THE BRIGHT MESSENGER
 
 OTHER WORKS BY 
 
 ALGERNON BLACKWOOD 
 
 JULIUS LEVALLON 
 
 THE WAVE : An Egyptian Aftermath 
 TEN MINUTE STORIES 
 DAY AND NIGHT STORIES 
 THE PROMISE OF AIR 
 THE GARDEN OF SURVIVAL 
 THE LISTENER and Other Stories 
 THE EMPTY HOUSE and Other Stories 
 THE LOST VALLEY and Other Stories 
 JOHN SILENCE : Physician Extraordinary 
 
 With Violet Pearn 
 KARMA : A Reincarnation Play 
 
 With Wilfred Wilson 
 THE WOLVES OF GOD and other Fey 
 Stories 
 
 E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
 
 THE 
 
 BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 BY 
 
 ALGERNON BLACKWOOD 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 " JULIUS LEVALLON," " THE WOLVES OF GOD," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
 
 68 1 FIFTH AVENUE
 
 Copyright 1922, by 
 E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 
 
 All Right* Reserved 
 
 Printed tn the United State* of America
 
 the Unstable 
 
 2078470
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 EDWARD FILLERY, so far as may be possible to a 
 man of normal passions and emotions, took a detached 
 view of life and human nature. At the age of thirty-eight 
 he still remained a spectator, a searching, critical, analytical, 
 yet chiefly, perhaps, a sympathetic spectator, before the 
 great performance whose stage is the planet and whose 
 performers and auditorium are humanity. 
 
 Knowing himself outcast, an unwelcome deadhead at 
 the play, he had yet felt no bitterness against the parents 
 whose fierce illicit passion had deprived him of an honour- 
 able seat. The first shock of resentment over, he had faced 
 the situation with a tolerance which showed an unusual 
 charity, an exceptional understanding, in one so young. 
 
 He was twenty when he learned the truth about him- 
 self. And it was his wondering analysis as to why two 
 loving humans could be so careless of their offspring's 
 welfare, when the rest of Nature took such pains in the 
 matter, that first betrayed, perhaps, his natural aptitude. 
 He had the innate gift of seeing things as they were, 
 undisturbed by personal emotion, while yet asking himself 
 with scientific accuracy why and how they came to be 
 so. These were invaluable qualities in the line of knowledge 
 and research he chose for himself as psychologist and 
 doctor. The terms are somewhat loose. His longing was 
 to probe the motives of conduct in the first place, and, in 
 the second, to correct the results of wrong conduct by
 
 2 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 removing faulty motives. Psychiatrist and healer, there- 
 fore, were his more accurate titles; psychiatrist and healer, 
 in due course, he became. 
 
 His father, an engineer of ability and enterprise, pros- 
 pecting in the remoter parts of the Caucasus for copper, 
 and making a comfortable fortune in so doing, was carried 
 off his feet suddenly by the beauty of a Khaketian peasant 
 girl, daughter of a shepherd in these lonely and majestic 
 mountains, whose intolerable grandeur may well intoxicate 
 a man to madness. A dangerous and disgraceful episode 
 it seems to have been between John Fillery, hitherto of 
 steady moral fibre, and this strange, lovely pagan girl, 
 whose savage father hunted the pair of them high and low 
 for weeks before they finally eluded him in the azalea 
 valleys beyond Artvine. 
 
 Great passion, possibly great love, born of this enchanted 
 land whose peaks touch heaven, while their lower turfy 
 slopes are carpeted with lilies, azaleas, rhododendrons, con- 
 tributed to the birth of Edward, who first saw the light in 
 a secret chamber of a dirty Tiflis house, above the Koura 
 torrent. That same night, when the sun dipped beneath 
 the Black Sea waters two hundred miles to the westward, 
 his mother had looked for the last time upon her northern 
 lover and her wild Caucasian mountains. 
 
 Edward, however, persisted, visible emblem of a few 
 weeks' primal passion in a primal land. Intense desire, 
 born in this remote wilderness of amazing loveliness, lent 
 him, perhaps, a strain of illicit, almost unearthly yearning, 
 a secret nostalgia for some lost vale of beauty that held 
 fiercer sunshine, mightier winds and fairer flowers than 
 those he knew in this world. 
 
 At the age of four he was brought to England ; his 
 Russian memories faded, though not the birthright of his 
 primitive blood. Settling in London, his father increased 
 his fortune as consulting engineer, but did not marry. To 
 the short vehement episode he had given of his very best; 
 he remained true to his gorgeous memory and his sin; the
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 3 
 
 cream of his life, its essence and its perfume, had been 
 spent in those wild wind-swept azalea valleys beyond 
 Artvine. The azalea honey was in his blood, the scent of 
 the lilies in his brain; he still heard the Koura and Rion 
 foaming down towards ancient Colchis. Edward embodied 
 for him the spirit of these sweet, passionate memories. He 
 loved the boy, he cherished and he spoilt him. 
 
 But Edward had stuff in him that rendered spoiling 
 harmless. A vigorous, independent youngster, he showed 
 firmness and character as a lad. To the delight of his 
 father he knew his own mind early, reading and studying 
 on his own account, possessed at the same time by a 
 vehement love of nature and outdoor life that was far 
 more than the average English boy's inclination to open 
 air and sport. There lay some primal quality in his blood 
 that was of ancient origin and leaned towards wildness. 
 There seemed almost, at the same time, a faunish strain 
 that turned away from life. 
 
 As a tiny little fellow he had that strange touch of 
 creative imagination other children have also known an 
 invisible playmate. It had no name, as it, apparently, had 
 no sex. The boy's father could trace it directly to no fairy 
 tale read or heard; its origin in the child's mind remained 
 a mystery. But its characteristics were unusual, even for 
 such fanciful imaginings : too full-fledged to have been 
 created gradually by the boy's loneliness, it seemed half 
 goblin and half Nature-spirit; it replaced, at any rate, the 
 little brothers and sisters who were not there, and the 
 father, led by his conscience, possibly, to divine or half 
 divine its origin, met the pretence with sympathetic encour- 
 agement. 
 
 It came usually with the wind, moreover, and went with 
 the wind, and wind accordingly excited the child. "Listen ! 
 Father !" he would exclaim when no air was moving any- 
 where and the day was still as death. Then: "Plop! So 
 there you are!" as though it had dropped through empty 
 space and landed at his feet. "It came from a tremenjus
 
 4 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 height," the child explained. "The wind's up there, you 
 see, to-day." Which struck the parent's mind as odd, be- 
 cause it proved later true. An upper wind, far in the 
 higher strata of air, came down an hour or so afterwards 
 and blew into a storm. 
 
 Fire and flowers, too, were connected with this invisible 
 playmate. "He'll make it burn, father," the child said 
 convincingly, when the chimney smoked and the coals 
 refused to catch, and then became very busy with his friend 
 in the grate and about the hearth, just as though he helped 
 and superintended what was being invisibly accomplished. 
 "It's burning better, anyhow," agreed the father, astonished 
 in spite of himself as the coals began to glow and spurt 
 their gassy flames. "Well done; I am very much obliged 
 to you and your little friend." 
 
 "But it's the only thing he can do. He likes it. It's 
 his work really, don't you see keeping up the heat in 
 things." 
 
 "Oh, it's his natural job, is it? I see, yes. But my 
 thanks to him, all the same." 
 
 "Thank you very much," said grave Edward, aged five, 
 addressing his tiny friend among the fire-irons. "I'm much 
 mobliged to you." 
 
 Edward was a bit older when the flower incident took 
 place with the geranium that no amount of care and 
 coaxing seemed able to keep alive. It had been dying slowly 
 for some days, when Edward announced that he saw its 
 "inside" flitting about the plant, but unable to get back 
 into it. "It's got out, you see, and can't get back into its 
 body again, so it's dying." 
 
 "Well, what in the world are we to do about it?" asked 
 his father. 
 
 "I'll ask," was the solemn reply. "Now I know!" he 
 cried, delighted, after asking his question of the empty 
 air and listening for the answer. "Of course. Now I see. 
 Look, father, there it is its spirit!" He stood beside the 
 flower and pointed to the earth in the pot.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 5 
 
 "Dear me, yes! Where d'you see it? I don't see it 
 quite." 
 
 "He says I can pick it up and put it back and then the 
 flower will live." The child put out a hand as though 
 picking up something that moved quickly about the stem. 
 
 "What's it look like?" asked his father quickly. 
 
 "Oh, sort of trinangles and things with lines and corners," 
 was the reply, making a gesture as though he caught it 
 and popped it back into the red drooping blossoms. "There 
 you are ! Now you're alive again. Thank you very much, 
 please" this last remark to the invisible playmate who 
 was superintending. 
 
 "A sort of geometrical figure, was it?" inquired the 
 father next day, when, to his surprise, he found the 
 geranium blooming in full health and beauty once again. 
 "That's what you saw, eh ?" 
 
 "It was its spirit, and it was shiny red, like fire," the 
 child replied. "It's heat. Without these things there'd be 
 no flowers at all." 
 
 "Who makes everything grow?" he asked suddenly, a 
 moment later. 
 
 "You mean what makes them grow." 
 
 "Who," he repeated with emphasis. "Who builds the 
 bodies up and looks after them?" 
 
 "Ah ! the structure, you mean, the form ?" 
 
 Edward nodded. His father had the feeling he was not 
 being asked for information, but was being cross-examined. 
 A faint pressure, as of uneasiness, touched him. 
 
 "They develop automatically that means naturally, 
 under the laws of nature," he replied. 
 
 "And the laws who keeps them working properly?" 
 
 The father, with a mental gulp, replied that God did. 
 
 "A beetle's body, for instance, or a daisy's or an 
 elephant's?" persisted the child undeceived by the theolog- 
 ical evasion. "Or mine, or a mountain's ?" 
 
 John Fillery racked his brain for an answer, while 
 Edward continued his list to include sea-anemones, frost-
 
 6 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 patterns, fire, wind, moon, sun and stars. All these forms 
 to him were bodies apparently. 
 
 "I know !" he exclaimed suddenly with intense convic- 
 tion, clapping his hands together and standing on his toes. 
 
 "Do you, indeed! Then you know more than the rest 
 of us." 
 
 "They do, of course," came the positive announcement. 
 "The other kind! It's their work. Yours, for instance" 
 he turned to his playmate, but so naturally and convinc- 
 ingly that a chill ran down his father's spine as he watched 
 "is fire, isn't it ? You showed me once. And water stops 
 you, but wind helps you ..." and he continued long after 
 his father had left the room. 
 
 With advancing years, however, Edward either forgot 
 his playmate or kept its activities to himself. He no longer 
 referred to it, at any rate. His energies demanded a bigger 
 field; he roamed the fields and woods, climbed the hills, 
 stayed out all night to see the sunrise, made fires even when 
 fires were not exactly needed, and hunted with Red Indians 
 and with what he called "Windy-Fire people" everywhere. 
 He was never hi the house. He ran wild. Great open 
 spaces, trees and flowers were what he liked. The sea, 
 on the other hand, alarmed him. Only wind and fire 
 comforted him and made him happy and full of life. He 
 was a playmate of wind and fire. Water, in large quantities 
 at any rate, was inimical. 
 
 With concealed approval, masking a deep love fulfilled 
 yet incomplete, his father watched the growth of this fiercer 
 strain that mere covert shooting could not satisfy, nor 
 ordinary sporting holidays appease. 
 
 "England's too small for you, Edward, isn't it ?" he asked 
 once tentatively, when the boy was about fifteen. 
 
 "The English people, you mean, father?" 
 
 "You find them dull, don't you? And the island a bit 
 cramped eh ?" 
 
 Edward waited without replying. He did not quite under- 
 stand what his indulgent father intended, or was leading 
 up to.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 7 
 
 "You'd like to travel and see things and people for your- 
 self, I mean?" 
 
 He watched the boy without, as he thought, the latter 
 noticing. The answer pleased but puzzled him. 
 
 "We're all much the same, aren't we?" said Ed- 
 ward. 
 
 "Well with differences yes, we are. But still " 
 
 "It's only the same over and over again, isn't it ?" Then, 
 while his father was thinking of this reply, and of what 
 he should say to it, the boy asked suddenly with arresting 
 intensity : 
 
 "Are we the only people the only sort of beings, I 
 mean? Just men and women like us all over the world? 
 No others of any sort bigger, for instance, or more wild 
 and wonderful?" Then he added, a thrust of strange 
 yearning in his face and eyes: "More beautiful?" He 
 almost whispered the last words. 
 
 His father winced. He divined the origin of that strange 
 inquiry. Upon those immense and lonely mountains, distant 
 in space and time for him, imagination, rich and pagan, 
 ran, he well knew, to vast and mighty beings, superior to 
 human, benignant and maleficent, akin to the stimulating 
 and exhilarating conception of the gods, and certainly non- 
 human. 
 
 "Nothing, Edward, that we know of. Why should there 
 be?" 
 
 "Oh, I don't know, dad, I just wondered sometimes. 
 But, as you say, we've not a scrap of evidence, of course." 
 
 "Not a scrap," agreed his father. "Poetic legends ain't 
 evidence." 
 
 The mind ruled the heart in Edward ; he had his father's 
 brains, at any rate ; and all his powers and longings focused 
 in a single line that indicated plainly what his career should 
 be. The Public Schools could help him little; he went to 
 Edinburgh to study medicine; he passed eventually with 
 all possible honours; and the day he brought home the 
 news his father, dying, told him the secret of his illegitimate 
 birth.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE subsequent twenty years or so may be sum- 
 marized. 
 
 Alone in the world, of a loving, passionate nature, he 
 deliberately set all thought of marriage on one side as an 
 impossibility, and directed his entire energy into the acquire- 
 ment of knowledge; reading, studying, experimenting far 
 outside the circle of the ordinary medical man. The attitude 
 of detachment he had adopted became a habit. He be- 
 lieved it was now his nature. 
 
 The more he learned of human frailty and human facul- 
 ties, the greater became the charity he felt towards his 
 fellow-kind. In his own being, it seemed, lay something 
 big, sweet, simple, a generosity that longed to share with 
 others, a tolerance more ready to acquit than to condemn, 
 above all, a great gift of understanding sympathy that, 
 doubtless, was the explanation of his singular insight. 
 Rarely he found it in him to blame; forgiveness, based 
 upon the increasing extent of his experience, seemed his 
 natural view of human mistakes and human infirmities. 
 His one desire, his one hope, was to serve the Race. 
 
 Yet he himself remained aloof. He watched the Play 
 but took no part in it. This forgiveness, too, began at 
 home. His grievance had not soured or dejected him, his 
 father's error presenting itself as a problem to be pondered 
 over, rather than a sin to blame. Some day, he promised 
 himself, he would go and see with his own eyes the 
 Khaketian tribe whence his blood was partially derived, 
 whence his un-English yearnings for a wilder scale of 
 personal freedom amid an unstained, majestic Nature were 
 first stolen. The inherited picture of a Caucasian vale of 
 loveliness and liberty lay, indeed, very deep in his nature, 
 
 8
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 9 
 
 emerging always like a symbol when he was profoundly 
 moved. At any crisis in his life it rose beckoning, seductive, 
 haunting beyond words . . . Curious, ill-defined emotions 
 with it, that drove him towards another standard, another 
 state, to something, at any rate, he could neither name nor 
 visualize, yet that seemed to dwarf the only life he knew. 
 About it was a touch of strange unearthly radiance that 
 dimmed existence as he knew it. The shine went out of 
 it. There was involved in this symbolic "Valley" some- 
 thing wholly new both in colour, sound and outline, yet 
 that remained obstinately outside definition. 
 
 First, however, he must work, develop himself, and 
 broaden, deepen, extend in every possible way the knowledge 
 of his kind that seemed his only love. 
 
 He began in a very practical way, setting up his plate 
 in a mean quarter of the great metropolis, healing, helping, 
 learning with his heart as well as with his brain, observing 
 life at closest quarters from its beginning to its close, his 
 sympathies becoming enriched the more he saw, and his 
 mind groping its way towards clearer insight the more he 
 read, thought, studied. His wealth made him independent; 
 his tastes were simple; his wants few. He observed the 
 great Play from the Pit and Gallery, from the Wings, 
 from Behind the Scenes as well. 
 
 Moving then, into the Stalls, into a wealthier neighbour- 
 hood, that is, he repeated the experience among another 
 class, finding, however, little difference except in the greater 
 artificiality of his types, the larger proportion of mental 
 and nervous ailments, of hysteria, delusion, imaginary 
 troubles, and the like. The infirmities due to idleness, 
 enflamed vanity and luxury offered a new field, though to 
 him a less attractive one. The farther from simplicity, 
 from the raw facts of living, the more complicated, yet 
 the more trivial, the resulting disabilities. These, however, 
 were quite as real as those, and harder, indeed, to cure. 
 Idle imagination, fostered by opportunity and means, yet 
 forced by conventionality to wear infinite disguises, brought
 
 10 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 a strange, if far from a noble, crop of disorders into his 
 ken. Yet he accepted them for serious treatment, whatever 
 his private opinion may have been, while his patience, tact 
 and sympathy, backed by his insight and great knowledge, 
 brought him quick success. He was soon in a fair way to 
 become a fashionable doctor. 
 
 But the field, he found, was restricted somewhat. His 
 quest was knowledge, not fame or money. He chose his 
 cases where he could, though actually refusing nothing. He 
 specialized more and more with afflictions of a mental kind. 
 He was immensely successful in restoring proportion out 
 of disorder. He revealed people to themselves. He taught 
 them to recover lost hope and confidence. He used little 
 medicine, but stimulated the will towards a revival of fad- 
 ing vitality. Auto-suggestion, rather than suggestion or 
 hypnotism, was his method. He healed. He began to be 
 talked about. 
 
 Then, suddenly, his house was sold, his plate was taken 
 down, he vanished. 
 
 Human beings object to sudden changes whose secret 
 they have not been told and cannot easily guess ; his abrupt 
 disappearance caused talk and rumours, led, of course, by 
 those, chiefly disappointed women, who had most reason 
 to be grateful for past services. But, if the words charlatan 
 and quack were whispered, he did not hear them; he had 
 taken the post of assistant in a lunatic asylum in a northern 
 town, because the work promised him increase of knowledge 
 and experience in his own particular field. The talk he left 
 behind him mattered as little as the small pay attached 
 to the humble duties he had accepted. 
 
 London forgot him, but he did not forget what London 
 had taught him. 
 
 A new field opened, and in less than two years, oppor- 
 tunity, combined with his undoubted qualifications, saw 
 him Head of an establishment where he could observe at 
 first hand the facts and phenomena that interested him 
 most. Humane treatment, backed by profound insight into
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 11 
 
 the derangements of the poor human creatures under his 
 charge, brought the place into a fame it had never known 
 before. He spent five years there in profound study and 
 experiment; he achieved new results and published them. 
 His Experimental Psychology caused a sensation. His 
 name was known. He was an Authority. 
 
 At this time he was well past thirty, a tall, dark, dis- 
 tinguished-looking man, of appearance grave and even 
 sombre; imposing, too, with his quiet, piercing eyes, but 
 sombre only until the smile lit up his somewhat rugged 
 face. It was a face that nobody could lie to, but to that 
 smile the suffering heart might tell its inmost secrets with 
 confidence, hope, trust, and without reserve. 
 
 There followed several years abroad, in Paris, Rome, 
 St. Petersburg, Moscow ; Vienna and Zurich he also visited 
 to test there certain lines of research and to meet personally 
 their originators. 
 
 This period was partly a holiday, partly an opportunity 
 to know at first hand the leaders in mental therapeutics, 
 psychology and the rest, and also that he might find time 
 to digest and arrange his own accumulation of knowledge 
 with a view, later, to undertaking the life-work to which 
 his previous experience was but preliminary. Fame had 
 come to him unsought; his published works alone ensured 
 his going down to posterity as a careful but daring and 
 original judge of the human species and its possibilities. 
 It was the supernormal rather than the merely abnormal 
 powers that attracted him. In the subconscious, as, equally, 
 in the superconscious, his deep experience taught him, lay 
 amazing powers of both moral and physical healing, powers 
 as yet but little understood, powers as limitless as they 
 seemed incredible, as mysterious in their operation as they 
 were simple in their accessibility. And auto-suggestion was 
 the means of using them. The great men whom he visited 
 welcomed him with open arms, added to his data, widened 
 yet further his mental outlook. Sought by high and low 
 in many countries and in strangest cases, his experience
 
 12 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 grew and multiplied, his assortment of unusual knowledge 
 was far-reaching ; till he stood finally in wonder and amaze- 
 ment before the human being and its unrealized powers, 
 and his optimism concerning the future progress of the 
 race became more justified with every added fact. 
 
 Yet, perhaps, his greatest achievement was the study 
 of himself ; it was probably to this deep, intimate and honest 
 research into his own being that his success in helping others 
 was primarily due. For in himself, though mastered and 
 co-ordinated by his steady will, rendered harmless by his 
 saving sense of humour and (as he believed) by the absence 
 of any harboured grievance against others in his very 
 own being lay all those potential elements of disorder, those 
 loose unravelled threads of alien impulse and suppressed 
 desire, which can make for dangerous disintegration, and 
 thus produce the disturbing results classed generally under 
 alienation and neurosis. 
 
 The incongruous elements in him were the gift of nature ; 
 yvwOt a-eavTov was the saving attitude he brought to that 
 gift, redeeming it. This phrase, borrowed, he remembered 
 with a smile, for the portal of the ancient Mysteries, re- 
 mained his watchword. He was able to thank the fierce 
 illicit love that furnished his body and his mental make-up 
 for a richer field of first-hand study than years of practice 
 among others could have supplied. He belonged by tem- 
 perament to the unstable. But he was aware of it. He 
 realized the two beings in him: the reasoning, scientific 
 man, and the speculative dreamer, visionary, poet.. The 
 latter wondered, dreamed among a totally different set of 
 values far below and out of sight. This deeper portion 
 of himself was forever beating up for recognition, clamour- 
 ing to be used, yet with the strange shyness that reminded 
 him of a loving woman who cannot be certain her passion 
 is returned. It hinted, threatened, wept and even sulked. 
 It rose like a flame, bringing its own light and wind, blessed 
 his whole being with some divine assurance, and then, be- 
 cause not instantly accepted, it retired, leaving him empty,
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 13 
 
 his mind coloured with unearthly yearnings, with poignant 
 regrets, yet perfumed as though the fairness of Spring 
 herself had lit upon his heart and kissed it into blossom 
 on her passage north. It presented its amazing pictures, 
 and withdrew. Elusive, as the half memory of some radiant 
 dream, whose wonder and sweetness have been intense to 
 the point of almost pain, it hovered, floating just out of 
 reach. It lay waiting for that sincere belief which would 
 convince that its passion was returned. And a fleeting 
 picture of a wild Caucasian valley, steeped in sunshine and 
 flowers, was always the first sign of its awakening. 
 
 Though not afraid of reason, it seemed somehow inde- 
 pendent of the latter's processes. It was his reason, how- 
 ever, he well knew that dimmed the light in its grand, 
 terrible eyes, causing it to withdraw the instant he began 
 to question. Precise, formal thinking shut the engines 
 off and damped the furnaces. His love, his passion, none 
 the less, were there, hiding with belief, until some bright 
 messenger, bringing glad tidings, should reveal the method 
 of harmonious union between reason and vision, between 
 man's trivial normal faculties and his astounding super- 
 normal possibilities. 
 
 "This element of feeling in our outlook on Nature is 
 a satisfaction in itself, but our plea for allowing it to 
 operate in our interpretation of Nature is that we get closer 
 to some things through feeling than we do through science. 
 The tendency of feeling is always to see things whole. We 
 cannot, for our life's sake, and for the sake of our philo- 
 sophical reconstruction, afford to lose in scientific analysis 
 what the poets and artists and the lovers of Nature all see. 
 It is intuitively felt, rather than intellectually perceived, the 
 vision of things as totalities, root and all, all in all ; neither 
 fancifully, nor mystically, but sympathetically in their 
 wholeness/' 
 
 To these words of Professor T. Arthur Thomson's, he 
 heartily subscribed, applying their principle to his own par- 
 ticular field.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE net result of his inquiries and research, when, at 
 the age of nearly forty, he established his own Private 
 Home for unusual, so-called hopeless cases in North- West 
 London it was free to all, and as Spiritual Clinique he 
 thought of it sometimes with a smile may be summed 
 up in the single sentence that man is greater than he knows, 
 and that completer realization of his full possibilities lies 
 accessible to his subconscious and superconscious powers. 
 Herein he saw, indeed, the chief hope of progress for 
 humanity. 
 
 And it was to the failures, the diseased, the evil and 
 the broken that he owed chiefly his inspiring optimism, 
 since it was largely in collapse that occurred the sporadic 
 upheaval of those super-normal forces which, controlled, 
 co-ordinated, led, must eventually bring about the realiza- 
 tion he foresaw. 
 
 The purpose, however, of these notes is not to furnish 
 a sensational story of various patients whom he studied, 
 healed, or failed to heal. Its object is to give some details 
 of one case in particular whose outstanding peculiarities 
 affected his theories and convictions, leaving him open- 
 minded still, but with a breath of awe in his heart perhaps, 
 before a possibility his previous knowledge had ruled 
 entirely out of court, even if which is doubtful he had 
 ever considered it as a possibility at all. 
 
 He had realized early that the individual manifests but 
 an insignificant portion of his being in his ordinary existence, 
 the normal self being the tip of his consciousness only, 
 yet whose fuller expression rises readily to adequate evoca- 
 tion ; and it was the study of genius, of prodigies, so-called, 
 
 14
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 15 
 
 and of certain faculties shown sometimes in hysteria, that 
 led him to believe these were small jets from a sea of power 
 that might, indeed ought, to be realizable at will. The 
 phenomena all pointed, he believed, to powers that seemed 
 as superior to cerebral functions as they were independent 
 of these. 
 
 Man's possible field of being, in other words, seemed 
 capable of indefinite extension. His heart glowed within 
 him as he established, step by step, these greater powers. 
 He dared to foresee a time when the limitations of separate 
 personality would have been destroyed, and the vast brother- 
 hood of the race become literally realized, its practical unity 
 accomplished. 
 
 The difficulties were endless and discouraging. The in- 
 ventive powers of the bigger self, its astonishing faculty 
 for dramatizing its content in every conceivable form, 
 blocked everywhere the search for truth. 
 
 It could, he found, also detach a portion of its content 
 into a series of separate personalities, each with its indi- 
 vidual morals, talents, tendencies, each with its distinct and 
 separate memory. These fragments it could project, so to 
 speak, masquerading convincingly as separate entities, using 
 strange languages, offering detailed knowledge of other 
 conditions, distant in time and space, suggesting, indeed, 
 to the unwary that they were due to obsessing spirits, and 
 leaving the observer in wonder before the potential capacity 
 of the central self disgorging them. 
 
 The human depths included, beyond mere telepathy and 
 extended telepathy, an expansion of consciousness so vast 
 as to be, apparently, limitless. The past, on rare occasions 
 even the future, lay open; the entire planetary memory, 
 stored with rich and pregnant accumulated experience, was 
 accessible and shareable. New aspects of space and time 
 were equally involved. A vision of incredible grandeur 
 opened gradually before his eyes. 
 
 The surface consciousness of to-day was really rather 
 a trumpery affair; the gross lethargy of the vast majority
 
 16 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 vis a vis the greater possibilities afflicted him. To this 
 surface consciousness alone was so-called evil possible 
 as ignorance. As "ugly is only half-way to a thing," so 
 evil is half-way to good. With the greater powers must 
 come greater knowledge, shared as by instantaneous wire- 
 less over the entire planet, and misunderstanding, chief 
 obstacle to progress always, would be impossible. A huge 
 unity, sense of oneness must follow. Moral growth would 
 accompany the increase of faculty. And here and there, 
 it seemed to him, the surface ice had thawed already a 
 little; the pressure of the great deeps below caused cracks 
 and fissures. Auto-suggestion, prototype of all suggestion, 
 offered mysterious hints of the way to reach the stupendous 
 underworld, as the Christian Scientists, the miraculous 
 healers, the New Thought movement, saints, prophets, poets, 
 artists, were finding out. 
 
 The subliminal, to state it shortly, might be the divine. 
 This was the hope, though not yet the actual belief, that 
 haunted and inspired him. Behind his personality lurked 
 this strange gigantic dream, ever beating to get through. . . . 
 
 In his Private Home, helping, healing, using his great 
 gifts of sympathy and insight, he at the same time found 
 the material for intimate study and legitimate experiment 
 he sought. The building had been altered to suit his exact 
 requirements; there were private suites, each with its door 
 and staircase to the street ; one part of it provided his own 
 living quarters, shut off entirely from the patients' side; 
 in another, equally cut off and self-contained, yet within 
 easy communication of his own rooms, lived Paul Devon- 
 ham, his valued young assistant. There was a third private 
 suite as well. The entire expenses he defrayed himself. 
 
 Here, then, for a year or two he worked indefatigably, 
 with the measure of success and failure he anticipated; 
 here he dreamed his great dream of the future of the race, 
 in whose progress and infinite capacities he hopefully be- 
 lieved. Work was his love, the advancement of humanity 
 his god. The war availed itself of his great powers, as
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 17 
 
 also of his ready-made establishment, both of which he gave 
 without a thought of self. New material came as well 
 from the battlefields into his ken. 
 
 The effect of the terrible five years upon him was in 
 direct proportion to his sincerity. His mind was not the 
 type that shirks conclusions, nor fears to look facts in the 
 face. For really new knowledge he was ever ready to yield 
 all previous theories, to scrap all he had held hitherto for 
 probable. His mind was open, he sought only Truth. 
 
 The war, above all the Peace, shook his optimism. If 
 it did not wholly shatter his belief in human progress, it 
 proved such progress to be so slow that his Utopia faded 
 into remotest distance, and his dream of perfectibility be- 
 came the faintest possible star in his hitherto bright sky 
 of hope. 
 
 He felt shocked and stupefied. The reaction was greater 
 than at first he realized. He had often pitied the mind 
 that, aware only of its surface consciousness, uninformed 
 by thrill or shift of the great powers below and above, lived 
 unwarned of its own immenser possibilities. To such, the 
 evidence for extended human faculties must seem explicable 
 by fraud, illusion, derangement, to be classed as abnormal 
 rubbish worthy only of the alienist's attention as diseases. 
 To him such minds, though able, with big intellects among 
 them, had ever seemed a prejudiced, fossilized, prehistoric 
 type. Restricted by their very nature, violently resisting 
 new ideas, they might be intense within their actual scope, 
 but, with vision denied them, they never could be really 
 great. 
 
 One effect of the shock he had undergone will be evident 
 by merely stating that he now understood this type of mind 
 a good deal better than before.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE war was over, though the benefits of the long 
 anticipated peace still kept provocatively, exasperat- 
 ingly, out of reach, when, about the middle of September, 
 Dr. Fillery received a letter that interested him deeply. 
 
 The shattered world was still distraught, uneasy. 
 Nervously eager to resume its former activities, it was yet 
 waiting for the word that should give it the necessary con- 
 fidence to begin. Doubt, insecurity, uncertainty everywhere 
 dominated human minds. Those who hoped for a renewal 
 of the easy, careless mood of pre-war days were dismayed 
 to find this was impossible; others who had allowed an 
 optimistic idealism to prophesy a New Age, looked about 
 them bewilderingly and in vain for signs of its fair birth. 
 The latter, to whom, perhaps, Dr. Fillery belonged, were 
 more bitterly disappointed, more cruelly shocked, than the 
 former. The race, it seemed to many unshirking eyes, had 
 leaped back centuries at a single spring; the gulf of primal 
 savagery which had gaped wide open for five years, prov- 
 ing the Stone Age close beneath the surface of so-called 
 civilization, had not yet fully closed. Its jaws still dripped 
 blood, hatred, selfishness ; the Race was still dislocated by 
 the convincing disproof of progress, horrified at the fierce 
 reality which had displaced the two-pence coloured dream 
 it had been complacently worshipping hitherto. Men in 
 the mass undoubtedly were savages still. 
 
 To Dr. Fillery, an honest, though not a necessarily funda- 
 mental pessimism, seemed justified. He believed in progress 
 still, but as his habit was, he faced the facts. His attitude 
 lost something of its original enthusiasm. Looking about 
 him, he saw no big constructive movement ; the figure who 
 
 18
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 19 
 
 more than any other was altering the face of the world 
 with his ideas as well as his armies, was avowedly de- 
 structive only. He found himself a sobered and a saddened 
 man. 
 
 His Private Home, having accomplished splendid work, 
 had just discharged its last shell-shocked patient; it was 
 now empty again, the staff, carefully chosen and proved 
 by long service, dismissed on holidays, the building itself 
 renovated and repaired against the arrival later of new 
 patients that were expected. 
 
 Devonham, his assistant, away for a period of rest in 
 Switzerland, would be back in a week or two, and Dr. 
 Fillery, before resuming his normal work, found himself 
 with little to do but watch the progress of the cleaners, 
 painters and carpenters at work. 
 
 Into this brief time of leisure dropped the strange, per- 
 plexing letter with an effect distinctly stimulating. It 
 promised an unusual case, a patient, if patient the case 
 referred to could properly be called, a young man "who if 
 you decide after careful reflection to reject, can be looked 
 after only by the State, which means, of course, an Asylum 
 for the Insane. I know you are no longer head of the 
 Establishment in Liverpool, but that you confine yourself 
 to private work along similar lines, though upon a smaller 
 scale, and that you welcome only cases that have been 
 given up as hopeless. I honour your courage and your 
 sympathy, I know your skill. So far as a cure is conceiv- 
 able, this one is hopeless certainly, but its unusual, indeed, 
 its unique character, entitles it, I believe, to be placed among 
 your chosen few. Love, sympathy, patience, combined with 
 the closest observation, it urgently demands, and these 
 qualities, associated with unrivalled skill, you must allow 
 me, again, to think you alone possess among healers and 
 helpers of strange minds. 
 
 "For over twenty years, in the solitudes of these Jura 
 forests and mountains, I have cared for him as best I 
 could, and with a devotion a child of my own might have
 
 20 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 expected. But now, my end not far away, I cannot leave 
 him behind me here uncared for, yet the alternative, the 
 impersonal and formal care of an Institute, must break 
 my heart and his. I turn to you. 
 
 "My advanced age and growing infirmities, in these days 
 of unkind travel, prohibit my bringing him over. Can your 
 great heart suggest a means, since I feel sure you will not 
 refuse the care of this strange being whose nature and 
 peculiarities indicate your especial care, and yours alone? 
 Is it too much to wonder if you yourself could come and 
 see him here in the remote mountain chalet where I have 
 tended and cared for him ever since his mother died in 
 bearing him over twenty years ago ? 
 
 "I have taught him what seemed wise and best; I have 
 guarded and observed him; he knows little or nothing of 
 an outside world of men and women, and is ignorant of 
 life in the ordinary meaning of the word. What precisely 
 he may be, to what stratum of consciousness he belongs, 
 what kind of being he is, I mean. . . ." The last two lines 
 were then scored through, though left legible. "I feel with 
 Arago, that he is a rash man who pronounces the word 
 'impossible' anywhere outside the sphere of pure mathe- 
 matics." More sentences were here scored through. 
 
 "Dare I say to you, as master, teacher, great open- 
 minded soul that to human life, as we know it, he does 
 not, perhaps, belong? 
 
 "In writing in this letter I find it impossible to give 
 you full details. I had intended to set them down; my 
 pen refuses; in the plain English at my disposal well, 
 simply, it is not credible. But I have kept full notes all 
 these years, and the notes belong to you. I enclose an 
 imperfect painting I made of him some four years ago. 
 I am no artist; for background you must imagine what 
 lay beyond my little skill the blazing glory of the immense 
 wood-fires that he loves to make upon the open mountain 
 side, usually at dawn after a night of prayer and singing, 
 while waiting for the strange power he derives (as we all
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 21 
 
 do, indeed, at second or third hand), from the worship of 
 what is to him his mighty father, the life-giving sun. Wind, 
 as the 'messengers' of the sun, he worships too. . . . Both 
 sun and wind, that is, produce an unusual state approach- 
 ing ecstasy. 
 
 "Counting upon you, I have hypnotized him, suggesting 
 that he forget all the immediate past (in fact to date), and 
 telling him he will like you in place of me though with 
 him it is an uncertain method. 
 
 "I am now old in years. I have lived and loved, suffered 
 and dreamed like most of us ; my hands have been warmed 
 at the fires of life, of which, let me add, I am not ignorant. 
 You have known, I believe, my serious, as also my lighter 
 imaginative books ; my occasional correspondence with your 
 colleague Paul Devonham has been of help and guidance 
 to me. We are not, therefore, wholly strangers. 
 
 "The twenty years spent in these solitudes among simple 
 peasant folk, with a single object of devotion to fill my 
 days, have been, I would tell you, among the best of my 
 long existence. My renouncement of the world was no 
 renouncement. I am enriched with wonder and experience 
 that amaze me, for the world holds possibilities few have 
 ever dreamed of, and that I myself, filled as I am with the 
 memory of their contemplation, can hardly credit even now. 
 Perhaps in an earlier stage of evolution, as Delboeuf be- 
 lieves, man was fully aware of all that went on within 
 himself a region since closed to us, owing to attention 
 being increasingly directed outwards. Into some such 
 region I have had a glimpse, it seems. I feel sometimes 
 there was as much fact as fancy, perhaps, in the wise old 
 Hebrew who stated poetically recently, too, compared with 
 the stretch of time my science deals with 'The Sons of 
 God took to themselves daughters of the children of 
 men. . . ." 
 
 The letter here broke off, as though interrupted by some- 
 thing unexpected and unusual ; it was signed, indeed, "John 
 Mason," but signed in pencil and at the bottom of an
 
 22 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 unwritten blank sheet. It had not all been written, either, 
 at one time, or on the same day; there were intervals, evi- 
 dently, perhaps of hours, perhaps of days, between the 
 paragraphs. Dr. Fillery read, re-read, then read again the 
 strange epistle, coming each time to the same conclusion 
 the writer was dying in the very act of forming the last 
 sentences. Their incoherence, the alteration in the style, 
 were thus explained. He had felt the end of life so close 
 that he had written his signature, probably addressed the 
 envelope as well, knowing the page might never be filled 
 up. It had not been filled up. 
 
 Something behind the phrases, behind the intensity of 
 the actual words, beyond the queer touches that revealed 
 a mind betrayed by solitude, the hints possibly of a deluded 
 intelligence there was something that rang true and 
 stimulated him more than ordinarily. The reference to 
 Devonham, too, was definite enough. Dr. Fillery remem- 
 bered vaguely a correspondence during recent crowded 
 years with a man named Mason, living away in Switzer- 
 land somewhere, and that Devonham had asked him ques- 
 tions from time to time about what he called, with his 
 rough-and-ready and half -humorous classification, "pagan 
 obsession," "worshipper of fire and wind," referring it to 
 the writer of the letters, named John Mason. "Non-human 
 delusion," he had also called it sometimes. They had come 
 to refer to it, he remembered, as "N.H." in fact. 
 
 He now looked up those Notes, for the mention of the 
 books caused him an uncomfortable feeling of neglected 
 opportunity, and John Mason was an honoured name. 
 
 "You know, I believe . . . my books," the writer said. 
 Could this be, he asked himself anxiously, John Mason, the 
 eminent geologist? Had Devonham not realized who he 
 was? Must he blame his assistant, whose jealous care and 
 judgment saved him so many foolish, futile, un-real cases, 
 reserving what was significant and important only? 
 
 The Notes established his mistakes and his assistant's 
 perhaps intentional? ignorance. The writer of this
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 23 
 
 curious letter was unquestionably the author of those fairy 
 books for children, old and young, whose daring specula- 
 tions had suggested that other types and races, ages even 
 before the Neanderthal man, had dwelt side by side with 
 what is known as modern man upon this time-worn planet. 
 Behind the literary form of legend and fairy tale, however, 
 lay a curious conviction. Atlantis was of yesterday com- 
 pared with earlier civilizations, now extinct by fire and flood 
 and general upheaval, which once may have inhabited the 
 globe. The present evolutionary system, buttressed by 
 Darwin and the rest, was but a little recent insignificant 
 series, trivial both in time and space, when set beside the 
 mightier systems that had come and gone. Their evidence 
 he found, not in clumsy fossils and footprints on cooled 
 rocks, but in the minds of those who had followed and 
 eventually survived them : memories of Titan Wars and 
 mighty beings, and gods and goddesses of non-human kind, 
 to whose different existence the physical conditions of an 
 over-heated planet presented no impossibility. The human 
 species, this trumpery, limited, self-satisfied super-animal 
 man, was not the only type of being. 
 
 Yet John Mason, in his day, had held the chair at Edin- 
 burgh University, his lectures embodied common-sense and 
 knowledge, with acutest imaginative insight. His earliest 
 writings were the text-books of the time. His name, when 
 Edward Fillery was medical student there, still hovered 
 like well-loved incense above the old-town towers. 
 
 The Notes now intrigued him. No blame attached to 
 Devonham for having missed the cue, Devonham could not 
 know everything; geology was not in his line of work and 
 knowledge ; and Mason was a common name. Rather he 
 blamed himself for not having been struck by the oddness 
 of the case the Mason letters, the pagan obsession, 
 worshipper of wind and fire, the strange "N.H." 
 
 "A competent indexer, at any rate," he said to himself 
 with a smile, as he turned up the details easily. 
 
 These were very scanty. Devonham evidently had
 
 24 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 deemed the case of questionable value, The letters from 
 Mason, with the answers to them, he could not find. 
 
 The slight record was headed "Mason, John," followed 
 by an address "Chez Henri Petavel, peasant, Jura Moun- 
 tains, Vaud, French Switzerland," and details how to reach 
 this apparently remote valley by mule and carriage and 
 foot-path. Name of Mason's protege not given. 
 
 "Sex, male; age born 1895 ; parentage, couple of 
 mystical temperament, sincere, but suffering from marked 
 delusions, believers in Magic (various, but chiefly concerned 
 with Nature and natural forces, once known, forgotten 
 to-day, of immense potency, accessible to certain practices 
 of logical but undetailed kind, able apparently to intensify 
 human consciousness). 
 
 "Subject, of extremely quick intelligence, yet betrays 
 ignorance of human conditions; intelligence superior to 
 human, though sometimes inferior; long periods of quies- 
 cence, followed by immense, almost super-human, activity 
 and energy; worships fire and air, chiefly the former, call- 
 ing the sun his father and deity. 
 
 "Abhors confined space; this shown by intense desire 
 for heat, which, together with free space (air), seem con- 
 ditions of well-being. 
 
 "Fears (as in claustrophobia) both water and solidity 
 (anything massive). 
 
 "Has great physical power, yet indifferent to its use; 
 women irresistibly attracted to him, but his attitude towards 
 other sex seems one of gentleness and pity; love means 
 nothing. Has, on the other hand, extraordinarily high ideal 
 of service. Is puzzled by quarrels and differences of 
 personal kind* Half-memories of vast system of myriad 
 workers, ruled by this ideal of harmonious service. Faith- 
 ful, true, honest; falseness or lies impossible . . . lovable, 
 pathetic, helpless type " 
 
 The Notes broke off abruptly. 
 
 Dr. Fillery, wondering a little that his subordinate's brief 
 but suggestive summary had never been brought to his
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 25 
 
 notice before, turned a moment to glance at the rough 
 water-colour drawing he held in his hand. He looked at 
 it for some moments with absorption. The expression of 
 his face was enigmatical. He was more than surprised 
 that Devonham had not drawn his attention to the case in 
 detail. Placing his hand so as to hide the lower portion 
 of the facej he examined the eyes, then turned the portrait 
 upside down, gazing at the eyes afresh. He seemed lost 
 in thought for a considerable time. A faint flush stole into 
 his cheek, and a careful observer might have noticed an 
 increase of light about the skin. He sighed once or twice, 
 and presently, laying the portrait down again, he turned 
 back to the dossier upon the table in front of him. 
 
 "Very accurate and careful," he said to himself with 
 satisfaction as he noticed the date Devonham had set against 
 the entries "J une 2Oth, 1914." 
 
 The war, therefore, had interrupted the correspondence. 
 
 Devonham had made further notes of his own in the 
 margin here and there : 
 
 "Does this originate primarily from Mason's mind, com- 
 municated thence to his protege?" He agreed with his 
 assistant's query. 
 
 "If so, was it transferred to Mason's mind before that? 
 By the father or mother? The mother was, obviously, 
 his Mason's great love. Yet the father was his life 
 friend. Mason's great passion was suppressed. He never 
 told it. It found no outlet." 
 
 "Admirable," was the comment spoken below his breath. 
 
 "Boy born as result of some 'magical' experiment in- 
 tensely believed (not stated in detail), during course of 
 which father died suddenly. 
 
 "Mason tended mother, then lived alone in remote place 
 where all had occurred. 
 
 "Did Mason inherit entire content of parents' beliefs, 
 dramatizing this by force of unexpressed but passionate 
 love? 
 
 "Did not Mason's mind, thus charged, communicate whole
 
 26 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 business to the young mind he has since formed, a plastic 
 mind uninfluenced by normal human surroundings and con- 
 ditions of ordinary life? 
 
 "Transfer of a sex-inspired mania?" 
 
 Then followed another note, summarizing evidently 
 Devonham's judgment: 
 
 "Not worth F/s investigation until examined further. 
 N.B. Look up Mason first opportunity and judge at first 
 hand." 
 
 Dr. Fillery, glancing from the papers to the portrait, 
 smiled a little again as he signified approval. 
 
 But the last entry interested him still more. It was dated 
 July 13, 1914. 
 
 "Mason reports boy's prophecy of great upheaval com- 
 ing. Entire race slips back into chaos of primitive life 
 again. Entire Western Civilization crumbles. Modern in- 
 ventions and knowledge vanish. Nature spirits reappear. 
 . . . Desires return of all previous letters. These sent by 
 registered post." 
 
 A few scattered notes on separate sheets of paper lay 
 at the end of the carefully typed dossier, but these were 
 very incomplete, and Devonham's handwriting, especially 
 when in pencil, was not of the clearest. 
 
 "Non-human claim, though absurd, not traceable to any 
 antecedent causes given by letters* What is Mason's past 
 mental and temperamental history? Is he not, through the 
 parents, the cause? Mania seems harmless, both to subject 
 and others. No suffering or unhappiness. Therefore not 
 a case for F., until further examined by self. Better see 
 Mason and his subject first. Wrote July 24th proposing 
 visit." 
 
 Dr. Fillery's eyes twinkled. His forehead relaxed. He 
 looked back. He remembered details. Devonham's holiday 
 that year, he recalled, was due on August ist; he had in- 
 tended going out mountain climbing in Switzerland. 
 
 The final note of all, also in half-legible writing, seemed
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 27 
 
 to refer to the treatment Mason had asked advice about, 
 and the line Devonham had suggested: 
 
 "Natural life close to Nature cannot hurt him. But I 
 advise watch him with fire and with heights heat, air! 
 That is, he may decide his physical body is irksome and 
 seek to escape it. Teach him natural history botany, 
 geology, insects, animals, even astronomy, but always giv- 
 ing him reasons and explanations. Above all let him meet 
 girls of his own age and fall in love. Fullest natural expres- 
 sion, but guarded without his knowing it. . . ." 
 
 For a long time Dr. Fillery sat with the notes and papers 
 before him, thinking over what he had read. Devonham's 
 advice was clever enough, but without insight, sound and 
 astute, yet lacking divination. 
 
 The twinkle in his eyes, caused by the final entry, died 
 away. His face was grave, his manner preoccupied, intense. 
 He gazed long at the portrait in his hand. ... It was dusk 
 when he finally rose, replaced the dossier, locked the 
 cabinet, and went out into another room, and thence into 
 the hall. Taking his hat and stick, he left the house, already 
 composing in his mind the telegram instructing Devonham, 
 while apologizing for the interrupted holiday, to bring the 
 subject of the Notes to England with him. A telegraph 
 girl met him on the very steps of the house. He took the 
 envelope from her, and opened it. He read the message 
 It was dated Bale, the day before: 
 
 "Arriving end week with interesting patient. Details 
 index under Mason. Prepare private suite. 
 
 "DEVONHAM/'
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 IT was, however, some two weeks later before Dr. Fillery 
 was on his way to the station to meet Devonham and 
 his companion. A slight delay, caused apparently by the 
 necessity of buying an outfit, had intervened and given time 
 for an exchange of letters, but Devonham had contented 
 himself chiefly with telegrams. He did not wish his chief 
 to know too much about the case in advance. "Probably 
 he regrets the Notes already," thought the doctor, as the 
 car made its way slowly across crowded London. "He 
 wants my first unbiased judgment; he's right, of course, 
 but it's too late for that now." 
 
 The delay, however, had been of value. The Home was 
 in working order again, the staff returned, the private suite 
 all ready for its interesting occupant, whom in thought he 
 had already named "N.H."; for in the first place he did 
 not know his name as yet, and in the second he felt towards 
 him a certain attitude of tolerant, half-humorous scepticism. 
 
 Cut off from his own kind for so many years, educated, 
 perhaps half -educated only, by too speculative and imagina- 
 tive a mind, equally warped by this long solitude, a mind 
 unduly stretched by the contemplation of immense geolog- 
 ical perspectives, filled, too, with heaven knows what strange 
 stories of pantheistic Nature- feeling "N. H." might be 
 distinctly interesting, but hardly all that Mason had thought 
 him. "Unique" was a word rarely justified ; the peculiari- 
 ties would prove to be mere extravagances that had, of 
 necessity, remained uncorrected by the friction of inter- 
 course with his own kind. The rest was inheritance, equally 
 unpruned; a mind living in a side-eddy, a backwater with 
 Nature. . , , 
 
 28
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 29 
 
 At the same time Dr. Fillery admitted a certain antici- 
 patory excitement he could not wholly account for, an 
 undercurrent of wonder he ascribed to his Khaketian blood. 
 
 He had written once only to his assistant, sending briefest 
 instructions to say the rooms would be ready, and that the 
 young man must believe he was an invited guest coming on 
 a visit. "Let him expect complete freedom of movement 
 and occupation without the smallest idea of restraint in 
 any way. He is merely coming to stay for as long as he 
 pleases with a friend of Mason. Impress him with a sense 
 of hearty welcome," And Devonham, replying, had evi- 
 dently understood the wisdom of this method. "He is also 
 greatly pleased with your name the sound of it," was 
 stated in the one letter that he wrote, "and as names mean 
 a lot to him, so much the better. The sound of it gives 
 him pleasure ; he keeps repeating it over to himself ; he 
 already likes you. My name he does not care about, saying 
 it quickly, sharply. But he trusts me. His trust in any- 
 one who shows him kindness is instantaneous and complete. 
 He invariably expects kindness, however, from everyone 
 gives it himself equally and is baffled and puzzled by any 
 other treatment." 
 
 So Devonham, with "N. H.," who attached importance 
 to names and expected kindness from people as a natural 
 thing, would be in London town within the hour. Straight 
 from his forests and mountains for the first time in his 
 life, he would find himself in the heart of the greatest 
 accumulation of human beings on the planet, the first city 
 of the world, the final expression of civilization as known 
 to the human race. 
 
 " 'N. H.' in London town," thought Dr. Fillery, his mouth 
 twitching with the smile that began in his quiet eyes. 
 "Bless the lad ! We must make him feel at home and happy. 
 He shall indeed have kindness. He'll need a woman's touch 
 as well." He reflected a moment. "Women are a great 
 help in doubtful cases the way a man reacts to them," he 
 mused. "Only they must be distinct in type to be of
 
 80 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 value." And his mind ran quickly, comprehensively over 
 the women of his acquaintance, pausing, as it did so, upon 
 two in particular a certain Lady Gleeson, and Iraida 
 sometimes called Nayan Khilkoff, the daugher o*f his 
 Russian friend, the sculptor. 
 
 His mind pondered for some moments the two he had 
 selected. It was not the first time he had made use of 
 them. Their effect respectively upon a man was invariably 
 instinctive and illuminating. 
 
 The two were radically different feminine types, as far 
 removed from one another as pole from pole, yet each 
 essentially of her sex. Their effect, respectively, upon such 
 a youth must be of value, and might be even illuminating 
 to the point of revelation. Both, he felt sure, would not be 
 indifferent to the new personality. 
 
 It was, however, of Nayan Khilkoff that he thought 
 chiefly. Of that rare, selfless, maternal type which men 
 in all ages have called saint or angel, she possessed that 
 power which evoked in them all they could feel of respect, 
 of purity, of chivalry, that love, in a word, which holds 
 as a chief ingredient, worship. Her beauty, beyond their 
 reach, was of the stars; it was the unattainable in her they 
 loved; her beauty was of the soul. Nayan was spiritual, 
 not as a result of painful effort and laborious development, 
 but born so. Her life, moreover, was one of natural service. 
 Personal love, exclusive devotion to an individual, concen- 
 tration of her being upon another single being this seemed 
 impossible to her. She was at the same time an enigma : there 
 was an elusive flavour about her that made people a little in 
 awe of her, a flavour not of this earth, quite. She carried an 
 impersonal attitude almost to the point of seeming irre- 
 sponsive to common human things and interests. 
 
 The other woman, Lady Gleeson, Angela her Christian 
 name, was equally a simple type, though her simplicity was 
 that of the primitive female who is still close to the Stone 
 Age a savage. She adorned herself to capture men. She
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 31 
 
 was the female spider that devours its mates. She wanted 
 slaves. To describe her as selfish were inadequate, for she 
 was unaware that any other ideal existed in life but that 
 of obtaining her own pleasure. There was instinct and 
 emotion, but, of course, no heart. Without morals, con- 
 science or consideration, she was the animal of prey that 
 obeys the call of hunger in the most direct way possible, 
 regardless of consequences to herself or others. Her brain 
 was quick, her personality shallow. When talking she 
 "rattled on." Devonham had well said once: "You can 
 hear her two thoughts clicking, both of them in trousers!" 
 Sir George, recently knighted, successful with large con- 
 cessions in China, was indulgent. The male splendour of 
 the youth was bound to stimulate her hunger, as his sim- 
 plicity, his loneliness, and in a sense his pathetic helpless- 
 ness, would certainly evoke the tenderness in Nayan. "He'll 
 probably like her dear, ridiculous name, too," Dr. Fillery 
 felt, "the nickname they gave her because she's the same 
 to everybody, whichever way you take her Nayan Khil- 
 koff." Yet her real name was more beautiful Iraida. And, 
 as he repeated it half aloud, a soft light stole upon his face, 
 shone in the deep clear eyes, and touched even the corners 
 of the rather grim mouth with another, a tenderer expres- 
 sion, before the sternness quickly returned to it. 
 
 "N f H." would meet, thus, two main types of female 
 life. He, apparently an exceedingly male being, would face 
 the onslaught of passion and heart, of lust and love, respec- 
 tively; and it was his reactions to these onslaughts that 
 Fillery wished to observe. They would help his diagnosis, 
 they might guide his treatment. 
 
 It was a warm and muggy afternoon, the twilight pass- 
 ing rapidly into darkness now; one of those late autumn 
 days when summer heat flits back, but light is weak. The 
 covered sky increased the clammy warmth, which was 
 damp, unhealthy, devitalizing. No wind stirred. The great 
 city was sticky and depressing. Yet people approved the
 
 32 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 heat, although it tired them. "It shortens the winter, any- 
 how," was the general verdict, when expressed at all. They 
 referred unconsciously to the general dread of strikes. 
 
 London was hurried and confused. An air of feverish 
 overcrowding reigned in the great station, when he left the 
 car and went in on foot. No sign of order, system, direc- 
 tion, was visible. The scene might have been a first re- 
 hearsal of some entirely new experiment. Grumbling and 
 complaint rose from all sides in an exasperated chorus. 
 He tried to ascertain how late the train was and on which 
 platform it might be expected, but no one knew for certain, 
 and the grudging replies to questions seemed to say, 
 "You've no right to ask anything, and if you keep on ask- 
 ing there will be a strike. So that's that !" 
 
 He listened to the talk and watched the facial expres- 
 sions and the movements of the half -resigned and half- 
 excited concourse of London citizens. The clock was 
 accurate, and everyone was kind to ladies; stewed tea, stale 
 cake with little stones in it, vile whisky and very weak 
 beer were obtainable at high prices. There were no matches. 
 The machine for supplying platform-tickets was broken. 
 He saw men paying more thought and attention to the 
 comfort of their dogs than to their own. The great, marvel- 
 lous, stupid, splendid race was puzzled and exasperated. 
 Then, suddenly, the train pulled in, full of returned exiles 
 longing to be back again in "dear old England." 
 
 "Thank God, it's come," sighed the crowd. "Good! 
 We're English. Forgive and forget!" and prepared to tip 
 the porters handsomely and carry their own baggage. 
 
 The confusion that followed was equally characteristic, 
 and equally remarkable, displaying greatness side by side 
 with its defects. There was no system; all was muddled, 
 yet all was safe. Anyone could claim what luggage they 
 liked, though no one did so, nor dreamed, it seemed, of 
 doing so. There was an air of decent honesty and trust. 
 There were ladies who discovered that all men are savages ; 
 there were men and women who were savages. People
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 33 
 
 shook hands warmly, smiled with honest affection, said 
 light, careless good-byes that hid genuine emotion; helped 
 one another with parcels, offered one another lifts. There 
 were few taxicabs, one perhaps to every thirty people. 
 And in this general scrimmage, Dr. Fillery, at first, could 
 see no sign of his expected arrivals; he walked from end 
 to end of the platform littered with luggage and thronged 
 with bustling people, but nowhere could he discover the 
 familiar outline of Devonham, nor anyone who answered 
 to the strange picture that already stood forth sharply in 
 his mind. 
 
 "There's been a mistake somewhere," he said to himself ; 
 "I shall find a telegram when I get back to the house 
 explaining it" when, suddenly and without apparent cause, 
 there stole upon him a curious lift of freedom a sharp 
 sense of open spaces he was at a loss to understand. It 
 was accompanied by an increase of light. For a second it 
 occurred to him that the great enclosing roof had rolled 
 back and blown away, letting in air and some lost ray of 
 sunshine. A lovely valley flitted across his thought. Al- 
 most he was aware of flowers, of music, of rhythmic move- 
 ment. 
 
 "Edward! there you are. I thought you hadn't come," 
 he heard close behind him, and, turning, saw the figure of 
 Devonham, calm and alert as usual. At his side stood a 
 lean, virile outline of a young man, topping Devonham by 
 several inches, with broad but thin shoulders, figure erect 
 yet flexible, whose shining and inquiring eyes of blue were 
 the most striking feature in a boyish face, where strength, 
 intensity and radiant health combined in an unusual degree. 
 
 "Here is our friend, LeVallon," added Devonham, but 
 not before the figure had stepped lightly and quickly for- 
 ward, already staring at him and shaking his outstretched 
 hand. 
 
 So this was "N. H.," and LeVallon was his name. The 
 calm, searching eyes held a touch of bewilderment in them, 
 the eyes of an honest, intelligent animal, thought Fillery
 
 34 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 quickly, adding in spite of himself and almost simul- 
 taneously, "but of a divine animal." It was a look he had 
 never in his life before encountered in any human eyes. 
 Mason's water-colour sketch had caught something, at least, 
 of their innocence and question, of their odd directness 
 and intensity, something, too, of the golden fire in the hair. 
 He wore a broad-brimmed felt hat of Swiss pattern, a 
 Bernese overcoat, a low, soft-collared shirt, with blue tie 
 to match. 
 
 Buffeted and pushed by the frenzied travellers, they stood 
 and faced each other, shaking hands, eyes looking into 
 eyes, two strangers, doctor and patient possibly, but friends 
 most certainly, both felt instantly. They liked one another, 
 Once again the scent of flowers danced with light above 
 the piled-up heaps of trunks, rugs, packages. A cool wind 
 from mountains seemed to blow across the dreadful station. 
 
 "You've arrived safely," began Dr. Fillery, a little taken 
 
 aback perhaps. "Welcome ! And not too tired, I hope 
 
 when the other interrupted him in a man's deep voice, full 
 of pleasant timbre : 
 
 "Fill-er-y," he said, making the "F" sound rather long, 
 "I need you. To see you makes me happy." 
 
 "Tired," put in Devonham breathlessly, "good heavens, 
 not he ! But I am. Now for a porter and the big luggage. 
 Have you got a taxi ?" 
 
 "The car is here," said Fillery, letting go with a certain 
 reluctance the hand he held, and paying little attention to 
 anything but the figure before him who used such unex- 
 pected language. What was it? What did it mean? 
 Whence came this sudden sense of intensity, light, of order, 
 system, intelligence into the racial scene of muddled turmoil 
 all about him? There seemed an air of speeding up in 
 thought and action near him, compared to which the slow 
 stupidity, unco-ordinated and confused on all sides, became 
 painful, gross, and even ludicrous. 
 
 Someone bumped against him with violence, but quite 
 needlessly, since the simplest judgment of weight and dis- 
 tance could have avoided the collision. In such ordinary
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 35 
 
 small details he was aware of another, a higher, standard 
 close. A man on his left, trying to manage several bundles, 
 appeared vividly as of amazing incompetence, with his mis- 
 calculation, his clumsy movement, his hopeless inability to 
 judge cause and effect. Yet he had two arms, ten fingers, 
 two legs, broad shoulders and deep chest. Misdirection of 
 his great strength made it impossible for him to manage 
 the assortment of light parcels. Next to him, however, stood 
 a woman carrying a baby there was no error there. The 
 panting engine just beyond them, again, set a standard of 
 contemptuous, impersonal intelligence that, obeying Nature's 
 laws, dwarfed the humans generally. But it was another, 
 a quasi-spiritual standard that had flashed to him above all. 
 In some curious way the competent "dead" machinery that 
 obeyed the Law with faultless efficiency, and the woman 
 obeying instinct with equally unconscious skill these two 
 energies were akin to the new standard he was now 
 startlingly aware of. 
 
 He looked up, as though to trace this sudden new con- 
 sciousness of bright, quick, rapid competence almost as 
 of some immense power building with consistent scheme 
 and system that had occurred to him; and he met again 
 the direct, yet slightly bewildered eyes that watched him, 
 watched him with confidence, sweetness, and with a ques- 
 tioning intensity he found intriguing, captivating, and oddly 
 stimulating. He felt happiness. 
 
 "By yer leave!" roared a porter, as they stepped aside 
 just in time to save being pushed by the laden truck 
 just in time to save himself, that is, for the other, Fillery 
 noticed, moved like a chamois on its native rocks, so surely, 
 lightly, swiftly was he poised. 
 
 "This! Ah, you must excuse it," the doctor exclaimed 
 with a smile of apology almost, "we've not yet had time 
 to settle down after the war, you see." He pointed with 
 a sweep of his hand to the roaring, dim-lit cavern where 
 confusion reigned supreme, the G.H.Q. of travel in the 
 biggest city of the Empire. 
 
 "I've got a porter,'"' cried Devonham, beckoning vigorously
 
 36 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 a little further down the platform. "You wait there. I'll 
 be along in a minute with the stuff." He was hot, flustered, 
 exhausted. 
 
 "You struggle. It was like this all the way. Is there 
 no knowledge?" LeVallon asked in his deep, quiet tones. 
 
 "We do," said Fillery. "With us life is always struggle. 
 But there is more system than appears. The confusion is 
 chiefly on the surface." 
 
 "It is dark and there is so little air," observed the other. 
 "And they all work against each other." 
 
 Fillery laughed into the other's eyes; they laughed to- 
 gether; and it seemed suddenly to the doctor that their 
 beings somehow merged, so that, for a second, he knew 
 the entire content of his companion's mind as if there 
 was nothing in LeVallon he did not understand. 
 
 "You are a builder," LeVallon said abruptly. But as 
 he said it his companion caught, on the wing as it were, 
 another meaning. He became curiously aware of the small- 
 ness, of the remote insignificance of the little planet whereon 
 this dialogue took place, yet at the same time of its superb 
 seductive loveliness. In him rose a feeling, as on wings, 
 that he was not chained in his familiar, daily personality, 
 but that an immense, delicious freedom lay within reach. 
 He could be everywhere at once. He could do everything. 
 
 "Wait here while I help Devonham. Then we'll get into 
 the car and be off." He moved away, threading a path 
 with difficulty. 
 
 "I wait in peace. I am happy," was the reply. 
 
 And with those few phrases, uttered in the quiet, deep 
 voice, sounding in his ears and in his very blood, the older 
 man went towards the spot where Devonham struggled with 
 a porter, a pile of nondescript luggage and a truck : "I wait 
 in peace. . . . You struggle, you work against each 
 other. ... It is dark, there is little air. . . . You are a 
 builder. . . ." 
 
 But not these singular words alone remained alive in 
 his mind; there remained in his heart the sense of that
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 37 
 
 vitality of open spaces, keen air and brighter light he had 
 experienced and, with it, the security of some higher, 
 faultless standard. His brain, indeed, had recognized a 
 consciousness of swifter reactions, of surer movements, of 
 more intelligent co-ordination, compared to which the people 
 about him behaved like stupid, almost like half-witted 
 beings, the one exception being the instinctive action of the 
 mother in carrying her baby, and the other, the impersonal, 
 accurate, competence of the dead machinery. 
 
 But, more than this reasoned change, there burned sud- 
 denly in his heart an inexplicable exhilaration and bright- 
 ness, a wonder that he could attribute only to another mode 
 of life. His Khaketian blood, he knew, might be responsible 
 for part of it, but not for all. The invigorating mountain 
 wind, the sunlight, the rhythmic sound, the scent of wild 
 flowers, these were his own personal interpretations of a 
 quickened sense he could not analyse as yet. As he held 
 the young man's hand, as he gazed into his direct blue 
 eyes, this sense had increased in intensity. LeVallon had 
 some marvellous quality or power that was new to him, 
 while yet not entirely unfamiliar. What was it ? And how 
 did the youth perceive this sense in him so surely that he 
 took its presence for granted, accepted, even played upon 
 it? He experienced, as it were, a brilliant intensification 
 of spirit. Some portion of him already knew exactly what 
 LeVallon was. 
 
 Across the ugly turmoil and confusion of the huge dingy 
 railway terminus had moved wondrously some simple power 
 that brought in Beauty. Some very deep and ancient 
 conception had touched him and gone its way again. The 
 stupendous beauty of a simple, common day appeared to 
 him. His subconscious being, of course, was deeply stirred. 
 That was the truth, phrase it as he might. His heart was 
 lifted as by a primal wind at dawn upon some mountain 
 top. The heaviness of the day was gone. Fatigue, too, 
 vanished. The "civilized" folk appeared contemptible and 
 stupid. Something direct from Nature herself poured
 
 38 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 through him., And it was from the atmosphere of LeVallon 
 this new vitality issued radiating. 
 
 He found a moment or two, while alone with Devonham, 
 to exchange a few hurried sentences. As they bent over 
 bags and bundles he asked quick questions. These ques- 
 tions and answers between the two experienced men were 
 brief but significant: 
 
 "Yes, quiet as a lamb. Just be kind and sympathetic. 
 You looked up the Notes ? Well, that can't be helped now, 
 though I had rather you knew nothing. My mistake, of 
 course." 
 
 "The content of his mind is accessible to me telepath- 
 ically in any case." 
 
 "But at one remove more distant, because unexpressed." 
 
 Fillery laughed. "Quite right. I admit it's a pity. But 
 tell me more about him anything I ought to know at 
 once." 
 
 "Quiet as a lamb, I told you," repeated the other, "and 
 most of the way over too. Butt puzzled my God, Edward, 
 his criticisms would make a book." 
 
 "Normal? Intelligent criticisms?" 
 
 "Intelligent above ordinary. Normal no." 
 
 "Hysteria?" 
 
 "Not a sign." 
 
 "Health?" 
 
 "Perfect, magnificent, as you see. He's less tired now 
 than when we started three days ago, whereas I'm fagged 
 out, though in climbing condition." 
 
 "Origin of delusions any indication?" 
 
 Devonham looked up quickly. His eyes flashed a 
 peculiarly searching glance something watchful in it per- 
 haps. "No delusion at all of any sort. As for origin of 
 his ideas the parents probably, but stimulated and allowed 
 unchecked growth by Mason. Affected by Nature beyond 
 anything we know." 
 
 "By Nature. Ah!" He checked himself. "And what 
 peculiarities?" he asked.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 39 
 
 "His terror of water, for instance. Crossing the Channel 
 he was like a frightened child. He hid from it, kept his 
 hands over his eyes even, so as not to see it." 
 
 "Give any reason?" 
 
 "All he said was 'It is unknown, an enemy, and can 
 destroy me, I cannot understand its secret ways. Fire 
 and wind are not in it. I cannot work with it.' No, it 
 was not fear of drowning that he meant. He found com- 
 fort, too, in the repetition of your name." 
 
 "Appetite, pulse, temperature?" asked Fillery, after a 
 brief pause. 
 
 "First two very strong ; temperature always slightly above 
 normal." 
 
 "Other peculiarities ?" 
 
 "He became rather excited before a lighted match once 
 tried to kneel, almost, but I stopped it." 
 
 "Fire?" 
 
 "That's it. Instinct of worship presumably." 
 
 The barrow was laden, the porter was asking where 
 the car was. They prepared to move back to the com- 
 panion, whom Fillery had never failed to observe care- 
 fully over his shoulder during this rapid conversation. 
 "N. H." had not moved the whole time: he stood quietly, 
 looking about him, a curious figure, aloof somehow from 
 his surroundings, so tall and straight and unconcerned he 
 seemed, yet so poised, alert, virile, vigorous. It was not 
 'his clothes that made him appear unusual, nor was it his 
 eyes and hair alone, though all three contributed their 
 share. Yet he seemed dressed up, his clothes irksome to 
 him. He was uncommon, an attractive figure, and many 
 a pair of eyes, female eyes especially, Fillery noticed, turned 
 to examine him with undeniable curiosity. 
 
 "And women?" the doctor asked quickly in a lowered 
 voice, as they followed the porter's barrow towards Le- 
 Vallon, who already smiled at their approach the most 
 engaging, trustful, welcoming smile that Fillery Bad ever 
 seen upon a human countenance.
 
 40 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 He lowered his head to catch the reply. But Devonham 
 only laughed and shrugged his shoulders. "All attracted," 
 he mumbled in a half whisper, "and eager to help him." 
 
 "And he ?" 
 
 "Gentle, astonished, but indifferent, oh, supremely in- 
 different." 
 
 LeVallon came forward to meet them, and Fillery took 
 his hand and led him to the car. The luggage was bundled 
 in, some behind and some on the roof. Fillery and Le- 
 Vallon sat side by side. The car started. 
 
 "We shall get home in half an hour," the doctor men- 
 tioned, turning to his companion. "We'll have a good 
 dinner and then get to bed. You are hungry, I know." 
 
 "Thank you," was the reply, "thank you, dear Fillery. 
 I want sleep most. Will there be trees and air near me? 
 And stars to see?" 
 
 "Your windows open on to a garden with big trees, there 
 will be plenty of fresh air, and you will hear the sparrows 
 chattering at dawn. But London, of course, is not the 
 country. Oh, we'll make you comfortable, never fear." 
 
 "Dear Fillery, I thank you," said LeVallon quietly, and 
 without more ado lay back among the soft cushions and 
 closed his eyes. Hardly a word was said the whole way 
 out to the north-west suburb, and when they arrived the 
 "patient" was too overcome with sleep to wish to eat. He 
 went straight to his room, found a hot bath into which he 
 tumbled first, and then leaped into his bed and was sound 
 asleep almost before the door was closed. Upon a table 
 beside the bed Dr. Fillery, with his own hands, arranged 
 bread, butter, eggs and a jug of milk in case of need. 
 Nurse Robbins, an experienced, tactful young woman, he 
 put in special charge. He thought of everything, divining 
 his friend's possible needs instinctively, noticing with his 
 keen practised eye several details for himself at the same 
 time. The splendid physical condition, frame-work, 
 muscular development he noted no freakish bulky masses 
 produced by gymnastic exercises, but the muscles laid on
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 41 
 
 flowingly, smooth and firm and ample, without a trace of 
 fat, and the whole in the most admirable proportion pos- 
 sible. The leanness was deceptive ; the body was of immense 
 power. The quick, certain, unerring movements he noticed 
 too; perfect, swift co-ordination between brain and phys- 
 ical response, no misdirection, no miscalculation, the reac- 
 tions extremely rapid. He thought with a smile of some- 
 thing between deer and tiger. The poise and balance and 
 accuracy conveyed intense joy of living. Yet above and 
 beyond these was something else he could not name, some- 
 thing that stirred in him wonder, love, a touch of awe, and 
 a haunting suggestion of familiarity. 
 
 He saw him into bed, he saw him actually asleep* The 
 strong blue eyes looked up into his own with their intense 
 and innocent gaze for a moment; he held the firm, dry 
 muscular hand; ten seconds later the eyes were closed in 
 sleep, the grip of the powerful but slender fingers relaxed. 
 
 "Good night, my friend, and sleep deeply. To-morrow 
 we'll see to everything you need. Be happy here and com- 
 fortable with us, for you are welcome and we love you." 
 His voice trembled slightly. 
 
 "Good night, dear Fill-er-y," the musical tones replied, 
 and he was off. 
 
 The windows were wide open. "N. H." had thrown 
 aside the pyjamas and blankets. On this cool, damp night 
 of late autumn he covered his big, warm, lithe body with a 
 single sheet only. 
 
 Fillery went out quietly, an expression of keen approval 
 and enjoyment on his face not a smile exactly, but that 
 look of deep content, betraying a fine inner excitement of 
 happiness, which is the mother of all smiles. As he softly 
 opened the door the draught blew through from the open 
 windows, stirring the white curtains by the bed. It came 
 from the big damp garden where the trees stood, already 
 nearly leafless, and where no flowers were. And yet a 
 scent of flowers came faintly with it. He caught an echo 
 of faint sound like music. There was the invigorating
 
 42 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 hint of forests too. It seemed a living wind that blew into 
 the house. 
 
 Dr. Fillery paused a moment, sniffed with surprise and 
 sharp enjoyment, listened intently, then switched the light 
 off and went out, closing the door behind him. There was 
 a flash of wonder in his eyes, and a thrill of some remote 
 inexplicable happiness ran through his nerves. An instant 
 of complete comprehension had been his, as if another con- 
 sciousness had, for that swift instant, identified itself with 
 his own.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 EDWARD FILLERY was glad that Paul Devonham, 
 good friend and skillful colleague, was his assistant; 
 for Devonham, competent as himself in knowledge and 
 experience, found explanations for all things, and had in 
 his natural temperament a quality of sane judgment which 
 corrected extravagances. 
 
 Devonham was agnostic, because reason ruled his life. 
 Devoid of imagination, he had no temptations. Speculative, 
 within limits, he might be, but he belonged not to the 
 unstable. Not that he thought he knew everything, but 
 that he refused to base action on what he regarded as 
 unknown. A clue into the unknown he would follow up 
 as keenly, carefully, as Fillery himself, but he went step 
 by step, with caution, declining to move further until the 
 last step was of hardened concrete. To the powers of the 
 subconscious self he set drastic limits, admitting their 
 existence of course, but attaching small value to their use 
 or development. His own deeper being had never stirred 
 or wakened. Of this under-sea, this vast background in 
 himself, he remained placidly uninformed. A comprehensive 
 view of a problem the flash of vision he never knew 
 thus was perhaps denied him, but so far as he went he was 
 very safe and sure. And his chief was the first to appreciate 
 his value. He appreciated it particularly now, as the two 
 men sat smoking after their late dinner, discussing details 
 of the new inmate of the Home. 
 
 Fillery, aware of the strong pull upon his own mixed 
 blood, aware of a half-wild instinctive sympathy towards 
 "N. H.," almost of a natural desire now, having seen him, 
 to believe him "unique" in several ways, and, therefore, 
 
 43
 
 44 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 conscious of a readiness to accept more than any evidence 
 yet justified feeling these symptoms clearly, and remem- 
 bering vividly his experiences in the railway station, he 
 was glad, for truth's sake, that Devonham was there to 
 clip extravagance before it injured judgment. A weak 
 man, aware of his own frailties, excels a stronger one who 
 thinks he has none at all. The two colleagues were a power- 
 ful combination. 
 
 "In your view, it's merely a case of a secondary any- 
 how of a divided personality?" he asked, as soon as the 
 other had recovered a little from his journey, and was 
 digesting his meal comfortably over a pipe. "You have 
 seen more of him than I have. Of insanity, at any rate, 
 there is no sign at all, I take it? His relations with his 
 environment are sound?" 
 
 "None whatever." Devonham answered both questions 
 at once. "Exactly." 
 
 He took off his pince-nez, cleaned them with his hand- 
 kerchief, and then replaced them carefully. This gave him 
 time to reflect, as though he was not quite sure where to 
 begin his story. 
 
 "There are certainly indications," he went on slowly, 
 "of a divided personality, though of an unusual kind. The 
 margin between the two between the normal and the 
 secondary self is so very slight. It is not clearly defined, 
 I mean. They sometimes merge and interpenetrate. The 
 frontier is almost indistinguishable." 
 
 Fillery raised his eyebrows. 
 
 "You feel uncertain which is the main self, and which 
 the split-off secondary personality?" he inquired, with sur- 
 prise. 
 
 Devonham nodded. "I'm extremely puzzled," he ad- 
 mitted. "LeVallon's most marked self, the best defined, 
 the richest, the most fully developed, seems to me what we 
 should call his Secondary Self this 'Nature-being' that 
 worships wind and fire, is terrified by a large body of water, 
 is ignorant of human ways, probably also quite ww-moral,
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 45 
 
 yet alive with a kind of instinctive wisdom we credit 
 usually to the animal kingdom though far beyond any- 
 thing animals can claim " 
 
 "Briefly, what we mean by the term 'N. H.,' " suggested 
 Fillery, not anxious for too many details at the moment. 
 
 "Exactly. And I propose we always refer to that aspect 
 of him as 'N. H./ the other, the normal ordinary man, 
 being LeVallon, his right name." He smiled faintly. 
 
 "Agreed," replied his chief. "We shall always know 
 then exactly which one we're talking of at a given moment. 
 Now," he went on, "to come to the chief point, and before 
 you give me details of what happened abroad, let me hear 
 your own main conclusion. What is LeVallon? What is 
 'N. H.' ?" 
 
 Devonham hesitated for some time. It was evident his 
 respect for his chief made him cautious. There was an 
 eternal battle between these two, keen though always good- 
 natured, even humorous, the victory not invariably per- 
 haps with the assistant. Later evidence had often proved 
 Fillery's swifter imagination correct after all, or, alter- 
 nately, shown him to be wrong. They kept an accurate 
 score of the points won and lost by either. 
 
 "You can always revise your conclusions later," Fillery 
 reminded him slyly. "Call it a preliminary conclusion for 
 the moment. You've not had time yet for a careful study, 
 I know." 
 
 But Devonham this time did not smile at the rally, and 
 his chief noticed it with secret approval. Here was some- 
 thing new, big, serious, it seemed. Devonham, apparently, 
 was already too interested to care who scored or did not 
 score. His Notes of 1914 indeed betrayed his genuine 
 zeal sufficiently. 
 
 "LeVallon," he said at length "to begin with him! I 
 think LeVallon without any flavour of 'N. H/ is a fine 
 specimen of a normal human being. His physique is 
 magnificent, as you have seen, his health and strength 
 exceptional. The brain, so far as I have been able to judge,
 
 46 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 functions quite normally. The intelligence, also normal, is 
 much above the average in quickness, receptivity of ideas, 
 and judgment based on these. The emotional development, 
 however, puzzles me; the emotions are not entirely normal. 
 But" he paused again, a grave expression on his face 
 "to answer your question as well as my limited observation 
 of him, of LeVallon, allows I repeat that I consider him 
 a normal young man, though with peculiarities and idiosyn- 
 crasies of his own, as with most other normal young fellows 
 who are individuals, that is," he added quickly, "and not 
 turned out in bundles cut to measure." 
 
 "So much for LeVallon. Now what about 'N. H.' ?" 
 
 He repeated the question, fixing the assistant with his 
 steady gaze. He had noticed the confusion in the reply. 
 
 "My dear Edward " began Devonham, after a con- 
 siderable pause. Then he stuck fast, sighed, settled his 
 glasses carefully upon his aquiline, sharp nose, and relapsed 
 into silence. His forehead became wrinkled, his mouth 
 much pursed. 
 
 "Out with it, Paul ! This isn't a Court of Law. I shan't 
 behead you if you're wrong." Yet Fillery, too, spoke 
 gravely. 
 
 The other kept his eyes down; his face still wore a 
 puzzled look. Fillery detected a new expression on the 
 keen, thoughtful features, and he was pleased to see it. 
 
 "To give you the truth," resumed his assistant, "and all 
 question of who is right or who is wrong aside, I tell you 
 frankly I am not sure. I confess myself up against it. 
 
 It er gives me the creeps a little " He laughed 
 
 awkwardly. That swift watchful look, as of a man who 
 plays a part, flashed and vanished. 
 
 "Your feeling, anyhow?" insisted his friend. "Your 
 general feeling?" 
 
 "A general judgment based on general feeling," said the 
 other in a quiet tone, "has little value. It is based, neces- 
 sarily, as you know, upon intuition, which I temperamentally 
 dislike. It has no facts to go upon. I distrust generaliza-
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 47 
 
 tions." He took a deep breath, inhaled a lot of smoke, 
 exhaled it with relief, and made an effort. It went against 
 the grain in him to be caught without an explanation. 
 
 " 'N. H.' in my opinion, and so far as my limited obser- 
 vation of him " 
 
 Fillery allowed himself a laugh of amused impatience. 
 "Leave out the personal extras for once, and burn your 
 bridges. Tell me finally what you think about 'N. H.' 
 We're not scoring points now." 
 
 Thus faced with an alternative, Devonham found his 
 sense of humour again and forgot himself. It cost him 
 an effort, but he obeyed the bigger and less personal mind. 
 
 "I really don't know exactly what he is," he confessed 
 again. "He puzzles me completely. It may be" he 
 shrugged his shoulders, compelled by his temperament to 
 hedge "that he represents, as I first thought, the content 
 of his parents' minds, the subsequent addition of Mason's 
 mind included." 
 
 "That's possible, usual and comprehensible enough," put 
 in the doctor, watching him with amused concentration, 
 but with an inner excitement scarcely concealed. 
 
 "Or" resumed Devonham, "it may be that through 
 these " 
 
 "Through his mental inheritance from his parents and 
 from Mason, yes " 
 
 " he taps the most primitive stores and layers of 
 
 racial memory we know. The world-memory, if I dare 
 put it so, full proof being lacking, is open to him " 
 
 "Through his subconscious powers, of course?" 
 
 "That is your usual theory, isn't it? We have there, at 
 any rate, a working hypothesis, with a great mass of evi- 
 dence generally speaking behind it." 
 
