CHAPTER X
About a week after the arrival of LeVallon in London, Dr. Fillery cameout of the Home one morning early, upon some uninteresting privatebusiness. He had left "LeVallon" happy with his books and garden,Devonham was with him to answer questions or direct his energies; theother "cases" in the establishment were moving nicely towards a cure.
The November air was clear and almost bright; no personal worriestroubled him. His mind felt free and light.
It was one of those mornings when Nature slips, very close and sweet,into the heart, so close and sweet that the mind wonders why peoplequarrel and disagree, when it is so easy to forgive, and the planetseems but a big, lovely, happy garden, evil an impossible nightmare,and personal needs few and simple.
He walked by cross roads towards Primrose Hill, entering Regent's Parknear the Zoo. An early white frost was rapidly melting in the sun. Thesky showed a faint tinge of blue. He saw floating sea-gulls. These, anda faint breeze that stirred the yellowing last leaves of autumn, gavehis heart a sudden lift.
And this lift was in the direction of a forbidden corner. He was awareof some exquisite dawn-wind far away stirring a million flowers,dew sparkled, streams splashed and murmured. A valley gleamed andvanished, yet left across his mind its shining trail.... For this liftof his heart made him soar into a region where it was only too easyto override temptation. Fillery, however, though his invisible beingsoared, kept both visible feet firmly on the ground. The surfacewas slippery, being melted by the sun, but frost kept the earth hardand frozen underneath. His balance never was in danger. He remaineddetached and a spectator.
She walked beside him nevertheless, a figure of purity and radiance,perfumed, soft, delicious. She was so ignorant of life. That was herwonder partly; for beauty was her accident and, while admirable, wasnot a determining factor. Life, in its cruder sense, she did not know,though moving through the thick of it. It neither touched nor soiledher; she brushed its dirt and dust aside as though a non-conductingatmosphere surrounded her. Her emotions, deep and searching, hadremained untorn. A quality of pristine innocence belonged to her, asthough, in the noisy clamour of ambitious civilized life, she remainedstill aware of Eden. Her grace, her loveliness, her simplicity moved byhis side as naturally, it seemed to him, as air or perfume.
"Iraida," he murmured to himself, with a smile of joy. "Nayan Khilkoff.All the men worship and adore you, yet respect you too. They cannottouch you. You remain aloof, unstained." And, remembering LeVallon'sremarks in cinema and theatre, he could have sung at this mere thoughtof her.
"Untouched by coarseness, something unearthly about your lovelinessof soul, a baby, a saint, and to all the men in Khilkoff's Studio,a mother. Where do you really come from? Whence do you derive? Yourlovely soul can have no dealings with our common flesh. How manyyoung fellows have you saved already, how many floundering charactersredeemed! They crave your earthly, physical love. Instead you surpriseand disappoint and shock them into safety again--by giving to themLove...!"
And, as he half repeated his vivid thoughts aloud, he suddenly saw hercoming towards him from the ornamental water, and instantly, wonderingwhat he should say to her, his mind contracted. The thing in him thatsang went backward into silence. He put a brake upon himself. But hewatched her coming nearer, wondering what brought her so luckily intoRegent's Park, and all the way from Chelsea, at such an hour. She movedso lightly, sweetly; she was so intangible and lovely. He feared hereyes, her voice.
They drew nearer. From looking to right and left, he raised his head.She was close, quite close, a hundred yards away. That walk, thatswing, that poise of head and neck he could not mistake anywhere. Hiswhole being glowed, thrilled, and yet contracted as in pain.
A sentence about the weather, about her own, her father's, health,about his calling to see them shortly, rose to his lips. He turned hiseyes away, then again looked up. They were now not twenty yards apart;in another moment he would have raised his hat, when, with a sensationof cold disappointment in him, she went past in totally irresponsivesilence. It was a stranger--a shop girl, a charwoman, a bus-conductor'swife--anybody but she whom he had thought.
How could he have been so utterly mistaken? It amazed him. It was,indeed, months since they had met, yet his knowledge of her appearancewas so accurate and detailed that such an error seemed incredible. Hehad experienced, besides, the actual thrill.
The phenomenon, however, was not new to him. Often had he experiencedit, much as others have. He knew, from this, that she was somewherenear, coming deliciously, deliberately towards him, moving every minutefirmly nearer, from a point in great London town which she had leftjust at the precise moment which would time her crossing his own pathlater. They would meet presently, if not now. Fate had arranged alldetails, and something in him was aware of it before it happened.
The phenomenon, as a matter of fact, was repeated twice again in thenext half-hour: he saw her--on both occasions beyond the possibilityof question--coming towards him, yet each time it was a completestranger masquerading in her guise.
