The Bright Messenger

by Algernon Blackwood

  CHAPTER XVII

  It was not long after the scene in the Studio that the Prometheansforegathered at dinner in the back room of the small French restaurantin Soho and discussed the event. The prices were moderate, conditionsfree and easy. It was a favourite haunt of Members.

  To-night, moreover, there was likely to be a good attendance. The wordhad gone out.

  The Studio scene had, of course, been the subject of much discussionalready. The night of its occurrence it had been talked over till dawnin more than one flat, and during the following days the Society, as awhole, thought of little else. Those who had not been present had to beinformed, and those who had witnessed it found it an absorbing topic ofspeculation. The first words that passed when one member met another inthe street was: "What _did_ you make of that storm? Wasn't it amazing?Did your solar plexus vibrate? Mine did! And the light, the colour,the vibrations--weren't they terrific? What do you think _he_ is?" Itwas rumoured that the Secretary was asking for individual reports.Excitement and interest were general, though the accounts of individualwitnesses differed extraordinarily. It seemed impossible that all hadseen and heard the same thing.

  The back room was pleasantly filled to-night, for it was somehowknown that Millington Povey, and possibly Father Collins, too, werecoming. Miss Milligan, the astrologist, was there early, arriving withMrs. Towzer, who saw auras and had already, it was rumoured, paintedautomatically a strange rendering of "forces" that were visible to herclairvoyantly during the occurrence. Miss Lance, in shining beads anda glittering scarf, arrived on their heels, an account of the scene inher pocket--to be published in her magazine "Simplicity" after she hadmodified it according to what she picked up from hearing other, andbetter, descriptions.

  Kempster, immaculate as ever, ordering his food as he ordered hisclothes, like a connoisseur, was one of the first to establish himselfin a comfortable seat. He knew how to look after himself, and wasalready eating in his neat dainty way while the others still stoodabout studying the big white _menu_ with its illegible hieroglyphics insmudged violet ink. He supplemented his meals with special patent foodsof vegetarian kind he brought with him. He had dried bananas in onepocket and spirit photographs in another, and he was invariably pullingout the wrong thing. Meat he avoided. "A man is what he eats," he held,and animal blood was fatal to psychic development. To eat pig or cowwas to absorb undesirable characteristics.

  Next to him sat Lattimer, a lanky man of thirty, with loose clothes,long hair, and eyes of strange intensity. Known as "occultist andalchemist," he was also a chemist of some repute. His life was ruled bya master-desire and a master-fear: the former, that he might one dayproject his double consciously; the latter, that in his next earthlyincarnation he might be--the prospect made him shudder--a woman. Hesought to keep his thought as concrete as possible, the male quality.

  He believed that the nervous centre of the physical body whichcontrolled all such unearthly, if not definitely "spiritual," impulses,was the solar plexus. For him it was _the_ important portion of hisanatomy, the seat of intuition. Brain came second.

  "The fellow," he declared emphatically, "stirred my solar plexus, my_kundalini_--that's all I know." He referred, as all understood, to thelatent power the _yogis_ claim lies coiled, but only rarely manifested,in that great nervous centre.

  His statement, he knew, would meet with general approval andunderstanding. It was the literal Kempster who spoiled his opening:

  "Paul Devonham," said the latter, "thinks it's merely a secondarypersonality that emerged. I had a long argument with him about it----"

  "Never argue with the once-born," declared Povey flatly, producinghis pet sentence. "It's waste of time. Only older souls, withthe experience of many earthly lives stored in their beings, areknowledgeable." He filled his glass and poured out for others, Lattimerand Mrs. Towzer alone declining, though for different reasons.

  "It destroys the 'sight,'" explained the former. "Alcohol sets upcoarse vibrations that ruin clairvoyance."

  "I decided to deny myself till the war is over," was Mrs. Towzer'sreason, and when Povey reminded her of the armistice, she mentionedthat Turkey hadn't "signed yet."

  "I think his soul----" began Miss Lance.

  "If he _has_ a soul," put in Povey, electrically.

