Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  “Thank you,” replied LeVallon, and at the sound of his voice the sculptor’s interest deepened. A gleam shone in his eye.

  “You’ve begun some work,” said Fillery, “and models are hard to come by, I imagine.” His eye never left LeVallon.

  Khilkoff chuckled. “Thought-reader!” he exclaimed. “If Povey heard that, he’d make you join the Society at once — as honorary member or vice-president. Anything to get you in. Dr. Fillery understands us all too well,” he went on to LeVallon. “In Sark, that lonely island in the sea, I began four figures — four elemental figures — of earth, air, fire and water — a group, of course. The air figure, I’ve done — —”

  “With Nayan as model,” suggested Fillery, smiling.

  “One morning, yes, I caught her bathing from a rock, hair streaming in the wind, no clothes on, white foam from the big breakers fluttering about her, slim, shining, unconscious and half dancing, fierce sunlight all over her. Ah” — he broke off— “here’s Povey coming. I mustn’t monopolize you all. Devonham, you know most of ‘em. Make yourselves at home.” He turned to LeVallon again, with a touch of something gentler, almost of respect, thought Fillery, as he noticed the delicate change of voice and manner quickly. “Come, Mr. LeVallon,” he said courteously, “I should like to show you the figure as I’ve done it. We’ll go for a moment into my own private rooms. But it’s a model for fire I’m looking for, as Fillery guessed. You may be interested.” He led him off. LeVallon went with evident content, and the advance of skirmishes that were already approaching for introductions was temporarily defeated.

  For the three men standing by the door had formed a noticeable group, and Khilkoff’s presence added to their value. Dr. Fillery, known and much respected, regarded with a touch of awe by many, had not come for nothing, it was doubtless argued; his colleague, moreover, accompanied him, and he, too, was known to the Society, though not much cultivated by its members owing to his downright, critical way of talking. They deemed him prejudiced, unsympathetic. It was the third member of the group, LeVallon, who had quickly caught all eyes, and the attention immediately paid to him by their host set the value of a special and important guest upon him instantly. All watched him led away by Khilkoff to the private quarters of the Studio, where none at first presumed to follow them; but it was the eyes of the women that remained glued to the open door where they had disappeared, waiting with careful interest for their reappearance. In particular Lady Gleeson, the “pretty Lady Gleeson,” watched from the corner where she sat alone, sipping some refreshment.

  Fillery and Devonham, having observed the signs about them, exchanged a glance; their charge was safe for the moment, at any rate; they felt relieved; yet it was for the entry of Nayan, the daughter, that both waited with interest and impatience, as, meanwhile, the bolder ones among the crowd came up one by one and captured them.

  “Oh, Dr. Fillery, I am glad to see you here. I thought you were always too busy for unscientific people like us. Yet, in a way, we’re all seekers, are we not? I’ve been reading your Physiology book, and I did so want to ask you about something in it. I wonder if you’d mind.”

  He shook hands with a young-old woman, wearing bobbed hair and glasses, and speaking with an intense, respectful, yet self-apologetic manner.

  “You’ve forgotten me, but I quite understand. You see so many people. I’m Miss Lance. I sent you my little magazine, ‘Simplicity,’ once, and you acknowledged it so sweetly, though, of course, I understood you had not the time to write for it.” She continued for several minutes, smiling up at him, her hands clasping and unclasping themselves behind a back clothed with some glittering coloured material that rather fascinated him by its sheen. She kept raising herself on her toes and sinking back again in a series of jerky rhythms.

  He gave her his delightful smile.

  “Oh, Dr. Fillery!” she exclaimed, with pleasure, leading him to a divan, upon which he let himself down in such a position that he could observe the door from the street as well as the door where LeVallon had disappeared. “This is really too good-natured of you. Your book set me on fire simply” — her eyes wandering to the other door— “and what a wonderful looking person you’ve brought with you — —”

  “I fear it’s not very easy reading,” he interposed patiently.

