Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  Chapter VI

  I

  The situation at this point of his amazing adventure seems to have been that the fear Spinrobin felt about the nature of the final Experiment was met and equalized by his passionate curiosity regarding it. Had these been the only two forces at work, the lightest pressure in either direction would have brought him to a decision. He would have accepted the challenge and stayed; or he would have hesitated, shirked, and left.

  There was, however, another force at work upon which he had hardly calculated at the beginning, and that force now came into full operation and controlled his decision with margin and to spare. He loved Miriam; and even had he not loved her, it is probable that her own calm courage would have put him to shame and made him “face the music.” He could no more have deserted her than he could have deserted himself. The die was cast.

  Moreover, if the certainty that Mr. Skale was trafficking in dangerous and unlawful knowledge was formidable enough to terrify him, for Miriam, at least, it held nothing alarming. She had no qualms, knew no uneasiness. She looked forward to the end with calmness, even with joy, just as ordinary good folk look forward to a heaven beyond death. For she had never known any other ideal. Mr. Skale to her was father, mother and God. He had brought her up during all the twenty years of her life in this solitude among the mountains, choosing her reading, providing her companionship, training her with the one end in view of carrying out his immense and fire-stealing purpose.

  She had never dreamed of any other end, and had been so drilled with the idea that this life was but a tedious training-place for a worthier state to come, that she looked forward, naturally enough, with confidence and relief to the great Experiment that should bring her release. She knew vaguely that there was a certain awful danger involved, but it never for one instant occurred to her that Mr. Skale could fail. And, so far, Spinrobin had let no breath of his own terror reach her, or attempted ever to put into her calm mind the least suggestion that the experiment might fail and call down upon them the implacable and destructive forces that could ruin them body and soul forever. For this, plainly expressed, was the form in which his terror attacked him when he thought about it. Skale was tempting the Olympian powers to crush him.

  It was about this time, however, as has been seen from a slight incident in the last chapter, that a change began to steal, at first imperceptibly, then obviously, over their relations together. Spinrobin had been in the house three weeks — far longer, no doubt, than any of the other candidates. There only remained now the final big tests. The preliminary ones were successfully passed. Miriam knew that very soon the moment would come for him to stay — or go. And it was in all probability this reflection that helped her to make certain discoveries in herself that at first she did not in the least understand.

  Spinrobin, however, understood perfectly. His own heart made him intuitive enough for that. And the first signs thrilled and moved him prodigiously. His account of it all is like no love story that has ever been heard, for in the first place this singular girl hardly breathed about her the reality of an actual world. She had known nothing beyond the simple life in this hollow of the hills on the one hand, and on the other the portentous conceptions that peopled the region of dream revealed by the clergyman. And in the second place she had no standards but her own instincts to judge by, for Mrs. Mawle, in spite of her devotion to the girl, suffered under too great disabilities to fill the place of a mother, while Mr. Skale was too lost in his vast speculations to guide her except in a few general matters, and too sure of her at the same time to reflect that she might ever need detailed guidance. Her exceedingly natural and wholesome bringing-up on the one hand, and her own native purity and good sense on the other, however, led her fairly straight; while the fact that Spinrobin, with his modesty and his fine aspirations, was a “little gentleman” into the bargain, ensured that no unlawful temptation should be placed in her way, or undue pressure, based upon her ignorance, employed.

  II

  They were coming down one afternoon from the mountains soon after the test of calling his name, and they were alone, the clergyman being engaged upon some mysterious business that had kept him out of sight all day. They did not talk much, but they were happy in each other’s company, Spinrobin more than happy. Much of the time, when the ground allowed, they went along hand in hand like children.

  “Miriam,” he had asked on the top of the moors, “did I ever tell you about Winky — my little friend Winky?” And she had looked up with a smile and shaken her head. “But I like the name,” she added; “I should like to hear, please.” And he told her how as a boy he had invoked various folk to tease his sister, of whom Winky was chief, but in telling the story he somehow or other always referred to the little person by name, and never once revealed his sex. He told, too, how he sat all night on the lawn outside his sister’s window to intercept the expected visit.

  “Winky,” she said, speaking rather low, “is a true name, of course. You really created Winky — called Winky into being.” For to her now this seemed as true and possible as it had seemed to himself at the age of ten.

  “Oh, I really loved Winky,” he replied enthusiastically, and was at the same moment surprised to feel her draw away her hand. “Winky lived for years in my very heart.”

  And the next thing he knew, after a brief silence between them, was that he heard a sob, and no attempt to smother it either. In less than a second he was beside her and had both her hands in his. He understood in a flash.

  “You precious baby,” he cried, “but Winky was a little man. He wasn’t a girl!”

  She looked up through her tears — oh, but how wonderful her grey eyes were through tears! — and made him stand still before her and repeat his sentence. And she said, “I know it’s true, but I like to hear you say it, and that’s why I asked you to repeat it.”

