“And that very week — the next day, I think, it was — I asked Maennlich to allow me an hour’s talk with her alone—”
“She — er — ?”
“She liked me — from the very first, yes. She felt me.”
“And showed it?” I asked bluntly.
“And showed it,” he repeated, “although she said it puzzled her and she couldn’t understand.”
“On her side, then, it was love — love at first sight?”
“Strong attraction,” he put it, “but an attraction she thought it her duty to resist at first. Her present conditions made any relationship between us seem incongruous, and when I offered marriage — as I did at once — it overwhelmed her. She made sensible objections, but it was her brain of To-day that made them. You can imagine how it went. She urged that to marry a man in another class of life, a ‘ gentleman,’ a ‘wealthy’ gentleman and an educated, ‘scholar gentleman,’ as she called me, could only end in unhappiness — because I should tire of her. Yet, all the time — she told me this afterwards — she had the feeling that we were meant for one another, and that it must surely be. She was shy about it as a child.”
“And you convinced her in the end!” I said to myself rather than aloud to him. There were feelings in me I could not disentangle.
“Convinced her that we needed one another and could never go apart,” he said. “We had something to fulfil together. The forces that drove us together, though unintelligible to her, were yet acknowledged by her too, you see.”
“I see,” my voice murmured faintly, as he seemed to expect some word in reply. “I see.” Then, after a longer pause than usual, I asked: “And you told her of your — your theories and beliefs — the purpose you had to do together?”
“No single word. She could not possibly have understood. It would have frightened her.” I heard it with relief, yet with resentment too.
“Was that quite fair, do you think?”
His answer I could not gainsay. “Cause and effect,” he said, “work out, whether memory is there or not. To attempt to block fulfilment by fear or shrinking is but to delay the very thing you need. I told her we were necessary to each other, but that she must come willingly, or not at all. I used no undue persuasion, and I used no force. I realised plainly that her upper, modern, uncultured and uneducated self was merely what she had acquired in the few years of her present life. It was this upper self that hesitated and felt shy. The older self below was not awake, yet urged her to acceptance blindly — as by irresistible instinctive choice. She knew subconsciously; but, once I could succeed in arousing her knowledge consciously, I knew her doubts would vanish. I suggested living away from city life, away from any conditions that might cause her annoyance or discomfort due to what she called our respective ‘stations’ in life; I suggested the mountains, some beautiful valley perhaps, where in solitude for a time we could get to know each other better, untroubled by the outer world — until she became accustomed—”
“And she approved?” I interrupted with impatience. “Her words were ‘ That’s the very thing; I’ve always had a dream like that.’ She agreed with enthusiasm, and the opposition melted away. She knew the kind of place we needed,” he added significantly.
We had reached the head of the valley by this time, and I sat down upon a boulder with the sweep of Jura forests below us like a purple carpet. The sun and shadow splashed it everywhere with softest colouring. The morning wind was fresh; birds were singing; this green vale among the mountains seemed some undiscovered paradise.
“And you have never since felt a moment’s doubt — uncertainty — that she really is this ‘soul’ you knew before?”
He lay back, his head upon his folded hands, and his eyes fixed upon the blue dome of sky.
“A hundred proofs come to me all the time,” he said, stretching himself at full length upon the grass. “And in her atmosphere, in her presence, the memories still revive in detail from day to day — just as at school they revived in you — those pictures you sought to stifle and deny. From the first she never doubted me. She was aware of a great tie and bond between us. ‘You’re the only man,’ she said to me afterwards, ‘that could have done it like that. I belonged to you — oh! I can’t make it out — but just as if there wasn’t any getting out of it possible. I felt stunned when I saw you. I had always felt something like this coming, but thought it was a dream.’ Only she often said there was something else to come as well, and that we were not quite complete. She knew, you see; she knew.” He broke off suddenly and turned to look at me. He added in a lower tone, as he watched my face: “And you see how pleased and happy she is to have you here!”
I made no reply. I reached out for a stone and flung it headlong down the steep slope towards the stream five hundred feet below.
“And so it was settled then and there?” I asked, after a pause that Julius seemed inclined to prolong.
“Then and there,” he said, watching the rolling stone with dreamy eyes. “In the hall-way of that Norwood villa, under the very eyes of Maennlich who paid her wages and probably often scolded her, she came up into my arms at the end of our final talk, and kissed me like a happy child. She cried a good deal at the time, but I have never once seen her cry since!”
“And it’s all gone well — these months?” I murmured.
“There was a temporary reaction at first — at the very first, that is,” he said, “and I had to call in Maennlich to convince her that I was in earnest. At her bidding I did that. Some instinct told her that Maennlich ought to see it — perhaps, because it would save her awkward and difficult explanations afterwards, There’s the woman in her, you see, the normal, wholesome woman, sweet and timid.”
“A fascinating personality,” I murmured quickly, lest I might say other things — before their time.
