The Algernon Blackwood Collection

by Algernon Blackwood

  “And that service,” he went on in his deep vibrating, half-singing tone, “I see in dear Fillery and in you. I know my own kind. We three, at least, belong. I know my own.” The voice seemed to shake her like a wind.

  At the last two words her soul leaped within her. It seemed quite natural that his great arm should take her breast and shoulder and that his lips should touch her cheek and hair. For there was worship in both gestures.

  “Our greater service,” she whispered, trembling, “tell me of that. What is it?” His touch against her was like the breath of fire.

  Her womanly instincts, so-called, her maternal love, her feminine impulses deserted her. She was aware solely at that moment of the proximity of a being who called her to a higher, to, at any rate, a different state, to something beyond the impoverished conditions of humanity as she had hitherto experienced it, to something she had ever yearned and longed for without knowing what it was. An extraordinary sense of enormous liberty swept over her again.

  His voice broke and the rhythm failed.

  “I cannot tell you,” he replied mournfully, the light fading a little from his eyes and face. “I have forgotten. That other place is hidden from me. I am in exile,” he added slowly, “but with you and Fillery.” His blue eyes filled with moisture; the expression of troubled loneliness was one she had never seen before on any human face. “I suffer,” he added gently. “We all suffer.”

  And, at the sight of it, the yearning to help, to comfort, to fulfil her role as mother, returned confusingly, and rose in her like a tide. He was so big and strong and splendid. He was so helpless. It was, perhaps, the innocence in the great blue eyes that conquered her for the first time in her life.

  But behind, beside the mother in her, stirred also the natural woman. And beyond this again, rose the accumulated power of the entire Race. The instinct of all the women of the planet since the world began drove at her. Not easily may an individual escape the deep slavery of the herd.

  The young girl wavered and hestitated. Caught by so many emotions that whirled her as in a vortex, the direction of the resultant impetus hung doubtful for some time. During the half hour’s talk, she had entered deeper water than she had ever dared or known before. Life hitherto, so far as men were concerned, had been a simple and an easy thing that she had mastered without difficulty. Her real self lay still unscarred within her. Freely she had given the mothering care and sympathy that were so strong in her, the more freely because the men who asked of her were children, one and all, children who needed her, but from whom she asked nothing in return. If they fell in love, as they usually did, she knew exactly how to lift their emotion in a way that saved them pain while it left herself untouched. None reached her real being, which thus remained unscathed, for none offered the lifting glory that she craved.

  Here, for the first time facing her, stood a being of another type; and that unscathed self in her went trembling at the knowledge. Here was a power she could not play with, could not dominate, but a power that could play with her as easily as the hurricane with the flying leaf. It was not his words, his strange beauty, his great strength that mastered her, though these brought their contribution doubtless. The power she felt emanated unconsciously from him, and was used unconsciously. It was all about him. She realized herself a child before him, and this realization sweetened, though it confused her being. He so easily touched depths in her she had hardly recognized herself. He could so easily lift her to terrific heights.... Various sides of her became dominant in turn....

  The inmost tumult of a good woman’s heart is not given to men to read, perhaps, but the final impetus resulting from the whirlpool tossed her at length in a very definite direction. She found her feet again. The determining factor that decided the issue of the struggle was a small and very human one. He appealed to the woman in her, yet what stirred the woman was the vital and afflicting factor that he did not need her.

  He wished to help, to lift her towards some impersonal ideal that remained his secret. He wished to give he could give while she, for her part, had nothing that he needed. Indeed, he asked for nothing. He was as independent of her as she was independent of these other men.

  And the woman, now faced for the first time with this entirely new situation, decided automatically that he should learn to need her. He must. Though she had nothing that he wanted from her, she must on that very account give all. The sacrifice which stands ready for the fire in every true feminine heart was lighted there and then. She had found her master and her god. Half measures were not possible to her. She stood naked at the altar. But in her sacrifice he, too, the priest, the deity, the master, he also should find love.

  Such is the woman’s power, however, to conceal from herself the truth, that she did not recognize at first what this decision was. She disguised it from her own heart, yet quite honestly. She loved him and gave him all she had to give for ever and ever: even though he did not ask nor need her love. This she grasped. Her role must be one of selfless sacrifice. But the deliberate purpose behind her real decision she disguised from herself with complete success. It lay there none the less, strong, vital, very simple. She would teach him love.

  Alone of all men, Edward Fillery could have drawn up this motive from its inmost hiding place in her deep subconscious being, and have made it clear to her. Dr. Fillery, had he been present, would have discerned it in her, as, indeed, he did discern it later. He had, for that matter, already felt its prophecy with a sinking heart when he planned bringing them together: Iraida might suffer at LeVallon’s hands.

  But Fillery, apparently, was not present, and Nayan Khilkoff remained unaware of self-deception. LeVallon “needs your care and sympathy; you can help him,” she remembered. This she believed, and Love did the rest.

  So intricate, so complex were the emotions in her that she realized one thing only she must give all without thought of self. “When half gods go the gods arrive” sang in her heart. She was a woman, one of a mighty and innumerable multitude, and collective instinct urged her irresistibly. But it hid at the same time with lovely care the imperishable desire and intention that the arriving god should must love her in return.

