Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  “God geometrizes — you, doubtless, know the ancient saying?” Mrs. Towzer said it like a challenge.

  “I have heard it,” admitted her listener shortly, his first opportunity of making himself audible. “Plato said some other fine things too — —”

  “I felt sure you were feeling cross just now,” the lady went on, “because I saw lines and arrows of crimson darting and flashing through your aura while you were talking to Mr. Povey. He is very annoying sometimes, isn’t he? I often wonder where all our subscriptions go to. I never could understand a balance-sheet. Can you?”

  But Devonham, having noticed Dr. Fillery moving across the room, did not answer, even if he heard the question. Fillery, he saw, was now standing near the door where Khilkoff and LeVallon had disappeared to see the sculpture, an oddly rapt expression on his face. He was talking with a member called Father Collins. The buzz of voices, the incessant kaleidoscope of colour and moving figures, made the atmosphere a little electric. Extricating himself with a neat excuse, he crossed towards his colleague, but the latter was already surrounded before he reached him. A forest of coloured scarves, odd coiffures, gleaming talismans, intervened; he saw men’s faces of intense, eager, preoccupied expression, old and young, long hair and bald; there was a new perfume in the air, incense evidently; tea, coffee, lemonade were being served, with stronger drink for the few who liked it, and cigarettes were everywhere. The note everywhere was exalté rather.

  Out of the excited throng his eyes then by chance, apparently, picked up the figure of Lady Gleeson, smoking her cigarette alone in a big armchair, a half-empty glass of wine-cup beside her. She caught his attention instantly, this “pretty Lady Gleeson,” although personally he found neither title nor adjective justified. The dark hair framed a very white skin. The face was shallow, trivial, yet with a direct intensity in the shining eyes that won for her the reputation of being attractive to certain men. Her smile added to the notoriety she loved, a curious smile that lifted the lip oddly, showing the little pointed teeth. To him, it seemed somehow a face that had been over-kissed; everything had been kissed out of it; the mouth, the lips, were worn and barren in an appearance otherwise still young. She was very expensively dressed, and deemed her legs of such symmetry that it were a shame to hide them; clad in tight silk stockings, and looking like strips of polished steel, they were now visible almost to the knee, where the edge of the skirt, neatly trimmed in fur, cut them off sharply. Some wag in the Society, paraphrasing the syllables of her name, wittily if unkindly, had christened her fille de joie. When she heard it she was rather pleased than otherwise.

  Lady Gleeson, too, he saw now, was watching the private door. The same moment, as so often occurred between himself and his colleague at some significant point in time and space, he was aware of Fillery’s eye upon his own across the intervening heads and shoulders. Fillery, also, had noticed that Lady Gleeson watched that door. His changed position in the room was partly explained.

  A slightly cynical smile touched Dr. Devonham’s lips, but vanished again quickly, as he approached the lady, bowed politely, and asked if he might bring her some refreshment. He was too discerning to say “more” refreshment. But she dotted every i, she had no half tones.

  “Thanks, kind Dr. Devonham,” she said in a decided tone, her voice thin, a trifle husky, yet not entirely unmusical. It held a strange throaty quality. “It’s so absurdly light,” she added, holding out the glass she first emptied. “The mystics don’t hold with anything strong apparently. But I’m tired, and you discovered it. That’s clever of you. It’ll do me good.”

  He, malevolently, assured her that it would.

  “Who’s your friend?” she asked point blank, with an air that meant to have a proper answer, as he brought the glass and took a chair near her. “He looks unusual. More like a hurdle-race champion than a visionary.” A sneer lurked in the voice. She fixed her determined clear grey eyes upon his, eyes sparkling with interest, curiosity in life, desire, the last-named quality of unmistakable kind. “I think I should like to know him perhaps.” It was mentioned as a favour to the other.