“No looks, no worldly beauty,” he nodded, “but the unconscious charm of the old soul. It’s unmistakable.” Worlds and worlds I would have given to have been present at that interview; Julius Le Vallon, so unusual and distinguished; the shy and puzzled serving-maid, happy and incredulous; the grey-bearded archaeologist and scholar; the strange embarrassment of this amazing proposal of marriage!
“And Maennlich?” I asked, anxious for more detail. Julius burst out laughing. “Maennlich lives in his own world with his specimens and theories and memories of travel — more recent memories of travel than our own! It hardly interested him for more than a passing moment. He regarded it, I think, as an unnecessary interruption — and a bothering one — some joke he couldn’t quite appreciate or understand. He pulled his dirty beard, patted me on the back as though I were a boy running after some theatre girl, and remarked with a bored facetiousness that he could give her a year’s character with a clear conscience and great pleasure. Something like that it was; I forget exactly. Then he went back to his library, shouting through the door some appointment about a Geographical Society meeting for the following week. For how could he know” — his voice grew softer as he said it and his laughter ceased—” how could he divine, that old literal-minded savant, that he stood before a sign-post along the route to the eternal things we seek, or that my marrying his servant was a step towards something we three owe together to the universe itself?”
It was some time before either of us spoke, and when at length I broke the silence it was to express surprise that a woman, so long ripened by the pursuit of spiritual, or at least exalted aims, should have returned to earth among the lowly. By rights, it seemed, she should have reincarnated among the great ones of the world. I knew I could say this now without offence.
“The humble,” Julius answered simply, “are the great ones.”
His fingers played with the fronds of a piece of stag-horn moss as he said it, and to this day I cannot see this kind of moss without remembering his strange words.
“It’s among what men call the lower ranks that the old souls return,” he went on; “among peasants and simple folk, unambitious and h
eedless of material power, you always find the highest ones. They are there to learn the final lessons of service or denial, neglected in their busier and earlier — kindergarten sections. The last stages are invariably in humble service — they are by far the most difficult; no young, ‘ambitious’ soul could manage it. But the old souls, having already mastered all the more obvious lessons, are content.”
“Then the oldest souls are not the great minds and great characters of history?” I exclaimed.
“Not necessarily,” he answered; “probably never. The most advanced are unadvertised, in the least assuming positions. The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to them, hard of attainment by those the world applauds. The successful, so called, are the younger, cruder souls, passionately acquiring still the external prizes men hold so dear. Maturer souls have long since discarded these as worthless. The qualities the world crowns are great, perhaps, at that particular stage, but they never are the highest. Intellect, remember, is not of the soul, and all that reason teaches must be unlearned again. Theories change, knowledge shifts, facts are forgotten or proved false; only what the soul itself acquires remains eternally the same. The old are the intuitional; and the oldest of all — ah! how wonderful! — He who came back from loftier heights than most of us can yet even conceive of, was the — son of a carpenter.”
I left my seat upon the boulder and lay beside him, listening for a long time while he talked, and if there was much that seemed visionary, there was also much that thrilled me with emotions beyond ordinary. Nothing, certainly, was foolish — because of the man who said it. And, while he took it for granted that all Nature was alive and a manifestation of spiritual powers, the elements themselves but forces to be mastered and acquired, it grew upon me that I had indeed entered an enchanted valley where, with my strange companions, I might witness new, incredible things. Finding little to reply, I was content to listen, wondering what was coming next. And in due course the talk came round again to ourselves, and so to the woman who was now his wife.
“Then she has no idea,” I said at length, “that we three — you and I and she — have been together before, or that there is any particular purpose in my being here at this moment?”
“In her normal condition — none,” he answered. “For she has no memory.”
“There is a state, however, when she does remember?” I asked. “You have helped her to remember? Is that it, Julius?”
“Yes,” he replied; “I have reached down and touched her soul, so that she remembers for herself.”
“The deep trance state?”
“Where all the memories of the past lie accumulated,” he answered, “the subconscious state. Her Self of To-day — with new body and recent brain — she has forgotten; in trance — the subconscious Self where the soul dwells with all its past — she remembers.”
CHAPTER XIX
“Proof of the reality of a personal sovereign of the universe will not be obtained. But proof of the reality of a power or powers, not unworthy of the title of gods, in respect of our corner of the cosmos, may be feasible”—” The Individual and Reality” (E. D. Fawcett).
I SHRANK. Certain memories of our Edinburgh days revived unpleasantly. They seemed to have happened yesterday instead of years ago. A shadowy hand from those distant skies he spoke of, from those dim avenues of thickly written Time, reached down and touched my heart, leaving the chill of an indescribable uneasiness. The change in me since my arrival only a few hours before was too rapid not to bring reaction. Yet on the whole the older, deeper consciousness gained power.
