The Human Chord
The Human Chord
Algernon Henry Blackwood
DEDICATION
TO THOSE WHO HEAR
I
AS a boy he constructed so vividly in imagination that he came
to believe in the living reality of his creations: for everybody
and everything he found names--real names. Inside him
somewhere stretched immense playgrounds, compared to which
the hayfields and lawns of his father's estate seemed trivial:
plains without horizon, seas deep enough to float the planets
like corks, and "such tremendous forests" with "trees like tall
pointed hill-tops." He had only to close his eyes, drop his
thoughts inwards, sink after them himself, call aloud and--see.
His imagination conceived and bore--worlds; but nothing in
these worlds became alive until he discovered its true and
living name. The name was the breath of life; and, sooner or
later, he invariably found it.
Once, having terrified his sister by affirming that a little
man he had created would come through her window at night and
weave a peaked cap for himself by pulling out all her hairs
"that hadn't gone to sleep with the rest of her body," he took
characteristic measures to protect her from the said
depredations. He sat up the entire night on the lawn beneath
her window to watch, believing firmly that what his imagination
had made alive would come to pass.
She did not know this. On the contrary, he told her that the
little man had died suddenly; only, he sat up to make sure. And,
for a boy of eight, those cold and haunted hours must have
seemed endless from ten o'clock to four in the morning, when
he crept back to his own corner of the night nursery. He
possessed, you see, courage as well as faith and imagination.
Yet the name of the little man was nothing more formidable
than "Winky!"
"You might have known he wouldn't hurt you, Teresa," he said.
"Any one with that name would be light as a fly and awf'ly
gentle--a regular dicky sort of chap!"
"But he'd have pincers," she protested, "or he couldn't pull
the hairs out. Like an earwig he'd be. Ugh!"
"Not Winky! Never!" he explained scornfully, jealous of his
offspring's reputation. "He'd do it with his rummy little
fingers."
"Then his fingers would have claws at the ends!" she
insisted; for no amount of explanation could persuade her that
a person named Winky could be nice and gentle, even though he
were "quicker than a second." She added that his death rejoiced
her.
"But I can easily make another--such a nippy little beggar,
and twice as hoppy as the first. Only I won't do it," he added
magnanimously, "because it frightens you."
For to name with him was to create. He had only to run out
some distance into his big mental prairie, call aloud a name in
a certain commanding way, and instantly its owner would run up
to claim it. Names described souls. To learn the name of a
thing or person was to know all about them and make them
subservient to his will; and "Winky" could only have been a very
soft and furry little person, swift as a shadow, nimble as a
mouse--just the sort of fellow who would make a conical cap
out of a girl's fluffy hair . . . and love the mischief of doing
it.
And so with all things: names were vital and important. To
address beings by their intimate first names, beings of the
opposite sex especially, was a miniature sacrament; and the
story of that premature audacity of Elsa with Lohengrin never
failed to touch his sense of awe. "What's in a name?" for him,
was a significant question--a question of life or death. For to
mispronounce a name was a bad blunder, but to name it wrongly
was to miss it altogether. Such a thing had no real life, or at
best a vitality that would soon fade. Adam knew that! And he
pondered much in his childhood over the difficulty Adam must
have had "discovering" the correct appellations for some of the
queerer animals. . . .
As he grew older, of course, all this faded a good deal, but he
never quite lost the sense of reality in names--the significance
of a true name, the absurdity of a false one, the cruelty of
mispronunciation. One day in the far future, he knew, some
wonderful girl would come into his life, singing her own true
name like music, her whole personality expressing it just as
her lips framed the consonants and vowels--and he would love
her. His own name, ridiculous and hateful though it was, would
sing in reply. They would be in harmony together in the literal
sense, as necessary to one another as two notes in the same
chord. . . .
So he also possessed the mystical vision of the poet. What
he lacked--such temperaments always do--was the sense of
proportion and the careful balance that adjusts cause and
effect. And this it is, no doubt, that makes his adventures such
"hard sayings." It becomes difficult to disentangle what
actually did happen from what conceivably might have happened;
what he thinks he saw from what positively was.
His early life--to the disgust of his Either, a poor country
squire--was a distressing failure. He missed all examinations,
muddled all chances, and finally, with Ј50 a year of his own,
and no one to care much what happened to him, settled in
London and took any odd job of a secretarial nature that
offered itself. He kept to nothing for long, being easily
dissatisfied, and ever on the look out for the "job" that might
conceal the kind of adventure he wanted. Once the work of the
moment proved barren of this possibility, he wearied of it and
sought another. And the search seemed prolonged and hopeless,
for the adventure he sought was not a common kind, but
something that should provide him with a means of escape from
a vulgar and noisy world that bored him very much indeed. He
sought an adventure that should announce to him a new heaven
and a new earth; something that should confirm, if not actually
replace, that inner region of wonder and delight he revelled in
as a boy, but which education and conflict with a prosaic age
had swept away from his nearer consciousness. He sought, that
is, an authoritative adventure of the soul.
To look at, one could have believed that until the age of
twenty-five he had been nameless, and that a committee had
then sat upon the subject and selected the sound best suited to
describe him: Spinrobin--Robert. For, had he never seen
himself, but run into that inner prairie of his and called aloud
"Robert Spinrobin," an individual exactly resembling him would
surely have pattered up to claim the name.
He was slight, graceful, quick on his feet and generally alert;
took little steps that were almost hopping, and when he was in
a hurry gave him the appearance of "spinning" down the
pavement or up the stairs; always wore clothes of some fluffy
material, with a low collar and bright red tie; had soft pink
cheeks, dancing grey eyes and loosely scattered hair,
prematurely thin and unquestionably like feathers. His hands
and feet were small and nimble. When he stood in his favourite
attitude with hands plunged deep in his pockets, coat-tails
slightly spread and flapping, head on one side and hair
disordered, talking in that high, twittering, yet very agreeable
voice of his, it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that
here was--well--Spinrobin, Bobby Spinrobin, "on the job."
For he took on any "job" that promised adventure of the kind
he sought, and the queerer the better. As soon as he found that
his present occupation led to nothing, he looked about for
something new--chiefly in the newspaper advertisements.
Numbers of strange people advertised in the newspapers, he
knew, just as numbers of strange people wrote letters to them;
and Spinny--so he was called by those who loved him--was a
diligent student of the columns known as "Agony" and "Help
wanted." Whereupon it came about that he was aged twenty-eight,
and out of a job, when the threads of the following occurrence
wove into the pattern of his life, and "led to something" of a
kind that may well be cause for question and amazement.
The advertisement that formed the bait read as follows:--
"WANTED, by Retired Clergyman, Secretarial Assistant with
courage and imagination. Tenor voice and some knowledge of
Hebrew essential; single; unworldly. Apply Philip Skale,"--and
the address.
Spinrobin swallowed the bait whole. "Unworldly" put the
match, and he flamed up. He possessed, it seemed, the other
necessary qualifications; for a thin tenor voice, not unmusical,
was his, and also a smattering of Hebrew which he had picked up
at Cambridge because he liked the fine, high-sounding names of
deities and angels to be found in that language. Courage and
imagination he lumped in, so to speak, with the rest, and in the
gilt-edged diary he affected he wrote: "Have taken on Skale's
odd advertisement. I like the man's name. The experience may
prove an adventure. While there's change, there's hope." For he
was very fond of turning proverbs to his own use by altering
them, and the said diary was packed with absurd misquotations
of a similar kind.
II
A singular correspondence followed, in which the advertiser
explained with reserve that he wanted an assistant to aid him
in certain experiments in sound, that a particular pitch and
quality of voice was necessary (which he could not decide until,
of course, he had heard it), and that the successful applicant
must have sufficient courage and imagination to follow a
philosophical speculation "wheresoever it may lead," and also
be "so far indifferent to worldly success as to consider it of
small account compared to spiritual knowledge--especially if
such knowledge appeared within reach and involved worldly
sacrifices." He further added that a life of loneliness in the
country would have to be faced, and that the man who suited him
and worked faithfully should find compensation by inheriting
his own "rather considerable property when the time came." For
the rest he asked no references and gave none. In a question of
spiritual values references were mere foolishness. Each must
judge intuitively for himself.
Spinrobin, as has been said, bit. The letters, written in a
fine scholarly handwriting, excited his interest
extraordinarily. He imagined some dreamer-priest possessed by
a singular hobby, searching for things of the spirit by those
devious ways he had heard about from time to time, a little
mad probably into the bargain. The name Skale sounded to him
big, yet he somehow pictured to himself an ascetic-faced man of
small stature pursuing in solitude some impossible ideal. It
all attracted him hugely with its promise of out-of-the-way
adventure. In his own phrase it "might lead to something," and
the hints about "experiments in sound" set chords trembling in
him that had not vibrated since the days of his boyhood's
belief in names and the significance of names. The salary,
besides, was good. He was accordingly thrilled and delighted to
receive in reply to his last letter a telegram which read:
"Engage you month's trial both sides. Take single ticket.
Scale."
"I like that `take single ticket,'" he said to himself as he
sped westwards into Wales, dressed in his usual fluffy tweed suit
and anarchist tie. Upon his knees lay a brand new Hebrew
grammar which he studied diligently all the way to Cardiff, and
still carried in his hands when he changed into the local train
that carried him laboriously into the desolation of the
Pontwaun Mountains. "It looks as though he approved of me
already. My name apparently hasn't put him off as it does most
people. Perhaps, through it, he divines the real me!"
He smoothed down his rebellious hair as he neared the
station in the dusk; but he was surprised to find only a rickety
little cart drawn by a donkey sent to meet him (the house being
five miles distant in the hills), and still more surprised when
a huge figure of a man, hatless, dressed in knickerbockers, and
with a large, floating grey beard, strode down the platform as
he gave up his ticket to the station-master and announced
himself as Mr. Philip Skale. He had expected the small, foxy-
faced individual of his imagination, and the shock momentarily
deprived him of speech.
"Mr. Spinrobin, of course? I am Mr. Skale--Mr. Philip Skale."
The voice can only be described as booming, it was so deep
and vibrating; but the smile of welcome, where it escaped with
difficulty from the network of beard and moustaches, was
winning and almost gentle in contradistinction to the volume
of that authoritative voice. Spinrobin felt slightly bewildered
--caught up into a whirlwind that drove too many impressions
through his brain for any particular one to be seized and
mastered. He found himself shaking hands--Mr. Skale, rather,
shaking his, in a capacious grasp as though it were some small
indiarubber ball to be squeezed and flung away. Mr. Scale flung
it away; he felt the shock up the whole length of his arm to
the shoulder. His first impressions, he declares, he cannot
remember--they were too tumultuous--beyond that he liked both
smile and voice, the former making him feel at home, the
latter filling him to the brim with a peculiar sense of well-
being. Never before had he heard his name pronounced in quite
the same way; it sounded dignified, even splendid, the way Mr.
Skale spoke it. Beyond this general impression, however, he can
only say that his thoughts and feelings "whirled." Something
emanated from this giant clergyman that was somewhat
enveloping and took him off his feet. The keynote of the man
had been struck at once.
"How do you do, sir? This is the train you mentioned, I
think?" Spinrobin heard his own thin voice speaking, by way, as
it were, of instinctive apology that he should have put such a
man to the trouble of coming to meet him. He said "sir," it
seemed unavoidable; for there was nothing of the clergyman
about him--bishop, perhaps, or archbishop, but no suggestion of
vicar or parish priest. Somewhere, too, in his presentment he
felt dimly, even at the first, there was an element of the
incongruous, a meeting of things not usually found together.
The vigorous open-air life of the mountaineer spoke in the
great muscular body with the broad shoulders and clean,
straight limbs; but behind the brusqueness of manner lay the
true gentleness of fine breeding.
And even here, on this platform of the lonely mountain
station, Spinrobin detected the atmosphere of the scholar,
almost of the recluse, shot through with the strange fires that
dropped from the large, lambent, blue eyes. All these things
rushed over the thrilled little secretary with an effect, as
already described, of a certain bewilderment, that left no
single, dominant impression. What remained with him, perhaps,
most vividly, he says, was the quality of the big blue eyes,
their luminosity, their far-seeing expression, their kindliness.
They were the eyes of the true visionary, but in such a
personality they proclaimed the mystic who had retained his
health of soul and body. Mr. Skale was surely a visionary, but
just as surely a wholesome man of action--probably of terrific
action. Spinrobin felt irresistibly drawn to him.
"It is not unpleasant, I trust," the other was saying in his
deep tones, "to find some one to meet you, and," he added with a
genial laugh, "to counteract the first impression of this
somewhat melancholy and inhospitable scenery." His arm swept
out to indicate the dreary little station and the bleak and
lowering landscape of treeless hills in the dusk.
The new secretary made some appropriate reply, his sense of
loneliness already dissipated in part by the unexpected
welcome. And they fell to arrangements about the luggage. "You
won't mind walking," said Mr. Skale, with a finality that
anticipated only agreement. "It's a short five miles. The
donkey-cart will take the portmanteau." Upon which they started
off at a pace that made the little man wonder whether he could
possibly keep it up. "We shall get in before dark," explained
the other, striding along with ease, "and Mrs. Mawle, my
housekeeper, will have tea ready and waiting for us." Spinrobin
followed, panting, thinking vaguely of the other employers he
had known--philanthropists, bankers, ambitious members of
Parliament, and all the rest--commonplace individuals to a
man; and then of the immense and towering figure striding just
ahead, shedding about him this vibrating atmosphere of power
and whirlwind, touched so oddly here and there with a vein of
gentleness that was almost sweetness. Never before had he
known any human being who radiated such vigour, such big and
beneficent fatherliness, yet for all the air of kindliness
something, too, that touched in him the sense of awe. Mr. Skale,
he felt, was a very unusual man.
They went on in the gathering dusk, talking little but easily.
Spinrobin felt "taken care of." Usually he was shy with a new
employer, but this man inspired much too large a sensation in
him to include shyness, or any other form of petty self-
consciousness. He felt more like a son than a secretary. He
remembered the wording of the advertisement, the phrases of
the singular correspondence--and wondered. "A remarkable
personality," he thought to himself as he stumbled through the
dark after the object of his reflections; "simple--yet
tremendous! A giant in all sorts of ways probably----" Then his
thought hesitated, floundered. There was something else he
divined yet could not name. He felt out of his depth in some
entirely new way; in touch with an order of possibilities
larger, more vast, more remote than any dreams his
imagination even had yet envisaged. All this, and more, the
mere presence of this retired clergyman poured into his
receptive and eager little soul.
And very soon it was that these nameless qualities began to
assert themselves, completing the rout of Spinrobin's moderate
powers of judgment. No practical word as to the work before
them, or the duties of the new secretary, had yet passed between
them. They walked along together, chatting as equals,
acquaintances, almost two friends might have done. And on the
top of the hill, after a four-mile trudge, they rested for the
first time, Spinrobin panting and perspiring, trousers tucked up
and splashed yellow with mud; Mr. Skale, legs apart, beard
flattened by the wind about his throat, and thumbs in the slits
of his waistcoat as he looked keenly about him over the
darkening landscape. Treeless and desolate hills rose on all
sides. A few tumbled-down cottages of grey stone lay scattered
upon the lower slopes among patches of shabby and forlorn
cultivation. Here and there an outcrop of rock ran skywards into
sombre and precipitous ridges. The October wind passed to and
fro over it all, mournfully singing, and driving loose clouds
that seemed to drop weighted shadows among the peaks.
III
And it was here that Mr. Skale stopped abruptly, looked about
him, and then down at his companion.
"Bleak and lonely--this great spread of bare mountain and
falling cliff," he observed half to himself, half to the other;
"but fine, very, very fine." He exhaled deeply, then inhaled as
though the great draught of air was profoundly satisfying. He
turned to catch his companion's eye. "There's a savage and
desolate beauty here that uplifts. It helps the mind to dwell
upon the full sweep of life instead of getting dwarfed and lost
among its petty details. Pretty scenery is not good for the
soul." And again he inhaled a prodigious breastful of the
mountain air. "This is."
"But an element of terror in it, perhaps, sir," suggested the
secretary who, truth to tell, preferred his scenery more
smiling, and who, further, had been made suddenly aware that in
this sombre setting of bleak and elemental nature the great
figure of his future employer assumed a certain air of grandeur
that was a little too awe-inspiring to be pleasant.
"In all profound beauty there must be that," the clergyman
was saying; "fine terror, I mean, of course--just enough to
bring out the littleness of man by comparison."
"Perhaps, yes," agreed Spinrobin. His own insignificance
seemed peculiarly apparent at that moment in contrast to Mr.
Skale who had become part and parcel of the rugged landscape.
Spinrobin was a lost atom whirling somewhere outside on his
own account, whereas the other seemed oddly in touch with it,
almost merged and incorporated into it. With those deep
breaths the clergyman absorbed something of this latent power
about them--then gave it out again. It broke over his
companion like a wave. Elemental force of some kind emanated
from that massive human figure beside him.
The wind came tearing up the valley and swept past them with
a rush as of mighty wings. Mr. Skale drew attention to it. "And
listen to that!" he said. "How it leaps, singing, from the woods
in the valley up to those gaunt old cliffs yonder!" He pointed.
His beard blew suddenly across his face. With his bare head and
shaggy flying hair, his big eyes and bold aquiline nose, he
presented an impressive figure. Spinrobin watched him with
growing amazement, aware that an enthusiasm scarcely warranted
by the wind and scenery had passed into his manner. In his own
person, too, he thought he experienced a birth of something
similar--a little wild rush of delight he was unable to account
for. The voice of his companion, pointing out the house in the
valley below, again interrupted his thoughts.
"How the mountains positively eat it up. It lies in their
very jaws," and the secretary's eyes, travelling into the depths,
made out a cluster of grey stone chimneys and a clearing in the
woods that evidently represented lawns. The phrase "courage and
imagination" flashed unbidden into his mind as he realised the
loneliness of the situation, and for the hundredth time he
wondered what in the world could be the experiments with sound
that this extraordinary man pursued in this isolated old
mansion among the hills.
"Buried, sir, rather," he suggested. "I can only just see
it----"
"And inaccessible," Mr. Skale interrupted him. "Hard to get
at. No one comes to disturb; an ideal place for work. In the
hollows of these hills a man may indeed seek truth and pursue
it, for the world does not enter here." He paused a moment. "I
hope, Mr. Spinrobin," he added, turning towards him with that
gentle smile his shaggy visage sometimes wore, "I hope you will
not find it too lonely. We have no visitors, I mean; nothing but
our own little household of four."
Spinrobin smiled back. Even at this stage he admits he was
exceedingly anxious to suit. Mr. Skale, in spite of his marked
peculiarities, inspired him with confidence. His personal
attraction was growing every minute; that vague awe he roused
probably only increased it. He wondered who the "four" might
be.
"There's nothing like solitude for serious work, sir," replied
the younger man, stifling a passing uneasiness.
And with that they plunged down the hill-side into the
valley, Mr. Skale leading the way at a terrific pace, shouting
out instructions and warnings from time to time that echoed
from the rocks as though voices followed them down from the
mountains. The darkness swallowed them, they left the wind
behind; the silence that dwells in the folded hills fell about
their steps; the air grew less keen; the trees multiplied,
gathering them in with fingers of mist and shadow. Only the
clatter of their boots on the rocky path, and the heavy bass of
the clergyman's voice shouting instructions from time to time,
broke the stillness. Spinrobin followed the big dark outline in
front of him as best he could, stumbling frequently. With
countless little hopping steps he dodged along from point to
point, a certain lucky nimbleness in his twinkling feet saving
him from many a tumble.
"All right behind there?" Mr. Skale would thunder.
"All right, thanks, Mr. Skale," he would reply in his thin
tenor, "I'm coming."
"Come along, then!" And on they would go faster than before,
till in due course they emerged from the encircling woods and
reached the more open ground about the house. Somehow, in the
jostling relations of the walk, a freedom of intercourse had
been established that no amount of formal talk between four
walls could have accomplished. They scraped their dirty boots
vigorously on the iron mat.
"Tired?" asked the clergyman, kindly.
"Winded, Mr. Skale, thank you--nothing more," was the reply.
He looked up at the square mass of the house looming dark
against the sky, and the noise his companion made opening the
door--the actual rattle of the iron knob did it--suddenly
brought to him a clear realisation of two things: First, he
understood that the whole way from the station Mr. Skale had
been watching him closely, weighing, testing, proving him,
though by ways and methods so subtle that they had escaped his
observation at the time; secondly, that he was already so
caught in the network of this personality, vaster and more
powerful than his own, that escape if he desired it would be
exceedingly difficult. Like a man in a boat upon the upper
Niagara river, he already felt the tug and suction of the current
below--the lust of a great adventure drawing him forward. Mr.
Skale's hand upon his shoulder as they entered the house was
the symbol of that. The noise of the door closing behind him
was the passing of the last bit of quiet water across which a
landing to the bank might still have been possible.
Faint streamers from the dark, inscrutable house of fear
reached him even then and left their vague, undecipherable
signatures upon the surface of his soul. The forces that
vibrated so strangely in the atmosphere of Mr. Skale were
already playing about his own person, gathering him in like a
garment. Yet while he shuddered, he liked it. Was he not already
losing something of his own insignificant and diminutive self?
IV
The clergyman, meanwhile, had closed the heavy door,
shutting out the darkness, and now led the way across a large,
flagged hall into a room, ablaze with lamp and fire, the walls
lined thickly with books, furnished cosily if plainly. The laden
tea-table, and a kettle hissing merrily on the hob, were
pleasant to look upon, but what instantly arrested the gaze of
the secretary was the face of the old woman in cap and apron--
evidently the housekeeper already referred to as "Mrs." Mawle--
who stood waiting to pour out tea. For about her worn and
wrinkled countenance there lay an indefinable touch of
something that hitherto he had seen only in pictures of the
saints by the old masters. What attracted his attention, and
held it so arrestingly, was this singular expression of
happiness, aye, of more than mere happiness--of joy and peace
and blessed surety, rarely, if ever, seen upon a human face
alive, and only here and there suggested behind that mask of
repose which death leaves so tenderly upon the features of
those few who have lived their lives to noblest advantage.
Spinrobin caught his breath a little, and stared. Aged and
lined as it unquestionably was, he caught that ineffable
suggestion of radiance about it which proclaimed an inner life
that had found itself and was in perfect harmony with outer
things: a life based upon certain knowledge and certain hope. It
wore a gentle whiteness he could find only one word to describe
--glory. And the moment he saw it there flashed across him the
recognition that this was what Mr. Skale also possessed. That
giant, athletic, vigorous man, and this bent, worn old woman
both had it. He wondered with a rush of sudden joy what
produced it;--whether it might perhaps one day be his too. The
flame of his own spirit leapt within him.
And, so wondering, he turned to look at the clergyman. In the
softer light of fire and lamp his face had the appearance of
forty rather than sixty as he had first judged; the eyes, always
luminous, shone with health and enthusiasm; a great air of
youth and vitality glowed about him. It was a fine head with
that dominating nose and the shaggy tangle of hair and beard;
very big, fatherly and protective he looked, a quite
inexpressible air of tenderness mingled in everywhere with the
strength. Spinrobin felt immensely drawn to him as he looked.
With such a leader he could go anywhere, do anything. There,
surely, was a man whose heart was set not upon the things of
this world.
An introduction to the housekeeper interrupted his
reflections; it did not strike him as at all out of the way;
doubtless she was more mother than domestic to the household.
At the name of "Mrs." Mawle (courtesy-title, obviously), he rose
and bowed, and the old woman, looking from one to the other,
smiled becomingly, curtseyed, put her cap straight, and turned
to the teapot again. She said nothing.
"The only servant I have, practically," explained the
clergyman, "cook, butler, housekeeper and tyrant all in one;
and, with her niece, the only other persons in the house besides
ourselves. A very simple mйnage, you see, Mr. Spinrobin. I ought
to warn you, too, by-the-by," he added, "that she is almost
stone deaf, and has only got the use of one arm, as perhaps you
noticed. Her left arm is"--he hesitated for a fraction of a
second--"withered."
A passing wonder as to what the niece would be like
accompanied the swallowing of his buttered toast and tea, but
the personalities of Mr. Skale and his housekeeper had already
produced emotions that prevented this curiosity acquiring much
strength. He could deal with nothing more just yet.
Bewilderment obstructed the way, and in his room before dinner
he tried in vain to sort out the impressions that so thickly
flooded him, though without any conspicuous degree of success.
The walls of his bedroom, like those of corridor and hall, were
bare; the furniture solid and old-fashioned; scanty, perhaps, yet
more than he was accustomed to; and the spaciousness was very
pleasant after the cramped quarters of stuffy London lodgings.
He unpacked his few things, arranged them with neat precision
in the drawers of the tallboy, counted his shirts, socks, and
ties, to see that all was right, and then drew up an arm-chair
and toasted his toes before the comforting fire. He tried to
think of many things, and to decide numerous little questions
roused by the events of the last few hours; but the only thing,
it seems, that really occupied his mind, was the rather
overpowering fact that he was--with Mr. Skale and in Mr. Skale's
house; that he was there on a month's trial; that the nature of
the work in which he was to assist was unknown, immense,
singular; and that he was already being weighed in the balances
by his uncommon and gigantic employer. In his mind he used
this very adjective. There was something about the big
clergyman--titanic.
He was in the middle of a somewhat jumbled consideration
about "Knowledge of Hebrew--tenor voice--courage and
imagination--unworldly," and so forth, when a knock at the door
announced Mrs. Mawle who came to inform him that dinner was
ready. She stood there, a motherly and pleasant figure in black,
and she addressed him in the third person. "If Mr. Spinrobin
will please to come down," she said, "Mr. Skale is waiting. Mr.
Skale is always quite punctual." She always spoke thus, in the
third person; she never used the personal pronoun if it could
be avoided. She preferred the name direct, it seemed. And as
Spinrobin passed her on the way out, she observed further,
looking straight into his eyes as she said it: "and should Mr.
Spinrobin have need of anything, that," indicating it, "is the
bell that rings in the housekeeper's room. Mrs. Mawle can see
it wag, though she can't hear it. Day or night," she added with a
faint curtsey, "and no trouble at all, just as with the other
gentlemen----"
So there had been other gentlemen, other secretaries! He
thanked her with a nod and a smile, and hurried pattering
downstairs in a neat blue suit, black silk socks and a pair of
bright new pumps, Mr. Skale having told him not to dress. The
phrase "day or night," meanwhile, struck him as significant and
peculiar. He remembered it later. At the moment he merely
noted that it added one more to the puzzling items that caused
his bewilderment.
V
Before he had gone very far, however, there came another--
crowningly perplexing. For he was half way down the darkened
passage, making for the hall that glimmered beyond like the
mouth of a cave, when, without the smallest warning, he became
suddenly conscious that something attractive and utterly
delicious had invaded the stream of his being. It came from
nowhere--inexplicably, and at first it took the form of a naked
sensation of delight, keen as a thrill of boyhood days. There
passed into him very swiftly something that satisfied. "I mean,
whatever it was," he says, "I couldn't have asked or wanted more
of it. It was all there, complete, supreme, sufficient." And the
same instant he saw close beside him, in the comparative gloom
of the narrow corridor, a vivid, vibrating picture of a girl's
face, pale as marble, of flower-like beauty, with dark
voluminous hair and large grey eyes that met his own from
behind a wavering net of eyelashes. Down to the shoulders he
saw her.
Erect and motionless she stood against the wall to let him
pass--this slim young girl whose sudden and unexpected
presence had so electrified him. Her eyes followed him like
those of a picture, but she neither bowed nor curtseyed, and the
only movement she made was the slight turning of the head and
eyes as he went by. It was extraordinarily effective, this silent
and delightful introduction, for swift as lightning, and with
lightning's terrific and incalculable surety of aim, she leapt
into his heart with the effect of a blinding and complete
possession.
It was, of course, he realised, the niece--the fourth member
of the household, and the first clear thought to disentangle
itself from the resultant jumble of emotions was his
instinctive wonder what her name might be. How was this
delightful apparition called? This was the question that ran and
danced in his blood. In another minute he felt sure he would
discover it. It must begin (he felt sure of that) with an M.
He did not pause, or alter his pace. He made no sign of
recognition. Their eyes swallowed each other for a brief
moment as he passed--and then he was pattering with quick,
excited steps down the passage beyond, and the girl was left out
of sight in the shadows behind him. He did not even turn back
to look, for in some amazing sense she seemed to move on
beside him, as though some portion of her had merged into his
being. He carried her on with him. Some sweet and marvellous
interchange they had undergone together. He felt strangely
blessed, soothed inwardly, made complete, and more than twice
on the way down the name he knew must belong to her almost
sprang up and revealed itself--yet never quite. He knew it began
with M, even with Mir--but could get nothing more. The rest
evaded him. He divined only a portion of the name. He had seen
only a portion of her form.
The first syllable, however, sang in him with an exquisitely
sweet authority. He was aware of some glorious new thing in the
penetralia of his little spirit, vibrating with happiness. Some
portion of himself sang with it. "For it really did vibrate," he
said, "and no other word describes it. It vibrated like music,
like a string; as though when I passed her she had taken a bow
and drawn it across the strings of my inmost being to make
them sing. . . ."
"Come," broke in the sonorous voice of the clergyman whom
he found standing in the hall; "I've been waiting for you."
It was said, not complainingly nor with any idea of fault-
finding, but rather--both tone and manner betrayed it--as a
prelude to something of importance about to follow. Somewhat
impatiently Mr. Skale took his companion by the arm and led
him forwards; on the stone floor Spinrobin's footsteps sounded
light and dancing, like a child's. The clergyman strode. At the
dining-room door he stopped, turning abruptly, and at the same
instant the figure of the young girl glided noiselessly towards
them from the mouth of the dark corridor where she had been
waiting.
Her entry, again, was curiously effective; like a beautiful
thought in a dream she moved into the hall, and into
Spinrobin's life. Moreover, as she came wholly into view in the
light, he felt, as positively as though he heard it uttered, that
he knew her name complete. The first syllable had come to him
in the passage-way when he saw her partly, and the feeling of
dread that "Mir----" might prove to be part of "Miranda,"
"Myrtle," or some other enormity, passed instantly. These would
only have been gross and cruel misnomers. Her right name--the
only one that described her soul--must end, as it began, with M.
It flashed into his mind, and at the same moment Mr. Skale
picked it off his very lips.
"Miriam," he said in deep tones, rolling the name along his
mouth so as to extract every shade of sound belonging to it,
"this is Mr. Spinrobin about whom I told you. He is coming, I
hope, to help us."
VI
At first Spinrobin was only aware of the keen delight
produced in him by the manner of Skale's uttering her name,
for it entered his consciousness with a murmuring, singing
sound that continued on in his thoughts like a melody. His
racing blood carried it to every portion of his body. He heard
her name, not with his ears alone but with his whole person--a
melodious, haunting phrase of music that thrilled him
exquisitely. Next, he knew that she stood close before him,
shaking his hand, and looking straight into his eyes with an
expression of the most complete trust and sympathy
imaginable, and that he felt a well-nigh irresistible desire to
draw her yet closer to him and kiss her little shining face.
Thirdly--though the three impressions were as a matter of fact
almost simultaneous--that the huge figure of the clergyman
stood behind them, watching with the utmost intentness and
interest, like a keen and alert detective eager for some
betrayal of evidence, inspired, however, not by mistrust, but by
a very zealous sympathy.
He understood that this meeting was of paramount importance
in Mr. Skale's purpose.
"How do you do, Mr. Spinrobin," he heard a soft voice saying,
and the commonplace phrase served to bring him back to a more
normal standard of things. But the tone in which she said it
caused him a second thrill almost more delightful than the
first, for the quality was low and fluty, like the gentle note of
some mellow wind instrument, and the caressing way she
pronounced his name was a revelation. Mr. Skale had known how
to make it sound dignified, but this girl did more--she made it
sound alive. "I will give thee a new name" flashed into his
thoughts, as some memory-cell of boyhood discharged its little
burden most opportunely and proceeded to refill itself.
The smile of happiness that broke over Spinrobin's face was
certainly reflected in the eyes that gazed so searchingly into
his own, without the smallest sign of immodesty, yet without
the least inclination to drop the eyelids. The two natures ran
out to meet each other as naturally as two notes of music run
to take their places in a chord. This slight, blue-eyed youth,
light of hair and sensitive of spirit, and this slim, dark-
skinned little maiden, with the voice of music and the wide-
open grey eyes, understood one another from the very first
instant their atmospheres touched and mingled; and the big
Skale, looking on intently over their very shoulders, saw that
it was good and smiled down upon them, too, in his turn.
"The harmony of souls and voices is complete," he said, but
in so low a tone that the secretary did not hear it. Then, with
a hand on a shoulder of each, he half pushed them before him
into the dining-room, his whole face running, as it were, into a
single big smile of contentment. The important event had
turned out to his entire satisfaction. He looked like some
beneficent father, well pleased with his two children.
But Spinrobin, as he moved beside the girl and heard the
rustle of her dress that almost touched him, felt as though he
stood upon a sliding platform that was moving ever quicker, and
that the adventure upon which he was embarked had now acquired
a momentum that nothing he could do would ever stop. And he
liked it. It would carry him out of himself into something very
big. . . .
And at dinner, where he sat opposite to the girl and studied
her face closely, Mr. Skale, he was soon aware, was occupied in
studying the two of them even more closely. He appeared always
to be listening to their voices. They spoke little enough,
however, only their eyes met continually, and when they did so
there was no evidence of a desire to withdraw. Their gaze
remained fastened on one another, on her part without shyness,
without impudence on his. That Mr. Skale wished for them an
intimate and even affectionate understanding was evident, and
the secretary warmed to him on that account more than ever, if
on no other.
It surprised him too--when he thought of it, which was rarely
--that a girl who was perforce of humble origin could carry
herself with an air of such complete and natural distinction,
and prove herself so absolutely "the lady." For there was
something about her of greater value than any mere earthly
rank or class could confer; her spirit was in its very essence
distinguished, perfectly simple, yet strong with a great and
natural pride. It never occurred to her soul to doubt its own
great value--or to question that of others. She somehow or
other made the little secretary feel of great account. He had
never quite realised his own value before. Her presence, her
eyes, her voice served to bring it out. And a very curious detail
that he always mentions just at this point is the fact that it
never occurred to him to wonder what her surname might be, or
whether, indeed, she had one at all. Her name, Miriam, seemed
sufficient. The rest of her--if there was any other part of her
not described by those three syllables--lay safely and
naturally included somewhere in his own name. "Spinrobin"
described her as well as himself. But "Miriam" completed his
own personality and at the same time extended it. He felt all
wrapped up and at peace with her. With Philip Skale, Mrs. Mawle
and Miriam, he, Robert Spinrobin, felt that he naturally
belonged as "one of the family." They were like the four notes
in the chord: Skale, the great bass; Mawle, the mellow alto;
himself and Miriam, respectively, the echoing tenor and the
singing soprano. The imagery by which, in the depths of his
mind, he sought to interpret to himself the whole singular
business ran, it seems, even then to music and the analogies of
music.
The meal was short and very simple. Mrs. Mawle carved the
joint at the end of the table, handed the vegetables and looked
after their wants with the precision of long habit. Her skill, in
spite of the withered arm, was noteworthy. They talked little,
Mr. Skale hardly at all. Miriam spoke from time to time across
the table to the secretary. She did not ask questions, she
stated facts, as though she already knew all about his feelings
and tastes. She may have been twenty years of age, perhaps, but
in some way she took him back to childhood. And she said
things with the simple audacity of a child, ignoring Mr. Skale's
presence. It seemed to the secretary as if he had always known
her.
"I knew just how you would look," she said, without a trace of
shyness, "the moment I heard your name. And you got my name
very quickly, too?"
"Only part of it, at first----"
"Oh yes; but when you saw me completely you got it all," she
interrupted. "And I like your name," she added, looking him full
in the eye with her soft grey orbs; "it tells everything."
"So does yours, you know."
"Oh, of course," she laughed; "Mr. Skale gave it to me the day
I was born."
"I heard it," put in the clergyman, speaking almost for the
first time. And the talk dropped again, the secretary's head
fairly whirling.
"You used it all, of course, as a little boy," she said
presently again; "names, I mean?"
"Rather," he replied without hesitation; "only I've rather
lost it since----"
"It will come back to you here. It's so splendid, all this
world of sound, and makes everything seem worth while. But you
lose your way at first, of course; especially if you are out of
practice, as you must be."
Spinrobin did not know what to say. To hear this young girl
make use of such language took his breath away. He became aware
that she was talking with a purpose, seconding Mr. Skale in the
secret examination to which the clergyman was all the time
subjecting him. Yet there was no element of alarm in it all. In
the room with these two, and with the motherly figure of the
housekeeper busying about to and fro, he felt at home,
comforted, looked after--more even, he felt at his best; as
though the stream of his little life were mingling in with a
much bigger and worthier river, a river, moreover, in flood. But
it was the imagery of music again that most readily occurred to
him. He felt that the note of his own little personality had
been caught up into the comforting bosom of a complete
chord. . . .
VII
"Mr. Spinrobin," suddenly sounded soft and low across the
table, and, thrilled to hear the girl speak his name, he looked
up quickly and found her very wide-opened eyes peering into his.
Her face was thrust forward a little as she leaned over the
table in his direction.
As he gazed she repeated his name, leisurely, quietly, and
even more softly than before: "Mr. Spinrobin." But this time,
as their eyes met and the syllables issued from her lips, he
noticed that a singular after-sound--an exceedingly soft yet
vibrant overtone--accompanied it. The syllables set something
quivering within him, something that sang, running of its own
accord into a melody to which his rising pulses beat time and
tune.
"Now, please, speak my name," she added. "Please look
straight at me, straight into my eyes, and pronounce my name."
His lips trembled, if ever so slightly, as he obeyed.
"Miriam . . ." he said.
"Pronounce each syllable very distinctly and very slowly,"
she said, her grey eyes all over his burning face.
"Mir . . . i . . . am," he repeated, looking in the centre of
the eyes without flinching, and becoming instantly aware that
his utterance of the name produced in himself a development
and extension of the original overtones awakened by her
speaking of his own name. It was wonderful . . . exquisite . . .
delicious. He uttered it again, and then heard that she, too, was
uttering his at the same moment. Each spoke the other's name.
He could have sworn he heard the music within him leap across
the intervening space and transfer itself to her . . . and that
he heard his own name singing, too, in her blood.
For the names were true. By this soft intoning utterance
they seemed to pass mutually into the secret rhythm of that
Eternal Principle of Speech which exists behind the spoken
sound and is independent of its means of manifestation. Their
central beings, screened and limited behind their names, knew
an instant of synchronous rhythmical vibration. It was their
introduction absolute to one another, for it was an instant of
naked revelation.
"Spinrobin. . . ."
"Miriam. . . ."
VIII
. . . A great volume of sound suddenly enveloped and caught
away the two singing names, and the spell was broken. Miriam
dropped her eyes; Spinrobin looked up. It was Mr. Skale's voice
upon them with a shout.
"Splendid! splendid!" he cried; "your voices, like your names,
are made for one another, in quality, pitch, accent, everything."
He was enthusiastic rather than excited; but to Spinrobin,
taking part in this astonishing performance, to which the other
two alone held the key, it all seemed too perplexing for words.
The great bass crashed and boomed for a moment about his ears;
then came silence. The test, or whatever it was, was over. It
had been successful.
Mr. Skale, his face still shining with enthusiasm, turned
towards him. Miriam, equally happy, watched, her hands folded
in her lap.
"My dear fellow," exclaimed the clergyman, half rising in his
chair, "how mad you must think us! How mad you must think us!
I can only assure you that when you know more, as you soon
shall, you will understand the importance of what has just
taken place. . . ."
He said a good deal more that Spinrobin did not apparently
quite take in. He was too bewildered. His eyes sought the girl
where she sat opposite, gazing at him. For all its pallor, her
face was tenderly soft and beautiful; more pure and undefiled,
he thought, than any human countenance he had ever seen, and
sweet as the face of a child. Utterly unstained it was. A similar
light shone in the faces of Skale and Mrs. Mawle. In their case
it had forged its way through the more or less defiling garment
of a worn and experienced flesh. But the light in Miriam's eyes
and skin was there because it had never been extinguished. She
had retained her pristine brilliance of soul. Through the little
spirit of the perplexed secretary ran a thrill of genuine
worship and adoration.
"Mr. Skale's coffee is served in the library," announced the
voice of the housekeeper abruptly behind them; and when
Spinrobin turned again he discovered that Miriam had slipped
from the room unobserved and was gone.
Mr. Skale took his companion's arm and led the way towards
the hall.
"I am glad you love her," was his astonishing remark. "It is
the first and most essential condition of your suiting me."
"She is delightful, wonderful, charming, sir----"
"Not `sir,' if you please," replied the clergyman, standing
aside at the threshold for his guest to pass; "I prefer the use
of the name, you know. I think it is important."
And he closed the library door behind them.
I
FOR some minutes they sat in front of the fire and sipped their
coffee in silence. The secretary felt that the sliding platform
on which he was travelling into this extraordinary adventure
had been going a little too fast for him. Events had crowded
past before he had time to look squarely at them. He had lost
his bearings rather, routed by Miriam's beauty and by the
amazing way she talked to him. Had she lived always inside his
thoughts she could not have chosen words better calculated to
convince him that they were utterly in sympathy one with the
other. Mr. Skale, moreover, approved heartily. The one thing
Spinrobin saw clearly through it all was that himself and
Miriam--their voices, rather--were necessary for the success of
the clergyman's mysterious experiments. Only, while Miriam,
little witch, knew all about it, he, candidate on trial, knew as
yet--nothing.
And now, as they sat opposite one another in the privacy of
the library, Spinrobin, full of confidence and for once proud of
his name and personality, looked forward to being taken more
into the heart of the affair. Things advanced, however, more
slowly than he desired. Mr. Skale's scheme was too big to be
hurried.
The clergyman did not smoke, but his companion, with the
other's ready permission, puffed gently at a small cigarette.
Short, rapid puffs he took, as though the smoke was afraid to
enter beyond the front teeth, and with one finger he incessantly
knocked off the ashes into his saucer, even when none were there
to fall. On the table behind them gurgled the shaded lamp,
lighting their faces from the eyes downwards.
"Now," said Mr. Skale, evidently not aware that he thundered,
"we can talk quietly and undisturbed." He caught his beard in a
capacious hand, in such a way that the square outline of his
chin showed through the hair. His voice boomed musically,
filling the room. Spinrobin listened acutely, afraid even to
cross his legs. A genuine pronouncement, he felt, was coming.
"A good many years ago, Mr. Spinrobin," he said simply, "when
I was a curate of a country parish in Norfolk, I made a
discovery--of a revolutionary description--a discovery in the
world of real things, that is, of spiritual things."
He gazed fixedly over the clutched beard at his companion,
apparently searching for brief, intelligible phrases. "But a
discovery, the development of which I was obliged to put on one
side until I inherited with this property the means and leisure
which enabled me to continue my terrific--I say purposely
terrific--researches. For some years now I have been quietly at
work here absorbed in my immense pursuit." And again he
stopped. "I have reached a point, Mr. Spinrobin----"
"Yes," interjected the secretary, as though the mention of
his name touched a button and produced a sound. "A point----?"
"Where I need the assistance of some one with a definite
quality of voice--a man who emits a certain note--a certain
tenor note." He released his beard, so that it flew out with a
spring, at the same moment thrusting his head forward to drive
home the announcement effectively.
Spinrobin crossed his legs with a fluttering motion, hastily.
"As you advertised," he suggested.
The clergyman bowed.
"My efforts to find the right man," continued the enthusiast,
leaning back in his chair, "have now lasted a year. I have had a
dozen men down here, each on a month's trial. None of them
suited. None had the requisite quality of voice. With a single
exception, none of them could stand the loneliness, the
seclusion; and without exception, all of them were too worldly
to make sacrifices. It was the salary they wanted. The majority,
moreover, confused imagination with fancy, and courage with
mere audacity. And, most serious of all, not one of them passed
the test of--Miriam. She harmonised with none of them. They
were discords one and all. You, Mr. Spinrobin, are the first to
win acceptance. The instant she heard your name she cried for
you. And she knows. She sings the soprano. She took you into
the chord."
"I hope indeed----" stammered the flustered and puzzled
secretary, and then stopped, blushing absurdly. "You claim for
me far more than I should dare to claim for myself," he added.
The reference to Miriam delighted him, and utterly destroyed
his judgment. He longed to thank the girl for having approved
him. "I'm glad my voice--er--suits your--chord." In his heart
of hearts he understood something of what Mr. Skale was driving
at, yet was half-ashamed to admit it even to himself. In this
twentieth century it all seemed so romantic, mystical, and
absurd. He felt it was all half-true. If only he could have run
back into that great "mental prairie" of his boyhood days it
might all have been quite true.
"Precisely," continued Mr. Skale, bringing him back to
reality, "precisely. And now, before I tell you more, you will
forgive my asking you one or two personal questions, I'm sure.
We must build securely as we go, leaving nothing to chance. The
grandeur and importance of my experiments demand it.
Afterwards," and his expression changed to a sudden softness in
a way that was characteristic of the man, "you must feel free to
put similar questions to me, as personal and direct as you
please. I wish to establish a perfect frankness between us at
the start."
"Thank you, Mr. Skale. Of course--er--should anything occur
to me to ask----" A momentary bewilderment, caused by the
great visage so close to his own, prevented the completion of
the sentence.
"As to your beliefs, for instance," the clergyman resumed
abruptly, "your religious beliefs, I mean. I must be sure of you
on that ground. What are you?"
"Nothing--I think," Spinrobin replied without hesitation,
remembering how his soul had bounced its way among the
various creeds since Cambridge, and arrived at its present state
of Belief in Everything, yet without any definite label.
"Nothing in particular. Nominally, though--a Christian."
"You believe in a God?"
"A Supreme Intelligence, most certainly," was the emphatic
reply.
"And spirits?"
Spinrobin hesitated. He was a very honest soul.
"Other life, let me put it," the clergyman helped him;
"other beings besides ourselves?"
"I have often felt--wondered, rather," he answered carefully,
"whether there might not be other systems of evolution besides
humanity. Such extraordinary Forces come blundering into one's
life sometimes, and one can't help wondering where they come
from. I have never formulated any definite beliefs, however----"
"Your world is not a blind chaos, I mean?" Mr. Skale put
gravely to him, as though questioning a child.
"No, no, indeed. There's order and system----"
"In which you personally count for something of value?"
asked the other quickly.
"I like to think so," was the apologetic reply. "There's
something that includes me somewhere in a purpose of very
great importance--only, of course, I've got to do my part,
and----"
"Good," Mr. Skale interrupted him. "And now," he asked softly,
after a moment's pause, leaning forward, "what about death? Are
you afraid of death?"
Spinrobin started visibly. He began to wonder where this
extraordinary catechism was going to lead. But he answered at
once: he had thought out these things and knew where he stood.
"Only of its possible pain," he said, smiling into the
bearded visage before him. "And an immense curiosity, of
course----"
"It does not mean extinction for you--going out like the
flame of a candle, for instance?"
"I have never been able to believe that, Mr. Skale. I continue
somewhere and somehow--for ever."
The cross-examination puzzled him more and more, and
through it, for the first time, he began to feel dimly, ran a
certain strain of something not quite right, not permissible in
the biggest sense. It was not the questions themselves that
produced this odd and rather disquieting impression, but the
fact that Mr. Skale was preparing the ground with such
extraordinary thoroughness. This conversation was the first
swell, as it were, rolling mysteriously in upon him from the
ocean in whose deeps the great Experiment lay buried. Forces,
tidal in strength, oceanic in volume, shrouded it just now, but
he already felt them. They reached him through the person of
the clergyman. It was these forces playing through his
personality that Spinrobin had been aware of the first moment
they met on the station platform, and had "sensed" even more
strongly during the walk home across the mountains.
Behind the play of these darker impressions, as yet only
vague and ambiguous, there ran in and out among his thoughts
the vein of something much sweeter. Miriam, with her large grey
eyes and silvery voice, was continually peeping in upon his
mind. He wondered where she was and what she was doing in the
big, lonely house. He wished she could have been in the room to
hear his answers and approve them. He felt incomplete without
her. Already he thought of her as the melody to which he was
the accompaniment, two things that ought not to be separated.
"My point is," Mr. Skale continued, "that, apart from ordinary
human ties, and so forth, you have no intrinsic terror of death
--of losing your present body?"
"No, no," was the reply, more faintly given than the rest. "I
love my life, but--but----" he looked about him in some
confusion for the right words, still thinking of Miriam--"but I
look forward, Mr. Skale; I look forward." He dropped back into
the depths of his arm-chair and puffed swiftly at the end of his
extinguished cigarette, oblivious of the fact that no smoke
came.
"The attitude of a brave man," said the clergyman with
approval. Then, looking straight into the secretary's blue eyes,
he added with increased gravity: "And therefore it would not be
immoral of me to expose you to an experiment in which the
penalty of a slip would be--death? Or you would not shrink from
it yourself, provided the knowledge to be obtained seemed worth
while?"
"That's right, sir--Mr. Skale, I mean; that's right," came the
answer after an imperceptible pause.
The result of the talk seemed to satisfy the clergyman. "You
must think my questions very peculiar," he said, the sternness
of his face relaxing a little, "but it was necessary to
understand your exact position before proceeding further. The
gravity of my undertaking demands it. However, you must not let
my words alarm you." He waited a moment, reflecting deeply.
"You must regard them, if you will, as a kind of test," he
resumed, searching his companion's face with eagle eyes, "the
beginning of a series of tests in which your attitude to Miriam
and hers to you, so far as that goes, was the first."
"Oh, that's all right, Mr. Skale," was his inadequate
rejoinder; for the moment the name of the girl was introduced
his thoughts instantly wandered out to find her. The way the
clergyman pronounced it increased its power, too, for no name
he uttered sounded ordinary. There seemed a curious mingling in
the resonant cavity of his great mouth of the fundamental note
and the overtones.
"Yes, you have the kind of courage that is necessary," Mr.
Skale was saying, half to himself, "the modesty that forgets
self, and the unworldly attitude that is essential. With your
help I may encompass success; and I consider myself
wonderfully fortunate to have found you, wonderfully
fortunate. . . ."
"I'm glad," murmured Spinrobin, thinking that so far he had
not learned anything very definite about his duties, or what it
was he had to do to earn so substantial a salary. Truth to tell,
he did not bother much about that part of it. He was conscious
only of three main desires: to pass the unknown tests, to learn
the nature of Mr. Skale's discovery, with the experiment
involved, and--to be with Miriam as much as possible. The
whole affair was so unusual that he had already lost the
common standards of judging. He let the sliding platform take
him where it would, and he flattered himself that he was not
fool enough to mistake originality for insanity. The clergyman,
dreamer and enthusiast though he might be, was as sane as other
men, saner than most.
"I hope to lead you little by little to what I have in view,"
Mr. Skale went on, "so that at the end of our trial month you
will have learned enough to enable you to form a decision, yet
not enough to--to use my knowledge should you choose to return
to the world."
It was very frank, but the secretary did not feel offended. He
accepted the explanation as perfectly reasonable. In his mind
he knew full well what his choice would be. This was the
supreme adventure he had been so long a-seeking. No ordinary
obstacle could prevent his accepting it.
II
There came a pause of some length, in which Spinrobin found
nothing particular to say. The lamp gurgled; the coals fell
softly into the fender. Then suddenly Mr. Skale rose and stood
with his back to the grate. He gazed down upon the small figure
in the chair. He towered there, a kindly giant, enthusiasm
burning in his eyes like lamps. His voice was very deep, his
manner more solemn than before when he spoke.
"So far, so good," he said, "and now, with your permission,
Mr. Spinrobin, I should like to go a step further. I should like
to take--your note."
"My note?" exclaimed the other, thinking he had not heard
correctly.
"Your sound, yes," repeated the clergyman.
"My sound!" piped the little man, vastly puzzled, his voice
shrill with excitement. He dodged about in the depths of his
big leather chair, as though movement might bring explanation.
Mr. Skale watched him calmly. "I want to get the vibrations
of your voice, and then see what pattern they produce in the
sand," he said.
"Oh, in the sand, yes; quite so," replied the secretary. He
remembered how the vibrations of an elastic membrane can
throw dry sand, loosely scattered upon its surface, into various
floral and geometrical figures. Chladni's figures, he seemed to
remember, they were called after their discoverer. But Mr.
Skale's purpose in the main, of course, escaped him.
"You don't object?"
"On the contrary, I am greatly interested." He stood up on
the mat beside his employer.
"I wish to make quite sure," the clergyman added gravely,
"that your voice, your note, is what I think it is--accurately in
harmony with mine and Miriam's and Mrs. Mawle's. The pattern
it makes will help to prove this."
The secretary bowed in perplexed silence, while Mr. Skale
crossed the room and took a violin from its case. The golden
varnish of its ribs and back gleamed in the lamplight, and when
the clergyman drew the bow across the strings to tune it,
smooth, mellow sounds, soft and resonant as bells, filled the
room. Evidently he knew how to handle the instrument. The
notes died away in a murmur.
"A Guarnerius," he explained, "and a perfect pedigree
specimen; it has the most sensitive structure imaginable, and
carries vibrations almost like a human nerve. For instance,
while I speak," he added, laying the violin upon his companion's
hand, "you will feel the vibrations of my voice run through the
wood into your palm."
"I do," said Spinrobin. It trembled like a living thing.
"Now," continued Mr. Skale, after a pause, "what I first want
is to receive the vibrations of your own voice in the same way
--into my very pulses. Kindly read aloud steadily while I hold
it. Stop reading when I make a sign. I'll nod, so that the
vibrations of my voice won't interfere." And he handed a note-
book to him with quotations entered neatly in his own
handwriting, selected evidently with a purpose, and all dealing
with sound, music, as organised sound, and names. Spinrobin
read aloud; the first quotation from Meredith he recognised, but
the others, and the last one, discussing names, were new to
him:--
But listen in the thought; so may there come
Conception of a newly-added chord,
Commanding space beyond where ear has home.
------
Everything that the sun shines upon sings or can be made to
sing, and can be heard to sing. Gases, impalpable powders, and
woollen stuffs, in common with other non-conductors of sound,
give forth notes of different pitches when played upon by an
intermittent beam of white light. Coloured stuffs will sing in
lights of different colours, but refuse to sing in others. The
polarization of light being now accomplished, light and sound
are known to be alike. Flames have a modulated voice and can be
made to sing a definite melody. Wood, stone, metal, skins,
fibres, membranes, every rapidly vibrating substance, all have
in them the potentialities of musical sound.
------
Radium receives its energy from, and responds to, radiations
which traverse all space--as piano strings respond to sounds in
unison with their notes. Space is all a-quiver with waves of
radiant energy. We vibrate in sympathy with a few strings here
and there--with the tiny X-rays, actinic rays, light waves, heat
waves, and the huge electro-magnetic waves of Hertz and
Marconi; but there are great spaces, numberless radiations, to
which we are stone deaf. Some day, a thousand years hence, we
shall know the full sweep of this magnificent harmony.
------
Everything in nature has its name, and he who has the power
to call a thing by its proper name can make it subservient to
his will; for its proper name is not the arbitrary name given
to it by man, but the expression of the totality of its powers
and attributes, because the powers and attributes of each Being
are intimately connected with its means of expression, and
between both exists the most exact proportion in regard to
measure, time, and condition.
The meaning of the four quotations, as he read them, plunged
down into him and touched inner chords very close to his own
beliefs. Something of his own soul, therefore, passed into his
voice as he read. He read, that is to say, with authority.
A nod from Mr. Skale stopped him just as he was beginning a
fifth passage. Raising the vibrating instrument to his ear, the
clergyman first listened a moment intently. Then he quickly
had it under his chin, beard flowing over it like water, and the
bow singing across the strings. The note he played--he drew it
out with that whipping motion of the bow only possible to a
loving expert--was soft and beautiful, long drawn out with a
sweet singing quality. He took it on the G string with the
second finger--in the "fourth position." It thrilled through
him, Spinrobin declares, most curiously and delightfully. It
made him happy to hear it. It was very similar to the singing
vibrations he had experienced when Miriam gazed into his eyes
and spoke his name.
"Thank you," said Mr. Skale, and laid the violin down again.
"I've got the note. You're E flat."
"E flat!" gasped Spinrobin, not sure whether he was pleased
or disappointed.
"That's your sound, yes. You're E flat--just as I thought,
just as I hoped. You fit in exactly. It seems too good to be
true!" His voice began to boom again, as it always did when he
was moved. He was striding about, very alert, very masterful,
pushing the furniture out of his way, his eyes more luminous
than ever. "It's magnificent." He stopped abruptly and looked
at the secretary with a gaze so enveloping that Spinrobin for
an instant lost his bearings altogether. "It means, my dear
Spinrobin," he said slowly, with a touch of solemnity that woke
an involuntary shiver deep in his listener's being, "that you
are destined to play a part, and an important part, in one of
the grandest experiments ever dreamed of by the heart of man.
For the first time since my researches began twenty years ago I
now see the end in sight."
"Mr. Skale--that is something--indeed," was all the little
man could find to say.
There was no reason he could point to why the words should
have produced a sense of chill about his heart. It was only that
he felt again the huge ground-swell of this vast unknown
experiment surging against him, lifting him from his feet--as a
man might feel the Atlantic swells rise with him towards the
stars before they engulfed him for ever. It seemed getting a
trifle out of hand, this adventure. Yet it was what he had always
longed for, and his courage must hold firm. Besides, Miriam was
involved in it with him. What could he ask better than to risk
his insignificant personality in some gigantic, mad attempt to
plumb the Unknown, with that slender, little pale-faced Beauty
by his side? The wave of Mr. Skale's enthusiasm swept him away
deliciously.
"And now," he cried, "we'll get your Pattern too. I no longer
have any doubts, but none the less it will be a satisfaction to
us both to see it. It must, I'm sure, harmonise with ours; it
must!"
He opened a cupboard drawer and produced a thin sheet of
glass, upon which he next poured some finely powdered sand out
of a paper bag. It rattled, dry and faint, upon the smooth, hard
surface. And while he did this, he talked rapidly, boomingly,
with immense enthusiasm.
"All sounds," he said, half to himself; half to the
astonished secretary, "create their own patterns. Sound builds;
sound destroys; and invisible sound-vibrations affect concrete
matter. For all sounds produce forms--the forms that
correspond to them, as you shall now see. Within every form
lies the silent sound that first called it into view--into
visible shape--into being. Forms, shapes, bodies are the
vibratory activities of sound made visible."
"My goodness!" exclaimed Spinrobin, who was listening like a
man in a dream, but who caught the violence of the clergyman's
idea none the less.
"Forms and bodies are--solidified Sound," cried the
clergyman in italics.
"You say something extraordinary," exclaimed the
commonplace Spinrobin in his shrill voice. "Marvellous!"
Vaguely he seemed to remember that Schelling had called
architecture "frozen music."
Mr. Skale turned and looked at him as a god might look at an
insect--that he loved.
"Sound, Mr. Spinrobin," he said, with a sudden and effective
lowering of his booming voice, "is the original divine
impulsion behind nature--communicated to language. It is--
creative!"
Then, leaving the secretary with this nut of condensed
knowledge to crack as best he could, the clergyman went to the
end of the room in three strides. He busied himself for a
moment with something upon the wall; then he suddenly turned,
his great face aglow, his huge form erect, fixing his burning
eyes upon his distracted companion.
"In the Beginning," he boomed solemnly, in tones of profound
conviction, "was--the Word." He paused a moment, and then
continued, his voice filling the room to the very ceiling. "At
the Word of God--at the thunder of the Voice of God, worlds
leaped into being!" Again he paused. "Sound," he went on, the
whole force of his great personality in the phrase, "was the
primordial, creative energy. A sound can call a form into
existence. Forms are the Sound-Figures of archetypal forces--
the Word made Flesh." He stopped, and moved with great soft
strides about the room.
Spinrobin caught the words full in the face. For a space he
could not measure--considerably less than a second, probably--
the consciousness of something unutterably immense,
unutterably flaming, rushed tumultuously through his mind,
with wings that bore his imagination to a place where light was
--dazzling, white beyond words. He felt himself tossed up to
Heaven on the waves of a great sea, as the body of strange
belief behind the clergyman's words poured through him. . . .
For somewhere, behind the incoherence of the passionate
language, burned the blaze of a true thought at white heat--
could he but grasp it through the stammering utterance.
Then, with equal swiftness, it passed. His present
surroundings came back. He dropped with a dizzy rush from awful
spaces . . . and was aware that he was merely--standing on the
black, woolly mat before the fire watching the movements of
his new employer, that his pumps were bright and pointed, his
head just level with a dark marble mantelpiece. Dazed, and a
trifle breathless he felt; and at the back of his disordered
mind stirred a schoolboy's memory that the Pythagoreans
believed the universe to have been called out of chaos by Sound,
Number, and Harmony--or something to that effect. . . . But
these huge, fugitive thoughts that tore through him refused to
be seized and dealt with. He staggered a little, mentally; then,
with a prodigious effort, controlled himself--and watched.
III
Mr. Skale, he saw, had fastened the little sheet of glass by
its four corners to silken strings hanging from the ceiling. The
glass plate hung, motionless and horizontal, in the air with its
freight of sand. For several minutes the clergyman played a
series of beautiful modulations in double-stopping upon the
violin. In these the dominating influence was E flat. Spinrobin
was not musical enough to describe it more accurately than
this. Only, with greater skill than he knows, he mentions how
Skale drew out of that fiddle the peculiarly intimate and
searching tones by which strings can reach the spiritual centre
of a man and make him respond to delicate vibrations of
thoughts beyond his normal gamut. . . .
Spinrobin, listening, understood that he was a greater man
than he knew. . . .
And the sand on the glass sheet, he next became aware, was
shifting, moving, dancing. He heard the tiny hissing and
rattling of the dry grains. It was uncommonly weird. This
visible and practical result made the clergyman's astonishing
words seem true and convincing. That moving sand brought
sanity, yet a certain curious terror of the unknown into it all.
A minute later Mr. Skale stopped playing and beckoned to
him.
"See," he said quietly, pointing to the arrangement the
particles of sand had assumed under the influence of the
vibrations. "There's your pattern--your sound made visible.
That's your utterance--the Note you substantially represent and
body forth in terms of matter."
The secretary stared. It was a charming but very simple
pattern the lines of sand had assumed, not unlike the fronds of
a delicate fern growing out of several small circles round the
base.
"So that's my note--made visible!" he exclaimed under his
breath. "It's delightful; it's quite exquisite."
"That's E flat," returned Mr. Skale in a whisper, so as not to
disturb the pattern; "if I altered the note, the pattern would
alter too. E natural, for instance, would be different. Only,
luckily, you are E flat--just the note we want. And now," he
continued, straightening himself up to his full height, "come
over and see mine and Miriam's and Mrs. Mawle's, and you'll
understand what I meant when I said that yours would
harmonize." And in a glass case across the room they examined
a number of square sheets of glass with sand upon them in
various patterns, all rendered permanent by a thin coating of a
glue-like transparent substance that held the particles in
position.
"There you see mine and Miriam's and Mrs. Mawle's," he said,
stooping to look. "They harmonize most beautifully, you
observe, with your own."
It was, indeed, a singular and remarkable thing. The patterns,
though all different, yet combined in some subtle fashion
impossible of analysis to form a complete and well-
proportioned Whole--a design--a picture. The patterns of the
clergyman and the housekeeper provided the base and foreground,
those of Miriam and the secretary the delicate superstructure.
The girl's pattern, he noted with a subtle pleasure, was
curiously similar to his own, but far more delicate and waving.
Yet, whereas his was floral, hers was stellar in character; that
of the housekeeper was spiral, and Mr. Skale's he could only
describe as a miniature whirlwind of very exquisite design
rising out of apparently three separate centres of motion.
"If I could paint over them the colour each shade of sound
represents," Mr. Skale resumed, "the tint of each timbre, or
Klangfarbe, as the Germans call it, you would see better still
how we are all grouped together there into a complete and
harmonious whole."
Spinrobin looked from the patterns to his companion's great
face bending there beside him. Then he looked back again at the
patterns. He could think of nothing quite intelligible to say.
He noticed more clearly every minute that these dainty shapes
of sand, stellar, spiral, and floral, stood to one another in
certain definite proportions, in a rising and calculated ratio of
singular beauty.
"There, before you, lies a true and perfect chord made
visible," the clergyman said in tones thrilling with
satisfaction, "--three notes in harmony with the fundamental
sound, myself, and with each other. My dear fellow, I
congratulate you, I congratulate you."
"Thank you very much, indeed," murmured Spinrobin. "I don't
quite understand it all yet, but it's--it's extraordinarily
fascinating and wonderful."
Mr. Skale said nothing, and Spinrobin drifted back to his big
arm-chair. A deep silence pervaded the room for the space of
several minutes. In the heart of that silence lay the mass of
direct and vital questions the secretary burned, yet was afraid,
to ask. For such was the plain truth; he yearned to know, yet
feared to hear. The Discovery and the Experiment of this
singular man loomed already somewhat vast and terrible; the
adjective that had suggested itself before returned to him--
"not permissible." . . . Of Mr. Skale himself he had no sort of
fear, though a growing and uncommon respect, but of the
purpose Mr. Skale had in view he caught himself thinking more
and more, yet without obvious reason, with a distinct shrinking
almost amounting to dismay. But for the fact that so sweet and
gentle a creature as Miriam was travelling the same path with
him, this increased sense of caution would have revealed itself
plainly for what it was--Fear. . . .
"I am deeply interested, Mr. Skale," he said at length,
breaking first the silence, "and sympathetic too, I assure you;
only--you will forgive me for saying it--I am, as yet, still
rather in the dark as to where all this is to lead----" The
clergyman's eyes, fixed straight upon his own, again made it
difficult to finish the sentence as he wished.
"Necessarily so, because I can only lead you to my discovery
step by step," replied the other steadily. "I wish you to be
thoroughly prepared for anything that may happen, so that you
can deal intelligently with results that might otherwise
overwhelm you."
"Overwhelm----?" faltered his listener.
"Might, I said. Note carefully my use of words, for they are
accurately chosen. Before I can tell you all I must submit you,
for your own sake, to certain tests--chiefly to the test of
Alteration of Form by Sound. It is somewhat--er--alarming, I
believe, the first time. You must be thoroughly accustomed to
these astonishing results before we dare to approach the final
Experiment; so that you will not tremble. For there can be no
rehearsal. The great Experiment can only be made once . . . and
I must be as sure as possible that you will feel no terror in
the face of the Unknown."
IV
Spinrobin listened breathlessly. He hesitated a moment after
the other stopped speaking, then slewed round on his slippery
chair and faced him.
"I can understand," he began, "why you want imagination, but
you spoke of courage too? I mean,--is there any immediate cause
for alarm? Any personal danger, for instance, now?" For the
clergyman's weighty sentences had made him realize in a new
sense the loneliness of his situation here among these desolate
hills. He would appreciate some assurance that his life was not
to be trifled with before he lost the power to withdraw if he
wished to do so.
"None whatever," replied Mr. Skale with decision, "there is no
question at all of physical personal injury. You must trust me
and have a little patience." His tone and manner were
exceedingly grave, yet at the same time inspired confidence.
"I do," said Spinrobin honestly.
Another pause fell between them, longer than the rest; it
was broken by the clergyman. He spoke emphatically, evidently
weighing his words with the utmost care.
"This Chord," he said simply--yet, for all the simplicity,
there ran to and fro behind his words the sense of unlawful and
immense forces impending--"I need for a stupendous experiment
with sound, an experiment which will lead in turn towards a yet
greater and final one. There is no harm in your knowing that.
To produce a certain transcendent result I want a complex
sound--a chord, but a complete and perfect chord in which each
note is sure of itself and absolutely accurate."
He waited a moment. There was utter silence about them in
the room. Spinrobin held his breath.
"No instrument can help me; the notes must be human," he
resumed in a lower voice, "and the utterers--pure. For the
human voice can produce sounds `possessing in some degree the
characteristics not only of all musical instruments, but of all
sounds of whatever description.' By means of this chord I hope
to utter a certain sound, a certain name, of which you shall
know more hereafter. But a name, as you surely know, need not
be composed of one or two syllables only; a whole symphony
may be a name, and a whole orchestra playing for days, or an
entire nation chanting for years, may be required to pronounce
the beginning merely of--of certain names. Yours, Robert
Spinrobin, for instance, I can pronounce in a quarter of a
second; but there may be names so vast, so mighty, that
minutes, days, years even, may be necessary for their full
utterance. There may be names, indeed, which can never be
known, for they could never be uttered--in time. For the
moment I am content simply to drop this thought into your
consciousness; later you shall understand more. I only wish you
to take in now that I need this perfect chord for the utterance
in due course of a certain complex and stupendous name--the
invocation, that is, of a certain complex and stupendous
Force!"
"I think I understand," whispered the other, afraid to
interrupt more.
