“Paul, I understand, and I respect your reticence. I think I can agree with it.”
He placed a hand upon the other’s shoulder, smiling gently, even tenderly.
“You have told me much, but you have not told me all! The chief part — you have intentionally omitted.”
“For the present, at any rate,” was the reply, given without flinching.
“Your reasons are sound, your judgment perhaps right. I ask no questions. What happened, what you saw, at the châlet; the ‘peculiar powers’ you mentioned; all, in fact, that you think it wise to keep to yourself for the moment, I leave there willingly.”
He spoke gravely, sincere emotion in the eyes and tone. It was in a lower voice he added:
“The responsibility, of course, is yours.”
Devonham returned the steady gaze, pondering his reply a moment.
“I can — and do accept it,” he answered. “You have read my thoughts correctly as usual, Edward. I think you know quite enough already — what with my Notes and Mason’s letter — even too much. Besides, why complicate it with an account of what were doubtless mere mental pictures — hallucinations — on my part? This is a matter,” he went on slowly, “a case, we dare not trifle with; there may be strange and terrible afflictions in it later; we must remain unbiased.” The anxiety deepened on his face.
“True, true,” murmured the other. “God bless the boy! May his own gods bless him!”
“In other words, it will need your clearest, soundest judgment, your finest skill, your very best, as you said yourself just now.” He used a firmer, yet also a softer tone suddenly: “Edward, you know your own mind, its contents, its suppressions, its origin; your refusal of the love of women, your deep powerful dreams that you have suppressed and put away. Promise me” — the voice and manner were very earnest— “that you will not communicate these to him in any way, and that you will keep your judgment absolutely unbiased and untainted.” He looked at his old friend and paused. “Only your purest judgment of what is to come can help. You promise.”
Fillery sighed a scarcely noticeable sigh. “I promise you, Paul. You are wise — and you are right,” he said. “On the other hand, let me say one thing to you in my turn. This theory of heredity and of mental telepathic transference — the idea that all his mind’s content is derived from his parents and from Mason — we cannot, remember, force this transference and interchange too far. I ask only this: be fair and open yourself with all that follows.”
Devonham raised his voice: “Nor can we, apparently, set limits to it, Edward. But — to be fair and open-minded — I give my promise too.”
Thus, in the little downstairs room of a Private Home for Incurable Mental Cases, not a Lunatic Asylum, though sometimes perhaps next door to it, these two men, deeply intrigued by a new “Case” that passed their understanding, as it exceeded their knowledge, practice and experience, swore to each other to observe carefully, to report faithfully, and to experiment, if experiment proved necessary, with honest and affectionate uprightness.
Their views were, obviously, not the same. Devonham, temperamentally opposed to radical innovations, believed it was a case of divided personality — hundreds of such cases had passed through their hands. Forced to accept extended telepathy — that all minds can on occasion share one another’s content, and that even a racial and a world-memory can be tapped — he feared that his Chief might influence LeVallon, and twist, thus, the phenomena to a special end. He knew Edward Fillery’s story. He feared, for the sake of truth, the mental transference. He had, perhaps, other fears as well.
Fillery, on the other hand, believing as much, and knowing more than his colleague, saw in “N. H.” a unique possibility. He was thrilled and startled with a half-impossible hope. He felt as if someone ran beside his life, bearing impossible glad tidings, an unexpected, half-incredible figure, the tidings marvellously bright. He hoped, he already wished to think, that “N. H.” might shadow forth a promise of some magical advance for the ultimate benefit of the Race....
The thinkers were crying on the housetops that progress was a myth, that each wave of civilization at its height reached the same average level without ever passing further. The menace to the present civilization, already crumbling, was in full swing everywhere; knowledge, culture, learning threatened in due course with the chaos of destruction that has so far been the invariable rule. The one hope of saving the world, cried religion, lay in substituting spiritual for material values — a Utopian dream at best. The one chance, said science, on the other hand, was that civilization to-day is continuous and not isolated.
