The Algernon Blackwood Collection

by Algernon Blackwood

  “Merely to finish what you had first begun a sort of convalescence. You work in the big, raw world, I in a mere specialized corner of it.”

  He turned away, lest the power in her eyes overcome him. The traffic thundered past, the people crowded, jostling them. He could have stood there talking to her all day long, the London street forgotten or full of flowers and Eden’s trees and rippling summer streams. The pale sunlight caught her face beside him and made it shine..

  He longed to take her in his arms and fly through the dawn for ever, for his clean mind saw her without clothing, her hair loose in the wind, her white shape fleeing from him, yet beckoning across a gleaming shoulder that he must overtake and capture her....

  “I’m on my way to St. Dunstan’s,” he heard the musical voice. “A friend of father’s.... Come with me, will you?” And with her muff she touched his arm, trying to make him turn her way. But just as he felt the touch he saw the bright figure again. Swifter than himself and far more powerful, it leaped dancing past and carried her away before his very eyes. She waved her hand, her eyes faded like stars into the distance of some unearthly spring and she was gone. A pang of peculiar anguish seized him, as the mental picture flashed with the speed of light and vanished. For the figure seemed of elemental power, taking its own with perfect ease....

  He shook his head. “I’ll come to see you tomorrow instead,” he told her. “I’ll come to the Studio in the afternoon, if you’ll both be in. I’d like to bring a friend with me, if I may.”

  “Goodbye then.” She took his hand and kept it. “I shall expect you to tell me all about this friend. I knew you had something on your mind, for your thoughts have been elsewhere all the time.”

  “Julian LeVallon,” he replied quickly. “He’s staying with me indefinitely.” His face grew sjiern a moment about the mouth. “I think he may need you,” “he added with abrupt significance.

  “Julian LeVallon,” she repeated, the name sounding very musical the way her slightly foreign accent touched it. “And what nationality may that be?”

  Dr. Fillery hesitated. “His parents, Nayan, I believe, were English,” he said. “He has lived all his life in the Jura Mountains, alone with an old scholar, poet and geologist, who brought him up. Of our modern life he knows little. I think you may “ He broke off. “His mother died when he was born,” he concluded.

  “And of women he knows nothing,” she replied, understandingly, “so that he will probably fall in love with the first he sees with Nayan.”

  “I hope so, Nayan, and he will be safe with you.”

  She watched her companion’s face for a minute or two with her clear searching eyes. She smiled. But his own face wore a mask now; no figure this time flashed between their deep understanding gaze.

  “A woman, you think, can teach and help him more than a man,” she said, without lowering her eyes.

  “Probably perhaps, at any rate. The material, I must warn you at once, is new and strange, I want him to meet you.”

  “Then I am in the Firm,” was all she answered, “and you can’t do without me.” She let go the hand she had held all this time, and turned from him, looking once across her shoulder as he, too, went upon his way.

  “About three o’clock we shall expect you and Mr. Julian LeVallon,” she added. “The Prometheans are coming too, as of course you know, but that won’t matter. Father has let the Studio to them.”

  “The more the merrier,” he answered, raised his hat, and went on at a rapid pace up Baker Street.

  But with him up the London street went a flock of thoughts, hopes, fears and memories that were hard to disentangle. Lost, forgotten dreams went with him too. He had known that one day he must be “executed,” yet with his own hands he had just slipped the noose about his neck. Detachment from life, he realized, keeping aloof from the emotions that touch one’s fellow beings, can only be, after all, a pose. In his case it was evidently a pose assumed for safety and self-protection, an artificial attitude he wore to keep his heart from error. His love, born of some far unearthly valley, undoubtedly consumed him, while yet he said it nay....

  He had himself suggested bringing together the girl and “N.H.” There had been no need to do this. Yet he had deliberately offered it, and she had instantly accepted. Even while he said the words there was a volcano of emotion in him, several motives fighting to combine. The fear for himself, being selfish, he had set aside at once; there was also the fear for her the odd certainty in him that at last her woman’s nature would be waked; lastly, the fear for “N.H.” himself. And here he clashed with his promise to Devonham. Behind the simple proposal lay these various threads of motive, emotion and qualification.