"And the difficulty I have experienced in finding the three
notes has been immense. I found Mrs. Mawle--alto; then Miriam
I found at birth and trained her--soprano; and now I have found
you, Mr. Spinrobin, and my chord, with myself as bass, is
complete. Your note and Miriam's, soprano and tenor, are closer
than the relations between the other notes, and a tenor has
accordingly been most difficult to find. You can now understand
the importance of your being sympathetic to each other."
Spinrobin's heart burned within him as he listened. He began
to grasp some sweet mystical meaning in the sense of perfect
companionship the mere presence of the girl inspired. They
were the upper notes in the same chord together, linked in a
singing and harmonious relation, the one necessary to the
other. Moreover, in the presence of Mr. Skale and the
housekeeper, bass and alto in the full chord, their
completeness was still more emphasized, and they knew their
fullest life. The adventure promised to be amazingly seductive.
He would learn practically the strange truth that to know the
highest life Self must be lost and merged in something bigger.
And was this not precisely what he had so long been seeking--
escape from his own insignificance?
"And--er--the Hebrew that you require of me, Mr. Skale?" he
asked, returning to practical considerations.
"Our purposes require a certain knowledge of Hebrew," he
answered without hesitation or demur, "because that ancient
language and the magical resources of sound are profoundly
linked. In the actual sounds of many of the Hebrew letters lies
a singular power, unguessed by the majority, undivined
especially, of course, by the mere scholar, but available for
the pure in heart who may discover how to use their
extraordinary values. They constitute, in my view at least, a
remnant of the original Chaldaean mysteries, the lore of that
magic which is older than religion. The secret of this
knowledge lies in the psychic values of sound; for Hebrew, the
Hebrew of the Bahir, remains in the hierarchy of languages a
direct channel to the unknown and inscrutable forces; and the
knowledge of mighty and supersensual things lies locked up in
the correct utterance of many of its words, letters and phrases.
Its correct utterance, mark well. For knowledge of the most
amazing and terrible kind is there, waiting release by him who
knows, and who greatly dares.
"And you shall later learn that sound is power. The Hebrew
alphabet you must know intimately, and the intricate
association of its letters with number, colour, harmony and
geometrical form, all of which are but symbols of the Realities
at the very roots of life. The Hebrew alphabet, Mr. Spinrobin, is
a `discourse in methods of manifestation, of formation.' In its
correct pronunciation lies a way to direct knowledge of divine
powers, and to conditions beyond this physical existence."
The clergyman's voice grew lower and lower as he proceeded,
and the conviction was unavoidable that he referred to things
whereof he had practical knowledge. To Spinrobin it was like
the lifting of a great veil. As a boy he had divined something
of these values of sound and name, but with the years this
knowledge had come to seem fantastic and unreal. It now
returned upon him with the force of a terrific certainty. That
immense old inner playground of his youth, without boundaries
or horizon, rolled up before his mental vision, inviting further
and detailed discovery.
"With the language, qua language," he continued, "you need not
trouble, but the `Names' of many things you must know
accurately, and especially the names of the so-called `Angels';
for these are in reality Forces of immense potency, vast
spiritual Powers, Qualities, and the like, all evocable by
correct utterance of their names. This language, as you will
see, is alive and divine in the true sense; its letters are the
vehicles of activities; its words, terrific formulж; and the
true pronunciation of them remains to-day a direct channel to
divine knowledge. In time you shall see; in time you shall
know; in time you shall hear. Mr. Spinrobin," and he thrust his
great head forwards and dropped his voice to a hushed whisper,
"in time we shall all together make this Experiment in sound
which shall redeem us and make us as Gods!"
"Thank you!" gasped the secretary, swept off his feet by this
torrent of uncommon and mystical language, and passing a
moist hand through his feathery hair. He was not entirely
ignorant, of course, of the alleged use of sound in the various
systems of so-called magic that have influenced the minds of
imaginative men during the history of the world. He had heard,
more or less vaguely, perhaps, but still with understanding,
about "Words of Power"; but hitherto he had merely regarded
such things as picturesque superstitions, or half-truths that
lie midway between science and imagination. Here, however, was
a man in the twentieth century, the days of radium, flying
machines, wireless telegraphy, and other invitations towards
materialism, who apparently had practical belief in the
effective use of sound and in its psychic and divine
possibilities, and who was devoting all of his not
inconsiderable powers of heart and mind to their actual
demonstration. It was astonishing. It was delightful. It was
incredible! And, but for the currents of a strange and
formidable fear that this conception of Skale's audacious
Experiment set stirring in his soul, Spinrobin's enthusiasm
would have been possibly as great as his own.
As it was he went up to the big clergyman and held out his
hand, utterly carried away by the strangeness of it all, caught
up in a vague splendour he did not quite understand, prepared to
abandon himself utterly.
"I gather something of what you mean," he said earnestly, "if
not all; and I hope most sincerely I may prove suitable for
your purpose when the time comes. As a boy, you know, curiously
enough, I always believed in the efficacy of names and the
importance of naming true. I think," he added somewhat
diffidently, looking up straight into the luminous eyes above
him, "if you will allow me to say so, I would follow you
anywhere, Mr. Skale--anywhere you cared to lead."
"`Upon him that overcometh,'" said the clergyman in that
gentle voice he sometimes used, soft as the voice of woman,
"`will I write my new name. . . .'"
He gazed down very searchingly into the other's eyes for a
minute or two, then shook the proffered hand without another
word. And so they separated and went to bed, for it was long
past midnight.
I
IN his bedroom, though excitement banished sleep in spite of
the lateness of the hour, he was too exhausted to make any
effective attempt to reduce the confusion of his mind to order.
For the first time in his life the diary-page for the day
remained blank. For a long time he sat before it with his
pencil--then sighed and put it away. A volume he might have
written, but not a page, much less a line or two. And though it
was but eight hours since he had made the acquaintance of the
Rev. Philip Skale, it seemed to him more like eight days.
Moreover, all that he had heard and seen, fantastic and
strained as he felt it to be, possibly even the product of
religious mania, was nevertheless profoundly disquieting, for
mixed up with it somewhere or other was--truth. Mr. Skale had
made a discovery--a giant one; it was not all merely talk and
hypnotism, the glamour of words. His great Experiment would
prove to be real and terrible. He had discovered certain uses of
sound, occult yet scientific, and if he, Spinrobin, elected to
stay on, he would be obliged to play his part in the
dйnouement. And this thought from the very beginning appalled
while it fascinated him. It filled him with a kind of horrible
amazement. For the object the clergyman sought, though not
yet disclosed, already cast its monstrous shadow across his
path. He somehow discerned that it would deal directly with
knowledge the saner judgment of a common-place world had
always deemed undesirable, unlawful, unsafe, dangerous to the
souls that dared attempt it, failure involving a pitiless and
terrible Nemesis.
He lay in bed watching the play of the firelight upon the
high ceiling, and thinking in confused fashion of the huge
clergyman with his thundering voice, his great lambent eyes and
his seductive gentleness; of his singular speculations and his
hints, half menacing, half splendid, of things to come. Then he
thought of the housekeeper with her deafness and her withered
arm, and that white peace about her face; and, lastly, of
Miriam, soft, pale beneath her dark skin, her gem-like eyes ever
finding his own, and of the intimate personal relations so
swiftly established between them. . . .
It was, indeed, a singular household thus buried away in the
heart of these lonely mountains. The stately old mansion was
just the right setting for--for----
Unbidden into his mind a queer, new thought shot suddenly,
interrupting the flow of ideas. He never understood how or
whence it came, but with the picture of all the empty rooms in
the corridor about him, he received the sharp unwelcome
impression that when Mr. Skale described the house as empty it
was really nothing of the sort. Utterly unannounced, the uneasy
conviction took possession of him that the building was
actually--populated. It was an extraordinary idea to have. There
was absolutely nothing in the way of evidence to support it.
And with it flashed across his memory echoes of that unusual
catechism he had been subjected to--in particular the questions
whether he believed in spirits,--"other life," as Skale termed
it. Sinister suspicions flashed through his imagination as he
lay there listening to the ashes dropping in the grate and
watching the shadows cloak the room. Was it possible that
there were occupants of these rooms that the man had somehow
evoked from the interstellar spaces and crystallized by means
of sound into form and shape--created?
Something freezing swept into him from a region far beyond
the world. He shivered. These cold terrors that grip the soul
suddenly without apparent cause, whence do they come? Why, out
of these rather extravagant and baseless speculations, should
have emerged this sense of throttling dread that appalled him?
And why, once again, should he have felt convinced that the
ultimate nature of the clergyman's great experiment was
impious, fraught with a kind of heavenly danger,
"unpermissible"?
Spinrobin, lying there shivering in his big bed, could not
guess. He only knew that by way of relief his mind instinctively
sought out Miriam, and so found peace. Curled up in a ball
between the sheets his body presently slept, while his mind,
intensely active, travelled off into that vast inner prairie of
his childhood days and called her name aloud. And presumably
she came to him at once, for his sleep was undisturbed and his
dreams uncommonly sweet, and he woke thoroughly refreshed
eight hours later, to find Mrs. Mawle standing beside his bed
with thin bread and butter and a cup of steaming tea.
II
For the rest, the new secretary fell quickly and easily into
the routine of this odd little household, for he had great
powers of adaptability. At first the promise of excitement
faded. The mornings were spent in the study of Hebrew, Mr. Skale
taking great pains to instruct him in the vibratory
pronunciation (for so he termed it) of certain words, and
especially of the divine, or angelic, names. The correct
utterance, involving a kind of prolonged and sonorous vibration
of the vowels, appeared to be of supreme importance. He further
taught him curious correspondences between Sound and Number,
and the attribution to these again of certain colours. The
vibrations of sound and light, as air and ether, had intrinsic
importance, it seemed, in the uttering of certain names; all of
which, however, Spinrobin learnt by rote, making neither head
nor tail of it.
That there were definite results, though, he could not deny--
psychic results; for a name uttered correctly produced one
effect, and uttered wrongly produced another . . . just as a
wrong note in a chord afflicts the hearer whereas the right one
blesses. . . .
The afternoons, wet or fine, they went for long walks
together about the desolate hills, Miriam sometimes
accompanying them. Their talk and laughter echoed all over the
mountains, but there was no one to hear them, the nearest
village being several miles away and the railway station--
nothing but a railway station. The isolation was severe; there
were no callers but the bi-weekly provision carts; letters had
to be fetched and newspapers were neglected.
Arrayed in fluffy tweeds, with baggy knickerbockers and
heavily-nailed boots, he trotted beside his giant companion
over the moors, somewhat like a child who expected its hand to
be taken over difficult places. His confidence had been
completely won. The sense of shyness left him. He felt that he
already stood to the visionary clergyman in a relationship that
was more than secretarial. He still panted, but with enthusiasm
instead of with regret. In the background loomed always the dim
sense of the Discovery and Experiment approaching inevitably,
just as in childhood the idea of Heaven and Hell had stood
waiting to catch him--real only when he thought carefully
about them. Skale was just the kind of man, he felt, who would
make a discovery, so simple that the rest of the world had
overlooked it, so tremendous that it struck at the roots of
human knowledge. He had the simple originality of genius, and a
good deal of its inspirational quality as well.
Before ten days had passed he was following him about like a
dog, hanging upon his lightest word. New currents ran through
him mentally and spiritually as the fires of Mr. Skale's vivid
personality quickened his own, and the impetus of his inner life
lifted him with its more violent momentum. The world of an
ordinary man is so circumscribed, so conventionally moulded,
that he can scarcely conceive of things that may dwell
normally in the mind of an extra-ordinary man. Adumbrations
of these, however, may throw their shadow across his field of
vision. Spinrobin was ordinary in most ways, while Mr. Skale was
un-ordinary in nearly all; and thus, living together in this
intimate solitude, the secretary got peeps into his companion's
region that gradually convinced him. With cleaned nerves and
vision he began to think in ways and terms that were new to
him. Skale, like some big figure in story or legend, moved
forward into his life and waved a wand. His own smaller
personality began to expand; thoughts entered unannounced that
hitherto had not even knocked at the door, and the frontiers of
his mind first wavered, then unfolded to admit them.
The clergyman's world, whether he himself were mad or sane,
was a real world, alive, vibrating, shortly to produce practical
results. Spinrobin would have staked his very life upon it. . . .
And, meanwhile, he made love openly--under any other
conditions, outrageously--to Miriam, whose figure of soft beauty
moving silently about the house helped to redeem it. She
rendered him quiet little services of her own accord that
pleased him immensely, for occasionally he detected her
delicate perfume about his room, and he was sure it was not
Mrs. Mawle who put the fresh heather in the glass jars upon his
table, or arranged his papers with such neat precision on the
desk.
Her delicate, shining little face with its wreath of dark hair,
went with him everywhere, hauntingly, possessingly; and when he
kissed her, as he did now every morning and every evening under
Mr. Skale's very eyes, it was like plunging his lips into a bed
of wild flowers that no artificial process had ever touched.
Something in him sang when she was near. She had, too, what he
used to call as a boy "night eyes"--changing after dusk into
such shadowy depths that to look at them was to look beyond
and through them. The sight could never rest only upon their
surface. Through her eyes, then, stretched all the delight of
that old immense playground . . . where names clothed,
described, and summoned living realities.
His attitude towards her was odd yet comprehensible; for
though his desire was unquestionably great, it was not
particularly active, probably because he knew that he held her
and that no aggressive effort was necessary. Secure in the
feeling that she belonged to him, and he to her, he also found
that he had little enough to say to her, never anything to ask.
She knew and understood it all beforehand; expression was
uncalled for. As well might the brimming kettle sing to the
water "I contain you," or the water reply "I fill you!"
Only this was not the simile he used. In his own thoughts
from the very beginning he had used the analogy of sound--of
the chord. As well might one note feel called upon to cry to
another in the same chord, "Hark! I'm sounding with you!" as
that Spinrobin should say to Miriam, "My heart responds and
sings to yours."
After a period of separation, however, he became charged with
things he wanted to say to her, all of which vanished utterly
the moment they came together. Words instantly then became
unnecessary, foolish. He heard that faint internal singing, and
his own resonant response; and they merely stayed there side by
side, completely happy, everything told without speech. This
sense of blissful union enwrapped his soul. In the language of
his boyhood he had found her name; he knew her; she was his.
Yet sometimes they did talk; and their conversations, in any
other setting but this amazing one provided by the wizardry of
Skale's enthusiasm, must have seemed exquisitely ludicrous. In
the room, often with the clergyman a few feet away, reading by
the fire, they would sit in the window niche, gazing into one
another's eyes, perhaps even holding hands. Then, after a long
interval of silence Mr. Skale would hear Spinrobin's thin
accents:
"You brilliant little sound! I hear you everywhere within me,
chanting a song of life!"
And Miriam's reply, thrilled and gentle:
"I'm but your perfect echo! My whole life sings with yours!"
Whereupon, kissing softly, they would separate, and Mr. Skale
would cover them mentally with his blessing.
Sometimes, too, he would send for the housekeeper and, with
the aid of the violin, would lead the four voices, his own bass
included, through the changes of various chords, for the
vibratory utterance of certain names; and the beauty of these
sounds, singing the "divine names," would make the secretary
swell to twice his normal value and importance (thus he puts
it), as the forces awakened by the music poured and surged into
the atmosphere about them. Whereupon the clergyman would
explain with burning words that many a symphony of
Beethoven's, a sonata of Schumann's, or a suite of
Tschaikovsky's were the Names, peaceful, romantic or
melancholy, of great spiritual Potencies, heard partially by
these masters in their moments of inspirational ecstasy. The
powers of these Beings were just as characteristic, their
existence just as real, as the simpler names of the Hebrew
angels, and their psychic influence upon the soul that heard
them uttered just as sure and individual.
"For the power of music, my dear Spinrobin, has never yet by
science or philosophy been adequately explained, and never can
be until the occult nature of sound, and its correlations with
colour, form, and number is once again understood. `Rhythm is
the first law of the physical creation,' says one, `and music is
a breaking into sound of the fundamental rhythm of universal
being.' `Rhythm and harmony,' declares Plato, `find their way
into the secret places of the soul.' `It is the manifestation,'
whispers the deaf Beethoven, `of the inner essential nature of
all that is,' or in the hint of Leibnitz, `it is a calculation
which the soul makes unconsciously in secret.' It is `love in
search of a name,' sang George Eliot, nearer in her intuition to
the truth than all the philosophers, since love is the dynamic
of pure spirit. But I," he continued after a pause for breath,
and smiling amid the glow of his great enthusiasm, "go beyond
and behind them all into the very heart of the secret; for you
shall learn that to know the sounds of the Great Names and to
utter their music correctly shall merge yourself into the heart
of their deific natures and make you `as the gods
themselves . . . !'"
And Spinrobin, as he listened, noticed that a slight
trembling ran across the fabric of his normal world, as though
it were about to vanish and give place to another--a new world
of divine things made utterly simple. For many things that
Skale said in this easy natural way, he felt, were in the nature
of clues and passwords, whose effect he carefully noted upon his
secretary, being intended to urge him, with a certain violence
even, into the desired region. Skale was testing him all the
time.
III
And it was about this time, more than half way through the
trial month, that the clergyman took Spinrobin, now become far
more than merely secretary, into his fuller confidence. In a
series of singular conversations, which the bewildered little
fellow has reported to the best of his ability, he explained to
him something of the science of true names. And to prove it he
made two singular experiments: first he uttered the true name
of Mrs. Mawle, secondly of Spinrobin himself, with results that
shall presently be told.
These things it was necessary for him to know and understand
before they made the great Experiment. Otherwise, if
unprepared, he might witness results that would involve the
loss of self-control and the failure, therefore, of the
experiment--a disaster too formidable to contemplate.
By way of leading up to this, however, he gave him some
account first of the original discovery. Spinrobin asked few
questions, made few comments; he took notes, however, of all he
heard and at night wrote them up as best he could in his diary.
At times the clergyman rose and interrupted the strange recital
by moving about the room with his soft and giant stride,
talking even while his back was turned; and at times the
astonished secretary wrote so furiously that he broke his
pencil with a snap, and Mr. Skale had to wait while he sharpened
it again. His inner excitement was so great that he almost felt
he emitted sparks.
The clue, it appears, came to the clergyman by mere chance,
though he admits his belief that the habits of asceticism and
meditation he had practised for years may have made him in
some way receptive to the vision, for as a vision, it seems, the
thing first presented itself--a vision made possible by a
moment of very rapid hypnosis.
An Anglican priest at the time, in charge of a small Norfolk
parish, he was a great believer in the value of ceremonial--in
the use, that is, of colour, odour and sound to induce mental
states of worship and adoration--more especially, however, of
sound as uttered by the voice, the human voice being unique
among instruments in that it combined the characteristics of
all other sounds. Intoning, therefore, was to him a matter of
psychic importance, and it was one summer evening, intoning, in
the chancel, that he noticed suddenly certain very curious
results. The faces of two individuals in the congregation
underwent a charming and singular change, a change which he
would not describe more particularly at the moment, since
Spinrobin should presently witness it for himself.
It all happened in a flash--in less than a second, and it is
probable, he holds, that his own voice induced an instant of
swift and passing hypnosis upon himself; for as he stood there
at the lectern there came upon him a moment of keen interior
lucidity in which he realized beyond doubt or question what had
happened. The use of voice, bell, or gong, has long been known
as a means of inducing the hypnotic state, and during this
almost instantaneous trance of his there came a sudden
revelation of the magical possibilities of sound-vibration. By
some chance rhythm of his intoning voice he had hit upon the
exact pitch, quality and accent which constituted the "Note" of
more than one member of the congregation before him. Those
particular individuals, without being aware of the fact, had at
once responded, automatically and inevitably. For a second he
had heard, he knew, their true names! He had unwittingly
"called" them.
Spinrobin's heart leaped with excitement as he listened, for
this idea of "Naming True" carried him back to the haunted days
of his childhood clairvoyance when he had known Winky.
"I don't quite understand, Mr. Skale," he put in, desirous to
hear a more detailed explanation.
"But presently you shall," was all the clergyman vouchsafed.
The clue thus provided by chance he had followed up, but by
methods hard to describe apparently. A corner of the veil,
momentarily lifted, had betrayed the value that lies in the
repetition of certain sounds--the rhythmic reiteration of
syllables--in a word, of chanting or incantation. By diving down
into his subconscious region, already prepared by long spiritual
training, he gradually succeeded in drawing out further details
piece by piece, and finally by infinite practice and prayer
welding them together into an intelligible system. The science
of true-naming slowly, with the efforts of years, revealed
itself. His mind slipped past the deceit of mere sensible
appearances. Clair-audiently he heard the true inner names of
things and persons. . . .
Mr. Skale rose from his chair. With thumbs in the arm-holes
of his waistcoat and fingers drumming loudly on his breast he
stood over the secretary, who continued making frantic notes.
"That chance discovery, then, made during a moment's inner
vision," he continued with a grave excitement, "gave me the key
to a whole world of new knowledge, and since then I have made
incredible developments. Listen closely, Mr. Spinrobin, while I
explain. And take in what you can."
The secretary laid down his pencil and note-book. He sat
forward in an attitude of intense eagerness upon the edge of his
chair. He was trembling. This strange modern confirmation of
his early Heaven of wonder before the senses had thickened and
concealed it, laid bare again his earliest world of far-off
pristine glory.
"The ordinary name of a person, understand then, is merely a
sound attached to their physical appearance at birth by the
parents--a meaningless sound. It is not their true name. That,
however, exists behind it in the spiritual world, and is the
accurate description of the soul. It is the sound you express
visibly before me. The Word is the Life."
Spinrobin surreptitiously picked up his pencil; but the
clergyman spied the movement. "Never mind the notes," he said;
"listen closely to me." Spinrobin obeyed meekly.
"Your ordinary outer name, however," continued Mr. Skale,
speaking with profound conviction, "may be made a conductor to
your true, inner one. The connection between the two by a
series of subtle interior links forms gradually with the years.
For even the ordinary name, if you reflect a moment, becomes
in time a sound of singular authority--inwoven with the finest
threads of your psychical being, so that in a sense you become
it. To hear it suddenly called aloud in the night--in a room
full of people, in the street unexpectedly--is to know a shock,
however small, of increased vitality. It touches the
imagination. It calls upon the soul built up around it."
He paused a moment. His voice boomed musically about the
room, even after he ceased speaking. Bewildered, wondering,
delighted, Spinrobin drank in every word. How well he knew it
all.
"Now," resumed the clergyman, lowering his tone
unconsciously, "the first part of my discovery lies in this:
that I have learned to pronounce the ordinary names of things
and people in such a way as to lead me to their true, inner
ones----"
"But," interrupted Spinrobin irrepressibly, "how in the name
of----?"
"Hush!" cried Skale quickly. "Never again call upon a mighty
name--in vain. It is dangerous. Concentrate your mind upon what
I now tell you, and you shall understand a part, at least, of my
discovery. As I was saying, I have learned how to find the true
name by means of the false; and understand, if you can, that to
pronounce a true name correctly means to participate in its
very life, to vibrate with its essential nature, to learn the
ultimate secret of its inmost being. For our true names are the
sounds originally uttered by the `Word' of God when He created
us, or `called' us into Being out of the void of infinite
silence, and to repeat them correctly means literally--to--
speak--with--His--Voice. It is to speak the truth." The
clergyman dropped his tone to an awed whisper. "Words are the
veils of Being; to speak them truly is to lift a corner of the
veil."
"What a glory! What a thing!" exclaimed the other under his
breath, trying to keep his mind steady, but losing control of
language in the attempt. The great sentences seemed to change
the little room into a temple where sacred things were about
to reveal themselves. Spinrobin now understood in a measure
why Mr. Skale's utterance of his own name and that of Miriam
had sounded grand. Behind each he had touched the true name and
made it echo.
The clergyman's voice brought his thoughts back from
distances in that inner prairie of his youth where they had lost
themselves.
"For all of us," he was repeating with rapt expression in his
shining eyes, "are Sounds in the mighty music the universe
sings to God, whose Voice it was that first produced us, and of
whose awful resonance we are echoes therefore in harmony or
disharmony." A look of power passed into his great visage.
Spinrobin's imagination, in spite of the efforts that he made,
fluttered with broken wings behind the swift words. A flash of
the former terror stirred in the depths of him. The man was at
the heels of knowledge it is not safe for humanity to seek. . . .
"Yes," he continued, directing his gaze again upon the other,
"that is a part of my discovery, though only a part, mind. By
repeating your outer name in a certain way until it disappears
in the mind, I can arrive at the real name within. And to utter
it is to call upon the secret soul--to summon it from its lair.
`I have redeemed thee; I have called thee by name.' You
remember the texts? `I know thee by name,' said Jehovah to the
great Hebrew magician, `and thou art mine.' By certain rhythms
and vibratory modulations of the voice it is possible to
produce harmonics of sound which awaken the inner name into
life--and then to spell it out. Note well, to spell it,--spell--
incantation--the magical use of sound--the meaning of the Word
of Power, used with such terrific effect in the old forgotten
Hebrew magic. Utter correctly the names of their Forces, or
Angels, I am teaching you daily now," he went on reverently,
with glowing eyes and intense conviction; "pronounce them with
full vibratory power that awakens all their harmonics, and you
awaken also their counterpart in yourself; you summon their
strength or characteristic quality to your aid; you introduce
their powers actively into your own psychical being. Had Jacob
succeeded in discovering the `Name' of that `Angel' with whom
he wrestled, he would have become one with its superior power
and have thus conquered it. Only, he asked instead of
commanded, and he found it not. . . ."
"Magnificent! Splendid!" cried Spinrobin, starting from his
chair, seizing with his imagination potently stirred, this
possibility of developing character and rousing the forces of
the soul.
"We shall yet call upon the Names, and see," replied Skale,
placing a great hand upon his companion's shoulder, "not aloud
necessarily, but by an inner effort of intense will which sets
in vibration the finer harmonics heard only by the poet and
magician, those harmonics and overtones which embody the
psychical element in music. For the methods of poet and
magician, I tell you, my dear Spinrobin, are identical, and all
the faiths of the world are at the heels of that thought.
Provided you have faith you can--move mountains! You can call
upon the very gods!"
"A most wonderful idea, Mr. Skale," faltered the other
breathlessly, "quite wonderful!" The huge sentences deafened
him a little with their mental thunder.
"And utterly simple," was the reply, "for all truth is
simple."
He paced the floor like a great caged animal. He went down
and leaned against the dark bookcase, with his legs wide apart,
and hands in his coat pockets. "To name truly, you see, is to
evoke, to create!" he roared from the end of the room. "To
utter as it should be uttered any one of the Ten Words, or
Creative Powers of the Deity in the old Hebrew system, is to
become master of the `world' to which it corresponds. For
these names are still in living contact with the realities
behind. It means to vibrate with the powers that called the
universe into being and--into form."
A sort of shadowy majesty draped his huge figure, Spinrobin
thought, as he stood in semi-darkness at the end of the room
and thundered forth these extraordinary sentences with a
conviction that, for the moment at least, swept away all doubt
in the mind of his listener. Dreadful ideas, huge-footed and
threatening, rushed to and fro in the secretary's mind. He was
torn away from all known anchorage, staggered, dizzy and
dismayed; yet at the same time, owing to his adventure-loving
temperament, a prey to some secret and delightful exaltation
of the spirit. He was out of his depth in great waters. . . .
Then, quite suddenly, Mr. Skale came swiftly over to his side
and whispered in accents that were soothing in comparison:
"And think for a moment how beautiful, the huge Words by
which God called into being the worlds, and sent the perfect,
rounded bodies of the spheres spinning and singing, blazing
their eternal trails of glory through the void! How sweet the
whisper that crystallized in flowers! How tender the note that
fashioned the eyes and face, say, of Miriam. . . ."
At the name of Miriam he felt caught up and glorified, in
some delightful and inexplicable way that brought with it--
peace. The power of all these strange and glowing thoughts
poured their full tide into his own rather arid and thirsty
world, frightening him with their terrific force. But the mere
utterance of that delightful name--in the way Skale uttered it
--brought confidence and peace.
". . . Could we but hear them!" Skale continued, half to
himself, half to his probationer; "for the sad thing is that to-
day the world has ears yet cannot hear. As light is distorted by
passing through a gross atmosphere, so sound reaches us but
indistinctly now, and few true names can bring their wondrous
messages of power correctly. Men, coarsening with the
materialism of the ages, have grown thick and gross with the
luxury of inventions and the diseases of modern life that
develop intellect at the expense of soul. They have lost the
old inner hearing of divine sound, and but one here and there
can still catch the faint, far-off and ineffable music."
He lifted his eyes, and his voice became low and even gentle
as the glowing words fell from his heart of longing.
"None hear now the morning stars when they sing together to
the sun; none know the chanting of the spheres! The ears of the
world are stopped with lust, and the old divine science of true-
naming seems lost for ever amid the crash of engines and the
noisy thunder of machinery! . . . Only among flowers and
certain gems are the accurate old true names still to be found!
. . . But we are on the track, my dear Spinrobin, we are on the
ancient trail to Power."
The clergyman closed his eyes and clasped his hands, lifting
his face upwards with a rapt expression while he murmured
under his breath the description of the Rider on the White
Horse from the Book of the Revelations, as though it held some
inner meaning that his heart knew yet dared not divulge: "And
he had a Name written, that no man knew but he himself. And he
was clothed in a vesture dipped in blood: and his Name is
called The Word of God . . . and he hath on his vesture and on
his thigh a name written,--`King of Kings and Lord of
Lords. . . .'"
And for an instant Spinrobin, listening to the rolling sound
but not to the actual words, fancied that a faintly coloured
atmosphere of deep scarlet accompanied the vibrations of his
resonant whisper and produced in the depths of his mind this
momentary effect of coloured audition.
It was all very strange and puzzling. He tried, however, to
keep an open mind and struggle as best he might with these big
swells that rolled into his little pool of life and threatened
to merge it in a vaster tide than he had yet dreamed of.
Knowing how limited is the world which the senses report, he
saw nothing too inconceivable in the idea that certain persons
might possess a peculiar inner structure of the spirit by which
supersensuous things can be perceived. And what more likely
than that a man of Mr. Skale's unusual calibre should belong to
them? Indeed, that the clergyman possessed certain practical
powers of an extraordinary description he was as certain as
that the house was not empty as he had at first supposed. Of
neither had he proof as yet; but proof was not long in
I
"THEN if there is so much sound about in all objects and forms
--if the whole universe, in fact, is sounding," asked Spinrobin
with a naпve impertinence not intended, but due to the reaction
of his simple mind from all this vague splendour, "why don't
we hear it more?"
Mr. Skale came upon him like a boomerang from the end of
the room. He was smiling. He approved the question.
"With us the question of hearing is merely the question of
wave-lengths in the air," he replied; "the lowest audible sound
having a wave-length of sixteen feet, the highest less than an
inch. Some people can't hear the squeak of a bat, others the
rumble of an earthquake. I merely affirm that in every form
sleeps the creative sound that is its life and being. The ear is
a miserable organ at best, and the majority are far too gross
to know clair-audience. What about sounds, for instance, that
have a wave-length of a hundred, a thousand miles on the one
hand, or a millionth part of an inch on the other?"
"A thousand miles! A millionth of an inch?" gasped the
other, gazing at his interlocutor as though he was some great
archangel of sound.
"Sound for most of us lies between, say, thirty and many
thousand vibrations per second--the cry of the earthquake and
the cricket; it is our limitation that renders the voice of the
dewdrop and the voice of the planet alike inaudible. We even
mistake a measure of noise--like a continuous mill-wheel or a
river, say--for silence, when in reality there is no such thing
as perfect silence. Other life is all the time singing and
thundering about us," he added, holding up a giant finger as
though to listen. "To the imperfection of our ears you may
ascribe the fact that we do not hear the morning stars shouting
together."
"Thank you, yes, I quite see now," said the secretary. "To
name truly is to hear truly." The clergyman's words seemed to
hold a lamp to a vast interior map in his mind that was
growing light. A new dawn was breaking over the great mental
prairie where he wandered as a child. "To find the true name of
anything," he added, "you mean, is to hear its sound, its
individual note as it were?" Incredible perspectives swam into
his ken, hitherto undreamed of.
"Not `as it were,'" boomed the other, "You do hear it. After
which the next step is to utter it, and so absorb its force into
your own being by synchronous vibration--union mystical and
actual. Only, you must be sure you utter it correctly. To
pronounce incorrectly is to call it incompletely into life and
form--to distort and injure it, and yourself with it. To make it
untrue--a lie."
They were standing in the dusk by the library window,
watching the veil of night that slowly covered the hills. The
flying horizons of the moors had slipped away into the
darkness.
The stars were whispering together their thoughts of flame
and speed. At the back of the room sat Miriam among the
shadows, like some melody hovering in a musician's mind till
he should call her forth. It was close upon the tea hour. Behind
them Mrs. Mawle was busying herself with lamps and fire. Mr.
Skale, turning at the sound of the housekeeper, motioned to the
secretary to approach, then stooped down and spoke low in his
ear:
"With many names I had great difficulty," he whispered. "With
hers, for instance," indicating the housekeeper behind them. "It
took me five years' continuous research to establish her
general voice-outline, and even then I at first only derived a
portion of her name. And in uttering it I made such errors of
omission and pronunciation that her physical form suffered, and
she emerged from the ordeal in disorder. You have, of course,
noticed her disabilities. . . . But, later, though only in
stammering fashion, I called upon her all complete, and she
has since known a serene blessedness and a sense of her great
value in the music of life that she never knew before." His face
lit up as he spoke of it. "For in that moment she found
herself. She heard her true name, God's creative sound, thunder
through her being."
Spinrobin, feeling the clergyman's forces pouring through
him like a tide at such close proximity, bowed his head. His
lips were too dry to frame words. He was thinking of the
possible effects upon his own soul and body when his name too
should be "uttered." He remembered the withered arm and the
deafness. He thought, too, of that slender, ghostly figure that
haunted the house with its soft movements and tender singing.
Lastly, he remembered his strange conviction that somewhere in
the great building, possibly in his own corridor, there were
other occupants, other life, Beings of unearthly scale waiting
the given moment to appear, summoned by utterance.
"And you will understand now why it is I want a man of high
courage to help me," Skale resumed in a louder tone, standing
sharply upright; "a man careless of physical existence, and
with a faith wholly beyond the things of this world!"
"I do indeed," he managed to reply aloud, while in his
thoughts he was saying, "I will, I must see it through. I won't
give in!" With all his might he resisted the invading tide of
terror. Even if sad results came later, it was something to have
been sacrificed in so big a conception.
In his excitement he slipped from the edge of the window-
sill, where he was perched, and Mr. Skale, standing close in
front of him, caught his two wrists and set him upon his feet.
A shock, like a rush of electricity, ran through him. He took
his courage boldly in both hands and asked the question ever
burning at the back of his mind.
"Then, this great Experiment you--we have in view," he
stammered, "is to do with the correct uttering of the names of
some of the great Forces, or Angels, and--and the assimilating
of their powers into ourselves----?"
Skale rose up gigantically beside him. "No, sir," he cried, "it
is greater--infinitely greater than that. Names of mere Angels
I can call alone without the help of any one; but for the name
I wish to utter a whole chord is necessary even to compass the
utterance of the opening syllable; as I have told you already, a
chord in which you share the incalculable privilege of being the
tenor note. But for the completed syllables--the full
name----!" He closed his eyes and shrugged his massive
shoulders--"I may need the massed orchestras of half the world,
the chorused voices of the entire nation--or in their place a
still small voice of utter purity crying in the wilderness! In
time you shall know fully--know, see and hear. For the present,
hold your soul with what patience and courage you may."
The words thundered about the room, so that Miriam, too,
heard them. Spinrobin trembled inwardly, as though a cold air
passed him. The suggestion of immense possibilities, vague yet
terrible, overwhelmed him again suddenly. Had not the girl at
that moment moved up beside him and put her exquisite pale
face over his shoulder, with her hand upon his arm, it is
probable he would then and there have informed Mr. Skale that
he withdrew from the whole affair.
"Whatever happens," murmured Miriam, gazing into his eyes,
"we go on singing and sounding together, you and I." Then, as
Spinrobin bent down and kissed her hair, Mr. Skale put an arm
round each of them and drew them over to the tea-table.
"Come, Mr. Spinrobin," he said, with his winning smile, "you
must not be alarmed, you know. You must not desert me. You are
necessary to us all, and when my Experiment is complete we
shall all be as gods together. Do not falter. There is nothing
in life, remember, but to lose oneself; and I have found a
better way of doing so than any one else--by merging ourselves
into the Voice of----"
"Mr. Skale's tea has been standing more than ten minutes,"
interrupted the old housekeeper, coming up behind them; "if Mr.
Spinrobin will please to let him come----" as though it was
Spinrobin's fault that there had been delay.
Mr. Skale laughed good-humouredly, as the two men, suddenly
in the region of tea-cups and buttered toast, looked one another
in the face with a certain confusion. Miriam, sipping her tea,
laughed too, curiously. Spinrobin felt restored to some measure
of safety and sanity again. Only the strange emotion of a few
moments before still moved there unseen among them.
"Listen, and you shall presently hear her name," the
clergyman whispered, glancing up at the other over his tea-cup,
but Spinrobin was crunching his toast too noisily to notice the
meaning of the words fully.
II
The Stage Manager who stands behind all the scenes of life,
both great and small, had prepared the scene well for what was
to follow. The sentences about the world of inaudible sound had
dropped the right kind of suggestion into the secretary's heart.
His mind still whirred with a litter of half-digested sentences
and ideas, however, and he was vividly haunted by the actuality
of truth behind them all. His whole inner being at that moment
cried "Hark!" through a hush of expectant wonder.
There they sat at tea, this singular group of human beings:
Mr. Skale, bigger than ever in his loose house-suit of black,
swallowing his liquid with noisy gulps; Spinrobin, nibbling
slippery morsels of hot toast, on the edge of his chair;
Miriam, quiet and mysterious, in her corner; and Mrs. Mawle,
sedate, respectful in cap and apron, presiding over the tea-pot,
the whole scene cosily lit by lamp and fire--when this
remarkable new thing happened. Spinrobin declares always that
it came upon him like a drowning wave, frightening him not
with any idea of injury to himself, but with a dreadful sense of
being lost and shelterless among the immensities of a
transcendent new world. Something passed into the room that
made his soul shake and flutter at the centre.
His attention was first roused by a sound that he took,
perhaps, to be the wind coming down from the hills in those
draughts and gusts he sometimes heard, only to his imagination
now it was a peopled wind crying round the walls, behind whose
voice he detected the great fluid form of it--running and
coloured. But, with the noise, a terror that was no ordinary
terror invaded the recesses of his soul. It was the fear of the
Unknown, dreadfully multiplied.
He glanced up quickly from his tea-cup, and chancing to meet
Miriam's eye, he saw that she was smiling as she watched him.
This sound, then, had some special significance. At the same
instant he perceived that it was not outside but in the room,
close beside him, that Mr. Skale, in fact, was talking to the
deaf housekeeper in a low and carefully modulated tone--a tone
she could not possibly have heard, however. Then he discovered
that the clergyman was not speaking actually, but repeating her
name. He was intoning it. It grew into a kind of singing chant,
an incantation.
"Sarah Mawle . . . Sarah Mawle . . . Sarah Mawle . . ." ran
through the room like water. And, in Skale's mouth, it sounded
as his own name had sounded--different. It became in some
significant way--thus Spinrobin expresses it always--stately,
important, nay, even august. It became real. The syllables led
his ear away from their normal signification--away from the
outer toward the inner. His ordinary mental picture of the mere
letters SARAHMAWLE disappeared and became merged in
something else--into something alive that pulsed and moved
with vibrations of its own. For, with the outer sound there grew
up another interior one, that finally became separate and
distinct.
Now Spinrobin was well aware that the continued repetition
of one's own name can induce self-hypnotism; and he also knew
that the reiteration of the name of an object ends by making
that object disappear from the mind. "Mustard," repeated
indefinitely, comes to have no meaning at all. The mind drops
behind the mere symbol of the sound into something that is
unintelligible, if not meaningless. But here it was altogether
another matter, and from the torrent of words and similes he
uses to describe it, this--a curious mixture of vividness and
confusion--is apparently what he witnessed:
For, as the clergyman's resonant voice continued quietly to
utter the name, something passed gradually into the appearance
of the motherly old housekeeper that certainly was not there
before, not visible, at least, to the secretary's eyes. Behind
the fleshly covering of the body, within the very skin and bones
it seemed, there flowed with steady splendour an effect of
charging new vitality that had an air of radiating from her face
and figure with the glow and rush of increased life. A
suggestion of grandeur, genuine and convincing, began to express
itself through the humble domestic exterior of her everyday
self; at first, as though some greater personage towered
shadowy behind her, but presently with a growing definiteness
that showed it to be herself and nothing separate. The two, if
two they were, merged.
Her mien, he saw, first softened astonishingly, then grew
firm with an aspect of dignity that was unbelievably beautiful.
An air of peace and joy her face had always possessed, but this
was something beyond either. It was something imposing,
majestic. So perilously adjusted is the ludicrous to the
sublime, that while the secretary wondered dumbly whether the
word "housekeeper" might also in Skale's new world connote
"angel," he could have laughed aloud, had not the nobility of
the spectacle hinted at the same time that he should have wept.
For the tears of a positive worship started to his eyes at the
sight.
"Sarahmawle . . . Sarahmawle. . . ." The name continued to
pour itself about him in a steady ripple, neither rising nor
falling, and certainly not audible to those deaf old ears that
flanked the vigorous and unwrinkled face. "Youth" is not the
word to describe this appearance of ardent intensity that
flamed out of the form and features of the housekeeper, for it
was something utterly apart from either youth or age. Nor was
it any mere idealization of her worn and crumpled self. It was
independent of physical conditions, as it was independent of the
limitations of time and space; superb as sunshine, simple as
the glory that had sometimes touched his soul of boyhood in
sleep--the white fires of an utter transfiguration.
It was, in a word, as if the name Skale uttered had summoned
to the front, through all disguising barriers of flesh, her true
and naked spirit, that which neither ages nor dies, that which
the eyes, when they rest upon a human countenance, can never
see--the Soul itself!
For the first time in his life Spinrobin, abashed and
trembling, gazed upon something in human guise that was
genuinely sublime--perfect with a stainless purity. The mere
sight produced in him an exaltation of the spirit such as he
had never before experienced . . . swallowing up his first
terror. In his heart of hearts, he declares, he prayed; for this
was the natural expression for an emotion of the volume and
intensity that surged within him. . . .
How long he sat there gazing seems uncertain; perhaps
minutes, perhaps seconds only. The sense of time's passage was
temporarily annihilated. It might well have been a thousand
years, for the sight somehow swept him into eternity. . . . In
that tea-room of Skale's lonely house among the mountains, the
warmth of an earthly fire upon his back, the light of an earthly
oil-lamp in his eyes, holding buttered toast in exceedingly
earthly fingers, he sat face to face with something that yet was
not of this earth, something majestic, spiritual and eternal
. . . visible evidence of transfiguration and of "earth growing
heaven. . . ."
------
It was, of course, stupid and clumsy of Spinrobin to drop his
tea-cup and let it smash noisily against the leg of the table;
yet it was natural enough, for in his ecstasy and amazement he
apparently lost control of certain muscles in his trembling
fingers. . . . Though the change came gradually it seemed very
quick. The volume of the clergyman's voice grew less, and as
the tide of sound ebbed the countenance of the housekeeper also
slowly altered. The flames that a moment before had burned so
whitely there flickered faintly and were gone; the glory faded;
the splendour withdrew. She even seemed to dwindle in size.
. . . She resumed her normal appearance. Skale's voice ceased.
The incident apparently had occupied but a few moments, for
Mrs. Mawle, he realized, was gathering the plates together and
fitting them into the spaces of the crowded tea-tray with
difficulty--an operation, he remembered, she had just begun
when the clergyman first began to call upon her name.
She, clearly, had been conscious of nothing unusual. A
moment later, with her customary combination of curtsey and
bow, she was gone from the room, and Spinrobin, acting upon a
strange impulse, found himself standing upright by the table,
looking wildly about him, passing his hand through his
scattered hair, and trying in vain to utter words that should
relieve his overcharged soul of the burden of glory and mystery
that oppressed it.
A pain, profoundly searching, pierced his heart. He thought of
the splendours he had just witnessed, and of the joy and peace
upon those features even when the greater wonder withdrew. He
thought of the power in the countenance of Skale, and of the
shining loveliness in the face of Miriam. Then, with a blast of
bitterest disappointment, he realized the insignificance of his
own self--the earthiness of his own personality, the dead, dull
ordinariness of his own appearance. Why, oh, why, could not all
faces let the soul shine through? Why could not all identify
themselves with their eternal part, and thus learn happiness
and joy? A sense of the futile agony of life led him with an
impassioned eagerness again to the thought of Skale's
tremendous visions, and of the great Experiment that beckoned
beyond. Only, once more the terror of its possible meaning
dropped upon him, and the little black serpents of fear shot
warningly across this brighter background of his hopes.
Then he was aware that Miriam had crossed the room and
stood beside him, for her delicate and natural perfume
announced her even before he turned and saw. Her soft eyes
shining conveyed an irresistible appeal, and with her came the
sense of peace she always brought. She was the one thing at
that moment that could comfort and he opened his arms to her
and let her come nestling in against him, both hands finding
their way up under the lapels of his coat, all the exquisite
confidence of the innocent child in her look. Her hair came
over his lips and face like flowers, but he did not kiss her, nor
could he find any words to say. To hold her there was enough,
for the touch of her healed and blessed him.
"So now you have seen her as she really is," he heard her
voice against his shoulder; "you have heard her true name, and
seen a little of its form and colour!"
"I never guessed that in this world----" he stammered; then,
instead of completing the sentence, held her more tightly to
him and let his face sink deeper into the garden of her hair.
"Oh yes," she answered, and then peered up with unflinching
look into his eyes, "for that is just how I see you too--bright,
splendid and eternal."
"Miriam!" It was as unexpected as a ghost and as incredible.
"Me . . . ?"
"Of course! You see I know your true name. I see you as you
are within!"
Something came to steady his swimming brain, but it was
only after a distinct effort that he realized it was the voice of
Mr. Skale addressing him. Then, gradually, as he listened, gently
releasing the girl in order to turn towards him, he understood
that what he had witnessed had been in the nature of a "test"--
one of those tests he had been warned would come--and that his
attitude to it was regarded by the clergyman with approval.
"It was a test more subtle than you know, perhaps, Mr.
Spinrobin," he was saying, "and the feelings it has roused in
you are an adequate proof that you have come well through it.
As I knew you would, as I knew you would," he added, with evident
satisfaction. "They do infinite credit both to yourself and to
our judgment in--er--accepting you."
A wave of singular emotion seemed to pass across the room
from one to the other that, catching the breathless secretary
in its tide, filled him with a high pride that he had been
weighed and found worthy, then left him cold with a sudden
reaction as he realized after some delay the import of the
words Mr. Skale was next saying to him.
"AND now you shall hear your own name called," boomed the
clergyman with enthusiasm, "and realize the beauty and
importance of your own note in the music of life."
And while Spinrobin trembled from head to toe Mr. Skale
bore down upon him and laid a hand upon his shoulder. He
looked up into the clergyman's luminous eyes. His glance next
wandered down the ridge of that masterful nose and lost itself
among the flowing strands of the tangled beard. At that moment
it would hardly have surprised him to see the big visage
disappear, and to hear the Sound, of which it was the visible
form, slip into his ears with a roar.
But side by side with the vague terror of the unknown he was
conscious also of a smaller and more personal pang. For a man
may envy other forms, yet keenly resent the possible loss or
alteration of his own. And he remembered the withered arm and
the deafness.
"But," he faltered, yet ashamed of his want of courage, "I
don't want to lose my present shape, or--come back--
without----"
"Have no fear," exclaimed the other with decision. "Miriam
and myself have not been experimenting in vain these three
weeks. We have found your name. We know it accurately. For we
are all one chord, and as I promised you, there is no risk." He
stopped, lowering his voice; and, taking the secretary by the
arm with a fatherly and possessive gesture, "Spinrobin," he
whispered solemnly, "you shall learn the value and splendour of
your Self in the melody of the Universe--that burst of divine
music! You shall understand how closely linked you are to
myself and Mrs. Mawle, but, closest of all, to Miriam. For
Miriam herself shall call your name, and you shall hear!"
So little Miriam was to prove his executioner, or his
redeemer. That was somehow another matter. The awe with which
these experiments of Mr. Skale's inspired him ebbed
considerably as he turned and saw the appealing, wistful
expression of his other examiner. Brave as a lion he felt, yet
timid as a hare; there was no idea of real resistance in him any
longer.
"I'm ready, then," he said faintly, and the girl came up
softly to his side and sought his face with a frank innocence of
gaze that made no attempt to hide her eagerness and joy. She
accepted the duty with delight, proudly conscious of its
importance.
"I know thee by name and thou art mine," she murmured,
taking his hand.
"It makes me happy, yet afraid," he replied in her ear,
returning the caress; and at that moment the clergyman, who
had gone to fetch his violin, returned into the room with a
suddenness that made them both start--for the first time. Very
slightly, with the first sign of that modesty which comes with
knowledge he had yet noticed in her, or felt conscious of in
himself, she withdrew, a wonderful flush tinging her pale skin,
then passing instantly away.
"To make you feel absolutely safe from possible disaster,"
Mr. Skale was saying with a smile, "you shall have the
assistance of the violin. The pitch and rhythm shall be thus
assured. There is nothing to fear."
And Miriam, equally smiling with confidence, led her friend,
perplexed and entangled as he was by the whole dream-like and
confusing puzzle--led him to the arm-chair she had just
vacated, and then seated herself at his feet upon a high
footstool and stared into his eyes with a sweet and irresistible
directness of gaze that at once increased both his sense of
bewilderment and his confidence.
"First, you must speak my name," she said gently, yet with a
note of authority, "so that I may get the note of your voice
into myself. Once or twice will do."
He obeyed. "Miriam . . . Miriam . . . Miriam," he said, and
watched the tiny reflection of his own face in her eyes, her
"night-eyes." The same moment he began to lose himself. The
girl's lips were moving. She had picked up his voice and merged
her own with it, so that when he ceased speaking her tones took
up the note continuously. There was no break. She carried on
the sound that he had started.
And at the same moment, out of the corner of his eye, he
perceived that the violin had left its case and was under the
clergyman's beard. The bow undulated like a silver snake,
drawing forth long, low notes that flowed about the room and
set the air into rhythmical vibrations. These vibrations, too,
carried on the same sound. Spinrobin gave a little
uncontrollable jump; he felt as if he had uttered his own
death-warrant and that this instrument proclaimed the
sentence. Then the feeling of dread lessened as he heard Mr.
Skale's voice mingling with the violin, combining exquisitely
with the double-stopping he was playing on the two lower
strings; for the music, as the saying is, "went through him"
with thrills of power that plunged into unknown depths of his
soul and lifted him with a delightful sense of inner expansion
to a state where fear was merged in joy.
For some minutes the voice of Miriam, murmuring so close
before him that he could feel her very breath, was caught in the
greater volume of the violin and bass. Then, suddenly, both
Skale and violin ceased together, and he heard her voice emerge
alone. With a little rush like that of a singing flame, it
dropped down on to the syllables of his name--his ugly and
ridiculous outer and ordinary name:
"ROBERTSPINROBIN . . . ROBERTSPINROBIN . . ." he heard; and
the sound flowed and poured about his ears like the murmur of a
stream through summer fields. And, almost immediately, with
it there came over him a sense of profound peace and security.
Very soon, too, he lost the sound itself--did not hear it, as
sound, for it grew too vast and enveloping. The sight of
Miriam's face also he lost. He grew too close to her to see her,
as object. Both hearing and sight merged into something more
intimate than either. He and the girl were together--one
consciousness, yet two aspects of that one consciousness.
They were two notes singing together in the same chord, and
he had lost his little personality, only to find it again,
increased and redeemed, in an existence that was larger.
It seemed to Spinrobin--for there is only his limited
phraseology to draw from--that the incantation of her singing
tones inserted itself between the particles of his flesh and
separated them, ran with his blood, covered his skin with
velvet, flowed and purred in the very texture of his mind and
thoughts. Something in him swam, melted, fused. His inner
kingdom became most gloriously extended. . . .
His soul loosened, then began to soar, while something at
the heart of him that had hitherto been congealed now turned
fluid and alive. He was light as air, swift as fire. His thoughts,
too, underwent a change: rose and fell with the larger rhythm
of new life as the sound played upon them, somewhat as wind
may rouse the leaves of a tree, or call upon the surface of a
deep sea to follow it in waves. Terror was nowhere in his
sensations; but wonder, beauty and delight ran calling to one
another from one wave to the next, as this tide of sound moved
potently in the depths of his awakening higher consciousness.
The little reactions of ordinary life spun away from him into
nothingness as he listened to a volume of sound that was
oceanic in power and of an infinite splendour: the creative
sound by which God first called him into form and being--the
true inner name of his soul.
. . . Yet he no longer consciously listened . . . no longer,
perhaps, consciously heard. The name of the soul can sound only
in the soul, where no speech is, nor any need for such
stammering symbols. Spinrobin for the first time knew his true
name, and that was enough.
It is impossible to translate into precise language this
torrent of exquisite sensation that the girl's voice awakened.
In the secret chambers of his imagination Spinrobin found the
thoughts, perhaps, that clothed it with intelligible description
for himself, but in speaking of it to others he becomes simply
semi-hysterical, and talks a kind of hearty nonsense. For the
truth probably is that only poetry or music can convey any
portion of a mystical illumination, otherwise hopelessly
incommunicable. The outer name had acted as a conductor to the
inner name beyond. It filled the room, and filled some far
vaster space that opened out above the room, about the house,
above the earth, yet at the same time was deep, deep down
within his own self. He passed beyond the confines of the world
into those sweet, haunted gardens where Cherubim and Seraphim
--vast Forces--continually do sing. It floated him off his feet
as a rising tide overtakes the little shore-pools and floats
them into its own greatness, and on the tranquil bosom of
these giant swells he rose into a state that was too calm to be
ecstasy, yet too glorious to be mere exaltation.
And as his own little note of personal aspiration soared with
this vaster music to which it belonged, he felt mounting out of
himself into a condition where at last he was alive, complete
and splendidly important. His sense of insignificance fled. His
ordinary petty and unvalued self dropped away flake by flake,
and he realized something of the essential majesty of his own
real Being as part of an eternal and wonderful Whole. The little
painful throb of his own limited personality slipped into the
giant pulse-beat of a universal vibration.
In his normal daily life, of course, he lost sight of this
Whole, blinded by the details seen without perspective,
mistaking his little personality for all there was of him; but
now, as he rose, whirling, soaring, singing in the body of this
stupendous music, he understood with a rush of indescribable
glory that he was part and parcel of this great chord--this
particular chord in which Skale, Mrs. Mawle and Miriam also
sang their harmonious existences--that this chord, again, was
part of a vaster music still, and that all, in the last resort,
was a single note in the divine Utterance of God.
That is, the little secretary, for the first time in his
existence, saw life as a whole, and interpreted the vision, so
wondrous sweet and simple, with the analogies of sound
communicated to his subliminal mind by the mighty Skale.
Whatever the cause, however, the fine thing was that he saw,
heard, knew. He was of value in the scheme. In future he could
pipe his little lay without despair.
Moreover, with a merciless clarity of vision, he perceived an
even deeper side of truth, and understood that the temporary
discords were necessary, just as evil, so-called, is necessary for
the greater final perfection of the Whole. For it came to him
with the clear simplicity of a child's vision that the process
of attuning his being to the right note must inevitably involve
suffering and pain: the awful stretching of the string, the
strain of the lifting vibrations, the stress at first of sounding
in harmony with all the others, and the apparent loss of one's
own little note in order to do so. . . .
This point he reached, it seems, and grasped. Afterwards,
however, he entered a state where he heard things no man can
utter because no language can touch transcendental things
without confining or destroying them. In attempting a version
of them he merely becomes unintelligible, as has been said. Yet
the mere memory of it brings tears to his blue eyes when he
tries to speak of it, and Miriam, who became, of course, his
chief confidant, invariably took it upon herself to stop his
futile efforts with a kiss.
------
So at length the tide of sound began to ebb, the volume
lessened and grew distant, and he found himself, regretfully,
abruptly, sinking back into what by comparison was mere noise.
First, he became conscious that he listened--heard--saw; then,
that Miriam's voice still uttered his name softly, but his
ordinary, outer name, Robertspinrobin; that he noticed her big
grey eyes gazing into his own, and her lips moving to frame the
syllables, and, finally, that he was sitting in the arm-chair,
trembling. Joy, peace, wonder still coursed through him like
flames, but dying flames. Mr. Skale's voice next reached him
from the end of the room. He saw the fireplace, his own bright
and pointed pumps, the tea-table where they had drunk tea, and
then, as the clergyman strode towards him over the carpet, he
looked up, faint with the farewell of the awful excitement, into
his face. The great passion of the experience still glowed and
shone in him like a furnace.
And there, in that masterful bearded visage, he surprised an
expression so tender, so winning, so comprehending, that
Spinrobin rose to his feet, and taking Miriam by the hand, went
to meet him. There the three of them stood upon the mat
before the fire. He felt overwhelmingly drawn to the
personality of the man who had revealed to him such splendid
things, and in his mind stirred a keen and poignant regret that
such knowledge could not be permanent and universal, instead of
merely a heavenly dream in the mind of each separate
percipient. Gratitude and love, unknown to him before, rose in
his soul. Spinrobin, his heart bursting as with flames, had
cried aloud, "You have called me by my name and I am free! . . .
You have named me truly and I am redeemed! . . ." And all
manner of speech, semi-inspirational, was about to follow, when
Mr. Skale suddenly moved to one side and raised his arm. He
pointed to the mirror.
Spinrobin was just tall enough to see his own face in the
glass, but the glimpse he caught made him stand instantly on
tiptoe to see more. For his round little countenance, flushed
as it was beneath its fringe of disordered feathery hair, was
literally--transfigured. A glory, similar to the glory he had
seen that same evening upon the face of the housekeeper, still
shone and flickered about the eyes and forehead. The signature
of the soul, brilliant in purity, lay there, transforming the
insignificance of the features with the grandeur and nobility of
its own power.
"I am honoured,--too gloriously honoured!" was the singular
cry that escaped his lips, vainly seeking words to express an
emotion of the unknown, "I am honoured as the sun . . . and as
the stars . . . !"
And so fierce was the tide of emotion that rose within him
at the sight, so strong the sense of gratitude to the man and
girl who had shown him how his true Self might contain so
great a glory, that he turned with a cry like that of a child
bewildered by the loss of some incomprehensible happiness--
turned and flung himself first upon the breast of the big
clergyman, and then into the open arms of the radiant Miriam,
with sobs and tears of wonder that absolutely refused to be
I
THE situation at this point of his amazing adventure seems to
have been that the fear Spinrobin felt about the nature of the
final Experiment was met and equalized by his passionate
curiosity regarding it. Had these been the only two forces at
work, the lightest pressure in either direction would have
brought him to a decision. He would have accepted the challenge
and stayed; or he would have hesitated, shirked, and left.
There was, however, another force at work upon which he had
hardly calculated at the beginning, and that force now came
into full operation and controlled his decision with margin and
to spare. He loved Miriam; and even had he not loved her, it is
probable that her own calm courage would have put him to
shame and made him "face the music." He could no more have
deserted her than he could have deserted himself. The die was
cast.
Moreover, if the certainty that Mr. Skale was trafficking in
dangerous and unlawful knowledge was formidable enough to
terrify him, for Miriam, at least, it held nothing alarming. She
had no qualms, knew no uneasiness. She looked forward to the
end with calmness, even with joy, just as ordinary good folk
look forward to a heaven beyond death. For she had never known
any other ideal. Mr. Skale to her was father, mother and God. He
had brought her up during all the twenty years of her life in
this solitude among the mountains, choosing her reading,
providing her companionship, training her with the one end in
view of carrying out his immense and fire-stealing purpose.
She had never dreamed of any other end, and had been so
drilled with the idea that this life was but a tedious training-
place for a worthier state to come, that she looked forward,
naturally enough, with confidence and relief to the great
Experiment that should bring her release. She knew vaguely that
there was a certain awful danger involved, but it never for one
instant occurred to her that Mr. Skale could fail. And, so far,
Spinrobin had let no breath of his own terror reach her, or
attempted ever to put into her calm mind the least suggestion
that the experiment might fail and call down upon them the
implacable and destructive forces that could ruin them body
and soul for ever. For this, plainly expressed, was the form in
which his terror attacked him when he thought about it. Skale
was tempting the Olympian powers to crush him.
It was about this time, however, as has been seen from a
slight incident in the last chapter, that a change began to
steal, at first imperceptibly, then obviously, over their
relations together. Spinrobin had been in the house three weeks
--far longer, no doubt, than any of the other candidates. There
only remained now the final big tests. The preliminary ones
were successfully passed. Miriam knew that very soon the
moment would come for him to stay--or go. And it was in all
probability this reflection that helped her to make certain
discoveries in herself that at first she did not in the least
understand.
Spinrobin, however, understood perfectly. His own heart made
him intuitive enough for that. And the first signs thrilled and
moved him prodigiously. His account of it all is like no love
story that has ever been heard, for in the first place this
singular girl hardly breathed about her the reality of an actual
world. She had known nothing beyond the simple life in this
hollow of the hills on the one hand, and on the other the
portentous conceptions that peopled the region of dream
revealed by the clergyman. And in the second place she had no
standards but her own instincts to judge by, for Mrs. Mawle, in
spite of her devotion to the girl, suffered under too great
disabilities to fill the place of a mother, while Mr. Skale was
too lost in his vast speculations to guide her except in a few
general matters, and too sure of her at the same time to
reflect that she might ever need detailed guidance. Her
exceedingly natural and wholesome bringing-up on the one hand,
and her own native purity and good sense on the other, however,
led her fairly straight; while the fact that Spinrobin, with his
modesty and his fine aspirations, was a "little gentleman" into
the bargain, ensured that no unlawful temptation should be
placed in her way, or undue pressure, based upon her ignorance,
employed.
II
They were coming down one afternoon from the mountains
soon after the test of calling his name, and they were alone,
the clergyman being engaged upon some mysterious business
that had kept him out of sight all day. They did not talk much,
but they were happy in each other's company, Spinrobin more
than happy. Much of the time, when the ground allowed, they
went along hand in hand like children.
"Miriam," he had asked on the top of the moors, "did I ever
tell you about Winky--my little friend Winky?" And she had
looked up with a smile and shaken her head. "But I like the
name," she added; "I should like to hear, please." And he told
her how as a boy he had invoked various folk to tease his
sister, of whom Winky was chief, but in telling the story he
somehow or other always referred to the little person by name,
and never once revealed his sex. He told, too, how he sat all
night on the lawn outside his sister's window to intercept the
expected visit.
"Winky," she said, speaking rather low, "is a true name, of
course. You really created Winky--called Winky into being." For
to her now this seemed as true and possible as it had seemed to
himself at the age of ten.
"Oh, I really loved Winky," he replied enthusiastically, and
was at the same moment surprised to feel her draw away her
hand. "Winky lived for years in my very heart."
And the next thing he knew, after a brief silence between
them, was that he heard a sob, and no attempt to smother it
either. In less than a second he was beside her and had both her
hands in his. He understood in a flash.
"You precious baby," he cried, "but Winky was a little man.
He wasn't a girl!"
She looked up through her tears--oh, but how wonderful her
grey eyes were through tears!--and made him stand still before
her and repeat his sentence. And she said, "I know it's true, but
I like to hear you say it, and that's why I asked you to repeat
it."
"Miriam," he said to her softly, kneeling down on the heather
at her feet, "there's only one name in my heart, I can tell you
that. I heard it sing and sing the moment I came into this
house, the very instant I first saw you in that dark passage. I
knew perfectly well, ages and ages ago, that one day a girl with
your name would come singing into my life to make me
complete and happy, but I never believed that she would look as
beautiful as you are." He kissed the two hands he held. "Or that
she--would--would think of me as you do," he stammered in his
passion.
And then Miriam, smiling down on him through her tears,
bent and kissed his feathery hair, and immediately after was on
her knees in front of him among the heather.
"I own you," she said quite simply. "I know your name, and
you know mine. Whatever happens----" But Spinrobin was too
happy to hear any more, and putting both arms round her neck,
he kissed the rest of her words away into silence.
And in the very middle of this it was that the girl gently,
but very firmly, pushed him from her, and Spinrobin in the
delicacy of his mind understood that for the first time in her
curious, buried life the primitive instincts had awakened, so
that she knew herself a woman, and a woman, moreover, who
loved.
------
Thus caught in a bewildering network of curiosity, fear,
wonder, and--love, Spinrobin stayed on, and decided further that
should the clergyman approve him he would not leave. Yet his
intimate relations now with Miriam, instead of making it easier
for him to learn the facts, made it on the other hand more
difficult. For he could not, of course, make use of her affection
to learn secrets that Mr. Skale did not yet wish him to know.
And, further, he had no desire to be disloyal either to him.
None the less he was sorely tempted to ask her what the final
experiment was, and what the "empty" rooms contained. And
most of all what the great name was they were finally to utter
by means of the human chord.
The emotions playing about him at this time, however, were
too complicated and too violent to enable him to form a
proper judgment of the whole affair. It seems, indeed, that this
calmer adjudication never came to him at all, for even to this
day the mere mention of the clergyman's name brings to his
round cheeks a flush of that enthusiasm and wonder which are
the enemies of all sober discrimination. Skale still remains
the great battering force of his life that carried him off his
feet towards the stars, and sent his imagination with wings of
fire tearing through the Unknown to a goal that once attained
should make them all four as gods.
I
AND thus the affair moved nearer to its close. The theory and
practice of moulding form by means of sound was the next bang
at his mind--delivered in the clergyman's most convincing
manner, and, in view of the proofs that soon followed, an
experience that seemed to dislocate the very foundations of his
visible world, deemed hitherto secure enough at least to stand
on.
Had it all consisted merely of talk on Mr. Skale's part the
secretary would have known better what to think. It was the
interludes of practical proof that sent his judgment so awry.
These definite, sensible results, sandwiched in between all the
visionary explanation, left him utterly at sea. He could not
reconcile them altogether with hypnotism. He could only, as an
ordinary man, already with a bias in the mystical direction,
come to the one conclusion that this overwhelming and
hierophantic man was actually in touch with cisterns of force
so terrific as to be dangerous to what he had hitherto
understood to be--life. It was easy enough for the clergyman, in
his optimistic enthusiasm, to talk about their leading to a
larger life. But what if the experiment failed, and these
colossal powers ran amok upon the world--and upon the
invokers?
Moreover--chief anxiety of all--what was this name to be
experimented with? What was the nature of this force that Skale
hoped to invoke--so mighty that it should make them "as gods,"
so terrible that a chord alone could compass even the first of
its stupendous syllables?
And, further, he was still haunted with the feeling that other
"beings" occupied certain portions of the rambling mansion,
and more than once recently he had wakened in the night with
an idea, carried over from dreams possibly, that the corridor
outside his bedroom was moving and alive with footsteps. "From
dreams possibly," for when he went and peered shivering through
the narrow crack of the half-opened door, he saw nothing
unusual. And another time--he was awake beyond question at the
moment, for he had been reading till two o'clock and had but
just extinguished the candle--he had heard a sound that he
found impossible to describe, but that sent all the blood with
a swift rush from the region of his heart. It was not wind; it
was not the wood cracking with the frost; it was not snow
sliding from the slates outside. It was something that
simultaneously filled the entire building, yet sounded
particularly loud just outside his door; and it came with the
abrupt suddenness of a report. It made him think of all the air
in the rooms and halls and passages being withdrawn by
immense suction, as though a gigantic dome had been dropped
over the building in order to produce a vacuum. And just after
it he heard, unmistakably, the long soft stride of Skale going
past his door and down the whole length of the corridor--
stealthily, very quickly, with the hurry of anxiety or alarm in
his silence and his speed.
This, moreover, had now happened twice, so that imagination
seemed a far-fetched explanation. And on both occasions the
clergyman had remained invisible on the day following until
the evening, and had then reappeared, quiet and as usual, but
with an atmosphere of immense vibratory force somehow about
his person, and a glow in his face and eyes that at moments
seemed positively coloured.
No word of explanation, however, had as yet been forthcoming
of these omens, and Spinrobin waited with what patience he
could, meanwhile, for the final test which he knew to be close
upon him. And in his diary, the pages usually left blank now
because words failed him, he wrote a portion of AEnone's cry
that had caught his memory and expressed a little of what he
felt:
. . . for fiery thoughts
Do shape themselves within me, more and more,
Whereof I catch the issue, as I hear
Dead sounds at night come from the inmost hills,
Like footsteps upon wool. . . .
