Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  Fillery explained with one-half of his nature, and still as to a child. The other half of him lay under firm restraint according to his promise. He outlined in general terms man’s knowledge of the stars. “The laws never tire,” he said.

  “But the stars end! They burn out, stop, and die! You said so.”

  The other replied with something judicious and cautious about time and its immense duration. But he was startled.

  “And those who attend to the laws,” came then the words that startled him, “who keeps them working so that they do not tire?”

  It was something in the tone of voice perhaps that, once again, produced in his listener the extraordinary sudden feeling that Humanity was, after all, but an insignificant, a microscopic detail in the Universe; that it was, say, a mere ant-heap in the colossal jungle crowded with other minuter as well as immenser life of every sort and kind, and, moreover, that “N. H.” was aware of this “other life,” or at least of some vast section of it, and had been, if he were not still, associated with it. The two letters by which he was designated acquired a deeper meaning than before.

  A rich glow came into the young face, and into the eyes, growing ever darker, a look of burning; the skin had the effect of radiating; the breathing became of a sudden deep and rhythmical. The whole figure seemed to grow larger, expanding as though it extended already and half filled the room. Into the atmosphere about it poured, as though heat and light rushed through it, a strange effect of power.

  “You’d like to visit them, perhaps — wouldn’t you?” asked Fillery gently.

  “I feel — —” began the other, then stopped short.

  “You feel it would interest you,” the doctor helped — then saw his mistake.

  “I feel,” repeated the youth. The sentence was complete. “I am there.”

  “Ah! when you feel you’re there, you are there?”

  The other nodded.

  He leaned forward. “I know,” he whispered as with sudden joy. “You help me to remember, Fillery.” The voice, though whispering, was strong; it vibrated full of over-tones and under-tones. The sound of the “F” was like a wind in branches. “You wonderful, you know too! It is the same with flowers, with everything. We build with wind and fire.” He stopped, rubbing a hand across his forehead a moment. “Wind and fire,” he went on, but this time to himself, “my splendid mighty ones....” Dropping his hand, he flashed an amazing look of enthusiasm and power into his companion’s face. The look held in concentrated form something of the power that seemed pulsing and throbbing in his atmosphere. “Help me to remember, dear Fillery,” his voice rang out aloud like singing. “Remember with me why we both are here. When we remember we can go back where we belong.”

  The glow went from his face and eyes as though an inner lamp had been suddenly extinguished. The power left both voice and atmosphere. He sank back in his chair, his great sensitive hands spread over the table where the star charts lay, as through the open window came the crash and clatter of an aeroplane tearing, like some violent, monstrous insect, through the sunlight.

  A look of pain came into his eyes. “It goes again. I’ve lost it.”

  “We were talking about the stars and the laws of Nature,” said Fillery quickly, though his voice was shaking, “when that noisy flying-machine disturbed us.” He leaned over, taking his companion’s hand. His heart was beating. He smelt the open spaces. The blood ran wildly in his veins. It was with the utmost difficulty he found simple, common words to use. “You must not ask too much at once. We will learn slowly — there is so much we have to learn together.”

  LeVallon’s smile was beautiful, but it was the smile of “LeVallon” again only.

  “Thank you, dear Fillery,” he replied, and the talk continued as between a tutor and his backward pupil.... But for some time afterwards the “tutor’s” mind and heart, while attending to LeVallon now, went travelling, it seemed, with “N. H.” There was this strange division in his being ... for “N. H.” appealed with power to a part of him, perhaps the greatest, that had never yet found expression, much less satisfaction.

