CHAPTER XI
The meeting with Dr. Fillery and his friends, the Khilkoffs, fatherand daughter, had, for one reason or another, to be postponed for aweek, during which brief time even, no single day wasted, LeVallon'seducation proceeded rapidly. He was exceedingly quick to learn theusages of civilized society in a big city, adapting himself withan ease born surely of quick intelligence to the requirements andconventions of ordinary life.
In his perception of the rights of others, particularly, he showeda natural aptitude; he had good manners, that is, instinctively; incertain houses where Fillery took him purposely, he behaved witha courtesy and tact that belong usually to what England calls agentleman. Except to Fillery and Devonham, he talked little, but wasan excellent and sympathetic listener, a quality that helped him tomake his way. With Mrs. Soames, the stern and even forbidding matron,he made such headway, that it was noticed with a surprise, includinglaughter. He might have been her adopted son.
"She's got a new pet," said Devonham, with a laugh. "Mason taught himwell. His aptitude for natural history is obvious; after a few years'study he'll make a name for himself. The 'N. H.' side will disappearnow more and more, unless _you_ stimulate it for your own ends----" Hebroke off, speaking lightly still, but with a carelessness some mighthave guessed assumed.
"You forget," put in his Chief, "I promised."
Devonham looked at him shrewdly. "I doubt," he said, "whether you canhelp yourself, Edward," the expression in his eyes for a moment almostsevere.
Fillery remained thoughtful, making no immediate reply.
"We must remember," he said presently, "that he's now in the quiescentstate. Nothing has again occurred to bring 'N. H.' uppermost again."
Devonham turned upon his friend. "I see no reason why 'N. H.'"--hespoke with emphasis--"should ever get uppermost again. In my opinion wecan make this quiescent state--LeVallon--the permanent one."
"We can't keep him in a cage like Mrs. Soames's mice and parrot. Areyou, for instance, against my taking him to the Studio? Do you thinkit's a mistake to let him meet the Prometheans?"
"That's just where Mason went wrong," returned Devonham. "He kept himin a cage. The boy met only a few peasants, trees, plants, animals andbirds. The sun, making him feel happy, became his deity. The rain hehated. The wind inspired and invigorated him. If we now introduce thehuman element wisely, I see no danger. If he can stand the Khi--theStudio and the Prometheans, he can stand anything. He may be consideredcured."
The door opened and a tall, radiant figure with bright eyes and untidyshining hair came into the room, carrying an open book.
"Mrs. Soames says I've nothing to do with stars," said a deep musicalvoice, "and that I had better stick to animals and plants. She saysthat star-gazing never was good for anyone except astronomers who warnus about tides, eclipses and dangerous comets."
He held out the big book, open at an enlarged stellar photograph."What, please, is a galaxy, a star that is suddenly brilliant, thendisappears in a few weeks, and a nebula?"
Before either of the astonished men could answer, LeVallon turned toDevonham, his face wearing the gravity and intense curiosity of achild. "And, please, are _you_ the only sort of being in the universe?Mrs. Soames says that the earth is the only inhabited place. Aren'tthere other beings besides you anywhere? The Earth is such a littleplanet, and the solar system, according to this book, is one of thesmallest too."
"My dear fellow," Devonham said gently, "do not bother your head withuseless speculations. Our only valuable field of study is this planet,for it is all we know or ever can know. Whether the universe holdsother beings or not, can be of no importance to us at present."
LeVallon stared fixedly at him, saying nothing. Something of hisnatural radiance dimmed a little. "Then what are all these things thatI remember I've forgotten?" he asked, his blue eyes troubled.
"It will take you all your lifetime to understand beings like me, andlike yourself and like Dr. Fillery. Don't waste time speculating aboutpossible inhabitants in other stars."
He spoke good-humouredly, but firmly, as one who laid down certaindefinite lines to be followed, while Dr. Fillery, watching, made noaudible comment. Once long ago he had asked his own father a somewhatsimilar question.
"But I shall so soon get to the end of you," replied LeVallon, adisappointed expression on his face. "I may speculate _then_?" he asked.
"When you get to the end of me and of yourself and of Dr. Fillery--yes,then you may speculate to your heart's content," said Devonham in akindly tone. "But it will take you longer than you think perhaps.Besides, there are women, too, remember. You will find them morecomplicated still."