  “Miriam,” he said to her softly, kneeling down on the heather at her feet, “there’s only one name in my heart, I can tell you that. I heard it sing and sing the moment I came into this house, the very instant I first saw you in that dark passage. I knew perfectly well, ages and ages ago, that one day a girl with your name would come singing into my life to make me complete and happy, but I never believed that she would look as beautiful as you are.” He kissed the two hands he held. “Or that she — would — would think of me as you do,” he stammered in his passion.

  And then Miriam, smiling down on him through her tears, bent and kissed his feathery hair, and immediately after was on her knees in front of him among the heather.

  “I own you,” she said quite simply. “I know your name, and you know mine. Whatever happens—” But Spinrobin was too happy to hear any more, and putting both arms round her neck, he kissed the rest of her words away into silence.

  And in the very middle of this it was that the girl gently, but very firmly, pushed him from her, and Spinrobin in the delicacy of his mind understood that for the first time in her curious, buried life the primitive instincts had awakened, so that she knew herself a woman, and a woman, moreover, who loved.

  * * * * *

  Thus caught in a bewildering network of curiosity, fear, wonder, and — love, Spinrobin stayed on, and decided further that should the clergyman approve him he would not leave. Yet his intimate relations now with Miriam, instead of making it easier for him to learn the facts, made it on the other hand more difficult. For he could not, of course, make use of her affection to learn secrets that Mr. Skale did not yet wish him to know. And, further, he had no desire to be disloyal either to him. None the less he was sorely tempted to ask her what the final experiment was, and what the ‘empty’ rooms contained. And most of all what the great name was they were finally to utter by means of the human chord.

  The emotions playing about him at this time, however, were too complicated and too violent to enable him to form a proper judgment of the whole affair. It seems, indeed, that this calmer adjudication never came to him at all, for even to this day
the mere mention of the clergyman’s name brings to his round cheeks a flush of that enthusiasm and wonder which are the enemies of all sober discrimination. Skale still remains the great battering force of his life that carried him off his feet towards the stars, and sent his imagination with wings of fire tearing through the Unknown to a goal that once attained should make them all four as gods.

  Chapter VII

  I

  And thus the affair moved nearer to its close. The theory and practice of molding form by means of sound was the next bang at his mind — delivered in the clergyman’s most convincing manner, and, in view of the proofs that soon followed, an experience that seemed to dislocate the very foundations of his visible world, deemed hitherto secure enough at least to stand on.

  Had it all consisted merely of talk on Mr. Skale’s part the secretary would have known better what to think. It was the interludes of practical proof that sent his judgment so awry. These definite, sensible results, sandwiched in between all the visionary explanation, left him utterly at sea. He could not reconcile them altogether with hypnotism. He could only, as an ordinary man, already with a bias in the mystical direction, come to the one conclusion that this overwhelming and hierophantic man was actually in touch with cisterns of force so terrific as to be dangerous to what he had hitherto understood to be — life. It was easy enough for the clergyman, in his optimistic enthusiasm, to talk about their leading to a larger life. But what if the experiment failed, and these colossal powers ran amok upon the world — and upon the invokers?

  Moreover — chief anxiety of all — what was this name to be experimented with? What was the nature of this force that Skale hoped to invoke — so mighty that it should make them “as gods,” so terrible that a chord alone could compass even the first of its stupendous syllables?

  And, further, he was still haunted with the feeling that other “beings” occupied certain portions of the rambling mansion, and more than once recently he had wakened in the night with an idea, carried over from dreams possibly, that the corridor outside his bedroom was moving and alive with footsteps. “From dreams possibly,” for when he went and peered shivering through the narrow crack of the half-opened door, he saw nothing unusual. And another time — he was awake beyond question at the moment, for he had been reading till two o’clock and had but just extinguished the candle — he had heard a sound that he found impossible to describe, but that sent all the blood with a swift rush from the region of his heart. It was not wind; it was not the wood cracking with the frost; it was not snow sliding from the slates outside. It was something that simultaneously filled the entire building, yet sounded particularly loud just outside his door; and it came with the abrupt suddenness of a report. It made him think of all the air in the rooms and halls and passages being withdrawn by immense suction, as though a gigantic dome had been dropped over the building in order to produce a vacuum. And just after it he heard, unmistakably, the long soft stride of Skale going past his door and down the whole length of the corridor — stealthily, very quickly, with the hurry of anxiety or alarm in his silence and his speed.

  This, moreover, had now happened twice, so that imagination seemed a far-fetched explanation. And on both occasions the clergyman had remained invisible on the day following until the evening, and had then reappeared, quiet and as usual, but with an atmosphere of immense vibratory force somehow about his person, and a glow in his face and eyes that at moments seemed positively colored.

  No word of explanation, however, had as yet been forthcoming of these omens, and Spinrobin waited with what patience he could, meanwhile, for the final test which he knew to be close upon him. And in his diary, the pages usually left blank now because words failed him, he wrote a portion of Anone’s cry that had caught his memory and expressed a little of what he felt:

  … for fiery thoughts Do shape themselves within me, more and more, Whereof I catch the issue, as I hear Dead sounds at night come from the inmost hills, Like footsteps upon wool….