  Many a talk together of this kind, with occasional semi-irruptions of “N. H.,” he had already enjoyed with his new patient, and LeVallon was by now fairly well instructed in the general history of our little world, briefly but picturesquely given. Evolution had been outlined and explained, the rise of man sketched vividly, the great war, and the planet’s present state of chaos described in a way that furnished a clear enough synopsis of where humanity now stood. LeVallon was able to hold his own in conversation with others; he might pass for a simple-minded but not ill-informed young man, and both Paul Devonham and Edward Fillery, though each for different reasons, were, therefore, well satisfied with the young human being entrusted to their care, a human being to be eventually discharged from the Home, healed and cured of extravagances, made harmonious with himself, able to make his own way in the world alone. To Devonham it appeared already certain that, within a reasonable time, LeVallon would find himself happily at home among his fellow kind, a normal, even a gifted young man with a future before him. “N. H.” would disappear and be forgotten, absorbed back into the parent Self. To his colleague, on the other hand, another vision of his future opened. Sooner or later it was LeVallon that would disappear and “N. H.” remain in full control, a strange, possibly a new type of being, not alone marvellously gifted, but who might even throw light upon a vista of research and knowledge hitherto unknown to humanity, and with benefits for the Race as yet beyond the reach of any wildest prophecy.

  Both men, therefore, went gladly with him to the Khilkoff Studio that early November afternoon, anxious to observe him, his conduct, attitude, among the curious set of people to be found there on the Prometheans’ Society day, and to note any reactions he might show in such a milieu. Each felt fully justified in doing so, though they would have kept an ordinary “hysterical” patient safely from the place. LeVallon, however, betrayed no trace of hysteria in any meaning of the word, big or little; he was stable as a navvy, betraying no undesirable reaction to the various well-known danger points. The visit might be something of an experiment perhaps, but an experiment, a test, they were justified in taking. Yet Devonham on no account would have allowed his chief to go alone. He had insisted on accompanying them.

  And to both men, as they went towards Chelsea, their quiet companion with them, came the feeling that the visit might possibly prove one of them right, the other wrong. Fillery expected that Nayan Khilkoff alone, to say nothing of the effect of the other queer folk who might be present, must surely evoke the “N. H.” personality now lying quiescent and inactive below the threshold of LeVallon. The charm and beauty of the girl he had never known to fail with any male, for she had that in her which was bound to stimulate the highest in the opposite sex. The excitement of the wild, questing, picturesque, if unbalanced, minds who would fill the place, must also, though in quite another way, affect the real self of anyone who came in contact with their fantastic and imaginative atmosphere. Attraction or repulsion must certainly be felt. He expected at any rate a vital clue.

  “Ivan Khilkoff,” he told LeVallon, as they went along in the car, “is a Russian, a painter and sculptor of talent, a good-hearted and silent sort of old fellow, who has remained very poor because he refuses to advertise himself or commercialize his art, and because his work is not the kind of thing the English buy. His daughter, Nayan, teaches the piano and Russian. She is beautiful and sweet and pure, but of an independent and rather impersonal character. She has never fallen in love, for instance, though most men fall in love with her. I hope you may like and understand each other.”

  “Thank you,” said LeVallon, listening attentively, but with no great interest apparently. “I will try very much to like her and her father too.”

  “The Studio is a very big one, it is really two studios knocked into one, their living rooms opening out of it. One half of the place, being so large, they sometimes let out
for meetings, dances and that sort of thing, earning a little money in that way. It is rented this evening by a Society called the Prometheans — a group of people whose inquisitive temperaments lead them to believe, or half believe — —”

  “To imagine, if not deliberately to manufacture,” put in Devonham.

  “ —— to imagine, let us call it,” continued the other with a twinkle, “that there are other worlds, other powers, other states of consciousness and knowledge open to them outside and beyond the present ones we are familiar with.”

  “They know these?” asked LeVallon, looking up with signs of interest. “They have experienced them?”

  “They know and experience,” replied Fillery, “according to their imaginations and desires, those with a touch of creative imagination claiming the most definite results, those without it being merely imitative. They report their experiences, that is, but cannot — or rarely show the results to others. You will hear their talk and judge accordingly. They are interesting enough in their way. They have, at any rate, one thing of value — that they are open to new ideas. Such people have existed in every age of the world’s history, but after an upheaval, such as the great war has been, they become more active and more numerous, because the nervous system, reacting from a tremendous strain, produces exaggeration. Any world is better than an uncomfortable one in revolution, they think. They are, as a rule, sincere and honest folk. They add a touch of colour to the commonplace — —”

  “Tuppence coloured,” murmured Devonham below his breath.