It meant, he knew, that their two minds--hearts, too, he wondered,with a sense of secret happiness, enjoyed intensely then instantlysuppressed--were wirelessing to one another across the vast city, andthat both transmitter and receiver, their physical bodies, would meetshortly round the corner, or along the crowded street. Strong currentsof desiring thought, he knew, he hoped, he wondered, were trying toshape the crude world nearer to the heart's desire, causing the variousintervening passers-by to assume the desirable form and outline inadvance.
He reflected, following the habit of his eager mind; this wirelessdiscovery, after all, was the discovery of a universal principle inNature. It was common to all forms of life, a faint beginning ofthat advance towards marvellous intercommunicating, semi-telepathicbrotherhood he had always hoped for, believed in.... Even plants, heremembered, according to Bose....
Then, suddenly, half-way down Baker Street he found her close besidehim.
She was dressed so becomingly, so naturally, that no particular detailcaught his eye, although she wore more colour than was usual in thedull climate known to English people. There was a touch of fur andthere were flowers, but these were part of her appearance as a whole,and the hat was so exactly right, though it was here that Englishwomengenerally went wrong, that he could not remember afterwards what itwas like. It was as suitable as natural hair. It looked as if she hadgrown it. The shining eyes were what he chiefly noticed. They seemed toincrease the pale sunlight in the dingy street.
She was so close that he caught her perfume almost before he recognizedher, and a sense of happiness invaded his whole being instantly, as hetook the slender hand emerging from a muff and held it for a moment.The casual sentences he had half prepared fled like a flock of birdssurprised. Their eyes met.... And instantly the sun rose over a farKhaketian valley; he was aware of joy, of peace, of deep contentment,London obliterated, the entire world elsewhere. He knew the thrill, theecstasy of some long-forgotten dawn....
But in that brief second while he held her hand and gazed into hereyes, there flashed before him a sudden apparition. With lightningrapidity this picture darted past between them, paused for the tiniestfraction of a second, and was gone again. So swiftly the figure shotacross that the very glance he gave her was intercepted, its anglechanged, its meaning altered. He started involuntarily, for he knewthat vision, the bright rushing messenger, someone who brought gladtidings. And this time he recognized it--it was the figure of "N. H."
The outward start, the slight wavering of the eyelids, both werenoticed, though not understood, much less interpreted by the youngwoman facing him.
"You are as much surprised as I am," he heard the pleasant, low-pitchedvoice before his face. "I thought you were abroad. Father and I cameback from Sark only yesterday."
"I haven't left town," he replied. "It was Devonham went toSwitzerland."
He was thinking of her pleasant voice, and wondering how a mere voicecould soothe and ble
ss and comfort in this way. The picture of theflashing figure, too, preoccupied him. His various mind was ever busywith several trains of thought at once, though all correlated. Why, hewas wondering, should that picture of "N. H." leave a sense of chillupon his heart? Why had the first radiance of this meeting thus alreadydimmed a little? Her nearness, too, confused him as of old, makinghis manner a trifle brusque and not quite natural, until he found hiscentre of control again. He looked quickly up and down the street,moved aside to let some people pass, then turned to the girl again."Your holiday has done you good, Iraida," he said quietly; "I hope yourfather enjoyed it too."
"We both enjoyed ourselves," she answered, watching him, something ofa protective air about her. "I wish you had been with us, for thatwould have made it perfect. I was thinking that only this morning--as Iwalked across Hyde Park."
"How nice of you! I believe I, too, was thinking of you both, as Iwalked through Regent's Park." He smiled for the first time.
"It's very odd," she went on, "though you can explain it probably,"she added, with a smile that met his own, increasing it, "or, at anyrate, Dr. Devonham could--but I've seen you several times this morningalready--in the last half-hour. I've seen you in other people in thestreet, I mean. Yet I wasn't thinking of you at the actual moment, it'stwo months since we've met, and I imagined you were abroad."
"Odd, yes," he said, half shyly, half curtly. "It's an experience manyhave, I believe."
She gazed up at him. "It's very natural, I think, when people like eachother, Edward, and are in sympathy."
"Yet it happens with people who don't like each other too," heobjected, and at the same moment was vexed that he had used the words.
Iraida Khilkoff laughed. He had the feeling that she read his thoughtsas easily as if they were printed in red letters on his grey felt hat.
"There must be _some_ bond between them, though," she remarked, "anemotion, I mean, whatever it may be--even hatred."
"Probably, Nayan," he agreed. "It's you now, not Devonham, that wantsto explain things. I think I must take you into the Firm, you couldtake charge of the female patients with great success."