A curious look stole into the other's eager eyes. He turned suddenlytowards the older man who had his confidence so completely. There wasin the movement, in the incipient gesture that he made with his arms,his hands, almost with his head and face as well, something of appealthat set the doctor's nerves alert. And the change of voice--it waslower now and more musical than before--increased the nameless messagethat flashed to his brain and heart. There was a hint of song, ofchanting almost, in the tone. There was music in him. For the voice,Fillery realized suddenly, brought in the over-tones, somewhat in theway good teachers of singing and voice production know. There was thedepth, sonority, singing quality which means that the "harmonics" aremade audible, as with a violin played in perfect tune. The sound seemedproduced not by the vocal cords alone, but by the entire being, so tospeak. Yet, "LeVallon's" voice had not this rich power, he noticed.Its appearance was a sign that "N. H." was stirring into activity andutterance.
"Women, yes," the young man repeated to himself. "Women--bring backsomething. Their eyes make me remember----" he turned abruptly to theopen book upon the doctor's knee. "It's something to do with stars,these memories," he went on eagerly, the voice resonant. "Stars, women,memories ... where are they all gone to...? Why have I lost...? What isit that...?"
It seemed as if a veil passed from his face, a thin transparencythat dimmed the shining effect his hair and eyes and radiant healthproduced. A far-away expression followed it.
"'N. H.'!" Devonham quickly flashed the whispered warning. And in thesame instant, Fillery rose, holding out the open book.
"Come, LeVallon," he said, putting a hand upon his shoulder, "we'll gointo my room for an hour, and I'll tell you all about the galaxies andnebulae. You shall ask as many questions as you like. Devonham is a verybusy man and has duties to attend to just now."
He moved across to open the door, and LeVallon, his face changing moreand more, went with him; the light in his eyes increased; he smiled,the far-away expression passed a little.
"Dr. Devonham is quite right in what he says about uselessspeculations," continued Fillery, as they went out arm in arm together,"but we can play a bit with thought and imagination, for all that--youand I. 'Let your thought wander like an insect which is allowed to flyin the air, but is at the same time confined by a thread.' Come along,we'll have an hour's play. We'll travel together among the goldenstars, eh?"
"Play!" exclaimed the youth, looking up with flashing eyes. "Ah! in theSpring we play! Our work with sap, roots, crystals, fire, all finishedout of sight, so that their results followed of their own accord."He was talking at great speed in a low voice, a deep, rolling voice,and half to himself. "Spring is our holiday, the forms made perfectand ready for the power to rush through, and we rush with it, playingeverywhere----"
"Spring is the wine of life, yes," put in Fillery, caught awaymomentarily by something behind the words he listened to, as though arhythm swept him. "Creative life racing up and flooding into every formand body everywhere. It brings wonder, joy--play, as you call it."
"We--we build the way----" The youth broke off abruptly as they reachedthe study door. Something flowed down and back in him, emptying faceand manner of a mood which had striven for utterance, then passed. Hereturned to the previous talk about the stars again:
"Who attends to them? Who looks after them?" he
inquired, a deep,peculiar interest in his manner, his eyes turning a little darker.
"What we call the laws of Nature," was the reply, "which are, afterall, merely our 'descriptive formulae summing up certain regularitiesof recurrence,' the laws under which they were first set alight andthen sent whirling into space. Under these same laws they will alleventually burn out and come to rest. They will be dead."
"Dead," repeated the other, as though he did not understand. "They arethe children of the laws," he stated, rather than asked. "Are the lawskind and faithful? They never tire?"
Fillery explained with one-half of his nature, and still as to achild. The other half of him lay under firm restraint according to hispromise. He outlined in general terms man's knowledge of the stars."The laws never tire," he said.
"But the stars end! They burn out, stop, and die! You said so."
The other replied with something judicious and cautious about time andits immense duration. But he was startled.
"And those who attend to the laws," came then the words that startledhim, "who keeps them working so that they do not tire?"
It was something in the tone of voice perhaps that, once again,produced in his listener the extraordinary sudden feeling that Humanitywas, after all, but an insignificant, a microscopic detail in theUniverse; that it was, say, a mere ant-heap in the colossal junglecrowded with other minuter as well as immenser life of every sort andkind, and, moreover, that "N. H." was aware of this "other life," or atleast of some vast section of it, and had been, if he were not still,associated with it. The two letters by which he was designated acquireda deeper meaning than before.
A rich glow came into the young face, and into the eyes, growing everdarker, a look of burning; the skin had the effect of radiating; thebreathing became of a sudden deep and rhythmical. The whole figureseemed to grow larger, expanding as though it extended already and halffilled the room. Into the atmosphere about it poured, as though heatand light rushed through it, a strange effect of power.