  “And they believe so much in other worlds to conquer, other regions, bigger states of consciousness, other powers,” concluded Fillery, ignoring the interruption, “that they are half in this world, half in the next. Hence Dr. Devonham’s name, the name by which he sometimes laughs at them — of Half Breeds.”

  LeVallon’s eyes, he saw, were very big; his interest and attention were excited.

  “They will probably welcome you with open arms,” he added, “if you care to join them. They consider themselves pioneers of a larger life. They are not mere spiritualists — oh no! They are familiar with all the newest theories, and realize that an alternative hypothesis can explain all so-called psychic phenomena without dragging spirits in. It is in exaggerating results they go mostly wrong.”

  “Eccentrics,” Devonham remarked, “out of the circle, and hysterical to a man. They accomplish nothing. They are invariably dreamers, usually of doubtful morals and honesty, and always unworthy of serious attention. But they may amuse you for an hour.”

  “We all find it difficult to believe what we have never experienced,” mentioned Fillery, turning to his colleague with a hearty laugh, in which the latter readily joined, for their skirmishes usually brought in laughter at the end. Just now, moreover, they were talking with a purpose, and it was wise and good that LeVallon should listen and take in what he could — hearing both sides. He watched and listened certainly with open eyes and ears, as he sat between them on the wide front seat, but saying, as usual, very little.

  The car turned down a narrow lane with slackening speed and slowed up before a dingy building with faded Virginia creepers sprawling about stained dirty walls. The neighbourhood was depressing, patched and dishevelled, and almost bordering on a slum. The November light was passing into early twilight.

  “You,” said LeVallon abruptly, turning round and staring at Devonham, “make everything seem unreal to me. I do not understand you. You know so much. Why is so little real to you?”

  But Devonham, in the act of getting out of the car, made no reply, and probably had not heard the words, or, if he had heard, thought them more suitable for Fillery.

  CHAPTER XII

  THE Prometheans were evidently in full attendance; possibly the rumour had reached them that Dr. Fillery was coming. No one announced the latter’s arrival, there was no servant visible; the party hung up their hats and coats in a passage, then walked into the lofty, dim-lit studio which was already filled with people and the hum of many voices.

  At once, standing in a hesitating group beside the door, they were observed by everyone in the room. All asked, it seemed, “Who is this stranger they have brought?” Fillery caught the curious atmosphere in that first moment, an instant whiff, as it were, of excitement, interest, something picturesque, if possibly foolish, fantastic, too, yet faintly stimulating, breathing along his extremely sensitive nerves.

  He glanced at his companions. Devonham, it struck him, looked more than ever like a floor-walker come to supervise, say, a Department where the sales and assistants were not satisfactory or — he laughed inwardly as the simile occurred to him — a free-thinker entering a church whose teaching he disapproved, even despised, and whose congregation touched his contemptuous pity. “Who would ever guess,” thought his friend and colleague, “the sincerity and depth of knowledge in that insignificant appearance? Paul hides his value well!” He noticed, in his quick fashion, touched by humour, the hard challenging eyes, the aquiline nose on which a pair of pince-nez balanced uneasily, the narrow shoulders, the poorly fitting clothes. The heart, of course, remained invisible. Yet suddenly he felt glad that Devonham was with him. “Nothing unstable there,” he reflected, “and stability combined with competence is rare.” This rapid judgment, it occurred to him, was possibly a warning from his own subconscious being.... A red flag signalled, flickered, vanished.