  Now, as he hurried along the street, they rushed to and fro about his mind, each at its own speed and with its own impetuous strength. It was the last one, however, the certainty that her mere presence must evoke the “N.H.” personality, banishing the commonplace LeVallon; it was this that, in the end, perhaps troubled him most. An intuitive conviction assured him that this was bound to be the result of their meeting. LeVallon would sink down out of sight; “N.H.” would emerge triumphant and vital, bringing his elemental power with him. The girl would summon him....

  “I must tell Paul first,” he decided. “I must consult his judgment. Otherwise I’m breaking my promise. If Paul is against it, I will send an excuse....”

  With this proviso, he dismissed the matter from his mind, noting only how clearly it revealed his own keen desire to let LeVallon disappear and “N.H.” become active. He himself yearned for the interest, stimulus and companionship of the strange new being that was “N.H.”

  The other aspect of the problem he dismissed quickly too: he would lose Nayan. Yes, but he had never possessed the right to hold her. He was strong, indifferent, detached.... His life in any case was a sacrifice upon the altar of a mistake with regard to which he had not been consulted. His whole existence must be passed in worship before this altar, unles? he was to admit himself a failure. His ideal possession of the girl, he consoled himself, need know no change. To watch her womanhood, hitherto untouched by any man, to watch this bloom and ripen at the bidding of another must mean pain. But he faced the loss. And a curious sense of compensation lay in it somewhere the strange notion that she and he would share “N.H.” in a sense between them. He was already aware of a deep subtle kinship between the three of them, a kinship hardly of this physical world. And, after all, the interests of “N.H.” must come first. He had chosen his life, accepted it, at any rate; he must remain true to his high ideal. This strange being, blown by the winds of chance into his keeping, must be his first consideration.

  “LeVallon” needed no special help, neither from himself, nor from her, nor from others. “LeVallon” was ordinary enough, if not commonplace, his only interest being at those thin places in his being where the submerged personality of “N.H.” peeped through. Paul Devonham, he felt convinced, was wrong in thinking “N.H.” to be the transient manifestation.

  It was the reverse that Dr. Fillery believed to be the truth. He saw in “N.H.” almost a new type of being altogether. In that physical body warred two personalities certainly, but “N.H.” was the important one, and Le–Vallon merely the transient outer one, masquerading on the surface merely, a kind of automatic and mechanical personality, gleaned, picked up, trained and educated, as n were, by the few years spent among the human herd.

  And this “N.H.” needed help, the best, the wisest possible. Both male and female help “N.H.” demanded. He, Edward Fillery, could supply the former, but the latter could be furnished only by some woman in whom innocence, truth and a natural mother-love the three deepest feminine qualities were happily combined. Nayan possessed them all. “N.H.,” the strange bright messenger, bringing perhaps glad tidings into life, had need of her.

  And Fillery, as his thoughts ran down these sad and happy paths of that lost valley in his blood, realized the meaning of the flashing intuition that had pained y
et gladdened him half an hour before with its convincing symbolic picture.

  This private Eden secreted in his depths he revealed to no one, though Paul, his intimate friend and keen assistant, divined its general neighbourhood and geography to some extent. It was the girl who invariably opened its ivory gates for him. They had but to meet and talk a moment, when, with a sudden drift of wonder, beauty, wildness, this Khaketian inheritance rose before him. Its sunny brilliance, its flowers, its perfumes seduced and caught him away. The unearthly mood stole over him. Thought took wings of imagination and soared beyond the planet. He foresaw, easily, the effect she would produce upon “LeVallon.”...

  He came back to earth again at the door of the Home, smiling, as so often before, at these brief wanderings in his secret Eden, yet perfectly able to pigeon-hole the experience, each detail explained, labelled, docketed, and therefore harmless....

