The Algernon Blackwood Collection

by Algernon Blackwood

  The figure of “N.H.” still was definite enough in form indeed, yet at the same time taking the rays into itself as though it were a body of light. There was no transparency, of course, nor was this clear radiance seen by Fillery for the first time, but rather that his natural shining was caught up and intensified by the morning sunshine. A body of light, none the less, seemed a true description of what Fillery now saw. This sunshine filled the air, the space all round him, the entire lawn and garden shone in a sparkling flood of dancing brilliance. It blazed. The figure of “N.H.” was merely a portion of this blazing. As a focus, but one of many, he now thought of it. And about each focus was the toss and fling of lovely, ever — rising spirals.

  Across the main stream came then another pulsing movement, hardly discernible at first, and similar to an under-swell that moves the sea against the wave so that the eye perceives it only when not looking for it. This contrary motion, it soon became apparent, went in numerous, almost countless directions, so that, within and below its complicated wave-tracery, he was aware of yet other motions, crossing and interlacing at various speeds, until the space about him seemed to whirl with myriad rhythms, yet without the least confusion. These rhythms were of a hundred different magnitudes, from the very tiny to the gigantic, and while the smallest were of a radiant brilliance that made the sunshine pale, the larger ones seemed distant, their light of an intenser quality, though of a quality he had never seen before. These were strangely diffused, these bigger ones “distant” was the word that occurred to him, although that inner brilliance which occurs in dreams, in imaginative moments, the nameless glow that colours mental vision, described them better. Moreover they wore colours the human eye had never seen, while the smallest rhythms were lit with the familiar colours of the prism.

  He stood absorbed, fascinated, drinking in the amazing spectacle, as though the glowing spirals of fire communicated to his inmost being a heat and glory of creative power. He was aware of the creative stream of spring in his own heart, pouring from the body of the earth on which he stood, drenching mind, nerves and even muscles with concentrated life. His subconscious being rose and stretched its wings. All, all was possible. A sensation of divine deathlessness possessed him. The limitations of his ordinary human faculties and powers were overborne, so that he felt he could never again face the mournful prison that caged him in. The jneaning of escape became plain to him. He saw the invisible building Intelligences at work.

  He was aware then suddenly of purpose, of intention. The seeming welter of the waves of coloured light, of the immense and tiny rhythms, the intricate streams of vibrating, pulsing, throbbing movements were, he now perceived, marvellously coordinated. There was a focus, a vortex, towards, which all rushed with a power so prodigious that a sense of terror touched him. He suddenly became conscious of a pattern forming before his eyes, hanging in empty space, shining, soft with light and beauty. It became, he saw, a geometric design. An idea of crystals, frost-forms, a spider’s web hung with glistening dewdrops shot across his memory. The spirals whirled and sang about it.

  This outline, he next perceived, was the focus to which the light, heat, colour all contributed their particular touch and quality. It glowed now in the centre of the vortex. So overwhelming, however, was the sense of the stupendous power involved that, as he phrased it afterwards, it seemed he watched the formation of some mighty sun. It was the whirling of those billion-miled sheets of incandescent fires that attend the birth of a nebula he watched. The power, at any rate, was gigantic.

  He stood trembling before a revelation that left him lost, shelterless, bereft of any help that his little self might summon when, suddenly, with an emotion of strange tenderness, he saw the great rhythms become completely dominated by the very smallest of all. The same instant the pattern grew sharply outlined, perfect in every detail, as though the focus of powerful glasses cleared and the pattern hung a moment exquisitely fashioned in space beneath his eyes before it sank slowly to the ground. It remained in an upright position on the grass at his feet a daisy, growing in the earth, alive, its tiny delicate face taking the sunlight and the morning wind.

  With a shock he then realized another thing: it was the very daisy he had broken, uprooted, killed a few minutes before.

  He stooped, one hand outstretched as though to finger its wee white petals, but found instead that he was listening listening to a sweet faint music that rose from the surface of the lawn, from grass and flowers, running in waves and circles, like the vibrations of gentle wind across a thousand strings. It was similar, though less in volume, to the sound he had heard in the presence of “N.H.” He rose slowly to an upright position, dazed, bewildered, yet rapt with the wonder of the whole experience.