  “To me it was too delightful for words,” she rattled on, pleased by the compliment implied. “I devour all your books and always review them myself in the magazine. I wouldn’t trust them to anyone else. I simply can’t tell you how physiology stimulates me. Humanity needs imaginative books, especially just now.” She broke off with a deprecatory smile. “I do what I can,” she added, as he made no remark, “to make them known, though in such a very small way, I fear.” Her interest, however, was divided, the two powerful attractions making her quite incoherent. “Your friend,” she ventured again, “he must be Eastern perhaps? Or is that merely sunburn? He looks most unusual.”

  “Sunburn merely, Miss Lance. You must have a chat with him later.”

  “Oh, thank you, thank you, Dr. Fillery. I do so love unusual people....”

  He listened gravely. He was gentle, while she confided to him her little inner hopes and dreams about the “simple life.” She introduced adjectives she believed would sound correct, if spoken very quickly, until, between the torrent of “psychical,” “physiological” and once or twice, “psychological,” she became positively incoherent in a final entanglement from which there was no issue but a convulsive gesture. None the less, she was bathed in bliss. She monopolized the great man for a whole ten minutes on a divan where everybody could see that they talked earnestly, intimately, perhaps even intellectually, together side by side.

  He observed the room, meanwhile, without her noticing it, scanning the buzzing throng with interest. There was confusion somewhere, something was lacking, no system prevailed; he was aware of a general sense of waiting for a leader. All looked, he knew, for Nayan to appear. Without her presence, there was no centre, for, though not a member of the Society herself, she was the heart always of their gatherings, without which they straggled somewhat aimlessly. And “heart,” he remembered, with a smile that Miss Lance took proudly for herself, was the appropriate word. Nayan mothered them. They were but children, after all....

  “When you talk of a ‘New Age,’ what exactly do you mean? I wish you’d define the term for me,” Devonham meanwhile was saying to an interlocutor, not far away, while with a corner of his eye he watched both Fillery and the private door. He still stood near the entrance, looking more than ever like a disapproving floor-walker in a big department store, and it was with H. Millington Povey that he talked, the Honorary Secretary of the Society. The Secretary had aimed at Fillery, but Miss Lance had been too quick for him. He was obliged to put up with Devonham as second best, and his temper suffered accordingly. He was in aggressive mood.

  Povey, facing him, was talking with almost violent zeal. A small, thin, nervous man, on the verge of middle age, his head prematurely bald, with wildish tufts of patchy hair, a thin, scraggy neck that he lengthened and shortened between high hunched shoulders, Povey resembled an eager vulture. His keen bright eyes, hooked nose, and a habit of twisting head and neck apart from his body, which held motionless, increased this likeness to a bird of prey. Possessed of considerable powers of organization, he kept the Society together. It was he who insisted upon some special “psychic gift” as a qualification of membership; an applicant must prove this gift to a committee of Povey’s choosing, though these proofs were never circulated for general reading in the Society’s Reports. Talkers, dreamers, faddists were not desired; a member must possess some definite abnormal power before he could be elected. He must be clairvoyant or clairaudient, an automatic writer, trance-painter, medium, ghost-seer, prophet, priest or king.

  Members, therefore, stated their special qualification to each other without false modesty: “I’m a trance medium,” for instance; “Oh, really! I see auras, of course”; whi
le others had written automatic poetry, spoken in trance— “inspirational speakers,” that is — photographed a spirit, appeared to someone at a distance, or dreamed a prophetic dream that later had come true. Mediums, spirit-photographers, and prophetic dreamers were, perhaps, the most popular qualifications to offer, but there were many who remembered past lives and not a few could leave their bodies consciously at will.

  Memberships cost two guineas, the hat was occasionally passed round for special purposes, there was a monthly dinner in Soho, when members stood up, like saved sinners at a revivalist meeting, and gave personal testimony of conversion or related some new strange incident. The Prometheans were full of stolen fire and life.

