CHAPTER XXVII
To Edward Fillery, the deep pain of frustration baffling all his mentalprocesses, the end had come with a strange, bewildering swiftness. Heknew there had been a prolonged dislocation of his being, possibly,even a partial loss of memory with regard to much that went on abouthim, but he could not, did not, admit that no value or reality hadattached to his experiences. The central self in him had projected alimb, an arm, that, feeling its way across the confining wall of theprison house, groping towards an unbelievably wonderful revelation ofnew possibilities, had abruptly now withdrawn again. The dissociationin his personality was over. He was, in other words, no longer awareof "N. H." Like Devonham, he now did not "perceive" "N. H.," but onlyLeVallon. But, unlike Devonham, he _had_ perceived him....
He had met half-way a mighty and magnificent Vision. Its truth andbeauty remained for him enduring. The revelation had come and gone.That its close was sudden, simple, undramatic, above all untheatrical,satisfied him. "N. H." had "escaped," leaving the commonplaceLeVallon in his place. But, at least, he had known "N. H."
His whole being, an odd, sweet, happy pain in him, yearned ever tothe glorious memory of it all. The melancholy, the peculiar shynesshe felt, were not without an indefinite pleasure. His nature stillvibrated to those haunting and inspiring rhythms, but his normal,earthly faculties, he flattered himself, were in no sense permanentlydisorganized. Professionally, he still cared for LeVallon, disenchanteddust though he might be, compared to "N. H." ... He approved ofDevonham's proposal to take him for a few days to the sea. He alsoapproved of Paul's advice that he should accept Father Collins'invitation to spend a day or two at his country cottage. The Khilkoffswould be there, father and daughter. The Home, in charge of anassistant, could be reached in a few hours in case of need. The magicof Devonham's wise, controlling touch lay in every detail, it seemed....
He saw the trio--for Nurse Robbins was of the party--off to Seaford."The final touches to his cure," Paul mentioned slyly, with a smile, asthe guard whistled. But of whose cure he did not explain. "He'll bathein the sea," he added, the reference obvious this time. "And--whenwe return--I shall be best man. I've already promised!" There was atriumph of skilled wisdom in both sentences.
"The time isn't ripe yet, Edward, for too magnificent ideas. Andyour ideas have been a shade too magnificent, perhaps." He talked onlightly, even carelessly. And, as usual, there was purpose, meaning,"treatment"--his friend easily discerned it now--in every detail of hisattitude.
Fillery laughed. Through his mind ran Povey's sentence, "Never arguewith the once-born!" but aloud he said, "At any rate, I've no idea thatI'm Emperor of Japan or--or the Archangel Gabriel!" And the other,pleased and satisfied that a touch of humour showed itself, shook handsfirmly, affectionately, through the window as the train moved off.LeVallon raised his hat to his chief and smiled--an ordinary smile....
* * * * *
With the speed and incongruity of a dream these few days slipped by,their happenings vivid enough, yet all set to a curiously small scale,a cramped perspective, blurred a little as by a fading light. Onlyone thing retained its brilliance, its intense reality, its place inthe bigger scale, its vast perspective remaining unchanged. The sameimmense sweet rhythm swept Iraida and himself inevitably together. Somedeep obsession that hitherto prevented had been withdrawn.
She had called that very morning--Paul's touch visible here again, hebelieved, though he had not asked. He looked on and smiled. After theordeal of breakfast with Devonham and LeVallon her visit was announced.It was Paul, after a little talk downstairs, who showed her in. Withthe radiance of a spring wild-flower opening to the early sunshine,her unexpected visit to his study seemed clothed. Unexpected, yes, butsurely inevitable as well. With the sweet morning wind through theopen window, it seemed, she came to him, the letter of invitation fromFather Collins in her hand. His own lay among his correspondence, stilluntouched. Her perfume rose about him as she explained something hehardly heard or followed.
"You'll come, Edward, won't you? You'll come too."