"You'd like to visit them, perhaps--wouldn't you?" asked Fillery gently.
"I feel----" began the other, then stopped short.
"You feel it would interest you," the doctor helped--then saw hismistake.
"I feel," repeated the youth. The sentence was complete. "I am there."
"Ah! when you feel you're there, you _are_ there?"
The other nodded.
He leaned forward. "_I_ know," he whispered as with sudden joy. "_You_help me to remember, Fillery." The voice, though whispering, wasstrong; it vibrated full of over-tones and under-tones. The sound ofthe "F" was like a wind in branches. "You wonderful, _you_ know too!It is the same with flowers, with everything. We build with wind andfire." He stopped, rubbing a hand across his forehead a moment. "Windand fire," he went on, but this time to himself, "my splendid mightyones...." Dropping his hand, he flashed an amazing look of enthusiasmand power into his companion's face. The look held in concentratedform something of the power that seemed pulsing and throbbing in hisatmosphere. "Help me to remember, dear Fillery," his voice rang outaloud like singing. "Remember with me why we both are here. When weremember we can go back where we belong."
The glow went from his face and eyes as though an inner lamp had beensuddenly extinguished. The power left both voice and atmosphere. Hesank back in his chair, his great sensitive hands spread over the tablewhere the star charts lay, as through the open window came the crashand clatter of an aeroplane tearing, like some violent, monstrousinsect, through the sunlight.
A look of pain came into his eyes. "It goes again. I've lost it."
"We were talking about the stars and the laws of Nature," said Filleryquickly, though his voice was shaking, "when that noisy flying-machinedisturbed us." He leaned over, taking his companion's hand. His heartwas beating. He smelt the open spaces. The blood ran wildly in hisveins. It was with the utmost difficulty he found simple, common wordsto use. "You must not ask too much at once. We will learn slowly--thereis so much we have to learn together."
LeVallon's smile was beautiful, but it was the smile of "LeVallon"again only.
"Thank you, dear Fillery," he replied, and the talk continued asbetween a tutor and his backward pupil.... But for some time afterwardsthe "tutor's" mind and heart, while attending to LeVallon now, wenttravelling, it seemed, with "N. H." There was this strange divisionin his being ... for "N. H." appealed with power to a part of him,perhaps the greatest, that had never yet found expression, much lesssatisfaction.
Many a talk together of this kind, with occasional semi-irruptions of"N. H.," he had already enjoyed with his new patient, and LeVallon wasby now fairly well instructed in the general history of our littleworld, briefly but picturesquely given. Evolution had been outlinedand explained, the rise of man sketched vividly, the great war, andthe planet's present state of chaos described in a way that furnisheda clear enough synopsis of where humanity now stood. LeVallon wasable to hold his own in conversation with others; he might pass for asimple-minded but not ill-informed young man, and both Paul Devonhamand Edward Fillery, though each for different reasons, were, therefore,well satisfied with the young human being entrusted to their care, ahuman being to be eventually discharged from the Home, healed and curedof extravagances, made harmonious with himself, able to make his ownway in the world alone. To Devonham it appeared already certain that,within a reasonable time, LeVallon would find himself happily at homeamong his fellow kind, a normal, even a gifted young man with a futurebefore him. "N. H." would disappear and be forgotten, absorbed backinto the parent Self. To his colleague, on the other hand, anothervision of his future opened. Sooner or later it was LeVallon that woulddisappear and "N. H." remain in full control, a strange, possibly anew type of being, not alone marvellously gifted, but who might eventhrow light upon a vista of research and knowledge hitherto unknown tohumanity, and with benefits for the Race as yet beyond the reach of anywildest prophecy.
Both men, therefore, went gladly with him to the Khilkoff Studiothat early November afternoon, anxious to observe him, his conduct,attitude, among the curious set of people to be found there on thePrometheans' Society day, and to note any reactions he might show insuch a milieu. Each felt fully justified in doing so, though they wouldhave kept an ordinary "hysterical" patient safely from the place.LeVallon, however, betrayed no trace of hysteria in any meaning of theword, big or little; he was stable as a navvy, betraying no undesirablereaction to the various well-known danger points. The visit might besomething of an experiment perhaps, but an experiment, a test, theywere justified in taking. Yet Devonham on no account would have allowedhis chief to go alone. He had insisted on accompanying them.