 "Don't be cynical, Paul. Is this 'N. H.' merely a 
 Secondary Personality, or is it the real central self? That's 
 the whole point." 
 
 "You jump ahead, as usual," replied Devonham, really 
 smiling for the first lime, though his face instantly grew
 
 48 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 serious again. "Edward," he went on, "I do not know, I 
 cannot say, I dare not <lare not guess. 'N. H.' is some- 
 thing entirely new to me, and I admit it" He seemed to 
 find his stride, to forget himself. "I feel far from cynical. 
 'N. H./ in my opinion, is exceptional. My notes suggested 
 it long ago. He has, for instance at least, so it seems to 
 me peculiar powers." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 "Of suggestion, let us put it." 
 
 "Of suggestion, yes. Get on with it, there's a good fellow. 
 I felt myself an extraordinary vitality about him. I noticed 
 it at once at Charing Cross." 
 
 "I saw you did" Devonham looked hard at him. "You 
 were humming to yourself, you know." 
 
 "I didn't know," was the surprised reply, "but I can 
 well believe it. I felt a curious pleasure and exhilaration." 
 
 Devonham, shrugging his shoulders slightly, resumed : 
 "During the 'LeVallon' periods he is ordinary, though 
 unusually observant, critical and intelligent; during the 
 'X. H.' periods he becomes er super-normal. If you felt 
 this felt anything in the station, it was because something 
 in you called up the 'N. H.' aspect" 
 
 "It's quick of you to guess that," said Fillery, with quick 
 appreciation. "You noticed a change in me, well but the 
 other ? He divined my 'foreign' blood, you think?" 
 
 "It is enough that you responded and felt kinship. Put 
 it that way. 'N. H.' seems to me" he took a deeper breath 
 and gave a sort of gasp "in some ways a unique being 
 as I said before." 
 
 "Tell me, if you can," said Fillery, lighting his own pipe 
 and settling back into his chair, "tell me a little about your 
 first meeting with him in the Jura Mountains, what hap- 
 pened and so forth. I remember, of course, your Notes. 
 After your telegram, I read 'em carefully." He glanced 
 round at his companion. "They were very honest, Paul, 
 I thought. Eh?" He was unable to refuse himself the
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 49 
 
 pleasure of the little dig. "Honest you always are," he 
 added. "We couldn't work together otherwise, could we?" 
 
 Devonham, deep in his own thoughts, did not accept the 
 challenge. He turned in his chair, puffing at his pipe, 
 
 "I can give you briefly what happened and how things 
 went," he said. "The place, then, first : an ordinary peasant 
 chalet in a remote Jura valley, difficult of access, situated 
 among what they call the upper pastures. I reached it by 
 diligence and mule late in the afternoon. A peasant in a 
 lower valley directed me, adding that 'le monsieur anglais* 
 was dead and buried two days before " 
 
 "Mason, that is?" 
 
 The other nodded. "And adding that 'le fou' " 
 
 "LeVallon, of course?" 
 
 " would eat me alive at sight. He spoke with respect, 
 
 however, even awe. He hoped I had come to take him 
 away. The countryside was afraid of him. 
 
 "The valley struck me as intolerably lonely, but of 
 unusual beauty. Big forests, great rocks, and tumbling 
 streams among cliffs and pastures made it exceptional. The 
 chalet was simple, clean and comfortable. It was really 
 an ideal spot for a thinker or a student. The first thing 
 I noticed was a fire burning on a pile of rock in front of 
 the building. The sun was setting, and its last rays lit the 
 entire little glen a mere gully between precipices and 
 forest slopes but especially lit up the pile of rocks where 
 the fire burned, so that I saw the smoke, blue, red and 
 yellow, and the figure kneeling before it. This figure was 
 a man, half naked, and of magnificent proportions. When 
 I shouted " 
 
 "You would shout, of course," Yet he did not say it 
 critically. 
 
 " the figure rose and turned and came to meet me. 
 
 It was LeVallon." 
 
 Devonham paused a moment. Fillery's eyes were fixed 
 upon him.
 
 50 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 "I admit," Devonham went on, conscious of the other's 
 inquiring and intent expression, "I was surprised a bit." 
 He smiled his faint, unwilling smile. "The figure made 
 me start. I was aware of an emotion I am not subject to 
 what I called just now the creeps. I thought, at last, 
 I had really seen a a vision. He looked so huge, so won- 
 derful, so radiant. It was, of course, the effect of coloured 
 smoke and magnifying sunset, added to his semi-nakedness. 
 To the waist he was stripped. But, at first, his size, his 
 splendour, a kind of radiance borrowed from the sunlight 
 and the fire, seemed to enlarge him beyond human. He 
 seemed to dominate, even to fill the little valley. 
 
 "I stood still, uncertain of my feelings. There was, I 
 think, a trace of fear in me. I waited for him to come up 
 to me. He did so. He stretched out a hand. I took it. 
 And what do you think he said ?" 
 
 Fillery, the inner excitement and delight increasing in 
 him as he listened, stared in silence. There was no light- 
 ness in him now. 
 
 " 'Are you Fillery ?' That's what he said, and the first 
 words he uttered. 'Are you Fillery?' But spoken in a 
 way I find difficult to reproduce. He made the name sound 
 like a rush of wind. 'F,' of course, involves a draught of 
 breath between the teeth, I know. But he made the name 
 sound exactly like a gush of wind through branches that's 
 the nearest I can get to it," 
 
 "Well and then?" 
 
 "Don't be impatient, Edward. I try to be accurate. But 
 really what happened next is a bit beyond any experience 
 that we I have yet come across. And, as to what I felt 
 well, I was tired, hungry, thirsty. I wanted, normally, 
 rest and food and drink. Yet all these were utterly for- 
 gotten. For a moment or two I admit it I felt as if I 
 had come face to face with something not of this earth 
 quite." He grinned. "A touch of gooseflesh came to me 
 for the first time in my life. The fellow's size and radiance 
 in the sunlight, the fact that he stood there worshipping
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 51 
 
 fire always, to me, the most wonderful of natural phe- 
 nomena his grandeur and nakedness the way he pro- 
 nounced your name even all this er upset my judgment 
 for the moment." He paused again. He hesitated. "A 
 visual hallucination, due to fatigue, can be, of course, very 
 detailed sometimes," he added, a note of challenge in his 
 tone. 
 
 Fillery watched his friend narrowly, as he stumbled 
 among the details of what he evidently found a difficult, 
 almost an impossible description. 
 
 "Natural enough," he put in. "You'd hardly be human 
 yourself if you felt nothing at such a sight." 
 
 "The loneliness, too, increased the effect," went on the 
 other, "for there was no one nearer than the peasants who 
 had directed me a thousand feet below, nor was there 
 another building of any sort in sight. Anyhow, it seemed, 
 I managed my strange emotions all right, for the young 
 man took to me at once. He left the fire, if reluctantly, 
 singing to himself a sort of low chanting melody, with 
 perhaps five or six notes at most in it, and far from 
 unmusical " 
 
 "He explained the fire? Was he actually worshipping, 
 I mean?" 
 
 "It was certainly worship, judging by the expression of 
 his face and his gestures of reverence and happiness. But 
 I asked no questions. I thought it best just to accept, or 
 appear to accept, the whole thing as natural. He said some- 
 thing about the Equinox, but I did not catch it properly 
 and did not ask. This had evidently been taught him. It 
 was, however, the 22nd of September, oddly enough, though 
 the gales had not yet come." 
 
 "So you got into the chalet next?" asked the other, 
 noticing the gaps, the incoherence. 
 
 "He put his coat on, sat down with me to a meal of 
 bread and milk and cheese meat there seemed none in 
 the building anywhere. This meal was, if you understand 
 me, obeying a mere habit automatically. He did just what
 
 52 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 it had been his habit to do with Mason all these years. 
 He got the stuff himself quickly, effectively, no fumbling 
 anywhere and, from that moment, hardly spoke again until 
 we left two days later. I mean that literally. All he said, 
 when I tried to make him talk, was, 'You are not Fillery,' 
 or 'Take me to Fillery. I need him/ 
 
 "I almost felt that I was living with some marvellously 
 trained animal, of extraordinary intelligence, gentle, docile, 
 friendly, but unhappy because it had lost its accustomed 
 master. But on the other hand I admit it I was con- 
 scious of a certain power in his personality beyond me to 
 explain. That, really, is the best description I can give 
 you." 
 
 "You mentioned the name of Mason?" asked Fillery, 
 avoiding a dozen more obvious and natural questions. 
 
 "Several times. But his only reply was a smile, while 
 he repeated the name himself, adding your own after it: 
 'Mason Fillery, Mason Fillery,' he would say, smiling with 
 quiet happiness. 'I like Fillery !' " 
 
 "The nights?" 
 
 "Briefly I was glad to see the dawn. We had separate 
 rooms, my own being the one probably where Mason had 
 died a few days before. But it was not that I minded in 
 the least. It was the feeling the knowledge in fact that 
 my companion was up and about all night in the building 
 or out of doors. I heard him moving, singing quietly to 
 himself, the wooden veranda creaked beneath his tread. 
 He was active all through the darkness and cannot have 
 slept at all. When I came down soon after dawn he was 
 running over the slopes a mile away, running towards the 
 chalet, too, with the speed and lightness of a deer. He had 
 been to some height, I think, to see the sun rise and probably 
 to worship it " 
 
 "And your journey? You got him away easily?" 
 
 "He was only too ready to leave, for it meant coming 
 to you. I arranged with the peasants below to have the 
 chalet closed up, took my charge to Neuchatel, and thence
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 53 
 
 to Berne, where I bought him an outfit, and arrived in due 
 course, as you know, at Charing Cross." 
 
 "His first sight of cities, people, trains, steamers and the 
 rest, I take it. Any reactions?" 
 
 "The troubles I anticipated did not materialize. He 
 came like a lamb, the most helpless and pathetic lamb I 
 ever saw. He stared but asked no questions. I think he 
 was half dazed, even stupefied with it all." 
 
 "Stupefied?" 
 
 "An odd word to use, I know. I should have said per- 
 haps 'automatic' rather. He was so open to my suggestions, 
 doing what my mind expected him to do, but nothing more 
 ah! with one exception." 
 
 Fillery meant to hear an account of that exception, though 
 the other would willingly have foregone its telling evi- 
 dently. It was related, Fillery felt sure, to the unusual 
 powers Devonham had mentioned. 
 
 "Oh, you shall hear it," said the latter quickly, "for 
 what it's worth. There's no need to exaggerate, of course." 
 He told it rapidly, accurately, no doubt, because his mind 
 was honest, yet without comment or expression in his voice 
 and face. He supplied no atmosphere. 
 
 "I had got him like a lamb, as I told you, to Paris, and 
 it was during the Customs examination the er little thing 
 occurred. The man, searching through his trunk, pulled 
 out a packet of flat papers and opened it. He looked them 
 over with puzzled interest, turning them upside down to 
 examine them from every possible angle. Then he asked 
 a trifle unpleasantly what they were. I hadn't the smallest 
 idea myself, I had never seen them before; they were very 
 carefully wrapped up. LeVallon, whose sudden excitement 
 increased the official's interest, told him that they were 
 star-and-weather maps. It doubtless was the truth ; he had 
 made them with Mason ; but they were queer-looking papers 
 to have at such a time, hidden away, too, at the bottom of 
 the trunk; and LeVallon's manner and expression did not 
 help to disarm the man's evident suspicion. He asked a
 
 54 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 number of pointed questions in a very disagreeable way 
 who made them, for what purpose, how they were used, 
 and whether they were connected with aviation. I trans- 
 lated, of course. I explained their innocence " 
 
 "LeVallon's excitement?" asked Fillery. "What form 
 did it take? Rudeness, anger, violence of any sort?" He 
 was aware his friend would have liked to shirk these 
 details. 
 
 "Nothing of the kind." He hesitated briefly, then went 
 on. "He behaved, rather, as though well, as a devout 
 Catholic might have behaved if his crucifix or some holy 
 relic were being mauled. The maps were sacred. Symbols 
 possibly. Heaven knows what! He tried to take them 
 back. The official, as a natural result, became still more 
 suspicious and, of course, offensive too. My explanations 
 and expostulations were quite useless, for he didn't even 
 listen to them." 
 
 Devonham was now approaching the part of the story 
 he least wished to describe. He played for time. He gave 
 details of the ensuing altercation. 
 
 "What happened in the end?" Fillery at length inter- 
 rupted. "What did LeVallon do? There were no arrests, 
 I take it?" he added with a smile. 
 
 Paul coughed and fidgeted. He told the literal truth, 
 however. 
 
 "LeVallon, after listening for a long time to the con- 
 versation he could not understand, suddenly took his fingers 
 off the papers. The man's dirty hand still held them tightly 
 on the grimy counter. LeVallon began or he suddenly 
 began to breathe well heavily rather." 
 
 "Rhythmically?" 
 
 "Heavily," insisted the other. "In a curious way, any- 
 how," he added, determined to keep strictly to the truth, 
 "not unlike Heathcote when he put himself automatically 
 into trance and then told us what was going on at the 
 other end of England. You remember the case." He 
 paused a moment again, as if to recall exactly what had
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 55 
 
 occurred. "It's not easy to describe, Edward," he con- 
 tinued, looking up. "You remember that huge draughty 
 hall where they examine luggage at the Lyons Station. I 
 can't explain it. But that breathing somehow caught the 
 draughts, used them possibly, in any case increased them. 
 A wind came through the great hall. I can't explain it," 
 he repeated, "I can only tell you what happened. That wind 
 most certainly came pouring steadily through, for I felt it 
 myself, and saw it blow upon the fluttering papers. The 
 heat in the salle at the same moment seemed to grow intense. 
 Not an oppressive heat, though. Radiant heat, rather. It 
 felt, I mean, like a fierce sunlight. I looked up, almost 
 expecting to see a great light from which it came. It was 
 then at this very moment the Frenchman turned as if 
 someone touched him." 
 
 "You felt anything, Paul?" 
 
 "Yes," admitted the other slowly. 
 
 Fillery waited. 
 
 "A what I must call a thrill." His voice was lower 
 now. 
 
 "Of ?" his Chief persisted. 
 
 Devonham waited a full ten seconds before reply. He 
 again shrugged his shoulders a little. Apparently he sought 
 his words with honest care that included also intense reluc- 
 tance and disapproval: 
 
 "Loveliness, romance, enchantment; but, above all, I 
 think power." He ground out the confession slowly. "By 
 power I mean a sort of confidence and happiness." 
 
 "Increase of vitality, call it. Intensification of your con- 
 sciousness." 
 
 "Possibly. A bigger perspective suddenly, a bigger scale 
 of life; something er a bit wild, but certainly er 
 uncommonly stimulating. The best word, I think, is liberty, 
 perhaps. An immense and careless sense of liberty." And 
 Fillery, knowing the value of superlatives in Devonham's 
 cautious mind, felt satisfied. He asked quietly what the 
 official did next.
 
 56 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 "Stood stock still at first. Then his face changed; he 
 smiled; he looked up understandingly, sympathetically, at 
 LeVallon. He spoke : 'My father, too,' he said with admira- 
 tion, 'had a big telescope. Monsieur is an astronomer.' 
 
 "'One of the greatest/ I added quickly; 'these charts 
 are of infinite value to France.' No sense of comedy 
 touched me anywhere, the ludicrous was absent. The man 
 bowed, as carefully, respect in every gesture, he replaced 
 the maps, marked the trunk with his piece of chalk, and 
 let us go, helping in every way he could." 
 
 Devonham drew a long breath, glad that he had relieved 
 himself of his unwelcome duty. He had told the literal 
 truth. 
 
 "Of course, of course," Fillery said, half to himself per- 
 haps, "A breath of bigger consciousness, his imagination 
 touched, the subconscious wakened, and intelligence the 
 natural result." He turned to his colleague. "Interesting, 
 Paul, very," he added in a louder tone, "and not easy to 
 explain, I grant. The official we do not know, but you, 
 at any rate, are not a good subject for hypnotic suggestion !" 
 
 For some time Devonham said nothing. Presently he 
 spoke : 
 
 "Fillery, I tell you really I love the fellow. He's the 
 most lovable thing in human shape I ever saw. He gets 
 into your heart so strangely. We must heal him." 
 
 The other sighed, quickly smothering it, yet not before 
 Devonham had noticed it. They did not look at one an- 
 other for some seconds, and there was a certain tenseness, 
 a sense of deep emotion in the air that each, possibly, 
 sought to hide from the other. 
 
 Devonham was the first to break the silence that had 
 fallen between them. 
 
 "To be quite frank it's LeVallon that appeals most to 
 me," he said, as if to himself, "whereas you, Edward, I 
 believe, are more more interested in the other aspect of 
 him. It's 'N. H.' that interests you." 
 
 No challenge was intended, yet the glove was flung.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 57 
 
 Fillery said nothing for a minute or two. Then he looked 
 up, and their eyes met across the smoke-laden atmosphere. 
 It was close on midnight. The world lay very still and 
 hushed about the house. 
 
 "It is," he said quietly, "a pathetic and inspiring case. 
 He is deserving of" he chose his words slowly and with 
 care "our very best," he concluded shortly. 
 
 "And now," he added quickly, "you're tired out, and I 
 ought to have let you have a night's sleep before taxing you 
 like this." He poured out two glasses of whisky. "Let us 
 drink anyhow to success and healing of body, mind and 
 soul." 
 
 "Body, mind and nerves," said Devonham slowly, as 
 he drank the toast. 
 
 "The reason I had none of the trouble I anticipated," 
 remarked Devonham, as he sipped the reviving liquor, "is 
 simple enough." 
 
 "There are two periods, of course, I guessed that." 
 
 "Exactly. There is the LeVallon period, when he is 
 quiescent, normal, very charming into the bargain, more 
 like a good child or trained animal or happy peasant, if 
 you like it better, than a grown man. And there is the 
 *N. H.' period, when he is otherwise." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 "I arrived just at the transition moment, so to speak. It 
 was during the change I reached the chalet." 
 
 "Precisely." Fillery looked up, smiled and nodded. 
 
 "That's about the truth," repeated Devonham, putting his 
 glass down. He thought for a moment, then added slowly, 
 "I think that fire of his, the worship, singing at the 
 autumnal equinox marked the change. 'N. H,' at once 
 after that, slipped back into the unconscious state. Le- 
 Vallon emerged. It was with LeVallon only or chiefly, / 
 had to deal., He became so very quiet, dazed a little, half 
 there, as we call it, and almost entirely silent. He retained 
 little, if any, memory of the *N. H.' period, although it 
 lies, I think, just beneath the surface only. The LeVallon
 
 58 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 personality, you see, is not very positive, is it? It seems a 
 quiet, negative state, a condition almost of rest, in fact." 
 
 Fillery listening attentively, made no rejoinder. 
 
 "We may expect," continued Devonham, "these alternat- 
 ing states, I think. The frontier between them is, as I said, 
 a narrow one. Indeed, often they merge or interpenetrate 
 In my judgment, the main, important part of his conscious- 
 ness, that parent Self, is LeVallon not 'N. H.'" The 
 voice was slightly strident. 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 It so happened that, in the act of exchanging these last 
 words, they both looked up toward the ceiling, where a 
 moth buzzed round and round, banging itself occasionally 
 against the electric light. Whether it was this that drew 
 their sight upwards simultaneously, or whether it was that 
 some other sound in the stillness of the night had caught 
 their strained attention, is uncertain. The same thought, 
 at any rate, was in both minds at that instant, the same 
 freight of meaning trailing behind it invisibly across the 
 air. Their hearts burned within them; the two faces up- 
 ward turned, the lips a little parted as when listening is 
 intense, the heads thrown back. For in the room above that 
 ceiling, asleep at this moment, lay the subject of their 
 long discussion; only a few inches of lath and plaster 
 separated them from the strange being who, dropping out 
 of space, as it were, had come to make his home with them. 
 A being, lonely utterly in the world, unique in kind perhaps, 
 his nature as yet undecipherable, lay trustingly unconscious 
 in that upper chamber. The two men felt the gravity, the 
 responsibility of their charge. The same thought had vividly 
 touched them both at the same instant. 
 
 A few minutes later they were still standing, facing one 
 another. They were of a height, but compared to Fillery 's 
 big frame and rugged head, his friend's appearance was 
 almost slight. Devonham, for all his qualifications, looked 
 painfully like a shopwalker. They exchanged this steady
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 59 
 
 gaze for a few seconds without speaking. Then the older 
 man said quietly: 
 
 "Paul, I understandj and I respect your reticence. I think 
 I can agree with it." 
 
 He placed a hand upon the other's shoulder, smiling 
 gently, even tenderly. 
 
 "You have told me much, but you have not told me all! 
 The chief part you have intentionally omitted." 
 
 "For the present, at any rate," was the reply, given with- 
 out flinching. 
 
 "Your reasons are sound, your judgment perhaps right. 
 I ask no questions. What happened, what you saw, at the 
 chalet ; the 'peculiar powers' you mentioned ; all, in fact, 
 that you think it wise to keep to yourself for the moment, 
 I leave there willingly." 
 
 He spoke gravely, sincere emotion in the eyes and tone. 
 It was in a lower voice he added : 
 
 "The responsibility, of course, is yours." 
 
 Devonham returned the steady gaze, pondering his reply 
 a moment. 
 
 "I can and do accept it," he answered. "You have read 
 my thoughts correctly as usual, Edward. I think you know 
 quite enough already what with my Notes and Mason's 
 letter even too much. Besides, why complicate it with an 
 account of what were doubtless mere mental pictures 
 hallucinations on my part? This is a matter," he went 
 on slowly, "a case, we dare not trifle with; there may be 
 strange and terrible afflictions in it later; we must remain 
 unbiased." The anxiety deepened on his face. 
 
 "True, true," murmured the other. "God bless the boy! 
 May his own gods bless him!" 
 
 "In other words, it will need your clearest, soundest 
 judgment, your finest skill, your very best, as you said 
 yourself just now." He used a firmer, yet also a softer 
 tone suddenly: "Edward, you know your own mind, its 
 contents, its suppressions, its origin; your refusal of the
 
 60 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 love of women, your deep powerful dreams that you have 
 suppressed and put away. Promise me" the voice and 
 manner were very earnest "that you will not communicate 
 these to him in any way, and that you will keep your judg- 
 ment absolutely unbiased and untainted." He looked at his 
 old friend and paused. "Only your purest judgment of 
 what is to come can help. You promise." 
 
 Fillery sighed a scarcely noticeable sigh. "I promise you, 
 Paul. You are wise and you are right," he said. "On 
 the other hand, let me say one thing to you in my turn. 
 This theory of heredity and of mental telepathic trans- 
 ference the idea that all his mind's content is derived 
 from his parents and from Mason we cannot, remember, 
 force this transference and interchange too far. I ask 
 only this: be fair and open yourself with all that follows." 
 
 Devonham raised his voice: "Nor can we, apparently, 
 sets limits to it, Edward. But to be fair and open-minded 
 I give my promise too." 
 
 Thus, in the little downstairs room of a Private Home 
 for Incurable Mental Cases, not a Lunatic Asylum, though 
 sometimes perhaps next door to it, these two men, deeply 
 intrigued by a new "Case" that passed their understanding, 
 as it exceeded their knowledge, practice and experience, 
 swore to each other to observe carefully, to report faith- 
 fully, and to experiment, if experiment proved necessary, 
 with honest and affectionate uprightness. 
 
 Their views were, obviously, not the same. Devonham, 
 temperamentally opposed to radical innovations, believed 
 it was a case of divided personality hundreds of such cases 
 had passed through their hands. Forced to accept extended 
 telepathy that all minds can on occasion share one an- 
 other's content, and that even a racial and a world-memory 
 can be tapped he feared that his Chief might influence 
 LeVallon, and twist, thus, the phenomena to a special end. 
 He knew Edward Fillery's story. He feared, for the sake 
 of truth, the mental transference. He had, perhaps, other 
 fears as well.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 61 
 
 Fillery, on the other hand, believing as much, and know- 
 ing more than his colleague, saw in "N. H." a unique pos- 
 sibility. He was thrilled and startled with a half-impossible 
 hope. He felt as if someone ran beside his life, bearing 
 impossible glad tidings, an unexpected, half-incredible figure, 
 the tidings marvellously bright. He hoped, he already 
 wished to think, that "N. H." might shadow forth a promise 
 of some magical advance for the ultimate benefit of the 
 Race. . . . 
 
 The thinkers were crying on the housetops that progress 
 was a myth, that each wave of civilization at its height 
 reached the same average level without ever passing further. 
 The menace to the present civilization, already crumbling, 
 was in full swing everywhere ; knowledge, culture, learning 
 threatened in due course with the chaos of destruction that 
 has so far been the invariable rule. The one hope of saving 
 the world, cried religion, lay in substituting spiritual for 
 material values a Utopian dream at best. The one chance, 
 said science, on the other hand, was that civilization to-day 
 is continuous and not isolated. 
 
 The best hope, believed Fillery, the only hope, lay in 
 raising the individual by the drawing up into full conscious- 
 ness of the limitless powers now hidden and inactive in his 
 deeper self the so-called subliminal faculties. With these 
 greater powers must come also greater moral development. 
 
 Already, with his uncanny insight, derived from knowl- 
 edge of himself, he had piercingly divined in "N. H." a 
 being, whatever he might be, whose nature acted auto- 
 matically and directly upon the subconscious self in every- 
 body. 
 
 That bright messenger, running past his life, had looked, 
 as with fire and tempest, straight into his eyes. 
 
 It was long after one o'clock when the two men said 
 good-night, and went to their rooms. Devonham was soon 
 in bed, though not soon asleep. Exhausted physically 
 though he was, his mind burned actively. His recent
 
 62 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 memories were vivid. All he had purposely held back 
 from Fillery returned with power. . . . 
 
 The uncertainty whether he had experienced hallucina- 
 tion, or had actually, as by telepathic transfer from Le- 
 Vallon, touched another state of consciousness, kept sleep 
 far away. . . . 
 
 His brain was far too charged for easy slumber. He 
 feared for his dear, faithful friend, his colleague, the skil- 
 ful, experienced, yet sorely tempted mind tempted by 
 Nature and by natural weaknesses of birth and origin 
 who now shared with him the care and healing of a Case 
 that troubled his being too deeply for slumber to come 
 quickly. 
 
 Yet he had done well to keep these memories from 
 Edward Fillery. If Fillery once knew what he knew, his 
 judgment and his scientific diagnosis must be drawn hope- 
 lessly away from what he considered the best treatment: 
 the suppression of "N. H." and the making permanent of 
 "LeVallon." . . . 
 
 He fell asleep eventually, towards dawn, dreaming impos- 
 sible, radiant dreams of a world he might have hoped for, 
 yet could not, within the limits of his little cautious, accurate 
 mind, believe in. Dreams that inspire, yet sadden, haunted 
 his release from normal consciousness. Someone had 
 walked upon his life, leaving a growth of everlasting flowers 
 in their magical tread, though his mind his stolid, cautious 
 mind had no courage for the plucking. . . . 
 
 And while he slept, as the hours slipped from west to 
 east, his chief and colleague, lying also sleepless, rose sud- 
 denly before the late autumn dawn, and walked quietly 
 along the corridor towards the Private Suite where the new 
 patient rested. His mind was quiet, yet his inner mind 
 alert. His thoughts, his hopes, his dreams, these lay, per- 
 haps, beyond human computation. He was calmer far than 
 his assistant, though more strangely tempted. 
 
 It was just growing light, the corridor was cold. A cool, 
 damp air came through the open windows and the linoleum
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 63 
 
 felt like ice against the feet. The house lay dead and 
 silent. Pausing a moment by a window, he listened to the 
 chattering of early sparrows. He felt chill and hungry, 
 unrested too, though far from sleepy. He was aware of 
 London bleak, heavy, stolid London town. The troubles 
 of modern life, of Labour, Politics, Taxes, cost of living, 
 all the common, daily things came in with the cheerless 
 morning air. 
 
 He reached the door he sought, and very softly opened 
 it. 
 
 The radiance met him in the face, so that he almost 
 gasped. The scent of flowers, the sting of sharp, keen 
 forest winds, the exhilaration of some distant mountain- 
 top. There was, actually, a tang of dawn, known only to 
 those who have tasted the heights at sunrise with the heart. 
 And into his heart, singing with happy confidence, rose a 
 sense of supreme joy and confidence that mastered all little 
 earthly woes and pains, and walked among the stars. 
 
 The occupant of the bed lay very still. His shining hair 
 was spread upon the pillow. The splendid limbs were 
 motionless. The chest and arms were bare, the single 
 covering sheet tossed off. The strange, wild face wore 
 happiness and peace upon its skin, the features very calm, 
 the mouth relaxed. It almost seemed a god lay sleeping 
 there upon a little human bed. 
 
 How long he stood and stared he did not know, but 
 suddenly, the light increased. The curtains stirred about 
 the bed. 
 
 With a marvellous touch the separate details merged 
 and quickened into life. The room was changed. The 
 occupant of the bed moved very swiftly, as through the 
 open window came the first touch of exhilarating light. 
 Gold stole across the lintel, breaking over the roofs of slates 
 beyond. The leafless elm trees shimmered faintly. The 
 telegraph wires shone. There was a running sparkle. It 
 was dawn. 
 
 The figure leaped, danced no other word describes it
 
 64 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 to the open window where the light and air gushed in, 
 spread wide its arms, lowered its radiant head, began to 
 sing in low, melodious rhythmic chant and Fillery, as 
 silently as he had come, withdrew and closed the door 
 unseen. His heart moved strangely, but his promise held 
 him. .
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 r I ^HE following days it seemed to both Fillery and 
 J. Devonham that their discussion of the first night had 
 been pitched in too intense, too serious a key. Their patient 
 was so commonplace again, so ordinary. He made him- 
 self quite at home, seemed contented and uncurious, taking 
 it for granted he had come to stay for ever, apparently. 
 
 Apart from his strange beauty, his size, virility and a 
 general impression he conveyed of immense energies he 
 was too easy-going to make use of, he might have passed 
 for a peasant, a countryman to whom city life was new; 
 but an educated, or at least half-educated, countryman. He 
 was so big, yet never gauche. He was neither stupid nor 
 ill-informed ; the garden interested him, he knew much 
 about the trees and flowers, birds and insects too. He 
 discussed the weather, prevailing wind, moisture, prospects 
 of change and so forth with a judgment based on what 
 seemed a natural, instinctive knowledge. The gardener 
 looked on him with obvious respect. 
 
 "Such nice manners and such a steady eye," Mrs. Soames, 
 the matron, mentioned, too, approvingly to Devonham. 
 "But a lot in him he doesn't understand himself, unless 
 I'm wrong. Not much the matter with his nerves, any- 
 how. Once he's married unless I'm much mistaken eh, 
 sir?" 
 
 He was quiet, talking little, and spent the morning over 
 the books Fillery had placed purposely in his sitting-room, 
 books on simple physics, natural history and astronomy. It 
 was the latter that absorbed him most ; he pored over them 
 by the hour. 
 
 65
 
 66 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 Fillery explained the situation so far as he thought wise. 
 The young man was honesty and simple innocence, but only 
 vaguely interested in the life of the great city he now 
 experienced for the first time. He had in his luggage a 
 copy of the Will by which Mason had left him everything, 
 and he was pleased to know himself well provided for. 
 Of Mason, however, he had only a dim, uncertain, almost 
 an impersonal memory, as of someone encountered in a 
 dream. 
 
 "I suppose something's happened to me," he said to 
 Fillery, his language normal and quite ordinary again. He 
 spoke with a slight foreign accent. "There was somebody, 
 of course, who looked after me and lived with me, but I 
 can't remember who or where it was. I was very happy," 
 he added, "and yet ... I miss something." 
 
 Dr. Fillery, remembering his promise, did not press him. 
 
 "It will all come back by degrees," he remarked in a 
 sympathetic tone. "In the meantime, you must make your- 
 self at home here with us, for as long as you like. You 
 are quite free in every way. I want you to be happy 
 here." 
 
 "I live with you always," was the reply. "There are 
 things I want to tell you, ask you too." He paused, look- 
 ing thoughtful. "There was someone I told all to once." 
 
 "Come to me with everything. I'll help you always, so 
 far as I can." He placed a hand upon his knee. 
 
 "There are feelings, big feelings I cannot reach quite, 
 but that make me feel different" he smiled beautifully 
 "from others." Quick as lightning he had changed the 
 sentence at the last word, substituting "others" for "you." 
 Had he been aware of a slight uneasy emotion in his 
 listener's heart? It had hardly betrayed itself by any visible 
 sign, yet he had instantly divined its presence. Such evi- 
 dences of a subtle, intimate, understanding were not lack- 
 ing. Yet Fillery admirably restrained himself. 
 
 "There are bright places I have lost," he went on frankly, 
 no sign of shy reserve in him. "I feel confused, lost some-
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 67 
 
 where, as if I didn't belong here. I feel" he used an odd 
 word "doubled." His face shaded a little. 
 
 "Big overpowering London is bound to affect you," put 
 in Fillery, who had noticed the rapid discernment, "after 
 living among woods and mountains, as you have lived, for 
 years. All will come right in a little time; we must settle 
 down a bit first " 
 
 "Woods and mountains," repeated the other, in a half- 
 dreamy voice, his eyes betraying an effort to follow thought 
 elsewhere. "Of course, yes woods and mountains and 
 hot living sunlight and the winds " 
 
 His companion shifted the conversation a little. He 
 suggested a line of reading and study. . . . They talked 
 also of such ordinary but necessary things as providing a 
 wardrobe, of food, exercise, companionship of his own 
 age, and so forth all the commonplace details of ordinary 
 daily life, in fact. The exchange betrayed nothing of inter- 
 est, nothing unusual. They mentioned theatres, music, 
 painting, and, beyond the natural curiosity of youth that 
 was ignorant of these, no detail was revealed that need 
 have attracted the attention of anybody, neither of doctor, 
 psychologist, nor student of human nature. With the single 
 exception that the past years had been obliterated from 
 memory, though much that had been acquired in them re- 
 mained, there was not noticeable peculiarity of any sort. 
 Both language and point of view were normal. 
 
 This was obviously LeVallon. The "N. H." personality 
 scarcely cast a shadow even. Yet "N. H.," the doctor was 
 quick to see, lay ready and waiting just below the surface. 
 There was no doubt in his mind which was the central 
 self and which its transient projection, the secondary per- 
 sonality. Again, as he sat and talked, he had the odd 
 impression that someone with bright tidings ran swiftly 
 past his life, perhaps towards it. 
 
 The swift messenger was certainly not LeVallon. Le- 
 Vallon, indeed, was but a shadow cast before this glad, 
 bright visitant. Thus he felt, at any rate. LeVallon was
 
 68 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 an empty simulacrum left behind while "N. H." rested, 
 or was active upon other things, things natural to him, 
 elsewhere. LeVallon was an arm, a limb, a feeler that 
 "N. H." thrust out. At Charing Cross, for instance, for 
 a brief moment only, "N. H." had peered across his 
 shoulder, then withdrawn again. In the car had sat by 
 his side LeVallon. The being he now chatted with was 
 also LeVallon only. 
 
 But in his own heart, deep down, hidden yet eager to 
 break loose, lay his own deeper self that burned within him. 
 This, the important part of him, yearned towards "N. H." 
 And up rose the strange symbol that always appeared when 
 his deepest, perhaps his subliminal self was stirred. That 
 lost radiant valley in the haunted Caucasus shone close 
 and brimming over , . . with light, with flowers, with 
 splendid winds and fire, symbols of a vaster, grander, happier 
 life, though perhaps a life not yet within the range of 
 normal human consciousness. . . . The fiery symbol flashed 
 and passed. 
 
 Curious thoughts and pictures rose flaming in his mind, 
 persistent ideas that bore no possible relation to his intellec- 
 tual, reasoning life. Passing across the background of his 
 brain, as with waves of heat and colour, they were cor- 
 related somewhere with harmonious sound. Music, that is, 
 came with them, as though inspiration brought its own sound 
 with it that made singing natural. They haunted him, these 
 vague, pleasurable phantasmagoria that were connected, he 
 felt sure, with music, as with childhood's lost imaginings. 
 For a long time he searched in vain for their source and 
 origin. Then, suddenly, he remembered. He heard his 
 father's gruff, humorous voice: "There's not a scrap of 
 evidence, of course. . . ." And, sharply, vividly, the buried 
 memory gave up its dead. His childish question went 
 crashing through the air: "Are we the only beings in the 
 world?" 
 
 "Nothing is ever lost," he reminded himself with a smile 
 that Devonham assuredly never saw. "Every seed must 
 bear its fruit in time."
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 69 
 
 And emotion surged through him from the remorseless 
 records of his underself. The childhood's love, with its 
 correlative of deep, absolute belief, returned upon him, 
 linked on somehow to that old familiar symbol he knew to 
 mean his awakening subconscious being a flowering 
 Caucasian vale of sun and wind. A belief, he realized, 
 especially a belief of childhood, remains for ever inex- 
 pugnable, eternal, prolific seed of future harvests. 
 
 The unstable in him betrayed its ineradicable, dangerous 
 streak. There rose upon him in a cloud strange notions 
 that inflamed imagination sweetly. Later reading, indeed, 
 had laid flesh upon the skeleton of the boyish notion, though 
 derived in the first instance he certainly knew not whence. 
 The literature and tradition of the East, he recalled, peopled 
 the elements with conscious life, to which the world's fairy- 
 tales remnant of lost knowledge possibly added nerves 
 and heart and blood. In all human bodies, at any 
 rate, dwelt not necessarily always human spirits, human 
 souls. . . . 
 
 He checked himself with a smile he would have liked to 
 call a chuckle, but that yet held some inexplicable happiness 
 at its heart. His rugged, eager face, its expression bitten 
 deeply by experience, turned curiously young. There rushed 
 through him the Eastern conception of another system of 
 life, another evolution, deathless, divine, important, the 
 Order of the Devas, a series of Nature Beings entirely 
 apart from human categories. They included many degrees, 
 from fairies to planetary spirits, the gods, so called; and 
 their duties, work and purposes were concerned, he remem- 
 bered, with carrying out the Laws of Nature, the busy 
 tending of all forms and structures, from the elaborately 
 marvellous infusoria in a drop of stagnant water, the growth 
 of crystals, the upbuilding of flowers and trees, of insects, 
 animals, humans, to the guidance and guardianship of those 
 vaster forms of heavenly bodies, the stars, the planets and 
 the mighty suns, whose gigantic "bodies," inhabited by 
 immenser consciousness, people empty space. ... A noble, 
 useful, selfless work, God's messengers. . . .
 
 70 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 He checked himself again, as the rich, ancient notion 
 flitted across his stirring memory. 
 
 "Delightful, picturesque conceptions of the planet's 
 young, fair ignorance!" he reminded himself, smiling as 
 before. 
 
 Whereupon rose, bursting through his momentary dream, 
 with full-fledged power, the great hope of his own reasoned, 
 scientific Dream that man is greater than he knows, and 
 that the progress of the Race was demonstrable. 
 
 For, to the subliminal powers of an awakened Race these 
 Nature Beings with their special faculties, must lie open 
 and accessible. The human and the non-human could unite ! 
 Nature must come back into the hearts of men and win 
 them again to simple, natural life with love, with joy, with 
 naked beauty. Death and disease must vanish, hope and 
 purity return. The Race must develop, grow, become in 
 the true sense universal. It could know God ! 
 
 The vision flashed upon him with extraordinary convic- 
 tion, so that he forgot for the moment how securely he 
 belonged to the unstable. The smile of happiness spread, 
 as it were, over his entire being. He glowed and pulsed 
 with its delicious inward fire. Light filled his being for 
 an instant an instant of intoxicating belief and certainty 
 and vision. The instant inspiration of a dream went lost 
 and vanished. He had drawn upon childhood and legendary 
 reading for the substance of a moment's happiness. He 
 shook himself, so to speak. He remembered his patients 
 and his duties, his colleague too. . . . 
 
 Nothing, meanwhile, occurred to arouse interest or atten- 
 tion. Le Vallon was quite docile, ordinary; he needed no 
 watching; he slept well, ate well, spent his leisure with his 
 books and in the garden. He complained often of the lack 
 of sunlight, and sometimes he might be seen taking some 
 deep breaths of air into his lungs by the open window or 
 on the balcony. The phases of the moon, too, interested 
 him, and he asked once when the full moon would come 
 and then, when Devonham told him, he corrected the date
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 71 
 
 the latter gave, proving him two hours wrong. But, on the 
 whole, there seemed little to differentiate him from the 
 usual young man whose physique had developed in advance 
 of his mental faculties; his knowledge in some respects 
 certainly was backward, as in the case of arrested develop- 
 ment. He seemed an intelligent countryman, but an 
 unusually intelligent countryman, though all the time an- 
 other under-intelligence shone brightly, betraying itself in 
 remarks and judgments oddly phrased. 
 
 Dr. Fillery took him, during the following day or two, 
 to concerts, theatres, cinemas. He enjoyed them all. Yet 
 in the theatres he was inclined to let his attention wander. 
 The degree of alertness varied oddly. His critical standard, 
 moreover, was curiously exacting; he demanded the real 
 creative interpretation of a part, and was quick to detect 
 a lack of inspiration, of fine technique, of true conception 
 in a player. Reasons he failed to give, and argument seemed 
 impossible to him, but if voice or gesture or imaginative 
 touch failed anywhere, he lost interest in the performer 
 from that moment. 
 
 "He has poor breath," he remarked. "He only imitates. 
 He is outside." Or, "She pretends. She does not feel 
 and know. Feeling the feeling that comes of fire she 
 has not felt." 
 
 "She does not understand her part, you mean?" suggested 
 Fillery. 
 
 "She does not burn with it," was the reply. 
 
 At concerts he behaved individually too. They bored as 
 well as puzzled him; the music hardly stirred Him. He 
 showed signs of distress at anything classical, though 
 Wagner, Debussy, the Russians, moved him and produced 
 excitement. 
 
 "He," was his remark, with emphasis, "has heard. He 
 gives me freedom. I could fly and go away. He sets me 
 free . . ." and then he would say no more, not even in 
 reply to questions. He could not define the freedom he 
 referred to, nor could he say where he could go away to.
 
 72 
 
 But his face lit up, he smiled his delightful smile, he looked 
 happy. "Stars," he added once in a tone of interest, in 
 reply to repeated questions, "stars, wind, fire, away from 
 this!" he tapped his head and breast "I feel more alive 
 and real." 
 
 "It's real and true, that music? That's what you feel?" 
 
 "It's beyond this," he replied, again tapping his body. 
 "They have heard." 
 
 The cinema interested him more. Yets its limits seemed 
 to perplex him more than its wonder thrilled him. He 
 accepted it as a simple, natural, universal thing. 
 
 "They stay always on the sheet," he observed with evident 
 surprise. "And I hear nothing. They do not even sing. 
 Sound and movement go together!" 
 
 "The speaking will come," explained Fillery. "Those are 
 pictures merely." 
 
 "I understand. Yet sound is natural, isn't it? They 
 ought to be heard." 
 
 "Speech," agreed his companion, "is natural, but singing 
 isn't." 
 
 "Are they not alive enough to sing?" was the reply, 
 spoken to himself rather than to his neighbour, who was 
 so attentive to his least response. "Do they only sing 
 when" Fillery heard it and felt something leap within 
 him "when they are paid or have an audience ?" he finished 
 the sentence quickly. 
 
 "No one sings naturally of their own accord not in 
 cities, at any rate," was the reply. 
 
 LeVallon laughed, as though he understood at once. 
 
 "There is no sun and wind," he murmured. "Of course. 
 They cannot." 
 
 It was the cinemas that provided most material for obser- 
 vation, Fillery found. There was in a cinema performance 
 something that excited his companion, but excited Him more 
 than the doctor felt he was justified in encouraging. 
 Obviously the other side of him, the "N. H." aspect, came 
 up to breathe under the stimulus of the rapid, wor!3-embrac-
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 73 
 
 ing, space-and-time destroying pictures on the screen. 
 Concerts did not stimulate him, it seemed, but rather puzzled 
 him. He remained wholly the commonplace LeVallon 
 with one exception: he drew involved patterns on the edge 
 of his programmes, patterns of a very complicated yet 
 accurate kind, as though he almost saw the sounds that 
 poured into his ears. And these ornamented programmes 
 Dr. Fillery preserved. Sound music seemed to belong 
 to his interpretation of movement. About the cinema, how- 
 ever, there seemed something almost familiar, something 
 he already knew and understood, the sound belonging to 
 movement only lacking. 
 
 Apart from these small incidents, LeVallon showed noth- 
 ing unusual, nothing that a yokel untaught yet of natural 
 intelligence might not have shown. His language, perhaps, 
 was singular, but, having been educated by one mind only, 
 and in a region of lonely forests and mountains, remote 
 from civilized life, there was nothing inexplicable in the 
 odd words he chose, nor in the peculiar if subtle and 
 penetrating phrases that he used. Invariably he recognized 
 the spontaneous, creative power as distinguished from the 
 derivative that merely imitated. 
 
 He found ways of expressing himself almost immediately, 
 both in speech and writing, however, and with a perfection 
 far beyond the reach of a half-educated country lad; and 
 this swift aptitude was puzzling until its explanation sud- 
 denly was laid bare. He absorbed, his companion realized 
 at last, as by telepathy, the content of his own, of Fillery's 
 mind, acquiring the latter's mood, language, ideas, as though 
 the two formed one being. 
 
 The discovery startled the doctor. Yet what startled 
 him still more was the further discovery, made a little 
 later, that he himself could, on occasions, become so identi- 
 fied with his patient that the slightest shade of thought 
 or feeling rose spontaneously in his own mind too. 
 
 He remained, otherwise, almost entirely "LeVallon" ; and, 
 after a full report made to Devonham, and the detailed
 
 74 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 discussion thereon that followed, Dr. Fillery had no evi- 
 dence to contradict the latter's opinion: "LeVallon is the 
 real true self. The other personality 'N. H.' as we call it 
 is a mere digest and accumulation of material supplied 
 by his parents and by Mason." 
 
 "Let us wait and see what happens when 'N. H.' appears 
 and does something," Fillery was content to reply. 
 
 "If," answered Devonham, with sceptical emphasis, "it 
 ever does appear." 
 
 "You think it won't?" asked Fillery. 
 
 "With proper treatment," said Devonham decisively, "I 
 see no reason why 'N. H.' should not become happily 
 merged in the parent self in LeVallon, and a permanent 
 cure result." 
 
 He put his glasses straight and stared at his chief, as 
 much as to say "You promised." 
 
 "Perhaps," said Fillery. "But, in my judgment, 'Le- 
 Vallon' is too slight to count at all. I believe the whole, 
 real, parent Self is 'N. H.,' and the only life LeVallon has 
 at all is that which peeps up through him from 'N. H.' " 
 
 Fillery returned his serious look. 
 
 "If 'N. H.' is the real self, and I am right," he added 
 slowly, "you, Paul, will have to revise your whole position." 
 
 "I shall," returned Devonham. "But you will allow 
 this it is a lot to expect. I see no reason to believe in 
 anything more than a subconscious mind of unusual content, 
 and possibly of unusual powers and extent," he added with 
 reluctance. 
 
 "It is," said Fillery significantly, "a lot to expect as you 
 said just now. I grant you that. Yet I feel it possible 
 that " he hesitated. 
 
 Devonham looked uncomfortable. He fidgeted. He did 
 not like the pause. A sense of exasperation rose in him, 
 as though he knew something of what was coming. 
 
 "Paul," went on his chief abruptly in a tone that dropped 
 instinctively to a lower key almost a touch of awe lay
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 75 
 
 behind it "you admit no deity, I know, but you admit 
 purpose, design, intelligence." 
 
 "Well," replied the other patiently, long experience hav- 
 ing taught him iron restraint, "it's a blundering, imperfect 
 system, inadequately organized if you care to call that 
 intelligence. It's of an extremely intricate complexity. I 
 admit that. Deity I consider an unnecessary assumption." 
 
 "The love and hate of atoms alone bowls you over," 
 was the unexpected comment. "The word 'Laws' explains 
 nothing. A machine obeys the laws, but intelligence con- 
 ceived that machine and a man repairs and keeps it going. 
 Who what keeps the daisy going, the crystal, the creative 
 thought in the imagination? An egg becomes a leaf -eating 
 caterpillar, which in turn becomes a honey-eating butterfly 
 with wings. A yolk turns into feathers. Is that accom- 
 plished without intelligence?" 
 
 "Ask our new patient," interrupted Devonham, wiping 
 his glasses with unnecessary thoroughness. 
 
 "Which?" 
 
 Devonham startled, looked up without his glasses. It 
 seemed the question made him uneasy. Putting the glasses 
 on suddenly, he stared at his chief. 
 
 "I see what you mean, Edward," he said earnestly, his 
 interest deeply captured. "Be careful. We know nothing, 
 remember, nothing of life. Don't jump ahead like this 
 or take your dreams for reality. We have our duty in 
 a case like this." 
 
 Fillery smiled, as though to convey that he remembered 
 his promise. 
 
 "Humanity," he replied, "is a very small section of the 
 universe. Compared to the minuter forms of life, which 
 may be quite as important, if not more so, the human 
 section is even negligible ; while, compared to the possibility 
 
 of greater forms " He broke off abruptly. "As you 
 
 say, Paul, we know nothing of life after all, do we? Noth- 
 ing, less than nothing! We observe and classify a few
 
 76 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 results, that's all. We must beware of narrow prejudice, 
 at any rate you and I." 
 
 His eyes lost their light, his speech dried up, his ideas, 
 dreams, speculations returned to him unrewarded z unex- 
 pressed. With natures in whom the subconscious never 
 stirred, natures through whom its magical fires cast no 
 faintest upward gleam, intercourse was ever sterile, unpro- 
 ductive. Such natures had no background. Even a fact, 
 with them, was detached from its true big life, its full 
 significance, its divine potentialities ! . . . 
 
 "We must beware of prejudice," he repeated quietly. 
 "We seek truth only." 
 
 "We must beware," replied Devonham, as he shrugged 
 his shoulders, "of suggestion of auto-suggestion above all. 
 We must remember how repressed desires dramatize them- 
 selves especially," he added significantly, "when aided by 
 imagination. We seek only facts." On his face appeared 
 swiftly, before it vanished again, an expression of keen 
 anxiety, almost of affliction, yet tempered, as it were, by 
 surprise and wonder, by pity possibly, and certainly by 
 affection.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 TO Devonham, meanwhile, LeVallon's behaviour was 
 polite and kind and distant ; he did not show distrust 
 of any sort, but he betrayed a certain diffidence, reserve 
 and caution. Trust he felt ; sympathy he did not feel. To 
 the amusement of Fillery, he suggested almost a kind of 
 mild contempt when dealing with him, and this amusement 
 was increased by the fact that it obviously annoyed Devon- 
 ham, while it gratified his chief. For towards Fillery, 
 LeVallon behaved with an intimate and understanding 
 sympathy that proved his instantaneous affection based upon 
 mutual comprehension. It seemed that LeVallon and Fillery 
 had known one another always. 
 
 It was doubtless, due to this innate sympathy between 
 them that Edward FHlery's rare gift of absorbing the con- 
 tent of another's mind, even to the point of taking on 
 that other's conditions, physical and emotional at the 
 same time, was so successful. By means of a highly 
 developed power of auto-suggestion, he had learned so to 
 identify his own mind, thought, feeling with those of a 
 patient, that there resulted a kind of merging by which 
 he literally became that patient. He felt with him. As a 
 subject sees the pictures in the hypnotiser's mind, perceives 
 his thoughts, divines his slightest will, so Fillery, reversing 
 the process, could realize for the moment exactly what his 
 patient was thinking, feeling, desiring. It was of great 
 use to him in his strange practice. 
 
 This gift, naturally, varied in degree, and was not in- 
 variably successful. In some cases he only felt, the emotion 
 alone being thus transferred; in others he only saw what 
 the patient saw, or thought he saw, the accompanying 
 
 77
 
 78 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 emotion being omitted ; in others again, as in cases of vision 
 at a distance, either of time or space, he had been able to 
 follow the "travelling sight" of his patient, whose con- 
 sciousness in trance was operating far away, and thus to 
 check for subsequent verification exactly what that patient 
 saw. He had shared strange experiences with others 
 with a man, for instance, in whom sight was transferred 
 to the tip of his index finger, so that he could read a book 
 by passing that finger along the printed line ; with a woman, 
 again, in whom "exteriorized consciousness" manifested it- 
 self, so that, if the air several inches from her face was 
 pinched or struck, the impact was received and an actual 
 bruise produced upon her skin. 
 
 This extension of consciousness, its seeds already in his 
 nature, he had trained and developed to a point where he 
 could almost rely upon auto-suggestion bringing about 
 quickly the desired conditions. Its success, however, as 
 mentioned, was variable. With "N. H.," especially now, 
 this variableness was marked; sometimes it was so easily 
 accomplished as to seem natural and without a conscious 
 effort, while at other times it failed completely. Since it 
 was in no sense an attempt to transfer anything from his 
 own mind to that of the patient, Fillery felt that his promise 
 to his colleague was not involved. 
 
 The following scene describes the first time in which the 
 process took place with his new patient. Fillery himself 
 wrote down the words, supplied the detailed description, 
 filled in the emotion and psychology, but exactly as these 
 occurred and as he felt them, both when these took place, 
 respectively, in his own consciousness and in that of his 
 patient. Part of the time he was present, part of it he 
 was not visibly so, being screened from observation, yet 
 so placed that he could note everything that happened. It 
 is clear, however, that his mind was so intimately en rapport 
 with the thoughts and feelings of "N. H.," that he ex- 
 perienced in his own being all that "N. H." experienced. 
 The description was written immediately after the occur-
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 79 
 
 rence, though some of it, the spoken language in particular, 
 was jotted down in his hiding place at the actual moment. 
 
 The interlacing of the two minds, their interpenetration, 
 as it were, one occasionally dominating the other, is curious 
 to trace and far from difficult to disentangle. Similarly 
 the interweaving of LeVallon and "N. H." is noticeable. 
 The description given by Devonham of the portion of the 
 occurrence he witnessed personally, or heard about from 
 Nurse Robbins and the attendants this description reduces 
 the whole thing to the commonplace level of "a slight 
 seizure accompanied by signs of violence and moments of 
 delirium due to excitement and fatigue, and soon cured 
 by sleep." 
 
 The occurrence took place precisely at the period when 
 the moon was at the full.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE body I'm in and using is 22, as they call it, and 
 from a man named Mason, a geologist, I receive sums 
 of money, regularly paid, with which I live. They call it 
 "live." A roof and walls protect me, who do not need 
 protection; my body, which it irks, is covered with wool 
 and cloth and stuff, fitting me as bark fits a tree and yet 
 not part of me ; my feet, which love the touch of earth and 
 yearn for it, are cased in dead dried skin called leather; 
 even my head and hair, which crave the sun and wind, 
 are covered with another piece of dead dried skin, shaped 
 like a shell, but an ugly shell, in which, were it shaped 
 otherwise, the wind and rustling leaves might sing with 
 flowers. 
 
 Before 22 I remember nothing nothing definite, that is. 
 I opened my eyes in a soft, but not refreshing case standing 
 on four iron legs, and well off the ground, and covered with 
 coarse white coverings piled thickly on my body. It was a 
 bed. Slabs of transparent stuff kept out the living sunshine 
 for which I hungered ; thick solid walls shut off the wind ; 
 no stars or moon showed overhead, because an enormous lid 
 hid every bit of sky. No dew, therefore, lay upon the 
 sheets. I smelt no earth, no leaves, no flowers. No single 
 natural sound entered except the chattering of dirty 
 sparrows which had lost its freshness. I was in a hospital. 
 
 One comely figure alone gave me a little joy. It was 
 soft and slim and graceful, with a smell of fern and morn- 
 ing in its hair, though that hair was lustreless and balled 
 up in ugly lumps, with strips of thin metal in it. They 
 called it nurse and sister. It was the first moving thing I 
 saw when my eyes opened on my limited and enclosed 
 surroundings. My heart beat quicker, a flash of thin joy 
 
 80
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 81 
 
 came up in me. I had seen something similar before some- 
 where ; it reminded me, I mean, of something I had known 
 elsewhere; though but a shabby, lifeless, clumsy copy of 
 this other glorious thing. Though not real, it stirred this 
 faint memory of reality, so that I caught at the skirts of 
 moonlight, stars and flowers reflected in a forest pool where 
 my companion played for long periods of happiness be- 
 tween our work. The perfume and the eyes did that. I 
 watched it for a bit, as it moved away, came close and 
 looked at me. When the eyes met mine, a wave of life, 
 but of little life, surged faintly through me. 
 
 They were dim and pitiful, these eyes; mournful, unlit, 
 unseeing. The stars had set in them ; dull shadows crowded. 
 They were so small. They were hungry too. They were 
 unsatisfied. For some minutes it puzzled me, then I under- 
 stood. That was the word unsatisfied. Ah, but I could 
 alter that ! I could comfort, help, at any rate* My strength, 
 though horribly clipped and blocked, could manage a little 
 thing like that ! My smaller rhythms I could put into it. 
 
 The eyes, the smile, the whole soft comely bundle, so 
 pitifully hungry and unsatisfied, I rose and seized, pressing 
 it close inside my own great arms, and burying it all against 
 my breast. I crushed it, but very gently, as I might crush 
 a sapling. My lips were amid the ferny hair. I breathed 
 upon it willingly, glad to help. 
 
 It was a poor unfinished thing, I felt at once, soft and 
 yielding where it should have been resilient and elastic as 
 fresh turf; the perfume had no body, it faded instantly; 
 there was so little life in it. 
 
 But, as I held it in my big embrace, smothering its 
 hunger as best I could within my wave of being, this bundle, 
 this poor pitiful bundle, screamed and struggled to get free. 
 It bit and scratched and uttered sounds like those squeaks 
 the less swift creatures make when the swifter overtake 
 them. 
 
 I was too surprised to keep it to me ; I relaxed my hold. 
 The instant I did so the figure, thus released, stood upright
 
 82 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 like a young birch the wind sets free. The figure looked 
 alive. The hair fell loose, untidily, the puny face wore 
 colour, the eyes had fire in them. I saw that fire. It was 
 a message. Memory stirred faintly in me. 
 
 "Ah !" I cried. "I've helped you anyhow a little !" 
 
 The scene that followed filled me with such trouble and 
 bewilderment that I cannot recall exactly what occurred. 
 The figure seemed to spit at me, yet not with grace and 
 invitation. There was no sign of gratitude. I was entirely 
 misunderstood, it seemed. Bells rang, as the figure rushed 
 to the door and flung it open. It called aloud ; similar, 
 though quite lifeless figures came in answer and filled the 
 room. A doctor Devonham, they called him followed 
 them. I was most carefully examined in a dozen curious 
 ways that tickled my skin a little so that I smiled. But I 
 lay quite still and silent, watching the whole performance 
 with a confusion in my being that baffled my comprehend- 
 ing what was going on. Most of the figures were frightened. 
 
 Then the doctor gave place to Fillery, whose name has 
 rhythm. 
 
 To him I spoke at once: 
 
 "I wished to comfort and revive her," I told him. "She 
 is so starved. I was most gentle. She brings a message 
 only." 
 
 He made no reply, but gazed at me with the corners of 
 his mouth both twitching, and in his eyes ah, his eyes had 
 more of the sun in them a flash of something that had 
 known fire, at least, if it had not kept it. 
 
 "My God! I worship thee," I murmured at the glimpse 
 of the Power I must own as Master and creator of my 
 being. "Even when thou art playful, I adore thee and 
 obey." 
 
 Then four other figures, shaped like the doctor but wholly 
 mechanical, a mere blind weight operating through them, 
 held my arms and legs. Not the least desire to move was 
 in me luckily. I say "luckily," because, had I wished it, 
 I could have flung them through the roof, blown down the
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 83 
 
 little walls, caught up a dozen figures in my arms, and 
 rushed forth with them towards the Powers of Fire and 
 Wind to which I belonged. 
 
 Could I ? I felt that I could. The sight of the true fire, 
 small though it was, in the comely figure's and the doctor's 
 eyes, had set me in touch again with my home and origin. 
 This touch I had somehow lost; I had been "ill," with 
 what they called nervous disorder and injured reason. The 
 lost touch was now restored. But, luckily, as I said, there 
 was no desire in me to set free these other figures, to help 
 them in any way, after the reception my first kindly effort 
 had experienced. I lay quite still, held by these four 
 grotesque and puny mechanisms. The comely one, with the 
 others similar to her, had withdrawn. I felt very kindly 
 towards them all, but especially towards the doctor, Fillery, 
 who had shown that he knew my deity and origin. None of 
 them were worth much trouble, anyhow. I felt that too. A 
 mild, sweet-toned contempt was in me. 
 
 "Dangerous," was a word I caught them whispering as 
 they went. I laughed a little. The four faces over me made 
 odd grimaces, tightening their lips, and gripping my legs 
 and arms with greater effort. The doctor Fillery 
 noticed it. 
 
 "Easy, remember," he addressed the four. "There's 
 really no need to hold. It won't recur." I nodded. We 
 understood one another. And, with a smile at me, he left 
 the room, saying he would come back after a short interval. 
 A link with my source, a brother as it were, went with him. 
 I was lonely. ., . . 
 
 I began to hum songs to myself, little fragments of a 
 great natural music I had once known but lost, and I 
 noticed that the four figures, as I sang, relaxed their grip 
 of my limbs considerably. To tell the truth, I forgot 
 that they were holding me ; their grip, anyhow, was but 
 a thread I could snap without the smallest effort. The 
 songs were happiness in me. Upon free leaping rhythms 
 I careered with an exhilarating rush of liberty; all about
 
 84 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 space I soared and sank; I was picked up, flung far, 
 riding the crest of immense waves of orderly vibration 
 that delighted me. I let myself go a bit, let my voice 
 out, I mean. No effort accompanied my singing. It was 
 automatic, like breathing almost. It was natural to me. 
 These rhythmical sounds and the patterns that they 
 wove in space were the outlines of forms it was my work 
 to build. This expressed my nature. Only my power 
 was blocked and stifled in this confining body. The fire 
 and air which were my tools I could not control. I have 
 forgotten forgotten ! 
 
 "Got a voice, ain't he?" observed one of the figures 
 admiringly. 
 
 "Lunies can do 'most anything they have a mind to." 
 
 "Grand Opera isn't it." 
 
 "Yes," mentioned the fourth, "but he'll lift the roof 
 off presently. We'd better stop him before there's any 
 trouble." 
 
 I stopped of myself, however : their remarks interested 
 me. Also while I had been singing, although I called it 
 humming only, they had gradually let go of me, and were 
 now sitting down on my bed and staring with quite 
 pleasant faces. All their dim eight eyes were fixed on 
 me. Their forms were not built well. 
 
 "Where did you get that from, Guv'nor?" asked the 
 one who had spoken first. "Can you give me the name 
 of it?" 
 
 The sound of his own voice was like the scratching 
 of a pin after the enormous rhythm that now ceased. 
 
 "Ain't printed, is it?" he went on, as I stared, not 
 understanding what he meant. "I've got a sister at the- 
 Halls," he explained. "She'd make a hit with that kind 
 of thing. Gave me quite a twist inside to hear it," he 
 added, turning to the others. 
 
 The others agreed solemnly with dull stupid faces. I 
 lay and listened to their talk. I longed to help them. 
 I had forgotten how.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 85 
 
 "A bit churchy, I thought it," said one. "But, I con- 
 fess, it stirred me up." 
 
 "Churchy or not, it's the stuff," insisted the first. 
 
 "Oh, it's the stuff to give 'em, right enough." And they 
 looked at me admiringly again. "Where did you get it, if 
 I may ask ?" replied Number One in a more respectful tone. 
 ,His face looked quite polite. The lips stretched, showing 
 yellow teeth. It was his smile. But his eyes were a little 
 more real. Oh ; where was my fire ? I could have built the 
 outline better so that he was real and might express far 
 more. I have forgotten ! 
 
 "I hear it," I told him, "because I'm in it. It's all about 
 me. It never stops. It's what we build with " 
 
 Number One seemed greatly interested. 
 
 "Hear it, do you? Why, that's odd now. You see" 
 he looked at his companions apologetically, as though he 
 knew they would not believe him "my father was like that. 
 He heard his music, he always used to say, but we laughed 
 at him. He was a composer by trade. Oh, his stuff was 
 printed too. Of course," he added, "there's musical talent 
 in the family," as though that explained everything. He 
 turned to me again. "Give us a little more, Mister if you 
 don't object, that is," he added. And his face was soft as 
 he said it. "Only gentle like if you don't mind." 
 
 "Yes, keep it down a bit," another put in, looking 
 anxiously in the direction of the closed door. He patted 
 the air with his open palm, slowly, carefully, as though he 
 patted an animal that might rise and fly at him. 
 
 I hummed again for them, but this time with my lips 
 closed. The waves of rhythm caught me up and away. I 
 soared and flew and dropped and rose again upon their 
 huge coloured crests. Curtains and sheets of quiet flame in 
 palest gold flared shimmering through the sound, while 
 winds that were full of hurricanes and cyclones swept down 
 to lift the fire and dance with it in spirals. The perfume of 
 great flowers rose. There were flowers everywhere, and 
 stars shone through it all like showers of gold. Ah ! I began
 
 86 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 to remember something. It was flowers and stars as well 
 as human forms we worked to build. . ., . 
 
 But I kept the fire from leaping into actual flame; the 
 mighty winds I held back. Even thus pent and checked, 
 their powerful volume made the atmosphere shake and pulse 
 about us. Only I could not control them now. . . . With 
 an effort I came back, came down, as it were, and saw the 
 funny little faces staring at me with opened eyes and 
 mouths, and yellow teeth, pale gums, their skins gone 
 whitish, their figures rigid with their tense emotion. They 
 were so poorly made, the patterns so imperfect. The new 
 respect in their manner was marked plainly. Suddenly all 
 four turned together towards the door. I stopped. The 
 doctor had returned. But it was Fillery again. I liked 
 the feel of him. 
 
 "He wanted to sing, sir, so we let him. It seemed to 
 relieve him a bit," they explained quickly and with an air 
 of helpless apology. 
 
 "Good, good," said the doctor. "Quite good. Any 
 normal expression that brings relief is good." He dismissed 
 them. They went out, casting back at me expressions of 
 puzzled thanks and interest. The door closed behind them. 
 The doctor seated himself beside me and took my hand. I 
 liked his touch. His hand was alive, at any rate, although 
 within my own it felt rather like a dying branch or bunch 
 of leaves I grasped. The life, if thin, was real. 
 
 "Where's the rest of it?" I asked him, meaning the 
 music. "I used to have it all. It's left me, gone away. 
 What's cut it off?" 
 
 "You're not cut off really," he said gently. "You can 
 always get into it again when you really need it." He gazed 
 at me steadily for a minute, then said in his quiet voice 
 a full, nice tone with wind through a forest running in it : 
 "Mason. ... Dr. Mason. . ." 
 
 He said no more, but watched me. The name stirred 
 something in me I could not get at quite. I could not reach 
 down to it. I was troubled by a memory I could not seize.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 87 
 
 "Mason," I repeated, returning his strong gaze. "What 
 who was Mason? And where?" I connected the name 
 with a sense of liberty, also with great winds and pools of 
 fire, with great figures of golden skin and radiant faces, with 
 music, too, the music that had left me. 
 
 "You've forgotten for the moment," came the deep run- 
 ning voice I liked. "He looked after you for twenty years. 
 He gave his life for you. He loved you. He loved your 
 mother. Your father was his friend." 
 
 "Has he gone gone back ?" 
 
 "He's dead." 
 
 "I can get after him though," I said, for the name touched 
 me with a sense of lost companionship I wanted, though 
 the reference to my father and mother left me cold. "I 
 can easily catch him up. When I move with my wind and 
 fire, the fastest things stand still." My own speed, once 
 I was free again, I knew outpaced easily the swiftest bird, 
 outpaced light itself." 
 
 "Yes," agreed the doctor; "only he doesn't want that 
 now. You can always catch him up when the time comes. 
 Besides, he's waiting for you anyhow." 
 
 I knew that was true. I sank back comforted upon the 
 stuffy pillows and lay silent. This tinkling chatter wearied 
 me. It was like trickling wind. I wanted the flood of 
 hurricanes, the pulse of storms. My building, shaping 
 powers, my great companions oh! where were they? 
 
 "He taught you himself, taught you all you know," I 
 heard the tinkling go on again, "but he kept you away 
 from life, thinking it was best. He was afraid for you, 
 afraid for others too. He kept you in the woods and moun- 
 tains where, as he believed, you could alone express yourself 
 and so be happy. A hundred times, in babyhood and early 
 childhood, you nearly died. He nursed you back to life. 
 His own life he renounced. Now he is dead. He has left 
 you all his money." 
 
 He paused. I said no word. Faint memories passed 
 through my mind, but nothing I could hold and seize. The
 
 88 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 money I did not understand at all, except that it was neces- 
 sary. 
 
 "He thought at first that you could not possibly live to 
 manhood. To his surprise you survived everything ill- 
 ness, accident, disaster of every sort and kind. Then, as 
 you grew up, he realized his mistake. Instead of keeping 
 you away from life, he ought to have introduced you to it 
 and explained it as I and Devonham are now trying to 
 do. You could not live for ever alone in woods and 
 mountains; when he was gone there would be no one to 
 look after you and guide you." 
 
 The trickling of wind went on and on. I hardly listened 
 to it. He did it for his own pleasure, I suppose. It pleased 
 and soothed him possibly. Yet I remembered every syllable. 
 It was a small detail to keep fresh when my real memory 
 covered the whole planet. 
 
 "Before he died, he recognized his mistake and faced the 
 position boldly. It was some years before the end ; he was 
 hale and hearty still, yet the end, he knew, was in sight. 
 While the power was still strong in him, therefore, he did 
 the only thing left to him to do. He used his great powers. 
 He used suggestion. He hypnotized you, telling you to for~ 
 get from the moment of his death, but not before forget 
 everything It was only partially successful." 
 
 The door opened, the comely figure glanced in, then 
 vanished. 
 
 "She wants more help from me," I interrupted the 
 monotonous tinkling instantly, for pity stirred in me again 
 as I saw her eager, hungry and unsatisfied little eyes. "Call 
 her back. I feel quite willing. It is one of the lower 
 forms we made. I can improve it." 
 
 Dr. Fillery, as he was called, looked at me steadily, his 
 mouth twitching at the corners as before, a flash of fire 
 flitting through his eyes. The fire made me like and trust 
 him; the twitching, too, I liked, for it meant he knew how 
 absurd he was. Yet he was bigger than the other figures.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 89 
 
 "You can't do that," he said, "you mustn't," and then 
 laughed outright. "It isn't done, you know here." 
 
 "Why not, sir?" I asked, using the terms the figures 
 used. "I feel like that." 
 
 "Of course, you do. But all you feel can't be expressed 
 except at the proper times and places. The consent of the 
 other party always is involved," he went on slowly, "when 
 it's a question of expressing anything you feel." 
 
 This puzzled me, because in this particular instance the 
 other party had asked me with her eyes to comfort her. I 
 told him this. He laughed still more. Caught by the sound 
 it was just like wind passing among tall grasses on a 
 mountain ridge I forgot what he was talking about for the 
 moment. The sound carried me away towards my own 
 rhythms. 
 
 "You've got such amazing insight," he went on tinkling 
 to himself, for I heard, although I did not listen. "You 
 read the heart too easily, too quickly. You must learn to 
 hide your knowledge." The laughter which ran with the 
 words then ended, and I came back to the last thing I had 
 definitely listened to "express, expressing," was the phrase 
 he used. 
 
 "You told me that self-expression is the purpose "for 
 which I'm here ?" 
 
 "I believe it is," he agreed, more solemnly. 
 
 "Only sometimes, then ?" 
 
 "Exactly. If that expression involves another in pain 
 or trouble or discomfort " 
 
 "Ah ! I have to choose, you mean. I have to know first 
 what the other feels about it." 
 
 I began to understand better. It was a game. And all 
 games delighted me. 
 
 "You may put it roughly so, yes," he explained, "you're 
 very quick. I'll give you a rule to guide you," he went 
 on. I listened with an effort; this tinkling soon wearied 
 me; I could not think long or much; my way, it seemed,
 
 90 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 was feeling. "Ask yourself always how what you do will 
 affect another," Dr. Fillery concluded. "That's a safe rule 
 for you." 
 
 "That is of children," I observed. We stared at each 
 other a moment. "Both sides keep it?" I asked. 
 
 "Childish," he agreed, "it certainly is. Both sides, yes, 
 keep it." 
 
 I sighed, and the sigh seemed to rise from my very feet, 
 passing through my whole being. He looked at me most 
 kindly then, asking why I sighed. 
 
 "I used to be free," I told him. "This is not liberty. 
 And why are we not all free together ?" 
 
 "It is liberty for two instead of only for one," he said, 
 "and so, in the long run, liberty for all." 
 
 "So that's where they are," I remarked, but to myself and 
 not to him. "Not further than that." For what I had once 
 known, but now, it seemed, forgotten, was far beyond such 
 a foolish little game. We had lived without such tiny 
 tricks. We lived openly and unafraid. We worked in 
 harmony. We lived. Yes but who was "we" ? That was 
 the part I had forgotten. 
 
 "It's the growth and development of civilization," I heard 
 the little drift of wind go whistling thinly, "and it won't 
 take you long to become quite civilized at this rate, more 
 civilized, indeed, than most with your swift intelligence 
 and lightning insight." 
 
 "Civilization," I repeated to myself. Then I looked at 
 his eyes which hid carefully in their depths somewhere that 
 tiny cherished flame I loved. "Your ways are really very 
 simple," I said. "It's all easy enough to learn. It is so 
 small." 
 
 "A man studying ants," he tinkled, "finds them small, 
 but far from simple. You may find complications later. If 
 so, come to me." 
 
 I promised him, and the fire gleamed faintly in his eyes 
 a moment. "He entrusted you to me. Your mother," he 
 added softly, "was the woman he loved."
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 91 
 
 "Civilization," I repeated, for the word set going an odd 
 new rhythm in me that I rather liked, and that tired me less 
 than the other things he said. "What is it then? You are 
 a Race, you told me." 
 
 "A Race of human beings, of men and women "develop- 
 ing " 
 
 "The comely ones ?" 
 
 "Are the women. Together we make up the Race." 
 
 "And civilization?" 
 
 "Is realizing that we are a community, learning, growing, 
 all its members living for the others as well as for them- 
 selves." 
 
 Dr. Fillery told me then about men and women and sex, 
 how children are made, and what enormous and endless 
 work was necessary merely to keep them all alive and 
 clothed and sheltered before they could accomplish anything 
 else of any sort at all. Half the labour of the majority was 
 simply to keep alive at all. It was an ugly little system 
 he described. Much I did not hear, because my thinking 
 powers gave out. Some of it gave me an awful feeling he 
 called pain. The confusion and imperfection seemed beyond 
 repair, even beyond the worth of being part of it, of belong- 
 ing to it at all. Moreover, the making of children, without 
 which the whole thing must end, gave me spasms of irrita- 
 tion he called laughter. Only the Comely Ones, and what 
 he told me of them, made me want to sing. 
 
 "The men," I said, "but do they see that it is ugly and 
 ludicrous and " 
 
 "Comic," he helped me. 
 
 "Do they know," I asked, taking his unknown words, 
 "that it's comic?" 
 
 "The glamour," he said, "conceals it from them. To the 
 best among them it is sacred even." 
 
 "And the Comely Ones?" 
 
 "It is their chief mission," he replied. "Always remem- 
 ber that. It's sacred." He fixed his kind eyes gravely on 
 my face.
 
 92 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 "Ah, worship, you mean," I said. "I understand." Again 
 we stared for some minutes. "Yet all are not comely, are 
 they?'" I asked presently. 
 
 The fire again shone faintly in his eyes as he watched 
 me a moment without answering. It caught me away. I 
 am not sure I heard his words, but I think they ran like 
 this: 
 
 "That's just the point where civilization so far has 
 always stopped." 
 
 I remember he ceased tinkling then ; our talk ceased too. 
 I was exhausted. He told me to remember what he had 
 said, and to lie down and rest. He rang the bell, and a 
 man, one of the four who had held me, came in. 
 
 "Ask Nurse Robbins to come here a moment, please," he 
 said. And a moment later the Comely One entered softly 
 and stood beside my bed. She did not look at me. Dr. 
 Fillery began again his little tinkling. ". . . wishes to 
 apologize to you most sincerely, nurse, for his mistake. 
 He meant no harm, believe me. There is no danger in him, 
 nor will he ever repeat it. His ignorance of our ways, I 
 must ask you to believe " 
 
 "Oh, it's nothing, sir," she interrupted. "I've quite for- 
 gotten it already. And usually he's as good as gold and 
 perfectly quiet." She blushed, glancing shyly at me with 
 clear invitation. 
 
 "It will not recur," repeated the Doctor positively. "He 
 has promised me. He is very, very sorry and ashamed." 
 
 The nurse looked more boldly a moment. I saw her silver 
 teeth. I saw the hint of soft fire in her poor pitiful eyes, 
 but far, far away and, as she thought, safely hidden. 
 
 "Pitiful one, I will not touch you," I said instantly. "I 
 know that you are sacred." 
 
 I noticed at once that her sweet natural perfume increased 
 about her as I said the words, but her eyes were lowered, 
 though she smiled a little, and her little cheeks grew 
 coloured. I saw her small teeth of silvery marble again. 
 Our work was visible. I liked it.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 93 
 
 "You have promised me," said Dr. Fillery, rising to go 
 out. 
 
 "I promise," I said, while the Comely One was arranging 
 my pillows and sheets with quick, clever hands, sometimes 
 touching my cheek on purpose as she did so. "I will not 
 worship, unless it is commanded of me first. The increased 
 sweetness of her smell will tell me." 
 
 But indeed already I had forgotten her, and I no longer 
 realized who it was that tripped about my bed, doing 
 numerous little things to make me comfortable. My friend, 
 the understanding one, companion of my big friend, Mason, 
 who was dead, also had left the room. His twitching mouth, 
 his laughter, and his shining eyes were gone. I was aware 
 that the Comely One remained, doing all manner of little 
 things about me and my bed, unnecessary things, but my 
 pity and my worship were not asked, so I forgot her. My 
 thinking had wearied me, and my feeling was not touched. 
 I began to hum softly to myself ; my giant rhythms rose ; I 
 went forth towards my Powers of Wind and Fire, full of 
 my own natural joy. I forgot the Race with its men, its 
 women, its rules and games, its tiny tricks, its civilization. 
 I was free for a little with my own. 
 
 One detail interfered a little with the rhythms, but only 
 for a second and very faintly even then. The Comely One's 
 face grew dark. 
 
 "He's gone off asleep actually," I heard her mutter, as 
 she left the room with a fling of her little skirts, shutting 
 the door behind her with a bang. 
 
 That bang was far away. I was already rising and 
 falling in that natural happy state which to me meant free- 
 dom. It is hard to tell about, but that dear Fillery knows, 
 I am sure, exactly what I know, though he has forgotten 
 it. He has known us somewhere, I feel. He understands 
 our service. But, like me, he has forgotten too. 
 
 What really happened to me? Where did I go, what 
 did I see and feel when my rhythms took me off?
 
 94 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 Thinking is nowhere in it I can tell him that. I am 
 conscious of the Sun. 
 
 One difficulty is that my being here confuses me. Here 
 I am already caught, confined and straitened. I am within 
 certain limits. I can only move in three ways, three measure- 
 ments, three dimensions. The space I am in here allows 
 only little rhythms ; they are coarse and slow and heavy, 
 and beat against confining walls as it were, are thrown back, 
 cross and recross each other, so that while they themselves 
 grow less, their confusion grows greater. The forms and 
 outlines I can build with them are poor and clumsy and 
 insignificant. Spirals I cannot make. Then I forget. 
 
 Into these small rhythms I cannot compress myself ; the 
 squeezing hurts. Yet neither can I make them bigger to 
 suit myself. I would break forth towards the Sun. 
 
 Thus I feel cramped, confused and crippled. It is almost 
 impossible to tell of my big rhythms, for it is an attempt 
 to tell of one thing in terms of another. How can I fix fire 
 and wind upon the point of a pin, for instance, and examine 
 them through a magnifying-glass? The Sun remains. What 
 I experience, really, when I go off into my own freedom is 
 release. My rhythms are of the Sun. They are his messen- 
 gers, they are my law, they are my life and happiness. By 
 means of them I fulfill the purpose of my being. I work, 
 so Fillery calls it. I build. 
 
 That, at any rate, is literally true. My thinking stops 
 at that point, perhaps; but "I think" I mean by "release" 
 that I escape back from being trapped by all these 
 separate little individualities, human beings each working 
 on his own, for his own, and against all the others escape 
 from this stifling tangle into the sweep of my big rhythms 
 which work together and in unison. I search for lost 
 companions, but do not find them the golden skins and 
 ladiant faces, the mighty figures and the splendid shapes. 
 
 They work without effort, however. That is another 
 difference. 
 
 I, too, work, only I work with them, and never against
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 95 
 
 them. I can draw upon them as they can draw upon me. 
 We do draw on one another. We know harmony. Service 
 is our method and system. 
 
 My dear Fillery also wants to know who "we" are. How 
 can I tell him? The moment I try to "think," I seem to 
 forget. This forgetting, indeed, is one of the limits against 
 which I bang myself, so that I am flung back upon the 
 tangle of criss-cross, tiny rhythms which confuse and 
 obliterate the very thing he wants to know. Yet the Sun I 
 never forget father of fire and wind.. My companions are 
 lost temporarily. I am shut off from them. It seems I 
 cannot have them and the Race at the same time. I yearn 
 and suffer to rejoin them. The service we all know together 
 is great joy. Of love, this love between two isolated indi- 
 viduals the Race counts the best thing they have we know 
 nothing. 
 
 Now, here is one thing I can understand quite clearly : 
 
 I have watched and helped the Race, as he calls it, for 
 countless ages. Yet from outside it. Never till now have 
 I been inside its limits with it. And a dim sense of having 
 watched it through a veil or curtain comes to me. I can 
 faintly recall that I tried to urge my big rhythms in among 
 its members, as great waves of heat or sound might be 
 launched upon an ant-heap. I used to try to force and pro- 
 ject my vast rhythms into their tiny ones, hoping to make 
 these latter swell and rise and grow but never with success. 
 Though a few members, here and there, felt them and 
 struggled to obey and use their splendid swing, the rest did 
 not seem to notice them at all. . . . Indeed, they objected 
 to the struggling efforts of the few who did feel them, for 
 their own small accustomed rhythms were interfered with. 
 The few were generally broken into little pieces and pushed 
 violently out of the way. 
 
