The Bright Messenger

by Algernon Blackwood

  CHAPTER XV

  To retail the following scene as Dr. Fillery saw it in detail is notnecessary, the sequence of acts, of physical events being alreadyknown. The reactions of his heart and mind, however, have importance.What he felt, thought, hoped and feared, what he believed as well, hispoint of view in a word, remain essential.

  Edward Fillery, being what he was, witnessed it from his own individualangle; his mind, with his heredity, his soul, with its mysteriousbackground, these held the glasses to his eyes, adjusting, as with aZeiss instrument, each eye separately. In his case the analyst andthinker checked the unstable dreamer with acute exactitude. This washis special gift. He studied himself best while studying others. Hissight, moreover, was exceptionally keen, his glasses of consummateworkmanship. He saw, it seems, considerably beyond the normal range. Hebelieved, at least, that he did so.

  He saw, for instance, that the girl, while her fingers ran over thekeys before she sang, searched the room and found LeVallon in a second.Following her rapid glance, he took in the picture that she alsosaw--LeVallon, coffee cup in hand, before Lady Gleeson languishingon the divan, and Devonham just beside them. LeVallon was obviouslyunaware of Lady Gleeson's presence; he had forgotten her existence.Devonham, a floor-walker with nothing particular to do at the moment,looked uncomfortable and ill at ease, scared a little, fearing a scene,a possible outbreak even. The meaning of the group was easily read. Thegirl herself, undoubtedly, read it clearly too.

  This flashed upon the cinema screen, and Fillery divined it without thehelp of tedious letterpress.

  The same instant he was aware that the girl and LeVallon looked forthe first time straight into each other's faces, and that both seemedsimultaneously caught into the air as though a star had lifted them.Not even a question lay in their clear eyes. It was an instantaneousunderstanding, so complete and perfect that the expression of happysurprise was too convincing to be missed even by the slow-wittedLady Gleeson. Vanity usually delays intelligence, and her vanity wasabnormal. But she saw the expression on the two faces, and interpretedit aright. Fillery noticed that she squirmed; she would presently, hefelt positive, disappear. Before the singing ended he had seen herslink away.

  The song began. He had heard it before, "The Vagrant's Epitaph,"sung by the same clear, sweet voice, had felt his heart stirred bythe true simple feeling she put into it. He knew every word andevery bar; the music was her own. He loved it. Both words and musicawoke in him invariably a picture of his own lost valley, a physicaldesire to be over the hills and far away with the homeless libertyof winds and stars and waters, and at the same time, its spiritualequivalent--a yearning that the Race should discover the immense fairregion of its greater hidden self and enjoy its new powers withoutrestraint. All this was familiar to him. But now, as she sang, therecame another, deeper meaning that sublimated the essential spirit ofit, lifting it out of the known ditch of space and time. Never yethad he heard such yearning passion, such untold desire in her voice.The physical vagrancy changed subtly, exquisitely, to a symbol of avaster meaning--a spiritual vagrancy that suddenly captured him inbitter pain. "Love could not hold him, Duty forged no chain"--as helistened to the sweetness, struck him between the joints of armour hehad not realized before was so insecurely bound about him. The anguishof lonely souls, alien among their kind, hungry for companionshipthey might not find, unclothed, uncared for, desired of none andunderstanding none--this rose tumultuously in his blood. "The wideseas and the mountains called him ..." the words and music piercedhim like a flame. "Revel might hold him for a little space ..."--hervoice made it sound like a description of man's brief moment on thewhirling planet, tasting adventure with men and women, playing a momentwith love and hope and fear, till, "turning past the laughter and thelamps," he heard that "other summons at the door."

  This bigger version, this deeper meaning, caught at him with poweras he heard the song in the sweet, familiar voice, and realized ina flash that what he felt faintly LeVallon felt terrifically. Hisown detachment was a pose, a shadow, at best a bodiless yearning; inLeVallon it was a reality of consuming fire. Also it was an explanationof the girl's own singular aloofness from the world of admiring men.Both belonged, as Father Collins put it, "elsewhere."