  Devonham, who disliked and disapproved of all these people collectively, felt angry suddenly with Fillery for having brought LeVallon among them. It was after all a foolish experiment; the atmosphere was dangerous for anyone of unstable, possibly of hysterical temperament. He had vengeance to discharge. He answered with deliberate malice, leading her on that he might watch her reactions. She was so transparently sincere.

  “I hardly think Mr. LeVallon would interest you,” he said lightly. “He is neither modern nor educated. He has spent his life in the backwoods, and knows nothing but plants and stars and weather and — animals. You would find him dull.”

  “No man with a face and figure like that can be dull,” she said quickly, her eyes alight.

  He glanced at her rings, the jewelry round her neck, her expensive gown that would keep a patient for a year or two. He remembered her millionaire South African husband who was her foolish slave. She lived, he knew, entirely for her own small, selfish pleasure. Although he meant to use her, his gorge rose. He produced his happiest smile.

  “You are a keen observer, Lady Gleeson,” he remarked. “He doesn’t look quite ordinary, I admit.” After a pause he added, “It’s a curious thing, but Mr. LeVallon doesn’t care for the charms that we other men succumb to so easily. He seems indifferent. What he wants is knowledge only.... Apparently he’s more interested in stars than in girls.”

  “Rubbish,” she rejoined. “He hasn’t met any in his woods, that’s all.”

  Her directness rather disconcerted him. At the same time, it charmed him a little, though he did not know it. His dislike of the woman, however, remained. The idle, self-centred rich annoyed him. They were so useless. The fabulous jewelry hanging upon such trash now stirred his bile. He was conscious of the lust for pleasure in her.

  “Yet, after all, he’s rather an interesting fellow perhaps,” he told her, as with an air of sudden enthusiasm. “Do you know he talks of rather wonderful things, too. Mere dreams, of course, yet, for all that, out of the ordinary. He has vague memories, it seems, of another state of existence altogether. He speaks sometimes of — of marvellous women, compared to whom our women here, our little dressed-up dolls, seem commonplace and insignificant.” And, to his keen enjoyment, Lady Gleeson took the bait with open mouth. She recrossed her shapely legs. She wriggled a little in her chair. Her be-ringed fingers began fidgeting along the priceless necklace.

  “Just what I should expect,” she replied in her throaty voice, “from a young man who looks as he does.”

  She began to play her own cards then, mentioning that her husband was interested in Dr. Fillery’s Clinique. Devonham, however, at once headed her off. He described the work of the Home with enthusiasm. “It’s fortunate that Dr. Fillery is rich,” he observed carelessly, “and can follow out his own ideas exactly as he likes. I, personally, should never have joined him had he been dependent upon the mere philanthropist.”

  “How wise of you,” she returned. “And I should never have joined this mad Society but for the chance of coming across unusual people. Now, your Mr. LeVallon is one. You may introduce him to me,” she repeated as an ultimatum.

  Her directness was the one thing he admired in her. At her own level, she was real. He was aware of the semi-erotic atmosphere about these Meetings and realized that Lady Gleeson came in search of excitement, also that she was too sincere to hide it. She wore her insignia unconcealed. Her talisman was of base metal, the one cheap thing she wore, yet real. This foolish woman, after all, might be of use unwittingly. She might capture LeVallon, if only for a moment, before Nayan Khilkoff enchanted him with that wondrous sweetness to which no man could remain indifferent. For he had long ago divined the natural, unspoken passion between his Chief and the daughter of his host, and with his whole heart he desired to advance it.

  “My husband, too, would like to meet him, I’m sure,” h
e heard her saying, while he smiled at the reappearance of the gilded bait. “My husband, you know, is interested in spirit photography and Dr. Frood’s unconscious theories.”

  He rose, without even a smile. “I’ll try and find him at once,” he said, “and bring him to you. I only hope,” he added as an afterthought, “that Miss Khilkoff hasn’t monopolized him already — —”

  “She hasn’t come,” Lady Gleeson betrayed herself. Instinctively she knew her rival, he saw, with an inward chuckle, as he rose to fetch the desired male.