  "--is hardly in his body at all," concluded Miss Lance, lessconvincingly than originally intended.

  "It was love at first sight. His sign is Fire and hers is Air," MissMilligan said. "That's certain. _Of course_ they came together."

  "A clear case of memory, at any rate," insisted Kempster. "Two oldsouls meeting again for the first time for thousands of years,probably. Love at first sight, or hate, for that matter, is alwaysmemory, isn't it?" He disliked the astrology explanation; it was notmysterious enough, too mathematical and exact to please him.

  "Secondary personalities _are_ invariably memories of former selves, ofcourse," agreed young Dickson, the theosophist, who was on the vergenow of becoming a psycho-analyst and had already discarded Freud forJung. "If not memories of past lives, then they're desires suppressedin this one."

  "The less you think, the more you know," suggested Miss Lance. Shedistrusted intellect and believed that another faculty, called instinctor intuition, according to which word first occurred to her, was theway to knowledge. She was about to quote Bergson upside down, whenPovey, foreseeing an interval of boredom, took command:

  "One thing we know, at any rate," he began judiciously; "we aren't theonly beings in the universe. There are non-human intelligences, bothvast and small. The old world-wide legends can't be built on nothing.In every age of history--the reports are universal--we have pretty goodevidence for other forms of life than humans----"

  "Though never yet in human _form_," put in Lattimer, yetsympathetically. "Their bodies, I mean, aren't human," he added.

  "Exactly. That's true. But the gods, the fauns, the satyrs, theelemental beings, as we call 'em--sylphs, undines, gnomes andsalamanders--to say nothing of fairies et hoc genus omne--there mustbe _some_ reasonable foundation for their persistence through all theages."

  "They all belong to the _Deva_ Evolution," Dickson mentioned withconviction. "In the East it's been known and recognized for centuries,hasn't it? Another evolutionary system that runs parallel to ours.From planetary spirits down to elementals, they're concerned with thebuilding up of form in the various kingdoms----"

  "Yes, yes," Povey interrupted impatiently. Dickson was stealing what hehad meant to say himself and to say, he flattered himself, far better."We know all _that_, of course. They stand behind what we call the lawsof nature, non-human activities and intelligences of every grade andkind. They work for humanity in a way, are in other space and time,deathless, of course, yet--in some strange way, always eager to crossthe gulf fixed between the two and so find a soul. They are impersonalin a sense, as impersonal as, say, wind and fire through which some ofthem operate as bodies."

  He paused and looked about him, noting the interested attention heawaked.

  "There _may_ be times," he went on, "there probably _are_ certainoccasions, when the gulf is more crossable than others." He laid downhis knife and fork as a sympathetic murmur proved that the point he wasleading up to was favourably understood already. "We have had this war,for instance," he stated, his voice taking on a more significant andmysterious tone. "Dislodged by the huge upheaval, man's soul is on themarch again." He paused once more. "_They_," he concluded, lowering hisvoice still more, and emphasizing the pronoun, "are possibly alreadyamong us! Who knows?"

  He glanced round. "We do; we know," was the expression on most faces.All knew precisely what he meant and to whom he referred, at any rate.

  "You might get him to come and lecture to us," said Dickson, the firstto break the pause. "You might ask Dr. Fillery. _You_ know him."

  "That's an idea----" began the Secretary, when there was a commotionnear the door. His face showed annoyance.

  It was the arrival of Toogood that at this moment disturbed the
atmosphere and robbed Povey of the effect he aimed at. It providedKempster, however, with an idea at the same time. "Here's apsychometrist!" he exclaimed, making room for him. "He might get a bitof his hair or clothing and psychometrize it. He might tell us abouthis past, if not exactly _what_ he is."