 And this made me feel pitiful, I remember dimly; because 
 these smaller rhythms, though insignificant, were exquisite. 
 They were of extraordinary beauty. Could they only have 
 been increased, the Race that knew and used them must
 
 96 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 have changed my own which, though huge and splendid of 
 their kind, lacked the intense, perfect loveliness of the 
 smaller kind. 
 
 The Race, had it accepted mine and mastered them, must 
 have carried themselves and me towards still mightier 
 rhythms which I alone could never reach. 
 
 This, then, is clear to me, though very faint now. Fillery, 
 who can think for a long time, instead of like me for 
 seconds only, will understand what I mean. For if I tell 
 him what "we" did, he may be able to think out what "we" 
 were. 
 
 "Your work?" he asked me too. 
 
 I'm not sure I know what he means by "work." We were 
 incessantly active, but not for ourselves. There was no 
 effort. There was easy and sure accomplishment in the 
 sense that nothing could stop or hinder our fulfilling our 
 own natures. Obstacles, indeed, helped our power and made 
 it greater, for everything feeds fire and opposition adds to 
 the pressure of wind. Our main activity was to make 
 perfect forms. We were form-builders. Apart from this, 
 our "work" was to maintain and keep active all rhythms 
 less than our own, yet of our kind. I speak of my own 
 kind alone. We had no desire to be known outside our 
 kind. We worked and moved and built up swiftly, but out 
 of sight an endless service. 
 
 "You are the Powers behind what we call Nature, then ?" 
 the dear Fillery asked me. "You operate behind growing 
 things, even behind inanimate things like trees and stones 
 and flowers. Your big rhythms, as you call them, are our 
 Laws of Nature. Your own particular department, your 
 own elements evidently, were heat and air." 
 
 I could not answer that. But, as he said it, I saw in his 
 grey eyes the flash of fire which so few of his Race pos- 
 sessed ; and I felt vaguely that he was one of the struggling 
 members who was aware of the big rhythms and who 
 would be put away in little pieces later by the rest. It 
 made me pitiful. "Forget your own tiny rhythms," I said,
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 97 
 
 "and come over to us. But bring your tiny rhythms with 
 you because they are so exquisitely lovely. We shall in- 
 crease them." 
 
 He did not answer me. His mouth twitched at the 
 corners, and he had an attack of that irritation which, he 
 says, is relieved and expressed by laughter. Yet the face 
 shone. 
 
 The laughter, however, was a very quick, full, natural 
 answer, all the same. It was happy and enthusiastic. I 
 saw that laughter made his rhythms bigger at once. Then 
 laughter was probably the means to use. It was a sort of 
 bridge. 
 
 "Your instantaneous comprehension of our things puzzles 
 me," he said. "You grasp our affairs in all their relations 
 so swiftly* Yet it is all new to you." His voice and face 
 made me wish to stroke and help him, he was so dear and 
 eager. "How do you manage it?" he asked point blank. 
 "Our things are surely foreign to your nature." 
 
 "But they are of children," I told him. "They are small 
 and so very simple. There are no difficulties. Your lan- 
 guage is block letters because your self-expression, as you 
 call it, is so limited. It all comes to me at a glance. I and 
 my kind can remember a million tiniest details without 
 effort." 
 
 He did not laugh, but his face looked full of questions. 
 I could not help him further. "A scrap, probably, of what 
 you've taught us," I heard him mumble, though no further 
 questions came. "Well," he went on presently, while I lay 
 and watched the pale fire slip in tiny waves about his eyes, 
 "remember this : since our alphabet is so easy to you, follow 
 it, stick to it, do not go outside it. There's a good rule that 
 will save trouble for others as well as for yourself." 
 
 "I remember and I try. But it is not always easy. I get 
 so cramped and stiff and lifeless with it." 
 
 "This sunless, chilly England, of course, cannot feed 
 you," he said. "The sense of beauty in our Race, too, is 
 very poor."
 
 98 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 Once he suddenly looked up and fixed his eyes on my 
 face. His manner became very earnest. 
 
 "Now, listen to me," he said. "I'm going to read you 
 something; I want you to tell me what you make of it. It's 
 private ; that is, I have no right to show it to others, but as 
 no one would understand it with the exception possibly of 
 yourself secrecy is not of importance." And his mouth 
 twitched a little. 
 
 He drew a sheaf of papers from an inner pocket, and I 
 saw they were covered with fine writing. I laughed; this 
 writing always made me laugh it was so laborious and 
 slow. The writing I knew best, of course, lay all over and 
 inside the earth and skies. The privacy also made me laugh, 
 so strange seemed the idea to me, and so impossible this 
 idea of secrecy. It was such an admission of ignorance. 
 
 "I will understand it quickest by reading it," I said. "I 
 take in a page at once in your block letters." 
 
 But he preferred to read it out himself, so that he could 
 note the effect upon me, he explained, of definite passages. 
 He saw that I guessed his purpose, and we laughed together 
 a moment. "When you tire of listening," he said, "just tell 
 me and I'll pause." I gave him my hand to hold. "It helps 
 me to stay here," I explained, and he nodded as he grasped 
 me in his warm firm clasp. 
 
 "It's written by one who may have known you and your 
 big rhythms, though I can't be sure," he added. "One of 
 er my patients wrote it, someone who believed she was 
 in communication with a kind of immense Nature-spirit." 
 
 Then he began to read in his clear, windy voice : 
 
 "'I sit and weave. I feel strange; as if I had so much 
 consciousness that words cannot explain it. The failure of 
 others makes my work more hard, but my own purposes 
 never fail, I am associated with those who need me. The 
 universal doors are open to me. I compass Creation.' " 
 
 But already I began to hum my songs, though to please 
 him I kept the music low, and he, dear Fillery, did not bid 
 me stop, but only tightened his grasp upon my hand. I
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 99 
 
 listened with pleasure and satisfaction. Therefore I 
 hummed. 
 
 " 'I am silent, seeking no expression, needing no com- 
 munication, satisfied with the life that is in me. I do not 
 even wish to be known about ' " 
 
 "That's where your Race," I put in, "is to me as children. 
 All they do must be shouted about so loud or they think it 
 has not happened." 
 
 " 'I do not wish to be forced to obtrude myself/ " he 
 went on. " 'There are hosts like me. We do not want that 
 which does not belong to us. We do not want that 
 hindrance, that opposition which rouses an undesirable con- 
 sciousness ; for without that opposition we could never have 
 known of disobedience. We are formless. The formless 
 is the real. That cannot die. It is eternal.' " 
 
 Again he tightened his grasp, and this time also laid his 
 eyes a moment on my own, over the top of his paper, so 
 that I kept my music back with a great effort. For it was 
 hard not to express myself when my own came calling in 
 this fashion. 
 
 He continued reading aloud. He selected passages now, 
 instead of oing straight through the pages. The words 
 helped memory in me ; flashes of what I had forgotten came 
 back in sheets of colour and waves of music; the phrases 
 built little spirals, as it were, between two states. Of these 
 two states, I now divined, he understood one perfectly his 
 own, and the other mine partially. Yet he had a little of 
 both, I knew, in himself. With me it was similar, only the 
 understood state was not the same with us. To the Race, of 
 course, what he read would have no meaning. 
 
 "The Comely One and the four figures," I said, "how they 
 would turn white and run if they could hear you, showing 
 their yellow teeth and dim eyes !" 
 
 His face remained grave and eager, though I could see 
 the laughter running about beneath the tight brown skin 
 as he went on reading his little bits. 
 
 ' 'We heard nothing of man, and were rarely even con-
 
 100 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 scious of him, although he benefited by our work in all that 
 sustained and conditioned him. The wise are silent, the 
 foolish speak, and the children are thus led astray, for 
 wisdom is not knowledge, it is a realization of the scheme 
 and of one's own part in it/ " 
 
 He took a firmer, broader grip of my hand as he read the 
 next bit. I felt the tremble of his excitement run into my 
 wrist and arm. His voice deepened and shook. It was like 
 a little storm : 
 
 " 'Then, suddenly, we heard man's triumphant voice. We 
 became conscious of him as an evolving entity. Our Work 
 had told. We had built his form and processes so faith- 
 fully. We knew that when he reached his height we must 
 be submissive to his will/ " 
 
 A gust of memory flashed by me as I heard. Those small 
 but perfect, exquisite, lovely rhythms ! 
 
 "Who called me here? Whose voice reached after me, 
 bringing me into this undesirable consciousness?" I cried 
 aloud, as the memory went tearing by, then vanished before 
 I could recover it. At the same time Fillery let go my hand, 
 and the little bridge was snapped. I felt what he called 
 pain. It passed at once. I found his hand again, but the 
 bridge was not rebuilt. How white his skin had grown, I 
 noticed, as I looked up at his face. But the eyes shone 
 grandly. "I shall find the way," I said. "We shall go back 
 together to our eternal home." 
 
 He went on reading as though I had not interrupted, but 
 I found it less easy to listen now. 
 
 I realized then that he was gone. He had left the room, 
 though I had not seen him go. I had been away. 
 
 It was some days ago that this occurred. It was to-day, 
 a few hours ago, that I seized the Comely One and tried to 
 comfort her, poor hungry member of this little Race. 
 
 But both occurrences help us help dear Fillery and my- 
 self to understand how difficult it is to answer his questions 
 and tell him exactly what he wants to know. 
 
 "How long, O Lord, how long!" I hear his yearning
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 101 
 
 cry. "Yet other beings cannot help us; they can only tell 
 us what their own part is." 
 
 After the door had clicked I knew release for a bit re- 
 lease from a state I partially understood and so found irk- 
 some, into another where I felt at home and so found 
 pleasurable. In the big rhythms my nature expressed itself 
 apparently. I rose, seeking my lost companions. They 
 the Devonham and his busy little figures called it sleep. 
 It may be "sleep." But I find there what I seek yet have 
 forgotten, and that with me were dear Fillery and another 
 a Comely One whom he brings as though we belong 
 together and have a common origin. But this other Comely 
 One who is it?
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 ABOUT a week after the arrival of LeVallon in London, 
 Dr. Fillery came out of the Home one morning early, 
 upon some uninteresting private business. He had left 
 "LeVallon" happy with his books and garden, Devonham 
 was with him to answer questions or direct his energies; 
 the other "cases" in the establishment were moving nicely 
 towards a cure. 
 
 The November air was clear and almost bright; no 
 personal worries troubled him. His mind felt free and 
 light. 
 
 It was one of those mornings when Nature slips, very 
 close and sweet, into the heart, so close and sweet that the 
 mind wonders why people quarrel and disagree, when it 
 is so easy to forgive, and the planet seems but a big, lovely, 
 happy garden, evil an impossible nightmare, and personal 
 needs few and simple. 
 
 He walked by cross roads towards Primrose Hill, enter- 
 ing Regent's Park near the Zoo. An early white frost was 
 rapidly melting in the sun. The sky showed a faint tinge 
 of blue. He saw floating sea-gulls. These, and a faint 
 breeze that stirred the yellowing last leaves of autumn, gave 
 his heart a sudden lift. 
 
 And this lift was in the direction of a forbidden corner. 
 He was aware of some exquisite dawn-wind far away 
 stirring a million flowers, dew sparkled, streams splashed 
 and murmured. A valley gleamed and vanished, yet left 
 across his mind its shining trail. . . . For this lift of his 
 heart made him soar into a region where it was only too 
 easy to override temptation. Fillery, however, though his 
 invisible being soared, kept both visible feet firmly on 
 
 102
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 103 
 
 the ground. The surface was slippery, being melted by 
 the sun, but frost kept the earth hard and frozen under- 
 neath. His balance never was in danger. He remained 
 detached and a spectator. 
 
 She walked beside him nevertheless, a figure of purity 
 and radiance, perfumed, soft, delicious. She was so 
 ignorant of life. That was her wonder partly; for beauty 
 was her accident and, while admirable, was not a deter- 
 mining factor. Life, in its cruder sense, she did not know, 
 though moving through the thick of it. It neither touched 
 nor soiled her ; she brushed its dirt and dust aside as though 
 a non-conducting atmosphere surrounded her. Her emo- 
 tions, deep and searching, had remained untorn. A quality 
 of pristine innocence belonged to her, as though, in the 
 noisy clamour of ambitious civilized life, she remained still 
 aware of Eden. Her grace, her loveliness, her simplicity 
 moved by his side as naturally, it seemed to him, as air 
 or perfume. 
 
 "Iraida," he murmured to himself, with a smile of joy. 
 "Nayan Khilkoff. All the men worship and adore you, 
 yet respect you too. They cannot touch you. You remain 
 aloof, unstained." And, remembering LeVallon's remarks 
 in cinema and theatre, he could have sung at this mere 
 thought of her. 
 
 "Untouched by coarseness, something unearthly about 
 your loveliness of soul, a baby, a saint, and to all the men 
 in Khilkoff's Studio, a mother. Where do you really come 
 from? Whence do you derive? Your lovely soul can have 
 no dealings with our common flesh. How many young 
 fellows have you saved already, how many floundering 
 characters redeemed! They crave your earthly, physical 
 love. Instead you surprise and disappoint and shock them 
 into safety again by giving to them Love. ... !" 
 
 And, as he half repeated his vivid thoughts aloud, he 
 suddenly saw her coming towards him from the ornamental 
 water, and instantly, wondering what he should say to her, 
 his mind contracted. The thing in him that sang went
 
 104 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 backward into silence. He put a brake upon himself. But 
 he watched her coming nearer, wondering what brought 
 her so luckily into Regent's Park, and all the way from 
 Chelsea, at such an hour. She moved so lightly, sweetly; 
 she was so intangible and lovely. He feared her eyes, her 
 voice. 
 
 They drew nearer. From looking to right and left, he 
 raised his head. She was close, quite close, a hundred 
 yards away. That walk, that swing, that poise of head 
 and neck he could not mistake anywhere. His whole being 
 glowed, thrilled, and yet contracted as in pain. 
 
 A sentence about the weather, about her own, her father's, 
 health, about his calling to see them shortly, rose to his 
 lips. He turned his eyes away, then again looked up. They 
 were now not twenty yards apart; in another moment he 
 would have raised his hat, when, with a sensation of cold 
 disappointment in him, she went past in totally irresponsive 
 silence. It was a stranger a shop girl, a charwoman, a 
 bus-conductor's wife anybody but she whom he had 
 thought. 
 
 How could he have been so utterly mistaken ? It amazed 
 him. It was, indeed, months since they had met, yet his 
 knowledge of her appearance was so accurate and detailed 
 that such an error seemed incredible. He had experienced, 
 besides, the actual thrill. 
 
 The phenomenon, however, was not new to him. Often 
 had he experienced it, much as others have. He knew, 
 from this, that she was somewhere near, coming deliciously, 
 deliberately towards him, moving every minute firmly 
 nearer, from a point in great London town which she had 
 left just at the precise moment which would time her 
 crossing his own path later. They would meet presently, 
 if not now. Fate had arranged all details, and something 
 in him was aware of it before it happened. 
 
 The phenomenon, as a matter of fact, was repeated twice 
 again in the next half-hour : he saw her on both occasions
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 105 
 
 beyond the possibility of question coming towards him, 
 yet each time it was a complete stranger masquerading in 
 her guise. 
 
 It meant, he knew, that their two minds hearts, too, he 
 wondered, with a sense of secret happiness, enjoyed in- 
 tensely then instantly suppressed were wirelessing to one 
 another across the vast city, and that both transmitter and 
 receiver, their physical bodies, would meet shortly round 
 the corner, or along the crowded street. Strong currents 
 of desiring thought, he knew, he hoped, he wondered, were 
 trying to shape the crude world nearer to the heart's desire, 
 causing the various intervening passers-by to assume the 
 desirable form and outline in advance. 
 
 He reflected, following the habit of his eager mind; this 
 wireless discovery, after all, was the discovery of a universal 
 principle in Nature. It was common to all forms of life, 
 a faint beginning of that advance towards marvellous inter- 
 communicating, semi-telepathic brotherhood he had always 
 hoped for, believed in. ... Even plants, he remembered, 
 according to Bose. . . . 
 
 Then, suddenly, half-way down Baker Street he found 
 her close beside him. 
 
 She was dressed so becomingly, so naturally, that no 
 particular detail caught his eye, although she wore more 
 colour than was usual in the dull climate known to English 
 people. There was a touch of fur and there were flowers, 
 but these were part of her appearance as a whole, and the 
 hat was so exactly right, though it was here that English- 
 women generally went wrong, that he could not remember 
 afterwards what it was like. It was as suitable as natural 
 hair. It looked as if she had grown it. The shining eyes 
 were what he chiefly noticed. They seemed to increase the 
 pale sunlight in the dingy street. 
 
 She was so close that he caught her perfume almost be- 
 fore he recognized her, and a sense of happiness invaded 
 his whole being instantly, as he took the slender hand
 
 106 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 emerging from a muff and held it for a moment. The 
 casual sentences he had half prepared fled like a flock of 
 birds surprised. Their eyes met. . . . And instantly the 
 sun rose over a far Khaketian valley; he was aware of 
 joy, of peace, of deep contentment, London obliterated, the 
 entire world elsewhere. He knew the thrill, the ecstasy of 
 some long- forgotten dawn. . . . 
 
 But in that brief second while he held her hand and 
 gazed into her eyes, there flashed before him a sudden 
 apparition. With lightning rapidity this picture darted past 
 between them, paused for the tiniest fraction of a second, 
 and was gone again. So swiftly the figure shot across that 
 the very glance he gave her was intercepted, its angle 
 changed, its meaning altered. He started involuntarily, for 
 he knew that vision, the bright rushing messenger, someone 
 who brought glad tidings. And this time he recognized it 
 it was the figure of "N. H." 
 
 The outward start, the slight wavering of the eyelids, 
 both were noticed, though not understood, much less inter- 
 preted by the young woman facing him. 
 
 "You are as much surprised as I am," he heard the 
 pleasant, low-pitched voice before his face. "I thought you 
 were abroad. Father and I came back from Sark only 
 yesterday." 
 
 "I haven't left town," he replied. "It was Devonham 
 went to Switzerland." 
 
 He was thinking of her pleasant voice, and wondering 
 how a mere voice could soothe and bless and comfort in 
 this way. The picture of the flashing figure, too, pre- 
 occupied him. His various mind was ever busy with several 
 trains of thought at once, though all correlated. Why, he 
 was wondering, should that picture of "N. H." leave a sense 
 of chill upon his heart r Why had the first radiance of this 
 meeting thus already dimmed a little? Her nearness, too, 
 confused him as of old, making his manner a trifle brusque 
 and not quite natural, until he found his centre of control 
 again. He looked quickly up and down the street, moved
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 107 
 
 aside to let some people pass, then turned to the girl again. 
 "Your holiday has done you good, Iraida," he said quietly ; 
 "I hope your father enjoyed it too." 
 
 "We both enjoyed ourselves," she answered, watching 
 him, something of a protective air about her. "I wish you 
 had been with us, for that would have made it perfect. I 
 was thinking that only this morning as I walked across 
 Hyde Park." 
 
 "How nice of you ! I believe I, too, was thinking of 
 you both, as I walked through Regent's Park." He smiled 
 for the first time. 
 
 "It's very odd," she went on, "though you can explain 
 it probably," she added, with a smile that met his own, 
 increasing it, "or, at any rate, Dr. Devonham could but 
 I've seen you several times this morning already in the 
 last half -hour. I've seen you in other people in the street, 
 I mean. Yet I wasn't thinking of you at the actual moment, 
 it's two months since we've met, and I imagined you were 
 abroad." 
 
 "Odd, yes," he said, half shyly, half curtly. "It's an 
 experience many have, I believe." 
 
 She gazed up at him. "It's very natural, I think, when 
 people like each other, Edward, and are in sympathy." 
 
 "Yet it happens with people who don't like each other 
 too," he objected, and at the same moment was vexed that 
 he had used the words. 
 
 Iraida Khilkoff laughed. He had the feeling that she 
 read his thoughts as easily as if they were printed in red 
 letters on his grey felt hat. 
 
 "There must be some bond between them, though," she 
 remarked, "an emotion, I mean, whatever it may be even 
 hatred." 
 
 "Probably, Nayan," he agreed. "It's you now, not Devon- 
 ham, that wants to explain things. I think I must take 
 you into the Firm, you could take charge of the female 
 patients with great success." 
 
 Whereupon she looked up at him with such a grave
 
 108 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 mothering expression that he was aware of her secret 
 power, her central source of strength in dealing with men. 
 Her innocence and truth were an atmosphere about her, 
 protecting her as naturally and neatly as the clothes upon 
 her body. She believed in men. He felt like a child beside 
 her. 
 
 "I'm in the Firm already," she said, "for you made me 
 a partner years ago when I was so high," and her small 
 gloved hand indicated the stature of a little girl. "You 
 taught me first." 
 
 He remembered the bleak northern town where fifteen 
 years ago he had known her father as a patient for some 
 minor ailment, and the friendship that grew out of the 
 relationship. He remembered the child of nine or ten who 
 sat on his knee and repeated to him the Russian fairy tales 
 her mother told her; he recalled the charm, the wonder, 
 the extraordinary power of belief. Her words brought 
 back again that flowered Caucasian valley in the sunlight 
 and this, again, flashed upon the screen the strange bright 
 figure that had already once intercepted their glance, as 
 though it somehow came between them. . . . 
 
 "You have one advantage over me," he rejoined presently, 
 "for in my Clinique the people know that they need treat- 
 ment, whereas in the Studio you catch your patients 
 unawares. They do not know they're ill. You heal them 
 without their being aware that they need healing." 
 
 "Yet some of our habitues have found their way later 
 to your consulting-room," she reminded him. 
 
 "Merely to finish what you had first begun a sort of 
 convalescence. You work in the big, raw world, I in a 
 mere specialized corner of it." 
 
 He turned away, lest the power in her eyes overcome 
 him. The traffic thundered past, the people crowded, 
 jostling them. He could have stood there talking to her 
 all day long, the London street forgotten or full of flowers 
 and Eden's trees and rippling summer streams. The 
 pale sunlight caught her face beside him and made it 
 shine. .
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 109 
 
 He longed to take her in his arms and fly through the 
 dawn for ever, for his clean mind saw her without clothing, 
 her hair loose in the wind, her white shape fleeing from 
 him, yet beckoning across a gleaming shoulder that he must 
 overtake and capture her. . . . 
 
 "I'm on my way to St. Dunstan's," he heard the musical 
 voice. "A friend of father's. . . . Come with me, will 
 you?" And with her muff she touched his arm, trying 
 to make him turn her way. But just as he felt the touch 
 he saw the bright figure again. Swifter than himself and 
 far more powerful, it leaped dancing past and carried her 
 away before his very eyes. She waved her hand, her eyes 
 faded like stars into the distance of some unearthly spring 
 and she was gone. A pang of peculiar anguish seized 
 him, as the mental picture flashed with the speed of light 
 and vanished. For the figure seemed of elemental power, 
 taking its own with perfect ease. . . . 
 
 He shook his head. "I'll come to see you to-morrow 
 instead," he told her. "I'll come to the Studio in the after- 
 noon, if you'll both be in. I'd like to bring a friend with 
 me, if I may." 
 
 "Good-bye then." She took his hand and kept it. "I 
 shall expect you to tell me all about this friend. I knew 
 you had something on your mind, for your thoughts have 
 been elsewhere all the time." 
 
 "Julian LeVallon," he replied quickly. "He's staying 
 with me indefinitely." His face grew sjiern a moment 
 about the mouth. "I think he may need you," "he added 
 with abrupt significance. 
 
 "Julian LeVallon," she repeated, the name sounding very 
 musical the way her slightly foreign accent touched it. 
 "And what nationality may that be?" 
 
 Dr. Fillery hesitated. "His parents, Nayan, I believe, 
 were English," he said. "He has lived all his life in the 
 Jura Mountains, alone with an old scholar, poet and 
 geologist, who brought him up. Of our modern life he 
 
 knows little. I think you may " He broke off. "His 
 
 mother died when he was born," he concluded. 

 
 110 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 "And of women he knows nothing," she replied, under- 
 standingly, "so that he will probably fall in love with the 
 first he sees with Nayan." 
 
 "I hope so, Nayan, and he will be safe with you." 
 
 She watched her companion's face for a minute or two 
 with her clear searching eyes. She smiled. But his own 
 face wore a mask now; no figure this time flashed between 
 their deep understanding gaze. 
 
 "A woman, you think, can teach and help him more 
 than a man," she said, without lowering her eyes. 
 
 "Probably perhaps, at any rate. The material, I must 
 warn you at once, is new and strange, I want him to meet 
 you." 
 
 "Then I am in the Firm," was all she answered, "and 
 you can't do without me." She let go the hand she had 
 held all this time, and turned from him, looking once across 
 her shoulder as he, too, went upon his way. 
 
 "About three o'clock we shall expect you and Mr. 
 Julian LeVallon," she added. "The Prometheans are com- 
 ing too, as of course you know, but that won't matter. 
 Father has let the Studio to them." 
 
 "The more the merrier," he answered, raised his hat, 
 and went on at a rapid pace up Baker Street. 
 
 But with him up the London street went a flock of 
 thoughts, hopes, fears and memories that were hard to 
 disentangle. Lost, forgotten dreams went with him too. 
 He had known that one day he must be "executed," yet 
 with his own hands he had just slipped the noose about 
 his neck. Detachment from life, he realized, keeping aloof 
 from the emotions that touch one's fellow beings, can only 
 be, after all, a pose. In his case it was evidently a pose 
 assumed for safety and self-protection, an artificial attitude 
 he wore to keep his heart from error. His love, born of 
 some far unearthly valley, undoubtedly consumed him, 
 while yet he said it nay. . . . 
 
 He had himself suggested bringing together the girl and 
 "N. H." There had been no need to do this. Yet he had
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 111 
 
 deliberately offered it, and she had instantly accepted. Even 
 while he said the words there was a volcano of emotion 
 in him, several motives fighting to combine. The fear for 
 himself, being selfish, he had set aside at once; there was 
 also the fear for her the odd certainty in him that at last 
 her woman's nature would be waked; lastly, the fear for 
 "N. H." himself. And here he clashed with his promise 
 to Devonham. Behind the simple proposal lay these various 
 threads of motive, emotion and qualification. 
 
 Now, as he hurried along the street, they rushed to and 
 fro about his mind, each at its own speed and with its own 
 impetuous strength. It was the last one, however, the 
 certainty that her mere presence must evoke the "N. H." 
 personality, banishing the commonplace LeVallon; it was 
 this that, in the end, perhaps troubled him most. An intuitive 
 conviction assured him that this was bound to be the result 
 of their meeting. LeVallon would sink down out of sight ; 
 "N. H." would emerge triumphant and vital, bringing his 
 elemental power with him. The girl would summon 
 him. . . . 
 
 "I must tell Paul first," he decided. "I must consult his 
 judgment. Otherwise I'm breaking my promise. If Paul 
 is against it, I will send an excuse. . . ." 
 
 With this proviso, he dismissed the matter from his mind, 
 noting only how clearly it revealed his own keen desire 
 to let LeVallon disappear and "N. H." become active. He 
 himself yearned for the interest, stimulus and companion- 
 ship of the strange new being that was "N. H." 
 
 The other aspect of the problem he dismissed quickly 
 too : he would lose Nayan. Yes, but he had never possessed 
 the right to hold her. He was strong, indifferent, de- 
 tached. . . . His life in any case was a sacrifice upon the 
 altar of a mistake with regard to which he had not been 
 consulted. His whole existence must be passed in worship 
 before this altar, unles? he was to admit himself a failure. 
 His ideal possession of the girl, he consoled himself, need 
 know no change. To watch her womanhood, hitherto
 
 112 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 untouched by any man, to watch this bloom and ripen at 
 the bidding of another must mean pain. But he faced the 
 loss. And a curious sense of compensation lay in it some- 
 where the strange notion that she and he would share 
 "N. H." in a sense between them. He was already aware 
 of a deep subtle kinship between the three of them, a kin- 
 ship hardly of this physical world. And, after all, the 
 interests of "N. H." must come first. He had chosen his 
 life, accepted it, at any rate; he must remain true to his 
 high ideal. This strange being, blown by the winds of 
 chance into his keeping, must be his first consideration. 
 
 "LeVallon" needed no special help, neither from himself, 
 nor from her, nor from others. "LeVallon" was ordinary 
 enough, if not commonplace, his only interest being at those 
 thin places in his being where the submerged personality 
 of "N. H." peeped through. Paul Devonham, he felt con- 
 vinced, was wrong in thinking "N. H." to be the transient 
 manifestation. 
 
 It was the reverse that Dr. Fillery believed to be the 
 truth. He saw in "N. H." almost a new type of being 
 altogether. In that physical body warred two personalities 
 certainly, but "N. H." was the important one, and Le- 
 Vallon merely the transient outer one, masquerading on 
 the surface merely, a kind of automatic and mechanical 
 personality, gleaned, picked up, trained and educated, as 
 n were, by the few years spent among the human herd. 
 
 And this "N. H." needed help, the best, the wisest pos- 
 sible. Both male and female help "N. H." demanded. 
 He, Edward Fillery, could supply the former, but the latter 
 could be furnished only by some woman in whom innocence, 
 truth and a natural mother-love the three deepest feminine 
 qualities were happily combined. Nayan possessed them 
 all. "N. H.," the strange bright messenger, bringing per- 
 haps glad tidings into life, had need of her. 
 
 And Fillery, as his thoughts ran down these sad and 
 happy paths of that lost valley in his blood, realized the 
 meaning of the flashing intuition that had pained yet
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 113 
 
 gladdened him half an hour before with its convincing 
 symbolic picture. 
 
 This private Eden secreted in his depths he revealed 
 to no one, though Paul, his intimate friend and keen 
 assistant, divined its general neighbourhood and geog- 
 raphy to some extent. It was the girl who invariably 
 opened its ivory gates for him. They had but to meet 
 and talk a moment, when, with a sudden drift of wonder, 
 beauty, wildness, this Khaketian inheritance rose before 
 him. Its sunny brilliance, its flowers, its perfumes se- 
 duced and caught him away. The unearthly mood stole 
 over him. Thought took wings of imagination and soared 
 beyond the planet. He foresaw, easily, the effect she 
 would produce upon "LeVallon." . . . 
 
 He came back to earth again at the door of the Home, 
 smiling, as so often before, at these brief wanderings in 
 his secret Eden, yet perfectly able to pigeon-hole the 
 experience, each detail explained, labelled, docketed, and 
 therefore harmless. . . . 
 
 He found Devonham in the study and at once told 
 him of his suggestion and its possible results, and his 
 assistant, resting before lunch after a long morning's 
 work, looked up at him with his quick, observant air. 
 Noticing the light in the eyes, the softer expression about 
 the mouth, the general appearance of a strong and recent 
 stimulus, he easily divined their origin, and showed his 
 pleasure in his face. He longed for his old friend to be 
 humanized and steadied by some deep romance. There 
 was a curious new watchful attitude also about him, 
 though cleverly concealed. 
 
 "I'm glad the Khilkoffs are back in town," he said 
 easily. "As for LeVallon he's been quiet and uninter- 
 esting all the morning. He needs the human touch, as 
 I already said, and the Studio atmosphere, especially if 
 the Prometheans are to be there, seems the very thing." 
 
 "And Nayan ?" 
 
 'Her influence is good for any man, young or old, and
 
 114 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 if LeVallon worships at her shrine like the rest of 'em, 
 so much the better. You remember my Notes. Nothing 
 will help towards his finding his real self quicker than 
 an abandoned passion unreturned." 
 
 "Unreturned?" 
 
 "You can't think she will give to LeVallon what so 
 many ?" 
 
 "But may she not," the other interrupted, "stimulate 
 'N. H.' rather than LeVallon?" 
 
 Devonham was surprised he had quickly divined the 
 subconscious fear and jealousy. For this detached, im- 
 personal attitude he was not prepared. Only the keenest 
 observer could have noticed the sharp, anxious watchful- 
 ness he hid so well. 
 
 "Edward, there's only one thing I feel we you rather 
 have to be careful about. And the girl has nothing 
 to do with that. In your blood, remember, lies an un- 
 earthly spiritual vagrancy which you must not, dare not, 
 communicate to him, if you ever hope to see him cured." 
 
 Devonham regarded him keenly as he said it. He 
 was as earnest as his chief, but the difference between 
 the two men was fundamental, probably unbridgeable as 
 well. The affection, trust, respect each felt for the other 
 was sincere. Devonham, however, having never known 
 a thought, a feeling, much less an actual experience, out- 
 side the normal gamut of humanity, regarded all such as 
 pathogenic. Fillery, who had tasted the amazing, dan- 
 gerous sweetness of such experiences, in his own being, 
 had another standard. 
 
 "You must not exaggerate," observed Fillery, slowly. 
 "Your phrase, though, is good. 'Spiritual vagrancy' is 
 an apt description, I admit. Yet to the 'spiritual,' if it 
 exists, the whole universe lies open, remember, too." 
 
 They laughed together. Then, suddenly, Devonham 
 rose, and a new inexpressible uneasiness was in his face. 
 He thrust his hands deep into his trouser pockets, turned 
 his eyes hard upon the floor, stood with his legs apart.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 115 
 
 Abruptly turning, he came a full step closer. "Edward," 
 he said, furious with himself, and yet fiercely determined 
 to be honest, "I may as well tell you frankly though 
 explanation lies beyond me there's something in this 
 this case I don't quite like." Behind his lowered eyelids 
 his observation never failed. 
 
 Quick as a flash, his companion took him up. "For 
 yourself, for others, or for himself?" he asked, while a 
 secret touch of joy ran through him. 
 
 "For myself perhaps," was the immediate rejoinder. 
 "It's intolerable. It's the panic sense he touches in me. 
 I admit it frankly. I've had once or twice the desire 
 to turn and run. But what I mean is we've got to be 
 uncommonly careful with him," he ended lamely. 
 
 "LeVallon you refer to? Or 'N. H.'?" 
 
 "'N. H/" 
 
 "The panic sense," repeated Fillery to himself more 
 than to his friend. "The old, old thing. I understand." 
 
 "Also," Devonham went on presently, "I must tell 
 you that since he came here there's been a change in 
 every patient in the building without exception." He 
 looked over his shoulder as though he heard a sound. 
 He listened certainly, but his mind was sharply centred 
 on his friend. 
 
 "For the better, yes," said Fillery at once. "Increased 
 vitality, I've noticed too." 
 
 "Precisely," whispered the other, still listening. 
 
 There came a pause between them. 
 
 "And when we have found the real, the central self," 
 pursued Fillery presently. "When we have found the 
 essential being what is it?" 
 
 "Exactly," replied Devonham with extraordinary 
 emphasis. "What is it?" But even then he did not look 
 up to meet the other's glance.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE meeting with Dr. Fillery and his friends, the 
 Khilkoffs, father and daughter, had, for one reason 
 or another, to be postponed for a week, during which brief 
 time even, no single day wasted, LeVallon's education 
 proceeded rapidly. He was exceedingly quick to learn 
 the usages of civilized society in a big city, adapting 
 himself with an ease born surely of quick intelligence to 
 the requirements and conventions of ordinary life. 
 
 In his perception of the rights of others, particularly, 
 he showed a natural aptitude; he had good manners, 
 that is, instinctively ; in certain houses where Fillery took 
 him purposely, he behaved with a courtesy and tact that 
 belong usually to what England calls a gentleman. Ex- 
 cept to Fillery and Devonham, he talked little, but was 
 an excellent and sympathetic listener, a quality that 
 helped him to make his way. With Mrs. Soames, the 
 stern and even forbidding matron, he made such head- 
 way, that it was noticed with a surprise, including 
 laughter. He might have been her adopted son. 
 
 "She's got a new pet," said Devonham, with a laugh. 
 "Mason taught him well. His aptitude for natural 
 history is obvious; after a few years' study he'll make a 
 name for himself. The 'N. H.' side will disappear now 
 more and more, unless you stimulate it for your own 
 
 ends " He broke off, speaking lightly still, but with 
 
 a carelessness some might have guessed assumed. 
 
 "You forget," put in his Chief, "I promised." 
 
 Devonham looked at him shrewdly. "I doubt," he 
 said, "whether you can help yourself, Edward," the ex- 
 pression in his eyes for a moment almost severe, 
 
 116
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 117 
 
 Fillery remained thoughtful, making no immediate 
 reply. 
 
 "We must remember," he said presently, "that he's 
 now in the quiescent state. Nothing has again occurred 
 to bring 'N. H.' uppermost again." 
 
 Devonham turned upon his friend. "I see no reason 
 why 'N. H.' " he spoke with emphasis "should ever 
 get uppermost again. In my opinion we can make this 
 quiescent state LeVallon the permanent one." 
 
 "We can't keep him in a cage like Mrs. Soames's 
 mice and parrot. Are you, for instance, against my 
 taking him to the Studio? Do you think it's a mistake 
 to let him meet the Prometheans?" 
 
 "That's just where Mason went wrong," returned 
 Devonham. "He kept him in a cage. The boy met only 
 a few peasants, trees, plants, animals and birds. The sun, 
 making him feel happy, became his deity. The rain he 
 hated. The wind inspired and invigorated him. If we 
 now introduce the human element wisely, I see no dan- 
 ger. If he can stand the Khi the Studio and the Pro- 
 metheans, he can stand anything. He may be considered 
 cured." 
 
 The door opened and a tall, radiant figure with bright 
 eyes and untidy shining hair came into the room, carrying 
 an open book. 
 
 "Mrs. Soames says I've nothing to do with stars," 
 said a deep musical voice, "and that I had better stick to 
 animals and plants. She says that star-gazing never 
 was good for anyone except astronomers who warn us 
 about tides, eclipses and dangerous comets." 
 
 He held out the big book, open at an enlarged stellar 
 photograph. "What, please, is a galaxy, a star that is 
 suddenly brilliant, then disappears in a few weeks, and a 
 nebula?" 
 
 Before either of the astonished men could answer, 
 LeVallon turned to Devonham, his face wearing the 
 gravity and intense curiosity of a child. "And, please,
 
 118 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 are you the only sort of being in the universe? Mrs. 
 Soames says that the earth is the only inhabited place. 
 Aren't there other beings besides you anywhere? The 
 Earth is such a little planet, and the solar system, accord- 
 ing to this book, is one of the smallest too." 
 
 "My dear fellow," Devonham said gently, "do not 
 bother your head with useless speculations. Our only 
 valuable field of study is this planet, for it is all we know 
 or ever can know. Whether the universe holds other 
 beings or not, can be of no importance to us at present." 
 
 LeVallon stared fixedly at him, saying nothing. Some- 
 thing of his natural radiance dimmed a little. "Then what 
 are all these things that I remember I've forgotten?" he 
 asked, his blue eyes troubled. 
 
 "It will take you all your lifetime to understand beings 
 like me, and like yourself and like Dr. Fillery. Don't 
 waste time speculating about possible inhabitants in 
 other stars." 
 
 He spoke good-humouredly, but firmly, as one who 
 laid down certain definite lines to be followed, while Dr. 
 Fillery, watching, made no audible comment. Once long 
 ago he had asked his own father a somewhat similar 
 question. 
 
 "But I shall so soon get to the end of you," replied 
 LeVallon, a disappointed expression on his face. "I may 
 speculate then?" he asked. 
 
 "When you get to the end of me and of yourself and 
 of Dr. Fillery yes, then you may speculate to your 
 heart's content," said Devonham in a kindly tone. "But 
 it will take you longer than you think perhaps. Besides, 
 there are women, too, remember. You will find them 
 more complicated still." 
 
 A curious look stole into the other's eager eyes. He 
 turned suddenly towards the older man who had his 
 confidence so completely. There was in the movement, 
 in the incipient gesture that he made with his arms, his 
 hands, almost with his head and face as well, something 
 of appeal that set the doctor's nerves alert. And the
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 119 
 
 change of voice it was lower now and more musical 
 than before increased the nameless message that flashed 
 to his brain and heart. There was a hint of song, of 
 chanting almost, in the tone. There was music in him. 
 For the voice, Fillery realized suddenly, brought in the 
 over-tones, somewhat in the way good teachers of sing- 
 ing and voice production know. There was the depth, 
 sonority, singing quality which means that the "har- 
 monics" are made audible, as with a violin played in 
 perfect tune. The sound seemed produced not by the 
 vocal cords alone, but by the entire being, so to speak. 
 Yet, "LeVallon's" voice had not this rich power, he 
 noticed. Its appearance was a sign that "N. H." was 
 stirring into activity and utterance. 
 
 "Women, yes," the young man repeated to himself. 
 "Women bring back something. Their eyes make me 
 
 remember " he turned abruptly to the open book upon 
 
 the doctor's knee. "It's something to do with stars, 
 these memories," he went on eagerly, the voice resonant. 
 "Stars, women, memories . . . where are they all gone 
 to . . . ? Why have I lost . . . ? What is it that . . . ?" 
 
 It seemed as if a veil passed from his face, a thin 
 transparency that dimmed the shining effect his hair and 
 eyes and radiant health produced. A far-away expression 
 followed it. 
 
 " 'N. H.' !" Devonham quickly flashed the whispered 
 warning. And in the same instant, Fillery rose, holding 
 out the open book. 
 
 "Come, LeVallon," he said, putting a hand upon his 
 shoulder, "we'll go into my room for an hour, and I'll 
 tell you all about the galaxies and nebulae. You shall 
 as'- as many questions as you like. Devonham is a very 
 busy man and has duties to attend to just now."^ 
 
 He moved across to open the door, and LeVallon, his 
 face changing more and more, went with him ; the light 
 in his eyes increased ; he smiled, the far-away expression 
 passed a little. 
 
 "Dr. Devonham is quite right in what he says about
 
 120 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 useless speculations," continued Fillery, as they went out 
 arm in arm together, "but we can play a bit with thought 
 and imagination, for all that you and I. 'Let your 
 thought wander like an insect which is allowed to fly in 
 the air, but is at the same time confined by a thread.' 
 Come along, we'll have an hour's play. We'll travel 
 together among the golden stars, eh?" 
 
 "Play!" exclaimed the youth, looking up with flash- 
 ing eyes. "Ah! in the Spring we play! Our work with 
 sap, roots, crystals, fire, all finished out of sight, so that 
 their results followed of their own accord." He was 
 talking at great speed in a low voice, a deep, rolling 
 voice, and half to himself. "Spring is our holiday, the 
 forms made perfect and ready for the power to rush 
 through, and we rush with it, playing everywhere " 
 
 "Spring is the wine of life, yes," put in Fillery, caught 
 away momentarily by something behind the words he 
 listened to, as though a rhythm swept him. "Creative 
 life racing up and flooding into every form and body 
 everywhere. It brings wonder, joy play, as you call it." 
 
 "We we build the way " The youth broke off 
 
 abruptly as they reached the study door. Something 
 flowed down and back in him, emptying face and manner 
 of a mood which had striven for utterance, then passed. 
 He returned to the previous talk about the stars again: 
 
 "Who attends to them? Who looks after them?" he 
 inquired, a deep, peculiar interest in his manner, his eyes 
 turning a little darker. 
 
 "What we call the laws of Nature," was the reply, 
 "which are, after all, merely our 'descriptive formulae 
 summing up certain regularities of recurrence/ the laws 
 under which they were first set alight and then sent 
 whirling into space. Under these same laws they will 
 all eventually burn out and come to rest. They will be 
 dead." 
 
 "Dead," repeated the other, as though he did not 
 understand. "They are the children of the laws," he
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 121 
 
 stated, rather than asked. "Are the laws kind and faith- 
 ful? They never tire?" 
 
 Fillery explained with one-half of his nature, and still 
 as to a child. The other half of him lay under firm 
 restraint according to his promise. He outlined in gen- 
 eral terms man's knowledge of the stars. "The laws 
 never tire," he said. 
 
 "But the stars end! They burn out, stop, arid die! 
 You said so." 
 
 The other replied with something judicious and 
 cautious about time and its immense duration. But he 
 was startled. 
 
 "And those who attend to the laws," came then the 
 words that startled him, "who keeps them working so 
 that they do not tire ?" 
 
 It was something in the tone of voice perhaps that, 
 once again, produced in his listener the extraordinary 
 sudden feeling that Humanity was, after all, but an in- 
 significant, a microscopic detail in the Universe; that it 
 was, say, a mere ant-heap in the colossal jungle crowded 
 with other minuter as well as immenser life of every sort 
 and kind, and, moreover, that "N. H." was aware of 
 this "other life," or at least of some vast section of it, 
 and had been, if he were not still, associated with it. 
 The two letters by which he was designated acquired a 
 deeper meaning than before. 
 
 A rich glow came into the young face, and into the 
 eyes, growing ever darker, a look of burning; the skin 
 had the effect of radiating; the breathing became of a 
 sudden deep and rhythmical. The whole figure seemed 
 to grow larger, expanding as though it extended already 
 and half filled the room. Into the atmosphere about it 
 poured, as though heat and light rushed through it, a 
 strange effect of power. 
 
 "You'd like to visit them, perhaps wouldn't you?" 
 asked Fillery gently. 
 
 "I feel " began the other, then stopped short.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 "You feel it would interest you," the doctor helped 
 then saw his mistake. 
 
 "I feel," repeated the youth. The sentence was com- 
 plete. "I am there." 
 
 "Ah ! when you feel you're there, you are there ?" 
 
 The other nodded. 
 
 He leaned forward. "/ know," he whispered as with 
 sudden joy. "You help me to remember, Fillery." The 
 voice, though whispering, was strong; it vibrated full of 
 over-tones and under-tones. The sound of the "F" was 
 like a wind in branches. "You wonderful, you know too ! 
 It is the same with flowers, with everything. We build 
 with wind and fire." He stopped, rubbing a hand across 
 his forehead a moment. "Wind and fire," he went on, 
 but this time to himself, "my splendid mighty ones. . . ." 
 Dropping his hand, he flashed an amazing look of en- 
 thusiasm and power into his companion's face. The 
 look held in concentrated form something of the power 
 that seemed pulsing and throbbing in his atmosphere. 
 "Help me to remember, dear Fillery," his voice rang out 
 aloud like singing. "Remember with me why we both 
 are here. When we remember we can go back where 
 we belong." 
 
 The glow went from his face and eyes as though an 
 inner lamp had been suddenly extinguished. The power 
 left both voice and atmosphere. He sank back in his 
 chair, his great sensitive hands spread over the table 
 where the star charts lay, as through the. open window 
 came the crash and clatter of an aeroplane tearing, like 
 some violent, monstrous insect, through the sunlight. 
 
 A look of pain came into his eyes. "It goes again. 
 I've lost it." 
 
 "We were talking about the stars and the laws of 
 Nature," said Fillery quickly, though his voice was shak- 
 ing, "when that noisy flying-machine disturbed us." He 
 leaned over, taking his companion's hand. His heart was 
 beating. He smelt the open spaces. The blood ran wildly
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 123 
 
 in his veins. It was with the utmost difficulty he 
 found simple, common words to use. "You must not 
 ask too much at once. We will learn slowly there is 
 so much we have to learn together." 
 
 LeVallon's smile was beautiful, but it was the smile 
 of "LeVallon" again only. 
 
 "Thank you, dear Fillery," he replied, and the talk 
 continued as between a tutor and his backward pupil. 
 . . . But for some time afterwards the "tutor's" mind and 
 heart, while attending to LeVallon now, went travelling, 
 it seemed, with "N. H." There was this strange division 
 in his being . . . for "N. H." appealed with power to a 
 part of him, perhaps the greatest, that had never yet 
 found expression, much less satisfaction. 
 
 Many a talk together of this kind, with occasional 
 semi-irruptions of "N. H.," he had already enjoyed with 
 his new patient, and LeVallon was by now fairly well 
 instructed in the general histo'ry of our little world, 
 briefly but picturesquely given. Evolution had been out- 
 lined and explained, the rise of man sketched vividly, the 
 great war, and the planet's present state of chaos de- 
 scribed in a way that furnished a clear enough synopsis 
 of where humanity now stood. LeVallon was able to 
 hold his own in conversation with others; he might pass 
 for a simple-minded but not ill-informed young man, and 
 both Paul Devonham and Edward Fillery, though each 
 for different reasons, were, therefore, well satisfied with 
 the young human being entrusted to their care, a human 
 being to be eventually discharged from the Home, healed 
 and cured of extravagances, made harmonious with him- 
 self, able to make his own way in the world alone. To 
 Devonham it appeared already certain that, withm a rea- 
 sonable time, LeVallon would find himself happily at 
 home among his fellow kind, a normal, even a gifted 
 young man with a future before him. "N. H." would 
 disappear and be forgotten, absorbed back into the 
 parent Self. To his colleague, on the other hand, another
 
 124 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 vision of his future opened. Sooner or later it was 
 LeVallon that would disappear and "N. H." remain in 
 full control, a strange, possibly a new type of being, not 
 alone marvellously gifted, but who might even throw 
 light upon a vista of research and knowledge hitherto 
 unknown to humanity, and with benefits for the Race as 
 yet beyond the reach of any wildest prophecy. 
 
 Both men, therefore, went gladly with him to the 
 Khilkoff Studio that early November afternoon, anxious 
 to observe him, his conduct, attitude, among the curious 
 set of people to be found there on the Prometheans' 
 Society day, and to note any reactions he might show 
 in such a milieu. Each felt fully justified in doing so, 
 though they would have kept an ordinary "hysterical" 
 patient safely from the place. LeVallon, however, be- 
 trayed no trace of hysteria in any meaning of the word, 
 big or little ; he was stable as a navvy, betraying no un- 
 desirable reaction to the various well-known danger 
 points. The visit might be something of an experiment 
 perhaps, but an experiment, a test, they were justified 
 in taking. Yet Devonham on no account would have 
 allowed his chief to go alone. He had insisted on accom- 
 panying ^hem. 
 
 And to both men, as they went towards Chelsea, their 
 quiet companion with them, came the feeling that the 
 visit might possibly prove one of them right, the other 
 wrong. Fillery expected that Nayan Khilkoff alone, to 
 say nothing of the effect of the other queer folk who 
 might be present, must surely evoke the "N. H." person- 
 ality now lying quiescent and inactive below the thresh- 
 old of LeVallon. The charm and beauty of the girl he 
 had never known to fail with any male, for she Rad that 
 in her which was bound to stimulate the highest in the 
 opposite sex. The excitement of the wild, questing, pic- 
 turesque, if unbalanced, minds who would fill the place, 
 must also, though in quite another way, affect the real 
 self of anyone who came in contact with their fantastic
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 125 
 
 and imaginative atmosphere. Attraction or repulsion 
 must certainly be felt. He expected at any rate a vital 
 clue. 
 
 "Ivan Khilkoff," he told LeVallon, as they went along 
 in the car, "is a Russian, a painter and sculptor of talent, 
 a good-hearted and silent sort of old fellow, who has 
 remained very poor because he refuses to advertise him- 
 self or commercialize his art, and because his work is 
 not the kind of thing the English buy. His daughter, 
 Nayan, teaches the piano and Russian. She is beautiful 
 and sweet and pure, but of an independent and rather 
 impersonal character. She has never fallen in love, for 
 instance, though most men fall in love with her. I hope 
 you may like and understand each other." 
 
 "Thank you," said LeVallon, listening attentively, but 
 with no great interest apparently. "I will try very much 
 to like her and her father too." 
 
 "The Studio is a very big one, it is really two studios 
 knocked into one, their living rooms opening out of it. 
 One half of the place, being so large, they sometimes let 
 out for meetings, dances and that sort of thing, earning 
 a little money in that way. It is rented this evening by a 
 Society called the Prometheans a group of people whose 
 inquisitive temperaments lead them to believe, or half 
 believe " 
 
 "To imagine, if not deliberately to manufacture," put 
 in Devonham. 
 
 " to imagine, let us call it," continued the other with 
 
 a twinkle, "that there are other worlds, other powers, other 
 states of consciousness and knowledge open to them out- 
 side and beyond the present ones we are familiar with." 
 
 "They know these?" asked LeVallon, looking up with 
 signs of interest. "They have experienced them?" 
 
 "They know and experience," replied Fillery, "accord- 
 ing to their imaginations and desires, those with a touch 
 of creative imagination claiming the most definite results, 
 those without it being merely imitative. They report their
 
 126 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 experiences, that is, but cannot or rarely show tne results 
 to others. You will hear their talk and judge accordingly. 
 They are interesting enough in their way. They have, at 
 any rate, one thing of value that they are open to new 
 ideas. Such people have existed in every age of the world's 
 history, but after an upheaval, such as the great war has 
 been, they become more active and more numerous, because 
 the nervous system, reacting from a tremendous strain, 
 produces exaggeration. Any world is better than an un- 
 comfortable one in revolution, they think. They are, as 
 a rule, sincere and honest folk. They add a touch of 
 colour to the commonplace " 
 
 "Tuppence coloured," murmured Devonham below his 
 breath, 
 
 "And they believe so much in other worlds to conquer, 
 other regions, bigger states of consciousness, other powers," 
 concluded Fillery, ignoring the interruption, "that they are 
 half in this world, half in the next. Hence Dr. Devonham's 
 name, the name by which he sometimes laughs at them of 
 Half Breeds." 
 
 LeVallon's eyes, he saw, were very big; his interest and 
 attention were excited. 
 
 "The;* w iM probably welcome you with open arms," he 
 added, "if you care to join them. They consider them- 
 selves pioneers of a larger life. They are not mere 
 spiritualists oh no ! They are familiar with all the newest 
 theories, and realize that an alternative hypothesis can ex- 
 plain all so-called psychic phenomena without dragging 
 spirits in. It is in exaggerating results they go mostly 
 wrong." 
 
 "Eccentrics," Devonham remarked, "out of the circle, 
 and hysterical to a man. They accomplish nothing. They 
 are invariably dreamers, usually of doubtful morals and 
 honesty, and always unworthy of serious attention. But 
 they may amuse you for an hour." 
 
 "We all find it difficult to believe what we have never 
 experienced," mentioned Fillery, turning to his colleague
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 127 
 
 with a hearty laugh, in which the latter readily joined, for 
 their skirmishes usually brought in laughter at the end. 
 Just now, moreover, they were talking with a purpose, and 
 it was wise and good that LeVallon should listen and take 
 in what he could hearing both sides. He watched and 
 listened certainly with open eyes and ears, as he sat be- 
 tween them on the wide front seat, but saying, as usual, 
 very little. 
 
 The car turned down a narrow lane with slackening speed 
 and slowed up before a dingy building with faded Virginia 
 creepers sprawling about stained dirty walls. The neigh- 
 bourhood was depressing, patched and dishevelled, and 
 almost bordering on a slum. The November light was 
 passing into early twilight. 
 
 "You," said LeVallon abruptly, turning round and star- 
 ing at Devonham, "make everything seem unreal to me. 
 I do not understand you. You know so much. Why is so 
 little real to you ?" 
 
 But Devonham, in the act of getting out of the car, made 
 no reply, and probably had not heard the words, or, if he 
 had heard, thought them more suitable for Fillery.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 Prometheans were evidently in full attendance; 
 possibly the rumour had reached them that Dr. Fillery 
 was coming. No one announced the latter's arrival, there 
 was no servant visible; the party hung up their hats and 
 coats in a passage, then walked into the lofty, dim-lit studio 
 which was already filled with people and the hum of many 
 voices. 
 
 At once, standing in a hesitating group beside the door, 
 they were observed by everyone in the room. All asked, 
 it seemed, "Who is this stranger they have brought?" 
 Fillery caught the curious atmosphere in that first moment, 
 an instant whiff, as it were, of excitement, interest, some- 
 thing picturesque, if possibly foolish, fantastic, too, yet 
 faintly stimulating, breathing along his extremely sensitive 
 nerves. 
 
 He glanced at his companions. Devonham, it struck him, 
 looked more than ever like a floor-walker come to supervise, 
 say, a Department where the sales and assistants were not 
 satisfactory or he laughed inwardly as the simile occurred 
 to him a free-thinker entering a church whose teaching 
 he disapproved, even despised, and whose congregation 
 touched his contemptuous pity. "Who would ever guess," 
 thought his friend and colleague, "the sincerity and depth 
 of knowledge in that insignificant appearance? Paul hides 
 his value well !" He noticed, in his quick fashion, touched 
 by humour, the hard challenging eyes, the aquiline nose on 
 which a pair of pince-nez balanced uneasily, the narrow 
 shoulders, the poorly fitting clothes. The heart, of course, 
 remained invisible. Yet suddenly he felt glad that Devon- 
 ham was with him. "Nothing unstable there," he reflected, 
 
 128
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 129 
 
 "and stability combined with competence is rare." This 
 rapid judgment, it occurred to him, was possibly a warning 
 from his own subconscious being. ... A red flag signalled, 
 flickered, vanished. 
 
 He glanced next at LeVallon, towering above the other. 
 LeVallon was now well dressed in London clothes that 
 suited him, though, for that matter, any clothes must have 
 looked well upon a male figure so virile and upstanding. 
 His great shoulders, his leanness, covered so beautifully 
 with muscle, his height, his colouring, his radiant air ; above 
 all, his strange, big penetrating eyes, marked him as a figure 
 one would notice anywhere. He stood, somehow, alone, 
 apart, though the ingredients that contributed to this strange 
 air of aloofness would be hard to define. 
 
 It was chiefly, perhaps, the poise of the great powerful 
 frame that helped towards this odd setting in isolation and 
 independence. Motionless, he gazed about him quietly, but 
 it was the way he stood that singled him out from other 
 men. Even in his stillness there was grace; neither hands 
 nor feet, though it was difficult to describe exactly how he 
 placed them or used them, were separate from this poise 
 of perfect balance. To put it colloquially, he knew what 
 to do with his extremities. Self-consciousness, in sight of 
 this ardent throng, the first he had encountered at close, 
 intimate quarters, was entirely absent. 
 
 This Fillery noticed instantly, but other impressions 
 followed during the few brief seconds while they waited 
 by the door; and first, the odd effect of tremendous power 
 he managed to convey. Nothing could have been less 
 aggressive than the tentative, questioning, half inquiring, 
 half wondering attitude in which he stood, waiting to be 
 introduced to the buzzing throng of humans ; yet there hung 
 about him like an atmosphere this potential strength, of 
 confidence, of superiority, even of beauty too, that not only 
 contributed much to the aloofness already mentioned, but 
 also contrived to make the others, men and women, in the 
 crowded room insignificant. Somehow they seemed pale
 
 130 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 and ineffective against a larger grandeur, a scale entirely 
 beyond their reach. 
 
 "Gigantic" was the word that leaped into the mind, but 
 another perhaps leaped with it "elemental." 
 
 Fillery was aware of envy, oddly enough, of pride as 
 well. His heart warmed more than ever to him. Almost, 
 he could have then and there recalled his promise given 
 to Devonham, cancelling it contemptuously with a word of 
 self-apology for his smallness and his lack of faith. . . . 
 
 LeVallon, aware of a sympathetic mind occupied closely 
 with himself, turned in that moment, and their eyes met 
 squarely; a smile of deep, inner understanding passed 
 swiftly between them over Devonham's head and shoulders. 
 In which moment, exactly, a short, bearded man, detaching 
 himself from the crowd, came forward and greeted them 
 with sincere pleasure in his voice and manner. He was 
 broad-shouldered, lean, his clothes hung loosely; his glance 
 was keen but kindly. Introductions followed, and KhilkofFs 
 sharp eye rested for some seconds with unconcealed admira- 
 tion upon LeVallon, as he held his hand. His discerning 
 sculptor's glance seemed to appraise his stature and propor- 
 tions, while he bade him welcome to the Studio. His big 
 head and short neck, his mane of hair, the width of his 
 face, with its squat nose and high cheek-bones, the half 
 ferocious eyes, the heavy jaw and something sprawling 
 about the mouth, gave him a leonine expression. And 
 his voice was not unlike a deep-toned growl, for all its 
 ,cordiality. 
 
 A stir, meanwhile, ran through the room, more heads 
 turned in their direction ; they had long ago been observed,; 
 they were being now examined. 
 
 "Nayan," Khilkoff was saying, while he still held Le- 
 Vallon's hand as though its size and grip contented him, 
 "had a late Russian lesson. She will be here shortly, and 
 very glad to make your acquaintance," looking up at Le- 
 Vallon, as the new-comer. His gruffness and brevity had 
 something pleasing in them. "To-day the Studio is not
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 131 
 
 entirely mine," he explained. "I want you to come when 
 I'm alone. Some studies I made in Sark this summer may 
 interest you." He turned to Fillery. "That lonely place 
 was good for both of us," he said; "it gave me new life 
 and inspiration, and Nayan benefited immensely too. She 
 looks more like a nymph than ever." 
 
 He shook hands with Devonham, smiling more grimly. 
 "I'm surprised you, too, have honoured us," he exclaimed 
 with genuine surprise. "Come to damn them all as usual, 
 probably! Good! Your common-sense and healthy criti- 
 cism are needed in these days cool, cleaning winds in an 
 over-heated conservatory." He broke off abruptly and 
 looked down at LeVallon's hand he was still holding. He 
 examined it for a second with care and admiration, then 
 turned his eye upon the young man's figure. He grunted. 
 
 "When I know you better," he said, with a growl of 
 earnest meaning, "I shall ask a favour, a great favour, of 
 you. So, beware!" 
 
 "Thank you," replied LeVallon, and at the sound of his 
 voice the sculptor's interest deepened. A gleam shone in 
 his eye. 
 
 "You've begun some work," said Fillery, "and models 
 are hard to come by, I imagine." His eye never left Le- 
 Vallon. 
 
 Khilkoff chuckled. "Thought-reader!" he exclaimed. 
 "If Povey heard that, he'd make you join the Society at 
 once as honorary member or vice-president. Anything to 
 get you in. Dr. Fillery understands us all too well," he 
 went on to LeVallon. "In Sark, that lonely island in the 
 sea, I began four figures four elemental figures of earth, 
 air, fire and water a group, of course. The air figure, 
 I've done " 
 
 "With Nayan as model," suggested Fillery, smiling. 
 
 "One morning, yes, I caught her bathing from a rock, 
 hair streaming in the wind, no clothes on, white foam from 
 the big breakers fluttering about her, slim, shining, uncon- 
 scious and half dancing, fierce sunlight all over her. Ah"
 
 132 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 he broke off "here's Povey coming. I mustn't monopo- 
 lize you all. Devonham, you know most of 'em. Make 
 yourselves at home." He turned to LeVallon again, with 
 a touch of something gentler, almost of respect, thought 
 Fillery, as he noticed the delicate change of voice and 
 manner quickly. "Come, Mr. LeVallon," he said courteously, 
 "I should like to show you the figure as I've done it. We'll 
 go for a moment into my own private rooms. But it's a 
 model for fire I'm looking for, as Fillery guessed. You 
 may be interested." He led him off. LeVallon went with 
 evident content, and the advance of skirmishes that were 
 already approaching for introductions was temporarily 
 defeated. 
 
 For the three men standing by the door had formed a 
 noticeable group, and Khilkoff's presence added to their 
 value. Dr. Fillery, known and much respected, regarded 
 with a touch of awe by many, had not come for nothing, 
 it was doubtless argued; his colleague, moreover, accom- 
 panied him, and he, too, was known to the Society, though 
 not much cultivated by its members owing to his down- 
 right, critical way of talking. They deemed him prejudiced, 
 unsympathetic. It was the third member of the group, 
 LeVallon, who had quickly caught all eyes, and the atten- 
 tion immediately paid to him by their host set the value 
 of a special and important guest upon him instantly. All 
 watched him led away by Khilkoff to the private quarters 
 of the Studio, where none at first presumed to follow them ; 
 but it was the eyes of the women that remained glued to 
 the open door where they had disappeared, waiting with 
 careful interest for their reappearance. In particular Lady 
 Gleeson, the "pretty Lady Gleeson," watched from the 
 corner where she sat alone, sipping some refreshment. 
 
 Fillery and Devonham, having observed the signs about 
 them, exchanged a glance ; their charge was safe for the 
 moment, at any rate ; they felt relieved ; yet it was for the 
 entry of Nayan, the daughter, that both waited with interest 
 and impatience, as, meanwhile, the bolder ones among the 
 crowd came up one by one and captured them.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 133 
 
 "Oh, Dr. Fillery, I am glad to see you here. I thought 
 you were always too busy for unscientific people like us. 
 Yet, in a way, we're all seekers, are we not? I've been 
 reading your Physiology book, and I did so want to ask 
 you about something in it. I wonder if you'd mind." 
 
 He shook hands with a young-old woman, wearing bobbed 
 hair and glasses, and speaking with an intense, respectful, 
 yet self-apologetic manner. 
 
 "You've forgotten me, but I quite understand. You see 
 so many people. I'm Miss Lance. I sent you my little 
 magazine, 'Simplicity,' once, and you acknowledged it so 
 sweetly, though, of course, I understood you had not the 
 time to write for it." She continued for several minutes, 
 smiling up at him, her hands clasping and unclasping them- 
 selves behind a back clothed with some glittering coloured 
 material that rather fascinated him by its sheen. She kept 
 raising herself on her toes and sinking back again in a 
 series of jerky rhythms. 
 
 He gave her his delightful smile. 
 
 "Oh, Dr. Fillery!" she exclaimed, with pleasure, leading 
 him to a divan, upon which he let himself down in such a 
 position that he could observe the door from the street as 
 well as the door where LeVallon had disappeared. "This 
 is really too good-natured of you. Your book set me on 
 fire simply" her eyes wandering to the other door "and 
 what a wonderful looking person you've brought with 
 you " 
 
 "I fear it's not very easy reading," he interposed patiently. 
 
 "To me it was too delightful for words," she rattled on, 
 pleased by the compliment implied. "I devour all your books 
 and always review them myself in the magazine. I wouldn't 
 trust them to anyone else. I simply can't tell you how 
 physiology stimulates me. Humanity needs imaginative books, 
 especially just now." She broke off with a deprecatory 
 smile. "I do what I can," she added, as he made no remark, 
 "to make them known, though in such a very small way, 
 I fear." Her interest, however, was divided, the two power- 
 ful attractions making her quite incoherent. "Your friend,"
 
 134 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 she ventured again, "he must be Eastern perhaps? Or is 
 that merely sunburn? He looks most unusual." 
 
 "Sunburn merely, Miss Lance. You must have a chat 
 with him later." 
 
 "Oh, thank you, thank you, Dr. Fillery. I do so love 
 unusual people. . . ." 
 
 He listened gravely. He was gentle, while she confided 
 to him her little inner hopes and dreams about the "simple 
 life." She introduced adjectives she believed would sound 
 correct, if spoken very quickly, until, between the torrent 
 of "psychical," "physiological" and once or twice, "psycho- 
 logical," she became positively incoherent in a final entangle- 
 ment from which there was no issue but a convulsive ges- 
 ture. None the less, she was bathed in bliss. She monopo- 
 lized the great man for a whole ten minutes on a divan 
 where everybody could see that they talked earnestly, 
 intimately, perhaps even intellectually, together side by side. 
 
 He observed the room, meanwhile, without her noticing 
 it, scanning the buzzing throng with interest. There was 
 confusion somewhere, something was lacking, no system 
 prevailed; he was aware of a general sense of waiting for 
 a leader. All looked, he knew, for Nayan to appear. With- 
 out her presence, there was no centre, for, though not a 
 member of the Society herself, she was the heart always 
 of their gatherings, without which they straggled somewhat 
 aimlessly. And "heart," he remembered, with a smile that 
 Miss Lance took proudly for herself, was the appropriate 
 word. Nayan mothered them. They were but children, 
 after all. . . . 
 
 "When you talk of a 'New Age,' what exactly do you 
 mean? I wish you'd define the term for me," Devonham 
 meanwhile was saying to an interlocutor, not far away, 
 while with a corner of his eye he watched both Fillery and 
 the private door. He still stood near the entrance, looking 
 more than ever like a disapproving floor-walker in a big 
 department store, and it was with H. Millington Povey 
 that he talked, the Honorary Secretary of the Society. The
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 135 
 
 Secretary had aimed at Fillery, but Miss Lance had been 
 too quick for him. He was obliged to put up with Devon- 
 ham as second best, and his temper suffered accordingly. 
 He was in aggressive mood. 
 
 Povey, facing him, was talking with almost violent zeal. 
 A small, thin, nervous man, on the verge of middle age, 
 his head prematurely bald, with wildish tufts of patchy hair, 
 a thin, scraggy neck that he lengthened and shortened be- 
 tween high hunched shoulders, Povey resembled an eager 
 vulture. His keen bright eyes, hooked nose, and a habit 
 of twisting head and neck apart from his body, which 
 held motionless, increased this likeness to a bird of prey. 
 Possessed of considerable powers of organization, he kept 
 the Society together. It was he who insisted upon some 
 special "psychic gift" as a qualification of membership; an 
 applicant must prove this gift to a committee of Povey's 
 choosing, though these proofs were never circulated for 
 general reading in the Society's Reports. Talkers, dreamers, 
 faddists were not desired; a member must possess some 
 definite abnormal power before he could be elected. He 
 must be clairvoyant or clairaudient, an automatic writer, 
 trance-painter, medium, ghost-seer, prophet, priest or king. 
 
 Members, therefore, stated their special qualification to 
 each other without false modesty : "I'm a trance medium," 
 for instance ; "Oh, really ! I see auras, of course" ; while 
 others had written automatic poetry, spoken in trance 
 "inspirational speakers," that is photographed a spirit, 
 appeared to someone at a distance, or dreamed a prophetic 
 dream that later had come true. Mediums, spirit-photog- 
 raphers, and prophetic dreamers were, perhaps, the most 
 popular qualifications to offer, but there were many who 
 remembered past lives and not a few could leave their 
 bodies consciously at will. 
 
 Memberships cost two guineas, the hat was occasionally 
 passed round for special purposes, there was a monthly 
 dinner in Soho, when members stood up, like saved sinners 
 at a revivalist meeting, and gave personal testimony of con-
 
 136 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 version or related some new strange incident. The Prome- 
 theans were full of stolen fire and life. 
 
 Among them were ambitious souls who desired to start 
 a new religion, deeming the Church past hope. Others, like 
 the water-dowsers and telepathists, were humbler. There 
 was an Inner Circle which sought to revive the Mysteries, 
 and gave very private performances of dramatic and sym- 
 bolic kind, based upon recovered secret knowledge, at the 
 solstices and equinoxes. New Thought members despised 
 these, believing nothing connected with the past had value ; 
 they looked ahead; "live in the present," "do it now" was 
 their watchword. Astrologers were numerous too. These 
 cast horoscopes, or, for a small fee, revealed one's secret 
 name, true colour, lucky number, day of the week and 
 month, and so forth. One lady had a tame "Elemental." 
 Students of Magic and Casters of Spells, wearers of talis- 
 mans and intricate designs in precious or inferior metal, 
 according to taste and means, were well represented, and 
 one and all believed, of course, in spirits. 
 
 None, however, belonged to any Sect of the day, what- 
 ever it might be ; they wore no labels ; they were seekers, 
 questers, inquirers whom no set of rules or dogmas dared 
 confine within fixed limits. An entirely open mind and no 
 prejudices, they prided themselves, distinguished them. 
 
 "Define it in scientific terms, this New Age I cannot," 
 replied Povey in his shrill voice, "for science deals only 
 with the examination of the known. Yet you only have to 
 look round you at the world to-day to see its obvious signs. 
 Humanity is changing, new powers everywhere " 
 
 Devonham interrupted unkindly, before the other could 
 assume he had proved something by merely stating it: 
 
 "What are these signs, if I may ask?" he questioned 
 sharply. "For if you can name them, we can examine them 
 er scientifically." He used the word with malice, know- 
 ing it was ever on the Promethean lips. 
 
 "There you are, at cross-purposes at once," declared 
 Povey. "I refer to hints, half-lights, intuitions, signs that
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 137 
 
 only the most sensitive among us, those with psychic divina- 
 tion, with spiritual discernment that only the privileged 
 and those developed in advance of the Race can know. 
 And, instantly you produce your microscope, as though I 
 offered you the muscles of a tadpole to dissect." 
 
 They glared at one another. "We shall never get progress 
 your way," Povey fumed, withdrawing his head and neck 
 between his shoulders. 
 
 "Returning to the Middle Ages, on the other hand," men- 
 tioned Devonham, "seems like advancing in a circle, doesn't 
 it?" 
 
 "Dr. Devonham," interrupted a pretty, fair-haired girl 
 with an intense manner, "forgive me for breaking up your 
 interesting talk, but you come so seldom, you know, and 
 there's a lady here who is dying to be introduced. She has 
 just seen crimson flashing in your aura, and she wants to 
 ask do you mind very much?" She smiled so sweetly 
 at him, and at Mr. Povey, too, who was said to be engaged 
 to her, though none believed it, that annoyance was not 
 possible. "She says she simply must ask you if you were 
 feeling anger. Anger, you know, produces red or crimson 
 in one's visible atmosphere," she explained charmingly. 
 She led him off, forgetting, however, her purpose en route, 
 since they presently sat down side by side in a quiet corner 
 and began to enjoy what seemed an interesting tete-a-tete, 
 while the aura-seeing lady waited impatiently and observed 
 them, without the aid of clairvoyance, from a distance. 
 
 "And your qualifications for membership ?" askeS Devon- 
 ham. "I wonder if I may ask ?" 
 
 "But you'd laugh at me, if I told you," she answered 
 simply, fingering a silver talisman that hung from her neck, 
 a six-pointed star with zodiacal signs traced round a rose, 
 rosa mystica, evidently. "I'm so afraid of doctors." 
 
 Devonham shook his head decidedly, asserting vehemently 
 his interest, whereupon she told him her little private dream 
 delightfully, without pose or affectation, yet shyly and so 
 sincerely that he proved his assertion by a genuine interest.
 
 138 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 "And does that protect you among your daily troubles?" 
 he asked, pointing to her little silver talisman. He had 
 already commented sympathetically upon her account of 
 saving her new puppies from drowning, having dreamed 
 the night before that she saw them gasping in a pail of 
 water, the cruel under-gardener looking on. "Do you wear 
 it always, or only on special occasions like this?" 
 
 "Oh, Miss Milligan made that," she told him, blushing 
 a little. "She's rather poor. She earns her living by de- 
 signing " 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 "But I don't mean that. She tells you your Sign and 
 works it in metal for you. I bought one. Mine is Pisces." 
 She became earnest. "I was born in Pisces, you see." 
 
 "And what does Pisces do for you ?" he inquired, remem- 
 bering the heightened colour. The sincerity of this Rose 
 Mystica delighted him, and he already anticipated her reply 
 with interest* Here,, he felt, was the credulous, religious 
 type in its naked purity, forced to believe in something 
 marvellous. 
 
 "Well, if you wear your Sign next your skin it brings 
 good luck it makes the things you want happen." The 
 blush reappeared becomingly. She did not lower her eyes. 
 
 "Have your things happened then?" 
 
 She hesitated. "Well, I've had an awfully good time 
 ever since I wore it " 
 
 "Proposals?" he asked gently. 
 
 "Dr. Devonham!" she exclaimed. "How ever did you 
 guess?" She looked very charming in her innocent con- 
 fusion. 
 
 He laughed. "If you don't take it off at once," he told 
 her solemnly, "you may get another." 
 
 "It was two in a single week," she confided a little 
 tremulously. "Fancy !" 
 
 "The important thing, then," he suggested, "is to wear 
 your talisman at the right moment, and with the right 
 person."
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 139 
 
 But she corrected him promptly. 
 
 "Oh, no. It brings the right moment and the right person 
 together, don't you see, and if the other person is a Pisces 
 person, you understand each other, of course, at once." 
 
 "Would that I too were Pisces!" he exclaimed, seeing 
 that she was flattered by his interest. "I'm probably" 
 taking a sign at random "Scorpio." 
 
 "No," she said with grave disappointment, "I'm afraid 
 you're Capricornus, you know. I can tell by your nose 
 and eyes and cleverness. But I wanted really to ask 
 you," she went on half shyly, "if I might " She stuck 
 fast. 
 
 "You want to know," he said, glancing at her with quick 
 understanding, "who he is." He pointed to the door. "Isn't 
 that it?" 
 
 She nodded her head, while a divine little blush spread 
 over her face. Devonham became more interested. "Why ?" 
 he asked. "Did he impress you so?" 
 
 "Rather," she replied with emphasis, and there was some- 
 thing in her earnestness curiously convincing. A sincere 
 impression had been registered. 
 
 "His appearance, you mean?" 
 
 She nodded again; the blush deepened; but it was not, 
 he saw, an ordinary blush. The sensitive young girl had 
 awe in her. "He's a friend of Dr. Fillery's," he told her; 
 "a young man who's lived in the wilds all his life. But, 
 tell me why are you so interested? Did he make any 
 particular impression on you?" 
 
 He watched her. His own thoughts dropped back sud- 
 denly to a strange memory of woods and mountains . . . 
 a sunset, a blazing fire ... a hint of panic. 
 
 "Yes," she said, her tone lower, "he did." 
 
 "Something very definite?" 
 
 She made no answer. 
 
 "What did you see?" he persisted gently. From woods 
 and mountains, memory stepped back to a railway station 
 and a customs official. . . .
 
 HO THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 Her manner, obviously truthful, had deep wonder, mys- 
 tery, even worship in it. He was aware of a nervous 
 reaction he disliked, almost a chill. He listened for her 
 next words with an interest he could hardly account for. 
 
 "Wings," she replied, an odd hush in her voice. "I 
 thought of wings. He seemed to carry me off the earth 
 with great rushing wings, as the wind blows a leaf. It 
 was too lovely: I felt like a dancing flame. I thought he 
 was " 
 
 "What?" Something in his mind held its breath a 
 moment. 
 
 "You won't laugh, Dr. Devonham, will you? I thought 
 for a second of an angel." Her voice died away. 
 
 For a second the part of his mood that held its breath 
 struggled between anger and laughter. A moment's con- 
 fusion in him there certainly was. 
 
 "That makes two in the room," he said gently, recover- 
 ing himself. He smiled. But she did not hear the playful 
 compliment; she did not see the smile. "You've a delight- 
 ful, poetic little soul," he added under his breath, watching 
 the big earnest eyes whose rapt expression met his own so 
 honestly. Having made her confession she was still 
 engrossed, absorbed, he saw, in her own emotion. ... So 
 this was the picture that LeVallon, by his mere appearance 
 alone, left upon an impressionable young girl, an impres- 
 sion, he realized, that was profound and true and absolute, 
 whatever value her own individual interpretation of it 
 might have. Her mention of space, wind, fire, speed, he 
 noticed in particular "off the earth . . . rushing wind . . . 
 dancing flame ... an angel !" 
 
 It was easy, of course, to jeer. Yet, somehow, he did 
 not jeer at all. 
 
 She relapsed into silence, which proved how great had 
 been the emotional discharge accompanying the confession, 
 temporarily exhausting her. Dr. Devonham keenly regis- 
 tered the small, important details. 
 
 "Entertaining an angel unawares in a Chelsea Studio/'
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 141 
 
 he said, laughingly ; then reminding her presently that there 
 was a lady who was "dying to be introduced" to him, made 
 his escape, and for the next ten minutes found himself 
 listening to a disquisition on auras which described "visible 
 atmospheres whose colour changes with emotion . . . radio- 
 activity . . . the halo worn by saints" . . . the effect of 
 light noticed about very good people and of blackness that 
 the wicked emanated, and ending up with the "radiant 
 atmosphere that shone round the figure of Christ and was 
 believed to show the most lovely and complicated geomet- 
 rical designs." 
 
 "God geometrizes you, doubtless, know the ancient say- 
 ing ?" Mrs. Towzer said it like a challenge. 
 
 "I have heard it," admitted her listener shortly, his first 
 opportunity of making himself audible. "Plato said some 
 other fine things too " 
 
 "I felt sure you were feeling cross just now," the lady 
 went on, "because I saw lines and arrows of crimson dart- 
 ing and flashing through your aura while you were talking 
 to Mr. Povey. He is very annoying sometimes, isn't he? 
 I often wonder where all our subscriptions go to. I never 
 could understand a balance-sheet- Can you ?" 
 
 But Devonham, having noticed Dr. Fillery moving across 
 the room, did not answer, even if he heard the question. 
 Fillery, he saw, was now standing near the door where 
 Khilkoff and LeVallon had disappeared to see the sculpture, 
 an oddly rapt expression on his face. He was talking with 
 a member called Father Collins. The buzz of voices, the 
 incessant kaleidoscope of colour and moving figures, made 
 the atmosphere a little electric. Extricating himself with a 
 neat excuse, he crossed towards his colleague, but the latter 
 was already surrounded before he reached him. A forest of 
 coloured scarves, odd coiffures, gleaming talismans, inter- 
 vened; he saw men's faces of intense, eager, preoccupied 
 expression, old and young, long hair and bald; there was 
 a new perfume in the air, incense evidently; tea, coffee, 
 lemonade were being served, with stronger drink for the
 
 142 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 few who liked it, and cigarettes were everywhere. The 
 note everywhere was exalte rather. 
 
 Out of the excited throng his eyes then by chance, 
 apparently, picked up the figure of Lady Gleeson, smoking 
 her cigarette alone in a big armchair, a half-empty glass of 
 wine-cup beside her. She caught his attention instantly, 
 this "pretty Lady Gleeson," although personally he found 
 neither title nor adjective justified. The dark hair framed 
 a very white skin. The face was shallow, trivial, yet with 
 a direct intensity in the shining eyes that won for her the 
 reputation of being attractive to certain men. Her smile 
 added to the notoriety she loved, a curious smile that lifted 
 the lip oddly, showing the little pointed teeth. To him, it 
 seemed somehow a face that had been over-kissed; every- 
 thing had been kissed out of it; the mouth, the lips, were 
 worn and barren in an appearance otherwise still young. 
 She was very expensively dressed, and deemed her legs of 
 such symmetry that it were a shame to hide them; clad in 
 tight silk stockings, and looking like strips of polished steel, 
 they were now visible almost to the knee, where the edge 
 of the skirt, neatly trimmed in fur, cut them off sharply. 
 Some wag in the Society, paraphrasing the syllables of her 
 name, wittily if unkindly, had christened her fille de joie. 
 When she heard it she was rather pleased than otherwise. 
 
 Lady Gleeson, too, he saw now, was watching the private 
 door. The same moment, as so often occurred between 
 himself and his colleague at some significant point in time 
 and space, he was aware of Fillery's eye upon his own 
 across the intervening heads and shoulders. Fillery, also, 
 had noticed that Lady Gleeson watched that door. His 
 changed position in the room was partly explained. 
 
 A slightly cynical smile touched Dr. Devonham's lips, but 
 vanished again quickly, as he approached the lady, bowed 
 politely, and asked if he might bring her some refreshment. 
 He was too discerning to say "more" refreshment. But 
 she dotted every i, she had no half tones.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 143 
 
 "Thanks, kind Dr. Devonham," she said in a decided 
 tone, her voice thin, a trifle husky, yet not entirely un- 
 musical. It held a strange throaty quality. "It's so absurdly 
 light," she added, holding out the glass she first emptied. 
 "The mystics don't hold with anything strong apparently. 
 But I'm tired, and you discovered it. That's clever of you. 
 It'll do me good." 
 