  He found him the centre of a little group just inside the door leading into the sculptor’s private studio, where Khilkoff had evidently been showing his new group of elemental figures. Fillery, a few feet away, observing everything at close range, was still talking eagerly with Father Collins. LeVallon and Kempster, the pacifist, were in the middle of an earnest talk, of which Devonham caught an interesting fragment. Kempster’s qualification for membership was an occasional display of telepathy. He was a neat little man exceedingly well dressed, over-dressed in fact, for his tailor’s dummy appearance betrayed that he thought too much about his personal appearance. LeVallon, towering over him like some flaming giant, spoke quietly, but with rare good sense, it seemed. Fillery’s condensed education had worked wonders on his mind. Devonham was astonished. About the pair others had collected, listening, sometimes interjecting opinions of their own, many women among them leaning against the furniture or sitting on cushions and movable, dump-like divans on the floor. It was a picturesque little scene. But LeVallon somehow dwarfed the others.

  “I really think,” Kempster was saying, “we might now become a comfortable little third-rate Power — like Spain, for instance — enjoy ourselves a bit, live on our splendid past, and take the sun in ease.” He looked about him with a self-satisfied smirk, as though he had himself played a fine rôle in the splendid past.

  LeVallon’s reply surprised him perhaps, but it surprised Devonham still more. The real, the central self, LeVallon, he thought with satisfaction, was waking and developing. His choice of words was odd too.

  “No, no! You — the English are the leaders of the world; the best quality is in you. If you give up, the world goes down and backwards.” The deep, musical tones vibrated through the little room. The speaker, though so quiet, had the air of a powerful athlete, ready to strike. His pose was admirable. Faces turned up and stared. There was a murmur of approval.

  “We’re so tired of that talk,” replied Kempster, no whit disconcerted by the evident signs of his unpopularity. “Each race should take its turn. We’ve borne the white man’s burden long enough. Why not drop it, and let another nation do its bit? We’ve earned a rest, I think.” His precise, high voice was persuasive. He was a good public speaker, wholly impervious to another point of view. But the resonant tones of LeVallon’s rejoinder seemed to bury him, voice, exquisite clothes and all.

  “There is no other — unless you hand it back to weaker shoulders. No other race has the qualities of generosity, of big careless courage of the unselfish kind required. Above all, you alone have the chivalry.”

  Two things Devonham noted as he heard: behind the natural resonance in the big voice lay a curious deepness that made him think of thunder, a volume of sound suppressed, potential, roaring, which, if let loose, might overwhelm, submerge. It belonged to an earnestness as yet unsuspected in him, a strength of conviction based on a great purpose that was evidently subconscious in him, as though he served it, belonged to it, without realizing that he did so. He stood there like some new young prophet, proclaiming a message not entirely his own. Also he said “you” in place of the natural “we.”

  Devonham listened attentively. Here, too, at any rate, was an exchange of ideas above the “psychic” level he so disliked.

  LeVallon, he noticed at once, showed no evidence of emotion, though his eyes shone brightly and his voice was earnest.

  “America — —” began Kempster, but was knocked down by a fact before he could continue.

  “Has deliberately made itself a Province again. America saw the ideal, then drew back, afraid. It is once more provincial, cut off from the planet, a big island again, concerned with local affairs of its own. Your Democracy has failed.”

  “As it always must,” put in Kempster, glad perhaps to shift the point, when he found no ready answer. “The wider the circle from which statesmen are drawn, the lower the level of ability. We should be patriotic for ideas, not for places. The success of one country means the downfall of another. That’s not spiritual....” He continued at high speed, but Devonham missed the words. He was too preoccupied with the other’s language, penetration, point of view. LeVallon had, indeed, progressed. There was nothing of the alternative personality in this, nothing of the wild, strange, nature-being whom he called “N. H.”

  “Patriotism, of course, is vulgar rubbish,” he heard Kempster finishing his tirade. “It is local, provincial. The world is a whole.”

