His hopes had in both respects proved justified. LeVallon was gone. “N. H.” had swept up commandingly into full possession.
If it is the attitude of mind that interprets details in a given scene, it is the heart that determines their selection. Devonham saw collective hallucination, delusion, humbug — useless and undesirable weeds, where his chief saw strange imperfect growths that might one day become flowers in a marvellous garden. That this garden blossomed upon the sunny slopes of a lost Caucasian valley had a significance he did not shirk. Always he was honest with himself. It was this symbolic valley he longed to people. Its radiant loveliness stirred a forgotten music in his heart, he watched golden bees sipping that wild azalea honey, of which even the natives may not rob them without the dangerous delight of exaltation; his nostrils caught the delicious perfumes, his cheek felt the touch of happy winds ... as he stood by the door with Devonham and LeVallon, looking round the crowded Chelsea studio.
Aware of this association stirring in his blood, he believed he had himself well in hand; he knew already in advance that a spirit moved upon the face of those waters that were his inmost self; he had that intuitive divination which anticipates a change of spiritual weather. The wind was rising, the atmosphere lay prepared, already the flowers bent their heads one way. All his powers of self-control might well be called upon before the entertainment ended. Glancing a moment at LeVallon, tall, erect and poised beside him, he was conscious — it was an instant of vivid self-revelation — that he steadied himself in doing so. He borrowed, as it were, something of that poise, that calm simplicity, that potential energy, that modest confidence. Some latent power breathed through the great stalwart figure by his side; the strength was not his own; LeVallon emanated this power unconsciously.
Khilkoff, as described, had then led the youth away to see the sculpture, Devonham was captured by a Member, and Fillery found himself alone. He looked about him, noticing here and there individuals whom he knew. Lady Gleeson he saw at once on her divan in the corner, with her cigarette, her jewels, her glass, her background of millions through which an indulgent husband floated like a shadow. His eye rested on her a second only, then passed in search of something less insignificant. Miss Lance, who had heard of his books and dared to pretend knowledge of them, monopolised him for ten minutes. A little tactful kindness managed her easily, while he watched the door where LeVallon had disappeared with Khilkoff, and through which Nayan might any moment now enter. Already his thoughts framed these two together in a picture; his heart saw them playing hand in hand among the flowers of the Hidden Valley, one flying, the other following, a radiance of sunny fire and a speed of lifting winds about them both, yet he himself, oddly enough, not far away. He, too, was somehow with them. While listening with his mind to what Miss Lance was saying, his heart went out playing with this splendid pair.... He would not lose her finally, it seemed; some subtle kinship held them together in this trinity. The heart in him played wild against the mind.
He caught Devonham’s eye upon him, and a sudden smile that Miss Lance fortunately appropriated to herself, ran over his too thoughtful face. For Devonham’s attitude towards the case, his original Notes, his obvious concealment of experiences in the Jura Mountains, flashed across him with a flavour of something half comic, half pathetic. “With all that knowledge, with all the accumulation of data, Paul stops short of Wonder!” he thought to himself, his eyes fixed solemnly upon Miss Lance’s face. He remembered Coleridge: “All knowledge begins and ends with wonder, but the first wonder is the child of ignorance, while the second wonder is the parent of adoration.” A thousand years, and the dear fellow will still regard adoration as hysteria! He chuckled audibly, to his companion’s surprise, since the moment was not appropriate for chuckling.
Making his peace with his neighbour, he presently left her for a position nearer to the door, Father Collins providing the opportunity.
Father Collins, as he was called, half affectionately, half in awe, as of a parent with a cane, was an individual. He had been evangelical, high church, Anglican, Roman Catholic, in turn, and finally Buddhist. Believing in reincarnation, he did not look for progress in humanity; the planet resembled a form at school — individuals passed into it and out of it, but the average of the form remained the same. The fifth form was always the fifth form. Earth’s history showed no advance as a whole, though individuals did. He looked forward, therefore, to no Utopia, nor shared the pessimism of the thinkers who despaired of progress.
