On the staircase was the perfume of a strange tobacco, and, to his surprise and intense relief, when he entered the châlet he found that his brother for the first time was not alone. A small, dark man stood talking earnestly with him by the open window — the window where Mark had obviously been watching with anxiety for his arrival. Before introducing him to the stranger, Mark at once gave expression to his relief.
“I was beginning to be afraid something had happened to you,” he said quietly enough, but in a way that the other understood. And after a moment’s pause, in which he searched Stephen’s face keenly, he added, “but we didn’t wait supper as you see, and old Petavel has kept yours all hot and ready for you in the kitchen.”
“I — er — lost my way,” Stephen said quickly, glancing from Mark to the stranger, wondering vaguely who he was. “I got confused somehow in the dusk—”
Mark, remembering his manners now that his anxiety was set at rest, hastened to introduce him — a Professor in a Russian University, interested in folklore and legend, who had read their book on the Abruzzi and discovered quite by chance that they were neighbors here in the forest. He was staying in a little hotel at Les Rasses, and had ventured to come up and introduce himself. Stephen was far too occupied trying to conceal his new battling emotions to notice that Mark and the stranger seemed on quite familiar terms. He was so fearful lest the perturbations of his own heart should betray him that he had no power to detect anything subtle or unusual in anybody else.
“Professor Samarianz comes originally from Tiflis,” Mark was explaining, “and has been telling me the most fascinating things about the legends and folklore of the Caucasus. We really must go there another year, Stephen — Mr. Samarianz most kindly has promised me letters to helpful people. He tells me, too, of a charming and exquisite legend of a ‘Lost Valley’ that exists hereabouts, where the spirits of all who die by their own hands, or otherwise suffer violent deaths, find perpetual peace — the peace denied them by all the religions, that is...”
Mark went on talking for some minutes while Stephen took off his knapsack and exchanged a few words with their visitor, who spoke excellent English. He was not quite sure what he said, but hoped he talked quietly and sensibly enough, in spite of the passions that waged war so terrifically in his breast. He noticed, however, that the man’s face held an unusual charm, though he could not detect wherein its secret specifically lay. Presently, with excuses of hunger, he went into the kitchen for his supper, hugely relieved to find the opportunity to collect his thoughts a little; and when he returned twenty minutes later he found that his brother was alone. Professor Samarianz had taken his leave. In the room still lingered the perfume of his peculiarly flavored cigarettes.
Mark, after listening with half an ear to his brother’s description of the day, began pouring out his new interest; he was full of the Caucasus, and its folklore, and of the fortunate chance that had brought the stranger their way. The legend of the “Lost Valley” in the Jura, too, particularly interested him, and he spoke of his astonishment that he had hitherto come across no trace anywhere of the story.
“And fancy,” he exclaimed, after a recital that lasted half-an-hour, “the man came up from one of those little hotels on the edge of the forest — that noisy one we have always been so careful to avoid. You never know where your luck hides, do you?” he added, with a laugh.
“You never do, indeed,” replied Stephen quietly, now wholly master of himself, or, at least, of his voice and eyes.
And, to his secret satisfaction and delight, it was Mark who provided the excuses for staying on in the chalet, instead of moving further down the valley as they had intended. Besides, it would have been unnatural and absurd to leave without investigating so picturesque a legend as the “Lost Valley.”
“We’re uncommonly happy here,” Mark added quietly; “why not stay on a bit?”
“Why not, indeed?” answered Stephen, trusting that the fearful inner storm instantly roused again by the prospect did not betray itself.
“You’re not very keen, perhaps, old fellow?” suggested Mark gently.
“On the contrary — I am, very,” was the reply.
“Good. Then we’ll stay.”
The words were spoken after a pause of some seconds. Stephen, who was down at the end of the room sorting his specimens by the lamp, looked up sharply. Mark’s face, where he sat on the window-ledge in the dusk, was hardly visible. It must have something in his voice that had shot into Stephen’s heart with a flash of sudden warning.
A sensation of cold passed swiftly over him and was gone. Had he already betrayed himself? Was the subtle, almost telepathic sympathy between the twins developed to such a point that emotions could be thus transferred with the minimum of word or gesture, within the very shades of their silence even? And another thought: Was there something different in Mark to — something in him also that had changed? Or was it merely his own raging, heaving passion, though so sternly repressed, that distorted his judgment and made him imaginative?
What stood so darkly in the room — between them?
A sudden and fearful pain seared him inwardly as he realized, practically, and with cruelly acute comprehension, that one of these two loves in his heart must inevitably die to feed the other; and that it might have to be — Mark. The complete meaning of it came home to him. And at the thought all his deep love of thirty years rose in a tide within him, flooding through the gates of life, seeking to overwhelm and merge in itself all obstacles that threatened to turn it aside. Unshed tears burned behind his eyes. He ached with a degree of actual, physical pain.
After a moment of savage self-control he turned and crossed the room; but before he had covered half the distance that separated him from the window where his brother sat smoking, the rush of burning words — were they to have been of confession, of self-reproach, or of renewed devotion? — swept away from him, so that he wholly forgot them. In their place came the ordinary dead phrases of convention. He hardly heard them himself, though his lips uttered them.
