It was chiefly, perhaps, the poise of the great powerful frame that helped towards this odd setting in isolation and independence. Motionless, he gazed about him quietly, but it was the way he stood that singled him out from other men. Even in his stillness there was grace; neither hands nor feet, though it was difficult to describe exactly how he placed them or used them, were separate from this poise of perfect balance. To put it colloquially, he knew what to do with his extremities. Self-consciousness, in sight of this ardent throng, the first he had encountered at close, intimate quarters, was entirely absent.
This Fillery noticed instantly, but other impressions followed during the few brief seconds while they waited by the door; and first, the odd effect of tremendous power he managed to convey. Nothing could have been less aggressive than the tentative, questioning, half inquiring, half wondering attitude in which he stood, waiting to be introduced to the buzzing throng of humans; yet there hung about him like an atmosphere this potential strength, of confidence, of superiority, even of beauty too, that not only contributed much to the aloofness already mentioned, but also contrived to make the others, men and women, in the crowded room insignificant. Somehow they seemed pale and ineffective against a larger grandeur, a scale entirely beyond their reach.
“Gigantic” was the word that leaped into the mind, but another perhaps leaped with it “elemental.”
Fillery was aware of envy, oddly enough, of pride as well. His heart warmed more than ever to him. Almost, he could have then and there recalled his promise given to Devonham, cancelling it contemptuously with a word of self-apology for his smallness and his lack of faith....
LeVallon, aware of a sympathetic mind occupied closely with himself, turned in that moment, and their eyes met squarely; a smile of deep, inner understanding passed swiftly between them over Devonham’s head and shoulders. In which moment, exactly, a short, bearded man, detaching himself from the crowd, came forward and greeted them with sincere pleasure in his voice and manner. He was broad-shouldered, lean, his clothes hung loosely; his glance was keen but kindly. Introductions followed, and KhilkofFs sharp eye rested for some seconds with unconcealed admiration upon LeVallon, as he held his hand. His discerning sculptor’s glance seemed to appraise his stature and proportions, while he bade him welcome to the Studio. His big head and short neck, his mane of hair, the width of his face, with its squat nose and high cheek-bones, the half ferocious eyes, the heavy jaw and something sprawling about the mouth, gave him a leonine expression. And his voice was not unlike a deep-toned growl, for all its,cordiality.
A stir, meanwhile, ran through the room, more heads turned in their direction; they had long ago been observed,; they were being now examined.
“Nayan,” Khilkoff was saying, while he still held Le–Vallon’s hand as though its size and grip contented him, “had a late Russian lesson. She will be here shortly, and very glad to make your acquaintance,” looking up at Le–Vallon, as the new-comer. His gruffness and brevity had something pleasing in them. “Today the Studio is not entirely mine,” he explained. “I want you to come when I’m alone. Some studies I made in Sark this summer may interest you.” He turned to Fillery. “That lonely place was good for both of us,” he said; “it gave me new life and inspiration, and Nayan benefited immensely too. She looks more like a nymph than ever.”
He shook hands with Devonham, smiling more grimly. “I’m surprised you, too, have honoured us,” he exclaimed with genuine surprise. “Come to damn them all as usual, probably! Good! Your common-sense and healthy criticism are needed in these days cool, cleaning winds in an over-heated conservatory.” He broke off abruptly and looked down at LeVallon’s hand he was still holding. He examined it for a second with care and admiration, then turned his eye upon the young man’s figure. He grunted.
“When I know you better,” he said, with a growl of earnest meaning, “I shall ask a favour, a great favour, of you. So, beware!”
“Thank you,” replied LeVallon, and at the sound of his voice the sculptor’s interest deepened. A gleam shone in his eye.
“You’ve begun some work,” said Fillery, “and models are hard to come by, I imagine.” His eye never left Le–Vallon.