  The suggestion, however, found no seconder, for it seemed that the newarrival was not particularly welcomed. Judging by the glances, thevarying shades of greeting, too, he was not fully trusted, perhaps,this broad, fleshy man of thirty-five, with complexion blotchy, anover-sensual mouth and eyes a trifle shifty. His claim to membershipwas two-fold: he remembered past lives, and had the strange power ofpsychometry. An archaeologist by trade, his gift of psychometry--bywhich he claimed to hold an object and tell its past, its pedigree,its history--was of great use to him in his calling. Without furthertrouble he could tell whether such an object was genuine or sham.Dealers in antiquities offered him big fees--but "No, no; I cannotprostitute my powers, you see"--and he remained poor accordingly.

  In his past lives he had been either a famous Pharaoh, orCleopatra--according to his audience of the moment and its male orfemale character--but usually Cleopatra, because, on the whole, therewas more money and less risk in her. He lectured--for a fee. Lately,however, he had been Pharaoh, having got into grave trouble over theCleopatra claim, even to the point of being threatened with expulsionfrom the Society. His attitude during the war, besides, had beenunsatisfactory--it was felt he had selfishly protected himself on thegrounds of being physically unfit. Apart from archaeology, too, hischief preoccupation, derived from past lives of course, was sex, in theform of other men's wives, his own wife and children being, naturally,very recent and somewhat negligible ties.

  His gift of psychometry, none the less, was considered proved--in spiteof the backward and indifferent dealers. His mind was quick and notunsubtle. He became now au fait with the trend of the conversation ina very few seconds, but he had not been present at the Studio when theoccurrence all discussed had taken place.

  "Hair would be best," he advised tentatively, sipping hiswhisky-and-soda. He had already dined. "It's a part of himself, yousee. Better than mere clothing, I mean. It's extremely vital, hair. Itgrows after death."

  "If I can get it for you, I will," said Povey. "He may be lecturing forus before long. I'll try."

  "With psychometry and a good photograph," Kempster suggested, "a timeexposure, if possible, we ought to get _some_ evidence, at any rate.It's first-hand evidence we want, of course, isn't it? What do youthink of this, for instance, I wonder?" He turned to Lattimer, drawingsomething from his pocket and showing it. "It's a time exposure atnight of a haunted tree. You'll notice a queer sort of elemental form_inside_ the trunk and branches. Oh!" He replaced the shrivelled bananain his pocket, and drew out the photograph without a smile. "This," heexplained, waving it, "is what I meant." They fell to discussing it.

  Meanwhile, Povey, anxious to resume his lecture, made an effortto recover his command of the group-atmosphere which Toogood haddisturbed. The latter had a "personal magnetism" which made the womenlike him in spite of their distrust.

  "I was just saying," he resumed, patting the elbow of thepsychometrist, "that this strange event we've been discussing--youweren't present, I believe, at the time, but, of course, you've heardabout it--has features which seem to point to something radically new,or at least of very rare occurrence. As Lattimer mentioned, a humanbody has never yet, so far as we know, been occupied, obsessed, bya non-human entity, but that, after all, is no reason why it shouldnot ever happen. What is a body, anyhow? What is an entity, too?"Povey's thought was wandering, evidently; the thread of his firstdiscourse was broken; he floundered. "Man, anyway, is more than a merechemical machine," he went on, "a crystallization of the primitivenebulae, though the instrument he uses, the body he works through, isundoubtedly thus describable. Now, we know there are all kinds ofnon-human intelligences busy on our planet, in the Universe itself aswell. Why, then, I ask, should not one of these----?"

  He paused, unable to find himself, his confusion obvious. He was asglad of the interruption that was then provided by the arrival of Imsonas his audience was. Toogood certainly was not sorry; he need find noimmediate answer. He sipped his drink and made mental notes.

  Imson arrived in a rough brown ulster with the collar turned up abouthis ears, a low flannel shirt, not strictly clean, lying loosely roundhis neck. His colourless face was of somewhat flabby texture, dueprobably to his diet, but its simple, honest expression was attractive,the smile engaging. The touch of foolishness might have been childlikeinnocence, even saintliness some thought, and though he was well overforty, the unlined skin made him look more like thirty. He enjoyed aphysiognomy not unlike that of a horse or sheep. His big, brown eyesstared wide open at the world, expecting wonder and finding it. Hishobby was inspirational poems. One lay in his breast pocket now. Heburned to read it aloud.