"Of course," he answered. But it was a song he heard, and no dullspoken words. She ran dancing towards him through a million flowers;her hair flew loose along the scented winds; her white limbs glowedwith fire. He danced to meet her. It was in the Valley that he caughther hands and met her eyes. "It's happened," he heard himself saying."It's happened at last--just as you said it must. _Escape!_ He hasescaped!"
"But we shall follow after--when the time comes, Edward."
"Where the wild bee never flew!"...
"When the time comes," she repeated.
Her voice, her smile, her eyes brought him back sharply into the littleroom. The furniture showed up again. The Valley faded. He noticedsuddenly that for the first time she wore no flowers in her dress asusual.
"Iraida!" he exclaimed. "Then--you knew!"
She bent her head, smiling divinely. She took both his hands in hers.At her touch every obstacle between them melted. His own private,personal inhibition he saw as the trivial barriers a little childmight raise. His complex against humanity, as Paul called it, haddisappeared. Their minds, their beings, their natures became moststrangely one, he felt, and yet quite naturally. There was nothingthey did not share.
"With the first dawn," he heard her say in a low voice. "Never--neveragain," he seemed to hear, "shall we destroy his--their--work of ages."
"A flower," he whispered, "has no need to wear a flower!" He wasconvinced that she too had shared an experience similar to his own,perhaps had even seen the bright, marvellous Deva faces peering,shining.... He did not ask. She said no more. Life flowed between themin an untroubled stream....
* * * * *
Like the flow of a stream, indeed, things went past him, yet withincidents and bits of conversation thus picked out with vividsharpness. The dissociation of his being was still noticeable here andthere, he supposed. The swell after the storm took time to settle down.Slowly, however, the waves that had been projected, leaping to heaven,returned to the safe, quiet dead level of the normal calm.... Thedepths lay still once more. And his melancholy passed a little, lifted.He knew, at any rate, those depths were now accessible.
"I've seen over the wall a moment," he said to himself. "Paul is bothright and wrong. What I've seen lies too far ahead of the Race to beintelligible or of use. I should be cast out, crucified, my other,simpler work destroyed. To control rhythms so powerful, so different toanything we now know, is not yet possible. They would shatter, ratherthan construct." He smiled sadly, yet with resignation. There was painand humour in his eyes. "I should be regarded as a Promethean merely,an extremist Promethean, and probably be locked up for contraveningsome County Council bye-law or offending Church and State. That'swhere he, perhaps, is right--Paul!" He thought of him with affectionand pity, with understanding love. "How wise and faithful, how patientand how skilled--within his limits. The stable are the useful; thestable are the leaders; the stable rule the world. People with steadyif unvisioned eyes like Paul, with money like Lady Gleeson.... But,oh!"--he sighed--"how slow, ye gods! how slow!" ...
* * * * *
The visit was a strange one. Nayan sat between him and her father inthe motor. It was not far from London, the ancient little house amongthe trees where Father Collins secreted himself from time to time uponoccasional "retreats."
Within the grounds it might have been the centre of the New Forest,but for the sound of tramcar bells that sometimes came janglingfaintly through the thick screen of leaves. There were old-world pavedcourtyards with sweet playing fountains, miniature lawns, tangles offlowers, small sunken gardens with birds of cut box and yew, stonenymphs, and a shaggy, moss-grown Pan, whose hand that once held thepipes had broken off. Suburbia lay outside, yet, by walking wisely, itwas possible to move among these delights for half an hour, great treesever rustling overhead, and a clear small stream winding peacefully inand out with gentle lapp
ing murmurs. Nature here lay undisturbed as ithad lain for centuries.
The little ancient house, moreover, seemed to have grown up with thegreen things out of the soil, so naturally, it all belonged together.The garden ran indoors, it seemed, through open doors and windows.Butterflies floated from courtyard into drawing-room and out again,leaves blew through dining-room windows, scurrying to another littlebit of lawn; the sun and wind, even the fountains' spray, found thewalls no obstacle as though unaware of them. Bees murmured, swallowshung below the eaves. It was, indeed, a healing spot, a naturalretreat....