A man of intense convictions, yet open mind, he was not ashamed to move. Before the Buddhist phase, he had been icily agnostic. He thought, but also he felt. He had vision and intuition; he had investigated for himself. His mind was of the imaginative-scientific order. Buddhism, his latest phase, attracted him because it was “a scientific, logical system rather than a religion based on revelation.” He belonged eminently to the unstable. He found no resting place. He came to the meetings of the Society to listen rather than to talk. His net was far flung, catching anything and everything in the way of new ideas, experiments, theories, beliefs, especially powers. He tested for himself, then accepted or discarded. The more extravagant the theory, the greater its appeal to him. Behind a grim, even a repulsive ugliness, he hid a heart of milk and honey. In his face was nobility, yet something slovenly ran through it like a streak.
He loved his kind and longed to help them to the light. Although a rolling stone, spiritually, his naked sincerity won respect. He was composed, however, of several personalities, and hence, since these often clashed, he was accused of insincerity too. The essay that lost him his pulpit and parish, “The Ever-moving Truth, or Proof Impossible,” was the poignant confession of an honest intellect where faith and unbelief came face to face with facts. The Bishop, naturally, preferred the room of “Father” Collins to his company.
“I should like you to meet my friend,” Fillery mentioned, after some preliminary talk. “He would interest you. You might help him possibly.” He mentioned a few essential details. “Perhaps you will call one day — you know my address — and make his acquaintance. His mind, owing to his lonely and isolated youth, is tabula rasa. For the same reason, a primitive Nature is his Deity.”
Father Collins raised his bushy dark eyebrows.
“I took note of him the moment he came in,” he replied. “I was wondering who he was — and what! I’ll come one day with pleasure. The innocence on his face surprised me. Is he — may I ask it — friend or patient?”
“Both.”
“I see,” said the other, without hesitation. He added: “You are experimenting?”
“Studying. I should value the help — the view of a religious temperament.”
Father Collins looked grim to ugliness. The touch of nobility appeared.
“I know your ideals, Dr. Fillery; I know your work,” he said gruffly. “In you lies more true religion than in a thousand bishops. I should trust your treatment of an unusual case. If,” he added slowly, “I can help him, so much the better.” He then looked up suddenly, his manner as if galvanized: “Unless he can perhaps help us.”
The words struck Fillery on the raw, as it were. They startled him. He stared into the other’s eyes. “What makes you think that? What do you mean exactly?”
Father Collins returned his gaze unflinchingly. He made an odd reply. “Your friend,” he said, “looks to me — like a man who — might start a new religion — Nature for instance — back to Nature being, in my opinion, always a possible solution of over-civilization and its degeneracy.” The streak of something slovenly crept into the nobility, smudging it, so to speak, with a blur.
Dr. Fillery, for a moment, waited, listening with his heart.
“And find a million followers at once,” continued the other, as though he had not noticed. “His voice, his manner, his stature, his face, but above all — something he brings with him. Whatever his nature, he’s a natural leader. And a sincere, unselfish leader is what people are asking for nowad
ays.”
His black bushy eyebrows dropped, darkening the grim, clean-shaven face. “You noticed, of course — you — the women’s eyes?” he mentioned. “It isn’t, you know, so much what a man says, nor entirely his looks, that excite favour or disfavour with women. It’s something he emanates — unconsciously. They can’t analyze it, but they never fail to recognize it.”
Fillery moved sideways a little, so that he could watch the inner studio better. The discernment of his companion was somewhat unexpected. It disconcerted him. All his knowledge, all his experience clustered about his mind as thick as bees, yet he felt unable to select the item he needed. The sunshine upon his Inner Valley burned a brighter fire. He saw the flowers glow. The wind ran sweet and magical. He began to watch himself more closely.