  He watched them. LeVallon's eyes, he saw, remained fixed and motionlesson the singer; her own did not leave the notes for a single moment;the words and music poured into the room like a shower of dancingsilver. The personality of the girl flowed out with them to meet thenewly-found companion they addressed. An extraordinary thing thenhappened: to Fillery it almost seemed that there formed then and therebetween them a new vehicle--as it were, a body--that gave expression totheir own great secret. Something in each of them, unable to manifestthrough their minds, their brains, their earthly bodies, formed foritself an elastic subtle vehicle, using the sound, the words, thefeeling for this purpose--and as literally as a human spirit uses thefamiliar physical body for its manifestation.

  The experience was amazing, but it was real. He watched it carefully.In the room about him, formed on the waves of this sweet singing,shaped by feeling that found normally no other expression, inspiredby emotions, yearnings, desires alien to their normal kind, these twocreated between them a new vehicle or body that could and did expressall this.

  They heard that "other summons at the door...." And they were off.

  Yet he, too, heard the summons, and in the depths of his being heanswered to it. His essential weakness, wearing the guise of strength,rose naked....

  These thoughts and feelings lay unexpressed, perhaps--too deepactually, too remote from any experience he had yet known, to findactual words, even in his mind. What did find expression, in thoughtat any rate, was that, before his very eyes, he witnessed thetransfiguring change come over Nayan. Like some flower that has beengrowing in the shade, then meets the flood of sunshine for the firsttime, she knew a fresh tide of life sweep over her entire being. Sheseemed to blossom, breaking almost into flower and fruit before hisvery eyes, as though sun and wind brought her into a sudden bloom ofexquisite maturity. He was aware of rich, deep purple, the faint goldof fruits and flowers, the creamy softness of a rose, the amber of wildgrapes bathed in sparkling dew. The luscious promise of the Springmatured about her whole presentment into full summer glory. And it wasthe sun and wind of LeVallon's enigmatic, stimulating presence close toher that caused the miracle. The essential flower of her life pouredforth to meet his own, as he had always felt it must. LeVallon's wasthe mighty wind that lifted her, was the sun in whose heat she basked,expanded, soared. She experienced a strange increase of her naturalvitality and being. Her consciousness knew an abrupt intensification.

  The signs, in that brief moment, were as clear to Fillery's diviningheart as though he read them in black printed letters on a page ofwhitest paper. He knew the cipher and the code. He watched the signalsflash. They had not even spoken, yet the relationship was establishedbeyond doubt. He witnessed the first exchange; the wireless message ofjoy and sympathy that flashed he intercepted.

  Through his extremely rapid mind, as he watched, poured memories,reflections, judgments in concentrated form, yet calmly, steadily,though against a background of deep and troubled emotion. There seemedactually a disruption of his personality. Father Collins, standingbeside him, divined nothing, he believed, of his agitation, standing,mere figure of a man, listening to the music with attentive pleasure;at least, he gave no outward sign....

  The song drew to its close. Once Nayan raised her eyes, instantlyfinding those of LeVallon across the room, then shifting again for afleeting second with a rapidly changing focus to his own. He met themwithout a quiver; he caught again her tender, searching question; hesent no answer back.

  In his own heart burned, however, a score of questions that beatagainst his soul for answers. What was it that each had found thusintuitively within the other? Was it her maternal instinct only thatwas reached as with all other men hitherto, was it at last the woman inher that leaped towards its own divi
ne, creative sun, or was it thathidden, nameless aspect of her which had never yet found a vehicle formanifestation among her own kind and had therefore remained hithertounexpressed--bodiless?

  The answer to this he found easily enough. No jealousy stirred; painfor himself had been long ago uprooted. Yet pain of a kind he felt.Would LeVallon injure, drag her down, bring suffering, perhaps ofan atrocious sort, into her hitherto so innocent life? Was she yetqualified to withstand the fierce fire, the rushing wind, that the fullforce of his strange nature must bring to bear upon her?