  “N.H.!” he heard his voice exclaim, its sound merging in the growing volume of music all about him. “N.H.!” he cried again. “This is your work, your service...!”

  But he could not see him; his figure was no longer differentiated from the ever-moving sea of light that filled space wherever he looked. The same play of brilliance shone and glistened everywhere, whirling, ever shifting as in vortices of intricate geometrical designs, dancing, inter-penetrating, and with a magnificence of colour that caught his breath away. There were remarkable flashings, and two of these flashings blazed suddenly together, forming an immense physiognomy, an expression, rather, as of a mighty face. The same instant there were a hundred of these mighty brilliant visages that pierced through the sea of whirling colour and gazed upon him, close, terrific, with a power and beauty that left thought without even a ghost of language to describe them. Their glory lay beyond all earthly terms. He recognized them. These mighty outlines he had seen before.

  His mind then made an effort; he tried to think; memory and reason strove with emotion and sensation. The forms, the faces, the powers at once grew fainter. They faded slowly. The whirling vortices withdrew in some extraordinary way, the colour paled, the sound grew thinner, ever more distant, the great weaving designs dissolved. The lovely spirals all were gone. He saw the garden trees again, the flower beds. Space emptied, showing the morning sunshine on roofs and chimney-pots.

  “We have rebuilt, remade it,” he heard faintly, but he heard also the roar and boom of the gigantic rhythms as they withdrew, not spatially, so much as from his consciousness that was now contracting once more, till only the fainter sounds of the smaller singing patterns, the Flower Music as he had come to call it, reached his ears. Words and music, like voices known in dreams, seemed interwoven. He remembered the huge faces, with their bright confidence and glory, rising through the sunlight, peering as through a mirror at him, radiant and of imperishable beauty. The words, perhaps, he attached himself, his own interpretations of their ringing motions.

  The sounds died away. He reeled. The expansion and subsequent contraction of consciousness had been too rapid, the whole experience too intense. He swayed, unsure of his own identity. He remembered vaguely that tears filled his eyes and rolled down his cheeks, that the destruction of a lovely form had caused him a peculiar anguish, and that its recreation produced an intolerable joy, bringing tears of happiness. An arm caught him as he swayed. The accents of a voice he knew were audible close beside him. But at first he did not understand the words, feeling only a dull pain they caused.

  “Their imperishable beauty! Their divine loveliness!” he stammered, recognizing the face and voice. He flung his arms wide, gazing into the now empty air above the London garden. “The great service they eternally fulfil oh, that we all might “ He made a gesture towards the other houses with their sightless, shuttered windows.

  “I know, I know,” came in the familiar tones. “But come in now, come in, Edward, with me. I beg you before it is too late.” Paul Devonham’s voice shook so that it was hardly recognizable. The skin of his face was white. He wore a haggard look.

  “Too late!” repeated the other; “it is always too late. The world will never see. Their eyes are blinded.” An intolerable emotion
swept him. He stared suddenly at his colleague, an immense surprise in him. “But you, Paul!” he exclaimed. “You understand! Even you!”

  Devonham led him slowly into the house. There was protection in his manner, in voice and gesture there was deep affection, respect as well, but behind and through these flickered the signs of another unmistakable emotion that Fillery at first could hardly credit of pity, was it? Of something at any rate he dared not contemplate.

  “Even I,” came in quick, low tones, “even I, Edward, understand. You forget. I was once alone with him” the voice sank to a rapid whisper “in the mountain valley.” Devonham’s expression was curious. He raised his tone again. “But not now, not now, I beg of you. Not yet, at any rate. You will be cast out, judged insane, your work destroyed, your career ruined, your reputation “ His excitement betrayed itself in his bright eyes and unusual gestures. He was shaken to the core. Fillery turned upon him. They were in the corridor now. He flung his arm free of the restraining hand.