“LeVallon is an interesting being,” he admitted finally, “but you make big deductions surely. A mind like yours,” he added, “must have its reasons?”
“Power,” replied the other promptly; “power. ‘The earlier generations,’ said Emerson, ‘saw God face to face; we through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to Nature?’ Your friend has this original relation, I feel; he stands close — terribly close — to Nature. He brings open spaces even into this bargain sale — —” He drew a deep breath. “There is a power about him — —”
“Perhaps,” interrupted the other.
“Not of this earth.”
“You mean that literally?”
“Not of this earth quite — not of humanity, so to speak,” repeated Father Collins half irritably, as though his intelligence had been insulted. “That’s the best way I can describe how it strikes me. Ask one of the women. Ask Nayan, for instance. Whatever he is, your friend is elemental.”
Like a shock of fire the unusual words ran deep into Fillery’s heart, but, at that same instant a stirring of the figures beyond the door caught his attention. His main interest revived. The inner door of the private studio, he thought, had opened.
“Elemental!” he repeated, his interest torn in two directions simultaneously. He looked at his companion keenly, searchingly. “You — a man like you — does not use such words — —” He kept an eye upon the inner studio.
“Without meaning,” the other caught him up at once. “No. I mean it. Nor do I use such words idly to a man — Fillery — like you.” He stopped. “He has what you have,” came the quick blunt statement; “only in your case it’s indirect, while in his it’s direct — essential.”
They looked at each other. Two minds, packed with knowledge and softened with experience of their kind, though from different points of view, met each other fairly. A bridge existed. It was crossed. Few words were necessary, it seemed. Each understood the other.
“Elemental,” repeated Fillery, his pulse quickening half painfully.
At which instant he knew the inner door had opened. Nayan had come in. The same instant almost she had gone out again. So quick, indeed, was the interval between her appearance and disappearance, that Fillery’s version of what he then witnessed in those few seconds might have been ascribed by a third person who saw it with him to his imagination largely. Imaginative, at any rate, the version was; whether it was on that account unreal is another matter. The swift, tiny scene, however, no one witnessed but himself. Even Devonham, unusually alert with professional anxiety, missed it; as did also the watchful Lady Gleeson, whom jealousy made clairvoyante almost. Khilkoff and LeVallon, standing sideways to the door, were equally unaware that it had opened, then quickly closed again. None saw, apparently, the radiant, lovely outline.
It was a curtained door leading out of the far end of the inner studio into a passage which had an exit to the street; Fillery was so placed that he could see it over his companion’s shoulder; Khilkoff, LeVallon and the little group about them stood in his direct line of sight against the dark background of the curtain. The light in this far corner was so dim that Fillery was not aware the curtained door had swung open until he actually saw the figure of Nayan Khilkoff framed suddenly in the clear space, the white passage wall behind her. She wore gloves, hat and furs, having come, evidently, straight from the street. Ten seconds, perhaps twenty, she stood there, gazing with a sudden fixed intensity at LeVallon, whose figure, almost close enough for touch, was sideways to her, the face in profile.
She stopped abruptly as though a shock ran through her. She remained motionless. She stared, an expression in her eyes as of life momentarily arrested by wild, glorious, intense surprise. The lips were parted; one gloved hand still held the swinging curtained door. To Fillery it seemed as if a flame leaped into her eyes. The entire face lit up. She seemed spellbound with delight.
This leap of light was the first sign he witnessed. The same second her eyes lifted a fraction of an inch, changed their focus, and, gazing past LeVallon, looked straight across the room into his own.
In his mind at that instant still rang the singular words of Father Collins; in his heart still hung the picture of the flowered valley: it was across this atmosphere the eyes of the girl flashed their message like a stroke of lightning. It came as a cry, almost a call for help, an audible message whose syllables fled down the valley, yearning sweet, yet a tone of poignant farewell within the following wind. It was a moment of delicious joy, of exquisite pain, of a blissful, searching dream beyond this world....