  Among them were ambitious souls who desired to start a new religion, deeming the Church past hope. Others, like the water-dowsers and telepathists, were humbler. There was an Inner Circle which sought to revive the Mysteries, and gave very private performances of dramatic and symbolic kind, based upon recovered secret knowledge, at the solstices and equinoxes. New Thought members despised these, believing nothing connected with the past had value; they looked ahead; “live in the present,” “do it now” was their watchword. Astrologers were numerous too. These cast horoscopes, or, for a small fee, revealed one’s secret name, true colour, lucky number, day of the week and month, and so forth. One lady had a tame “Elemental.” Students of Magic and Casters of Spells, wearers of talismans and intricate designs in precious or inferior metal, according to taste and means, were well represented, and one and all believed, of course, in spirits.

  None, however, belonged to any Sect of the day, whatever it might be; they wore no labels; they were seekers, questers, inquirers whom no set of rules or dogmas dared confine within fixed limits. An entirely open mind and no prejudices, they prided themselves, distinguished them.

  “Define it in scientific terms, this New Age — I cannot,” replied Povey in his shrill voice, “for science deals only with the examination of the known. Yet you only have to look round you at the world to-day to see its obvious signs. Humanity is changing, new powers everywhere — —”

  Devonham interrupted unkindly, before the other could assume he had proved something by merely stating it:

  “What are these signs, if I may ask?” he questioned sharply. “For if you can name them, we can examine them — er — scientifically.” He used the word with malice, knowing it was ever on the Promethean lips.

  “There you are, at cross-purposes at once,” declared Povey. “I refer to hints, half-lights, intuitions, signs that only the most sensitive among us, those with psychic divination, with spiritual discernment — that only the privileged and those developed in advance of the Race — can know. And, instantly you produce your microscope, as though I offered you the muscles of a tadpole to dissect.”

  They glared at one another. “We shall never get progress your way,” Povey fumed, withdrawing his head and neck between his shoulders.

  “Returning to the Middle Ages, on the other hand,” mentioned Devonham, “seems like advancing in a circle, doesn’t it?”

  “Dr. Devonham,” interrupted a pretty, fair-haired girl with an intense manner, “forgive me for breaking up your interesting talk, but you come so seldom, you know, and there’s a lady here who is dying to be introduced. She has just seen crimson flashing in your aura, and she wants to ask — do you mind very much?” She smiled so sweetly at him, and at Mr. Povey, too, who was said to be engaged to her, though none believed it, that annoyance was not possible. “She says she simply must ask you if you were feeling anger. Anger, you know, produces red or crimson in one’s visible atmosphere,” she explained charmingly. She led him off, forgetting, however, her purpose en route, since they presently sat down side by side in a quiet corner and began to enjoy what seemed an interesting tête-à-tête, while the aura-seeing lady waited impatiently and observed them, without the aid of clairvoyance, from a distance.

  “And your qualifications for membership?” asked Devonham. “I wonder if I may ask —— ?”

  “But you’d laugh at me, if I told you,” she answered simply, fingering a silver talisman that hung from her neck, a six-pointed star with zodiacal signs traced round a rose, rosa mystica, evidently. “I’m so afraid of doctors.”

  Devonham shook his head decidedly, asserting vehemently his interest, whereupon she told him her little private dream delightfully, without pose or affectation, yet shyly and so sincerely that he proved his assertion by a genuine interest.

  “And does that protect you among your daily troubles?” he asked, pointing to her little silver talisman. He had already commented sympathetically upon her account of saving her new puppies from drowning, having dreamed the night before that she saw them gasping in a pail of water, the cruel under-gardener looking on. “Do you wear it always, or only on special occasions like this?”

  “Oh, Miss Milligan made that,” she told him, blushing a little. “She’s rather poor. She earns her living by designing — —”

  “Oh!”

  “But I don’t mean that. She tells you your Sign and works it in metal for you. I bought one. Mine is Pisces.” She became earnest. “I was born in Pisces, you see.”

  “And what does Pisces do for you?” he inquired, remembering the heightened colour. The sincerity of this Rose Mystica delighted him, and he already anticipated her reply with interest. Here, he felt, was the credulous, religious type in its naked purity, forced to believe in something marvellous.

  “Well, if you wear your Sign next your skin it brings good luck — it makes the things you want happen.” The blush reappeared becomingly. She did not lower her eyes.

  “Have your things happened then?”