  “You know!” he cried, “yet would keep silent!” His voice choked. “You saw what I saw: new sources open, the offer made, the channels accessible at our very door, yet you would refuse —”

  “Not one in ten million,” came the hard rejoinder, “would believe.” The voice trembled. “We have no proof. Their laws of manifestation are unknown to us, and such glimpses are but glimpses useless and dangerous.” He whispered suddenly: “Besides what are they? What, after all, are we dealing with?

  “We can experiment,” interrupted his companion quickly.

  “How? Of what possible value?”

  “You felt what I felt? In your own being you experienced the revelation too, and yet you use such words! New forces, new faculties, Beings from another order oT incalculable powers to ennoble, to bless, to inspire! The creation of higher forms through which new, greater life and knowledge, shall manifest!”

  He could hardly find the words he sought, so bright was the hope and wonder in his heart still. “Think at a time like this what humanity might gain. Creative powers, Paul, creative! Acting directly on the subconscious selves of everybody, intensifying every individual, whether he understands and believes or not! The gods, Paul and nothing less You saw the daisy —”

  Devonham seized both of his companion’s hands, as he heard the torrent of wild, incoherent words: “You’ll have the entire world against you,” he interrupted. “Why seek crucifixion for a dream?” Then, as his hands were again flung off, he turned, a ringer suddenly on his lips. “Hush, hush, Edward!” he whispered. “The house is sleeping still. You’ll wake them all.”

  There was a new, strange authority about him. Dr. Fillery controlled himself. They went upstairs on tiptoe.

  “Listen!” murmured Devonham, as they reached the first-floor landing. “That’s what woke me first and led me to his room, but only to find it empty. He was already gone. I saw him join you on the lawn. I watched from the open window. Then I lost him.... Listen!” He was trembling like a child.

  The sound still echoed faintly, distant, rising and falling, sweet and very lovely, and hardly to be distinguished from the musical hum of wind that sighs and whispers across the strings of an aeolian harp. To one man came incredible sensations as they paused a moment. Dim though the landing was, there still seemed a tender luminous glow pervading it.

  “They’re everywhere,” murmured Fillery, “everywhere and always about us, though in different space. Through and behind and inside everything that happens, helping, building, constructing ceaselessly. Oh, Paul, how can you doubt and question value? Behind every single form and body, physical or mental, they operate divinely —”

  “Mental! Edward, for God’s sake —”

  Devonham stepped nearer to him with such abruptness that his companion stopped. The pallor of the assistant’s face so close arrested his words a moment. They held their breath, listening together side by side. The sounds grew fainter, died away in the stillness of the early morning, then ceased altogether. It was not the first time they had listened thus to the strange music, nor was it the first time that Fillery entered the room alone. As once before, his colleague remained outside, watching, waiting, half seduced, it seemed, yet vehemently against a sympathetic attitude. He watched his chief go in, he saw the expression on his face. Upon his own, behind a mild expectancy, lay a look of pain.

  “Empty!” He heard the startled exclamation.

  And instantly Devonham was at his side, a firm hand upon his arm, his eyes taking in an unused bed, a window opened wide, a glow of light and heat the early sunshine could not possibly explain. The perfume, as of flowers in the air, he noted too, and a sense of lightness, freshness, sweetness about the atmosphere that produced happiness, exhilaration. The room throbbed, as it were, with invisible waves of some communicable power even he could not deny. But of “N.H.,” the recent occupant, there was no sign.

  “In the garden still. I lost sight of him somehow. I told you.”

  Fillery crossed quickly to the window, his colleague with him, looking out upon a lawn and paths that held no figure anywhere. The gardener was not in sight. Only the birds were visible among the daisies. The quiet sunlight lay as usual upon leaves and flowers waving in the breeze. “He came in,” Fillery went on rapidly under his breath. “He must have slipped back when —”

  The sound of steps and voices behind them in the corridor brought both men round with a quick movement, as Nurse Robbins, her arm linked in that of “N.H.,” stood in the open doorway. Her face was radiant, her eyes alight, her breath came unevenly, and one might have thought her caught midway in some ecstatic dance that still left its joy and bliss stamped on her pretty face. Only she looked more than pretty; there was beauty, a fairy loveliness about her that betrayed an intense experience of some inner kind.