Khilkoff chuckled. “Thought-reader!” he exclaimed. “If Povey heard that, he’d make you join the Society at once as honorary member or vice-president. Anything to get you in. Dr. Fillery understands us all too well,” he went on to LeVallon. “In Sark, that lonely island in the sea, I began four figures four elemental figures of earth, air, fire and water a group, of course. The air figure, I’ve done —”
“With Nayan as model,” suggested Fillery, smiling.
“One morning, yes, I caught her bathing from a rock, hair streaming in the wind, no clothes on, white foam from the big breakers fluttering about her, slim, shining, unconscious and half dancing, fierce sunlight all over her. Ah” he broke off “here’s Povey coming. I mustn’t monopolize you all. Devonham, you know most of ’em. Make yourselves at home.” He turned to LeVallon again, with a touch of something gentler, almost of respect, thought Fillery, as he noticed the delicate change of voice and manner quickly. “Come, Mr. LeVallon,” he said courteously, “I should like to show you the figure as I’ve done it. We’ll go for a moment into my own private rooms. But it’s a model for fire I’m looking for, as Fillery guessed. You may be interested.” He led him off. LeVallon went with evident content, and the advance of skirmishes that were already approaching for introductions was temporarily defeated.
For the three men standing by the door had formed a noticeable group, and Khilkoff’s presence added to their value. Dr. Fillery, known and much respected, regarded with a touch of awe by many, had not come for nothing, it was doubtless argued; his colleague, moreover, accompanied him, and he, too, was known to the Society, though not much cultivated by its members owing to his down-right, critical way of talking. They deemed him prejudiced, unsympathetic. It was the third member of the group, LeVallon, who had quickly caught all eyes, and the attention immediately paid to him by their host set the value of a special and important guest upon him instantly. All watched him led away by Khilkoff to the private quarters of the Studio, where none at first presumed to follow them; but it was the eyes of the women that remained glued to the open door where they had disappeared, waiting with careful interest for their reappearance. In particular Lady Gleeson, the “pretty Lady Gleeson,” watched from the corner where she sat alone, sipping some refreshment.
Fillery and Devonham, having observed the signs about them, exchanged a glance; their charge was safe for the moment, at any rate; they felt relieved; yet it was for the entry of Nayan, the daughter, that both waited with interest and impatience, as, meanwhile, the bolder ones among the crowd came up one by one and captured them.
“Oh, Dr. Fillery, I am glad to see you here. I thought you were always too busy for unscientific people like us. Yet, in a way, we’re all seekers, are we not? I’ve been reading your Physiology book, and I did so want to ask you about something in it. I wonder if you’d mind.”
He shook hands with a young-old woman, wearing bobbed hair and glasses, and speaking with an intense, respectful, yet self-apologetic manner.
“You’ve forgotten me, but I quite understand. You see so many people. I’m Miss Lance. I sent you my little magazine, ‘Simplicity,’ once, and you acknowledged it so sweetly, though, of course, I understood you had not the time to write for it.” She continued for several minutes, smiling up at him, her hands clasping and unclasping themselves behind a back clothed with some glittering coloured material that rather fascinated him by its sheen. She kept raising herself on her toes and sinking back again in a series of jerky rhythms.
He gave her his delightful smile.
“Oh, Dr. Fillery!” she exclaimed, with pleasure, leading him to a divan, upon which he let himself down in such a position that he could observe the door from the street as well as the door where LeVallon had disappeared. “This is really too good-natured of
you. Your book set me on fire simply” her eyes wandering to the other door “and what a wonderful looking person you’ve brought with you —”
“I fear it’s not very easy reading,” he interposed patiently.
“To me it was too delightful for words,” she rattled on, pleased by the compliment implied. “I devour all your books and always review them myself in the magazine. I wouldn’t trust them to anyone else. I simply can’t tell you how physiology stimulates me. Humanity needs imaginative books, especially just now.” She broke off with a deprecatory smile. “I do what I can,” she added, as he made no remark, “to make them known, though in such a very small way, I fear.” Her interest, however, was divided, the two powerful attractions making her quite incoherent. “Your friend,” she ventured again, “he must be Eastern perhaps? Or is that merely sunburn? He looks most unusual.”