  She hesitated. “Well, I’ve had an awfully good time ever since I wore it — —”

  “Proposals?” he asked gently.

  “Dr. Devonham!” she exclaimed. “How ever did you guess?” She looked very charming in her innocent confusion.

  He laughed. “If you don’t take it off at once,” he told her solemnly, “you may get another.”

  “It was two in a single week,” she confided a little tremulously. “Fancy!”

  “The important thing, then,” he suggested, “is to wear your talisman at the right moment, and with the right person.”

  But she corrected him promptly.

  “Oh, no. It brings the right moment and the right person together, don’t you see, and if the other person is a Pisces person, you understand each other, of course, at once.”

  “Would that I too were Pisces!” he exclaimed, seeing that she was flattered by his interest. “I’m probably” — taking a sign at random— “Scorpio.”

  “No,” she said with grave disappointment, “I’m afraid you’re Capricornus, you know. I can tell by your nose and eyes — and cleverness. But — I wanted really to ask you,” she went on half shyly, “if I might — —” She stuck fast.

  “You want to know,” he said, glancing at her with quick understanding, “who he is.” He pointed to the door. “Isn’t that it?”

  She nodded her head, while a divine little blush spread over her face. Devonham became more interested. “Why?” he asked. “Did he impress you so?”

  “Rather,” she replied with emphasis, and there was something in her earnestness curiously convincing. A sincere impression had been registered.

  “His appearance, you mean?”

  She nodded again; the blush deepened; but it was not, he saw, an ordinary blush. The sensitive young girl had awe in her. “He’s a friend of Dr. Fillery’s,” he told her; “a young man who’s lived in the wilds all his life. But, tell me — why are you so interested? Did he make any particular impression on you?”

  He watched her. His own thoughts dropped back suddenly to a strange memory of woods and mountains ... a sunset, a blazing fire ... a hint of panic.

  “Yes,” she said, her tone lower, “he did.”

  “Something very definite?”

  She made no answer.r />
  “What did you see?” he persisted gently. From woods and mountains, memory stepped back to a railway station and a customs official....

  Her manner, obviously truthful, had deep wonder, mystery, even worship in it. He was aware of a nervous reaction he disliked, almost a chill. He listened for her next words with an interest he could hardly account for.

  “Wings,” she replied, an odd hush in her voice. “I thought of wings. He seemed to carry me off the earth with great rushing wings, as the wind blows a leaf. It was too lovely: I felt like a dancing flame. I thought he was — —”

  “What?” Something in his mind held its breath a moment.

  “You won’t laugh, Dr. Devonham, will you? I thought — for a second — of — an angel.” Her voice died away.

  For a second the part of his mood that held its breath struggled between anger and laughter. A moment’s confusion in him there certainly was.

  “That makes two in the room,” he said gently, recovering himself. He smiled. But she did not hear the playful compliment; she did not see the smile. “You’ve a delightful, poetic little soul,” he added under his breath, watching the big earnest eyes whose rapt expression met his own so honestly. Having made her confession she was still engrossed, absorbed, he saw, in her own emotion.... So this was the picture that LeVallon, by his mere appearance alone, left upon an impressionable young girl, an impression, he realized, that was profound and true and absolute, whatever value her own individual interpretation of it might have. Her mention of space, wind, fire, speed, he noticed in particular— “off the earth ... rushing wind ... dancing flame ... an angel!”

  It was easy, of course, to jeer. Yet, somehow, he did not jeer at all.

  She relapsed into silence, which proved how great had been the emotional discharge accompanying the confession, temporarily exhausting her. Dr. Devonham keenly registered the small, important details.

  “Entertaining an angel unawares in a Chelsea Studio,” he said, laughingly; then reminding her presently that there was a lady who was “dying to be introduced” to him, made his escape, and for the next ten minutes found himself listening to a disquisition on auras which described “visible atmospheres whose colour changes with emotion ... radioactivity ... the halo worn by saints” ... the effect of light noticed about very good people and of blackness that the wicked emanated, and ending up with the “radiant atmosphere that shone round the figure of Christ and was believed to show the most lovely and complicated geometrical designs.”