  The youth stood facing her while this tumult surged within her heart and mind. Outwardly calm, she still gazed into the clear blue eyes that shone with moisture as he repeated, half to himself and half to her:

  “We are in exile here; we suffer. We have forgotten.”

  His hands were stretched towards her, and she took them in her own and held them a moment.

  “But you and I,” he went on, “you and I and Fillery shall remember again soon. We shall know why we are here. We shall do our happy work together here. We shall then return escape.”

  His deep tones filled the air. At the sound of the other name a breath of sadness, of disappointment, touched her coldly. The familiar name had faded. It was, as always, dear. But its potency had dimmed....

  The sun was down and a soft dusk covered all. A faint wind rustled in the garden trees through the open window.

  “Fillery,” she murmured, “Edward Fillery! He loved me. He has loved me always.”

  The little words they sounded little for the first time she uttered almost in a whisper that went lost against the figure of LeVallon towering above her through the twilight.

  “We are together,” his great voice caught her whisper in the immense vibration, drowning it. “The love of our happy impersonal service brings us all together. We have forgotten, but we shall remember soon.”

  It seemed to her that he shone now in the dusky air. Light came about his face and shoulders. An immense vitality poured into her through his hands. The sense of strange kinship was overpowering. She felt, though not in terms of size or physical strength, a pigmy before him, while yet another thing rose in gigantic and limitless glory as from some inner heart he quickened in her. This sense of exaltation, of delirious joy that tempted sweetly, came upon her. He must love her, need her in the end....

>   “Julian,” she murmured softly, drawn irresistibly closer. “The gods have brought you to me.” Her feet went nearer of their own accord, but there was no movement, no answering pressure, in the hands she held. “You shall never know loneliness again, never while I am here. The gods your gods have brought us together.”

  “Our gods,” she heard his answer, “are the same.” The words trembled against her actual breast, so close she was now leaning against him. “Even if lost, it is they who sent us here. I know their messengers —”

  He broke off, standing back from her, dropping her hands, or, rather, drawing his own away.

  “Hark!” he cried. The voice deep and full, yet without loudness, thrilled her. She watched him with terror and amazement, as he turned to the open window, throwing his arms out suddenly to the darkening sky against which the trees loomed still and shapeless. His figure was wrapped in a faint radiance as of silvery moonlight. She was aware of heat about her, a comforting, inspiring warmth that pervaded her whole being, as from within. The same moment the bulk of the big tree shook and trembled, and a steady wind came pouring into the room. It seemed to her the wind, the heat, poured through that tree.

  And the inner heart in her grew clear an instant. This wind, this heat, increased her being marvellously. The exaltation in her swept out and free. She saw him, dropped from alien skies upon the little teeming earth. The sense of his remoteness from the life about them, of her own remoteness too, flashed over her like wind and fire. An immense ideal blazed, then vanished. It flamed beyond her grasp. It beckoned with imperishable loveliness, then faded instantly. Wind caught it up once more. With the fire an overpowering joy rose in her.

  “Julian!” she cried aloud. “Son of Wind and Fire!”

  At the words, which had come to her instinctively, he turned with a sudden gesture she could not quite interpret, while there broke upon his face a smile, strange and lovely, that caught up the effect of light about him and seemed to focus in his brilliant eyes. His happiness was beyond all question, his admiration, wonder too; yet the quality she chiefly looked and expected was not there.

  She chilled. The joy, she was acutely conscious, was not a personal joy.

  “You,” he said gently, happily, emphasizing the word, “you are not pitiful,” and the rustle of the shaking trees outside the window merged their voice in his and carried it outward into space. It was as if the wind itself had spoken. Across the garden dusk there shot a sudden effect of light, as though a flame had flickered somewhere in the sky, then passed back into the growing night There was a scent of flowers in the air. “You,” he cried, with an exultation that carried her again beyond herself. “You are not pitiful.”

  “Julian!” she stammered, longing for his arms. She half drew away. The blood flowed down and back in her. “Not pitiful!” she repeated faintly.

  For it was to her suddenly as if that sighing wind that entered the room from the outer sky had borne him away from her. That wind was a messenger. It came from that distant state, that other region where he belonged, a state, a region compared to which the beings of earth were trumpery and tinsel-dressed. It came to remind him of his home and origin. The little earth, the myriad confused figures struggling together on its surface, he saw as “pitiful.” From that window in the sky whence he looked down he watched them....!

  She knew the feeling in him, knew it, because some part of her, though faint and deeply hidden, was akin. Yet she was not wholly “pitiful.” He had discerned in her this faint, hidden strain of vaster life, had stirred and strengthened it by his words, his presence. Yet it was not vital enough in her to stand alone. When wind and fire, his elements, breathed forth from it, she was afraid.

  “You are not pitiful,” he had said, yet pitiful, for all that, she knew herself to be. On that breath of sighing wind he swept away from her, far, far away where, as yet, she could not follow. And her dream of personal love swept with it. Some ineffable hint of a divine, impersonal glory she had known went with him from her heart. The personal was too strong in her. It was human love she desired both to give and ask.