Possibilities my imagination had unwisely played with now seemed stealing slowly toward probabilities. I felt as a man might feel who, having never known fire, and disbelieved in its existence, becomes aware of the warmth of its approach — a strange and revolutionary discomfort. For Julius was winning me back into his world again, and not with mere imaginative, half-playful acceptance, but with practical action and belief. Yet the change in me was somehow welcome. No feeling of resentment kept it in check, and certainly neither scorn nor ridicule. Incredulity glanced invitingly at faith. They would presently shake hands.
I made, perhaps, an effort to hold back, to define the position, my position, at any rate.
“Julius,” I said gravely, yet with a sympathy I could not quite conceal, “as boys together, and even later at the University, we talked of various curious things, remarkable, even amazing things. You even showed me certain extraordinary things which, at the time, convinced me possibly. I ought to tell you now — and before we go any further, since you take it for granted that my feelings and — er — beliefs are still the same as yours — that I can no longer subscribe to all the articles of your wild conviction. I have been living in the world, you see, these many years, and — well, my imagination has collapsed or dried up or whatever you like to call it. I don’t really see, or remember — anything — quite in the way you mean—”
“The ‘world’ has smothered it — temporarily,” he put in gently.
“And what is more,” I continued, ignoring his interruption, “I must confess that I have no stomach now for any ‘great experiment’ such as you think our coming together in this valley must involve. Your idea of reincarnation may be true — why not? It’s a most logical conception. And we three may have been together before — granted! I admit I rather like the notion. It may even be conceivable that the elemental powers of Nature are intelligent, that men and women could use them to their advantage, and that worship and feeling with is the means to acquire them — it’s just as likely as that some day we shall send telegrams without wires, thoughts and pictures too!”
I drew breath a moment, while he waited patiently, linking his arm in mine and listening silently.
“It may even be possible, too,” I went on, finding some boyish relief in all these words, “that we three together in earlier days did — in some kind of primitive Nature Worship — make wrong use of an unconscious human body to evoke those particular Powers you say exist behind Wind and Fire, and that, having thus upset the balance of material forces, we must readjust that balance or suffer accordingly — you in particular, since you were the prime mover—”
“How well you state it,” he murmured. “How excellent your memory is after all.”
“But even so,” I continued, nettled by his calm interpretation of my long and plodding objection, “and even if all you claim is true — I — I mean bluntly — that the transitory acceptance you woke in me years ago no longer holds. I am with you now merely to keep a promise, a boy’s promise, but my heart is no longer in the matter — except out of curiosity — curiosity pure and simple.”
I stopped, or rather it was his face and the expression in his eyes that stopped me. I felt convicted of somewhat pompous foolishness, my sense of humour and proportion gone awry. Fear, with its ludicrous inhibitions, made me strut in this portentous fashion. His face, wearing the child’s expression of belief and confidence, arrested me by its sheer simplicity. But the directness of his rejoinder, however — of his words, at least, for it was not a reply — struck me dumb.
“You are afraid for her,” he said without a trace of embarrassment or emotion, “because you love her still, even as she loves you — beneath.”
If unconsciously or consciously I avoided his eye, he made no attempt to avoid my own. He looked calmly at me like some uncannily clairvoyant lawyer who has pierced the elaborate evasions of his cross-examined witness — yet a witness who believed in his own excuses, quite honestly self-deceived.
At first the shock of his words deprived me of any power to think. I was not offended, I was simply speechless. He forgot who I was and what my life had been, forgot my relation with himself, forgot also the brevity of my acquaintance with his wife. He forgot, too, that I had accepted her, an inferior woman, accepted her without a hint of regret — nay, let me use the word I mean — of contempt that he, my friend, had linked his life with such a being — married her. And, further, he forgot al
l that was due to himself, to me, to her! It was too distressing. What could he possibly think of me, of himself, of her, that so outrageous a statement, and without a shred of evidence, could pass his lips? I, a middle-aged professor of geology, with an established position in the world! And she, a parlour-maid he had been wild enough to marry for the sake of some imagined dream, a woman, moreover, I had seen for the first time a short hour before, and with whom I had exchanged a few sentences in bare politeness, remembering that this uneducated creature was the wife of my old friend, and — !
Thought galloped on in indignant disorder and agitation. The pretence was so apparent even to myself. But I remained speechless. For while he spoke, looking me calmly in the eye, without a sign of arriéré pensée, I realised in a flash — that it all was true. Like the witness who still believes in his indignant answers until the lawyer puts questions that confound him by unexpected self-revelation — I suddenly saw — myself. My own heart opened in a blaze of fire. It was the truth.
And all this came upon me, not in a flash, but in a series of flashes. I had not known it. I now discovered myself, but for the first time. Layer after layer dropped away. The naked fact shone clearly.
“It is exactly what I hoped,” he went on quietly. “It proves memory beyond all further doubt. A love like yours and hers can never die. Even another thirty thousand years could make no difference — the instant you met you would be bound to take it up again — exactly where you left it off — no matter how long the interval of separation. The first sign would be this divine and natural intimacy.”
Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood Page 148