 He, malevolently, assured her that it would. 
 
 "Who's your friend?" she asked point blank, with an 
 air that meant to have a proper answer, as he brought the 
 glass and took a chair near her. "He looks unusual. More 
 like a hurdle-race champion than a visionary." A sneer 
 lurked in the voice. She fixed her determined clear grey 
 eyes upon his, eyes sparkling with interest, curiosity in life, 
 desire, the last-named quality of unmistakable kind. "I 
 think I should like to know him perhaps." It was mentioned 
 as a favour to the other. 
 
 Devonham, who disliked and disapproved of all these 
 people collectively, felt angry suddenly with Fillery for 
 having brought LeVallon among them. It was after all a 
 foolish experiment ; the atmosphere was dangerous for any- 
 one of unstable, possibly of hysterical temperament. He 
 had vengeance to discharge. He answered with deliberate 
 malice, leading her on that he might watch her reactions. 
 She was so transparently sincere. 
 
 "I hardly think Mr. LeVallon would interest you," he 
 said lightly. "He is neither modern nor educated. He has 
 spent his life in the backwoods, and knows nothing but 
 plants and stars and weather and animals. You would find 
 him dull." 
 
 "No man with a face and figure like that can be dull," 
 she said quickly, her eyes alight. 
 
 He glanced at her rings, the jewelry round her neck, her 
 expensive gown that would keep a patient for a year or 
 two. He remembered her millionaire South African 
 husband who was her foolish slave. She lived, he knew,
 
 144 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 entirely for her own small, selfish pleasure. Although he 
 meant to use her, his gorge rose. He produced his happiest 
 smile. 
 
 "You are a keen observer, Lady Gleeson," he remarked. 
 "He doesn't look quite ordinary, I admit." After a pause 
 he added, "It's a curious thing, but Mr. LeVallon doesn't 
 care for the charms that we other men succumb to so easily. 
 He seems indifferent. What he wants is knowledge only. 
 . . . Apparently he's more interested in stars than in girls." 
 
 "Rubbish," she rejoined. "He hasn't met any in his 
 woods, that's all." 
 
 Her directness rather disconcerted him. At the same 
 time, it charmed him a little, though he did not know it. 
 His dislike of the woman, however, remained. The idle, 
 self-centred rich annoyed him. They were so useless. The 
 fabulous jewelry hanging upon such trash now stirred his 
 bile. He was conscious of the lust for pleasure in her. 
 
 "Yet, after all, he's rather an interesting fellow perhaps," 
 he told her, as with an air of sudden enthusiasm. "Do you 
 know he talks of rather wonderful things, too. Mere 
 dreams, of course, yet, for all that, out of the ordinary. He 
 has vague memories, it seems, of another state of existence 
 altogether. He speaks sometimes of of marvellous women, 
 compared to whom our women here, our little dressed-up 
 dolls, seem commonplace and insignificant." And, to his 
 keen enjoyment, Lady Gleeson took the bait with open 
 mouth. She recrossed her shapely legs. She wriggled a 
 little in her chair. Her be-ringed fingers began fidgeting 
 along the priceless necklace. 
 
 "Just what I should expect," she replied in her throaty 
 voice, "from a young man who looks as he does." 
 
 She began to play her own cards then, mentioning that 
 her husband was interested in Dr. Fillery's Clinique. Devon- 
 ham, however, at once headed her off. He described the 
 work of the Home with enthusiasm. "It's fortunate that 
 Dr. Fillery is rich," he observed carelessly, "and can follow 
 out his own ideas exactly as he likes. I, personally, should
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 145 
 
 never have joined him had he been dependent upon the 
 mere philanthropist." 
 
 "How wise of you," she returned. "And I should never 
 have joined this mad Society but for the chance of coming 
 across unusual people. Now, your Mr. LeVallon is one. 
 You may introduce him to me," she repeated as an 
 ultimatum. 
 
 Her directness was the one thing he admired in her. 
 At her own level, she was real. He was aware of the 
 semi-erotic atmosphere about these Meetings and realized 
 that Lady Gleeson came in search of excitement, also that 
 she was too sincere to hide it. She wore her insignia 
 unconcealed. Her talisman was of base metal, the one cheap 
 thing she wore, yet real. This foolish woman, after all, 
 might be of use unwittingly. She might capture LeVallon, 
 if only for a moment, before Nayan Khilkoff enchanted 
 him with that wondrous sweetness to which no man could 
 remain indifferent. For he had long ago divined the natural, 
 unspoken passion between his Chief and the daughter of 
 his host, and with his whole heart he desired to advance it. 
 
 "My husband, too, would like to meet him, I'm sure," 
 he heard her saying, while he smiled at the reappearance 
 of the gilded bait. "My husband, you know, is interested 
 in spirit photography and Dr. Frood's unconscious theories." 
 
 He rose, without even a smile. "I'll try and find him 
 at once," he said, "and bring him to you. I only hope," 
 he added as an afterthought, "that Miss Khilkoff hasn't 
 monopolized him already " 
 
 "She hasn't come," Lady Gleeson betrayed herself. 
 Instinctively she knew her rival, he saw, with an inward 
 chuckle, as he rose to fetch the desired male. 
 
 He found him the centre of a little group just inside \ 
 the door leading into the sculptor's private studio, where 
 Khilkoff had evidently been showing his new group of 
 elemental figures. Fillery, a few feet away, observing 
 everything at close range, was still talking eagerly with 
 Father Collins. LeVallon and Kempster, the pacifist, were
 
 146 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 in the middle of an earnest talk, of which Devonham caught 
 an interesting fragment. Kempster's qualification for 
 membership was an occasional display of telepathy. He 
 was a neat little man exceedingly well dressed, over-dressed 
 in fact, for his tailor's dummy appearance betrayed that he 
 thought too much about his personal appearance. LeVallon, 
 towering over him like some flaming giant, spoke quietly, 
 but with rare good sense, it seemed. Fillery's condensed 
 education had worked wonders on his mind. Devonham 
 was astonished. About the pair others had collected, listen- 
 ing, sometimes interjecting opinions of their own, many 
 women among them leaning against the furniture or sitting 
 on cushions and movable, dump-like divans on the floor. 
 It was a picturesque little scene. But LeVallon somehow 
 dwarfed the others. 
 
 "I really think," Kempster was saying, "we might now 
 become a comfortable little third-rate Power like Spain, 
 for instance enjoy ourselves a bit, live on our splendid 
 past, and take the sun in ease." He looked about him with 
 a self-satisfied smirk, as though he had himself played a 
 fine role in the splendid past. 
 
 LeVallon's reply surprised him perhaps, but it surprised 
 Devonham still more. The real, the central self, LeVallon, 
 he thought with satisfaction, was waking and developing. 
 His choice of words was odd too. 
 
 "No, no ! You the English are the leaders of the world ; 
 the best quality is in you. If you give up, the world goes 
 down and backwards." The deep, musical tones vibrated 
 through the little room. The speaker, though so quiet, had 
 the air of a powerful athlete, ready to strike. His pose 
 was admirable. Faces turned up and stared. There was 
 a murmur of approval. 
 
 "We're so tired of that talk," replied Kempster, no whit 
 disconcerted by the evident signs of his unpopularity. 
 "Each race should take its turn. We've borne the white 
 man's burden long enough. Why not drop it, and let an- 
 other nation do its bit? We've earned a rest, I think."
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 147 
 
 His precise, high voice was persuasive. He was a good 
 public speaker, wholly impervious to another point of view. 
 But the resonant tones of LeVallon's rejoinder seemed to 
 bury him, voice, exquisite clothes and all. 
 
 "There is no other unless you hand it back to weaker 
 shoulders. No other race has the qualities of generosity, 
 of big careless courage of the unselfish kind required. 
 Above all, you alone have the chivalry." 
 
 Two things Devonham noted as he heard: behind the 
 natural resonance in the big voice lay a curious deepness 
 that made him think of thunder, a volume of sound sup- 
 pressed, potential, roaring, which, if let loose, might over- 
 whelm, submerge. It belonged to an earnestness as yet 
 unsuspected in him, a strength of conviction based on a 
 great purpose that was evidently subconscious in him, as 
 though he served it, belonged to it, without realizing that 
 he did so. He stood there like some new young prophet, 
 proclaiming a message not entirely his own. Also he said 
 "you" in place of the natural "we." 
 
 Devonham listened attentively. Here, too, at any rate, 
 was an exchange of ideas above the "psychic" level he so 
 disliked. 
 
 LeVallon, he noticed at once, showed no evidence of 
 emotion, though his eyes shone brightly and his voice was 
 earnest. 
 
 "America " began Kempster, but was knocked down 
 
 by a fact before he could continue. 
 
 "Has deliberately made itself a Province again. America 
 saw the ideal, then drew back, afraid. It is once more 
 provincial, cut off from the planet, a big island again, con- 
 cerned with local affairs of its own. Your Democracy has 
 failed." 
 
 "As it always must," put in Kempster, glad perhaps to 
 shift the point, when he found no ready answer. "The 
 wider the circle from which statesmen are drawn, the lower 
 the level of ability. We should be patriotic for ideas, not 
 for places. The success of one country means the downfall
 
 148 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 of another. That's not spiritual. , , ." He continued at 
 high speed, but Devonham missed the words. He was too 
 preoccupied with the other's language, penetration, point 
 of view. LeVallon had, indeed, progressed. There was 
 nothing of the alternative personality in this, nothing of 
 the wild, strange, nature-being whom he called "N. H." 
 
 "Patriotism, of course, is vulgar rubbish," he heard 
 Kempster finishing his tirade. "It is local, provincial. The 
 world is a whole." 
 
 But LeVallon did not let him escape so easily. It was 
 admirable really. This half-educated countryman from the 
 woods and mountains had a clear, concentrated mind. He 
 had risen too. Whence came his comprehensive outlook ? 
 
 "Chivalry you call it sporting instinct is the first essen- 
 tial of a race that is to lead the world. It is a topmost 
 quality. Your race has it. It has come down even into 
 your play. It is instinctive in you more than any other. 
 And chivalry is unselfish. It is divine. You have con- 
 quered the sun. The hot races all obey you." 
 
 The thunder broke through the strange but simple words 
 which, in that voice, and with that quiet earnestness, carried 
 some weight of meaning in them that print cannot convey. 
 The women gazed at him with unconcealed, if not with 
 understanding admiration. "Lead us, inspire us, at any 
 rate!" their eyes said plainly; "but love us, O love us, 
 passionately, above all!" 
 
 Devonham, hardly able to believe his ears and eyes, 
 turned to see if Fillery had heard the scrap of talk. Judg- 
 ing by the expression on his face, he had not heard it. 
 Father Collins seemed saying things that held his attention 
 too closely. Yet Fillery, for all his apparent absorption, 
 had heard it, though he read it otherwise than his some- 
 what literal colleague. It was, nevertheless, an interesting 
 revelation to him, since it proved to him again how unreal 
 "LeVallon" was ; how easily, quickly this educated simula- 
 crum caught up, assimilated and reproduced as his own,
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 149 
 
 yet honestly, whatever was in the air at the moment. For 
 the words he had spoken were not his own, but Fillery's. 
 They lay, or something like them lay, unuttered in Fillery's 
 mind just at that very moment. Yet, even while listening 
 attentively to Father Collins, his close interest in LeVallon 
 was so keen, so watchful, that another portion of his mind 
 was listening to this second conversation, even taking part 
 in it inaudibly. LeVallon caught his language from the 
 
 Devonham made his opportunity, leading LeVallon off 
 to be introduced to Lady Gleeson, who still sat waiting for 
 them on the divan in the outer studio. 
 
 As they made their way through the buzzing throng into 
 the larger room, Devonham guessed suddenly that Lady 
 Gleeson must somehow have heard in advance that Le- 
 Vallon would be present; her flair for new men was 
 singular; the sexual instinct, unduly developed, seemed 
 aware of its prey anywhere within a big radius. He owed 
 his friend a hint of guidance possibly. "A little woman," 
 he explained as they crossed over, "who has a weakness 
 for big men and will probably pay you compliments. She 
 comes here to amuse herself with what she calls 'the 
 freaks.' Sometimes she lends her great house for the meet- 
 ings. Her husband's a millionaire." To which the other, 
 in his deep, quiet voice, replied: "Thank you, Dr. Devon- 
 ham." 
 
 "She's known as 'the pretty Lady Gleeson.' " 
 
 "That?" exclaimed the other, looking towards her. 
 
 "Hush !" his companion warned him. 
 
 As they approached, Lady Gleeson, waiting with keen 
 impatience, saw them coming and made her preparations. 
 The frown of annoyance at the long delay was replaced by 
 a smile of welcome that lifted the upper lip on one side 
 only, showing the white even teeth with odd effect. She 
 stared at LeVallon, thought Devonham, as a wolf eyes its 
 prey. Deftly lowering her dress betraying thereby that
 
 150 
 
 she knew it was too high, and a detail now best omitted 
 from the picture she half rose from her seat as they came 
 up. The instinctive art of deference, though instantly cor- 
 rected, did not escape Paul Devonham's too observant eye. 
 
 "You were kind enough to say I might introduce my 
 friend," murmured he. "Mr. LeVallon is new to our big 
 London 2 and a stranger among all these people." 
 
 LeVallon bowed in his calm, dignified fashion, saying 
 no word, but Lady Gleeson put her hand out, and, finding 
 his own, shook it with her air of brilliant welcome. Determi- 
 nation lay in her smile and in her gesture, in her voice as 
 well, as she said familiarly at once: "But, Mr. LeVallon, 
 how tall are you, really? You seem to me a perfect giant." 
 She made room for him beside her on the divan. "Every- 
 body here looks undersized beside you !" She became 
 intense. 
 
 "I am six feet and three inches," he replied literally, but 
 without expression in his face. There was no smile. He 
 was examining her as frankly as she examined him. Devon- 
 ham was examining the pair of them. The lack of interest, 
 the cold indifference in LeVallon, he reflected, must put 
 the young woman on her mettle, accustomed as she was to 
 quick submission in her victims. 
 
 LeVallon, however, did not accept the offered seat; per- 
 haps he had not noticed the invitation. He showed no 
 interest, though polite and gentle. 
 
 "He towers over all of us," Devonham put in, to help 
 an awkward pause. Yet he meant it more than literally; 
 the empty prettiness of the shallow little face before him, 
 the triviality of Miss Rosa Mystica, the cheapness of Povey, 
 Kempster, Mrs. Towzer, the foolish air of otherworldly 
 expectancy in the whole room, of deliberate exaggeration, 
 of eyes big with wonder for sensation as story followed 
 story all this came upon him with its note of poverty and 
 tawdriness as he used the words. 
 
 Something in the atmosphere of LeVallon had this effect
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 151 
 
 whence did it come? he questioned, puzzled of dwarfing 
 all about him. 
 
 "All London, remember, isn't like this," he heard Lady 
 Gleeson saying, a dangerous purr audible in the throaty 
 voice. "Do sit down here and tell me what you think about 
 it. I feel you don't belong here quite, do you know? 
 London cramps you, doesn't it? And you find the women 
 dull and insipid?" She deliberately made more room, pat- 
 ting the cushions invitingly with a flashing hand, that alone, 
 thought Devonham contemptuously, could have endowed 
 at least two big Cliniques. "Tell me about yourself, Mr. 
 LeVallon. I'm dying to hear about your life in the woods 
 and mountains. Do talk to me. I am so bored!" 
 
 What followed surprised Devonham more than any of 
 the three perhaps. He ascribed it to what Fillery had called 
 the "natural gentleman," while Lady Gleeson, doubtless, 
 ascribed it to her own personal witchery. 
 
 With that easy grace of his he sat down instantly beside 
 her on the low divan, his height and big frame contriving 
 the awkward movement without a sign of clumsiness. His 
 indifference was obvious to Devonham, but the vain eyes 
 of the woman did not notice it. 
 
 "That's better," she again welcomed him with a happy 
 laugh. She edged closer a little. "Now, do make yourself 
 comfortable" she arranged the cushions again "and 
 please tell me about your wild life in the forests, or wherever 
 it was. You know a lot about the stars, I hear." She 
 devoured his face and figure with her shining eyes. 
 
 The upper lip was lifted for a second above a gleaming 
 tooth. Devonham had the feeling she was about to eat him, 
 licking her lips already in anticipation. He himself would 
 be dismissed, he well knew, in another moment, for Lady 
 Gleeson would not tolerate a third person at the meal. Be- 
 fore he was sent about his business, however, he had the 
 good fortune to hear LeVallon's opening answer to the 
 foolish invitation. Amazement filled him, He wished
 
 152 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 Fillery could have heard it with him, seen the play of ex- 
 pression on the faces too the bewilderment of sensational 
 hunger for something new in Lady Gleeson's staring eyes, 
 arrested instantaneously; the calm, cold look of power, 
 yet power tempered by a touch of pity, in LeVallon's glance, 
 a glance that was only barely aware of her proximity. He 
 smiled as he spoke, and the smile increased his natural 
 radiance. He looked extraordinarily handsome, yet with 
 a new touch of strangeness that held even the cautious 
 doctor momentarily almost spellbound. 
 
 "Stars yes, but I rarely see them here in London, and 
 they seem so far away. They comfort me. They bring 
 me they and women bring me nearest to a condition that 
 is gone from me. I have lost it." He looked straight into 
 her face, so that she blinked and screwed up her eyes, while 
 her breathing came more rapidly. "But stars and women," 
 he went on, his voice vibrating with music in spite of its 
 quietness, "remind me that it is recoverable. Both give me 
 this sweet message. I read it in stars and in the eyes of 
 women. And it is true because no words convey it. For 
 women cannot express themselves, I see; and stars, too, 
 are silent here." 
 
 The same soft thunder as before sounded below the 
 gently spoken words; Lady Gleeson was trembling a little; 
 she made a movement by means of which she shifted her- 
 self yet nearer to her companion in what seemed a natural 
 and unconscious way. It was doubtless his proximity rather 
 than his words that stirred her. Her face was set, though 
 the lips quivered a trifle and the voice was less shrill than 
 usual as she spoke, holding out her empty glass. 
 
 "Thank you, Dr. Devonham," she said icily. 
 
 The determined gesture, a toss of the head, with the 
 glare of sharp impatience in the eyes, he could not ignore; 
 yet he accepted his curt dismissal slowly enough to catch 
 her murmured words to LeVallon: 
 
 "How wonderful ! How wonderful you are ! And what 
 sort of women . . . ?" followed him as he moved away.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 153 
 
 In his heart rose again an uncomfortable memory of a 
 Jura valley blazing in the sunset, and of a half-naked figure 
 worshipping before a great wood fire on the rocks. . . . 
 He fancied he caught, too, in the voice, a suggestion of a 
 lilt, a chanting resonance, that increased his uneasiness 
 further. One thing was certain: it was not quite the ordi- 
 nary "LeVallon" that answered the silly woman. The 
 reaction was of a different kind. Was, then, the other self 
 awake and stirring? Was it "N. H." after all, as his 
 colleague claimed ? 
 
 Allowing a considerable interval to pass, he returned with 
 a glass of lemonade reaching the divan in its dimlit 
 corner just in time to see a flashing hand withdrawn quickly 
 from LeVallon's arm, and to intercept a glance that told 
 him the intrigue evidently had not developed altogether 
 according to Lady Gleeson's plan, although her air was one 
 of confidence and keenest self-satisfaction. LeVallon sat 
 like a marble figure, cold, indifferent, looking straight be- 
 fore him, listening, if only with half an ear, to a stream 
 of words whose import it was not difficult to guess. 
 
 This Devonham' s practised eye read in the flashing look 
 she shot at him, and in the quick way she thanked him. 
 
 "Coffee, dear Dr. Devonham, I asked for." 
 
 Her move was so quick, his desire to watch them a 
 moment longer together so keen, that for an instant he 
 appeared to hesitate. It was more than appearance ; he did 
 hesitate an instant merely, yet long enough for Lady 
 Gleeson to shoot at him a second swift glance of concen- 
 trated virulence, and also long enough for LeVallon to 
 spring lightly to his feet, take the glass from his hand and 
 vanish in the direction of the refreshment table before any- 
 thing could prevent. "I will get your coffee for you," still 
 sounded in the air, so quickly was the adroit manoeuvre 
 executed. LeVallon had cleverly escaped. 
 
 "How stupid of me," said Devonham quickly, referring 
 to the pretended mistake. Lady Gleeson made no reply. 
 Her inward fury betrayed itself, however, in the tight-set
 
 154 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 lips and the hard glitter of her brilliant little eyes. "He 
 won't be a moment," the other added. "Do you find him 
 interesting? He's not very talkative as a rule, but perhaps 
 with you " He hardly knew what words he used. 
 
 The look she gave him stopped him, so intense was the 
 bitterness in the eyes. His interruption, then, must indeed 
 have been worse or better? timed than he had imagined. 
 She made no pretence of speaking. Turning her glance in 
 the direction whence the coffee must presently appear, she 
 waited, and Devonham might have been a dummy for all 
 the sign she gave of his being there. He had made an 
 enemy for life, he felt, a feeling confirmed by what almost 
 immediately then followed. Neither the coffee nor its 
 bearer came that evening to pretty Lady Gleeson in the 
 way she had desired. She laid the blame at Devonham's 
 door. 
 
 For at that moment, as he stood before her, secretly 
 enjoying her anger a little, yet feeling foolish, perhaps, as 
 well, a chord sounded on the piano, and a hush passed 
 instantly over the entire room. Someone was about to sing. 
 Nayan Khilkoff had come in, unnoticed, by the door of the 
 private room. Her singing invariably formed a part of 
 these entertainments. The song, too, was the one invariably 
 asked for, its music written by herself. 
 
 All talk and movement stopped at the sound of the little 
 prelude, as though a tap had been turned off. Even Devon- 
 ham, most unmusical of men, prepared to listen with enjoy- 
 ment. He tried to see Nayan at the piano, but too many 
 people came between. He saw, instead, LeVallon standing 
 close at his side, the cup of coffee in his hand. He had 
 that instant returned. 
 
 "For Lady Gleeson. Will you pass it to her? Who's 
 going to sing?" he whispered all in the same breath. And 
 Devonham told him, as he bent down to give the cup. 
 "Nayan Khilkoff. Hush! It's a lovely song. I know it 
 The Vagrant's Epitaph.' " 
 
 They stood motionless to listen, as the pure voice of the
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 155 
 
 girl, singing very simply but with the sweetness and truth 
 of sincere feeling, filled the room. Every word, too, was 
 clearly audible : 
 
 "Change was his mistress; Chance his counsellor. 
 
 Love could not hold him ; Duty forged no chain. 
 The wide seas and the mountains called him, 
 
 And grey dawns saw his camp-fires in the rain. 
 
 "Sweet hands might tremble! aye, but he must go. 
 
 Revel might hold him for a little space; 
 But, turning past the laughter and the lamps, 
 
 His eyes must ever catch the luring Face. 
 
 "Dear eyes might question! Yea, and melt again; 
 
 Rare lips a-quiver, silently implore; 
 But he must ever turn his furtive head, 
 
 And hear that other summons at the door. 
 
 "Change was his mistress; Chance his counsellor. 
 
 The dark firs knew his whistle up the trail. 
 Why tarries he to-day? . . . And yesternight 
 
 Adventure lit her stars without avail."
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 LADY GLEESON, owing to an outraged vanity and 
 jealousy she was unable to control, missed the final 
 scene, for before the song was actually finished she was 
 gone. Being near a passage that was draped only by a 
 curtain, she slipped out easily, flung herself into a luxurious 
 motor, and vanished into the bleak autumn night. 
 
 She had seen enough. Her little heart raged with selfish 
 fury. What followed was told her later by word of mouth. 
 
 Never could she forgive herself that she had left the 
 studio before the thing had happened. She blamed Devon- 
 ham for that too. 
 
 For LeVallon, it appears, having passed the cup of coffee 
 to her through a third person in itself an insult of indif- 
 ference and neglect stood absorbed in the words and music 
 of the song., Being head and shoulders above the throng, 
 he easily saw the girl at the piano. No one, unless it was 
 Fillery, a few yards away, watched him as closely as did 
 Devonham and Lady Gleeson, though all three for different 
 reasons. It was Devonham, however, who made the most 
 accurate note of what he saw, though Fillery 's memory was 
 possibly the truer, since his own inner being supplied the 
 fuller and more sympathetic interpretation. 
 
 LeVallon, tall and poised, stood there like a great figure 
 shaped in bronze. He was very calm. His bright hair 
 seemed to rise a little ; his eyes, steady and wondering, gazed 
 fixedly; his features, though set, were mobile in the sense 
 that any instant they might leap into the alive and fluid 
 expression of some strong emotion. His whole being, in 
 a word, stood at attention, alert for instant action of some 
 uncontrollable, perhaps terrific kind, "He seemed like a 
 
 156
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 157 
 
 glowing pillar of metal that must burst into flame the very 
 next instant," as a Member told Lady Gleeson later. 
 
 Devonham watched him. LeVallon seemed transfixed. 
 He stared above the intervening tousled heads. He drew 
 a series of deep breaths that squared his shoulders and 
 made his chest expand. His very muscles ached apparently 
 for instant action. An intensity of wondering joy and 
 admiration that lit his face made the eyes shine like stars. 
 He watched the singing girl as a tiger watches the keeper 
 who brings its long-expected food. The instant the bar is 
 up, it springs, it leaps, it carries off, devours. Only, in 
 this case, there were no bars. Nor was the wild desire for 
 nourishment of a carnal kind. It was companionship, it 
 was intercourse with his own that he desired so intensely. 
 
 "He divines the motherhood in her," thought Fillery, 
 watching closely, pain and happiness mingled in his heart. 
 "The protective, selfless, upbuilding power lies close to 
 Nature." And as this flashed across him he caught a 
 glimpse by chance of its exact opposite in Lady Gleeson's 
 peering, glittering eyes the destructive lust, the selfish 
 passion, the bird of prey. 
 
 "The dark firs knew his whistle up the trail," the song 
 in that soft true voice drew to its close. LeVallon was 
 trembling. 
 
 "Good Heavens !" thought Devonham. "Is it 'N. H.' ? 
 Is it 'N. H./ after all, waking rising to take possession?" 
 He, too, trembled. 
 
 It was here that Lady Gleeson, close, intuitive observer 
 of her escaping prey, rose up and slipped away, her going 
 hardly noticed by the half -entranced, half-dreaming hearts 
 about her, each intent upon its own small heaven of neat 
 desire. She went as unobstrusively as an animal that is 
 aware of untoward conditions and surroundings, showing 
 her teeth, feeling her claws, yet knowing herself helpless. 
 Not even Devonham, his mind ever keenly alert, observed 
 her going. Fillery, alone, conscious of LeVallon's eyes 
 across the room, took note of it. She left, her violent little
 
 158 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 will intent upon vengeance of a later victory that she still 
 promised herself with concentrated passion. 
 
 Yet Devonham, though he failed to notice the slim animal 
 of prey in exit, noticed this that the face he watched so 
 closely changed quickly even as he watched, and that the 
 new expression, growing upon it as heat grows upon metal 
 set in a flame, was an expression he had seen before. He 
 had seen it in that lonely mountain valley where a setting 
 sun poured gold upon a burning pyre, upon a dancing, chant- 
 ing figure, upon a human face he now watched in this 
 ridiculous little Chelsea studio. The sharpness of the air, 
 the very perfume, stole over him as he stared, perplexed, 
 excited and uneasy. That strange, wild, innocent and tender 
 face, that power, that infinite yearning ! LeVallon had dis- 
 appeared. It was "N. H." that stood and watched the 
 singer at the little modern piano. 
 
 Then with the end of the song came the rush, the bustle 
 of applause, the confusion of many people rising, trotting 
 forward, all talking at once, all moving towards the singer 
 when LeVallon, hitherto motionless as a statue, suddenly 
 leaped past and through them like a vehement wind through 
 a whirl of crackling dead leaves. Only his deft, skilful 
 movement, of poise and perfect balance combined with 
 accurate swiftness, could have managed it without bruised 
 bodies and angry cries. There was no clumsiness, no visible 
 effort, no appearance of undue speed. He seemed to move 
 quietly, though he moved like fire. In a moment he was 
 by the piano, and Nayan, in the act of rising from her 
 stool, gazed straight up into his great lighted eyes. 
 
 It was singular how all made way for him, drew back, 
 looked on. Confusion threatened. Emotion surged like 
 a rising sea. Without a leader there might easily have been 
 tumult; even a scene. But Fillery was there. His figure 
 intervened at once. 
 
 "Nayan," he said in a steady voice, "this is my friend, 
 Mr. LeVallon. He wants to thank you."
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 159 
 
 But, before she could answer, LeVallon, his hand upon 
 her arm, said quickly, yet so quietly that few heard the 
 actual words, perhaps his voice resonant, his eyes alight 
 with joy: "You are here too with me, with Fillery. We 
 are all exiles together. But you know the way out the 
 way back ! You remember ! . . ." 
 
 She stared with delicious wonder into his eyes as he 
 went on : 
 
 "O star and woman! Your voice is wind and fire. 
 Come!" And he tried to seize her. "We will go back 
 together. We work here in vain! . . ." His arms were 
 round her; almost their faces touched. 
 
 The girl rose instantly, took a step towards him, then 
 hung back; the stool fell over with a crash; a hubbub of 
 voices rose in the room behind; Povey, Kempster, a dozen 
 Members with them, pressed up; the women, with half- 
 shocked, half -frightened eyes, gaped and gasped over the 
 forest of intervening male shoulders. A universal shuffle 
 followed. The confusion was absurd and futile. Both male 
 and female stood aghast and stupid before what they saw, 
 for behind the mere words and gestures there was some- 
 thing that filled the little scene with a strange shaking power, 
 touching the panic sense. 
 
 LeVallon lifted her across his shoulders. 
 
 The beautiful girl was radiant, the man wore the sudden 
 semblance of a god. Their very stature increased. They 
 stood alone. Yet Fillery, close by, stood with them. There 
 seemed a magic circle none dared cross about the three. 
 Something immense, unearthly, had come into the room, 
 bursting its little space. Even Devonham, breaking with 
 vehemence through the human ring, came to a sudden halt. 
 
 In a voice of thunder though it was not actually loud 
 LeVallon cried: 
 
 "Their little personal loves! They cannot understand!" 
 He bore Nayan in his arms as wind might lift a loose flower 
 and whirl it aloft. 'Come back with me, come home! The
 
 160 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 Sun forgets us here, the Wind is silent. There is no Fire. 
 Our work, our service calls us." He turned to Fillery. 
 "You too. Come!" 
 
 His voice boomed like a thundering wind against the 
 astonished frightened faces staring at him. It rose to a 
 cry of intense emotion: "We are in little exile here! In 
 our wrong place, cut off from the service of our gods ! We 
 will go back!" He started, with the girl flung across his 
 frame. He took one stride. The others shuffled back with 
 one accord. 
 
 "The other summons at the door. But, Edward! you 
 you too!" 
 
 It was Nayan's voice, as the girl clung willingly to the 
 great neck and arms, the voice of the girl all loved and 
 worshipped and thought wonderful beyond temptation; it 
 was this familiar sound that ran through the bewildered, 
 startled throng like an electric shock. They could not be- 
 lieve their eyes, their ears. They -stood transfixed. 
 
 Within their circle stood LeVallon, holding the girl, al- 
 most embracing her, while she lay helpless with happiness 
 upon his huge enfolding arms. He paused, looked round 
 at Fillery a moment. None dared approach. The men 
 gazed, wondering, and with faculties arrested; the women 
 stared, stock still, with beating hearts. All felt a lifting, 
 splendid wonder they could not understand. Devonham, 
 mute and motionless before an inexplicable thing, found 
 himself bereft of judgment. Analysis and precedent, for 
 once, both failed. He looked round in vain for Khilkoff. 
 
 Fillery alone seemed master of himself, a look of suffer- 
 ing and joy shone in his face; one hand lay steady upon 
 LeVallon's arm. 
 
 Within the little circle these three figures formed a 
 definite group, filling the beholders, for the first time in 
 their so-called "psychic" experience, with the thrill of some- 
 thing utterly beyond their ken something genuine at last. 
 For there seemed about the group, though emanating, as
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 161 
 
 with shining power, from the figure of LeVallon chiefly, 
 some radiating force, some elemental vigour they could not 
 comprehend. Its presence made the scene possible, even 
 right. 
 
 "Edward you too! What is it, O, what is it? There 
 are flowers great winds ! I see the fire !" 
 
 A searching tenderness in her tone broke almost beyond 
 the limits of the known human voice. 
 
 There swept over the onlookers a wave of incredible 
 emotion then, as they saw LeVallon move towards them, 
 as though he would pass through them and escape. He 
 seemed in that moment stupendous, irresistible. He looked 
 divine. The girl lay in his arms like some young radiant 
 child. He did not kiss her, no sign of a caress was seen; 
 he did no ordinary, human thing. His towering figure, 
 carrying his burden almost negligently, came out of the 
 circle "like a tide" towards them, as one described it later 
 or as a poem that appeared later in "Simplicity" began: 
 
 "With his hair of wind 
 
 And his eyes of fire 
 
 And his face of infinite desire . . ." 
 
 He swept nearer. They stirred again in a confused and 
 troubled shuffle, opening a way. They shrank back farther. 
 They shivered, like crying shingle a vast wave draws back. 
 Only Fillery stood still, making no sign or movement ; upon 
 his face that look of joy and pain wild joy and searching 
 pain no one, perhaps, but Devonham understood. 
 
 "Wind and fire !" boomed LeVallon's tremendous voice. 
 "We return to our divine, eternal service. O Wind and 
 Fire ! We come back at last !" An immense rhythm swept 
 across the room. 
 
 Then it was, without announcement of word or action, 
 that Nayan, suddenly leaping from the great enfolding 
 arms, stood upright between the two figures, one hand out- 
 stretched towards Fillery.
 
 162 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 At which moment, emerging apparently from nowhere, 
 Khilkoff appeared upon the scene. During the music he 
 had left the studio to find certain sketches he wished to 
 show to LeVallon; he had witnessed nothing, therefore, 
 of what had just occurred. He now stood still, staring in 
 sheer surprise. The people in a ring, gazing with excited, 
 rapt expression into the circle they thus formed, looked 
 like an audience watching some performance that dazed and 
 stupefied them, in which Fillery, LeVallon and Nayan 
 his own daughter were the players. He took ft for an 
 impromptu charade, perhaps, something spontaneously 
 arranged during his absence. Yet he was obviously 
 staggered. 
 
 As he entered, the girl had just leaped from the arms 
 that held her, and run towards Fillery, who stood erect 
 and motionless in the centre of the circle; and LeVallon's 
 wild splendid cry in that instant shook its grand music 
 across the vaulted room. So well acted, so dramatic, so 
 real was the scene thus interrupted that Khilkoff stood star- 
 ing in silence, thinking chiefly, as he said afterwards, that 
 the young man's pose and attitude were exactly magnifi- 
 cently what he wanted for the figure of Fire and Wind 
 in his elemental group. 
 
 This enthusiastic thought, with the attempt to engrave 
 it permanently in his memory, filled his mind completely 
 for an instant, when there broke in upon it again that 
 resonant voice, half cry, half chant, vibrating with depth 
 and music, yet quiet too: 
 
 "Wind and Fire! My Wind and Fire! O Sun your 
 messengers are come for us! ... Oh, come with power 
 and take us with you ! . . ." Its rhythm was gigantic. 
 
 So extraordinary was the volume, yet the sweetness, too, 
 in the voice, though its actual loudness was not great 
 so arresting was its quality, that Khilkoff, as he put it after- 
 wards, thought he heard an entirely new sound, a sound 
 his ears had never known before. He, like the rest of the 
 astonished audience, was caught spell-bound. But for an
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 163 
 
 instant only. For at once there followed another voice, 
 releasing the momentary spell, and, with the accompanying 
 action, warned him that what he saw was no mere game 
 of acting. This was real. 
 
 "I hear that other summons at the door! . . " 
 
 Her hands were outstretched, her eyes alight with yearn- 
 ing, she was oblivious of everyone but Fillery, LeVallon 
 and herself. 
 
 And her father, then, breaking through the crowding 
 figures, packed shoulder to shoulder nearest to him, entered 
 the circle. His mind was confused, perhaps, for vague 
 ideas of some undesirable hypnotic influence, of some foolish 
 experiment that had become too real, passed through it. 
 He knew one thing only this scene, whether real or acted, 
 pretence or sincere, must be stopped. The look on his 
 daughter's face entirely new and strange to him was 
 all the evidence he needed. He shouldered his way through 
 like an angry bear, making inarticulate noises, growling. 
 
 But, before he reached the actors, before Nayan reached 
 Fillery's side, and while the voice of the girl and of Le- 
 Vallon still seemed to echo simultaneously in the air, a new 
 thing happened that changed the scene completely. In these 
 few brief seconds, indeed, so much was concentrated, and 
 with such rapidity, that it was small wonder the reports 
 of individual witnesses differed afterwards, almost as if 
 each one had seen a separate detail of the crowded picture. 
 Its incredibility, too, bewildered minds accustomed to 
 imagined dreams rather than to real action. 
 
 LeVallon, at any rate, all agreed, turned with that ease 
 and swiftness peculiarly his own, caught Nayan again into 
 the air, and with one arm swung her back across his 
 shoulder. He moved, then, so irresistibly, with a great 
 striding rush in the direction of the door into the street, 
 and so rapidly, that the onlookers once more drew back 
 instinctively pell mell, tumbling over each other in their 
 frightened haste. 
 
 This, all agreed, had happened. One second they saw
 
 164 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 LeVallon carrying the girl off, the next a flash of intense 
 and vivid brilliance entered the big studio, flooding all detail 
 with a blaze of violent light. There was a loud report, 
 there was a violent shock. 
 
 "The Messengers ! Our Messengers ! . . ." The thunder 
 of LeVallon's cry was audible. 
 
 The same instant this dazzling splendour, so sparkling 
 it was almost painful, became eclipsed again. There was 
 complete obliteration. Darkness descended like a blow. An 
 inky blackness reigned. No single thing was visible. There 
 came a terrific splitting sound. 
 
 The effect of overwhelming sudden blackness was natural 
 enough. In every mind danced still the vivid memory of 
 that last amazing picture they had seen: Khilkoff, with 
 alarmed face, breaking violently into the circle where his 
 daughter, Nayan, swinging from those giant shoulders, 
 looked back imploringly at Dr. Fillery, who stood motion- 
 less as though carved in stone, a smile of curious happiness 
 yet pain upon his features. Yet the figure of LeVallon 
 dominated. His radiant beauty, his air of superb strength, 
 his ease, his power, his wild swiftness. Something un- 
 earthly glowed about him. He looked a god. The extra- 
 ordinary idea flashed into Fillery's mind that some big 
 energy as of inter-stellar spaces lay about him, as though 
 great Sirius called down along his light-years of distance 
 into the little tumbled Chelsea room. 
 
 This was the picture, set one instant in dazzling violet 
 brilliance, then drowned in blackness, that still hung shin- 
 ing with intense reality before every mind. 
 
 The following confusion had a moment of real and 
 troubling panic; women screamed, some fell upon their 
 knees ; men called for light ; various cries were heard ; there 
 was a general roar : 
 
 "To the door, all men to the door! He's controlled! 
 There's an Elemental in him !" It was Povey's shrill tones 
 that pierced.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 165 
 
 "Strike a match !" shouted Kempster. "The electric light 
 has fused. Stay where you are. Don't move everybody. 
 
 "Lightning," the clear voice of Devonham was heard. 
 "Keep your heads. It's only a thunderstorm !" 
 
 Matches were struck, extinguished, lit again; a patch 
 of dim light shone here and there upon a throng of huddled 
 people ; someone found a candle that shed a flickering glare 
 upon the walls and ceiling, but only made the shadows 
 chiefly visible. It was an unreal, fantastic scene. 
 
 A moment later there descended a hurricane gust of 
 wind against the building, with splintering glass as though 
 from a hail of bullets, that extinguished candle and matches, 
 and plunged the scene again into total darkness. A terrific 
 clap of thunder, followed immediately by a rushing sound 
 of rain that poured in a flood upon the floor, completed 
 the scene of terror and confusion. The huge north window 
 had blown in. 
 
 The consternation was, for some moments, dangerous, 
 for true panic may become an unmanageable thing, and 
 this panic was unquestionably real. The superstitious 
 thread that lies in every human being, stretched and 
 shivered, beginning to weave its swift, ominous pattern. 
 The elements dominated the human too completely just 
 then even for the sense of wonder that was usually so 
 active in the Society's mental make-up to assert itself .in- 
 telligently. Most of them lost their heads. All associated 
 that picture of LeVallon and the girl with this terrific 
 demonstration of overpowering elemental violence. Povey's 
 startled cry had given them the lead. The human touch 
 thus added the flavour of something both personal and 
 supernatural. 
 
 Some stood screaming, whimpering, unable to move; 
 some were numb ; others cried for help ; not a few remained 
 on their knees; the name of God was audible here and 
 there; many collapsed and several women fainted. To one 
 and all came the realization of that panic fear which dis-
 
 166 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 locates and paralyses. This was a manifestation of elemen- 
 tal power that had intelligence somewhere driving too 
 suggestively behind it. ... 
 
 It was Devonham and Khilkoff who kept their heads 
 and saved the situation. The sudden storm was, indeed, 
 of extreme violence and ferocity; the force of the wind, 
 with the nearness of the terrible lightning and the con- 
 sequent volume of the overwhelming thunder, were certainly 
 bewildering. But a thunderstorm, they began to realize, 
 was a thunderstorm. 
 
 "Everyone stay exactly where he is," suddenly shouted 
 Khilkoff through the darkness. His voice brought comfort. 
 "I'll light candles in the inner studio." He did so a moment 
 later; the faint light was reassuring; a pause in the storm 
 came to his assistance, the wind had passed, the rain had 
 ceased, there was no more lightning. With a whispered 
 word to Devonham, he disappeared through the door into 
 the passage: "You look after 'em; I must find my girl." 
 
 "One by one, now," called Devonham. "Take careful 
 steps ! Avoid the broken glass !" 
 
 Voices answered from dark corners, as the inner room 
 began to fill; all saw the candle light and came to it by 
 degrees. "Povey, Kempster, Imson, Father Collins! Each 
 man bring a lady with him. It's only a thunderstorm. Keep 
 your heads!" 
 
 The smaller room filled gradually, people with white faces 
 and staring eyes coining, singly or in couples, within the 
 pale radiance of the flickering candle light. Feet splashed 
 through pools of water; the furniture, the clothing, were 
 soaked ; the heat in the air, despite the great broken window, 
 was stifling. One or two women were helped, some were 
 carried; there were cries and exclamations, a noise of 
 splintered glass being trodden on or kicked aside; drinks 
 were brought for those who had fainted ; order was restored 
 bit by bit. The collective consciousness resumed gradually 
 its comforting sway. The herd found strength in contact. 
 A single cry in a woman's voice "Pan was among
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 167 
 
 us! . . ." was instantly smothered, drowned in a chorus 
 of "Hush ! Hush !" as though a mere name might bring a 
 repetition of a terror none could bear again. 
 
 The entire scene had lasted perhaps five minutes, possibly 
 less. The violent storm that had hung low over London, 
 accumulating probably for hours, had dissipated itself in 
 a single prodigious explosion, and was gone. Through the 
 gaping north window, torn and shattered, shone the stars. 
 More candles were brought and lighted, food and drink 
 followed, a few cuts from broken glass were attended to, 
 and calm in a measure came back to the battered and shaken 
 yet thrilled and delighted Prometheans. 
 
 But all eyes looked for a couple who were not there ; a 
 hundred heads turned searching, for in every heart lay one 
 chief question. Yet, oddly enough, none asked aloud; the 
 names of Nay an and LeVallon were not spoken audibly; 
 some touch of awe, it seemed, clung to a memory still burn- 
 ing in each individual mind ; it was an awe that none would 
 willingly revive just then. The whole occurrence had been 
 too devastating, too sudden ; it all had been too real. 
 
 There was little talk, nor was there the whispered dis- 
 cussion even that might have been expected; individual 
 recovery was slow and hesitating. What had happened 
 lay still too close for the comfort of detailed comparison 
 or analysis by word of mouth. With common accord the 
 matter was avoided. Discussions must wait. It would fill 
 many days with wonder afterwards. . . . 
 
 It was with a sense of general relief, therefore, that the 
 throng of guests, bedraggled somewhat in appearance, eyes 
 still bright with traces of uncommon excitement, their 
 breath uneven and their attitude still nervous, saw the door 
 into the passage open and frame the figure of their return- 
 ing host. He held a lighted candle. His bearded face 
 looked grim, but his slow deep voice was quiet and reassur- 
 ing he smiled, his words were commonplace. 
 
 "You must excuse my daughter," he said firmly, "but 
 she sends her excuses, and begs to be forgiven for not
 
 168 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 coming to bid you all good-night. The lightning the 
 electricity has upset her. I have advised her to go to 
 bed." 
 
 A sigh of relief from everybody came in answer. They 
 were only too glad to take the hint and go. 
 
 "The little impromptu act we had prepared for you we 
 cannot give now," he added, anticipating questions. "The 
 storm prevented the second part. We must give it another 
 time instead,"
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 HILKOFF, Edward Fillery and Paul Devonham, be- 
 tween them, it seems, were wise in their generation. 
 The story spread that the scene in the Studio had been 
 nothing but a bit of inspired impromptu acting, to which 
 the coincidence of the storm had lent a touch of unexpected 
 conviction where, otherwise, all would have ended in a 
 laugh and a round or two of amused applause. 
 
 The spreading of an undesirable story, thus, was to a 
 great extent prevented, its discussion remaining confined, 
 chiefly, among the few startled witnesses. Yet tKe Prome- 
 theans, of course, knew a supernatural occurrence when 
 they saw one. They were not to be so easily deprived of 
 their treasured privilege. Thrilled to their marrows, indi- 
 vidually and collectively, they committed their versions to 
 writing, drew up reports, compared notes and, generally, 
 made the feast last as long as possible. It was, moreover, 
 a semi-sacred feast for them. Its value increased porten- 
 tously. It bound the Society together with fresh life. It 
 attracted many new members. Povey and his committee 
 increased the subscription and announced an entrance fee 
 in addition. 
 
 The various accounts offered by the Members, curious 
 as these were, may be left aside for the moment, since the 
 version of the occurrence as given by Edward Fillery comes 
 first in interest. His report, however, was made only to 
 himself; he mentioned it in full to no one, not even to 
 Paul Devonham. He felt unable to share it with any living 
 being. Only one result of his conclusions he shared openly 
 enough with his assistant: he withdrew his promise. 
 
 Upon certain details, the two men agreed with interest 
 
 169
 
 170 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 that everybody in the room, men and women, were on 
 the qui v'we the moment LeVallon made his entrance. His 
 appearance struck a note. All were aware of an unusual 
 presence. Interest and curiosity rose like a vapour, heads 
 all turned one way as though the same wind blew them, 
 there was a buzz and murmur of whispered voices, as 
 though the figure of LeVallon woke into response the same 
 taut wire in every heart. "Who on earth is that? What 
 is he?" was legible in a hundred questioning eyes. All, in 
 a word, were aware of something unaccustomed. 
 
 Upon this detail and in support of the Society's claim 
 to special "psychic" perception, it must be mentioned 
 Fillery and Devonham were at one. But another detail, too, 
 found them in agreement. It was not the tempest that 
 caused the panic ; it was LeVallon himself. Something about 
 LeVallon had produced the abrupt and singular sense of 
 panic terror. 
 
 Fillery was glad; he was satisfied, at any rate. The 
 transient, unreal personality called "LeVallon" had dis- 
 appeared and, as he believed, for ever; a surface appari- 
 tion after all, it had been educated, superimposed, the result 
 of imitation and quick learning, a phantom masquerading 
 as an intelligent human being. It was merely an acquired 
 surface-self, a physical, almost an automatic intelligence. 
 The deep nature underneath had now broken out. It was 
 the sudden irruption of "N. H." that touched the subcon- 
 scious self of everyone in the room with its strange authentic 
 shock. "N. H." was in full possession. 
 
 Towards this real Self he felt attraction, yearning, even 
 love. He had felt this from the very beginning. Why, 
 or what it was, he did not pretend to know as yet. Towards 
 "N. H." he reacted as towards his own son, as to a comrade, 
 ancient friend, proved intimate and natural playmate even. 
 The strange tie was difficult to describe. In himself, though 
 faint by comparison, lay something akin in sympathy and 
 understanding. . . . They belonged together in the same
 
 THE BFJGHT MESSENGER 171 
 
 unknown region. The girl, of course, belonged there too, 
 but more completely, more absolutely, even than himself. 
 He foresaw the risks, the dangers. His heart, with a leap 
 of joy, accepted the responsibilities. 
 
 Unlike Devonham, he had not come that afternoon to 
 scoff; his smile at the vagaries of what his assistant called 
 "hysterical psychics" had no bitterness, no contempt. If 
 their excesses were pathogenic often, he believed with 
 Lombroso that genius and hysteria draw upon a common 
 origin sometimes, also that, from among this unstable 
 material, there emerged on occasions hints of undeniable 
 value. To the want of balance was chiefly due the in- 
 effectiveness of these hints. This class, dissatisfied with 
 present things, kicking over the traces which herd together 
 the dull normal crowd into the safe but uninteresting com- 
 monplace, but kicking, of course, too wildly, alone offered 
 hints of powers that might one day, obedient to laws at 
 present unknown, become of value to the race. They were 
 temperamentally open to occasional, if misguided, inspira- 
 tion, and all inspiration, the evidence overwhelmingly 
 showed, is due to an intense, but hidden mental activity. 
 The hidden nine-tenths of the self peeped out here and 
 there periodically. These people were, at heart, alert to 
 new ideas. The herd instinct was weak in them. They 
 were individuals. 
 
 Fillery had not come to scoff. His chief purpose on this 
 particular occasion had been to observe any reactions pro- 
 duced in LeVallon by the atmosphere of these unbalanced 
 yet questing minds, and by the introduction to a girl, whose 
 beauty, physical and moral, he considered far far above 
 the standard of other women. Iraida Khilkoff, as he saw 
 her, rose head and shoulders, like some magical flower in 
 a fairy-tale, beyond her feminine kind. 
 
 His hopes had in both respects proved justified. Le- 
 Vallon was gone. "N. H." had swept up commandingly 
 into full possession.
 
 172 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 If it is the attitude of mind that interprets details in a 
 given scene, it is the heart that determines their selection. 
 Devonham saw collective hallucination, delusion, humbug 
 useless and undesirable weeds, where his chief saw 
 strange imperfect growths that might one day become 
 flowers in a marvellous garden. That this garden blossomed 
 upon the sunny slopes of a lost Caucasian valley had a 
 significance he did not shirk. Always he was honest with 
 himself. It was this symbolic valley he longed to people. 
 Its radiant loveliness stirred a forgotten music in his heart, 
 he watched golden bees sipping that wild azalea honey, 
 of which even the natives may not rob them without the 
 dangerous delight of exaltation; his nostrils caught the 
 delicious perfumes, his cheek felt the touch of happy winds 
 ... as he stood by the door with Devonham and LeVallon, 
 looking round the crowded Chelsea studio. 
 
 Aware of this association stirring in his blood, he be- 
 lieved he had himself well in hand; he knew already in 
 advance that a spirit moved upon the face of those waters 
 that were his inmost self; he had that intuitive divination 
 which anticipates a change of spiritual weather. The wind 
 was rising, the atmosphere lay prepared, already the flowers 
 bent their heads one way. All his powers of self-control 
 might well be called upon before the entertainment ended. 
 Glancing a moment at LeVallon, tall, erect and poised be- 
 side him, he was conscious it was an instant of vivid self- 
 revelation that he steadied himself in doing so. He 
 borrowed, as it were, something of that poise, that calm 
 simplicity, that potential energy, that modest confidence. 
 Some latent power breathed through the great stalwart 
 figure by his side ; the strength was not his own ; LeVallon 
 emanated this power unconsciously. 
 
 Khilkoff, as described, had then led the youth away to 
 see the sculpture, Devonham was captured by a Member, 
 and Fillery found himself alone. He looked about him, 
 noticing here and there individuals whom he knew. Lady 
 Gleeson he saw at once on her divan in the corner, with
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 173 
 
 her cigarette, her jewels, her glass, her background of 
 millions through which an indulgent husband floated like 
 a shadow. His eye rested on her a second only, then passed 
 in search of something less insignificant. Miss Lance, who 
 had heard of his books and dared to pretend knowledge 
 of them, monopolised him for ten minutes. A little tactful 
 kindness managed her easily, while he watched the door 
 where LeVallon had disappeared with Khilkoff, and through 
 which Nayan might any moment now enter. Already his 
 thoughts framed these two together in a picture; his heart 
 saw them playing hand in hand among the flowers of the 
 Hidden Valley, one flying, the other following, a radiance 
 of sunny fire and a speed of lifting winds about them both, 
 yet he himself, oddly enough, not far away. He, too, was 
 somehow with them. While listening with his mind to what 
 Miss Lance was saying, his heart went out playing with 
 this splendid pair. . . . He would not lose her finally, it 
 seemed; some subtle kinship held them together in this 
 trinity. The heart in him played wild against the mind. 
 
 He caught Devonham's eye upon him, and a sudden smile 
 that Miss Lance fortunately appropriated to herself, ran 
 over his too thoughtful face. For Devonham's attitude 
 towards the case, his original Notes, his obvious conceal- 
 ment of experiences in the Jura Mountains, flashed across 
 him with a flavour of something half comic, half pathetic. 
 "With all that knowledge, with all the accumulation of 
 data, Paul stops short of Wonder !" he thought to himself, 
 his eyes fixed solemnly upon Miss Lance's face. He remem- 
 bered Coleridge: "All knowledge begins and ends with 
 wonder, but the first wonder is the child of ignorance, while 
 the second wonder is the parent of adoration." A thousand 
 years, and the dear fellow will still regard adoration as 
 hysteria ! He chuckled audibly, to his companion's surprise, 
 since the moment was not appropriate for chuckling. 
 
 Making his peace with his neighbour, he presently left 
 her for a position nearer to the door, Father Collins prd- 
 viding the opportunity.
 
 174 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 Father Collins, as he was called, half affectionately, half 
 in awe, as of a parent with a cane, was an individual. He 
 had been evangelical, high church, Anglican, Roman 
 Catholic, in turn, and finally Buddhist. Believing in reincar- 
 nation, he did not look for progress in humanity ; the planet 
 resembled a form at school individuals passed into it and 
 out of it, but the average of the form remained the same 
 The fifth form was always the fifth form. Earth's history 
 showed no advance as a whole, though individuals did. He 
 looked forward, therefore, to no Utopia, nor shared the 
 pessimism of the thinkers who despaired of progress. 
 
 A man of intense convictions, yet open mind, he was 
 not ashamed to move. Before the Buddhist phase, he had 
 been icily agnostic. He thought, but also he felt. He had 
 vision and intuition ; he had investigated for himself. His 
 mind was of the imaginative-scientific order. Buddhism, 
 his latest phase, attracted him because it was "a scientific, 
 logical system rather than a religion based on revelation." 
 He belonged eminently to the unstable. He found no rest- 
 ing place. He came to the meetings of the Society to 
 listen rather than to talk. His net was far flung, catching 
 anything and everything in the way of new ideas, experi- 
 ments, theories, beliefs, especially powers. He tested for 
 himself, then accepted or discarded. The more extravagant 
 the theory, the greater its appeal to him. Behind a grim, 
 even a repulsive ugliness, he hid a heart of milk and honey. 
 In his face was nobility, yet something slovenly ran through 
 it like a streak. 
 
 He loved his kind and longed to help them to the light. 
 Although a rolling stone, spiritually, his naked sincerity 
 won respect. He was composed, however, of several per- 
 sonalities, and hence, since these often clashed, he was 
 accused of insincerity too. The essay that lost him his 
 pulpit and parish, "The Ever-moving Truth, or Proof 
 Impossible," was the poignant confession of an honest in- 
 tellect where faith and unbelief came face to face with 
 facts. The Bishop, naturally, preferred the room of 
 "Father" Collins to his company.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 175 
 
 "I should like you to meet my friend," Fillery mentioned, 
 after some preliminary talk. "He would interest you. You 
 might help him possibly." He mentioned a few essential 
 details. "Perhaps you will call one day you know my 
 address and make his acquaintance. His mind, owing to 
 his lonely and isolated youth, is tabula rasa. For the same 
 reason, a primitive Nature is his Deity." 
 
 Father Collins raised his bushy dark eyebrows. 
 
 "I took note of him the moment he came in," he replied. 
 "I was wondering who he was and what! I'll come one 
 day with pleasure. The innocence on his face surprised 
 me. Is he may I ask it friend or patient ?" 
 
 "Both." 
 
 "I see," said the other, without hesitation. He added: 
 "You are experimenting?" 
 
 "Studying. I should value the help the view of a 
 religious temperament." 
 
 Father Collins looked grim to ugliness. The touch of 
 nobility appeared. 
 
 "I know your ideals, Dr. Fillery; I know your work," 
 he said gruffly. "In you lies more true religion than in 
 a thousand bishops. I should trust your treatment of an 
 unusual case. If," he added slowly, "I can help him, so 
 much the better." He then looked up suddenly, his manner 
 as if galvanized : "Unless he can perhaps help us." 
 
 The words struck Fillery on the raw, as it were. They 
 startled him. He stared into the other's eyes. "What 
 makes you think that? What do you mean exactly?" 
 
 Father Collins returned his gaze unflinchingly. He made 
 an odd reply. "Your friend," he said, "looks to me like 
 a man who might start a new religion Nature for instance 
 back to Nature being, in my opinion, always a possible 
 solution of over-civilization and its degeneracy." The 
 streak of something slovenly crept into the nobility, smudg- 
 ing it, so to speak, with a blur. 
 
 Dr. Fillery, for a moment, waited, listening with his 
 heart.
 
 176 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 "And find a million followers at once," continued the 
 other, as though he had not noticed. "His voice, his manner, 
 his stature, his face, but above all something he brings 
 with him. Whatever his nature, he's a natural leader. And 
 a sincere, unselfish leader is what people are asking for 
 nowadays." 
 
 His black bushy eyebrows dropped, darkening the grim, 
 clean-shaven face. "You noticed, of course you the 
 women's eyes ?" he mentioned. "It isn't, you know, so much 
 what a man says, nor entirely his looks, that excite favour 
 or disfavour with women. It's something he emanates 
 unconsciously. They can't analyze it, but they never fail 
 to recognize it." 
 
 Fillery moved sideways a little, so that he could watch 
 the inner studio better. The discernment of his companion 
 was somewhat unexpected. It disconcerted him. All his 
 knowledge, all his experience clustered about his mind as 
 thick as bees, yet he felt unable to select the item he needed. 
 The sunshine upon his Inner Valley burned a brighter fire. 
 He saw the flowers glow. The wind ran sweet and magical. 
 He began to watch himself more closely. 
 
 "LeVallon is an interesting being," he admitted finally, 
 "but you make big deductions surely. A mind like yours," 
 he added, "must have its reasons?" 
 
 "Power," replied the other promptly; "power. 'The 
 earlier generations,' said Emerson, 'saw God face to face; 
 we through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an 
 original relation to Nature?' Your friend has this original 
 relation, I feel; he stands close terribly close to Nature. 
 
 He brings open spaces even into this bargain sale " He 
 
 drew a deep breath. "There is a power about him " 
 
 "Perhaps," interrupted the other. 
 
 "Not of this earth." 
 
 "You mean that literally?" 
 
 "Not of this earth quite not of humanity, so to speak," 
 repeated Father Collins half irritably, as though his intel-
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 177 
 
 ligence had been insulted. "That's the best way I can 
 describe how it strikes me. Ask one of the women. Ask 
 Nayan, for instance. Whatever he is, your friend is 
 elemental." 
 
 Like a shock of fire the unusual words ran deep into 
 Fillery's heart, but, at that same instant a stirring of the 
 figures beyond the door caught his attention. His main 
 interest revived. The inner door of the private studio, he 
 thought, had opened. 
 
 "Elemental!" he repeated, his interest torn in two direc- 
 tions simultaneously. He looked at his companion keenly, 
 searchingly. "You a man like you does not use such 
 words " He kept an eye upon the inner studio. 
 
 "Without meaning," the other caught him up at once. 
 "No. I mean it. Nor do I use such words idly to a man 
 Fillery like you." He stopped. "He has what you 
 have," came the quick blunt statement; "only in your case 
 it's indirect, while in his it's direct essential." 
 
 They looked at each other. Two minds, packed with 
 knowledge and softened with experience of their kind, 
 though from different points of view, met each other fairly. 
 A bridge existed. It was crossed. Few words were neces- 
 sary, it seemed. Each understood the other. 
 
 "Elemental," repeated Fillery, his pulse quickening half 
 painfully. 
 
 At which instant he knew the inner door had opened. 
 Nayan had come in. The same instant almost she had 
 gone out again. So quick, indeed, was the interval be- 
 tween her appearance and disappearance, that Fillery's 
 version of what he then witnessed in those few seconds 
 might have been ascribed by a third person who saw it 
 with him to his imagination largely. Imaginative, at any 
 rate, the version was ; whether it was on that account unreal 
 is another matter. The swift, tiny scene, however, no one 
 witnessed but himself. Even Devonham, unusually alert 
 with professional anxiety, missed it ; as did also the watch-
 
 178 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 ful Lady Gleeson, whom jealousy made clairvoyante almost. 
 Khilkoff and LeVallon, standing sideways to the door, were 
 equally unaware that it had opened, then quickly closed 
 again. None saw, apparently, the radiant, lovely outline. 
 
 It was a curtained door leading out of the far end of 
 the inner studio into a passage which had an exit to the 
 street; Fillery was so placed that he could see it over his 
 companion's shoulder; Khilkoff, LeVallon and the little 
 group about them stood in his direct line of sight against 
 the dark background of the curtain. The light in this far 
 corner was so dim that Fillery was not aware the curtained 
 door had swung open until he actually saw the figure of 
 Nayan Khilkoff framed suddenly in the clear space, the 
 white passage wall behind her. She wore gloves, hat and 
 furs, having come, evidently, straight from the street. Ten 
 seconds, perhaps twenty, she stood there, gazing with a 
 sudden fixed intensity at LeVallon, whose figure, almost 
 close enough for touch, was sideways to her, the face in 
 profile. 
 
 She stopped abruptly as though a shock ran through 
 her. She remained motionless. She stared, an expression 
 in her eyes as of life momentarily arrested by wild, glorious, 
 intense surprise. The lips were parted; one gloved hand 
 still held the swinging curtained door. To Fillery it seemed 
 as if a flame leaped into her eyes. The entire face lit up. 
 She seemed spellbound with delight. 
 
 This leap of light was the first sign he witnessed. The 
 same second her eyes lifted a fraction of an inch, changed 
 their focus, and, gazing past LeVallon, looked straight 
 across the room into his own. 
 
 In his mind at that instant still rang the singular words 
 of Father Collins; in his heart still hung the picture of 
 the flowered valley : it was across this atmosphere the eyes 
 of the girl flashed their message like a stroke of lightning. 
 It came as a cry, almost a call for help, an audible message 
 whose syllables fled down the valley, yearning sweet, yet 
 a tone of poignant farewell within the following wind. It
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 179 
 
 was a moment of delicious joy, of exquisite pain, of a 
 blissful, searching dream beyond this world. ... 
 
 He stood spellbound himself a moment. The look in 
 the girl's big eloquent eyes threatened a cherished dream 
 that lay too close to his own life. He was aware of collapse, 
 of ruin; that old peculiar anguish seized him. He remem- 
 bered her words in Baker Street a few days before : "Please 
 bring your friend" the accompanying pain they caused. 
 And now he caught the echo on that following wind along 
 the distant valley. The cry in her eyes came to him: 
 
 "Why O why do you bring this to me? It must take 
 your place. It must put out You!" 
 
 The reasoning and the inspirational self in him knew 
 this momentary confusion, as the cry fled down the wind. 
 
 "O follow, follow 
 
 Through the caverns hollow 
 
 As the song floats, thou pursue 
 
 Where the wild bee never flew . . ." 
 
 The curtained door swung to again; the face and figure 
 were no longer there; Nayan had withdrawn quickly, 
 noticed by none but himself. She had gone up to make 
 herself ready for her father's guests ; in a few minutes she 
 would come down again to play hostess as her custom 
 was. ... It was so ordinary. It was so dislocating. . . . 
 For at that moment it seemed as if all the feminine forces 
 of the universe, whatever these may be, focused in her, 
 and poured against him their concentrated stream to allure, 
 enchant, subdue. He trembled. He remembered Devon- 
 ham's admission of the panic sense. 
 
 "It's the air," said a voice beside him, "all this tobacco 
 smoke and scent, and no ventilation." 
 
 Father Collins was speaking, only he had completely for- 
 gotten that Father Collins was in the world. The steadying 
 hand upon his arm made him realize that he had swayed a 
 moment.
 
 180 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 "The perfume chiefly," the voice continued. "All this 
 cheap nasty stuff these women use. It's enough to sicken 
 any healthy man. Nobody knows his own smell, they say." 
 He laughed a little. 
 
 Collins was tactful. He talked on easily of nothing in 
 particular, so that his companion might let the occasion 
 slip, or comment on it, as he wished. 
 
 "Worse than incense." Fillery gave him the clue per- 
 haps intentionally, certainly with gratitude. He made an 
 effort. He found control. "It intoxicates the imagination, 
 doesn't it?" That note of sweet farewell still hung with 
 enchanting sadness in his brain. He still saw those yearn- 
 ing eyes. He heard that cry. And yet the conflict in his 
 nature bewildered him as though he found two persons 
 in him, one weeping while the other sang. 
 
 Father Collins smiled, and Fillery then knew that he, 
 too, had seen the girl framed in the doorway, intercepted 
 the glance as well. No shadow of resentment crossed his 
 heart as he heard him add: "She, too, perhaps belongs 
 elsewhere." The phrase, however, brought to his own 
 personal dream the conviction of another understanding 
 mind. "As you yourself do, too," was added in a thrilling 
 whisper suddenly. 
 
 Fillery turned with a start to meet his eye. "But 
 where?" 
 
 "That is your problem," said Father Collins promptly. 
 "You are the expert even though you think mistakenly 
 that your heart is robbed." His voice held the sympathy 
 and tenderness of a woman taught by suffering. The 
 nobility was in his face again, untarnished now. His words, 
 his tone, his manner caught Fillery in amazement. It did 
 not surprise him that Father Collins had been quick enough 
 to understand, but it did surprise him that a man so 
 entangled in one formal creed after another, so netted by 
 the conventional thought of various religious Systems, and 
 therefore stuffed with old, rigid, commonplace ideas it
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 181 
 
 did, indeed surprise him to feel this sudden atmosphere 
 of vision and prophecy that abruptly shone about him. The 
 extravagant, fantastic side of the man he had forgotten. 
 "Where?" he repeated, gazing at him. "Where, indeed?" 
 "Where the wild bee never flew . . . perhaps!" 
 Father Collins's eyebrows shot up as though worked by 
 artificial springs. His eyes, changing extraordinarily, 
 turned very keen. He seemed several persons at once. He 
 looked like contradictory description a spiritual Jesuit. 
 The ugly mouth thank Heaven, thought Fillery snowed 
 lines of hidden humour. His sanity, at any rate, was 
 unquestioned. Father Collins watched the planet with his 
 soul, not with his brain alone. But which of his many 
 personalities was now in the ascendancy, no man, least of 
 all himself, could tell. His companion, the expert in him 
 automatically aware of the simultaneous irruption and dis- 
 ruption, waited almost professionally for any outburst that 
 might follow. "Arcades ambo," he reflected, making a stern 
 attempt to keep his balance. 
 
 "The subconscious, remember, doesn't explain every- 
 thing," came the words. "Not everything," he added with 
 emphasis. "As with heredity" he looked keenly half 
 humorously, half sympathetically at the doctor "there are 
 gaps and lapses. The recent upheaval has been more than 
 an inter-tribal war. It was a planetary event. It has shaken 
 our nature fundamentally, radically. The human mind has 
 been shocked, broken, dislocated. The prevalent hysteria 
 is not an ordinary hysteria, nor are the new powers per- 
 haps quite ordinary either." 
 
 "Mental history repeats itself," Fillery put in, now more 
 master of himself again. "Unbalance has always followed 
 upheaval. The removal of known, familiar foundations 
 always lets in extravagance of wildest dissatisfaction, search 
 and question." 
 
 "Upheaval of this kind," rejoined the other gravely, 
 "there has never been since human beings walked the earth.
 
 182 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 Our fabulous old world trembles in the balance." And, 
 as he said it, the dreamer shone in the light below the big, 
 black eyebrows, noticed quickly by his companion. "Old 
 ideals have been smashed beyond recovery. The gods men 
 knew have been killed, like Tommy, in the trenches. The 
 past is likewise dead, its dreams of progress buried with 
 it by a Black Maria. The human mind and heart stand 
 everywhere empty and bereft, while their hungry and 
 unanswered questions search the stars for something new." 
 
 "Well, well," said Fillery gently, half stirred, half amused 
 by the odd language. "You may be right. But mental 
 history has always shown a desire for something new after 
 each separate collapse. Signs and wonders are a recurrent 
 hunger, remember. In the days of Abraham, of Paul, of 
 Moses it was the same." 
 
 "Questions to-day," replied the other, "are based on an 
 immense accumulated knowledge unknown to Moses or to 
 Abraham's time. The phenomenon, I grant you, is the same, 
 but the shock, the dislocation, the shattering upheaval 
 comes in the twentieth century upon minds grounded in 
 deep scientific wisdom. It was formerly a shock to the 
 superstitious ignorance of intuitive feeling merely. To-day 
 it is organized scientific knowledge that meets the earth- 
 quake." 
 
 "You mentioned gaps and lapses," said Fillery, deeply 
 interested, but still half professionally, perhaps, in 
 spite of his preoccupations. "You think, perhaps, those 
 
 gaps ?" One eye watched the inner studio. The 
 
 unstable in him gained more and more the upper hand. 
 
 "I mean," replied Father Collins, now fairly launched 
 upon his secret hobby, evidently his qualification for mem- 
 bership in the Society, "I mean, Edward Fillery, that the 
 time is ripe, if ever, for a new revelation. If Man is the 
 only type of being in the universe, well and good. We see 
 his finish plainly, for the war has shown that progress is a 
 myth. Man remains, in spite of all conceivable scientific
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 183 
 
 knowledge, a savage, of low degree, irredeemable, and in- 
 tellect, as a reconstructive force, but of small account." 
 
 "It seems so, I admit." 
 
 "But if" Father Collins said it as calmly as though 
 he spoke of some new food or hygienic treatment merely 
 "if mankind is not the only life in the universe, if, for 
 instance, there exist and why not? other evolutionary 
 systems besides our own somewhat trumpery type other 
 schemes and other beings perhaps parallel, perhaps quite 
 different perhaps in more direct contact with the sources 
 of life a purer emanation, so to say " 
 
 He hesitated, realizing perhaps that in speaking to a 
 man of Edward Fillery's standing he must choose his words, 
 or at least present his case convincingly, while aware that 
 his inability to do so made him only more extravagant and 
 incoherent. 
 
 "Yes, quite so," Fillery helped him, noting all the time 
 the suppressed intensity, the half -concealed conviction of 
 an idee fixe behind the calmness, while the balance of his 
 own attention remained concentrated on the group about 
 LeVallon. "If, as you suggest, there are other types of 
 
 life " He spoke encouragingly. He had noticed the 
 
 slovenly streak spread and widen, breaking down, as it 
 were, the structure of the face. He was aware also of the 
 increasing insecurity in himself. 
 
 "Now is the moment," cried the other; "now is the time 
 for their appearance." 
 
 He turned as though he had hit a target unexpectedly. 
 
 "Now," he repeated, "is the opportunity for their manifes- 
 tation. The human mind lies open everywhere. It is blank, 
 receptive, ready. On all sides it waits ready and inviting. 
 The gaps are provided. If there is any other life, it should 
 break through and come among us now!" 
 
 Fillery, startled, withdrew for the first time his atten- 
 tion from that inner room. With keen eyes he gazed at 
 his companion. With an abrupt, unpleasant shock it oc-
 
 184 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 curred to him that all he heard was borrowed, filched, stolen 
 out of his own mind. Before words came to him, the other 
 spoke : 
 
 "Your friend," he mentioned quietly, but with intentional 
 significance, "and patient." 
 
 "LeVallon !" 
 
 But it was at this moment that Nayan Khilkoff, entering 
 again without her hat and furs, had moved straight to the 
 piano, seated herself, and began to sing.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 TO retail the following scene as Dr. Fillery saw it in 
 detail is not necessary, the sequence of acts, of 
 physical events being already known. The reactions of his 
 heart and mind, however, have importance. What he felt, 
 thought, hoped and feared, what he believed as well, his 
 point of view in a word, remain essential. 
 
 Edward Fillery, being what he was, witnessed it from 
 his own individual angle; his mind, with his heredity, his 
 soul, with its mysterious background, these held the glasses 
 to his eyes, adjusting, as with a Zeiss instrument, each eye 
 separately. In his case the analyst and thinker checked 
 the unstable dreamer with acute exactitude. This was his 
 special gift. He studied himself best while studying others. 
 His sight, moreover, was exceptionally keen, his glasses of 
 consummate workmanship. He saw, it seems, considerably 
 beyond the normal range. He believed, at least, that he 
 did so. 
 
 He saw, for instance, that the girl, while her fingers 
 ran over the keys before she sang, searched the room and 
 found LeVallon in a second. Following her rapid glance, 
 he took in the picture that she also saw LeVallon, coffee 
 cup in hand, before Lady Gleeson languishing on the divan, 
 and Devonham just beside them. LeVallon was obviously 
 unaware of Lady Gleeson's presence ; he had forgotten her 
 existence. Devonham, a floor-walker with nothing particular 
 to do at the moment, looked uncomfortable and ill at ease, 
 scared a little, fearing a scene, a possible outbreak even. 
 The meaning of the group was easily read. The girl herself, 
 undoubtedly, read it clearly too. 
 
 185
 
 ,186 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 This flashed upon the cinema screen, and Fillery divined 
 it without the help of tedious letterpress. 
 
 The same instant he was aware that the girl and LeVallon 
 looked for the first time straight into each other's faces, and 
 that both seemed simultaneously caught into the air as 
 though a star had lifted them. Not even a question lay in 
 their clear eyes. It was an instantaneous understanding, 
 so complete and perfect that the expression of happy sur- 
 prise was too convicing to be missed even by the slow-witted 
 Lady Gleeson. Vanity usually delays intelligence, and her 
 vanity was abnormal. But she saw the expression on the 
 two faces, and interpreted it aright. Fillery noticed that 
 she squirmed; she would presently, he felt positive, dis- 
 appear. Before the singing ended he had seen her slink 
 away. 
 
 The song began. He had heard it before, "The Vagrant's 
 Epitaph," sung by the same clear, sweet voice, had felt 
 his heart stirred by the true simple feeling she put into it. 
 He knew every word and every bar; the music was her 
 own. He loved it. Both words and music awoke in him 
 invariably a picture of his own lost valley, a physical desire 
 to be over the hills and far away with the homeless liberty 
 of winds and stars and waters, and at the same time, its 
 spiritual equivalent a yearning that the Race should dis- 
 cover the immense fair region of its greater hidden self 
 and enjoy its new powers without restraint. All this was 
 familiar to him. But now, as she sang, there came another, 
 deeper meaning that sublimated the essential spirit of it, 
 lifting it out of the known ditch of space and time. Never 
 yet had he heard such yearning passion, such untold desire 
 in her voice. The physical vagrancy changed subtly, ex- 
 quisitely, to a symbol of a vaster meaning a spiritual 
 vagrancy that suddenly captured him in bitter pain. "Love 
 could not hold him, Duty forged no chain" as he listened 
 to the sweetness, struck him between the joints of armour 
 he had not realized before was so insecurely bound about
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 187 
 
 him. The anguish of lonely souls, alien among their kind, 
 hungry for companionship they might not find, unclothed, 
 uncared for, desired of none and understanding none 
 this rose tumultuously in his blood. "The wide seas and 
 the mountains called him . . ." the words and music pierced 
 him like a flame. "Revel might hold him for a little 
 space . . ." her voice made it sound like a description of 
 man's brief moment on the whirling planet, tasting adven- 
 ture with men and women, playing a moment with love 
 and hope and fear, till, "turning past the laughter and the 
 lamps," he heard that "other summons at the door." 
 
 This bigger version, this deeper meaning, caught at him 
 with power as he heard the song in the sweet, familiar voice, 
 and realized in a flash that what he felt faintly LeVallon 
 felt terrifically. His own detachment was a pose, a shadow, 
 at best a bodiless yearning; in LeVallon it was a reality 
 of consuming fire. Also it was an explanation of the girl's 
 own singular aloofness from the world of admiring men. 
 Both belonged, as Father Collins put it, "elsewhere." 
 
 He watched them. LeVallon's eyes, he saw, remained 
 fixed and motionless on the singer; her own did not leave 
 the notes for a single moment ; the words and music poured 
 into the room like a shower of dancing silver. The per- 
 sonality of the girl flowed out with them to meet the newly- 
 found companion they addressed. An extraordinary thing 
 then happened : to Fillery it almost seemed that there formed 
 then and there between them a new vehicle as it were, a 
 body that gave expression to their own great secret. Some- 
 thing in each of them, unable to manifest through their 
 minds, their brains, their earthly bodies, formed for itself 
 an elastic subtle vehicle, using the sound, the words, the 
 feeling for this purpose and as literally as a human spirit 
 uses the familiar physical body for its manifestation. 
 
 The experience was amazing, but it was real. He watched 
 it carefully. In the room about him, formed on the waves 
 of this sweet singing, shaped by feeling that found normally
 
 188 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 no other expression, inspired by emotions, yearnings, desires 
 alien to their normal kind, these two created between them 
 a new vehicle or body that could and did express all this. 
 
 They heard that "other summons at the door. . . ." And 
 they were off. 
 
 Yet he, too, heard the summons, and in the depths of 
 his being he answered to it. His essential weakness, wearing 
 the guise of strength, rose naked. . . . 
 
 These thoughts and feelings lay unexpressed, perhaps 
 too deep actually, too remote from any experience he 
 had yet known, to find actual words, even in his mind. 
 What did find expression, in thought at any rate, was that, 
 before his very eyes, he witnessed the transfiguring change 
 come over Nayan. Like some flower that has been growing 
 in the shade, then meets the flood of sunshine for the first 
 time, she knew a fresh tide of life sweep over her entire 
 being. She seemed to blossom, breaking almost into flower 
 and fruit before his very eyes, as though sun and wind 
 brought her into a sudden bloom of exquisite maturity. He 
 was aware of rich, deep purple, the faint gold of fruits and 
 flowers, the creamy softness of a rose, the amber of wild 
 grapes bathed in sparkling dew. The luscious promise of 
 the Spring matured about her whole presentment into full 
 summer glory. And it was the sun and wind of LeVallon's 
 enigmatic, stimulating presence close to her that caused the 
 miracle. The essential flower of her life poured forth to 
 meet his own, as he had always felt it must. LeVallon's 
 was the mighty wind that lifted her, was the sun in whose 
 heat she basked, expanded, soared. She experienced a 
 strange increase of her natural vitality and being. Her 
 consciousness knew an abrupt intensification. 
 
 The signs, in that brief moment, were as clear to Fillery's 
 divining heart as though he read them in black printed 
 letters on a page of whitest paper. He knew the cipher and 
 the code. He watched the signals flash. They had not even 
 spoken, yet the relationship was established beyond doubt.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 189 
 
 He witnessed the first exchange; the wireless message of 
 joy and sympathy that flashed he intercepted. 
 
 Through his extremely rapid mind, as he watched, poured 
 memories, reflections, judgments in concentrated form, yet 
 calmly, steadily, though against a background of deep and 
 troubled emotion. There seemed actually a disruption of 
 his personality. Father Collins, standing beside him, divined 
 nothing, he believed, of his agitation, standing, mere figure 
 of a man, listening to the music with attentive pleasure; 
 at least, he gave no outward sign. . . . 
 
 The song drew to its close. Once Nayan raised her eyes, 
 instantly finding those of LeVallon across the room, then 
 shifting again for a fleeting second with a rapidly changing 
 focus to his own. He met them without a quiver ; he caught 
 again her tender, searching question; he sent no answer 
 back. 
 
 In his own heart burned, however, a score of questions 
 that beat against his soul for answers. What was it that 
 each had found thus intuitively within the other? Was it 
 her maternal instinct only that was reached as with all other 
 men hitherto, was it at last the woman in her that leaped 
 towards its own divine, creative sun, or was it that hidden, 
 nameless aspect of her which had never yet found a vehicle 
 for manifestation among her own kind and had therefore 
 remained hitherto unexpressed bodiless? 
 
 The answer to this he found easily enough. No jealousy 
 stirred ; pain for himself had been long ago uprooted. Yet 
 pain of a kind he felt. Would LeVallon injure, drag her 
 down, bring suffering, perhaps of an atrocious sort, into 
 her hitherto so innocent life? Was she yet qualified to 
 withstand the fierce fire, the rushing wind, that the full 
 force of his strange nature must bring to bear upon her? 
 
 His questions went prophesying, flying like swift birds 
 to such great distances that no audible answers could return. 
 His pain, at any rate, chiefly was for her. He divined that 
 she was frightened, yet exhilarated, before the unexpected
 
 190 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 apparition of an unusual presence, Accustomed to smaller 
 jets of admiration from smaller men, this deep flood over- 
 whelmed her. This motionless figure watching her among 
 the shadows, listening to her singing, devouring her beauty 
 with an innocence, power, worship she had never yet en- 
 countered could she, Fillery asked himself, withstand its 
 elemental flood and not be broken by its waves ? 
 
 For at the back of all his questions, haunting his prophe- 
 cies, filling his hopes and fears with substance, stood one 
 outstanding certainty: 
 
 The motionless figure in the shadows was not LeVallon. 
 It was "N. H." 
 
 The thing he had expected had now happened. Instinc- 
 tively he turned to find his colleague. 
 
 For what followed, Fillery, of course, was as unprepared 
 as anyone. In some way, difficult to describe, the whole 
 thing had a strangely natural, almost an inevitable touch. 
 The exaggeration that others felt he was not conscious of. 
 He never, for a single moment, lost his head. The wonder 
 of the elemental violence appealed and stimulated without 
 once touching the sense of fear, much less of panic, in him. 
 
