CHAPTER VIII. MY FATHER'S MANUSCRIPT
I am filled with awe of what I have to write. The sun is shining goldenabove me; the sea lies blue beneath his gaze; the same world sends itsgrowing things up to the sun, and its flying things into the air whichI have breathed from my infancy; but I know the outspread splendour apassing show, and that at any moment it may, like the drop-scene of astage, be lifted to reveal more wonderful things.
Shortly after my father's death, I was seated one morning in thelibrary. I had been, somewhat listlessly, regarding the portrait thathangs among the books, which I knew only as that of a distant ancestor,and wishing I could learn something of its original. Then I had taken abook from the shelves and begun to read.
Glancing up from it, I saw coming toward me--not between me and thedoor, but between me and the portrait--a thin pale man in rusty black.He looked sharp and eager, and had a notable nose, at once reminding meof a certain jug my sisters used to call Mr. Crow.
"Finding myself in your vicinity, Mr. Vane, I have given myself thepleasure of calling," he said, in a peculiar but not disagreeablevoice. "Your honoured grandfather treated me--I may say it withoutpresumption--as a friend, having known me from childhood as his father'slibrarian."
It did not strike me at the time how old the man must be.
"May I ask where you live now, Mr. Crow?" I said.
He smiled an amused smile.
"You nearly hit my name," he rejoined, "which shows the family insight.You have seen me before, but only once, and could not then have heardit!"
"Where was that?"
"In this very room. You were quite a child, however!"
I could not be sure that I remembered him, but for a moment I fancied Idid, and I begged him to set me right as to his name.
"There is such a thing as remembering without recognising the memory init," he remarked. "For my name--which you have near enough--it used tobe Raven."
I had heard the name, for marvellous tales had brought it me.
"It is very kind of you to come and see me," I said. "Will you not sitdown?"
He seated himself at once.
"You knew my father, then, I presume?"
"I knew him," he answered with a curious smile, "but he did not careabout my acquaintance, and we never met.--That gentleman, however," headded, pointing to the portrait,--"old Sir Up'ard, his people calledhim,--was in his day a friend of mine yet more intimate than ever yourgrandfather became."
Then at length I began to think the interview a strange one. But intruth it was hardly stranger that my visitor should remember Sir Upward,than that he should have been my great-grandfather's librarian!
"I owe him much," he continued; "for, although I had read many morebooks than he, yet, through the special direction of his studies, he wasable to inform me of a certain relation of modes which I should neverhave discovered of myself, and could hardly have learned from any oneelse."
"Would you mind telling me all about that?" I said.
"By no means--as much at least as I am able: there are not such thingsas wilful secrets," he answered--and went on.
"That closet held his library--a hundred manuscripts or so, for printingwas not then invented. One morning I sat there, working at a catalogueof them, when he looked in at the door, and said, 'Come.' I laid down mypen and followed him--across the great hall, down a steep rough descent,and along an underground passage to a tower he had lately built,consisting of a stair and a room at the top of it. The door of this roomhad a tremendous lock, which he undid with the smallest key I ever saw.I had scarcely crossed the threshold after him, when, to my eyes, hebegan to dwindle, and grew less and less. All at once my vision seemedto come right, and I saw that he was moving swiftly away from me. In aminute more he was the merest speck in the distance, with the topsof blue mountains beyond him, clear against a sky of paler blue. Irecognised the country, for I had gone there and come again many a time,although I had never known this way to it.
"Many years after, when the tower had long disappeared, I taught one ofhis descendants what Sir Upward had taught me; and now and then to thisday I use your house when I want to go the nearest way home. I mustindeed--without your leave, for which I ask your pardon--have by thistime well established a right of way through it--not from front to back,but from bottom to top!"
"You would have me then understand, Mr. Raven," I said, "that you gothrough my house into another world, heedless of disparting space?"
"That I go through it is an incontrovertible acknowledgement of space,"returned the old librarian.
"Please do not quibble, Mr. Raven," I rejoined. "Please to take myquestion as you know I mean it."
"There is in your house a door, one step through which carries me into aworld very much another than this."