The best hope, believed Fillery, the only hope, lay in raising the individual by the drawing up into full consciousness of the limitless powers now hidden and inactive in his deeper self — the so-called subliminal faculties. With these greater powers must come also greater moral development.
Already, with his uncanny insight, derived from knowledge of himself, he had piercingly divined in “N. H.” a being, whatever he might be, whose nature acted automatically and directly upon the subconscious self in everybody.
That bright messenger, running past his life, had looked, as with fire and tempest, straight into his eyes.
It was long after one o’clock when the two men said good-night, and went to their rooms. Devonham was soon in bed, though not soon asleep. Exhausted physically though he was, his mind burned actively. His recent memories were vivid. All he had purposely held back from Fillery returned with power....
The uncertainty whether he had experienced hallucination, or had actually, as by telepathic transfer from LeVallon, touched another state of consciousness, kept sleep far away....
His brain was far too charged for easy slumber. He feared for his dear, faithful friend, his colleague, the skilful, experienced, yet sorely tempted mind — tempted by Nature and by natural weaknesses of birth and origin — who now shared with him the care and healing of a Case that troubled his being too deeply for slumber to come quickly.
Yet he had done well to keep these memories from Edward Fillery. If Fillery once knew what he knew, his judgment and his scientific diagnosis must be drawn hopelessly away from what he considered the best treatment: the suppression of “N. H.” and the making permanent of “LeVallon.”...
He fell asleep eventually, towards dawn, dreaming impossible, radiant dreams of a world he might have hoped for, yet could not, within the limits of his little cautious, accurate mind, believe in. Dreams that inspire, yet sadden, haunted his release from normal consciousness. Someone had walked upon his life, leaving a growth of everlasting flowers in their magical tread, though his mind — his stolid, cautious mind — had no courage for the plucking....
And while he slept, as the hours slipped from west to east, his chief and colleague, lying also sleepless, rose suddenly before the late autumn dawn, and walked quietly along the corridor towards the Private Suite where the new patient rested. His mind was quiet, yet his inner mind alert. His thoughts, his hopes, his dreams, these lay, perhaps, beyond human computation. He was calmer far than his assistant, though more strangely tempted.
It was just growing light, the corridor was cold. A cool, damp air came through the open windows and the linoleum felt like ice against the feet. The house lay dead and silent. Pausing a moment by a window, he listened to the chattering of early sparrows. He felt chill and hungry, unrested too, though far from sleepy. He was aware of London — bleak, heavy, stolid London town. The troubles of modern life, of Labour, Politics, Taxes, cost of living, all the common, daily things came in with the cheerless morning air.
He reached the door he sought, and very softly opened it.
The radiance met him in the face, so that he almost gasped. The scent of flowers, the sting of sharp, keen forest winds, the exhilaration of some distant mountain-top. There was, actually, a tang of dawn, known only to those who have tasted the heights at sunrise with the heart. And into his heart, singing with happy confidence, rose a sense of supreme joy and co
nfidence that mastered all little earthly woes and pains, and walked among the stars.
The occupant of the bed lay very still. His shining hair was spread upon the pillow. The splendid limbs were motionless. The chest and arms were bare, the single covering sheet tossed off. The strange, wild face wore happiness and peace upon its skin, the features very calm, the mouth relaxed. It almost seemed a god lay sleeping there upon a little human bed.
How long he stood and stared he did not know, but suddenly, the light increased. The curtains stirred about the bed.
With a marvellous touch the separate details merged and quickened into life. The room was changed. The occupant of the bed moved very swiftly, as through the open window came the first touch of exhilarating light. Gold stole across the lintel, breaking over the roofs of slates beyond. The leafless elm trees shimmered faintly. The telegraph wires shone. There was a running sparkle. It was dawn.
The figure leaped, danced — no other word describes it — to the open window where the light and air gushed in, spread wide its arms, lowered its radiant head, began to sing in low, melodious rhythmic chant — and Fillery, as silently as he had come, withdrew and closed the door unseen. His heart moved strangely, but — his promise held him....