 Searching for Devonham's familiar figure, he found it 
 in the seat that Lady Gleeson had vacated shortly before, 
 but the face turned away towards the inner room, so that 
 it was not possible to catch his eye. It was an attentive, 
 critical, almost anxious expression his chief surprised, and 
 while a faint smile perhaps flitted across his own mouth, 
 he became aware that Father Collins he had again com- 
 pletely forgotten his proximity was staring with a curious 
 intentness at him. The same instant the song came to an 
 end. Into the brief pause of a second before the applause 
 burst forth, Father Collins's voice was suddenly audible in 
 his ear: 
 
 "LeVallon's gone," Fillery was saying to himself, " 'N. 
 H.' is in control," when his neighbour's words broke in. 
 The two sentences were simultaneously in his mind: 
 
 "A man in his own place is the Ruler of his Fate!"
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 191 
 
 And Fillery's astonishment was only equalled by the fact 
 that the grim face was soft with sympathy, and that in the 
 eyes shone moisture that was close to tears. Before he 
 could reply, however, the applause burst forth, making an 
 uproar against which no voice could possibly contend. The 
 subsequent events, following so swiftly, made rejoinder 
 equally out of the question, nor did he see Father Collins 
 again that evening. 
 
 These Fillery witnessed much as already described through 
 Devonham's eyes. The storm, the panic took place as told. 
 Yet a detail here and there belong to Fillery's version, for 
 they were a part of his own being. He had, for instance, 
 a warning that something was about to happen, although 
 warning seems not quite the faithful word. He saw the 
 Valley for one fleeting second, the three familiar figures, 
 Nayan, "N. H.," himself, flying through the bright sunshine 
 before a wind that stirred a million flowers. In the farthest 
 possible background of his mind it shone an instant. The 
 shutter dropped again, it vanished. 
 
 Yet enough to set him on the alert. Into the air about 
 him, into his heart as well, fell an exhilarating and immense 
 refreshment. It rose, as it were, from the most deeply 
 submerged portion of his own hidden being, now stirred, 
 even actually summoned, into activity. 
 
 The shutter meanwhile rose and fell and rose again; the 
 Valley reappeared and vanished, then reappeared again. 
 
 For the truth came smashing against him smashing his 
 being open, and bursting the doors of his carefully in- 
 structed, carefully guarded nature. The doors flung from 
 their hinges and a blinding light poured in and flooded the 
 strangest possible hidden corners. 
 
 He saw what followed with an accuracy of observation 
 impossible to anyone else, with an intimate sympathy the 
 others could not feel because he himself took part in the 
 entire scene. But the scene, for him, was not the Chelsea 
 studio with its tobacco smoke and perfume, it was the 
 Caucasian valley whence his own blood derived. Clean,
 
 192 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 fragrant winds swept past him across mighty space. The 
 walls melted into distances of forest and mountain peaks, 
 the ceiling was a dome of stainless blue, the floor ran deep 
 in flowers. A drenching sunshine of crystal purity bathed 
 the world. It was across bright emerald turf that he saw 
 "X. H." dance forward like a wind of power, cry with a 
 joyful resonant voice to the radiant girl who stood laughing, 
 half hiding, yet at the same time beckoning, that she should 
 fly with him. He caught and lifted her, her hair, the white- 
 ness of her skin flashing in the sun like some marvellous 
 bird in the act of taking wing, for before he had touched her 
 she leapt through the air to meet his outstretched arms. 
 Yet one hand, one silvery arm, waved towards himself, 
 towards Fillery; their fingers met and clasped; the three 
 of them, three dancing, free and joyful figures, fled like 
 the wind across the enormous mountains, but fled, he knew 
 beyond all question home. 
 
 He saw this in the space of those few seconds in which 
 Nayan was swung over the youth's shoulders beside the 
 piano. The two scenes ran parallel, as it were, before his 
 eyes, outer and inner sight keeping equal pace together. 
 His balance and judgment here were never once disturbed. 
 In the studio: he had just introduced LeVallon to the girl 
 and the latter had caught her up. In the valley: she had 
 leapt into his arms and the three of them were off. 
 
 It was this inner interpretation, keeping always level pace 
 with what was happening outwardly, that furnished Fillery 
 with the hint of an astounding explanation. The figure 
 in the valley, it flashed to him, was, of course, "N. H." 
 in all his natural splendour, but a figure unknown surely 
 to all records of humanity as such. Here danced and sang 
 a happy radiant being, by whom the limitations of the 
 human species were not experienced, even if the species were 
 familiar to him at all. A being from another system, an- 
 other evolution, an elemental being, whose ideal, develop- 
 ment, mode of existence, were not those of men and women. 
 "N. H." was not a human being, a human soul, a human
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 193 
 
 spirit He belonged elsewhere and otherwise. Under the 
 guise of LeVallon he had drifted in. He inhabited LeVal- 
 lon's frame. 
 
 In the Studio, at this instant, Fillery heard him using 
 the singular words already noted, and in the Studio they 
 sounded, indeed, senseless, foolish, even mad. It was, he 
 realized, an attempt to stammer in human language some 
 meaning that lay beyond, outside it. In the Valley, however, 
 and at the same moment, they sounded natural and true. 
 The evolutionary system to which "N. H." belonged, from 
 which he had in some as yet unknown manner passed into 
 humanity, but to which, though almost entirely forgotten, 
 he yearned with his whole being to return this other system 
 had, it seemed, its own conditions, its own methods of 
 advance, its ideals and its duties. Were, then, its inhabitants 
 this flashed upon him in the delicious wind and sunshine 
 the workers in what men call the natural kingdoms, the 
 builders of form and structure, the directing powers that 
 expressed themselves through the elemental energies every- 
 where behind the laws of Nature? Was this their tireless 
 and wondrous service in the planet, in the universe itself? 
 
 "N. H." called the girl to service, not to personal love. 
 Alone, cut off from his own kind, alien and derelict amid 
 the conditions of a humanity strange, perhaps unknown 
 to him, he sought companionship where he could. Drawn 
 instinctively to the more impersonal types, such as Fillery 
 and the girl, he felt there the nearest approach to what he 
 recognized as his own kind: their ideal of selfless service 
 was a beacon that he understood: he would return to his 
 own kingdom, carrying them both with him. From some- 
 where, at any rate, this all flashed into his too willing 
 mind. . . . 
 
 At which second precisely in Fillery's valley-vision, Khil- 
 koff entered, and yet before he could take action the 
 lightning struck and the sudden explosion of the ferocious 
 storm blackened out both the outer and the inner scene. 
 
 The shock of elemental violence, the astounding revelation
 
 194 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 as well that an entirely new type had possibly come within 
 his ken, this, combined with the emotional disturbance 
 caused by the change produced in Nayan, seemed enough 
 to upset the equilibrium of even the most balanced mind. 
 The darkness added its touch of helplessness besides. Yet 
 Fillery never for a moment lost his head. Two natures in 
 him, cause of his radical instability, merged for a moment 
 in amazing harmony. The panic now dominating all about 
 him seemed so small a thing compared to the shattering 
 discovery life had just offered to him. Across it, finding 
 his way past kneeling women and shrieking girls, drenched 
 to the skin by the flood of entering rain, moving over 
 splintered glass, he found the figure he sought, as though 
 by some instinctive sympathy. They came together in the 
 darkness. Their hands met easily. A moment later they 
 were in the street, and "N. H.'s" instinctive terror amid the 
 sheets of falling water, an element hostile to his own natural 
 fire, made it a simple matter to get him home in Lady 
 Gleeson's motor car.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 WHEN relative order had been restored, Devonham 
 realized, of course, that his colleague had cleverly 
 spirited away their "patient"; also that the sculptor had 
 carried off his daughter. Relieved to escape from the at- 
 mosphere of what he considered collective hysteria, he had 
 borrowed mackintosh and umbrella, and declining several 
 offers of a lift, had walked the four miles to his house in 
 the rain and wind. The exercise helped to work off the 
 emotion in him; his mind cleared healthily; personal bias 
 gave way to honest and unprejudiced reflection; there was 
 much that interested him deeply, at the same time puzzled 
 and bewildered him beyond anything he had yet experienced. 
 He reached the house with a mind steady if unsatisfied; 
 but the emotions caused by prejudice had gone. His main 
 anxiety centred about his chief. 
 
 He was glad to notice a light in an upper window, for 
 it meant, he hoped, that LeVallon was now safely home. 
 While his latchkey sought its hole, however, this light was 
 extinguished, and when the door opened, it was Fillery 
 himself who greeted him, a finger on his lips. 
 
 "Quietly !" he whispered. "I've just got him to bed and 
 put his light out. He's asleep already." Paul noticed his 
 manner instantly its happiness. There was a glow of 
 mysterious joy and wonder in his atmosphere that made the 
 other hostile at once. 
 
 They went together towards that inner room where so 
 often together they had already talked both moon and sun 
 to bed. Cold food lay on the table, and while they satisfied 
 their hunger, the rain outside poured down with a steady 
 drenching sound. The wind had dropped. The suburb 
 lay silent and deserted. It was long past midnight. The 
 
 195
 
 196 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 house was very still, only the occasional step of a night- 
 nurse audible in the passages and rooms upstairs. They 
 would not be disturbed. 
 
 "You got him home all right, then?" Paul asked presently, 
 keeping his voice low. 
 
 He had been observing his friend closely; the evident 
 pleasure and satisfaction in the face annoyed him ; the light 
 in the eyes at the same time profoundly troubled him. Not 
 only did he love his chief for himself, he set high value 
 on his work as well. It would be deplorable, a tragedy, 
 if judgment were destroyed by personal bias and desire. 
 He felt uneasy and distressed. 
 
 Fillery nodded, then gave an account of what had hap- 
 pened, but obviously an account of outward events merely ; 
 he did not wish, evidently, to argue or explain. The strong, 
 rugged face was lit up, the eyes were shining; some inner 
 enthusiasm pervaded his whole being. Evidently he felt 
 very sure of something something that both pleased and 
 stimulated him. 
 
 His account of what had happened was brief enough, 
 little more than a statement of the facts. 
 
 Finding himself close to LeVallon when the darkness 
 came, he had kept hold of him and hurried him out of the 
 house at once. The sudden blackness, it seemed, had made 
 LeVallon quiet again, though he kept asking excitedly for 
 the girl. When assured that he would soon see her, he 
 became obedient as a lamb. The absence of light apparently 
 had a calming influence. They found, of course, no taxis, 
 but commandeered the first available private car, Fillery 
 using the authoritative influence of his name. And it was 
 Lady Gleeson's car, Lady Gleeson herself inside it. She 
 had thought things over, put two and two together, and 
 had come back. Her car might be of use. It was. For 
 the rain was falling in sheets and bucketfuls, the road had 
 become a river of water, and Fillery's automobile, ordered 
 for an hour later, had not put in an appearance. It was 
 the rain that saved the situation. . . .
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 197 
 
 An exasperated expression crossed Devonham's face as 
 he heard this detail emphasized. He had meant to listen 
 without interruption. The enigmatical reference to the rain 
 proved too much for him. 
 
 "Why 'the rain'? What d'you mean exactly, Edward?" 
 
 "Water," was the reply, made in a significant tone that 
 further annoyed his listener's sense of judgment. "You 
 remember the Channel, surely! Water and fire mutually 
 destroy each other. They are hostile elements." 
 
 There was a look almost of amusement on his face as 
 he said it. Devonham kept a tight hold upon his tongue. 
 It was not impatience or surprise he felt, though both were 
 strong; it was perhaps sorrow. 
 
 "And so Lady Gleeson drove you home?" 
 
 He waited with devouring interest for further details. 
 The throng of questions, criticisms and emotions surging 
 in him he repressed with admirable restraint. 
 
 Lady Gleeson, yes, had driven the party home. Fillery 
 made her sit on the back seat alone, while he occupied the 
 front one, LeVallon beside him, but as far back among the 
 deep cushions as possible. The doctor held his hand. At 
 any other time, Devonham could have laughed ; but he saw 
 no comedy now. Lady Gleeson, it seemed, was awed by 
 the seriousness of the "Chief," whom, even at the best of 
 times, she feared a little. Her vanity, however, persuaded 
 her evidently that she was somehow the centre of interest. 
 
 Yet Devonham, as he listened, had difficulty in persuad- 
 ing himself that he was in the twentieth century, and that 
 the man who spoke was his colleague and a man of the day 
 as well. 
 
 "LeVallon talked little, and that little to himself or to 
 me. He seemed unaware that a third person was present 
 at all. Though quiet enough, there was suppressed ve- 
 hemence still about him. He said various things: that 'she 
 belonged to us/ for instance; that he 'knew his own'; that 
 she was 'filled with fire in exile'; and that he would 'take 
 her back.' Also that I, too, must go with them both. He
 
 198 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 often mentioned the sun, saying more than once that the 
 sun had 'sent its messengers/ Obviously, it was not the 
 ordinary sun he referred to, but some source of central 
 heat and fire he seems aware of " 
 
 "You, I suppose, Edward," put in his listener quickly, 
 "said nothing to encourage all this? Nothing that could 
 suggest or stimulate?" 
 
 Fillery ignored, even if he noticed, the tone of the ques- 
 tion. "I kept silence rather. I said very little. I let him 
 talk. I had to keep an eye on the woman, too." 
 
 "You certainly had your hands full a dual personality 
 and a nymphomaniac." 
 
 "She helped me, without knowing it. All he said about 
 the girl, she evidently took to herself. When he begged 
 me to keep the water out, she drew the window up the 
 last half-inch. . . . The water frightened him; she was 
 sympathetic, and her sympathy seemed to reach him, though 
 I doubt if he was aware of her presence at all until the 
 last minute almost " 
 
 "And 'at the last minute' ?" 
 
 "She leaned forward suddenly and took both his hands. 
 I had let go of the one I held and was just about to open 
 the door, when I heard her say excitedly that I must let 
 her come and see him, or that he must call on her; she 
 was sure she could help him; he must tell her every- 
 thing. ... I turned to look. . . . LeVallon, startled into 
 what I believe was his first consciousness of her presence, 
 stared into her eyes, and leaned forward among his cushions 
 a little, so that their faces were close together. Before I 
 could interfere, she had flung her bare arms about his neck 
 and kissed him. She then sat back again, turning to me, 
 and repeating again and again that he needed a woman's 
 care and that she must help and mother him. She was 
 excited, but she knew what she was saying. She showed 
 neither shame nor the least confusion. She tasted of 
 course with her it cannot last a bigger world. She was 
 most determined."
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 199 
 
 "His reaction?" inquired Devonham, amused in spite of 
 his graver emotions of uneasiness and exasperation. 
 
 "None whatever. I scarcely think he realized he had 
 been kissed. His interest was so entirely elsewhere. I 
 saw his face a moment among the white ermine, the bare 
 arms and jewels that enveloped him." Fillery frowned 
 faintly. "The car had almost stopped. Lady Gleeson was 
 leaning back again. He looked at me, and his voice was 
 intense and eager: 'Dear Fillery,' he said, 'we have found 
 each other, I have found her. She knows, she remembers 
 the way back. Here we can do so little.' 
 
 "Lady Gleeson, however, had interpreted the words in 
 another way. 
 
 " 'I'll come to-morrow to see you,' she said at once in- 
 tensely. 'You must let me come,' the last words addressed 
 to me, of course." 
 
 The two men looked at one another a moment in silence, 
 and for the first time during the conversation they ex- 
 changed a smile. . . . 
 
 "I got him to bed," Fillery concluded. "In ten minutes 
 he was sound asleep." And his eyes indicated the room 
 overhead. 
 
 He leaned back, and quietly began to fill his pipe. The 
 account was over. 
 
 As though a great spring suddenly released him, Paul 
 Devonham stood up. His untidy hair hung wild, his glasses 
 were crooked on his big nose, his tie askew. His whole 
 manner bristled with accumulated challenge and disagree- 
 ment. 
 
 "Who?" he cried. "Who? Edward, I ask you?" 
 
 His colleague, yet knowing exactly what he meant, looked 
 up questioningly. He looked him full in the face. 
 
 "Hush !" he said quietly. "You'll wake him." 
 
 He gazed with happy penetrating eyes at his companion. 
 "Paul," he added gently, "do you really mean it? Have 
 you still the faintest doubt?" 
 
 The moment had drama in it of unusual kind. The con-
 
 200 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 flict between these two honest and unselfish minds was 
 vital. The moment, too, was chosen, the place as well 
 this small, quiet room in a commonplace suburb of the 
 greatest city on the planet, drenched by earthly rain and 
 battered by earthly wind from the heart of an equinoctial 
 storm ; the mighty universe outside, breaking with wondrous, 
 incredible impossibilities upon a mind that listened and a 
 mind that could not hear ; and upstairs, separated from them 
 by a few carpenter's boards, an assortment of "souls," 
 either derelict and ruined, or gifted super-normally, masters 
 of space and time perhaps, yet all waiting to be healed by 
 the best knowledge known to the race and one among 
 them, about whom the conflict raged . . . sound asleep . . . 
 while wind and water stormed, while lightning fires lit the 
 distant horizons, while the great sun lay hidden, and dark- 
 ness crept soundlessly to and fro. . . . 
 
 "Have you still the slightest doubt, Paul?" repeated 
 Fillery. "You know the evidence. You have an open 
 mind." 
 
 Then Devonham, still standing over his Chief, let out 
 the storm that had accumulated in him over-long. He 
 talked like a book. He talked like several books. It seemed 
 almost that he distrusted his own personal judgment. 
 
 "Edward," he began solemnly not knowing that he 
 quoted "you, above all men, understand the lower recesses 
 of the human heart, that gloomy, gigantic oubliette in which 
 our million ancestors writhe together inextricably, and each 
 man's planetary past is buried alive " 
 
 Fillery nodded quietly his acquiescence. 
 
 "You, of all men, know our packed, limitless subter- 
 ranean life," Devonham went on, "and its impenetrable 
 depths. You understand telepathy, 'extended telepathy' as 
 well, and how a given mind may tap not only forgotten 
 individual memories, but memories of his family, his race, 
 even planetary memories into the bargain, the memory, in 
 fact, of every being that ever lived, right down to Adam, 
 if you will "
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 201 
 
 "Agreed," murmured the other, listening patiently, while 
 he puffed his pipe and heard the rain and wind "I know 
 all that. I know it, at any rate, as a possible theory." 
 
 "You also know," continued Devonham in a slightly less 
 strident tone, "your own forgive me, Edward your own 
 idiosyncrasies, your weaknesses, your dynamic accumulated 
 repressions, your strange physical heritage and spiritual 
 I repeat the phrase your spiritual vagrancies towards 
 
 towards " He broke off suddenly, unable to find the 
 
 words he wanted. 
 
 "I'm illegitimate, born of a pagan passion,' mentioned 
 the other calmly. "In that sense, if you like, I have in me 
 a 'complex' against the race, against humanity as such." 
 
 He smiled patiently, and it was the patience, the evident 
 conviction of superiority that exasperated his cautious, 
 accurate colleague. 
 
 "If I love humanity, I also tolerate it perhaps, for I try 
 to heal it," added Fillery. "But, believe me, Paul, I do 
 not lose my scientific judgment" 
 
 "Edward," burst out the other, "how can you think it 
 possible, then that he is other than the result of tendencies 
 transmitted by his mad parents, or acquired from Mason, 
 who taught him all he knows, or if you will that he has 
 these hysterical faculties supernormal as we may call them 
 which tap some racial, even, if you will, some planetary 
 past " 
 
 He again broke off, unable to express his whole thought, 
 his entire emotion, in a few words. 
 
 "I accept all that," said Fillery, still calmly, quietly, "but 
 perhaps now in the interest of truth" his tone was grave, 
 his words obviously chosen carefully "if now I feel it 
 necessary to go beyond it ! My strange heritage," he added, 
 "is even possibly a help and guide. How," he asked, a trace 
 of passion for the first time visible in his manner, "shall 
 we venture how decide for we are not wholly ignorant, 
 you and I between what is possible and impossible? Is 
 this trivial planet, then," he asked, his voice rising suddenly, 
 ominously perhaps, "our sole criterion? Dare we not ven-
 
 202 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 ture beyond a little? The scientific mind should be the 
 last to dogmatize as to the possibilities of this life of 
 ours. . . ." 
 
 The authority of chief, the old tie of respectful and affec- 
 tionate friendship, the admiring wonder that pertained to 
 a daring speculator who had often proved himself right in 
 face of violent opposition all these affected Devonham. 
 He did not weaken, but for an instant he knew, perhaps, 
 the existence of a vast, incredible horizon in his friend's 
 mind, though one he dared not contemplate. Possibly, he 
 understood in this passing moment a huger world, a new 
 outlook that scorned limit, though yet an outlook that his 
 accurate, smaller spirit shrank from. 
 
 He found, at any rate, his own words futile. "You 
 remember," he offered " 'We need only suppose the con- 
 tinuity of our own consciousness with a mother sea, to 
 allow for exceptional waves occasionally pouring over the 
 dam.' " 
 
 "Good, yes," said Fillery. "But that 'mother sea,' what 
 may it not include? Dare we set limits to it?" 
 
 And, as he said it, Fillery, emotion visible in him, rose 
 suddenly from his chair. He stood up and faced his 
 colleague. 
 
 "Let us come to the point," he said in a clear, steady 
 voice. "It all lies doesn't it? in that question you 
 asked " 
 
 "Who?" came at once from Devonham's lips, as he stood, 
 looking oddly stiff and rigid opposite his Chief. There was 
 a touch of defiance in his tone. "Who?" He repeated his 
 original question. 
 
 No pause intervened. Fillery's reply came sharp and 
 firm: 
 
 " 'N. H.,' " he said. 
 
 An interval of silence followed, then, between the two 
 men, as they looked into each other's eyes. Fillery waited 
 for his assistant to speak, but no word came,
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 203 
 
 "LeVallon, ' the older man continued, "is the transient, 
 acquired personality. It does not interest us. There is 
 no real LeVallon. The sole reality is *N. H.' " 
 
 He spoke with the earnestness of deep conviction. There 
 was still no reply or comment from the other. 
 
 "Paul," he continued, steadying his voice and placing a 
 hand upon his colleague's shoulder, "I am going to ask 
 you to consider our arrangement cancelled. I must " 
 
 Then, before he could finish what he had to say, the 
 other had said it for him: 
 
 "Edward, I give you back your promise." 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders ever so slightly, but there 
 was no unpleasant, no antagonistic touch now either in 
 voice or manner. There was, rather, a graver earnestness 
 than there had been hitherto, a hint of reluctant acquiescence, 
 but also there was an emotion that included certainly 
 affection. No such fundamental disagreement had ever 
 come between them during all their years of work together. 
 "You understand," he added slowly, "what you are doing 
 what is involved." His tone almost suggested that he 
 spoke to a patient, a loved patient, but one over whom he 
 had no control. He sighed. 
 
 "I belong, Paul, myself to the unstable if that is what 
 you mean," said his old friend gently, "and with all of 
 danger, or of wonder, it involves." 
 
 The faint movement of the shoulders again was notice- 
 able. "We need not put it that way, Edward," was the 
 quiet rejoinder; "for that, if true, can only help your in- 
 sight, your understanding, and your judgment." He 
 hesitated a moment or two, searching his mind carefully 
 for words. Fillery waited. "But it involves I think" 
 he went on presently in a firmer voice "his fate as well. 
 He must become permanently one or other." 
 
 No pause followed.. There was a smile of curious happi- 
 ness on Fillery's face as he instantly answered in a tone of 
 absolute conviction:
 
 *04 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 "There lies the root of our disagreement, Paul. There 
 is no 'other.' I am positive for once. There is only one, 
 and that one is 'N. H.' " 
 
 "Umph!" his friend grunted. Behind the exclamation 
 hid an attitude confirmed, as though he had come suddenly 
 to a big decision. 
 
 "You see, Paul I know."
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 IT was not long after the scene in the Studio that the 
 Prometheans foregathered at dinner in the back room 
 of the small French restaurant in Soho and discussed the 
 event. The prices were moderate, conditions free and easy. 
 It was a favourite haunt of Members. 
 
 To-night, moreover, there was likely to be a good 
 attendance. The word had gone out. 
 
 The Studio scene had, of course, been the subject of 
 much discussion already. The night of its occurrence it 
 had been talked over till dawn in more than one flat, and 
 during the following days the Society, as a whole, thought 
 of little else. Those who had not been present had to be 
 informed, and those who had witnessed it found it an 
 absorbing topic of speculation. The first words that passed 
 when one member met another in the street was: "What 
 did you make of that storm? Wasn't it amazing? Did 
 your solar plexus vibrate? Mine did! And the light, the 
 colour, the vibrations weren't they terrific? What do you 
 think he is?" It was rumoured that the Secretary was 
 asking for individual reports. Excitement and interest were 
 general, though the accounts of individual witnesses differed 
 extraordinarily. It seemed impossible that all had seen and 
 heard the same thing. 
 
 The back room was pleasantly filled to-night, for it was 
 somehow known that Millington Povey, and possibly Father 
 Collins, too, were coming. Miss Milligan, the astrologist, 
 was there early, arriving with Mrs. Towzer, who saw auras 
 and had already, it was rumoured, painted automatically 
 a strange rendering of "forces" that were visible to her 
 clairvoyantly during the occurrence. Miss Lance, in shin- 
 
 205
 
 206 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 ing beads and a glittering scarf, arrived on their heels, an 
 account of the scene in her pocket to be published in her 
 magazine "Simplicity" after she had modified it according 
 to what she picked up from hearing other, and better, 
 descriptions. 
 
 Kempster, immaculate as ever, ordering his food as he 
 ordered his clothes, like a connoisseur, was one of the first 
 to establish himself in a comfortable seat. He knew how 
 to look after himself, and was already eating in his neat 
 dainty way while the others still stood about studying the 
 big white menu with its illegible hieroglyphics in smudged 
 violet ink. He supplemented his meals with special patent 
 foods of vegetarian kind he brought with him. He had 
 dried bananas in one pocket and spirit photographs in an- 
 other, and he was invariably pulling out the wrong thing. 
 Meat he avoided. "A man is what he eats," he held, and 
 animal blood was fatal to psychic development. To eat pig 
 or cow was to absorb undesirable characteristics. 
 
 Next to him sat Lattimer, a lanky man of thirty, with 
 loose clothes, long hair, and eyes of strange intensity. 
 Known as "occultist and alchemist," he was also a chemist 
 of some repute. His life was ruled by a master-desire and 
 a master-fear: the former, that he might one day project 
 his double consciously; the latter, that in his next earthly 
 incarnation he might be the prospect made him shudder 
 a woman. He sought to keep his thought as concrete 
 as possible, the male quality. 
 
 He believed that the nervous centre of the physical body 
 which controlled all such unearthly, if not definitely 
 "spiritual," impulses, was the solar plexus. For him it was 
 the important portion of his anatomy, the seat of intuition. 
 Brain came second. 
 
 . "The fellow," he declared emphatically, "stirred my solar 
 plexus, my kundalini that's all I know." He referred, as 
 all understood, to the latent power the yogis claim lies 
 coiled, but only rarely manifested, in that great nervous 
 centre.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 207 
 
 His statement, he knew, would meet with general approval 
 and understanding. It was the literal Kempster who spoiled 
 his opening: 
 
 "Paul Devonham," said the latter, "thinks it's merely a 
 secondary personality that emerged. I had a long argument 
 with him about it " 
 
 "Never argue with the once-born," declared Povey flatly, 
 producing his pet sentence. "It's waste of time. Only 
 older souls, with the experience of many earthly lives stored 
 in their beings, are knowledgeable." He filled his glass and 
 poured out for others, Lattimer and Mrs. Towzer alone 
 declining, though for different reasons. 
 
 "It destroys the 'sight/ " explained the former. "Alcohol 
 sets up coarse vibrations that ruin clairvoyance." 
 
 "I decided to deny myself till the war is over," was Mrs. 
 Towzer's reason, and when Povey reminded her of the 
 armistice, she mentioned that Turkey hadn't "signed yet." 
 
 "I think his soul " began Miss Lance. 
 
 "If he has a soul," put in Povey, electrically. 
 
 " is hardly in his body at all," concluded Miss Lance, 
 less convincingly than originally intended. 
 
 "It was love at first sight. His sign is Fire and hers 
 is Air," Miss Milligan said. "That's certain. Of course 
 they came together." 
 
 "A clear case of memory, at any rate," insisted Kempster. 
 "Two old souls meeting again for the first time for thousands 
 of years, probably. Love at first sight, or hate, for that 
 matter, is always memory, isn't it?" He disliked the 
 astrology explanation ; it was not mysterious enough, too 
 mathematical and exact to please him. 
 
 "Secondary personalities are invariably memories of 
 former selves, of course," agreed young Dickson, the 
 theosophist, who was on the verge now of becoming a 
 psycho-analyst and had already discarded Freud for Jung. 
 "If not memories of past lives, then they're desires sup- 
 pressed in this one." 
 
 "The less you think, the more you know," suggested
 
 208 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 Miss Lance. She distrusted intellect and believed that an- 
 other faculty, called instinct or intuition, according to which 
 word first occurred to her, was the way to knowledge. 
 She was about to quote Bergson upside down, when Povey, 
 foreseeing an interval of boredom, took command: 
 
 "One thing we know, at any rate," he began judiciously; 
 "we aren't the only beings in the universe. There are non- 
 human intelligences, both vast and small. The old world- 
 wide legends can't be built on nothing. In every age of 
 history the reports are universal we have pretty good 
 evidence for other forms of life than humans " 
 
 "Though never yet in human form," put in Lattimer, yet 
 sympathetically. "Their bodies, I mean, aren't human," he 
 added. 
 
 "Exactly. That's true. But the gods, the fauns, the 
 satyrs, the elemental beings, as we call 'em sylphs, undines, 
 gnomes and salamanders to say nothing of fairies et hoc 
 genus omne there must be some reasonable foundation 
 for their persistence through all the ages." 
 
 "They all belong to the Deva Evolution," Dickson men- 
 tioned with conviction. "In the East it's been known and 
 recognized for centuries, hasn't it? Another evolutionary 
 system that runs parallel to ours. From planetary spirits 
 down to elementals, they're concerned with the building 
 up of form in the various kingdoms " 
 
 "Yes, yes," Povey interrupted impatiently. Dickson was 
 stealing what he had meant to say himself and to say, he 
 flattered himself, far better. "We know all that, of course. 
 They stand behind what we call the laws of nature, non- 
 human activities and intelligences of every grade and kind. 
 They work for humanity in a way, are in other space and 
 time, deathless, of course, yet in some strange way, always 
 eager to cross the gulf fixed between the two and so find a 
 soul. They are impersonal in a sense, as impersonal as, 
 say, wind and fire through which some of them operate as 
 bodies."
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 209 
 
 He paused and looked about him, noting the interested 
 attention he awaked. 
 
 "There may be times," he went on, "there probably are 
 certain occasions, when the gulf is more crossable than 
 others." He laid down his knife and fork as a sympathetic 
 murmur proved that the point he was leading up to was 
 favourably understood already. "We have had this war, 
 for instance," he stated, his voice taking on a more signifi- 
 cant and mysterious tone. "Dislodged by the huge upheaval, 
 man's soul is on the march again." He paused once more. 
 "They," he concluded, lowering his voice still more, and 
 emphasizing the pronoun, "are possibly already among us! 
 Who knows?" 
 
 He glanced round. "We do ; we know," was the expres- 
 sion on most faces- All knew precisely what he meant and 
 to whom he referred, at any rate. 
 
 "You might get him to come and lecture to us," said 
 Dickson, the first to break the pause. "You might ask Dr. 
 Fillery. You know him." 
 
 "That's an idea " began the Secretary, when 
 
 there was a commotion near the door. His face showed 
 annoyance. 
 
 It was the arrival of Toogood that at this moment dis- 
 turbed the atmosphere and robbed Povey of the effect he 
 aimed at. It provided Kempster, however, with an idea 
 at the same time. "Here's a psychometrist !" he exclaimed, 
 making room for him. "He might get a bit of his hair 
 or clothing and psychometrize it. He might tell us about 
 his past, if not exactly what he is." 
 
 The suggestion, however, found no seconder, for it 
 seemed that the new arrival was not particularly welcomed. 
 Judging by the glances, the varying shades of greeting, too, 
 he was not fully trusted, perhaps, this broad, fleshy man 
 of thirty-five, with complexion blotchy, an over-sensual 
 mouth and eyes a trifle shifty. His claim to membership 
 was two- fold : he remembered past lives, and had the strange
 
 210 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 power of psychometry. An archaeologist by trade, his gift 
 of psychometry by which he claimed to hold an object and 
 tell its past, its pedigree, its history was of great use to 
 him in his calling. Without further trouble he could tell 
 whether such an object was genuine or sham. Dealers in 
 antiquities offered him big fees but "No, no; I cannot 
 prostitute my powers, you see" and he remained poor 
 accordingly. 
 
 In his past lives he had been either a famous Pharaoh, or 
 Cleopatra according to his audience of the moment and 
 its male or female character but usually Cleopatra, because, 
 on the whole, there was more money and less risk in her. 
 He lectured for a fee. Lately, however, he had been 
 Pharaoh, having got into grave trouble over the Cleopatra 
 claim, even to the point of being threatened with expulsion 
 from the Society. His attitude during the war, besides, 
 had been unsatisfactory it was felt he had selfishly pro- 
 tected himself on the grounds of being physically unfit. 
 Apart from archaeology, too, his chief preoccupation, derived 
 from past lives of course, was sex, in the form of other 
 men's wives, his own wife and children being, naturally, 
 very recent and somewhat negligible ties. 
 
 His gift of psychometry, none the less, was considered 
 proved in spite of the backward and indifferent dealers. 
 His mind was quick and not unsubtle. He became now 
 au fait with the trend of the conversation in a very few 
 seconds, but he had not been present at the Studio when 
 the occurrence all discussed had taken place. 
 
 "Hair would be best," he advised tentatively, sipping his 
 whisky-and-soda. He had already dined. "It's a part of 
 himself, you see. Better than mere clothing, I mean. It's 
 extremely vital, hair. It grows after death." 
 
 "If I can get it for you, I will," said Povey. "He may 
 be lecturing for us before long. I'll try." 
 
 "With psychometry and a good photograph," Kempster 
 suggested, "a time exposure, if possible, we ought to get 
 some evidence, at any rate. It's first-hand evidence we want,
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 211 
 
 of course, isn't it? What do you think of this, for instance, 
 I wonder?" He turned to Lattimer, drawing something 
 from his pocket and showing it. "It's a time exposure at 
 night of a haunted tree. You'll notice a queer sort of 
 elemental form inside the trunk and branches. Oh!" He 
 replaced the shrivelled banana in his pocket, and drew out 
 the photograph without a smile. "This," he explained, wav- 
 ing it, "is what I meant." They fell to discussing it. 
 
 Meanwhile, Povey, anxious to resume his lecture, made 
 an effort to recover his command of the group-atmosphere 
 which Toogood had disturbed. The latter had a "personal 
 magnetism" which made the women like him in spite of 
 their distrust. 
 
 "I was just saying," he resumed, patting the elbow of 
 the psychometrist, "that this strange event we've been dis- 
 cussing you weren't present, I believe, at the time, but, 
 of course, you've heard about it has features which seem 
 to point to something radically new, or at least of very rare 
 occurrence. As Lattimer mentioned, a human body has 
 never yet, so far as we know, been occupied, obsessed, by 
 a non-human entity, but that, after all, is no reason why 
 it should not ever happen. What is a body, anyhow ? What 
 is an entity, too?" Povey's thought was wandering, evi- 
 dently; the thread of his first discourse was broken; he 
 floundered. "Man, anyway, is more than a mere chemical 
 machine," he went on, "a crystallization of the primitive 
 nebulae, though the instrument he uses, the body he works 
 through, is undoubtedly thus describable. Now, we know 
 there are all kinds of non-human intelligences busy on our 
 planet, in the Universe itself as well. Why, then, I ask, 
 should not one of these ?" 
 
 He paused, unable to find himself, his confusion obvious. 
 He was as glad of the interruption that was then provided 
 by the arrival of Imson as his audience was. Toogood 
 certainly was not sorry ; he need find no immediate answer. 
 He sipped his drink and made mental notes. 
 
 Imson arrived in a rough brown ulster with the collar
 
 212 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 turned up about his ears, a low flannel shirt, not strictly 
 clean, lying loosely round his neck. His colourless face 
 was of somewhat flabby texture, due probably to his diet, 
 but its simple, honest expression was attractive, the smile 
 engaging. The touch of foolishness might have been child- 
 like innocence, even saintliness some thought, and though 
 he was well over forty, the unlined skin made him look 
 more like thirty. He enjoyed a physiognomy not unlike 
 that of a horse or sheep. His big, brown eyes stared wide 
 open at the world, expecting wonder and finding it. His 
 hobby was inspirational poems. One lay in his breast 
 pocket now. He burned to read it aloud. 
 
 Pat Imson's ideal was an odd one detachment ; the desire 
 to avoid all ties that must bring him back to future incar- 
 nations on the earth, to eschew making fresh Karma, in a 
 word. He considered himself an "old soul," and was rather 
 weary of it all of existence and development, that is. To 
 take no part in life meant to escape from those tangles for 
 whose unravelling the law of rebirth dragged the soul back 
 again and again. To sow no Causes was to have no harvest 
 of Effects to reap with toil and perspiration. Action, of 
 course, there must be, but "indifference to results of action" 
 was the secret. Imson, none the less, was always entangled 
 with wives and children. Having divorced one wife, and 
 been divorced by another, he had recently married a third ; 
 a flock of children streamed behind him; he was a good 
 father, if a strange husband. 
 
 "It's old Karma I have to work off," he would explain, 
 referring to the wives. "If I avoid the experience I shall 
 only have to come back again. There's no good shirking 
 old Karma." He gave this explanation to the wives them- 
 selves, not only to his friends. "Face it and it's done with, 
 worked off, you see." That is, it had to be done nicely, 
 kindly, generously. 
 
 An entire absence of the sense of humour was, of course, 
 his natural gift, yet a certain quaint wisdom helped to fill 
 the dangerous vacuum. He was known usually as "Pat."
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 213 
 
 "Come on, Pat," said Povey, making room for him at 
 his side. "How's Karma? We're just talking about Le- 
 Vallon and the Studio business. What do you make of it? 
 You were there, weren't you ?" The others listened, atten- 
 tively, for Imson had a reputation for "seeing true." 
 
 "I saw it, yes," replied Imson, ordering his dinner with 
 indifference soup, fried potatoes, salad, cheese and coffee 
 but declining the offered wine. The group waited for 
 his next remark, but none was forthcoming. He sat 
 crumbling his bread into the soup and stirring the mixture 
 with his spoon. 
 
 "Did you see the light about him, Mr. Imson?" asked 
 Miss Lance. "The brilliant aura of golden yellow that he 
 wore? / thought it sounds exaggerated, I know but 
 to me it seemed even brighter than the lightning. Did you 
 notice it?" 
 
 "Well," said Imson slowly, putting his spoon down. "I'm 
 not often clairvoyant, you know. I did notice, however, a 
 sort of radiance about him. But with hair like that, it's 
 difficult to be certain " 
 
 "Full of lovely patterns," said Mrs. Towzer. "Geomet- 
 rical patterns." 
 
 "Like astrological designs," mentioned Miss Milligan. 
 "He's Leo, of course fire." 
 
 "Almost as though he brought or caused the lightning 
 as if it actually emanated out of his atmosphere somehow," 
 claimed Miss Lance, for it was her conversation after all. 
 
 "I saw nothing of that," replied Imson quietly. "No, I 
 can't say I saw anything exactly like that." He added 
 honestly, with his engaging smile that had earned for him 
 in some quarters the nickname of "The Sheep": "I was 
 looking at Nayan, you see, most of the time." 
 
 A smile flickered round the table, for rumour had it that 
 the girl had once seemed to him as possible "Karma." 
 
 "So was I," put in Kempster with kindly intention, though 
 his sympathy was evidently not needed. Imson was too 
 simple even to feel embarrassment. "She came to life sud-
 
 214 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 denly for the first time since I've known her. It was amaz- 
 ing." To which Imson, busy over his salad-dressing, made 
 no reply. 
 
 Povey, lighting his pipe and puffing out thick clouds of 
 smoke, was cleverer. "LeVallon's effect upon her, what- 
 ever it was, seemed instantaneous," he informed the table. 
 "I never saw a clearer case of two souls coming together 
 in a flash." 
 
 "As I said just now," Kempster quickly mentioned. 
 
 "They are similar," said Imson, looking up, while the 
 group waited expectantly. 
 
 "Similar," repeated Kempster. "Ah !" 
 
 "It was the surprise in her face that struck me most," 
 observed Povey quickly, making an internal note of Imson's 
 adjective, but knowing that indirect methods would draw 
 him out better than point-blank questions. "LeVallon 
 showed it too. It was an unexpected recognition on both 
 sides. They are 'similar/ as you say; both at the same 
 stage of development, whatever that stage may be. The 
 expression on both faces " 
 
 "Escape," exclaimed Imson, giving at last the kernel of 
 what he had to say. And the effect upon the group was 
 electrical. A visible thrill ran round the Soho table. 
 
 "The very word," exclaimed Povey and Miss Lance to- 
 gether. "Escape !" But neither of them knew exactly what 
 they meant, nor what Imson himself meant. 
 
 "LeVallon has, of course, already escaped," the latter 
 went on quietly. "He is no longer caught by causes and 
 effects as we are here. He's got out of it all long ago 
 if he was ever in it at all." 
 
 "If he ever was in it at all," said Povey quickly. "You 
 noticed that too. You're very discerning, Pat." 
 
 "Clairvoyant," mentioned Miss Lance. 
 
 "I've seen them in dreams like that," returned Imson 
 calmly. "I often see them, of course." He referred to his 
 qualification for membership. "The great figures I see in 
 dream have just that unearthly expression."
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 215 
 
 "Unearthly," said Mrs. Towzer with excitement. 
 
 "Non-human," mentioned Kempster suggestively. 
 
 "Not of this world, anyhow," suggested Miss Lance 
 mysteriously. 
 
 "Divine?" inquired Miss Milligan below her breath. 
 
 "Really," murmured Toogood, "I must get a bit of his 
 hair and psychometrize it at once." He was sipping a second 
 glass of whisky. 
 
 Imson looked round at each face in turn, apparently 
 seeing nothing that need increase his attachment to the 
 planet by way of fresh Karma. 
 
 "The Deva world," he said briefly, after a pause. 
 "Probably he's come to take Nayan off with him. She 
 I always said so has a strong strain of the elemental king- 
 dom in her. She may be his Devi. LeVallon, I'm sure, 
 is here for the first time. He's one of the non-human 
 evolution. He's slipped in. A Deva himself probably." 
 It was as though he said that the waiter was Swiss or 
 French, or that the proprietor's daughter had Italian blood 
 in her. 
 
 Povey looked round him with an air of triumph. 
 
 "Ah !" he announced, as who should say, "You all thought 
 my version a bit wild, but here's confirmation from an 
 unbiased witness." 
 
 "Oh, well, I can't be certain," Imson reminded the group. 
 If he deceived them enough to change their lives in any 
 respect, it involved fresh Karma for himself. Care was 
 indicated. "I can't be positive, can I?" he hedged. "Only 
 I must say the great deva-figures I've seen in dream 
 have exactly that look and expression." 
 
 "That's interesting, Pat," Povey put in, "because, before 
 you came, I was suggesting a similar explanation for his 
 air of immense potential power. The elemental atmosphere 
 he brought we all noticed it, of course." 
 
 "Elemental is the only word," Miss Lance inserted. "A 
 great Nature Being." She was thinking of her magazine.
 
 216 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 "He struck me as being so close to Nature that he seemed 
 literally part of it." 
 
 "That would explain the lightning and the strange cry 
 he gave about 'messengers,' " replied Imson, wiping the oil 
 from his chin and sprinkling his petit suisse with powdered 
 sugar. "It's quite likely enough." 
 
 "I wish you'd jot down what you think a little report 
 of what you saw and felt," the Secretary mentioned. "It 
 would be of great value. I thought of making a collection 
 of the different versions and accounts." 
 
 "They might be published some day," thought Miss 
 Lance. "Let's all," she added aloud with emphasis. 
 
 Imson nodded agreement, making no audible reply, while 
 the conversation ran on, gathering impetus as it went, grow- 
 ing wilder possibly, but also more picturesque. A man in 
 the street, listening behind a curtain, must have deemed the 
 talkers suffering from delusion, mad; a good psychologist, 
 on the other hand, similarly screened, and knowing the 
 antecedent facts, the Studio scene, at any rate, must have 
 been struck by one outstanding detail the effect, namely, 
 upon one and all of the person they discussed. They had 
 seen him for an hour or so among a crowd, a young man 
 whose name they hardly knew; only a few had spoken to 
 him ; there had been, it seemed, neither time nor opportunity 
 for him to produce upon one and all the impression he 
 undoubtedly had produced. For in every mind, upon every 
 heart, LeVallon's mere presence had evidently graven an 
 unforgettable image, scored an undecipherable hieroglyph. 
 Each felt, it seemed, the hint of a personality their knowl- 
 edge could not explain, nor any earthly explanation satisfy. 
 The consciousness in each one, perhaps, had been quickened. 
 Hence, possibly, the extravagance of their conversation. 
 Yet, since all reported differently, collective hysteria seemed 
 discounted. 
 
 Meanwhile, as the talk continued, and the wings of
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 217 
 
 imaginative speculation fanned the thick tobacco smoke, 
 others had dropped in, both male and female members, and 
 the group now filled the little room to the walls. The same 
 magnet drew them all, in each heart burned the same huge 
 question mark : Who what is this LeVallon ? What was 
 the meaning of the scene in Khilkoffs Studio? 
 
 Here, too, was a curious and significant fact about the 
 gathering the amount of knowledge, true or otherwise, 
 they had managed to collect about LeVallon. One way 
 or another, no one could say exactly how, the Society had 
 picked up an astonishing array of detail they now shared 
 together. It was known where he had spent his youth, 
 also how, and with whom, as well as something of the dif- 
 ferent views about him held by Dr. Devonham and Edward 
 Fillery. To such temperaments as theirs the strange, the 
 unusual, came automatically perhaps, percolating into their 
 minds as though a collective power of thought-reading 
 operated. Garbled, fanciful, askew, their information may 
 have been, but a great deal of it was not far wrong. 
 
 Imson, for instance, provided an account of LeVallon's 
 birth, to which all listened spellbound. He evaded all ques- 
 tions as to how he knew of it. "His parents," he assured 
 the room, "practised the old forgotten magic; his father, 
 'at any rate, was an expert, if not an initiate, with all the 
 rites and formulae of ancient times in his memory. Le- 
 Vallon was born as the result of an experiment, its origins 
 dating back so far that they concerned life upon another 
 planet, I believe, a planet nearer to the sun. The tre- 
 mendous winds and heat were vehicles of deity, you see 
 there!' 
 
 "The parents, you mean, had former lives upon another 
 planet?" asked someone in a hushed tone. "Or he him- 
 self?" 
 
 "The parents and Mason. Mason was involved in the 
 experiment that resulted in the birth of LeVallon here 
 to-day."
 
 218 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 "The experiment what was it exactly?" inquired 
 Lattimer, while Toogood surreptitiously made notes on his 
 rather dirty cuff. 
 
 Imson shrugged his shoulders very slightly. 
 
 "Some of it came to me in sleep," he mentioned, produc- 
 ing a paper from his pocket and beginning to read it aloud 
 before anyone could stop him. 
 
 " When the sun was younger, and moon and stars 
 
 Were thrilled with my human birth, 
 And the winds fled shouting the wondrous news 
 As they circled the sea and the earth, 
 
 " From the fight for money and worldly fame 
 
 I drew one magical soul 
 Who came to me over the star-lit sea 
 As the needle turns to the Pole. 
 
 " Conceived in the hour the stars foretold, 
 
 This son of the winds I bore, 
 And I taught him the secrets of " 
 
 "Yes," interrupted Povey audaciously, "but the experi- 
 ment you were telling us about ?" 
 
 A murmur of approving voices helped him. 
 
 "Oh, the experiment, yes, well all I know is," he went 
 on with conviction, calmly replacing the poem in his pocket, 
 "that it concerned an old rite, involving the evocation of 
 some elemental being or nature-spirit the three of them 
 had already evoked millions of years before, but had not 
 banished again. The experiment they made to-day was to 
 restore it to its proper sphere. In order to do so, they had 
 to evoke it again, and, of course" he glanced round, as 
 though all present were familiar with the formula of magical 
 practices "it could come only through the channel of a 
 human system." 
 
 "Of course, yes," murmured a dozen voices, while eyes 
 grew bigger and a pin dropping must have been audible. 
 
 "Well" Imson spoke very slowly now, each word clear
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 219 
 
 as a bell "the father, who was officiating, failed. He could 
 not stand the strain. His heart stopped beating. He died 
 just when it was there, he dropped dead." 
 
 "What happened to iff" asked Povey, too interested to 
 care that he no longer led the room. "You said it could 
 only use a human system as channel " 
 
 "It did so," explained Imson. 
 
 The information produced a pause of several seconds. 
 Some of the members, like Toogood, though openly, were 
 making pencil notes upon cuffs or backs of envelopes. 
 
 "But the channel was neither Mason nor the woman." 
 The effect of this negative information was as nothing com- 
 pared to the startling interest produced by the speaker's 
 next words: "It took the easiest channel, the line of least 
 resistance the unborn body of the child." 
 
 Povey, seizing his opportunity, leaped into the silence : 
 
 "Whose body, now full grown, and named LeVallon, 
 came to the Studio!" he exclaimed, looking round at the 
 group, as though he had himself given the explanation all 
 had just listened to. "A human body tenanted by a nature- 
 spirit, one of the form-builders a Deva, . , ."
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 FOR all the wildness of the talk, this group of the 
 Unstable was a coherent and consistent entity, using 
 a language each item in it understood. They knew what 
 they were after. Alcohol, coffee, tobacco, underfeeding, 
 these helped or hindered, respectively, the expression of 
 an ideal that, nevertheless, was common to them all; and 
 if the minds represented were unbalanced, or merely specu- 
 lative, poetic, one genuine quest and sympathy bound all 
 together into a coherent, and who shall say unintelligent or 
 valueless, unit. The unstable enjoyed an extreme sensitive- 
 ness to varied experience, with flexible adaptability to all 
 possible new conditions, whereas the stable, with their rigid 
 mental organizations, remained uninformed, stagnant, even 
 fossilized. 
 
 In other rooms about the great lamp-lit city sat, doubt- 
 less, other similar groups at the very same moment, dis- 
 cussing the shibboleths of other faiths, of other dreams, of 
 other ideas, systems, notions, philosophies, all interpretative 
 of the earth in which little humanity dwells, cut off and 
 isolated, apparently, from the rest of the stupendous 
 universe. A listener, screened from view, a listener not 
 in sympathy with the particular group he observed, and 
 puzzled, therefore, by the language used, must have deemed 
 he listened to harmless, if boring, madness. For each group 
 uses its own language, and the lowest common denominator, 
 though plainly printed in the world's old scriptures, has not 
 yet become adopted by the world at large. 
 
 Into this particular group, a little later in the evening, 
 and when the wings of imagination had increased their 
 
 220
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 221 
 
 sweep a trifle dangerously perhaps into the room, like the 
 arrival of a policeman rather, dropped Father Collins. He 
 came rarely to the Prometheans' restaurant. There was a 
 general sense of drawing breath as he appeared. A pause 
 followed. Something of the cold street air came with him. 
 He wore his big black felt hat, his shabby opera cloak, and 
 clutched firmly he had no gloves on the heavy gnarled 
 stick he had cut for his collection in a Cingalese forest 
 years ago, when he was studying with a Buddhist priest. 
 The folds of his voluminous cloak, as he took it off, sent 
 the hanging smoke-clouds in a whirl. His personality stirred 
 the mental atmosphere as well. The women looked up and 
 stared, respectful welcome in their eyes ; several of the men 
 rose to shake hands ; there was a general shuffling of chairs. 
 
 "Bring another moulin a vent and a clean glass," Povey 
 said at once to the hovering waiter. 
 
 "It's raw and bitter in the street and a fog coming down 
 thickly," mentioned Father Collins. He exhaled noisily and 
 with comfortable relief, as he squeezed himself towards 
 the chair Povey placed for him and looked round genially, 
 nodding and shaking hands with those he knew. "But 
 you're warm and cosy enough in here" he sat down with 
 unexpected heaviness, and smiled at everybody "and well 
 fed, too, I'll be bound." 
 
 " The body must be comfortable before the mind can 
 enjoy itself,' " said Phillipps, an untidy member who dis- 
 liked asceticism. "Starvation produces hallucination, not 
 vision." His glance took in the unused glasses. His qualifi- 
 cation was a vision of an uncle at the moment of death, 
 and the uncle had left him money. He had written a wordy 
 pamphlet describing it. 
 
 "I'll have an omelette, then, I think," Father Collins told 
 the waiter, as the red wine arrived. "And some fried 
 potatoes. A bit of cheese to follow, and coffee, yes." He 
 filled his glass. He had not come to argue or to preach, 
 and Phillipps's challenge passed unnoticed. Phillipps, who 
 had been leading the talk of late, resented the new arrival,
 
 222 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 but felt his annoyance modify as he saw his own glass 
 generously filled. Povey, too, accepted a glass, while say- 
 ing with a false vehemence, "No, no," his finger against 
 the rim. 
 
 A change stole over the room, for the new personality 
 was not negligible; he brought his atmosphere with him. 
 The wild talk, it was felt now, would not be quite suit- 
 able. Father Collins had the reputation of being some- 
 thing of a scholar; they were not quite sure of him; none 
 knew him very intimately ; he had a rumoured past as well 
 that lent a flavour of respect. One story had it that 
 "dabbling in magic" had lost him his position in the Church. 
 Yet he was deemed an asset to the Society. 
 
 Whatever it was, the key changed sharply. Imson's eyes 
 and ears grew wider, the hand of Miss Lance went instinc- 
 tively to her hair and combs, Miss Milligan sought through 
 her mind for a remark at once instructive and uncommon, 
 Mrs. Towzer looked past him searchingly lest his aura 
 escape her before she caught its colour, and Kempster, 
 smoothing his immaculate coat, had an air of being in his 
 present surroundings merely by chance. Toogood, quickly 
 scanning his notes, wondered whether, if called upon, he 
 was to be Pharaoh or Cleopatra. One and all, that is, took 
 on a soberer gait. This semi-clerical visit complicated. The 
 presence of Father Collins was a compliment. What he 
 had to say about LeVallon and the Studio scene was, 
 anyhow, assured of breathless interest. 
 
 Povey led off. "We were just talking over the other 
 night," he observed, "the night at the Studio, you remember. 
 The storm and so on. It was a singular occurrence, though, 
 of course, we needn't, we mustn't exaggerate it." And 
 while he thus, as Secretary, set the note, Father Collins 
 sipped his wine and beamed upon the group. He made no 
 comment. "You were there, weren't you ?" continued Povey, 
 sipping his own comforting glass. "I think I saw you. 
 Fillery, you may have noticed," he added, "brought a 
 friend."
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 223 
 
 "LeVallon, yes," said the other in a tone that startled 
 them. "A most unusual fellow, wasn't he?" He was 
 attacking the omelette now. "A Greek God, if ever I saw 
 one," he added. And the silence in the crowded room 
 became abruptly noticeable. Miss Milligan, feeling her 
 zodiacal garter slipping, waited to pull it up. Imson's brown 
 eyes grew wider. Kempster held his breath. Toogood 
 borrowed a cigar and waited for someone to offer him a 
 match before he lit it. 
 
 "Delicious," added Father Collins. "Cooked to a turn." 
 the omelette slid about his plate. 
 
 But the silence continued, and he realized the position 
 suddenly. Emptying his glass and casually refilling it, he 
 turned and faced the eager group about him. 
 
 "You want to know what 7 thought about it all," he 
 said. "You've been discussing LeVallon, Nayan and the 
 rest, I see." He looked round as though he were in the 
 lost pulpit that was his right. After a pause he asked point 
 blank: "And what do you all think of it? How did it 
 strike you all? For myself, I confess" he took another 
 sip and paused "I am full of wonder and question," he 
 finished abruptly. 
 
 It was Imson, the fearless, wondering Pat Imson, who 
 first found his tongue. 
 
 "We think," he ventured, "LeVallon is probably of Deva 
 origin." 
 
 The others, while admiring his courage, seemed unsym- 
 pathetic suddenly. Such phraseology, probably meaningless 
 to the respected guest, was out of place. Eyes were cast 
 down, or looked generally elsewhere. Povey, remembering 
 that the Society was not solely Eastern, glared at the speaker. 
 Father Collins, however, was not perturbed. 
 
 "Possibly," he remarked with a courteous smile. "The 
 origin of us all is doubtful and confused. We know not 
 whence we come, of course, and all that. Nor can we 
 ever tell exactly who our neighbour is, or what. LeVallon," 
 he went on, "since you all ask me" he looked round again
 
 824 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 "is for me an undecipherable being. I am," he added, 
 his words falling into open mouths and extended eyes and 
 ears, "somewhat puzzled. But more I am enormously 
 stimulated and intrigued." 
 
 All gazed at him. Father Collins was in his element. 
 The rapt silence that met him was precisely what he had 
 a right to expect from his lost pulpit. He had come, 
 probably, merely to listen and to watch. The opportunity 
 provided by a respectful audience was too much for him. 
 An inspiration tempted him. 
 
 "I am inclined to believe," he resumed suddenly in a 
 simple tone, "that he is a Messenger." 
 
 The sentence might have dropped from Sirius upon a 
 listening planet. The babble that followed must, to an 
 ordinary man, have seemed confusion. Everyone spoke with 
 a rush into his neighbour's ear. All bubbled. "I always 
 thought so, I told you so, that was exactly what I meant 
 just now" and so on. All found their tongues, at any 
 rate, if Povey, as Secretary, led the turmoil : 
 
 "Something outside our normal evolution, you mean?" 
 he asked judiciously. "Such a conception is possible, of 
 course." 
 
 "A Messenger!" ran on the babel of male and female 
 voices. 
 
 It was here that Father Collins failed. The "unstable" 
 in him came suddenly uppermost. The "ecstatic" in his 
 being took the reins. The wondering and expectant 
 audience suited him. The red wine helped as well. When 
 he said "Messenger" he had meant merely someone who 
 brought a message. The expression of nobility merged 
 more and more in the slovenly aspect. Like a priest in 
 the pulpit, whom none can answer and to whom all must 
 listen, he had his text, though that text had been suggested 
 actually by the conversation he had just heard. He had 
 not brought it with him. It occurred to him merely then 
 and there. His mind reflected, in a word, the collective 
 idea that was in the air about him, and he proceeded to
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 225 
 
 sum it up and give expression to it. This was his gift, 
 his fatal gift a ready sensitiveness, a plausible exposition. 
 He caught the prevailing mood, the collective notion, then 
 dramatized it. Before he left the pulpit he invariably, 
 however, convinced himself that what he had said in it 
 was true, inspired, a revelation for that moment. 
 
 "A Messenger," he announced, thrusting his glass aside 
 with an impatient gesture as though noticing for the first 
 time that it was there. "A Messenger," he repeated, the 
 automatic emphasis in his voice already persuading him that 
 he believed what he was about to say, "sent among us from 
 who knows what distant sphere" he drew himself up and 
 looked about him "and for who can guess on what 
 mysterious and splendid mission." 
 
 His eye swept his audience, his hand removed the glass 
 yet farther lest, it impede free gesture. It was, however, 
 as Povey noticed, empty now. "We, of course," he went on 
 impressively, lowering his voice, "we, a mere handful in 
 the world, but alert and watchful, all of us we know that 
 some great new teaching is expected" he threw out another 
 challenging glance "but none of us can know whence it 
 may come nor in what way it shall manifest." His voice 
 dropped dramatically. "Whether as a thief in the night, 
 or with a blare of trumpets, none of us can tell. But we 
 expect it and are ready. To us, therefore, perhaps, as to 
 the twelve fishermen of old, may be entrusted the privilege 
 of accepting it, the work of spreading it among a hostile 
 and unbelieving world, even perhaps the final sacrifice of 
 of suffering for it." 
 
 He paused, quickly took in the general effect of his words, 
 picked up here and there a hint of question, and realized 
 that he had begun on too exalted a note. Detecting this 
 breath of caution in the collective mind that was his inspira- 
 tion, he instantly shifted his key. 
 
 "LeVallon," he resumed, instinctively emphasizing the 
 conviction in his voice so that the change of key might be 
 less noticeable, "undoubtedly believes himself to be some
 
 226 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 such divine Messenger. . . ." It was consummate hedg- 
 ing. 
 
 The sermon needs no full report. The audience, without 
 realizing it, witnessed what is known as an "inspirational 
 address," where a speaker, naturally gifted with a certain 
 facile eloquence, gathers his inspiration, takes his changing 
 cues as well, from the collective mind that listens to him. 
 Father Collins, quite honestly doubtless, altered his key 
 automatically. He no longer said that LeVallon was a 
 Messenger, but that he "believed himself" to be one. Like 
 Balaam, he said things he had not at first thought of saying. 
 He talked for some ten minutes without stopping. He said 
 "all sorts of things," according to the expression of critical 
 doubt, of wonder, of question, of rejection or acceptance, 
 on the particular face he gazed at. At regular intervals 
 he inserted, with considerable effect, his favourite sentence : 
 "A man in his own place is the Ruler of his Fate." 
 
 He developed his idea that LeVallon "believed himself 
 to be such and such . . ." but declared that the conception 
 had been put into the youth during his life of exile in the 
 mountains the Society had already acquired this informa- 
 tion and extended it and had "felt himself into" the role 
 until he had become its actual embodiment. 
 
 "He does not think, he does not reason," he explained. 
 "He feels he feels with. Now, to 'feel with' anything 
 is to become it in the end. It is the only way of true 
 knowledge, of course, of true understanding. If I want to 
 understand, say, an Arab, I must feel with that Arab to 
 the point for the moment of actually becoming him. And 
 this strange youth has spent his time, his best years, mark 
 you his creative years, feeling with the elemental forces 
 of Nature until he has actually becomes at moments one 
 with them." 
 
 He paused again and stared about him. He saw faces 
 shocked, astonished, startled, but not hostile. He continued 
 rapidly: "There lies the danger. One may get caught, 
 get stuck. Lose the desire to return to one's normal self.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 227 
 
 Which means, of course, remaining out of relation with 
 one's environment mad. Only a man in his own place 
 is the ruler of his luck. . . ." 
 
 He noticed suddenly the look of disappointment on several 
 faces. He swiftly hedged. 
 
 "On the other hand," he went on, making his voice and 
 manner more impressive than before, "it may be who can 
 say indeed? it may be that he is in relation with another 
 environment altogether, a much vaster environment, an 
 extended environment of which the rest of humanity is 
 unaware. The privilege of tasting something of an ex- 
 tended environment some of us here already enjoy. What 
 we all know as human activities are doubtless but a frag- 
 ment of life the conscious phenomena merely of some 
 larger whole of which we are aware in fleeting seconds 
 only by mood, by hint, by suggestive hauntings, so to speak 
 by faint shadows of unfamiliar, nameless shape cast 
 across our daily life from some intenser sun we normally 
 cannot see! LeVallon may be, as some of us think and 
 hope, a Messenger to show us the way into a yet farther 
 field of consciousness. . . . 
 
 "It is a fine, a noble, an inspiring hope, at any rate," he 
 assured the room. "Unless some such Messenger comes 
 into the world, showing us how to extend our knowledge, 
 we can get no farther; we shall never know more tfyan 
 we know now ; we shall only go on multiplying our channels 
 for observing the same old things. . . ." 
 
 He closed his little address finally on a word as to what 
 attitude should be adopted to any new experience of amaz- 
 ing and incredible kind. To a Society such as the one 
 he had the honour of belonging to was left the guidance 
 of the perverse and ignorant generations outside of it, "the 
 lethargic and unresponsive majority," as he styled them. 
 
 "We must not resist," he declared bravely. "We must 
 accept with confidence, above all without fear." He leaned 
 back in his chair, somewhat exhausted, for the source of 
 his inspiration was evidently weakening. His words came
 
 228 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 less spontaneously, less easily; he hesitated, sighed, looked 
 from face to face for help he did not find. His glass was 
 empty. "We're here," he concluded lamely, "without being 
 consulted, and we may safely leave to the Powers that 
 brought us here the results of such acceptance." 
 
 "Quite so," agreed Povey, sighing audibly. "Denial will 
 get us nowhere." He filled up Father Collins's glass and 
 his own. "I think most of us are ready enough to accept 
 any new experience that comes, and to accept it without 
 fear." He drained his own glass and looked about him. 
 "But the point is how did LeVallon produce the effect 
 upon us all the effect he did produce? He may be non- 
 human, or he may be merely mad. He may, as Imson says, 
 come to us by some godless chance from another evolutionary 
 system of which, mind you, we have as yet no positive 
 knowledge or he may be a Messenger, as Father Collins 
 suggests, from some divine source, bringing new teaching. 
 But, in the name of Magic, how did he manage it? In 
 other words what is he?" 
 
 For Povey could be very ruthless when he chose. It 
 was this ruthlessness, perhaps, that made him such an effi- 
 cient secretary. The note of extravagance in his language 
 had possibly another inspiration. 
 
 An awkward pause, at any rate, followed his remarks. 
 Father Collins had comforted and blessed the group. Povey 
 introduced cold water rather. 
 
 "There's this and th re's that," remarked Miss Milligan, 
 tactfully. 
 
 "Those among us," added Miss Lance with sympathy, 
 "who have The Sight, know at least what they have seen. 
 Still, I think we are indebted to Father Collins for his 
 guidance." 
 
 "If we knew exactly what he is," mentioned Mrs. Towzer, 
 referring to LeVallon, "we should know exactly where we 
 are." 
 
 They got up to go. There was a fumbling among crowded 
 hat-pegs.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 829 
 
 "What is he?" offered Kempster. "He certainly made 
 us all sit up and take notice." 
 
 "No mere earthly figure," suggested Imson, "could have 
 produced the effect he did. In my poem it came to me in 
 sleep " 
 
 Father Collins held his glass unsteadily to the light. "A 
 Messenger," he interrupted with authority, "would affect 
 us all differently, remember." 
 
 The talk continued in this fashion for a considerable 
 time, while all searched for wraps and coats. The waiter 
 brought the bill amid general confusion, but no one noticed 
 him. All were otherwise engaged. Povey paid it finally, 
 putting it down to the Entertainment Account. 
 
 "Remember," he said, as they stood in a group on the 
 restaurant steps, each wondering who would provide a lift 
 home, "remember, we have all got to write out an account 
 of what we saw and heard at the Studio. These reports 
 will be valuable. They will appear in our 'Psychic Bulletin' 
 first. Then I'll have them bound into a volume. And I 
 shall try and get LeVallon to give us a lecture too. Tickets 
 will be extra, of course, but each member can bring a friend. 
 I'll let you all know the date in due course."
 
 -. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 WHILE the Prometheans thus, individually and collec- 
 tively fermenting, floundered between old and new 
 interpretations of a strange occurrence, in another part of 
 London something was happening, of its kind so real, so 
 interesting, that one and all would eagerly have renounced 
 a favourite shibboleth or pet desire to witness it. Kempster 
 would have eaten a raw beefsteak, Lattimer have agreed 
 to rebirth as a woman, Mrs. Towzer have swallowed whisky 
 neat, and even Toogood have written a signed confession 
 that his "psychometry," was intelligent guesswork. 
 
 It is the destiny, however, of such students of the wonder- 
 ful to receive their data invariably at second or third hand ; 
 the data may deal with genuine occurrences, but the student 
 seems never himself present at the time. From books, from 
 reports, from accounts of someone who knew an actual 
 witness, the student generally receives the version he then 
 proceeds to study and elaborate. 
 
 In this particular instance, moreover, no version ever 
 reached their ears at all, either at second or third hand, 
 because the only witness of what happened was Edward 
 Fillery, and he mentioned it to no one. Its reality, its 
 interpretation likewise, remained authoritative only for that 
 expert, if unstable, mind that experienced the one and 
 divined the other. 
 
 His conversation with Devonham over, and the latter 
 having retired to his room, Fillery paid a last visit to the 
 patient who was now his private care, instead of merely 
 an inmate of the institution that was half a Home and half 
 a Spiritual Clinique. The figure lay sleeping quietly, the 
 lean, muscular body bare to the wind that blew upon it 
 from the open window. Graceful, motionless, both pillow 
 
 230
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 231 
 
 f and coverings rejected, "N. H." breathed the calm, regular 
 breath of deepest slumber. The light from the door just 
 touched the face and folded hands, the features wore 
 no expression of any kind, the hair, drawn back from the 
 forehead and temples, almost seemed to shine. 
 
 Through the window came the rustle of the tossing 
 branches, but the night air, though damp, was neither raw 
 nor biting, and Fillery did not replace the sheets upon the 
 great sleeping body. He withdrew as softly as he entered. 
 Knowing he would not close an eye that night, he left the 
 house silently and walked out into the deserted streets. . . . 
 
 The rain had ceased, but the wet wind rushed in gusts 
 against him, the soft blows and heavy moisture acting as 
 balm to his somewhat tired nerves. As with great elemental 
 hands, the windy darkness stroked him, soothing away the 
 intense excitement he had felt, muting a thousand eager 
 questions. They stroked his brain into a gentler silence 
 gradually. "Don't think, don't think," night whispered all 
 about him, "but feel, feel, feel. What you want to know 
 will come to you by feeling now." He obeyed instinctively. 
 Down the long, empty streets he passed, swinging his stick, 
 tapping the lampposts, noting how steady their light held 
 in the wind, noting the tossing trees in little gardens, noting 
 occasionally rifts of moonlight between the racing clouds, 
 but relinquishing all attempt to think. 
 
 He counted the steps between the lamp-posts as he swung 
 along, leaving the kerb at each crossing with his left foot, 
 taking the new one with his right, planting each boot safely 
 in the centre of each paving stone, establishing, in a word, 
 a sort of rhythm as he moved. He did so, however, without 
 being consciously aware of it. He was not aware, indeed, 
 of anything but that he swung along with this pleasant 
 rhythmical stride that rested his body, though the exercise 
 was vigorous. 
 
 And the night laid her deep peace upon him as he 
 went. . . . 
 
 The streets grew narrower, twisted, turned and ran up-
 
 232 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 hill; the houses became larger, spaced farther apart, less 
 numerous, their gardens bigger, with groups of trees instead 
 of isolated specimens. He emerged suddenly upon the open 
 heath, tasting a newer, sweeter air. The huge city lay 
 below him now, but the rough, shouting wind drowned its 
 distant roar completely. For a time he stood and watched 
 its twinkling lights across the vapours that hung between, 
 then turned towards the little pond. He knew it well. Its 
 waves flew dancing happily. The familiar outline of Jack 
 Straw's Castle loomed beyond. The square enclosure of 
 the anti-aircraft gun rattled with a metallic sound in the 
 wind. . . . 
 
 He had been walking for the best part of two hours now, 
 thinking nothing but feeling only, and his surface-conscious- 
 ness, perhaps, lay still, inactive. The mind was quiescent 
 certainly, his being subdued and lulled by the rhythmic 
 movement which had gained upon his entire system. The 
 sails of his ship hung idly, becalmed above the profound 
 deeps below. It was these deeps, the mysterious and in- 
 exhaustible region below the surface, that now began to 
 stir. There stole upon him a dim prophetic sense as of 
 horizons lifting and letting in new light. He glanced about 
 him. The moon was brighter certainly, the flying scud was 
 thinning, though the dawn was still some hours away. But 
 it was not the light of moon or sun or stars he looked for ; 
 it was no outer light. 
 
 The little waves fell splashing at his feet. He watched 
 them for a long time, keeping very still ; his heart, his mind, 
 his nerves, his muscles, all were very still. . . . He became 
 aware that new big powers were alert and close, hovering 
 above the world, feathering the Race like wings of mighty 
 birds. The waters were being troubled. . . . 
 
 He turned and walked slowly, but ever with the same 
 pleasant rhythm that was in him, to the pine trees, where 
 he paused a minute, listening to the branches shaking and 
 singing, then retraced his steps along the ridge, every yard 
 of which, though blurred in darkness, he knew and recog-
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 233 
 
 nized. Below, on his left lay London, on his right stretched 
 the familiar country, though now invisible, past Hendon 
 with its Welsh Harp, Wembley, and on towards Harrow, 
 whose church steeple would catch the sunrise before very 
 long. He reached the little pond again and heard its small 
 waves rushing and tumbling in the south-west wind. He 
 stood and watched them, listening to their musical wash and 
 gurgle. 
 
 The waters, yes, were being troubled. . . . Despite the 
 buffeting wind, the world lay even stiller now about him; 
 no single human being had he seen ; even stiller than before, 
 too, lay heart and mind within him ; the latter held no single 
 picture. He was aware, yes, of horizons lifting, of great 
 powers alert and close; the interior light increased. He 
 felt, but he did not think. Into the empty chamber of his 
 being, swept and garnished, flashed suddenly, then, as in 
 picture form, the memory of "N. H," All that he knew 
 about him came at once : Paul's notes and journey, the Lon- 
 don scenes and talks, his own observations, deductions, 
 questionings, his dreams, and fears and yearnings, his hope 
 and wonder all came in a clapping instant, complete and 
 simultaneous. Into his opened subconscious being floated 
 the power and the presence of that bright messenger who 
 brought glad tidings to his life. 
 
 "N. H." stood beside him, whispering with lips that were 
 the darkness, and with words that were the wind. It was 
 the power and presence of "N. H." that lifted the horizon 
 and let in light. His body lay sleeping miles away in that 
 bed against an open window. This was his real presence. 
 Without words, as without thought, understanding came. 
 The appeal of "N. H." was direct to the subliminal mind; 
 it was the hidden nine-tenths he stimulated ; hence came the 
 intensification of consciousness in all who had to do with 
 him., And it operated now. Fillery was aware of defying 
 time and space, as though there were no limits to his being. 
 Faith lights fires. . . . Perception wandered down those 
 dusky by-ways behind the mind that lead through trackless
 
 234 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 depths where the massed heritage of the world-soul, lit 
 sometimes by a flashing light, reveal incredible, incalculable 
 things. One of those flashes came now. Through the fis- 
 sures, as it were, of his unstable being rose the marvellous, 
 uncanny gleam. His eyes were opened and he saw. 
 
 The label, he realized, was incorrect, inadequate "N. 
 H." was a misnomer; more than human, both different to 
 and greater than, came nearer to the truth. A being from 
 other conditions certainly, belonging to another order; an 
 order whose work was unremitting service rendered with 
 joy and faithfulness; a hierarchy whose service included 
 the entire universe, the stars and suns and nebulae, earth 
 with her frail humanity but an insignificant fraction of it 
 all. . . . 
 
 He came, of course, from that central sea of energy 
 whence all life, pushing irresistibly outwards into form, 
 first arises. Like human beings, he came thence undoubt- 
 edly, but more directly than they, in more intimate relations, 
 therefore, with the elemental powers that build up form 
 and shape the destinies of matter. One only of a mighty 
 host of varying degrees and powers, his services lay inter- 
 woven with the very heart and processes of Nature herself. 
 The energies of heat and air, essentials of all life every- 
 where, were his handmaidens; he worked with fire and 
 wind ; in the forms he helped to build he set enthusiasm and 
 energy aglow. . . . 
 
 From stars and fire-mist he came now into humanity, 
 using the limited instrument of a human mechanism, a 
 mechanism he must learn to master without breaking it. A 
 human brain and nerves confined him. He could deal with 
 essences only, those essential, buried, semi-elemental powers 
 that lie ever waiting below the threshold of all human con- 
 sciousness, linking men, did they but know it, direct with 
 the sea of universal life which is inexhaustible, independent 
 of space and time. The fraction of his nature which had 
 manifested as a transient surface-personality LeVallon 
 was gone for ever, merged in the real self below.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 235 
 
 His origin was already forgotten; no memory of it lay 
 in his present brain ; he must suffer training, education, and 
 he turned instinctively to those whose ideal, like his own, 
 was one of impersonal service. To a woman he turned, 
 and to a man. His recognition, guided by Nature, was sure 
 and accurate. It must take time and patience, sympathy 
 and love, faith, belief and trust, and the labour must be 
 borne by one man chiefly by Fillery, into whose life had 
 come this strange bright messenger carrying glad tidings 
 ... to prove at last that man was greater than he knew, 
 that the hope for Humanity, for the deteriorating Race, 
 for crumbling Civilization, lay in drawing out into full prac- 
 tical consciousness the divine powers concealed below the 
 threshold of every single man and woman. . . . 
 
 But how, in what practical manner, what instrument could 
 they use? The human mechanism, the brain, the mind, 
 afforded inadequate means of manifestation ; new wines into 
 old skins meant disaster ; knowledge, power beyond the ex- 
 perience of the Race needed a better instrument than the 
 one the Race had painfully evolved for present uses. New 
 powers of unknown kinds, as already in those rare cases 
 when the supernormal forces emerged, could only strain 
 the machinery and cause disorder. A new order of con- 
 sciousness required another, a different equipment. And 
 the idea flashed into him, as in the Studio when he watched 
 "N. H." and the girl Father Collins had divined its pos- 
 sibility as well the idea of a group consciousness, a collec- 
 tive group-soul. What a single individual might not be 
 able to resist at first without disaster, many a group in 
 harmony two or three gathered together in unfson these 
 might provide the way, the means, the instrument the body. 
 
 "The personal merged in the impersonal," he exclaimed 
 to the night about him, already aware that words, expres- 
 sion, failed even at this early stage of understanding. 
 "Beauty, Art! Where words, form, colour end, we shall 
 construct, while yet using these as far as they go, a new 
 vehicle, a new "
 
 236 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 "Good evenin'," said a gruff voice. "Good evenin', sir," 
 it added more respectfully, after a second's inspection. 
 "Turned out quite fine after the storm." 
 
 Aware of the policeman suddenly, Fillery started and 
 turned round abruptly. Evidently he had uttered his 
 thoughts aloud, probably had cried and shouted them. He 
 could think of nothing in the world to say. 
 
 "It was a terrible storm. I hardly ever see the likes 
 of it." The man was looking at him still with doubtful 
 curiosity. 
 
 "Extraordinary, yes." Dr. Fillery managed to find a 
 few natural words. It was an early hour in the morning 
 to be out, and his position by the pond, he now realized, 
 might have suggested an undesirable intention. "It made 
 sleep impossible, and I came out to to take a walk. I'm 
 a doctor, Dr. Fillery the Fillery Home." 
 
 "Yes, sir," said the man, apparently satisfied. He looked 
 at the sky. "All blown away again," he remarked, "and the 
 moon that nice and bright " 
 
 Fillery offered something in reply, then moved away. The 
 moon, he noticed, was indeed nice and bright now ; the heavy 
 lower vapours all had vanished, and thin cirrus clouds at 
 a great height moved, slowly before an upper wind; the 
 stars shone clearly, and a faint line of colour gave a hint 
 of dawn not far away. 
 
 He glanced at his watch. It was nearly half-past four. 
 
 "It's impossible, impossible," he thought to himself, the 
 pictures he had been seeing still hanging before his eyes. 
 "It was all feeling merely feeling. My blood, my heritage 
 asserting themselves upon an over-tired system ! Too much 
 repression evidently. I must find an outlet. My Caucasian 
 Valley again!" 
 
 He walked rapidly. His mind began to work, and think- 
 ing made an effort to replace feeling. He watched himself. 
 His everyday surface-consciousness partially resumed its 
 sway. The policeman, of course, had interrupted the flow 
 and inrush of another state just at the moment when a
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 37 
 
 flash of direct knowledge was about to blaze. It concerned 
 "N. H.," his new patient. In another moment he would 
 have known exactly what and who he was, whence he came, 
 the purpose and the powers that attended him. The police- 
 man and inner laughter ran through him at this juxta- 
 position of the practical and the transcendental had 
 interfered with an interesting expansion of his being. An 
 extension of consciousness, perhaps a touch of cosmic con- 
 sciousness, was on the way. The first faint quiver of its 
 coming, magical with wondrous joy, had touched him. Its 
 cause, its origin, he knew not, yet he could trace both to 
 the effect produced upon him by "N. H." Of that he was 
 sure. This effect his reasoning mind, with busy analysis 
 and criticism, had hitherto partially suppressed, even at its 
 first manifestation in Charing Cross Station. To-night, 
 criticism silent and analysis inactive, it had found an outlet, 
 his own deep inner stillness had been its opportunity. Then 
 came the practical, honest, simple policeman, the censor, 
 who received so much a week to keep people in the way 
 they ought to follow, the safe, broad way. . . . 
 
 He smiled, as he walked rapidly along the deserted streets. 
 He knew so well the method and process of these abnormal 
 states in others. As he swung along, not tired now, but 
 rested, rather, and invigorated, the rhythm of motion es- 
 tablished itself again. "N. H." a Nature Spirit ! A Nature 
 Being! Another order of life entering humanity for the 
 first time, that humanity for whose welfare it or was it 
 he? had worked, with hosts of similar beings, during in- 
 calculable ages. . . , 
 
 He smiled, remembering the policeman again. There was 
 always a policeman, or a censor. Oh, the exits beyond safe 
 normal states of being, the exits into extended fields of 
 consciousness, into an outer life which the majority, led 
 by the best minds of the day, deny with an oath these 
 were well guarded! His smile, as he thought of it, ran 
 from his lips and settled in the eyes, lingering a moment 
 there before it died away. . . .
 
 238 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 How quiet, yet unfamiliar, the suburb of the huge city 
 lay about him in pale half-light. The Studio scene, how 
 distant it seemed now in space and time; it had happened 
 weeks ago in another city somewhere. Devonham, his cau- 
 tious, experienced assistant, how far away! He belonged 
 to another age. The Prometheans were part of a dream in 
 childhood, a dream of pantomime or harlequinade whose 
 extravagance yet conveyed symbolic meaning. Two figures 
 alone retained a reality that refused to be dismissed a 
 mysterious, enigmatic youth, a radiant girl with perhaps 
 a third a broken priest. . . . 
 
 The rhythm, meanwhile, gained upon him, and, as it did. 
 so, thinking once more withdrew and feeling stole back 
 softly. His being became more harmonized, more one with 
 itself, more open to inspiration. . . . "N. H.," whose work 
 was service, service everywhere, not merely in that tiny 
 corner of the universe called Humanity. . . . "N. H.," who 
 could neither age nor die. . . . What was the hidden link 
 that bound them ? Had they not served and played together 
 in some lost Caucasian valley, leaped with the sun's hot fire, 
 flown in the winds of dawn . . . sung, laughed and danced 
 at their service, with a radiant sylph-like girl who had at 
 last enticed them into the confinement of a limited human 
 form? . . . Did not that valley symbolize, indeed, another 
 state of existence, another order of consciousness altogether 
 that lay beyond any known present experience or descrip- 
 tion . . .? 
 