  Pat Imson's ideal was an odd one--detachment; the desire to avoid allties that must bring him back to future incarnations on the earth, toeschew making fresh Karma, in a word. He considered himself an "oldsoul," and was rather weary of it all--of existence and development,that is. To take no part in life meant to escape from those tanglesfor whose unravelling the law of rebirth dragged the soul back againand again. To sow no Causes was to have no harvest of Effects to reapwith toil and perspiration. Action, of course, there must be, but"indifference to results of action" was the secret. Imson, none theless, was always entangled with wives and children. Having divorced onewife, and been divorced by another, he had recently married a third;a flock of children streamed behind him; he was a good father, if astrange husband.

  "It's old Karma I have to work off," he would explain, referring tothe wives. "If I avoid the experience I shall only have to come backagain. There's no good shirking old Karma." He gave this explanation tothe wives themselves, not only to his friends. "Face it and it's donewith, worked off, you see." That is, it had to be done nicely, kindly,generously.

  An entire absence of the sense of humour was, of course, his naturalgift, yet a certain quaint wisdom helped to fill the dangerous vacuum.He was known usually as "Pat."

  "Come on, Pat," said Povey, making room for him at his side. "How'sKarma? We're just talking about LeVallon and the Studio business. Whatdo you make of it? You were there, weren't you?" The others listened,attentively, for Imson had a reputation for "seeing true."

  "I saw it, yes," replied Imson, ordering his dinner withindifference--soup, fried potatoes, salad, cheese and coffee--butdeclining the offered wine. The group waited for his next remark, butnone was forthcoming. He sat crumbling his bread into the soup andstirring the mixture with his spoon.

  "Did you see the light about him, Mr. Imson?" asked Miss Lance. "Thebrilliant aura of golden yellow that he wore? _I_ thought--it soundsexaggerated, I know--but to me it seemed even brighter than thelightning. Did you notice it?"

  "Well," said Imson slowly, putting his spoon down. "I'm not oftenclairvoyant, you know. I did notice, however, a sort of radiance abouthim. But with hair like that, it's difficult to be certain----"

  "Full of lovely patterns," said Mrs. Towzer. "Geometrical patterns."

  "Like astrological designs," mentioned Miss Milligan. "He's Leo, ofcourse--fire."

  "Almost as though he brought or caused the lightning--as if it actuallyemanated out of his atmosphere somehow," claimed Miss Lance, for it was_her_ conversation after all.

  "I saw nothing of that," replied Imson quietly. "No, I can't say I sawanything _exactly_ like that." He added honestly, with his engagingsmile that had earned for him in some quarters the nickname of "TheSheep": "I was looking at Nayan, you see, most of the time."

  A smile flickered round the table, for rumour had it that the girl hadonce seemed to him as possible "Karma."

  "So was I," put in Kempster with kindly intention, though hissympathy was evidently not needed. Imson was too simple even tofeel embarrassment. "She came to life suddenly for the first time
since I've known her. It was amazing." To which Imson, busy over hissalad-dressing, made no reply.

  Povey, lighting his pipe and puffing out thick clouds of smoke,was cleverer. "LeVallon's effect upon her, whatever it was, seemedinstantaneous," he informed the table. "I never saw a clearer case oftwo souls coming together in a flash."

  "As I said just now," Kempster quickly mentioned.

  "They are similar," said Imson, looking up, while the group waitedexpectantly.

  "Similar," repeated Kempster. "Ah!"

  "It was the surprise in her face that struck me most," observed Poveyquickly, making an internal note of Imson's adjective, but knowingthat indirect methods would draw him out better than point-blankquestions. "LeVallon showed it too. It was an unexpected recognitionon both sides. They are 'similar,' as you say; both at the same stageof development, whatever that stage may be. The expression on bothfaces----"

  "Escape," exclaimed Imson, giving at last the kernel of what he had tosay. And the effect upon the group was electrical. A visible thrill ranround the Soho table.

