Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  “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 he noticed 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 — this mercy, 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 to us too —— !”

  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 people do live 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, whereas He came here only 2,000 years ago — —”

  “Came here,” 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. It was 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.

  CHAPTER XXV

  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 to herself, 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 which he knows 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 never quite realizes 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,” he went 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 one born noble? 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. “If you, 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. I have 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 — to you.”

  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 — —”