He stood spellbound himself a moment. The look in the girl’s big eloquent eyes threatened a cherished dream that lay too close to his own life. He was aware of collapse, of ruin; that old peculiar anguish seized him. He remembered her words in Baker Street a few days before: “Please bring your friend” — the accompanying pain they caused. And now he caught the echo on that following wind along the distant valley. The cry in her eyes came to him:
“Why — O why — do you bring this to me? It must take your place. It must put out — You!”
The reasoning and the inspirational self in him knew this momentary confusion, as the cry fled down the wind.
“O follow, follow
Through the caverns hollow
As the song floats, thou pursue
Where the wild bee never flew....”
The curtained door swung to again; the face and figure were no longer there; Nayan had withdrawn quickly, noticed by none but himself. She had gone up to make herself ready for her father’s guests; in a few minutes she would come down again to play hostess as her custom was.... It was so ordinary. It was so dislocating.... For at that moment it seemed as if all the feminine forces of the universe, whatever these may be, focused in her, and poured against him their concentrated stream to allure, enchant, subdue. He trembled. He remembered Devonham’s admission of the panic sense.
“It’s the air,” said a voice beside him, “all this tobacco smoke and scent, and no ventilation.”
Father Collins was speaking, only he had completely forgotten that Father Collins was in the world. The steadying hand upon his arm made him realize that he had swayed a moment.
“The perfume chiefly,” the voice continued. “All this cheap nasty stuff these women use. It’s enough to sicken any healthy man. Nobody knows his own smell, they say.” He laughed a little.
Collins was tactful. He talked on easily of nothing in particular, so that his companion might let the occasion slip, or comment on it, as he wished.
“Worse than incense.” Fillery gave him the clue perhaps intentionally, certainly with gratitude. He made an effort. He found control. “It intoxicates the imagination, doesn’t it?” That note of sweet farewell still hung with enchanting sadness in his brain. He still saw those yearning eyes. He heard that cry. And yet the conflict in his nature bewildered him — as though he found two persons in him, one weeping while the other sang.
Father Collins smiled, and Fillery then knew that he, too, had seen the girl framed in the doorway, intercepted the glance as well. No shadow of resentment crossed his heart as he heard him add: “She, too, perhaps belongs elsewhere.” The phrase, h
owever, brought to his own personal dream the conviction of another understanding mind. “As you yourself do, too,” was added in a thrilling whisper suddenly.
Fillery turned with a start to meet his eye. “But where?”
“That is your problem,” said Father Collins promptly. “You are the expert — even though you think — mistakenly — that your heart is robbed.” His voice held the sympathy and tenderness of a woman taught by suffering. The nobility was in his face again, untarnished now. His words, his tone, his manner caught Fillery in amazement. It did not surprise him that Father Collins had been quick enough to understand, but it did surprise him that a man so entangled in one formal creed after another, so netted by the conventional thought of various religious Systems, and therefore stuffed with old, rigid, commonplace ideas — it did, indeed surprise him to feel this sudden atmosphere of vision and prophecy that abruptly shone about him. The extravagant, fantastic side of the man he had forgotten.
“Where?” he repeated, gazing at him. “Where, indeed?”
“Where the wild bee never flew ... perhaps!”
Father Collins’s eyebrows shot up as though worked by artificial springs. His eyes, changing extraordinarily, turned very keen. He seemed several persons at once. He looked like — contradictory description — a spiritual Jesuit. The ugly mouth — thank Heaven, thought Fillery — showed lines of hidden humour. His sanity, at any rate, was unquestioned. Father Collins watched the planet with his soul, not with his brain alone. But which of his many personalities was now in the ascendancy, no man, least of all himself, could tell. His companion, the expert in him automatically aware of the simultaneous irruption and disruption, waited almost professionally for any outburst that might follow. “Arcades ambo,” he reflected, making a stern attempt to keep his balance.
Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood Page 239