  His questions went prophesying, flying like swift birds to such greatdistances that no audible answers could return. His pain, at anyrate, chiefly was for her. He divined that she was frightened, yetexhilarated, before the unexpected apparition of an unusual presence.Accustomed to smaller jets of admiration from smaller men, this deepflood overwhelmed her. This motionless figure watching her amongthe shadows, listening to her singing, devouring her beauty with aninnocence, power, worship she had never yet encountered--could she,Fillery asked himself, withstand its elemental flood and not be brokenby its waves?

  For at the back of all his questions, haunting his prophecies, fillinghis hopes and fears with substance, stood one outstanding certainty:

  The motionless figure in the shadows was not LeVallon. It was "N. H."

  The thing he had expected had now happened. Instinctively he turned tofind his colleague.

  For what followed, Fillery, of course, was as unprepared as anyone.In some way, difficult to describe, the whole thing had a strangelynatural, almost an inevitable touch. The exaggeration that others felthe was not conscious of. He never, for a single moment, lost his head.The wonder of the elemental violence appealed and stimulated withoutonce touching the sense of fear, much less of panic, in him.

  Searching for Devonham's familiar figure, he found it in the seat thatLady Gleeson had vacated shortly before, but the face turned awaytowards the inner room, so that it was not possible to catch his eye.It was an attentive, critical, almost anxious expression his chiefsurprised, and while a faint smile perhaps flitted across his ownmouth, he became aware that Father Collins--he had again completelyforgotten his proximity--was staring with a curious intentness at him.The same instant the song came to an end. Into the brief pause of asecond before the applause burst forth, Father Collins's voice wassuddenly audible in his ear:

  "LeVallon's gone," Fillery was saying to himself, "'N. H.' is incontrol," when his neighbour's words broke in. The two sentences weresimultaneously in his mind:

  "A man in _his own place_ is the Ruler of his Fate!"

  And Fillery's astonishment was only equalled by the fact that the grimface was soft with sympathy, and that in the eyes shone moisture thatwas close to tears. Before he could reply, however, the applause burstforth, making an uproar against which no voice could possibly contend.The subsequent events, following so swiftly, made rejoinder equally outof the question, nor did he see Father Collins again that evening.

  These Fillery witnessed much as already described through Devonham'seyes. The storm, the panic took place as told. Yet a detail here andthere belong to Fillery's version, for they were a part of his ownbeing. He had, for instance, a warning that something was about tohappen, although warning seems not quite the faithful word. He sawthe Valley for one fleeting second, the three familiar figures, Nayan,"N. H.," himself, flying through the bright sunshine before a wind thatstirred a million flowers. In the farthest possible background of hismind it shone an instant. The shutter dropped again, it vanished.

  Yet enough to set him on the alert. Into the air about him, into hisheart as well, fell an exhilarating and immense refreshment. It rose,as it were, from the most deeply submerged portion of his own hiddenbeing, now stirred, even actually summoned, into activity.

  The shutter meanwhile rose and fell and rose again; the Valleyreappeared and vanished, then reappeared again.

  For the truth came smashing against him--smashing his being open, andbursting the doors of his carefully instructed, carefully guardednature. The doors flung from their hinges and a blinding light pouredin and flooded the strangest possible hidden corners.

  He saw what followed with an accuracy of observation impossibleto anyone else, with an intimate sympathy the others could notfeel--because he himself took part in the entire scene. But the scene,for him, was not the Chelsea studio with its tobacco smoke and perfume,it was the Caucasian valley whence his own blood derived. Clean,fragrant winds swept past him across mighty space. The walls meltedinto distances of forest and mountain peaks, the ceiling was a dome ofstainless blue, the floor ran deep in flowers. A drenching sunshine ofcrystal purity bathed the world. It was across bright emerald turf thathe saw "N. H." dance forward like a wind of power, cry with a joyfulresonant voice to the radiant girl who stood laughing, half hiding, yetat the same time beckoning, that she should fly with him. He caught andlifted her, her hair, the whiteness of her skin flashing in the sunlike some marvellous bird in the act of taking wing, for before he hadtouched her she leapt through the air to meet his outstretched arms.Yet one hand, one silvery arm, waved towards himself, towards Fillery;their fingers met and clasped; the three of them, three dancing, freeand joyful figures, fled like the wind across the enormous mountains,but fled, he knew beyond all question--_home_.