  He glanced next at LeVallon, towering above the other. LeVallon was now well dressed in London clothes that suited him, though, for that matter, any clothes must have looked well upon a male figure so virile and upstanding. His great shoulders, his leanness, covered so beautifully with muscle, his height, his colouring, his radiant air; above all, his strange, big penetrating eyes, marked him as a figure one would notice anywhere. He stood, somehow, alone, apart, though the ingredients that contributed to this strange air of aloofness would be hard to define.

  It was chiefly, perhaps, the poise of the great powerful frame that helped towards this odd setting in isolation and independence. Motionless, he gazed about him quietly, but it was the way he stood that singled him out from other men. Even in his stillness there was grace; neither hands nor feet, though it was difficult to describe exactly how he placed them or used them, were separate from this poise of perfect balance. To put it colloquially, he knew what to do with his extremities. Self-consciousness, in sight of this ardent throng, the first he had encountered at close, intimate quarters, was entirely absent.

  This Fillery noticed instantly, but other impressions followed during the few brief seconds while they waited by the door; and first, the odd effect of tremendous power he managed to convey. Nothing could have been less aggressive than the tentative, questioning, half inquiring, half wondering attitude in which he stood, waiting to be introduced to the buzzing throng of humans; yet there hung about him like an atmosphere this potential strength, of confidence, of superiority, even of beauty too, that not only contributed much to the aloofness already mentioned, but also contrived to make the others, men and women, in the crowded room — insignificant. Somehow they seemed pale and ineffective against a larger grandeur, a scale entirely beyond their reach.

  “Gigantic” was the word that leaped into the mind, but another perhaps leaped with it— “elemental.”

  Fillery was aware of envy, oddly enough, of pride as well. His heart warmed more than ever to him. Almost, he could have then and there recalled his promise given to Devonham, cancelling it contemptuously with a word of self-apology for his smallness and his lack of faith....

  LeVallon, aware of a sympathetic mind occupied closely with himself, turned in that moment, and their eyes met squarely; a smile of deep, inner understanding passed swiftly between them over Devonham’s head and shoulders. In which moment, exactly, a short, bearded man, detaching himself from the crowd, came forward and greeted them with sincere pleasure in his voice and manner. He was broad-shouldered, lean, his clothes hung loosely; his glance was keen but kindly. I
ntroductions followed, and Khilkoff’s sharp eye rested for some seconds with unconcealed admiration upon LeVallon, as he held his hand. His discerning sculptor’s glance seemed to appraise his stature and proportions, while he bade him welcome to the Studio. His big head and short neck, his mane of hair, the width of his face, with its squat nose and high cheek-bones, the half ferocious eyes, the heavy jaw and something sprawling about the mouth, gave him a leonine expression. And his voice was not unlike a deep-toned growl, for all its cordiality.

  A stir, meanwhile, ran through the room, more heads turned in their direction; they had long ago been observed; they were being now examined.

  “Nayan,” Khilkoff was saying, while he still held LeVallon’s hand as though its size and grip contented him, “had a late Russian lesson. She will be here shortly, and very glad to make your acquaintance,” looking up at LeVallon, as the new-comer. His gruffness and brevity had something pleasing in them. “To-day the Studio is not entirely mine,” he explained. “I want you to come when I’m alone. Some studies I made in Sark this summer may interest you.” He turned to Fillery. “That lonely place was good for both of us,” he said; “it gave me new life and inspiration, and Nayan benefited immensely too. She looks more like a nymph than ever.”

  He shook hands with Devonham, smiling more grimly. “I’m surprised you, too, have honoured us,” he exclaimed with genuine surprise. “Come to damn them all as usual, probably! Good! Your common-sense and healthy criticism are needed in these days — cool, cleaning winds in an over-heated conservatory.” He broke off abruptly and looked down at LeVallon’s hand he was still holding. He examined it for a second with care and admiration, then turned his eye upon the young man’s figure. He grunted.

  “When I know you better,” he said, with a growl of earnest meaning, “I shall ask a favour, a great favour, of you. So, beware!”