II
It was within three days of the expiration of his trial month
that he then had this conversation with the clergyman, which he
understood quite well was offered by way of preparation for the
bigger tests about to come. He has reported what he could of
it; it seemed to him at the time both plausible and absurd; it
was of a piece, that is, with the rest of the whole fabulous
adventure.
Mr. Skale, as they walked over the snowy moors in the semi-
darkness between tea and dinner, had been speaking to him about
the practical results obtainable by sound-vibrations (what he
already knew for that matter), and how it is possible by
fiddling long enough upon a certain note to fiddle down a bridge
and split it asunder. From that he passed on to the scientific
fact that the ultimate molecules of matter are not only in
constant whirring motion, but that also they do not actually
touch one another. The atoms composing the point of a pin, for
instance, shift and change without ceasing, and--there is space
between them.
Then, suddenly taking Spinrobin's arm, he came closer, his
booming tone dropping to a whisper:
"To change the form of anything," he said in his ear, "is
merely to change the arrangement of those dancing molecules,
to alter their rate of vibration." His eyes, even in the
obscurity of the dusk, went across the other's face like flames.
"By means of sound?" asked the other, already beginning to
feel eerie.
The clergyman nodded his great head in acquiescence.
"Just as the vibrations of heat-waves," he said after a pause,
"can alter the form of a metal by melting it, so the vibrations
of sound can alter the form of a thing by inserting themselves
between those whirling molecules and changing their speed and
arrangement--change the outline, that is."
The idea seemed fairly to buffet the little secretary in the
face, but Mr. Skale's proximity was too overpowering to permit
of very clear thinking. Feeling that a remark was expected from
him, he managed to ejaculate an obvious objection in his mind.
"But is there any sound that can produce vibrations fine and
rapid enough--to--er--accomplish such a result?"
Mr. Skale appeared almost to leap for pleasure as he heard
it. In reality he merely straightened himself up.
"That," he cried aloud, to the further astonishment and even
alarm of his companion, "is another part of my discovery--an
essential particular of it: the production of sound-vibrations
fine and rapid enough to alter shapes! Listen and I will tell
you!" He lowered his voice again. "I have found out that by
uttering the true inner name of anything I can set in motion
harmonics--harmonics, note well, half the wave length and
twice the frequency!--that are delicate and swift enough to
insert themselves between the whirling molecules of any
reasonable object--any object, I mean, not too closely or
coherently packed. By then swelling or lowering my voice I can
alter the scale, size or shape of that object almost
indefinitely, its parts nevertheless retaining their normal
relative proportions. I can scatter it to a huge scale by
separating its molecules indefinitely, or bring them so closely
together that the size of the object would be reduced to a
practical invisibility!"
"Re-create the world, in fact!" gasped Spinrobin, feeling the
earth he knew slipping away under his feet.
Mr. Skale turned upon him and stood still a moment. The
huge moors, glimmering pale and unreal beneath their snow, ran
past them into the sky--silent forms corresponding to who
knows what pedal notes? The wind sighed--audible expression of
who shall say what mighty shapes? . . . Something of the
passion of sound, with all its mystery and splendour, entered
his heart in that windy sigh. Was anything real? Was anything
permanent? . . . Were Sound and Form merely interchangeable
symbols of some deeper uncatalogued Reality? And was the
visible cohesion after all the illusory thing?
"Re-mould the whole universe, sir!" he roared through the
darkness, in a way that made the other wish for the touch of
Miriam's hand to steady him. "I could make you, my dear
Spinrobin, immense, tiny, invisible, or by a partial utterance
of your name, permanently crooked. I could overwhelm your own
vibrations and withdraw their force, as by suction of a vacuum,
absorbing yourself into my own being. By uttering the name of
this old earth, if I knew it, I could alter its face, toss the
forests like green dust into the sea, and lift the pebbles of the
seashore to the magnitude of moons! Or, did I know the true
name of the sun, I could utter it in such a way as to identify
myself with its very being, and so escape the pitiful terrors of
a limited personal existence!"
He seized his companion's arm and began to stride down the
mountain-side at a terrific pace, almost lifting Spinrobin from
his feet as he did so. About the ears of the panting secretary
the wild words tore like bullets, whistling a new and dreadful
music.
"My dear fellow," he shouted through the night, "at the Word
of Power of a true man the nations would rush into war, or sink
suddenly into eternal peace; the mountains be moved into the
sea, and the dead arise. To know the sounds behind the
manifestations of Nature, the names of mechanical as well as of
psychical Forces, of Hebrew angels, as of Christian virtues, is
to know Powers that you can call upon at will--and use! Utter
them in the true vibratory way and you waken their counterpart
in yourself and stir thus mighty psychic powers into activity in
your Soul."
He rained the words down upon the other's head like a
tempest.
"Can you wonder that the walls of Jericho fell flat before a
`Sound,' or that the raging waves of the sea lay still before a
voice that called their Name? My discovery, Mr. Spinrobin, will
run through the world like a purifying fire. For to utter the
true names of individuals, families, tribes and nations, will be
to call them to the knowledge of their highest Selves, and to
lift them into tune with the music of the Voice of God."
They reached the front door, where the gleam of lamps shone
with a homely welcome through the glass panels. The clergyman
released his companion's arm; then bent down towards him and
added in a tone that held in it for the first time something of
the gravity of death:
"Only remember--that to utter falsely, to pronounce
incorrectly, to call a name incompletely, is the beginning of
all evil. For it is to lie with the very soul. It is also to
evoke forces without the adequate corresponding shape that
covers and controls them, and to attract upon yourself the
destructive qualities of these Powers--to your own final
disintegration and annihilation."
Spinrobin entered the house, filled with a sense of awe that
was cold and terrible, and greater than all his other sensations
combined. The winds of fear and ruin blew shrill about his
naked soul. None the less he was steadfast. He would remain to
bless. Mr. Skale might be violent in mind, unbalanced, possibly
mad; but his madness thundered at the doors of heaven, and the
sound of that thundering completed the conquest of his
admiration. He really believed that when the end came those
mighty doors would actually open. And the thought woke a kind
of elemental terror in him that was not of this world--yet
marvellously attractive.
III
That night the singular rushing sound again disturbed him. It
seemed as before to pass through the entire building, but this
time it included a greater space in its operations, for he
fancied he could hear it outside the house as well, travelling
far up into the recesses of the dark mountains. Like the sweep
of immense draughts of air it went down the passage and rolled
on into the sky, making him think of the clergyman's
suggestion that some sounds might require air-waves of a
hundred miles instead of a few inches, too vast to be heard as
sound. And shortly after it followed the great gliding stride of
Mr. Skale himself down the corridor. That, at least, was
unmistakable.
During the following day, moreover, Mr. Skale remained
invisible. Spinrobin, of course, had never permitted himself to
search the house, or even to examine the other rooms in his
own corridor. The quarters where Miriam slept were equally
unknown to him. But he was quite certain that these prolonged
periods of absence were spent by the clergyman in some remote
part of the rambling building where there existed isolated, if
not actually secret, rooms in which he practised the rituals of
some dangerous and intrepid worship. And these intimidating
and mysterious sounds at night were, of course, something to do
with the forces he conjured. . . .
The day was still and windless, the house silent as the grave.
He walked about the hills during the afternoon, practising his
Hebrew "Names" and "Words" like a schoolboy learning a lesson.
And all about him the slopes of mountain watched him,
listening. So did the sheet of snow, shining in the wintry
sunlight. The clergyman seemed to have put all sound in his
pocket and taken it away with him. The absence of anything
approaching noise became almost oppressive. It was a Silence
that prepares. Spinrobin went about on tiptoe, spoke to Miriam
in whispers, practised his Names in hushed, expectant tones. He
almost expected to see the moors and mountains open their
deep sides and let the Sounds of which they were the visible
shape escape awfully about him. . . .
In these hours of solitude, all that Skale had told him, and
more still that he divined himself, haunted him with a sense of
disquieting reality. Inaudible sounds of fearful volume,
invisible forms of monstrous character, combinations of both
even, impended everywhere about him. He became afraid lest he
might stumble, as Skale had done, on the very note that should
release them and bring them howling, leaping, crashing about
his ears. Therefore, he tried to make himself as small as
possible; he muffled steps and voice and personality. If he
could, he would have completely disappeared.
He looked forward to Skale's return, but when evening came
he was still alone, and he dined tкte-а-tкte with Miriam for the
first time. And she, too, he noticed, was unusually quiet.
Almost they seemed to have entered the world of Mrs. Mawle, the
silent regions of the deaf. But for the most part it is probable
that these queer impressions were due to the unusual state of
Spinrobin's imagination. He knew that it was his last night in
the place--unless the clergyman accepted him; he knew also
that Mr. Skale had absented himself with a purpose, and that
the said purpose had to do with the test of Alteration of Forms
by Sound, which would surely be upon him before the sun rose.
So that, one way and another, it was natural enough that his
nerves should have been somewhat overtaxed.
The presence of Miriam and Mrs. Mawle, however, did much to
soothe him. The latter, indeed, mothered the pair of them quite
absurdly, smiling all the time while she moved about softly
with the dishes, and doing her best to make them eat enough for
four. Between courses she sat at the end of the room, waiting in
the shadows till Miriam beckoned to her, and once or twice
going so far as to put her hand upon Spinrobin's shoulder
protectively.
His own mind, however, all the time was full of charging
visions. He kept thinking of the month just past and of the
amazing changes it had brought into his thoughts. He realized,
too, now that Mr. Skale was away, something of the lonely and
splendid courage of the man, following this terrific, perhaps
mad, ideal, day in day out, week in week out, for twenty years
and more, his faith never weakening, his belief undaunted. Waves
of pity, too, invaded him for the first time--pity for this
sweet girl, brought up in ignorance of any other possible world;
pity for the deaf old housekeeper, already partially broken, and
both sacrificed to the dominant idea of this single, heaven-
climbing enthusiast; pity last of all for himself, swept
headlong before he had time to reflect, into the audacious
purpose of this violent and headstrong super-man.
All manner of emotions stirred now this last evening in his
perplexed breast; yet out of the general turmoil one stood
forth more clearly than the rest--his proud consciousness that
he was taking an important part in something really big at
last. Behind the screen of thought and emotion which veiled so
puzzlingly the truth, he divined for the first time in his
career a golden splendour. If it also terrified him, that was
only his cowardice. . . . In the same way it might be splendid
to jump into Niagara just above the falls to snatch a passing
flower that seemed more wonderful than any he had seen before,
but----!
"Miriam, to-morrow is my last day," he said suddenly,
catching her grey eyes upon him in the middle of his strange
reflections. "To-night may be my last night in this house with
you."
The girl made no reply, merely looking up and smiling at
him. But the singing sensation that usually accompanied her
gaze was not present.
"That was very nearly--a discord," she observed presently,
referring to his remark. "It was out of tune!" And he realized
with a touch of shame what she meant. For it was not true that
this was his last evening; he knew really that he would stay on
and that Mr. Skale would accept him. Quick as a flash, with her
simple intuition, she felt that he had said this merely to coax
from her some sign of sympathy or love. And the girl was not
to be drawn. She knew quite well that she held him and that
their fate, whatever it might be, lay together.
The gentle rebuke made him silent again. They sat there
smiling at one another across the table, and old Mrs. Mawle,
sitting among the shadows at the far end of the room, her hands
crossed in front of her, her white evening cap shining like a
halo above her patient face, watched them, also smiling. The
rest of the strange meal passed without conversation, for the
great silence that all day had wrapped the hills seemed to have
invaded the house as well and laid its spell upon every room. A
deep hush, listening and expectant, dropped more and more
about the building and about themselves.
After dinner they sat for twenty minutes together before the
library fire, their toes upon the fender, for, contrary to her
habit, Miriam had not vanished at once to her own quarters.
"We're not alone here," remarked Spinrobin presently, in a
low voice, and she nodded her head to signify agreement. The
presence of Mr. Skale when he was in the house but invisible,
was often more real and tremendous than when he stood beside
them and thundered. Some part of him, some emanation, some
potent psychic messenger from his personality, kept them
closely company, and to-night the secretary felt it very
vividly. His remark was really another effort to keep in close
touch with Miriam, even in thought. He needed her more than
ever in this sea of silence that was gathering everywhere about
him. Gulf upon gulf it rose and folded over him. His anxiety
became every moment more acute, and those black serpents of
fear that he dreaded were not very far away. By every fibre in
his being he felt certain that a test which should shake the
very foundations of his psychical life was slowly and
remorselessly approaching him.
Yet, though he longed to speak outright and demand of Miriam
what she knew, and especially that she should reveal the place
of the clergyman's concealment and what portent it was that
required all this dread and muted atmosphere for its
preparation, he kept a seal upon his lips, realizing that
loyalty forbade, and that the knowledge of her contempt would
be even worse than the knowledge of the truth.
And so in due course she rose to go, and as he opened the
door for her into the hall, she paused a moment and turned
towards him. A sudden inexplicable thrill flashed through him
as she turned her eyes upon his face, for he thought at first
she was about to speak. He has never forgotten the picture as
she stood there so close to his side, the lamplight on her slim
figure in its white silk blouse and neat dark skirt, the gloom
of the unlit hall and staircase beyond--stood there an instant,
then put both her arms about his neck, drew him down to her,
and kissed him gently on both cheeks. Twice she kissed him,
then was gone into the darkness, so softly that he scarcely
heard her steps, and he stood between the shadows and the light,
her perfume still lingering, and with it the sweet and magical
blessing that she left behind. For that caress, he understood,
was the innocent childlike caress of their first days, and with
all the power of her loving little soul in it she had given him
the message that he craved: "Courage! And keep a brave heart,
dear Spinny, to-night!"
I
SPINROBIN lingered a while in the library after Miriam was
gone, then feeling slightly ill at ease in the room now that
her presence was withdrawn, put the lights out, saw that the
windows were properly barred and fastened, and went into the
hall on his way to bed.
He looked at the front door, tried the chain, and made sure
that both top and bottom bolts were thrown. Why he should
have taken these somewhat unusual precautions was not far to
seek, though at the moment he could not probably have
explained. The desire for protection was awake in his being, and
he took these measures of security and defence because it
sought to express itself, as it were, even automatically.
Spinrobin was afraid.
Up the broad staircase he went softly with his lighted
candle, leaving the great hall behind him full to the brim with
shadows--shadows that moved and took shape. His own head and
shoulders in monstrous outline poured over the walls and upper
landings, and thence leaped to the sky-light overhead. As he
passed the turn in the stairs, the dark contents of the hall
below rushed past in a single mass, like an immense extended
wing, and settled abruptly at his back, following him thence to
the landing.
Once there, he went more quickly, moving on tiptoe, and so
reached his own room halfway down. He passed two doors to get
there; another two lay beyond; all four, as he believed, being
always locked. It was these four rooms that conjured mightily
with his imagination always, for these were the rooms he
pictured to himself, though without a vestige of proof, as being
occupied. It was from the further ones--one or other of them--
he believed Mr. Skale came when he had passed down the corridor
at two in the morning, stealthily, hurriedly, on the heels of
that rush of sound that made him shake in his bed as he heard
it.
In his own room, however, surrounded by the familiar and
personal objects that reminded him of normal life, he felt
more at home. He undressed quickly, all his candles alight, and
then sat before the fire in the arm-chair to read a little
before getting into bed.
And he read for choice Hebrew--Hebrew poetry; and on this
particular occasion, the books of Job and Ezekiel. For nothing
had so soothing and calming an effect upon him as the mighty
yet simple imagery of these sonorous stanzas; they invariably
took him "out of himself," or at any rate out of the region of
small personal alarms. And thus, letting his fancy roam, it
seems, he was delighted to find that gradually the fears which
had dominated him during the day and evening disappeared. He
passed with the poetry into that region of high adventure which
his nature in real life denied him. The verses uplifted him in a
way that made his recent timidity seem the mere mood of a
moment, or at least negligible. His memory, as one thing
suggested another, began to give up its dead, and some of
Blake's drawings, seen recently in London with prodigious
effect, began to pass vividly before his mental vision.
The symbolism of what he was reading doubtless suggested
the memory. He felt himself caught in the great invisible nets
of wonder that for ever swept the world. The littleness of
modern life, compared to that ancient and profound spirit
which sought the permanent things of the soul, haunted him
with curious insistence. He suffered a keen, though somewhat
mixed realization of his actual insignificance, yet of his
potential sublimity could he but identify himself with his
ultimate Self in the region of vision. . . . His soul was aware
of finding itself alternately ruffled and exalted as he read . . .
and pondered . . . as he visualised to some degree the giant
Splendours, the wonderful Wheels, the spirit Wings and Faces
and all the other symbols of potent imagery evoked by the
imagination of that old Hebrew world. . . .
So that when, an hour later, pacified and sleepy, he rose to
go to bed, this poetry seems to have left a very marked effect
upon his mind--mingled, naturally enough, with the thought of
Mr. Skale. For on his way across the floor, having adjusted the
fire-screen, he distinctly remembered thinking what a splendid
"study" the clergyman would have made for one of Blake's
representations of the Deity--the flowing beard, the great nose,
the imposing head and shoulders, the potentialities of the
massive striding figure, surrounded by a pictorial suggestion of
all the sound-forces he was for ever talking about. . . .
This thought was his last, and it was without fear of any
kind. Merely, he insists, that his imagination was touched, and
in a manner perfectly accountable, considering the ingredients
of its contents at the time.
And so he hopped nimbly into bed. On the little table beside
him stood the candle and the copy of the Hebrew text he had
been reading, with its parallel columns in the two languages.
His Jaeger slippers were beneath the chair, his clothes,
carefully folded, on the sofa, his collar, studs and necktie in a
row on the top of the mahogany chest of drawers. On the
mantelpiece stood the glass jar of heather, filled that very day
by Miriam. He saw it just as he blew out the candle, and Miriam,
accordingly, was the last vision that journeyed with him into
the country of dreams and sweet forgetfulness.
The night was perfectly still. Winter, black and hard, lay
about the house like an iron wall. No wind stirred. Snow covered
the world of mountain and moor outside, and Silence, supreme
at midnight, poured all her softest forces upon the ancient
building and its occupants. Spinrobin, curled up in the middle
of the big four-poster, slept like a tired baby.
II
It was a good deal later when somewhere out of that mass of
silence rose the faint beginnings of a sound that stirred first
cautiously about the very foundations of the house, and then,
mounting inch by inch, through the hall, up the staircase, along
the corridor, reached the floor where the secretary slept so
peacefully, and finally entered his room. Its muffled tide
poured most softly over all. At first only this murmur was
audible, as of "footsteps upon wool," of wind or drifting snow, a
mere ghost of sound; but gradually it grew, though still gentle
and subdued, until it filled the space from ceiling unto floor,
pressing in like water dripping into a cistern with ever-
deepening note as its volume increased. The trembling of air in
a big belfry where bells have been a-ringing represents best the
effect, only it was a trifle sharper in quality--keener, more
alive.
But, also, there was something more in it--something gong-
like and metallic, yet at the same time oddly and suspiciously
human. It held a temper, too, that somehow woke the "panic
sense," as does the hurried note of a drum--some quick
emotional timbre that stirs the sleeping outposts of
apprehension and alarm. On the other hand, it was constant,
neither rising nor falling, and thus ordinarily, it need not have
stirred any emotion at all--least of all the emotion of
consternation. Yet, there was that in it which struck at the
root of security and life. It was a revolutionary sound.
And as it took possession of the room, covering everything
with its garment of vibration, it slipped in also, so to speak,
between the crevices of the sleeping, unprotected Spinrobin,
colouring his dreams--his innocent dreams--with the suggestion
of nightmare dread. Of course, he was too deeply wrapped in
slumber to receive the faintest intimation of this waking
analysis. Otherwise he might, perhaps, have recognized the kind
of primitive, ancestral dread his remote forefathers knew when
the inexplicable horror of a tidal wave or an eclipse of the sun
overwhelmed them with the threatened alteration of their
entire known universe.
The sleeping figure in that big four-poster moved a little as
the tide of sound played upon it, fidgeting this way and that.
The human ball uncoiled, lengthened, straightened out. The
head, half hidden by folds of sheet and pillow-case, emerged.
Spinrobin unfolded, then opened his eyes and stared about
him, bewildered, in the darkness.
"Who's there? Is that you--anybody?" he asked in a whisper,
the confusion of sleep still about him.
His voice seemed dead and smothered, as though the other
sound overwhelmed it. The same instant, more widely awake, he
realized that his bedroom was humming.
"What's that? What's the matter?" he whispered again,
wondering uneasily at the noise.
There was no answer. The vague dread transferred itself
adroitly from his dream-consciousness to his now thoroughly
awakened mind. It began to dawn upon him that something was
wrong. He noticed that the fire was out, and the room dark and
heavy. He realized dimly the passage of time--a considerable
interval of time--and that he must have been asleep several
hours. Where was he? Who was he? What, in the name of mystery
and night, had been going on during the interval? He began to
shake all over--feverishly. Whence came this noise that made
everything in the darkness tremble?
As he fumbled hurriedly for the match-box, his fingers
caught in the folds of pillow-case and sheet, and he struggled
violently to get them clear again. It was while doing this that
the impression first reached him that the room was no longer
quite the same. It had changed while he slept. Even in the
darkness he felt this, and shuddering pulled the blankets over
his head and shoulders, for this idea of the changed room
plucked at the centre of his heart, where terror lay waiting to
leap out upon him.
After what seemed five minutes he found the match-box and
struck a light, and all the time the torrent of sound poured
about his ears with such an effect of bewilderment that he
hardly realized what he was doing. A strange terror poured into
him that he would change with the room. At length the match
flared, and while he lit the candle with shaking fingers, he
looked wildly, quickly about him. At once the sounds rushed
upon him from all directions, burying him, so to speak, beneath
vehement vibrations of the air that rained in upon him. . . .
Yes, the room had indeed changed, actually changed . . . but
before he could decide where the difference lay the candle died
down to a mere spark, waiting for the wick to absorb the grease.
It seemed like half an hour before the yellow tongue grew again,
so that he finally saw clearly.
But--saw what? Saw that the room had horribly altered while
he slept, yes! But how altered? What in the name of all the
world's deities was the matter with it? The torrent of sound,
now growing louder and louder, so confused him at first, and the
dancing patchwork of light and shadow the candle threw so
increased his bewilderment, that for some minutes he sought in
vain to steady his mind to the point of accurate observation.
"God of my Fathers!" cried Spinrobin at last under his
breath, and hardly knowing what he said, "if it's not moving!"
For this, indeed, was what he saw while the candle flame
burned steadily upon a room that was no longer quite
recognizable.
At first, with the natural exaggeration due to shock, he
thought the whole room moved, but as his powers of sight came
with time to report more truly, he perceived that this was only
true of certain things in it. It was not the ceiling that poured
down in fluid form to meet a floor ever gliding and shifting
forward into outlandish proportions, but it was certain objects
--one here, another there--midway between the two that, having
assumed new and unaccustomed outlines, lent to the rest of the
chamber a general appearance of movement and an entirely
altered expression. And these objects, he perceived, holding
tightly to the bedclothes with both hands as he stared, were
two: the dark, old-fashioned cupboard on his left, and the plush
curtains that draped the window on his right. He himself, and
the bed and the rest of the furniture were stationary. The room
as a whole stood still, while these two common and familiar
articles of household furnishing took on a form and an
expression utterly foreign to what he had always known as a
cupboard and a curtain. This outline, this expression, moreover,
if not actually sinister, was grotesque to the verge of the
sinister: monstrous.
The difficulty of making any accurate observation at all was
further increased by the perplexity of having to observe two
objects, not even on the same side of the room. Their outlines,
however, Spinrobin claims, altered very slowly, wavering like
the distorted reflections seen in moving water, and
unquestionably obeying in some way the pitch and volume of the
sound that continued to pour its resonant tide about the room.
The sound manipulated the shape; the connection between the
two was evident. That, at least, he grasped. Somebody hidden
elsewhere in the house--Mr. Skale probably, of course, in one of
his secret chambers--was experimenting with the "true names"
of these two "common objects," altering their normal forms by
inserting the vibrations of sound between their ultimate
molecules.
Only, this simple statement that his clearing mind made to
itself in no way accounted for the fascination of horror that
accompanied the manifestation. For he recognized it as the joy
of horror and not alone the torment. His blood ran swiftly to
the rhythm of these humming vibrations that filled the space
about him; and his terror, his bewilderment, his curious sense
of elation seemed to him as messengers of far more terrific
sensations that communicated to him dimly the rushing wonder
of some aspect of the Unknown in its ultimate nature
essentially beautiful.
This, however, only dawned upon him later, when the
experiment was complete and he had time to reflect upon it all
next day; for, meanwhile, to see the proportions he had known
since childhood alter thus before his eyes was unbelievably
dreadful. To see your friend sufficiently himself still to be
recognizable, yet in essentials, at the same time, grotesquely
altered, would doubtless touch a climax of distress and horror
for you. The changing of these two things, so homely and well-
known in themselves, into something that was not themselves,
involved an idea of destruction that was worse than even death,
for it meant that the idea in the mind no longer corresponded
to the visible object there before the eyes. The correspondence
was no longer a true one. The result was a lie.
To describe the actual forms assumed by these shifting and
wavering bodies is not possible, for when Spinrobin gives the
details one simply fails to recognize either cupboard or
curtain. To say that the dark, lumbering cupboard, standing
normally against the wall down there in the shadows, loomed
suddenly forward and upward, bent, twisted, and stretched out
the whole of one side towards him like a misshapen arm, can
convey nothing of the world of new sensations that the little
secretary felt while actually watching it in progress in that
haunted chamber of Skale's mansion among the hills. Nor can
one be thrilled with the extraordinary sense of wonder that
thrilled Spinrobin when he saw the faded plush curtain hang
across the window in such a way that it might well have wrapped
the whole of Wales into a single fold, yet without extending its
skirts beyond the actual walls of the room. For what he saw
apparently involved contradictions in words, and the fact is
that no description of what he saw is really possible at all.
"Hark! By thunder!" he exclaimed, creeping out of bed with
sheer stress of excitement, while the sounds poured up through
the floor as though from cellars and tunnels where they lay
stored beneath the house. They sang and trembled about him
with the menaces of a really exquisite alarm. He moved
cautiously out into the centre of the room, not daring to
approach too close to the affected objects, yet furiously
anxious to discover how it was all done. For he was uncommonly
"game" through it all, and had himself well in hand from
beginning to end. He was really too excited, probably, to feel
ordinary fear; it all swept him away too mightily for that; he
did not even notice the sting of the hot candle-grease as it
fell upon his bare feet.
There he stood, plucky little Spinny, steady amid this
shifting world, master of his soul amid dissolution, his hair
pointing out like ruffled feathers, his blue eyes wide open and
charged with a speechless wonder, his face pale as chalk, lips
apart, jaw a trifle dropped, one hand in the pocket of his
dressing-gown, and the other holding the candle at an angle
that showered grease upon the carpet of the Rev. Philip Skale as
well as upon his own ankles. There he stood, face to face with
the grotesque horror of familiar outlines gone wrong, the
altered panorama of his known world moving about him in a
strange riot of sound and form. It was, he understood, an
amazing exhibition of the transforming power of sound--of
sound playing tricks with the impermanence and the illusion of
Form. Skale was making his words good.
And behind the scenes he divined, with a shudder of genuine
admiration, the figure of the master of the ceremonies,
somehow or other grown colossal, as he had thought of him just
before going to sleep--Philip Skale, hidden in the secret places
of the building, directing the operations of this dreadful
aspect of his revolutionary Discovery. . . . And yet the thought
brought a measure of comfort in its train, for was he not also
himself now included in the mighty scheme? . . . In his mind he
saw this giant Skale, with his great limbs and shoulders, his
flowing, shaggy beard, his voice of thunder and his portentous
speculations, and, so doing, felt himself merged in a larger
world that made his own little terrors and anxieties of but
small account. Once again the sense of his own insignificance
disappeared as he realized that at last he was in the full flood
of an adventure that was providing the kind of escape he had
always longed for.
Inevitably, then, his thought flew to Miriam, and as he
remembered her final word to him a few short hours ago in the
hall below, he already felt ashamed of the fear with which he
had met the beginning of the "test." He instantly felt steeped
instead in the wonder and power of the whole thing. His mind,
though still trembling and shaken, came to rest. He drew, that
is, upon the larger powers of the Chord.
And the interesting thing was that the moment this happened
he noticed a change begin to come over the room. With
extraordinary swiftness the tide of vibration lessened and the
sound withdrew; the humming seemed to sink back into the
depths of the house; the thrill and delight of his recent
terrors fled with it. The air gradually ceased to shake and
tremble; the furniture, with a curious final shiver as of
spinning coins about to settle, resumed its normal shape. Once
more the room, and with it the world, became commonplace and
dull. The test apparently was over. He had met it with success.
Spinrobin, holding the candle straight for the first time,
turned back towards the bed. He caught a passing glimpse of
himself in the mirror as he went--white and scattered he
describes his appearance. . . . He climbed again into bed, blew
the candle out, put the match-box under his pillow within easy
reach, and so once more curled himself up into a ball and
composed himself to sleep.
I
BUT he was hardly settled--there had not even been time to
warm the sheets again--when he was aware that the test, instead
of being over, was, indeed, but just beginning; and the detail
that conveyed this unwelcome knowledge to him, though small
enough in itself, was yet fraught with a crowded cargo of new
alarms. It was a step upon the staircase, approaching his room.
He heard it the instant he lay still in bed after the
shuffling process known generally as "cuddling down." And he
knew that it was approaching because of the assistance the hall
clock brought to his bewildered ears. For the hall clock--a big,
dignified piece of furniture with a deep note--happened just
then to strike the hour of two in the morning, and there was a
considerable interval between the two notes. He first heard the
step far below in the act of leaving the flagged hall for the
staircase; then the clock drowned it with its first stroke, and
perhaps a dozen seconds later, when the second stroke had died
away, he heard the step again, as it passed from the top of the
staircase on to the polished boards of the landing. The owner
of the step, meanwhile, had passed up the whole length of the
staircase in the interval, and was now coming across the
landing in a direct line towards his bedroom door.
"It is a step, I suppose," it seems he muttered to himself,
as with head partially raised above the blankets he listened
intently. "It's a step, I mean . . . ?" For the sound was more
like a light tapping of a little hammer than an actual step--
some hard substance drumming automatically upon the floor,
while yet moving in advance. He recognized, however, that there
was intelligence behind its movements, because of the sense of
direction it displayed, and by the fact that it had turned the
sharp corner of the stairs; but the idea presented itself in
fugitive fashion to his mind--Heaven alone knows why--that it
might be some mechanical contrivance that was worked from the
hall by a hand. For the sound was too light to be the tread of a
person, yet too "conscious" to be merely a sound of the night
operating mechanically. And it was unlike the noise that the
feet of any animal would make, any animal that he could think
of, that is. A four-footed creature suggested itself to his mind,
but without approval.
The puzzling characteristics of the sound, therefore,
contradictory as they were, left him utterly perplexed, so that
for some little time he could not make up his mind whether to
be frightened, interested or merely curious.
This uncertainty, however, lasted but a moment or two at the
most, for an appreciable pause outside his door was next
followed by a noise of scratching upon the panels, as of hands
or paws, and then by the shuffling of some living body that was
flattening itself in an attempt to squeeze through the
considerable crack between door and flooring, and so to enter
the room.
And, hearing it, Spinrobin this time was so petrified with an
instantaneous rush of terror, that at first he dared not even
move to find the matches again under his pillow.
The pause was dreadful. He longed for brilliant light that
should reveal all parts of the room equally, or else for a thick
darkness that should conceal him from everything in the world.
The uncertain flicker of a single candle playing miserably
between the two was the last thing in the world to appeal to
him.
And then events crowded too thick and fast for him to
recognize any one emotion in particular from all the fire of
them passing so swiftly in and out among his hopelessly
disorganized thoughts. Terror flashed, but with it flashed also
wonder and delight--the audacity of unreflecting courage--and
more--even a breathless worship of the powers, knowledge and
forces that lifted for him in that little bedroom the vast
Transparency that hides from men the Unknown.
It is soon told. For a moment there was silence, and then he
knew that the invader had effected an entrance. There was barely
time to marvel at the snake-like thinness of the living
creature that could avail itself of so narrow a space, when to
his amazement he heard the quick patter of feet across the
space of boarded flooring next the wall, and then the silence
that muffled them as they reached the carpet proper.
Almost at the same second something leaped upon his bed,
and there shot swiftly across him a living thing with light,
firm tread--a creature, so far as he could form any judgment at
all, about the size of a rabbit or a cat. He felt the feet
pushing through sheets and blankets upon his body. They were
little feet; how many, at that stage, he could not guess. Then
he heard the thud as it dropped to the floor upon the other
side.
The panic terror that in the dark it would run upon his bare
exposed face thus passed; and in that moment of intense relief
Spinrobin gripped his soul, so to speak, with both hands and
made the effort of his life. Whatever happened now he must have
a light, be it only the light of a single miserable candle. In
that moment he felt that he would have sacrificed all his hopes
of the hereafter to have turned on a flood of searching and
brilliant sunshine into every corner of the room--
instantaneously. The thought that the creature might jump
again upon the bed and touch him before he could see, gave him
energy to act.
With dashes of terror shooting through him like spears of
ice, he grabbed the match-box, and after a frenzied
entanglement again with sheets and pillow-case, succeeded in
breaking four matches in quick succession. They cracked, it
seemed to him, like pistol shots, till he half expected that
this creature, waiting there in the darkness, must leap out in
the direction of the sound to attack him. The fifth lit, and a
moment later the candle was burning dimly, but with its usual
exasperating leisure and delay. As the flare died down, then
gradually rose again, he fairly swallowed the room with a single
look, wishing there were eyes all over his body. It was a very
faint light. At first he saw nothing, heard nothing--nothing
alive, that is.
"I must act! I must do something--at once!" he remembered
thinking. For, to wait meant to leave the choice and moment of
attack to this other. . . .
Cautiously, and very slowly, therefore, he wriggled to the
edge of the bed and slid over, searching with his feet for
slippers, but finding none, yet not daring to lower his eyes to
look; then stood upright with a sudden rush, shading the candle
from his eyes with one hand and peering over it.
As a rule, in moments of overwhelming emotion, the eyes
search too eagerly, too furiously, to see properly at all; but
this does not seem to have been the case with Spinrobin. The
shadows ran about like water and the flickering of the candle-
flame dazzled, but there, opposite to him, over by the darkness
of the dead fire-place, he saw instantly the small black object
that was the immediate cause of his terror. Its actual shape
was merged too much in the dark background to be clearly
ascertainable, but near the top of it, where presumably the
head was, the candle-flame shone reflected in two brilliant
points of light that were directed straight upon his face, and
he knew that he was looking into the eyes of a living creature
that was not the very least on the defensive. It was a living
creature, aggressive and unafraid.
For perhaps a couple of minutes--or was it seconds only?
--these two beings with the breath of life in them faced one
another. Then Spinrobin made a step cautiously in advance;
lowering his candle he moved towards it. This he did, partly to
see better, partly to protect his bare legs. The idea of
protection, however, seems to have been merely instinct, for at
once this notion that it might dash forward to attack him was
merged in the unaccountable realization of a far grander
emotion, as he perceived that this "living creature" facing him
was, for all its diminutive size, both dignified and imposing.
Something in its atmosphere, something about its mysterious
presentment there upon the floor in its dark corner, something,
perhaps, that flashed from its brilliant and almost terrible
eyes, managed to convey to him that it was clothed with an
importance and a significance not attached normally to the
animal world. It had "an air." It bore itself with power, with
value, almost with pride.
This incongruous impression bereft him of the sensations of
ordinary fear, while it increased the sources of his confusion.
Yet it convinced. He knew himself face to face with some form
of life that was considerable in the true sense--spiritually. It
exercised a fascination over him that was at the moment beyond
either explanation or belief.
As he moved, moreover, the little dark object also moved--
away from him, as though resenting closer inspection. With
action--again unlike the action of any animal he could think of,
and essentially dignified--both rapid and nicely calculated, it
ran towards the curtains behind. This appearance of something
stately that went with it was indefinable and beyond everything
impressive; for how in the world could such small proportions
and diminutive movements convey grandeur? And again Spinrobin
found it impossible to decide precisely how it moved--whether
on four legs or on two.
Keeping the two points of light always turned upon him, it
shot across the floor, leaped easily upon a chair, passed with a
nimble spring from this to a table by the wall, still too much
in obscurity to permit a proper view; and then, while the
amazed secretary approached cautiously to follow its
movements better, it crawled to the edge of the table, and in
so doing passed for the first time full across the pale zone of
flickering candle-light.
Spinrobin, in that quick second, caught a glimpse of flying
hair, and saw that it moved either as a human being or as a
bird--on two legs.
The same moment it sprang deftly from the high table to the
mantelpiece, turned, stood erect, and looked at him with the
whole glare of the light upon its face; and Spinrobin, bereft of
all power of intelligible sensation whatever, saw to his
unutterable distress that it was--a man. The dignity of its
movements had already stirred vaguely his sense of awe, but now
the realization beyond doubt of its diminutive human shape
added a singularly acute touch of horror; and it was the
combination of the two emotions, possibly, that were
responsible also for the two remarkable impulses of which he
was first conscious: first, a mad desire to strike and kill;
secondly, an imperious feeling that he must hide his eyes in
some act or other of worship!
And it was then he realized that the man was--Philip Skale!
Mr. Skale, scarcely a foot high, dressed as usual in black,
flowing beard, hooked nose, lambent, flashing eyes and all,
stood there upon the mantelpiece level with his secretary's
face, not three feet separating them, and--smiled at him. He
was small as a Tanagra figure, and in perfect proportion.
It was unspeakably terrible.
II
"Of course--I'm dreaming," cried Spinrobin, half aloud, half
to the figure before him. He searched behind him with one hand
for solid support. "You're a dream thing. It's some awful trick
--God will protect me----!"
Mr. Skale's tiny lips moved. "No, no," his voice said, and it
sounded as from a great distance. "I'm no dream thing at all,
and you are wide awake. Look at me well. I am the man you know
--Philip Skale. Look straight into my eyes and be convinced."
Again he smiled his kindly, winning smile. "What you now see is
nothing but a result of sounding my true name in a certain way
--very softly--to increase the cohesion of my physical
molecules and reduce my visible expression. Listen, and watch!"
And Spinrobin, half stupefied, obeyed, feeling that his
weakening knees must in another moment give way and
precipitate him to the floor. He was utterly unnerved. The
onslaught of terror and amazement was overwhelming. For
something dreadful beyond all words lay in the sight of this
man, whom he was accustomed to reverence in his gigantic
everyday shape, here reduced to the stature of a pygmy, yet
compelling as ever, terrific even when thus dwarfed. And to hear
the voice of thunder that he knew so well come to him disguised
within this thin and almost wailing tone, passed equally beyond
the limits of what he could feel as emotion or translate into
any intelligible words or gesture.
While, therefore, the secretary stood in awful wonder, doing
as he was told simply because he could do nothing else, the
figure of the clergyman moved with tiny steps to the edge of
the mantelpiece, until it seemed as though he meant in another
moment to leap on to his companion's shoulder, or into his
arms. At the edge, however, he stopped--the brink of a
precipice, to him!--and Spinrobin then became aware that from
his moving lips, doll-like though bearded, his voice was issuing
with an ever-growing volume of sound and power.
Vibrations of swiftly-increasing depth and wave-length were
spreading through the air about him, filling the room from
floor to ceiling. What the syllables actually uttered may have
been he was too dazed to realize, for no degree of concentration
was possible to his mind at all; he only knew that, before his
smarting eyes, with this rising of the voice to its old
dominant inflexion, the figure of Mr. Philip Skale grew
likewise, indescribably; swelled, rose, spread upwards and
outwards, but with the parts ever passing slowly in consistent
inter-relation, from minute to minute. He became, always in
perfect proportion, magnified and extended. The growing form,
moreover, kept pace exactly, and most beautifully, with the
increasing tide of sonorous vibration that flooded himself, its
utterer and the whole room.
Spinrobin, it seems, had just sufficient self-control left to
realize that this sound was similar in quality to that which had
first awakened him and caused the outlines of the furniture to
alter, when the sight of Mr. Skale's form changing thus terribly
before his eyes, and within the touch of his very hand, became
too much for him altogether. . . .
What precisely happened he never knew. The sounds first
enveloped him, then drove him backwards with a sense of
immense applied resistance. He collapsed upon the sofa a few
feet behind him, as though irresistibly pushed. The power that
impelled him charged vehemently through the little room till
it seemed the walls must burst asunder to give it scope, while
the sounds rose to such a volume that he figured himself
drowned and overpowered by their mighty vibrations as by the
storm swells of the Atlantic. Before he lost them as sound he
seems thus to have been aware of them as moving waves of air.
. . . The next thing he took in was that amid the waste of
silence that now followed his inability to hear, the figure of
Philip Skale towered aloft towards the ceiling, till it seemed
positively to occupy all the available space in the room about
him.
Had he dropped upon the floor instead of upon the sofa it is
probable that at this point Spinrobin would have lost
consciousness, at any rate for a period; but that sofa, which
luckily for his bones was so close behind, galvanised him
sharply back into some measure of self-control again. Being
provided with powerful springs, it shot him up into the air,
whence he relapsed with a series of smaller bounds into a
normal sitting posture. Still holding the lighted candle as
best he could, the little secretary bounced upon that sofa like
a tennis ball. And the violent motion shook him into himself,
as it were. His tottering universe struggled back into shape
once more. He remembered vaguely that all this was somehow a
test of his courage and fitness. And this thought, strengthened
by a law of his temperament which forced him to welcome the
sweet, mad terror of the whole adventure, helped to call out
the reserves of his failing courage.
He bounced upon his feet again--those bare feet plastered
with candle grease--and, turning his head, saw the clergyman, of
incredible stature, yet still apparently increasing, already over
by the door. He was turning the key with a hand the size--O
horror!--of Spinrobin's breast. The next moment his vast
stooping body filled the entire entrance, blotting out whole
portions of the walls on either side, then was gone from the
room.
Leaving the candlestick on the sofa, his heart aflame with a
fearful ecstasy of curiosity, he dashed across the floor in
pursuit, but Mr. Skale, silently and with the swiftness of a
river, was already down the stairs before he had covered half
the distance.
Through the framework of the door Spinrobin saw this
picture:
Skale, like some awful Cyclops, stood upon the floor of the
hall some twenty feet below, yet rearing terrifically up
through the well of the building till his head and shoulders
alone seemed to fill the entire space beneath the skylight.
Though his feet rested unquestionably upon the ground, his face,
huge as a planet in the sky, rose looming and half lighted
above the banisters of this second storey, his tangled locks
sweeping the ceiling, and his beard, like some dark river of
hair, flowing downwards through the night. And this spreading
countenance of cloud it was, hanging in the semi-darkness, that
Spinrobin saw turn slowly towards him across the faint flicker
of the candle-light, look straight down into his face, and
smile. The great mouth and eyes unquestionably smiled. And
that smile, for all its vast terror, was beyond words enchanting
--like the spread laughter of a summer landscape.
Among the spaces of the immense visage--reminding him
curiously of his boyhood's conception of the Creator--Spinrobin
lost himself and grew dizzy with a deadly yet delicious
faintness. The mighty tenderness, the compassion, the splendour
of that giant smile overpowered him and swallowed him up.
For one second, in dreadful silence, he gazed. Then, rising to
meet the test with a courage that he felt might somehow
involve the alteration if not the actual destruction of his own
little personality, but that also proved his supreme gameness
at the same time, he tried to smile in return. . . . The strange
and pitiful attempt upon his own face perhaps, in the semi-
obscurity, was not seen. He only remembers that he somehow
found strength to crawl forward and close the door with a bang,
though not the strength to turn the key and lock it, and that
two seconds later, having kicked the candle over and out in his
flying leap, he was in the middle of the bed under a confused
pile of sheets and blankets, weeping with muffled sobs in the
darkness as though his heart must burst with the wonder and
terror of all he had witnessed.
For, to the simple in heart, at the end of all possible
stress and strain of emotion, comes mercifully the blinding
relief of tears. . . .
And then, although too overcome to be able to prove it even
to himself, it was significant that, lying there smothered
among the bed-clothes, he became aware of the presence of
something astonishingly sweet and comforting in his
consciousness. It came quite suddenly upon him; the reaction he
experienced, he says, was very wonderful, for with it the sense
of absolute safety and security returned to him. Like a
terrified child in the darkness who suddenly knows that its
mother stands by the bed, all-powerful to soothe, he felt
certain that some one had moved into the room, was close
beside him, and was even trying to smooth his pillow and
arrange the twisted bed-clothes.
He did not dare uncover his face to see, for he was still
dominated by the memory of Mr. Skale's portentous visage; but
his ears were not so easily denied, and he was positive that he
heard a voice that called his name as though it were the
opening phrase of some sweet, childhood lullaby. There was a
touch about him somewhere, it seemed, of delicate cool hands
that brought with them the fragrance as of a scented summer
wind; and the last thing he remembered before he sank away
into welcome unconsciousness was an impression, fugitive and
dreamlike, of a gentle face, unstained and pale as marble, that
bent above his pillow, and, singing, called him away to
forgetfulness and peace.
III
And several hours later, when he woke after a refreshing
sleep to find Mrs. Mawle smiling down upon him over a tray of
steaming coffee, he recalled the events of the night with a
sense of vivid reality that if possible increased his conviction
of their truth, but without the smallest symptom of terror or
dismay. For the blessing of the presence that had soothed him
into sleep lay still upon him like a garment to protect. The
test had come and he had not wholly failed.
With something approaching amusement, he watched the
housekeeper pick up a candlestick from the middle of the floor
and put his Jaeger slippers beneath the chair, having found one
by the cupboard and the other over by the fire-place.
"Mr. Skale's compliments and Mr. Spinrobin is not to hurry
himself," he heard her saying, as she put the tray beside the
bed and went out of the room. He looked at his watch and saw
that it was after ten o'clock.
Half an hour later he was dressed and on his way downstairs,
conscious only of an overwhelming desire to see Mr. Skale, but
to see him in his normal and fatherly aspect again. For a
strain of worship mingled oddly with his devouring curiosity,
and he was thirsty now for the rest of the adventure, for the
complete revelation of the Discovery in all its bearings. And
the moment he saw the clergyman in the hall he ran towards
him, scarcely realizing what it was he meant to say or do. Mr.
Skale stretched out both hands to meet him. His face was alight
with pleasure.
But, before they could meet and touch, a door opened and in
slipped Miriam between them; she, too, was radiant, and her
hands outstretched.
"Me first, please! Me first!" she cried with happy laughter,
and before Spinrobin realized what was happening, she had flung
her arms about his neck and kissed him. "You were splendid!"
she whispered in his ear, "and I am proud of you--ever so
proud!"
The next minute Skale had him by the hands.
"Well done! well done!" his voice boomed, while he gazed
down into his face with enthusiastic and unqualified approval.
"It was all magnificent. My dear little fellow, you've got the
heart of a god, and, by Heavens, you shall become as a god too!
For you are worthy!" He shook him violently by both hands,
while Miriam looked eagerly on with admiration in her wide grey
eyes.
"I'm so glad, so awfully glad----" stammered the secretary,
remembering with shame his moments of vivid terror. He hardly
knew what he said at the moment.
"The properties of things," thundered the clergyman, "as you
have now learned, are merely the `muffled utterances of the
Sounds that made them.' The thing itself is its name."
He spoke rapidly, with intense ardour and with reverence.
"You have seen with your own eyes a scientific proof of my
Discovery on its humblest level--how the physical properties
of objects can be manipulated by the vibratory utterance of
their true names--can be extended, reduced, glorified. Next you
shall learn that spiritual qualities--the attributes of higher
states of being--can be similarly dealt with and harnessed--
exalted, intensified, invoked--and that the correct utterance of
mighty Names can seduce their specific qualities into your own
soul to make you mighty and eternal as themselves, and that to
call upon the Great Names is no idle phrase. . . . When the
time comes, Spinrobin, you shall not shrink, you shall not
shrink. . . ." He flung his arms out with a great gesture of
delight.
"No," repeated Spinrobin, yet aware that he felt mentally
battered at the prospect, "I shall not shrink. I think--now--I
can manage--anything!"
And then, watching Miriam with lingering glance as she
vanished laughing up the staircase, he followed Mr. Skale into
the library, his thoughts tearing wildly to and fro, swelling
with delight and pride, thrilling with the wonder of what was
yet to come. There, with fewest possible sentences, the
clergyman announced that he now accepted him and would,
therefore, carry out the promise with regard to the bequeathal
of his property to him in the event of any untoward
circumstances arising later. He also handed to him in cash the
salary for the "trial month," together with a cheque for the
first quarter in advance. He was beaming with the satisfaction
he felt at having found at last a really qualified helper.
Spinrobin looked into his face as they shook hands over the
bargain. He was thinking of other aspects he had seen of this
amazing being but a few hours before--the minute, the colossal,
the changing-between-the-two Skales. . . .
"I'm game, Mr. Skale," he said simply, forgetting all his
recent doubts and terrors.
"I know you are," the clergyman replied. "I knew it all
I
THE first thing Spinrobin knew when he ran upstairs to lock
away the money in his desk was that his whole being, without
his directing it, asked a question of momentous import. He did
not himself ask it deliberately. He surprised his
subconsciousness asking it:
"WHAT IS THIS NAME THAT PHILIP SKALE
FOR EVER SEEKS?"
It was no longer mere curiosity that asked it, but that sense
of responsibility which in all men of principle and character
lies at the root of action and of life. And Spinrobin, for all
his little weaknesses, was a man of character and principle.
There came a point when he could no longer follow blindly
where others led, even though the leader were so grand an
individual as Philip Skale. This point is reached at varying
degrees of the moral thermometer, and but for the love that
Miriam had wakened in his heart, it might have taken much
longer to send the mercury of his will so high in so short a
time. He now felt responsibility for two, and in the depths of
his queer, confused, little mind stirred the thought that
possibly after all the great adventure he sought was only the
supreme adventure of a very wonderful Love.
He records these two questions at this point, and it is only
just to himself, therefore, to set them down here. To neither
was the answer yet forthcoming.
For some days the routine of this singular household
followed its normal course, the only change being that while
the secretary practised his Hebrew names and studied the
relations between sound, colour, form and the rest, he kept
himself a little better in hand, for Love is a mighty humanizer
and holds down the nose upon the grindstone of the wholesome
and practical values of existence. He turned, so to speak, and
tried to face the matter squarely; to see the adventure as a
whole; to get all round it and judge. It seems, however, that he
was too much in the thick of it to get that bird's-eye view
which reduces details to the right proportion. Skale's
personality was too close, and flooded him too violently.
Spinrobin remained confused and bewildered; but also
unbelievably happy.
"Coming out all right," he wrote shakily in that gilt-edged
diary. "Beginning to understand why I'm in the world. Am just
as important as anybody else--really. Impossible explain
more." His entries were very like telegrams, in which a man
attempts to express in a lucid shorthand all manner of things
that the actual words hardly compass. And life itself is not
unlike some mighty telegram that seeks vainly to express,
between the extremes of silence and excess, all that the soul
would say. . . .
"Skale is going too far," perhaps best expresses the daily
burden of his accumulating apprehension. "He is leading up to
something that makes me shrink--something not quite
legitimate. Playing with an Olympian fire that may consume us
both." And there his telegram stopped; for how in the world
could he put into mere language the pain and distress involved
in the thought that it might at the same time consume Miriam?
It all touched appalling depths of awe in his soul. It made his
heart shake. The girl had become a part of his very self.
Vivid reactions he suffered, alternating with equally vivid
enthusiasms. He realized how visionary the clergyman's poetical
talk was, but the next minute the practical results staggered
him again, as it were, back into a state of conviction. For the
poetry obscured his judgment and fired his imagination so that
he could not follow calmly. The feeling that it was not only
illogical but insane troubled him; yet the physical effects
stared him in the face, and to argue with physical results is
waste of time. One must act.
Yet how "act"? The only way that offered he accepted: he fell
back upon the habits of his boyhood, read his Bible, and at
night dropped humbly upon his knees and prayed.
"Keep me straight and pure and simple, and bless . . .
Miriam. Grant that I may love and strengthen her . . . and that
my love may bring her peace . . . and joy . . . and guide me
through all this terror, I beseech Thee, into Truth. . . ."
For, in the beauty of his selfless love, he dared not even
admit that it was love; feeling only the highest, he could not
quite correlate his sweet and elevated passion with the common
standards of what the World called love. The humility of a
great love is ever amazing.
And then followed in his prayers the more cowardly cry for
ordinary protection from the possible results of Skale's
audacity. The Love of God he could understand, but the Wrath of
God was a conception he was still unemancipated enough to
dread; and a dark, portentous terror that Skale might incur it,
and that he might be dragged at its heels into some hideous
catastrophe, chased him through the days and nights. It all
seemed so unlawful, impious, blasphemous. . . .
". . . And preserve us from vain presumptions of the heart
and brain, I pray Thee, lest we be consumed. . . . Please, O God,
forgive the insolence of our wills . . . and the ignorant daring
of our spirit. . . . Permit not the innocent to suffer for the
guilty . . . and especially bless . . . Miriam. . . ."
Yet through it all ran that exquisite memory of the calling
of his true name in the spaces of his soul. The beauty of far-
off unattainable things hovered like a star above his head, so
that he went about the house with an insatiable yearning in his
heart, a perpetual smile of wonder upon his face, and in his
eyes a gleam that was sometimes terror, sometimes delight.
It was almost as if some great voice called to him from the
mountain-tops, and the little chap was for ever answering in
his heart, "I'm coming! I'm coming!" and then losing his way
purposely, or hiding behind bushes on the way for fear of
meeting the great invisible Caller face to face.
II
And, meanwhile, the house became for him a kind of Sound-
Temple as it were, protected from desecration by the hills and
desolate spaces that surrounded it. From dawn to darkness its
halls and corridors echoed with the singing violin, Skale's
booming voice, Miriam's gentle tones, and his own plaintive yet
excited note, while outside the old grey walls the air was ever
alive with the sighing of the winds and the ceaseless murmur of
falling water. Even at night the place was not silent. He
understood at last what the clergyman had told him--that
perfect silence does not exist. The universe, down to its
smallest detail, sings through every second of time.
The sounds of nature especially haunted him. He never heard
the wind now without thinking of lost whispers from the voice
of God that had strayed down upon the world to sweeten and
bewilder the hearts of men--whispers a-search for listeners
simple enough to understand. And when their walks took them as
far as the sea, the dirge of the waves troubled his soul with a
kind of distressing exaltation that afflicted the very deeps of
his being. It was with a new comprehension he understood his
employer's dictum that the keynote of external nature was
middle F--this employer who himself possessed that psychic
sense of absolute pitch--and that the roar of a city, wind in
forest trees, the cry of trains, the rushing of rivers and
falling water, Niagara itself, all produced this single
utterance; and he loved to sing it on the moors, Miriam
laughing by his side, and to realize that the world, literally,
sang with them.
Behind all sounds he divined for the first time a majesty
that appalled; his imagination, glorified by Skale, instantly
fell to constructing the forms they bodied forth. Out of doors
the flutes of Pan cried to him to dance: indoors the echoes of
yet greater music whispered in the penetralia of his spirit that
he should cry. In this extraordinary new world of Philip Skale's
revelation he fairly spun.
It was one thing when the protective presence of the
clergyman was about him, or when he was sustained by the
excitement of enthusiasm, but when he was alone, at his normal
level, timid, yet adventurous, the too vivid sense of these new
things made him tremble. The terrifying beauty of Skale's
ideas; the realization in cold blood that all forms in the
world about him were silently a-singing, and might any moment
vanish and release their huge bodies into primal sounds; that
the stones in the road, the peaked hills, the very earth herself
might alter in shape before his eyes: on the other hand, that
the viewless forces of life and death might leap into visibility
and form with the calling of their names; that himself, and
Skale, and Mrs. Mawle, and that pale fairy girl-figure were all
enmeshed in the same scheme with plants, insects, animals and
planets; and that God's voice was everywhere too sublimely
close--all this, when he was alone, oppressed him with a sense
of things that were too intimate and too mighty for daily life.
In these moments--so frequent now as to be almost
continuous--he preferred the safety of his ordinary and normal
existence, dull though it might be; the limited personality he
had been so anxious to escape from seemed wondrous sweet and
comforting. The Terror of the approaching Experiment with this
mighty name appalled him.
The forces, thus battling within his soul, became more and
more contradictory and confused. The outcome for himself
seemed to be the result of the least little pressure this way or
that--possibly at the very last moment, too. Which way the
waiting Climax might draw him was a question impossible to
decide.
III
And then, suddenly, the whole portentous business moved a
sharp stage nearer that hidden climax, when one afternoon Mr.
Skale came up unexpectedly behind him and laid a great hand
upon his shoulder in a way that made him positively jump.
"Spinrobin," he said, in those masterful, resonant tones that
shamed his timidity and cowardice, "are you ready?"
"For anything and everything," was the immediate reply,
given almost automatically as he felt the clergyman's forces
flood into his soul and lift him.
"The time is at hand, then," continued the other, leading his
companion by the arm to a deep leather sofa, "for you to know
certain things that for your own safety and ours, I was obliged
to keep hidden till now--first among which is the fact that
this house is not, as you supposed, empty."
Prepared as he was for some surprising announcement,
Spinrobin nevertheless started. It was so abrupt.
"Not empty!" he repeated, eager to hear more, yet quaking. He
had never forgotten the nightly sounds and steps in his own
passage.
"The rooms beyond your own," said Skale, with a solemnity
that amounted to reverence, "are occupied----"
"By----" gasped the secretary.
"Captured Sounds--gigantic," was the reply, uttered almost
below the breath.
The two men looked steadily at one another for the space of
several seconds, Spinrobin charged to the brim with anxious
questions pressing somehow upon the fringe of life and death,
Skale obviously calculating how much he might reveal or how
little.
"Mr. Spinrobin," he said presently, holding him firmly with
his eyes, "you are aware by this time that what I seek is the
correct pronunciation of certain names--of a certain name, let
us say, and that so complex is the nature of this name that no
single voice can utter it. I need a chord, a human chord of four
voices."
Spinrobin bowed.
"After years of research and experiment," resumed the
clergyman, "I have found the first three notes, and now, in your
own person, has come my supreme happiness in the discovery of
the fourth. What I now wish you to know, though I cannot expect
you to understand it all at first, is that the name I seek is
broken up into four great divisions of sound, and that to each
of these separate divisions the four notes of our chord form
introductory channels. When the time comes to utter it, each
one of us will call the syllable or sound that awakens the
mighty response in one of these immense and terrific divisions,
so that the whole name will vibrate as a single chord sung
perfectly in tune."
Mr. Skale paused and drew deep breaths. This approach to his
great experiment, even in speech, seemed to exhaust him so
that he was obliged to call upon reserves of force that lay
beneath. His whole manner betrayed the gravity, the reverence,
the mingled respect and excitement of--death.
And the simple truth is that at the moment Spinrobin could
not find in himself sufficient courage to ask what this fearful
and prodigious name might be. Even to put ordinary questions
about the four rooms was a little beyond him, for his heart
beat like a hammer against his ribs, and he heard its ominous
drum sounding through both his temples.
"And in each of the rooms in your corridor, ready to leap
forth when called, lie the sounds or voices I have captured and
imprisoned, these separate chambers being sheeted and prepared
--huge wax receptacles, in fact, akin to the cylinders of the
phonograph. Together with the form or pattern belonging to
them, and the colour, there they lie at present in silence and
invisibility, just as the universe lay in silence and
invisibility before the word of God called it into objective
being. But--I know them and they are mine."
"All these weeks--so close to me," whispered Spinrobin, too
low for Skale to notice.
Then the clergyman leaned over towards him. "These captured
sounds are as yet by no means complete," he said through his
beard, as though afraid to admit it; "for all I have of them
really is their initial letters, of their forms the merest faint
outlines, and of their colours but a first suggestion. And we
must be careful, we must be absolutely wise. To utter them
correctly will mean to transfer to us the qualities of Gods,
whereas to utter falsely may mean to release upon the surface
of the world forces that----" He shrugged his great shoulders
and an ashen pallor spread downwards over the face to the very
lips. The sentence remained unfinished; and its very
incompleteness left Spinrobin with the most grievous agony of
apprehension he had yet experienced.
"So that, if you are ready, our next step shall be to show you
the room in which your own particular sound lies," added Mr.
Skale after a long pause; "the sound in the chord it will be
your privilege to utter when the time comes. For each of us
will utter his or her particular letter, the four together
making up the first syllable in the name I seek."
Mr. Skale looked steadily down into the wide blue eyes of his
companion, and for some minutes neither of them spoke.
"The letter I am to utter," repeated the secretary at length;
"the letter in some great name?"
Mr. Skale smiled upon him with the mighty triumph of the
Promethean idea in his eyes.
"The room," he muttered deeply and softly, "in which it lies
waiting for you to claim it at the appointed time . . . the room
where you shall learn its colour, become attuned to its great
vibratory activity, see its form, and know its power in your own
person."
Again they looked long into one another's eyes.
"I'm game," murmured Spinrobin almost inaudibly; "I'm
game, Mr. Skale." But, as he said it, something in his round head
turned dizzy, while his thoughts flew to Miriam and to the
clergyman's significant phrase of a few minutes ago--"we must
be careful, we must be absolutely wise."
IV
And the preparation the clergyman insisted upon--detailed,
thorough and scrupulous--certainly did not lessen in
Spinrobin's eyes the gravity of the approaching ordeal. They
spent two days and nights in the very precise and punctilious
study, and utterance, of the Hebrew names of the "angels"--that
is, forces--whose qualities were essential to their safety.
Also, at the same time, they fasted.
But when the time came for the formal visit to those closed
rooms, of which the locked doors were like veils in a temple,
Spinrobin declares it made him think of some solemn
procession down ancient passage-ways of crypt or pyramid to
the hidden places where inscrutable secrets lay. It was
certainly thrilling and impressive. Skale went first, moving
slowly with big strides, grave as death, and so profoundly
convinced of the momentous nature of their errand that an air
of dignity, and of dark adventure almost majestic, hung about
his figure. The long corridor, that dreary December morning,
stretched into a world of shadows, and about half-way down it he
halted in front of a door next but one to Spinrobin's room and
turned towards his companion.
Spinrobin, in a mood to see anything, yet striving to hide
behind one of those "bushes," as it were, kept his distance a
little, but Mr. Skale took him by the arm and drew him forward
to his side. Slowly he stooped, till the great bearded lips were
level with his ear, and whispered solemnly:
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see--and hear
God."
Then he turned the key and led the way inside.
But apparently there were double doors, for they found
themselves at first in a cupboard-like space that formed a tiny
vestibule to the room itself; and here there was light enough
to see that the clergyman was taking from nails on the wall
two long garments like surplices, coloured, so far as Spinrobin
could make out, a deep red and a deep violet.
"For our protection," whispered Skale, enveloping himself in
the red one, while he handed the other to his companion and
helped him into it. "Wear it closely about your body until we
come out." And while the secretary struggled among the folds of
this cassock-like garment, that was several feet too long for
his diminutive stature, the clergyman added, still with a
gravity and earnestness that impressed the imagination beyond
all reach of the ludicrous:
"For sound and colour are intimately associated, and there
are combinations of the two that can throw the spiritual body
into a condition of safe receptivity, without which we should be
deaf and blind even in the great Presences themselves."
Trivial details, presenting themselves in really dramatic
moments, may impress the mind with extraordinary aptness. At
this very moment Spinrobin's eyes noticed in the corner of
wall and door a tiny spider's web, with the spider itself
hanging in the centre of its little net--shaking. And he has
never forgotten it. It expressed pictorially exactly what he
felt himself. He, too, felt that he was shaking in mid-air--as
in the centre of a web whose strands hung suspended from the
very stars.
And the words, spoken in that slow deep whisper, filled the
little space in which the two men stood, and somehow
completed for Spinrobin the sense of stupendous things
adequately approached.
Then Mr. Skale closed the outer door, shutting out the last
feeble glimmer of day, at the same moment turning the handle
of the portal beyond. And as they entered the darkness,
Spinrobin, holding up his violet robe with one hand to prevent
tripping, with the other caught hold of the tail of the flowing
garment in front of him. For a second or two he stopped
breathing altogether.
V
On the very threshold a soft murmur of beauty met them;
and, as plainly as though the darkness had lifted into a blaze
of light, the secretary at once realized that he stood in the
presence of something greater than all he had hitherto known
in this world. He had managed to find the clergyman's big hand,
and he held it tightly through a twisted corner of his
voluminous robe. The inner door next closed behind them.
Skale, he was aware, had again stooped in the darkness to the
level of his ear.
"I'll give you the sound--the note," he heard him whisper.
"Utter it inwardly--in your thoughts only. Its vibrations
correspond to the colour, and will protect us."
"Protect us?" gasped Spinrobin with dry lips.
"From being shattered and destroyed--owing to the intense
activity of the vibrations conveyed to our ultimate physical
atoms," was the whispered reply, as the clergyman proceeded to
give him under his breath a one-syllable sound that was unlike
any word he knew, and that for the life of him he has never
been able to reproduce since.
Mr. Skale straightened himself up again and Spinrobin
pictured him standing there twice his natural size, a huge and
impressive figure as he had once before seen him, clothed now
with the double dignity of his strange knowledge. Then,
advancing slowly to the centre of the room, they stood still,
each uttering silently in his thoughts the syllable that attuned
their inner beings to safety.
Almost immediately, as the seconds passed, the secretary
became aware that the room was beginning to shake with a
powerful but regular movement. All about him had become
alive. Vitality, like the vitality of youth upon mountain tops,
pulsed and whirled about them, pouring into them the currents
of a rushing glorious life, undiluted, straight from the source.
In his little person he felt both the keenness of sharp steel
and the vast momentum of a whole ocean. Thus he describes it.
And the more clearly he uttered in his thoughts the sound given
to him by his leader, the greater seemed the influx of strength
and glory into his heart.
The darkness, meanwhile, began to lift. It moved upwards in
spirals that, as they rose, hummed and sang. A soft blaze of
violet like the colour of the robe he wore became faintly
visible in the air. The chamber, he perceived, was about the
same size as his own bedroom, and empty of all furniture, while
walls, floor, and ceiling were draped in the same shade of
violet that covered his shoulders; and the sound he uttered, and
thought, called forth the colour and made it swim into
visibility. The walls and ceiling sheeted with wax opened, so to
speak, their giant lips.
Mr. Skale made a movement and drew him closer. He raised
one arm into the air, and Spinrobin, following the motion, saw
what at first he imagined to be vast round faces glimmering
overhead, outlined darkly against the violet atmosphere. Mr.
Skale, with what seemed a horrible audacity, was reaching up to
touch them, and as he did so there issued a low, soft, metallic
sound, humming and melodious, that dropped sweetly about his
ears. Then the secretary saw that they were discs of metal--
immense gongs swinging in mid-air, suspended in some way from
the ceiling, and each one as Skale touched it emitted its
beautiful note till all combined together at length into a
single chord.
And this chord, though Spinrobin talks whole pages in
describing it, apparently brought in its train the swell and
thunder of something beyond,--the far sweetness of exquisite
harmonics, thousands upon thousands, inwoven with the strands
of deeper notes that boomed with colossal vibrations about
them. And, in some fashion that musical people will
understand, its gentler notes caught up the sound that
Spinrobin was uttering in his mind, and took possession of it.
They merged. An extraordinary volume, suggesting a huge
aggregation of sound behind it--in the same way that a murmur
of wind may suggest the roar of tempests--rose and fell
through the room, lifted them up, bore them away, sang
majestically over their heads, under their feet, and through
their very minds. The vibrations of their own physical atoms
fell into pace with these other spiritual activities by a kind of
sympathetic resonance.
The combination of power and simplicity was what impressed
him most, it seems, for it resembled--resembled only--the
great spiritual simplicity in Beethoven that rouses and at the
same time satisfies the profoundest yearnings of the soul. It
swept him into utter bliss, into something for once complete.
And Spinrobin, at the centre of his glorified yet quaking little
heart, understood vaguely that the sound he uttered, and the
sound he heard, were directly connected with the presence of
some august and awful Name. . . .
VI
Suddenly Mr. Skale, he was aware, became rigid beside him.
Spinrobin pressed closer, seeking the protective warmth of his
body, and realizing from the gesture that something new was
about to happen. And something did happen, though not
precisely in the sense that things happen in the streets and in
the markets of men. In the sphere of his mind, perhaps, it
happened, but was none the less real for that.
For the Presence he had been aware of in the room from the
moment of entrance became then suddenly almost concrete. It
came closer--sheeted in wonder inscrutable. The form and body
of the sounds that filled the air pressed forward into partial
visibility. Spinrobin's powers of interior sight, he dimly
realized, increased at the same time. Vast as a mountain, as a
whole range of mountains; beautiful as a star, as a whole
heaven of stars; yet simple as a flower of the field; and
singing this little song of pure glory and joy that he felt was
the inmost message of the chord--this Presence in the room
sought to push forward into objective reality. And behind it, he
knew, lay the stupendous urgency and drive of some power that
held the entire universe in its pulses as easily as the ocean
holds a shoal of minnows. . . .