“Come along, Mark, old chap,” he said, conscious that his voice trembled, and that another face slipped imperiously in front of the one his eyes looked upon; “it’s time to go to bed. I’m dead tired like yourself.”
“You are right,” Mark replied, looking at him steadily as he turned towards the lamplight. “Besides, the night air’s getting chilly — and we’ve been sitting in a draft, you know, all along.”
For the first time in their lives the eyes of the two brothers could not quite find each other. Neither gaze hit precisely the middle of the other. It was as though a veil hung down between them and a deliberate act of focus was necessary. They looked one another straight in the face as usual, but with an effort — with momentary difficulty. The room, too, as Mark had said, was cold, and the lamp, exhausted of its oil, was beginning to smell. Both light and heat were going. It was certainly time for bed.
The brothers went out together, arm in arm, and the long shadows of the pines, thrown by the rising moon through the window, fell across the floor like arms that waved. And from the black branches outside, the wind caught up a shower of sighs and dropped them about the roofs and walls as they made their way to their bedrooms on opposite sides of the little corridor.
V
Four hours later, when the moon was high overhead and the room held but a single big shadow, the door opened softly and in came — Stephen. He was dressed. He crossed the floor stealthily, unfastened the windows, and let himself out upon the balcony. A minute afterwards he had disappeared into the forest beyond the strip of vegetable garden at the back of the châlet.
It was two o’clock in the morning, and no sleep had touched his eyes. For his heart burned, ached, and fought within him, and he felt the need of open spaces and the great forces of the night and mountains. No such battle had he ever known before. He remembered his brother saying years ago, with a half serious, half playful, “... for if ever one of us comes a cropper in
love, old fellow, it will be time for the other to —— go!” And by “go” they both understood the ultimate meaning of the word.
Through the glades of forest, sweet-scented by night, he made his way till he reached the spot where that Face of soft splendor had first blessed his soul with its mysterious glory. There he sat down and, with his back against the very tree that had supported him a few hours ago, he drove his thoughts forward into battle with the whole strength of his will and character behind him. Very quietly, and with all the care, precision and steadiness of mind that he would have brought to bear upon a difficult “case” at Wimpole Street, he faced the situation and wrestled with it. The emotions during four hours’ tossing upon a sleepless bed had worn themselves out a little. He was, in one sense of the word, calm, master of himself. The facts, with the huge issue that lay in their hands, he saw naked. And, as he thus saw them, he discerned how very, very far he had already traveled down the sweet path that led him toward the girl — and away from his brother.
Details about her, of course, he knew none; whether she was free even; for he only knew that he loved, and that his entire life was already breaking with the yearning to sacrifice itself for that love. That was the naked fact. The problem bludgeoned him. Could he do anything to hold back the flood still rising, to arrest its terrific flow? Could he divert its torrent, and take it, girl and all, to offer upon the altar of that other love — the devotion of the twin for its twin, the mysterious affinity that hitherto had ruled and directed all the currents of his soul?
There was no question of undoing what had already been done. Even if he never saw that face again, or heard the accents of those beloved lips; if he never was to know the magic of touch, the perfume of close thought, or the strange blessedness of telling her his burning message and hearing the murmur of her own — the fact of love was already accomplished between them. That was ineradicable. He had seen. The sensitive plate had received its undying picture.
For this was no foolish passion arising from the mere propinquity that causes so many of the world’s misfit marriages. It was a profound and mystical union already accomplished, psychical in the utter sense, inevitable as the marriage of wind and fire. He almost heard his soul laugh as he thought of the revolution effected in an instant of time by the message of a single glance. What had science, or his own special department of science, to say to this tempest of force that invaded him, and swept with its beautiful terrors of wind and lightning the furthest recesses of his being? This whirlwind that so shook him, that so deliciously wounded him, that already made the thought of sacrificing his brother seem sweet — what was there to say to it, or do with it, or think of it?
Nothing, nothing, nothing...! He could only lie in its arms and rest, with that peace, deeper than all else in life, which the mystic knows when he is conscious that the everlasting arms are about him and that his union with the greatest force of the world is accomplished.
Yet Stephen struggled like a lion. His will rose up and opposed itself to the whole invasion... and in the end his will of steel, trained as all men of character train their wills against the difficulties of life, did actually produce a certain, definite result. This result was almost a tour de fora, perhaps, yet it seemed valid. By its aid Stephen forced himself into a position he felt intuitively was an impossible one, but in which nevertheless he determined, by a deliberate act of almost incredible volition, that he would remain fixed. He decided to conquer his obsession, and to remain true to Mark....
The distant ridges of the dim blue Jura were tipped with the splendors of the coming dawn when at length he rose, chilly and exhausted, to retrace his steps to the châlet.
He realized fully the meaning of the resolve he had come to. And the knowledge of it froze something within him into a stiffness that was like the stiffness of death. The pain in his heart battling against the resolution was atrocious. He had estimated, or thought so, at least, the meaning of his sacrifice. As a matter of fact his decision was entirely artificial, of course, and his resolve dictated by a moral code rather than by the living forces that direct life and can alone make its changes permanent. Stephen had in him the stuff of the hero; and, having said that, one has said all that language can say.