"I really believe the river rises in your library," exclaimed Fillery,after a tour of inspection with his host, "and my bedroom is in theheart of that big chestnut across the lawn. Do my feet touch carpet,grass, or bark when I get out of bed in the morning?"
"I've learnt more here," began Father Collins, "than at all theconferences and learned meetings I ever attended...."
The group of four stood in the twilight by the playing fountain wherethe dignified stone Pan watched the paved little court, listening tothe splash of the water and the wind droning among the leaves. The lapof the winding stream came faintly to them. The stillness cast a spellabout them, dropping a screen against the outer world.
"Hark!" said Father Collins, holding a curved hand to his ear. "Youhear the music...?"
"'Why, in the leafy greenwood lone Sit you, rustic Pan, and drone On a dulcet resonant reed?'"
He paused, peering across to the stone figure as for an answer. Allstood listening, waiting, only wind and water breaking the silence.The bats were now flitting; overhead hung the saffron arch of fadingsunset. In a deep ringing voice, very gruff and very low, FatherCollins gave the answer:
"'So that yonder cows may feed Up the dewy mountain passes, Gathering the feathered grasses.'
"That's Pan's work," he said, laughing pleasantly, "Pan and all hissplendid hierarchy. Always at work, though invisibly, with music,colour, beauty!..."
It was scraps like this that stood out in Fillery's memory, adding tohis conviction that Paul had enlisted even this strange priest in hisdeep-laid plan....
"Each man is saturated with certain ideas, thoughts, phrases in aline of his own. These constitute his groove. To go outside it makeshim feel homeless and uncomfortable. Accustomed to its measurementsand safe within them, he interprets all he hears, reads, observes,according to his particular familiar shibboleths, to which, as toa standard of infallible criticism, he brings slavishly all thatis offered for the consideration of his judgment. A new Idea standslittle chance of being comprehended, much less adopted. Tell him newthings about the stars, the Stock Exchange, the Stigmata--up cropshis Standard of approval or disapproval. He cannot help himself. Hisjudgment, based upon the limited content of his groove, operatesautomatically. He condemns. An entirely new idea is barely glanced atbefore it is rejected for the rubbish heap. How, then, can progresscome swiftly to a Race composed of such individuals? Mass-judgment,herd-opinion governs everything. He who has original ideas is outcast,and dwells lonely as the moon. How slow, ye Gods! How slow!" ...
Only Fillery could not remember, could not be certain, whether it washis host or himself that used the words. Father Collins, as usual,was saying "all sorts of things," but addressed himself surely, toold Khilkoff most of the time, the Russian, half angry, half amused,growling out his comments and replies as he sat smoking heavily andenjoying the peaceful night scene in his own fashion....
It was odd, none the less, how much that the wild priest gabbledcoincided with his own, with Fillery's, thoughts at the moment. Apeculiar melancholy, a mood of shyness never known before, lay stillupon him. The beauty of the silent girl beside him overpowered hima little; too wonderful to hold, to own, she seemed. Yet they weredeliciously, uncannily akin. All his former self-created denials andsuppressions, hesitations and refusals had vanished. "N. H."--Hewondered?--had provided him with the fullest expression he had everknown. A boundless relief poured over him. He was aware of wholesomedesire rising behind his old high admiration and respect....
He watched her once standing close to Pan's broken outline among theshadows, touching the mossy arm with white fingers, and he imagined foran instant that she held the vanished pipes.
"After an experience with Other Beings," Father Collins's endless dronefloated to him, "shyness, they say, is felt. Silence descends upon thewhole nature" ... to which, a little later, came the growling commentwith its foreign accent: "Talk may be pleasurable--sometimes--but it isprofitable rarely...."
The talk flowed past and over him, occasional phrases, like islandsrising out of a stream, inviting his attention momentarily to land andlisten.... The girl, he now saw, no longer stood beside the brokenstone figure. She was wandering idly towards the farther garden and thetrees.