But the limits of realization for him were almost reached.
Spinrobin wanted to close his eyes, yet could not. He was driven
along with the wave of sound thus awakened and forced to see
what was to be seen. This time there was no bush behind which
he could screen himself. And there, dimly sketched out of the
rhythmical vibrations of the seething violet obscurity, rose
that looming Outline of wonder and majesty that clothed itself
about them with a garment as of visible sound. The Unknown,
suggesting incredible dimensions, stood at his elbow,
tremendously draped in these dim, voluminous folds of music
and colour--very fearful, very seductive, yet so supremely
simple at the same time that a little child could have
understood without fear.
But only partially there, only partially revealed. The
ineffable glory was never quite told. Spinrobin, amid all the
torrent of words in which he sought later to describe the
experience, could only falter out a single comprehensible
sentence: "I felt like stammering in intoxication over the
first letter of a name I loved--loved to the point of ecstasy--
to the point even of giving up my life for it."
And meanwhile, breathless and shaking, he clung to Skale,
still murmuring in his heart the magic syllable, but swept into
some region of glory where pain and joy both ceased, where
terror and delight merged into some perfectly simple form of
love, and where he became in an instant of time an entirely new
and emancipated Spinrobin, driving at full speed towards the
ultimate sound and secret of the universe--God.
------
He never remembered exactly how he got out of the room, but
it always seemed as though he dropped with a crash from some
enormous height. The sounds ceased; the gongs died into
silence; the violet faded; the quivering wax lay still. . . . Mr.
Skale was moving beside him, and the next minute they were in
the narrow vestibule between the doors, hanging up ordinary
coloured surplices upon ordinary iron nails.
Spinrobin stumbled. Skale caught him. They were in the
corridor again--cold, cheerless, full of December murk and
shadows--and the secretary was leaning against the clergyman's
shoulder breathless and trembling as though he had run a mile.
I
"AND the colour of my sound is a pale green," he heard behind
him in tones as sweet as a muted violin string, "while the form
of my note fits into yours just like a glove. Dear Spinny, don't
tremble so. We shall always be together, remember, you and
I. . . ."
And when, turning, he saw Miriam at his side, radiant with her
shining little smile of welcome, the relief was so great that
he took her in his arms and would not let her go. She drew him
tenderly away downstairs, for the clergyman, it seemed, was
still busy with something in the room, and had left them. . . .
"I know, I know," she said softly, making him sit down beside
her on the sofa, "I know the rush of pain and happiness it
brings. It shifts the whole key of your life, doesn't it? When I
first went into my `room' and learned the letter I was to utter
in the Name, I felt as if I could never come back to ordinary
things again, or----"
"What name?" interrupted Spinrobin, drawing sharply away
from her, and the same second amazed at the recklessness that
had prompted the one question he dreaded.
The inevitable reaction had come. He realized for the first
time that there was an alternative. All the passion of battle
was upon him. The terrific splendours of Skale's possible
achievement dazzled the very windows of his soul, but at the
same time the sweet uses of normal human life called
searchingly to him from within. He had been circling about this
fight for days; at last it was unexpectedly upon him. He might
climb to Skale's impossible Heaven, Skale's outrageous Heaven
. . . on the wings of this portentous experience, or--he might
sink back into the stream of wholesome and commonplace life,
with a delicious little human love to companion him across the
years, the unsoiled love of an embryonic soul that he could
train practically from birth. Miriam was beside him, soft and
yielding, ready, doubtless, to be moulded for either path.
"What name?" he repeated, holding his breath once the words
were out.
"The name, of course," she answered gently, smiling up into
his eyes. "The name I have lived to know and that you came here
to learn, so that when our voices sing and utter it together in
the chord we shall both become----"
Spinrobin set his mouth against her own to stop her speech.
She yielded to him with her whole little body. Her eyes smiled
the great human welcome as she stared so closely into his.
"Shall become--what we are not now," he cried fiercely,
drawing his face back, but holding her body yet more closely to
him. "Lose each other, don't you see? Don't you realize that?"
"No, no," she said faintly, "find each other--you mean----"
"Yes--if all goes well!" He spoke the words very low.
For perhaps thirty seconds they stared most searchingly into
each other's eyes, drawing slightly apart. Very slowly her face,
then, went exceedingly pale.
"If--all goes well," she repeated, horrified. Then, after a
pause, she added: "You mean--that he might make a mistake--
or----?"
And Spinrobin, drinking in the sweet breath that bore the
words so softly from her lips, answered, measuring his words
with ponderous gravity as though each conveyed a sentence of
life or death, "If--all--goes--well."
She watched him with something of that utter clinging
mother-love in her eyes that claims any degree of suffering
gladly rather than the loss of her own--passionately welcoming
misery in preference to loss. She, too, had divined the
alternative.
Then, kissing his cheeks and eyes and lips, she untied his
arms from about her neck and ran, blushing furiously, from the
room. And with her went doubt, for the first time--doubt as to
the success of the great experiment--doubt as to their Leader's
power.
II
And while Spinrobin still sat there, trembling with the two
passions that tore his soul in twain--the passion to climb
forbidden skies with Skale, and the passion to know sweet human
love with Miriam--there came thundering into the room no less
a personage than the giant clergyman, straight from those
haunted rooms. Pallor hung about his face, but there was a
light radiating through it--a high, luminous whiteness--that
made the secretary think of his childhood's pictures of the
Hebrew prophet descending from Mount Sinai, the glory of
internal spheres still reflected upon the skin and eyes. Skale,
like a flame and a wind, came pouring into the room. The thing
he had remained upstairs to complete had clearly proved
successful. The experiment had moved another stage--almost
the final one--nearer accomplishment.
The reaction was genuinely terrific. Spinrobin felt himself
swept away beyond all power of redemption. Miriam and the
delicious human life faded into insignificance again. What, in
the name of the eternal fires, were a girl's lips and love
compared to the possibilities of Olympian achievement
promised by Skale's golden audacities? Earth faded before the
lights of heaven. The whole tide of human emotion was nothing
compared to a drop of this terrible salt brine from seas in
unknown stars. . . . As usual Skale's personality caught him up
into some seventh heaven of the soaring imagination.
"Spinrobin, my glorious companion in adventure," thundered
the clergyman, "your note suits perfectly the chord! I am
delighted beyond all words. You chime with amazing precision
and accuracy into the complex Master-Tone I need for the
proper pronunciation of the Name! Your coming has been an
inspiration permitted of Him who owns it." His excitement was
profoundly moving. The man was in earnest if ever man was. "We
shall succeed!" And he caught him in his arms. "For the Name
manifests the essential attributes of the Being it describes,
and in uttering it we shall know mystical union with it. . . . We
shall be as Gods!"
"Splendid! Splendid!" exclaimed Spinrobin, utterly carried
away by this spiritual enthusiasm. "I will follow you to the
end----"
III
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when framed in the
doorway, delicate and seductive as a witch, again stood Miriam,
then moved softly forward into the room. Her face was pale as
the grave. Her little, delicate mouth was set with resolution.
Clearly she had overheard, but clearly also she had used the
interval for serious reflection.
"We cannot possibly--fail, can we?" she asked, gliding up like
a frightened fawn to the clergyman's side.
He turned upon her, stern, even terrible. So relentless was
his swift appearance, so implacable in purpose, that Spinrobin
felt the sudden impulse to fly to her assistance. But instantly
his great visage broke into a smile like the smile of
thunderous clouds when unexpectedly the sun breaks through,
then quickly hides itself again.
"Everywhere," he roared, "true things are great and clean.
. . . Have faith . . . have faith. . . ." And he looked upon them
both as though his eyes would sweep from their petty souls all
vestige of what was afraid and immature. "We all are--pure . . .
we all are true . . . each calls his note in singleness of heart
. . . we cannot fail!"
And just here Spinrobin, a little beyond himself with
excitement probably, pattered across the room to his giant
leader's side and peered up into his visage. He stood on tiptoe,
craning his neck forwards, then spoke very low:
"I have the right, we have the right--for I have earned it--to
be taken now fully into confidence, and to know everything--
everything," came the words; and the reply, simple and
immediate, that dropped back upon him through all that tangle
of ragged beard was brief and to the point:
"You have. Listen, then----" And he led them both by the
hand like two children towards the sofa, and then, standing over
them, began to speak.
IV
"I seek," he said slowly and gravely, "the correct utterance
of a certain mighty and ineffable name, and in each of those
four rooms lies a letter of its first syllable. For all these
years of research"--his voice dropped suddenly--"have only
brought me to that--the first syllable. And the name itself is
composed of four, each more mighty than the last."
A violent trembling ran over both listeners. Spinrobin,
holding a cold little hand in his, dreaded unuttered sentences.
For if mere letters could spell so vast a message, what must be
the meaning of a whole syllable, and what the dire content of
the completed name itself!
"Yes," Skale went on with a reverence born of profoundest
awe, "the captured sounds I hold are but the opening vibrations
of this tremendous name, and the task is of such magnitude that
absolute courage and absolute faith are essential. For the
sounds are themselves creative sounds, and the consequences in
case of faulty utterance might be too appalling to
contemplate----"
"Creative!" fell from the little man on the sofa, aghast at
the possibility. Yet the one burning question that lay
trembling just behind his lips dared not frame itself in words,
for there was something in Mr. Skale's face and manner that
rendered the asking of it not yet possible. The revelation of
the name must wait.
"Even singly, as you saw, their power is terrific," he went on,
ignoring the pathetic interruption, "but united--as we shall
unite them while each of us utters his letter and summons
forth the entire syllable by means of the chord--they will
constitute a Word of Power which shall make us as Gods if
uttered correctly; if incorrectly, shall pour from this house to
consume and alter the surface of the entire world with the
destructive tempest due to mispronunciation and a lie."
Miriam nestled closer into her companion's side. There was
otherwise no sign outwardly of the emotions that surged
through the two little figures upon the sofa.
"And now--now that you have this first syllable complete?"
faltered a high and sharing tenor voice.
"We must transfer it to a home where it shall wait in
silence and in safety until we have also captured the other
remaining three." Skale came forward and lowered his mouth to
his companions' ears. "We shall transfer it, as you now
understand, by chanting the four letters. Our living chord will
summon forth that first syllable into visible form and shape.
Our four voices, thus trained and purified, each singing a mighty
letter, shall create the astounding pattern of the name's first
syllable----"
"But the home," stammered Spinrobin; "this home where it
shall await the rest?"
"My rooms," was the reply, "can contain letters only; for a
whole syllable I need a larger space. In the crypt-like cellars
beneath this house I have the necessary space all ready and
prepared to hold this first syllable while we work upon the
second. Come, and you shall see!"
They crossed the hall and went down the long stone passage
beyond the dining-room till they reached a swinging baize door,
and so came to the dark stairs that plunged below ground. Skale
strode first, Spinrobin following with beating heart; he held
Miriam by the hand; his steps, though firm enough, made him
think of his efforts as a boy when treading water for solid
ground out of his depth.
V
Cold air met them, yet it was neither dank nor unpleasant as
air usually is that has never tasted sunlight. There was a touch
of vitality about it wholly remarkable. Miriam pressed closer.
Every detail, every little incident that brought them nearer to
the climax was now interpreted by these two loving children as
something that might eventually spell for them separation. Yet
neither referred to it directly. The pain of the ultimate choice
possessed them deep within.
"Here," exclaimed the clergyman in a hushed tone that yet
woke echoes on all sides, while he lit a candle and held it
aloft, "you see the cellar vaults all ready for the first great
syllable when our chord shall bring it leaping down from the
rooms upstairs. Here will reside the pattern of the name's
opening syllable till we shall have accomplished the
construction of the others."
And like some august master of forbidden ceremonies, looking
twice his natural size as the shadows played tricks with his
arms and shoulders, merging his outline into walls and ceiling,
Skale stood and looked about him.
Spaces stretched away on all sides as in the crypt of a
cathedral, most beautifully and harmoniously draped with the
separate colours of the four rooms, red, yellow, violet and
green; immense gongs, connected apparently with some intricate
network of shining wires, hung suspended in mid-air beneath the
arches; rising from the floor were gigantic tuning forks, erect
and silent, immediately behind which gaped artificial air-
cavities placed to increase the intensity of the respective
notes when caught; and in the dim background the clergyman
pointed out an elaborate apparatus for quickly altering the
temperature of the air, and another for the rapid production of
carbonic acid gas, since by means of a lens of carbonic acid gas
sound can be refracted like light, and by changing the
temperature of the air that conveys it, sound can be bent, also
like a ray of light, in any desired direction. The whole cellar
seemed in some way to sum up and synthesize the distinctive
characteristics of the four rooms. Over it all, sheeting ceiling
and walls, lay the living and receptive wax. Singularly
suggestive, too, was the appearance of those huge metal discs,
like lifeless, dark faces waiting the signal to open their bronze
lips and cry aloud, ready for the advent of the Sound that
should give them birth and force them to proclaim their
mighty secret. Spinrobin stared, silent and fascinated, almost
expecting them to begin there and then their dreadful and
appalling music.
Yet the place was undeniably empty; no ghost of a sound
stirred the gorgeous draperies; nothing but a faint metallic
whispering seemed to breathe out from the big discs and forks
and wires as Skale's voice, modulated and hushed though it was,
vibrated gently against them. Nothing moved, nothing uttered,
nothing lived--as yet.
"Destitute of all presence, you see it now," whispered the
clergyman, shading the candle with one huge hand; "though
before long, when we transfer our great captured syllable down
here, you shall know it alive and singing with a thousand
thunders. The Letters shall not escape me. The gongs and
colours correspond exactly. They will retain both the sounds
and the outlines . . . and the wax is sensitive as the heart of a
child." And his big face shone quite dreadfully as the whole
pomp and splendour of his dream come true set fire to his
thoughts.
But Spinrobin was glad when at length they turned and moved
slowly again up the stone steps and emerged into the pale
December daylight. That dark cellar, wired, draped, waxed and
be-gonged, awaiting its mighty occupant, filled his mind with
too vast a sensation of wonder and anticipation for peace.
"And for the syllables to follow," Skale resumed when they
were once more in the library, "we shall want spaces larger
still. There are great holes in these hills"--stretching out an
arm to indicate the mountains above the house--"and down
yonder in the heart of those cliffs by the sounding sea there
are caverns. They are far, but the distance is of no consequence.
They will serve us well. I know them. I have marked them. They
are ready."
He swept his beard to and fro with one hand. Spinrobin
already saw those holes and caverns in the terms of sound and
colour.
"And--for the entire name--when completed?" he asked,
knowing that the question was but a feeble substitute for that
other one he burned to ask, yet dared not allow his lips to
utter. Skale turned and looked at him. He raised his hands
aloft. His voice boomed again as of old.
"The open sky!" he cried with enthusiasm; "the vault of
heaven itself! For no solid structure exists in the world, not
even the ribs of these old hills, that could withstand the power
of that--of that eternal and terrific----"
Spinrobin leapt to his feet. The question swept from his
lips at last like a flame. Miriam clung to his arm, trying in
vain to stop him.
"Then tell me," he cried aloud, "tell me, you great
blasphemer, whose is the Name that you seek to utter under
heaven . . . and tell me why it is my soul faints and is so
fearfully afraid?"
Mr. Skale looked at him for a moment as a man might look at
some trifling phenomenon of life that puzzled yet interested
him. But there was love in his eyes--love, and the forgiveness
of a great soul. Spinrobin, afraid at his own audacity, met his
eyes recklessly, while Miriam peered from one to the other,
perplexed and questioning.
"Spinrobin," said the clergyman at length, in a voice turned
soft and tender with compassion, "the name I seek--this awful
name we may all eventually utter together, completely formed
--is one that no living man has spoken for nigh two thousand
years, though all this time the search has been kept alive by a
few men in every age and every country of the world. Some few,
they say--ah, yes, `they say'--have found it, then instantly
forgotten it again; for once pronounced it may not be retained,
but goes utterly lost to the memory on the instant. Only once,
so far as we may know"--he lowered his voice to a hushed and
reverent whisper that thrilled about them in the air like the
throbbing of a string--"has it been preserved: the Prophet of
Nazareth, purer and simpler than all other men, recovered the
correct utterance of the first two syllables, and swiftly--very
swiftly--phonetically, too, of necessity,--wrote them down
before the wondrous memory had time to fade; then sewed the
piece of parchment into his thigh, and hence `had Power' all
his life.
"It is a name," he continued, his tone rising to something of
its old thunder, "that sounds like the voice of many waters,
that piles the ocean into standing heaps and makes the high
hills to skip like little lambs. It is a name the ancient
Hebrews concealed, as Tetragrammaton, beneath a thousand
devices, the name, they said, that `rusheth through the
universe,' to call upon which--that is, to utter correctly--is
to call upon that name which is far above all others that can
be named----"
He paused midway in the growing torrent of his speech and
lifted his companion out of the sofa. He set him upon his feet,
holding both his hands and peering deep into his eyes--those
bewildered yet unflinching blue eyes of the little man who
sought terrific adventure as an escape from insignificance--
"--to know which," he added, in a sudden awed whisper, "is to
know the ultimate secrets of life and death, and to read the
riddle of the world and the soul--to become even as itself--
Gods."
He stopped abruptly, and again that awful, flaming smile ran
over his face, flushing it from chin to forehead with the power
of his burning and tremendous belief.
Spinrobin was already weeping inwardly, without sound. He
understood at last, only too well, what was coming. Skale's
expression held the whole wild glory, and the whole impious
audacity of what seemed his blasphemous spiritual discovery.
The fires were alight in his eyes. He stooped down lower and
opened wide his capacious arms. The next second, Spinrobin,
Miriam, and Mrs. Mawle, who had unexpectedly come upon them
from behind, were gathered all together against his breast. His
voice then dropped suddenly to a tiny whisper of awful joy that
seemed to creep from his lips like some message too mighty to
be fully known, and half lost itself among the strands of his
beard.
"My wonderful redeemed children, notes in my human chord,"
he whispered over their heads, "it is the Name that shall make
us as God, for it is none other than the Name that rusheth
through the universe"--his breath failed him most curiously for
an instant--"the NAME OF THE ALMIGHTY!"
I
A CERTAIN struggling incoherence is manifest in Spinrobin's
report of it all, as of a man striving to express violent
thoughts in a language he has not yet mastered. It is evident,
for instance, as those few familiar with the "magical" use of
sound in ceremonial and the power that resides in "true
naming" will realize, that he never fully understood Skale's
intended use of the chord, or why this complex sound was
necessary for the utterance of the complex "Name."
Moreover, the powers concealed in the mere letters, while
they laid hold upon his imagination, never fully entered his
understanding. Few minds, it seems, can conceive of any deity as
other than some anthropomorphic extension of themselves, for
the idea is too greatly blinding to admit human thought within
a measurable distance even of a faintest conception. The true,
stupendous nature of the forces these letters in the opening
syllable clothed, Spinrobin unquestionably never apprehended.
Miriam, with her naked and undefiled intuitions, due to utter
ignorance of worldly things from birth, came nearer to the
reality; but then Miriam was now daily more and more caught up
into the vortex of a sweet and compelling human love, and in
proportion as this grew she feared the great experiment that
might--so Spinrobin had suggested--spell Loss. Gradually dread
closed the avenues of her spirit that led so fearfully to
Heaven; and in their place she saw the dear yet thorny paths
that lay with Spinny upon the earth.
They no longer, these two bewildered loving children, spoke
of one another in the far-fetched terminology of sound and
music. He no longer called her his "brilliant little sound," nor
did she respond with "you perfect echo"; they fell back--sign of
a gradual concession to more human things--upon the gentler
terminology, if the phrase may be allowed, of Winky. They
shared Winky between them . . . though neither one nor other of
them divined yet what Winky actually meant in their just-
opening lives.
"Winky is yours," she would say, "because you made him, but
he belongs to me too, because he simply can't live without
me!"
"Or I without you, Little Magic," he whispered, laughing
tenderly. "So, you see, we are all three together."
Her face grew slightly troubled.
"He only pays me visits, though. Sometimes I think you hide
him, or tell him not to come." And far down in her deep grey
eyes swam the first moisture of rising tears. "Don't you, my
wonderful Spinny?"
"Sometimes I forget him, perhaps," he replied gravely; "but
that is only when I think of what may be coming if--the
experiment succeeds----"
"Succeeds?" she exclaimed. "You mean if it fails!" Her voice
dropped instinctively, and they looked over their shoulders to
make sure they were alone.
He came up very close to her and spoke in her small pink
ear. "If it succeeds," he whispered, "we go to Heaven, I suppose;
if it fails we stay upon the earth." Then he stood off, holding
her hands at arm's length and gazing down upon her. "Do you
want to go to Heaven?" he asked very deliberately, "or to stay
here upon the earth with me and Winky----?"
She was in his arms the same second, laughing and crying
with the strange conflict of new and inexplicable emotions.
"I want to be with you here, and for ever. Heaven frightens
me now. But--oh, Spinny, dear protecting thing, I want--I also
want----" She broke off abruptly, and Spinrobin, unable to see
her face buried against his shoulder, could not guess whether
she was laughing or weeping. He only divined that something in
her heart, profound as life itself, something she had never been
warned to conceal, was clamouring for comprehension and
satisfaction.
"Miriam, tell me exactly. I'm sure I shall understand----"
"I want Winky to be with us always--not only sometimes--on
little visits," he heard between the broken breathing.
"I'll tell him----"
"But there's no good telling him," she interrupted almost
fiercely, "it is me you must tell. . . ."
Spinrobin's heart sank within him. She was in pain and he
could not quite understand. He pressed her hard against him,
keeping silence.
Presently she lifted her face from his coat, and he saw the
tears of mingled pain and happiness in her eyes--the eyes of
this girl-woman who knew not the common ugly standards of
life because no woman had ever told them to her.
"You see, Winky is not really mine unless I have some share
in making him too," she said very softly. "When I have made
him too, then he will stay for ever with us, I think."
And Spinrobin, beginning to understand, knowing within him
that singular exultation of triumphant love which comes to a
pure man when he meets the mother-to-be of his first-born,
lowered his own face very reverently to hers, and kissed her on
the cheeks and eyes--saying nothing, and vaguely wondering
whether the awful name that Skale sought with so much thunder
and lightning, did not lie at that very moment, sweetly singing
its divinest message, between the contact of this pair of
youthful lips, the lips of himself and Miriam.
II
And Philip Skale, meanwhile, splendid and independent of all
common obstacles, thundered along his tempestuous mad way,
regardless and ignorant of all signs of disaffection. The rest of
that week--a week of haunting wonder and beauty--was devoted to
the carrying out of the strange programme. It is not possible
to tell in detail the experience of each separate room.
Spinrobin does it, yet only succeeds in repeating himself; and,
as has been seen, his powers failed even in that first chamber
of awe. The language does not exist in which adventures so
remote from normal experience can be clothed without
straining the mind to the verge of the unintelligible. It
appears, however, that each room possessed its colour, note and
form, which later were to issue forth and combine in the even
vaster pattern, chord and outline which should include them
all.
Even the thought of it strained the possibilities of belief
and the resources of the imagination. . . . His soul fluttered
and shrank.
They continued the processes of prayer and fasting Skale had
ordained as the time for the experiment drew near, and the
careful vibratory utterance of the "word" belonging to each
room, the vibrations of which threw their inner selves into a
condition of safe--or comparatively safe--receptivity. But
Spinrobin no longer said his prayers, for the thought that soon
he was to call upon the divine and mighty name in reality
prevented his doing so in the old way of childhood--nominally.
He feared there might come an answer.
He literally walked the dizzy edge of precipices that dropped
over the edge of the world. The incoherence of all this traffic
with sound and name had always bewildered him, even to the
point of darkness, whereas now it did more, it appalled him in
some sense that was monstrous and terrifying. Yet, while weak
with terror when he tried to face the possible results, and
fevered with the notion of entering some new condition (even
though one of glory) where Miriam might no longer be as he now
knew her, it was the savage curiosity he felt that prevented his
coming to a definite decision and telling Mr. Skale that he
withdrew from the whole affair.
Then the idea grew in his mind that the clergyman was
obsessed by some perverted spiritual force, some "Devil" who
deceived him, and that the name he sought to pronounce was
after all not good--not God. His thoughts, fears, hopes, all
became hopelessly entangled, through them one thing alone
holding clear and steady--the passionate desire to keep Miriam
as she was now, and to be with her for ever. His mind played
tricks with him too. Day and night the house echoed with new
sounds; the very walls grew resonant; the entire building,
buried away among these desolate hills, trembled as though he
were imprisoned within the belly of some monstrous and
gigantic fiddle.
Mr. Skale, too, began to change, it seemed. While physically
he increased, as it were, with the power of his burning
enthusiasm, his beard longer and more ragged, his eyes more
luminous, and his voice shaking through the atmosphere almost
like wind, his personality, in some curious fashion, seemed at
the same time to retire and become oddly tinged with a certain
remoteness from reality. Spinrobin once or twice caught
himself wondering if he were not after all some legendary or
pagan figure, some mighty character of dream or story, and that
presently he, Spinrobin, would awake and write down the most
wonderful vision the world had ever known. His imagination, it
will be seen, was affected in more ways than one. . . .
With a tremendous earnestness the clergyman went about the
building, down the long dark corridors and across the halls, his
long soft strides took him swiftly everywhere; his mere
presence charged with some potent force that betrayed itself in
the fire of his eyes and the flush of his cheeks.
Spinrobin thought of him as some daring blasphemer,
knocking at a door in the sky. The sound of that knocking ran
all about the universe. And when the door opened, the heavens
would roll back like an enormous, flat curtain. . . .
"Any moment almost," Skale whispered to him, smiling, "the
day may be upon us. Keep yourself ready--and--in tune."
And Spinrobin, expecting a thunderclap in his sleep, but ever
plucky, answered in his high-pitched voice, "I'm ready, Mr.
Philip Skale, I'm ready! I'm game too!" when, truthfully
speaking, perhaps, he was neither one nor other.
He would start up from sleep in the night-time at the least
sound, and the roar of the December gales about the house
became voices of portent that conveyed far more than the mere
rushing of inarticulate winds. . . .
"When the hour comes--and it is close at hand--we shall not
fail to know it," said Skale, pallid with excitement. "The
Letters will be out upon us. They will live! But with an intense
degree of exuberant life far beyond what we know as life--we, in
our puny, sense-limited bodies!" And the scorn in his voice
came from the centre of his heart. "For what we hear as sound
is only a section," he cried, "only a section of sound-vibrations
--as they exist."
"The vibrations our ears can take are very small, I know,"
interpolated Spinrobin, cold at heart, while Miriam, hiding
behind chairs and tables that offered handy protection, watched
with mingled anxiety and confidence, knowing that in the last
resort her adorable and "wonderful Spinny" would guide her
aright. Love filled her heart, ousting that other portentous
Heaven!
III
And then Skale announced that the time was ready for
rehearsals.
"Let us practise the chord," he said, "so that when the
moment comes suddenly upon us, in the twinkling of an eye, in
the day-time or in the night, we shall be prepared, and each
shall fly to his appointed place and utter his appointed note."
The reasons for these definite arrangements he did not
pretend to explain, for they belonged to a part of his discovery
that he kept rigidly to himself; and why Spinrobin and Miriam
were to call their notes from the corridor itself, while Skale
boomed his great bass in the prepared cellar, Mrs. Mawle
chanting her alto midway in the hall, acting as a connecting
channel in some way, was apparently never made fully clear. In
Spinrobin's imagination it was very like a practical
illustration of the written chord, the notes rising from the
bass clef to the high soprano--the cellar to the attic, so to
speak. But, whatever the meaning behind it, Skale was
exceedingly careful to teach to each of them his and her
appointed place.
"When the Letters move of themselves, and make the first
sign," he repeated, "we shall know it beyond all doubt or
question. At any moment of the day or night it may come. Each
of you then hasten to your appointed place and wait for the
sound of my bass in the cellar. There will be no mistake about
it; you will hear it rising through the building. Then, each in
turn, as it reaches you, lift your voices and call your notes.
The chord thus rising through the building will gather in the
flying Letters: it will unite them; it will summon them down
to the fundamental master-tone I utter in the cellar. The
moment the Letter summoned by each particular voice reaches
the cellar, that voice must cease its utterance. Thus, one by
one, the four mighty Letters will come to rest below. The gongs
will vibrate in sympathetic resonance; the colours will
tremble and respond; the finely drawn wires will link the two,
and the lens of gas will lead them to the wax, and the record of
the august and terrible syllable will be completely chained. At
any desired moment afterwards I shall be able to reawaken it.
Its phonetic utterance, its correct pronunciation, captured thus
in the two media of air and ether, sound and light, will be in
my safe possession, ready for use.
"But"--and he looked down upon his listeners with a dreadful
and impressive gravity that yet only just concealed the
bursting exultation the thought caused him to feel--"remember
that once you have uttered your note, you will have sucked out
from the Letter a portion of its own terrific life and force,
which will immediately pass into yourself. You will instantly
absorb this, for you will have called upon a mighty name--the
mightiest--and your prayer will have been answered." He stooped
and whispered as in an act of earnest prayer, "We shall be as
Gods!"
Something of cold splendour, terribly possessing, came close
to them as he spoke the words; for this was no empty phrase.
Behind it lay the great drive of a relentless reality. And it
struck at the very root of the fear that grew every moment
more insistent in the hearts of the two lovers. They did not
want to become as gods. They desired to remain quietly human
and to love!
But before either of them could utter speech, even had they
dared, the awful clergyman continued; and nothing brought home
to them more vividly the horrible responsibility of the
experiment, and the results of possible failure, than the few
words with which he concluded.
"And to mispronounce, to utter falsely, to call inaccurately,
will mean to summon into life upon the world--and into the
heart of the utterer--that which is incomplete, that which is
not God--Devils!--devils of that subtle Alteration which is
destruction--the devils of a Lie."
------
And so for hours at a time they rehearsed the sounds of the
chord, but very softly, lest the sound should rise and reach the
four rooms and invite the escape of the waiting Letters
prematurely.
Mrs. Mawle, holding the bit of paper on which her
instructions were clearly written, was as eager almost as her
master, and as the note she had to utter was practically the
only one left in the register of her voice, her deafness
provided little difficulty.
"Though when the letters awake into life and cry aloud," said
Skale, beaming upon her dear old apple-skinned face, "it will be
in tones that even the deaf shall hear. For they will spell a
measure of redemption that shall destroy in a second of time
all physical disabilities whatsoever. . . ."
It was at this moment Spinrobin asked a question that for
days had been hovering about his lips. He asked it gravely,
hesitatingly, even solemnly, while Miriam hung upon the answer
with an anxiety as great as his own.
"And if any one of us fails," he said, "and pronounces falsely,
will the result affect all of us, or only the utterer?"
"The utterer only," replied the clergyman. "For it is his own
spirit that must absorb the forces and powers invoked by the
sound he utters."
He took the question lightly, it seemed. The possibility of
failure was too remote to be practical.
I
BUT Spinrobin was hardly prepared for the suddenness of the
denouement. He had looked for a longer period of preparation,
with the paraphernalia of a considerable, even an august
ceremony. Instead, the announcement came with an abrupt
simplicity that caught him with a horrid shock of surprise. He
was taken wholly unawares.
"The only thing I fear," Mr. Skale had confided to them, "is
that the vibrations of our chord may have already risen to the
rooms and cause a premature escape. But, even so, we shall have
ample warning. For the deaf, being protected from the coarser
sounds of earth, are swift to hear the lightest whispers from
Heaven. Mrs. Mawle will know. Mrs. Mawle will instantly warn
us. . . ."
And this, apparently, was what happened, though not precisely
as Mr. Skale had intended, nor with the margin for preparation
he had hoped. It was all so swift and brief and shattering, that
to hear Spinrobin tell it makes one think of a mass of
fireworks that some stray spark has sent with blazing explosion
into the air, to the complete loss of the calculated effect had
they gone off seriatim as intended.
And in the awful stress of excitement there can be no
question that Spinny acted out of that subconscious region of
the mind which considers and weighs deeds before passing them
on to the surface mind, translating them into physical
expression and thinking itself responsible for the whole
operation. The course he adopted was thus instinctive, and,
since he had no time to judge, blameless.
Neither he nor Miriam had any idea really that their minds,
subconsciously, were already made up. Yet only that morning he
had been talking with her, skirting round the subject as they
always did, ashamed of his doubts about success, and trying to
persuade her, and, therefore, himself, that the path of duty lay
in following their leader blindly to the very end.
He had seen her on the stairs ahead of him, and had overtaken
her quickly. He drew her down beside him, and they sat like two
children perched on the soft-carpeted steps.
"It's coming, you know," he said abruptly, "the moment's
getting very close."
He felt the light shudder that passed through her into
himself. She turned her face to him and he saw the flush of
excitement painted in the centre of the usually pale cheeks. He
thought of some rare flower, delicately exotic, that had sprung
suddenly into blossom from the heart of the bleak December
day, out of the very boards whereon they sat.
"We shall then be as gods," he added, "filled with the huge
power of those terrific Letters. And that is only the
beginning." In himself he was striving to coax a fading
enthusiasm, and to pour it into her. Her little hand stole into
his. "We shall be a sort of angel together, I suppose. Just
think of it . . . !" His voice was not as thrilling as it ought to
have been, for very human notes vibrated down below in the part
he tried to keep back. He saw the flush fade from her cheeks,
and the pallor spread. "You and I, Miriam--something
tremendous together, greater than any other man and woman in
the whole world. Think of it, dear baby; just think of it . . . !"
A tiny frown gathered upon her forehead, darkening the grey
eyes with shadows.
"But--lose our Winky!" she said, nestling against his coat,
her voice singularly soft, her fingers scratching gently the
palm of his hand where they lay.
"Hush, hush!" he answered, kissing her into silence. "We must
have more faith. I think everything will be all right. And there
is no reason why we should lose our Winky," he added, very
tenderly, smothering the doubt as best he could, "although we
may find his name changed. Like the rest of us, he will get a
`new name' I suppose."
"Then he won't be our Winky any longer," she objected, with a
touch of obstinacy that was very seductive. "We shall all be
different. Perhaps we shall be too wonderful to need each other
any more. . . . Oh, Spinny, you precious thing my life needs,
think of that! We may be too wonderful even to care!"
Spinrobin turned and faced her. He tried to speak with
authority and conviction, but he was a bad actor always. He met
her soft grey eyes, already moist and shining with a tenderness
of love beyond belief, and gazed into them with what degree of
sternness he could.
"Miriam," he said solemnly, "is it possible that you do not
want us to be as gods?"
Her answer came this time without hesitation. His pretended
severity only made her happy, for nothing could intimidate by a
hair's breadth this exquisite first love of her awakening soul.
"Some day, perhaps, oh, my sweet Master," she whispered with
trembling lips, "but not now. I want to be on earth first with
you--and with our Winky."
To hear that precious little voice call him "sweet Master"
was almost more than he could bear. He made an effort,
however, to insist upon this fancied idea of "duty" to Skale;
though everything, of course, betrayed him--eyes, voice,
gestures.
"But we owe it to Mr. Skale to become as gods," he faltered,
trying to make the volume of his voice atone for its lack of
conviction.
And it was then she uttered the simple phrase that utterly
confounded him, and showed him the new heaven and new earth
wherein he and she and Winky already lived.
"I am as God now," she said simply, the whole passion of a
clean, strong little soul behind the words. "You have made me
so! You love me!"
II
The same moment, before they could speak or act, Skale was
upon them from behind with a roar.
"Practising your splendid notes together!" he cried,
thundering down the steps past them, three at a time, clothed
for the first time in the flowing scarlet robe he usually wore
only in the particular room where his own "note" lived. "That's
capital! Sing it together in your hearts and in your souls and
in your minds; and the more the better!"
He swept by them like a storm, vanishing through the hall
below like some living flame of fire. They both understood that
he wore that robe for protection, and that throughout the house
the heralds of the approaching powers of the imprisoned
Letters were therefore already astir. His steps echoed below
them in the depths of the building as he descended to the
cellar, intent upon some detail of the appalling consummation
that drew every minute nearer.
They turned and faced one another, breathless a little.
Tenderness and terror shone plainly in their eyes, but
Spinrobin, ever an ineffectual little man, and with nothing of
the "Master" really in his composition anywhere, found no word
to speak. That sudden irruption of the terrific clergyman into
their intimate world had come with an effect of dramatic and
incalculable authority. Like a blast of air that drives the
furnace to new heat and turns the metal white, his mind now
suddenly saw clear and sure. The effect of the incident was too
explosive, however, for him to find expression. Action he found
in a measure, but no words. He took Miriam passionately into
his arms as they stood there in the gathering dusk upon the
staircase of that haunted and terrible building, and Miriam it
was who found the words upon which they separated and went
quietly away to the solitude each needed for the soul.
"We'll leave the gods alone," she said with gentle decision,
yet making it seem as though she appealed to his greater
strength and wisdom to decide; "I want nothing but you--you and
Winky. And all you really want is me."
But in his room he heard the vibrations of the clergyman's
voice rising up through the floor and walls as he practised in
the cellar the sounds with which the ancient Hebrews concealed
the Tetragrammaton: YOD--HE--VAU--HE: JEHOVAH--JAHVE--of
which the approaching great experiment, however, concerned
itself only with the opening vibrations of the first letter--
YOD. . . .
And, as he listened, he hesitated again . . . wondering after
all whether Miriam was right.
III
It was towards the end of their short silent dinner that very
night--the silence due to the fact that everybody was intently
listening--when Spinrobin caught the whisper of a singular
faint sound that he took first to be the rising of wind. The
wind sometimes came down that way with curious gulps from the
terraces of the surrounding moors. Yet in this sound was none
of that rush and sigh that the hills breed. It did not drop
across the curves of the world; it rose from the centre.
He looked up sharply, then at once realized that the sound
was not outside at all, but inside--inside the very room where
he sat facing Skale and Miriam. Then something in his soul
recognized it. It was the first wave in an immense vibration.
Something stretched within him as foam stretches on the
elastic side of a heaped Atlantic roller, retreated, then came
on again with a second gigantic crest. The rhythm of the huge
sound had caught him. The life in him expanded awfully, rose to
far summits, dropped to utter depths. A sense of glowing
exaltation swept through him as though wings of power lifted
his heart with enormous ascendancy. The biggest passions of his
soul stirred--the sweetest dreams, yearnings, aspirations he had
ever known were blown to fever heat. Above all, his passion for
Miriam waxed tumultuous and possessed him.
Mr. Skale dropped his fruit-knife and uttered a cry, but a cry
of so peculiar a character that Spinrobin thought for a moment
he was about to burst into song. At the same instant he stood
up, and his chair fell backwards with a crash upon the floor.
Spinrobin stood up too. He asserts always that he was lifted up.
He recognized no conscious effort of his own. It was at this
point, moreover, that Miriam, pale as linen, yet uttering no
sound and fully mistress of herself, left her side of the table
and ran round swiftly to the protection of her lover.
She came close up. "Spinny," she said, "it's come!"
Thus all three were standing round that dinner-table on the
verge of some very vigorous action not yet disclosed, as people,
vigilant and alert, stand up at a cry of fire, when the door
from the passage opened noisily and in rushed Mrs. Mawle,
surrounded by an atmosphere of light such as might come from
a furnace door suddenly thrown wide in some dark foundry. Only
the light was not steady; it was whirling.
She ran across the floor as though dancing--the dancing of a
child--propelled, it seemed, by an irresistible drive of force
behind; while with her through the opened door came a roaring
volume of sound that was terrible as Niagara let loose, yet at
the same time exquisitely sweet, as birds or children singing.
Upon these two incongruous qualities Spinrobin always insists.
"The deaf shall hear----!" came sharply from the
clergyman's lips, the sentence uncompleted, for the housekeeper
cut him short.
"They're out!" she cried with a loud, half-frightened
jubilance; "Mr. Skale's prisoners are bursting their way about
the house. And one of them," she added with a scream of joy and
terror mingled, "is in my throat . . . !"
If the odd phrase she made use of stuck vividly in
Spinrobin's memory, the appearance she presented impressed
him even more. For her face was shining and alight, radiant as
when Skale had called her true name weeks before. Flashes of
flame-like beauty ran about the eyes and mouth; and she looked
eighteen--eternally eighteen--with a youth that was permanent
and unchanging. Moreover, not only was hearing restored to her,
but her left arm, withered for years, was in the act of pointing
to the ceiling, instinct with vigorous muscular life. Her whole
presentment was splendid, intense--redeemed.
"The deaf hear!" repeated Skale in a shout, and was across
the room with the impetus of a released projectile. "The
Letters are out and alive! To your appointed places! The
syllable has caught us! Quick, quick! If you love your soul and
truth . . . fly!"
Deafening thunders rushed and crashed and blew about the
room, interpenetrated everywhere at the same time by that
searching strain of sweetness Spinrobin had first noticed. The
sense of life, running free and abundant, was very remarkable.
The same moment he found his hand clasped, and felt himself
torn along by the side of the rushing clergyman into the hall.
Behind them "danced" Mrs. Mawle, her cap awry, her apron flying,
her elastic-side boots taking the light, dancing step of youth.
With quick, gliding tread Miriam, still silent, was at his heels.
He remembers her delicate, strange perfume reaching him
faintly through all the incredible turmoil of that impetuous
exit.
In the hall the roar increased terrifically about his ears.
Skale, in his biggest booming voice, was uttering the names of
Hebrew "angels"--invoking forces, that is, to his help; and
behind him Mrs. Mawle was singing--singing fragments
apparently of the "note" she had to utter, as well as fragments
of her own "true name" thus magically recovered. Her restored
arm gyrated furiously; her tripping youth spelt witchery. Yet
the whole madness of the scene came to Spinrobin with a
freezing wind of terror; for about it was a lawless, audacious
blasphemy, that must surely win for itself a quite appalling
punishment. . . .
Yet nothing happened at once--nothing destructive, at least.
Skale and the housekeeper, he saw, were hurriedly robing
themselves in the red and yellow surplices that hung from
nails in the hall, and the instinct to laugh at the sight was
utterly overwhelmed when he remembered that these were the
colours which were used for safety in their respective "rooms."
. . . It was a scene of wild confusion and bewilderment which
the memory refuses to reproduce coherently. In his own throat
already began a passionate rising of sound that he knew was the
"note" he had to utter attempting to escape, summoned forth
automatically by these terrible vibrating Letters in the air. A
cataract of sound seemed to fill the building and made it shake
to its very foundations.
But the hall, he saw, was not only alive with "music," it was
ablaze with light--a white and brilliant glory that at first
dazzled him to the point of temporary blindness.
The same second Mr. Skale's voice, storming its way somehow
above the tumult, made itself heard:
"To the rooms upstairs, Spinrobin! To the corridor with
Miriam! And when you hear my voice from the cellar--utter! We
may yet be in time to unite the Letters . . . !"
He released the secretary's hand, flinging it from him, and
was off with a bounding, leaping motion like an escaped animal
towards the stone passage that led to the cellar steps; and
Spinrobin, turning about himself like a top in a perfect frenzy
of bewilderment, heard his great voice as he disappeared round
the corner:
"It has come upon me like a thief in the night! Before I am
fully prepared it has called me! May the powers of the Name
have mercy upon my soul . . . !" And he was gone. For the last
time had Spinrobin set his eyes upon the towering earthly form
of the Rev. Philip Skale.
IV
Then, at first, it seems, the old enthusiasm caught him, and
with him, therefore, caught Miriam, too. That savage and
dominant curiosity to know clutched him, overpowering even the
assaults of a terror that fairly battered him. Through all the
chaos and welter of his dazed mind he sought feverishly for the
"note" he had to utter, yet found it not, for he was too
horribly confused. Fiddles, sand-patterns, coloured robes, gongs,
giant tuning-forks, wax-sheeted walls, aged-faces-turned-young
and caverns-by-the-sea jostled one another in his memory with
a jumble of disproportion quite inextricable.
Next, impelled by that driving sense of duty to Skale, he
turned to the girl at his side: "Can you do it?" he cried.
Unable to make her voice heard above the clamour she nodded
quickly in acquiescence. Spinrobin noticed that her little
mouth was set rather firmly, though there was a radiance about
her eyes and features that made her sweetly beautiful. He
remembers that her loveliness and her pluck uplifted him above
all former littlenesses of hesitation; and, seizing her
outstretched hand, they flew up the main staircase and in less
than a minute reached the opening of the long corridor where
the rooms were.
Here, however, they stopped with a gasp, for a hurricane of
moving air met them in the face like the draught from some
immense furnace. Again the crest of a wave in the colossal
sound-vibration had caught them. Staggering against the wall,
they tried again and again to face the tempest of sound and
light, but the space beyond them was lit with the same
unearthly brilliance as the hall, and out of the whole long
throat of that haunted corridor issued such a passion of music
and such a torrent of gorgeous colour, that it seemed
impossible for any aggregation of physical particles--least of
all poor human bodies--to remain coherent for a single instant
before the concentrated onslaught.
Yet, game to the inmost core of his little personality, and
raised far above his normal powers by the evidence of Miriam's
courage and fidelity, he struggled with all his might and
searched through the chambers of his being for the note he was
ordained to utter in the chord. The ignominy of failure, now
that the great experiment was full upon him--failure in
Miriam's eyes, too--was simply impossible to contemplate. Yet,
in spite of every effort, the memory of that all-important note
escaped him utterly, for the forces of his soul floundered,
helpless and dishevelled, before the too mighty splendours that
were upon him at such close quarters. The sounds he actually
succeeded in emitting between dry and quivering lips were
pitiful and feeble beyond words.
Down that living corridor, meanwhile, he saw the doors of the
four rooms were gone, consumed like tissue paper; and through
the narrow portals there shouldered forward, bathed in light
ineffable, the separate outlines of the Letters so long
imprisoned in inactivity. And with their appearance the sounds
instantly ceased, having overpassed the limits of what is
audible to human ears. A great stillness dropped about them
with an abrupt crash of utter silence. For a "crash" of silence
it was--all-shattering.
And then, from the categories of the incomprehensible and
unmanifest, "something" loomed forth towards them where, limp
and shaking, they leaned against the wall, and they witnessed
the indescribable operation by which the four Letters, whirling
and alive, ran together and melted into a single terrific
semblance of a FORM . . . the sight of which entered the heart
of Spinrobin and threatened to split it asunder with the joy of
the most sublime terror and adoration a human soul has ever
known.
And the whole gigantic glory of Skale's purpose came upon
him like a tempest. The magnificent effrontery by which the
man sought to storm his way to heaven again laid its spell
upon him. The reaction was of amazing swiftness. It almost
seemed as though time ceased to operate, so instantaneously did
his mood pass from terror to elation--wild, ecstatic elation
that could dare anything and everything to share in the awful
delight and wonder of Skale's transcendent experiment.
And so, forgetting himself and his little disabilities of
terror and shrinking, he sought once again for the note he was
to utter in the chord. And this time he found it.
V
Very faintly, yet distinctly audible in the deep stillness, it
sounded far away down in the deeps of his being. And, with a
splendid spiritual exultation tearing and swelling in his heart,
he turned at once triumphantly to Miriam beside him.
"Utter your note too!" he cried. "Utter it with mine, for any
moment now we shall hear the command from the cellar. . . .
Be ready. . . . !"
And the FORM, meanwhile, limned in the wonder of an
undecipherable or at least untranslatable geometry, silently
roaring, enthroned in the undiscoverable colours beyond the
spectrum, swept towards them as he spoke.
At the same instant Miriam answered him, her exquisite
little face set like a rock, her marble pallor painted with the
glory of the approaching splendours. Just when the moment of
success was upon them; when the flying Letters were abroad;
when all the difficult weeks of preparation were face to face
with the consummation; and when any moment Skale's booming
bass might rise from the bowels of the building as the signal
to utter the great chord and unite the fragments of the first
divine syllable; when Spinrobin had at last conquered his
weakness and recovered his note--then, at this decisive and
supreme moment, Miriam asserted herself and took the reins of
command.
"No," she said, looking with sudden authority straight into
his eyes, "no! I will not utter the note. Nor shall you utter
yours!" And she clapped her little hand tight upon his mouth.
In that instant of unutterable surprise the two great forces
of his life and personality met together with an explosive
violence wholly beyond his power to control. For on the one
hand lay the fierce enticement of Skale's heaven, with all that
it portended, and on the other the deep though temporarily
submerged human passion of his love for the girl. Miriam's
sudden action revealed the truth to him better than any
argument. In a flash he realized that her choice was made, and
that she was in entire and final revolt against the whole
elaborate experiment and all that it involved. The risk of
losing her Spinny, or finding him changed in some condition of
redemption where he would no longer be the little human thing
she so dearly loved, had helped her to this final, swift
conclusion.
With her hand tight over his lips, and her face of white
decision before him, he understood. She called him with those
big grey eyes to the sweet and common uses of life, instead of
to the heights of some audacious heaven where they might be as
gods with Philip Skale. She clung to humanity. And Spinrobin,
seeing her at last with spiritual eyes fully opened, knew finally
that she was right.
"But oh," he always cries, "in that moment I knew the most
terrible choice I have ever had to make, for it was not a choice
between life and death, but a choice between two lives, each of
infinite promised wonder. And what do you think it was that
decided me, and made me choose the wholesome, humble life
with little Miriam in preference to the grandeur of Skale's vast
dream? What do you think?" And his face always turns pink and
then flame-coloured as he asks it, hesitating absurdly before
giving the answer. "I'll tell you, because you'd never guess in
this world." And then he lowers his voice and says, "It was the
delicious little sweet perfume of her fingers as she held them
over my lips. . . . !"
That delicate, faint smell was the symbol of human
happiness, and through all the whirlwind of sound and colour
about him, it somehow managed to convey its poignant,
searching message of the girl's utter love straight into his
heart. Thus curiously out of proportion and insignificant,
indeed, are sometimes the decisive details that in moments of
overwhelming experience turn the course of life's river this
way or that. . . .
With a single wild cry in his soul that found no audible
expression, he gave up the unequal struggle. He turned, and with
Miriam by his side, flew down the corridor from the advent of
the Immensity that was upon them--from the approach of the
escaping Letters.
VI
How Spinrobin found his way out of that sound-stricken house
remains an unsolved mystery. He never understood it himself;
he remembers only that when they reached the ground floor the
vibrations of Skale's opening bass note had already begun. Its
effect, too, was immediately noticeable. For the roar of the
escaping Letters, which upstairs had reached so immense a
volume as to be recognized only in terms of silence, now
suddenly grew in a measure harnessed and restrained. Their
vibration became reduced--down closer to the sixteen-foot wave-
length which is the limit of human audition. They were being
leashed in by the summoning master-tone. They grew once more
audible.
On the rising swirl of sound the two humans were swept down
passages and across halls, as two leaves are borne by a tempest,
and after frantic efforts, in which Spinrobin bruised his body
against doors and walls without number, he found himself at
last in the open air, and at a considerable distance from the
house of terror. Stars shone overhead. He saw the outline of
hills. Breaths of cool wind fanned his burning skin and eyes.
But he dared not turn to look or listen. The music of that
opening note, now rising through the building from the cellar,
might catch him and win him back. The chord in which himself
and Miriam were to have uttered their appointed tones, even
half-told, was still mighty to overwhelm. Its effect upon the
Letters themselves had been immediate.
The feeling that he had proved faithless to Skale, unworthy
of the great experiment, never properly attuned to this fearful
music of the gods--this was forgotten in the overmastering
desire to escape from it all into the safety of common human
things with Miriam. Setting his course ever up the hills, he ran
on and on, till breath failed him utterly and he was obliged to
stop for lack of strength. And it was only then he realized that
the whole time the girl had been in his arms. He had been
carrying her.
Placing her on the ground, he caught a glimpse of her eyes in
the darkness, and saw that they were still charged with the one
devouring passion that had made the sacrifice of Skale and of
all her training since birth inevitable. Soft and glowing with
her first knowledge of love, her grey eyes shone like stars
newly risen.
"Come, come!" he whispered hoarsely; "we must get as far as
possible--away from it all. Across the hills we shall find
safety. Once the splendours overtake us we are lost. . . ."
Seizing her by the hand, they pressed on again, the ocean of
sound rising and thundering behind them and below.
Without knowing it, he had taken the path by which the
clergyman had brought him from the station weeks ago on the
day of his first arrival. With a confused memory, as of a dream,
he recognized it. The ground was slippery with dead leaves whose
odour penetrated sharply the air of night. Everywhere about
him, as they paused from time to time in the little open
spaces, the trees pressed up thickly; and ever from the valley
they had just left the increasing tide of sound came pouring up
after them like the roar of the sea escaping through doors upon
the surface of the world.
And even now the marvellous, enticing wonder of it caught
him more than once and made him hesitate. The sense of what
he was giving up sickened him with a great sudden yearning of
regret. The mightiness of that loved leader, lonely and
unafraid, trafficking with the principalities and powers of
sound, and reckoning without misgiving upon the co-operation of
his other "notes"--this plucked fearfully at his heart-strings.
But only in great tearing gusts, so to speak, which passed the
instant he realized the little breathless, grey-eyed girl at his
side, charged with her beautiful love for him and the wholesome
ambition for human things.
"Oh! but the heaven we're losing . . . !" he cried once aloud,
unable to contain himself. "Oh, Miriam . . . and I have proved
unworthy . . . small . . . !"
"Small enough to stay with me for ever and ever . . . here on
the earth," she replied passionately, seizing his hand and
drawing him further up the hill. Then she stopped suddenly and
gathered a handful of dead leaves, moss, twigs and earth. The
exquisite familiar perfume as she held it to his face pierced
through him with a singular power of conviction.
"We should lose this," she exclaimed; "there's none of this
. . . in heaven! The earth, the earth, the dear, beautiful earth,
with you . . . and Winky . . . is what I want!"
And when he stopped her outburst with a kiss, fully
understanding the profound truth she so quaintly expressed, he
smelt the trees and mountains in her hair, and her fragrance
was mingled there with the fragrance of that old earth on which
they stood.
VII
The rising flood of sound sent them charging ahead the same
minute, for it seemed upon them with a rush; and it was only
after much stumbling and floundering among trees and boulders
that they emerged into the open space of the hills beyond the
woods. Actually, perhaps, they had been running for twenty
minutes, but to them it seemed that they had been running for
days. They stood still and looked about them.
"You shall never regret, never, never," Miriam whispered
quickly. "I can make you happier than all this ever could," and
she waved her arm towards the house below. "And you know it,
my little Master."
But before he could reply, or do more than place an arm
about her waist to support her, something came to pass that
communicated its message to their souls with an incalculable
certainty neither could explain. Perhaps it was that distance
enabled them to distinguish between the sounds more clearly,
or perhaps their beings were still so intimately connected with
Skale that some psychic warning travelled up to them across
the night; but at any rate there then came about this sharp and
sudden change in the quality of the sound-tempest round them
that proclaimed the arrival of an exceedingly dramatic moment.
The nature of the rushing, flying vibrations underwent
alteration. And, looking one another in the eyes, they realized
what it meant.
"He's beginning . . ." faltered Spinrobin in some skeleton of
a voice. "Skale has begun to utter . . . !" He said it beneath his
breath.
Down in the cellar of that awful house the giant clergyman,
alone and undismayed, had begun to call the opening vibration
of the living chord which was to gather in this torrent of
escaping Letters and unite them in temporary safety in the
crypts of the prepared vault. For the first time in eighteen
hundred years the initial sound of the "Name that rusheth
through the universe"--the first sound of its opening syllable,
that is--was about to thunder its incalculable message over the
earth.
Crouching close against each other they stood there on the
edge of the woods, the night darkly smothering about them, the
bare, open hills lying beyond in the still sky, waiting for the
long-apprehended climax--the utterance of the first great
syllable.
"It will make him . . . as God," crashed the thought through
Spinrobin's brain as he experienced the pangs of the fiercest
remorse he had ever known. "Even without our two notes the
power will be sublime . . . !"
But, through Miriam's swiftly-beating heart, as she pressed
closer and closer: "I know your true name . . . and you are
mine. What else in heaven or earth can ever matter . . . ?"
I
SKALE had indeed begun to utter. And to these two bewildered
children standing there alone with their love upon the
mountain, it seemed that the whole world knew.
Those desolate hills that rolled away like waves beneath the
stars; the whispering woods about them; the distant sea,
eternally singing its own note of sadness; the boulders at their
feet; the very stars themselves, listening in the heart of night
--one and all were somehow aware that a portion of the great
Name which first called them into being was about to issue
from the sleep of ages once again into manifestation. . . .
Perhaps to quicken them into vaster life, perhaps to change
their forms, perhaps to merge them all back into the depths of
the original "word" of creation . . . with the roar of a
dissolving universe. . . .
Through everything, from the heart of the hidden primroses
below the soil to the centre of the huge moors above, there ran
some swift thrill of life as the sounds of which they were the
visible expression trembled in sympathetic resonance with the
opening vibrations of the great syllable.
Philip Skale had begun to utter. Alone in the cellar of that
tempest-stricken house, already aware probably that the upper
notes of his chord had failed him, he was at last in the act of
calling upon the Name that Rusheth through the Universe . . .
the syllable whose powers should pass into his own being and
make him as the gods. . . .
And, first of all, to the infinite surprise of these two
listening, shaking lovers, the roaring thunders that had been
battling all about them, grew faint and small, and then dropped
away into mere trickles of sound, retreating swiftly down into
the dark valley where the house stood, as though immense and
invisible leashes drew them irresistibly back. One by one the
Letters fled away, leaving only a murmur of incredibly sweet
echoes behind them in the hills, as the master-sound, spoken by
this fearless and audacious man, gathered them into their
appointed places in the cellar.
But if they expected stupendous things to follow they were at
first singularly disappointed. For, instead of woe and terror,
instead of the foundering of the visible universe, there fell
about the listening world a cloak of the most profound silence
they had ever known, soft beyond conception. The Name was not
in the whirlwind. Out of the heart of that deathly stillness it
came--a small, sweet voice, that was undeniably the voice of
Philip Skale, its awful thunders all smoothed away. With it,
too, like a faint overtone, came the yet gentler music of
another voice. The bass and alto were uttering their appointed
notes in harmony and without dismay.
Everywhere the sound rose up through the darkness of great
distance, yet at the same time ran most penetratingly sweet,
close beside them in their very ears. So magically intimate
indeed was it, yet so potentially huge for all its soft
beginning, that Spinrobin declares that what he heard was
probably not the actual voices, but only some high liberated
harmonics of them.
The sounds, moreover, were not distinguishable as consonants
and vowels in the ordinary sense, and to this day remain for
him beyond all reach of possible reproduction. He did not hear
them as "word" or "syllable," but as some incalculably splendid
Message that was too mighty to be taken in, yet at the same
time was sweeter than all imagined music, simple as a little
melody "sweetly sung in tune," artless as wind through rustling
branches.
And, moreover, as this small, sweet voice ran singing
everywhere about them in the darkness of hills and woods,
Spinrobin realized, with a whole revolution of wonder sweeping
through him, that the sound, for all its gentleness, was at work
vehemently upon the surface of the landscape, altering and
shifting the pattern of the solid earth, just as the sand had
wreathed into outlines at the sound of his own voice weeks ago,
and as the form of the clergyman had changed at the vibrations
of the test night.
The first letters of the opening syllable of this divine and
magical name were passing over the world . . . shifting the
myriad molecules that composed it by the stress and stir of
its vast harmonics . . . changing the pattern.
But this time the change was not dreadful; the new outline,
even before he actually perceived it, was beautiful above all
known forms of beauty. The outer semblance of the old earth
appeared to melt away and reveal that heart of clean and
dazzling wonder which burns ever at its inmost core--the naked
spirit divined by poets and mystics since the beginning of
time. It was a new heaven and a new earth that pulsed below
them in response to the majesty of this small sweet voice. All
nature knew, from the birds that started out of sleep into
passionate singing, to the fish that stirred in the depths of
the sea, and the wild deer that sprang alert in their wintry
coverts, scenting an eternal spring. For the earth rolled up as
a scroll, shaking the outworn skin of centuries from her face,
and suffering all her rocky structure to drop away and disclose
the soft and glowing loveliness of an actual being--a being
most tenderly and exquisitely alive. It was the beginning of
spiritual vision in their own hearts. The name had set them
free. The blind saw--a part of God. . . .
II
And then, in Spinrobin's heart, the realization of failure--
that he was not in his appointed place, following his great
leader to the stars, clashed together with the splendour of his
deep and simple love for this trembling slip of a girl beside
him.
The thought that God, as it were, had called him and he had
been afraid to run and answer to his name overpowered his
timid, aching soul with such a flood of emotion that he found
himself struggling with a glorious temptation to tear down the
mountain-side again to the house and play his appointed part--
utter his note in the chord even thus late. For the essential
bitterness and pain that lies at the heart of all transitory
earthly things--the gnawing sense of incompleteness and vanity
that touches the section of transitory existence men call
"life," met face to face with this passing glimpse of reality,
timeless and unconditioned, which the sound of the splendid
name flashed so terrifically before his awakened soul-vision,
--and threatened to overwhelm him.
In another instant he would have yielded and gone; forgotten
even Miriam, and all the promised sweetness of life with her
half-planned, when something came to pass abruptly that threw
his will and all his little calculations into a dark chaos of
amazement where, by a kind of electrically swift reaction, he
realized that the one true, possible and right thing for him was
this very love he was about to cast aside. His highest destiny
was upon the unchanged old earth . . . with Miriam . . . and
Winky. . . .
She turned and flung her arms round his neck in a passion of
tears as though she had divined his unspoken temptation . . .
and at the same time this awful new thing was upon them both.
It caught them like a tempest. For a disharmony--a discord--a
lying sound was loose upon the air from those two voices far
below.
"Call me by my true name," she cried quickly, in an anguish
of terror; "for my soul is afraid. . . . Oh, love me most
utterly, utterly, utterly . . . and save me!"
Unnerved and shaking like a leaf, Spinrobin pressed her
against his heart.
"I know you by name and you are mine," he tried to say, but
the words never left his lips. It was the love surging up in his
tortured heart that alone held him to sanity and prevented--as
it seemed to him in that appalling moment--the dissolution of
his very being and hers.
For Philip Skale had somewhere uttered falsely.
A darting zigzag crack, as of lightning, ran over the giant
fabric of vibrations that covered the altering world as with a
flood . . . and sounds that no man may hear and not die leaped
awfully into being. The suddenness and immensity of the
catastrophe blinded these two listening children-souls. Awe and
terror usurped all other feelings . . . but one. Their love,
being born of the spirit, held supreme, insulating them, so to
speak, from all invading disasters.
Philip Skale had made a mistake in the pronunciation of the
Name.
The results were dreadful and immediate, and from all the
surface of the wakening world rose anguished voices. Spinrobin
started up, lifting Miriam into his arms. He spun dizzily for a
moment between boulders and trees, giving out a great wailing
cry, unearthly enough had there been any to hear it. Then he
began to run wildly through the thick darkness. In his ear--for
her head lay close--he heard her dear voice, between the sobs of
collapse, calling his inner name most sweetly; and the sound
summoned to the front all in him that was best and manly.
"My sweet Master, my sweet Master!"
But he did not run far. About him on every side the night
lifted as though it were suddenly day. He saw the summits of
the bleak mountains agleam with the reflection of some great
light that rushed upon them from the valley. All the desolate
landscape, hesitating like some hovering ocean between the old
pattern and the new, seemed to hang suspended amid the
desolation of the winter skies. Everything roared. It seemed the
ground shook. The very bones of the woods went shuddering
together; the hills toppled; and overhead, in some incredible
depths of space, boomed sounds as though the heavens split off
into fragments and hurled the constellations about the vault to
swell these shattering thunders of a collapsing world.
The Letters of that terrible and august Name were passing
over the face of the universe--distorted because mispronounced
--creative sounds, dishevelled and monstrous, because
incompletely and incorrectly uttered.
"Put me down," he heard Miriam cry where she lay smothered
in his arms, "and we can face everything together, and be safe.
Our love is bigger than it all and will protect us. . . ."
"Because it is complete," he cried incoherently in reply,
seizing the truth of her thought, and setting her upon the
ground; "it includes even this. It is a part of . . . the Name
. . . correctly uttered . . . for it is true and pure."
He heard her calling his inner name, and he began forthwith
to call her own as they stood there clinging to one another,
mingling arms and hair and lips in such a tumult of passion
that it seemed as though all this outer convulsion of the world
was a small matter compared to the commotion in their own
hearts, revolutionized by the influx of a divine love that
sought to melt them into a single being.
And as they looked down into the valley at their feet, too
bewildered to resist these mighty forces that stole the breath
from their throats and the strength from their muscles, they
saw with a clearness as of day that the House of Awe in which
their love had wakened and matured was passing away and being
utterly consumed.
In a flame of white fire, tongued and sheeted, streaked with
gulfs of black, and most terribly roaring, it rose with a
prodigious crackling of walls and roof towards the sky. Volumes
of coloured smoke, like hills moving, went with it; and with it,
too, went the forms--the substance of their forms, at least, of
their "sounds" released--of Philip Skale, Mrs. Mawle, and all
the paraphernalia of gongs, drapery, wires, sheeted walls, sand-
patterns, and the preparations of a quarter of a century of
labour and audacious research. For nothing could possibly
survive in such a furnace. The heat of it struck their faces
where they stood even here high upon the hills, and the
currents of rising wind blew the girl's tresses across his eyes
and moved his own feathery hair upon his head. The notes of
those leaping flames were like thunder.
"Watch now!" cried Miriam, though he divined the meaning
from the gesture of her free hand rather than actually heard
the words.
And, leaning their trembling bodies against a great boulder
behind them, they then saw in the midst of the conflagration,
or hovering dimly above it rather, the vast outlines of the
captured sounds--the Letters--escaping back again into the
womb of eternal silence from which they had been with such
appalling courage evoked. In forms of dazzling blackness they
passed upwards in their chariots of flame, yet at the same time
passed inwards in some amazing kind of spiral motion upon
their own axes, vanishing away with incredible swiftness and
beauty deep down into themselves . . . and were gone.
Realizing in some long-forgotten fashion of childhood the
fearful majesty of the wrath of Jehovah, yet secretly
undismayed because each felt so gloriously lost in their
wonderful love, the bodies of Miriam and Spinrobin dropped
instinctively upon their knees, and, still tightly clasped in one
another's arms, bowed their foreheads to the ground, touching
the earth and leaves.
But how long they rested thus upon the heart of the old
earth, or whether they slept, or whether, possibly, the
inevitable reaction to all the overstrain of the past hours led
them through a period of unconsciousness, neither of them
quite knew. Nor was it possible for them to have known,
perhaps, that the lonely valley sheltering the House of Awe,
running tongue-like into these desolate hills, had the
unenviable reputation of trembling a little in sympathy with
any considerable shock of earthquake that came to move that
portion of the round globe from her sleep. Of this they knew as
little, no doubt, as they did of the ill-defined line of
demarcation between experiences that are objective, capable of
being weighed and measured, and those that are subjective,
taking place--though with convincing authority--only in the
sphere of the mind. . . .
All they do know, and Spinrobin tells it with an expression
of supreme happiness upon his shining round face, is that at
length they stirred as they lay, opened their eyes, turned and
looked at one another, then stood up. On Miriam's hair and
lashes lay the message of the dew, and in her clear eyes all the
soft beauty of the stars that had watched over them.
But the stars themselves had gone. Over the hills ran the
coloured feet of the dawn, swift and rosy, touching the spread
of heathery miles with the tints of approaching sunrise. The
tops of the leafless trees stirred gently with a whisper of wind
that stole up from the distant sea. The birds were singing. Over
the surface of the old earth flew the magical thrill of life. It
caught these two children-lovers, sweeping them into each
other's arms as with wings.
Out of all the amazing tempest of their recent experiences
emerged this ever-growing splendour of their deep and simple
love. The kindly earth they had chosen beckoned them down into
the valley; the awful heaven they had rejected smiled upon
them approvingly, as the old sun topped the hills and peeped
upon them with his glorious eye.
"Come, Miriam," breathed Spinrobin softly into her little
ear; "we'll go down into another valley . . . and live happily
together for ever and ever. . . ."
"Yes," she murmured, blushing with the rosiness of that
exquisite winter's dawn; ". . . you and I . . . and . . . and . . ."
But Spinrobin kissed the unborn name from her lips. "Hush!"
he whispered, "hush!"
For the little "word" between these two was not yet made
flesh. But the dawn-wind caught up that "hush" and carried it to
the trees and undergrowth about them, and then ran thousand-
footed before them to whisper it to the valley where they were
going.
And Miriam, knowing the worship and protection in his
delicate caress, looked up into his face and smiled--and the
smile in her grey eyes was that ancient mother-smile which is
coeval with life. For the word of creation flamed in these two
hearts, waiting only to be uttered.