  He found Devonham in the study and at once told him of his suggestion and its possible results, and his assistant, resting before lunch after a long morning’s work, looked up at him with his quick, observant air. Noticing the light in the eyes, the softer expression about the mouth, the general appearance of a strong and recent stimulus, he easily divined their origin, and showed his pleasure in his face. He longed for his old friend to be humanized and steadied by some deep romance. There was a curious new watchful attitude also about him, though cleverly concealed.

  “I’m glad the Khilkoffs are back in town,” he said easily. “As for LeVallon he’s been quiet and uninteresting all the morning. He needs the human touch, as I already said, and the Studio atmosphere, especially if the Prometheans are to be there, seems the very thing.”

  “And Nayan?”

  ‘Her influence is good for any man, young or old, and if LeVallon worships at her shrine like the rest of ’em, so much the better. You remember my Notes. Nothing will help towards his finding his real self quicker than an abandoned passion unreturned.”

  “Unreturned?”

  “You can’t think she will give to LeVallon what so many?”

  “But may she not,” the other interrupted, “stimulate ‘N.H.’ rather than LeVallon?”

  Devonham was surprised he had quickly divined the subconscious fear and jealousy. For this detached, impersonal attitude he was not prepared. Only the keenest observer could have noticed the sharp, anxious watchfulness he hid so well.

  “Edward, there’s only one thing I feel we you rather have to be careful about. And the girl has nothing to do with that. In your blood, remember, lies an unearthly spiritual vagrancy which you must not, dare not, communicate to him, if you ever hope to see him cured.”

  Devonham regarded him keenly as he said it. He was as earnest as his chief, but the difference between the two men was fundamental, probably unbridgeable as well. The affection, trust, respect each felt for the other was sincere. Devonham, however, having never known a thought, a feeling, much less an actual experience, outside the normal gamut of humanity, regarded all such as pathogenic. Fillery, who had tasted the amazing, dangerous sweetness of such experiences, in his own being, had another standard.

  “You must not exaggerate,” observed Fillery, slowly. “Your phrase, though, is good. ‘Spiritual vagrancy’ is an apt description, I admit. Yet to the ‘spiritual,’ if it exists, the whole universe lies open, remember, too.”

  They laughed together. Then, suddenly, Devonham rose, and a new inexpressible uneasiness was in his face. He thrust his hands deep into his trouser pockets, turned his eyes hard upon the floor, stood with his legs apart.

  Abruptly turning, he came a full step closer. “Edward,” he said, furious with himself, and yet fiercely determined to be honest, “I may as well tell you frankly though explanation lies beyond me there’s something in this this case I don’t quite like.” Behind his lowered eyelids his observation never failed.

  Quick as a flash, his companion took him up. “For yourself, for others, or for himself?” he asked, while a secret touch of joy ran through him.

  “For myself perhaps,” was the immediate rejoinder. “It’s intolerable. It’s the panic sense he touches in me. I admit it frankly. I’ve had once or twice the desire to turn and run. But what I mean is we’ve got to be uncommonly careful with him,” he ended lamely.

  “LeVallon you refer to? Or ‘N.H.’?”

  “‘N.H.’”

  “The panic sense,” repeated Fillery to himself more than to his friend. “The old, old thing. I understand.”

  “Also,” Devonham went on presently, “I must tell you that since he came here there’s been a change in every patient in the building without exception.” He looked over his shoulder as though he heard a sound. He listened certainly, but his mind was sharply centred on his friend.

  “For the better, yes,” said Fillery at once. “Increased vitality, I’ve noticed too.”

  “Precisely,” whispered the other, still listening.

  There came a pause between them.

  “And when we have found the real, the central self,” pursued Fillery presently. “When we have found the essential being what is it?”

  “Exactly,” replied Devonham with extraordinary emphasis. “What is it?” But even then he did not look up to meet the other’s glance.

  CHAPTER 11

  ..................

  THE MEETING WITH DR. FILLERY and his friends, the Khilkoffs, father and daughter, had, for one reason or another, to be postponed for a week, during which brief time even, no single day wasted, LeVallon’s education proceeded rapidly. He was exceedingly quick to learn the usages of civilized society in a big city, adapting himself with an ease born surely of quick intelligence to the requirements and conventions of ordinary life.