  He saw this in the space of those few seconds in which Nayan wasswung over the youth's shoulders beside the piano. The two scenes ranparallel, as it were, before his eyes, outer and inner sight keepingequal pace together. His balance and judgment here were never oncedisturbed. In the studio: he had just introduced LeVallon to the girland the latter had caught her up. In the valley: she had leapt into hisarms and the three of them were off.

  It was this inner interpretation, keeping always level pace with whatwas happening outwardly, that furnished Fillery with the hint of anastounding explanation. The figure in the valley, it flashed to him,was, of course, "N. H." in all his natural splendour, but a figureunknown surely to all records of humanity as such. Here danced and sanga happy radiant being, by whom the limitations of the human specieswere not experienced, even if the species were familiar to him at all.A being from another system, another evolution, an elemental being,whose ideal, development, mode of existence, were not those of men andwomen. "N. H." was not a human being, a human soul, a human spirit. Hebelonged elsewhere and otherwise. Under the guise of LeVallon he haddrifted in. He inhabited LeVallon's frame.

  In the Studio, at this instant, Fillery heard him using the singularwords already noted, and in the Studio they sounded, indeed, senseless,foolish, even mad. It was, he realized, an attempt to stammer in humanlanguage some meaning that lay beyond, outside it. In the Valley,however, and at the same moment, they sounded natural and true. Theevolutionary system to which "N. H." belonged, from which he hadin some as yet unknown manner passed into humanity, but to which,though almost entirely forgotten, he yearned with his whole beingto return--this other system had, it seemed, its own conditions,its own methods of advance, its ideals and its duties. Were, then,its inhabitants--this flashed upon him in the delicious wind andsunshine--the workers in what men call the natural kingdoms, thebuilders of form and structure, the directing powers that expressedthemselves through the elemental energies everywhere behind the laws ofNature? Was this their tireless and wondrous service in the planet, inthe universe itself?

  "N. H." called the girl to service, not to personal love. Alone, cutoff from his own kind, alien and derelict amid the conditions of ahumanity strange, perhaps unknown to him, he sought companionshipwhere he could. Drawn instinctively to the more impersonal types, suchas Fillery and the girl, he felt there the nearest approach to whathe recognized as his own kind; their ideal of selfless service was abeacon that he understood; he would return to his own kingdom, carryingthem both with him. From somewhere, at any rate, this all flashed intohis too willing mind....

  At which second precisely in Fillery's valley-vision, Khilkoff entered,and--yet before he could t
ake action--the lightning struck and thesudden explosion of the ferocious storm blackened out both the outerand the inner scene.

  The shock of elemental violence, the astounding revelation as wellthat an entirely new type had possibly come within his ken, this,combined with the emotional disturbance caused by the change producedin Nayan, seemed enough to upset the equilibrium of even the mostbalanced mind. The darkness added its touch of helplessness besides.Yet Fillery never for a moment lost his head. Two natures in him, causeof his radical instability, merged for a moment in amazing harmony. Thepanic now dominating all about him seemed so small a thing comparedto the shattering discovery life had just offered to him. Across it,finding his way past kneeling women and shrieking girls, drenched tothe skin by the flood of entering rain, moving over splintered glass,he found the figure he sought, as though by some instinctive sympathy.They came together in the darkness. Their hands met easily. A momentlater they were in the street, and "N. H.'s" instinctive terror amidthe sheets of falling water, an element hostile to his own naturalfire, made it a simple matter to get him home--in Lady Gleeson's motorcar.