THE END
The Human Chord
The Human Chord
Algernon Henry Blackwood
DEDICATION
TO THOSE WHO HEAR
I
AS a boy he constructed so vividly in imagination that he came
to believe in the living reality of his creations: for everybody
and everything he found names--real names. Inside him
somewhere stretched immense playgrounds, compared to which
the hayfields and lawns of his father's estate seemed trivial:
plains without horizon, seas deep enough to float the planets
like corks, and "such tremendous forests" with "trees like tall
pointed hill-tops." He had only to close his eyes, drop his
thoughts inwards, sink after them himself, call aloud and--see.
His imagination conceived and bore--worlds; but nothing in
these worlds became alive until he discovered its true and
living name. The name was the breath of life; and, sooner or
later, he invariably found it.
Once, having terrified his sister by affirming that a little
man he had created would come through her window at night and
weave a peaked cap for himself by pulling out all her hairs
"that hadn't gone to sleep with the rest of her body," he took
characteristic measures to protect her from the said
depredations. He sat up the entire night on the lawn beneath
her window to watch, believing firmly that what his imagination
had made alive would come to pass.
She did not know this. On the contrary, he told her that the
little man had died suddenly; only, he sat up to make sure. And,
for a boy of eight, those cold and haunted hours must have
seemed endless from ten o'clock to four in the morning, when
he crept back to his own corner of the night nursery. He
possessed, you see, courage as well as faith and imagination.
Yet the name of the little man was nothing more formidable
than "Winky!"
"You might have known he wouldn't hurt you, Teresa," he said.
"Any one with that name would be light as a fly and awf'ly
gentle--a regular dicky sort of chap!"
"But he'd have pincers," she protested, "or he couldn't pull
the hairs out. Like an earwig he'd be. Ugh!"
"Not Winky! Never!" he explained scornfully, jealous of his
offspring's reputation. "He'd do it with his rummy little
fingers."
"Then his fingers would have claws at the ends!" she
insisted; for no amount of explanation could persuade her that
a person named Winky could be nice and gentle, even though he
were "quicker than a second." She added that his death rejoiced
her.
"But I can easily make another--such a nippy little beggar,
and twice as hoppy as the first. Only I won't do it," he added
magnanimously, "because it frightens you."
For to name with him was to create. He had only to run out
some distance into his big mental prairie, call aloud a name in
a certain commanding way, and instantly its owner would run up
to claim it. Names described souls. To learn the name of a
thing or person was to know all about them and make them
subservient to his will; and "Winky" could only have been a very
soft and furry little person, swift as a shadow, nimble as a
mouse--just the sort of fellow who would make a conical cap
out of a girl's fluffy hair . . . and love the mischief of doing
it.
And so with all things: names were vital and important. To
address beings by their intimate first names, beings of the
opposite sex especially, was a miniature sacrament; and the
story of that premature audacity of Elsa with Lohengrin never
failed to touch his sense of awe. "What's in a name?" for him,
was a significant question--a question of life or death. For to
mispronounce a name was a bad blunder, but to name it wrongly
was to miss it altogether. Such a thing had no real life, or at
best a vitality that would soon fade. Adam knew that! And he
pondered much in his childhood over the difficulty Adam must
have had "discovering" the correct appellations for some of the
queerer animals. . . .
As he grew older, of course, all this faded a good deal, but he
never quite lost the sense of reality in names--the significance
of a true name, the absurdity of a false one, the cruelty of
mispronunciation. One day in the far future, he knew, some
wonderful girl would come into his life, singing her own true
name like music, her whole personality expressing it just as
her lips framed the consonants and vowels--and he would love
her. His own name, ridiculous and hateful though it was, would
sing in reply. They would be in harmony together in the literal
sense, as necessary to one another as two notes in the same
chord. . . .
So he also possessed the mystical vision of the poet. What
he lacked--such temperaments always do--was the sense of
proportion and the careful balance that adjusts cause and
effect. And this it is, no doubt, that makes his adventures such
"hard sayings." It becomes difficult to disentangle what
actually did happen from what conceivably might have happened;
what he thinks he saw from what positively was.
His early life--to the disgust of his Either, a poor country
squire--was a distressing failure. He missed all examinations,
muddled all chances, and finally, with Ј50 a year of his own,
and no one to care much what happened to him, settled in
London and took any odd job of a secretarial nature that
offered itself. He kept to nothing for long, being easily
dissatisfied, and ever on the look out for the "job" that might
conceal the kind of adventure he wanted. Once the work of the
moment proved barren of this possibility, he wearied of it and
sought another. And the search seemed prolonged and hopeless,
for the adventure he sought was not a common kind, but
something that should provide him with a means of escape from
a vulgar and noisy world that bored him very much indeed. He
sought an adventure that should announce to him a new heaven
and a new earth; something that should confirm, if not actually
replace, that inner region of wonder and delight he revelled in
as a boy, but which education and conflict with a prosaic age
had swept away from his nearer consciousness. He sought, that
is, an authoritative adventure of the soul.
To look at, one could have believed that until the age of
twenty-five he had been nameless, and that a committee had
then sat upon the subject and selected the sound best suited to
describe him: Spinrobin--Robert. For, had he never seen
himself, but run into that inner prairie of his and called aloud
"Robert Spinrobin," an individual exactly resembling him would
surely have pattered up to claim the name.
He was slight, graceful, quick on his feet and generally alert;
took little steps that were almost hopping, and when he was in
a hurry gave him the appearance of "spinning" down the
pavement or up the stairs; always wore clothes of some fluffy
material, with a low collar and bright red tie; had soft pink
cheeks, dancing grey eyes and loosely scattered hair,
prematurely thin and unquestionably like feathers. His hands
and feet were small and nimble. When he stood in his favourite
attitude with hands plunged deep in his pockets, coat-tails
slightly spread and flapping, head on one side and hair
disordered, talking in that high, twittering, yet very agreeable
voice of his, it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that
here was--well--Spinrobin, Bobby Spinrobin, "on the job."
For he took on any "job" that promised adventure of the kind
he sought, and the queerer the better. As soon as he found that
his present occupation led to nothing, he looked about for
something new--chiefly in the newspaper advertisements.
Numbers of strange people advertised in the newspapers, he
knew, just as numbers of strange people wrote letters to them;
and Spinny--so he was called by those who loved him--was a
diligent student of the columns known as "Agony" and "Help
wanted." Whereupon it came about that he was aged twenty-eight,
and out of a job, when the threads of the following occurrence
wove into the pattern of his life, and "led to something" of a
kind that may well be cause for question and amazement.
The advertisement that formed the bait read as follows:--
"WANTED, by Retired Clergyman, Secretarial Assistant with
courage and imagination. Tenor voice and some knowledge of
Hebrew essential; single; unworldly. Apply Philip Skale,"--and
the address.
Spinrobin swallowed the bait whole. "Unworldly" put the
match, and he flamed up. He possessed, it seemed, the other
necessary qualifications; for a thin tenor voice, not unmusical,
was his, and also a smattering of Hebrew which he had picked up
at Cambridge because he liked the fine, high-sounding names of
deities and angels to be found in that language. Courage and
imagination he lumped in, so to speak, with the rest, and in the
gilt-edged diary he affected he wrote: "Have taken on Skale's
odd advertisement. I like the man's name. The experience may
prove an adventure. While there's change, there's hope." For he
was very fond of turning proverbs to his own use by altering
them, and the said diary was packed with absurd misquotations
of a similar kind.
II
A singular correspondence followed, in which the advertiser
explained with reserve that he wanted an assistant to aid him
in certain experiments in sound, that a particular pitch and
quality of voice was necessary (which he could not decide until,
of course, he had heard it), and that the successful applicant
must have sufficient courage and imagination to follow a
philosophical speculation "wheresoever it may lead," and also
be "so far indifferent to worldly success as to consider it of
small account compared to spiritual knowledge--especially if
such knowledge appeared within reach and involved worldly
sacrifices." He further added that a life of loneliness in the
country would have to be faced, and that the man who suited him
and worked faithfully should find compensation by inheriting
his own "rather considerable property when the time came." For
the rest he asked no references and gave none. In a question of
spiritual values references were mere foolishness. Each must
judge intuitively for himself.
Spinrobin, as has been said, bit. The letters, written in a
fine scholarly handwriting, excited his interest
extraordinarily. He imagined some dreamer-priest possessed by
a singular hobby, searching for things of the spirit by those
devious ways he had heard about from time to time, a little
mad probably into the bargain. The name Skale sounded to him
big, yet he somehow pictured to himself an ascetic-faced man of
small stature pursuing in solitude some impossible ideal. It
all attracted him hugely with its promise of out-of-the-way
adventure. In his own phrase it "might lead to something," and
the hints about "experiments in sound" set chords trembling in
him that had not vibrated since the days of his boyhood's
belief in names and the significance of names. The salary,
besides, was good. He was accordingly thrilled and delighted to
receive in reply to his last letter a telegram which read:
"Engage you month's trial both sides. Take single ticket.
Scale."
"I like that `take single ticket,'" he said to himself as he
sped westwards into Wales, dressed in his usual fluffy tweed suit
and anarchist tie. Upon his knees lay a brand new Hebrew
grammar which he studied diligently all the way to Cardiff, and
still carried in his hands when he changed into the local train
that carried him laboriously into the desolation of the
Pontwaun Mountains. "It looks as though he approved of me
already. My name apparently hasn't put him off as it does most
people. Perhaps, through it, he divines the real me!"
He smoothed down his rebellious hair as he neared the
station in the dusk; but he was surprised to find only a rickety
little cart drawn by a donkey sent to meet him (the house being
five miles distant in the hills), and still more surprised when
a huge figure of a man, hatless, dressed in knickerbockers, and
with a large, floating grey beard, strode down the platform as
he gave up his ticket to the station-master and announced
himself as Mr. Philip Skale. He had expected the small, foxy-
faced individual of his imagination, and the shock momentarily
deprived him of speech.
"Mr. Spinrobin, of course? I am Mr. Skale--Mr. Philip Skale."
The voice can only be described as booming, it was so deep
and vibrating; but the smile of welcome, where it escaped with
difficulty from the network of beard and moustaches, was
winning and almost gentle in contradistinction to the volume
of that authoritative voice. Spinrobin felt slightly bewildered
--caught up into a whirlwind that drove too many impressions
through his brain for any particular one to be seized and
mastered. He found himself shaking hands--Mr. Skale, rather,
shaking his, in a capacious grasp as though it were some small
indiarubber ball to be squeezed and flung away. Mr. Scale flung
it away; he felt the shock up the whole length of his arm to
the shoulder. His first impressions, he declares, he cannot
remember--they were too tumultuous--beyond that he liked both
smile and voice, the former making him feel at home, the
latter filling him to the brim with a peculiar sense of well-
being. Never before had he heard his name pronounced in quite
the same way; it sounded dignified, even splendid, the way Mr.
Skale spoke it. Beyond this general impression, however, he can
only say that his thoughts and feelings "whirled." Something
emanated from this giant clergyman that was somewhat
enveloping and took him off his feet. The keynote of the man
had been struck at once.
"How do you do, sir? This is the train you mentioned, I
think?" Spinrobin heard his own thin voice speaking, by way, as
it were, of instinctive apology that he should have put such a
man to the trouble of coming to meet him. He said "sir," it
seemed unavoidable; for there was nothing of the clergyman
about him--bishop, perhaps, or archbishop, but no suggestion of
vicar or parish priest. Somewhere, too, in his presentment he
felt dimly, even at the first, there was an element of the
incongruous, a meeting of things not usually found together.
The vigorous open-air life of the mountaineer spoke in the
great muscular body with the broad shoulders and clean,
straight limbs; but behind the brusqueness of manner lay the
true gentleness of fine breeding.
And even here, on this platform of the lonely mountain
station, Spinrobin detected the atmosphere of the scholar,
almost of the recluse, shot through with the strange fires that
dropped from the large, lambent, blue eyes. All these things
rushed over the thrilled little secretary with an effect, as
already described, of a certain bewilderment, that left no
single, dominant impression. What remained with him, perhaps,
most vividly, he says, was the quality of the big blue eyes,
their luminosity, their far-seeing expression, their kindliness.
They were the eyes of the true visionary, but in such a
personality they proclaimed the mystic who had retained his
health of soul and body. Mr. Skale was surely a visionary, but
just as surely a wholesome man of action--probably of terrific
action. Spinrobin felt irresistibly drawn to him.
"It is not unpleasant, I trust," the other was saying in his
deep tones, "to find some one to meet you, and," he added with a
genial laugh, "to counteract the first impression of this
somewhat melancholy and inhospitable scenery." His arm swept
out to indicate the dreary little station and the bleak and
lowering landscape of treeless hills in the dusk.
The new secretary made some appropriate reply, his sense of
loneliness already dissipated in part by the unexpected
welcome. And they fell to arrangements about the luggage. "You
won't mind walking," said Mr. Skale, with a finality that
anticipated only agreement. "It's a short five miles. The
donkey-cart will take the portmanteau." Upon which they started
off at a pace that made the little man wonder whether he could
possibly keep it up. "We shall get in before dark," explained
the other, striding along with ease, "and Mrs. Mawle, my
housekeeper, will have tea ready and waiting for us." Spinrobin
followed, panting, thinking vaguely of the other employers he
had known--philanthropists, bankers, ambitious members of
Parliament, and all the rest--commonplace individuals to a
man; and then of the immense and towering figure striding just
ahead, shedding about him this vibrating atmosphere of power
and whirlwind, touched so oddly here and there with a vein of
gentleness that was almost sweetness. Never before had he
known any human being who radiated such vigour, such big and
beneficent fatherliness, yet for all the air of kindliness
something, too, that touched in him the sense of awe. Mr. Skale,
he felt, was a very unusual man.
They went on in the gathering dusk, talking little but easily.
Spinrobin felt "taken care of." Usually he was shy with a new
employer, but this man inspired much too large a sensation in
him to include shyness, or any other form of petty self-
consciousness. He felt more like a son than a secretary. He
remembered the wording of the advertisement, the phrases of
the singular correspondence--and wondered. "A remarkable
personality," he thought to himself as he stumbled through the
dark after the object of his reflections; "simple--yet
tremendous! A giant in all sorts of ways probably----" Then his
thought hesitated, floundered. There was something else he
divined yet could not name. He felt out of his depth in some
entirely new way; in touch with an order of possibilities
larger, more vast, more remote than any dreams his
imagination even had yet envisaged. All this, and more, the
mere presence of this retired clergyman poured into his
receptive and eager little soul.
And very soon it was that these nameless qualities began to
assert themselves, completing the rout of Spinrobin's moderate
powers of judgment. No practical word as to the work before
them, or the duties of the new secretary, had yet passed between
them. They walked along together, chatting as equals,
acquaintances, almost two friends might have done. And on the
top of the hill, after a four-mile trudge, they rested for the
first time, Spinrobin panting and perspiring, trousers tucked up
and splashed yellow with mud; Mr. Skale, legs apart, beard
flattened by the wind about his throat, and thumbs in the slits
of his waistcoat as he looked keenly about him over the
darkening landscape. Treeless and desolate hills rose on all
sides. A few tumbled-down cottages of grey stone lay scattered
upon the lower slopes among patches of shabby and forlorn
cultivation. Here and there an outcrop of rock ran skywards into
sombre and precipitous ridges. The October wind passed to and
fro over it all, mournfully singing, and driving loose clouds
that seemed to drop weighted shadows among the peaks.
III
And it was here that Mr. Skale stopped abruptly, looked about
him, and then down at his companion.
"Bleak and lonely--this great spread of bare mountain and
falling cliff," he observed half to himself, half to the other;
"but fine, very, very fine." He exhaled deeply, then inhaled as
though the great draught of air was profoundly satisfying. He
turned to catch his companion's eye. "There's a savage and
desolate beauty here that uplifts. It helps the mind to dwell
upon the full sweep of life instead of getting dwarfed and lost
among its petty details. Pretty scenery is not good for the
soul." And again he inhaled a prodigious breastful of the
mountain air. "This is."
"But an element of terror in it, perhaps, sir," suggested the
secretary who, truth to tell, preferred his scenery more
smiling, and who, further, had been made suddenly aware that in
this sombre setting of bleak and elemental nature the great
figure of his future employer assumed a certain air of grandeur
that was a little too awe-inspiring to be pleasant.
"In all profound beauty there must be that," the clergyman
was saying; "fine terror, I mean, of course--just enough to
bring out the littleness of man by comparison."
"Perhaps, yes," agreed Spinrobin. His own insignificance
seemed peculiarly apparent at that moment in contrast to Mr.
Skale who had become part and parcel of the rugged landscape.
Spinrobin was a lost atom whirling somewhere outside on his
own account, whereas the other seemed oddly in touch with it,
almost merged and incorporated into it. With those deep
breaths the clergyman absorbed something of this latent power
about them--then gave it out again. It broke over his
companion like a wave. Elemental force of some kind emanated
from that massive human figure beside him.
The wind came tearing up the valley and swept past them with
a rush as of mighty wings. Mr. Skale drew attention to it. "And
listen to that!" he said. "How it leaps, singing, from the woods
in the valley up to those gaunt old cliffs yonder!" He pointed.
His beard blew suddenly across his face. With his bare head and
shaggy flying hair, his big eyes and bold aquiline nose, he
presented an impressive figure. Spinrobin watched him with
growing amazement, aware that an enthusiasm scarcely warranted
by the wind and scenery had passed into his manner. In his own
person, too, he thought he experienced a birth of something
similar--a little wild rush of delight he was unable to account
for. The voice of his companion, pointing out the house in the
valley below, again interrupted his thoughts.
"How the mountains positively eat it up. It lies in their
very jaws," and the secretary's eyes, travelling into the depths,
made out a cluster of grey stone chimneys and a clearing in the
woods that evidently represented lawns. The phrase "courage and
imagination" flashed unbidden into his mind as he realised the
loneliness of the situation, and for the hundredth time he
wondered what in the world could be the experiments with sound
that this extraordinary man pursued in this isolated old
mansion among the hills.
"Buried, sir, rather," he suggested. "I can only just see
it----"
"And inaccessible," Mr. Skale interrupted him. "Hard to get
at. No one comes to disturb; an ideal place for work. In the
hollows of these hills a man may indeed seek truth and pursue
it, for the world does not enter here." He paused a moment. "I
hope, Mr. Spinrobin," he added, turning towards him with that
gentle smile his shaggy visage sometimes wore, "I hope you will
not find it too lonely. We have no visitors, I mean; nothing but
our own little household of four."
Spinrobin smiled back. Even at this stage he admits he was
exceedingly anxious to suit. Mr. Skale, in spite of his marked
peculiarities, inspired him with confidence. His personal
attraction was growing every minute; that vague awe he roused
probably only increased it. He wondered who the "four" might
be.
"There's nothing like solitude for serious work, sir," replied
the younger man, stifling a passing uneasiness.
And with that they plunged down the hill-side into the
valley, Mr. Skale leading the way at a terrific pace, shouting
out instructions and warnings from time to time that echoed
from the rocks as though voices followed them down from the
mountains. The darkness swallowed them, they left the wind
behind; the silence that dwells in the folded hills fell about
their steps; the air grew less keen; the trees multiplied,
gathering them in with fingers of mist and shadow. Only the
clatter of their boots on the rocky path, and the heavy bass of
the clergyman's voice shouting instructions from time to time,
broke the stillness. Spinrobin followed the big dark outline in
front of him as best he could, stumbling frequently. With
countless little hopping steps he dodged along from point to
point, a certain lucky nimbleness in his twinkling feet saving
him from many a tumble.
"All right behind there?" Mr. Skale would thunder.
"All right, thanks, Mr. Skale," he would reply in his thin
tenor, "I'm coming."
"Come along, then!" And on they would go faster than before,
till in due course they emerged from the encircling woods and
reached the more open ground about the house. Somehow, in the
jostling relations of the walk, a freedom of intercourse had
been established that no amount of formal talk between four
walls could have accomplished. They scraped their dirty boots
vigorously on the iron mat.
"Tired?" asked the clergyman, kindly.
"Winded, Mr. Skale, thank you--nothing more," was the reply.
He looked up at the square mass of the house looming dark
against the sky, and the noise his companion made opening the
door--the actual rattle of the iron knob did it--suddenly
brought to him a clear realisation of two things: First, he
understood that the whole way from the station Mr. Skale had
been watching him closely, weighing, testing, proving him,
though by ways and methods so subtle that they had escaped his
observation at the time; secondly, that he was already so
caught in the network of this personality, vaster and more
powerful than his own, that escape if he desired it would be
exceedingly difficult. Like a man in a boat upon the upper
Niagara river, he already felt the tug and suction of the current
below--the lust of a great adventure drawing him forward. Mr.
Skale's hand upon his shoulder as they entered the house was
the symbol of that. The noise of the door closing behind him
was the passing of the last bit of quiet water across which a
landing to the bank might still have been possible.
Faint streamers from the dark, inscrutable house of fear
reached him even then and left their vague, undecipherable
signatures upon the surface of his soul. The forces that
vibrated so strangely in the atmosphere of Mr. Skale were
already playing about his own person, gathering him in like a
garment. Yet while he shuddered, he liked it. Was he not already
losing something of his own insignificant and diminutive self?
IV
The clergyman, meanwhile, had closed the heavy door,
shutting out the darkness, and now led the way across a large,
flagged hall into a room, ablaze with lamp and fire, the walls
lined thickly with books, furnished cosily if plainly. The laden
tea-table, and a kettle hissing merrily on the hob, were
pleasant to look upon, but what instantly arrested the gaze of
the secretary was the face of the old woman in cap and apron--
evidently the housekeeper already referred to as "Mrs." Mawle--
who stood waiting to pour out tea. For about her worn and
wrinkled countenance there lay an indefinable touch of
something that hitherto he had seen only in pictures of the
saints by the old masters. What attracted his attention, and
held it so arrestingly, was this singular expression of
happiness, aye, of more than mere happiness--of joy and peace
and blessed surety, rarely, if ever, seen upon a human face
alive, and only here and there suggested behind that mask of
repose which death leaves so tenderly upon the features of
those few who have lived their lives to noblest advantage.
Spinrobin caught his breath a little, and stared. Aged and
lined as it unquestionably was, he caught that ineffable
suggestion of radiance about it which proclaimed an inner life
that had found itself and was in perfect harmony with outer
things: a life based upon certain knowledge and certain hope. It
wore a gentle whiteness he could find only one word to describe
--glory. And the moment he saw it there flashed across him the
recognition that this was what Mr. Skale also possessed. That
giant, athletic, vigorous man, and this bent, worn old woman
both had it. He wondered with a rush of sudden joy what
produced it;--whether it might perhaps one day be his too. The
flame of his own spirit leapt within him.
And, so wondering, he turned to look at the clergyman. In the
softer light of fire and lamp his face had the appearance of
forty rather than sixty as he had first judged; the eyes, always
luminous, shone with health and enthusiasm; a great air of
youth and vitality glowed about him. It was a fine head with
that dominating nose and the shaggy tangle of hair and beard;
very big, fatherly and protective he looked, a quite
inexpressible air of tenderness mingled in everywhere with the
strength. Spinrobin felt immensely drawn to him as he looked.
With such a leader he could go anywhere, do anything. There,
surely, was a man whose heart was set not upon the things of
this world.
An introduction to the housekeeper interrupted his
reflections; it did not strike him as at all out of the way;
doubtless she was more mother than domestic to the household.
At the name of "Mrs." Mawle (courtesy-title, obviously), he rose
and bowed, and the old woman, looking from one to the other,
smiled becomingly, curtseyed, put her cap straight, and turned
to the teapot again. She said nothing.
"The only servant I have, practically," explained the
clergyman, "cook, butler, housekeeper and tyrant all in one;
and, with her niece, the only other persons in the house besides
ourselves. A very simple mйnage, you see, Mr. Spinrobin. I ought
to warn you, too, by-the-by," he added, "that she is almost
stone deaf, and has only got the use of one arm, as perhaps you
noticed. Her left arm is"--he hesitated for a fraction of a
second--"withered."
A passing wonder as to what the niece would be like
accompanied the swallowing of his buttered toast and tea, but
the personalities of Mr. Skale and his housekeeper had already
produced emotions that prevented this curiosity acquiring much
strength. He could deal with nothing more just yet.
Bewilderment obstructed the way, and in his room before dinner
he tried in vain to sort out the impressions that so thickly
flooded him, though without any conspicuous degree of success.
The walls of his bedroom, like those of corridor and hall, were
bare; the furniture solid and old-fashioned; scanty, perhaps, yet
more than he was accustomed to; and the spaciousness was very
pleasant after the cramped quarters of stuffy London lodgings.
He unpacked his few things, arranged them with neat precision
in the drawers of the tallboy, counted his shirts, socks, and
ties, to see that all was right, and then drew up an arm-chair
and toasted his toes before the comforting fire. He tried to
think of many things, and to decide numerous little questions
roused by the events of the last few hours; but the only thing,
it seems, that really occupied his mind, was the rather
overpowering fact that he was--with Mr. Skale and in Mr. Skale's
house; that he was there on a month's trial; that the nature of
the work in which he was to assist was unknown, immense,
singular; and that he was already being weighed in the balances
by his uncommon and gigantic employer. In his mind he used
this very adjective. There was something about the big
clergyman--titanic.
He was in the middle of a somewhat jumbled consideration
about "Knowledge of Hebrew--tenor voice--courage and
imagination--unworldly," and so forth, when a knock at the door
announced Mrs. Mawle who came to inform him that dinner was
ready. She stood there, a motherly and pleasant figure in black,
and she addressed him in the third person. "If Mr. Spinrobin
will please to come down," she said, "Mr. Skale is waiting. Mr.
Skale is always quite punctual." She always spoke thus, in the
third person; she never used the personal pronoun if it could
be avoided. She preferred the name direct, it seemed. And as
Spinrobin passed her on the way out, she observed further,
looking straight into his eyes as she said it: "and should Mr.
Spinrobin have need of anything, that," indicating it, "is the
bell that rings in the housekeeper's room. Mrs. Mawle can see
it wag, though she can't hear it. Day or night," she added with a
faint curtsey, "and no trouble at all, just as with the other
gentlemen----"
So there had been other gentlemen, other secretaries! He
thanked her with a nod and a smile, and hurried pattering
downstairs in a neat blue suit, black silk socks and a pair of
bright new pumps, Mr. Skale having told him not to dress. The
phrase "day or night," meanwhile, struck him as significant and
peculiar. He remembered it later. At the moment he merely
noted that it added one more to the puzzling items that caused
his bewilderment.
V
Before he had gone very far, however, there came another--
crowningly perplexing. For he was half way down the darkened
passage, making for the hall that glimmered beyond like the
mouth of a cave, when, without the smallest warning, he became
suddenly conscious that something attractive and utterly
delicious had invaded the stream of his being. It came from
nowhere--inexplicably, and at first it took the form of a naked
sensation of delight, keen as a thrill of boyhood days. There
passed into him very swiftly something that satisfied. "I mean,
whatever it was," he says, "I couldn't have asked or wanted more
of it. It was all there, complete, supreme, sufficient." And the
same instant he saw close beside him, in the comparative gloom
of the narrow corridor, a vivid, vibrating picture of a girl's
face, pale as marble, of flower-like beauty, with dark
voluminous hair and large grey eyes that met his own from
behind a wavering net of eyelashes. Down to the shoulders he
saw her.
Erect and motionless she stood against the wall to let him
pass--this slim young girl whose sudden and unexpected
presence had so electrified him. Her eyes followed him like
those of a picture, but she neither bowed nor curtseyed, and the
only movement she made was the slight turning of the head and
eyes as he went by. It was extraordinarily effective, this silent
and delightful introduction, for swift as lightning, and with
lightning's terrific and incalculable surety of aim, she leapt
into his heart with the effect of a blinding and complete
possession.
It was, of course, he realised, the niece--the fourth member
of the household, and the first clear thought to disentangle
itself from the resultant jumble of emotions was his
instinctive wonder what her name might be. How was this
delightful apparition called? This was the question that ran and
danced in his blood. In another minute he felt sure he would
discover it. It must begin (he felt sure of that) with an M.
He did not pause, or alter his pace. He made no sign of
recognition. Their eyes swallowed each other for a brief
moment as he passed--and then he was pattering with quick,
excited steps down the passage beyond, and the girl was left out
of sight in the shadows behind him. He did not even turn back
to look, for in some amazing sense she seemed to move on
beside him, as though some portion of her had merged into his
being. He carried her on with him. Some sweet and marvellous
interchange they had undergone together. He felt strangely
blessed, soothed inwardly, made complete, and more than twice
on the way down the name he knew must belong to her almost
sprang up and revealed itself--yet never quite. He knew it began
with M, even with Mir--but could get nothing more. The rest
evaded him. He divined only a portion of the name. He had seen
only a portion of her form.
The first syllable, however, sang in him with an exquisitely
sweet authority. He was aware of some glorious new thing in the
penetralia of his little spirit, vibrating with happiness. Some
portion of himself sang with it. "For it really did vibrate," he
said, "and no other word describes it. It vibrated like music,
like a string; as though when I passed her she had taken a bow
and drawn it across the strings of my inmost being to make
them sing. . . ."
"Come," broke in the sonorous voice of the clergyman whom
he found standing in the hall; "I've been waiting for you."
It was said, not complainingly nor with any idea of fault-
finding, but rather--both tone and manner betrayed it--as a
prelude to something of importance about to follow. Somewhat
impatiently Mr. Skale took his companion by the arm and led
him forwards; on the stone floor Spinrobin's footsteps sounded
light and dancing, like a child's. The clergyman strode. At the
dining-room door he stopped, turning abruptly, and at the same
instant the figure of the young girl glided noiselessly towards
them from the mouth of the dark corridor where she had been
waiting.
Her entry, again, was curiously effective; like a beautiful
thought in a dream she moved into the hall, and into
Spinrobin's life. Moreover, as she came wholly into view in the
light, he felt, as positively as though he heard it uttered, that
he knew her name complete. The first syllable had come to him
in the passage-way when he saw her partly, and the feeling of
dread that "Mir----" might prove to be part of "Miranda,"
"Myrtle," or some other enormity, passed instantly. These would
only have been gross and cruel misnomers. Her right name--the
only one that described her soul--must end, as it began, with M.
It flashed into his mind, and at the same moment Mr. Skale
picked it off his very lips.
"Miriam," he said in deep tones, rolling the name along his
mouth so as to extract every shade of sound belonging to it,
"this is Mr. Spinrobin about whom I told you. He is coming, I
hope, to help us."
VI
At first Spinrobin was only aware of the keen delight
produced in him by the manner of Skale's uttering her name,
for it entered his consciousness with a murmuring, singing
sound that continued on in his thoughts like a melody. His
racing blood carried it to every portion of his body. He heard
her name, not with his ears alone but with his whole person--a
melodious, haunting phrase of music that thrilled him
exquisitely. Next, he knew that she stood close before him,
shaking his hand, and looking straight into his eyes with an
expression of the most complete trust and sympathy
imaginable, and that he felt a well-nigh irresistible desire to
draw her yet closer to him and kiss her little shining face.
Thirdly--though the three impressions were as a matter of fact
almost simultaneous--that the huge figure of the clergyman
stood behind them, watching with the utmost intentness and
interest, like a keen and alert detective eager for some
betrayal of evidence, inspired, however, not by mistrust, but by
a very zealous sympathy.
He understood that this meeting was of paramount importance
in Mr. Skale's purpose.
"How do you do, Mr. Spinrobin," he heard a soft voice saying,
and the commonplace phrase served to bring him back to a more
normal standard of things. But the tone in which she said it
caused him a second thrill almost more delightful than the
first, for the quality was low and fluty, like the gentle note of
some mellow wind instrument, and the caressing way she
pronounced his name was a revelation. Mr. Skale had known how
to make it sound dignified, but this girl did more--she made it
sound alive. "I will give thee a new name" flashed into his
thoughts, as some memory-cell of boyhood discharged its little
burden most opportunely and proceeded to refill itself.
The smile of happiness that broke over Spinrobin's face was
certainly reflected in the eyes that gazed so searchingly into
his own, without the smallest sign of immodesty, yet without
the least inclination to drop the eyelids. The two natures ran
out to meet each other as naturally as two notes of music run
to take their places in a chord. This slight, blue-eyed youth,
light of hair and sensitive of spirit, and this slim, dark-
skinned little maiden, with the voice of music and the wide-
open grey eyes, understood one another from the very first
instant their atmospheres touched and mingled; and the big
Skale, looking on intently over their very shoulders, saw that
it was good and smiled down upon them, too, in his turn.
"The harmony of souls and voices is complete," he said, but
in so low a tone that the secretary did not hear it. Then, with
a hand on a shoulder of each, he half pushed them before him
into the dining-room, his whole face running, as it were, into a
single big smile of contentment. The important event had
turned out to his entire satisfaction. He looked like some
beneficent father, well pleased with his two children.
But Spinrobin, as he moved beside the girl and heard the
rustle of her dress that almost touched him, felt as though he
stood upon a sliding platform that was moving ever quicker, and
that the adventure upon which he was embarked had now acquired
a momentum that nothing he could do would ever stop. And he
liked it. It would carry him out of himself into something very
big. . . .
And at dinner, where he sat opposite to the girl and studied
her face closely, Mr. Skale, he was soon aware, was occupied in
studying the two of them even more closely. He appeared always
to be listening to their voices. They spoke little enough,
however, only their eyes met continually, and when they did so
there was no evidence of a desire to withdraw. Their gaze
remained fastened on one another, on her part without shyness,
without impudence on his. That Mr. Skale wished for them an
intimate and even affectionate understanding was evident, and
the secretary warmed to him on that account more than ever, if
on no other.
It surprised him too--when he thought of it, which was rarely
--that a girl who was perforce of humble origin could carry
herself with an air of such complete and natural distinction,
and prove herself so absolutely "the lady." For there was
something about her of greater value than any mere earthly
rank or class could confer; her spirit was in its very essence
distinguished, perfectly simple, yet strong with a great and
natural pride. It never occurred to her soul to doubt its own
great value--or to question that of others. She somehow or
other made the little secretary feel of great account. He had
never quite realised his own value before. Her presence, her
eyes, her voice served to bring it out. And a very curious detail
that he always mentions just at this point is the fact that it
never occurred to him to wonder what her surname might be, or
whether, indeed, she had one at all. Her name, Miriam, seemed
sufficient. The rest of her--if there was any other part of her
not described by those three syllables--lay safely and
naturally included somewhere in his own name. "Spinrobin"
described her as well as himself. But "Miriam" completed his
own personality and at the same time extended it. He felt all
wrapped up and at peace with her. With Philip Skale, Mrs. Mawle
and Miriam, he, Robert Spinrobin, felt that he naturally
belonged as "one of the family." They were like the four notes
in the chord: Skale, the great bass; Mawle, the mellow alto;
himself and Miriam, respectively, the echoing tenor and the
singing soprano. The imagery by which, in the depths of his
mind, he sought to interpret to himself the whole singular
business ran, it seems, even then to music and the analogies of
music.
The meal was short and very simple. Mrs. Mawle carved the
joint at the end of the table, handed the vegetables and looked
after their wants with the precision of long habit. Her skill, in
spite of the withered arm, was noteworthy. They talked little,
Mr. Skale hardly at all. Miriam spoke from time to time across
the table to the secretary. She did not ask questions, she
stated facts, as though she already knew all about his feelings
and tastes. She may have been twenty years of age, perhaps, but
in some way she took him back to childhood. And she said
things with the simple audacity of a child, ignoring Mr. Skale's
presence. It seemed to the secretary as if he had always known
her.
"I knew just how you would look," she said, without a trace of
shyness, "the moment I heard your name. And you got my name
very quickly, too?"
"Only part of it, at first----"
"Oh yes; but when you saw me completely you got it all," she
interrupted. "And I like your name," she added, looking him full
in the eye with her soft grey orbs; "it tells everything."
"So does yours, you know."
"Oh, of course," she laughed; "Mr. Skale gave it to me the day
I was born."
"I heard it," put in the clergyman, speaking almost for the
first time. And the talk dropped again, the secretary's head
fairly whirling.
"You used it all, of course, as a little boy," she said
presently again; "names, I mean?"
"Rather," he replied without hesitation; "only I've rather
lost it since----"
"It will come back to you here. It's so splendid, all this
world of sound, and makes everything seem worth while. But you
lose your way at first, of course; especially if you are out of
practice, as you must be."
Spinrobin did not know what to say. To hear this young girl
make use of such language took his breath away. He became aware
that she was talking with a purpose, seconding Mr. Skale in the
secret examination to which the clergyman was all the time
subjecting him. Yet there was no element of alarm in it all. In
the room with these two, and with the motherly figure of the
housekeeper busying about to and fro, he felt at home,
comforted, looked after--more even, he felt at his best; as
though the stream of his little life were mingling in with a
much bigger and worthier river, a river, moreover, in flood. But
it was the imagery of music again that most readily occurred to
him. He felt that the note of his own little personality had
been caught up into the comforting bosom of a complete
chord. . . .
VII
"Mr. Spinrobin," suddenly sounded soft and low across the
table, and, thrilled to hear the girl speak his name, he looked
up quickly and found her very wide-opened eyes peering into his.
Her face was thrust forward a little as she leaned over the
table in his direction.
As he gazed she repeated his name, leisurely, quietly, and
even more softly than before: "Mr. Spinrobin." But this time,
as their eyes met and the syllables issued from her lips, he
noticed that a singular after-sound--an exceedingly soft yet
vibrant overtone--accompanied it. The syllables set something
quivering within him, something that sang, running of its own
accord into a melody to which his rising pulses beat time and
tune.
"Now, please, speak my name," she added. "Please look
straight at me, straight into my eyes, and pronounce my name."
His lips trembled, if ever so slightly, as he obeyed.
"Miriam . . ." he said.
"Pronounce each syllable very distinctly and very slowly,"
she said, her grey eyes all over his burning face.
"Mir . . . i . . . am," he repeated, looking in the centre of
the eyes without flinching, and becoming instantly aware that
his utterance of the name produced in himself a development
and extension of the original overtones awakened by her
speaking of his own name. It was wonderful . . . exquisite . . .
delicious. He uttered it again, and then heard that she, too, was
uttering his at the same moment. Each spoke the other's name.
He could have sworn he heard the music within him leap across
the intervening space and transfer itself to her . . . and that
he heard his own name singing, too, in her blood.
For the names were true. By this soft intoning utterance
they seemed to pass mutually into the secret rhythm of that
Eternal Principle of Speech which exists behind the spoken
sound and is independent of its means of manifestation. Their
central beings, screened and limited behind their names, knew
an instant of synchronous rhythmical vibration. It was their
introduction absolute to one another, for it was an instant of
naked revelation.
"Spinrobin. . . ."
"Miriam. . . ."
VIII
. . . A great volume of sound suddenly enveloped and caught
away the two singing names, and the spell was broken. Miriam
dropped her eyes; Spinrobin looked up. It was Mr. Skale's voice
upon them with a shout.
"Splendid! splendid!" he cried; "your voices, like your names,
are made for one another, in quality, pitch, accent, everything."
He was enthusiastic rather than excited; but to Spinrobin,
taking part in this astonishing performance, to which the other
two alone held the key, it all seemed too perplexing for words.
The great bass crashed and boomed for a moment about his ears;
then came silence. The test, or whatever it was, was over. It
had been successful.
Mr. Skale, his face still shining with enthusiasm, turned
towards him. Miriam, equally happy, watched, her hands folded
in her lap.
"My dear fellow," exclaimed the clergyman, half rising in his
chair, "how mad you must think us! How mad you must think us!
I can only assure you that when you know more, as you soon
shall, you will understand the importance of what has just
taken place. . . ."
He said a good deal more that Spinrobin did not apparently
quite take in. He was too bewildered. His eyes sought the girl
where she sat opposite, gazing at him. For all its pallor, her
face was tenderly soft and beautiful; more pure and undefiled,
he thought, than any human countenance he had ever seen, and
sweet as the face of a child. Utterly unstained it was. A similar
light shone in the faces of Skale and Mrs. Mawle. In their case
it had forged its way through the more or less defiling garment
of a worn and experienced flesh. But the light in Miriam's eyes
and skin was there because it had never been extinguished. She
had retained her pristine brilliance of soul. Through the little
spirit of the perplexed secretary ran a thrill of genuine
worship and adoration.
"Mr. Skale's coffee is served in the library," announced the
voice of the housekeeper abruptly behind them; and when
Spinrobin turned again he discovered that Miriam had slipped
from the room unobserved and was gone.
Mr. Skale took his companion's arm and led the way towards
the hall.
"I am glad you love her," was his astonishing remark. "It is
the first and most essential condition of your suiting me."
"She is delightful, wonderful, charming, sir----"
"Not `sir,' if you please," replied the clergyman, standing
aside at the threshold for his guest to pass; "I prefer the use
of the name, you know. I think it is important."
And he closed the library door behind them.
I
FOR some minutes they sat in front of the fire and sipped their
coffee in silence. The secretary felt that the sliding platform
on which he was travelling into this extraordinary adventure
had been going a little too fast for him. Events had crowded
past before he had time to look squarely at them. He had lost
his bearings rather, routed by Miriam's beauty and by the
amazing way she talked to him. Had she lived always inside his
thoughts she could not have chosen words better calculated to
convince him that they were utterly in sympathy one with the
other. Mr. Skale, moreover, approved heartily. The one thing
Spinrobin saw clearly through it all was that himself and
Miriam--their voices, rather--were necessary for the success of
the clergyman's mysterious experiments. Only, while Miriam,
little witch, knew all about it, he, candidate on trial, knew as
yet--nothing.
And now, as they sat opposite one another in the privacy of
the library, Spinrobin, full of confidence and for once proud of
his name and personality, looked forward to being taken more
into the heart of the affair. Things advanced, however, more
slowly than he desired. Mr. Skale's scheme was too big to be
hurried.
The clergyman did not smoke, but his companion, with the
other's ready permission, puffed gently at a small cigarette.
Short, rapid puffs he took, as though the smoke was afraid to
enter beyond the front teeth, and with one finger he incessantly
knocked off the ashes into his saucer, even when none were there
to fall. On the table behind them gurgled the shaded lamp,
lighting their faces from the eyes downwards.
"Now," said Mr. Skale, evidently not aware that he thundered,
"we can talk quietly and undisturbed." He caught his beard in a
capacious hand, in such a way that the square outline of his
chin showed through the hair. His voice boomed musically,
filling the room. Spinrobin listened acutely, afraid even to
cross his legs. A genuine pronouncement, he felt, was coming.
"A good many years ago, Mr. Spinrobin," he said simply, "when
I was a curate of a country parish in Norfolk, I made a
discovery--of a revolutionary description--a discovery in the
world of real things, that is, of spiritual things."
He gazed fixedly over the clutched beard at his companion,
apparently searching for brief, intelligible phrases. "But a
discovery, the development of which I was obliged to put on one
side until I inherited with this property the means and leisure
which enabled me to continue my terrific--I say purposely
terrific--researches. For some years now I have been quietly at
work here absorbed in my immense pursuit." And again he
stopped. "I have reached a point, Mr. Spinrobin----"
"Yes," interjected the secretary, as though the mention of
his name touched a button and produced a sound. "A point----?"
"Where I need the assistance of some one with a definite
quality of voice--a man who emits a certain note--a certain
tenor note." He released his beard, so that it flew out with a
spring, at the same moment thrusting his head forward to drive
home the announcement effectively.
Spinrobin crossed his legs with a fluttering motion, hastily.
"As you advertised," he suggested.
The clergyman bowed.
"My efforts to find the right man," continued the enthusiast,
leaning back in his chair, "have now lasted a year. I have had a
dozen men down here, each on a month's trial. None of them
suited. None had the requisite quality of voice. With a single
exception, none of them could stand the loneliness, the
seclusion; and without exception, all of them were too worldly
to make sacrifices. It was the salary they wanted. The majority,
moreover, confused imagination with fancy, and courage with
mere audacity. And, most serious of all, not one of them passed
the test of--Miriam. She harmonised with none of them. They
were discords one and all. You, Mr. Spinrobin, are the first to
win acceptance. The instant she heard your name she cried for
you. And she knows. She sings the soprano. She took you into
the chord."
"I hope indeed----" stammered the flustered and puzzled
secretary, and then stopped, blushing absurdly. "You claim for
me far more than I should dare to claim for myself," he added.
The reference to Miriam delighted him, and utterly destroyed
his judgment. He longed to thank the girl for having approved
him. "I'm glad my voice--er--suits your--chord." In his heart
of hearts he understood something of what Mr. Skale was driving
at, yet was half-ashamed to admit it even to himself. In this
twentieth century it all seemed so romantic, mystical, and
absurd. He felt it was all half-true. If only he could have run
back into that great "mental prairie" of his boyhood days it
might all have been quite true.
"Precisely," continued Mr. Skale, bringing him back to
reality, "precisely. And now, before I tell you more, you will
forgive my asking you one or two personal questions, I'm sure.
We must build securely as we go, leaving nothing to chance. The
grandeur and importance of my experiments demand it.
Afterwards," and his expression changed to a sudden softness in
a way that was characteristic of the man, "you must feel free to
put similar questions to me, as personal and direct as you
please. I wish to establish a perfect frankness between us at
the start."
"Thank you, Mr. Skale. Of course--er--should anything occur
to me to ask----" A momentary bewilderment, caused by the
great visage so close to his own, prevented the completion of
the sentence.
"As to your beliefs, for instance," the clergyman resumed
abruptly, "your religious beliefs, I mean. I must be sure of you
on that ground. What are you?"
"Nothing--I think," Spinrobin replied without hesitation,
remembering how his soul had bounced its way among the
various creeds since Cambridge, and arrived at its present state
of Belief in Everything, yet without any definite label.
"Nothing in particular. Nominally, though--a Christian."
"You believe in a God?"
"A Supreme Intelligence, most certainly," was the emphatic
reply.
"And spirits?"
Spinrobin hesitated. He was a very honest soul.
"Other life, let me put it," the clergyman helped him;
"other beings besides ourselves?"
"I have often felt--wondered, rather," he answered carefully,
"whether there might not be other systems of evolution besides
humanity. Such extraordinary Forces come blundering into one's
life sometimes, and one can't help wondering where they come
from. I have never formulated any definite beliefs, however----"
"Your world is not a blind chaos, I mean?" Mr. Skale put
gravely to him, as though questioning a child.
"No, no, indeed. There's order and system----"
"In which you personally count for something of value?"
asked the other quickly.
"I like to think so," was the apologetic reply. "There's
something that includes me somewhere in a purpose of very
great importance--only, of course, I've got to do my part,
and----"
"Good," Mr. Skale interrupted him. "And now," he asked softly,
after a moment's pause, leaning forward, "what about death? Are
you afraid of death?"
Spinrobin started visibly. He began to wonder where this
extraordinary catechism was going to lead. But he answered at
once: he had thought out these things and knew where he stood.
"Only of its possible pain," he said, smiling into the
bearded visage before him. "And an immense curiosity, of
course----"
"It does not mean extinction for you--going out like the
flame of a candle, for instance?"
"I have never been able to believe that, Mr. Skale. I continue
somewhere and somehow--for ever."
The cross-examination puzzled him more and more, and
through it, for the first time, he began to feel dimly, ran a
certain strain of something not quite right, not permissible in
the biggest sense. It was not the questions themselves that
produced this odd and rather disquieting impression, but the
fact that Mr. Skale was preparing the ground with such
extraordinary thoroughness. This conversation was the first
swell, as it were, rolling mysteriously in upon him from the
ocean in whose deeps the great Experiment lay buried. Forces,
tidal in strength, oceanic in volume, shrouded it just now, but
he already felt them. They reached him through the person of
the clergyman. It was these forces playing through his
personality that Spinrobin had been aware of the first moment
they met on the station platform, and had "sensed" even more
strongly during the walk home across the mountains.
Behind the play of these darker impressions, as yet only
vague and ambiguous, there ran in and out among his thoughts
the vein of something much sweeter. Miriam, with her large grey
eyes and silvery voice, was continually peeping in upon his
mind. He wondered where she was and what she was doing in the
big, lonely house. He wished she could have been in the room to
hear his answers and approve them. He felt incomplete without
her. Already he thought of her as the melody to which he was
the accompaniment, two things that ought not to be separated.
"My point is," Mr. Skale continued, "that, apart from ordinary
human ties, and so forth, you have no intrinsic terror of death
--of losing your present body?"
"No, no," was the reply, more faintly given than the rest. "I
love my life, but--but----" he looked about him in some
confusion for the right words, still thinking of Miriam--"but I
look forward, Mr. Skale; I look forward." He dropped back into
the depths of his arm-chair and puffed swiftly at the end of his
extinguished cigarette, oblivious of the fact that no smoke
came.
"The attitude of a brave man," said the clergyman with
approval. Then, looking straight into the secretary's blue eyes,
he added with increased gravity: "And therefore it would not be
immoral of me to expose you to an experiment in which the
penalty of a slip would be--death? Or you would not shrink from
it yourself, provided the knowledge to be obtained seemed worth
while?"
"That's right, sir--Mr. Skale, I mean; that's right," came the
answer after an imperceptible pause.
The result of the talk seemed to satisfy the clergyman. "You
must think my questions very peculiar," he said, the sternness
of his face relaxing a little, "but it was necessary to
understand your exact position before proceeding further. The
gravity of my undertaking demands it. However, you must not let
my words alarm you." He waited a moment, reflecting deeply.
"You must regard them, if you will, as a kind of test," he
resumed, searching his companion's face with eagle eyes, "the
beginning of a series of tests in which your attitude to Miriam
and hers to you, so far as that goes, was the first."
"Oh, that's all right, Mr. Skale," was his inadequate
rejoinder; for the moment the name of the girl was introduced
his thoughts instantly wandered out to find her. The way the
clergyman pronounced it increased its power, too, for no name
he uttered sounded ordinary. There seemed a curious mingling in
the resonant cavity of his great mouth of the fundamental note
and the overtones.
"Yes, you have the kind of courage that is necessary," Mr.
Skale was saying, half to himself, "the modesty that forgets
self, and the unworldly attitude that is essential. With your
help I may encompass success; and I consider myself
wonderfully fortunate to have found you, wonderfully
fortunate. . . ."
"I'm glad," murmured Spinrobin, thinking that so far he had
not learned anything very definite about his duties, or what it
was he had to do to earn so substantial a salary. Truth to tell,
he did not bother much about that part of it. He was conscious
only of three main desires: to pass the unknown tests, to learn
the nature of Mr. Skale's discovery, with the experiment
involved, and--to be with Miriam as much as possible. The
whole affair was so unusual that he had already lost the
common standards of judging. He let the sliding platform take
him where it would, and he flattered himself that he was not
fool enough to mistake originality for insanity. The clergyman,
dreamer and enthusiast though he might be, was as sane as other
men, saner than most.
"I hope to lead you little by little to what I have in view,"
Mr. Skale went on, "so that at the end of our trial month you
will have learned enough to enable you to form a decision, yet
not enough to--to use my knowledge should you choose to return
to the world."
It was very frank, but the secretary did not feel offended. He
accepted the explanation as perfectly reasonable. In his mind
he knew full well what his choice would be. This was the
supreme adventure he had been so long a-seeking. No ordinary
obstacle could prevent his accepting it.
II
There came a pause of some length, in which Spinrobin found
nothing particular to say. The lamp gurgled; the coals fell
softly into the fender. Then suddenly Mr. Skale rose and stood
with his back to the grate. He gazed down upon the small figure
in the chair. He towered there, a kindly giant, enthusiasm
burning in his eyes like lamps. His voice was very deep, his
manner more solemn than before when he spoke.
"So far, so good," he said, "and now, with your permission,
Mr. Spinrobin, I should like to go a step further. I should like
to take--your note."
"My note?" exclaimed the other, thinking he had not heard
correctly.
"Your sound, yes," repeated the clergyman.
"My sound!" piped the little man, vastly puzzled, his voice
shrill with excitement. He dodged about in the depths of his
big leather chair, as though movement might bring explanation.
Mr. Skale watched him calmly. "I want to get the vibrations
of your voice, and then see what pattern they produce in the
sand," he said.
"Oh, in the sand, yes; quite so," replied the secretary. He
remembered how the vibrations of an elastic membrane can
throw dry sand, loosely scattered upon its surface, into various
floral and geometrical figures. Chladni's figures, he seemed to
remember, they were called after their discoverer. But Mr.
Skale's purpose in the main, of course, escaped him.
"You don't object?"
"On the contrary, I am greatly interested." He stood up on
the mat beside his employer.
"I wish to make quite sure," the clergyman added gravely,
"that your voice, your note, is what I think it is--accurately in
harmony with mine and Miriam's and Mrs. Mawle's. The pattern
it makes will help to prove this."
The secretary bowed in perplexed silence, while Mr. Skale
crossed the room and took a violin from its case. The golden
varnish of its ribs and back gleamed in the lamplight, and when
the clergyman drew the bow across the strings to tune it,
smooth, mellow sounds, soft and resonant as bells, filled the
room. Evidently he knew how to handle the instrument. The
notes died away in a murmur.
"A Guarnerius," he explained, "and a perfect pedigree
specimen; it has the most sensitive structure imaginable, and
carries vibrations almost like a human nerve. For instance,
while I speak," he added, laying the violin upon his companion's
hand, "you will feel the vibrations of my voice run through the
wood into your palm."
"I do," said Spinrobin. It trembled like a living thing.
"Now," continued Mr. Skale, after a pause, "what I first want
is to receive the vibrations of your own voice in the same way
--into my very pulses. Kindly read aloud steadily while I hold
it. Stop reading when I make a sign. I'll nod, so that the
vibrations of my voice won't interfere." And he handed a note-
book to him with quotations entered neatly in his own
handwriting, selected evidently with a purpose, and all dealing
with sound, music, as organised sound, and names. Spinrobin
read aloud; the first quotation from Meredith he recognised, but
the others, and the last one, discussing names, were new to
him:--
But listen in the thought; so may there come
Conception of a newly-added chord,
Commanding space beyond where ear has home.
------
Everything that the sun shines upon sings or can be made to
sing, and can be heard to sing. Gases, impalpable powders, and
woollen stuffs, in common with other non-conductors of sound,
give forth notes of different pitches when played upon by an
intermittent beam of white light. Coloured stuffs will sing in
lights of different colours, but refuse to sing in others. The
polarization of light being now accomplished, light and sound
are known to be alike. Flames have a modulated voice and can be
made to sing a definite melody. Wood, stone, metal, skins,
fibres, membranes, every rapidly vibrating substance, all have
in them the potentialities of musical sound.
------
Radium receives its energy from, and responds to, radiations
which traverse all space--as piano strings respond to sounds in
unison with their notes. Space is all a-quiver with waves of
radiant energy. We vibrate in sympathy with a few strings here
and there--with the tiny X-rays, actinic rays, light waves, heat
waves, and the huge electro-magnetic waves of Hertz and
Marconi; but there are great spaces, numberless radiations, to
which we are stone deaf. Some day, a thousand years hence, we
shall know the full sweep of this magnificent harmony.
------
Everything in nature has its name, and he who has the power
to call a thing by its proper name can make it subservient to
his will; for its proper name is not the arbitrary name given
to it by man, but the expression of the totality of its powers
and attributes, because the powers and attributes of each Being
are intimately connected with its means of expression, and
between both exists the most exact proportion in regard to
measure, time, and condition.
The meaning of the four quotations, as he read them, plunged
down into him and touched inner chords very close to his own
beliefs. Something of his own soul, therefore, passed into his
voice as he read. He read, that is to say, with authority.
A nod from Mr. Skale stopped him just as he was beginning a
fifth passage. Raising the vibrating instrument to his ear, the
clergyman first listened a moment intently. Then he quickly
had it under his chin, beard flowing over it like water, and the
bow singing across the strings. The note he played--he drew it
out with that whipping motion of the bow only possible to a
loving expert--was soft and beautiful, long drawn out with a
sweet singing quality. He took it on the G string with the
second finger--in the "fourth position." It thrilled through
him, Spinrobin declares, most curiously and delightfully. It
made him happy to hear it. It was very similar to the singing
vibrations he had experienced when Miriam gazed into his eyes
and spoke his name.
"Thank you," said Mr. Skale, and laid the violin down again.
"I've got the note. You're E flat."
"E flat!" gasped Spinrobin, not sure whether he was pleased
or disappointed.
"That's your sound, yes. You're E flat--just as I thought,
just as I hoped. You fit in exactly. It seems too good to be
true!" His voice began to boom again, as it always did when he
was moved. He was striding about, very alert, very masterful,
pushing the furniture out of his way, his eyes more luminous
than ever. "It's magnificent." He stopped abruptly and looked
at the secretary with a gaze so enveloping that Spinrobin for
an instant lost his bearings altogether. "It means, my dear
Spinrobin," he said slowly, with a touch of solemnity that woke
an involuntary shiver deep in his listener's being, "that you
are destined to play a part, and an important part, in one of
the grandest experiments ever dreamed of by the heart of man.
For the first time since my researches began twenty years ago I
now see the end in sight."
"Mr. Skale--that is something--indeed," was all the little
man could find to say.
There was no reason he could point to why the words should
have produced a sense of chill about his heart. It was only that
he felt again the huge ground-swell of this vast unknown
experiment surging against him, lifting him from his feet--as a
man might feel the Atlantic swells rise with him towards the
stars before they engulfed him for ever. It seemed getting a
trifle out of hand, this adventure. Yet it was what he had always
longed for, and his courage must hold firm. Besides, Miriam was
involved in it with him. What could he ask better than to risk
his insignificant personality in some gigantic, mad attempt to
plumb the Unknown, with that slender, little pale-faced Beauty
by his side? The wave of Mr. Skale's enthusiasm swept him away
deliciously.
"And now," he cried, "we'll get your Pattern too. I no longer
have any doubts, but none the less it will be a satisfaction to
us both to see it. It must, I'm sure, harmonise with ours; it
must!"
He opened a cupboard drawer and produced a thin sheet of
glass, upon which he next poured some finely powdered sand out
of a paper bag. It rattled, dry and faint, upon the smooth, hard
surface. And while he did this, he talked rapidly, boomingly,
with immense enthusiasm.
"All sounds," he said, half to himself; half to the
astonished secretary, "create their own patterns. Sound builds;
sound destroys; and invisible sound-vibrations affect concrete
matter. For all sounds produce forms--the forms that
correspond to them, as you shall now see. Within every form
lies the silent sound that first called it into view--into
visible shape--into being. Forms, shapes, bodies are the
vibratory activities of sound made visible."
"My goodness!" exclaimed Spinrobin, who was listening like a
man in a dream, but who caught the violence of the clergyman's
idea none the less.
"Forms and bodies are--solidified Sound," cried the
clergyman in italics.
"You say something extraordinary," exclaimed the
commonplace Spinrobin in his shrill voice. "Marvellous!"
Vaguely he seemed to remember that Schelling had called
architecture "frozen music."
Mr. Skale turned and looked at him as a god might look at an
insect--that he loved.
"Sound, Mr. Spinrobin," he said, with a sudden and effective
lowering of his booming voice, "is the original divine
impulsion behind nature--communicated to language. It is--
creative!"
Then, leaving the secretary with this nut of condensed
knowledge to crack as best he could, the clergyman went to the
end of the room in three strides. He busied himself for a
moment with something upon the wall; then he suddenly turned,
his great face aglow, his huge form erect, fixing his burning
eyes upon his distracted companion.
"In the Beginning," he boomed solemnly, in tones of profound
conviction, "was--the Word." He paused a moment, and then
continued, his voice filling the room to the very ceiling. "At
the Word of God--at the thunder of the Voice of God, worlds
leaped into being!" Again he paused. "Sound," he went on, the
whole force of his great personality in the phrase, "was the
primordial, creative energy. A sound can call a form into
existence. Forms are the Sound-Figures of archetypal forces--
the Word made Flesh." He stopped, and moved with great soft
strides about the room.
Spinrobin caught the words full in the face. For a space he
could not measure--considerably less than a second, probably--
the consciousness of something unutterably immense,
unutterably flaming, rushed tumultuously through his mind,
with wings that bore his imagination to a place where light was
--dazzling, white beyond words. He felt himself tossed up to
Heaven on the waves of a great sea, as the body of strange
belief behind the clergyman's words poured through him. . . .
For somewhere, behind the incoherence of the passionate
language, burned the blaze of a true thought at white heat--
could he but grasp it through the stammering utterance.
Then, with equal swiftness, it passed. His present
surroundings came back. He dropped with a dizzy rush from awful
spaces . . . and was aware that he was merely--standing on the
black, woolly mat before the fire watching the movements of
his new employer, that his pumps were bright and pointed, his
head just level with a dark marble mantelpiece. Dazed, and a
trifle breathless he felt; and at the back of his disordered
mind stirred a schoolboy's memory that the Pythagoreans
believed the universe to have been called out of chaos by Sound,
Number, and Harmony--or something to that effect. . . . But
these huge, fugitive thoughts that tore through him refused to
be seized and dealt with. He staggered a little, mentally; then,
with a prodigious effort, controlled himself--and watched.
III
Mr. Skale, he saw, had fastened the little sheet of glass by
its four corners to silken strings hanging from the ceiling. The
glass plate hung, motionless and horizontal, in the air with its
freight of sand. For several minutes the clergyman played a
series of beautiful modulations in double-stopping upon the
violin. In these the dominating influence was E flat. Spinrobin
was not musical enough to describe it more accurately than
this. Only, with greater skill than he knows, he mentions how
Skale drew out of that fiddle the peculiarly intimate and
searching tones by which strings can reach the spiritual centre
of a man and make him respond to delicate vibrations of
thoughts beyond his normal gamut. . . .
Spinrobin, listening, understood that he was a greater man
than he knew. . . .
And the sand on the glass sheet, he next became aware, was
shifting, moving, dancing. He heard the tiny hissing and
rattling of the dry grains. It was uncommonly weird. This
visible and practical result made the clergyman's astonishing
words seem true and convincing. That moving sand brought
sanity, yet a certain curious terror of the unknown into it all.
A minute later Mr. Skale stopped playing and beckoned to
him.
"See," he said quietly, pointing to the arrangement the
particles of sand had assumed under the influence of the
vibrations. "There's your pattern--your sound made visible.
That's your utterance--the Note you substantially represent and
body forth in terms of matter."
The secretary stared. It was a charming but very simple
pattern the lines of sand had assumed, not unlike the fronds of
a delicate fern growing out of several small circles round the
base.
"So that's my note--made visible!" he exclaimed under his
breath. "It's delightful; it's quite exquisite."
"That's E flat," returned Mr. Skale in a whisper, so as not to
disturb the pattern; "if I altered the note, the pattern would
alter too. E natural, for instance, would be different. Only,
luckily, you are E flat--just the note we want. And now," he
continued, straightening himself up to his full height, "come
over and see mine and Miriam's and Mrs. Mawle's, and you'll
understand what I meant when I said that yours would
harmonize." And in a glass case across the room they examined
a number of square sheets of glass with sand upon them in
various patterns, all rendered permanent by a thin coating of a
glue-like transparent substance that held the particles in
position.
"There you see mine and Miriam's and Mrs. Mawle's," he said,
stooping to look. "They harmonize most beautifully, you
observe, with your own."
It was, indeed, a singular and remarkable thing. The patterns,
though all different, yet combined in some subtle fashion
impossible of analysis to form a complete and well-
proportioned Whole--a design--a picture. The patterns of the
clergyman and the housekeeper provided the base and foreground,
those of Miriam and the secretary the delicate superstructure.
The girl's pattern, he noted with a subtle pleasure, was
curiously similar to his own, but far more delicate and waving.
Yet, whereas his was floral, hers was stellar in character; that
of the housekeeper was spiral, and Mr. Skale's he could only
describe as a miniature whirlwind of very exquisite design
rising out of apparently three separate centres of motion.
"If I could paint over them the colour each shade of sound
represents," Mr. Skale resumed, "the tint of each timbre, or
Klangfarbe, as the Germans call it, you would see better still
how we are all grouped together there into a complete and
harmonious whole."
Spinrobin looked from the patterns to his companion's great
face bending there beside him. Then he looked back again at the
patterns. He could think of nothing quite intelligible to say.
He noticed more clearly every minute that these dainty shapes
of sand, stellar, spiral, and floral, stood to one another in
certain definite proportions, in a rising and calculated ratio of
singular beauty.
"There, before you, lies a true and perfect chord made
visible," the clergyman said in tones thrilling with
satisfaction, "--three notes in harmony with the fundamental
sound, myself, and with each other. My dear fellow, I
congratulate you, I congratulate you."
"Thank you very much, indeed," murmured Spinrobin. "I don't
quite understand it all yet, but it's--it's extraordinarily
fascinating and wonderful."
Mr. Skale said nothing, and Spinrobin drifted back to his big
arm-chair. A deep silence pervaded the room for the space of
several minutes. In the heart of that silence lay the mass of
direct and vital questions the secretary burned, yet was afraid,
to ask. For such was the plain truth; he yearned to know, yet
feared to hear. The Discovery and the Experiment of this
singular man loomed already somewhat vast and terrible; the
adjective that had suggested itself before returned to him--
"not permissible." . . . Of Mr. Skale himself he had no sort of
fear, though a growing and uncommon respect, but of the
purpose Mr. Skale had in view he caught himself thinking more
and more, yet without obvious reason, with a distinct shrinking
almost amounting to dismay. But for the fact that so sweet and
gentle a creature as Miriam was travelling the same path with
him, this increased sense of caution would have revealed itself
plainly for what it was--Fear. . . .
"I am deeply interested, Mr. Skale," he said at length,
breaking first the silence, "and sympathetic too, I assure you;
only--you will forgive me for saying it--I am, as yet, still
rather in the dark as to where all this is to lead----" The
clergyman's eyes, fixed straight upon his own, again made it
difficult to finish the sentence as he wished.
"Necessarily so, because I can only lead you to my discovery
step by step," replied the other steadily. "I wish you to be
thoroughly prepared for anything that may happen, so that you
can deal intelligently with results that might otherwise
overwhelm you."
"Overwhelm----?" faltered his listener.
"Might, I said. Note carefully my use of words, for they are
accurately chosen. Before I can tell you all I must submit you,
for your own sake, to certain tests--chiefly to the test of
Alteration of Form by Sound. It is somewhat--er--alarming, I
believe, the first time. You must be thoroughly accustomed to
these astonishing results before we dare to approach the final
Experiment; so that you will not tremble. For there can be no
rehearsal. The great Experiment can only be made once . . . and
I must be as sure as possible that you will feel no terror in
the face of the Unknown."
IV
Spinrobin listened breathlessly. He hesitated a moment after
the other stopped speaking, then slewed round on his slippery
chair and faced him.
"I can understand," he began, "why you want imagination, but
you spoke of courage too? I mean,--is there any immediate cause
for alarm? Any personal danger, for instance, now?" For the
clergyman's weighty sentences had made him realize in a new
sense the loneliness of his situation here among these desolate
hills. He would appreciate some assurance that his life was not
to be trifled with before he lost the power to withdraw if he
wished to do so.
"None whatever," replied Mr. Skale with decision, "there is no
question at all of physical personal injury. You must trust me
and have a little patience." His tone and manner were
exceedingly grave, yet at the same time inspired confidence.
"I do," said Spinrobin honestly.
Another pause fell between them, longer than the rest; it
was broken by the clergyman. He spoke emphatically, evidently
weighing his words with the utmost care.
"This Chord," he said simply--yet, for all the simplicity,
there ran to and fro behind his words the sense of unlawful and
immense forces impending--"I need for a stupendous experiment
with sound, an experiment which will lead in turn towards a yet
greater and final one. There is no harm in your knowing that.
To produce a certain transcendent result I want a complex
sound--a chord, but a complete and perfect chord in which each
note is sure of itself and absolutely accurate."
He waited a moment. There was utter silence about them in
the room. Spinrobin held his breath.
"No instrument can help me; the notes must be human," he
resumed in a lower voice, "and the utterers--pure. For the
human voice can produce sounds `possessing in some degree the
characteristics not only of all musical instruments, but of all
sounds of whatever description.' By means of this chord I hope
to utter a certain sound, a certain name, of which you shall
know more hereafter. But a name, as you surely know, need not
be composed of one or two syllables only; a whole symphony
may be a name, and a whole orchestra playing for days, or an
entire nation chanting for years, may be required to pronounce
the beginning merely of--of certain names. Yours, Robert
Spinrobin, for instance, I can pronounce in a quarter of a
second; but there may be names so vast, so mighty, that
minutes, days, years even, may be necessary for their full
utterance. There may be names, indeed, which can never be
known, for they could never be uttered--in time. For the
moment I am content simply to drop this thought into your
consciousness; later you shall understand more. I only wish you
to take in now that I need this perfect chord for the utterance
in due course of a certain complex and stupendous name--the
invocation, that is, of a certain complex and stupendous
Force!"
"I think I understand," whispered the other, afraid to
interrupt more.