And to both men, as they went towards Chelsea, their quiet companionwith them, came the feeling that the visit might possibly prove oneof them right, the other wrong. Fillery expected that Nayan Khilkoffalone, to say nothing of the effect of the other queer folk who mightbe present, must surely evoke the "N. H." personality now lyingquiescent and inactive below the threshold of LeVallon. The charmand beauty of the girl he had never known to fail with any male, forshe had that in her which was bound to stimulate the highest in theopposite sex. The excitement of the wild, questing, picturesque, ifunbalanced, minds who would fill the place, must also, though in quiteanother way, affect the _real_ self of anyone who came in contact withtheir fantastic and imaginative atmosphere. Attraction or repulsionmust certainly be felt. He expected at any rate a vital clue.
"Ivan Khilkoff," he told LeVallon, as they went along in the car, "isa Russian, a painter and sculptor of talent, a good-hearted and silentsort of old fellow, who has remained very poor because he refuses toadvertise himself or commercialize his art, and because his work isnot the kind of thing the English buy. His daughter, Nayan, teachesthe piano and Russian. She is beautiful and sweet and pure, but of anindependent and rather impersonal character. She has never fallen inlove, for instance, though most men fall in love with her. I hope youmay like and understand each other."
"Thank you," said LeVallon, listening attentively, but with no greatinterest apparently. "I will try very much to like her and her fathertoo."
"The Studio is a very big one, it is really two studios knocked intoone, their living rooms opening out of it. One half of the place, beingso large, they sometimes let out for meetings, dances and that sort ofthing, earning a little money in that way. It is rented this evening bya Society called the Prometheans--a group of people whose inquisitivetemperaments lead them to believe, or half believe----"
"To imagine, if not deliberately to manufacture," put in Devonham.
"----to imagine, let us call it," continued the other with atwinkle, "that there are other worlds, other powers, other states ofconsciousness and knowledge open to them outside and beyond the presentones we are familiar with."
"They _know_ these?" asked LeVallon, looking up with signs of interest."They have experienced them?"
"They know and experience," replied Fillery, "according to theirimaginations and desires, those with a touch of creative imaginationclaiming the most definite results, those without it being merelyimitative. They report their experiences, that is, but cannot--orrarely show the results to others. You will hear their talk and judgeaccordingly. They are interesting enough in their way. They have,at any rate, one thing of value--that they are open to new ideas.Such people have existed in every age of the world's history, butafter an upheaval, such as the great war has been, they become moreactive and more numerous, because the nervous system, reacting froma tremendous strain, produces exaggeration. Any world is betterthan an uncomfortable one in revolution, they think. They are, asa rule, sincere and honest folk. They add a touch of colour to thecommonplace----"
"Tuppence coloured," murmured Devonham below his breath.
"And they believe so much in other worlds to conquer, other regions,bigger states of consciousness, other powers," concluded Fillery,ignoring the interruption, "that they are half in this world, half inthe next. Hence Dr. Devonham's name, the name by which he sometimeslaughs at them--of Half Breeds."
LeVallon's eyes, he saw, were very big; his interest and attention wereexcited.
"They will probably welcome you with open arms," he added, "if youcare to join them. They consider themselves pioneers of a larger life.They are not mere spiritualists--oh no! They are familiar with all thenewest theories, and realize that an alternative hypothesis can explainall so-called psychic phenomena without dragging spirits in. It is inexaggerating results they go mostly wrong."
"Eccentrics," Devonham remarked, "out of the circle, and hystericalto a man. They accomplish nothing. They are invariably dreamers,usually of doubtful morals and honesty, and always unworthy of seriousattention. But they may amuse you for an hour."
"We all find it difficult to believe what we have never experienced,"mentioned Fillery, turning to his colleague with a hearty laugh, inwhich the latter readily joined, for their skirmishes usually broughtin laughter at the end. Just now, moreover, they were talking with apurpose, and it was wise and good that LeVallon should listen and takein what he could--hearing both sides. He watched and listened certainlywith open eyes and ears, as he sat between them on the wide front seat,but saying, as usual, very little.
The car turned down a narrow lane with slackening speed and slowed upbefore a dingy building with faded Virginia creepers sprawling aboutstained dirty walls. The neighbourhood was depressing, patched anddishevelled, and almost bordering on a slum. The November light waspassing into early twilight.
"You," said LeVallon abruptly, turning round and staring at Devonham,"make everything seem unreal to me. I do not understand you. You knowso much. Why is so little real to you?"
But Devonham, in the act of getting out of the car, made no reply, andprobably had not heard the words, or, if he had heard, thought themmore suitable for Fillery.