  At the sight of the two doctors she rapidly composed herself, leading her companion quietly into the room. “He was upstairs, sir,” she said respectfully but breathlessly somewhat, and addressing herself, Fillery noticed, to Devonham and not to himself. “He was going from room to room, talking to the patients er singing to them. It was the singing woke me —”

  “Upstairs!” exclaimed Devonham. “He has been up there!”

  She broke off as Fillery came forward and took “N.H.” by the hands, dismissing her with a gesture she was quick to understand. Devonham went with her hurriedly, intent upon a personal inspection at once.

  “Your service called you,” said Fillery quietly, the moment they were alone. “I understand!” Through the contact of the hands waves of power entered him, it seemed. About the face was light, as though fire glowed behind the very skin and eyes, producing the effect almost of a halo.

  “They came for me, and I must go.” The voice was deep and wonderful, with prolonged vibrations. “I have found my own. I must return where my service needs me, for here I can do so little.”

  “To your own place where you are ruler of your fate,” the other said slowly. “Here you —”

  “Here,” came the quick interruption, while the voice lost its resonance, fading as it were in sadness, “here I die.” Even the radiance of his face, although he smiled, dimmed a little on that final word. “I can help where I belong not here.” The light returned, the music came back into the amazing voice.

  “The daisy,” whispered Fillery, joy rising in him strangely.

  “Nature,” floated through the air like music, “is my place. With human beings I cannot work. It is too much, and I only should destroy. They are not ready yet, for our great rhythms injure them, and they cannot understand.”

  Trembling with emotions he could neither define nor control, Fillery led him to the window.

  “Even in this little back-garden of a London house,” he murmured, “among, so to speak, the humble buttercups and daisies of our life! The creative Intelligences at work, building, ever building the best forms they can. You remake a broken daisy” his voice rose, as the great shining face so close lit with its flaming smile
“you remake as well our broken minds. In the subconscious hides our creative power that you stimulate. It is with that and that alone you work. It hides in all of us, though the artist alone perceives or can use it. It is with that you work —”

  “With you, dear Fillery, I can work, for you help me to remember. You feel the big rhythms that we bring.”

  Dr. Fillery started, peered about him, listened hard. Was it the trees, shaking in the morning wind, that rustled? Was it a voice? The dancing leaves reflected the sunshine from a thousand facets. The sound accompanied, rather than interrupted, his own speech. He turned back to “N.H.” with passionate enthusiasm.

  “Using beauty the artists the creative powers of the Race,” he went on, “we shall create together a new body, a new vehicle, through which your powers can express themselves. The intellect cannot serve you... it is the creative imagination of those who know beauty that you seek. You are inarticulate in this wretched body. We shall make a new one —”

  “They have come for me and I must go n

  “We will work together. Oh, stay stay with me!”

  “I have found the way. I have remembered. I must go back —”

  The wind died down, the leaves stopped rustling, the sunshine seemed to pale as though a cloud passed over the sky. The words he had heard resolved themselves into the morning sounds, the singing of the birds. Had they been words at all? Bewilderment, like a pain, rushed over him. He knew himself suddenly imprisoned, caught.

  “I have remembered,” he heard in quiet tones, but the voice dead, no resonance, no music in it. And across the room he saw suddenly Paul Devonham just inside the door, returned from his inspection. Beside him stood LeVallon.

  An extraordinary reaction instantly took place in him.

  A lid was raised, a shutter lifted, a wall fell flat. He hardly knew how to describe it. Was it due to the look of anxiety, of tenderness, of affectionate, of protective care he saw plainly upon his colleague’s face? He could not say. He only knew for certain in that instant that Paul Devonham’s main preoccupation was with himself; that the latter regarded him exactly as he regarded any other yes, that was the only word any other patient; that he looked after him, tended, guarded, cared for him and that this watchful, experienced observation had been going on now for a long, long time.