"And the difficulty I have experienced in finding the three
notes has been immense. I found Mrs. Mawle--alto; then Miriam
I found at birth and trained her--soprano; and now I have found
you, Mr. Spinrobin, and my chord, with myself as bass, is
complete. Your note and Miriam's, soprano and tenor, are closer
than the relations between the other notes, and a tenor has
accordingly been most difficult to find. You can now understand
the importance of your being sympathetic to each other."
Spinrobin's heart burned within him as he listened. He began
to grasp some sweet mystical meaning in the sense of perfect
companionship the mere presence of the girl inspired. They
were the upper notes in the same chord together, linked in a
singing and harmonious relation, the one necessary to the
other. Moreover, in the presence of Mr. Skale and the
housekeeper, bass and alto in the full chord, their
completeness was still more emphasized, and they knew their
fullest life. The adventure promised to be amazingly seductive.
He would learn practically the strange truth that to know the
highest life Self must be lost and merged in something bigger.
And was this not precisely what he had so long been seeking--
escape from his own insignificance?
"And--er--the Hebrew that you require of me, Mr. Skale?" he
asked, returning to practical considerations.
"Our purposes require a certain knowledge of Hebrew," he
answered without hesitation or demur, "because that ancient
language and the magical resources of sound are profoundly
linked. In the actual sounds of many of the Hebrew letters lies
a singular power, unguessed by the majority, undivined
especially, of course, by the mere scholar, but available for
the pure in heart who may discover how to use their
extraordinary values. They constitute, in my view at least, a
remnant of the original Chaldaean mysteries, the lore of that
magic which is older than religion. The secret of this
knowledge lies in the psychic values of sound; for Hebrew, the
Hebrew of the Bahir, remains in the hierarchy of languages a
direct channel to the unknown and inscrutable forces; and the
knowledge of mighty and supersensual things lies locked up in
the correct utterance of many of its words, letters and phrases.
Its correct utterance, mark well. For knowledge of the most
amazing and terrible kind is there, waiting release by him who
knows, and who greatly dares.
"And you shall later learn that sound is power. The Hebrew
alphabet you must know intimately, and the intricate
association of its letters with number, colour, harmony and
geometrical form, all of which are but symbols of the Realities
at the very roots of life. The Hebrew alphabet, Mr. Spinrobin, is
a `discourse in methods of manifestation, of formation.' In its
correct pronunciation lies a way to direct knowledge of divine
powers, and to conditions beyond this physical existence."
The clergyman's voice grew lower and lower as he proceeded,
and the conviction was unavoidable that he referred to things
whereof he had practical knowledge. To Spinrobin it was like
the lifting of a great veil. As a boy he had divined something
of these values of sound and name, but with the years this
knowledge had come to seem fantastic and unreal. It now
returned upon him with the force of a terrific certainty. That
immense old inner playground of his youth, without boundaries
or horizon, rolled up before his mental vision, inviting further
and detailed discovery.
"With the language, qua language," he continued, "you need not
trouble, but the `Names' of many things you must know
accurately, and especially the names of the so-called `Angels';
for these are in reality Forces of immense potency, vast
spiritual Powers, Qualities, and the like, all evocable by
correct utterance of their names. This language, as you will
see, is alive and divine in the true sense; its letters are the
vehicles of activities; its words, terrific formulж; and the
true pronunciation of them remains to-day a direct channel to
divine knowledge. In time you shall see; in time you shall
know; in time you shall hear. Mr. Spinrobin," and he thrust his
great head forwards and dropped his voice to a hushed whisper,
"in time we shall all together make this Experiment in sound
which shall redeem us and make us as Gods!"
"Thank you!" gasped the secretary, swept off his feet by this
torrent of uncommon and mystical language, and passing a
moist hand through his feathery hair. He was not entirely
ignorant, of course, of the alleged use of sound in the various
systems of so-called magic that have influenced the minds of
imaginative men during the history of the world. He had heard,
more or less vaguely, perhaps, but still with understanding,
about "Words of Power"; but hitherto he had merely regarded
such things as picturesque superstitions, or half-truths that
lie midway between science and imagination. Here, however, was
a man in the twentieth century, the days of radium, flying
machines, wireless telegraphy, and other invitations towards
materialism, who apparently had practical belief in the
effective use of sound and in its psychic and divine
possibilities, and who was devoting all of his not
inconsiderable powers of heart and mind to their actual
demonstration. It was astonishing. It was delightful. It was
incredible! And, but for the currents of a strange and
formidable fear that this conception of Skale's audacious
Experiment set stirring in his soul, Spinrobin's enthusiasm
would have been possibly as great as his own.
As it was he went up to the big clergyman and held out his
hand, utterly carried away by the strangeness of it all, caught
up in a vague splendour he did not quite understand, prepared to
abandon himself utterly.
"I gather something of what you mean," he said earnestly, "if
not all; and I hope most sincerely I may prove suitable for
your purpose when the time comes. As a boy, you know, curiously
enough, I always believed in the efficacy of names and the
importance of naming true. I think," he added somewhat
diffidently, looking up straight into the luminous eyes above
him, "if you will allow me to say so, I would follow you
anywhere, Mr. Skale--anywhere you cared to lead."
"`Upon him that overcometh,'" said the clergyman in that
gentle voice he sometimes used, soft as the voice of woman,
"`will I write my new name. . . .'"
He gazed down very searchingly into the other's eyes for a
minute or two, then shook the proffered hand without another
word. And so they separated and went to bed, for it was long
past midnight.
I
IN his bedroom, though excitement banished sleep in spite of
the lateness of the hour, he was too exhausted to make any
effective attempt to reduce the confusion of his mind to order.
For the first time in his life the diary-page for the day
remained blank. For a long time he sat before it with his
pencil--then sighed and put it away. A volume he might have
written, but not a page, much less a line or two. And though it
was but eight hours since he had made the acquaintance of the
Rev. Philip Skale, it seemed to him more like eight days.
Moreover, all that he had heard and seen, fantastic and
strained as he felt it to be, possibly even the product of
religious mania, was nevertheless profoundly disquieting, for
mixed up with it somewhere or other was--truth. Mr. Skale had
made a discovery--a giant one; it was not all merely talk and
hypnotism, the glamour of words. His great Experiment would
prove to be real and terrible. He had discovered certain uses of
sound, occult yet scientific, and if he, Spinrobin, elected to
stay on, he would be obliged to play his part in the
dйnouement. And this thought from the very beginning appalled
while it fascinated him. It filled him with a kind of horrible
amazement. For the object the clergyman sought, though not
yet disclosed, already cast its monstrous shadow across his
path. He somehow discerned that it would deal directly with
knowledge the saner judgment of a common-place world had
always deemed undesirable, unlawful, unsafe, dangerous to the
souls that dared attempt it, failure involving a pitiless and
terrible Nemesis.
He lay in bed watching the play of the firelight upon the
high ceiling, and thinking in confused fashion of the huge
clergyman with his thundering voice, his great lambent eyes and
his seductive gentleness; of his singular speculations and his
hints, half menacing, half splendid, of things to come. Then he
thought of the housekeeper with her deafness and her withered
arm, and that white peace about her face; and, lastly, of
Miriam, soft, pale beneath her dark skin, her gem-like eyes ever
finding his own, and of the intimate personal relations so
swiftly established between them. . . .
It was, indeed, a singular household thus buried away in the
heart of these lonely mountains. The stately old mansion was
just the right setting for--for----
Unbidden into his mind a queer, new thought shot suddenly,
interrupting the flow of ideas. He never understood how or
whence it came, but with the picture of all the empty rooms in
the corridor about him, he received the sharp unwelcome
impression that when Mr. Skale described the house as empty it
was really nothing of the sort. Utterly unannounced, the uneasy
conviction took possession of him that the building was
actually--populated. It was an extraordinary idea to have. There
was absolutely nothing in the way of evidence to support it.
And with it flashed across his memory echoes of that unusual
catechism he had been subjected to--in particular the questions
whether he believed in spirits,--"other life," as Skale termed
it. Sinister suspicions flashed through his imagination as he
lay there listening to the ashes dropping in the grate and
watching the shadows cloak the room. Was it possible that
there were occupants of these rooms that the man had somehow
evoked from the interstellar spaces and crystallized by means
of sound into form and shape--created?
Something freezing swept into him from a region far beyond
the world. He shivered. These cold terrors that grip the soul
suddenly without apparent cause, whence do they come? Why, out
of these rather extravagant and baseless speculations, should
have emerged this sense of throttling dread that appalled him?
And why, once again, should he have felt convinced that the
ultimate nature of the clergyman's great experiment was
impious, fraught with a kind of heavenly danger,
"unpermissible"?
Spinrobin, lying there shivering in his big bed, could not
guess. He only knew that by way of relief his mind instinctively
sought out Miriam, and so found peace. Curled up in a ball
between the sheets his body presently slept, while his mind,
intensely active, travelled off into that vast inner prairie of
his childhood days and called her name aloud. And presumably
she came to him at once, for his sleep was undisturbed and his
dreams uncommonly sweet, and he woke thoroughly refreshed
eight hours later, to find Mrs. Mawle standing beside his bed
with thin bread and butter and a cup of steaming tea.
II
For the rest, the new secretary fell quickly and easily into
the routine of this odd little household, for he had great
powers of adaptability. At first the promise of excitement
faded. The mornings were spent in the study of Hebrew, Mr. Skale
taking great pains to instruct him in the vibratory
pronunciation (for so he termed it) of certain words, and
especially of the divine, or angelic, names. The correct
utterance, involving a kind of prolonged and sonorous vibration
of the vowels, appeared to be of supreme importance. He further
taught him curious correspondences between Sound and Number,
and the attribution to these again of certain colours. The
vibrations of sound and light, as air and ether, had intrinsic
importance, it seemed, in the uttering of certain names; all of
which, however, Spinrobin learnt by rote, making neither head
nor tail of it.
That there were definite results, though, he could not deny--
psychic results; for a name uttered correctly produced one
effect, and uttered wrongly produced another . . . just as a
wrong note in a chord afflicts the hearer whereas the right one
blesses. . . .
The afternoons, wet or fine, they went for long walks
together about the desolate hills, Miriam sometimes
accompanying them. Their talk and laughter echoed all over the
mountains, but there was no one to hear them, the nearest
village being several miles away and the railway station--
nothing but a railway station. The isolation was severe; there
were no callers but the bi-weekly provision carts; letters had
to be fetched and newspapers were neglected.
Arrayed in fluffy tweeds, with baggy knickerbockers and
heavily-nailed boots, he trotted beside his giant companion
over the moors, somewhat like a child who expected its hand to
be taken over difficult places. His confidence had been
completely won. The sense of shyness left him. He felt that he
already stood to the visionary clergyman in a relationship that
was more than secretarial. He still panted, but with enthusiasm
instead of with regret. In the background loomed always the dim
sense of the Discovery and Experiment approaching inevitably,
just as in childhood the idea of Heaven and Hell had stood
waiting to catch him--real only when he thought carefully
about them. Skale was just the kind of man, he felt, who would
make a discovery, so simple that the rest of the world had
overlooked it, so tremendous that it struck at the roots of
human knowledge. He had the simple originality of genius, and a
good deal of its inspirational quality as well.
Before ten days had passed he was following him about like a
dog, hanging upon his lightest word. New currents ran through
him mentally and spiritually as the fires of Mr. Skale's vivid
personality quickened his own, and the impetus of his inner life
lifted him with its more violent momentum. The world of an
ordinary man is so circumscribed, so conventionally moulded,
that he can scarcely conceive of things that may dwell
normally in the mind of an extra-ordinary man. Adumbrations
of these, however, may throw their shadow across his field of
vision. Spinrobin was ordinary in most ways, while Mr. Skale was
un-ordinary in nearly all; and thus, living together in this
intimate solitude, the secretary got peeps into his companion's
region that gradually convinced him. With cleaned nerves and
vision he began to think in ways and terms that were new to
him. Skale, like some big figure in story or legend, moved
forward into his life and waved a wand. His own smaller
personality began to expand; thoughts entered unannounced that
hitherto had not even knocked at the door, and the frontiers of
his mind first wavered, then unfolded to admit them.
The clergyman's world, whether he himself were mad or sane,
was a real world, alive, vibrating, shortly to produce practical
results. Spinrobin would have staked his very life upon it. . . .
And, meanwhile, he made love openly--under any other
conditions, outrageously--to Miriam, whose figure of soft beauty
moving silently about the house helped to redeem it. She
rendered him quiet little services of her own accord that
pleased him immensely, for occasionally he detected her
delicate perfume about his room, and he was sure it was not
Mrs. Mawle who put the fresh heather in the glass jars upon his
table, or arranged his papers with such neat precision on the
desk.
Her delicate, shining little face with its wreath of dark hair,
went with him everywhere, hauntingly, possessingly; and when he
kissed her, as he did now every morning and every evening under
Mr. Skale's very eyes, it was like plunging his lips into a bed
of wild flowers that no artificial process had ever touched.
Something in him sang when she was near. She had, too, what he
used to call as a boy "night eyes"--changing after dusk into
such shadowy depths that to look at them was to look beyond
and through them. The sight could never rest only upon their
surface. Through her eyes, then, stretched all the delight of
that old immense playground . . . where names clothed,
described, and summoned living realities.
His attitude towards her was odd yet comprehensible; for
though his desire was unquestionably great, it was not
particularly active, probably because he knew that he held her
and that no aggressive effort was necessary. Secure in the
feeling that she belonged to him, and he to her, he also found
that he had little enough to say to her, never anything to ask.
She knew and understood it all beforehand; expression was
uncalled for. As well might the brimming kettle sing to the
water "I contain you," or the water reply "I fill you!"
Only this was not the simile he used. In his own thoughts
from the very beginning he had used the analogy of sound--of
the chord. As well might one note feel called upon to cry to
another in the same chord, "Hark! I'm sounding with you!" as
that Spinrobin should say to Miriam, "My heart responds and
sings to yours."
After a period of separation, however, he became charged with
things he wanted to say to her, all of which vanished utterly
the moment they came together. Words instantly then became
unnecessary, foolish. He heard that faint internal singing, and
his own resonant response; and they merely stayed there side by
side, completely happy, everything told without speech. This
sense of blissful union enwrapped his soul. In the language of
his boyhood he had found her name; he knew her; she was his.
Yet sometimes they did talk; and their conversations, in any
other setting but this amazing one provided by the wizardry of
Skale's enthusiasm, must have seemed exquisitely ludicrous. In
the room, often with the clergyman a few feet away, reading by
the fire, they would sit in the window niche, gazing into one
another's eyes, perhaps even holding hands. Then, after a long
interval of silence Mr. Skale would hear Spinrobin's thin
accents:
"You brilliant little sound! I hear you everywhere within me,
chanting a song of life!"
And Miriam's reply, thrilled and gentle:
"I'm but your perfect echo! My whole life sings with yours!"
Whereupon, kissing softly, they would separate, and Mr. Skale
would cover them mentally with his blessing.
Sometimes, too, he would send for the housekeeper and, with
the aid of the violin, would lead the four voices, his own bass
included, through the changes of various chords, for the
vibratory utterance of certain names; and the beauty of these
sounds, singing the "divine names," would make the secretary
swell to twice his normal value and importance (thus he puts
it), as the forces awakened by the music poured and surged into
the atmosphere about them. Whereupon the clergyman would
explain with burning words that many a symphony of
Beethoven's, a sonata of Schumann's, or a suite of
Tschaikovsky's were the Names, peaceful, romantic or
melancholy, of great spiritual Potencies, heard partially by
these masters in their moments of inspirational ecstasy. The
powers of these Beings were just as characteristic, their
existence just as real, as the simpler names of the Hebrew
angels, and their psychic influence upon the soul that heard
them uttered just as sure and individual.
"For the power of music, my dear Spinrobin, has never yet by
science or philosophy been adequately explained, and never can
be until the occult nature of sound, and its correlations with
colour, form, and number is once again understood. `Rhythm is
the first law of the physical creation,' says one, `and music is
a breaking into sound of the fundamental rhythm of universal
being.' `Rhythm and harmony,' declares Plato, `find their way
into the secret places of the soul.' `It is the manifestation,'
whispers the deaf Beethoven, `of the inner essential nature of
all that is,' or in the hint of Leibnitz, `it is a calculation
which the soul makes unconsciously in secret.' It is `love in
search of a name,' sang George Eliot, nearer in her intuition to
the truth than all the philosophers, since love is the dynamic
of pure spirit. But I," he continued after a pause for breath,
and smiling amid the glow of his great enthusiasm, "go beyond
and behind them all into the very heart of the secret; for you
shall learn that to know the sounds of the Great Names and to
utter their music correctly shall merge yourself into the heart
of their deific natures and make you `as the gods
themselves . . . !'"
And Spinrobin, as he listened, noticed that a slight
trembling ran across the fabric of his normal world, as though
it were about to vanish and give place to another--a new world
of divine things made utterly simple. For many things that
Skale said in this easy natural way, he felt, were in the nature
of clues and passwords, whose effect he carefully noted upon his
secretary, being intended to urge him, with a certain violence
even, into the desired region. Skale was testing him all the
time.
III
And it was about this time, more than half way through the
trial month, that the clergyman took Spinrobin, now become far
more than merely secretary, into his fuller confidence. In a
series of singular conversations, which the bewildered little
fellow has reported to the best of his ability, he explained to
him something of the science of true names. And to prove it he
made two singular experiments: first he uttered the true name
of Mrs. Mawle, secondly of Spinrobin himself, with results that
shall presently be told.
These things it was necessary for him to know and understand
before they made the great Experiment. Otherwise, if
unprepared, he might witness results that would involve the
loss of self-control and the failure, therefore, of the
experiment--a disaster too formidable to contemplate.
By way of leading up to this, however, he gave him some
account first of the original discovery. Spinrobin asked few
questions, made few comments; he took notes, however, of all he
heard and at night wrote them up as best he could in his diary.
At times the clergyman rose and interrupted the strange recital
by moving about the room with his soft and giant stride,
talking even while his back was turned; and at times the
astonished secretary wrote so furiously that he broke his
pencil with a snap, and Mr. Skale had to wait while he sharpened
it again. His inner excitement was so great that he almost felt
he emitted sparks.
The clue, it appears, came to the clergyman by mere chance,
though he admits his belief that the habits of asceticism and
meditation he had practised for years may have made him in
some way receptive to the vision, for as a vision, it seems, the
thing first presented itself--a vision made possible by a
moment of very rapid hypnosis.
An Anglican priest at the time, in charge of a small Norfolk
parish, he was a great believer in the value of ceremonial--in
the use, that is, of colour, odour and sound to induce mental
states of worship and adoration--more especially, however, of
sound as uttered by the voice, the human voice being unique
among instruments in that it combined the characteristics of
all other sounds. Intoning, therefore, was to him a matter of
psychic importance, and it was one summer evening, intoning, in
the chancel, that he noticed suddenly certain very curious
results. The faces of two individuals in the congregation
underwent a charming and singular change, a change which he
would not describe more particularly at the moment, since
Spinrobin should presently witness it for himself.
It all happened in a flash--in less than a second, and it is
probable, he holds, that his own voice induced an instant of
swift and passing hypnosis upon himself; for as he stood there
at the lectern there came upon him a moment of keen interior
lucidity in which he realized beyond doubt or question what had
happened. The use of voice, bell, or gong, has long been known
as a means of inducing the hypnotic state, and during this
almost instantaneous trance of his there came a sudden
revelation of the magical possibilities of sound-vibration. By
some chance rhythm of his intoning voice he had hit upon the
exact pitch, quality and accent which constituted the "Note" of
more than one member of the congregation before him. Those
particular individuals, without being aware of the fact, had at
once responded, automatically and inevitably. For a second he
had heard, he knew, their true names! He had unwittingly
"called" them.
Spinrobin's heart leaped with excitement as he listened, for
this idea of "Naming True" carried him back to the haunted days
of his childhood clairvoyance when he had known Winky.
"I don't quite understand, Mr. Skale," he put in, desirous to
hear a more detailed explanation.
"But presently you shall," was all the clergyman vouchsafed.
The clue thus provided by chance he had followed up, but by
methods hard to describe apparently. A corner of the veil,
momentarily lifted, had betrayed the value that lies in the
repetition of certain sounds--the rhythmic reiteration of
syllables--in a word, of chanting or incantation. By diving down
into his subconscious region, already prepared by long spiritual
training, he gradually succeeded in drawing out further details
piece by piece, and finally by infinite practice and prayer
welding them together into an intelligible system. The science
of true-naming slowly, with the efforts of years, revealed
itself. His mind slipped past the deceit of mere sensible
appearances. Clair-audiently he heard the true inner names of
things and persons. . . .
Mr. Skale rose from his chair. With thumbs in the arm-holes
of his waistcoat and fingers drumming loudly on his breast he
stood over the secretary, who continued making frantic notes.
"That chance discovery, then, made during a moment's inner
vision," he continued with a grave excitement, "gave me the key
to a whole world of new knowledge, and since then I have made
incredible developments. Listen closely, Mr. Spinrobin, while I
explain. And take in what you can."
The secretary laid down his pencil and note-book. He sat
forward in an attitude of intense eagerness upon the edge of his
chair. He was trembling. This strange modern confirmation of
his early Heaven of wonder before the senses had thickened and
concealed it, laid bare again his earliest world of far-off
pristine glory.
"The ordinary name of a person, understand then, is merely a
sound attached to their physical appearance at birth by the
parents--a meaningless sound. It is not their true name. That,
however, exists behind it in the spiritual world, and is the
accurate description of the soul. It is the sound you express
visibly before me. The Word is the Life."
Spinrobin surreptitiously picked up his pencil; but the
clergyman spied the movement. "Never mind the notes," he said;
"listen closely to me." Spinrobin obeyed meekly.
"Your ordinary outer name, however," continued Mr. Skale,
speaking with profound conviction, "may be made a conductor to
your true, inner one. The connection between the two by a
series of subtle interior links forms gradually with the years.
For even the ordinary name, if you reflect a moment, becomes
in time a sound of singular authority--inwoven with the finest
threads of your psychical being, so that in a sense you become
it. To hear it suddenly called aloud in the night--in a room
full of people, in the street unexpectedly--is to know a shock,
however small, of increased vitality. It touches the
imagination. It calls upon the soul built up around it."
He paused a moment. His voice boomed musically about the
room, even after he ceased speaking. Bewildered, wondering,
delighted, Spinrobin drank in every word. How well he knew it
all.
"Now," resumed the clergyman, lowering his tone
unconsciously, "the first part of my discovery lies in this:
that I have learned to pronounce the ordinary names of things
and people in such a way as to lead me to their true, inner
ones----"
"But," interrupted Spinrobin irrepressibly, "how in the name
of----?"
"Hush!" cried Skale quickly. "Never again call upon a mighty
name--in vain. It is dangerous. Concentrate your mind upon what
I now tell you, and you shall understand a part, at least, of my
discovery. As I was saying, I have learned how to find the true
name by means of the false; and understand, if you can, that to
pronounce a true name correctly means to participate in its
very life, to vibrate with its essential nature, to learn the
ultimate secret of its inmost being. For our true names are the
sounds originally uttered by the `Word' of God when He created
us, or `called' us into Being out of the void of infinite
silence, and to repeat them correctly means literally--to--
speak--with--His--Voice. It is to speak the truth." The
clergyman dropped his tone to an awed whisper. "Words are the
veils of Being; to speak them truly is to lift a corner of the
veil."
"What a glory! What a thing!" exclaimed the other under his
breath, trying to keep his mind steady, but losing control of
language in the attempt. The great sentences seemed to change
the little room into a temple where sacred things were about
to reveal themselves. Spinrobin now understood in a measure
why Mr. Skale's utterance of his own name and that of Miriam
had sounded grand. Behind each he had touched the true name and
made it echo.
The clergyman's voice brought his thoughts back from
distances in that inner prairie of his youth where they had lost
themselves.
"For all of us," he was repeating with rapt expression in his
shining eyes, "are Sounds in the mighty music the universe
sings to God, whose Voice it was that first produced us, and of
whose awful resonance we are echoes therefore in harmony or
disharmony." A look of power passed into his great visage.
Spinrobin's imagination, in spite of the efforts that he made,
fluttered with broken wings behind the swift words. A flash of
the former terror stirred in the depths of him. The man was at
the heels of knowledge it is not safe for humanity to seek. . . .
"Yes," he continued, directing his gaze again upon the other,
"that is a part of my discovery, though only a part, mind. By
repeating your outer name in a certain way until it disappears
in the mind, I can arrive at the real name within. And to utter
it is to call upon the secret soul--to summon it from its lair.
`I have redeemed thee; I have called thee by name.' You
remember the texts? `I know thee by name,' said Jehovah to the
great Hebrew magician, `and thou art mine.' By certain rhythms
and vibratory modulations of the voice it is possible to
produce harmonics of sound which awaken the inner name into
life--and then to spell it out. Note well, to spell it,--spell--
incantation--the magical use of sound--the meaning of the Word
of Power, used with such terrific effect in the old forgotten
Hebrew magic. Utter correctly the names of their Forces, or
Angels, I am teaching you daily now," he went on reverently,
with glowing eyes and intense conviction; "pronounce them with
full vibratory power that awakens all their harmonics, and you
awaken also their counterpart in yourself; you summon their
strength or characteristic quality to your aid; you introduce
their powers actively into your own psychical being. Had Jacob
succeeded in discovering the `Name' of that `Angel' with whom
he wrestled, he would have become one with its superior power
and have thus conquered it. Only, he asked instead of
commanded, and he found it not. . . ."
"Magnificent! Splendid!" cried Spinrobin, starting from his
chair, seizing with his imagination potently stirred, this
possibility of developing character and rousing the forces of
the soul.
"We shall yet call upon the Names, and see," replied Skale,
placing a great hand upon his companion's shoulder, "not aloud
necessarily, but by an inner effort of intense will which sets
in vibration the finer harmonics heard only by the poet and
magician, those harmonics and overtones which embody the
psychical element in music. For the methods of poet and
magician, I tell you, my dear Spinrobin, are identical, and all
the faiths of the world are at the heels of that thought.
Provided you have faith you can--move mountains! You can call
upon the very gods!"
"A most wonderful idea, Mr. Skale," faltered the other
breathlessly, "quite wonderful!" The huge sentences deafened
him a little with their mental thunder.
"And utterly simple," was the reply, "for all truth is
simple."
He paced the floor like a great caged animal. He went down
and leaned against the dark bookcase, with his legs wide apart,
and hands in his coat pockets. "To name truly, you see, is to
evoke, to create!" he roared from the end of the room. "To
utter as it should be uttered any one of the Ten Words, or
Creative Powers of the Deity in the old Hebrew system, is to
become master of the `world' to which it corresponds. For
these names are still in living contact with the realities
behind. It means to vibrate with the powers that called the
universe into being and--into form."
A sort of shadowy majesty draped his huge figure, Spinrobin
thought, as he stood in semi-darkness at the end of the room
and thundered forth these extraordinary sentences with a
conviction that, for the moment at least, swept away all doubt
in the mind of his listener. Dreadful ideas, huge-footed and
threatening, rushed to and fro in the secretary's mind. He was
torn away from all known anchorage, staggered, dizzy and
dismayed; yet at the same time, owing to his adventure-loving
temperament, a prey to some secret and delightful exaltation
of the spirit. He was out of his depth in great waters. . . .
Then, quite suddenly, Mr. Skale came swiftly over to his side
and whispered in accents that were soothing in comparison:
"And think for a moment how beautiful, the huge Words by
which God called into being the worlds, and sent the perfect,
rounded bodies of the spheres spinning and singing, blazing
their eternal trails of glory through the void! How sweet the
whisper that crystallized in flowers! How tender the note that
fashioned the eyes and face, say, of Miriam. . . ."
At the name of Miriam he felt caught up and glorified, in
some delightful and inexplicable way that brought with it--
peace. The power of all these strange and glowing thoughts
poured their full tide into his own rather arid and thirsty
world, frightening him with their terrific force. But the mere
utterance of that delightful name--in the way Skale uttered it
--brought confidence and peace.
". . . Could we but hear them!" Skale continued, half to
himself, half to his probationer; "for the sad thing is that to-
day the world has ears yet cannot hear. As light is distorted by
passing through a gross atmosphere, so sound reaches us but
indistinctly now, and few true names can bring their wondrous
messages of power correctly. Men, coarsening with the
materialism of the ages, have grown thick and gross with the
luxury of inventions and the diseases of modern life that
develop intellect at the expense of soul. They have lost the
old inner hearing of divine sound, and but one here and there
can still catch the faint, far-off and ineffable music."
He lifted his eyes, and his voice became low and even gentle
as the glowing words fell from his heart of longing.
"None hear now the morning stars when they sing together to
the sun; none know the chanting of the spheres! The ears of the
world are stopped with lust, and the old divine science of true-
naming seems lost for ever amid the crash of engines and the
noisy thunder of machinery! . . . Only among flowers and
certain gems are the accurate old true names still to be found!
. . . But we are on the track, my dear Spinrobin, we are on the
ancient trail to Power."
The clergyman closed his eyes and clasped his hands, lifting
his face upwards with a rapt expression while he murmured
under his breath the description of the Rider on the White
Horse from the Book of the Revelations, as though it held some
inner meaning that his heart knew yet dared not divulge: "And
he had a Name written, that no man knew but he himself. And he
was clothed in a vesture dipped in blood: and his Name is
called The Word of God . . . and he hath on his vesture and on
his thigh a name written,--`King of Kings and Lord of
Lords. . . .'"
And for an instant Spinrobin, listening to the rolling sound
but not to the actual words, fancied that a faintly coloured
atmosphere of deep scarlet accompanied the vibrations of his
resonant whisper and produced in the depths of his mind this
momentary effect of coloured audition.
It was all very strange and puzzling. He tried, however, to
keep an open mind and struggle as best he might with these big
swells that rolled into his little pool of life and threatened
to merge it in a vaster tide than he had yet dreamed of.
Knowing how limited is the world which the senses report, he
saw nothing too inconceivable in the idea that certain persons
might possess a peculiar inner structure of the spirit by which
supersensuous things can be perceived. And what more likely
than that a man of Mr. Skale's unusual calibre should belong to
them? Indeed, that the clergyman possessed certain practical
powers of an extraordinary description he was as certain as
that the house was not empty as he had at first supposed. Of
neither had he proof as yet; but proof was not long in
I
"THEN if there is so much sound about in all objects and forms
--if the whole universe, in fact, is sounding," asked Spinrobin
with a naпve impertinence not intended, but due to the reaction
of his simple mind from all this vague splendour, "why don't
we hear it more?"
Mr. Skale came upon him like a boomerang from the end of
the room. He was smiling. He approved the question.
"With us the question of hearing is merely the question of
wave-lengths in the air," he replied; "the lowest audible sound
having a wave-length of sixteen feet, the highest less than an
inch. Some people can't hear the squeak of a bat, others the
rumble of an earthquake. I merely affirm that in every form
sleeps the creative sound that is its life and being. The ear is
a miserable organ at best, and the majority are far too gross
to know clair-audience. What about sounds, for instance, that
have a wave-length of a hundred, a thousand miles on the one
hand, or a millionth part of an inch on the other?"
"A thousand miles! A millionth of an inch?" gasped the
other, gazing at his interlocutor as though he was some great
archangel of sound.
"Sound for most of us lies between, say, thirty and many
thousand vibrations per second--the cry of the earthquake and
the cricket; it is our limitation that renders the voice of the
dewdrop and the voice of the planet alike inaudible. We even
mistake a measure of noise--like a continuous mill-wheel or a
river, say--for silence, when in reality there is no such thing
as perfect silence. Other life is all the time singing and
thundering about us," he added, holding up a giant finger as
though to listen. "To the imperfection of our ears you may
ascribe the fact that we do not hear the morning stars shouting
together."
"Thank you, yes, I quite see now," said the secretary. "To
name truly is to hear truly." The clergyman's words seemed to
hold a lamp to a vast interior map in his mind that was
growing light. A new dawn was breaking over the great mental
prairie where he wandered as a child. "To find the true name of
anything," he added, "you mean, is to hear its sound, its
individual note as it were?" Incredible perspectives swam into
his ken, hitherto undreamed of.
"Not `as it were,'" boomed the other, "You do hear it. After
which the next step is to utter it, and so absorb its force into
your own being by synchronous vibration--union mystical and
actual. Only, you must be sure you utter it correctly. To
pronounce incorrectly is to call it incompletely into life and
form--to distort and injure it, and yourself with it. To make it
untrue--a lie."
They were standing in the dusk by the library window,
watching the veil of night that slowly covered the hills. The
flying horizons of the moors had slipped away into the
darkness.
The stars were whispering together their thoughts of flame
and speed. At the back of the room sat Miriam among the
shadows, like some melody hovering in a musician's mind till
he should call her forth. It was close upon the tea hour. Behind
them Mrs. Mawle was busying herself with lamps and fire. Mr.
Skale, turning at the sound of the housekeeper, motioned to the
secretary to approach, then stooped down and spoke low in his
ear:
"With many names I had great difficulty," he whispered. "With
hers, for instance," indicating the housekeeper behind them. "It
took me five years' continuous research to establish her
general voice-outline, and even then I at first only derived a
portion of her name. And in uttering it I made such errors of
omission and pronunciation that her physical form suffered, and
she emerged from the ordeal in disorder. You have, of course,
noticed her disabilities. . . . But, later, though only in
stammering fashion, I called upon her all complete, and she
has since known a serene blessedness and a sense of her great
value in the music of life that she never knew before." His face
lit up as he spoke of it. "For in that moment she found
herself. She heard her true name, God's creative sound, thunder
through her being."
Spinrobin, feeling the clergyman's forces pouring through
him like a tide at such close proximity, bowed his head. His
lips were too dry to frame words. He was thinking of the
possible effects upon his own soul and body when his name too
should be "uttered." He remembered the withered arm and the
deafness. He thought, too, of that slender, ghostly figure that
haunted the house with its soft movements and tender singing.
Lastly, he remembered his strange conviction that somewhere in
the great building, possibly in his own corridor, there were
other occupants, other life, Beings of unearthly scale waiting
the given moment to appear, summoned by utterance.
"And you will understand now why it is I want a man of high
courage to help me," Skale resumed in a louder tone, standing
sharply upright; "a man careless of physical existence, and
with a faith wholly beyond the things of this world!"
"I do indeed," he managed to reply aloud, while in his
thoughts he was saying, "I will, I must see it through. I won't
give in!" With all his might he resisted the invading tide of
terror. Even if sad results came later, it was something to have
been sacrificed in so big a conception.
In his excitement he slipped from the edge of the window-
sill, where he was perched, and Mr. Skale, standing close in
front of him, caught his two wrists and set him upon his feet.
A shock, like a rush of electricity, ran through him. He took
his courage boldly in both hands and asked the question ever
burning at the back of his mind.
"Then, this great Experiment you--we have in view," he
stammered, "is to do with the correct uttering of the names of
some of the great Forces, or Angels, and--and the assimilating
of their powers into ourselves----?"
Skale rose up gigantically beside him. "No, sir," he cried, "it
is greater--infinitely greater than that. Names of mere Angels
I can call alone without the help of any one; but for the name
I wish to utter a whole chord is necessary even to compass the
utterance of the opening syllable; as I have told you already, a
chord in which you share the incalculable privilege of being the
tenor note. But for the completed syllables--the full
name----!" He closed his eyes and shrugged his massive
shoulders--"I may need the massed orchestras of half the world,
the chorused voices of the entire nation--or in their place a
still small voice of utter purity crying in the wilderness! In
time you shall know fully--know, see and hear. For the present,
hold your soul with what patience and courage you may."
The words thundered about the room, so that Miriam, too,
heard them. Spinrobin trembled inwardly, as though a cold air
passed him. The suggestion of immense possibilities, vague yet
terrible, overwhelmed him again suddenly. Had not the girl at
that moment moved up beside him and put her exquisite pale
face over his shoulder, with her hand upon his arm, it is
probable he would then and there have informed Mr. Skale that
he withdrew from the whole affair.
"Whatever happens," murmured Miriam, gazing into his eyes,
"we go on singing and sounding together, you and I." Then, as
Spinrobin bent down and kissed her hair, Mr. Skale put an arm
round each of them and drew them over to the tea-table.
"Come, Mr. Spinrobin," he said, with his winning smile, "you
must not be alarmed, you know. You must not desert me. You are
necessary to us all, and when my Experiment is complete we
shall all be as gods together. Do not falter. There is nothing
in life, remember, but to lose oneself; and I have found a
better way of doing so than any one else--by merging ourselves
into the Voice of----"
"Mr. Skale's tea has been standing more than ten minutes,"
interrupted the old housekeeper, coming up behind them; "if Mr.
Spinrobin will please to let him come----" as though it was
Spinrobin's fault that there had been delay.
Mr. Skale laughed good-humouredly, as the two men, suddenly
in the region of tea-cups and buttered toast, looked one another
in the face with a certain confusion. Miriam, sipping her tea,
laughed too, curiously. Spinrobin felt restored to some measure
of safety and sanity again. Only the strange emotion of a few
moments before still moved there unseen among them.
"Listen, and you shall presently hear her name," the
clergyman whispered, glancing up at the other over his tea-cup,
but Spinrobin was crunching his toast too noisily to notice the
meaning of the words fully.
II
The Stage Manager who stands behind all the scenes of life,
both great and small, had prepared the scene well for what was
to follow. The sentences about the world of inaudible sound had
dropped the right kind of suggestion into the secretary's heart.
His mind still whirred with a litter of half-digested sentences
and ideas, however, and he was vividly haunted by the actuality
of truth behind them all. His whole inner being at that moment
cried "Hark!" through a hush of expectant wonder.
There they sat at tea, this singular group of human beings:
Mr. Skale, bigger than ever in his loose house-suit of black,
swallowing his liquid with noisy gulps; Spinrobin, nibbling
slippery morsels of hot toast, on the edge of his chair;
Miriam, quiet and mysterious, in her corner; and Mrs. Mawle,
sedate, respectful in cap and apron, presiding over the tea-pot,
the whole scene cosily lit by lamp and fire--when this
remarkable new thing happened. Spinrobin declares always that
it came upon him like a drowning wave, frightening him not
with any idea of injury to himself, but with a dreadful sense of
being lost and shelterless among the immensities of a
transcendent new world. Something passed into the room that
made his soul shake and flutter at the centre.
His attention was first roused by a sound that he took,
perhaps, to be the wind coming down from the hills in those
draughts and gusts he sometimes heard, only to his imagination
now it was a peopled wind crying round the walls, behind whose
voice he detected the great fluid form of it--running and
coloured. But, with the noise, a terror that was no ordinary
terror invaded the recesses of his soul. It was the fear of the
Unknown, dreadfully multiplied.
He glanced up quickly from his tea-cup, and chancing to meet
Miriam's eye, he saw that she was smiling as she watched him.
This sound, then, had some special significance. At the same
instant he perceived that it was not outside but in the room,
close beside him, that Mr. Skale, in fact, was talking to the
deaf housekeeper in a low and carefully modulated tone--a tone
she could not possibly have heard, however. Then he discovered
that the clergyman was not speaking actually, but repeating her
name. He was intoning it. It grew into a kind of singing chant,
an incantation.
"Sarah Mawle . . . Sarah Mawle . . . Sarah Mawle . . ." ran
through the room like water. And, in Skale's mouth, it sounded
as his own name had sounded--different. It became in some
significant way--thus Spinrobin expresses it always--stately,
important, nay, even august. It became real. The syllables led
his ear away from their normal signification--away from the
outer toward the inner. His ordinary mental picture of the mere
letters SARAHMAWLE disappeared and became merged in
something else--into something alive that pulsed and moved
with vibrations of its own. For, with the outer sound there grew
up another interior one, that finally became separate and
distinct.
Now Spinrobin was well aware that the continued repetition
of one's own name can induce self-hypnotism; and he also knew
that the reiteration of the name of an object ends by making
that object disappear from the mind. "Mustard," repeated
indefinitely, comes to have no meaning at all. The mind drops
behind the mere symbol of the sound into something that is
unintelligible, if not meaningless. But here it was altogether
another matter, and from the torrent of words and similes he
uses to describe it, this--a curious mixture of vividness and
confusion--is apparently what he witnessed:
For, as the clergyman's resonant voice continued quietly to
utter the name, something passed gradually into the appearance
of the motherly old housekeeper that certainly was not there
before, not visible, at least, to the secretary's eyes. Behind
the fleshly covering of the body, within the very skin and bones
it seemed, there flowed with steady splendour an effect of
charging new vitality that had an air of radiating from her face
and figure with the glow and rush of increased life. A
suggestion of grandeur, genuine and convincing, began to express
itself through the humble domestic exterior of her everyday
self; at first, as though some greater personage towered
shadowy behind her, but presently with a growing definiteness
that showed it to be herself and nothing separate. The two, if
two they were, merged.
Her mien, he saw, first softened astonishingly, then grew
firm with an aspect of dignity that was unbelievably beautiful.
An air of peace and joy her face had always possessed, but this
was something beyond either. It was something imposing,
majestic. So perilously adjusted is the ludicrous to the
sublime, that while the secretary wondered dumbly whether the
word "housekeeper" might also in Skale's new world connote
"angel," he could have laughed aloud, had not the nobility of
the spectacle hinted at the same time that he should have wept.
For the tears of a positive worship started to his eyes at the
sight.
"Sarahmawle . . . Sarahmawle. . . ." The name continued to
pour itself about him in a steady ripple, neither rising nor
falling, and certainly not audible to those deaf old ears that
flanked the vigorous and unwrinkled face. "Youth" is not the
word to describe this appearance of ardent intensity that
flamed out of the form and features of the housekeeper, for it
was something utterly apart from either youth or age. Nor was
it any mere idealization of her worn and crumpled self. It was
independent of physical conditions, as it was independent of the
limitations of time and space; superb as sunshine, simple as
the glory that had sometimes touched his soul of boyhood in
sleep--the white fires of an utter transfiguration.
It was, in a word, as if the name Skale uttered had summoned
to the front, through all disguising barriers of flesh, her true
and naked spirit, that which neither ages nor dies, that which
the eyes, when they rest upon a human countenance, can never
see--the Soul itself!
For the first time in his life Spinrobin, abashed and
trembling, gazed upon something in human guise that was
genuinely sublime--perfect with a stainless purity. The mere
sight produced in him an exaltation of the spirit such as he
had never before experienced . . . swallowing up his first
terror. In his heart of hearts, he declares, he prayed; for this
was the natural expression for an emotion of the volume and
intensity that surged within him. . . .
How long he sat there gazing seems uncertain; perhaps
minutes, perhaps seconds only. The sense of time's passage was
temporarily annihilated. It might well have been a thousand
years, for the sight somehow swept him into eternity. . . . In
that tea-room of Skale's lonely house among the mountains, the
warmth of an earthly fire upon his back, the light of an earthly
oil-lamp in his eyes, holding buttered toast in exceedingly
earthly fingers, he sat face to face with something that yet was
not of this earth, something majestic, spiritual and eternal
. . . visible evidence of transfiguration and of "earth growing
heaven. . . ."
------
It was, of course, stupid and clumsy of Spinrobin to drop his
tea-cup and let it smash noisily against the leg of the table;
yet it was natural enough, for in his ecstasy and amazement he
apparently lost control of certain muscles in his trembling
fingers. . . . Though the change came gradually it seemed very
quick. The volume of the clergyman's voice grew less, and as
the tide of sound ebbed the countenance of the housekeeper also
slowly altered. The flames that a moment before had burned so
whitely there flickered faintly and were gone; the glory faded;
the splendour withdrew. She even seemed to dwindle in size.
. . . She resumed her normal appearance. Skale's voice ceased.
The incident apparently had occupied but a few moments, for
Mrs. Mawle, he realized, was gathering the plates together and
fitting them into the spaces of the crowded tea-tray with
difficulty--an operation, he remembered, she had just begun
when the clergyman first began to call upon her name.
She, clearly, had been conscious of nothing unusual. A
moment later, with her customary combination of curtsey and
bow, she was gone from the room, and Spinrobin, acting upon a
strange impulse, found himself standing upright by the table,
looking wildly about him, passing his hand through his
scattered hair, and trying in vain to utter words that should
relieve his overcharged soul of the burden of glory and mystery
that oppressed it.
A pain, profoundly searching, pierced his heart. He thought of
the splendours he had just witnessed, and of the joy and peace
upon those features even when the greater wonder withdrew. He
thought of the power in the countenance of Skale, and of the
shining loveliness in the face of Miriam. Then, with a blast of
bitterest disappointment, he realized the insignificance of his
own self--the earthiness of his own personality, the dead, dull
ordinariness of his own appearance. Why, oh, why, could not all
faces let the soul shine through? Why could not all identify
themselves with their eternal part, and thus learn happiness
and joy? A sense of the futile agony of life led him with an
impassioned eagerness again to the thought of Skale's
tremendous visions, and of the great Experiment that beckoned
beyond. Only, once more the terror of its possible meaning
dropped upon him, and the little black serpents of fear shot
warningly across this brighter background of his hopes.
Then he was aware that Miriam had crossed the room and
stood beside him, for her delicate and natural perfume
announced her even before he turned and saw. Her soft eyes
shining conveyed an irresistible appeal, and with her came the
sense of peace she always brought. She was the one thing at
that moment that could comfort and he opened his arms to her
and let her come nestling in against him, both hands finding
their way up under the lapels of his coat, all the exquisite
confidence of the innocent child in her look. Her hair came
over his lips and face like flowers, but he did not kiss her, nor
could he find any words to say. To hold her there was enough,
for the touch of her healed and blessed him.
"So now you have seen her as she really is," he heard her
voice against his shoulder; "you have heard her true name, and
seen a little of its form and colour!"
"I never guessed that in this world----" he stammered; then,
instead of completing the sentence, held her more tightly to
him and let his face sink deeper into the garden of her hair.
"Oh yes," she answered, and then peered up with unflinching
look into his eyes, "for that is just how I see you too--bright,
splendid and eternal."
"Miriam!" It was as unexpected as a ghost and as incredible.
"Me . . . ?"
"Of course! You see I know your true name. I see you as you
are within!"
Something came to steady his swimming brain, but it was
only after a distinct effort that he realized it was the voice of
Mr. Skale addressing him. Then, gradually, as he listened, gently
releasing the girl in order to turn towards him, he understood
that what he had witnessed had been in the nature of a "test"--
one of those tests he had been warned would come--and that his
attitude to it was regarded by the clergyman with approval.
"It was a test more subtle than you know, perhaps, Mr.
Spinrobin," he was saying, "and the feelings it has roused in
you are an adequate proof that you have come well through it.
As I knew you would, as I knew you would," he added, with evident
satisfaction. "They do infinite credit both to yourself and to
our judgment in--er--accepting you."
A wave of singular emotion seemed to pass across the room
from one to the other that, catching the breathless secretary
in its tide, filled him with a high pride that he had been
weighed and found worthy, then left him cold with a sudden
reaction as he realized after some delay the import of the
words Mr. Skale was next saying to him.
"AND now you shall hear your own name called," boomed the
clergyman with enthusiasm, "and realize the beauty and
importance of your own note in the music of life."
And while Spinrobin trembled from head to toe Mr. Skale
bore down upon him and laid a hand upon his shoulder. He
looked up into the clergyman's luminous eyes. His glance next
wandered down the ridge of that masterful nose and lost itself
among the flowing strands of the tangled beard. At that moment
it would hardly have surprised him to see the big visage
disappear, and to hear the Sound, of which it was the visible
form, slip into his ears with a roar.
But side by side with the vague terror of the unknown he was
conscious also of a smaller and more personal pang. For a man
may envy other forms, yet keenly resent the possible loss or
alteration of his own. And he remembered the withered arm and
the deafness.
"But," he faltered, yet ashamed of his want of courage, "I
don't want to lose my present shape, or--come back--
without----"
"Have no fear," exclaimed the other with decision. "Miriam
and myself have not been experimenting in vain these three
weeks. We have found your name. We know it accurately. For we
are all one chord, and as I promised you, there is no risk." He
stopped, lowering his voice; and, taking the secretary by the
arm with a fatherly and possessive gesture, "Spinrobin," he
whispered solemnly, "you shall learn the value and splendour of
your Self in the melody of the Universe--that burst of divine
music! You shall understand how closely linked you are to
myself and Mrs. Mawle, but, closest of all, to Miriam. For
Miriam herself shall call your name, and you shall hear!"
So little Miriam was to prove his executioner, or his
redeemer. That was somehow another matter. The awe with which
these experiments of Mr. Skale's inspired him ebbed
considerably as he turned and saw the appealing, wistful
expression of his other examiner. Brave as a lion he felt, yet
timid as a hare; there was no idea of real resistance in him any
longer.
"I'm ready, then," he said faintly, and the girl came up
softly to his side and sought his face with a frank innocence of
gaze that made no attempt to hide her eagerness and joy. She
accepted the duty with delight, proudly conscious of its
importance.
"I know thee by name and thou art mine," she murmured,
taking his hand.
"It makes me happy, yet afraid," he replied in her ear,
returning the caress; and at that moment the clergyman, who
had gone to fetch his violin, returned into the room with a
suddenness that made them both start--for the first time. Very
slightly, with the first sign of that modesty which comes with
knowledge he had yet noticed in her, or felt conscious of in
himself, she withdrew, a wonderful flush tinging her pale skin,
then passing instantly away.
"To make you feel absolutely safe from possible disaster,"
Mr. Skale was saying with a smile, "you shall have the
assistance of the violin. The pitch and rhythm shall be thus
assured. There is nothing to fear."
And Miriam, equally smiling with confidence, led her friend,
perplexed and entangled as he was by the whole dream-like and
confusing puzzle--led him to the arm-chair she had just
vacated, and then seated herself at his feet upon a high
footstool and stared into his eyes with a sweet and irresistible
directness of gaze that at once increased both his sense of
bewilderment and his confidence.
"First, you must speak my name," she said gently, yet with a
note of authority, "so that I may get the note of your voice
into myself. Once or twice will do."
He obeyed. "Miriam . . . Miriam . . . Miriam," he said, and
watched the tiny reflection of his own face in her eyes, her
"night-eyes." The same moment he began to lose himself. The
girl's lips were moving. She had picked up his voice and merged
her own with it, so that when he ceased speaking her tones took
up the note continuously. There was no break. She carried on
the sound that he had started.
And at the same moment, out of the corner of his eye, he
perceived that the violin had left its case and was under the
clergyman's beard. The bow undulated like a silver snake,
drawing forth long, low notes that flowed about the room and
set the air into rhythmical vibrations. These vibrations, too,
carried on the same sound. Spinrobin gave a little
uncontrollable jump; he felt as if he had uttered his own
death-warrant and that this instrument proclaimed the
sentence. Then the feeling of dread lessened as he heard Mr.
Skale's voice mingling with the violin, combining exquisitely
with the double-stopping he was playing on the two lower
strings; for the music, as the saying is, "went through him"
with thrills of power that plunged into unknown depths of his
soul and lifted him with a delightful sense of inner expansion
to a state where fear was merged in joy.
For some minutes the voice of Miriam, murmuring so close
before him that he could feel her very breath, was caught in the
greater volume of the violin and bass. Then, suddenly, both
Skale and violin ceased together, and he heard her voice emerge
alone. With a little rush like that of a singing flame, it
dropped down on to the syllables of his name--his ugly and
ridiculous outer and ordinary name:
"ROBERTSPINROBIN . . . ROBERTSPINROBIN . . ." he heard; and
the sound flowed and poured about his ears like the murmur of a
stream through summer fields. And, almost immediately, with
it there came over him a sense of profound peace and security.
Very soon, too, he lost the sound itself--did not hear it, as
sound, for it grew too vast and enveloping. The sight of
Miriam's face also he lost. He grew too close to her to see her,
as object. Both hearing and sight merged into something more
intimate than either. He and the girl were together--one
consciousness, yet two aspects of that one consciousness.
They were two notes singing together in the same chord, and
he had lost his little personality, only to find it again,
increased and redeemed, in an existence that was larger.
It seemed to Spinrobin--for there is only his limited
phraseology to draw from--that the incantation of her singing
tones inserted itself between the particles of his flesh and
separated them, ran with his blood, covered his skin with
velvet, flowed and purred in the very texture of his mind and
thoughts. Something in him swam, melted, fused. His inner
kingdom became most gloriously extended. . . .
His soul loosened, then began to soar, while something at
the heart of him that had hitherto been congealed now turned
fluid and alive. He was light as air, swift as fire. His thoughts,
too, underwent a change: rose and fell with the larger rhythm
of new life as the sound played upon them, somewhat as wind
may rouse the leaves of a tree, or call upon the surface of a
deep sea to follow it in waves. Terror was nowhere in his
sensations; but wonder, beauty and delight ran calling to one
another from one wave to the next, as this tide of sound moved
potently in the depths of his awakening higher consciousness.
The little reactions of ordinary life spun away from him into
nothingness as he listened to a volume of sound that was
oceanic in power and of an infinite splendour: the creative
sound by which God first called him into form and being--the
true inner name of his soul.
. . . Yet he no longer consciously listened . . . no longer,
perhaps, consciously heard. The name of the soul can sound only
in the soul, where no speech is, nor any need for such
stammering symbols. Spinrobin for the first time knew his true
name, and that was enough.
It is impossible to translate into precise language this
torrent of exquisite sensation that the girl's voice awakened.
In the secret chambers of his imagination Spinrobin found the
thoughts, perhaps, that clothed it with intelligible description
for himself, but in speaking of it to others he becomes simply
semi-hysterical, and talks a kind of hearty nonsense. For the
truth probably is that only poetry or music can convey any
portion of a mystical illumination, otherwise hopelessly
incommunicable. The outer name had acted as a conductor to the
inner name beyond. It filled the room, and filled some far
vaster space that opened out above the room, about the house,
above the earth, yet at the same time was deep, deep down
within his own self. He passed beyond the confines of the world
into those sweet, haunted gardens where Cherubim and Seraphim
--vast Forces--continually do sing. It floated him off his feet
as a rising tide overtakes the little shore-pools and floats
them into its own greatness, and on the tranquil bosom of
these giant swells he rose into a state that was too calm to be
ecstasy, yet too glorious to be mere exaltation.
And as his own little note of personal aspiration soared with
this vaster music to which it belonged, he felt mounting out of
himself into a condition where at last he was alive, complete
and splendidly important. His sense of insignificance fled. His
ordinary petty and unvalued self dropped away flake by flake,
and he realized something of the essential majesty of his own
real Being as part of an eternal and wonderful Whole. The little
painful throb of his own limited personality slipped into the
giant pulse-beat of a universal vibration.
In his normal daily life, of course, he lost sight of this
Whole, blinded by the details seen without perspective,
mistaking his little personality for all there was of him; but
now, as he rose, whirling, soaring, singing in the body of this
stupendous music, he understood with a rush of indescribable
glory that he was part and parcel of this great chord--this
particular chord in which Skale, Mrs. Mawle and Miriam also
sang their harmonious existences--that this chord, again, was
part of a vaster music still, and that all, in the last resort,
was a single note in the divine Utterance of God.
That is, the little secretary, for the first time in his
existence, saw life as a whole, and interpreted the vision, so
wondrous sweet and simple, with the analogies of sound
communicated to his subliminal mind by the mighty Skale.
Whatever the cause, however, the fine thing was that he saw,
heard, knew. He was of value in the scheme. In future he could
pipe his little lay without despair.
Moreover, with a merciless clarity of vision, he perceived an
even deeper side of truth, and understood that the temporary
discords were necessary, just as evil, so-called, is necessary for
the greater final perfection of the Whole. For it came to him
with the clear simplicity of a child's vision that the process
of attuning his being to the right note must inevitably involve
suffering and pain: the awful stretching of the string, the
strain of the lifting vibrations, the stress at first of sounding
in harmony with all the others, and the apparent loss of one's
own little note in order to do so. . . .
This point he reached, it seems, and grasped. Afterwards,
however, he entered a state where he heard things no man can
utter because no language can touch transcendental things
without confining or destroying them. In attempting a version
of them he merely becomes unintelligible, as has been said. Yet
the mere memory of it brings tears to his blue eyes when he
tries to speak of it, and Miriam, who became, of course, his
chief confidant, invariably took it upon herself to stop his
futile efforts with a kiss.
------
So at length the tide of sound began to ebb, the volume
lessened and grew distant, and he found himself, regretfully,
abruptly, sinking back into what by comparison was mere noise.
First, he became conscious that he listened--heard--saw; then,
that Miriam's voice still uttered his name softly, but his
ordinary, outer name, Robertspinrobin; that he noticed her big
grey eyes gazing into his own, and her lips moving to frame the
syllables, and, finally, that he was sitting in the arm-chair,
trembling. Joy, peace, wonder still coursed through him like
flames, but dying flames. Mr. Skale's voice next reached him
from the end of the room. He saw the fireplace, his own bright
and pointed pumps, the tea-table where they had drunk tea, and
then, as the clergyman strode towards him over the carpet, he
looked up, faint with the farewell of the awful excitement, into
his face. The great passion of the experience still glowed and
shone in him like a furnace.
And there, in that masterful bearded visage, he surprised an
expression so tender, so winning, so comprehending, that
Spinrobin rose to his feet, and taking Miriam by the hand, went
to meet him. There the three of them stood upon the mat
before the fire. He felt overwhelmingly drawn to the
personality of the man who had revealed to him such splendid
things, and in his mind stirred a keen and poignant regret that
such knowledge could not be permanent and universal, instead of
merely a heavenly dream in the mind of each separate
percipient. Gratitude and love, unknown to him before, rose in
his soul. Spinrobin, his heart bursting as with flames, had
cried aloud, "You have called me by my name and I am free! . . .
You have named me truly and I am redeemed! . . ." And all
manner of speech, semi-inspirational, was about to follow, when
Mr. Skale suddenly moved to one side and raised his arm. He
pointed to the mirror.
Spinrobin was just tall enough to see his own face in the
glass, but the glimpse he caught made him stand instantly on
tiptoe to see more. For his round little countenance, flushed
as it was beneath its fringe of disordered feathery hair, was
literally--transfigured. A glory, similar to the glory he had
seen that same evening upon the face of the housekeeper, still
shone and flickered about the eyes and forehead. The signature
of the soul, brilliant in purity, lay there, transforming the
insignificance of the features with the grandeur and nobility of
its own power.
"I am honoured,--too gloriously honoured!" was the singular
cry that escaped his lips, vainly seeking words to express an
emotion of the unknown, "I am honoured as the sun . . . and as
the stars . . . !"
And so fierce was the tide of emotion that rose within him
at the sight, so strong the sense of gratitude to the man and
girl who had shown him how his true Self might contain so
great a glory, that he turned with a cry like that of a child
bewildered by the loss of some incomprehensible happiness--
turned and flung himself first upon the breast of the big
clergyman, and then into the open arms of the radiant Miriam,
with sobs and tears of wonder that absolutely refused to be
I
THE situation at this point of his amazing adventure seems to
have been that the fear Spinrobin felt about the nature of the
final Experiment was met and equalized by his passionate
curiosity regarding it. Had these been the only two forces at
work, the lightest pressure in either direction would have
brought him to a decision. He would have accepted the challenge
and stayed; or he would have hesitated, shirked, and left.
There was, however, another force at work upon which he had
hardly calculated at the beginning, and that force now came
into full operation and controlled his decision with margin and
to spare. He loved Miriam; and even had he not loved her, it is
probable that her own calm courage would have put him to
shame and made him "face the music." He could no more have
deserted her than he could have deserted himself. The die was
cast.
Moreover, if the certainty that Mr. Skale was trafficking in
dangerous and unlawful knowledge was formidable enough to
terrify him, for Miriam, at least, it held nothing alarming. She
had no qualms, knew no uneasiness. She looked forward to the
end with calmness, even with joy, just as ordinary good folk
look forward to a heaven beyond death. For she had never known
any other ideal. Mr. Skale to her was father, mother and God. He
had brought her up during all the twenty years of her life in
this solitude among the mountains, choosing her reading,
providing her companionship, training her with the one end in
view of carrying out his immense and fire-stealing purpose.
She had never dreamed of any other end, and had been so
drilled with the idea that this life was but a tedious training-
place for a worthier state to come, that she looked forward,
naturally enough, with confidence and relief to the great
Experiment that should bring her release. She knew vaguely that
there was a certain awful danger involved, but it never for one
instant occurred to her that Mr. Skale could fail. And, so far,
Spinrobin had let no breath of his own terror reach her, or
attempted ever to put into her calm mind the least suggestion
that the experiment might fail and call down upon them the
implacable and destructive forces that could ruin them body
and soul for ever. For this, plainly expressed, was the form in
which his terror attacked him when he thought about it. Skale
was tempting the Olympian powers to crush him.
It was about this time, however, as has been seen from a
slight incident in the last chapter, that a change began to
steal, at first imperceptibly, then obviously, over their
relations together. Spinrobin had been in the house three weeks
--far longer, no doubt, than any of the other candidates. There
only remained now the final big tests. The preliminary ones
were successfully passed. Miriam knew that very soon the
moment would come for him to stay--or go. And it was in all
probability this reflection that helped her to make certain
discoveries in herself that at first she did not in the least
understand.
Spinrobin, however, understood perfectly. His own heart made
him intuitive enough for that. And the first signs thrilled and
moved him prodigiously. His account of it all is like no love
story that has ever been heard, for in the first place this
singular girl hardly breathed about her the reality of an actual
world. She had known nothing beyond the simple life in this
hollow of the hills on the one hand, and on the other the
portentous conceptions that peopled the region of dream
revealed by the clergyman. And in the second place she had no
standards but her own instincts to judge by, for Mrs. Mawle, in
spite of her devotion to the girl, suffered under too great
disabilities to fill the place of a mother, while Mr. Skale was
too lost in his vast speculations to guide her except in a few
general matters, and too sure of her at the same time to
reflect that she might ever need detailed guidance. Her
exceedingly natural and wholesome bringing-up on the one hand,
and her own native purity and good sense on the other, however,
led her fairly straight; while the fact that Spinrobin, with his
modesty and his fine aspirations, was a "little gentleman" into
the bargain, ensured that no unlawful temptation should be
placed in her way, or undue pressure, based upon her ignorance,
employed.
II
They were coming down one afternoon from the mountains
soon after the test of calling his name, and they were alone,
the clergyman being engaged upon some mysterious business
that had kept him out of sight all day. They did not talk much,
but they were happy in each other's company, Spinrobin more
than happy. Much of the time, when the ground allowed, they
went along hand in hand like children.
"Miriam," he had asked on the top of the moors, "did I ever
tell you about Winky--my little friend Winky?" And she had
looked up with a smile and shaken her head. "But I like the
name," she added; "I should like to hear, please." And he told
her how as a boy he had invoked various folk to tease his
sister, of whom Winky was chief, but in telling the story he
somehow or other always referred to the little person by name,
and never once revealed his sex. He told, too, how he sat all
night on the lawn outside his sister's window to intercept the
expected visit.
"Winky," she said, speaking rather low, "is a true name, of
course. You really created Winky--called Winky into being." For
to her now this seemed as true and possible as it had seemed to
himself at the age of ten.
"Oh, I really loved Winky," he replied enthusiastically, and
was at the same moment surprised to feel her draw away her
hand. "Winky lived for years in my very heart."
And the next thing he knew, after a brief silence between
them, was that he heard a sob, and no attempt to smother it
either. In less than a second he was beside her and had both her
hands in his. He understood in a flash.
"You precious baby," he cried, "but Winky was a little man.
He wasn't a girl!"
She looked up through her tears--oh, but how wonderful her
grey eyes were through tears!--and made him stand still before
her and repeat his sentence. And she said, "I know it's true, but
I like to hear you say it, and that's why I asked you to repeat
it."
"Miriam," he said to her softly, kneeling down on the heather
at her feet, "there's only one name in my heart, I can tell you
that. I heard it sing and sing the moment I came into this
house, the very instant I first saw you in that dark passage. I
knew perfectly well, ages and ages ago, that one day a girl with
your name would come singing into my life to make me
complete and happy, but I never believed that she would look as
beautiful as you are." He kissed the two hands he held. "Or that
she--would--would think of me as you do," he stammered in his
passion.
And then Miriam, smiling down on him through her tears,
bent and kissed his feathery hair, and immediately after was on
her knees in front of him among the heather.
"I own you," she said quite simply. "I know your name, and
you know mine. Whatever happens----" But Spinrobin was too
happy to hear any more, and putting both arms round her neck,
he kissed the rest of her words away into silence.
And in the very middle of this it was that the girl gently,
but very firmly, pushed him from her, and Spinrobin in the
delicacy of his mind understood that for the first time in her
curious, buried life the primitive instincts had awakened, so
that she knew herself a woman, and a woman, moreover, who
loved.
------
Thus caught in a bewildering network of curiosity, fear,
wonder, and--love, Spinrobin stayed on, and decided further that
should the clergyman approve him he would not leave. Yet his
intimate relations now with Miriam, instead of making it easier
for him to learn the facts, made it on the other hand more
difficult. For he could not, of course, make use of her affection
to learn secrets that Mr. Skale did not yet wish him to know.
And, further, he had no desire to be disloyal either to him.
None the less he was sorely tempted to ask her what the final
experiment was, and what the "empty" rooms contained. And
most of all what the great name was they were finally to utter
by means of the human chord.
The emotions playing about him at this time, however, were
too complicated and too violent to enable him to form a
proper judgment of the whole affair. It seems, indeed, that this
calmer adjudication never came to him at all, for even to this
day the mere mention of the clergyman's name brings to his
round cheeks a flush of that enthusiasm and wonder which are
the enemies of all sober discrimination. Skale still remains
the great battering force of his life that carried him off his
feet towards the stars, and sent his imagination with wings of
fire tearing through the Unknown to a goal that once attained
should make them all four as gods.
I
AND thus the affair moved nearer to its close. The theory and
practice of moulding form by means of sound was the next bang
at his mind--delivered in the clergyman's most convincing
manner, and, in view of the proofs that soon followed, an
experience that seemed to dislocate the very foundations of his
visible world, deemed hitherto secure enough at least to stand
on.
Had it all consisted merely of talk on Mr. Skale's part the
secretary would have known better what to think. It was the
interludes of practical proof that sent his judgment so awry.
These definite, sensible results, sandwiched in between all the
visionary explanation, left him utterly at sea. He could not
reconcile them altogether with hypnotism. He could only, as an
ordinary man, already with a bias in the mystical direction,
come to the one conclusion that this overwhelming and
hierophantic man was actually in touch with cisterns of force
so terrific as to be dangerous to what he had hitherto
understood to be--life. It was easy enough for the clergyman, in
his optimistic enthusiasm, to talk about their leading to a
larger life. But what if the experiment failed, and these
colossal powers ran amok upon the world--and upon the
invokers?
Moreover--chief anxiety of all--what was this name to be
experimented with? What was the nature of this force that Skale
hoped to invoke--so mighty that it should make them "as gods,"
so terrible that a chord alone could compass even the first of
its stupendous syllables?
And, further, he was still haunted with the feeling that other
"beings" occupied certain portions of the rambling mansion,
and more than once recently he had wakened in the night with
an idea, carried over from dreams possibly, that the corridor
outside his bedroom was moving and alive with footsteps. "From
dreams possibly," for when he went and peered shivering through
the narrow crack of the half-opened door, he saw nothing
unusual. And another time--he was awake beyond question at the
moment, for he had been reading till two o'clock and had but
just extinguished the candle--he had heard a sound that he
found impossible to describe, but that sent all the blood with
a swift rush from the region of his heart. It was not wind; it
was not the wood cracking with the frost; it was not snow
sliding from the slates outside. It was something that
simultaneously filled the entire building, yet sounded
particularly loud just outside his door; and it came with the
abrupt suddenness of a report. It made him think of all the air
in the rooms and halls and passages being withdrawn by
immense suction, as though a gigantic dome had been dropped
over the building in order to produce a vacuum. And just after
it he heard, unmistakably, the long soft stride of Skale going
past his door and down the whole length of the corridor--
stealthily, very quickly, with the hurry of anxiety or alarm in
his silence and his speed.
This, moreover, had now happened twice, so that imagination
seemed a far-fetched explanation. And on both occasions the
clergyman had remained invisible on the day following until
the evening, and had then reappeared, quiet and as usual, but
with an atmosphere of immense vibratory force somehow about
his person, and a glow in his face and eyes that at moments
seemed positively coloured.
No word of explanation, however, had as yet been forthcoming
of these omens, and Spinrobin waited with what patience he
could, meanwhile, for the final test which he knew to be close
upon him. And in his diary, the pages usually left blank now
because words failed him, he wrote a portion of AEnone's cry
that had caught his memory and expressed a little of what he
felt:
. . . for fiery thoughts
Do shape themselves within me, more and more,
Whereof I catch the issue, as I hear
Dead sounds at night come from the inmost hills,
Like footsteps upon wool. . . .