“Sunburn merely, Miss Lance. You must have a chat with him later.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you, Dr. Fillery. I do so love unusual people....”
He listened gravely. He was gentle, while she confided to him her little inner hopes and dreams about the “simple life.” She introduced adjectives she believed would sound correct, if spoken very quickly, until, between the torrent of “psychical,” “physiological” and once or twice, “psychological,” she became positively incoherent in a final entanglement from which there was no issue but a convulsive gesture. None the less, she was bathed in bliss. She monopolized the great man for a whole ten minutes on a divan where everybody could see that they talked earnestly, intimately, perhaps even intellectually, together side by side.
He observed the room, meanwhile, without her noticing it, scanning the buzzing throng with interest. There was confusion somewhere, something was lacking, no system prevailed; he was aware of a general sense of waiting for a leader. All looked, he knew, for Nayan to appear. Without her presence, there was no centre, for, though not a member of the Society herself, she was the heart always of their gatherings, without which they straggled somewhat aimlessly. And “heart,” he remembered, with a smile that Miss Lance took proudly for herself, was the appropriate word. Nayan mothered them. They were but children, after all....
“When you talk of a ‘New Age,’ what exactly do you mean? I wish you’d define the term for me,” Devonham meanwhile was saying to an interlocutor, not far away, while with a corner of his eye he watched both Fillery and the private door. He still stood near the entrance, looking more than ever like a disapproving floor-walker in a big department store, and it was with H. Millington Povey that he talked, the Honorary Secretary of the Society. The
Secretary had aimed at Fillery, but Miss Lance had been too quick for him. He was obliged to put up with Devonham as second best, and his temper suffered accordingly. He was in aggressive mood.
Povey, facing him, was talking with almost violent zeal. A small, thin, nervous man, on the verge of middle age, his head prematurely bald, with wildish tufts of patchy hair, a thin, scraggy neck that he lengthened and shortened between high hunched shoulders, Povey resembled an eager vulture. His keen bright eyes, hooked nose, and a habit of twisting head and neck apart from his body, which held motionless, increased this likeness to a bird of prey. Possessed of considerable powers of organization, he kept the Society together. It was he who insisted upon some special “psychic gift” as a qualification of membership; an applicant must prove this gift to a committee of Povey’s choosing, though these proofs were never circulated for general reading in the Society’s Reports. Talkers, dreamers, faddists were not desired; a member must possess some definite abnormal power before he could be elected. He must be clairvoyant or clairaudient, an automatic writer, trance-painter, medium, ghost-seer, prophet, priest or king.
Members, therefore, stated their special qualification to each other without false modesty: “I’m a trance medium,” for instance; “Oh, really! I see auras, of course”; while others had written automatic poetry, spoken in trance “inspirational speakers,” that is photographed a spirit, appeared to someone at a distance, or dreamed a prophetic dream that later had come true. Mediums, spirit-photographers, and prophetic dreamers were, perhaps, the most popular qualifications to offer, but there were many who remembered past lives and not a few could leave their bodies consciously at will.
Memberships cost two guineas, the hat was occasionally passed round for special purposes, there was a monthly dinner in Soho, when members stood up, like saved sinners at a revivalist meeting, and gave personal testimony of conversion or related some new strange incident. The Prometheans were full of stolen fire and life.
Among them were ambitious souls who desired to start a new religion, deeming the Church past hope. Others, like the water-dowsers and telepathists, were humbler. There was an Inner Circle which sought to revive the Mysteries, and gave very private performances of dramatic and symbolic kind, based upon recovered secret knowledge, at the solstices and equinoxes. New Thought members despised these, believing nothing connected with the past had value; they looked ahead; “live in the present,” “do it now” was their watchword. Astrologers were numerous too. These cast horoscopes, or, for a small fee, revealed one’s secret name, true colour, lucky number, day of the week and month, and so forth. One lady had a tame “Elemental.” Students of Magic and Casters of Spells, wearers of talismans and intricate designs in precious or inferior metal, according to taste and means, were well represented, and one and all believed, of course, in spirits.