 The dawn, meanwhile, grew nearer and a pallid light ran 
 down the dreadful streets. . . . He reached at length the 
 foot of the hill upon whose shoulder his own house stood. 
 The familiar sights stirred more familiar currents of feeling, 
 and these in turn sought words. . . . 
 
 The crowding houses, with their tight-shut windows, fol- 
 lowed and pressed after as he climbed. They swarmed 
 behind him. How choked and airless it all was. He thought 
 of the heavy-footed routine of the thousands who occupied 
 these pretentious buildings. Here lived a section of the
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 239 
 
 greatest city on the planet, almost a separate little town, 
 with marked characteristics, atmosphere, tastes and habits. 
 How many, he wondered, behind those walls knew yearning, 
 belief, imagination beyond the ruck and routine of familiar 
 narrow thought? Rows upon rows, with their stunted, 
 manufactured trees, hideous conservatories, bulging porches, 
 ornamented windows his wings beat against them all with 
 the burning desire to set their inmates free. They caged 
 themselves in deliberately. A few thousand years ago these 
 people lived in mud huts, before that in caves, before that 
 again in trees. Now they were "civilized." They dwelt 
 in these cages. Oh, that he might tear away the thick dead 
 bricks, and let in light and dew and stars, and the brave, 
 free winds of heaven! Waken the deeper powers they 
 carried unwittingly about with them through all their tedious 
 sufferings! Teach them that they were greater than they 
 knew! 
 
 The yearning was deep and true in him, as the houses 
 followed and tried to bar his way. Many of the occupiers, 
 he knew, would welcome help, would gaze with happy, 
 astonished eyes at the wonder of their own greater selves 
 set free. Not all, of course, were wingless. Yet the ma- 
 jority, he felt, were otherwise. They peered at him from 
 behind thick curtains, hostile, sceptical, contented with their 
 lot, averse to change. Mode, custom, habit chained them 
 to the floor. He was aware of a collective obstinate grin 
 of smug complacency, of dull resistance. Though a part 
 of the community, of the race, of the world, of the universe 
 itself, they denied their mighty brotherhood, and clung 
 tenaciously to their idea of living apart, cut off and separate. 
 They belonged to leagues, societies, clubs and circles, but 
 the bigger oneness of the race they did not know. Of 
 greater powers in themselves they had no faintest inkling. 
 At the first sign of these, they would shuffle, sneer and turn 
 away, grow frightened even. 
 
 The yearning to show them a bigger field of conscious- 
 ness, to help them towards a realization of their buried
 
 240 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 powers, to let them out of their separate cages, beat through 
 his being with a passionate sincerity. ... In a hundred 
 thousand years perhaps! Perhaps in a million! He knew 
 the slow gait that Nature loved. The trend of an Age is 
 not to be stemmed by one man, nor by twelve, who see 
 over the horizon. The futility of trying pained him. Yet, 
 if no one ever tried ! Oh, for a few swift strokes of awful 
 sacrifice then freedom! 
 
 The words came back to him, and with them, from the 
 same source, came others: "I sit and I weave. ... I sit 
 and I weave." . . . Whose, then, was this divine, eternal 
 patience? . . . 
 
 There could be, it seemed, no hurried growth, no instant 
 escape, no sudden leap to heaven. Slowly, slowly, the Ages 
 turned the wheel. "Nor can other beings help," he remem- 
 bered; "they can only tell what their own part is." . . . 
 And as his clear mind saw the present Civilization like all 
 its wonderful predecessors, tottering before his very eyes, 
 threatening in its collapse, the extinction of knowledge so 
 slowly, painfully, laboriously acquired, the deep heart in 
 him rose as on wings of wind and fire, questing the stars 
 above. There was this strange clash in him, as though two 
 great divisions in his being struggled. A way of escape 
 seemed just within his reach, only a little beyond the horizon 
 of his actual knowledge. It fluttered marvellously ; golden, 
 alight, inviting. Its coming glory brushed his insight. It 
 was simple, it was divine. There seemed a faint knocking 
 against the doors of his mental and spiritual understand- 
 ing. . . . 
 
 " 'N. H.' !" he cried, "Bright Messenger !" 
 
 He paused a moment and stood still. A new sound lay 
 suddenly in the night. It came, apparently, from far away, 
 almost from the air above him. He listened. No, after 
 all it was only steps. They came nearer. A pedestrian, 
 muffled to the ears, went past, and the steps died away 
 on the resounding pavement round the corner. Yet the 
 sound continued, and was not the echo of the steps just
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 241 
 
 gone. It was, moreover, he now felt convinced, in the air 
 above him. It was continuous. It reminded him of the 
 musical droning hum that a big bell leaves behind it, while 
 a suggestion of rhythm, almost of melody, ran faintly 
 through it too. 
 
 Somebody's lines was it Shelley's? ran faintly in his 
 mind, yet it was not his mind now that surged and rose 
 to the new great rhythm: 
 
 " 'Tis the deep music of the rolling world 
 Kindling within the strings of the waved air 
 ^olian modulations. . . . 
 Clear, icy, keen awakening tones 
 That pierce the sense 
 And live within the soul. . . ." 
 
 He listened. It was a simple, natural, happy sound 
 simple as running water, natural as wind, happy as the 
 song of birds. . . .
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 HE became, again, vividly aware of the power and 
 presence of "N. H." 
 
 He was not far from his house now on the shoulder of 
 the hill. He turned his eyes upwards, where the three- 
 quarter moon sailed above transparent cirrus clouds that 
 scarcely dimmed her light. Like dappled sands of silver, 
 they sifted her soft shining, moving slowly across the 
 heavens before an upper wind. The sound continued. 
 
 For a moment or two, in the pale light of dawn, he 
 watched and listened, then lowered his gaze, caught his 
 breath sharply, and stood stock still. He stared in front 
 of him. Next, turning slowly, he stared right and left. He 
 stared behind as well. 
 
 Yes, it was true. The lines and rows of crowding houses 
 trembled, disappeared. The heavy buildings dissolved be- 
 fore his very eyes. The solid walls and roofs were gone, 
 the chimneys, railings, doors and porches vanished. There 
 were no more conservatories. There were no lamp-posts. 
 The streets themselves had melted. He gazed in amazement 
 and delight. The entire hill lay bare and open to the sky. 
 
 Across the rising upland swept a keen fresh morning 
 wind. Yet bare they were not, this rising upland and 
 this hill. As far as he could see, the landscape flowed 
 waist-deep in flowers, whose fragrance lay upon the air; 
 dew trembled, shimmering on a million petals of blue and 
 gold, of orange, purple, violet ; the very atmosphere seemed 
 painted. Flowering trees, both singly and in groves, waved 
 in the breeze, birds sang in chorus, there was a murmur 
 of streams and falling waters. Yet that other sound rose 
 too, rose from the entire hill and all upon it, a continuous 
 
 242
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 243 
 
 gentle rhythm, as though, he felt, the actual scenery poured 
 forth its being in spontaneous, natural expression of sound 
 as well as of form and colour. It was the simplest, happiest 
 music he had ever heard. 
 
 Unable to deal with the rapture of delight that swept 
 upon him, he stood stock still among the blossoms to his 
 waist. Eyes, ears and nostrils were inadequate to report 
 a beauty which, simple though it was, overbore nerves and 
 senses accustomed to a lesser scale. Horizons indeed had 
 lifted, the joy and confidence of fuller life poured in. His 
 own being grew immense, stretched, widened, deepened, till 
 it seemed to include all space. He was everywhere, or 
 rather everything was happening somewhere in him all at 
 once. ... In place of the heavy suburb lay this garden" 
 of primal beauty, while yet, in a sense, the suburb itself 
 remained as well. Only it had flowered . . . revealing the 
 subconscious soul the bricks and pavements hid. . . . Its 
 potential self had blossomed into loveliness and wonder. 
 
 The sound drew nearer. He was aware of movement. 
 Figures were approaching; they were coming in his direc- 
 tion, coming towards him over the crest of the hill, nearer 
 and nearer. Concealed by the forest of tall flowers, he 
 watched them come. Yet as Presences he perceived them, 
 rather than as figures, already borrowing power from them, 
 as sails borrow from a rising wind. His consciousness ex- 
 panded marvellously to let them in. 
 
 Their stature was conveyed to him, chiefly, at first, by 
 the fact that these flowers, though rising to his own waist, 
 did not cover the feet of them, yet that the flowers in the 
 immediate line of their advance still swayed and nodded, 
 as though no weight had lain upon their brilliance. The 
 footsteps were of wind, the figures light as air; they shone; 
 their radiant presences lit the acres. Their own atmosphere, 
 too, came with them, as though the landscape moved and 
 travelled with and in their being, as though the flowers, the 
 natural beauty, emanated from them. The landscape was 
 their atmosphere. They created, brought it with them. It
 
 244 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 seemed that they "expressed" the landscape and "were" 
 the scenery, with all its multitudinous forms. 
 
 They approached with a great and easy speed that was 
 not measurable. Over the crest of the living, sunlit hill 
 they poured, with their bulk, their speed, their majesty, 
 their sweet brimming joy. Fillery stood motionless watch- 
 ing them, his own joy touched with awed confusion, till 
 wonder and worship mastered the final trace of fear. 
 
 Though he perceived these figures first as they topped 
 the skyline, he was aware that great space also stretched 
 behind them, and that this immense perspective was in some 
 way appropriate to their appearance. Born of a greater 
 space than his "mind" could understand, they flowed to- 
 wards him across that windy crest and at the same time 
 from infinitely far beyond it. Above the continuous hum- 
 ming sound, he heard their music too, faint but mighty, 
 filling the air with deep vibrations that seemed the natural 
 expression of their joyful beings. Each figure was a chord, 
 yet all combining in a single harmony that had volume 
 without loudness. It seemed to him that their sound and 
 colour and movement wove a new pattern upon space, a 
 new outline, form or growth, perhaps a flower, a tree, 
 perhaps a planet. . . . They were creative. They expressed 
 themselves naturally in a million forms. 
 
 He heard, he saw. He knew no other words to use. 
 But the "hearing" was, rather, some kind of intimate pos- 
 session so that his whole being filled and overbrimmed ; and 
 the "sight" was greater than the customary little irritation 
 of the optic nerve it involved another term of space. He 
 could describe the sight more readily than the hearing. The 
 apparent contradiction of distance and proximity, of vast 
 size yet intimacy, made him tremble in his hiding-place. 
 
 His "sight," at any rate, perceived the approaching figures 
 all round, all over, all at once, as they poured like a wave 
 across the hill from far beyond its visible crest. For into 
 this space below the horizon he saw as well, though, normally 
 speaking, it was out of sight. Nor did he see one side
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 245 
 
 only; he saw the backs of the towering forms as easily 
 as the portion facing him; he saw behind them. It was 
 not as with ordinary objects refracting light, the back and 
 underneath and further edges invisible. All sides were 
 visible at once. The space beyond, moreover, whence the 
 mighty outlines issued, was of such immensity that he could 
 think only of interstellar regions. Not to the little planet, 
 then, did these magnificent shapes belong. They were of 
 the Universe. The symbol of his valley, he knew suddenly, 
 belonged here too. 
 
 Silent with wonder, motionless with worship, he watched 
 the singing flood of what he felt to be immense, non-human 
 nature-life pour past him. The procession lasted for hours, 
 yet was over in a minute's flash. All categories his mind 
 knew hitherto were useless. The faces, in their power, 
 their majesty, the splendour even of their extent, were both 
 appalling, yet infinitely tender. They were filled with stars, 
 blue distance, flowers, spirals of fire, space and air, inter- 
 woven too, with shining geometrical designs whose intricate 
 patterns merged in a central harmony. They brought their 
 own winds with them. 
 
 Yet of features precisely, he was not aware. Each face 
 was, rather, an immense expression, but an expression that 
 was permanent and could not change. These were im- 
 mutable, eternal faces. He borrowed from human terms 
 the only words that offered, while aware that he falsely 
 introduced the personal into that which was essentially im- 
 personal. 
 
 There stole over him a strange certainty that what he 
 worshipped was the grandeur of joyful service working 
 through unalterable law the great compassion of some un- 
 tiring service that was deathless. . . . He stood within the 
 Universe, face to face with its elemental builders, guardians, 
 its constructive artizans, the impersonal angelic powers . . . 
 the region, the state, he now felt convinced, to which "N. 
 H." belonged, and whence, by some inexplicable chance, 
 he had come to occupy a human body. . . . And the sounds
 
 246 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 the flash came to him with lightning conviction were 
 those essential rhythms which are the kernels of all visible, 
 manifested forms. . . . 
 
 He was not aware that he was moving, that he had left 
 the spot where he had stood so long, yet for a single 
 second only and had now reached the corner of a street 
 again. The flowers were gone, and the trees and groves 
 gone with them; no waters rippled past; there was no 
 shining hill. The moon, the stars, the breaking dawn re- 
 mained, but he saw windows, walls and villas once again, 
 while his feet echoed on dead stone pavements. . . . 
 
 Yet the figures had not wholly gone. Before a house, 
 where he now paused a moment, the towering, flowing out- 
 lines were still faintly visible. Their singing still audible, 
 their shapes still gently luminous, they stood grouped about 
 an open window of the second story. In the front garden 
 a big plane tree stirred its leafless branches; the tree and 
 figures interpenetrated. Slowly then, the outlines grew dim 
 and shadowy, indistinguishable almost from the objects in 
 the twilight near them. Chimneys, walls and roofs stole 
 in upon the great shapes with foreign, grosser details that 
 obscured their harmony, confused their proportion, as with 
 two sets of values. The eye refused to focus both at once. 
 A roof, a chimney obtruded, while sight struggled, fluttered, 
 then ended in confusion. The figures faded and melted 
 out. They merged with the tree, the reddening sky, the 
 murky air close to the house which a street lamp made 
 visible. Suddenly they were lost they were no longer 
 there. 
 
 But the rhythmical sound, though fainter, still continued 
 and Fillery looked up. 
 
 It was a sound, he realized in a flash, evocative and 
 summoning. Type called to type, brother to brother, across 
 the universe. The house before him was his own, and the 
 open window through which the music issued was the bed- 
 room of "N. H."
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 247 
 
 He stood transfixed. Both sides of his complex nature 
 operated simultaneously. His mind worked more clearly 
 the entire history of the "case" in that upstairs room 
 passed through it: he was a doctor. But his speculative, 
 emotional aspect, the dreamer in him, so greatly daring, 
 all that poetic, transcendental, half -mystical part which 
 classed him, he well knew, with the unstable ; all this, long 
 and dangerously repressed, worked with opposite, if equal 
 pressure. From the subconscious rose violent hands as of 
 wind and fire, lovely, fashioning, divine, tearing away the 
 lid of the reasoning surface-consciousness that confined, 
 confused them. 
 
 To disentangle, to define these separate functions, were 
 a difficult problem even for the most competent psychiatrist. 
 Creative imaginative powers, hitherto merely fumbling, half 
 denied as well, now stretched their wings and soared. With 
 them came a blinding clarity of sight that enabled him to 
 focus a vast field of detail with extraordinary rapidity. 
 Horizons had lifted, perspective deepened and lit up. In a 
 few brief seconds, before his front door opened, a hundred 
 details flashed towards a focus and shone concentrated: 
 
 The Vision, of course the Figures had now melted into 
 the night had no objective reality. Suppressed passion 
 had created them, forbidden yearnings had passed the Cen- 
 sor and dramatized a dream, set aside yet never explained, 
 that heredity was responsible for. Both were born of his 
 lost radiant valley. His Note Books held a thousand similar 
 cases. . . . 
 
 But the speculative dreamer flashed coloured lights against 
 this common white. The prism blazed. From the inter- 
 stellar spaces came these radiant figures, from Sirius, im- 
 mense and splendid sun, from Aldebaran among the happy 
 Hyades, from awful Betelgeuse, whose volume fills a Mar- 
 tian orbit. Their dazzling, giant grandeur was of stellar 
 origin. Yet, equally, they came from the dreadful back 
 gardens of those sordid houses. Nature was Nature every- 
 where, in the nebulae as in the stifled plane tree of a city
 
 248 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 court. That he saw them as "figures" was but his own 
 private, personal interpretation of a prophecy the whole 
 Universe announced. They were not figures necessarily; 
 they were Powers. And "N. H." was of their kind. 
 
 He suddenly remembered the small, troubled earth 
 whereon he lived a neglected corner of the universe that 
 was in distress and cried frantically for help. . . . Alcyone 
 caught it in her golden arms perhaps; Sirius thundered 
 against its little ears. . . . 
 
 He found his latchkey and fumblingly inserted it, but, 
 even while he did so, the state of the planet at the moment 
 poured into his mind with swift, concentrated detail; he 
 remembered the wireless excitement of the instant and 
 smiled. Not that way would it come. The new order was 
 of a spiritual kind. It would steal into men's hearts, not 
 splutter along the waves of ether, as the "dead" are said 
 to splutter to the "living." The great impulse, the mighty 
 invitation Nature sent out to return to simple, natural life, 
 would come, without "phenomena" from within. . . . He 
 remembered Relativity that space is local, space and time 
 not separate entities. He understood. He had just ex- 
 perienced it. Another, a fourth dimension! Space as a 
 whole was annihilated ! He smiled. 
 
 His latchkey turned. 
 
 The transmutation of metals flashed past him all sub- 
 stance one. His latchkey was upside down. He turned it 
 round and reinserted it, and the results of advanced 
 psychology rushed at him, as though the sun rushed over 
 the horizon of some Eastern clime, covering all with the 
 light of a new, fair dawn. 
 
 In a few seconds this accumulation of recent knowledge 
 and discovery flooded his state of singular receptiveness 
 as thinker and as poet. The Age was crumbling, civilization 
 passing like its predecessors. The little planet lay certainly 
 in distress. No true help lay within it; its reservoirs were 
 empty. No adequate constructive men or powers were any- 
 where in sight. It was exhausted, dying. Unless new help,
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 249 
 
 powers from a new, an inexhaustible source, came quickly 
 ... a new vehicle for their expression. . . . 
 
 And wonder took him by the throat ... as the key 
 turned in the lock with its familiar grating sound, and the 
 door, without actual pressure on his part, swung open. 
 
 Paul Devonham, a look of bright terror in his eyes, stood 
 on the threshold. 
 
 The expression, not only of the face but of the whole 
 person, he had seen once only in another human countenance 
 a climber, who had slipped by his very side and dropped 
 backward into empty space. The look of helpless bewilder- 
 ment as hands and feet lost final touch with solidity, the 
 air of terrible yet childlike amazement with which he began 
 his descent of a thousand feet through a gulf of air the 
 shock marked the face in a single second with what he now 
 saw in his colleague's eyes. Only, with Devonham Fillery 
 felt sure of his diagnosis the lost hold was mental. 
 
 His outward control, however, was admirable. Devon- 
 ham's voice, apart from a certain tenseness in it, was quiet 
 enough: "I've been telephoning everywhere. . . . There's 
 been a a crisis " 
 
 "Violence?" 
 
 But the other shook his head. "It's all beyond me quite," 
 he said, with a wry smile. "The first outbreak was nothing 
 nothing compared to this." The continuous sound of 
 humming which filled the hall, making the air vibrate oddly, 
 grew louder. Devonham seized his friend's arm. 
 
 "Listen!" he whispered. "You hear that?" 
 
 "I heard it outside in the street," Fillery said. ''What 
 is it?" 
 
 Devonham glared at him. "God knows," he said, 'I don't. 
 He's been doing it, on and off, for a couple of hours. It 
 began the moment you left, it seems. They're all about 
 him these vibrations, I mean. He does it with his whole 
 body somehow. And" he hesitated "there's meaning in
 
 250 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 it of some kind. Results, I mean," he jerked out with an 
 effort. 
 
 "Visible?" came the gentle question. 
 
 Devonham started. "How did you know?" There was 
 a thrust of intense curiosity in the eyes. 
 
 "I've had a similar experience myself, Paul. You opened 
 the front door in the middle of it. The figures " 
 
 "You saw figures?" Devonham looked thunderstruck. In 
 his heart was obviously a touch of panic. 
 
 As the two men stood gazing into each other's eyes a 
 moment silently, the sound about them increased again, 
 rising and falling, its great separate rhythmical waves almost 
 distinguishable. In Fillery's mind rose patterns, outlines, 
 forms of flowers, spirals, circles. . . . 
 
 "He knows you're in the house," said Devonham in a 
 curious voice, relieved apparently no answer came to his 
 question. "Better come upstairs at once and see him." But 
 he did not turn to lead the way. "That's not auditory 
 hallucination, Edward, whatever else it is!" He was still 
 clinging to the rock, but the rock was crumbling beneath 
 his desperate touch. Space yawned below him. 
 
 "Visual," suggested Fillery, as though he held out a feeble 
 hand to the man whose whole weight already hung unsup- 
 ported before the plunge. His friend spoke no word; but 
 his expression made words unnecessary: "We must face 
 the facts," it said plainly, "wherever these may lead. No 
 shirking, no prejudice of mine or yours must interfere. 
 There must be no faltering now." 
 
 So plainly was *his passion for truth and knowledge legible 
 in the expression of the shocked but honest mind, that Fillery 
 felt compassion overpower the first attitude of privacy he 
 had meant to take. This time he must share. The honesty 
 of the other won his confidence too fully for him to hold 
 back anything. There was no doubt in his mind that he 
 read his colleague's state aright. 
 
 "A moment, Paul," he said in a low voice, "before we go 
 upstairs," and he put his hand out, oddly enough meeting
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER - 251 
 
 Devonham's hand already stretched to meet it. He drew 
 him aside into a corner of the hall, while the waves of sound 
 surged round and over them like a sea. "Let me first tell 
 you," he went on, his voice trembling slightly, "my own 
 experience." It seemed to him that any moment he must 
 see the birth of a new form, an outline, a "body" dance 
 across before his very eyes. 
 
 "Neither auditory nor visual," murmured Devonham, 
 burning to hear what was coming, yet at the same time 
 shrinking from it by the laws of his personality. "Hallu- 
 cination of any kind, there is absolutely none. There's noth- 
 ing transferred from your mind to his. This thing is real 
 original." 
 
 Fillery tightened his grip a second on the hand he held. 
 
 "Paul," he said gravely, yet unable to hide the joy of 
 recent ecstasy in his eyes, "it is also new !" 
 
 The low syllables seemed borne away and lifted beyond 
 their reach by an immense vibration that swept softly past 
 them. And so actual was this invisible wave that behind 
 it lay the trough, the ebb, that awaits, as in the sea, the 
 next advancing crest. Into this ebb, as it were, both men 
 dropped simultaneously the same significant syllables: their 
 lips uttered together : 
 
 "N. H." The wave of sound seemed to take their voices 
 and increase them. It was the older man who added : "Com- 
 ing into full possession." 
 
 The two stood waiting, listening, their heads turned side- 
 ways, their bodies motionless, while the soft rhythmical up- 
 roar rose and fell about them. No sign escaped them for 
 some minutes ; no .words, it seemed, occurred to either of 
 them. 
 
 Through the transom over the front door stole the grey 
 light of the late autumn dawn ; the hall furniture was visible, 
 chairs, hat-rack, wooden chests that held the motor rugs. 
 A china bowl filled with visiting cards gleamed white beside 
 it. Soon the milkman, uttering his comic earthly cry, would 
 clatter down the area staircase, and the servants would be
 
 252 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 up. As yet, however, but for the big soft sound, the house 
 was perfectly still. This part of it, almost a separate wing, 
 was completely cut off from the main building. No one 
 had been disturbed. 
 
 Fillery moved his head and looked at his companion. 
 The expression of both face and figure arrested him. He 
 had taken off his dinner jacket, and the old loose golfing 
 coat he wore hung askew; he had one hand in a pocket of 
 it, the other thrust deep into his trousers. His glasses hung 
 down across his crumpled shirt-front, his black tie made an 
 untidy cross. He looked, thought Fillery, whose sense of 
 the ludicrous became always specially alert in his gravest 
 moments, like an unhappy curate who had presided over 
 some strenuous and worrying social gathering in the local 
 town hall. Only one detail denied this picture the expres- 
 sion of something mysterious and awed in the sheet-white 
 face. He was listening with sharp dislike yet eager interest. 
 His repugnance betrayed itself in the tightened lips, the 
 set of the angular shoulders ; the panic was written in the" 
 glistening eyes. There were things in his face he could 
 never, never tell. The struggle in him was natural to his 
 type of mind: he had experienced something himself, and 
 a personal experience opens new vistas in sympathy and 
 understanding. But the experience ran contrary to every 
 tenet of theory and practice he had ever known. The mo- 
 ment of new birth was painful. This was his colleague's 
 diagnosis. 
 
 Fillery then suddenly realized that the gulf between them 
 was without a bridge. To tell his own experience became 
 at once utterly impossible. He saw this clearly. He could 
 not speak of it to his assistant. It was, after all, incom- 
 municable. The bridge of terms, language, feeling, did not 
 exist between them. And, again, up flashed for a second 
 his sense of the comic, this time in an odd touch of memory 
 Povey's favourite sentence : "Never argue with the once- 
 born!" Only to older souls was expression possible. 
 
 For the first time then his diagnosis wavered oddly. Why,
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 253 
 
 for instance, did Paul persist in that curious, watchful 
 stare . . . ? 
 
 Devonham, conscious of his chief's eyes and mind upon 
 him, looked up. Somewhere in his expression was a glare, 
 but nothing revealed his state of mind better than the fact 
 that he stupidly contradicted himself : 
 
 "You're putting all this into him, Edward," a touch 
 of anger, perhaps of fear, in the intense whispering voice. 
 "The hysteria of the studio upset him, of course. If you'd 
 left him alone, as you promised, he'd have always stayed 
 LeVallon. He'd be cured by now." Then, as Fillery made 
 no reply or comment, he added, but this time only the 
 anxiety of the doctor in his tone: "Hadn't you better go 
 up to him at once ? He's your patient, not mine, remember !" 
 
 The other took his arm. "Not yet," he said quietly. 
 "He's best alone for the moment." He smiled, and it was 
 the smile that invariably won him the confidence of even 
 the most obstinate and difficult patient. He was completely 
 master of himself again. "Besides, Paul," he went on 
 gently. "I want to hear what you have to tell me. Some 
 of it if not all. I want your Report. It is of value. I 
 must have that first, you know." 
 
 They sat on the bottom stair together, while Devonham 
 told briefly what had happened. He was glad to tell it, 
 too. It was a relief to become the mere accurate observer" 
 again. 
 
 "I can summarize it for you in two words," he said: 
 "light and sound. The sound, at first, seemed wind wind 
 rising, wind outside. With the light, was perceptible heat. 
 The two seemed correlated. When the sound increased, the 
 heat increased too. Then the sound became methodical, 
 rhythmical it became almost musical. As it did so the 
 light became coloured. Both" he looked across at the 
 ghostly hat-rack in the hall "were produced by him." 
 
 "Items, please, Paul. I want an itemized account." 
 
 Devonham fumbled in the big pockets of his coat and 
 eventually lit a cigarette, though he did not in the least
 
 254 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 want to smoke. That watchful, penetrating stare persisted, 
 none the less. Amid the anxiety were items of carelessness 
 that almost seemed assumed. 
 
 "Mrs. Soames sent Nurse Robbins to fetch me," he re- 
 sumed, his voice harshly, as it seemed, cutting across the 
 waves of pleasant sound that poured down the empty stairs 
 behind them and filled the hall with resonant vibrations. 
 "I went in, turned them both out, and closed the door. The 
 room was filled with a soft, white light, rather pale in tint, 
 that seemed to emanate from nowhere. I could trace it to 
 no source. It was equally diffused, I mean, yet a kind of 
 wave-like vibration ran through it in faint curves and circles. 
 There was a sound, a sound like wind. A wind was in 
 the room, moaning and sighing inside the walls a perfectly 
 natural and ordinary sound, if it had been outside. The 
 light moved and quivered. It lay in sheets. Its movement, 
 I noticed, was in direct relation to the wind : the louder the 
 volume of sound, the greater the movement of the air the 
 brighter became the light, and vice versa. I could not take 
 notes at the actual moment, but my memory" a slight 
 grimace by way of a smile indicated that forgetting was 
 impossible "is accurate, as you know." 
 
 Fillery did not interrupt, either by word or gesture. 
 
 "The increase of light was accompanied by colour, and 
 the increase of sound led into a measure not actual bars, 
 and never melody, but a distinct measure that involved 
 rhythm. It was musical, as I said. The colour I'm coming 
 to that then took on a very faint tinge of gold or orange, 
 a little red in it sometimes, flame colour almost. The ait 
 was luminous it was radiant. At one time I half expected 
 to see fire. For there was heat as well. Not an unpleasant 
 heat, but a comforting, stimulating, agreeable heat like I 
 was going to say, like the heat of a bright coal fire on a 
 winter's day, but I think the better term is sunlight. I had 
 an impression this heat must burst presently into actual 
 flame. It never did so. The sheets of coloured light rose 
 and fell with the volume of the sound. There were curves 
 and waves and rising columns like spirals, but anything
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 255 
 
 approaching a definite outline, form, or shape" he broke 
 off for a second "figures," he announced abruptly, almost 
 challengingly, staring at the white china bowl in front of 
 him, "I could not swear to." 
 
 He turned suddenly and stared at his chief with an ex- 
 pression half of question, half of challenge; then seemed 
 to change his mind, shrugging his shoulders a very little. 
 But Fillery made no sign. He did not answer. He laid 
 one hand, however, upon the banisters, as though pre- 
 liminary to getting to his feet. The sound about them had 
 been gradually growing less, the vibrations were smaller, 
 its waves perceptibly decreasing. 
 
 Devonham finished his account in a lower voice, speaking 
 rapidly, as though the words burnt his tongue : 
 
 "The sound, I had already discovered, issued from him- 
 self. He was lying on his back, the eyes wide open, the 
 expression peaceful, even happy. The lips were closed. 
 He was humming, continuously humming. Yet the sound 
 came in some way I cannot describe, and could not examine 
 or ascertain, from his whole body, I detected no vibration 
 of the body. It lay half naked, only a corner of the sheet 
 upon it. It lay quite still. The cause of the light and 
 heat, the cause of the movement of air I have called wind 
 I could not ascertain. They came through him, as it were." 
 A slight shiver ran across his body, noticed by his com- 
 panion, but eliciting no comment from him. "I I took his 
 pulse," concluded Devonham, sinking his voice now to a 
 whisper, though a very clear one; "it was very rapid and 
 extraordinarily strong. He seemed entirely unconscious of 
 my presence. I also" again the faint shiver was perceptible 
 "felt his heart. It was I have never felt such perfect 
 action, such power it was beating like an engine, like an 
 engine. And the sense of vitality, of life in the room every- 
 where was electrical. I could have sworn it was packed 
 to the walls with with others." Devonham never ceased 
 to watch his companion keenly while he spoke. 
 
 Fillery then put "his first question. 
 
 "And the effect upon yourself?" he asked quietly. "I
 
 25G THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 mean any emotional disturbance? Anything, for instance, 
 like what you saw in the Jura forests?" He did not look 
 at his colleague; he stood up; the sound about them had 
 now ceased almost entirely and only faint, dying fragments 
 of it reached them. "Roughly speaking," he added, making 
 a half movement to go upstairs. He understood the inner 
 struggle going on ; he wished to make it easy for him. For 
 the complete account he did not press him. 
 
 Devonham rose too; he walked over to the china bowl, 
 took up a card, read it and let it fall again. The sun was 
 over the horizon now, and a pallid light showed objects 
 clearly. It showed the whiteness of the thin, tired face. He 
 turned and walked slowly back across the hall. The first 
 cart went clattering noisily down the street. At the same 
 moment a final sound from the room upstairs came floating 
 down into the chill early air. 
 
 "My interest, of course," began Devonham, his hands 
 in his pockets, his body rigid, as he looked up into his 
 companion's eyes, "was very concentrated, my mind in- 
 tensely active." He paused, then added cautiously: "I may 
 confess, however I must admit, that is, a certain in- 
 crease of of well, a general sense of well-being, let me 
 call it. The heat, you see. A feeling of peace, if you 
 like it better beyond the fear," he blurted out finally, 
 changing his hands from his coat to his trouser pockets, 
 as though the new position protected him better from attack. 
 "Also I somehow expected any moment to see outlines, 
 forms, something new !" He stared frankly into the eyes 
 of the man who, from the step above him, returned his 
 gaze with equal frankness. "And you Edward ?" he asked 
 with great suddenness. 
 
 "Joy? Could you describe it as joy?" His companion 
 ignored the reference to new forms. He also ignored the 
 sudden question. "Any increase of ?" 
 
 "Vitality, you want to say. The word joy is meaningless, 
 as you know." 
 
 "An intensification of consciousness in any way?"
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 257 
 
 But Devonham had reached his limit of possible con- 
 fession. He did not reply for a moment. He took a step 
 forward and stood beside Fillery on the stairs. His man- 
 ner had abruptly changed. It was as though he had come 
 to a conclusion suddenly. His reply, when it came, was 
 no reply at all: 
 
 "Heat and light are favourable, of course, to life," he 
 remarked. "You remember Joaquin Mueller: 'the optic 
 nerve, under the action of light, acts as a stimulus to the 
 organs of the imagination and fancy.'" 
 
 Fillery smiled as he took his arm and they went quietly 
 upstairs together. The quoting was a sign of returning 
 confidence. He said something to himself about the absence 
 of light, but so low it was under his breath almost, and 
 even if his companion heard it, he made no comment: 
 "There was no moon at all to-night till well past three, and 
 even then her light was of the faintest. . . ." 
 
 No sound was now audible. They entered a room that 
 was filled with silence and with peace. A faint ray of morn- 
 ing sunlight showed the form of the patient sleeping calmly, 
 the body entirely uncovered. There was an expression of 
 quiet happiness upon the face whose perfect health sug- 
 gested perhaps radiance. But there was a change as well, 
 though indescribable there was power. He did not stir 
 as they approached the bed. The breathing was regular 
 and very deep. 
 
 Standing beside him a moment, Fillery sniffed the air, 
 then smiled. There was a perfume of wild flowers. There 
 was, in spite of the cool morning air, a pleasant warmth. 
 
 "You notice anything?" he whispered, turning to his 
 colleague. 
 
 Devonham likewise sniffed the air. "The window's wide 
 open," was the low rejoinder. "There are conservatories 
 at the back of every house all down the row." 
 
 And they left the room on tiptoe, closing the door behind 
 them very softly. Upon Devonham's face lay a curious 
 expression, half anxiety, half pain.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 DR. FILLER Y, lying on a couch in his patient's bed- 
 room, snatched some four to five hours' sleep, though, 
 if "snatched," it was certainly enjoyed a deep, dream- 
 less, reposeful slumber. He woke, refreshed in mind and 
 body, and the first thing he saw, even before he had time 
 to stretch a limb or move his head, was two great blue eyes 
 gazing into his own across the room. They belonged, it 
 first struck him, to some strange being that had followed 
 him out of sleep he had not yet recovered full conscious- 
 ness and the effects of sleep still hovered; then an earlier 
 phrase recurred : to some divine great animal. 
 
 "N. H.," in his bed in the opposite corner, lay gazing 
 at him. He returned the gaze. Into the blue eyes came 
 at once a look of happy recognition, of contentment, almost 
 a smile. Then they closed again in sleep. 
 
 The room was full of morning sunshine. Fillery rose 
 quietly, and performed his toilet in his own quarters, but 
 on returning after a hurried breakfast, the patient still slept 
 soundly. He slept on for hours, he slept the morning 
 through; but for the obvious evidences of perfect normal 
 health, it might have been a state of coma. The body did 
 not even change its position once. 
 
 He left Devonham in charge, and was on his way to 
 visit some of the other cases, when Nurse Robbins stood 
 before him. Miss Khilkoff had "called to inquire after Mr. 
 LeVallon," and was waiting downstairs in case Dr. Fillery 
 could also see her. 
 
 He glanced at her pretty slim figure and delicate com- 
 plexion, her hair, fine, plentiful and shiny, her dark eyes 
 with a twinkle in them. She was an attractive, intelligent, 
 
 258
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 259 
 
 experienced, young woman, tactful too, and of great use 
 with extra sensitive patients. She was, of course, already 
 hopelessly in love with her present "case." His "singing," 
 so she called it to Mrs. Soames, had excited her "like a 
 glass of wine some music makes you feel like that so that 
 you could love everybody in the world." She already called 
 him Master. 
 
 "Please say I will be down at once," said Dr. Fillery, 
 watching her for the first time with interest as he remem- 
 bered these details Paul had told him. The girl, it now 
 struck him, was intensely alive. There was a gain, an in- 
 crease, in her appearance somewhere. He recalled also 
 the matron's remark she was not usually loquacious with 
 her nurses that "he's no ordinary case, and I've seen a 
 good few, haven't I ? The way he understands animals and 
 flowers alone proves that!" 
 
 Dr. Fillery went downstairs. 
 
 His first rapid survey of the girl, exhaustive for all its 
 quickness he knew her so well showed him that no out- 
 ward signs of excitement were visible. Calm, poised, gentle 
 as ever, the same generous tenderness in the eyes, the same 
 sweet firmness in the mouth, the familiar steadiness that 
 was the result of an inner surety all were there as though 
 the wild scene of the night before had never been. Yet 
 all those were heightened. Her beauty had curiously in- 
 creased. 
 
 "Come into my study," he said, taking her hand and 
 leading the way. "We shan't be disturbed there. Besides, 
 it's ours, isn't it ? We mustn't forget that you are a member 
 of the Firm." 
 
 He was aware of her soft beauty invading, penetrating 
 him, aware, too, somehow, that she was in her most imper- 
 sonal mood. But for all that, her nature could not hide 
 itself, nor could signs of a certain, subtle change she had 
 undergone fail to obtrude themselves. In a single night, 
 it seemed, she had blossomed into a wondrous ripe maturity ; 
 like some strange flower that opens to the darkness, the
 
 260 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 bud had burst suddenly into full, sweet bloom, whose com- 
 ing only moon and stars had witnessed. There was moon- 
 light now in her dark mysterious eyes as she glanced at 
 him ; there was the gold of stars in her tender, yet curious 
 smile, as she answered in her low voice "Of course, I 
 always was a partner in the Firm" there was the grace 
 and rhythm of a wild flower swaying in the wind, as she 
 passed before him into the quiet room and sank into his 
 own swinging armchair at the desk. But there was some- 
 thing else as well. 
 
 A detail of his recent Vision slid past his inner sight 
 again while he watched her. ... "I thought I felt sure 
 you would come," he said. He looked at her admiringly, 
 but peace strong in his heart. "The ordeal," he went on 
 in a curious voice, "would have been too much for most 
 women, but you" he smiled, and the sympathy in his voice 
 increased "you, I see, have only gained from it. You've 
 mastered, conquered it. I wonder" looking away from 
 her almost as if speaking to himself "have you wholly 
 understood it ?" 
 
 He realized vividly in that moment what she, as a young, 
 unmarried girl, had suffered before the eyes of all those 
 prying eyes and gossiping tongues. His admiration 
 deepened. 
 
 She did not take up his words, however. "I've come to 
 inquire," she said simply in an even voice, "for father and 
 myself. He wanted to know if you got home all right, 
 and how Julian LeVallon is." The tone, the heightened 
 colour in the cheek, as she spoke the name no one had yet 
 used, explained, partly at least, to the experienced man who 
 listened, the secret of her sudden blossoming. Also she 
 used her father, though unconsciously, perhaps. "He was 
 afraid the electricity the lightning even had" she hesi- 
 tated, smiled a little, then added, as though she herself 
 knew otherwise "done something to him." 
 
 Fillery laughed with her then. "As it has done to you," 
 he thought, but did not speak the words. The need of
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 261 
 
 formula was past. He thanked her, adding that it was 
 sweet yet right that she had come herself, instead of writ- 
 ing or telephoning. "And you may set your your father's 
 mind at rest, for all goes well. The electricity, of course," 
 he added, on his own behalf as well as hers, "was more 
 than most of us could manage. Electricity explains every- 
 thing except itself, doesn't it?" 
 
 He was inwardly examining her with an intense and 
 accurate observation. She seemed the same, yet different. 
 The sudden flowering into beauty was simply enough ex- 
 plained. It was another change he now became more and 
 more aware of. In this way a ship, grown familiar during 
 the long voyage, changes on coming into port. The decks 
 and staircases look different when the vessel lies motionless 
 at the dock. It becomes half recognizable, half strange. 
 Gone is the old familiarity, gone also one's own former 
 angle of vision. It is difficult to find one's way about her. 
 Soon she will set sail again, but in another direction, and 
 with new passengers using her decks, her corners, hatch- 
 ways . . . telling their secrets of love and hate with that 
 recklessness the open sea and sky make easy. . . . And 
 now with the girl before him he couldn't quite find his 
 way about her as of old ... it was the same familiar ship, 
 yet it was otherwise, and he, a new passenger, acknowledged 
 the freedom of sea and sky. 
 
 "And you Iraida?" he asked. "It was brave of you to 
 come." 
 
 She liked evidently the use of her real name, for she 
 smiled, aware all the time of his intent observation, aware 
 probably also of his hidden pain, yet no sign of awkward- 
 ness in her; to this man she could talk openly, or, on the 
 contrary, conceal her thoughts, sure of his tact and judg- 
 ment. He would never intrude unwisely. 
 
 "It was natural, Edward," she observed frankly in return. 
 
 "Yes, I suppose it was. Natural is exactly the right 
 word. You have perhaps found yourself at last," and again 
 he used her real name, "Iraida."
 
 262 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 "It feels like that," she replied slowly. She paused. "I 
 have found, at least, something definite that I have to do. 
 I feel that I must care for him." Her eyes, as she said 
 it, were untroubled. 
 
 The well-known Nayan flashed back a moment in the 
 words; he recognized to use his simile a familiar corner 
 of the deck where he had sat and talked for hours beneath 
 the quiet stars to someone who understood, yet remained 
 ever impersonal. And the person he talked with came over 
 suddenly and stood beside him and took his hand between 
 her own soft gloved ones : 
 
 "You told me, Edward, he would need a woman to help 
 him. That's what you mean by 'natural' isn't it? And 
 I am she, perhaps." 
 
 "I think you are," came in a level tone. 
 
 "I know it," she said suddenly, both her eyes looking 
 down upon his face. "Yes, I suppose I know it." 
 
 "Because you need him," his voice, equally secure, made 
 answer. 
 
 Still keeping his hand tight between her own, her dark 
 eyes still searching his, she made no sign that his blunt 
 statement was accepted, much less admitted. Instead she 
 asked a question he was not prepared for: "You would 
 like that, Edward? You wish it?" 
 
 She was so close against his chair that her fur-trimmed 
 coat brushed his shoulder ; yet, though with eyes and touch 
 and physical presence she was so near, he felt that she 
 herself had gone far, far away into some other place. He 
 drew his hand free. "Iraida," he said quietly, "I wish the 
 best for him and for you. And I believe this is the best 
 for him and you." He put his patient first. He was 
 aware that the girl, for all her outer calmness, trembled. 
 
 "It is," she said, her voice as quiet as his own; and after 
 a moment's hesitation, she went back to her seat again. 
 "If you think I can be of use," she added. "I'm ready." 
 
 A little pause fell between them, during which Dr. Fillery
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 263 
 
 touched an electric bell beside his chair. Nurse Robbins 
 appeared with what seemed miraculous swiftness. "Stifl 
 sleeping quietly, sir, and pulse normal again," she replied 
 in answer to a question, then vanished as suddenly as she 
 had come. He looked into the girl's eyes across the room. 
 "A competent, reliable nurse," he remarked, "and, as you 
 saw, a pretty woman." He glanced out of the window. 
 "She is unmarried." He mentioned it apparently to the 
 sky. 
 
 The quick mind took in his meaning instantly. "All 
 women will be drawn to him irresistibly, of course," she 
 said. "But it is not that." 
 
 "No, no, of course it is not that," he agreed at once. "I 
 should like you to see him, though not, however, just 
 
 yet " He went on after a moment's reflection, and 
 
 speaking slowly: "I should like you to wait a little. It's 
 best. There has been a a certain disturbance in his 
 being " 
 
 "It's his first experience," she began, "of beauty " 
 
 "Of beauty in women, yes," he finished for her. "It is. 
 We must avoid anything in the nature of a violent 
 shock " 
 
 "He has asked for me?" she interrupted again, in her 
 quiet way. 
 
 He shook his head. "And we cannot be sure that it was 
 you as you he sought and is affected by. The call he 
 hears is, perhaps, hardly the call that sounds in most men's 
 ears, I mean." 
 
 The hint of warning guidance was audible in his voice, 
 as well as visible in his eyes and manner. The laughter 
 they both betrayed, a grave and curious laughter perhaps, 
 was brief, yet enough to conceal stranger emotions that 
 rose like dumb, gazing figures almost before their eyes. 
 Yet if she knew inner turmoil, emotion of any troubling 
 sort, she concealed it perfectly. 
 
 "I am glad," the girl said presently. "Oh, I am really
 
 264 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 glad. I think I understand, Edward." And, even while 
 he sat silent for a bit, watching her with an ever-growing 
 admiration that at the same time marvelled, he saw the 
 wonder of great questions riding through her face. The 
 recollection of what she had suffered publicly in the Studio 
 a few hours before came into his mind again. In these 
 questions, perhaps, lay the only signs of the hidden storm 
 below the surface. 
 
 "Are there are there such things as Nature-Beings, 
 Edward?" she asked abruptly. "We know this is his first 
 experience. Are there then ?" 
 
 He was prepared a little for this kind of question by 
 her eyes. "We have no evidence, of course," he replied; 
 "not a scrap of evidence for anything of the sort. There 
 are people, however, so close to Nature, so intimate with 
 her, that we may say they are strangely, inexplicably 
 akin." 
 
 "Has he a soul a human soul like ours?" she asked 
 point blank. 
 
 "He is perhaps not quite like us. That may be your 
 task, Iraida," he added enigmatically. He watched her 
 more closely than she knew. 
 
 She appeared to ponder his words for a few minutes; 
 then she asked abruptly : "And when do you think I ought 
 to come and see him ? You will let me know ?" 
 
 "I will let you know. A few days perhaps, perhaps a 
 week, perhaps longer. Some education, I think, is neces- 
 sary first." He gazed at her thoughtfully, and she returned 
 his look, her dark eyes filled with the wonder that was 
 both of a child and of a woman, and yet with a security 
 of something that was of neither. "It will be a a great 
 effort to you," he ventured with significant and sympathetic 
 understanding, "after what happened. It is brave and 
 generous of you " He broke off. 
 
 She nodded, but at once afterwards shook her head. She 
 rose then to go, but Dr. Fillery stopped her. He rose 
 too.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 265 
 
 "Nayan, I now want your help," he said with more 
 emotion than he had yet shown. "My responsibility, as 
 you may guess, is not light and " 
 
 "And he is in your sole charge, you mean." She had 
 willingly resumed her seat, and made herself comfortable 
 with a cushion he arranged for her. He was aware chiefly 
 of her eyes, for in them glowed light and fire he had never 
 seen there before but still in their depths. 
 
 "Well yes, partly," he replied, lighting a cigarette, 
 "though Paul is ready with help and sympathy whenever 
 needed. But the charge, as you call it, is not mine alone: 
 it is ours." 
 
 "Ours!" She started, though almost imperceptibly, as 
 she repeated his word. 
 
 "Subconsciously," he said in a firm voice, "we three 
 are similar. We are together. We obey half instinctively 
 the unknown laws of" he hesitated a moment "of some 
 unknown state of being." He added then a singular sen- 
 tence, though so low it seemed almost to himself : "Had 
 we been man and wife, Iraida, our child must have been 
 like him." 
 
 "Yes," she said, leaning forward a little in her chair, 
 increased warmth, yet no blush, upon her skin. "Yes, 
 Edward, we three are somehow together in this, aren't 
 we? Oh, I feel it. It pours over me like a great wind, 
 a wind with heat in it." Her hands clasped her knee, as 
 they gazed at one another for a moment's silence. "I feel 
 it," she repeated presently. "I'm sure of it, quite sure." 
 
 She stretched out a spirit hand, as it were, for an instant 
 across the impersonal barrier between them, but he did 
 not take it, pretending he did not see it. 
 
 "Ours, Nayan," he emphasized, again using the name 
 that belonged to everyone. "Therefore, you see, I want 
 you to tell me if you will what you felt, experienced, 
 perceived in the Studio last night." After watching her 
 a little, he qualified: "Another day, if you would like to 
 think it over. But some time, without fail. For my part,
 
 266 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 I will confess though I think you already know it that 
 I brought him there on purpose " 
 
 "To see ray effect upon him, Edward." 
 
 "But in his interest, and in the interest of my possible 
 future treatment. His effect upon yourself was not my 
 motive. You believe that." 
 
 "I know, I know. And I will tell you gladly. Indeed, 
 I want to." 
 
 He was aware, as she said it, that it would be a satis- 
 faction to her to talk; she would welcome the relief of 
 confession; she could speak to him as doctor now, as pro- 
 fessional man, as healer, and this, too, without betraying 
 the impersonal attitude she evidently wore and had adopted 
 possibly he wondered? in self-protection. "Tell me 
 exactly what it is you would like to know, please, Edward," 
 she added, and instinctively moved to the sofa, so that he 
 might occupy the professional swinging chair at the desk. 
 
 "What you saw, Nayan," he began, accepting the change 
 of position without comment, because he knew it helped 
 her. "What you saw is of value, I think, first." 
 
 He had all his usual self-control again, for he was now 
 on his throne, his seat of power ; his inner attitude changed 
 subtly; he was examining two patients the girl and him- 
 self. She sat before him demure, obedient, honest, very 
 sweet but very strong; if her perfume reached him he did 
 not notice it, the appeal of her loveliness went past him, 
 he did not see her eyes. He had a very comely and intel- 
 ligent young woman facing him, and the glow, as it were, 
 of an intense inner activity, strongly suppressed, was the 
 chief quality in her that he noted. But his new attitude 
 made other things, too, stand out sharply : he realized there 
 was confusion in her own mind and heart. Her being was 
 not wholly at one with itself. This impersonal role meant 
 safety until she was sure of herself; and so far she had 
 been entirely and admirably non-committal. No girl, he 
 remembered, could look back upon what she had experienced
 
 THF/ BRIGHT MESSENGER 267 
 
 in the Studio, upon what she had herself said and done, 
 before a crowd of onlookers too, without deep feelings of 
 a mixed and even violent kind. That scene with a young 
 man she had never seen before must bring painful 
 memories ; if it was love at first sight the memories must 
 be more painful still. But was it a case of this sudden, 
 rapturous love? What, indeed, were her feelings? What 
 at any rate was her dominant feeling? She had felt his 
 appeal beyond all question, but was it as Nayan or as 
 Iraida that she felt it? 
 
 She was non-committal and impersonal, conscious that 
 therein safety lay until, having become one with herself, 
 harmonious, she could feel absolutely sure. One hint only 
 had she dropped it was Nayan speaking that her mother- 
 ing, maternal instinct was needed and that she must obey 
 its prompting. She must "care" for him. . . . 
 
 Dr. Fillery, meanwhile, though he might easily have 
 probed and made discoveries without her knowing that 
 he did so, was not the man to use his powers now. Unless 
 she gave of her own free will, he would not ask. He would 
 close eyes and ears even to any chance betrayal or uncon- 
 scious revelation. 
 
 "When you first looked in, for instance? You had just 
 come in from the street, I think. You opened the door 
 on your way upstairs. Do you remember?" 
 
 She remembered perfectly. "I wanted to see who was 
 there. You, I think, were chiefly in my thoughts I was 
 wondering if you had come." Her voice was even, her 
 eyes quite steady; she chose her next words slowly: "I 
 saw to my intense surprise a figure of light." 
 
 "Shining, you mean? A shining figure?" 
 
 She nodded her head, as one little hand put back a stray- 
 ing wisp of dark hair from her forehead. "A figure like 
 flame," she agreed. "I saw it quite clearly. I saw every- 
 thing else quite clearly too the inner room, various people 
 standing about, the piano, the thick smoke, everything as
 
 268 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 usual. I saw you. You were in the big outer room beyond, 
 but your face was very distinct. You were staring staring 
 straight at me." 
 
 "True," put in Dr. Fillery; "I saw you in the doorway 
 plainly." 
 
 "In the foreground, by itself apart somehow, though 
 surrounded by people, was this shining, radiant outline. I 
 thought it was a Vision the first thing of that sort I had 
 ever seen in my life." 
 
 "That was your very first impression even before you 
 had time to think?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "It struck you as unusual?" 
 
 "I cannot say more than that. I knew by the light it 
 was unusual. Then it moved talking to Povey or Kemp- 
 ster or someone and I realized in a flash who it was. I 
 knew it must be your friend, the man you had promised 
 to bring Ju " 
 
 "And then ?" he asked quickly, before she could pro- 
 nounce the name. 
 
 "And then " 
 
 She stopped, and her eyes looked away from him, not 
 in the sense that they moved but that their focus changed 
 as though she looked at something else, at something within 
 herself, no longer, therefore, at the face in front of her. 
 He waited; he understood that she was searching among 
 deep, strange, seething memories; he let her search; and, 
 watching closely, he presently saw the sight return into 
 her eyes from its inward plunge. 
 
 "And when you knew who it was," he asked very quietly, 
 "were you still surprised? Did he look as you expected 
 him to look, for instance ?" 
 
 "I had expected nothing, you see, Edward, because I 
 had not been consciously thinking about his coming. No 
 mental picture was present in me at all. But the moment 
 I realized who it was, the light seemed to go I just saw 
 a young man standing there, with his head turned sideways
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 269 
 
 to me. The light, I suppose, lasted for a second only 
 that first second. As to how he looked? Well, he looked, 
 not only bigger he is bigger than most men," she went 
 on, "but he looked" her voice hushed instinctively a little 
 on the adjective "different." 
 
 Her companion made a gesture of agreement, waiting in 
 silence for what was to follow. 
 
 "He looked so extraordinary, so wonderful," she resumed, 
 gazing steadily into his eyes, "that I I can hardly put it 
 into words, Edward, unless I use childish language." She 
 broke off and sighed, and something, he fancied, in her 
 wavered for a second, though it was certainly neither the 
 voice nor the eyes. A faint trembling again perhaps ran 
 through her body. Her account was so deliberately truth- 
 ful that it impressed him more than he quite understood. 
 He was aware of pathos in her, of some vague trouble 
 very poignant yet inexplicable. A breath of awe, it seemed, 
 entered the room and moved between them. 
 
 "The childish words are probably the best, the right ones," 
 he told her gently. 
 
 "An angel," she said instantly in a hushed tone, "I thought 
 of an angel. There is no other word I can find. But some- 
 how a helpless one. An angel out of place." 
 
 He looked hard at her, his manner encouraging though 
 grave ; he said no word ; he did not smile. 
 
 "Someone not of this earth quite," she added. "Not a 
 man, at any rate." 
 
 Still more gently, he then asked her what she felt. 
 
 "At first I couldn't move," she went on, her voice normal 
 again. "I must have stood there ten minutes fully, per- 
 haps longer" her listener did not correct the statement 
 "when I suddenly recovered and looked about for you, 
 Edward, but could not see you. I needed you, but could 
 not find you. I remember feeling somehow that I had lost 
 you. I tried to call for you in my heart. There was no 
 answer. . . . Then then I closed the door quietly and went 
 upstairs to change from my street clothes."
 
 270 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 She paused and passed a hand slowly across her fore- 
 head. Dr. Fillery asked casually a curious question: 
 
 "Do you remember how you got upstairs, Nayan?" 
 
 Her hand dropped instantly ; she started. "It's very odd 
 x you should ask me that, Edward," she said, gazing at him 
 with a slightly rising colour in her face, an increase of fire 
 glowing in her eyes; "very odd indeed. I was just trying 
 to think how I could describe it to you. No. Actually I 
 do not remember how I got upstairs. All I know is I 
 was suddenly in my room." A new intensity appeared in 
 voice and manner. "It seemed to me I flew or that 
 something carried me." 
 
 "Yes, Nayan, yes. It's quite natural you should have 
 felt like that." 
 
 "Is it? I remember so little of what I actually felt. I 
 wonder I wonder," she went on softly, with an air almost 
 of talking to herself, "if it will ever come back again what 
 I felt then " 
 
 "Such moments of subliminal excitement," Dr. Fillery 
 reminded her gently, "have the effect of obliterating memory 
 sometimes " 
 
 "Excitement," she caught him up. "Yes, I suppose it 
 was excitement. But it was more, much more, than that. 
 Stimulated I think that's the word really. I felt caught 
 away somewhere, caught away, caught up as if into the 
 rest of myself into the whole of myself. I became vast" 
 she smiled curiously "if you know what I mean in 
 several places at once, perhaps, is better. It was an immense 
 feeling no, I mean a feeling of immensity " 
 
 "Happy?" His voice was low. 
 
 Her eyes answered even before her words, as the memory 
 came back a little in response to his cautious suggestion. 
 
 "A new feeling altogether," she replied, returning his 
 clear gaze with her frank, innocent eyes that had grown 
 still more brilliant. "A feeling I have never known be- 
 fore." She talked more rapidly now, leaning forward a 
 little in her chair. "I felt in the open air somehow, with
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 271 
 
 flowers, trees, hot burning sunshine and sweet winds rush- 
 ing to and fro. It was something bigger than happiness 
 a sort of intoxicating joy, I think. It was liberty, but 
 of an enormous spiritual kind. I wanted to dance I be- 
 lieve I did dance yes, I'm sure I did, and with hardly 
 anything on 'my body. I wanted to sing I sang down- 
 stairs, of course " 
 
 "I heard," he put in briefly. He did not add that she 
 had never sung like that before. 
 
 "The moment I came into the room, yes, I remember 
 I went straight to the piano without a word to anyone." 
 She reflected a moment. "I suppose I had to. There was 
 something new in me I could only express by music 
 rhythm, that is, not language." 
 
 "It was natural," Dr. Fillery said again. "Quite natural, 
 I think." 
 
 "Yes, Edward, I suppose it was," she answered, then sank 
 back in her chair, as though she had told him all there was 
 to tell. 
 
 Dr. Fillery smoked in silence for a few minutes, then 
 rose and touched the bell as before, and, as before, Nurse 
 Robbins appeared with the same miraculous speed. There 
 was a brief colloquy at the door; the woman was gone 
 again, and the doctor turned back into the room with a 
 look of satisfaction on his face. All, apparently, was going 
 well upstairs. He did not sit down, however; he stood 
 looking out of the window at the drab wintry sky of motion- 
 less clouds, his back to his companion. It was midday, but 
 the light, while making all things visible, was not light; 
 there was no shine, no touch of radiance, no hint of sparkle 
 beneath the canopy of sullen cloud. The English winter's 
 day was visible, no more than that. Yet it was not the 
 English day, nor the clouds, nor the bleak dead atmosphere 
 he looked at. In a single second his sight travelled far, 
 far away, covering an enormous interval in space and time, 
 in condition too. He saw a radiant world of sun-drenched 
 flowers "tossing with random airs of an unearthly wind";
 
 272 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 he saw a foam of forest leaves shaking and dancing against 
 a deep blue sky ; he say a valley whose streams and emerald 
 turf knew not the touch of human feet. . . . The familiar 
 symbols he saw, but inflamed with new meaning. 
 
 "Thank you, Edward, thank you" she was just behind 
 him, her hands upon his shoulders. "You understand 
 everything in the world!" she added, "and out of it," but 
 too low for him to hear. 
 
 He came back with an effort, turning towards her. They 
 were standing level now and very close, eyes looking into 
 eyes. He felt her breath upon his face, her perfume rose 
 about him, her lips were moving just in front of him 
 yet, for a second, he did not know who she was. It was 
 as though she had not come with him out of that valley, 
 not come back with him. . . . An insatiable longing seized 
 him to return and find her, stay with her. The ache of 
 an intolerable yearning was in his heart, yet a sudden flash 
 of understanding that brought a bigger, almost an unearthly 
 joy in its train. At the call of some service, some duty, 
 some help to be rendered to humanity, the three of them 
 together he, "N. H.," the girl were in temporary exile 
 from their rightful home. The scent of wild flowers rose 
 about him. He suddenly remembered, recognized, and gave 
 a little start. He had left her behind in the valley Iraida ; 
 it was Nayan who now stood before him. 
 
 He uttered a dry little laugh. "You startled me, Nayan. 
 I was thinking. I didn't hear you." She had just thanked 
 him for something oh, yes because he had left her alone 
 for a moment, giving her time to collect herself after the 
 long cross-examination. 
 
 He took both her hands in his. 
 
 "Our patient then isn't it?" he asked in a firm voice, 
 looking deep into her luminous eyes. He saw no fire in 
 them now. 
 
 "I'll do all I can, Edward." 
 
 She returned the pressure of his hands. His keen in- 
 sight, operating in spite of himself, had read her clearly.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 273 
 
 It was mother, child and woman he had always known. 
 The three, however, were already in process of disentangle- 
 ment. For the first time during their long acquaintance, 
 what now stood so close before him was the woman. Yet 
 behind the woman like an enveloping shadow stood the 
 mother too. And behind both, again, stood another wild, 
 gigantic, lovely possibility. Was it, then, the child that he 
 had left playing in the radiant valley? . . . The child, he 
 knew, was his always, always, even if the woman was an- 
 other's. . . . He laughed softly. These, after all, were but 
 transitory states in human, earthly evolution, concerned with 
 play, with a production of bodies and so forth. . . . 
 
 He had lost himself in her deep eyes. Her gaze lay 
 all over him, over his entire being, like a warm soft cover- 
 ing that blessed and healed. She was so close that it seemed 
 he drew her breath in with his own. She made a movement 
 then, a tiny gesture. He let go the hands his own had held 
 so long. He turned from the window and from her. He 
 was trembling. 
 
 "What came later," he resumed in his calm, almost in 
 his professional voice, "you probably do not remember?" 
 He went towards his desk. "We need not talk about that. 
 No doubt, in your mind, it all remains a blurred impres- 
 sion " 
 
 She interrupted, following him across the room. "What 
 happened, Edward," she said very quietly in her lowest 
 tone, "/ know. It was all told to me. But my memory, 
 as you say, is so faint as to be worthless really. What I 
 do remember is this" she tapped her open palm with two 
 fingers slowly, as she spoke the words "light, heat, a smell 
 of flowers and a rushing wind that lifted me into some 
 kind of exhilarating liberty where I felt the intense joy 
 of knowing myself somehow free and greater, oh, far 
 greater than I am now." Then she suddenly whispered 
 again too low for him to catch "angelic." A smile, as of 
 glory, rippled across her face. 
 
 His voice, coming quickly, was cool, its tone measured :
 
 274 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 "And you will come to see him the moment I let you 
 know," he interrupted abruptly. "It may be a few days, 
 
 it may be a week. The instant it seems wise " He was 
 
 entirely practical again. 
 
 She went to the door with him. "I'll come, of course," 
 she answered, as he opened the door. 
 
 "I'll let myself out, Edward please. I know the way. 
 There's no good being a partner if one doesn't know the 
 way out " She laughed. 
 
 "And in, remember!" he called down the little passage 
 after her, as, with a smile and a wave of the hand, she 
 was gone. 
 
 He went back to his desk, drew a piece of paper towards 
 him, and jotted a few notes down in briefest fashion. The 
 expression on his rugged face was enigmatical perhaps, but 
 the sternness at least was clear to read, and it was this, 
 combining with an extraordinary tenderness, that drew out 
 its nobility : 
 
 "Intensification of consciousness, involving increased 
 activity of every centre; hearing, sight, touch and smell, 
 all affected. Slight exteriorization of consciousness also 
 took place. No signs of split or divided personality, but 
 an increase of coherence rather. The central self active 
 aware of greater powers in time and space, hence sense 
 of joy, heat, light, sound, motion. Distinct subliminal up- 
 rush, followed by customary loss of memory later. Her 
 whole being, together with neglected tracts as yet untouched 
 by experience her entire being reached simultaneously. 
 Knew herself for the first time a woman but something 
 more as well. Unearthly complex, visible. 
 
 "Appeal made direct to subconscious self. Unfavourable 
 reactions none. Favourable reactions increased physical 
 and mental strength. . . ." 
 
 He laid down his pencil as with a gesture of impatience 
 at its uselessness, and sat back in the chair, thinking. 
 
 The effect "N. H." had upon other people was here 
 again confirmed. That, at least, seemed reasonably clear.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 275 
 
 Vitality was increased; heart and mind caught up an extra 
 gear ; thought leaped, if extravagantly, towards speculation ; 
 emotion deepened, if ecstatically, towards belief. All the 
 normal reactions of the system were speeded up and 
 strengthened. Consciousness was intensified. 
 
 More than this with some it was extended, and sub- 
 liminal powers were set free. In his own experience this 
 had been the case ; the sight, hearing, even a mild degree of 
 divination, had opened in his being. It had, similarly, taken 
 place with Devonham, an unlikely subject, who fought 
 against acknowledging it. Father Collins, too, he suspected 
 he recalled his behaviour and strange language had 
 known also a temporary extension of faculty outside the 
 normal field. He remembered, again, the Customs official, 
 Charing Cross Station, and a dozen other minor in- 
 stances. . . . Indications as yet were slight, he realized, but 
 they were valuable. 
 
 Such abnormal experiences, moreover, each one inter- 
 preted, respectively, in the terms of his own individual 
 being, of his own temperament, his own personal shibbo- 
 leths. The law governing unusual experience operated in- 
 variably. 
 
 Was not his own particular "vision" easily explained? 
 It might indeed, had it happened earlier, have found a 
 place in his own book of Advanced Psychology. He re- 
 flected rapidly: He believed the industrial system lay at 
 the root of Civilization's crumbling, and that man must 
 return to Nature therefore his yearnings dramatized them- 
 selves in personified representations of the beauty of Nature. 
 
 He could trace every detail of his Vision to some intense 
 but unrealized yearning, to some deep hope, desire, dream, 
 as yet unfulfilled. Always these yearnings and wishes 
 unfulfilled ! 
 
 Colour, form and sound again he used them one and 
 all in his treatment of special cases, and felt hurt by the 
 ignorant scoffing and denial of his brother doctors. Hence 
 their present dramatization.
 
 276 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 His immense belief, again, in the results upon the Race 
 when once the subliminal powers should have reached the 
 stage where they could be used at will for practical pur- 
 poses this, in its turn, led him to hope, perhaps to believe, 
 that this strange "Case" might prove to be some fabulous 
 bright messenger who brought glad tidings. . . . All, all 
 was explicable enough! 
 
 A smile stole over his face; he began to laugh quietly 
 to himself. . . . 
 
 Yes, he could explain all, trace all to something or other 
 in his being, yet he knew that the real explanation . . . 
 well his cleverest intellectual explanation and analysis 
 were worthless after all. For here lay something utterly 
 beyond his knowledge and experience. . . . 
 
 The note of another searcher recurred to him. 
 
 "Each human being has within himself that restless 
 creative phantasy which is ever engaged in assuaging the 
 harshness of reality. . . . Whoever gives himself unspar- 
 ingly and carefully to self-observation will realize that there 
 dwells within him something which would gladly hide up 
 and cover all that is difficult and questionable in life, and 
 thus procure an easy and free path. Insanity grants the 
 upper hand to this something. When once it is uppermost, 
 reality is more or less quickly driven out." 
 
 But he knew quite well that although he belonged to 
 what he called the "Unstable," the "something" which Jung 
 referred to had by no means obtained "the upper hand." 
 The vista opening to his inner sight led towards a new 
 reality. . . . Ah! If he could only persuade Paul Devon- 
 ham to see what he saw . . !
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 LADY GLEESON had heard from a Promethean what 
 had transpired in the studio after she had left, and 
 her interest was immensely stimulated. These details she 
 had not known when she had driven her hero home, and 
 had felt so strangely drawn to him that she had kissed him 
 in front of Dr. Fillery as though she caressed a prisoner 
 under the eyes of the warder. 
 
 She made her little plans accordingly. It was some days, 
 however, before they bore fruit. The telephone at last 
 rang. It was Dr. Fillery. The nerves in her quivered with 
 anticipation. 
 
 Devonham, it appeared, had been away, and her "kind 
 letters and presents," he regretted to find, had remained 
 unanswered and unacknowledged. Mr. LeVallon had been 
 in the country, too, with his colleague, and letters had not 
 been forwarded. Oh, it would "do him good to see people." 
 It would be delightful if she could spare a moment to looR 
 in. Perhaps for a cup of tea to-morrow? No, to-morrow 
 she was engaged. The next day then. The next day it 
 was. In the morning arrived a brief letter from Mr. Le- 
 Vallon himself : "You will come to tea to-morrow. I thank 
 you. JULIAN LEVALLON." 
 
 Yet there was something both in Dr. Fillery's voice, as 
 in this enigmatic letter, that she did not like. She felt 
 puzzled somewhere. The excitement of a novel intrigue 
 with this unusual youth, none the less, was stimulating. 
 She decided to go to tea. She put off a couple of engage- 
 ments in order to be ^ree. 
 
 A servant let her in. She went upstairs. There was 
 
 277
 
 278 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 no sign of Dr. Fillery nor, thank heaven, of Devonham 
 either. Tea, she saw, was laid for two in the private sitting- 
 room. LeVallon, seated in an arm-chair by the open 
 window, looked "magnificent and overpowering," as she 
 called it. He rose at once to greet her. "Thank you," he 
 said in his great voice. "I am glad to see you." He said 
 it perfectly, as though it had been taught him. He took 
 her hand. Her ravishing smile, perhaps, he did not notice. 
 His face, at any rate, was grave. 
 
 His height, his broad shoulders, his inexperienced eyes 
 and manner again delighted Lady Gleeson. 
 
 The effect upon her receptive temperament, at any rate, 
 was instantaneous. That he showed no cordiality, did not 
 smile, and that his manner was constrained, meant nothing 
 to her or meant what she wished it to mean. He was 
 somewhat overcome, of course, she reflected, that she was 
 here at all. She began at once. Sitting composedly on the 
 edge of the table, so that her pretty silk stockings were 
 visible to the extent she thought just right, she dangled 
 her slim legs and looked him straight in the eyes. She was 
 full of confidence. Her attitude said plainly: "I'm taking 
 a lot of trouble, but you're worth it." 
 
 "Mr. LeVallon," she purred in a teasing yet determined 
 voice, "why do you ignore me?" There was an air of 
 finality about the words. She meant to know. 
 
 LeVallon met her eyes with a look of puzzled surprise, 
 but did not answer. He stood in front of her. He looked 
 really magnificent, a perfect study of the athlete in repose. 
 He might have been a fine Greek statue. 
 
 "Why," she repeated, her lip quivering slightly, "do you 
 ignore me? I want the truth," she added. She was de- 
 lighted to see how taken aback he was. "You don't dislike 
 me." It was not a question. 
 
 Into his eyes stole an expression she could not exactly 
 fathom. She judged, however, that he felt awkward, 
 foolish. Her interest doubtless robbed him of any savoir 
 faire he might possess. This talk face to face was a little
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 279 
 
 too much for any young man, but for a simple country 
 youth it was, of course, more than disconcerting. 
 
 "I'm Lady Gleeson," she informed him, smiling precisely 
 in the way she knew had troubled so many other men. 
 "Angela," she added softly. "You've had my books and 
 flowers and letters. Yet you continue to ignore me. Why, 
 please?" With a different smile and a pathetic, childish, 
 voice: "Have I offended you somehow? Do I displease 
 you ?" 
 
 LeVallon stared at her as though he was not quite certain 
 who she actually was, yet as though he ought to know, 
 and that her words now reminded him. He stared at her 
 with what she called his "awkward and confused" expres- 
 sion, but which Fillery, had he been present, would have 
 recognized as due to his desire to help a pitiful and hungry 
 creature that, in a word, his instinct for service had been 
 a little stirred. 
 
 The scene was certainly curious and unusual. 
 
 LeVallon, with his great strength and dignity, yet some- 
 thing tender, pathetic in his bearing, stood staring 
 at her. Lady Gleeson, brimming with a sense of easy 
 victory, sat on the table-edge, her pretty legs well forward, 
 knowing herself divinely gowned. She had her victim, 
 surely, at a disadvantage. She felt at the same time a faint 
 uneasiness she could not understand. She concealed it, 
 however. 
 
 "I suffer here," he said suddenly in a quiet tone. 
 
 She gave a start. It was the phrase he had used before. 
 She thrilled. She hitched her skirt a fraction higher. 
 
 "Julian, poor boy," she said then stared at him. "How 
 innocent you are!" She said it with apparent impulse, 
 though her little frenzied mind was busy calculating. There 
 came a pause. He said nothing. He was, apparently, quite 
 innocent, extraordinarily, exasperatingly innocent. 
 
 In a low voice, smiling shyly, she added as though it 
 cost her a great effort 
 
 "You do not recognize what is yours."
 
 280 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 "You are sacred!" he replied with startling directness, 
 as though he suddenly understood, yet was stupidly per- 
 plexed. "You already have your man." 
 
 Lady Gleeson gulped down a spasm of laughter. How 
 slow these countrymen could be! Yet she must not shock 
 him. He was suffering, besides. This yokel from the 
 woods and mountains needed a little coaxing. It was natural 
 enough. She must explain and teach, it seemed. Well 
 he was worth the trouble. His beauty was mastering her 
 already. She loved, in particular, his innocence, his shyness, 
 his obvious respect. She almost felt herself a magnanimous 
 woman. 
 
 "My man!" she mentioned. "Oh, he's finished with me 
 long ago. He's bored. He has gone elsewhere. I am 
 alone" she added with an impromptu inspiration "and 
 free to choose." 
 
 "It must be pain and loneliness to you." 
 
 LeVallon looked, she thought, embarrassed. He was 
 struggling with himself, of course. She left the table and 
 came up close to him. She stood on tiptoe, so that her 
 breath might touch his face. Her eyes shone with fire. 
 Her voice trembled a little. It was very low. 
 
 "I choose you," she whispered. She cast down her 
 shining eyes. Her lips took on a prim, inviting turn. She 
 knew she was irresistible like that. She stood back a step, 
 as if expecting some tumultuous onslaught. She waited. 
 
 But the onslaught did not come. LeVallon, towering 
 above her, merely stared. His arms hung motionless. 
 There was, indeed, expression in his face, but it was not 
 the expression that she expected, longed for, deemed her 
 due. It puzzled her, as something entirely new. 
 
 "Me!" he repeated, in an even tone. He gazed at her 
 in a peculiar way. Was it appraisement? Was it halting 
 wonder at his marvellous good fortune? Was it that he 
 hesitated, judging her? He seemed, she thought once for 
 an instant, curiously indifferent. Something in his voice 
 startled her.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 281 
 
 The moment's pause, at any rate, was afflicting. Her 
 spirit burned within her. Only her supreme belief in her- 
 self prevented a premature explosion. Yet something 
 troubled her as well. A tremor ran through her. LeVallon, 
 she remembered, was LeVallon. 
 
 His own thought and feeling lay hidden from her blunt 
 perception since she read no signs unless they were pain- 
 fully obvious. But in his mind in his feeling, rather, 
 since he did not think ran evidently the sudden knowledge 
 of what her meaning was. He understood. But also, per- 
 haps he remembered what Fillery had told him. 
 
 For a long time he kept silent, the emotions in him 
 apparently at grips. Was he suddenly going to carry her 
 away as he had done to that "little Russian poseuse" ? She 
 watched him. He was intensely busy with what occupied 
 his mind, for though he did not speak, his lips were moving. 
 She watched him, impatience and wonder in her, impatience 
 at his slowness, wonder as to what he would do and say 
 when at last his simple mind had decided. And again the 
 odd touch of fear stole over her. Something warned her. 
 This young man thrilled her, but he certainly was strange. 
 This was, indeed, a new experience. Whatever was he 
 thinking about? What in the world was he going to say? 
 His lips were still moving. There was a light in his face. 
 She imagined the very words, could almost read them, hear 
 them. There! Then she heard them, heard some at any 
 rate distinctly: "You are an animal. Yet you walk up- 
 right. ..." 
 
 The scene that followed went like lightning. 
 
 Before Lady Gleeson could move or speak, however, he 
 also said another thing that for one pulsing second, and for 
 the first time in her life, made her own utter worthlessness 
 become appallingly clear to her. It explained the touch of 
 fear. Even her one true thing, her animal passion, was a 
 trumpery affair: 
 
 "There is nothing in you I can work with," he said with 
 gentle, pitying sympathy. "Nothing I can use."
 
 282 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 Then Lady Gleeson blazed. Vanity instantly restored 
 self-confidence. It seemed impossible to believe her ears. 
 
 What had he done? What had he said that caused the 
 explosion ? He watched her abrupt, spasmodic movements 
 with amazemnt. They were so ugly, so unrhythmical. Their 
 violence was so wasteful. 
 
 "You insult me !" she cried, making these violent move- 
 ments of her whole body that, to him, were unintelligible. 
 "How dare you? You " The breath choked her. 
 
 "Cad," he helped her, so suddenly that another mind not 
 far away might almost have dropped the word purposely 
 into his own. "I am so pained," he added, "so pained." 
 He gazed at her as though he longed to help. "For you, I 
 know, are valuable to him who holds you sacred to your 
 husband." 
 
 Lady Gleeson simply could not credit her ears. This 
 neat, though unintentional, way of transferring the epithet 
 to her who deserved it, left her speechless. Her fury in- 
 creased with her inability to express it. She could have 
 struck him, killed him on the spot. Her face changed from 
 white to crimson like some toy with a trick of light inside it. 
 She seemed to emit sparks. She was transfixed. And the 
 shiver that ran through her was, perhaps, for once, both 
 sexual and spiritual at once. 
 
 "You insult me," she cried again helplessly. "You insult 
 me!" 
 
 "If there was something in you I could work with 
 
 help " he began, his face showing a tender sympathy 
 
 that enraged her even more. He started suddenly, looking 
 closer into her blazing eyes. "Ah," he said quickly below 
 his breath, "the fire the little fire!" His expression 
 altered. But Lady Gleeson, full of her grievance, did not 
 catch the words, it seemed. 
 
 " In my tenderest, my most womanly feelings," she 
 choked on, yet noticing the altered expression on his face. 
 "How dare you?" Her voice became shrill and staccato. 
 Then suddenly mistaking the look in his eyes for shame
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 283 
 
 she added: "You shall apologize. You shall apologize at 
 once !" She screamed the words. They were the only ones 
 that her outraged feelings found. 
 
 "You show yourself, my fire," he was saying softly in 
 his deep resonant voice. "Oh, I see and worship now; I 
 understand a little." 
 
 His look astonished her even in the middle of her anger 
 the pity, kindness, gentleness in it. The bewilderment 
 she did not notice. It was the evident desire to be of service 
 to her, to help and comfort, that infuriated her. The su- 
 periority was more than she could stand. 
 
 "And on your knees," she yelped ; "on your knees, too !" 
 
 Drawing herself up, she pointed to the carpet with an 
 air of some tragedy queen to whom a lost self-respect came 
 slowly back. "Down there!" she added, as the gleaming 
 buckle on her shoe indicated the spot. She did not forget 
 to show her pretty stockings as well. 
 
 The picture was comic in the extreme, yet with a pathetic 
 twist about it that, had she possessed a single grain of 
 humour, must have made her feel foolish and shamed until 
 she died, for his kneeling position rendered her insignifi- 
 cance so obvious it was painful in the extreme. LeVallon 
 clasped his hands; his face, wearing a dignity and tender- 
 ness that emphasized its singular innocence and beauty, 
 gazed up into her trivial prettiness, as she sat on the edge 
 of the table behind her, glaring down at him with angry but 
 still hungry eyes. 
 
 "I should have helped and worshipped," his deep voice 
 thrilled. "I am ashamed. Always you are sacred, won- 
 derful. I did not recognize your presence calling me. I 
 did not hear nor understand. I am ashamed." 
 
 The strange words she did not comprehend, even if she 
 heard them properly. For one moment she knew a dread- 
 ful feeling that they were not addressed to her at all, but the 
 sense of returning triumph, the burning desire to extract 
 from him the last ounce of humiliation, to make him suffer 
 as much as in her power lay, these emotions deadened any
 
 284 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 perceptions of a subtler kind. He was kneeling at her feet, 
 stammering his abject apology, and the sight was wine and 
 food to her. Though she could have crushed him with her 
 foot, she could equally have flung herself in utter aban- 
 donment before his glorious crouching strength. She 
 adored the scene. He looked magnificent on his knees. He 
 was. She believed she, too, looked magnificent. 
 
 "You apologize to me," she said in a trembling voice, 
 tense with mingled passions. 
 
 "Oh, with what sadness for my mistake you cannot 
 know," was his strange reply. His voice rang with sin- 
 cerity, his eyes held a yearning that almost lent him 
 radiance. Yet it was the sense of power he gave that 
 thrilled Lady Gleeson most. For she could not understand 
 it. Again a passing hint of something remote, incalculable, 
 touched her sense of awe. She shivered slightly. LeVallon 
 did not move. 
 
 Appeased, yet puzzled, she lowered her face, now pale 
 and intense with eagerness, towards his own, hardly con- 
 scious that she did so, while the faint idea again went past 
 her that he addressed his astonishing words elsewhere. 
 Blind vanity at once dismissed the notion, though the shock 
 of its brief disthroning had been painful. She found satis- 
 faction for her wounded soul. A man who had scorned 
 her, now squirmed before her beauty on his knees, desiring 
 her but too late. 
 
 "You have some manhood, after all !" she exclaimed, still 
 fierce, the upper lip just revealing the shining little teeth. 
 Her power at last had touched him. He suffered. And she 
 was glad. 
 
 "I worship," he repeated, looking through her this time, 
 if not actually past her. "You are sacred, the source of all 
 my life and power." His pain, his worship, the aching 
 passion in him made her forget the insult. Upon that face 
 upturned so close to hers, she now breathed softly. 
 
 "I'll try," she said more calmly. "I'll try and forgive 
 you just this once." The suffering in his eyes, so close
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 285 
 
 against her own, dawned more and more on her. "There, 
 now," she added impulsively, "perhaps I will forgive you 
 altogether !" 
 
 It was a moment of immense and queenly generosity. 
 She felt sublime. 
 
 LeVallon, however, made no rejoinder; one might have 
 thought he had not heard ; only his head sank lower a little 
 before her. 
 
 She had him at her mercy now ; the rapt and wonderful 
 expression in his eyes delighted her. She bent slightly 
 nearer and made as though to kiss him, when a new idea 
 flashed suddenly through her mind. This forgiveness was 
 a shade too quick, too easy. Oh, she knew men. She was 
 not without experience. 
 