II
It was within three days of the expiration of his trial month
that he then had this conversation with the clergyman, which he
understood quite well was offered by way of preparation for the
bigger tests about to come. He has reported what he could of
it; it seemed to him at the time both plausible and absurd; it
was of a piece, that is, with the rest of the whole fabulous
adventure.
Mr. Skale, as they walked over the snowy moors in the semi-
darkness between tea and dinner, had been speaking to him about
the practical results obtainable by sound-vibrations (what he
already knew for that matter), and how it is possible by
fiddling long enough upon a certain note to fiddle down a bridge
and split it asunder. From that he passed on to the scientific
fact that the ultimate molecules of matter are not only in
constant whirring motion, but that also they do not actually
touch one another. The atoms composing the point of a pin, for
instance, shift and change without ceasing, and--there is space
between them.
Then, suddenly taking Spinrobin's arm, he came closer, his
booming tone dropping to a whisper:
"To change the form of anything," he said in his ear, "is
merely to change the arrangement of those dancing molecules,
to alter their rate of vibration." His eyes, even in the
obscurity of the dusk, went across the other's face like flames.
"By means of sound?" asked the other, already beginning to
feel eerie.
The clergyman nodded his great head in acquiescence.
"Just as the vibrations of heat-waves," he said after a pause,
"can alter the form of a metal by melting it, so the vibrations
of sound can alter the form of a thing by inserting themselves
between those whirling molecules and changing their speed and
arrangement--change the outline, that is."
The idea seemed fairly to buffet the little secretary in the
face, but Mr. Skale's proximity was too overpowering to permit
of very clear thinking. Feeling that a remark was expected from
him, he managed to ejaculate an obvious objection in his mind.
"But is there any sound that can produce vibrations fine and
rapid enough--to--er--accomplish such a result?"
Mr. Skale appeared almost to leap for pleasure as he heard
it. In reality he merely straightened himself up.
"That," he cried aloud, to the further astonishment and even
alarm of his companion, "is another part of my discovery--an
essential particular of it: the production of sound-vibrations
fine and rapid enough to alter shapes! Listen and I will tell
you!" He lowered his voice again. "I have found out that by
uttering the true inner name of anything I can set in motion
harmonics--harmonics, note well, half the wave length and
twice the frequency!--that are delicate and swift enough to
insert themselves between the whirling molecules of any
reasonable object--any object, I mean, not too closely or
coherently packed. By then swelling or lowering my voice I can
alter the scale, size or shape of that object almost
indefinitely, its parts nevertheless retaining their normal
relative proportions. I can scatter it to a huge scale by
separating its molecules indefinitely, or bring them so closely
together that the size of the object would be reduced to a
practical invisibility!"
"Re-create the world, in fact!" gasped Spinrobin, feeling the
earth he knew slipping away under his feet.
Mr. Skale turned upon him and stood still a moment. The
huge moors, glimmering pale and unreal beneath their snow, ran
past them into the sky--silent forms corresponding to who
knows what pedal notes? The wind sighed--audible expression of
who shall say what mighty shapes? . . . Something of the
passion of sound, with all its mystery and splendour, entered
his heart in that windy sigh. Was anything real? Was anything
permanent? . . . Were Sound and Form merely interchangeable
symbols of some deeper uncatalogued Reality? And was the
visible cohesion after all the illusory thing?
"Re-mould the whole universe, sir!" he roared through the
darkness, in a way that made the other wish for the touch of
Miriam's hand to steady him. "I could make you, my dear
Spinrobin, immense, tiny, invisible, or by a partial utterance
of your name, permanently crooked. I could overwhelm your own
vibrations and withdraw their force, as by suction of a vacuum,
absorbing yourself into my own being. By uttering the name of
this old earth, if I knew it, I could alter its face, toss the
forests like green dust into the sea, and lift the pebbles of the
seashore to the magnitude of moons! Or, did I know the true
name of the sun, I could utter it in such a way as to identify
myself with its very being, and so escape the pitiful terrors of
a limited personal existence!"
He seized his companion's arm and began to stride down the
mountain-side at a terrific pace, almost lifting Spinrobin from
his feet as he did so. About the ears of the panting secretary
the wild words tore like bullets, whistling a new and dreadful
music.
"My dear fellow," he shouted through the night, "at the Word
of Power of a true man the nations would rush into war, or sink
suddenly into eternal peace; the mountains be moved into the
sea, and the dead arise. To know the sounds behind the
manifestations of Nature, the names of mechanical as well as of
psychical Forces, of Hebrew angels, as of Christian virtues, is
to know Powers that you can call upon at will--and use! Utter
them in the true vibratory way and you waken their counterpart
in yourself and stir thus mighty psychic powers into activity in
your Soul."
He rained the words down upon the other's head like a
tempest.
"Can you wonder that the walls of Jericho fell flat before a
`Sound,' or that the raging waves of the sea lay still before a
voice that called their Name? My discovery, Mr. Spinrobin, will
run through the world like a purifying fire. For to utter the
true names of individuals, families, tribes and nations, will be
to call them to the knowledge of their highest Selves, and to
lift them into tune with the music of the Voice of God."
They reached the front door, where the gleam of lamps shone
with a homely welcome through the glass panels. The clergyman
released his companion's arm; then bent down towards him and
added in a tone that held in it for the first time something of
the gravity of death:
"Only remember--that to utter falsely, to pronounce
incorrectly, to call a name incompletely, is the beginning of
all evil. For it is to lie with the very soul. It is also to
evoke forces without the adequate corresponding shape that
covers and controls them, and to attract upon yourself the
destructive qualities of these Powers--to your own final
disintegration and annihilation."
Spinrobin entered the house, filled with a sense of awe that
was cold and terrible, and greater than all his other sensations
combined. The winds of fear and ruin blew shrill about his
naked soul. None the less he was steadfast. He would remain to
bless. Mr. Skale might be violent in mind, unbalanced, possibly
mad; but his madness thundered at the doors of heaven, and the
sound of that thundering completed the conquest of his
admiration. He really believed that when the end came those
mighty doors would actually open. And the thought woke a kind
of elemental terror in him that was not of this world--yet
marvellously attractive.
III
That night the singular rushing sound again disturbed him. It
seemed as before to pass through the entire building, but this
time it included a greater space in its operations, for he
fancied he could hear it outside the house as well, travelling
far up into the recesses of the dark mountains. Like the sweep
of immense draughts of air it went down the passage and rolled
on into the sky, making him think of the clergyman's
suggestion that some sounds might require air-waves of a
hundred miles instead of a few inches, too vast to be heard as
sound. And shortly after it followed the great gliding stride of
Mr. Skale himself down the corridor. That, at least, was
unmistakable.
During the following day, moreover, Mr. Skale remained
invisible. Spinrobin, of course, had never permitted himself to
search the house, or even to examine the other rooms in his
own corridor. The quarters where Miriam slept were equally
unknown to him. But he was quite certain that these prolonged
periods of absence were spent by the clergyman in some remote
part of the rambling building where there existed isolated, if
not actually secret, rooms in which he practised the rituals of
some dangerous and intrepid worship. And these intimidating
and mysterious sounds at night were, of course, something to do
with the forces he conjured. . . .
The day was still and windless, the house silent as the grave.
He walked about the hills during the afternoon, practising his
Hebrew "Names" and "Words" like a schoolboy learning a lesson.
And all about him the slopes of mountain watched him,
listening. So did the sheet of snow, shining in the wintry
sunlight. The clergyman seemed to have put all sound in his
pocket and taken it away with him. The absence of anything
approaching noise became almost oppressive. It was a Silence
that prepares. Spinrobin went about on tiptoe, spoke to Miriam
in whispers, practised his Names in hushed, expectant tones. He
almost expected to see the moors and mountains open their
deep sides and let the Sounds of which they were the visible
shape escape awfully about him. . . .
In these hours of solitude, all that Skale had told him, and
more still that he divined himself, haunted him with a sense of
disquieting reality. Inaudible sounds of fearful volume,
invisible forms of monstrous character, combinations of both
even, impended everywhere about him. He became afraid lest he
might stumble, as Skale had done, on the very note that should
release them and bring them howling, leaping, crashing about
his ears. Therefore, he tried to make himself as small as
possible; he muffled steps and voice and personality. If he
could, he would have completely disappeared.
He looked forward to Skale's return, but when evening came
he was still alone, and he dined tкte-а-tкte with Miriam for the
first time. And she, too, he noticed, was unusually quiet.
Almost they seemed to have entered the world of Mrs. Mawle, the
silent regions of the deaf. But for the most part it is probable
that these queer impressions were due to the unusual state of
Spinrobin's imagination. He knew that it was his last night in
the place--unless the clergyman accepted him; he knew also
that Mr. Skale had absented himself with a purpose, and that
the said purpose had to do with the test of Alteration of Forms
by Sound, which would surely be upon him before the sun rose.
So that, one way and another, it was natural enough that his
nerves should have been somewhat overtaxed.
The presence of Miriam and Mrs. Mawle, however, did much to
soothe him. The latter, indeed, mothered the pair of them quite
absurdly, smiling all the time while she moved about softly
with the dishes, and doing her best to make them eat enough for
four. Between courses she sat at the end of the room, waiting in
the shadows till Miriam beckoned to her, and once or twice
going so far as to put her hand upon Spinrobin's shoulder
protectively.
His own mind, however, all the time was full of charging
visions. He kept thinking of the month just past and of the
amazing changes it had brought into his thoughts. He realized,
too, now that Mr. Skale was away, something of the lonely and
splendid courage of the man, following this terrific, perhaps
mad, ideal, day in day out, week in week out, for twenty years
and more, his faith never weakening, his belief undaunted. Waves
of pity, too, invaded him for the first time--pity for this
sweet girl, brought up in ignorance of any other possible world;
pity for the deaf old housekeeper, already partially broken, and
both sacrificed to the dominant idea of this single, heaven-
climbing enthusiast; pity last of all for himself, swept
headlong before he had time to reflect, into the audacious
purpose of this violent and headstrong super-man.
All manner of emotions stirred now this last evening in his
perplexed breast; yet out of the general turmoil one stood
forth more clearly than the rest--his proud consciousness that
he was taking an important part in something really big at
last. Behind the screen of thought and emotion which veiled so
puzzlingly the truth, he divined for the first time in his
career a golden splendour. If it also terrified him, that was
only his cowardice. . . . In the same way it might be splendid
to jump into Niagara just above the falls to snatch a passing
flower that seemed more wonderful than any he had seen before,
but----!
"Miriam, to-morrow is my last day," he said suddenly,
catching her grey eyes upon him in the middle of his strange
reflections. "To-night may be my last night in this house with
you."
The girl made no reply, merely looking up and smiling at
him. But the singing sensation that usually accompanied her
gaze was not present.
"That was very nearly--a discord," she observed presently,
referring to his remark. "It was out of tune!" And he realized
with a touch of shame what she meant. For it was not true that
this was his last evening; he knew really that he would stay on
and that Mr. Skale would accept him. Quick as a flash, with her
simple intuition, she felt that he had said this merely to coax
from her some sign of sympathy or love. And the girl was not
to be drawn. She knew quite well that she held him and that
their fate, whatever it might be, lay together.
The gentle rebuke made him silent again. They sat there
smiling at one another across the table, and old Mrs. Mawle,
sitting among the shadows at the far end of the room, her hands
crossed in front of her, her white evening cap shining like a
halo above her patient face, watched them, also smiling. The
rest of the strange meal passed without conversation, for the
great silence that all day had wrapped the hills seemed to have
invaded the house as well and laid its spell upon every room. A
deep hush, listening and expectant, dropped more and more
about the building and about themselves.
After dinner they sat for twenty minutes together before the
library fire, their toes upon the fender, for, contrary to her
habit, Miriam had not vanished at once to her own quarters.
"We're not alone here," remarked Spinrobin presently, in a
low voice, and she nodded her head to signify agreement. The
presence of Mr. Skale when he was in the house but invisible,
was often more real and tremendous than when he stood beside
them and thundered. Some part of him, some emanation, some
potent psychic messenger from his personality, kept them
closely company, and to-night the secretary felt it very
vividly. His remark was really another effort to keep in close
touch with Miriam, even in thought. He needed her more than
ever in this sea of silence that was gathering everywhere about
him. Gulf upon gulf it rose and folded over him. His anxiety
became every moment more acute, and those black serpents of
fear that he dreaded were not very far away. By every fibre in
his being he felt certain that a test which should shake the
very foundations of his psychical life was slowly and
remorselessly approaching him.
Yet, though he longed to speak outright and demand of Miriam
what she knew, and especially that she should reveal the place
of the clergyman's concealment and what portent it was that
required all this dread and muted atmosphere for its
preparation, he kept a seal upon his lips, realizing that
loyalty forbade, and that the knowledge of her contempt would
be even worse than the knowledge of the truth.
And so in due course she rose to go, and as he opened the
door for her into the hall, she paused a moment and turned
towards him. A sudden inexplicable thrill flashed through him
as she turned her eyes upon his face, for he thought at first
she was about to speak. He has never forgotten the picture as
she stood there so close to his side, the lamplight on her slim
figure in its white silk blouse and neat dark skirt, the gloom
of the unlit hall and staircase beyond--stood there an instant,
then put both her arms about his neck, drew him down to her,
and kissed him gently on both cheeks. Twice she kissed him,
then was gone into the darkness, so softly that he scarcely
heard her steps, and he stood between the shadows and the light,
her perfume still lingering, and with it the sweet and magical
blessing that she left behind. For that caress, he understood,
was the innocent childlike caress of their first days, and with
all the power of her loving little soul in it she had given him
the message that he craved: "Courage! And keep a brave heart,
dear Spinny, to-night!"
I
SPINROBIN lingered a while in the library after Miriam was
gone, then feeling slightly ill at ease in the room now that
her presence was withdrawn, put the lights out, saw that the
windows were properly barred and fastened, and went into the
hall on his way to bed.
He looked at the front door, tried the chain, and made sure
that both top and bottom bolts were thrown. Why he should
have taken these somewhat unusual precautions was not far to
seek, though at the moment he could not probably have
explained. The desire for protection was awake in his being, and
he took these measures of security and defence because it
sought to express itself, as it were, even automatically.
Spinrobin was afraid.
Up the broad staircase he went softly with his lighted
candle, leaving the great hall behind him full to the brim with
shadows--shadows that moved and took shape. His own head and
shoulders in monstrous outline poured over the walls and upper
landings, and thence leaped to the sky-light overhead. As he
passed the turn in the stairs, the dark contents of the hall
below rushed past in a single mass, like an immense extended
wing, and settled abruptly at his back, following him thence to
the landing.
Once there, he went more quickly, moving on tiptoe, and so
reached his own room halfway down. He passed two doors to get
there; another two lay beyond; all four, as he believed, being
always locked. It was these four rooms that conjured mightily
with his imagination always, for these were the rooms he
pictured to himself, though without a vestige of proof, as being
occupied. It was from the further ones--one or other of them--
he believed Mr. Skale came when he had passed down the corridor
at two in the morning, stealthily, hurriedly, on the heels of
that rush of sound that made him shake in his bed as he heard
it.
In his own room, however, surrounded by the familiar and
personal objects that reminded him of normal life, he felt
more at home. He undressed quickly, all his candles alight, and
then sat before the fire in the arm-chair to read a little
before getting into bed.
And he read for choice Hebrew--Hebrew poetry; and on this
particular occasion, the books of Job and Ezekiel. For nothing
had so soothing and calming an effect upon him as the mighty
yet simple imagery of these sonorous stanzas; they invariably
took him "out of himself," or at any rate out of the region of
small personal alarms. And thus, letting his fancy roam, it
seems, he was delighted to find that gradually the fears which
had dominated him during the day and evening disappeared. He
passed with the poetry into that region of high adventure which
his nature in real life denied him. The verses uplifted him in a
way that made his recent timidity seem the mere mood of a
moment, or at least negligible. His memory, as one thing
suggested another, began to give up its dead, and some of
Blake's drawings, seen recently in London with prodigious
effect, began to pass vividly before his mental vision.
The symbolism of what he was reading doubtless suggested
the memory. He felt himself caught in the great invisible nets
of wonder that for ever swept the world. The littleness of
modern life, compared to that ancient and profound spirit
which sought the permanent things of the soul, haunted him
with curious insistence. He suffered a keen, though somewhat
mixed realization of his actual insignificance, yet of his
potential sublimity could he but identify himself with his
ultimate Self in the region of vision. . . . His soul was aware
of finding itself alternately ruffled and exalted as he read . . .
and pondered . . . as he visualised to some degree the giant
Splendours, the wonderful Wheels, the spirit Wings and Faces
and all the other symbols of potent imagery evoked by the
imagination of that old Hebrew world. . . .
So that when, an hour later, pacified and sleepy, he rose to
go to bed, this poetry seems to have left a very marked effect
upon his mind--mingled, naturally enough, with the thought of
Mr. Skale. For on his way across the floor, having adjusted the
fire-screen, he distinctly remembered thinking what a splendid
"study" the clergyman would have made for one of Blake's
representations of the Deity--the flowing beard, the great nose,
the imposing head and shoulders, the potentialities of the
massive striding figure, surrounded by a pictorial suggestion of
all the sound-forces he was for ever talking about. . . .
This thought was his last, and it was without fear of any
kind. Merely, he insists, that his imagination was touched, and
in a manner perfectly accountable, considering the ingredients
of its contents at the time.
And so he hopped nimbly into bed. On the little table beside
him stood the candle and the copy of the Hebrew text he had
been reading, with its parallel columns in the two languages.
His Jaeger slippers were beneath the chair, his clothes,
carefully folded, on the sofa, his collar, studs and necktie in a
row on the top of the mahogany chest of drawers. On the
mantelpiece stood the glass jar of heather, filled that very day
by Miriam. He saw it just as he blew out the candle, and Miriam,
accordingly, was the last vision that journeyed with him into
the country of dreams and sweet forgetfulness.
The night was perfectly still. Winter, black and hard, lay
about the house like an iron wall. No wind stirred. Snow covered
the world of mountain and moor outside, and Silence, supreme
at midnight, poured all her softest forces upon the ancient
building and its occupants. Spinrobin, curled up in the middle
of the big four-poster, slept like a tired baby.
II
It was a good deal later when somewhere out of that mass of
silence rose the faint beginnings of a sound that stirred first
cautiously about the very foundations of the house, and then,
mounting inch by inch, through the hall, up the staircase, along
the corridor, reached the floor where the secretary slept so
peacefully, and finally entered his room. Its muffled tide
poured most softly over all. At first only this murmur was
audible, as of "footsteps upon wool," of wind or drifting snow, a
mere ghost of sound; but gradually it grew, though still gentle
and subdued, until it filled the space from ceiling unto floor,
pressing in like water dripping into a cistern with ever-
deepening note as its volume increased. The trembling of air in
a big belfry where bells have been a-ringing represents best the
effect, only it was a trifle sharper in quality--keener, more
alive.
But, also, there was something more in it--something gong-
like and metallic, yet at the same time oddly and suspiciously
human. It held a temper, too, that somehow woke the "panic
sense," as does the hurried note of a drum--some quick
emotional timbre that stirs the sleeping outposts of
apprehension and alarm. On the other hand, it was constant,
neither rising nor falling, and thus ordinarily, it need not have
stirred any emotion at all--least of all the emotion of
consternation. Yet, there was that in it which struck at the
root of security and life. It was a revolutionary sound.
And as it took possession of the room, covering everything
with its garment of vibration, it slipped in also, so to speak,
between the crevices of the sleeping, unprotected Spinrobin,
colouring his dreams--his innocent dreams--with the suggestion
of nightmare dread. Of course, he was too deeply wrapped in
slumber to receive the faintest intimation of this waking
analysis. Otherwise he might, perhaps, have recognized the kind
of primitive, ancestral dread his remote forefathers knew when
the inexplicable horror of a tidal wave or an eclipse of the sun
overwhelmed them with the threatened alteration of their
entire known universe.
The sleeping figure in that big four-poster moved a little as
the tide of sound played upon it, fidgeting this way and that.
The human ball uncoiled, lengthened, straightened out. The
head, half hidden by folds of sheet and pillow-case, emerged.
Spinrobin unfolded, then opened his eyes and stared about
him, bewildered, in the darkness.
"Who's there? Is that you--anybody?" he asked in a whisper,
the confusion of sleep still about him.
His voice seemed dead and smothered, as though the other
sound overwhelmed it. The same instant, more widely awake, he
realized that his bedroom was humming.
"What's that? What's the matter?" he whispered again,
wondering uneasily at the noise.
There was no answer. The vague dread transferred itself
adroitly from his dream-consciousness to his now thoroughly
awakened mind. It began to dawn upon him that something was
wrong. He noticed that the fire was out, and the room dark and
heavy. He realized dimly the passage of time--a considerable
interval of time--and that he must have been asleep several
hours. Where was he? Who was he? What, in the name of mystery
and night, had been going on during the interval? He began to
shake all over--feverishly. Whence came this noise that made
everything in the darkness tremble?
As he fumbled hurriedly for the match-box, his fingers
caught in the folds of pillow-case and sheet, and he struggled
violently to get them clear again. It was while doing this that
the impression first reached him that the room was no longer
quite the same. It had changed while he slept. Even in the
darkness he felt this, and shuddering pulled the blankets over
his head and shoulders, for this idea of the changed room
plucked at the centre of his heart, where terror lay waiting to
leap out upon him.
After what seemed five minutes he found the match-box and
struck a light, and all the time the torrent of sound poured
about his ears with such an effect of bewilderment that he
hardly realized what he was doing. A strange terror poured into
him that he would change with the room. At length the match
flared, and while he lit the candle with shaking fingers, he
looked wildly, quickly about him. At once the sounds rushed
upon him from all directions, burying him, so to speak, beneath
vehement vibrations of the air that rained in upon him. . . .
Yes, the room had indeed changed, actually changed . . . but
before he could decide where the difference lay the candle died
down to a mere spark, waiting for the wick to absorb the grease.
It seemed like half an hour before the yellow tongue grew again,
so that he finally saw clearly.
But--saw what? Saw that the room had horribly altered while
he slept, yes! But how altered? What in the name of all the
world's deities was the matter with it? The torrent of sound,
now growing louder and louder, so confused him at first, and the
dancing patchwork of light and shadow the candle threw so
increased his bewilderment, that for some minutes he sought in
vain to steady his mind to the point of accurate observation.
"God of my Fathers!" cried Spinrobin at last under his
breath, and hardly knowing what he said, "if it's not moving!"
For this, indeed, was what he saw while the candle flame
burned steadily upon a room that was no longer quite
recognizable.
At first, with the natural exaggeration due to shock, he
thought the whole room moved, but as his powers of sight came
with time to report more truly, he perceived that this was only
true of certain things in it. It was not the ceiling that poured
down in fluid form to meet a floor ever gliding and shifting
forward into outlandish proportions, but it was certain objects
--one here, another there--midway between the two that, having
assumed new and unaccustomed outlines, lent to the rest of the
chamber a general appearance of movement and an entirely
altered expression. And these objects, he perceived, holding
tightly to the bedclothes with both hands as he stared, were
two: the dark, old-fashioned cupboard on his left, and the plush
curtains that draped the window on his right. He himself, and
the bed and the rest of the furniture were stationary. The room
as a whole stood still, while these two common and familiar
articles of household furnishing took on a form and an
expression utterly foreign to what he had always known as a
cupboard and a curtain. This outline, this expression, moreover,
if not actually sinister, was grotesque to the verge of the
sinister: monstrous.
The difficulty of making any accurate observation at all was
further increased by the perplexity of having to observe two
objects, not even on the same side of the room. Their outlines,
however, Spinrobin claims, altered very slowly, wavering like
the distorted reflections seen in moving water, and
unquestionably obeying in some way the pitch and volume of the
sound that continued to pour its resonant tide about the room.
The sound manipulated the shape; the connection between the
two was evident. That, at least, he grasped. Somebody hidden
elsewhere in the house--Mr. Skale probably, of course, in one of
his secret chambers--was experimenting with the "true names"
of these two "common objects," altering their normal forms by
inserting the vibrations of sound between their ultimate
molecules.
Only, this simple statement that his clearing mind made to
itself in no way accounted for the fascination of horror that
accompanied the manifestation. For he recognized it as the joy
of horror and not alone the torment. His blood ran swiftly to
the rhythm of these humming vibrations that filled the space
about him; and his terror, his bewilderment, his curious sense
of elation seemed to him as messengers of far more terrific
sensations that communicated to him dimly the rushing wonder
of some aspect of the Unknown in its ultimate nature
essentially beautiful.
This, however, only dawned upon him later, when the
experiment was complete and he had time to reflect upon it all
next day; for, meanwhile, to see the proportions he had known
since childhood alter thus before his eyes was unbelievably
dreadful. To see your friend sufficiently himself still to be
recognizable, yet in essentials, at the same time, grotesquely
altered, would doubtless touch a climax of distress and horror
for you. The changing of these two things, so homely and well-
known in themselves, into something that was not themselves,
involved an idea of destruction that was worse than even death,
for it meant that the idea in the mind no longer corresponded
to the visible object there before the eyes. The correspondence
was no longer a true one. The result was a lie.
To describe the actual forms assumed by these shifting and
wavering bodies is not possible, for when Spinrobin gives the
details one simply fails to recognize either cupboard or
curtain. To say that the dark, lumbering cupboard, standing
normally against the wall down there in the shadows, loomed
suddenly forward and upward, bent, twisted, and stretched out
the whole of one side towards him like a misshapen arm, can
convey nothing of the world of new sensations that the little
secretary felt while actually watching it in progress in that
haunted chamber of Skale's mansion among the hills. Nor can
one be thrilled with the extraordinary sense of wonder that
thrilled Spinrobin when he saw the faded plush curtain hang
across the window in such a way that it might well have wrapped
the whole of Wales into a single fold, yet without extending its
skirts beyond the actual walls of the room. For what he saw
apparently involved contradictions in words, and the fact is
that no description of what he saw is really possible at all.
"Hark! By thunder!" he exclaimed, creeping out of bed with
sheer stress of excitement, while the sounds poured up through
the floor as though from cellars and tunnels where they lay
stored beneath the house. They sang and trembled about him
with the menaces of a really exquisite alarm. He moved
cautiously out into the centre of the room, not daring to
approach too close to the affected objects, yet furiously
anxious to discover how it was all done. For he was uncommonly
"game" through it all, and had himself well in hand from
beginning to end. He was really too excited, probably, to feel
ordinary fear; it all swept him away too mightily for that; he
did not even notice the sting of the hot candle-grease as it
fell upon his bare feet.
There he stood, plucky little Spinny, steady amid this
shifting world, master of his soul amid dissolution, his hair
pointing out like ruffled feathers, his blue eyes wide open and
charged with a speechless wonder, his face pale as chalk, lips
apart, jaw a trifle dropped, one hand in the pocket of his
dressing-gown, and the other holding the candle at an angle
that showered grease upon the carpet of the Rev. Philip Skale as
well as upon his own ankles. There he stood, face to face with
the grotesque horror of familiar outlines gone wrong, the
altered panorama of his known world moving about him in a
strange riot of sound and form. It was, he understood, an
amazing exhibition of the transforming power of sound--of
sound playing tricks with the impermanence and the illusion of
Form. Skale was making his words good.
And behind the scenes he divined, with a shudder of genuine
admiration, the figure of the master of the ceremonies,
somehow or other grown colossal, as he had thought of him just
before going to sleep--Philip Skale, hidden in the secret places
of the building, directing the operations of this dreadful
aspect of his revolutionary Discovery. . . . And yet the thought
brought a measure of comfort in its train, for was he not also
himself now included in the mighty scheme? . . . In his mind he
saw this giant Skale, with his great limbs and shoulders, his
flowing, shaggy beard, his voice of thunder and his portentous
speculations, and, so doing, felt himself merged in a larger
world that made his own little terrors and anxieties of but
small account. Once again the sense of his own insignificance
disappeared as he realized that at last he was in the full flood
of an adventure that was providing the kind of escape he had
always longed for.
Inevitably, then, his thought flew to Miriam, and as he
remembered her final word to him a few short hours ago in the
hall below, he already felt ashamed of the fear with which he
had met the beginning of the "test." He instantly felt steeped
instead in the wonder and power of the whole thing. His mind,
though still trembling and shaken, came to rest. He drew, that
is, upon the larger powers of the Chord.
And the interesting thing was that the moment this happened
he noticed a change begin to come over the room. With
extraordinary swiftness the tide of vibration lessened and the
sound withdrew; the humming seemed to sink back into the
depths of the house; the thrill and delight of his recent
terrors fled with it. The air gradually ceased to shake and
tremble; the furniture, with a curious final shiver as of
spinning coins about to settle, resumed its normal shape. Once
more the room, and with it the world, became commonplace and
dull. The test apparently was over. He had met it with success.
Spinrobin, holding the candle straight for the first time,
turned back towards the bed. He caught a passing glimpse of
himself in the mirror as he went--white and scattered he
describes his appearance. . . . He climbed again into bed, blew
the candle out, put the match-box under his pillow within easy
reach, and so once more curled himself up into a ball and
composed himself to sleep.
I
BUT he was hardly settled--there had not even been time to
warm the sheets again--when he was aware that the test, instead
of being over, was, indeed, but just beginning; and the detail
that conveyed this unwelcome knowledge to him, though small
enough in itself, was yet fraught with a crowded cargo of new
alarms. It was a step upon the staircase, approaching his room.
He heard it the instant he lay still in bed after the
shuffling process known generally as "cuddling down." And he
knew that it was approaching because of the assistance the hall
clock brought to his bewildered ears. For the hall clock--a big,
dignified piece of furniture with a deep note--happened just
then to strike the hour of two in the morning, and there was a
considerable interval between the two notes. He first heard the
step far below in the act of leaving the flagged hall for the
staircase; then the clock drowned it with its first stroke, and
perhaps a dozen seconds later, when the second stroke had died
away, he heard the step again, as it passed from the top of the
staircase on to the polished boards of the landing. The owner
of the step, meanwhile, had passed up the whole length of the
staircase in the interval, and was now coming across the
landing in a direct line towards his bedroom door.
"It is a step, I suppose," it seems he muttered to himself,
as with head partially raised above the blankets he listened
intently. "It's a step, I mean . . . ?" For the sound was more
like a light tapping of a little hammer than an actual step--
some hard substance drumming automatically upon the floor,
while yet moving in advance. He recognized, however, that there
was intelligence behind its movements, because of the sense of
direction it displayed, and by the fact that it had turned the
sharp corner of the stairs; but the idea presented itself in
fugitive fashion to his mind--Heaven alone knows why--that it
might be some mechanical contrivance that was worked from the
hall by a hand. For the sound was too light to be the tread of a
person, yet too "conscious" to be merely a sound of the night
operating mechanically. And it was unlike the noise that the
feet of any animal would make, any animal that he could think
of, that is. A four-footed creature suggested itself to his mind,
but without approval.
The puzzling characteristics of the sound, therefore,
contradictory as they were, left him utterly perplexed, so that
for some little time he could not make up his mind whether to
be frightened, interested or merely curious.
This uncertainty, however, lasted but a moment or two at the
most, for an appreciable pause outside his door was next
followed by a noise of scratching upon the panels, as of hands
or paws, and then by the shuffling of some living body that was
flattening itself in an attempt to squeeze through the
considerable crack between door and flooring, and so to enter
the room.
And, hearing it, Spinrobin this time was so petrified with an
instantaneous rush of terror, that at first he dared not even
move to find the matches again under his pillow.
The pause was dreadful. He longed for brilliant light that
should reveal all parts of the room equally, or else for a thick
darkness that should conceal him from everything in the world.
The uncertain flicker of a single candle playing miserably
between the two was the last thing in the world to appeal to
him.
And then events crowded too thick and fast for him to
recognize any one emotion in particular from all the fire of
them passing so swiftly in and out among his hopelessly
disorganized thoughts. Terror flashed, but with it flashed also
wonder and delight--the audacity of unreflecting courage--and
more--even a breathless worship of the powers, knowledge and
forces that lifted for him in that little bedroom the vast
Transparency that hides from men the Unknown.
It is soon told. For a moment there was silence, and then he
knew that the invader had effected an entrance. There was barely
time to marvel at the snake-like thinness of the living
creature that could avail itself of so narrow a space, when to
his amazement he heard the quick patter of feet across the
space of boarded flooring next the wall, and then the silence
that muffled them as they reached the carpet proper.
Almost at the same second something leaped upon his bed,
and there shot swiftly across him a living thing with light,
firm tread--a creature, so far as he could form any judgment at
all, about the size of a rabbit or a cat. He felt the feet
pushing through sheets and blankets upon his body. They were
little feet; how many, at that stage, he could not guess. Then
he heard the thud as it dropped to the floor upon the other
side.
The panic terror that in the dark it would run upon his bare
exposed face thus passed; and in that moment of intense relief
Spinrobin gripped his soul, so to speak, with both hands and
made the effort of his life. Whatever happened now he must have
a light, be it only the light of a single miserable candle. In
that moment he felt that he would have sacrificed all his hopes
of the hereafter to have turned on a flood of searching and
brilliant sunshine into every corner of the room--
instantaneously. The thought that the creature might jump
again upon the bed and touch him before he could see, gave him
energy to act.
With dashes of terror shooting through him like spears of
ice, he grabbed the match-box, and after a frenzied
entanglement again with sheets and pillow-case, succeeded in
breaking four matches in quick succession. They cracked, it
seemed to him, like pistol shots, till he half expected that
this creature, waiting there in the darkness, must leap out in
the direction of the sound to attack him. The fifth lit, and a
moment later the candle was burning dimly, but with its usual
exasperating leisure and delay. As the flare died down, then
gradually rose again, he fairly swallowed the room with a single
look, wishing there were eyes all over his body. It was a very
faint light. At first he saw nothing, heard nothing--nothing
alive, that is.
"I must act! I must do something--at once!" he remembered
thinking. For, to wait meant to leave the choice and moment of
attack to this other. . . .
Cautiously, and very slowly, therefore, he wriggled to the
edge of the bed and slid over, searching with his feet for
slippers, but finding none, yet not daring to lower his eyes to
look; then stood upright with a sudden rush, shading the candle
from his eyes with one hand and peering over it.
As a rule, in moments of overwhelming emotion, the eyes
search too eagerly, too furiously, to see properly at all; but
this does not seem to have been the case with Spinrobin. The
shadows ran about like water and the flickering of the candle-
flame dazzled, but there, opposite to him, over by the darkness
of the dead fire-place, he saw instantly the small black object
that was the immediate cause of his terror. Its actual shape
was merged too much in the dark background to be clearly
ascertainable, but near the top of it, where presumably the
head was, the candle-flame shone reflected in two brilliant
points of light that were directed straight upon his face, and
he knew that he was looking into the eyes of a living creature
that was not the very least on the defensive. It was a living
creature, aggressive and unafraid.
For perhaps a couple of minutes--or was it seconds only?
--these two beings with the breath of life in them faced one
another. Then Spinrobin made a step cautiously in advance;
lowering his candle he moved towards it. This he did, partly to
see better, partly to protect his bare legs. The idea of
protection, however, seems to have been merely instinct, for at
once this notion that it might dash forward to attack him was
merged in the unaccountable realization of a far grander
emotion, as he perceived that this "living creature" facing him
was, for all its diminutive size, both dignified and imposing.
Something in its atmosphere, something about its mysterious
presentment there upon the floor in its dark corner, something,
perhaps, that flashed from its brilliant and almost terrible
eyes, managed to convey to him that it was clothed with an
importance and a significance not attached normally to the
animal world. It had "an air." It bore itself with power, with
value, almost with pride.
This incongruous impression bereft him of the sensations of
ordinary fear, while it increased the sources of his confusion.
Yet it convinced. He knew himself face to face with some form
of life that was considerable in the true sense--spiritually. It
exercised a fascination over him that was at the moment beyond
either explanation or belief.
As he moved, moreover, the little dark object also moved--
away from him, as though resenting closer inspection. With
action--again unlike the action of any animal he could think of,
and essentially dignified--both rapid and nicely calculated, it
ran towards the curtains behind. This appearance of something
stately that went with it was indefinable and beyond everything
impressive; for how in the world could such small proportions
and diminutive movements convey grandeur? And again Spinrobin
found it impossible to decide precisely how it moved--whether
on four legs or on two.
Keeping the two points of light always turned upon him, it
shot across the floor, leaped easily upon a chair, passed with a
nimble spring from this to a table by the wall, still too much
in obscurity to permit a proper view; and then, while the
amazed secretary approached cautiously to follow its
movements better, it crawled to the edge of the table, and in
so doing passed for the first time full across the pale zone of
flickering candle-light.
Spinrobin, in that quick second, caught a glimpse of flying
hair, and saw that it moved either as a human being or as a
bird--on two legs.
The same moment it sprang deftly from the high table to the
mantelpiece, turned, stood erect, and looked at him with the
whole glare of the light upon its face; and Spinrobin, bereft of
all power of intelligible sensation whatever, saw to his
unutterable distress that it was--a man. The dignity of its
movements had already stirred vaguely his sense of awe, but now
the realization beyond doubt of its diminutive human shape
added a singularly acute touch of horror; and it was the
combination of the two emotions, possibly, that were
responsible also for the two remarkable impulses of which he
was first conscious: first, a mad desire to strike and kill;
secondly, an imperious feeling that he must hide his eyes in
some act or other of worship!
And it was then he realized that the man was--Philip Skale!
Mr. Skale, scarcely a foot high, dressed as usual in black,
flowing beard, hooked nose, lambent, flashing eyes and all,
stood there upon the mantelpiece level with his secretary's
face, not three feet separating them, and--smiled at him. He
was small as a Tanagra figure, and in perfect proportion.
It was unspeakably terrible.
II
"Of course--I'm dreaming," cried Spinrobin, half aloud, half
to the figure before him. He searched behind him with one hand
for solid support. "You're a dream thing. It's some awful trick
--God will protect me----!"
Mr. Skale's tiny lips moved. "No, no," his voice said, and it
sounded as from a great distance. "I'm no dream thing at all,
and you are wide awake. Look at me well. I am the man you know
--Philip Skale. Look straight into my eyes and be convinced."
Again he smiled his kindly, winning smile. "What you now see is
nothing but a result of sounding my true name in a certain way
--very softly--to increase the cohesion of my physical
molecules and reduce my visible expression. Listen, and watch!"
And Spinrobin, half stupefied, obeyed, feeling that his
weakening knees must in another moment give way and
precipitate him to the floor. He was utterly unnerved. The
onslaught of terror and amazement was overwhelming. For
something dreadful beyond all words lay in the sight of this
man, whom he was accustomed to reverence in his gigantic
everyday shape, here reduced to the stature of a pygmy, yet
compelling as ever, terrific even when thus dwarfed. And to hear
the voice of thunder that he knew so well come to him disguised
within this thin and almost wailing tone, passed equally beyond
the limits of what he could feel as emotion or translate into
any intelligible words or gesture.
While, therefore, the secretary stood in awful wonder, doing
as he was told simply because he could do nothing else, the
figure of the clergyman moved with tiny steps to the edge of
the mantelpiece, until it seemed as though he meant in another
moment to leap on to his companion's shoulder, or into his
arms. At the edge, however, he stopped--the brink of a
precipice, to him!--and Spinrobin then became aware that from
his moving lips, doll-like though bearded, his voice was issuing
with an ever-growing volume of sound and power.
Vibrations of swiftly-increasing depth and wave-length were
spreading through the air about him, filling the room from
floor to ceiling. What the syllables actually uttered may have
been he was too dazed to realize, for no degree of concentration
was possible to his mind at all; he only knew that, before his
smarting eyes, with this rising of the voice to its old
dominant inflexion, the figure of Mr. Philip Skale grew
likewise, indescribably; swelled, rose, spread upwards and
outwards, but with the parts ever passing slowly in consistent
inter-relation, from minute to minute. He became, always in
perfect proportion, magnified and extended. The growing form,
moreover, kept pace exactly, and most beautifully, with the
increasing tide of sonorous vibration that flooded himself, its
utterer and the whole room.
Spinrobin, it seems, had just sufficient self-control left to
realize that this sound was similar in quality to that which had
first awakened him and caused the outlines of the furniture to
alter, when the sight of Mr. Skale's form changing thus terribly
before his eyes, and within the touch of his very hand, became
too much for him altogether. . . .
What precisely happened he never knew. The sounds first
enveloped him, then drove him backwards with a sense of
immense applied resistance. He collapsed upon the sofa a few
feet behind him, as though irresistibly pushed. The power that
impelled him charged vehemently through the little room till
it seemed the walls must burst asunder to give it scope, while
the sounds rose to such a volume that he figured himself
drowned and overpowered by their mighty vibrations as by the
storm swells of the Atlantic. Before he lost them as sound he
seems thus to have been aware of them as moving waves of air.
. . . The next thing he took in was that amid the waste of
silence that now followed his inability to hear, the figure of
Philip Skale towered aloft towards the ceiling, till it seemed
positively to occupy all the available space in the room about
him.
Had he dropped upon the floor instead of upon the sofa it is
probable that at this point Spinrobin would have lost
consciousness, at any rate for a period; but that sofa, which
luckily for his bones was so close behind, galvanised him
sharply back into some measure of self-control again. Being
provided with powerful springs, it shot him up into the air,
whence he relapsed with a series of smaller bounds into a
normal sitting posture. Still holding the lighted candle as
best he could, the little secretary bounced upon that sofa like
a tennis ball. And the violent motion shook him into himself,
as it were. His tottering universe struggled back into shape
once more. He remembered vaguely that all this was somehow a
test of his courage and fitness. And this thought, strengthened
by a law of his temperament which forced him to welcome the
sweet, mad terror of the whole adventure, helped to call out
the reserves of his failing courage.
He bounced upon his feet again--those bare feet plastered
with candle grease--and, turning his head, saw the clergyman, of
incredible stature, yet still apparently increasing, already over
by the door. He was turning the key with a hand the size--O
horror!--of Spinrobin's breast. The next moment his vast
stooping body filled the entire entrance, blotting out whole
portions of the walls on either side, then was gone from the
room.
Leaving the candlestick on the sofa, his heart aflame with a
fearful ecstasy of curiosity, he dashed across the floor in
pursuit, but Mr. Skale, silently and with the swiftness of a
river, was already down the stairs before he had covered half
the distance.
Through the framework of the door Spinrobin saw this
picture:
Skale, like some awful Cyclops, stood upon the floor of the
hall some twenty feet below, yet rearing terrifically up
through the well of the building till his head and shoulders
alone seemed to fill the entire space beneath the skylight.
Though his feet rested unquestionably upon the ground, his face,
huge as a planet in the sky, rose looming and half lighted
above the banisters of this second storey, his tangled locks
sweeping the ceiling, and his beard, like some dark river of
hair, flowing downwards through the night. And this spreading
countenance of cloud it was, hanging in the semi-darkness, that
Spinrobin saw turn slowly towards him across the faint flicker
of the candle-light, look straight down into his face, and
smile. The great mouth and eyes unquestionably smiled. And
that smile, for all its vast terror, was beyond words enchanting
--like the spread laughter of a summer landscape.
Among the spaces of the immense visage--reminding him
curiously of his boyhood's conception of the Creator--Spinrobin
lost himself and grew dizzy with a deadly yet delicious
faintness. The mighty tenderness, the compassion, the splendour
of that giant smile overpowered him and swallowed him up.
For one second, in dreadful silence, he gazed. Then, rising to
meet the test with a courage that he felt might somehow
involve the alteration if not the actual destruction of his own
little personality, but that also proved his supreme gameness
at the same time, he tried to smile in return. . . . The strange
and pitiful attempt upon his own face perhaps, in the semi-
obscurity, was not seen. He only remembers that he somehow
found strength to crawl forward and close the door with a bang,
though not the strength to turn the key and lock it, and that
two seconds later, having kicked the candle over and out in his
flying leap, he was in the middle of the bed under a confused
pile of sheets and blankets, weeping with muffled sobs in the
darkness as though his heart must burst with the wonder and
terror of all he had witnessed.
For, to the simple in heart, at the end of all possible
stress and strain of emotion, comes mercifully the blinding
relief of tears. . . .
And then, although too overcome to be able to prove it even
to himself, it was significant that, lying there smothered
among the bed-clothes, he became aware of the presence of
something astonishingly sweet and comforting in his
consciousness. It came quite suddenly upon him; the reaction he
experienced, he says, was very wonderful, for with it the sense
of absolute safety and security returned to him. Like a
terrified child in the darkness who suddenly knows that its
mother stands by the bed, all-powerful to soothe, he felt
certain that some one had moved into the room, was close
beside him, and was even trying to smooth his pillow and
arrange the twisted bed-clothes.
He did not dare uncover his face to see, for he was still
dominated by the memory of Mr. Skale's portentous visage; but
his ears were not so easily denied, and he was positive that he
heard a voice that called his name as though it were the
opening phrase of some sweet, childhood lullaby. There was a
touch about him somewhere, it seemed, of delicate cool hands
that brought with them the fragrance as of a scented summer
wind; and the last thing he remembered before he sank away
into welcome unconsciousness was an impression, fugitive and
dreamlike, of a gentle face, unstained and pale as marble, that
bent above his pillow, and, singing, called him away to
forgetfulness and peace.
III
And several hours later, when he woke after a refreshing
sleep to find Mrs. Mawle smiling down upon him over a tray of
steaming coffee, he recalled the events of the night with a
sense of vivid reality that if possible increased his conviction
of their truth, but without the smallest symptom of terror or
dismay. For the blessing of the presence that had soothed him
into sleep lay still upon him like a garment to protect. The
test had come and he had not wholly failed.
With something approaching amusement, he watched the
housekeeper pick up a candlestick from the middle of the floor
and put his Jaeger slippers beneath the chair, having found one
by the cupboard and the other over by the fire-place.
"Mr. Skale's compliments and Mr. Spinrobin is not to hurry
himself," he heard her saying, as she put the tray beside the
bed and went out of the room. He looked at his watch and saw
that it was after ten o'clock.
Half an hour later he was dressed and on his way downstairs,
conscious only of an overwhelming desire to see Mr. Skale, but
to see him in his normal and fatherly aspect again. For a
strain of worship mingled oddly with his devouring curiosity,
and he was thirsty now for the rest of the adventure, for the
complete revelation of the Discovery in all its bearings. And
the moment he saw the clergyman in the hall he ran towards
him, scarcely realizing what it was he meant to say or do. Mr.
Skale stretched out both hands to meet him. His face was alight
with pleasure.
But, before they could meet and touch, a door opened and in
slipped Miriam between them; she, too, was radiant, and her
hands outstretched.
"Me first, please! Me first!" she cried with happy laughter,
and before Spinrobin realized what was happening, she had flung
her arms about his neck and kissed him. "You were splendid!"
she whispered in his ear, "and I am proud of you--ever so
proud!"
The next minute Skale had him by the hands.
"Well done! well done!" his voice boomed, while he gazed
down into his face with enthusiastic and unqualified approval.
"It was all magnificent. My dear little fellow, you've got the
heart of a god, and, by Heavens, you shall become as a god too!
For you are worthy!" He shook him violently by both hands,
while Miriam looked eagerly on with admiration in her wide grey
eyes.
"I'm so glad, so awfully glad----" stammered the secretary,
remembering with shame his moments of vivid terror. He hardly
knew what he said at the moment.
"The properties of things," thundered the clergyman, "as you
have now learned, are merely the `muffled utterances of the
Sounds that made them.' The thing itself is its name."
He spoke rapidly, with intense ardour and with reverence.
"You have seen with your own eyes a scientific proof of my
Discovery on its humblest level--how the physical properties
of objects can be manipulated by the vibratory utterance of
their true names--can be extended, reduced, glorified. Next you
shall learn that spiritual qualities--the attributes of higher
states of being--can be similarly dealt with and harnessed--
exalted, intensified, invoked--and that the correct utterance of
mighty Names can seduce their specific qualities into your own
soul to make you mighty and eternal as themselves, and that to
call upon the Great Names is no idle phrase. . . . When the
time comes, Spinrobin, you shall not shrink, you shall not
shrink. . . ." He flung his arms out with a great gesture of
delight.
"No," repeated Spinrobin, yet aware that he felt mentally
battered at the prospect, "I shall not shrink. I think--now--I
can manage--anything!"
And then, watching Miriam with lingering glance as she
vanished laughing up the staircase, he followed Mr. Skale into
the library, his thoughts tearing wildly to and fro, swelling
with delight and pride, thrilling with the wonder of what was
yet to come. There, with fewest possible sentences, the
clergyman announced that he now accepted him and would,
therefore, carry out the promise with regard to the bequeathal
of his property to him in the event of any untoward
circumstances arising later. He also handed to him in cash the
salary for the "trial month," together with a cheque for the
first quarter in advance. He was beaming with the satisfaction
he felt at having found at last a really qualified helper.
Spinrobin looked into his face as they shook hands over the
bargain. He was thinking of other aspects he had seen of this
amazing being but a few hours before--the minute, the colossal,
the changing-between-the-two Skales. . . .
"I'm game, Mr. Skale," he said simply, forgetting all his
recent doubts and terrors.
"I know you are," the clergyman replied. "I knew it all
I
THE first thing Spinrobin knew when he ran upstairs to lock
away the money in his desk was that his whole being, without
his directing it, asked a question of momentous import. He did
not himself ask it deliberately. He surprised his
subconsciousness asking it:
"WHAT IS THIS NAME THAT PHILIP SKALE
FOR EVER SEEKS?"
It was no longer mere curiosity that asked it, but that sense
of responsibility which in all men of principle and character
lies at the root of action and of life. And Spinrobin, for all
his little weaknesses, was a man of character and principle.
There came a point when he could no longer follow blindly
where others led, even though the leader were so grand an
individual as Philip Skale. This point is reached at varying
degrees of the moral thermometer, and but for the love that
Miriam had wakened in his heart, it might have taken much
longer to send the mercury of his will so high in so short a
time. He now felt responsibility for two, and in the depths of
his queer, confused, little mind stirred the thought that
possibly after all the great adventure he sought was only the
supreme adventure of a very wonderful Love.
He records these two questions at this point, and it is only
just to himself, therefore, to set them down here. To neither
was the answer yet forthcoming.
For some days the routine of this singular household
followed its normal course, the only change being that while
the secretary practised his Hebrew names and studied the
relations between sound, colour, form and the rest, he kept
himself a little better in hand, for Love is a mighty humanizer
and holds down the nose upon the grindstone of the wholesome
and practical values of existence. He turned, so to speak, and
tried to face the matter squarely; to see the adventure as a
whole; to get all round it and judge. It seems, however, that he
was too much in the thick of it to get that bird's-eye view
which reduces details to the right proportion. Skale's
personality was too close, and flooded him too violently.
Spinrobin remained confused and bewildered; but also
unbelievably happy.
"Coming out all right," he wrote shakily in that gilt-edged
diary. "Beginning to understand why I'm in the world. Am just
as important as anybody else--really. Impossible explain
more." His entries were very like telegrams, in which a man
attempts to express in a lucid shorthand all manner of things
that the actual words hardly compass. And life itself is not
unlike some mighty telegram that seeks vainly to express,
between the extremes of silence and excess, all that the soul
would say. . . .
"Skale is going too far," perhaps best expresses the daily
burden of his accumulating apprehension. "He is leading up to
something that makes me shrink--something not quite
legitimate. Playing with an Olympian fire that may consume us
both." And there his telegram stopped; for how in the world
could he put into mere language the pain and distress involved
in the thought that it might at the same time consume Miriam?
It all touched appalling depths of awe in his soul. It made his
heart shake. The girl had become a part of his very self.
Vivid reactions he suffered, alternating with equally vivid
enthusiasms. He realized how visionary the clergyman's poetical
talk was, but the next minute the practical results staggered
him again, as it were, back into a state of conviction. For the
poetry obscured his judgment and fired his imagination so that
he could not follow calmly. The feeling that it was not only
illogical but insane troubled him; yet the physical effects
stared him in the face, and to argue with physical results is
waste of time. One must act.
Yet how "act"? The only way that offered he accepted: he fell
back upon the habits of his boyhood, read his Bible, and at
night dropped humbly upon his knees and prayed.
"Keep me straight and pure and simple, and bless . . .
Miriam. Grant that I may love and strengthen her . . . and that
my love may bring her peace . . . and joy . . . and guide me
through all this terror, I beseech Thee, into Truth. . . ."
For, in the beauty of his selfless love, he dared not even
admit that it was love; feeling only the highest, he could not
quite correlate his sweet and elevated passion with the common
standards of what the World called love. The humility of a
great love is ever amazing.
And then followed in his prayers the more cowardly cry for
ordinary protection from the possible results of Skale's
audacity. The Love of God he could understand, but the Wrath of
God was a conception he was still unemancipated enough to
dread; and a dark, portentous terror that Skale might incur it,
and that he might be dragged at its heels into some hideous
catastrophe, chased him through the days and nights. It all
seemed so unlawful, impious, blasphemous. . . .
". . . And preserve us from vain presumptions of the heart
and brain, I pray Thee, lest we be consumed. . . . Please, O God,
forgive the insolence of our wills . . . and the ignorant daring
of our spirit. . . . Permit not the innocent to suffer for the
guilty . . . and especially bless . . . Miriam. . . ."
Yet through it all ran that exquisite memory of the calling
of his true name in the spaces of his soul. The beauty of far-
off unattainable things hovered like a star above his head, so
that he went about the house with an insatiable yearning in his
heart, a perpetual smile of wonder upon his face, and in his
eyes a gleam that was sometimes terror, sometimes delight.
It was almost as if some great voice called to him from the
mountain-tops, and the little chap was for ever answering in
his heart, "I'm coming! I'm coming!" and then losing his way
purposely, or hiding behind bushes on the way for fear of
meeting the great invisible Caller face to face.
II
And, meanwhile, the house became for him a kind of Sound-
Temple as it were, protected from desecration by the hills and
desolate spaces that surrounded it. From dawn to darkness its
halls and corridors echoed with the singing violin, Skale's
booming voice, Miriam's gentle tones, and his own plaintive yet
excited note, while outside the old grey walls the air was ever
alive with the sighing of the winds and the ceaseless murmur of
falling water. Even at night the place was not silent. He
understood at last what the clergyman had told him--that
perfect silence does not exist. The universe, down to its
smallest detail, sings through every second of time.
The sounds of nature especially haunted him. He never heard
the wind now without thinking of lost whispers from the voice
of God that had strayed down upon the world to sweeten and
bewilder the hearts of men--whispers a-search for listeners
simple enough to understand. And when their walks took them as
far as the sea, the dirge of the waves troubled his soul with a
kind of distressing exaltation that afflicted the very deeps of
his being. It was with a new comprehension he understood his
employer's dictum that the keynote of external nature was
middle F--this employer who himself possessed that psychic
sense of absolute pitch--and that the roar of a city, wind in
forest trees, the cry of trains, the rushing of rivers and
falling water, Niagara itself, all produced this single
utterance; and he loved to sing it on the moors, Miriam
laughing by his side, and to realize that the world, literally,
sang with them.
Behind all sounds he divined for the first time a majesty
that appalled; his imagination, glorified by Skale, instantly
fell to constructing the forms they bodied forth. Out of doors
the flutes of Pan cried to him to dance: indoors the echoes of
yet greater music whispered in the penetralia of his spirit that
he should cry. In this extraordinary new world of Philip Skale's
revelation he fairly spun.
It was one thing when the protective presence of the
clergyman was about him, or when he was sustained by the
excitement of enthusiasm, but when he was alone, at his normal
level, timid, yet adventurous, the too vivid sense of these new
things made him tremble. The terrifying beauty of Skale's
ideas; the realization in cold blood that all forms in the
world about him were silently a-singing, and might any moment
vanish and release their huge bodies into primal sounds; that
the stones in the road, the peaked hills, the very earth herself
might alter in shape before his eyes: on the other hand, that
the viewless forces of life and death might leap into visibility
and form with the calling of their names; that himself, and
Skale, and Mrs. Mawle, and that pale fairy girl-figure were all
enmeshed in the same scheme with plants, insects, animals and
planets; and that God's voice was everywhere too sublimely
close--all this, when he was alone, oppressed him with a sense
of things that were too intimate and too mighty for daily life.
In these moments--so frequent now as to be almost
continuous--he preferred the safety of his ordinary and normal
existence, dull though it might be; the limited personality he
had been so anxious to escape from seemed wondrous sweet and
comforting. The Terror of the approaching Experiment with this
mighty name appalled him.
The forces, thus battling within his soul, became more and
more contradictory and confused. The outcome for himself
seemed to be the result of the least little pressure this way or
that--possibly at the very last moment, too. Which way the
waiting Climax might draw him was a question impossible to
decide.
III
And then, suddenly, the whole portentous business moved a
sharp stage nearer that hidden climax, when one afternoon Mr.
Skale came up unexpectedly behind him and laid a great hand
upon his shoulder in a way that made him positively jump.
"Spinrobin," he said, in those masterful, resonant tones that
shamed his timidity and cowardice, "are you ready?"
"For anything and everything," was the immediate reply,
given almost automatically as he felt the clergyman's forces
flood into his soul and lift him.
"The time is at hand, then," continued the other, leading his
companion by the arm to a deep leather sofa, "for you to know
certain things that for your own safety and ours, I was obliged
to keep hidden till now--first among which is the fact that
this house is not, as you supposed, empty."
Prepared as he was for some surprising announcement,
Spinrobin nevertheless started. It was so abrupt.
"Not empty!" he repeated, eager to hear more, yet quaking. He
had never forgotten the nightly sounds and steps in his own
passage.
"The rooms beyond your own," said Skale, with a solemnity
that amounted to reverence, "are occupied----"
"By----" gasped the secretary.
"Captured Sounds--gigantic," was the reply, uttered almost
below the breath.
The two men looked steadily at one another for the space of
several seconds, Spinrobin charged to the brim with anxious
questions pressing somehow upon the fringe of life and death,
Skale obviously calculating how much he might reveal or how
little.
"Mr. Spinrobin," he said presently, holding him firmly with
his eyes, "you are aware by this time that what I seek is the
correct pronunciation of certain names--of a certain name, let
us say, and that so complex is the nature of this name that no
single voice can utter it. I need a chord, a human chord of four
voices."
Spinrobin bowed.
"After years of research and experiment," resumed the
clergyman, "I have found the first three notes, and now, in your
own person, has come my supreme happiness in the discovery of
the fourth. What I now wish you to know, though I cannot expect
you to understand it all at first, is that the name I seek is
broken up into four great divisions of sound, and that to each
of these separate divisions the four notes of our chord form
introductory channels. When the time comes to utter it, each
one of us will call the syllable or sound that awakens the
mighty response in one of these immense and terrific divisions,
so that the whole name will vibrate as a single chord sung
perfectly in tune."
Mr. Skale paused and drew deep breaths. This approach to his
great experiment, even in speech, seemed to exhaust him so
that he was obliged to call upon reserves of force that lay
beneath. His whole manner betrayed the gravity, the reverence,
the mingled respect and excitement of--death.
And the simple truth is that at the moment Spinrobin could
not find in himself sufficient courage to ask what this fearful
and prodigious name might be. Even to put ordinary questions
about the four rooms was a little beyond him, for his heart
beat like a hammer against his ribs, and he heard its ominous
drum sounding through both his temples.
"And in each of the rooms in your corridor, ready to leap
forth when called, lie the sounds or voices I have captured and
imprisoned, these separate chambers being sheeted and prepared
--huge wax receptacles, in fact, akin to the cylinders of the
phonograph. Together with the form or pattern belonging to
them, and the colour, there they lie at present in silence and
invisibility, just as the universe lay in silence and
invisibility before the word of God called it into objective
being. But--I know them and they are mine."
"All these weeks--so close to me," whispered Spinrobin, too
low for Skale to notice.
Then the clergyman leaned over towards him. "These captured
sounds are as yet by no means complete," he said through his
beard, as though afraid to admit it; "for all I have of them
really is their initial letters, of their forms the merest faint
outlines, and of their colours but a first suggestion. And we
must be careful, we must be absolutely wise. To utter them
correctly will mean to transfer to us the qualities of Gods,
whereas to utter falsely may mean to release upon the surface
of the world forces that----" He shrugged his great shoulders
and an ashen pallor spread downwards over the face to the very
lips. The sentence remained unfinished; and its very
incompleteness left Spinrobin with the most grievous agony of
apprehension he had yet experienced.
"So that, if you are ready, our next step shall be to show you
the room in which your own particular sound lies," added Mr.
Skale after a long pause; "the sound in the chord it will be
your privilege to utter when the time comes. For each of us
will utter his or her particular letter, the four together
making up the first syllable in the name I seek."
Mr. Skale looked steadily down into the wide blue eyes of his
companion, and for some minutes neither of them spoke.
"The letter I am to utter," repeated the secretary at length;
"the letter in some great name?"
Mr. Skale smiled upon him with the mighty triumph of the
Promethean idea in his eyes.
"The room," he muttered deeply and softly, "in which it lies
waiting for you to claim it at the appointed time . . . the room
where you shall learn its colour, become attuned to its great
vibratory activity, see its form, and know its power in your own
person."
Again they looked long into one another's eyes.
"I'm game," murmured Spinrobin almost inaudibly; "I'm
game, Mr. Skale." But, as he said it, something in his round head
turned dizzy, while his thoughts flew to Miriam and to the
clergyman's significant phrase of a few minutes ago--"we must
be careful, we must be absolutely wise."
IV
And the preparation the clergyman insisted upon--detailed,
thorough and scrupulous--certainly did not lessen in
Spinrobin's eyes the gravity of the approaching ordeal. They
spent two days and nights in the very precise and punctilious
study, and utterance, of the Hebrew names of the "angels"--that
is, forces--whose qualities were essential to their safety.
Also, at the same time, they fasted.
But when the time came for the formal visit to those closed
rooms, of which the locked doors were like veils in a temple,
Spinrobin declares it made him think of some solemn
procession down ancient passage-ways of crypt or pyramid to
the hidden places where inscrutable secrets lay. It was
certainly thrilling and impressive. Skale went first, moving
slowly with big strides, grave as death, and so profoundly
convinced of the momentous nature of their errand that an air
of dignity, and of dark adventure almost majestic, hung about
his figure. The long corridor, that dreary December morning,
stretched into a world of shadows, and about half-way down it he
halted in front of a door next but one to Spinrobin's room and
turned towards his companion.
Spinrobin, in a mood to see anything, yet striving to hide
behind one of those "bushes," as it were, kept his distance a
little, but Mr. Skale took him by the arm and drew him forward
to his side. Slowly he stooped, till the great bearded lips were
level with his ear, and whispered solemnly:
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see--and hear
God."
Then he turned the key and led the way inside.
But apparently there were double doors, for they found
themselves at first in a cupboard-like space that formed a tiny
vestibule to the room itself; and here there was light enough
to see that the clergyman was taking from nails on the wall
two long garments like surplices, coloured, so far as Spinrobin
could make out, a deep red and a deep violet.
"For our protection," whispered Skale, enveloping himself in
the red one, while he handed the other to his companion and
helped him into it. "Wear it closely about your body until we
come out." And while the secretary struggled among the folds of
this cassock-like garment, that was several feet too long for
his diminutive stature, the clergyman added, still with a
gravity and earnestness that impressed the imagination beyond
all reach of the ludicrous:
"For sound and colour are intimately associated, and there
are combinations of the two that can throw the spiritual body
into a condition of safe receptivity, without which we should be
deaf and blind even in the great Presences themselves."
Trivial details, presenting themselves in really dramatic
moments, may impress the mind with extraordinary aptness. At
this very moment Spinrobin's eyes noticed in the corner of
wall and door a tiny spider's web, with the spider itself
hanging in the centre of its little net--shaking. And he has
never forgotten it. It expressed pictorially exactly what he
felt himself. He, too, felt that he was shaking in mid-air--as
in the centre of a web whose strands hung suspended from the
very stars.
And the words, spoken in that slow deep whisper, filled the
little space in which the two men stood, and somehow
completed for Spinrobin the sense of stupendous things
adequately approached.
Then Mr. Skale closed the outer door, shutting out the last
feeble glimmer of day, at the same moment turning the handle
of the portal beyond. And as they entered the darkness,
Spinrobin, holding up his violet robe with one hand to prevent
tripping, with the other caught hold of the tail of the flowing
garment in front of him. For a second or two he stopped
breathing altogether.
V
On the very threshold a soft murmur of beauty met them;
and, as plainly as though the darkness had lifted into a blaze
of light, the secretary at once realized that he stood in the
presence of something greater than all he had hitherto known
in this world. He had managed to find the clergyman's big hand,
and he held it tightly through a twisted corner of his
voluminous robe. The inner door next closed behind them.
Skale, he was aware, had again stooped in the darkness to the
level of his ear.
"I'll give you the sound--the note," he heard him whisper.
"Utter it inwardly--in your thoughts only. Its vibrations
correspond to the colour, and will protect us."
"Protect us?" gasped Spinrobin with dry lips.
"From being shattered and destroyed--owing to the intense
activity of the vibrations conveyed to our ultimate physical
atoms," was the whispered reply, as the clergyman proceeded to
give him under his breath a one-syllable sound that was unlike
any word he knew, and that for the life of him he has never
been able to reproduce since.
Mr. Skale straightened himself up again and Spinrobin
pictured him standing there twice his natural size, a huge and
impressive figure as he had once before seen him, clothed now
with the double dignity of his strange knowledge. Then,
advancing slowly to the centre of the room, they stood still,
each uttering silently in his thoughts the syllable that attuned
their inner beings to safety.
Almost immediately, as the seconds passed, the secretary
became aware that the room was beginning to shake with a
powerful but regular movement. All about him had become
alive. Vitality, like the vitality of youth upon mountain tops,
pulsed and whirled about them, pouring into them the currents
of a rushing glorious life, undiluted, straight from the source.
In his little person he felt both the keenness of sharp steel
and the vast momentum of a whole ocean. Thus he describes it.
And the more clearly he uttered in his thoughts the sound given
to him by his leader, the greater seemed the influx of strength
and glory into his heart.
The darkness, meanwhile, began to lift. It moved upwards in
spirals that, as they rose, hummed and sang. A soft blaze of
violet like the colour of the robe he wore became faintly
visible in the air. The chamber, he perceived, was about the
same size as his own bedroom, and empty of all furniture, while
walls, floor, and ceiling were draped in the same shade of
violet that covered his shoulders; and the sound he uttered, and
thought, called forth the colour and made it swim into
visibility. The walls and ceiling sheeted with wax opened, so to
speak, their giant lips.
Mr. Skale made a movement and drew him closer. He raised
one arm into the air, and Spinrobin, following the motion, saw
what at first he imagined to be vast round faces glimmering
overhead, outlined darkly against the violet atmosphere. Mr.
Skale, with what seemed a horrible audacity, was reaching up to
touch them, and as he did so there issued a low, soft, metallic
sound, humming and melodious, that dropped sweetly about his
ears. Then the secretary saw that they were discs of metal--
immense gongs swinging in mid-air, suspended in some way from
the ceiling, and each one as Skale touched it emitted its
beautiful note till all combined together at length into a
single chord.
And this chord, though Spinrobin talks whole pages in
describing it, apparently brought in its train the swell and
thunder of something beyond,--the far sweetness of exquisite
harmonics, thousands upon thousands, inwoven with the strands
of deeper notes that boomed with colossal vibrations about
them. And, in some fashion that musical people will
understand, its gentler notes caught up the sound that
Spinrobin was uttering in his mind, and took possession of it.
They merged. An extraordinary volume, suggesting a huge
aggregation of sound behind it--in the same way that a murmur
of wind may suggest the roar of tempests--rose and fell
through the room, lifted them up, bore them away, sang
majestically over their heads, under their feet, and through
their very minds. The vibrations of their own physical atoms
fell into pace with these other spiritual activities by a kind of
sympathetic resonance.
The combination of power and simplicity was what impressed
him most, it seems, for it resembled--resembled only--the
great spiritual simplicity in Beethoven that rouses and at the
same time satisfies the profoundest yearnings of the soul. It
swept him into utter bliss, into something for once complete.
And Spinrobin, at the centre of his glorified yet quaking little
heart, understood vaguely that the sound he uttered, and the
sound he heard, were directly connected with the presence of
some august and awful Name. . . .
VI
Suddenly Mr. Skale, he was aware, became rigid beside him.
Spinrobin pressed closer, seeking the protective warmth of his
body, and realizing from the gesture that something new was
about to happen. And something did happen, though not
precisely in the sense that things happen in the streets and in
the markets of men. In the sphere of his mind, perhaps, it
happened, but was none the less real for that.
For the Presence he had been aware of in the room from the
moment of entrance became then suddenly almost concrete. It
came closer--sheeted in wonder inscrutable. The form and body
of the sounds that filled the air pressed forward into partial
visibility. Spinrobin's powers of interior sight, he dimly
realized, increased at the same time. Vast as a mountain, as a
whole range of mountains; beautiful as a star, as a whole
heaven of stars; yet simple as a flower of the field; and
singing this little song of pure glory and joy that he felt was
the inmost message of the chord--this Presence in the room
sought to push forward into objective reality. And behind it, he
knew, lay the stupendous urgency and drive of some power that
held the entire universe in its pulses as easily as the ocean
holds a shoal of minnows. . . .