On the way home in the cool white dawn, as he crossed the open spaces of meadow where the mist rose and the dew lay like rain, he suddenly thought of her lying dead — dead, that is, as he had thus decided she was to be dead — for him. And instantly, as by a word of command, the entire light went out of the landscape and out of the world. His soul turned wintry, and all the sweetness of his life went bleak. For it was the ancient soul in him that loved, and to deny it was to deny life itself. He had pronounced upon himself a sentence of death by starvation — a lingering and prolonged death accompanied by tortures of the most exquisite description. And along this path he really believed at the moment his little human will could hold him firm.
He made his way through the dew-drenched grass with the elation caused by so vast a sacrifice singing curiously in his blood. The splendor of the mountain sunrise and all the vital freshness of the dawn was in his heart. He was upon the châlet almost before he knew it, and there on the balcony, waiting to receive him, his grey dressing gown wrapped about his ears in the sharp air, stood — Mark!
And, somehow or other, at the sight, all this false elation passed and dropped. Stephen looked up at him, standing suddenly still there in his tracks, as he might have looked up at his executioner. The picture had restored him most abruptly, with sharpest pain, to reality again.
“Like me, you couldn’t sleep, eh?” Mark called softly, so as not to waken the peasants who slept on the ground floor.
“Have you been lying awake, too?” Stephen replied.
“All night. I haven’t closed an eye.” Then Mark added, as his brother came up the wooden steps towards him, “I knew — you were awake I felt it. I knew, too — you had gone out.”
A silence passed between them. Both had spoken quietly, naturally, neither expressing surprise.
“Yes,” Stephen said slowly at length; “we always reflect each other’s pai — each other’s moods—” He stopped abruptly, leaving the sentence unfinished.
Their eyes met as of old. Stephen knew an instant of quite freezing terror in which he felt that his brother had divined the truth. Then Mark took his arm and led the way indoors on tiptoe.
“Look here, Stevie, old fellow,” he said, with extraordinary tenderness “there’s no good saying anything, but I know perfectly well that you’re unhappy about something; and so, of course, I am unhappy too.” He paused, as though searching for words. Under ordinary circumstances Stephen would have caught his precise thought, but now the tumult of suppressed emotion in him clouded his divining power. He felt his arm clutched in a sudden vice. They drew closer to one another. Neither spoke. Then Mark, low and hurriedly, said — he almost mumbled it— “It’s all my fault really, all my fault — dear old boy!”
Stephen turned in amazement and stared. What in the world did his brother mean? What was he talking about? Before he could find speech, however, Mark continued, speaking distinctly now, and with evidences of strong emotion in his voice —
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” he exclaimed, with sudden decision; “we’ll go away; we’ll leave! We’ve stayed here a bit too long, perhaps. Eh? What d’you say to that?”
Stephen did not notice how sharply Mark searched his face. At the thought of separation all his mighty resolution dropped like a house of cards. His entire life seemed to melt away and run in a stream of impetuous yearning towards the Face.
But he answered quietly, sustaining his purpose artificially by a force of will that seemed to break and twist his life at the source with extraordinary pain. He could not have endured the strain for more than a few seconds. His voice sounded strange and distant.
“All right; at the end of the week,” he said — the faintness in him was dreadful, filling him with cold— “and that’l
l give us just three days to make our plans, won’t it?”
Mark nodded his head. Both faces were lined and drawn like the faces of old men; only there was no one there to remark upon it — nor upon the fixed sternness that had dropped so suddenly upon their eyes and lips.
Arm in arm they entered the chalet and went to their bedrooms without another word. The sun, as they went, rose close over the tree-tops and dropped its first rays upon the spot where they had just stood.
VI
They came down in dressing gowns to a very late breakfast. They were quiet, grave and slightly preoccupied. Neither made the least reference to their meeting at sunrise. New lines had graved themselves upon their faces, identical hues it seemed, drawing the mouth down at the corners with a touch of grimness where hitherto had been merely firmness.
And the eyes of both saw new things, new distances, new terrors. Something, feared till now only as a possibility, had come close, and stood at their elbows for the first time as an actuality. Sleep, in which changes offered to the soul during the day are confirmed and ratified, had established this new element in their personal equation. They had changed — if not towards one another, then towards something else.
But Stephen saw the matter only from his own point of view. For the first time in his memory he seemed to have lost the intuitive sympathy which enabled him to see things from his brother’s point of view as well. The change, he felt positive, was in himself, not in Mark.
“He knows — he feels — something in me has altered dreadfully, but he doesn’t yet understand what,” his thoughts ran. “Pray to God he need never know — at least until I have utterly conquered it!”
For he still held with all the native tenacity of his strong will to the course he had so heroically chosen. The degree of self-deception his imagination brought into the contest seemed incredible when his mind looked back upon it all from the calmness of the end. But at the time he genuinely hoped, wished, intended to conquer, even believed that he would conquer.
Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood Page 398