"A better?"
"Not throughout; but so much another that most of its physical, and manyof its mental laws are different from those of this world. As for morallaws, they must everywhere be fundamentally the same."
"You try my power of belief!" I said.
"You take me for a madman, probably?"
"You do not look like one."
"A liar then?"
"You give me no ground to think you such."
"Only you do not believe me?"
"I will go out of that door with you if you like: I believe in youenough to risk the attempt."
"The blunder all my children make!" he murmured. "The only door out isthe door in!"
I began to think he must be crazy. He sat silent for a moment, his headresting on his hand, his elbow on the table, and his eyes on the booksbefore him.
"A book," he said louder, "is a door in, and therefore a door out.--Isee old Sir Up'ard," he went on, closing his eyes, "and my heart swellswith love to him:--what world is he in?"
"The world of your heart!" I replied; "--that is, the idea of him isthere."
"There is one world then at least on which your hall-door does notopen?"
"I grant you so much; but the things in that world are not things tohave and to hold."
"Think a little farther," he rejoined: "did anything ever become yours,except by getting into that world?--The thought is beyond you, however,at present!--I tell you there are more worlds, and more doors to them,than you will think of in many years!"
He rose, left the library, crossed the hall, and went straight up tothe garret, familiar evidently with every turn. I followed, studying hisback. His hair hung down long and dark, straight and glossy. His coatwas wide and reached to his heels. His shoes seemed too large for him.
In the garret a light came through at the edges of the great roofingslabs, and showed us parts where was no flooring, and we must step fromjoist to joist: in the middle of one of these spaces rose a partition,with a door: through it I followed Mr. Raven into a small, obscurechamber, whose top contracted as it rose, and went slanting through theroof.
"That is the door I spoke of," he said, pointing to an oblong mirrorthat stood on the floor and leaned against the wall. I went in frontof it, and saw our figures dimly reflected in its dusty face. Therewas something about it that made me uneasy. It looked old-fashioned andneglected, but, notwithstanding its ordinary seeming, the eagle, perchedwith outstretched wings on the top, appeared threatful.
"As a mirror," said the librarian, "it has grown dingy with age; butthat is no matter: its clearness depends on the light."
"Light!" I rejoined; "there is no light here!"
He did not answer me, but began to pull at a little chain on theopposite wall. I heard a creaking: the top of the chamber was turningslowly round. He ceased pulling, looked at his watch, and began to pullagain.
"We arrive almost to the moment!" he said; "it is on the very stroke ofnoon!"
The top went creaking and revolving for a minute or so. Then he pulledtwo other chains, now this, now that, and returned to the first. Amoment more and the chamber grew much clearer: a patch of sunlight hadfallen upon a mirror on the wall opposite that against which the
otherleaned, and on the dust I saw the path of the reflected rays to themirror on the ground. But from the latter none were returned; theyseemed to go clean through; there was nowhere in the chamber a secondpatch of light!
"Where are the sunrays gone?" I cried.
"That I cannot tell," returned Mr. Raven; "--back, perhaps, to wherethey came from first. They now belong, I fancy, to a sense not yetdeveloped in us."
He then talked of the relations of mind to matter, and of senses toqualities, in a way I could only a little understand, whence he wenton to yet stranger things which I could not at all comprehend. He spokemuch about dimensions, telling me that there were many more than three,some of them concerned with powers which were indeed in us, but of whichas yet we knew absolutely nothing. His words, however, I confess, tooklittle more hold of me than the light did of the mirror, for I thoughthe hardly knew what he was saying.
Suddenly I was aware that our forms had gone from the mirror, whichseemed full of a white mist. As I gazed I saw, growing gradually visiblebeyond the mist, the tops of a range of mountains, which became clearerand clearer. Soon the mist vanished entirely, uncovering the face of awide heath, on which, at some distance, was the figure of a man movingswiftly away. I turned to address my companion; he was no longer by myside. I looked again at the form in the mirror, and recognised the widecoat flying, the black hair lifting in a wind that did not touch me. Irushed in terror from the place.
Lilith: A Romance Page 8