The Algernon Blackwood Collection

by Algernon Blackwood

  “You said just now a bridge might be built,” Dr. Fillery interrupted, while the other paused a second for breath.

  Father Collins, nailed down to a positive statement, hesitated and looked about him. But the hesitation passed at once.

  “It is the question merely,” he went on more composedly, “of providing the apparatus, the means of manifestation, the instrument, the — body. Isn’t it? Our evolution and theirs are two separate different things.”

  “I suppose so. No force can express itself without a proper apparatus.”

  “Certain of these Intelligences are so immense that only a series of events, long centuries, a period of history, as we call it, can provide the means, the body indeed, through which they can express themselves. An entire civilization may be the ‘body’ used by an archetypal power. Others, again like ‘N.H.’ probably since I notice that it is usually the artist, the artistic temperament he affects most require beauty for their expression beauty of form and outline, of sound, of colour.”

  He paused for effect, but no comment came.

  “Our response to beauty, our thrill, our lift of delight and wonder before any manifestation of beauty these are due only to our perception, though usually unrecognized except by artists, of the particular Intelligence thus trying to express itself —”

  Dr. Fillery suddenly leaned forward, listening with a new expression on his face. He betrayed, however, no sign of what he thought of his voluble visitor. An idea, none the less, had struck Him like a flash between the eyes of the mind.

  “You mean,” he interposed patiently, “that just as your fairies use form and colour to express themselves in nature, we might use beauty of a mental order to to —”

  “To build a body of expression, yes, an instrument in a collective sense, through which ‘X. H.’ might express whatever of knowledge, wisdom and power he has —”

  “Will you explain yourself a little more definitely?”

  Father Collins beamed. He continued with an air of intense conviction:

  “The Artist is ever an instrument merely, and for the most part an unconscious one; only the greatest artist is a conscious instrument. No man is an artist at all until he transcends both nature and himself; that is, until he interprets both nature and himself in the unknown terms of that greater Power whence himself and nature emanate. He is aware of the majestic source, aware that the universe, in bulk and in detail, is an expression of it, itself a limited instrument; but aware, further and here he proves himself great artist of the stupendous, lovely, central Power whose message stammers, broken and partial, through the inadequate instruments of ephemeral appearances.

  “He creates, using beauty in form, sound, colour, a better and more perfect instrument, provides this central Power with a means of fuller expression.

  “The message no longer stammers, halts, suggests; it flows, it pours, it sings. He has fashioned a vehicle for its passage. His art has created a body it can use. He has transcended both nature and himself. The picture, poem, harmony that has become the body for this revelation is alone great art.”

  “Exactly,” came the patient comment that was asked for.

  “One thing is certain: only human knowledge, expressed in human terms, can come through a human brain. No mind, no intellect, can convey a message that transcends human experience and reason. Art, however, can. It can supply the vehicle, the body. But, even here, the great artist cannot communicate the secret of his Vision; he cannot talk about it, tell it to others. He can only show the result.”

  “Results,” interrupted Dr. Fillery in a curious tone; “what results, exactly, would you look for?” There was a burning in his eyes. His skin was tingling.

  “What else but a widening, deepening, heightening of our present consciousness,” came the instant reply. “An extension of faculty, of course, making entirely new knowledge available. A group of great artists, each contributing his special vision, respectively, of form, colour, words, proportion, could together create a ‘body’ to express a Power transcending the accumulated wisdom of the world. The race could be uplifted, taught, redeemed.”

  “You have already given some attention to this strange idea?” suggested his listener, watching closely the working of the other’s face. “You have perhaps even experimented — A ceremonial of some sort, you mean? A performance, a ritual or what?”

  Father Collins lowered his voice, becoming more earnest, more impressive:

  “Beauty, the arts,” he whispered, “can alone provide a vehicle for the expression of those Intelligences which are the cosmic powers. A performance of some sort possibly since there must be sound and movement. A bridge between us, between our evolution and their own, might, I believe, be thus constructed. Art is only great when it provides a true form for the expression of an eternal cosmic power. By combining we might provide a means for their manifestation —”

  “A body of thought, as it were, through which our ‘N.H.’ might become articulate? Is that your idea?”

  Behind the question lay something new, it seemed, as though, while listening to the exposition of an odd mystical conception, his mind had been busy with a preoccupation, privately but simultaneously, of his own. “In what way precisely do you suggest the arts might combine to provide this ‘body’? “ he asked, a faint tremor noticeable in the lowered voice.

  “That,” replied Father Collins promptly, never at a loss, “we should have to think about. Inspiration will come to us probably through him. Ceremonial, of course, has always been an attempt in this direction, only it has left the world so long that people no longer know how to construct a real one. The ceremonials of today are ugly, vulgar, false. The words, music, colour, gestures everything must combine in perfect harmony and proportion to be efficacious. It is a forgotten method.”

  “And results how would they come?”