 She acted with instant decision upon her new idea, as 
 though delay might tempt her to yield too soon. She 
 straightened up with a sudden jerk, touched his cheek with 
 her hand, then, with a swinging swish of her skirts, but 
 without a single further word, she swept across the room. 
 She went out, throwing him a last glance just before she 
 closed the door. At his kneeling figure and upturned face 
 she flung this last glance of murderous fascination. 
 
 But LeVallon did not move or turn his head ; he made no 
 sign; his attitude remained precisely as before, face up- 
 turned, hands clasped, his expression rapt and grave as 
 ever. His voice continued: 
 
 "I worship you for ever. I did not know you in that 
 little shape. O wondrous central fire, teach me to be aware 
 of you with awe, with joy, with love, even in the smallest 
 things. O perfect flame behind all form. . . ." 
 
 For a long time his deep tones poured their resonant 
 vibration through the room. There came an answering 
 music, low, faint, continuous, a long, deep rhythm running 
 in it. There was a scent of flowers, of open space, a fra- 
 grance of a mountain top. The sounds, the perfume, the 
 touch of cool refreshing wind rose round him, increasing 
 with every minute, till it seemed as though some energy
 
 286 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 informed them. At the centre he knelt steadily, light glow- 
 ing faintly in his face and on his skin. A vortex of energy 
 swept round him. He drew upon it. His own energy was 
 increased and multiplied. He seemed to grow more 
 radiant. . . . 
 
 A few minutes later the door opened softly and Dr. 
 Fillery looked in, hesitated for a second, then advanced into 
 the room. He paused before the kneeling figure. It was 
 noticeable that he was not startled and that his face wore no 
 expression of surprise. A smile indeed lay on his lips. He 
 noticed the scent of flowers, a sweetness in the air as after 
 rain; he felt the immense vitality, the exhilaration, the 
 peace and power too. He had made no sound, but the 
 other, aware of his presence, rose to his feet. 
 
 "I disturbed you," said Fillery. "I'm sorry. Shall I go ?" 
 
 "I was worshipping," replied "N. H." "No, do not go. 
 There was a little flash" he looked about him for an instant 
 as if slightly bewildered "a little sign something I might 
 have helped but it has gone again. Then I worshipped, 
 asking for more power. You notice it?" he asked, with a 
 radiant smile. 
 
 "I notice it," said Fillery, smiling back. He paused a 
 moment. His eye took in the tea-things and saw they were 
 untouched ; he felt the tea-pot. It was still warm. "Come," 
 he said happily; "we'll have some tea together. I'll send 
 for a fresh brew." He rang the bell, then arranged the 
 chairs a little differently. "Your visitor ?" he asked. "You 
 are expecting someone?" 
 
 "N. H." looked round him suddenly. "Oh!" he ex- 
 claimed, "but she has gone !" 
 
 His surprise was comical, but the expression on the face 
 changed in his rapid way at once. "I remember now. Your 
 Lady Gleeson came," he added, a touch of gentle sadness 
 in his voice, "I gave her pain. You had told me. I for- 
 got " 
 
 "You did well," Fillery commented with smiling approval 
 as though the entire scene was known to him, "you did very
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 287 
 
 well. It is a pity, only, that she left too soon. If she had 
 stayed for your worship your wind and fire might have 
 helped " 
 
 "N. H." shook his head. "There is nothing I can work 
 with," he replied. "She is empty. She destroys only. 
 Why," he added, "does she walk upright ?" 
 
 But Lady Gleeson held very different views upon the 
 recent scene. This magnificent young male she had put in 
 his place, but she had not finished with him. No such being 
 had entered her life before. She was woman enough to see 
 he was unusual. But he was magnificent as well, and, 
 secretly, she loved his grand indifference. 
 
 She left the house, however, with but an uncertain feel- 
 ing that the honours were with her. Two days without a 
 word, a sign, from her would bring him begging to her 
 little feet. 
 
 But the "begging" did not come. The bell was silent, the 
 post brought no humble, passionate, abandoned letter. She 
 fumed. She waited. Her husband, recently returned to 
 London and immensely preoccupied with his concessions, 
 her maid too, were aware that Lady Gleeson was impatient. 
 The third, the fourth day came, but still no letter. 
 
 Whereupon it occurred to her that she had possibly gone 
 too far. Having left him on his knees, he was, perhaps, 
 still kneeling in his heart, even prostrate with shame and 
 disappointment. Afraid to write, afraid to call, he knew 
 not what to do. She had evidently administered too severe 
 a lesson. Her callers, meanwhile, convinced her that she 
 was irresistible. There was no woman like her in the 
 world. She had, of course, been too harsh and cruel with 
 this magnificent and innocent youth from the woods and 
 mountains. . . . 
 
 Thus it was that, on the fourth day, feeling magnanimous 
 and generous, big-hearted too, she wrote to him. It would 
 be foolish, in any case, to lose him altogether merely for a 
 moment's pride:
 
 288 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 "DEAR MR. LEVALLON, I feel I must send you a tiny word to 
 let you know that I really have forgiven you. You behaved, you 
 know, in a way that no man of my acquaintance has ever done 
 before. But I feel sure now you did not really mean it. Your forest 
 and mountain gods have not taught you to understand civilized 
 women. So I forgive. 
 
 "Please forget it all, as I have forgotten it. Yours, 
 
 "ANGELA GLEESON. 
 
 "P. S. And you may come and see me soon." 
 
 To which, two days later, came the reply : 
 
 "DEAR LADY GLEESON, I thank you. 
 
 JULIAN LEVALLON." 
 
 Within an hour of its receipt, she wrote : 
 
 "DEAR JULIAN, I am so glad you understand. I knew you would. 
 You may come and see me. I will prove to you that you are really 
 forgiven. There is no need to feel embarrassed. I am interested 
 in you and can help you. Believe me, you need a woman's guidance. 
 All all I have, is yours. 
 
 "I shall be at home this afternoon alone from 4 to 7 o'clock. 
 I shall expect you. My love to you and your grand wild gods! 
 Yours, "ANGELA. 
 
 "P. S. I want you to tell me more about your gods. Will you ?" 
 
 She sent it by special messenger, "Reply" underlined on 
 the envelope. He did not appear at the appointed hour, but 
 the next morning she received his letter. It came by 
 ordinary post. The writing on the envelope was not his. 
 Either Devonham or Fillery had addressed it. And a 
 twinge of unaccustomed emotion troubled her. Intuition, 
 it seems, survives even in the coarsest, most degraded 
 feminine nature, ruins of some divine prerogative perhaps. 
 Lady Gleeson, at any rate, flinched uneasily before she 
 opened the long expected missive : 
 
 "DEAR LADY GLEESON, Be sure that you are always under the 
 protection of the gods even if you do not know them. They are 
 impersonal. They come to you through passion but not through
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 289 
 
 that love of the naked body which is lust. I can work with passion 
 because it is creative, but not with lust, for it is destructive only. 
 Your suffering is the youth and ignorance of the young uncreative 
 animal. I can strive with young animals and can help them. But 
 I cannot work with them. I beg you, listen. I love in you the 
 fire, though it is faint and piti-ful. " JULIAN." 
 
 Lady Gleeson read this letter in front of the looking- 
 glass, then stared at her reflection in the mirror. 
 
 She was dazed. But in spite of the language she thought 
 "silly," she caught the blunt refusal of her generous offer. 
 She understood. Yet, unable to believe it, she looked at her 
 reflection again then, impulsively, went downstairs to see 
 her husband. 
 
 It really was more than she could bear. The man was 
 mad, but that did not excuse him. 
 
 "He is a beast," she informed her husband, tearing up 
 the letter angrily before his eyes in the library, while he 
 watched her with a slavish admiration that increased her 
 fury. "He is nothing but an animal," she added. "He's 
 a a " 
 
 "Who ?" came the question, as though it had been asked 
 before. For Sir George wore a stolid and a patient expres- 
 sion on his kindly face. 
 
 "That man LeVallon," she told him. "One of Dr. 
 Fillery's cases I tried to to help. Now he's written to 
 me " 
 
 George looked up with infinite patience and desire in his 
 kindly gaze. 
 
 "Cut him out," he said dryly, as though he was accus- 
 tomed to such scenes. "Let him rip. Why bother, anyway, 
 with 'patients'?" 
 
 And he crossed the room to comfort her, knowing that 
 presently the reaction must make him seem more desirable 
 than he really was. . . . 
 
 "Never in my house again," she sighed, as he approached 
 her lovingly, his fingers in his close brown beard. "He is 
 simply a beast an animal !"
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 IT was, perhaps, some cosmic humour in the silent, beau- 
 tiful stars which planned that Nayan's visit should 
 follow upon the very heels of Lady Gleeson's call. Those 
 vast Intelligences who note the fall of even a feather, watch- 
 ing and guarding the Race so closely that they may be said 
 in human terms to love it, arranged the details possibly, 
 enjoying the result with their careless, sunny laughter. At 
 any rate, Dr. Fillery quickly sent her word, and she came. 
 To lust "N. H." had not reacted. How would it be with 
 love? 
 
 The beautiful girl entered the room slowly, shyly, as 
 though, certain of herself, she was not quite certain what 
 she was about to meet. Fillery had told her she could help, 
 that she was needed; therefore she came. There was no 
 thought of self in her. Her first visit to Julian LeVallon 
 after his behaviour in the Studio had no selfish motive in 
 it. Her self-confidence, however, went only to a certain 
 point; in the interview with Fillery she had easily con- 
 trolled herself; she was not so sure that her self-control 
 would be adequate now. Though calm outwardly, an in- 
 expressible turmoil surged within. 
 
 She remembered his strength, virility and admiration 
 as a woman; his ingenuous, childlike innocence, an odd 
 appealing helplessness in it somewhere, touched the mother 
 in her. That she divined this latter was, perhaps, the secret 
 of her power over men. Independent of all they had to 
 offer, she touched the highest in them by making them feel 
 they had need of the highest in herself. She obtained thus, 
 without desiring it, the influence that Lady Gleeson, her 
 antithesis, lacked. They called her Nayan the Impersonal. 
 
 290
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 291 
 
 The impersonal in her, nevertheless, that which had with- 
 stood the cunning onslaught of every type of male success- 
 fully, had received a fundamental shock. Both her mod- 
 esty and dignity had been assailed, and in public. Others, 
 women among them, had witnessed her apparent yielding to 
 LeVallon's violence and seen her carried in his arms; they 
 had noted her obvious willingness, had heard her sym- 
 pathetic cry. She knew quite well what the women thought 
 Lady Gleeson had written a little note of sympathy the 
 men as well, and yet she came at Fillery's call to visit, per- 
 haps to help, the offender who had caused it all. 
 
 As she opened the door every nerve she possessed was 
 tingling. The mother in her yearned, but the woman in her 
 sent the blood rushing from her heart in pride, in resent- 
 ment, in something of anger as well. How had he dared to 
 seize her in that awful way? The outrage and the love 
 both tore at her. Yet Nayan was not the kind to shirk 
 self -revelation when it came. She brought some hidden 
 secret with her, although as yet herself uncertain what that 
 secret was. 
 
 Fillery met her on the threshold with his sweet tact and 
 sympathy as usual. He had an authoritative and paternal 
 air that helped and comforted her, and, as she took his hand 
 at once, the look she gave him was more kind and tender 
 than she knew. The last trace of self, at any rate, went 
 out of her as she felt his touch. 
 
 "Here I am," she said; "you sent for me. I promised 
 you." 
 
 He replied in a low tone: "There's no need to refer to 
 anything, of course. Assume I suggest that he has for- 
 gotten all that happened, and you have forgotten too." 
 
 He was aware of nothing but her eyes. The softness, 
 the delicate perfume, the perfect voice, even the fur and 
 flowers all were summed up in her eyes alone. In those 
 eyes he could have lost himself perhaps for ever. 
 
 He led her into the room, a certain abruptness in his 
 manner.
 
 292 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 "I shall leave you alone," he whispered, using his pro- 
 fessional voice. "It is best that he should see you quite 
 alone. I shall not be far away, but you will find him per- 
 fectly quiet. He understands that you are" his tone 
 changed upon the adjective "sacred." 
 
 "Sacred," she murmured to herself, repeating the word, 
 "sacred." 
 
 They smiled. And the door closed behind her. Across 
 the room rose the tall figure of the man she had come to 
 see, dressed in dark blue, a low white shirt open at the neck, 
 a blue tie that matched the strong, clear eyes, the wondrous 
 hair crowning the whole like a flame. The slant of wintry 
 sunlight by chance just caught the great figure as it rose, 
 lightly, easily, as though it floated up out of the floor before 
 her. 
 
 And, as by magic, the last uncertainty in her disappeared ; 
 she knew herself akin to this radiant shape of blue and 
 gold; knew also mysteriously in a way entirely beyond 
 her to explain knew why Edward Fillery was dear to her. 
 Was it that something in the three of them pertained to a 
 common origin? The conviction, half thought, half feel- 
 ing, rose in her as she looked into the blue eyes facing her 
 and took the outstretched hand. 
 
 "You strange lost being ! No one will understand you 
 here. . . ." 
 
 The words flashed through her mind of their own accord, 
 instantly, spontaneously, yet were almost forgotten the same 
 second in the surge of more commonplace feeling that rose 
 after. Only the "here" proved their origin not entirely 
 forgotten. It was the selfless, mothering instinct that now 
 dominated, but the division in her being had, none the less, 
 been indicated as by a white piercing light that searched her 
 inmost nature. That added "here" laid bare, she felt, some 
 part of her which, with all other men, was clothed and cov- 
 ered away. 
 
 Realized though dimly, this troubled her clear mind, as 
 she took the chair he offered, the conviction that she must
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 293 
 
 tend and care for, even love this strange youth, as though 
 he were in exile and none but herself could understand him. 
 She heard the deep resonant voice in the air in front of her : 
 
 "I am not lost now," he said, with his radiant smile, and 
 as if he perceived her thought from the expression in her 
 face. "I wished to take you away to take you back. I 
 wish it still." 
 
 He stood gazing down at her. The deep tones, the shin- 
 ing eyes, the towering stature with its quiet strength these, 
 added to the directness of the language, confused her for 
 a moment. The words were so entirely unexpected. Fillery 
 had led her to suppose otherwise. Yet before the blazing 
 innocence in his face and manner, her composure at once 
 returned. She found no words at first. She smiled up into 
 his eyes, then pointed to a chair. Seated he would be more 
 manageable, she felt. His upright stature was so over- 
 powering. 
 
 "You had forgotten " he went on, obeying her wish 
 
 and sitting down, "but I could not know that you had for- 
 gotten. I apologize" the word sounded oddly on his lips, 
 as though learned recently "for making you suffer." 
 
 "Forgotten !" 
 
 A swift intuition, due to some as yet undecipherable kin- 
 ship, told her that the word bore no reference to the Studio 
 scene. Some larger meaning, scaled to an immenser map, 
 came with it. An unrealized emotion stirred faintly in her 
 as she heard. Her first sight of him as a figure of light 
 returned. 
 
 "But that is all forgiven now," she replied calmly in her 
 firm, gentle voice. "We need not speak of it. You under- 
 stand now" she ended lamely "that it is not pos- 
 sible " 
 
 He listened intently, gravely, as though with a certain 
 effort, his head bent forward to catch every syllable. And 
 as he bent, peering, listening, he might have been some 
 other-worldly being staring down through a window in the 
 sky into the small confusions of earth's affairs.
 
 294 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 "Yes," he said, the moment she stopped speaking, "I 
 understand now. I shall never make you suffer again. 
 Only I could not know that you had forgotten so com- 
 pletely." 
 
 "Forgotten?" she again repeated in spite of herself, for 
 the way he uttered the word again stirred that nameless, 
 deep emotion in her. Their attitudes respectively were 
 changing. She no longer felt that she could "mother" this 
 great figure before her. 
 
 "Where we belong," he answered in his great quiet voice. 
 "There," he added, in a way that made it the counterpart of 
 her own spontaneous and intuitive "here." "It is so easy. 
 I had forgotten too. But Fillery, dear Fillery, helps me to 
 remember, and the stars and flowers and wind, these help 
 me too. And then you when I saw you I suddenly 
 remembered more. I was so happy. I remembered what 
 I had left to come among men and women. I knew that 
 Fillery and you belonged 'there' with me. You, both, had 
 come down for a little time, come down 'here,' but had 
 remained too long. You had become almost as men and 
 women are. I remembered everything when I saw your 
 eyes. I was so happy in a moment, as I looked at you, that 
 I felt I must go back, go home. The central fire called me, 
 called us all three. I wanted to escape and take you with 
 me. I knew by your eyes that you were ready. You called 
 to Fillery. We were off." 
 
 He paused a moment, while she listened in breathless 
 silence. 
 
 "Then, suddenly, you refused. You resisted. Something 
 prevented. The Messengers were there when suddenly" 
 an expression of yearning pain clouded his great eyes a 
 moment "you forgot again. I forgot too, forgot every- 
 thing. The darkness came. It was cold. My enemy, the 
 water, caught me." 
 
 He stopped, and passed his hands across his forehead, 
 sighing, his eyes fixed upon vacancy as with an intense 
 effort to recover something. "And I still forget," he went
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 295 
 
 on, the yearning now transferred from the eyes to the low- 
 ered voice. "I can remember nothing again. All, all is gone 
 from me." The light in his face actually grew dimmer as 
 he slowly uttered the words. He leaned back in his big 
 arm-chair. Again, it occurred to her, it was as if he drew 
 back from that window in the sky. 
 
 A curious hollow, empty of life, seemed to drop into the 
 room between them as his voice ceased. 
 
 While he had been speaking, the girl watched and listened 
 with intense interest and curiosity. She remembered he 
 was a "patient," yet no touch of uneasiness or nervousness 
 was in her. His strange words, meaningless as they might 
 seem, woke deep echoes of some dim buried recognition in 
 her. It amazed and troubled her. This young man, this 
 sinner against the conventions whom she had come to com- 
 fort and forgive, held the reins already. What had hap- 
 pened, what was happening, and how did he contrive it? 
 She was aware of a clear, divining knowledge in him, a 
 power, a directness she could not fathom. He seemed to 
 read her inside out. It was more than uncanny; it was 
 spiritual. It mastered her. 
 
 During his speech he remained very still, without gesture, 
 without change of expression in his face ; he made no move- 
 ment ; only his voice deepened and grew rhythmical. And 
 a power emanated from him she hardly dared resist, much 
 less deny. His voice, his words, reached depths in her she 
 scarcely knew herself. He was so strong, so humble, so 
 simple, yet so strangely peaceful. And suddenly she real- 
 ized it so far beyond her, yet akin. She became aware that 
 the figure seated in the chair, watching her, talking, was 
 but a fraction of his whole self. He was the word oc- 
 curred to her immense. Was she, too, immense? 
 
 More than troubled, she was profoundly stimulated. The 
 mothering instinct in her for the first time seemed to fail a 
 little. The woman in her trembled, not quite sure of itself. 
 But, besides these t\vo, there was another part of her that 
 listened and felt joy a white, radiant joy which, if she
 
 296 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 allowed, must become ecstasy. Whence came this hint of 
 unearthly rapture? Again there rose before her the two 
 significant words : "There" and "Here." 
 
 "I do not quite understand," she replied, after a moment's 
 pause, looking into his eyes steadily, her voice firm, her 
 young face very sweet ; "I do not fully understand, perhaps. 
 But I sympathize." Then she added suddenly, with a little 
 smile: "But, at any rate, I did not come to make you 
 apologize Julian. Please be sure of that. I came to see 
 if I might be of any use if there was anything I might do 
 to make " 
 
 His quick interruption transfixed her. 
 
 "You came," he said in a distinct, low tone, "because you 
 love me and wish me to love you. But we do love already, 
 you, dear Fillery, and I only our love is in that great 
 Service where we all three belong. It is not of this it is 
 
 not here " making an impatient gesture with his hand to 
 
 indicate his general surroundings. 
 
 He broke off instantly, noticing the expression in her face. 
 
 She had realized suddenly, as he spoke, the blind fury of 
 reproduction that sweeps helpless men and women every- 
 where into union, then flings them aside exhausted, useless, 
 its purpose accomplished. Though herself never yet caught 
 by it, the vivid realization made her turn from life with 
 pity and revulsion. Yet were these thoughts her own? 
 Whence did they come, if not? And what was this new 
 blind thing straining in her mind for utterance, bursting 
 upwards like a flame, threatening to split it asunder even 
 in its efforts to escape? "What are these words we use?" 
 darted across her. "What do they mean ? What is it we're 
 talking about really? I don't know quite. Yet it's real, yes, 
 real and true. Only it's beyond our words. It's something 
 I know, but have forgotten. . . ." That was his word 
 again: "Forgotten"! While they used words together, 
 something in her went stumbling, groping, thrusting towards 
 a great shining revelation for which no words existed. And 
 a strange, deep anguish seized her suddenly.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 297 
 
 "Oh!" he cried, "I make you suffer again. The fire 
 leaves you. You are white. I I will apologize" he 
 slipped on to his knees before her "but you do not under- 
 stand. It was not your sacredness I spoke of." Already 
 on his knees before her, but level with her face owing to his 
 great stature, gazing into her eyes with an expression of 
 deep tenderness, humility, almost suffering, he added: "It 
 was our other love, I meant, our great happy service, the 
 thing we have forgotten. You came, I thought, to help me 
 to remember that. The way home I saw you knew." The 
 light streamed back into his face and eyes. 
 
 The tumult and confusion in the girl were natural 
 enough. Her resourcefulness, however, did not fail her at 
 this curious and awkward moment. His words, his conduct 
 were more than she could fathom, yet behind both she 
 divined a source of remote inspiration she had never known 
 before in any "man." The beauty and innocence on the 
 face arrested her faculties for a second. That nameless 
 emotion stirred again. A glimmer of some faint, distant 
 light, whose origin she could not guess, passed flickering 
 across her inner tumult. Some faculty she could not name, 
 at any rate, blew suddenly to white heat in her. This youth 
 on his knees before her had spoken truth. Without know- 
 ing it even herself, she had given him her love, a virgin love, 
 a woman's love hitherto unawakened in her by any other 
 man, but a love not of this earth quite because of him 
 who summoned it into sudden flower. 
 
 Yet at the same time Ke denied the need of it ! He spoke 
 of some marvellous great shining Service that was different 
 from the love of man and woman. 
 
 This too, as some forgotten, lost ideal, she knew was also 
 true. 
 
 Her mind, her heart, her experience, her deepest womanly 
 nature, these, she realized in a glowing instant of extra- 
 ordinary divination, we r e at variance in her. She trembled ; 
 she knew not what to do or say or think. And again, it 
 came to her, that the visible shape before her was but the
 
 298 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 insignificant fraction of a being whose true life spread 
 actively and unconfined through infinite space. 
 
 She then did something that was prompted, though she 
 did not know it thus, by her singleness of heart, her purity 
 of soul and body, her unique and natural instinct to be of 
 use, of service, to others the accumulated practice and 
 effort of her entire life provided the action along a natural 
 line of least resistance: she bent down and put her arm 
 and hand round his great shoulder. She lowered her face. 
 She kissed him most tenderly, with a mother's love, a 
 woman's secret passion perhaps, but yet with something else 
 as well she could not name an unearthly yearning for a 
 greater Ideal than anything she had yet known on earth 
 among humanity. ... It was the invisible she kissed. 
 
 And LeVallon, she realized with immense relief, justified 
 her action, for he did not return the kiss. At the same 
 time she had known quite well it would be thus. That kiss 
 trembled, echoed, in her own greater unrealized self as well. 
 
 "What is it," she whispered, a mysterious passion surging 
 up in her as she raised him to his feet, "that you remember 
 and wish to recover for us all ? Can you tell me ? What 
 is this great, happy, deathless service that we have forgot- 
 ten?" Her voice trembled a little. An immense sense of 
 joy, of liberty, shook out its sunlit wings. 
 
 His expression, as he rose, was something between that 
 of a child and a faithful yearning animal, but of a "divine 
 animal," though she did not know the phrase. Its purity, 
 its sweetness, its power it was the power she noticed 
 chiefly were superb. 
 
 "I cannot tell, I cannot remember," his voice said softly, 
 for all its resonant, virile depth. "It is some state we all 
 have come from into this. We are strangers here. This 
 brain and intellect, this coarse, thick feeling, this selfish- 
 ness, this want of harmony and working together all this 
 is new and strange to us. It is of blind and clumsy chil- 
 dren. This love of one single person for one other single 
 person it is so pitiful. We three have come into this for
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 299 
 
 a time, a little time. It is pain and misery. It is prison. 
 Each one works only for himself. There is no joy. They 
 know nothing of our great Service. We cannot show them. 
 Let us go back " 
 
 Another pause fell between them, another of those 
 singular hollows she had felt before. But this time the 
 hollow was not empty. It was brimmed with surging life. 
 The gulf between her earthly state and another that was 
 nameless, a gulf usually unbridgeable, the fixed gulf, as an 
 old book has it, which may not be crossed without danger to 
 the Race, for whose protection it exists this childhood 
 simile occurred to her. And a sense of awe stirred in her 
 being. It was the realization that this gulf or hollow now 
 brimmed with life, that it could be crossed, that she might 
 step over into another place the sense of awe rose thence, 
 yet came certainly neither from the woman nor the mother 
 in her. 
 
 "I am of another place," Le Vallon went on, plucking the 
 thought naked from her inmost being. "For I am come 
 here recently, and the purpose of my coming is hidden from 
 me, and memory is dark. But it is not entirely dark. Some- 
 times I half remember. Stars, flowers, fire, wind, women 
 here and there bring light into the darkness. Oh," he 
 cried suddenly, "how wonderful they are how wonderful 
 you are on that account to me!" 
 
 The voice held a strange, evoking power perhaps. A 
 thousand yearnings she had all her life suppressed (because 
 they interfered with her duty as she conceived it here 
 and now, fluttered like rising flames within her as she lis- 
 tened. His voice now increased in volume and rhythm, 
 though still quiet and low-pitched ; it was as if a great wind 
 poured behind it with tremendous vibrations, through it, 
 lifting her out of a limited, cramped, everyday self. A 
 delicious warmth of happy comfort, of acceptance, of en- 
 thusiasm glowed in her. And LeVallon's face, she saw, had 
 become radiant, almost as though it emanated light. This 
 light entered her being and brought joy again.
 
 300 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 "Joy !" he said, reading her thought and feeling. "Joy 1" 
 
 "Joy! Another place!" she heard herself repeating, her 
 eyes now fixed upon his own. 
 
 She felt lighter, caught up and away a little, lifted above 
 the solid earth ; as if it was heat that lightened, and wind that 
 bore her upwards. Everything in her became intensified. 
 
 "Another state, another place" her voice seemed to bor- 
 row something of the rhythm in his own, though she did 
 not notice it "but not away from earth, this beautiful 
 earth?" With a happy smile she added, "I love the dear 
 kind earth, I love it." 
 
 The light on his face increased: 
 
 "The earth we love and serve," he said, "is beautiful, but 
 here" he looked about him round the room, at the trees 
 waving through the window, at the misty sky above draping 
 the pale light of the sun "here I am on the surface only. 
 There is confusion and struggle. Everything quarrels 
 against everything else. It is discord and disorder. There 
 is no harmony. Here, on the surface, everything is separate. 
 There is no working together. It is all pain, each little part 
 fighting for itself. Here I am outside there is no joy." 
 
 It was the phrase "I am outside" that flashed something 
 more of his meaning into her. His full meaning lay beyond 
 actual words perhaps ; but this phrase fell like a shock into 
 that inmost self which she had deliberately put away. 
 
 "You are from inside, yes," she exclaimed, marvelling 
 afterwards that she had said it; "within nearer to the 
 centre !" 
 
 And he took the abrupt interruption as though they both 
 understood and spoke of the same one thing together, hav- 
 ing found a language born of similar great yearnings and 
 of forgotten knowledge, times, states, conditions, places. 
 
 "I come," he said, his voice, his bright smile alive with 
 the pressure of untold desire, "from another place that is 
 yes inside, nearer to the centre. I have forgotten almost 
 everything. I remember only that there was harmony, love, 
 work and happiness all combined in the perfect liberty of 
 our great service. We served the earth. We helped the
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 301 
 
 life upon it. There was no end, no broken fragments, no' 
 failure." The voice touched chanting. "There was no 
 death." 
 
 He rose suddenly and came over to her side, and in- 
 stinctively the girl stood up. What she felt and thought as 
 she heard the strange language he used, she hardly knew 
 herself. She only knew in that moment an immense desire 
 to help her kind, an intensification of that great ideal of 
 impersonal service which had always been the keynote of 
 her life. This became vividly stimulated in her. It rose 
 like a dominating, overmastering passion. The sense of in- 
 effectual impotence, of inability to accomplish anything of 
 value against the stolid odds life set against her, the useless- 
 ness of her efforts with the majority, in a word, seemed 
 brushed away, as though greater powers of limitless extent 
 were now at last within her reach. This blazed in her like 
 fire. It shone in her big dark eyes that looked straight into 
 his as they stood facing one another. 
 
 "And that service," he went on in his deep vibrating, 
 half-singing tone, "I see in dear Fillery and in you. I know 
 my own kind. We three, at least, belong. I know my own." 
 The voice seemed to shake her like a wind. 
 
 At the last two words her soul leaped within her. It 
 seemed quite natural that his great arm should take her 
 breast and shoulder and that his lips should touch her cheek 
 and hair. For there was worship in both gestures. 
 
 "Our greater service," she whispered, trembling, "tell me 
 of that. What is it?" His touch against her was like the 
 breath of fire. 
 
 Her womanly instincts, so-called, her maternal love, her 
 feminine impulses deserted her. She was aware solely at 
 that moment of the proximity of a being who called her to 
 a higher, to, at any rate, a different state, to something 
 beyond the impoverished conditions of humanity as she had 
 hitherto experienced it, to something she had ever yearned 
 and longed for without knowing what it was. An extraor- 
 dinary sense of enormous liberty swept over her again. 
 
 His voice broke and the rhythm failed.
 
 302 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 "I cannot tell you," he replied mournfully, the light fad- 
 ing a little from his eyes and face. "I have forgotten. That 
 other place is hidden from me. I am in exile," he added 
 slowly, "but with you and Fillery." His blue eyes filled 
 with moisture; the expression of troubled loneliness was 
 one she had never seen before on any human face. "I suf- 
 fer," he added gently. "We all suffer." 
 
 And, at the sight of it, the yearning to help, to comfort, 
 to fulfil her role as mother, returned confusingly, and rose 
 in her like a tide. He was so big and strong and splendid. 
 He was so helpless. It was, perhaps, the innocence in the 
 great blue eyes that conquered her for the first time in her 
 life. 
 
 But behind, beside the mother in her, stirred also the 
 natural woman. And beyond this again, rose the accu- 
 mulated power of the entire Race. The instinct of all the 
 women of the planet since the world began drove at her. 
 Not easily may an individual escape the deep slavery of the 
 herd. 
 
 The young girl wavered and hestitated. Caught by so 
 many emotions that whirled her as in a vortex, the direc- 
 tion of the resultant impetus hung doubtful for some time. 
 During the half hour's talk, she had entered deeper water 
 than she had ever dared or known before. Life hitherto, 
 so far as men were concerned, had been a simple and an 
 easy thing that she had mastered without difficulty. Her 
 real self lay still unscarred within her. Freely she had given 
 the mothering care and sympathy that were so strong in 
 her, the more freely because the men who asked of her were 
 children, one and all, children who needed her, but from 
 whom she asked nothing in return. If they fell in love, as 
 they usually did, she knew exactly how to lift their emo- 
 tion in a way that saved them pain while it left herself un- 
 touched. None reached her real being, which thus remained 
 unscathed, for none offered the lifting glory that she craved. 
 
 Here, for the first time facing her, stood a being of 
 another type ; and that unscathed self in her went trembling
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 303 
 
 at the knowledge. Here was a power she could not play 
 with, could not dominate, but a power that could play with 
 her as easily as the hurricane with the flying leaf. It was 
 not his words, his strange beauty, his great strength that 
 mastered her, though these brought their contribution 
 doubtless. The power she felt emanated unconsciously 
 from him, and was used unconsciously. It was all about 
 him. She realized herself a child before him, and this real- 
 ization sweetened, though it confused her being. He so 
 easily touched depths in her she had hardly recognized her- 
 self. He could so easily lift her to terrific heights. . . . 
 Various sides of her became dominant in turn. . . . 
 
 The inmost tumult of a good woman's heart is not given 
 to men to read, perhaps, but the final impetus resulting 
 from the whirlpool tossed her at length in a very definite 
 direction. She found her feet again. The determining 
 factor that decided the issue of the struggle was a small and 
 very human one. He appealed to the woman in her, yet 
 what stirred the woman was the vital and afflicting factor 
 that he did not need her. 
 
 He wished to help, to lift her towards some impersonal 
 ideal that remained his secret. He wished to give he 
 could give while she, for her part, had nothing that he 
 needed. Indeed, he asked for nothing. He was as inde- 
 pendent of her as she was independent of these other men. 
 
 And the woman, now faced for the first time with this 
 entirely new situation, decided automatically that he 
 should learn to need her. He must. Though she had 
 nothing that he wanted from her, she must on that very 
 account give all. The sacrifice which stands ready for the 
 fire in every true feminine heart was lighted there and then. 
 She had found her master and her god. Half measures 
 were not possible to her. She stood naked at the altar. But 
 in her sacrifice he, too, the priest, the deity, the master, he 
 also should find love. 
 
 Such is the woman's power, however, to conceal from 
 herself the truth, that she did not recognize at first what
 
 304 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 this decision was. She disguised it from her own heart, yet 
 quite honestly. She loved him and gave him all she had to 
 give for ever and ever: even though he did not ask nor 
 need her love. This she grasped. Her role must be one of 
 selfless sacrifice. But the deliberate purpose behind her 
 real decision she disguised from herself with complete suc- 
 cess. It lay there none the less, strong, vital, very simple. 
 She would teach him love. 
 
 Alone of all men, Edward Fillery could have drawn up 
 this motive from its inmost hiding place in her deep sub- 
 conscious being, and have made it clear to her. Dr. Fillery, 
 had he been present, would have discerned it in her, as, 
 indeed, he did discern it later. He had, for that matter, 
 already felt its prophecy with a sinking heart when he 
 planned bringing them together: Iraida might suffer at 
 LeVallon's hands. 
 
 But Fillery, apparently, was not present, and Nayan 
 Khilkoff remained unaware of self-deception. LeVallon 
 "needs your care and sympathy; you can help him," she 
 remembered. This she believed, and Love did the rest. 
 
 So intricate, so complex were the emotions in her that 
 she realized one thing only she must give all without 
 thought of self. "When half gods go the gods arrive" sang 
 in her heart. She was a woman, one of a mighty and in- 
 numerable multitude, and collective instinct urged her 
 irresistibly. But it hid at the same time with lovely care 
 the imperishable desire and intention that the arriving god 
 should must love her in return. 
 
 The youth stood facing her while this tumult surged 
 within her heart and mind. Outwardly calm, she still gazed 
 into the clear blue eyes that shone with moisture as he 
 repeated, half to himself and half to her: 
 
 "We are in exile here; we suffer. We have forgotten." 
 
 His hands were stretched towards her, and she took them 
 in her own and held them a moment. 
 
 "But you and I," he went on, "you and I and Fillery 
 shall remember again soon. We shall know why we are
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 305 
 
 here. We shall do our happy work together here. We shall 
 then return escape." 
 
 His deep tones filled the air. At the sound of the other 
 name a breath of sadness, of disappointment, touched her 
 coldly. The familiar name had faded. It was, as always, 
 dear. But its potency had dimmed. . . . 
 
 The sun was down and a soft dusk covered all. A faint 
 wind rustled in the garden trees through the open window. 
 
 "Fillery," she murmured, "Edward Fillery! He 
 
 loved me. He has loved me always." 
 
 The little words they sounded little for the first time 
 she uttered almost in a whisper that went lost against the 
 figure of LeVallon towering above her through the twilight. 
 
 "We are together," his great voice caught her whisper in 
 the immense vibration, drowning it. "The love of our 
 happy impersonal service brings us all together. We have 
 forgotten, but we shall remember soon." 
 
 It seemed to her that he shone now in the dusky air. 
 Light came about his face and shoulders. An immense 
 vitality poured into her through his hands. The sense of 
 strange kinship was overpowering. She felt, though not 
 in terms of size or physical strength, a pigmy before him, 
 while yet another thing rose in gigantic and limitless glory 
 as from some inner heart he quickened in her. This sense 
 of exaltation, of delirious joy that tempted sweetly, came 
 upon her. He must love her, need her in the end. . . . 
 
 "Julian," she murmured softly, drawn irresistibly closer. 
 "The gods have brought you to me." Her feet went nearer 
 of their own accord, but there was no movement, no 
 answering pressure, in the hands she held. "You shall 
 never know loneliness again, never while I am here. The 
 gods your gods have brought us together." 
 
 "Our gods," she heard his answer, "are the same." The 
 words trembled against her actual breast, so close she was 
 now leaning against him. "Even if lost, it is they who sent 
 us here. I know their messengers "
 
 306 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 He broke off, standing back from her, dropping her 
 hands, or, rather, drawing his own away. 
 
 "Hark!" he cried. The voice deep and full, yet without 
 loudness, thrilled her. She watched him with terror and 
 amazement, as he turned to the open window, throwing his 
 arms out suddenly to the darkening sky against which the 
 trees loomed still and shapeless. His figure was wrapped 
 in a faint radiance as of silvery moonlight. She was aware 
 of heat about her, a comforting, inspiring warmth that per- 
 vaded her whole being, as from within. The same moment 
 the bulk of the big tree shook and trembled, and a steady 
 wind came pouring into the room. It seemed to her the 
 wind, the heat, poured through that tree. 
 
 And the inner heart in her grew clear an instant. This 
 wind, this heat, increased her being marvellously. The 
 exaltation in her swept out and free. She saw him, dropped 
 from alien skies upon the little teeming earth. The sense 
 of his remoteness from the life about them, of her own 
 remoteness too, flashed over her like wind and fire. An 
 immense ideal blazed, then vanished. It flamed beyond her 
 grasp. It beckoned with imperishable loveliness, then faded 
 instantly. Wind caught it up once more. With the fire an 
 overpowering joy rose in her. 
 
 "Julian!" she cried aloud. "Son of Wind and Fire!" 
 
 At the words, which had come to her instinctively, he 
 turned with a sudden gesture she could not quite interpret, 
 while there broke upon his face a smile, strange and lovely, 
 that caught up the effect of light about him and seemed to 
 focus in his brilliant eyes. His happiness was beyond all 
 question, his admiration, wonder too ; yet the quality she 
 chiefly looked and expected was not there. 
 
 She chilled. The joy, she was acutely conscious, was 
 not a personal joy. 
 
 "You," he said gently, happily, emphasizing the word, 
 "you are not pitiful," and the rustle of the shaking trees 
 outside the window merged their voice in his and carried 
 it outward into space. It was as if the wind itself had
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 307 
 
 spoken. Across the garden dusk there shot a sudden effect 
 of light, as though a flame had flickered somewhere in the 
 sky, then passed back into the growing night There was a 
 scent of flowers in the air. "You," he cried, with an exulta- 
 tion that carried her again beyond herself. "You are not 
 pitiful." 
 
 "Julian !" she stammered, longing for his arms. She 
 
 half drew away. The blood flowed down and back in her. 
 "Not pitiful!" she repeated faintly. 
 
 For it was to her suddenly as if that sighing wind that 
 entered the room from the outer sky had borne him away 
 from her. That wind was a messenger. It came from that 
 distant state, that other region where he belonged, a state, a 
 region compared to which the beings of earth were trump- 
 ery and tinsel-dressed. It came to remind him of his home 
 and origin. The little earth, the myriad confused figures 
 struggling together on its surface, he saw as "pitiful." 
 From that window in the sky whence he looked down he 
 watched them. . . . ! 
 
 She knew the feeling in him, knew it, because some part 
 of her, though faint and deeply hidden, was akin. Yet she 
 was not wholly "pitiful." He had discerned in her this 
 faint, hidden strain of vaster life, had stirred and strength- 
 ened it by his words, his presence. Yet it was not vital 
 enough in her to stand alone. When wind and fire, his 
 elements, breathed forth from it, she was afraid. 
 
 "You are not pitiful," he had said, yet pitiful, for all that, 
 she knew herself to be. On that breath of sighing wind he 
 swept away from her, far, far away where, as yet, she could 
 not follow. And her dream of personal love swept with it. 
 Some ineffable hint of a divine, impersonal glory she had 
 known went with him from her heart. The personal was 
 too strong in her. It was human love she desired both to 
 give and ask. 
 
 Unspoken words flared through her heart and being: 
 "Julian, you have no soul, no human soul. But I will give 
 you one, for I will teach you love "
 
 308 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 He turned upon her like a hurricane of windy fire. 
 
 "Soul !" he cried, catching the word out of her naked 
 heart. "Oh, be not caught with that pitiful delusion. It is 
 this idea of soul that binds you hopelessly to selfish ends 
 and broken purposes. This thing you call soul is but the 
 dream of human vanity and egoism. It is worse than love. 
 Both bind you endlessly to limited desires and blind ambi- 
 tions. They are of children." 
 
 He rose, like some pillar of whirling flame and wind, 
 beside her. 
 
 "Come out with me," he cried, "come back! You teach 
 me to remember! Our elemental home calls sweetly to 
 us, our elemental service waits. We belong to those vast 
 Powers. They are eternal. They know no binding and 
 they have no death. Their only law is service, that mighty 
 service which builds up the universe. The stars are with 
 us, the nebulae and the central fires are their throne and 
 altar. The soul you dream of in your little circle is but an 
 idle dream of the Race that ties your feet lest you should 
 fly and soar. The personal has bandaged all your eyes. 
 Nayan, come back with me. You once worked with me 
 there you, I and Fillery together." 
 
 His voice, though low, had that which was terrific in it. 
 The volume of its sound appalled her. Its low vibrations 
 shook her heart. 
 
 "Soul," she said very softly, courage sure in her, but tears 
 close in her burning eyes, "is my only hope. I live for it. 
 I am ready to die for it. It is my life !" 
 
 He gazed at her a moment with a tenderness and sympathy 
 she hardly understood, for their origin lay hidden beyond 
 her comprehension. She knew one thing only that he 
 looked adorable and glorious, a being brought by the wise 
 powers of life, whatever these might be, into the keeping 
 of her love and care. The mother and the woman merged 
 in her. His redemption lay within her gentle hands, if it 
 lay at the same time upon an altar that was her awful sacri- 
 fice.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 309 
 
 "Son of wind and fire !" she cried, though emotion made 
 her voice dwindle to a breathless whisper. "You called to 
 my love, yet my love is personal. I have nothing else to 
 give you. Julian, come back ! O stay with me. Your wind 
 and fire frighten, for they take you away. Service I know, 
 but your service O what is it? For it leaves the bed, the 
 hearthstone cold " 
 
 She stopped abruptly, wondering suddenly at her own 
 words. What was this rhythm that had caught her mind 
 and heart into an unknown, a daring form of speech? 
 
 But the wind ran again through the open window flutter- 
 ing the curtains and the skirts about her feet. It sighed 
 and whispered. It was no earthly wind. She saw him 
 once again go from her on its quiet wings. He left her 
 side, he left her heart. And an icy realization of his loneli- 
 ness, his exile, stirred in her. . . . For a moment, as she 
 looked up into his shining face silhouetted in the dusk 
 against the window, there rose tumultuously in her that 
 maternal feeling which had held all men safely at a distance 
 hitherto. Like a wave, it mastered her. She longed to 
 take him in her arms, to shield him from a world that was 
 not his, to bless and comfort him with all she had to give, 
 to have the right to brush that wondrous hair, to open 
 those lids at dawn and close them with a kiss at night. 
 This ancient passion rose in her, bringing, though she did 
 not recognize it, the great woman in its train. She walked 
 up to him with both hands outstretched : 
 
 "All my nights," she said, with no reddening of the 
 cheek, "are as our wedding night !" 
 
 He heard, he saw, but the words held no meaning for 
 him. 
 
 "Julian! Stay with me stay here!" She put her arms 
 about him. 
 
 "And forget !" he cried, an inexpressible longing in 
 
 his voice. He bent, none the less, beneath the pressure of 
 her clinging arms ; he lowered his face to hers. 
 
 "I will teach you love," she murmured, her cheek against
 
 310 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 his own. "You do not know how sweet, how wonderful 
 it is. All your strange wisdom you shall show me, and I 
 will learn willingly, if only I may teach you love." 
 
 "You would teach me to forget," he said in a voice of 
 curious pain, "just as you are forgetting now." 
 
 He gently unclasped her hands from about his neck, and 
 went over to the open window, while she sank into a chair, 
 watching him. She again heard the wind, but again no 
 common, earthly wind, go singing past the walls. 
 
 "But / will teach you to remember," he said, his great 
 figure half turning towards her again, his voice sounding 
 as though it were in that sighing breath of wind that passed 
 and died away into the silence of the sky. 
 
 The strange difficulty, the immensity, of her self- 
 appointed task, grew suddenly crystal clear in her mind. 
 Amid the whirling, aching pain and yearning that she felt 
 it stood forth sharp and definite. It was imperious. She 
 loved, and she must teach him love. This was the one 
 thing needful in his case. Her own deep, selfless heart 
 would guide her. 
 
 There was pain in her, but there was no fear. Above 
 the conventions she felt herself, naked and unashamed. 
 The sense of a new immense liberty he had brought lifted 
 her into a region where she could be natural without offence. 
 He had flung wide the gates of life, setting free those 
 strange, ultimate powers which had lain hidden and un- 
 realized hitherto, and with them was quickened, too, that 
 mysterious and awful hint which, beckoning ever towards 
 some vaster life, had made the world as she found it un- 
 satisfactory, pale, of meagre value. 
 
 As the strange drift of wind passed off into the sky, 
 she moved across the room and stood beside him, its dying 
 chant still humming in her ears. That song of the wind, 
 she understood, was symbolic of what she had to fight, for 
 his being, though linked to a divine service she could not 
 understand, lay in Nature and apart from human things : 
 
 "Think, Julian," she murmured, her face against his
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 311 
 
 shoulder so that the sweet perfume as of flowers he exhaled 
 came over her intoxicatingly, "think what we could do 
 together for the world for all these little striving ignorant 
 troubled people in it for everybody! You and I together 
 working, helping, lifting them all up !" 
 
 He made no movement, and she took his great arm and 
 drew it round her neck, placing the hand against her cheek. 
 He looked down at her then, his eyes peering into her face. 
 
 "That," he said in a deep, gentle voice that vibrated 
 through her whole body, "yes, that we will do. It is the 
 service the service of our gods. It is why I called you. 
 From the first I saw it in you, and in " 
 
 Before he could speak the name she kissed his lips, pulling 
 his head lower in order to reach them: "Think, Julian," 
 she whispered, his eyes so close to hers that they seemed 
 to burn them, "think what our child might be!" 
 
 The wind came back across the tossing trees with a rush 
 of singing. Her hair fluttered across their two faces, as 
 it entered the room, drove round the inner walls, then, with 
 a cry, flew out again into the empty sky. She felt as if 
 the wind had answered her, for other answer there came 
 none. Far away in the spaces of that darkening sky the 
 wind rushed sailing, sailing with its impersonal song of 
 power and of triumph. . . . She did not remember any 
 further spoken words. She remembered only, as she went 
 homewards down the street, that Julian had opened th 
 door upon some unspoken understanding that she had lost 
 him because she dared not follow recklessly where he led, 
 and that the steady draught, it seemed, had driven forcibly 
 behind her as though the wind had blown her out. 
 
 It was only much later she realized that the figure who 
 had then overtaken her, supported, comforted with kind 
 ordinary words she hardly understood at the moment and 
 yet vaguely /welcomed, finally leaving her at the door of her 
 father's house in Chelsea, was the figure of Edward Fillery.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 A 5 upon a former occasion some twenty-four hours be- 
 fore, "N. H." seemed hardly aware that his visitor 
 had left, though this time there was the vital difference 
 that what was of value had not gone at all. The essence 
 of the girl, it seemed, was still with him. It remained. The 
 physical presence was to him apparently the least of all. 
 
 He returned to his place at the open window of the 
 darkening room, while night, with her cooler airs, passed 
 over tne world on tiptoe. He drew deep breaths, opened 
 his arms, and seemed to shake himself, as though glad to 
 be free of recent little awkward and unnatural gestures that 
 had irked him. There was happiness in his face. "She 
 is a builder, though she has forgotten," ran his thought with 
 pleasure, "and I can work with her. Like Fillery, she 
 builds up, constructs; we are all three in the same service, 
 and the gods are glad. I love her . . . yes . . . but she" 
 his thoughts grew troubled and confused "she speaks of 
 another love that is a tight and binding little thing . . . that 
 catches and confines. It is for one person only . . . one 
 person for one other. . . . For two . . . only for two per- 
 sons ! . . . What is its meaning then ?" 
 
 Of her words and acts he had understood evidently a 
 small part only; much that she had said and done he had 
 not comprehended, although in it somewhere there had cer- 
 tainly lain a sweet, faint, troubling pleasure that was new 
 to him. 
 
 His thought wavered, nickered out and vanished. For 
 a long time he leaned against the window with his images, 
 thinking with his heart, for when alone and not stirred by 
 
 312
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 313 
 
 the thinking of others close to him, he became of a curious 
 childlike innocence, knowing nothing. His "thinking" with 
 others present seemed but a reflection of their thinking. 
 The way he caught up the racial thinking, appearing swiftly 
 intelligent at the time (as with Fillery's mind), passed the 
 instant he was alone. He became open, then, to bigger 
 rhythms that the little busy thinkers checked and interrupted. 
 But this greater flow of images, of rhythms, this thinking 
 with the heart what was it, and with what things did it 
 deal ? He did not know. He had forgotten. To his present 
 brain it was alien. He grasped only that it was concerned 
 with the rhythms of fire and wind apparently, though hardly, 
 perhaps, of that crude form in which men know them, but 
 of an inner, subtler, more vital heat and air which lie in 
 and behind all forms and help to shape them and of In- 
 telligences which use these as their vehicles, their instru- 
 ments, their bodies. 
 
 In his "images" he was aware of these Intelligences, per- 
 ceived them with his entire being, shared their activities 
 and nature : behind all so-called forms and shapes, whether 
 of people, flowers, minerals, of insects or of stars, of a 
 bird, a butterfly or a nebula, but also of those mental shapes 
 which are born of thought and mood and heart this host 
 of Intelligences, great and small, all delving together, build- 
 ing, constructing, involved in a vast impersonal service which 
 was deathless. This seemed the mighty call that thundered 
 through him, fire and wind merely the agencies with which 
 he, in particular, knew instinctively his duties lay. 
 
 For his work, these images taught him, was to increase 
 life by making the "body" it used as perfect as he could. 
 The more perfect the form, the instrument, the greater 
 the power manifesting through it. A poor, imperfect form 
 stopped the flow of this manifesting life, as though a cur- 
 rent were held up and delayed. For instance, his own form, 
 his present body, now irked, delayed and hampered him, 
 although he knew not how or why or whence he had come 
 to be using it at this moment on the earth. The instinctive
 
 314 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 desire to escape from it lay in him, and also the instinctive 
 recognition that two others, similarly caught and imprisoned, 
 must escape with him. . . . 
 
 The images, the rhythms, poured through him in a mighty 
 flood, as he leaned by the open window, his great figure, 
 his whole nature too, merging in the space, the wind, the 
 darkness of the soft-moving night beyond. . . . Yet dark- 
 ness troubled him too; it always seemed unfamiliar, new, 
 something he had never been accustomed to. In darkness 
 he became quiet, very gentle, feeling his way, as it were, 
 uneasily. 
 
 He was aware, however, that Fillery was near, though 
 not, perhaps, that he was actually in the room, seated some- 
 where among the shadows, watching him. He felt him close 
 in the same way he felt the girl still close, whether distance 
 between them in space was actually great or small. The 
 essential in all three was similar, their yearnings, hopes, 
 intentions, purposes were akin; their longing for some 
 service, immense, satisfying, it seemed, connected them. The 
 voice, however, did not startle when it sounded behind him 
 from an apparently empty room: 
 
 "The love she spoke of you do not understand, of course. 
 Perhaps you do not need it. . . ." 
 
 The voice, as well as the feeling that lay behind, hardly 
 disturbed the images and rhythms in their wondrous flow. 
 Rather, they seemed a part of them. "N. H." turned. He 
 saw Dr. Fillery distinctly, sitting motionless among the 
 shadows by the wall. 
 
 "It is, for you, a new relationship, and seems small, 
 cramping and unnecessary " 
 
 "What is it?" "N. H." asked. "What is this love she 
 seeks to hold me with, saying that I need it ? Dear Fillery," 
 he added, moving nearer, "will you tell me what it is? I 
 found it sweet and pleasant, yet I fear it." 
 
 "It is," was the reply, "in its best form, the highest quality 
 we know " 
 
 "Ah ! I felt the fire in it," interrupted "N. H." smiling.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 315 
 
 "I smelt the flowers." His smile seemed faintly luminous 
 across the gloom. 
 
 "Because it was the best/' replied the other gently. "In 
 its best form it means, sometimes, the complete sacrifice of 
 one being for the welfare of another. There is no self in 
 it at all." He felt the eyes of his companion fixed upon 
 him in the darkness of the quiet room ; he felt likewise that 
 he was bewildered and perplexed. "As, for instance, the 
 mother for her child," he went on. "That is the purest form 
 of it we know." 
 
 "One being feels it for one other only," "N. H." repeated 
 apparently ignoring the reference to maternal love. "Each 
 wants the other for himself alone! Each lives for the other 
 only, the rest excluded! It is always two and two. Is 
 that what she means?" 
 
 "She would not like it if you had the same feeling for 
 another woman," Fillery explained. "She would feel 
 jealousy which means she would grudge sharing you with 
 another. She would resent it, afraid of losing you." 
 
 "Two and two, and two and two," the words floated 
 through the shadows. The ideal seemed to shock and hurt 
 him; he could not understand it. "She asks for the whole 
 of me all to herself. It is lower than insects, flowers even. 
 It is against Nature. So small, so separate " 
 
 "But Nature," interrupted Dr. Fillery, after an interval 
 of silence between them, "is not concerned with what we 
 call love. She is indifferent to it. Her purpose is merely 
 the continuance of the Race, and she accomplishes this by 
 making men and women attractive to one another. This, 
 too," he explained, "we call love, though it is love in its 
 weakest, least enduring form." 
 
 "That," replied "N. H.," "I know and understand. She 
 builds the best form she can." 
 
 "And once the form is built," agreed the other, "and 
 Nature's aim fulfilled, this kind of love usually fades out 
 and dies. It is a physical thing entirely, like the two atoms 
 we read about together a few days ago which rush together
 
 316 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 automatically to produce a third thing." He lowered his 
 voice suddenly. "There was a great teacher once," he went 
 on, "who told us that we should love everybody, everybody, 
 and that in the real life there was no marriage, as we call 
 it, nor giving in marriage." 
 
 It seemed that, as he said the words, the darkness lifted, 
 and a faint perfume of flowers floated through the air. 
 
 "N. H." made no comment or reply. He sat still, listening. 
 
 "I love her," he whispered suddenly. "I love her in that 
 way because I want everybody else to love her too as 
 I do, and as you do. But I do not want her for myself 
 alone. Do you? You do not, of course. I feel you are 
 as I am. You are happy that I love her." 
 
 "There is morality," said Fillery presently in a low voice, 
 glad at that moment of the darkness. "There is what we 
 call morality." 
 
 "Tell me, dear Fillery, what that is. Is it bigger than 
 your 'love'?" 
 
 Dr. Fillery explained briefly, while his companion listened 
 intently, making no comment. It was evidently as strange 
 and new to him as human love. "We have invented it," 
 he added at the end, "to protect ourselves, our mothers, our 
 families, our children. It is, you see, a set of rules devised 
 for the welfare of the Race. For though a few among us 
 do not need such rules, the majority do. It is, in a word, 
 the acknowledgment of the rights of others." 
 
 "It had to be invented !" exclaimed "N. H.," with a sigh 
 that seemed to trouble the darkness as with the sadness 
 of something he could scarcely believe. "And these rules 
 are needed still ! Is the Race at that stage only ? It does 
 not move, then ?" 
 
 Into the atmosphere, as the low-spoken words were 
 audible, stole again that mysterious sense of the insignif- 
 icance of earth and all its manifold activities, human and 
 otherwise, and with it, too, a remarkable breath of some 
 larger reality, starry-bright, that lay shining just beyond all 
 known horizons. Fillery shivered in spite of himself. It
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 317 
 
 seemed to him for an instant that the great figure looming 
 opposite through the darkness extended, spread, gathering 
 into its increased proportions the sky, the trees, the darkened 
 space outside; that it no longer sat there quite alone. He 
 recalled his colleague's startling admission the touch of 
 panic terror. 
 
 "Slowly, if at all," he said louder, though wondering why 
 he raised his voice. "Yet there is some progress." 
 
 He had the feeling it would be better to turn on the light, 
 as though this conversation and the strange sensations it 
 produced in him would be impossible in a full blaze. He 
 made a movement, indeed, to find the switch. It was the 
 sound of his companion's voice that made him pause, for 
 the words came at him as though a wave of heat moved 
 through the air. He knew intuitively that the other's intense 
 inner activity had increased. He let his hand drop. He 
 listened. Their thoughts, he was convinced, had mingled 
 and been mutually shared again. There was a faint sound 
 like music behind it. 
 
 "We have worked such a little time as yet," fell the words 
 into the silence. "If only oh! if only I could remember 
 more !" 
 
 "A little time!" thought Fillery to himself, knowing that 
 the other meant the millions of years Nature had used to 
 evoke her myriad forms. "Try to remember," he added 
 in a whisper. 
 
 "What I do remember, I cannot even tell," was the reply, 
 the voice strangely deepening. "No words come to me." 
 He paused a moment, then went on: "I am of the first, 
 the oldest. I know that. The earth was hot and burning 
 burning, burning still. It was soft with heat when I was 
 summoned from from other work just completed. With 
 a vast host I came. Our Service summoned us. We began 
 at the beginning. I am of the oldest. The earth was still 
 hot burning, burning " 
 
 The voice failed suddenly. 
 
 "I cannot remember. Dear Fillery, I cannot remember.
 
 318 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 It hurts me. My head pains. Our work our service yes, 
 there is progress. The ages, as you call them but it is 
 
 such a little time as yet " The voice trailed off, the 
 
 figure lost its suggestion of sudden vastness, the darkness 
 emptied. "I am of the oldest that I remember only. . . ." 
 It ceased as though it drifted out upon the passing wind 
 outside. 
 
 "Then you have been working," said Fillery, his voice 
 still almost a whisper, "you and your great host, for thou- 
 sands of years in the service of this planet " He broke 
 
 off, unable to find his words, it seemed. 
 
 "Since the beginning," came the steady answer. "Years 
 I do not know. Since the beginning. Yet we have only 
 just begun oh !" he cried, "I cannot remember ! It is im- 
 possible! It all goes lost among my words, and in this 
 darkness I am confused and entangled with your own 
 little thinking. I suffer with it." Then suddenly: "My 
 eyes are hot and wet, dear Fillery. What happens to them ?" 
 He stood up, putting both hands to his face. Fillery stood 
 up too. He trembled. 
 
 "Don't try," he said soothingly ; "do not try to remember 
 any more. It will come back to you soon, but it won't come 
 back by any deliberate effort." 
 
 He comforted him as best he could, realizing that the 
 curious dialogue had lasted long enough. But he did not 
 produce a disconcerting blaze by turning the light on sud- 
 denly ; he led his companion gently to the door, so that the 
 darkness might pass more gradually. The lights in the 
 corridor were shaded and inoffensive. It was only in the 
 bedroom that he noticed the bright tears, as "N. H.," ex- 
 amining them with curious interest in the mirror, exclaimed 
 more to himself than to Fillery: "She had them too. I 
 saw them in her eyes when she spoke to me of love, the 
 love she will teach me because she said I needed it." 
 
 "Tears," said Fillery t his voice shaking. "They come 
 from feeling pain." 
 
 "It is a little thing," returned "N. H.," smiling at himself,
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 319 
 
 then turning to his friend, his great blue eyes shining won- 
 derfully through their moisture. "Then she felt what I 
 felt we felt together. When she comes to-morrow I will 
 show her these tears and she will be glad I love. And she 
 will bring tears of her own, and you will have some too, 
 and we shall all love together. It is not difficult, is it?" 
 
 "Not very," agreed Fillery, smiling in his turn ; "it is not 
 very difficult." He was again trembling. 
 
 "She will be happy that we all love." 
 
 "I hope so." 
 
 It was curious how easily tears came to the eyes of 
 this strange being, and for causes so different that they 
 were not easy to explain. He did not cry; it was merely 
 that the hot tears welled up. 
 
 Even with Devonham once it happened too. The lesson 
 in natural history was over. Devonham had just sketched 
 the outline of the various kingdoms, with the animal king- 
 dom and man's position in it, according to present evolu- 
 tionary knowledge, and had then said something about the 
 earth's place in the solar system, and the probable relation 
 of this system to the universe at large an admirable bird's- 
 eye view, as it were, without a hint of speculative imagina- 
 tion in it anywhere when "N. H.," after intent listening 
 in irresponsive silence, asked abruptly: 
 
 "What does it believe?" Then, as Devonham stared at 
 him, a little puzzled at first, he repeated : "That is what 
 the Race knows. But what does it believe?" 
 
 "Believe," said Devonham, "believe. Ah ! you mean what 
 is its religion, its faith, its speculations!" and proceeded 
 to give the briefest possible answer he felt consistent with 
 his duty. The less his pupil's mind was troubled with 
 such matters, the better, in his opinion. 
 
 "And their God?" the young man inquired abruptly, as 
 soon as the recital was over. He had listened closely, as 
 he always did, but without a sign of interest, merely waiting 
 for the end, much as a child who is bored by a poor fairy
 
 320 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 tale, yet wishes to know exactly how it is all going to finish. 
 "They know Him?" He leaned forward. 
 
 Devonham, not quite liking the form of the question, 
 nor the more eager manner accompanying it, hesitated a 
 moment, thinking perhaps what he ought to say. He did 
 not want this mind, now opening, to be filled with ideas 
 that could be of no use to it, nor help in its formation; 
 least of all did he desire it to be choked and troubled with 
 the dead theology of man-made notions concerning a tum- 
 bling personal Deity. Creeds, moreover, were a matter of 
 faith, of auto-suggestion as he called it, being obviously 
 divorced from any process of reason. He had, nevertheless, 
 a question to answer and a duty to perform. His hesitation 
 passed in compromise. He was, as has been seen, too 
 sincere, too honest, to possess much sense of humour. 
 
 "The Race," he said, "or rather that portion of it into 
 which you have been born, believes on paper" he em- 
 phasized the qualification "in a paternal god; but its real 
 god, the god it worships, is Knowledge. Not a Knowledge 
 that exists for its own sake," he went on blandly, "but that 
 brings possessions, power, comfort and a million needless 
 accessories into life. That god it worships, as you see, with 
 energy and zeal. Knowledge and work that shall result in 
 acquisition, in pleasure, that is the god of the Race on this 
 side of the planet where you find yourself." 
 
 "And the God on paper?" asked "N. H.," making no 
 comment, though he had listened attentively and had under- 
 stood. "The God that is written about on paper, and be- 
 lieved in on paper?" 
 
 "The printed account of this god," replied Devonham, 
 "describes an omnipotent and perfect Being who has existed 
 always. He created the planet and everything upon it, but 
 created it so imperfectly that he had to send later a smaller 
 god to show how much better he might have created us. 
 In doing this, he offered us an extremely difficult and 
 laborious method of improvement, a method of escaping 
 from his own mistake, but a method so painful and un-
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 321 
 
 realizable that it is contrary to our very natures as he 
 made them first." He almost smacked his lips as he said it. 
 
 "The big God, the first one," asked "N. H." at once. 
 "Have they seen and known Him ? Have they complained ?" 
 
 "No," said Devonham, "they have not. Those who believe 
 in him accept things as he made them." 
 
 "And the smaller lesser God how did He arrive ?" came 
 the odd question. 
 
 "He was born like you and me, but without a father. 
 No male had his mother ever known." 
 
 "He was recognized as a god?" The pupil showed in- 
 terest, but no emotion, much less excitement. 
 
 "By a few. The rest, afraid because he told them their 
 possessions were worthless, killed him quickly." 
 
 "And the few?" 
 
 "They obeyed his teaching, or tried to, and believed that 
 they would live afterwards for ever and ever in happi- 
 ness " 
 
 "And the others ? The many ?" 
 
 "The others, according to the few, would live afterwards 
 for ever and ever in pain." 
 
 "It is a demon story," said "N. H.," smiling. 
 
 "It is printed, believed, taught," replied Devonham, "by 
 an immense organization to millions of people " 
 
 "Free?" inquired his pupil. 
 
 "The teachers are paid, but very little " 
 
 "The teachers believe it, though?" 
 
 "Y-yes at least some of them probably," replied Dev- 
 onham, after brief consideration. 
 
 "And the millions do they worship this God?" 
 
 "They do, on paper, yes. They worship the first big God. 
 They go once or twice a week into special buildings, dressed 
 in their best clothes as for a party, and pray and sing 
 and tell him he is wonderful and they themselves are miser- 
 able and worthless, and then ask him in abject humility for 
 all sorts of things they want." 
 
 "Do they get them?"
 
 322 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 "They ask for different things, you see. One wants fine 
 weather for his holidays, another wants rain for his crops. 
 The prayers in which they ask are printed by the Govern- 
 ment." 
 
 "They ask for this planet only ?" 
 
 "This planet conceives itself alone inhabited. There are 
 no other living beings anywhere. The Earth is the centre 
 of the universe, the only globe worth consideration." 
 
 Although "N. H." asked these quick questions, his interest 
 was obviously not much engaged, the first sharp attention 
 having passed. Then he looked fixedly at Devonham and 
 said, with a sudden curious smile : "What you say is always 
 dead. I understand the sounds you use, but the meaning 
 cannot get into me inside, I mean. But I thank you for 
 the sound." 
 
 There was a moment's pause, during which Devonham, 
 accustomed to strange remarks and comments from his 
 pupil, betrayed no sign of annoyance or displeasure. He 
 waited to see if any further questions would be forthcoming. 
 He was observing a phenomenon ; his attitude was scientific. 
 
 "But, in sending this lesser God," resumed "N. H." 
 presently, "how did the big One excuse himself?" 
 
 "He didn't. He told the Race it was so worthless that 
 nothing else could save it. He looked on while the lesser 
 God was killed. He is very proud about it, and claims the 
 thanks and worship of the Race because of it/' 
 
 "The lesser God poor lesser God !" observed "N. H." 
 "He was bigger than the other." He thought a moment. 
 "How pitiful," he added. 
 
 "Much bigger," agreed Devonham, pleased with his pupil's 
 acumen, his voice, even his manner, changing a little as 
 he continued. "For then came the wonder of it all. The 
 lesser God's teachings were so new and beautiful that the 
 position of the other became untenable. The Race disowned 
 him. It worshipped the lesser one in his place." 
 
 "Tell me, tell me, please," said "N. H.," as though he
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 323 
 
 noticed and understood the change of tone at once. "I listen. 
 The dear Fillery spoke to me of a great Teacher. I feel 
 a kind, deep joy move in me. Tell me, please." 
 
 Again Devonham hesitated a moment, for he recognized 
 signs that made him ill at ease a little, because he did not 
 understand them. Following a scientific textbook with his 
 pupil was well and good, but he had no desire to trespass 
 on what he considered as Fillery's territory. "N. H." was 
 his pupil, not his patient. He had already gone too far, he 
 realized. After a moment's reflection, however, he decided 
 it was wiser to let the talk run out its natural course, instead 
 of ending it abruptly. He was as thorough as he was sin- 
 cere, and whatever his own theories and prejudices might 
 be in this particular case, he would not shirk an issue, nor 
 treat it with the smallest dishonesty. He put the glasses 
 straight on his big nose. 
 
 "The new teachings," he said, "were so beautiful that, 
 if faithfully practised by everybody, the world would soon 
 become a very different place to what it is." 
 
 "Did the Race practise them?" came the question in a 
 voice that held a note of softness, almost of wonder. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "They were too difficult and painful and uncomfortable. 
 The new God, moreover, only came here 2,000 years ago, 
 whereas men have existed on earth for at least 400,000." 
 
 "N. H." asked abruptly what the teachings were, and 
 Devonham, growing more and more uneasy as he noted 
 the signs of increasing intensity and disturbance in his 
 pupil, recited, if somewhat imperfectly, the main points of 
 the Sermon on the Mount. As he did so "N. H." began 
 to murmur quietly to himself, his eyes grew large and 
 bright, his face lit up, his whole body trembled. He began 
 that deep, rhythmical breathing which seemed lo affect the 
 atmosphere about him so that his physical appearance in- 
 creased and spread. The skin took on something of radi-
 
 324 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 ance, as though an intense inner happiness shone through 
 it. Then, suddenly, to Devonham's horror, he began to 
 hum. 
 
 Though a normal, ordinary sound enough, it reminded 
 him of that other sound he had once shared with Fillery, 
 when he sat on the stairs, staring at a china bowl filled 
 with visiting cards, while the dawn broke after a night 
 of exhaustion and bewilderment. That sound, of course, 
 he had long since explained and argued away it was an 
 auditory hallucination conveyed to his mind by LeVallon, 
 who originated it. Interesting and curious, it was far from 
 inexplicable. It was disquieting, however, for it touched 
 in him a vague sense of alarm, as though it paved the way 
 for that odd panic terror he had been amazed to discover 
 hidden away deeply in some unrealized corner of his being. 
 
 This humming he now listened to, though normal and 
 ordinary enough there were no big vibrations with it, for 
 one thing was too suggestive of that other sound for him 
 to approve of it. His mind rapidly sought some way of 
 stopping it. A command, above all an impatient, harsh 
 command, was out of the question, yet a request seemed 
 equally not the right way. He fumbled in his mind to find 
 the wise, proper words. He stretched his hand out, as 
 though to lay it quietly upon his companion's shoulder 
 but realized suddenly he could not almost he dared not 
 touch him. 
 
 The same instant "N. H." rose. He pushed his chair 
 back and stood up. 
 
 Devonham, justly proud of his equable temperament and 
 steady nerves, admits that only a great effort of self-control 
 enabled him to sit quietly and listen. He listened, watched, 
 and made mental notes to the best of his ability, but he 
 was frightened a little. The outburst was so sudden. He 
 is not sure that his report of what he heard, made later 
 to Fillery, was a verbatim, accurate one : 
 
 "Justice we know," cried "N. H." in his half-chanting 
 voice that seemed to boom with resonance, "but this this
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 325 
 
 mercy, gentle kindness, beauty this unknown loveliness 
 we did not know it!" He went to the open window, and 
 threw his arms wide, as though he invoked the sun. "Dimly 
 we heard of it. We strive, we strive, we weave and build 
 and fashion while the whirl of centuries flies on. This 
 lesser God he came among us, too, making our service 
 sweeter, though we did not understand. Our work grew 
 wiser and more careful, we built lovelier forms, and knew 
 not why we did so. His mighty rhythms touched us with 
 their power and happy light. Oh, my great messengers of 
 wind and fire, bring me the memory I have lost ! Oh, where, 
 where ?"" 
 
 He shook himself, as though his clothes, perhaps his body 
 even ; irked him. It was a curious coincidence, thought 
 Devonham, as he watched and listened, too surprised and 
 puzzled to interfere either by word or act, that a cloud, at 
 that very moment, passed from the face of the sun, and 
 a gust of wind shook all the branches of the lime trees 
 in the garden. "N. H." stood drenched in the white clear 
 sunshine. His flaming hair was lifted by the wind. 
 
 "Behind, beyond the Suns He dwells and burns for ever. 
 Oh, the mercy, kindness, the strange beauty of this personal 
 love what is it ? These have been promised to us too !" 
 
 He broke off abruptly, bowed his great head and shoulders, 
 and sank upon his knees in an attitude of worship. Then, 
 stretching his arms out to the sky, the face raised into the 
 flood of sunlight, while his voice became lower, softer, al- 
 most hushed, he spoke again: 
 
 "Our faithful service, while the circles swallow the suns, 
 shall lift us too ! You, who sent me here to help this little, 
 dying Race, oh, help me to remember !" 
 
 His passion was a moving sight; the words, broken 
 through with fragments of his chanting, singing, had the 
 blood of some infinite, intolerable yearning in them. 
 
 Devonham, meanwhile, having heard outbursts of this 
 strange kind before with others, had recovered something 
 of his equanimity. He felt more sure of himself again.
 
 326 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 The touch of fear had left him. He went over to the 
 window. The attack, as he deemed it, was passing. A 
 thick cloud hid the sun again. "There, there," he said 
 soothingly, laying both hands upon the other's shoulders, 
 then taking the arms to help him rise. "I told you His 
 teachings were very beautiful that the world would become 
 a kind of heaven if people lived them." His voice seemed 
 not his own; beside the volume and music of the other's 
 it had a thin, rasping, ugly sound. 
 
 "N. H." was on his feet, gazing down into his face; 
 to Devonham's amazement there were tears in the eyes that 
 met his own. 
 
 "And many people do live them try to, rather," he added 
 gently. "There are thousands who really worship this lesser 
 God to-day. You can't go far wrong yourself if you take 
 Him as your model an " 
 
 "How He must have suffered !" came the astonishing in- 
 terruption, the voice quiet and more natural again. "There 
 was no way of telling what he knew. He had no words, 
 of course. You are all so difficult, so caged, so dead !" 
 
 Devonham smiled. "He used parables." He paused a 
 moment, then went on "Men have existed on the planet, 
 science tells us, for at least 403,000 years, whereas He came 
 here only 2,000 years ago " 
 
 "Came here," interrupted the pupil, as though the earth 
 were but one of a thousand places visited, a hint of contempt 
 and pity somewhere in his tone and gesture. "We made His 
 way ready then ! We prepared, we built ! It was for that 
 our work went on and on so faithfully." 
 
 He broke off. . . . 
 
 Devonham experienced a curious sensation as he heard. 
 In that instant it seemed to him that he was conscious 
 of the movement of the earth through space. He was aware 
 that the planet on which he stood was rushing forward at 
 eighteen miles a second through the sky. He felt himself 
 carried forward with it. 
 
 "What was His name?" he heard "N. H." asking. It
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 327 
 
 was as though he was aware of the enormous interval in 
 space traversed by the rolling earth between the first and 
 last words of the sudden question. It trailed through an 
 immense distance towards him, after him, yet at the same 
 time ever with him. 
 
 "His name oh Jesus Christ, we call him," wondering 
 at the same moment why he used the pronoun "we." 
 
 "Jesus Christ!" 
 
 "N. H." repeated the name with such intensity and power 
 that the sound, borne by deep vibrations, seemed to surge 
 and circle forth into space while the earth rushed irresistibly 
 onwards. A faintly imaginative idea occurred to Devonham 
 for the first time in his life it was as though the earth 
 herself had opened her green lips and uttered the great 
 name. With this came also the amazing and disconcerting 
 conviction that Nature and humans were expressions of 
 one and the same big simple energy, and that while their 
 forms, their bodies, differed, the life manifesting through 
 them was identical, though its degree might vary. For an 
 instant this was of such overpowering conviction as to be 
 merely obvious. 
 
 It passed as quickly as it came, though he still was dimly 
 conscious that he had travelled with the earth through 
 another huge stretch of space. Then this sense of movement 
 also passed. He looked up. "N. H." was in his chair 
 again at the table, reading quietly his book on natural 
 history. But in his eyes the moisture of tears was still 
 visible. 
 
 Devonham adjusted his glasses, blew his nose, went 
 quickly to another room to jot down his notes of the talk, 
 the reactions, the general description, and in doing so dis- 
 missed from his mind the slight uneasy effects of what had 
 been a "curious hallucination," caused evidently by an "un- 
 explained stimulation" of the motor centres in the brain.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 full account of "N. H.," with all he said and did, 
 _L his effect upon others, his general activities in a 
 word, it is impossible to compress intelligibly into the com- 
 pass of these notes. A complete report Edward Fillery 
 indeed accumulated, but its publication, he realized, must 
 await that leisure for which his busy life provided little 
 opportunity. His eyes, mental and physical, were never 
 off his "patient," and "N. H.," aware of it, leaped out to 
 meet the observant sympathy, giving all he could, concealing 
 nothing, yet debarred, it seemed, by the rigid limitations 
 of his own mental and physical machinery, as similarly by 
 that of his hearers, from contributing more than suggestive 
 and tantalizing hints. Of the use of parable he, obviously, 
 had no knowledge. 
 
 His relations with others, perhaps, offered the most sig- 
 nificant comments on his personality. Fillery was at some 
 pains to collect these. The reactions were various, yet one 
 and all showed this in common, a curious verdict but unan- 
 imous: that his effect, namely, was greatest when he was 
 not there. Not in his actual presence, which promised rather 
 than fulfilled, was his power so dominating upon mind and 
 imagination as after the door was closed and he was gone. 
 The withdrawal of his physical self, its absence as Fillery 
 had himself experienced one night on Hampstead Heath 
 as well as on other occasions brought his real presence 
 closer. 
 
 It was Nayan who first drew attention to thi? remarkable 
 characteristic. She spoke about him often now with Dr. 
 Fillery, for as the weeks passed and she realized the useless- 
 ness, the impossibility, of the plan she had proposed to 
 
 328
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 329 
 
 herself, she found relief in talking frankly about him to 
 her older friend. 
 
 "Always, always after I leave him," she confessed, "a 
 profound and searching melancholy gets hold of me, poign- 
 ant as death, yet an extraordinary unrealized beauty behind 
 it somewhere. It steals into my very blood and bones. I 
 feel an intense dissatisfaction with the world, with people 
 as they are, and a burning scorn for all that is small, un- 
 worthy, petty, mean and yet a hopelessness of ever attain- 
 ing to that something which he knows and lives so easily." 
 She sighed, gazing into his eyes a moment. "Or of ever 
 making others see it," she added. 
 
 "And that 'something,' " he asked, "can you define it ?" 
 
 She shook her head. "It's in me, within reach even, but 
 the word he used is the only one forgotten." 
 
 "Perhaps has it ever occurred to you? that he simply 
 cannot describe it. There are no words, no means at his 
 disposal no human terms?" 
 
 "Perhaps," she murmured. 
 
 "Desirable, though ?" he urged her gently. 
 
 She clasped her hands, smiling. "Heavenly," she mur- 
 mured, closing her eyes a moment as though to try and 
 recall it. "Yet when I'm with him," she went on, "he never 
 quite realizes for me the state of wonder and delight his 
 presence promises. His personality suggests rather than 
 fulfils." She paused, a wistful, pained expression in her 
 dark eyes. "The failure," she added quickly, lest she seem 
 to belittle him of whom she spoke, "of course lies in myself. 
 I refuse, you see I can't say why, though I feel it's wise 
 to let myself be dominated by that strange, lost part of me 
 he stimulates." 
 
 "True," interposed Dr. Fillery. "I understand. Yet to 
 have felt this even is a sign " 
 
 "That he stirs the deepest, highest in me? This hint of 
 divine beauty in the unrealized under-self?" 
 
 He nodded. There was an odd touch of sadness in their 
 talk. "I've watched him with many types of people," he
 
 330 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 went on thoughtfully, almost as though thinking aloud in 
 his rapid way, "I've talked with him on many subjects. The 
 meanness, jealousy, insignificance of the Race shocks and 
 amazes him. He cannot understand it. He asked me once 
 'But is no one born noble? To be splendid is such an effort 
 with them!' Splendour of conduct, he noticed, is a cal- 
 culated, rarely a spontaneous splendour. The general re- 
 sistance to new ideas also puzzles him. 'They fear a rhythm 
 they have never felt before,' as he put it. To adopt a new 
 rhythm, they think, must somehow injure them.' That the 
 Race respects a man because he possesses much equally be- 
 wilders him. 'No one serves willingly or naturally,' he 
 observed, 'or unless someone else receives money for draw- 
 ing attention loudly to it.' Any notion of reward, of adver- 
 tisement, in its widest meaning, is foreign to his nature." 
 
 He broke off. Another pause fell between them, the girl 
 the first to break it : 
 
 "He suffers," she said in a low voice. "Here he suffers," 
 and her face yearned with the love and help she longed 
 to pour out beyond all thought of self or compensation, 
 and at the same time with the pain of its inevitable frus- 
 tration ; and, watching her, Dr. Fillery understood that this 
 very yearning was another proof of the curious impetus, 
 the intensification of being, that "N. H." caused in everyone. 
 Yet he winced, as though anticipating the question she at 
 once then put to him : 
 
 "You are afraid for him, Edward?" her eyes calmly, 
 searchingly on his. "His future troubles you?" 
 
 He turned to her with abrupt intensity. "If you, Iraida, 
 
 could not enchain him " He broke off. He shrugged 
 
 his shoulders. 
 
 "I have no power," she confessed. "An insatiable longing 
 burns like a fire in him. Nothing he finds here on earth, 
 among men and women, can satisfy it." A faint blush stole 
 up her neck and touched her cheeks. "He is different. / 
 have no power to keep him here." Her voice sank suddenly 
 to a whisper, as though a breath of awe passed into her'.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 331 
 
 "He is here now at this very moment, I believe. He is 
 with us as we talk together. I feel him." Almost a visible 
 thrill passed through her. "And close, so very close to 
 you." 
 
 Dr. Fillery made no sign by word or gesture, but some- 
 thing in his very silence gave assent. 
 
 "And not alone," she added, still under her breath. It 
 seemed she looked about her, though she did not actually 
 move or turn her head. "Others of his kind, Edward 
 come with him. They are always with him I think some- 
 times." Her whisper was fainter still. 
 
 "You feel that too !" He said it abruptly, his voice louder 
 and almost challenging. Then he added incongruously, as 
 though saying it to himself this time, "That's what I mean. 
 I've known it for a long time " 
 
 He looked at the girl sharply with unconcealed admira- 
 tion. "It does not frighten you?" he asked, and in reply 
 she said the very thing he felt sure she would say, hoping 
 for it even while he shrank: 
 
 "Escape," he heard in a low, clear voice, half a question, 
 half an exclamation, and saw the blood leave her face. 
 
 The instinctive "Hush !" that rose to his lips he did not 
 utter. The sense of loss, of searching pain, the word im- 
 plied he did not show. Instead, he spoke in his natural, 
 everyday tone again : 
 
 "The body irks him, of course, and he may try to rid 
 himself of it. Its limitations to him are a prison, for his 
 true consciousness he finds outside it. The explanation," 
 he added to himself, "of many a case of suicidal mania 
 probably. I've often wondered " 
 
 He took her hand, aware by the pallor of her face what 
 her feelings were. "Death, you see, Nayan, has no meaning 
 for him, as it has for us who think consciousness out of 
 the body impossible, and he is puzzled by our dread of it. 
 'We/ he said once, 'have nothing that decays. We may be 
 stationary, or advance, or retreat, but we can never end.' 
 He derives oh, I'm convinced of it from another order.
 