  "The very word," exclaimed Povey and Miss Lance together. "Escape!" Butneither of them knew exactly what they meant, nor what Imson himselfmeant.

  "LeVallon has, of course, already escaped," the latter went on quietly."He is no longer caught by causes and effects as we are here. He's gotout of it all long ago--if he was ever in it at all."

  "If he ever was in it at all," said Povey quickly. "You noticed thattoo. You're very discerning, Pat."

  "Clairvoyant," mentioned Miss Lance.

  "I've seen them in dreams like that," returned Imson calmly. "I oftensee them, of course." He referred to his qualification for membership."The great figures I see in dream have just that unearthly expression."

  "Unearthly," said Mrs. Towzer with excitement.

  "Non-human," mentioned Kempster suggestively.

  "Not of this world, anyhow," suggested Miss Lance mysteriously.

  "Divine?" inquired Miss Milligan below her breath.

  "Really," murmured Toogood, "I must get a bit of his hair andpsychometrize it at once." He was sipping a second glass of whisky.

  Imson looked round at each face in turn, apparently seeing nothing thatneed increase his attachment to the planet by way of fresh Karma.

  "The _Deva_ world," he said briefly, after a pause. "Probably he's cometo take Nayan off with him. She--I always said so--has a strong strainof the elemental kingdom in her. She may be his _Devi_. LeVallon, I'msure, is here for the first time. He's one of the non-human evolution.He's slipped in. A _Deva_ himself probably." It was as though he saidthat the waiter was Swiss or French, or that the proprietor's daughterhad Italian blood in her.

  Povey looked round him with an air of triumph.

  "Ah!" he announced, as who should say, "You all thought my version abit wild, but here's confirmation from an unbiased witness."

  "Oh, well, I can't be certain," Imson reminded the group. If hedeceived them enough to change their lives in any respect, it involvedfresh Karma for himself. Care was indicated. "I can't be positive, canI?" he hedged. "Only--I must say--the great deva-figures I've seen indream have exactly that look and expression."

  "That's interesting, Pat," Povey put in, "because, before you came, Iwas suggesting a similar explanation for his air of immense potentialpower. The elemental atmosphere he brought--we all noticed it, ofcourse."

  "Elemental _is_ the only word," Miss Lance inserted. "A great NatureBeing." She was thinking of her magazine. "He struck me as being soclose to Nature that he seemed literally part of it."

  "That would explain the lightning and the strange cry he gave about'messengers,'" replied Imson, wiping the oil from his chin andsprinkling his _petit suisse_ with powdered sugar. "It's quite likelyenough."

  "I wish you'd jot down what you think--a little report of what you sawand felt," the Secretary mentioned. "It would be of great value. Ithought of making a collection of the different versions and accounts."

  "They might be published some day," thought Miss Lance. "Let's all,"she added aloud with emphasis.

  Imson nodded agreement, making no audible reply, while the conversationran on, gathering impetus as it went, growing wilder possibly, but alsomore picturesque. A man in the street, listening behind a curtain,must have deemed the talkers suffering from delusion, mad; a goodpsychologist, on the other hand, similarly screened, and knowing theantecedent facts, the Studio scene, at any rate, must have been struckby one outstanding detail--the effect, namely, upon one and all of theperson they discussed. They had seen him for an hour or so among acrowd, a young man whose name they hardly knew; only a few had spokento him; there had been, it seemed, neither time nor opportunity forhim to produce upon one and all the impression he undoubtedly hadproduced. For in every mind, upon every heart, LeVallon's mere presencehad evidently graven an unforgettable image, scored an undecipherablehieroglyph. Each felt, it seemed, the hint of a personality theirknowledge could not explain, nor any earthly explanation satisfy.The consciousness in each one, perhaps, had been quickened. Hence,possibly, the extravagance of their conversation. Yet, since allreported differently, collective hysteria seemed discounted.