CHAPTER VII
THE following days it seemed to both Fillery and Devonham that their discussion of the first night had been pitched in too intense, too serious a key. Their patient was so commonplace again, so ordinary. He made himself quite at home, seemed contented and uncurious, taking it for granted he had come to stay for ever, apparently.
Apart from his strange beauty, his size, virility and a general impression he conveyed of immense energies he was too easy-going to make use of, he might have passed for a peasant, a countryman to whom city life was new; but an educated, or at least half-educated, countryman. He was so big, yet never gauche. He was neither stupid nor ill-informed; the garden interested him, he knew much about the trees and flowers, birds and insects too. He discussed the weather, prevailing wind, moisture, prospects of change and so forth with a judgment based on what seemed a natural, instinctive knowledge. The gardener looked on him with obvious respect.
“Such nice manners and such a steady eye,” Mrs. Soames, the matron, mentioned, too, approvingly to Devonham. “But a lot in him he doesn’t understand himself, unless I’m wrong. Not much the matter with his nerves, anyhow. Once he’s married — unless I’m much mistaken — eh, sir?”
He was quiet, talking little, and spent the morning over the books Fillery had placed purposely in his sitting-room, books on simple physics, natural history and astronomy. It was the latter that absorbed him most; he pored over them by the hour.
Fillery explained the situation so far as he thought wise. The young man was honesty and simple innocence, but only vaguely interested in the life of the great city he now experienced for the first time. He had in his luggage a copy of the Will by which Mason had left him everything, and he was pleased to know himself well provided for. Of Mason, however, he had only a dim, uncertain, almost an impersonal memory, as of someone encountered in a dream.
“I suppose something’s happened to me,” he said to Fillery, his language normal and quite ordinary again. He spoke with a slight foreign accent. “There was somebody, of course, who looked after me and lived with me, but I can’t remember who or where it was. I was very happy,” he added, “and yet ... I miss something.”
Dr. Fillery, remembering his promise, did not press him.
“It will all come back by degrees,” he remarked in a sympathetic tone. “In the meantime, you must make yourself at home here with us, for as long as you like. You are quite free in every way. I want you to be happy here.”
“I live with you always,” was the reply. “There are things I want to tell you, ask you too.” He paused, looking thoughtful. “There was someone I told all to once.”
“Come to me with everything. I’ll help you always, so far as I can.” He placed a hand upon his knee.
“There are feelings, big feelings I cannot reach quite, but that make me feel different” — he smiled beautifully— “from — others.” Quick as lightning he had changed the sentence at the last word, substituting “others” for “you.” Had he been aware of a slight uneasy emotion in his listener’s heart? It had hardly betrayed itself by any visible sign, yet he had instantly divined its presence. Such evidences of a subtle, intimate, understanding were not lacking. Yet Fillery admirably restrained himself.
“There are bright places I have lost,” he went on frankly, no sign of shy reserve in him. “I feel confused, lost somewhere, as if I didn’t belong here. I feel” — he used an odd word— “doubled.” His face shaded a little.
“Big overpowering London is bound to affect you,” put in Fillery, who had noticed the rapid discernment, “after living among woods and mountains, as you have lived, for years. All will come right in a little time; we must settle down a bit first — —”
“Woods and mountains,” repeated the other, in a half-dreamy voice, his eyes betraying an effort to follow thought elsewhere. “Of course, yes — woods and mountains and hot living sunlight — and the winds — —”
His companion shifted the conversation a little. He suggested a line of reading and study.... They talked also of such ordinary but necessary things as providing a wardrobe, of food, exercise, companionship of his own age, and so forth — all the commonplace details of ordinary daily life, in fact. The exchange betrayed nothing of interest, nothing unusual. They mentioned theatres, music, painting, and, beyond the natural curiosity of youth that was ignorant of these, no detail was revealed that need have attracted the attention of anybody, neither of doctor, psychologist, nor student of human nature. With the single exception that the past years had been obliterated from memory, though much that had been acquired in them remained, there was not noticeable peculiarity of any sort. Both language and point of view were normal.