Whereupon she looked up at him with such a grave mothering expressionthat he was aware of her secret power, her central source of strengthin dealing with men. Her innocence and truth were an atmosphere abouther, protecting her as naturally and neatly as the clothes upon herbody. She believed in men. He felt like a child beside her.
"I'm in the Firm already," she said, "for you made me a partner yearsago when I was so high," and her small gloved hand indicated thestature of a little girl. "You taught me first."
He remembered the bleak northern town where fifteen years ago hehad known her father as a patient for some minor ailment, and thefriendship that grew out of the relationship. He remembered the childof nine or ten who sat on his knee and repeated to him the Russianfairy tales her mother told her; he recalled the charm, the wonder,the extraordinary power of belief. Her words brought back again thatflowered Caucasian valley in the sunlight and this, again, flashed uponthe screen the strange bright figure that had already once interceptedtheir glance, as though it somehow came between them....
"You have one advantage over me," he rejoined presently, "for in myClinique the people know that they need treatment, whereas in theStudio you catch your patients unawares. They do not know they're ill.You heal them without their being aware that they need healing."
"Yet some of our _habitues_ have found their way later to yourconsulting-room," she reminded him.
"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 trafficthundered past, the people crowded, jostling them. He could have stoodthere talking to her all day long, the London street forgotten or fullof flowers and Eden's trees and rippling summer streams. The palesunlight 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 thewind, her white shape fleeing from him, yet beckoning across a gleamingshoulder that he must overtake and capture her....
"I'm on my way to St. Dunstan's," he heard the musical voice. "A friendof father's.... Come with me, will you?" And with her muff she touchedhis arm, trying to make him turn her way. But just as he felt the touchhe saw the bright figure again. Swifter than himself and far morepowerful, it leaped dancing past and carried her away before his veryeyes. She waved her hand, her eyes faded like stars into the distanceof some unearthly spring--and she was gone. A pang of peculiar anguishseized him, as the mental picture flashed with the speed of light andvanished. For the figure seemed of elemental power, taking its own withperfect ease....
He shook his head. "I'll come to see you to-morrow instead," he toldher. "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."
"Good-bye then." She took his hand and kept it. "I shall expect you totell 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 meindefinitely." His face grew stern a moment about the mouth. "I thinkhe may need you," he added with abrupt significance.
"Julian LeVallon," she repeated, the name sounding very musical the wayher slightly foreign accent touched it "And what nationality may thatbe?"
Dr. Fillery hesitated. "His parents, Nayan, I believe, were English,"he said. "He has lived all his life in the Jura Mountains, alone withan old scholar, poet and geologist, who brought him up. Of our modernlife he knows little. I think you may----" He broke off. "His motherdied when he was born," he concluded.
"And of women he knows nothing," she replied, understandingly, "so thathe 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 clearsearching eyes. She smiled. But his own face wore a mask now; no figurethis 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 dowithout me." She let go the hand she had held all this time, and turnedfrom him, looking once across her shoulder as he, too, went upon hisway.
"About three o'clock we shall expect you--and Mr. Julian LeVallon," sheadded. "The Prometheans are coming too, as of course you know, but thatwon't matter. Father has let the Studio to them."
"The more the merrier," he answered, raised his hat, and went on at arapid 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, forgottendreams went with him too. He had known that one day he must be"executed," yet with his own hands he had just slipped the nooseabout his neck. Detachment from life, he realized, keeping aloof fromthe 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 andself-protection, an artificial attitude he wore to keep his heartfrom error. His love, born of some far unearthly valley, undoubtedlyconsumed him, while yet he said it nay....
He had himself suggested bringing together the girl and "N. H." Therehad been no need to do this. Yet he had deliberately offered it, andshe had instantly accepted. Even while he said the words there wasa volcano of emotion in him, several motives fighting to combine.The fear for himself, being selfish, he had set aside at once; therewas also the fear for her--the odd certainty in him that at last herwoman's nature would be waked; lastly, the fear for "N. H." himself.And here he clashed with his promise to Devonham. Behind the simpleproposal
lay these various threads of motive, emotion and qualification.
Now, as he hurried along the street, they rushed to and fro about hismind, each at its own speed and with its own impetuous strength. Itwas the last one, however, the certainty that her mere presence mustevoke the "N. H." personality, banishing the commonplace LeVallon; itwas this that, in the end, perhaps troubled him most. An intuitiveconviction assured him that this was bound to be the result of theirmeeting. LeVallon would sink down out of sight; "N. H." would emergetriumphant and vital, bringing his elemental power with him. The girlwould 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 sendan excuse...."