  “The new wisdom and knowledge that result are suddenly there in the members of the group. The Power has expressed itself. Not through the brain, of course, but, rather, that the new ideas, having been acted out, are suddenly there. There has been an extension of consciousness. A group consciousness has been formed, and —”

  “And there you are!” Dr. Fillery, moving his foot unperceived, had touched a bell beneath the table. The foot, however, groped and fumbled, as though unsure of itself.

  “You learn to swim by swimming, not by talking about it.” Father Collins was prepared to talk on for another hour, “If we can devise the means and I feel sure we can we shall have formed a bridge between the two evolutions —”

  Nurse Robbins entered with apologies. A case upstairs demanded the doctor’s instant attendance. Dr. Devonham was engaged.

  “One thing,” insisted Father Collins, as they shook hands and he got up to go, “one thing only you would have to fear.” He was very earnest. Evidently the signs of struggle, of fierce conflict in the other’s face he did not notice.

  “And that is?” A hand was on the door.

  “If successful if we provide this means of expression for him we provide also the means of losing him.”

  “Death?” He opened the door with rough, unnecessary violence.

  “Escape. He would no longer need the body he now uses. He would remember and be gone. In his place you would have LeVaflon again only. I’m afraid,” he added, “that he already is remembering!”

  His final words, as Nurse Robbins deftly hastened his departure in the ball, were a promise to communicate the results of his further reflections, and a suggestion that his cottage by the river would be a quiet spot in which to talk the matter over again.

  But Dr. Fillery, having thanked Nurse Robbins for her prompt attendance to his bell, returned to the room and sat for some time in a strange confusion of anxious thoughts. A singular idea took shape in him that Father Collins had again robbed his mind of its unspoken content That sensitive receptive nature had first perceived, then given form to the vague, incoherent dreams that lurked in the innermost recesses of his h
idden self.

  Yet, if that were so and if “N.H.” already was “remembering”!

  A wave of shadow crept upon him, darkening his hope, his enthusiasm, his very life. For another part of him knew quite well the value to be attributed to what Father Coffins had said.

  Instinctivery his mind sought for Devonham. But it did not occur to him at the moment to wonder why this was so.

  CHAPTER 26

  ..................

  SPRING HAD COME WITH HER sweet torment of delight, her promises, her passion, and London lay washed and perfumed beneath April’s eager sun. An immense, persuasive glamour was in the sky. The whole earth caught up a swifter gear, as the magic of rich creative life poured out of “dead” soil into flower, insect, bird and animal. The prodigious stream omitted no single form; every “body” pulsed and blossomed at full strength. The hidden powers in each seed emerged. And it was from the inanimate body of the earth this flood of increased vitality rose.

  Into Edward Fillery, strolling before breakfast over the wet lawn of the enclosed garden, the tide of new life rose likewise. It was very early, the flush of dawn still near enough for the freshness of the new day to be everywhere. The greater part of the huge city was asleep. He was alone with the first birds, the dew, the pearl and gold of the sun’s slanting rays. He saw the slates and chimneys glisten. Spring, like a visible presence, was passing across the town, bringing the amazing message that all obey yet no man understands.

  “This is its touch upon the blossomed rose,

  The fashion of its hand shaped lotus-leaves;

  In dark soil and the silence of the seeds

  The robe of spring it weaves.

  “It maketh and unmaketh, mending all;

  What it hath wrought is better than had been;

  Slow grows the splendid pattern that it plans,

  Its wistful hands between.”

  The lines came to his memory, while upon his mind fell lovely and wonderful impressions. It was as though the subconsciousness of the earth herself emerged with the spring, producing new life, new splendour everywhere. Out of a single patch of soil the various roots drew material they then fashioned into such different and complicated outlines as daisy, lily, rose, and a hundred types of tree. From the same bit of soil emerged these intricate patterns and designs, these different forms. At this very moment, while his feet left dark tracks across the silvery lawn, the process was going steadily forward all over England. Beneath those very feet up rushed the power into all conceivable bodies. Colour, music, form, marvellously organized, making no mistakes, were turning the world into a vast, delicious garden.

  Form, colour, sound! From his own hidden region rose again the flaming hope and prophecy. He stooped and picked a daisy, examining with rapt attention its perfect little body. Who, what made this astonishing thing, that was yet among the humbler forms? What intelligence devised its elaborate outline, guarded, cared for, tended it, ensured its growth and welfare? He gazed at its white rays tipped with crimson, its several hundred florets, its composite design. The spring life had been pouring through it until he picked it. Through the huge mass of earth’s body its tiny roots had drawn the life it needed. This power was now cut off. It would die. The process, as with everything else, was “automatic and unintelligent!” It seemed an incredible explanation. The old familiar question troubled him, but he saw it abruptly now from a new angle.

  “We built it,” came a voice so close that it seemed behind him, for when at first he turned, startled, and yet not startled, he saw no figure standing; “we who work in darkness, yet who never die, the Hidden Ones who build and weave inside and out of sight. You have destroyed our work of ages....”

