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THE CENTAUR 
 
j^&m. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
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 DALLAS . SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
THE CENTAUR 
 
 BY 
 
 ALGERNON BLACKWOOD 
 
 AUTHOR OF ' EDUCATION OF UNCLE PAUL,' 
 •jIMBO,' 'human chord,' ETC. 
 
 friTH A DESIGN BT W. GRAHAM ROBERTSON 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1916 
 
COPYRIGHT 
 
 First Edition 1911 
 Reprinted i<j^2f 19 16 
 
CM 
 
 I la 
 
 TO 
 
 RARE TYPE OF BEING : 
 AN INTELLECTUAL MYSTIC. 
 
* We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, 
 seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling 
 of the meaning of it all.* — William James, A Pluralistic Uni'verse. 
 
 «... A man's vision is the great fact about him. Who cares for 
 Carlyle's reasons, or Schopenhauer's, or Spencer's ? A philosophy is 
 the expression of a man's intimate character, and all definitions of 
 the Universe are but the deliberately adopted reactions of human 
 characters upon it.' — Ibid. 
 
 There are certain persons who, independently of sex 
 or comeliness, arouse an instant curiosity concerning 
 themselves. The tribe is small, but its members 
 unmistakable. They may possess neither fortune, 
 good looks, nor that adroitness of advance-vision 
 which the stupid name good-luck ; yet there is about 
 them this inciting quality which proclaims that they 
 have overtaken Fate, set a harness about its neck of 
 violence, and hold bit and bridle in steady hands. 
 
 Most of us, arrested a moment by their presence 
 to snatch the definition their peculiarity exacts, are 
 aware that on the heels of curiosity follows — envy. 
 They know the very things that we for ever seek 
 in vain. And this diagnosis, achieved as it were 
 en passant^ comes near to the truth, for the hall-mark 
 of such persons is that they have found, and come 
 into, their own. There is a sign upon the face and 
 in the eyes. Having somehow discovered the * piece ' 
 that makes them free of the whole amazing puzzle, 
 
2 : v^ ^^ : THE , CENTAUR i 
 
 they^'kh<D\r^wliere 'they belong and, therefore, whither 
 they are bound : more, they are definitely en route. 
 The littlenesses of existence that plague the majority 
 pass them by. 
 
 * For this reason, if for no other,' continued 
 O'Malley, * I count my experience with that man as 
 memorable beyond ordinary. " If for no other," 
 because from the very beginning there was another. 
 Indeed, it was probably his air of unusual bigness, 
 massiveness rather, — head, face, eyes, shoulders, 
 especially back and shoulders, — that struck me first 
 when I caught sight of him lounging there hugely 
 upon my steamer deck at Marseilles, winning my 
 instant attention before he turned and the expression 
 on his great face woke more — woke curiosity, interest, 
 envy. He wore this very look of certainty that 
 knows, yet with a tinge of mild surprise as though 
 he had only recently known. It was less than 
 perplexity. A faint astonishment as of a happy 
 child — almost of an animal — shone in the large 
 brown eyes ' 
 
 'You mean that the physical quality caught you 
 first, then the psychical ^ ' I asked, keeping him to 
 the point, for his Irish imagination was ever apt to 
 race away at a tangent. 
 
 He laughed good-naturedly, acknowledging the 
 check. ' I believe that to be the truth,' he replied, 
 his face instantly grave again. ' It was the impression 
 of uncommon bulk that heated my intuition — blessed 
 if I know how — leading me to the other. The size 
 of his body did not smother, as so often is the case 
 with big people : rather, it revealed. At the moment 
 I could conceive no possible connection, of course. 
 Only this overwhelming attraction of the man's 
 personality caught me and I longed to make friends. 
 
I THE CENTAUR 3 
 
 That's the way with me, as you know,' he added, 
 tossing the hair back from his forehead impatiently, 
 * — pretty often. First impressions. Old man, I 
 tell you, it was like a possession.' 
 
 * I believe you,' I said. For Terence O'Malley 
 all his life had never understood half measures. 
 
II 
 
 'The friendly and flowing savage, who is he ? Is he waiting for 
 civilization, or is he past it, and mastering it ? ' — Whitman. 
 