He burned to rise and go to her, but something held him. What was it?What could it be? Some strange hard little obstacle prevented. Then,suddenly, he knew what it was that stopped him: he was waiting for thatfamiliar pet sentence. Once he heard that, the impetus to move, thepower to overcome his strange shyness, the certainty that his wholebeing was at last one with itself again, would come to him. It made himlaugh inwardly while he recognized the validity of the detail--finalsymptoms of the obstructing inhibitions, of the obstinate originalcomplex.
The outline of the girl was lost now, merged in the shadows beyond.He stirred, but could not get up to go. A fury of impatience burnedin him. Father Collins, he felt, dawdled outrageously. He wastalking--jawing, Fillery called it--about extraordinary experiences."Gradually, as consciousness more and more often extends, the organsto record such extensions will be formed, you see.... If our inventivefaculties were turned inwards, instead of outwards for gain and comfortas they now are, we might know the gods...."
The sculptor's growl, though the words were this time inaudible, had abite in them. The other voice poured on like thick, slow oil:
"What, anyhow, is it, then, that urges us on in spite of all obstacles,denials, failures...?"
Then came something that seemed leading up to the pet sentence thatwas the signal he waited for--nearer to it, at any rate:
"... It's childish, surely, to go on merely seeking more of what wehave already. We should seek something new...."
A call, it seemed, came to him on the wind from the dark trees. Butstill he could not move.
But, at last, out of a prolonged jumble of the two voices, onegrowling, the other high pitched, came the signal he somehow waitedfor. Even now, however, the speaker delayed it as long as possible. Hewas doing it, of course, on purpose. This was intentional, obviously.
"... Yes, but a thing out of its right place is without power,life, means of expression--robbed of its context which alone givesit meaning--robbed, so to speak, of its arms and legs--_without abody_...."
There, at least, was the definite proof that Father Collins was doingthis of deliberate, set purpose!
"Go on! Yes, but, for God's sake, say it! I want to be off!" Fillerybelieved he shrieked the words, but apparently they were inaudible.They remained unnoticed, at any rate.
"... Hence the value of order, tidiness, you see. Often a misplacedthing is invisible until replaced where it belongs. It is, as we say,lost. No movement is meaningless, no walk without purpose. All yourmovements tend towards your proper place...."
A breeze blew the fountain spray aside so that its splashing ceased fora brief second. From the rustling leaves beyond came a faint murmuras of distant piping. But--into the second's pause had leaped the petsentence:
"Only a being in his _own_ place is the ruler of his fate."
The signal! He was aware that the Russian cleared his throat andspat unmusically, aware also that Father Collins, a queer smile justdiscernible on his face in the gloom, turned his head with a gesturethat might well have been an understanding nod. Both sound and gesture,however, were already behind him. He was released. He was across thepaved courtyard, past the fountain, past the stone figure
of the silentold rough god--and off!
And as he went, finding his way instinctively among the dark trees,that pet sentence went with him like a clarion call, as though sweetpiping music played it everywhere about him. A thousand memories shutdown with a final snap. In the stage of his mind came a black-out upona host of inhibitions. There was an immense and glorious sense ofrelief as though bitter knots were suddenly disentangled, and some ironkernel of resistance that had weighted him for years flowed freely atlast in a stream of happy molten gold....
He found her easily. Where the trees thinned at the farther edge hesaw her figure, long before he came up with her, outlined against thefading saffron. He saw her turn. He saw her arms outstretched. He cameup with her the same minute, and they stood in silence for a long time,watching the darkness bend and sink upon the landscape.
For, here, at this one edge of the tiny estate, the real open countryshowed. Beyond them, in the twilight, lay the silent fields like agigantic brown and yellow carpet whose shaken folds still seemed totremble and run on beneath the growing moon. Along a farther ridge thetrees and hedges passed in a ragged procession of strange figures,defined sharply against the sky--witches, queens and goblins on theprowl, the ancient fairyland of the English countryside.
They still stood silent, side by side, touching almost, their heat andperfume and atmosphere intermingling, looking out across the quietscene. He was aware that her mind stole into his most sweetly, and thatwithout knowing it his hand had found her own, and that, presently, sheleaned a little against him. Their eyes, their mental sight as well,saw the same things, he knew. The first stars peeped out, and theylooked up at them as one being looks, together.