  A pang of sudden regret and anguish seized him. He stood still and stared in the direction whence he thought the voice had come, but no form, no outline, no body that could have produced a sound, a voice, was visible. A blackbird flew with its shrill whistle over the — enclosing wall, and the gardener, up unusually early, was now moving slowly past the elms at the far end, some two hundred yards away. The old man, he remembered, had been telling him only the day before that the life in his plants this year had been prodigious and successful beyond his whole experience. It puzzled him. Something of reverence, of superstition almost, had lain in the man’s voice and eyes.

  “Who are you?” whispered Fillery, still holding the “dead” broken flower in his hand and staring about him. He was aware that the sound from which the voice had come, detaching itself, as it were, into articulate syllables out of a general continuous volume, had not ceased. It was all about him, softly murmuring. Was it in himself perhaps? An intense inner activity, like the pressure of an enveloping tide, that was also in space, in the soil, the body of the planet, rose in him too. And it seemed to him that his mind was suddenly in process of being shaped and fashioned into a new “body of understanding”; a new instrument of understanding.

  “This is its work upon the things ye see:

  The unseen things are more; men’s hearts and minds,

  The thoughts of peoples and their ways and wills,

  These, too, the great Law binds.”

  “I know,” he exclaimed, this time with acceptance that omitted the doubt he had first felt. “I know who you are”... and even as he said the words, there dropped into him, it seemed, some knowledge, some hint, some wonder that lay, he well knew, outside all human experience. It was as though some cosmic power brushed gently against and through his being, but a power so alien to known human categories that to attempt its expression in human terms language, reason, imagination even were to mutilate it. Yet, even for its partial, broken manifestation, human terms were alone available, since without these it must remain unperceived, he himself unaware of its existence.

  He was, however, aware of its presence, its existence. All that was left to him therefore was his own personal interpretation. Herein, evidently, lay the truth for him; this was the meaning of his “acceptance.” It was, in some way, a renewal of that other vision he called the Flower Hill and Flower Music experience.

  “I know you,” he repeated, his voice merging curiously in the general underlying murmur of the morning. “You belong to the bodiless, the deathless ones who work and build and weave eternally. Form, sound, colour are your instruments, the elements your tools. You wove this flower,” he fingered the dying daisy, “as you also shaped this body” he tapped his breast “and you built as well this mind —”

  He stopped dead. Two things arrested him: the feeling that the ideas were not primarily his own, but derived from a source outside himself; and a sudden intensification of the flaming hope and prophecy that burst up as with new meaning into the words “mind” and “body.”

  The broken body of the flower slipped from his fingers and fell upon the body of the earth. He looked down at its now empty form through which no life flowed, and his eye passed then to his own body beating with intense activity, and thence to the bodies of the trees, the darting birds, the gigantic sun now peering magnificently along the heavens. Body! A body was a form through which life expressed itself, a vehicle of expression by means of which life manifested, an instrument it used. But a body of thought was a true phrase too. And with the words, shaped automatically in his brain, a new light flashed and flooded him with its waves.

  “A body of thought, a mental body” the phrase went humming and flowing strangely through him. A body of thought! Father Collins, he remembered, had used some such wild language, only it had seemed empty words without intelligible meaning. Whence came the intense new meaning that so suddenly attached itself to the familiar phrase? Whence came the thrilling deep conviction that new, greater knowledge was hovering near, and that for its expression a new body must be devised? And what was this new knowledge, this new power? Whence came the amazing certainty in him that a new way was being shown to him, a means of progress for humanity that must otherwise flounder always to its average level of growth, development, then invariably col
lapse again?

  “We built it,” ran past him through the air again, or rose perhaps from the stirred depths of his own subconscious being, or again, dropped from a hidden rushing star. “The more perfect and adequate the form, the greater the flow of life, of knowledge, of power it can express. No mind, no intellect, can convey a message that transcends human experience. Yet there is a way.”

  The new knowledge was there, if only the new vehicle suited to its expression could be devised....

  The stream of life pouring through him became more and more intense; some power of perception seemed growing into white heat within him; transcending the limited senses; becoming incandescent. This tide of sound, inaudible to ordinary ears, was the music which is inseparable from the rhythm that underlies all forms, the music of the earth’s manifold activities now pouring in vibrations huge and tiny all round and through him. He turned instinctively.

  “You...!” exclaimed the doctor in him, as though rebuke, reproval stirred. “You here...!”

  It seemed to him that the figure of “N.H.,” embodying as it were a ray of sunlight, stood beside him.

  “We,” came the answer, with a smile that took the sparkling sunlight through the very face. “We are all about you,” added the voice with a rhythm that swamped all denial, all objection, bringing an exultant exhilaration in their place. “We come from what always seems to you a Valley of sun and flowers, where we work and play behind the appearances you call the world.”

  “The world,” repeated Fillery. “The universe as well.”

  The voice, the illusion of actual words, both died away, merging in some perplexing fashion into another appearance, perhaps equally an illusion so far as the senses were concerned the phenomenon men call sight. Instead of hearing, that is, he now suddenly saw. Something in the arrangement of light caught his attention, holding it. The deep, central self in him, that which interprets and decodes the reports the senses bring, employed another mode.