 * We find ourselves to-day in the midst of a somewhat peculiar state 
 of society, which we call Civilisation, but which even to the most 
 optimistic among us does not seem altogether desirable. Some of us, 
 indeed, are inclined to think that it is a kind of disease which the 
 various races of man have to pass through. . . . 
 
 * While History tells us of many nations that have been attacked by 
 it, of many that have succumbed to it, and of some that are still in 
 the throes of it, we know of no single case in which a nation has fairly 
 recovered from and passed through it to a more normal and healthy 
 condition. In other words, the development of human society has 
 never yet (that we know of) passed beyond a certain definite and 
 apparently final stage in the process we call Civilisation ; at that stage 
 it has always succumbed or been arrested.' — Edward Carpenter, 
 Ci'viltsation : its Cause and Cure. 
 
 O'Malley himself is an individuality that invites 
 consideration from the ruck of commonplace men. 
 Of mingled Irish, Scotch, and English blood, the 
 first predominated, and the Celtic element in him 
 was strong. A man of vigorous health, careless of 
 gain, a wanderer, and by his own choice something 
 of an outcast, he led to the end the existence of a 
 rolling stone. He lived from hand to mouth, never 
 quite growing up. It seemed, indeed, that he never 
 could grow up in the accepted sense of the term, for 
 his motto was the reverse of nil admirari, and he 
 found himself in a state of perpetual astonishment at 
 the mystery of things. He was for ever, deciphering 
 
II THE CENTAUR 5 
 
 the huge horoscope of Life, yet getting no further 
 than the House of Wonder, on whose cusp surely he 
 had been born. Civilization, he loved to say, had 
 blinded the eyes of men, filling them with dust 
 instead of vision. 
 
 An ardent lover of wild out-door life, he knew 
 at times a high, passionate searching for things 
 of the spirit, when the outer world fell away 
 like dross and he seemed to pass into a state 
 resembling ecstasy. Never in cities or among his 
 fellow-men, struggling and herded, did these times 
 come to him, but when he was abroad with the 
 winds and stars in desolate places. Then, some- 
 times, he would be rapt away, caught up to see 
 the tail-end of the great procession of the gods 
 that had come near. He surprised Eternity in a 
 running Moment. 
 
 For the moods of Nature flamed through him — 
 in him — like presences, potently evocative as the 
 presences of persons, and with meanings equally 
 various : the woods with love and tenderness ; the 
 sea with reverence and magic ; plains and wide 
 horizons with the melancholy peace and silence as 
 of wise and old companions ; and mountains with a 
 splendid terror due to some want of comprehension 
 in himself, caused probably by a spiritual remoteness 
 from their mood. 
 
 The Cosmos, in a word, for him was psychical, 
 and Nature's moods were transcendental cosmic 
 activities that induced in him these singular states of 
 exaltation and expansion. She pushed wide the gate- 
 ways of his deeper life. She entered, took possession, 
 dipped his smaller self into her own enormous and 
 enveloping personality. 
 
 He possessed a full experience, and at times a 
 
6 THE CENTAUR ii 
 
 keen judgment, of modern life ; while underneath, 
 all the time lay the moving sea of curiously wild 
 primitive instincts. An insatiable longing for the 
 wilderness was in his blood, a craving, vehement, 
 unappeasable. Yet for something far greater than 
 the wilderness alone — the wilderness was merely a 
 symbol, a first step, indication of a way of escape. 
 The hurry and invention of modern life were to him 
 a fever and a torment. He loathed the million 
 tricks of civilization. At the same time, being a 
 man of some discrimination at least, he rarely let him- 
 self go completely. Of these wilder, simpler instincts 
 he was afraid. They might flood all else. If he 
 yielded entirely, something he dreaded without being 
 able to define, would happen ; the structure of his 
 being would suffer a nameless violence, so that he 
 would have to break with the world. These cravings 
 stood for that loot of the soul which he must deny 
 himself. Complete surrender would involve somehow 
 a disintegration, a dissociation of his personality that 
 carried with it the loss of personal identity. 
 
 When the feeling of revolt became sometimes so 
 urgent in him that it threatened to become un- 
 manageable, he would go out into solitude, calling it 
 to heel ; but this attempt to restore order, while 
 easing his nature, was never radical ; the accumulation 
 merely increased on the rebound ; the yearnings grew 
 and multiplied, and the point of saturation was often 
 dangerously near. * Some day,' his friends would 
 say, * there'll be a bursting of the dam.' And, though 
 their meaning might be variously interpreted, they 
 spoke the truth. O'Malley knew it, too. 
 