  * * * * *

  Meanwhile, as the talk continued, and the wings of imaginativespeculation fanned the thick tobacco smoke, others had dropped in, bothmale and female members, and the group now filled the little room tothe walls. The same magnet drew them all, in each heart burned the samehuge question mark: Who--what--is this LeVallon? What was the meaningof the scene in Khilkoff's Studio?

  Here, too, was a curious and significant fact about the gathering--theamount of knowledge, true or otherwise, they had managed to collectabout LeVallon. One way or another, no one could say exactly how, theSociety had picked up an astonishing array of detail they now sharedtogether. It was known where he had spent his youth, also how, andwith whom, as well as something of the different views about him heldby Dr. Devonham and Edward Fillery. To such temperaments as theirs thestrange, the unusual, came automatically perhaps, percolating intotheir minds as though a collective power of thought-reading operated.Garbled, fanciful, askew, their information may have been, but a greatdeal of it was not far wrong.

  Imson, for instance, provided an account of LeVallon's birth, to whichall listened spellbound. He evaded all questions as to how he knew ofit. "His parents," he assured the room, "practised the old forgottenmagic; his father, at any rate, was an expert, if not an initiate, withall the rites and formulae of ancient times in his memory. LeVallonwas born as the result of an experiment, its origins dating back sofar that they concerned life upon another planet, I believe, a planetnearer to the sun. The tremendous winds and heat were vehicles ofdeity, you see--_there_."

  "The parents, you mean, had former lives upon another planet?" askedsomeone in a hushed tone. "Or he himself?"

  "The parents--and Mason. Mason was involved in the experiment thatresulted in the birth of LeVallon here to-day."

  "The experiment--what was it exactly?" inquired Lattimer, while Toogoodsurreptitiously made notes on his rather dirty cuff.

  Imson shrugged his shoulders very slightly.

  "Some of it came to me in sleep," he mentioned, producing a paper fromhis pocket and beginning to read it aloud before anyone could stop him.

  "When the sun was younger, and moon and stars Were thrilled with my human birth, And the winds fled shouting the wondrous news As they circled the sea and the earth,

  "From the fight for money and worldly fame I drew one magical soul Who came to me over the star-lit sea As the needle turns to the Pole.

  "Conceived in the hour the stars foretold, This son of the winds I bore, And I taught him the secrets of----"

  "Yes," interrupted Povey audaciously, "but the experiment you weretelling us about----?"

  A murmur of approving voices helped him.

  "Oh, the experiment, yes, well--all I know is," he went on wi
thconviction, calmly replacing the poem in his pocket, "that it concernedan old rite, involving the evocation of some elemental being ornature-spirit the three of them had already evoked millions of yearsbefore, but had not banished again. The experiment they made to-daywas to restore it to its proper sphere. In order to do so, they hadto evoke it again, and, of course"--he glanced round, as though allpresent were familiar with the formula of magical practices--"it couldcome only through the channel of a human system."

  "Of course, yes," murmured a dozen voices, while eyes grew bigger and apin dropping must have been audible.

  "Well"--Imson spoke very slowly now, each word clear as a bell--"thefather, who was officiating, failed. He could not stand the strain. Hisheart stopped beating. He died--just when _it_ was there, he droppeddead."

  "What happened to _it_?" asked Povey, too interested to care that heno longer led the room. "You said it could only use a human system aschannel----"

  "It did so," explained Imson.

  The information produced a pause of several seconds. Some of themembers, like Toogood, though openly, were making pencil notes uponcuffs or backs of envelopes.

  "But the channel was neither Mason nor the woman." The effect of thisnegative information was as nothing compared to the startling interestproduced by the speaker's next words: "It took the easiest channel, theline of least resistance--the unborn body of the child."

  Povey, seizing his opportunity, leaped into the silence:

  "Whose body, now full grown, and named LeVallon, came to the Studio!"he exclaimed, looking round at the group, as though he had himselfgiven the explanation all had just listened to. "A human body tenantedby a nature-spirit, one of the form-builders--a _Deva_...."