This was obviously LeVallon. The “N. H.” personality scarcely cast a shadow even. Yet “N. H.,” the doctor was quick to see, lay ready and waiting just below the surface. There was no doubt in his mind which was the central self and which its transient projection, the secondary personality. Again, as he sat and talked, he had the odd impression that someone with bright tidings ran swiftly past his life, perhaps towards it.
The swift messenger was certainly not LeVallon. LeVallon, indeed, was but a shadow cast before this glad, bright visitant. Thus he felt, at any rate. LeVallon was an empty simulacrum left behind while “N. H.” rested, or was active upon other things, things natural to him, elsewhere. LeVallon was an arm, a limb, a feeler that “N. H.” thrust out. At Charing Cross, for instance, for a brief moment only, “N. H.” had peered across his shoulder, then withdrawn again. In the car had sat by his side LeVallon. The being he now chatted with was also LeVallon only.
But in his own heart, deep down, hidden yet eager to break loose, lay his own deeper self that burned within him. This, the important part of him, yearned towards “N. H.” And up rose the strange symbol that always appeared when his deepest, perhaps his subliminal self was stirred. That lost radiant valley in the haunted Caucasus shone close and brimming over ... with light, with flowers, with splendid winds and fire, symbols of a vaster, grander, happier life, though perhaps a life not yet within the range of normal human consciousness.... The fiery symbol flashed and passed.
Curious thoughts and pictures rose flaming in his mind, persistent ideas that bore no possible relation to his intellectual, reasoning life. Passing across the background of his brain, as with waves of heat and colour, they were correlated somewhere with harmonious sound. Music, that is, came with them, as though inspiration brought its own sound with it that made singing natural. They haunted him, these vague, pleasurable phantasmagoria that were connected, he felt sure, with music, as with childhood’s lost imaginings. For a long time he searched in vain for their source and origin. Then, suddenly, he remembered. He heard his father’s
gruff, humorous voice: “There’s not a scrap of evidence, of course....” And, sharply, vividly, the buried memory gave up its dead. His childish question went crashing through the air: “Are we the only beings in the world?”
“Nothing is ever lost,” he reminded himself with a smile that Devonham assuredly never saw. “Every seed must bear its fruit in time.”
And emotion surged through him from the remorseless records of his underself. The childhood’s love, with its correlative of deep, absolute belief, returned upon him, linked on somehow to that old familiar symbol he knew to mean his awakening subconscious being — a flowering Caucasian vale of sun and wind. A belief, he realized, especially a belief of childhood, remains for ever inexpugnable, eternal, prolific seed of future harvests.
The unstable in him betrayed its ineradicable, dangerous streak. There rose upon him in a cloud strange notions that inflamed imagination sweetly. Later reading, indeed, had laid flesh upon the skeleton of the boyish notion, though derived in the first instance he certainly knew not whence. The literature and tradition of the East, he recalled, peopled the elements with conscious life, to which the world’s fairy-tales — remnant of lost knowledge possibly — added nerves and heart and blood. In all human bodies, at any rate, dwelt not necessarily always human spirits, human souls....
He checked himself with a smile he would have liked to call a chuckle, but that yet held some inexplicable happiness at its heart. His rugged, eager face, its expression bitten deeply by experience, turned curiously young. There rushed through him the Eastern conception of another system of life, another evolution, deathless, divine, important, the Order of the Devas, a series of Nature Beings entirely apart from human categories. They included many degrees, from fairies to planetary spirits, the gods, so called; and their duties, work and purposes were concerned, he remembered, with carrying out the Laws of Nature, the busy tending of all forms and structures, from the elaborately marvellous infusoria in a drop of stagnant water, the growth of crystals, the upbuilding of flowers and trees, of insects, animals, humans, to the guidance and guardianship of those vaster forms of heavenly bodies, the stars, the planets and the mighty suns, whose gigantic “bodies,” inhabited by immenser consciousness, people empty space.... A noble, useful, selfless work, God’s messengers....
Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood Page 228