  Unspoken words flared through her heart and being: “Julian, you have no soul, no human soul. But I will give you one, for I will teach you love —”

  He turned upon her like a hurricane of windy fire.

  “Soul!” he cried, catching the word out of her naked heart. “Oh, be not caught with that pitiful delusion. It is this idea of soul that binds you hopelessly to selfish ends and broken purposes. This thing you call soul is but the dream of human vanity and egoism. It is worse than love. Both bind you endlessly to limited desires and blind ambitions. They are of children.”

  He rose, like some pillar of whirling flame and wind, beside her.

  “Come out with me,” he cried, “come back! You teach me to remember! Our elemental home calls sweetly to us, our elemental service waits. We belong to those vast Powers. They are eternal. They know no binding and they have no death. Their only law is service, that mighty service which builds up the universe. The stars are with us, the nebulae and the central fires are their throne and altar. The soul you dream of in your little circle is but an idle dream of the Race that ties your feet lest you should fly and soar. The personal has bandaged all your eyes. Nayan, come back with me. You once worked with me there you, I and Fillery together.”

  His voice, though low, had that which was terrific in it. The volume of its sound appalled her. Its low vibrations shook her heart.

  “Soul,” she said very softly, courage sure in her, but tears close in her burning eyes, “is my only hope. I live for it. I am ready to die for it. It is my life!”

  He gazed at her a moment with a tenderness and sympathy she hardly understood, for their origin lay hidden beyond her comprehension. She knew one thing only that he looked adorable and glorious, a being brought by the wise powers of life, whatever these might be, into the keeping of her love and care. The mother and the woman merged in her. His redemption lay within her gentle hands, if it lay at the same time upon an altar that was her awful sacrifice.

  “Son of wind and fire!” she cried, though emotion made her voice dwindle to a breathless whisper. “You called to my love, yet my love is personal. I have nothing else to give you. Julian, come back! O stay with me. Your wind and fire frighten, for they take you away. Service I know, but your service O what is it? For it leaves the bed, the hearthstone cold —”

  She stopped abruptly, wondering suddenly at her own words. What was this rhythm that had caught her mind and heart into an unknown, a daring form of speech?

  But the wind ran again through the open window fluttering the curtains and the skirts about her feet. It sighed and whispered. It was no earthly wind. She saw him once again go from her on its quiet wings. He left her side, he left her heart. And an icy realization of his loneliness, his exile, stirred in her.... For a moment, as she looked up into his shining face silhouetted in the dusk against the window, there rose tumultuously in her that maternal feeling which had held all men safely at a distance hitherto. Like a wave, it mastered her. She longed to take him in her arms, to shield him from a world that was not his, to bless and comfort him with all she had to give, to have the right to brush that wondrous hair, to open those lids at dawn and close them with a kiss at night. This ancient passion rose in her, bringing, though she did not recognize it, the great woman in its train. She walked up to him with both hands outstretched:

  “All my nights,” she said, with no reddening of the cheek, “are as our wedding night!”

  He heard, he saw, but the words held no meaning for him.

  “Julian! Stay with me stay here!” She put her arms about him.

  “And forget!” he cried, an inexpressible longing in his voice. He bent, none the less, beneath the pressure of her clinging arms; he lowered his face to hers.

  “I will teach you love,” she murmured, her cheek against his own. “You do not know how sweet, how wonderful it is. All your strange wisdom you shall show
me, and I will learn willingly, if only I may teach you love.”

  “You would teach me to forget,” he said in a voice of curious pain, “just as you are forgetting now.”

  He gently unclasped her hands from about his neck, and went over to the open window, while she sank into a chair, watching him. She again heard the wind, but again no common, earthly wind, go singing past the walls.

  “But I will teach you to remember,” he said, his great figure half turning towards her again, his voice sounding as though it were in that sighing breath of wind that passed and died away into the silence of the sky.

  The strange difficulty, the immensity, of her self-appointed task, grew suddenly crystal clear in her mind. Amid the whirling, aching pain and yearning that she felt it stood forth sharp and definite. It was imperious. She loved, and she must teach him love. This was the one thing needful in his case. Her own deep, selfless heart would guide her.

  There was pain in her, but there was no fear. Above the conventions she felt herself, naked and unashamed. The sense of a new immense liberty he had brought lifted her into a region where she could be natural without offence. He had flung wide the gates of life, setting free those strange, ultimate powers which had lain hidden and unrealized hitherto, and with them was quickened, too, that mysterious and awful hint which, beckoning ever towards some vaster life, had made the world as she found it unsatisfactory, pale, of meagre value.

  As the strange drift of wind passed off into the sky, she moved across the room and stood beside him, its dying chant still humming in her ears. That song of the wind, she understood, was symbolic of what she had to fight, for his being, though linked to a divine service she could not understand, lay in Nature and apart from human things:

  “Think, Julian,” she murmured, her face against his shoulder so that the sweet perfume as of flowers he exhaled came over her intoxicatingly, “think what we could do together for the world for all these little striving ignorant troubled people in it for everybody! You and I together working, helping, lifting them all up!”