 A man he was, in a word, of deep and ever- 
 shifting moods, and with more difficulty than most 
 in recognizing the underlying self of which these 
 
II THE CENTAUR 7 
 
 outer aspects were projections masquerading as 
 complete personalities. 
 
 The underlying ego that unified these projections 
 was of the type touched with so sure a hand in the 
 opening pages of an inspired little book : The Plea of 
 Pan. O'Malley was useless as a citizen and knew it. 
 Sometimes — he was ashamed of it as well. 
 
 Occasionally, and at the time of this particular 
 * memorable adventure/ aged thirty, he acted as 
 foreign correspondent ; but even as such he was the 
 kind of newspaper man that not merely collects 
 news, but discovers, reveals, creates it. Wise in their 
 generation, the editors who commissioned him 
 remembered when his copy came in that they were 
 editors. A roving commission among the tribes of 
 the Caucasus was his assignment at the moment, and 
 a better man for the purpose would have been hard 
 to find, since he knew beauty, had a keen eye for 
 human nature, divined what was vital and picturesque, 
 and had, further, the power to set it down in brief 
 terms born directly of his vivid emotions. 
 
 When first I knew him he lived — nowhere, being 
 always on the move. He kept, however, a dingy 
 little room near Paddington where his books and 
 papers accumulated, undusted but safe, and where the 
 manuscripts of his adventures were found when his 
 death made me the executor of his few belongings. 
 The key was in his pocket, carefully ticketed with a 
 bone label. And this, the only evidence of practical 
 forethought I ever discovered in him, was proof that 
 something in that room was deemed by him of value 
 — to others. It certainly was not the heterogeneous 
 collection of second-hand books, nor the hundreds of 
 unlabelled photographs and sketches. Can it have 
 been the MSS. of stories, notes, and episodes I found, 
 
8 THE CENTAUR ir 
 
 almost carefully piled and tabulated, with titles in a 
 dirty kitbag of green Willesden canvas ? 
 
 Some of these he had told me (with a greater 
 vividness than he could command by pen) ; others 
 were new ; many unfinished. All were unusual, to 
 say the least. All, too, had obviously happened to 
 himself at some period of his roving career, though 
 here and there he had disguised his own part in them 
 by Hoffmann's device of throwing the action into the 
 third person. Those told to me by word of mouth 
 I could only feel were true, true for himself at least. 
 In no sense were they mere inventions, but arose in 
 moments of vision upon a structure of solid events. 
 Ten men will describe in as many different ways a 
 snake crossing their path ; but, besides these, there 
 exists an eleventh man who sees more than the snake, 
 the path, the movement. O'Malley was some such 
 eleventh man. He saw the thing whole, from some 
 kind of inner bird's-eye view, while the ten saw only 
 limited aspects of it from various angles. He was 
 accused of adding details, therefore, because he had 
 divined their presence while still below the horizon. 
 Before they emerged the others had already left. 
 
 By which I mean that he saw in commonplace 
 events the movement of greater tides than others saw. 
 At one remove of time or distance — a minute or a 
 mile — he perceived all. While the ten chattered 
 volubly about the name of the snake, he was caught 
 beyond by the beauty of the path, the glory of the 
 running glide, the nature of the forces that drove, 
 hindered, modified. 
 
 The others reasoned where the snake was going, 
 its length in inches and its speed per second, while 
 he, ignoring such superficial details, plunged as it 
 were into the very nature of the creature's being. 
 
II THE CENTAUR 9 
 
 And in this idiosyncrasy, which he shared with all 
 persons of mystical temperament, is exemplified a 
 certain curious contempt for Reason that he had. 
 For him mere intellectuality, by which the modern 
 world sets such store, was a valley of dry bones. Its 
 worship was a worship of the form. It missed the 
 essential inner truth because such inner truth could 
 be known only by being it, feeling it. The intellectual 
 attitude of mind, in a word, was critical, not creative, 
 and to be unimaginative seemed to him, therefore, the 
 worst form of unintelligence. 
 