 332 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 Here amongst us he is inarticulate, unable to express 
 himself, hopeless, helpless, in prison. Oh, if only " 
 
 "He loves you'' she said quickly, releasing her hand. 
 "I suppose he realizes the eternal part of you and identifies 
 himself with that. In you, Edward, lies something very 
 close to what he is, akin he needs it terribly, just as 
 you " She became confused. 
 
 "Love, as we understand it," he interrupted, his voice 
 shaking a little, "he does not, cannot know, for he serves 
 another law, another order of being." 
 
 "That's how I feel it too." 
 
 She shivered slightly, but she did not turn away, and 
 her eyes kept all their frankness. 
 
 "Our humanity," she murmured, "writes upon his heart 
 in ink that quickly fades " 
 
 "And leaves no trace," he caught her up hurriedly. "His 
 one idea is to help, to render service. It is as natural to 
 him as for water to run down hill. He seeks instinctively 
 to become one with the person he seeks to aid. As with 
 us an embrace is an attempt at union, so he seeks, by some 
 law of his own being, to become identified with those whom 
 he would help. And he helps by intensifying their con- 
 sciousness somewhat as heat and air increase ordinary 
 physical vitality. Only, first there must be something for 
 him to work on. Energy, even bad, vicious, wrongly used, 
 he can work on. Mere emptiness prevents him. You remem- 
 ber Lady Gleeson " 
 
 "We most of us are too empty," she put in with quiet 
 resignation. "Our sense of that divine beauty is too 
 faint " 
 
 "Rather," came the quick correction, "he stands too close 
 to us. His effect is too concentrated. The power at such 
 close quarters disturbs and overbalances." 
 
 "That's why, then, I always feel it strongest when he's 
 left." 
 
 He glanced at her keenly. 
 
 "In his presence," she explained, "it's always as though
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 333 
 
 I saw only a part of him, even of his physical appearance, 
 
 out of the corner of my eye, as it were, and sometimes " 
 
 She hesitated. He did not help her this time. "As if those 
 others, many others, similar to himself, but invisible, crowd- 
 ing space about us, were intensely active." Her voice hushed 
 again. "He brings them with him as now. I feel it, 
 Edward, now. I feel them close." She looked round the 
 empty room, peering through the window into the quiet 
 evening sky. Dr. Fillery also turned away. He sighed 
 again. "Have you noticed, too," he went on presently, 
 yet half as if following his own thoughts, and a trifle in- 
 congruously, "the speed and lightness his very movements 
 convey, and how he goes down the street with that curious 
 air of drawing things after him, along with him, as trains 
 and motors draw the loose leaves and dust " 
 
 "Whirling," her quick whisper startled him a little, as 
 she turned abruptly from the window and gazed straight 
 at him. He smiled, instantly recovering himself. "A good 
 word, yes whirling but in the plural. As though there 
 were vortices about him." 
 
 It was her turn to smile. "That might one day carry 
 him away," she exclaimed. They smiled together then, 
 they even laughed, but somewhere in their laughter, like 
 the lengthening shadows of the spring day outside, lay an 
 incommunicable sadness neither of them could wholly under- 
 stand. 
 
 "Yet the craving for beauty," she said suddenly, "that 
 he leaves behind in me" her voice wavered "an intolerable 
 yearning that nothing can satisfy nothing here. An in- 
 finite desire, it seems, for for " 
 
 Dr. Fillery took her hand again gently, looking down 
 steadily into the clear eyes that sought his own, and the 
 light glistening in their moisture was similar, he fancied 
 for a moment, to the fire in another pair of shining eyes 
 that never failed to stir the unearthly dreams in him. 
 
 "It lies beyond any words of ours," he said softly. "Don't 
 struggle to express it, Iraida. To the flower, the star, we
 
 334 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 are wise to leave their own expression in their own par- 
 ticular field, for we cannot better it." 
 
 A sound of rising wind, distant yet ominous, went past 
 the window, as for a moment then the girl came closer 
 till she was almost in his arms, and though he did not 
 accept her, equally he did not shrink from the idea of 
 acceptance for the first time since they had known one 
 another. There was a smell of flowers ; almost in that wail- 
 ing wind he was aware of music. 
 
 "Together," he heard her whisper, while a faint shiver 
 was it of joy or terror? ran through her nerves. "All 
 of us when the time comes together." She made an ab- 
 rupt movement. "Just as we are together now ! Listen !" 
 she exclaimed. 
 
 "We call it wind," she whispered. "But of course 
 really it's behind beyond inside isn't it ?" 
 
 Dr. Fillery, holding her closely, made no answer. Then 
 he laughed, let go her hands, and said in his natural tone 
 again, breaking an undesirable spell intentionally, though 
 with a strong effort : "We are in space and time, remember. 
 Iraida. Let us obey them happily until another certain and 
 practical thing is shown us." 
 
 The faint sound that had been rising about them in the 
 air died down again. 
 
 They looked into each other's eyes, then drew apart, 
 though with a movement so slight it was scarcely perceptible. 
 It was Nayan and Dr. Fillery once more, but not before 
 the former had apparently picked out the very thought that 
 had lain, though unexpressed, in the latter's deepest mind 
 its sudden rising the cause of his deliberate change of atti- 
 tude. For she had phrased it, given expression to it, though 
 from an angle very different to his own. And her own 
 word, "escape," used earlier in the conversation, had de- 
 liberately linked on with it, as of intentional purpose. 
 
 "He must go back. The time is coming when he must 
 go back. We are not ready for him here not yet." 
 
 Somewhat in this fashion, though without any actual
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 335 
 
 words, had the idea appeared in letters of fire that leaped 
 and flickered through a mist of anguish, of loss, of lone- 
 liness, rising out of the depths within him. He knew whence 
 they came, he divined their origin at once, and the sound, 
 though faint and distant at first, confirmed him. Swiftly 
 behind them, moreover, born of no discoverable antecedents, 
 it seemed, rose simultaneously the phrase that Father Collins 
 loved: "A Being in his own place is the ruler of his fate." 
 Father Collins, for all his faults and strangeness, was a 
 personality, a consciousness, that might prove of value. His 
 extraordinarily swift receptiveness, his undoubted telepathic 
 powers, his fluid, sensitive, protean comprehension of pos- 
 sibilities outside the human walls, above the earthly ceiling, 
 so to speak. . . . Value suddenly attached itself to Father 
 Collins, as though the name had been dropped purposely 
 into his mind by someone. He was surprised to find this 
 thought in him. It was not for the first time, however, Dr. 
 Fillery remembered. 
 
 In Nayan's father, again, an artist, though not a par- 
 ticularly subtle one perhaps, lay a deep admiration, almost 
 a love, he could not explain. "There's something about 
 him in a sense immeasurable, something not only untamed 
 but untamable," he phrased it. "His gentleness conceals 
 it as a summer's day conceals a thunderstorm. To me it's 
 almost like an incarnation of the primal forces at work in 
 the hearts of my own people" he grew sad "and as 
 dangerous probably." He was speaking to his daughter, 
 who repeated the words later to Dr. Fillery. The study of 
 Fire in the elemental group had failed. "He's too big, too 
 vast, too formless, to get into any shape or outline my tools 
 can manage, even by suggestion. He dominates the others 
 Earth, Air, Water and dwarfs them." 
 
 "But fire ought to," she put in. "It's the most powerful 
 and splendid, the most terrific of them all. Isn't it? It 
 regenerates. It purifies. I love fire " 
 
 Her father smiled in his beard, noticing the softness in
 
 336 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 her manner, rather than in her voice. The awakening in 
 her he had long since understood sympathetically, if more 
 profoundly than she knew, and welcomed. 
 
 "He won't hurt you, child. He won't harm Nayushka 
 any more than a summer's day can hurt her. I see him 
 thus sometimes," he mumbled on half to himself, though 
 she heard and stored the words in her memory; "as an 
 entire day, a landscape even, I often see him. A stretch 
 of being rather than a point; a rushing stream rather than 
 a single isolated wave harnessed and confined in definite 
 form as we understand being here," he added curiously. 
 "No, he'll neither harm nor help you," he went on; "nor 
 any of us for that matter. A dozen nations, a planet, a 
 star he might help or harm" he laughed aloud suddenly 
 in a startled way at his own language "but an individual 
 never!" And he abruptly took her in his arms and kissed 
 her, drying her tears with his own rough handkerchief. 
 "Not even a fire- worshipper," he added with gruff tender- 
 ness, "like you!" 
 
 "There's more of divinity in fire than in any other earthly 
 thing we know," she replied as he held her, "for it takes 
 into itself the sweetest essence of all it touches." She looked 
 up at him with a smile. "That's why you can't get it into 
 your marble perhaps." To which her father made the sig- 
 nificant rejoinder: "And because none of us has the least 
 conception what 'divine' and 'divinity' really mean, though 
 we're always using the words ! It's odd, anyhow," he 
 finished reflectively, "that I can model the fellow better from 
 memory than when he's standing there before my eyes. 
 At close quarters he confuses me with too many terrific 
 unanswerable questions." 
 
 To multiply the verdicts and impressions Fillery jotted 
 down is unnecessary. In his own way he collected; in his 
 own way he wrote them down. About "N. H.," all agreed 
 in their various ways of expressing it, was that vital sugges- 
 tion of agelessness, of deathlessness, of what men call 
 eternal youth : the vigorous grace of limbs and movements,
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 837 
 
 the deep simple joy of confider>ce and power. None could 
 picture him tired, or even wearing out, yet ever with a faint 
 hint of painful conflict due to immense potentialities "a 
 day compressed into a single minute," as Khilkoff phrased 
 it straining, but vainly, to express themselves through a 
 limited form that was inadequate to their use. A storm 
 of passionate hope and wonder seemed ever ready to tear 
 forth from behind the calm of the great quiet eyes, those 
 green-blue changing eyes, which none could imagine light- 
 less or unlamping; and about his whole presentment a 
 surplus of easy, overflowing energy from an inexhaustible 
 source pressing its gifts down into him spontaneously, fire 
 and wind its messengers; yet that the human machinery 
 using these mind, body, nerves was ill adapted to their 
 full expression. To every individual having to do with him 
 was given a push, a drive, an impetus that stimulated that 
 individual's chief characteristic, intensifying it. 
 
 This to imaginative and discerning sight. But even upon 
 ordinary folk, aware only of the surface things that de- 
 |liberately hit them, was left a startling impression as of 
 someone waving a strange, unaccustomed banner that made 
 them halt and stare before passing on uncomfortably. He 
 had that nameless quality, apart from looks or voice or 
 manner, which arrested attention and drew the eyes of the 
 soul, wonderingly, perhaps uneasily, upon itself. He left 
 a mark. Something denned him from all others, leaving 
 him silhouetted in the mind, and those who had looked 
 into his eyes could not forget that they had done so. Up 
 rose at once the great unanswerable questions that, lying 
 ever at the back of daily life, the majority find it most 
 comfortable to leave undisturbed but rose in red ink or 
 italics. He started into an awareness of greater life. And the 
 effect remained, was greatest even, after he had passed on. 
 
 It was, of course, Father Collins, a frequent caller now 
 at the Home, betraying his vehement interest in long talks 
 with Dr. Fillery and in what interviews with "N. H." the
 
 338 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 latter permitted him it was this protean being whose mind, 
 amid wildest speculations, formed the most positive con- 
 clusions. The Prometheans, he believed, were not far wrong 
 in their instinctive collective judgment. "N. H." was not 
 a human being; the occupant of that magnificent body was 
 not a human spirit like the rest of us. 
 
 "Nor is he the only one walking the streets to-day," he 
 affirmed mysteriously. "In shops and theatres, trains and 
 buses, tucked in among the best families," he laughed, al- 
 though in earnest, "and even in suburbia I have come across 
 other human bodies similarly inhabited. What they are 
 and where they come from exactly, we cannot know, but 
 their presence among us is indubitable." 
 
 "You mean you recognize them?" inquired Dr. Fillery 
 calmly. 
 
 "One unmistakable sign they possess in common they 
 are invariably inarticulate, helpless, lost. The brain, the 
 five senses, the human organs all they have to work 
 through are useless to express the knowledge and powers 
 natural to them. Electricity might as well try to manifest 
 itself through a gas-pipe, or music through a stone. One 
 and all, too, possess strange glimmerings of another state 
 where they are happy and at home, something of the glory 
 a la Wordsworth, a Golden Age idea almost, a state com- 
 pared to which humanity seems a tin-pot business, yet a 
 state of which no single descriptive terms occur to them." 
 
 "Of which, however, they can tell us nothing?" 
 
 "Memory, of course, is lost. Their present brain can 
 have no records, can it? Only those of us who have per- 
 haps at some time, in some earlier existence possibly, shared 
 such a state can have any idea of what they're driving 
 at." 
 
 He glanced at Fillery with a significant raising of his 
 bushy eyebrows. 
 
 "There have been no phenomena, I'm glad to say," put 
 in the doctor, aware some comment was due from him, 
 "no physical phenomena, I mean."
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 339 
 
 "Nor could there be," pursued the other, delighted. "He 
 has not got the apparatus. With all such beings, their 
 power, rather than perceived, is felt. Sex, as with us, they 
 also cannot know, for they are neither male nor female." 
 He paused, as the other did not help him. "Enigmas they 
 must always be to us. We may borrow from the East and 
 call them devas, or class them among nature spirits of 
 legend and the rest, but we can, at any rate, welcome them, 
 and perhaps even learn from them." 
 
 "Learn from them?" echoed Fillery sharply. 
 
 "They are essentially natural, you see, whereas we are 
 artificial, and becoming more so with every century, though 
 we call it civilization. If we lived closer to nature we 
 might get better results, I mean. Primitive man, I'm con- 
 vinced, did get certain results, but he was a poor instrument. 
 Modern man, in some ways, is a better, finer instrument 
 to work through, only he is blind to the existence of any 
 beings but himself. A bridge, however, might be built, 
 I feel. 'N. H.' seems to me in close touch with these curious 
 beings, if" he lowered his voice "he is not actually one 
 of them. The wind and fire he talks about are, of course, 
 not what we mean. It is heat and rhythm, in some more 
 essential form, he refers to. If 'N. H.' is some sort of 
 nature spirit, or nature-being, he is of a humble type, con- 
 cerned with humble duties in the universe " 
 
 "There are, you think, then, higher, bigger kinds?'" 
 inquired the listener, his face and manner showing neither 
 approval nor disapproval. 
 
 Father Collins raised his hands and face and shoulders, 
 even his eyebrows. His spirits rose as well. 
 
 "If they exist at all and the assumption explains 
 plausibly the amazing intelligence behind all natural phe- 
 nomena they include every grade, of course, from the 
 insignificant fairies, so called, builders of simple forms, to 
 the immense planetary spirits and vast Intelligenes who 
 guide and guard the welfare of the greater happenings." 
 His eyes shone, his tone matched in enthusiasm his gestures.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 "A stupendous and magnificent hierarchy," he cried, "but 
 all, all under God, of course, who maketh his angels spirit's 
 and his ministers a flaming fire. Ah, think of it," he went 
 on, becoming lyrical almost as wonder fired him, "think 
 of it now especially in the spring! The vast abundance 
 and insurgence of life pouring up on all sides into forms 
 and bodies, and all led, directed, fashioned by this host of 
 invisible, yet not unknowable, Intelligences! Think of the 
 prolific architecture, the delicacy, the grandeur, the inspir- 
 ing beauty that are involved. . . . !" 
 
 "You said just now a bridge might be built," Dr. Fiilery 
 interrupted, while the other paused a second for breath. 
 
 Father Collins, nailed down to a positive statement, 
 hesitated and looked about him. But the hesitation passed 
 at once. 
 
 "It is the question merely," he went on more composedly, 
 "of providing the apparatus, the means of manifestation, 
 the instrument, the -body. Isn't it? Our evolution and 
 theirs are two separate different things." 
 
 "I suppose so. No force can express itself without a 
 proper apparatus." 
 
 "Certain of these Intelligences are so immense that only 
 a series of events, long centuries, a period of history, as 
 we call it, can provide the means, the body indeed, through 
 which they can express themselves. An entire civilization 
 may be the 'body' used by an archetypal power. Others, 
 again like *N. H.' probably since I notice that it is usually 
 the artist, the artistic temperament he affects most require 
 beauty for their expression beauty of form and outline, 
 of sound, of colour." 
 
 He paused for effect, but no comment came. 
 
 "Our response to beauty, our thrill, our lift of delight 
 and wonder before any manifestation of beauty these are 
 due only to our perception, though usually unrecognized 
 except by artists, of the particular Intelligence thus trying 
 to express itself " 
 
 Dr. Fiilery suddenly leaned forward, listening with a
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER Ml 
 
 new expression on his face. He betrayed, however, no 
 sign of what he thought of his voluble visitor. An idea, 
 none the less, had struck Him like a flash between the eyes 
 of the mind. 
 
 "You mean," he interposed patiently, "that just as your 
 fairies use form and colour to express themselves in nature, 
 we might use beauty of a mental order to to " 
 
 "To build a body of expression, yes, an instrument in 
 a collective sense, through which 'X. H.' might express 
 whatever of knowledge, wisdom and power he has " 
 
 "Will you explain yourself a little more definitely ?" 
 
 Father Collins beamed. He continued with an air of 
 intense conviction: 
 
 "The Artist is ever an instrument merely, and for the 
 most part an unconscious one; only the greatest artist is 
 a conscious instrument. No man is an artist at all until 
 he transcends both nature and himself; that is, until he 
 interprets both nature and himself in the unknown terms 
 of that greater Power whence himself and nature emanate. 
 He is aware of the majestic source, aware that the universe, 
 in bulk and in detail, is an expression of it, itself a limited 
 instrument; but aware, further and here he proves him- 
 self great artist of the stupendous, lovely, central Power 
 whose message stammers, broken and partial, through the 
 inadequate instruments of ephemeral appearances. 
 
 "He creates, using beauty in form, sound, colour, a better 
 and more perfect instrument, provides this central Power 
 with a means of fuller expression. 
 
 "The message no longer stammers, halts, suggests; it 
 flows, it pours, it sings. He has fashioned a vehicle for 
 its passage. His art has created a body it can use. He 
 has transcended both nature and himself. The picture, 
 poem, harmony that has become the body for this revelation 
 is alone great art." 
 
 "Exactly," came the patient comment that was asked 
 for. 
 
 "One thing is certain: only human knowledge, expressed
 
 342 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 in human terms, can come through a human brain. No 
 mind, no intellect, can convey a message that transcends 
 human experience and reason. Art, however, can. It can 
 supply the vehicle, the body. But, even here, the great 
 artist cannot communicate the secret of his Vision; he can- 
 not talk about it, tell it to others. He can only show the 
 result." 
 
 "Results," interrupted Dr. Fillery in a curious tone; 
 "what results, exactly, would you look for?" There was 
 a burning in his eyes. His skin was tingling. 
 
 "What else but a widening, deepening, heightening of 
 our present consciousness," came the instant reply. "An 
 extension of faculty, of course, making entirely new 
 knowledge available. A group of great artists, each con- 
 tributing his special vision, respectively, of form, colour, 
 words, proportion, could together create a 'body' to express 
 a Power transcending the accumulated wisdom of the world. 
 The race could be uplifted, taught, redeemed." 
 
 "You have already given some attention to this strange 
 idea ?" suggested his listener, watching closely the work- 
 ing of the other's face. "You have perhaps even experi- 
 mented A ceremonial of some sort, you mean? A 
 
 performance, a ritual or what ?" 
 
 Father Collins lowered his voice, becoming more earnest, 
 more impressive: 
 
 "Beauty, the arts," he whispered, "can alone provide a 
 vehicle for the expression of those Intelligences which are 
 the cosmic powers. A performance of some sort possibly 
 since there must be sound and movement. A bridge 
 between us, between our evolution and their own, might, 
 I believe, be thus constructed. Art is only great when it 
 provides a true form for the expression of an eternal cosmic 
 power. By combining we might provide a means for their 
 manifestation " 
 
 "A body of thought, as it were, through which our 'N. H.' 
 might become articulate? Is that your idea?" 
 
 Behind the question lay something new, it seemed, as
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 343 
 
 though, while listening to the exposition of an odd mystical 
 conception, his mind had been busy with a preoccupation, 
 privately but simultaneously, of his own. "In what way 
 precisely do you suggest the arts might combine to provide 
 this 'body' ? " he asked, a faint tremor noticeable iin the 
 lowered voice. 
 
 "That," replied Father Collins promptly, never at a loss, 
 "we should have to think about. Inspiration will come to 
 us probably through him. Ceremonial, of course, has 
 always been an attempt in this direction, only it has left 
 the world so long that people no longer know how to con- 
 struct a real one. The ceremonials of to-day are ugly, 
 vulgar, false. The words, music, colour, gestures every- 
 thing must combine in perfect harmony and proportion 
 to be efficacious. It is a forgotten method." 
 
 "And results how would they come?" 
 
 "The new wisdom and knowledge that result are sud- 
 denly there in the members of the group. The Power has 
 expressed itself. Not through the brain, of course, but, 
 rather, that the new ideas, having been acted out, are sud- 
 denly there. There has been an extension of consciousness. 
 A group consciousness has been formed, and " 
 
 "And there you are!" Dr. Fillery, moving his foot 
 unperceived, had touched a bell beneath the table. The 
 foot, however, groped and fumbled, as though unsure of 
 itself. 
 
 "You learn to swim by swimming, not by talking about 
 it." Father Collins was prepared to talk on for another 
 hour, "If we can devise the means and I feel sure we 
 can we shall have formed a bridge between the two 
 evolutions " 
 
 Nurse Robbins entered with apologies. A case upstairs 
 demanded the doctor's instant attendance. Dr. Devonham 
 was engaged. 
 
 "One thing," insisted Father Collins, as they shook hands 
 and he got up to go, "one thing only you would have to 
 fear." He was very earnest. Evidently the signs of
 
 Si4 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 struggle, of fierce conflict in the other's face he did not 
 notice. 
 
 "And that is?" A hand was on the door. 
 
 "If successful if we provide this means of expression 
 for him we provide also the means of losing him." 
 
 "Death?" He opened the door with rough, unnecessary 
 Yiotence. 
 
 "Escape. He would no longer need the body he now uses. 
 He would remember and be gone. In his place you would 
 have LeVaflon again only. I'm afraid," he added, "that 
 he already is remembering !" 
 
 His final words, as Nurse Robbins deftly hastened his 
 departure in the ball, were a promise to communicate the 
 results of his further reflections, and a suggestion that his 
 cottage by the river would be a quiet spot in which to talk 
 the matter over again. 
 
 But Dr. Fillery, having thanked Nurse Robbins for her 
 prompt attendance to his bell, returned to the room and 
 sat for some time in a strange confusion of anxious 
 thoughts. A singular idea took shape in him that Father 
 Collins had again robbed his mind of its unspoken content 
 That sensitive receptive nature had first perceived, then 
 given form to the vague, incoherent dreams that lurked 
 in tiie innermost recesses of his hidden self. 
 
 Yet, if that were so and if "N. H." already was 
 
 "ranembermg^ ! 
 
 A wave of shadow crept upon him, darkening his hope, 
 his enthusiasm, his very life. For another part of him 
 knew quite well the value to be attributed to what Father 
 Coffins had said. 
 
 Instinctivery his mind sought for Devonham. But it did 
 not occur to him at the moment to wonder why this was so.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 SPRING had come with her sweet torment of delight, 
 her promises, her passion, and London lay washed and 
 perfumed beneath April's eager sun. An immense, 
 persuasive glamour was in the sky. The whole earth caught 
 up a swifter gear, as the magic of rich creative life poured 
 out of "dead" soil into flower, insect, bird and animal . 
 The prodigious stream omitted no single form; every 
 "body" pulsed and blossomed at full strength. The hidden 
 powers in each seed emerged. And it was from the 
 inanimate body of the earth this flood of increased vitality 
 rose. 
 
 Into Edward Fillery, strolling before breakfast over the 
 wet lawn of the enclosed garden, the tide of new life rose 
 likewise. It was very early, the flush of dawn still near 
 enough for the freshness of the new day to be even-where. 
 The greater part of the huge city was asleep. He was 
 alone with the first birds, the dew, the pearl and gold of 
 the sun's slanting rays. He saw the slates and chimneys 
 glisten. Spring, like a visible presence, was passing across 
 the town, bringing the amazing message that all obey yet 
 no man under~tands. 
 
 "This is its touch upon the blossomed rose, 
 
 The fashion of its hand shaped lotus-leaves; 
 In dark soil and the silence of the seeds 
 The robe of spring it weaves, 
 
 " It maketh and unmaketh, mending all ; 
 
 What it hath wrought is better than had been; 
 Slow grows the splendid pattern that it plans, 
 Its wistful hands between." 
 345
 
 
 316 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 The lines came to his memory, while upon his mind 
 fell lovely and wonderful impressions. It was as though 
 the subconsciousness of the earth herself emerged with the 
 spring, producing new life, new splendour everywhere. Out 
 of a single patch of soil the various roots drew material 
 they then fashioned into such different and complicated 
 outlines as daisy, lily, rose, and a hundred types of tree. 
 From the same bit of soil emerged these intricate patterns 
 and designs, these different forms. At this very moment, 
 while his feet left dark tracks across the silvery lawn, the 
 process was going steadily forward all over England. 
 Beneath those very feet up rushed the power into all con- 
 ceivable bodies. Colour, music, form, marvellously organ- 
 ized, making no mistakes, were turning the world into a 
 vast, delicious garden. 
 
 Form, colour, sound! From his own hidden region rose 
 again the flaming hope and prophecy. He stooped and 
 picked a daisy, examining with rapt attention its perfect 
 little body. Who, what made this astonishing thing, that 
 was yet among the humbler forms? What intelligence 
 devised its elaborate outline, guarded, cared for, tended it, 
 ensured its growth and welfare? He gazed at its white 
 rays tipped with crimson, its several hundred florets, its 
 composite design. The spring life had been pouring through 
 it until he picked it. Through the huge mass of earth's 
 body its tiny roots had drawn the life it needed. This 
 power was now cut off. It would die. The process, as 
 with everything else, was "automatic and unintelligent!" 
 It seemed an incredible explanation. The old familiar ques- 
 tion troubled him, but he saw it abruptly now from a new 
 angle. 
 
 "We built it," came a voice so close that it seemed be- 
 hind him, for when at first he turned, startled, and yet 
 not startled, he saw no figure standing; "we who work 
 in darkness, yet who never die, the Hidden Ones who 
 build and weave inside and out of sight. You have de- 
 stroyed our work of ages. . . ."
 
 347 
 
 A pang of sudden regret and anguish seized him. He 
 stood still and stared in the direction whence he thought 
 the voice had come, but no form, no outline, no body that 
 could have produced a sound, a voice, was visible. A 
 blackbird flew with its shrill whistle over the -enclosing wall, 
 and the gardener, up unusually early, was now moving 
 slowly past the elms at the far end, some two hundred 
 yards away. The old man, he remembered, had been telling 
 him only the day before that the life in his plants this 
 year had been prodigious and successful beyond his whole 
 experience. It puzzled him. Something of reverence, of 
 superstition almost, had lain in the man's voice and eyes. 
 
 "Who are you?" whispered Fillery, still holding the 
 "dead" broken flower in his hand and staring about him. 
 He was aware that the sound from which the voice had 
 come, detaching itself, as it were, into articulate syllables 
 out of a general continuous volume, had not ceased. It 
 was all about him, softly murmuring. Was it in himself 
 perhaps? An intense inner activity, like the pressure o? 
 an enveloping tide, that was also in space, in the soil, the 
 body of the planet, rose in him too. And it seemed to 
 him that his mind was suddenly in process of being shaped 
 and fashioned into a new "body of understanding"; a new 
 instrument of Qnderstan^mg. 
 
 " This is its work upon the things ye see : 
 
 The unseen things are more; men's hearts and minds, 
 The thoughts of peoples and their ways and wills, 
 These, too, the great Law binds." 
 
 "I know," he exclaimed, this time with acceptance that 
 omitted the doubt he had first felt. "I know who you 
 are" . . . and even as he said the words, there dropped 
 into him, it seemed, some knowledge, some hint, some 
 wonder that lay, he well knew, outside all human experience. 
 It was as though some cosmic power brushed gently against 
 and through his being, but a power so alien to known 
 human categories that to attempt its expression in
 
 348 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 human terms language, reason, imagination even were to 
 mutilate it. Yet, even for its partial, broken manifestation, 
 human terms were alone available, since without these it 
 must remain unperceived, he himself unaware of its 
 existence. 
 
 He was, however, aware of its presence, its existence. 
 All that was left to him therefore was his own personal 
 interpretation. Herein, evidently, lay the truth for him; 
 this was the meaning of his "acceptance." It was, in some 
 way, a renewal of that other vision he called the Flower 
 Hill and Flower Music experience. 
 
 "I know you," he repeated, his voice merging curiously 
 in the general underlying murmur of the morning. "You 
 belong to the bodiless, the deathless ones who work and 
 build and weave eternally. Form, sound, colour are your 
 instruments, the elements your tools. You wove this 
 flower," he fingered the dying daisy, "as you also shaped 
 this body" he tapped his breast "and you built as well 
 this mind " 
 
 He stopped dead. Two things arrested him: the feeling 
 that the ideas were not primarily his own, but derived from 
 a source outside himself ; and a sudden intensification of 
 the flaming hope and prophecy that burst up as with new 
 meaning into the words "mind" and "body." 
 
 The broken body of the flower slipped from his fingers 
 and fell upon the body of the earth. He looked down at 
 its now empty form through which no life flowed, and 
 his eye passed then to his own body beating with intense 
 activity, and thence to the bodies of the trees, the darting 
 birds, the gigantic sun now peering magnificently along the 
 heavens. Body! A body was a form through which life 
 expressed itseTffa vehicle of expression by means of which 
 life manifested, an instrument it used. But a body of 
 thought was a true phrase too. And with the words, shaped 
 automatically in his brain, a new light flashed and flooded 
 him with its waves. 
 
 "A body of thought, a mental body" the phrase went
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 349 
 
 humming and flowing strangely through him. A body of 
 thought! Father Collins, he remembered, had used some 
 such wild language, only it had seemed empty words with- 
 out intelligible meaning. Whence came the intense new 
 meaning that so suddenly attached itself to the familiar 
 phrase? Whence came the thrilling deep conviction that 
 new, greater knowledge was hovering near, and that for 
 its expression a new body must be devised ? And what was 
 this new knowledge, this new power? Whence came the 
 amazing certainty in him that a new way was being shown 
 to him, a means of progress for humanity that must other- 
 wise flounder always to its average level of growth, develop- 
 ment, then invariably collapse again? 
 
 "We built it," ran past him through the air again, or 
 rose perhaps from the stirred depths of his own subcon- 
 scious being, or again, dropped from a hidden rushing star. 
 "The more perfect and adequate the form, the greater the 
 ffowjjf fiTef'oT knowledge, of power it can express. No 
 mind, no intellect, can convey a message that transcends 
 human experience. Yet there is a way." 
 
 The new knowledge was there, if only the new vehicle 
 suited to its expression could be devised. . . . 
 
 The stream of life pouring through him became more 
 and more intense ; some power of perception seemed grow- 
 ing into white heat within him; transcending the limited 
 senses ; becoming incandescent. This .tide of sound, in- 
 audible to ordinary ears, was thejmusic which isTnseparable 
 from the rhythm that underlies all forms, the music of the 
 earth's manifold activities now pouring"m vibrations huge 
 and tiny all round and through him. He turned instinc-/ 
 tively. 
 
 ~You . , . !" exclaimed the doctor in him, as though 
 rebuke, reproval stirred. "You here ... !" 
 
 It seemed to him that the figure of "N. H.," embodying 
 as it were a ray of sunlight, stood beside him. 
 
 "We," came the answer, with a smile that took the 
 sparkling sunlight through the very face. "We are all about
 
 350 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 you," added the voice with a rhythm that swamped all 
 denial, all objection, bringing an exultant exhilaration in 
 their place. "We come from what always seems to you a 
 Valley of sun and flowers, where we work and play behind 
 the appearances you call the world." 
 
 "The world," repeated Fillery. "The universe as well." 
 
 The voice, the illusion of actual words, both died away, 
 merging in some perplexing fashion into another appear- 
 ance, perhaps equally an illusion so far as the senses were 
 concerned the phenomenon men call sight. Instead of 
 hearing, that is, he now suddenly saw. Something in the 
 arrangement of light caught his attention, holding it. The 
 deep, central self in him, that which interprets and de-codes 
 the reports the senses bring, employed another mode. 
 
 The figure of "N. H." still was definite enough in form 
 indeed, yet at the same time taking the rays into itself as 
 though it were a body of light. There was no transparency, 
 of course, nor was this clear radiance seen by Fillery for 
 the first time, but rather that his natural shining was caught 
 up and intensified by the morning sunshine. A body of 
 light, none the less, seemed a true description of what Fillery 
 now saw. This sunshine filled the air, the space all round 
 him, the entire lawn and garden shone in a sparkling flood 
 of dancing brilliance. It blazed. The figure of "N. H." 
 was merely a portion of this blazing. As a focus, but one 
 of many, he now thought of it. And about each focus was 
 the toss and fling of lovely, ever- rising spirals. 
 
 Across the main stream came then another pulsing move- 
 ment, hardly discernible at first, and similar to an under- 
 swell that moves the sea against the wave so that the eye 
 perceives it only when not looking for it. This contrary 
 motion, it soon became apparent, went in numerous, almost 
 countless directions, so that, within and below its com- 
 plicated wave-tracery, he was aware of yet other motions, 
 crossing and interlacing at various speeds, until the space 
 about him seemed to whirl with myriad rhythms, yet with-
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 351 
 
 out the least confusion. These rhythms were of a hundred 
 different magnitudes, from the very tiny to the gigantic, 
 and while the smallest were of a radiant brilliance that 
 made the sunshine pale, the larger ones seemed distant, 
 their light of an intenser quality, though of a quality he had 
 never seen before. These were strangely diffused, these 
 bigger ones "distant" was the word that occurred to him, 
 although that inner brilliance which occurs in dreams, in 
 imaginative moments, the nameless glow that colours mental 
 vision, described them better. Moreover they wore colours 
 the human eye had never seen, while the smallest rhythms 
 were lit with the familiar colours of the prism. 
 
 He stood absorbed, fascinated, drinking in the amazing 
 spectacle, as though the glowing spirals of fire communi- 
 cated to his inmost being a heat and glory of creative power. 
 He was aware of the creative stream of spring in his own 
 heart, pouring from the body of the earth on which he 
 stood, drenching mind, nerves and even muscles with 
 concentrated life. His subconscious being rose and 
 stretched its wings. All, all was possible. A sensation of 
 divine deathlessness possessed mm. The limitations of his 
 ofdirrary human faculties and powers were overborne, so 
 that he felt he could never again face the mournful prison 
 that caged him in. The jneaning of escape became pjain 
 to him. 
 ~TTe~saw the invisible building Intelligences at work. 
 
 He was aware then suddenly of purpose, of intention. 
 The seeming welter of the waves of coloured light, of the 
 immense and tiny rhythms, the intricate streams of vibrat- 
 ing, pulsing, throbbing movements were, he now perceived, 
 marvellously co-ordinated. There was a focus, a vortex, 
 towards, which all rushed with a power so prodigious that 
 a sense of terror touched him. He suddenly became con- 
 scious of a pattern forming before his eyes, hanging in 
 empty space, shining, soft with light and beauty. It be- 
 came, he saw, a geometric design. An idea of crystals,
 
 352 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 frost-forms, a spider's web hung with glistening dewdrops 
 shot across his memory. The spirals whirled and sang 
 about it. 
 
 This outline, he next perceived, was the focus to which 
 the light, heat, colour all contributed their particular touch 
 and quality. It glowed now in the centre of the vortex. 
 So overwhelming, however, was the sense of the stupendous 
 power involved that, as he phrased it afterwards, it seemed 
 he watched the formation of some mighty sun. It was the 
 whirling of those billion-miled sheets of incandescent fires 
 that attend the birth of a nebula he watched. The power, 
 at any rate, was gigantic. 
 
 He stood trembling before a revelation that left him lost, 
 shelterless, bereft of any help that his little self might sum- 
 mon when, suddenly, with an emotion of strange tender- 
 ness, he saw the great rhythms become completely domi- 
 nated by the very smallest of all. The same instant the 
 pattern grew sharply outlined, perfect in every detail, as 
 though the focus of powerful glasses cleared and the pat- 
 tern hung a moment exquisitely fashioned in space beneath 
 his eyes before it sank slowly to the ground. It remained 
 in an upright position on the grass at his feet a daisy, 
 growing in the earth, alive, its tiny delicate face taking the 
 sunlight and the morning wind. 
 
 With a shock he then realized another thing: it was the 
 very daisy he had broken, uprooted, killed a few minutes 
 before. 
 
 He stooped, one hand outstretched as though to finger 
 its wee white petals, but found instead that he was listen- 
 ing listening to a sweet faint music that rose from the 
 surface of the lawn, from grass and flowers, running in 
 waves and circles, like the vibrations of gentle wind across 
 a thousand strings. It was similar, though less in volume, 
 to the sound he had heard in the presence of "N. H." He 
 rose slowly to an upright position, dazed, bewildered, yet 
 rapt with the wonder of the whole experience. 
 
 "N. H. !" he heard his voice exclaim, its sound merging
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 353 
 
 in the growing volume of music all about him. "N. H. !" 
 he cried again. "This is your work, your service ... !" 
 
 But he could not see him; his figure was no longer 
 differentiated from the ever-moving sea of light that filled 
 space wherever he looked. The same play of brilliance 
 shone and glistened everywhere, whirling, ever shifting as 
 in vortices of intricate geometrical designs, dancing, inter- 
 penetrating, and with a magnificence of colour that caught 
 his breath away. There were remarkable flashings, and 
 two of these flashings blazed suddenly together, forming an 
 immense physiognomy, an expression, rather, as of a 
 mighty face. The same instant there were a hundred of 
 these mighty brilliant visages that pierced through the sea 
 of whirling colour and gazed upon him, close, terrific, with 
 a power and beauty that left thought without even a ghost 
 of language to describe them. Their glory lay beyond all 
 earthly terms. He recognized them. These mighty outlines 
 he had seen before. 
 
 His mind then made an effort ; he tried to think ; memory 
 and reason strove with emotion and sensation. The forms, 
 the faces, the powers at once grew fainter. They faded 
 slowly. The whirling vortices withdrew in some extra- 
 ordinary way, the colour paled, the sound grew thinner, 
 ever more distant, the great weaving designs dissolved. The 
 lovely spirals all were gone. He saw the garden trees again, 
 the flower beds. Space emptied, showing the morning sun- 
 shine on roofs and chimney-pots. 
 
 "We have rebuilt, remade it," he heard faintly, but he 
 heard also the roar and boom of the gigantic rhythms as 
 they withdrew, not spatially, so much as from his con- 
 sciousness that was now contracting once more, till only 
 the fainter sounds of the smaller singing patterns, the 
 Flower Music as he had come to call it, reached his ears. 
 Words and music, like voices known in dreams, seemed 
 interwoven. He remembered the huge faces, with their 
 bright confidence and glory, rising through the sunlight, 
 peering as through a mirror at him, radiant and of imperish-
 
 354 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 able beauty. The words, perhaps, he attached himself, his 
 own interpretations of their ringing motions. 
 
 The sounds died away. He reeled. The expansion and 
 subsequent contraction of consciousness had been too rapid, 
 the whole experience too intense. He swayed, unsure of 
 his own identity. He remembered vaguely that tears filled 
 his eyes and rolled down his cheeks, that the destruction 
 of a lovely form had caused him a peculiar anguish, and 
 that its recreation produced an intolerable joy, bringing 
 tears of happiness. An arm caught him as he swayed. 
 The accents of a voice he knew were audible close beside 
 him. But at first he did not understand the words, feeling 
 only a dull pain they caused. 
 
 "Their imperishable beauty! Their divine loveliness!" 
 he stammered, recognizing the face and voice. He flung 
 his arms wide, gazing into the now empty air above the 
 London garden. "The great service they eternally fulfil 
 
 oh, that we all might " He made a gesture towards 
 
 the other houses with their sightless, shuttered windows. 
 
 "I know, I know," came in the familiar tones. "But 
 come in now, come in, Edward, with me. I beg you 
 before it is too late." Paul Devonham's voice shook so that 
 it was hardly recognizable. The skin of his face was white. 
 He wore a haggard look. 
 
 "Too late!" repeated the other; "it is always too late. 
 The world will never see. Their eyes are blinded." An 
 intolerable emotion swept him. He stared suddenly at his 
 colleague, an immense surprise in him. "But you, Paul!" 
 he exclaimed. "You understand! Even you !" 
 
 Devonham led him slowly into the house. There was 
 protection in his manner, in voice and gesture there was 
 deep affection, respect as well, but behind and through 
 these flickered the signs of another unmistakable emotion 
 that Fillery at first could hardly credit of pity, was it? 
 Of something at any rate he dared not contemplate. 
 
 "Even I," came in quick, low tones, "even I, Edward, 
 understand. You forget. I was once alone with him"
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 355 
 
 the voice sank to a rapid whisper "in the mountain valley." 
 Devonham's expression was curious. He raised his tone 
 again. "But not now, not now, I beg of you. Not yet, 
 at any rate. You will be cast out, judged insane, your work 
 
 destroyed, your career ruined, your reputation " His 
 
 excitement betrayed itself in his bright eyes and unusual 
 gestures. He was shaken to the core. Fillery turned upon 
 him. They were in the corridor now. He flung his arm 
 free of the restraining hand. 
 
 "You know!" he cried, "yet would keep silent!" His 
 voice choked. "You saw what I saw: new sources open, 
 the offer made, the channels accessible at our very door, 
 yet you would refuse " 
 
 "Not one in ten million," came the hard rejoinder, 
 "would believe." The voice trembled. "We have no proof. 
 Their laws of manifestation are unknown to us, and such 
 glimpses are but glimpses useless and dangerous." He 
 whispered suddenly: "Besides what are they? What, 
 after all, are we dealing with? 
 
 "We can experiment," interrupted his companion 
 quickly. 
 
 "How? Of what possible value?" 
 
 "You felt what I felt? In your own being you ex- 
 perienced the revelation too, and yet you use such words! 
 New forces, new faculties, Beings from another order oT 
 incalculable powers to ennoble, to bless, to inspire! The 
 creation of higher forms through which new, greater life 
 and knowledge, shall manifest!" 
 
 He could hardly find the words he sought, so bright was 
 the hope and wonder in his heart still. "Think at a 
 time like this what humanity might gain. Creative powers, 
 Paul, creative ! Acting directly on the subconscious selves 
 of everybody, intensifying every individual, whether he 
 understands and believes or not! The gods, Paul and 
 nothing less You saw the daisy " 
 
 Devonham seized both of his companion's hands, as he 
 heard the torrent of wild, incoherent words : "You'll have
 
 356 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 the entire world against you," he interrupted. "Why seek 
 crucifixion for a dream?" Then, as his hands were again 
 flung off, he turned, a ringer suddenly on his lips. "Hush, 
 hush, Edward !" he whispered. "The house is sleeping still. 
 You'll wake them all." 
 
 There was a new, strange authority about him. Dr. 
 Fillery controlled himself. They went upstairs on tiptoe. 
 
 "Listen !" murmured Devonham, as they reached the first- 
 floor landing. "That's what woke me first and led me 
 to his room, but only to find it empty. He was already 
 gone. I saw him join you on the lawn. I watched from 
 the open window. Then I lost him. . . . Listen!" He 
 was trembling like a child. 
 
 The sound still echoed faintly, distant, rising and falling, 
 sweet and very lovely, and hardly to be distinguished from 
 the musical hum of wind that sighs and whispers across 
 the strings of an aeolian harp. To one man came incredible 
 sensations as they paused a moment. Dim though the land- 
 ing was, there still seemed a tender luminous glow pervad- 
 ing it. 
 
 "They're everywhere," murmured Fillery, "everywhere 
 and always about us, though in different space. Through 
 and behind and inside everything that happens, helping, 
 building, constructing ceaselessly. Oh, Paul, how can you 
 doubt and question value? Behind every single form and 
 body, physical or mental, they operate divinely " 
 
 "Mental ! Edward, for God's sake " 
 
 Devonham stepped nearer to him with such abruptness 
 that his companion stopped. The pallor of the assistant's 
 face so close arrested his words a moment. They held 
 their breath, listening together side by side. The sounds 
 grew fainter, died away in the stillness of the early morn- 
 ing, then ceased altogether. It was not the first time they 
 had listened thus to the strange music, nor was it the first 
 time that Fillery entered the room alone. As once before, 
 his colleague remained outside, watching, waiting, half 
 seduced, it seemed, yet vehemently against a sympathetic
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 357 
 
 attitude. He watched his chief go in, he saw the expression 
 on his face. Upon his own, behind a mild expectancy, lay 
 a look of pain. 
 
 "Empty !" He heard the startled exclamation. 
 
 And instantly Devonham was at his side, a firm hand 
 upon his arm, his eyes taking in an unused bed, a window 
 opened wide, a glow of light and heat the early sunshine 
 could not possibly explain. The perfume, as of flowers 
 in the air, he noted too, and a sense of lightness, fresh- 
 ness, sweetness about the atmosphere that produced hap- 
 piness, exhilaration. The room throbbed, as it were, with 
 invisible waves of some communicable power even he could 
 not deny. But of "N. H.," the recent occupant, there was 
 no sign. 
 
 "In the garden still. I lost sight of him somehow. I 
 told you." 
 
 Fillery crossed quickly to the window, his colleague with 
 him, looking out upon a lawn and paths that held no figure 
 anywhere. The gardener was not in sight. Only the birds 
 were visible among the daisies. The quiet sunlight lay as 
 usual upon leaves and flowers waving in the breeze. "He 
 came in," Fillery went on rapidly under his breath. "He 
 must have slipped back when " 
 
 The sound of steps and voices behind them in the corridor 
 brought both men round with a quick movement, as Nurse 
 Robbins, her arm linked in that of "N. H.," stood in the 
 open doorway. Her face was radiant, her eyes alight, her 
 breath came unevenly, and one might have thought her 
 caught midway in some ecstatic dance that still left its joy 
 and bliss stamped on her pretty face. Only she looked 
 more than pretty ; there was beauty, a fairy loveliness about 
 her that betrayed an intense experience of some inner kind. 
 
 At the sight of the two doctors she rapidly composed 
 herself, leading her companion quietly into the room. "He 
 was upstairs, sir," she said respectfully but breathlessly 
 somewhat, and addressing herself, Fillery noticed, to Devon- 
 ham and not to himself. "He was going from room to room,
 
 358 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 talking to the patients er singing to them. It was the 
 singing woke me " 
 
 "Upstairs!" exclaimed Devonham. "He has been up 
 there!" 
 
 She broke off as Fillery came forward and took "N. H." 
 by the hands, dismissing her with a gesture she was quick 
 to understand. Devonham went with her hurriedly, intent 
 upon a personal inspection at once. 
 
 "Your service called you," said Fillery quietly, the moment 
 they were alone. "I understand!" Through the contact 
 of the hands waves of power entered him, it seemed. About 
 the face was light, as though fire glowed behind the very 
 skin and eyes, producing the effect almost of a halo. 
 
 "They came for me, and I must go." The voice was 
 deep and wonderful, with prolonged vibrations. "I have 
 found my own. I must return where my service needs me, 
 for here I can do so little." 
 
 "To your own place where you are ruler of your fate," 
 the other said slowly. "Here you " 
 
 "Here," came the quick interruption, while the voice lost 
 its resonance, fading as it were in sadness, "here I die." 
 Even the radiance of his face, although he smiled, dimmed 
 a little on that final word. "I can help where I belong 
 not here." The light returned, the music came back into 
 the amazing voice. 
 
 "The daisy," whispered Fillery, joy rising in him 
 strangely. 
 
 "Nature," floated through the air like music, "is my 
 place. With human beings I cannot work. It is too much, 
 and I only should destroy. They are not ready yet, for 
 our great rhythms injure them, and they cannot under- 
 stand." 
 
 Trembling with emotions he could neither define nor 
 control, Fillery led him to the window. 
 
 "Even in this little back-garden of a London house," he 
 murmured, "among, so to speak, the humble buttercups and 
 daisies of our life! The creative Intelligences at work,
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 359 
 
 building, ever building the best forms they can. You re- 
 make a broken daisy" his voice rose, as the great shining 
 face so close lit with its flaming smile "you re-make as 
 well our broken minds. In the subconscious hides our 
 creative power that you stimulate. It is with that and that 
 alone you work. It hides in all of us, though the artist 
 alone perceives or can use it. It is with that you work " 
 
 "With you, dear Fillery, I can work, for you help me 
 to remember. You feel the big rhythms that we bring." 
 
 Dr. Fillery started, peered about him, listened hard. Was 
 it the trees, shaking in the morning wind, that rustled? 
 Was it a voice? The dancing leaves reflected the sunshine 
 from a thousand facets. The sound accompanied, rather 
 than interrupted, his own speech. He turned back to "N. 
 H." with passionate enthusiasm. 
 
 "Using beauty the artists the creative powers of the 
 Race," he went on, "we shall create together a new body, 
 a new vehicle, through which your powers can express 
 themselves. The intellect cannot serve you ... it is the 
 creative imagination of those who know beauty that you 
 seek. You are inarticulate in this wretched body. We shall 
 make a new one " 
 
 "They have come for me and I must go n 
 
 "We will work together. Oh, stay stay with me !** 
 
 "I have found the way. I have remembered. I must go 
 back " 
 
 The wind died down, the leaves stopped rustling, the sun- 
 shine seemed to pale as though a cloud passed over the sky. 
 The words he had heard resolved themselves into the morn- 
 ing sounds, the singing of the birds. Had they been words 
 at all? Bewilderment, like a pain, rushed over him. He 
 knew himself suddenly imprisoned, caught. 
 
 "I have remembered," he heard in quiet tones, but the 
 voice dead, no resonance, no music in it. And across the 
 room he saw suddenly Paul Devonham just inside the door, 
 returned from his inspection. Beside him stood LeVallon. 
 
 An extraordinary reaction instantly took place in him.
 
 360 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 A lid was raised, a shutter lifted, a wall fell flat. He 
 hardly knew how to describe it. Was it due to the look of 
 anxiety, of tenderness, of affectionate, of protective care 
 he saw plainly upon his colleague's face? He could not 
 say. He only knew for certain in that instant that Paul 
 Devonham's main preoccupation was with himself; that 
 the latter regarded him exactly as he regarded any other 
 yes, that was the only word any other patient; that he 
 looked after him, tended, guarded, cared for him and that 
 this watchful, experienced observation had been going on 
 now for a long, long time. 
 
 The authority in his manner became abruptly clear as 
 day. Devonham watched over him; also he watched him. 
 For days, for weeks, this had been his attitude. For the 
 first time, in this instant, as he saw him lead away LeVallon 
 into his own room and close the door, Fillery now perceived 
 this. He experienced a violent revulsion of mind. In a 
 flash a hundred details of the recent past occurred to him, 
 chief among them the fact that, more and more, the con- 
 trol of the Home and its occupants had been taken over, 
 Fillery himself only too willing, by his assistant. A moment 
 of appalling doubt rose like a black cloud. . . . 
 
 He heard Paul telling LeVallon to begin his breakfast, 
 just as the door closed, and he noted the authoritative 
 tone of voice. The next minute he and his colleague were 
 alone together. 
 
 "Paul," said the chief quickly, but with a calm assurance 
 that anticipated a favourable answer, "they, at any rate, 
 are all right?" 
 
 Devonham nodded his head. "No harm done," he replied 
 briefly. "In fact, as you know, he rather stimulates them 
 than otherwise." 
 
 "I know." 
 
 He felt, for the first time in their years of close relation- 
 ship, a breath of suspicion enter him. There was a look 
 upon his colleague's face he could not quite define. It 
 baffled him.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 361 
 
 "Of course, I know- 
 
 He stopped, for the undecipherable look had strengthened 
 suddenly. He thought of a gaoler. 
 
 "Paul," he said quickly, "what's the matter? What's 
 wrong with you?" 
 
 He drew back a pace or two and watched him. 
 
 "With me nothing, Edward. Nothing at all." The tone 
 was grave with anxiety, yet had this new authority in it. 
 
 A feeling of intolerable insecurity came upon him, a sen~ 
 sation as though he balanced on air, yet its cause, its origin, 
 easily explained: the support of his colleague's mind was 
 taken from him. Paul's attitude was clear as day to him. 
 He was a gaoler. . . . He recalled again the recent detail, 
 brightly significant that Nurse Robbins had turned to Paul, 
 rather than to himself. 
 
 "With me, then you think ?" His voice hardly sounded 
 like his own. He looked about him for support, found an 
 arm-chair, sat down in it. "You're strange, Paul, very 
 strange," he whispered. "What do you mean by 'there's 
 something wrong with me'?" 
 
 Devonham's expression cleared slightly and a kindly, 
 sympathetic smile appeared, then vanished. The grave look 
 that Fillery disliked reappeared. 
 
 "What d'you mean, Paul Devonham?" came the repeti- 
 tion, in a louder, more challenging voice. "You're watching 
 me as though I were" he laughed without a trace of 
 mirth "a patient." He leaned forward. "Paul, you've 
 been watching me for a long time. Out with it, now. What 
 is it?" 
 
 Devonham, who had kept silent, drew some papers from 
 his pocket, a bundle of rolled sheets. 
 
 "Of course," he said gently, "I always watch you. For 
 that's how I learn. I learn from you, Edward, more than 
 from anybody I know." 
 
 But Dr. Fillery, his eyes fixed upon the sheaf of papers, 
 had recognized them. His own writing was visible along 
 the uneven edges. They were the description he had set
 
 362 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 down of his adventure on Flower Hill, of the scenes be- 
 tween "N. H." and Lady Gleeson, between "N. H." and 
 Nayan, the autobiographical description with "N. H." and 
 Nurse Robbins soon after his arrival, when Fillery had so 
 amazingly found his own mind as he believed identified 
 with his patient's. 
 
 Devonham snapped off the elastic band that held the 
 sheaf together. "Edward, I've read them. We have no 
 secrets, of course. I've read them carefully. Every word 
 my dear fellow." 
 
 "Yes, yes," replied the other, while something in him 
 wavered horribly. "I'm glad. They were meant for you to 
 read, for of course we have no secrets. I I do not expect 
 you to agree. We have never quite seen eye to eye have 
 we?" His voice shook. "You terrible iconoclast," he 
 added, betraying thus the nature of the fear that changed 
 his voice, then recognizing with vexation that he had done 
 so. "You believe nothing. You never will believe anything. 
 You cannot understand. With joy you would destroy what 
 I and others believe wouldn't you, Paul ?" 
 
 The deep sadness, the gravity on the face in front of him 
 stopped the tirade. 
 
 "I would save you, Edward," came the earnest, gentle 
 words, "from yourself. The powers of auto-suggestion, as 
 we know in our practice don't we? are limitless. If you 
 call that destroying " 
 
 From the adjoining room the clatter of knives and forks 
 was audible. Dr. Fillery listened a moment with a smile. 
 
 "Paul," he asked, his voice firm and sure again, "is your 
 chief patient in that room," indicating the door with his 
 head, "or in this?" 
 
 "In this," was the reply. "A wise man is always his own 
 patient and 'Physician, heal thyself his motto." He sat 
 down beside his chief. His manner changed; there was 
 affection, deep solicitude, something of passionate entreaty 
 even in voice and eyes and gestures. "There are features 
 here," he said in lowered tones, "Edward, we have not
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 363 
 
 understood, perhaps even we can never understand ; but we 
 have not, I think, sufficiently guarded against one thing 
 auto-suggestion. The role it plays in life is immense, in- 
 calculable; it is in everything we do and think, above all in 
 everything we believe. It is peculiarly powerful and active 
 in er unusual things " 
 
 "The sound the sounds you've heard them yourself," 
 broke in his companion. 
 
 Devonham shrugged his thin shoulders. "He sings in a 
 peculiar way." As an aside, he said it, returning to his 
 main sermon instantly. "Let us leave details out," he cried ; 
 "it is the principle that concerns us. Edward, your complex 
 against humanity lies hard and rigid in you still. It has 
 never found that full recognition by yourself which can 
 resolve it. Your work, your noble work, is but a partial 
 expression. The kernel of this old complex in you remains 
 unrelieved, undischarged because still unrecognized. And, 
 further, you are continually adding to the repression which" 
 even Devonham paused a second before using such a 
 word to such a man "is poisoning you, Edward, poisoning 
 you, I repeat." 
 
 "You saw you saw the rebuilding of the daisy" an 
 odd whisper of insecurity ran through the quiet words, a 
 statement rather than a question "you realize, at any rate, 
 that chance has brought us into contact with Powers, 
 creative Powers, of a new order " 
 
 "Let us omit all details just now," interrupted the other, 
 a troubled, indecipherable look on his face. "The un- 
 doubted telepathy between your mind and mine nullifies 
 any such " 
 
 " powers of which we all have some faint counter- 
 part, at any rate, in our subliminal selves." Fillery had not 
 heard the interruption. "Powers by means of which we 
 may build for the Race new forms, new mental bodies, new 
 vehicles for life, for God, to manifest through more per- 
 fect, more receptive " 
 
 Devonham had suddenly seized both his hands and was
 
 364 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 leaning closer to him. Something compelling, authoritative, 
 peculiarly convincing for a moment had its undeniable 
 effect, again stopping the flow of hurried, passionate, eager 
 words. 
 
 "There is one new form, new body," and the intensity in 
 voice and eyes drove the meaning deep, deep into his lis- 
 tener's mind and heart. "I wish to see you build. One, and 
 one only physical, mental, spiritual. But you cannot build 
 it, Edward alone!" 
 
 "Paul !" The other held up a warning hand ; the expres- 
 sion in his eyes was warning too. Their effect upon Devon- 
 ham, however, was nil. He was talking with a purpose 
 nothing could alter. 
 
 "She is still waiting for you," he went on with determina- 
 tion, "and already you have kept her waiting overlong." 
 In the tone, in the hard clear eyes as well, lay a suggestion 
 almost of tears. 
 
 He opened the door into the breakfast-room, but Fillery 
 caught his arm and stopped him. They could hear Nurse 
 Robbins speaking, as she attended as usual to her patient's 
 wants. Coffee was being poured out. There was a sound 
 of knives and plates and cups. 
 
 "One minute, Paul, one minute before we go in." He 
 drew him aside. "And what, Doctor Devonham, may I ask, 
 would you prescribe?" There was a curious mixture of 
 gentle sarcasm, of pity, of patient tolerance, yet at the same 
 time of sincere, even anxious, interest in the question. The 
 face and manner betrayed that he waited for the answer 
 with something more than curiosity. 
 
 There was no hesitancy in Devonham. He judged the 
 moment ripe, perhaps ; he was aware that his words would 
 be listened to, appreciated, understood certainly, and pos- 
 sibly, obeyed. 
 
 "Expression," he said convincingly, but in a lowered 
 voice. "The fullest expression, everywhere and always. 
 Let it all come. Accept the lot, believe the lot, welcome
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 365 
 
 the lot, and thus" he could not conceal the note of passion- 
 ate entreaty, of deep affection "avoid every atom of 
 repression. In the end in the long run your own best 
 judgment must prevail." 
 
 They smiled into each other's eyes for a moment in 
 silence, while, instinctively and automatically, their hands 
 joined in a steady clasp. 
 
 "Bless you, old fellow," murmured the chief. "As if I 
 didn't know ! It's the treatment you've been trying on me 
 for weeks and months. As if I hadn't noticed !" 
 
 As they entered the breakfast-room, Nurse Robbins, with 
 flushed face and sparkling eyes, was pouring out the coffee, 
 leaning close over her patient's shoulder as she did so. 
 Fresh roses were in her cheeks as well as on the table. 
 
 "This is its touch upon the blossomed maid," whispered 
 Fillery, with the quick hint of humour that belongs only to 
 the sane. At the same time the light remark was produced, 
 he well knew, by a part of himself that sought to remain 
 veiled from recognition. Any other triviality would have 
 done as well to cloak the sharp pain that swept him, and to 
 lead his listener astray. For in that instant, as they entered, 
 he saw at the table not "N. H.," but LeVallon the back- 
 ward, ignorant, commonplace LeVallon, an empty, untaught 
 personality, yet so receptive that anything anything 
 could be transferred to him by a strong, vivid mind, a mind, 
 for instance, like his own. . . . 
 
 The sight, for a swift instant, was intolerable and dev- 
 astating. He balanced again on air that gave him no sup- 
 port. He wavered, almost swayed. "N. H.," in that 
 horrible and painful second, did not exist, and never had 
 existed. The unstable mind, he comforted himself, ex- 
 periences dislocating extremes of attitude . . . for, at the 
 same time as he saw himself shaking and wavering without 
 solid support, he saw the figure of Paul Devonham, big, 
 important, authoritative, dominating the uncertainties of 
 life with calm, steady power.
 
 366 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 In a fraction of a second all this came and went. He sat 
 down beside LeVallon, his eyes still twinkling with his 
 trivial little joke. 
 
 " 'N. H./ " he whispered to Devonham quickly, "has 
 escaped at last." 
 
 "LeVallon," came the whispered reply as quickly, "is 
 cured at last." And, to conceal an intolerable rush of pain, 
 of loss, of loneliness that threatened tears, he pointed to the 
 dropped eyes and blushing cheeks of the pretty nurse across 
 the table.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 TO Edward Fillery, the deep pain of frustration baffling 
 all his mental processes, the end had come with a 
 strange, bewildering swiftness. He knew there had been 
 a prolonged dislocation of his being, possibly, even a partial 
 loss of memory with regard to much that went on about 
 him, but he could not, did not, admit that no value or reality 
 had attached to his experiences. The central self in him had 
 projected a limb, an arm, that, feeling its way across the 
 confining wall of the prison house, groping towards an 
 unbelievably wonderful revelation of new possibilities, had 
 abruptly now withdrawn again. The dissociation in his 
 personality was over. He was, in other words, no longer 
 aware of "N. H." Like Devonham, he now did not "per- 
 ceive" "N. H.," but only LeVallon. But, unlike Devonham, 
 he had perceived him. . . . 
 
 He had met half-way a mighty and magnificent Vision. 
 Its truth and beauty remained for him enduring. The 
 revelation had come and gone. That its close was sudden, 
 simple, undramatic, above all untheatrical, satisfied him. 
 "N. H." had "escaped," leaving the commonplace LeVallon. 
 in his place. But, at least, he had known "N. H." 
 
 His whole being, an odd, sweet, happy pain in him, 
 yearned ever to the glorious memory of it all. The melan- 
 choly, the peculiar shyness he felt, were not without an 
 indefinite pleasure. His nature still vibrated to those haunt- 
 ing and inspiring rhythms, but his normal, earthly faculties, 
 he flattered himself, were in no sense permanently dis- 
 organized. Professionally, he still cared for LeVallon, dis- 
 enchanted dust though he might be, compared to "N. 
 H." . . . He approved of Devonham's proposal to take him 
 
 367
 
 368 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 for a few days to the sea. He also approved of Paul's 
 advice that he should accept Father Collins' invitation to 
 spend a day or two at his country cottage. The Khilkoffs 
 would be there, father and daughter. The Home, in charge 
 of an assistant, could be reached in a few hours in case of 
 need. The magic of Devonham's wise, controlling touch 
 lay in every detail, it seemed. . . . 
 
 He saw the trio for Nurse Robbins was of the party 
 off to Seaford. "The final touches to his cure," Paul men- 
 tioned slyly, with a smile, as the guard whistled. But of 
 whose cure he did not explain. "He'll bathe in the sea," he 
 added, the reference obvious this time. "And when we 
 return I shall be best man. I've already promised !" There 
 was a triumph of skilled wisdom in both sentences. 
 
 "The time isn't ripe yet, Edward, for too magnificent 
 ideas. And your ideas have been a shade too magnificent, 
 perhaps." He talked on lightly, even carelessly. And, as 
 usual, there was purpose, meaning, "treatment" his friend 
 easily discerned it now in every detail of his attitude. 
 
 Fillery laughed. Through his mind ran Povey's sentence, 
 "Never argue with the once-born !" but aloud he said, "At 
 any rate, I've no idea that I'm Emperor of Japan or or 
 the Archangel Gabriel !" And the other, pleased and satis- 
 fied that a touch of humour showed itself, shook hands 
 firmly, affectionately, through the window as the train 
 moved off. LeVallon raised his hat to his chief and smiled 
 an ordinary smile. . . . 
 
 With the speed and incongruity of a dream these few 
 days slipped by, their happenings vivid enough, yet all set 
 to a curiously small scale, a cramped perspective, blurred a 
 little as by a fading light. Only one thing retained its bril- 
 liance, its intense reality, its place in the bigger scale, its 
 vast perspective remaining unchanged. The same immense 
 sweet rhythm swept Iraida and himself inevitably together. 
 Some deep obsession that hitherto prevented had been with- 
 drawn.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 369 
 
 She had called that very morning Paul's touch visible 
 here again, he believed, though he had not asked. He 
 looked on and smiled. After the ordeal of breakfast with 
 Devonham and LeVallon her visit was announced. It was 
 Paul, after a little talk downstairs, who showed her in. 
 With the radiance of a spring wild-flower opening to the 
 early sunshine, her unexpected visit to his study seemed 
 clothed. Unexpected, yes, but surely inevitable as well. 
 With the sweet morning wind through the open window, 
 it seemed, she came to him, the letter of invitation from 
 Father Collins in her hand. His own lay among his cor- 
 respondence, still untouched. Her perfume rose about him 
 as she explained something he hardly heard or followed. 
 
 "You'll come, Edward, won't you ? You'll come too." 
 
 "Of course," he answered. But it was a song he heard, 
 and no dull spoken words. She ran dancing towards him 
 through a million flowers; her hair flew loose along the 
 scented winds; her white limbs glowed with fire. He 
 danced to meet her. It was in the Valley that he caught 
 her hands and met her eyes. "It's happened," he heard 
 himself saying. "It's happened at last just as you said 
 it must. Escape! He has escaped!" 
 
 "But we shall follow after when the time comes, 
 Edward." 
 
 "Where the wild bee never flew!" . . . 
 
 "When the time comes," she repeated. 
 
 Her voice, her smile, her eyes brought him back sharply 
 into the little room. The furniture showed up again. The 
 Valley faded. He noticed suddenly that for the first time 
 she wore no flowers in her dress as usual. 
 
 "Iraida!" he exclaimed. "Then you knew!" 
 
 She bent her head, smiling divinely. She took both his 
 hands in hers. At her touch every obstacle between them 
 melted. His own private, personal inhibition he saw as the 
 trivial barriers a little child might raise. His complex 
 against humanity, as Paul called it, had disappeared. Their 
 minds, their beings, their natures became most strangely
 
 370 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 one, he felt, and yet quite naturally. There was nothing 
 they did not share. 
 
 "With the first dawn," he heard her say in a low voice. 
 "Never never again," he seemed to hear, "shall we destroy 
 his their work of ages." 
 
 "A flower," he whispered, "has no need to wear a flower !" 
 He was convinced that she too had shared an experience 
 similar to his own, perhaps had even seen the bright, mar- 
 vellous Deva faces peering, shining. . . . He did not ask. 
 She said no more. Life flowed between them in an un- 
 troubled stream. . . . 
 
 Like the flow of a stream, indeed, things went past him, 
 yet with incidents and bits of conversation thus picked out 
 with vivid sharpness. The dissociation of his being was 
 still noticeable here and there, he supposed. The swell after 
 the storm took time to settle down. Slowly, however, the 
 waves that had been projected, leaping to heaven, returned 
 to the safe, quiet dead level of the normal calm. . . . The 
 depths lay still once more. And his melancholy passed a 
 little, lifted. He knew, at any rate, those depths were now 
 accessible. 
 
 "I've seen over the wall a moment," he said to himself. 
 "Paul is both right and wrong. What I've seen lies too far 
 ahead of the Race to be intelligible or of use. I should be 
 cast out, crucified, my other, simpler work destroyed. To 
 control rhythms so powerful, so different to anything we 
 now know, is not yet possible. They would shatter, rather 
 than construct." He smiled sadly, yet with resignation. 
 There was pain and humour in his eyes. "I should be 
 regarded as a Promethean merely, an extremist Promethean, 
 and probably be locked up for contravening some County 
 Council bye-law or offending Church and State. That's 
 where he, perhaps, is right Paul!" He thought of him 
 with affection and pity, with understanding love. "How 
 wise and faithful, how patient and how skilled within his 
 limits. The stable are the useful ; the stable are the leaders ;
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 371 
 
 the stable rule the world. People with steady if unvisioned 
 eyes like Paul, with money like Lady Gleeson. . . . But, 
 oh !" he sighed "how slow, ye gods ! how slow !" . . . 
 
 
 
 The visit was a strange one. Nayan sat between him and 
 her father in the motor. It was not far from London, the 
 ancient little house among the trees where Father Collins 
 secreted himself from time to time upon occasional 
 "retreats." 
 
 Within the grounds it might have been the centre of the 
 New Forest, but for the sound of tramcar bells that some- 
 times came jangling faintly through the thick screen of 
 leaves. There were old-world paved courtyards with sweet 
 playing fountains, miniature lawns, tangles of flowers, small 
 sunken gardens with birds of cut box and yew, stone nymphs, 
 and a shaggy, moss-grown Pan, whose hand that once held 
 the pipes had broken off. Suburbia lay outside, yet, by 
 walking wisely, it was possible to move among these delights 
 for half an hour, great trees ever rustling overhead, and a 
 clear small stream winding peacefully in and out with gentle 
 lapping murmurs. Nature here lay undisturbed as it had 
 lain for centuries. 
 
 The little ancient house, moreover, seemed to have grown 
 up with the green things out of the soil, so naturally, it 
 all belonged together. The garden ran indoors, it seemed, 
 through open doors and windows. Butterflies floated from 
 courtyard into drawing-room and out again, leaves blew 
 through dining-room windows, scurrying to another little bit 
 of lawn ; the sun and wind, even the fountains' spray, found 
 the walls no obstacle as though unaware of them. Bees 
 murmured, swallows hung below the eaves. It was, indeed, 
 a healing spot, a natural retreat. . . . 
 
 "I really believe the river rises in your library," exclaimed 
 Fillery, after a tour of inspection with his host, "and my 
 bedroom is in the heart of that big chestnut across the lawn. 
 Do my feet touch carpet, grass, or bark when I get out of 
 bed in the morning?"
 
 372 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 "I've learnt more here," began Father Collins, "than at all 
 the conferences and learned meetings I ever attended. . . ." 
 
 The group of four stood in the twilight by the playing 
 fountain where the dignified stone Pan watched the paved 
 little court, listening to the splash of the water and the wind 
 droning among the leaves. The lap of the winding stream 
 came faintly to them. The stillness cast a spell about them, 
 dropping a screen against the outer world. 
 
 "Hark!" said Father Collins, holding a curved hand to 
 his ear. "You hear the music . . . ?" 
 
 " 'Why, in the leafy greenwood lone 
 Sit you, rustic Pan, and drone 
 On a dulcet resonant reed?'" 
 
 He paused, peering across to the stone figure as for an 
 answer. All stood listening, waiting, only wind and water 
 breaking the silence. The bats were now flitting; overhead 
 hung the saffron arch of fading sunset. In a deep ringing 
 voice, very gruff and very low, Father Collins gave the 
 answer : 
 
 " 'So that yonder cows may feed 
 Up the dewy mountain passes, 
 Gathering the feathered grasses.' 
 
 "That's Pan's work," he said, laughing pleasantly, "Pan 
 and all his splendid hierarchy. Always at work, though 
 invisibly, with music, colour, beauty! . . ." 
 
 It was scraps like this that stood out in Fillery's memory, 
 adding to his conviction that Paul had enlisted even this 
 strange priest in his deep-laid plan. . . . 
 
 "Each man is saturated with certain ideas, thoughts, 
 phrases in a line of his own. These constitute his groove. 
 To go outside it makes him feel homeless and uncomfort- 
 able. Accustomed to its measurements and safe within 
 them, he interprets all he hears, reads, observes, according 
 to his particular familiar shibboleths, to which, as to a
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 373 
 
 standard of infallible criticism, he brings slavishly all that 
 is offered for the consideration of his judgment. A new 
 Idea stands little chance of being comprehended, much less 
 adopted. Tell him new things about the stars, the Stock 
 Exchange, the Stigmata up crops his Standard of ap- 
 proval or disapproval. He cannot help himself. His judg- 
 ment, based upon the limited content of his groove, operates 
 automatically. He condemns. An entirely new idea is 
 barely glanced at before it is rejected for the rubbish heap. 
 How, then, can progress come swiftly to a Race composed 
 of such individuals? Mass-judgment, herd-opinion gov- 
 erns everything. He who has original ideas is outcast, and 
 dwells lonely as the moon. How slow, ye Gods ! How 
 slow!" . . . 
 
 Only Fillery could not remember, could not be certain, 
 whether it was his host or himself that used the words. 
 Father Collins, as usual, was saying "all sorts of things," 
 but addressed himself surely, to old Khilkoff most of the 
 time, the Russian, half angry, half amused, growling out his 
 comments and replies as he sat smoking heavily and enjoy- 
 ing the peaceful night scene in his own fashion. . . . 
 
 It was odd, none the less, how much that the wild priest 
 gabbled coincided with his own, with Fillery's, thoughts at 
 the moment. A peculiar melancholy, a mood of shyness 
 never known before, lay still upon him. The beauty of the 
 silent girl beside him overpowered him a little ; too wonder- 
 ful to hold, to own, she seemed. Yet they were deliciously, 
 uncannily akin. All his former self-created denials and 
 suppressions, hesitations and refusals had vanished. "N. 
 H." He wondered? had provided him with the fullest 
 expression he had ever known. A boundless relief poured 
 over him. He was aware of wholesome desire rising behind 
 his old high admiration and respect. . . . 
 
 He watched her once standing close to Pan's broken out- 
 line among the shadows, touching the mossy arm with white 
 fingers, and he imagined for an instant that she held the 
 vanished pipes.
 
 374 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 "After an experience with Other Beings," Father Collins's- 
 endless drone floated to him, "shyness, they say, is felt. 
 Silence descends upon the whole nature" ... to which, 
 a little later, came the growling comment with its foreign 
 accent: "Talk may be pleasurable sometimes but it is 
 profitable rarely. . . ." 
 
 The talk flowed past and over him, occasional phrases, 
 like islands rising out of a stream, inviting his attention 
 momentarily to land and listen. . . . The girl, he now saw, 
 no longer stood beside the broken stone figure. She was 
 wandering idly towards the farther garden and the trees. 
 
 He burned to rise and go to her, but something held him. 
 What was it ? What could it be ? Some strange hard little 
 obstacle prevented. Then, suddenly, he knew what it was 
 that stopped him: he was waiting for that familiar pet 
 sentence. Once he heard that, the impetus to move, the 
 power to overcome his strange shyness, the certainty that 
 his whole being was at last one with itself again, would come 
 to him. It made him laugh inwardly while he recognized 
 the validity of the detail final symptoms of the obstructing 
 inhibitions, of the obstinate original complex. 
 
 The outline of the girl was lost now, merged in the 
 shadows beyond. He stirred, but could not get up to go. A 
 fury of impatience burned in him. Father Collins, he felt, 
 dawdled outrageously. He was talking jawing, Fillery 
 called it about extraordinary experiences. "Gradually, as 
 consciousness more and more often extends, the organs to 
 record such extensions will be formed, you see. ... If our 
 inventive faculties were turned inwards, instead of out- 
 wards for gain and comfort as they now are, we might know 
 the gods. . . ." 
 
 The sculptor's growl, though the words were this time 
 inaudible, had a bite in them. The other voice poured on 
 like thick, slow oil: 
 
 "What, anyhow, is it, then, that urges us on in spite of 
 all obstacles, denials, failures . . . ?" 
 
 Then came something that seemed leading up to the pet
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 375 
 
 sentence that was the signal he waited for nearer to it, at" 
 any rate: 
 
 ". . . It's childish, surely, to go on merely seeking more 
 of what we have already. We should seek something 
 new. . . ." 
 
 A call, it seemed, came to him on the wind from the dark 
 trees. But still he could not move. 
 
 But, at last, out of a prolonged jumble of the two voices, 
 one growling, the other high pitched, came the signal he 
 somehow waited for. Even now, however, the speaker 
 delayed it as long as possible. He was doing it, of course, 
 on purpose. This was intentional, obviously. 
 
 ". . . Yes, but a thing out of its right place is without 
 power, life, means of expression robbed of its context 
 which alone gives it meaning robbed, so to speak, of its 
 arms and legs without a body. . . ." 
 
 There, at least, was the definite proof that Father Collins 
 was doing this of deliberate, set purpose! 
 
 "Go on ! Yes, but, for God's sake, say it ! I want to be 
 off !" Fillery believed he shrieked the words, but apparently 
 they were inaudible. They remained unnoticed, at any rate. 
 
 ". . . Hence the value of order, tidiness, you see. Often 
 a misplaced thing is invisible until replaced where it be- 
 longs. It is, as we say, lost. No movement is meaningless, 
 no walk without purpose. All your movements tend towards 
 your proper place. . . ." 
 
 A breeze blew the fountain spray aside so that its splash- 
 ing ceased for a brief second. From the rustling leaves 
 beyond came a faint murmur as of distant piping. But 
 into the second's pause had leaped the pet sentence: 
 
 "Only a being in his own place is the ruler of his fate." 
 
 The signal ! He was aware that the Russian cleared his 
 throat and spat unmusically, aware also that Father Collins, 
 a queer smile just discernible on his face in the gloom, 
 turned his head with a gesture that might well have been 
 an understanding nod. Both sound and gesture, however, 
 were already behind him. He was released. He was across
 
 376 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 the paved courtyard, past the fountain, past the stone figure 
 of the silent old rough god and oft ! 
 
 And as he went, finding his way instinctively among the 
 dark trees, that pet sentence went with him like a clarion 
 call, as though sweet piping music played it everywhere 
 about him. A thousand memories shut down with a final 
 snap. In the stage of his mind came a black-out upon a 
 host of inhibitions. There was an immense and glorious 
 sense of relief as though bitter knots were suddenly dis- 
 entangled, and some iron kernel of resistance that had 
 weighted him for years flowed freely at last in a stream of 
 happy molten gold. . . . 
 
 He found her easily. Where the trees thinned at the 
 farther edge he saw her figure, long before he came up with 
 her, outlined against the fading saffron. He saw her turn. 
 He saw her arms outstretched. He came up with her the 
 same minute, and they stood in silence for a long time, 
 watching the darkness bend and sink upon the landscape. 
 
 For, here, at this one edge of the tiny estate, the real 
 open country showed. Beyond them, in the twilight, lay 
 the silent fields like a gigantic brown and yellow carpet 
 whose shaken folds still seemed to tremble and run on 
 beneath the growing moon. Along a farther ridge the trees 
 and hedges passed in a ragged procession of strange figures, 
 defined sharply against the sky witches, queens and gob- 
 lins on the prowl, the ancient fairyland of the English coun- 
 tryside. 
 
 They still stood silent, side by side, touching almost, their 
 heat and perfume and atmosphere intermingling, looking out 
 across the quiet scene. He was aware that her mind stole 
 into his most sweetly, and that without knowing it his hand 
 had found her own, and that, presently, she leaned a little 
 against him. Their eyes, their mental sight as well, saw the 
 same things, he knew. The first stars peeped out, and they 
 looked up at them as one being looks, together. 
 
 "The wonder that you saw in him," he heard himself 
 saying. It was a statement, not a question.
 
 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 377 
 
 "Was yourself, of course," her voice, like his own, in the 
 rustle of the leaves, came softly. It continued his own 
 thought rather than replied to it. "The part you've held 
 down and hidden away all these years." 
 
 Her divination came to him with staggering effect. "You 
 always knew then ?" 
 
 "Always. The first day we met you took me into the 
 firm." 
 
 He was aware that everything about him pulsed and 
 throbbed with life, intelligence in every stick and stone. 
 Angelic beings marched on their wondrous business 
 through the sky. A mighty host pursued their endless 
 service with a network of huge and tiny rhythms. The 
 spirals of creative fire soared and danced. . . . 
 
 The moon emerged, sailing, sailing, as though no wind 
 could stop her lovely flight. She fled the stars themselves. 
 The clouds turned round to look at her, as, clearing their 
 hair, she passed onwards with her radiant smile. Heading 
 into the bare bosom of the sky, she blazed in her triumph of 
 loneliness, her icy prow set towards some far, unknown, 
 unearthly goal, which is the reason why men love her so. 
 
 "And my theories our theories?" he murmured into the 
 ear against his lips. "The way that has been shown to us ?" 
 
 Both arms were now about her, and he held her so close 
 that her words were but a warm perfumed breath to cover 
 his face as her hair was covering his eyes. 
 
 "We shall follow it together . . . dear." 
 
 It was as if some angel, stepping down the sky, came near 
 enough to fold them in a great rhythm of fire and wind. 
 Bright, mighty faces in a crowd rose round them, and, 
 through her hair, he saw familiar visible outlines of all the 
 common things melt out, showing for one gorgeous instant 
 the flashings and whirlings that was the workshop of Their 
 deathless service. 
 
 "Look! Look!" he whispered, pointing from the dark- 
 ening earth to the stars and sailing moon above. "They're
 
 378 THE BRIGHT MESSENGER 
 
 everywhere! You can see them too? The bright messen- 
 gers ?" 
 
 For answer, she came yet closer against his side, holding 
 him more tightly to her, lifting her lips to his, so that in her 
 very eyes he saw the marvellous fire shine and flash. "We 
 shall build together, you and I," she whispered very softly, 
 "and with Their help, the sweetest and most perfect body 
 ever known. . . ." 
 
 But behind the magic of her words and voice, behind 
 their meaning and the steadying, understanding sympathy 
 he easily divined, he heard another sound, familiar as a 
 dream, yet fraught with some haunting significance he 
 already was forgetting almost had entirely forgotten. 
 From the centre of the earth it seemed to rise, a magnifi- 
 cent, deep, stupendous rhythm that created, at least, the 
 impression of a voice : 
 
 "I weave and I weave ... !" rolled forth, as though 
 the planet uttered. He stood waiting, transfixed, listening 
 intently. 
 
 "You heard?" he whispered. 
 
 "Everything," she said, tigh^/in his arms at once again, 
 her lips on his. "The very beating of your heart your 
 inmost thoughts as well." 
 
 THE END
 
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