But the limits of realization for him were almost reached.
Spinrobin wanted to close his eyes, yet could not. He was driven
along with the wave of sound thus awakened and forced to see
what was to be seen. This time there was no bush behind which
he could screen himself. And there, dimly sketched out of the
rhythmical vibrations of the seething violet obscurity, rose
that looming Outline of wonder and majesty that clothed itself
about them with a garment as of visible sound. The Unknown,
suggesting incredible dimensions, stood at his elbow,
tremendously draped in these dim, voluminous folds of music
and colour--very fearful, very seductive, yet so supremely
simple at the same time that a little child could have
understood without fear.
But only partially there, only partially revealed. The
ineffable glory was never quite told. Spinrobin, amid all the
torrent of words in which he sought later to describe the
experience, could only falter out a single comprehensible
sentence: "I felt like stammering in intoxication over the
first letter of a name I loved--loved to the point of ecstasy--
to the point even of giving up my life for it."
And meanwhile, breathless and shaking, he clung to Skale,
still murmuring in his heart the magic syllable, but swept into
some region of glory where pain and joy both ceased, where
terror and delight merged into some perfectly simple form of
love, and where he became in an instant of time an entirely new
and emancipated Spinrobin, driving at full speed towards the
ultimate sound and secret of the universe--God.
------
He never remembered exactly how he got out of the room, but
it always seemed as though he dropped with a crash from some
enormous height. The sounds ceased; the gongs died into
silence; the violet faded; the quivering wax lay still. . . . Mr.
Skale was moving beside him, and the next minute they were in
the narrow vestibule between the doors, hanging up ordinary
coloured surplices upon ordinary iron nails.
Spinrobin stumbled. Skale caught him. They were in the
corridor again--cold, cheerless, full of December murk and
shadows--and the secretary was leaning against the clergyman's
shoulder breathless and trembling as though he had run a mile.
I
"AND the colour of my sound is a pale green," he heard behind
him in tones as sweet as a muted violin string, "while the form
of my note fits into yours just like a glove. Dear Spinny, don't
tremble so. We shall always be together, remember, you and
I. . . ."
And when, turning, he saw Miriam at his side, radiant with her
shining little smile of welcome, the relief was so great that
he took her in his arms and would not let her go. She drew him
tenderly away downstairs, for the clergyman, it seemed, was
still busy with something in the room, and had left them. . . .
"I know, I know," she said softly, making him sit down beside
her on the sofa, "I know the rush of pain and happiness it
brings. It shifts the whole key of your life, doesn't it? When I
first went into my `room' and learned the letter I was to utter
in the Name, I felt as if I could never come back to ordinary
things again, or----"
"What name?" interrupted Spinrobin, drawing sharply away
from her, and the same second amazed at the recklessness that
had prompted the one question he dreaded.
The inevitable reaction had come. He realized for the first
time that there was an alternative. All the passion of battle
was upon him. The terrific splendours of Skale's possible
achievement dazzled the very windows of his soul, but at the
same time the sweet uses of normal human life called
searchingly to him from within. He had been circling about this
fight for days; at last it was unexpectedly upon him. He might
climb to Skale's impossible Heaven, Skale's outrageous Heaven
. . . on the wings of this portentous experience, or--he might
sink back into the stream of wholesome and commonplace life,
with a delicious little human love to companion him across the
years, the unsoiled love of an embryonic soul that he could
train practically from birth. Miriam was beside him, soft and
yielding, ready, doubtless, to be moulded for either path.
"What name?" he repeated, holding his breath once the words
were out.
"The name, of course," she answered gently, smiling up into
his eyes. "The name I have lived to know and that you came here
to learn, so that when our voices sing and utter it together in
the chord we shall both become----"
Spinrobin set his mouth against her own to stop her speech.
She yielded to him with her whole little body. Her eyes smiled
the great human welcome as she stared so closely into his.
"Shall become--what we are not now," he cried fiercely,
drawing his face back, but holding her body yet more closely to
him. "Lose each other, don't you see? Don't you realize that?"
"No, no," she said faintly, "find each other--you mean----"
"Yes--if all goes well!" He spoke the words very low.
For perhaps thirty seconds they stared most searchingly into
each other's eyes, drawing slightly apart. Very slowly her face,
then, went exceedingly pale.
"If--all goes well," she repeated, horrified. Then, after a
pause, she added: "You mean--that he might make a mistake--
or----?"
And Spinrobin, drinking in the sweet breath that bore the
words so softly from her lips, answered, measuring his words
with ponderous gravity as though each conveyed a sentence of
life or death, "If--all--goes--well."
She watched him with something of that utter clinging
mother-love in her eyes that claims any degree of suffering
gladly rather than the loss of her own--passionately welcoming
misery in preference to loss. She, too, had divined the
alternative.
Then, kissing his cheeks and eyes and lips, she untied his
arms from about her neck and ran, blushing furiously, from the
room. And with her went doubt, for the first time--doubt as to
the success of the great experiment--doubt as to their Leader's
power.
II
And while Spinrobin still sat there, trembling with the two
passions that tore his soul in twain--the passion to climb
forbidden skies with Skale, and the passion to know sweet human
love with Miriam--there came thundering into the room no less
a personage than the giant clergyman, straight from those
haunted rooms. Pallor hung about his face, but there was a
light radiating through it--a high, luminous whiteness--that
made the secretary think of his childhood's pictures of the
Hebrew prophet descending from Mount Sinai, the glory of
internal spheres still reflected upon the skin and eyes. Skale,
like a flame and a wind, came pouring into the room. The thing
he had remained upstairs to complete had clearly proved
successful. The experiment had moved another stage--almost
the final one--nearer accomplishment.
The reaction was genuinely terrific. Spinrobin felt himself
swept away beyond all power of redemption. Miriam and the
delicious human life faded into insignificance again. What, in
the name of the eternal fires, were a girl's lips and love
compared to the possibilities of Olympian achievement
promised by Skale's golden audacities? Earth faded before the
lights of heaven. The whole tide of human emotion was nothing
compared to a drop of this terrible salt brine from seas in
unknown stars. . . . As usual Skale's personality caught him up
into some seventh heaven of the soaring imagination.
"Spinrobin, my glorious companion in adventure," thundered
the clergyman, "your note suits perfectly the chord! I am
delighted beyond all words. You chime with amazing precision
and accuracy into the complex Master-Tone I need for the
proper pronunciation of the Name! Your coming has been an
inspiration permitted of Him who owns it." His excitement was
profoundly moving. The man was in earnest if ever man was. "We
shall succeed!" And he caught him in his arms. "For the Name
manifests the essential attributes of the Being it describes,
and in uttering it we shall know mystical union with it. . . . We
shall be as Gods!"
"Splendid! Splendid!" exclaimed Spinrobin, utterly carried
away by this spiritual enthusiasm. "I will follow you to the
end----"
III
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when framed in the
doorway, delicate and seductive as a witch, again stood Miriam,
then moved softly forward into the room. Her face was pale as
the grave. Her little, delicate mouth was set with resolution.
Clearly she had overheard, but clearly also she had used the
interval for serious reflection.
"We cannot possibly--fail, can we?" she asked, gliding up like
a frightened fawn to the clergyman's side.
He turned upon her, stern, even terrible. So relentless was
his swift appearance, so implacable in purpose, that Spinrobin
felt the sudden impulse to fly to her assistance. But instantly
his great visage broke into a smile like the smile of
thunderous clouds when unexpectedly the sun breaks through,
then quickly hides itself again.
"Everywhere," he roared, "true things are great and clean.
. . . Have faith . . . have faith. . . ." And he looked upon them
both as though his eyes would sweep from their petty souls all
vestige of what was afraid and immature. "We all are--pure . . .
we all are true . . . each calls his note in singleness of heart
. . . we cannot fail!"
And just here Spinrobin, a little beyond himself with
excitement probably, pattered across the room to his giant
leader's side and peered up into his visage. He stood on tiptoe,
craning his neck forwards, then spoke very low:
"I have the right, we have the right--for I have earned it--to
be taken now fully into confidence, and to know everything--
everything," came the words; and the reply, simple and
immediate, that dropped back upon him through all that tangle
of ragged beard was brief and to the point:
"You have. Listen, then----" And he led them both by the
hand like two children towards the sofa, and then, standing over
them, began to speak.
IV
"I seek," he said slowly and gravely, "the correct utterance
of a certain mighty and ineffable name, and in each of those
four rooms lies a letter of its first syllable. For all these
years of research"--his voice dropped suddenly--"have only
brought me to that--the first syllable. And the name itself is
composed of four, each more mighty than the last."
A violent trembling ran over both listeners. Spinrobin,
holding a cold little hand in his, dreaded unuttered sentences.
For if mere letters could spell so vast a message, what must be
the meaning of a whole syllable, and what the dire content of
the completed name itself!
"Yes," Skale went on with a reverence born of profoundest
awe, "the captured sounds I hold are but the opening vibrations
of this tremendous name, and the task is of such magnitude that
absolute courage and absolute faith are essential. For the
sounds are themselves creative sounds, and the consequences in
case of faulty utterance might be too appalling to
contemplate----"
"Creative!" fell from the little man on the sofa, aghast at
the possibility. Yet the one burning question that lay
trembling just behind his lips dared not frame itself in words,
for there was something in Mr. Skale's face and manner that
rendered the asking of it not yet possible. The revelation of
the name must wait.
"Even singly, as you saw, their power is terrific," he went on,
ignoring the pathetic interruption, "but united--as we shall
unite them while each of us utters his letter and summons
forth the entire syllable by means of the chord--they will
constitute a Word of Power which shall make us as Gods if
uttered correctly; if incorrectly, shall pour from this house to
consume and alter the surface of the entire world with the
destructive tempest due to mispronunciation and a lie."
Miriam nestled closer into her companion's side. There was
otherwise no sign outwardly of the emotions that surged
through the two little figures upon the sofa.
"And now--now that you have this first syllable complete?"
faltered a high and sharing tenor voice.
"We must transfer it to a home where it shall wait in
silence and in safety until we have also captured the other
remaining three." Skale came forward and lowered his mouth to
his companions' ears. "We shall transfer it, as you now
understand, by chanting the four letters. Our living chord will
summon forth that first syllable into visible form and shape.
Our four voices, thus trained and purified, each singing a mighty
letter, shall create the astounding pattern of the name's first
syllable----"
"But the home," stammered Spinrobin; "this home where it
shall await the rest?"
"My rooms," was the reply, "can contain letters only; for a
whole syllable I need a larger space. In the crypt-like cellars
beneath this house I have the necessary space all ready and
prepared to hold this first syllable while we work upon the
second. Come, and you shall see!"
They crossed the hall and went down the long stone passage
beyond the dining-room till they reached a swinging baize door,
and so came to the dark stairs that plunged below ground. Skale
strode first, Spinrobin following with beating heart; he held
Miriam by the hand; his steps, though firm enough, made him
think of his efforts as a boy when treading water for solid
ground out of his depth.
V
Cold air met them, yet it was neither dank nor unpleasant as
air usually is that has never tasted sunlight. There was a touch
of vitality about it wholly remarkable. Miriam pressed closer.
Every detail, every little incident that brought them nearer to
the climax was now interpreted by these two loving children as
something that might eventually spell for them separation. Yet
neither referred to it directly. The pain of the ultimate choice
possessed them deep within.
"Here," exclaimed the clergyman in a hushed tone that yet
woke echoes on all sides, while he lit a candle and held it
aloft, "you see the cellar vaults all ready for the first great
syllable when our chord shall bring it leaping down from the
rooms upstairs. Here will reside the pattern of the name's
opening syllable till we shall have accomplished the
construction of the others."
And like some august master of forbidden ceremonies, looking
twice his natural size as the shadows played tricks with his
arms and shoulders, merging his outline into walls and ceiling,
Skale stood and looked about him.
Spaces stretched away on all sides as in the crypt of a
cathedral, most beautifully and harmoniously draped with the
separate colours of the four rooms, red, yellow, violet and
green; immense gongs, connected apparently with some intricate
network of shining wires, hung suspended in mid-air beneath the
arches; rising from the floor were gigantic tuning forks, erect
and silent, immediately behind which gaped artificial air-
cavities placed to increase the intensity of the respective
notes when caught; and in the dim background the clergyman
pointed out an elaborate apparatus for quickly altering the
temperature of the air, and another for the rapid production of
carbonic acid gas, since by means of a lens of carbonic acid gas
sound can be refracted like light, and by changing the
temperature of the air that conveys it, sound can be bent, also
like a ray of light, in any desired direction. The whole cellar
seemed in some way to sum up and synthesize the distinctive
characteristics of the four rooms. Over it all, sheeting ceiling
and walls, lay the living and receptive wax. Singularly
suggestive, too, was the appearance of those huge metal discs,
like lifeless, dark faces waiting the signal to open their bronze
lips and cry aloud, ready for the advent of the Sound that
should give them birth and force them to proclaim their
mighty secret. Spinrobin stared, silent and fascinated, almost
expecting them to begin there and then their dreadful and
appalling music.
Yet the place was undeniably empty; no ghost of a sound
stirred the gorgeous draperies; nothing but a faint metallic
whispering seemed to breathe out from the big discs and forks
and wires as Skale's voice, modulated and hushed though it was,
vibrated gently against them. Nothing moved, nothing uttered,
nothing lived--as yet.
"Destitute of all presence, you see it now," whispered the
clergyman, shading the candle with one huge hand; "though
before long, when we transfer our great captured syllable down
here, you shall know it alive and singing with a thousand
thunders. The Letters shall not escape me. The gongs and
colours correspond exactly. They will retain both the sounds
and the outlines . . . and the wax is sensitive as the heart of a
child." And his big face shone quite dreadfully as the whole
pomp and splendour of his dream come true set fire to his
thoughts.
But Spinrobin was glad when at length they turned and moved
slowly again up the stone steps and emerged into the pale
December daylight. That dark cellar, wired, draped, waxed and
be-gonged, awaiting its mighty occupant, filled his mind with
too vast a sensation of wonder and anticipation for peace.
"And for the syllables to follow," Skale resumed when they
were once more in the library, "we shall want spaces larger
still. There are great holes in these hills"--stretching out an
arm to indicate the mountains above the house--"and down
yonder in the heart of those cliffs by the sounding sea there
are caverns. They are far, but the distance is of no consequence.
They will serve us well. I know them. I have marked them. They
are ready."
He swept his beard to and fro with one hand. Spinrobin
already saw those holes and caverns in the terms of sound and
colour.
"And--for the entire name--when completed?" he asked,
knowing that the question was but a feeble substitute for that
other one he burned to ask, yet dared not allow his lips to
utter. Skale turned and looked at him. He raised his hands
aloft. His voice boomed again as of old.
"The open sky!" he cried with enthusiasm; "the vault of
heaven itself! For no solid structure exists in the world, not
even the ribs of these old hills, that could withstand the power
of that--of that eternal and terrific----"
Spinrobin leapt to his feet. The question swept from his
lips at last like a flame. Miriam clung to his arm, trying in
vain to stop him.
"Then tell me," he cried aloud, "tell me, you great
blasphemer, whose is the Name that you seek to utter under
heaven . . . and tell me why it is my soul faints and is so
fearfully afraid?"
Mr. Skale looked at him for a moment as a man might look at
some trifling phenomenon of life that puzzled yet interested
him. But there was love in his eyes--love, and the forgiveness
of a great soul. Spinrobin, afraid at his own audacity, met his
eyes recklessly, while Miriam peered from one to the other,
perplexed and questioning.
"Spinrobin," said the clergyman at length, in a voice turned
soft and tender with compassion, "the name I seek--this awful
name we may all eventually utter together, completely formed
--is one that no living man has spoken for nigh two thousand
years, though all this time the search has been kept alive by a
few men in every age and every country of the world. Some few,
they say--ah, yes, `they say'--have found it, then instantly
forgotten it again; for once pronounced it may not be retained,
but goes utterly lost to the memory on the instant. Only once,
so far as we may know"--he lowered his voice to a hushed and
reverent whisper that thrilled about them in the air like the
throbbing of a string--"has it been preserved: the Prophet of
Nazareth, purer and simpler than all other men, recovered the
correct utterance of the first two syllables, and swiftly--very
swiftly--phonetically, too, of necessity,--wrote them down
before the wondrous memory had time to fade; then sewed the
piece of parchment into his thigh, and hence `had Power' all
his life.
"It is a name," he continued, his tone rising to something of
its old thunder, "that sounds like the voice of many waters,
that piles the ocean into standing heaps and makes the high
hills to skip like little lambs. It is a name the ancient
Hebrews concealed, as Tetragrammaton, beneath a thousand
devices, the name, they said, that `rusheth through the
universe,' to call upon which--that is, to utter correctly--is
to call upon that name which is far above all others that can
be named----"
He paused midway in the growing torrent of his speech and
lifted his companion out of the sofa. He set him upon his feet,
holding both his hands and peering deep into his eyes--those
bewildered yet unflinching blue eyes of the little man who
sought terrific adventure as an escape from insignificance--
"--to know which," he added, in a sudden awed whisper, "is to
know the ultimate secrets of life and death, and to read the
riddle of the world and the soul--to become even as itself--
Gods."
He stopped abruptly, and again that awful, flaming smile ran
over his face, flushing it from chin to forehead with the power
of his burning and tremendous belief.
Spinrobin was already weeping inwardly, without sound. He
understood at last, only too well, what was coming. Skale's
expression held the whole wild glory, and the whole impious
audacity of what seemed his blasphemous spiritual discovery.
The fires were alight in his eyes. He stooped down lower and
opened wide his capacious arms. The next second, Spinrobin,
Miriam, and Mrs. Mawle, who had unexpectedly come upon them
from behind, were gathered all together against his breast. His
voice then dropped suddenly to a tiny whisper of awful joy that
seemed to creep from his lips like some message too mighty to
be fully known, and half lost itself among the strands of his
beard.
"My wonderful redeemed children, notes in my human chord,"
he whispered over their heads, "it is the Name that shall make
us as God, for it is none other than the Name that rusheth
through the universe"--his breath failed him most curiously for
an instant--"the NAME OF THE ALMIGHTY!"
I
A CERTAIN struggling incoherence is manifest in Spinrobin's
report of it all, as of a man striving to express violent
thoughts in a language he has not yet mastered. It is evident,
for instance, as those few familiar with the "magical" use of
sound in ceremonial and the power that resides in "true
naming" will realize, that he never fully understood Skale's
intended use of the chord, or why this complex sound was
necessary for the utterance of the complex "Name."
Moreover, the powers concealed in the mere letters, while
they laid hold upon his imagination, never fully entered his
understanding. Few minds, it seems, can conceive of any deity as
other than some anthropomorphic extension of themselves, for
the idea is too greatly blinding to admit human thought within
a measurable distance even of a faintest conception. The true,
stupendous nature of the forces these letters in the opening
syllable clothed, Spinrobin unquestionably never apprehended.
Miriam, with her naked and undefiled intuitions, due to utter
ignorance of worldly things from birth, came nearer to the
reality; but then Miriam was now daily more and more caught up
into the vortex of a sweet and compelling human love, and in
proportion as this grew she feared the great experiment that
might--so Spinrobin had suggested--spell Loss. Gradually dread
closed the avenues of her spirit that led so fearfully to
Heaven; and in their place she saw the dear yet thorny paths
that lay with Spinny upon the earth.
They no longer, these two bewildered loving children, spoke
of one another in the far-fetched terminology of sound and
music. He no longer called her his "brilliant little sound," nor
did she respond with "you perfect echo"; they fell back--sign of
a gradual concession to more human things--upon the gentler
terminology, if the phrase may be allowed, of Winky. They
shared Winky between them . . . though neither one nor other of
them divined yet what Winky actually meant in their just-
opening lives.
"Winky is yours," she would say, "because you made him, but
he belongs to me too, because he simply can't live without
me!"
"Or I without you, Little Magic," he whispered, laughing
tenderly. "So, you see, we are all three together."
Her face grew slightly troubled.
"He only pays me visits, though. Sometimes I think you hide
him, or tell him not to come." And far down in her deep grey
eyes swam the first moisture of rising tears. "Don't you, my
wonderful Spinny?"
"Sometimes I forget him, perhaps," he replied gravely; "but
that is only when I think of what may be coming if--the
experiment succeeds----"
"Succeeds?" she exclaimed. "You mean if it fails!" Her voice
dropped instinctively, and they looked over their shoulders to
make sure they were alone.
He came up very close to her and spoke in her small pink
ear. "If it succeeds," he whispered, "we go to Heaven, I suppose;
if it fails we stay upon the earth." Then he stood off, holding
her hands at arm's length and gazing down upon her. "Do you
want to go to Heaven?" he asked very deliberately, "or to stay
here upon the earth with me and Winky----?"
She was in his arms the same second, laughing and crying
with the strange conflict of new and inexplicable emotions.
"I want to be with you here, and for ever. Heaven frightens
me now. But--oh, Spinny, dear protecting thing, I want--I also
want----" She broke off abruptly, and Spinrobin, unable to see
her face buried against his shoulder, could not guess whether
she was laughing or weeping. He only divined that something in
her heart, profound as life itself, something she had never been
warned to conceal, was clamouring for comprehension and
satisfaction.
"Miriam, tell me exactly. I'm sure I shall understand----"
"I want Winky to be with us always--not only sometimes--on
little visits," he heard between the broken breathing.
"I'll tell him----"
"But there's no good telling him," she interrupted almost
fiercely, "it is me you must tell. . . ."
Spinrobin's heart sank within him. She was in pain and he
could not quite understand. He pressed her hard against him,
keeping silence.
Presently she lifted her face from his coat, and he saw the
tears of mingled pain and happiness in her eyes--the eyes of
this girl-woman who knew not the common ugly standards of
life because no woman had ever told them to her.
"You see, Winky is not really mine unless I have some share
in making him too," she said very softly. "When I have made
him too, then he will stay for ever with us, I think."
And Spinrobin, beginning to understand, knowing within him
that singular exultation of triumphant love which comes to a
pure man when he meets the mother-to-be of his first-born,
lowered his own face very reverently to hers, and kissed her on
the cheeks and eyes--saying nothing, and vaguely wondering
whether the awful name that Skale sought with so much thunder
and lightning, did not lie at that very moment, sweetly singing
its divinest message, between the contact of this pair of
youthful lips, the lips of himself and Miriam.
II
And Philip Skale, meanwhile, splendid and independent of all
common obstacles, thundered along his tempestuous mad way,
regardless and ignorant of all signs of disaffection. The rest of
that week--a week of haunting wonder and beauty--was devoted to
the carrying out of the strange programme. It is not possible
to tell in detail the experience of each separate room.
Spinrobin does it, yet only succeeds in repeating himself; and,
as has been seen, his powers failed even in that first chamber
of awe. The language does not exist in which adventures so
remote from normal experience can be clothed without
straining the mind to the verge of the unintelligible. It
appears, however, that each room possessed its colour, note and
form, which later were to issue forth and combine in the even
vaster pattern, chord and outline which should include them
all.
Even the thought of it strained the possibilities of belief
and the resources of the imagination. . . . His soul fluttered
and shrank.
They continued the processes of prayer and fasting Skale had
ordained as the time for the experiment drew near, and the
careful vibratory utterance of the "word" belonging to each
room, the vibrations of which threw their inner selves into a
condition of safe--or comparatively safe--receptivity. But
Spinrobin no longer said his prayers, for the thought that soon
he was to call upon the divine and mighty name in reality
prevented his doing so in the old way of childhood--nominally.
He feared there might come an answer.
He literally walked the dizzy edge of precipices that dropped
over the edge of the world. The incoherence of all this traffic
with sound and name had always bewildered him, even to the
point of darkness, whereas now it did more, it appalled him in
some sense that was monstrous and terrifying. Yet, while weak
with terror when he tried to face the possible results, and
fevered with the notion of entering some new condition (even
though one of glory) where Miriam might no longer be as he now
knew her, it was the savage curiosity he felt that prevented his
coming to a definite decision and telling Mr. Skale that he
withdrew from the whole affair.
Then the idea grew in his mind that the clergyman was
obsessed by some perverted spiritual force, some "Devil" who
deceived him, and that the name he sought to pronounce was
after all not good--not God. His thoughts, fears, hopes, all
became hopelessly entangled, through them one thing alone
holding clear and steady--the passionate desire to keep Miriam
as she was now, and to be with her for ever. His mind played
tricks with him too. Day and night the house echoed with new
sounds; the very walls grew resonant; the entire building,
buried away among these desolate hills, trembled as though he
were imprisoned within the belly of some monstrous and
gigantic fiddle.
Mr. Skale, too, began to change, it seemed. While physically
he increased, as it were, with the power of his burning
enthusiasm, his beard longer and more ragged, his eyes more
luminous, and his voice shaking through the atmosphere almost
like wind, his personality, in some curious fashion, seemed at
the same time to retire and become oddly tinged with a certain
remoteness from reality. Spinrobin once or twice caught
himself wondering if he were not after all some legendary or
pagan figure, some mighty character of dream or story, and that
presently he, Spinrobin, would awake and write down the most
wonderful vision the world had ever known. His imagination, it
will be seen, was affected in more ways than one. . . .
With a tremendous earnestness the clergyman went about the
building, down the long dark corridors and across the halls, his
long soft strides took him swiftly everywhere; his mere
presence charged with some potent force that betrayed itself in
the fire of his eyes and the flush of his cheeks.
Spinrobin thought of him as some daring blasphemer,
knocking at a door in the sky. The sound of that knocking ran
all about the universe. And when the door opened, the heavens
would roll back like an enormous, flat curtain. . . .
"Any moment almost," Skale whispered to him, smiling, "the
day may be upon us. Keep yourself ready--and--in tune."
And Spinrobin, expecting a thunderclap in his sleep, but ever
plucky, answered in his high-pitched voice, "I'm ready, Mr.
Philip Skale, I'm ready! I'm game too!" when, truthfully
speaking, perhaps, he was neither one nor other.
He would start up from sleep in the night-time at the least
sound, and the roar of the December gales about the house
became voices of portent that conveyed far more than the mere
rushing of inarticulate winds. . . .
"When the hour comes--and it is close at hand--we shall not
fail to know it," said Skale, pallid with excitement. "The
Letters will be out upon us. They will live! But with an intense
degree of exuberant life far beyond what we know as life--we, in
our puny, sense-limited bodies!" And the scorn in his voice
came from the centre of his heart. "For what we hear as sound
is only a section," he cried, "only a section of sound-vibrations
--as they exist."
"The vibrations our ears can take are very small, I know,"
interpolated Spinrobin, cold at heart, while Miriam, hiding
behind chairs and tables that offered handy protection, watched
with mingled anxiety and confidence, knowing that in the last
resort her adorable and "wonderful Spinny" would guide her
aright. Love filled her heart, ousting that other portentous
Heaven!
III
And then Skale announced that the time was ready for
rehearsals.
"Let us practise the chord," he said, "so that when the
moment comes suddenly upon us, in the twinkling of an eye, in
the day-time or in the night, we shall be prepared, and each
shall fly to his appointed place and utter his appointed note."
The reasons for these definite arrangements he did not
pretend to explain, for they belonged to a part of his discovery
that he kept rigidly to himself; and why Spinrobin and Miriam
were to call their notes from the corridor itself, while Skale
boomed his great bass in the prepared cellar, Mrs. Mawle
chanting her alto midway in the hall, acting as a connecting
channel in some way, was apparently never made fully clear. In
Spinrobin's imagination it was very like a practical
illustration of the written chord, the notes rising from the
bass clef to the high soprano--the cellar to the attic, so to
speak. But, whatever the meaning behind it, Skale was
exceedingly careful to teach to each of them his and her
appointed place.
"When the Letters move of themselves, and make the first
sign," he repeated, "we shall know it beyond all doubt or
question. At any moment of the day or night it may come. Each
of you then hasten to your appointed place and wait for the
sound of my bass in the cellar. There will be no mistake about
it; you will hear it rising through the building. Then, each in
turn, as it reaches you, lift your voices and call your notes.
The chord thus rising through the building will gather in the
flying Letters: it will unite them; it will summon them down
to the fundamental master-tone I utter in the cellar. The
moment the Letter summoned by each particular voice reaches
the cellar, that voice must cease its utterance. Thus, one by
one, the four mighty Letters will come to rest below. The gongs
will vibrate in sympathetic resonance; the colours will
tremble and respond; the finely drawn wires will link the two,
and the lens of gas will lead them to the wax, and the record of
the august and terrible syllable will be completely chained. At
any desired moment afterwards I shall be able to reawaken it.
Its phonetic utterance, its correct pronunciation, captured thus
in the two media of air and ether, sound and light, will be in
my safe possession, ready for use.
"But"--and he looked down upon his listeners with a dreadful
and impressive gravity that yet only just concealed the
bursting exultation the thought caused him to feel--"remember
that once you have uttered your note, you will have sucked out
from the Letter a portion of its own terrific life and force,
which will immediately pass into yourself. You will instantly
absorb this, for you will have called upon a mighty name--the
mightiest--and your prayer will have been answered." He stooped
and whispered as in an act of earnest prayer, "We shall be as
Gods!"
Something of cold splendour, terribly possessing, came close
to them as he spoke the words; for this was no empty phrase.
Behind it lay the great drive of a relentless reality. And it
struck at the very root of the fear that grew every moment
more insistent in the hearts of the two lovers. They did not
want to become as gods. They desired to remain quietly human
and to love!
But before either of them could utter speech, even had they
dared, the awful clergyman continued; and nothing brought home
to them more vividly the horrible responsibility of the
experiment, and the results of possible failure, than the few
words with which he concluded.
"And to mispronounce, to utter falsely, to call inaccurately,
will mean to summon into life upon the world--and into the
heart of the utterer--that which is incomplete, that which is
not God--Devils!--devils of that subtle Alteration which is
destruction--the devils of a Lie."
------
And so for hours at a time they rehearsed the sounds of the
chord, but very softly, lest the sound should rise and reach the
four rooms and invite the escape of the waiting Letters
prematurely.
Mrs. Mawle, holding the bit of paper on which her
instructions were clearly written, was as eager almost as her
master, and as the note she had to utter was practically the
only one left in the register of her voice, her deafness
provided little difficulty.
"Though when the letters awake into life and cry aloud," said
Skale, beaming upon her dear old apple-skinned face, "it will be
in tones that even the deaf shall hear. For they will spell a
measure of redemption that shall destroy in a second of time
all physical disabilities whatsoever. . . ."
It was at this moment Spinrobin asked a question that for
days had been hovering about his lips. He asked it gravely,
hesitatingly, even solemnly, while Miriam hung upon the answer
with an anxiety as great as his own.
"And if any one of us fails," he said, "and pronounces falsely,
will the result affect all of us, or only the utterer?"
"The utterer only," replied the clergyman. "For it is his own
spirit that must absorb the forces and powers invoked by the
sound he utters."
He took the question lightly, it seemed. The possibility of
failure was too remote to be practical.
I
BUT Spinrobin was hardly prepared for the suddenness of the
denouement. He had looked for a longer period of preparation,
with the paraphernalia of a considerable, even an august
ceremony. Instead, the announcement came with an abrupt
simplicity that caught him with a horrid shock of surprise. He
was taken wholly unawares.
"The only thing I fear," Mr. Skale had confided to them, "is
that the vibrations of our chord may have already risen to the
rooms and cause a premature escape. But, even so, we shall have
ample warning. For the deaf, being protected from the coarser
sounds of earth, are swift to hear the lightest whispers from
Heaven. Mrs. Mawle will know. Mrs. Mawle will instantly warn
us. . . ."
And this, apparently, was what happened, though not precisely
as Mr. Skale had intended, nor with the margin for preparation
he had hoped. It was all so swift and brief and shattering, that
to hear Spinrobin tell it makes one think of a mass of
fireworks that some stray spark has sent with blazing explosion
into the air, to the complete loss of the calculated effect had
they gone off seriatim as intended.
And in the awful stress of excitement there can be no
question that Spinny acted out of that subconscious region of
the mind which considers and weighs deeds before passing them
on to the surface mind, translating them into physical
expression and thinking itself responsible for the whole
operation. The course he adopted was thus instinctive, and,
since he had no time to judge, blameless.
Neither he nor Miriam had any idea really that their minds,
subconsciously, were already made up. Yet only that morning he
had been talking with her, skirting round the subject as they
always did, ashamed of his doubts about success, and trying to
persuade her, and, therefore, himself, that the path of duty lay
in following their leader blindly to the very end.
He had seen her on the stairs ahead of him, and had overtaken
her quickly. He drew her down beside him, and they sat like two
children perched on the soft-carpeted steps.
"It's coming, you know," he said abruptly, "the moment's
getting very close."
He felt the light shudder that passed through her into
himself. She turned her face to him and he saw the flush of
excitement painted in the centre of the usually pale cheeks. He
thought of some rare flower, delicately exotic, that had sprung
suddenly into blossom from the heart of the bleak December
day, out of the very boards whereon they sat.
"We shall then be as gods," he added, "filled with the huge
power of those terrific Letters. And that is only the
beginning." In himself he was striving to coax a fading
enthusiasm, and to pour it into her. Her little hand stole into
his. "We shall be a sort of angel together, I suppose. Just
think of it . . . !" His voice was not as thrilling as it ought to
have been, for very human notes vibrated down below in the part
he tried to keep back. He saw the flush fade from her cheeks,
and the pallor spread. "You and I, Miriam--something
tremendous together, greater than any other man and woman in
the whole world. Think of it, dear baby; just think of it . . . !"
A tiny frown gathered upon her forehead, darkening the grey
eyes with shadows.
"But--lose our Winky!" she said, nestling against his coat,
her voice singularly soft, her fingers scratching gently the
palm of his hand where they lay.
"Hush, hush!" he answered, kissing her into silence. "We must
have more faith. I think everything will be all right. And there
is no reason why we should lose our Winky," he added, very
tenderly, smothering the doubt as best he could, "although we
may find his name changed. Like the rest of us, he will get a
`new name' I suppose."
"Then he won't be our Winky any longer," she objected, with a
touch of obstinacy that was very seductive. "We shall all be
different. Perhaps we shall be too wonderful to need each other
any more. . . . Oh, Spinny, you precious thing my life needs,
think of that! We may be too wonderful even to care!"
Spinrobin turned and faced her. He tried to speak with
authority and conviction, but he was a bad actor always. He met
her soft grey eyes, already moist and shining with a tenderness
of love beyond belief, and gazed into them with what degree of
sternness he could.
"Miriam," he said solemnly, "is it possible that you do not
want us to be as gods?"
Her answer came this time without hesitation. His pretended
severity only made her happy, for nothing could intimidate by a
hair's breadth this exquisite first love of her awakening soul.
"Some day, perhaps, oh, my sweet Master," she whispered with
trembling lips, "but not now. I want to be on earth first with
you--and with our Winky."
To hear that precious little voice call him "sweet Master"
was almost more than he could bear. He made an effort,
however, to insist upon this fancied idea of "duty" to Skale;
though everything, of course, betrayed him--eyes, voice,
gestures.
"But we owe it to Mr. Skale to become as gods," he faltered,
trying to make the volume of his voice atone for its lack of
conviction.
And it was then she uttered the simple phrase that utterly
confounded him, and showed him the new heaven and new earth
wherein he and she and Winky already lived.
"I am as God now," she said simply, the whole passion of a
clean, strong little soul behind the words. "You have made me
so! You love me!"
II
The same moment, before they could speak or act, Skale was
upon them from behind with a roar.
"Practising your splendid notes together!" he cried,
thundering down the steps past them, three at a time, clothed
for the first time in the flowing scarlet robe he usually wore
only in the particular room where his own "note" lived. "That's
capital! Sing it together in your hearts and in your souls and
in your minds; and the more the better!"
He swept by them like a storm, vanishing through the hall
below like some living flame of fire. They both understood that
he wore that robe for protection, and that throughout the house
the heralds of the approaching powers of the imprisoned
Letters were therefore already astir. His steps echoed below
them in the depths of the building as he descended to the
cellar, intent upon some detail of the appalling consummation
that drew every minute nearer.
They turned and faced one another, breathless a little.
Tenderness and terror shone plainly in their eyes, but
Spinrobin, ever an ineffectual little man, and with nothing of
the "Master" really in his composition anywhere, found no word
to speak. That sudden irruption of the terrific clergyman into
their intimate world had come with an effect of dramatic and
incalculable authority. Like a blast of air that drives the
furnace to new heat and turns the metal white, his mind now
suddenly saw clear and sure. The effect of the incident was too
explosive, however, for him to find expression. Action he found
in a measure, but no words. He took Miriam passionately into
his arms as they stood there in the gathering dusk upon the
staircase of that haunted and terrible building, and Miriam it
was who found the words upon which they separated and went
quietly away to the solitude each needed for the soul.
"We'll leave the gods alone," she said with gentle decision,
yet making it seem as though she appealed to his greater
strength and wisdom to decide; "I want nothing but you--you and
Winky. And all you really want is me."
But in his room he heard the vibrations of the clergyman's
voice rising up through the floor and walls as he practised in
the cellar the sounds with which the ancient Hebrews concealed
the Tetragrammaton: YOD--HE--VAU--HE: JEHOVAH--JAHVE--of
which the approaching great experiment, however, concerned
itself only with the opening vibrations of the first letter--
YOD. . . .
And, as he listened, he hesitated again . . . wondering after
all whether Miriam was right.
III
It was towards the end of their short silent dinner that very
night--the silence due to the fact that everybody was intently
listening--when Spinrobin caught the whisper of a singular
faint sound that he took first to be the rising of wind. The
wind sometimes came down that way with curious gulps from the
terraces of the surrounding moors. Yet in this sound was none
of that rush and sigh that the hills breed. It did not drop
across the curves of the world; it rose from the centre.
He looked up sharply, then at once realized that the sound
was not outside at all, but inside--inside the very room where
he sat facing Skale and Miriam. Then something in his soul
recognized it. It was the first wave in an immense vibration.
Something stretched within him as foam stretches on the
elastic side of a heaped Atlantic roller, retreated, then came
on again with a second gigantic crest. The rhythm of the huge
sound had caught him. The life in him expanded awfully, rose to
far summits, dropped to utter depths. A sense of glowing
exaltation swept through him as though wings of power lifted
his heart with enormous ascendancy. The biggest passions of his
soul stirred--the sweetest dreams, yearnings, aspirations he had
ever known were blown to fever heat. Above all, his passion for
Miriam waxed tumultuous and possessed him.
Mr. Skale dropped his fruit-knife and uttered a cry, but a cry
of so peculiar a character that Spinrobin thought for a moment
he was about to burst into song. At the same instant he stood
up, and his chair fell backwards with a crash upon the floor.
Spinrobin stood up too. He asserts always that he was lifted up.
He recognized no conscious effort of his own. It was at this
point, moreover, that Miriam, pale as linen, yet uttering no
sound and fully mistress of herself, left her side of the table
and ran round swiftly to the protection of her lover.
She came close up. "Spinny," she said, "it's come!"
Thus all three were standing round that dinner-table on the
verge of some very vigorous action not yet disclosed, as people,
vigilant and alert, stand up at a cry of fire, when the door
from the passage opened noisily and in rushed Mrs. Mawle,
surrounded by an atmosphere of light such as might come from
a furnace door suddenly thrown wide in some dark foundry. Only
the light was not steady; it was whirling.
She ran across the floor as though dancing--the dancing of a
child--propelled, it seemed, by an irresistible drive of force
behind; while with her through the opened door came a roaring
volume of sound that was terrible as Niagara let loose, yet at
the same time exquisitely sweet, as birds or children singing.
Upon these two incongruous qualities Spinrobin always insists.
"The deaf shall hear----!" came sharply from the
clergyman's lips, the sentence uncompleted, for the housekeeper
cut him short.
"They're out!" she cried with a loud, half-frightened
jubilance; "Mr. Skale's prisoners are bursting their way about
the house. And one of them," she added with a scream of joy and
terror mingled, "is in my throat . . . !"
If the odd phrase she made use of stuck vividly in
Spinrobin's memory, the appearance she presented impressed
him even more. For her face was shining and alight, radiant as
when Skale had called her true name weeks before. Flashes of
flame-like beauty ran about the eyes and mouth; and she looked
eighteen--eternally eighteen--with a youth that was permanent
and unchanging. Moreover, not only was hearing restored to her,
but her left arm, withered for years, was in the act of pointing
to the ceiling, instinct with vigorous muscular life. Her whole
presentment was splendid, intense--redeemed.
"The deaf hear!" repeated Skale in a shout, and was across
the room with the impetus of a released projectile. "The
Letters are out and alive! To your appointed places! The
syllable has caught us! Quick, quick! If you love your soul and
truth . . . fly!"
Deafening thunders rushed and crashed and blew about the
room, interpenetrated everywhere at the same time by that
searching strain of sweetness Spinrobin had first noticed. The
sense of life, running free and abundant, was very remarkable.
The same moment he found his hand clasped, and felt himself
torn along by the side of the rushing clergyman into the hall.
Behind them "danced" Mrs. Mawle, her cap awry, her apron flying,
her elastic-side boots taking the light, dancing step of youth.
With quick, gliding tread Miriam, still silent, was at his heels.
He remembers her delicate, strange perfume reaching him
faintly through all the incredible turmoil of that impetuous
exit.
In the hall the roar increased terrifically about his ears.
Skale, in his biggest booming voice, was uttering the names of
Hebrew "angels"--invoking forces, that is, to his help; and
behind him Mrs. Mawle was singing--singing fragments
apparently of the "note" she had to utter, as well as fragments
of her own "true name" thus magically recovered. Her restored
arm gyrated furiously; her tripping youth spelt witchery. Yet
the whole madness of the scene came to Spinrobin with a
freezing wind of terror; for about it was a lawless, audacious
blasphemy, that must surely win for itself a quite appalling
punishment. . . .
Yet nothing happened at once--nothing destructive, at least.
Skale and the housekeeper, he saw, were hurriedly robing
themselves in the red and yellow surplices that hung from
nails in the hall, and the instinct to laugh at the sight was
utterly overwhelmed when he remembered that these were the
colours which were used for safety in their respective "rooms."
. . . It was a scene of wild confusion and bewilderment which
the memory refuses to reproduce coherently. In his own throat
already began a passionate rising of sound that he knew was the
"note" he had to utter attempting to escape, summoned forth
automatically by these terrible vibrating Letters in the air. A
cataract of sound seemed to fill the building and made it shake
to its very foundations.
But the hall, he saw, was not only alive with "music," it was
ablaze with light--a white and brilliant glory that at first
dazzled him to the point of temporary blindness.
The same second Mr. Skale's voice, storming its way somehow
above the tumult, made itself heard:
"To the rooms upstairs, Spinrobin! To the corridor with
Miriam! And when you hear my voice from the cellar--utter! We
may yet be in time to unite the Letters . . . !"
He released the secretary's hand, flinging it from him, and
was off with a bounding, leaping motion like an escaped animal
towards the stone passage that led to the cellar steps; and
Spinrobin, turning about himself like a top in a perfect frenzy
of bewilderment, heard his great voice as he disappeared round
the corner:
"It has come upon me like a thief in the night! Before I am
fully prepared it has called me! May the powers of the Name
have mercy upon my soul . . . !" And he was gone. For the last
time had Spinrobin set his eyes upon the towering earthly form
of the Rev. Philip Skale.
IV
Then, at first, it seems, the old enthusiasm caught him, and
with him, therefore, caught Miriam, too. That savage and
dominant curiosity to know clutched him, overpowering even the
assaults of a terror that fairly battered him. Through all the
chaos and welter of his dazed mind he sought feverishly for the
"note" he had to utter, yet found it not, for he was too
horribly confused. Fiddles, sand-patterns, coloured robes, gongs,
giant tuning-forks, wax-sheeted walls, aged-faces-turned-young
and caverns-by-the-sea jostled one another in his memory with
a jumble of disproportion quite inextricable.
Next, impelled by that driving sense of duty to Skale, he
turned to the girl at his side: "Can you do it?" he cried.
Unable to make her voice heard above the clamour she nodded
quickly in acquiescence. Spinrobin noticed that her little
mouth was set rather firmly, though there was a radiance about
her eyes and features that made her sweetly beautiful. He
remembers that her loveliness and her pluck uplifted him above
all former littlenesses of hesitation; and, seizing her
outstretched hand, they flew up the main staircase and in less
than a minute reached the opening of the long corridor where
the rooms were.
Here, however, they stopped with a gasp, for a hurricane of
moving air met them in the face like the draught from some
immense furnace. Again the crest of a wave in the colossal
sound-vibration had caught them. Staggering against the wall,
they tried again and again to face the tempest of sound and
light, but the space beyond them was lit with the same
unearthly brilliance as the hall, and out of the whole long
throat of that haunted corridor issued such a passion of music
and such a torrent of gorgeous colour, that it seemed
impossible for any aggregation of physical particles--least of
all poor human bodies--to remain coherent for a single instant
before the concentrated onslaught.
Yet, game to the inmost core of his little personality, and
raised far above his normal powers by the evidence of Miriam's
courage and fidelity, he struggled with all his might and
searched through the chambers of his being for the note he was
ordained to utter in the chord. The ignominy of failure, now
that the great experiment was full upon him--failure in
Miriam's eyes, too--was simply impossible to contemplate. Yet,
in spite of every effort, the memory of that all-important note
escaped him utterly, for the forces of his soul floundered,
helpless and dishevelled, before the too mighty splendours that
were upon him at such close quarters. The sounds he actually
succeeded in emitting between dry and quivering lips were
pitiful and feeble beyond words.
Down that living corridor, meanwhile, he saw the doors of the
four rooms were gone, consumed like tissue paper; and through
the narrow portals there shouldered forward, bathed in light
ineffable, the separate outlines of the Letters so long
imprisoned in inactivity. And with their appearance the sounds
instantly ceased, having overpassed the limits of what is
audible to human ears. A great stillness dropped about them
with an abrupt crash of utter silence. For a "crash" of silence
it was--all-shattering.
And then, from the categories of the incomprehensible and
unmanifest, "something" loomed forth towards them where, limp
and shaking, they leaned against the wall, and they witnessed
the indescribable operation by which the four Letters, whirling
and alive, ran together and melted into a single terrific
semblance of a FORM . . . the sight of which entered the heart
of Spinrobin and threatened to split it asunder with the joy of
the most sublime terror and adoration a human soul has ever
known.
And the whole gigantic glory of Skale's purpose came upon
him like a tempest. The magnificent effrontery by which the
man sought to storm his way to heaven again laid its spell
upon him. The reaction was of amazing swiftness. It almost
seemed as though time ceased to operate, so instantaneously did
his mood pass from terror to elation--wild, ecstatic elation
that could dare anything and everything to share in the awful
delight and wonder of Skale's transcendent experiment.
And so, forgetting himself and his little disabilities of
terror and shrinking, he sought once again for the note he was
to utter in the chord. And this time he found it.
V
Very faintly, yet distinctly audible in the deep stillness, it
sounded far away down in the deeps of his being. And, with a
splendid spiritual exultation tearing and swelling in his heart,
he turned at once triumphantly to Miriam beside him.
"Utter your note too!" he cried. "Utter it with mine, for any
moment now we shall hear the command from the cellar. . . .
Be ready. . . . !"
And the FORM, meanwhile, limned in the wonder of an
undecipherable or at least untranslatable geometry, silently
roaring, enthroned in the undiscoverable colours beyond the
spectrum, swept towards them as he spoke.
At the same instant Miriam answered him, her exquisite
little face set like a rock, her marble pallor painted with the
glory of the approaching splendours. Just when the moment of
success was upon them; when the flying Letters were abroad;
when all the difficult weeks of preparation were face to face
with the consummation; and when any moment Skale's booming
bass might rise from the bowels of the building as the signal
to utter the great chord and unite the fragments of the first
divine syllable; when Spinrobin had at last conquered his
weakness and recovered his note--then, at this decisive and
supreme moment, Miriam asserted herself and took the reins of
command.
"No," she said, looking with sudden authority straight into
his eyes, "no! I will not utter the note. Nor shall you utter
yours!" And she clapped her little hand tight upon his mouth.
In that instant of unutterable surprise the two great forces
of his life and personality met together with an explosive
violence wholly beyond his power to control. For on the one
hand lay the fierce enticement of Skale's heaven, with all that
it portended, and on the other the deep though temporarily
submerged human passion of his love for the girl. Miriam's
sudden action revealed the truth to him better than any
argument. In a flash he realized that her choice was made, and
that she was in entire and final revolt against the whole
elaborate experiment and all that it involved. The risk of
losing her Spinny, or finding him changed in some condition of
redemption where he would no longer be the little human thing
she so dearly loved, had helped her to this final, swift
conclusion.
With her hand tight over his lips, and her face of white
decision before him, he understood. She called him with those
big grey eyes to the sweet and common uses of life, instead of
to the heights of some audacious heaven where they might be as
gods with Philip Skale. She clung to humanity. And Spinrobin,
seeing her at last with spiritual eyes fully opened, knew finally
that she was right.
"But oh," he always cries, "in that moment I knew the most
terrible choice I have ever had to make, for it was not a choice
between life and death, but a choice between two lives, each of
infinite promised wonder. And what do you think it was that
decided me, and made me choose the wholesome, humble life
with little Miriam in preference to the grandeur of Skale's vast
dream? What do you think?" And his face always turns pink and
then flame-coloured as he asks it, hesitating absurdly before
giving the answer. "I'll tell you, because you'd never guess in
this world." And then he lowers his voice and says, "It was the
delicious little sweet perfume of her fingers as she held them
over my lips. . . . !"
That delicate, faint smell was the symbol of human
happiness, and through all the whirlwind of sound and colour
about him, it somehow managed to convey its poignant,
searching message of the girl's utter love straight into his
heart. Thus curiously out of proportion and insignificant,
indeed, are sometimes the decisive details that in moments of
overwhelming experience turn the course of life's river this
way or that. . . .
With a single wild cry in his soul that found no audible
expression, he gave up the unequal struggle. He turned, and with
Miriam by his side, flew down the corridor from the advent of
the Immensity that was upon them--from the approach of the
escaping Letters.
VI
How Spinrobin found his way out of that sound-stricken house
remains an unsolved mystery. He never understood it himself;
he remembers only that when they reached the ground floor the
vibrations of Skale's opening bass note had already begun. Its
effect, too, was immediately noticeable. For the roar of the
escaping Letters, which upstairs had reached so immense a
volume as to be recognized only in terms of silence, now
suddenly grew in a measure harnessed and restrained. Their
vibration became reduced--down closer to the sixteen-foot wave-
length which is the limit of human audition. They were being
leashed in by the summoning master-tone. They grew once more
audible.
On the rising swirl of sound the two humans were swept down
passages and across halls, as two leaves are borne by a tempest,
and after frantic efforts, in which Spinrobin bruised his body
against doors and walls without number, he found himself at
last in the open air, and at a considerable distance from the
house of terror. Stars shone overhead. He saw the outline of
hills. Breaths of cool wind fanned his burning skin and eyes.
But he dared not turn to look or listen. The music of that
opening note, now rising through the building from the cellar,
might catch him and win him back. The chord in which himself
and Miriam were to have uttered their appointed tones, even
half-told, was still mighty to overwhelm. Its effect upon the
Letters themselves had been immediate.
The feeling that he had proved faithless to Skale, unworthy
of the great experiment, never properly attuned to this fearful
music of the gods--this was forgotten in the overmastering
desire to escape from it all into the safety of common human
things with Miriam. Setting his course ever up the hills, he ran
on and on, till breath failed him utterly and he was obliged to
stop for lack of strength. And it was only then he realized that
the whole time the girl had been in his arms. He had been
carrying her.
Placing her on the ground, he caught a glimpse of her eyes in
the darkness, and saw that they were still charged with the one
devouring passion that had made the sacrifice of Skale and of
all her training since birth inevitable. Soft and glowing with
her first knowledge of love, her grey eyes shone like stars
newly risen.
"Come, come!" he whispered hoarsely; "we must get as far as
possible--away from it all. Across the hills we shall find
safety. Once the splendours overtake us we are lost. . . ."
Seizing her by the hand, they pressed on again, the ocean of
sound rising and thundering behind them and below.
Without knowing it, he had taken the path by which the
clergyman had brought him from the station weeks ago on the
day of his first arrival. With a confused memory, as of a dream,
he recognized it. The ground was slippery with dead leaves whose
odour penetrated sharply the air of night. Everywhere about
him, as they paused from time to time in the little open
spaces, the trees pressed up thickly; and ever from the valley
they had just left the increasing tide of sound came pouring up
after them like the roar of the sea escaping through doors upon
the surface of the world.
And even now the marvellous, enticing wonder of it caught
him more than once and made him hesitate. The sense of what
he was giving up sickened him with a great sudden yearning of
regret. The mightiness of that loved leader, lonely and
unafraid, trafficking with the principalities and powers of
sound, and reckoning without misgiving upon the co-operation of
his other "notes"--this plucked fearfully at his heart-strings.
But only in great tearing gusts, so to speak, which passed the
instant he realized the little breathless, grey-eyed girl at his
side, charged with her beautiful love for him and the wholesome
ambition for human things.
"Oh! but the heaven we're losing . . . !" he cried once aloud,
unable to contain himself. "Oh, Miriam . . . and I have proved
unworthy . . . small . . . !"
"Small enough to stay with me for ever and ever . . . here on
the earth," she replied passionately, seizing his hand and
drawing him further up the hill. Then she stopped suddenly and
gathered a handful of dead leaves, moss, twigs and earth. The
exquisite familiar perfume as she held it to his face pierced
through him with a singular power of conviction.
"We should lose this," she exclaimed; "there's none of this
. . . in heaven! The earth, the earth, the dear, beautiful earth,
with you . . . and Winky . . . is what I want!"
And when he stopped her outburst with a kiss, fully
understanding the profound truth she so quaintly expressed, he
smelt the trees and mountains in her hair, and her fragrance
was mingled there with the fragrance of that old earth on which
they stood.
VII
The rising flood of sound sent them charging ahead the same
minute, for it seemed upon them with a rush; and it was only
after much stumbling and floundering among trees and boulders
that they emerged into the open space of the hills beyond the
woods. Actually, perhaps, they had been running for twenty
minutes, but to them it seemed that they had been running for
days. They stood still and looked about them.
"You shall never regret, never, never," Miriam whispered
quickly. "I can make you happier than all this ever could," and
she waved her arm towards the house below. "And you know it,
my little Master."
But before he could reply, or do more than place an arm
about her waist to support her, something came to pass that
communicated its message to their souls with an incalculable
certainty neither could explain. Perhaps it was that distance
enabled them to distinguish between the sounds more clearly,
or perhaps their beings were still so intimately connected with
Skale that some psychic warning travelled up to them across
the night; but at any rate there then came about this sharp and
sudden change in the quality of the sound-tempest round them
that proclaimed the arrival of an exceedingly dramatic moment.
The nature of the rushing, flying vibrations underwent
alteration. And, looking one another in the eyes, they realized
what it meant.
"He's beginning . . ." faltered Spinrobin in some skeleton of
a voice. "Skale has begun to utter . . . !" He said it beneath his
breath.
Down in the cellar of that awful house the giant clergyman,
alone and undismayed, had begun to call the opening vibration
of the living chord which was to gather in this torrent of
escaping Letters and unite them in temporary safety in the
crypts of the prepared vault. For the first time in eighteen
hundred years the initial sound of the "Name that rusheth
through the universe"--the first sound of its opening syllable,
that is--was about to thunder its incalculable message over the
earth.
Crouching close against each other they stood there on the
edge of the woods, the night darkly smothering about them, the
bare, open hills lying beyond in the still sky, waiting for the
long-apprehended climax--the utterance of the first great
syllable.
"It will make him . . . as God," crashed the thought through
Spinrobin's brain as he experienced the pangs of the fiercest
remorse he had ever known. "Even without our two notes the
power will be sublime . . . !"
But, through Miriam's swiftly-beating heart, as she pressed
closer and closer: "I know your true name . . . and you are
mine. What else in heaven or earth can ever matter . . . ?"
I
SKALE had indeed begun to utter. And to these two bewildered
children standing there alone with their love upon the
mountain, it seemed that the whole world knew.
Those desolate hills that rolled away like waves beneath the
stars; the whispering woods about them; the distant sea,
eternally singing its own note of sadness; the boulders at their
feet; the very stars themselves, listening in the heart of night
--one and all were somehow aware that a portion of the great
Name which first called them into being was about to issue
from the sleep of ages once again into manifestation. . . .
Perhaps to quicken them into vaster life, perhaps to change
their forms, perhaps to merge them all back into the depths of
the original "word" of creation . . . with the roar of a
dissolving universe. . . .
Through everything, from the heart of the hidden primroses
below the soil to the centre of the huge moors above, there ran
some swift thrill of life as the sounds of which they were the
visible expression trembled in sympathetic resonance with the
opening vibrations of the great syllable.
Philip Skale had begun to utter. Alone in the cellar of that
tempest-stricken house, already aware probably that the upper
notes of his chord had failed him, he was at last in the act of
calling upon the Name that Rusheth through the Universe . . .
the syllable whose powers should pass into his own being and
make him as the gods. . . .
And, first of all, to the infinite surprise of these two
listening, shaking lovers, the roaring thunders that had been
battling all about them, grew faint and small, and then dropped
away into mere trickles of sound, retreating swiftly down into
the dark valley where the house stood, as though immense and
invisible leashes drew them irresistibly back. One by one the
Letters fled away, leaving only a murmur of incredibly sweet
echoes behind them in the hills, as the master-sound, spoken by
this fearless and audacious man, gathered them into their
appointed places in the cellar.
But if they expected stupendous things to follow they were at
first singularly disappointed. For, instead of woe and terror,
instead of the foundering of the visible universe, there fell
about the listening world a cloak of the most profound silence
they had ever known, soft beyond conception. The Name was not
in the whirlwind. Out of the heart of that deathly stillness it
came--a small, sweet voice, that was undeniably the voice of
Philip Skale, its awful thunders all smoothed away. With it,
too, like a faint overtone, came the yet gentler music of
another voice. The bass and alto were uttering their appointed
notes in harmony and without dismay.
Everywhere the sound rose up through the darkness of great
distance, yet at the same time ran most penetratingly sweet,
close beside them in their very ears. So magically intimate
indeed was it, yet so potentially huge for all its soft
beginning, that Spinrobin declares that what he heard was
probably not the actual voices, but only some high liberated
harmonics of them.
The sounds, moreover, were not distinguishable as consonants
and vowels in the ordinary sense, and to this day remain for
him beyond all reach of possible reproduction. He did not hear
them as "word" or "syllable," but as some incalculably splendid
Message that was too mighty to be taken in, yet at the same
time was sweeter than all imagined music, simple as a little
melody "sweetly sung in tune," artless as wind through rustling
branches.
And, moreover, as this small, sweet voice ran singing
everywhere about them in the darkness of hills and woods,
Spinrobin realized, with a whole revolution of wonder sweeping
through him, that the sound, for all its gentleness, was at work
vehemently upon the surface of the landscape, altering and
shifting the pattern of the solid earth, just as the sand had
wreathed into outlines at the sound of his own voice weeks ago,
and as the form of the clergyman had changed at the vibrations
of the test night.
The first letters of the opening syllable of this divine and
magical name were passing over the world . . . shifting the
myriad molecules that composed it by the stress and stir of
its vast harmonics . . . changing the pattern.
But this time the change was not dreadful; the new outline,
even before he actually perceived it, was beautiful above all
known forms of beauty. The outer semblance of the old earth
appeared to melt away and reveal that heart of clean and
dazzling wonder which burns ever at its inmost core--the naked
spirit divined by poets and mystics since the beginning of
time. It was a new heaven and a new earth that pulsed below
them in response to the majesty of this small sweet voice. All
nature knew, from the birds that started out of sleep into
passionate singing, to the fish that stirred in the depths of
the sea, and the wild deer that sprang alert in their wintry
coverts, scenting an eternal spring. For the earth rolled up as
a scroll, shaking the outworn skin of centuries from her face,
and suffering all her rocky structure to drop away and disclose
the soft and glowing loveliness of an actual being--a being
most tenderly and exquisitely alive. It was the beginning of
spiritual vision in their own hearts. The name had set them
free. The blind saw--a part of God. . . .
II
And then, in Spinrobin's heart, the realization of failure--
that he was not in his appointed place, following his great
leader to the stars, clashed together with the splendour of his
deep and simple love for this trembling slip of a girl beside
him.
The thought that God, as it were, had called him and he had
been afraid to run and answer to his name overpowered his
timid, aching soul with such a flood of emotion that he found
himself struggling with a glorious temptation to tear down the
mountain-side again to the house and play his appointed part--
utter his note in the chord even thus late. For the essential
bitterness and pain that lies at the heart of all transitory
earthly things--the gnawing sense of incompleteness and vanity
that touches the section of transitory existence men call
"life," met face to face with this passing glimpse of reality,
timeless and unconditioned, which the sound of the splendid
name flashed so terrifically before his awakened soul-vision,
--and threatened to overwhelm him.
In another instant he would have yielded and gone; forgotten
even Miriam, and all the promised sweetness of life with her
half-planned, when something came to pass abruptly that threw
his will and all his little calculations into a dark chaos of
amazement where, by a kind of electrically swift reaction, he
realized that the one true, possible and right thing for him was
this very love he was about to cast aside. His highest destiny
was upon the unchanged old earth . . . with Miriam . . . and
Winky. . . .
She turned and flung her arms round his neck in a passion of
tears as though she had divined his unspoken temptation . . .
and at the same time this awful new thing was upon them both.
It caught them like a tempest. For a disharmony--a discord--a
lying sound was loose upon the air from those two voices far
below.
"Call me by my true name," she cried quickly, in an anguish
of terror; "for my soul is afraid. . . . Oh, love me most
utterly, utterly, utterly . . . and save me!"
Unnerved and shaking like a leaf, Spinrobin pressed her
against his heart.
"I know you by name and you are mine," he tried to say, but
the words never left his lips. It was the love surging up in his
tortured heart that alone held him to sanity and prevented--as
it seemed to him in that appalling moment--the dissolution of
his very being and hers.
For Philip Skale had somewhere uttered falsely.
A darting zigzag crack, as of lightning, ran over the giant
fabric of vibrations that covered the altering world as with a
flood . . . and sounds that no man may hear and not die leaped
awfully into being. The suddenness and immensity of the
catastrophe blinded these two listening children-souls. Awe and
terror usurped all other feelings . . . but one. Their love,
being born of the spirit, held supreme, insulating them, so to
speak, from all invading disasters.
Philip Skale had made a mistake in the pronunciation of the
Name.
The results were dreadful and immediate, and from all the
surface of the wakening world rose anguished voices. Spinrobin
started up, lifting Miriam into his arms. He spun dizzily for a
moment between boulders and trees, giving out a great wailing
cry, unearthly enough had there been any to hear it. Then he
began to run wildly through the thick darkness. In his ear--for
her head lay close--he heard her dear voice, between the sobs of
collapse, calling his inner name most sweetly; and the sound
summoned to the front all in him that was best and manly.
"My sweet Master, my sweet Master!"
But he did not run far. About him on every side the night
lifted as though it were suddenly day. He saw the summits of
the bleak mountains agleam with the reflection of some great
light that rushed upon them from the valley. All the desolate
landscape, hesitating like some hovering ocean between the old
pattern and the new, seemed to hang suspended amid the
desolation of the winter skies. Everything roared. It seemed the
ground shook. The very bones of the woods went shuddering
together; the hills toppled; and overhead, in some incredible
depths of space, boomed sounds as though the heavens split off
into fragments and hurled the constellations about the vault to
swell these shattering thunders of a collapsing world.
The Letters of that terrible and august Name were passing
over the face of the universe--distorted because mispronounced
--creative sounds, dishevelled and monstrous, because
incompletely and incorrectly uttered.
"Put me down," he heard Miriam cry where she lay smothered
in his arms, "and we can face everything together, and be safe.
Our love is bigger than it all and will protect us. . . ."
"Because it is complete," he cried incoherently in reply,
seizing the truth of her thought, and setting her upon the
ground; "it includes even this. It is a part of . . . the Name
. . . correctly uttered . . . for it is true and pure."
He heard her calling his inner name, and he began forthwith
to call her own as they stood there clinging to one another,
mingling arms and hair and lips in such a tumult of passion
that it seemed as though all this outer convulsion of the world
was a small matter compared to the commotion in their own
hearts, revolutionized by the influx of a divine love that
sought to melt them into a single being.
And as they looked down into the valley at their feet, too
bewildered to resist these mighty forces that stole the breath
from their throats and the strength from their muscles, they
saw with a clearness as of day that the House of Awe in which
their love had wakened and matured was passing away and being
utterly consumed.
In a flame of white fire, tongued and sheeted, streaked with
gulfs of black, and most terribly roaring, it rose with a
prodigious crackling of walls and roof towards the sky. Volumes
of coloured smoke, like hills moving, went with it; and with it,
too, went the forms--the substance of their forms, at least, of
their "sounds" released--of Philip Skale, Mrs. Mawle, and all
the paraphernalia of gongs, drapery, wires, sheeted walls, sand-
patterns, and the preparations of a quarter of a century of
labour and audacious research. For nothing could possibly
survive in such a furnace. The heat of it struck their faces
where they stood even here high upon the hills, and the
currents of rising wind blew the girl's tresses across his eyes
and moved his own feathery hair upon his head. The notes of
those leaping flames were like thunder.
"Watch now!" cried Miriam, though he divined the meaning
from the gesture of her free hand rather than actually heard
the words.
And, leaning their trembling bodies against a great boulder
behind them, they then saw in the midst of the conflagration,
or hovering dimly above it rather, the vast outlines of the
captured sounds--the Letters--escaping back again into the
womb of eternal silence from which they had been with such
appalling courage evoked. In forms of dazzling blackness they
passed upwards in their chariots of flame, yet at the same time
passed inwards in some amazing kind of spiral motion upon
their own axes, vanishing away with incredible swiftness and
beauty deep down into themselves . . . and were gone.
Realizing in some long-forgotten fashion of childhood the
fearful majesty of the wrath of Jehovah, yet secretly
undismayed because each felt so gloriously lost in their
wonderful love, the bodies of Miriam and Spinrobin dropped
instinctively upon their knees, and, still tightly clasped in one
another's arms, bowed their foreheads to the ground, touching
the earth and leaves.
But how long they rested thus upon the heart of the old
earth, or whether they slept, or whether, possibly, the
inevitable reaction to all the overstrain of the past hours led
them through a period of unconsciousness, neither of them
quite knew. Nor was it possible for them to have known,
perhaps, that the lonely valley sheltering the House of Awe,
running tongue-like into these desolate hills, had the
unenviable reputation of trembling a little in sympathy with
any considerable shock of earthquake that came to move that
portion of the round globe from her sleep. Of this they knew as
little, no doubt, as they did of the ill-defined line of
demarcation between experiences that are objective, capable of
being weighed and measured, and those that are subjective,
taking place--though with convincing authority--only in the
sphere of the mind. . . .
All they do know, and Spinrobin tells it with an expression
of supreme happiness upon his shining round face, is that at
length they stirred as they lay, opened their eyes, turned and
looked at one another, then stood up. On Miriam's hair and
lashes lay the message of the dew, and in her clear eyes all the
soft beauty of the stars that had watched over them.
But the stars themselves had gone. Over the hills ran the
coloured feet of the dawn, swift and rosy, touching the spread
of heathery miles with the tints of approaching sunrise. The
tops of the leafless trees stirred gently with a whisper of wind
that stole up from the distant sea. The birds were singing. Over
the surface of the old earth flew the magical thrill of life. It
caught these two children-lovers, sweeping them into each
other's arms as with wings.
Out of all the amazing tempest of their recent experiences
emerged this ever-growing splendour of their deep and simple
love. The kindly earth they had chosen beckoned them down into
the valley; the awful heaven they had rejected smiled upon
them approvingly, as the old sun topped the hills and peeped
upon them with his glorious eye.
"Come, Miriam," breathed Spinrobin softly into her little
ear; "we'll go down into another valley . . . and live happily
together for ever and ever. . . ."
"Yes," she murmured, blushing with the rosiness of that
exquisite winter's dawn; ". . . you and I . . . and . . . and . . ."
But Spinrobin kissed the unborn name from her lips. "Hush!"
he whispered, "hush!"
For the little "word" between these two was not yet made
flesh. But the dawn-wind caught up that "hush" and carried it to
the trees and undergrowth about them, and then ran thousand-
footed before them to whisper it to the valley where they were
going.
And Miriam, knowing the worship and protection in his
delicate caress, looked up into his face and smiled--and the
smile in her grey eyes was that ancient mother-smile which is
coeval with life. For the word of creation flamed in these two
hearts, waiting only to be uttered.
THE END