 ' The arid, sterile minds ! ' he would cry in a burst 
 of his Celtic enthusiasm. * Where, I ask ye, did the 
 philosophies and sciences of the world assist the 
 progress of any single soul a blessed inch ? * 
 
 .Any little Dreamer in his top-floor back, spinning 
 by rushlight his web of beauty, was greater than the 
 finest critical intelligence that ever lived. The one, 
 for all his poor technique, was stammering over some- 
 thing God had whispered to him, the other merely 
 destroying thoughts invented by the brain of man. 
 
 And this attitude of mind, because of its inter- 
 pretative effect upon what follows, justifies mention. 
 For to O'Malley, in some way difficult to explain. 
 Reason and Intellect, as such, had come to be wor- 
 shipped by men to-day out of all proportion to their 
 real value. Consciousness, focussed too exclusively 
 upon them, had exalted them out of due proportion 
 in the spiritual economy. To make a god of them 
 was to make an empty and inadequate god. Reason 
 should be the guardian of the soul's advance, but not 
 the object. Its function was that of a great sandpaper 
 which should clear the way of excrescences, but its 
 worship was to allow a detail to assume a dispro- 
 portionate importance. 
 
lo THE CENTAUR n 
 
 Not that he was fool enough to despise Reason in 
 what he called its proper place, but that he was * wise ' 
 enough — not that he was * intellectual ' enough ! — 
 to recognize its futility in measuring the things of 
 the soul. For him there existed a more fundamental 
 understanding than Reason, and it was, apparently, 
 an inner and natural understanding. 
 
 * The greatest Teacher we ever had,' I once heard 
 him say, ' ignored the intellect, and who, will ye tell 
 me, can by searching find out God ? And yet what 
 else is worth finding out ? . . . Isn't it only by 
 becoming as a little child — a child that feels and 
 never reasons things — that any one shall enter the 
 kingdom ? . . , Where will the giant intellects be 
 before the Great White Throne when a simple man 
 with the heart of a child will top the lot of 'em ? ' 
 
 ' Nature, I'm convinced,' he said another time, 
 thongh he said it with puzzled eyes and a mind 
 obviously groping, * is our next step. Reason has 
 done its best for centuries, and gets no further. It 
 can get no further, for it can do nothing for the inner 
 life which is the sole reality. We must return to 
 Nature and a purified intuition, to a greater reliance 
 upon what is now subconscious, back to that sweet, 
 grave guidance of the Universe which we've discarded 
 with the primitive state — a spiritual intelligence, really, 
 divorced from mere intellectuality.' 
 
 And by Nature he did not mean a return to 
 savagery. There was no idea of going backwards in 
 his wild words. Rather he looked forwards, in some 
 way hard to understand, to a state when Man, with 
 the best results of Reason in his pocket, might return 
 to the instinctive life — to feeling wuk — to the sinking 
 down of the modern, exaggerated intellectual per- 
 sonality into its rightful place as guide instead of 
 
II 
 
 THE CENTAUR ii 
 
 leader. He called it a Return to Nature, but what 
 he meant, I always felt, was back to a sense of kinship 
 with the Universe which men, through worshipping 
 the intellect alone, had lost. Men to-day prided 
 themselves upon their superiority to Nature as beings 
 separate and apart. O'Malley sought, on the con- 
 trary, a development, if not a revival, of some fault- 
 less instinct, due to kinship with her, which — to 
 take extremes — shall direct alike the animal and the 
 inspired man, guiding the wild bee and tKe homing 
 pigeon, and — the soul towards its God. 
 
 This clue, as he called it, crystallized so neatly and 
 so conclusively his own mental struggles, that he had 
 called a halt, as it were, to his own intellectual 
 development. . . . The name and family of the snake, 
 hence, meant to him the least important things about 
 it. He caught, wildly yet consistently, at the psychic 
 links that bound the snake and Nature and himself 
 together with all creation. Troops of adventurous 
 thoughts had all his life * gone west ' to colonize this 
 land of speculative dream. True to his idea, he 
 * thought ' with his emotions as much as with his 
 brain, and in the broken record of the adventure that 
 this book relates, this strange passion of his tempera- 
 ment remains the vital clue. For it happened in^ as 
 well as to, himself. His Being could include the 
 Earth by feeling with her, whereas his intellect could 
 merely criticize, and so belittle, the details of such 
 inclusion. 
 