"The wonder that you saw--in him," he heard himself saying. It was astatement, not a question.
"Was yourself, of course," her voice, like his own, in the rustle ofthe leaves, came softly. It continued his own thought rather thanreplied to it. "The part you've held down and hidden away all theseyears."
Her divination came to him with staggering effect. "You always knewthen?"
"Always. The first day we met you took me into the firm."
He was aware that everything about him pulsed and throbbed with life,intelligence in every stick and stone. Angelic beings marched ontheir wondrous business through the sky. A mighty host pursued theirendless service with a network of huge and tiny rhythms. The spirals ofcreative fire soared and danced....
The moon emerged, sailing, sailing, as though no wind could stop herlovely flight. She fled the stars themselves. The clouds turned roundto look at her, as, clearing their hair, she passed onwards with herradiant smile. Heading into the bare bosom of the sky, she blazed inher triumph of loneliness, her icy prow set towards some far, unknown,unearthly goal, which is the reason why men love her so.
"And my theories--our theories?" he murmured into the ear against hislips. "The way that has been shown to us?"
Both arms were now about her, and he held her so close that her wordswere but a warm perfumed breath to cover his face as her hair wascovering his eyes.
"We shall follow it together ... dear."
It was as if some angel, stepping down the sky, came near enough tofold them in a great rhythm of fire and wind. Bright, mighty faces in acrowd rose round them, and, through her hair, he saw familiar visibleoutlines of all the common things melt out, showing for one gorgeousinstant the flashings and whirlings that was the workshop of Theirdeathless service.
"Look! Look!" he whispered, pointing from the darkening earth to thestars and sailing moon above. "They're everywhere! You can see themtoo? The bright messengers?"
For answer, she came yet closer against his side, holding him moretightly to her, lifting her lips to his, so that in her very eyes hesaw the marvellous fire shine and flash. "We shall build together, youand I," she whispered very softly, "and with Their help, the sweetestand most perfect body ever known...."
But behind the magic of her words and voice, behind their meaningand the steadying, understanding sympathy he easily divined, heheard another sound, familiar as a dream, yet fraught with somehaunting significance he already was forgetting--almost _had_entirely forgotten. From the centre of the earth it seemed to rise,a magnificent, deep, stupendous rhythm that created, at least, theimpression of a voice:
"I weave and I weave...!" rolled forth, as though the planet uttered.He stood waiting, transfixed, listening intently.
"You heard?" he whispered.
"Everything," she said, tight in his arms at once again, her lips onhis. "The very beating of your heart--your inmost thoughts as well."
THE END
Transcriber's Note:
Punctuation has been standardised. Hyphenation and spelling has been retained as in the original publication except as follows:
Page 30 Khilkoff, the daugher of his _changed to_ Khilkoff, the daughter of his
Page 38 Butt puzzled--my God _changed to_ But puzzled--my God
Page 59 sets limits to it, Edward _changed to_ set limits to it, Edward
Page 70 Le Vallon was quite docile _changed to_ LeVallon was quite docile
Page 72 Yets its limits seemed _changed to_ Yet its limits seemed
Page 105 according to Bose.... _changed to_ according to Bose....
Page 153 reaching the divan in its dimlit _changed to_ reaching the divan in its dim-lit
Page 157 went as unobstrusively as an animal _changed to_ went as unobtrusively as an animal
Page 185 was too convicing to be missed _changed to_ was too convincing to be missed
Page 282 with amazemnt. They were so _changed to_ with amazement. They were so
Page 299 Le Vallon went on, plucking the _changed to_ LeVallon went on, plucking the
all her life suppressed (because _changed to_ all her life suppressed because
Page 302 young girl wavered and hestitated _changed to_ young girl wavered and hesitated
Page 339 planetary spirits and vast Intelligenes _changed to_ planetary spirits and vast Intelligences
The Bright Messenger Page 27