  II

  It was within three days of the expiration of his trial month that he then had this conversation with the clergyman, which he understood quite well was offered by way of preparation for the bigger tests about to come. He has reported what he could of it; it seemed to him at the time both plausible and absurd; it was of a piece, that is, with the rest of the whole fabulous adventure.

  Mr. Skale, as they walked over the snowy moors in the semi-darkness between tea and dinner, had been speaking to him about the practical results obtainable by sound-vibrations (what he already knew for that matter), and how it is possible by fiddling long enough upon a certain note to fiddle down a bridge and split it asunder. From that he passed on to the scientific fact that the ultimate molecules of matter are not only in constant whirring motion, but that also they do not actually touch one another. The atoms composing the point of a pin, for instance, shift and change without ceasing, and — there is space between them.

  Then, suddenly taking Spinrobin’s arm, he came closer, his booming tone dropping to a whisper:

  “To change the form of anything,” he said in his ear, “is merely to change the arrangement of those dancing molecules, to alter their rate of vibration.” His eyes, even in the obscurity of the dusk, went across the other’s face like flames.

  “By means of sound?” asked the other, already beginning to feel eerie.

  The clergyman nodded his great head in acquiescence.

  “Just as the vibrations of heat-waves,” he said after a pause, “can alter the form of a metal by melting it, so the vibrations of sound can alter the form of a thing by inserting themselves between those whirling molecules and changing their speed and arrangement — change the outline, that is.”

  The idea seemed fairly to buffet the little secretary in the face, but Mr. Skale’s proximity was too overpowering to permit of very clear thinking. Feeling that a remark was expected from him, he managed to ejaculate an obvious objection in his mind.

  “But is there any sound that can produce vibrations fine and rapid enough — to — er — accomplish such a result?”

  Mr. Skale appeared almost to leap for pleasure as he heard it. In reality he merely straightened himself up.

  “That,” he cried aloud, to the further astonishment and even alarm of his companion, “is another part of my discovery — an essential particular of it: the production of sound-vibrations fine and rapid enough to alter shapes! Listen and I will tell you!” He lowered his voice again. “I have found out that by uttering the true inner name of anything I can set in motion harmonics — harmonics, note well, half the wave length and twice the frequency! — that are delicate and swift enough to insert themselves between the whirling molecules of any reasonable object — any object, I mean, not too closely or coherently packed. By then swelling or lowering my voice I can alter the scale, size or shape of that object almost indefinitely, its parts nevertheless retaining their normal relative proportions. I can scatter it to a huge scale by separating its molecules indefinitely, or bring them so closely together that the size of the object would be reduced to a practical invisibility!”

  “Re-create the world, in fact!” gasped Spinrobin, feeling the earth he knew slipping away under his feet.

  Mr. Skale turned upon him and stood still a moment. The huge moors, glimmering pale and unreal beneath their snow, ran past them into the sky — silent forms corresponding to who knows what pedal notes? The wind sighed — audible expression of who shall say what mighty shapes?… Something of the passion of sound, with all its mystery and splendor, entered his heart in that windy sigh. Was anything real? Was anything permanent?… Were Sound and Form merely interchangeable symbols of some deeper uncataloged Reality? And was the visible cohesion after all the illusory thing?

  “Re-mold the whole universe, sir!” he roared through the darkness, in a way that made the other wish for the touch of Miriam’s hand to steady him. “I could make you, my dear Spinrobin, immense, tiny, invisible, or by a partial
utterance of your name, permanently crooked. I could overwhelm your own vibrations and withdraw their force, as by suction of a vacuum, absorbing yourself into my own being. By uttering the name of this old earth, if I knew it, I could alter its face, toss the forests like green dust into the sea, and lift the pebbles of the seashore to the magnitude of moons! Or, did I know the true name of the sun, I could utter it in such a way as to identify myself with its very being, and so escape the pitiful terrors of a limited personal existence!”

  He seized his companion’s arm and began to stride down the mountainside at a terrific pace, almost lifting Spinrobin from his feet as he did so. About the ears of the panting secretary the wild words tore like bullets, whistling a new and dreadful music.

  “My dear fellow,” he shouted through the night, “at the Word of Power of a true man the nations would rush into war, or sink suddenly into eternal peace; the mountains be moved into the sea, and the dead arise. To know the sounds behind the manifestations of Nature, the names of mechanical as well as of psychical Forces, of Hebrew angels, as of Christian virtues, is to know Powers that you can call upon at will — and use! Utter them in the true vibratory way and you waken their counterpart in yourself and stir thus mighty psychic powers into activity in your Soul.”

  He rained the words down upon the other’s head like a tempest.

  “Can you wonder that the walls of Jericho fell flat before a ‘Sound,’ or that the raging waves of the sea lay still before a voice that called their Name? My discovery, Mr. Spinrobin, will run through the world like a purifying fire. For to utter the true names of individuals, families, tribes and nations, will be to call them to the knowledge of their highest Selves, and to lift them into tune with the music of the Voice of God.”