None, however, belonged to any Sect of the day, whatever it might be; they wore no labels; they were seekers, questers, inquirers whom no set of rules or dogmas dared confine within fixed limits. An entirely open mind and no prejudices, they prided themselves, distinguished them.
“Define it in scientific terms, this New Age I cannot,” replied Povey in his shrill voice, “for science deals only with the examination of the known. Yet you only have to look round you at the world today to see its obvious signs. Humanity is changing, new powers everywhere —”
Devonham interrupted unkindly, before the other could assume he had proved something by merely stating it:
“What are these signs, if I may ask?” he questioned sharply. “For if you can name them, we can examine them er scientifically.” He used the word with malice, knowing it was ever on the Promethean lips.
“There you are, at cross-purposes at once,” declared Povey. “I refer to hints, half-lights, intuitions, signs that only the most sensitive among us, those with psychic divination, with spiritual discernment that only the privileged and those developed in advance of the Race can know. And, instantly you produce your microscope, as though I offered you the muscles of a tadpole to dissect.”
They glared at one another. “We shall never get progress your way,” Povey fumed, withdrawing his head and neck between his shoulders.
“Returning to the Middle Ages, on the other hand,” mentioned Devonham, “seems like advancing in a circle, doesn’t it?”
“Dr. Devonham,” interrupted a pretty, fair-haired girl with an intense manner, “forgive me for breaking up your interesting talk, but you come so seldom, you know, and there’s a lady here who is dying to be introduced. She has just seen crimson flashing in your aura, and she wants to ask do you mind very much?” She smiled so sweetly at him, and at Mr. Povey, too, who was said to be engaged to her, though none believed it, that annoyance was not possible. “She says she simply must ask you if you were feeling anger. Anger, you know, produces red or crimson in one’s visible atmosphere,” she explained charmingly. She led him off, forgetting, however, her purpose en route, since they presently sat down side by side in a quiet corner and began to enjoy what seemed an interesting tete-a-tete, while the aura-seeing lady waited impatiently and observed them, without the aid of clairvoyance, from a distance.
“And your qualifications for membership?” askeS Devonham. “I wonder if I may ask?”
“But you’d laugh at me, if I told you,” she answered simply, fingeri
ng a silver talisman that hung from her neck, a six-pointed star with zodiacal signs traced round a rose, rosa mystica, evidently. “I’m so afraid of doctors.”
Devonham shook his head decidedly, asserting vehemently his interest, whereupon she told him her little private dream delightfully, without pose or affectation, yet shyly and so sincerely that he proved his assertion by a genuine interest.
“And does that protect you among your daily troubles?” he asked, pointing to her little silver talisman. He had already commented sympathetically upon her account of saving her new puppies from drowning, having dreamed the night before that she saw them gasping in a pail of water, the cruel under-gardener looking on. “Do you wear it always, or only on special occasions like this?”
“Oh, Miss Milligan made that,” she told him, blushing a little. “She’s rather poor. She earns her living by designing —”
“Oh!”
“But I don’t mean that. She tells you your Sign and works it in metal for you. I bought one. Mine is Pisces.” She became earnest. “I was born in Pisces, you see.”
“And what does Pisces do for you?” he inquired, remembering the heightened colour. The sincerity of this Rose Mystica delighted him, and he already anticipated her reply with interest. Here, he felt, was the credulous, religious type in its naked purity, forced to believe in something marvellous.
“Well, if you wear your Sign next your skin it brings good luck it makes the things you want happen.” The blush reappeared becomingly. She did not lower her eyes.
“Have your things happened then?”
She hesitated. “Well, I’ve had an awfully good time ever since I wore it —”
“Proposals?” he asked gently.
“Dr. Devonham!” she exclaimed. “How ever did you guess?” She looked very charming in her innocent confusion.
The Algernon Blackwood Collection Page 179