With this proviso, he dismissed the matter from his mind, noting onlyhow clearly it revealed his own keen desire to let LeVallon disappearand "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 wouldlose Nayan. Yes, but he had never possessed the right to hold her.He was strong, indifferent, detached.... His life in any case was asacrifice upon the altar of a mistake with regard to which he hadnot been consulted. His whole existence must be passed in worshipbefore this altar, unless he was to admit himself a failure. His idealpossession of the girl, he consoled himself, need know no change. Towatch her womanhood, hitherto untouched by any man, to watch thisbloom and ripen at the bidding of another must mean pain. But he facedthe loss. And a curious sense of compensation lay in it somewhere--thestrange notion that she and he would share "N. H." in a sense betweenthem. He was already aware of a deep subtle kinship between the threeof them, a kinship hardly of this physical world. And, after all, theinterests of "N. H." must come first. He had chosen his life, acceptedit, at any rate; he must remain true to his high ideal. This strangebeing, blown by the winds of chance into his keeping, must be his firstconsideration.
"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 thesubmerged personality of "N. H." peeped through. Paul Devonham, hefelt convinced, was wrong in thinking "N. H." to be the transientmanifestation.
It was the reverse that Dr. Fillery believed to be the truth. He sawin "N. H." almost a new type of being altogether. In that physicalbody warred two personalities certainly, but "N. H." was the importantone, and LeVallon merely the transient outer one, masquerading onthe surface merely, a kind of automatic and mechanical personality,gleaned, picked up, trained and educated, as it were, by the few yearsspent among the human herd.
And this "N. H." needed help, the best, the wisest possible. Both maleand female help "N. H." demanded. He, Edward Fillery, could supply theformer, but the latter could be furnished only by some woman in whominnocence, truth and a natural mother-love--the three deepest femininequalities--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 ofthat lost valley in his blood, realized the meaning of the flashingintuition that had pained yet gladdened him half an hour before withits convincing symbolic picture.
This private Eden secreted in his depths he revealed to no one, thoughPaul, his intimate friend and keen assistant, divined its generalneighbourhood and geography to some extent. It was the girl whoinvariably opened its ivory gates for him. They had but to meet andtalk a moment, when, with a sudden drift of wonder, beauty, wildness,this Khaketian inheritance rose before him. Its sunny brilliance, itsflowers, its perfumes seduced and caught him away. The unearthly moodstole over him. Thought took wings of imagination and soared beyondthe planet. He foresaw, easily, the effect she would produce upon"LeVallon."...
He came back to earth again at the door of the Home, smiling, asso often before, at these brief wanderings in his secret Eden, yetperfectly 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 suggestionand its possible results, and his assistant, resting before lunch aftera 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 easilydivined their origin, and showed his pleasure in his face. He longedfor his old friend to be humanized and steadied by some deep romance.There was a curious new watchful attitude also about him, thoughcleverly concealed.
"I'm glad the Khilkoffs are back in town," he said easily. "As forLeVallon--he's been quiet and uninteresting all the morning. Heneeds 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 LeVallonworships at her shrine like the rest of 'em, so much the better. Youremember my Notes. Nothing will help towards his finding his real selfquicker 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.' ratherthan LeVallon?"
Devonham was surprised--he had quickly divined the subconscious fearand jealousy. For this detached, impersonal attitude he was notprepared. 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 becareful about. And the girl has nothing to do with _that_. In yourblood, remember, lies an unearthly spiritual vagrancy which you mustnot, 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 hischief, but the difference between the two men was fundamental, probablyunbridgeable as well. The affection, trust, respect each felt for theother was sincere. Devonham, however, having never known a thought, afeeling, much less an actual experience, outside the normal gamut ofhumanity, regarded all such as pathogenic. Fillery, who had tasted theamazing, dangerous sweetness of such experiences, in his own being, hadanother 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 newinexpressible uneasiness was in his face. He thrust his hands deepinto his trouser pockets, turned his eyes hard upon the floor, stoodwith his legs apart. Abruptly turning, he came a full step closer."Edward," he said, furious with himself, and yet fiercely determinedto be honest, "I may as well tell you frankly--though explanation liesbeyond 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'vehad--once or twice--the desire to turn and run. But what I meanis--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 camehere there's been a change in every patient in the building--withoutexception." He looked over his shoulder as though he heard a sound. Helistened certainly, but his mind was sharply centred on his friend.
"For the better, yes," said Fillery at once. "Increased vitality, I'venoticed too."
"Precisely," whispered the ot
her, still listening.
There came a pause between them.
"And when we have found the real, the central self," pursued Fillerypresently. "When we have found the essential being--what is it?"
"Exactly," replied Devonham with extraordinary emphasis. "_What isit?_" But even then he did not look up to meet the other's glance.