  But LeVallon did not let him escape so easily. It was admirable really. This half-educated countryman from the woods and mountains had a clear, concentrated mind. He had risen too. Whence came his comprehensive outlook?

  “Chivalry — you call it sporting instinct — is the first essential of a race that is to lead the world. It is a topmost quality. Your race has it. It has come down even into your play. It is instinctive in you more than any other. And chivalry is unselfish. It is divine. You have conquered the sun. The hot races all obey you.”

  The thunder broke through the strange but simple words which, in that voice, and with that quiet earnestness, carried some weight of meaning in them that print cannot convey. The women gazed at him with unconcealed, if not with understanding admiration. “Lead us, inspire us, at any rate!” their eyes said plainly; “but love us, O love us, passionately, above all!”

  Devonham, hardly able to believe his ears and eyes, turned to see if Fillery had heard the scrap of talk. Judging by the expression on his face, he had not heard it. Father Collins seemed saying things that held his attention too closely. Yet Fillery, for all his apparent absorption, had heard it, though he read it otherwise than his somewhat literal colleague. It was, nevertheless, an interesting revelation to him, since it proved to him again how unreal “LeVallon” was; how easily, quickly this educated simulacrum caught up, assimilated and reproduced as his own, yet honestly, whatever was in the air at the moment. For the words he had spoken were not his own, but Fillery’s. They lay, or something like them lay, unuttered in Fillery’s mind just at that very moment. Yet, even while listening attentively to Father Collins, his close interest in LeVallon was so keen, so watchful, that another portion of his mind was listening to this second conversation, even taking part in it inaudibly. LeVallon caught his language from the air....

  Devonham made his opportunity, leading LeVallon off to be introduced to Lady Gleeson, who still sat waiting for them on the divan in the outer studio.

  As they made their way through the buzzing throng into the larger room, Devonham guessed suddenly that Lady Gleeson must somehow have heard in advance that LeVallon would be present; her flair for new men was singular; the sexual instinct, unduly developed, seemed aware of its prey anywhere within a big radius. He owed his friend a hint of guidance possibly. “A little woman,” he explained as they crossed over, “who has a weakness for big men and will probably pay you compliments. She comes here to amuse herself with what she calls ‘the freaks.’ Sometimes she lends her great house for the meetings. Her husband’s a millionaire.” To which the other, in his deep, quiet voice, replied: “Thank you, Dr. Devonham.”

  “She’s known as ‘the pretty Lady Gleeson.’”

  “That?” exclaimed the other, looking towards her.

  “Hush!” his companion warned him.

  As they approached, Lady Gleeson, waiting with keen impatience, saw them coming and made her preparations. The frown of annoyance at the long delay was replaced by a smile of welcome that lifted the
upper lip on one side only, showing the white even teeth with odd effect. She stared at LeVallon, thought Devonham, as a wolf eyes its prey. Deftly lowering her dress — betraying thereby that she knew it was too high, and a detail now best omitted from the picture — she half rose from her seat as they came up. The instinctive art of deference, though instantly corrected, did not escape Paul Devonham’s too observant eye.

  “You were kind enough to say I might introduce my friend,” murmured he. “Mr. LeVallon is new to our big London, and a stranger among all these people.”

  LeVallon bowed in his calm, dignified fashion, saying no word, but Lady Gleeson put her hand out, and, finding his own, shook it with her air of brilliant welcome. Determination lay in her smile and in her gesture, in her voice as well, as she said familiarly at once: “But, Mr. LeVallon, how tall are you, really? You seem to me a perfect giant.” She made room for him beside her on the divan. “Everybody here looks undersized beside you!” She became intense.

  “I am six feet and three inches,” he replied literally, but without expression in his face. There was no smile. He was examining her as frankly as she examined him. Devonham was examining the pair of them. The lack of interest, the cold indifference in LeVallon, he reflected, must put the young woman on her mettle, accustomed as she was to quick submission in her victims.

  LeVallon, however, did not accept the offered seat; perhaps he had not noticed the invitation. He showed no interest, though polite and gentle.