  In his perception of the rights of others, particularly, he showed a natural aptitude; he had good manners, that is, instinctively; in certain houses where Fillery took him purposely, he behaved with a courtesy and tact that belong usually to what England calls a gentleman. Except to Fillery and Devonham, he talked little, but was an excellent and sympathetic listener, a quality that helped him to make his way. With Mrs. Soames, the stern and even forbidding matron, he made such headway, that it was noticed with a surprise, including laughter. He might have been her adopted son.

  “She’s got a new pet,” said Devonham, with a laugh. “Mason taught him well. His aptitude for natural history is obvious; after a few years’ study he’ll make a name for himself. The ‘N.H.’ side will disappear now more and more, unless you stimulate it for your own ends “ He broke off, speaking lightly still, but with a carelessness some might have guessed assumed.

  “You forget,” put in his Chief, “I promised.”

  Devonham looked at him shrewdly. “I doubt,” he said, “whether you can help yourself, Edward,” the expression in his eyes for a moment almost severe,

  Fillery remained thoughtful, making no immediate reply.

  “We must remember,” he said presently, “that he’s now in the quiescent state. Nothing has again occurred to bring ‘N.H.’ uppermost again.”

  Devonham turned upon his friend. “I see no reason why ‘N.H.’” he spoke with emphasis “should ever get uppermost again. In my opinion we can make this quiescent state LeVallon the permanent one.”

  “We can’t keep him in a cage like Mrs. Soames’s mice and parrot. Are you, for instance, against my taking him to the Studio? Do you think it’s a mistake to let him meet the Prometheans?”

  “That’s just where Mason went wrong,” returned Devonham. “He kept him in a cage. The boy met only a few peasants, trees, plants, animals and birds. The sun, making him feel happy, became his deity. The rain he hated. The wind inspired and invigorated him. If we now introduce the human element wisely, I see no danger. If he can stand the Khi the Studio and the Prometheans, he can stand anything. He may be considered cured.”

  The door opened and a tall, radiant figure with bright eyes and untidy shining hair came into the room, carrying an open book.

&
nbsp; “Mrs. Soames says I’ve nothing to do with stars,” said a deep musical voice, “and that I had better stick to animals and plants. She says that star-gazing never was good for anyone except astronomers who warn us about tides, eclipses and dangerous comets.”

  He held out the big book, open at an enlarged stellar photograph. “What, please, is a galaxy, a star that is suddenly brilliant, then disappears in a few weeks, and a nebula?”

  Before either of the astonished men could answer, LeVallon turned to Devonham, his face wearing the gravity and intense curiosity of a child. “And, please, are you the only sort of being in the universe? Mrs. Soames says that the earth is the only inhabited place. Aren’t there other beings besides you anywhere? The Earth is such a little planet, and the solar system, according to this book, is one of the smallest too.”

  “My dear fellow,” Devonham said gently, “do not bother your head with useless speculations. Our only valuable field of study is this planet, for it is all we know or ever can know. Whether the universe holds other beings or not, can be of no importance to us at present.”

  LeVallon stared fixedly at him, saying nothing. Something of his natural radiance dimmed a little. “Then what are all these things that I remember I’ve forgotten?” he asked, his blue eyes troubled.

  “It will take you all your lifetime to understand beings like me, and like yourself and like Dr. Fillery. Don’t waste time speculating about possible inhabitants in other stars.”

  He spoke good-humouredly, but firmly, as one who laid down certain definite lines to be followed, while Dr. Fillery, watching, made no audible comment. Once long ago he had asked his own father a somewhat similar question.

  “But I shall so soon get to the end of you,” replied LeVallon, a disappointed expression on his face. “I may speculate then?” he asked.

  “When you get to the end of me and of yourself and of Dr. Fillery yes, then you may speculate to your heart’s content,” said Devonham in a kindly tone. “But it will take you longer than you think perhaps. Besides, there are women, too, remember. You will find them more complicated still.”