 Many a time, while he stretched credulity to a 
 point, I have heard him apologize in some such way 
 for his method. It was the splendour of his belief 
 that made the thing so convincing in the telling, for 
 later when I found the same tale written down it 
 seemed somehow to have failed of an equal achieve- 
 
12 THE CENTAUR ii 
 
 ment. The truth was that no one language would 
 convey the extraordinary freight that was carried so 
 easily by his instinctive choice of gestures, tone, and 
 glance. With him these were consummately inter- 
 pretative. 
 
 Before the age of thirty he had written and 
 published a volume or two of curious tales, all dealing 
 with extensions of the personality, a subject that inter- 
 ested him deeply, and one he understood because he 
 drew the material largely from himself. Psychology 
 he simply devoured, even in its most fantastic and 
 speculative forms ; and though perhaps his vision was 
 incalculably greater than his power of technique, these 
 strange books had a certain value and formed a genuine 
 contribution to the thought on that particular subject. 
 In England naturally they fell dead, but their trans- 
 lation into German brought him a wider and more 
 intelligent circle. The common public unfamiliar 
 with Sally Beauchamp No. 4, with Helene Smith, or 
 with Dr. Hanna, found in these studies of divided 
 personality, and these singular extensions of the 
 human consciousness, only extravagance and imagina- 
 tion run to wildness. Yet, none the less, the 
 substratum of truth upon which O'Malley had built 
 them, lay actually within his own personal experience. 
 The books had brought him here and there acquaint- 
 ances of value ; and among these latter was a German 
 doctor, Heinrich Stahl. With Dr. Stahl the Irish- 
 man crossed swords through months of somewhat 
 irregular correspondence, until at length the two had 
 met on board a steamer where the German held 
 the position of ship's doctor. The acquaintanceship 
 had grown into something approaching friendship, 
 although the two men stood apparently at the 
 
II THE CENTAUR 13 
 
 opposite poles of thought. From time to time they 
 still met. 
 
 In appearance there was nothing unusual about 
 O'Malley, unless it was the contrast of the light blue 
 eyes with the dark hair. Never, I think, did I see 
 him in anything but that old grey flannel suit, with 
 the low collar and shabby glistening tie. He was of 
 medium height, delicately built, his hands more like 
 a girl's than a man's. In towns he shaved and 
 looked fairly presentable, but once upon his travels 
 he grew beard and moustache and would forget for 
 weeks to have his hair cut, so that it fell in a tangle 
 over forehead and eyes. 
 
 His manner changed with the abruptness of his 
 moods. Sometimes active and alert, at others for 
 days together he would become absent, dreamy, 
 absorbed, half oblivious of the outer world, his 
 movements and actions dictated by subconscious 
 instinct rather than regulated by volition. And one 
 cause of that loneliness of spirit which was undoubtedly 
 a chief pain in life to him, was the fact that ordinary 
 folk were puzzled how to take him, or to know 
 which of these many extreme moods was the man 
 himself. Uncomfortable, unsatisfactory, elusive, not 
 to be counted upon, they deemed him : and from 
 their point of view they were undoubtedly right. 
 The sympathy and above all the companionship he 
 needed, genuinely craved too, were thus denied to 
 him by the faults of his own temperament. With 
 women his intercourse was of the slightest ; in a 
 sense he did not know the need of them much. 
 For one thing, the feminine element in his own 
 nature was too strong, and he was not conscious, as 
 most men are, of the great gap of incompleteness 
 women may so exquisitely fill ; and, for another, its 
 
14 THE CENTAUR ii 
 
 obvious corollary perhaps, when they did come into 
 his life, they gave him more than he could comfort- 
 ably deal with. They offered him more than he 
 needed. 
 
 In this way, while he perhaps had never fallen in 
 love, as the saying has it, he had certainly known 
 that high splendour of devotion which means the 
 losing of oneself in others, that exalted love which 
 seeks not any reward of possession because it is 
 itself so utterly possessed. He was pure, too ; in 
 the sense that it never occurred to him to be other- 
 wise. 
 
 Chief cause of his loneliness — so far as I could 
 judge his complex personality at all — seemed that he 
 never found a sympathetic, truly understanding ear 
 for those deeply primitive longings that fairly 
 ravaged his heart. And this very isolation made 
 him often afraid ; it proved that the rest of the 
 world, the sane majority at any rate, said No to 
 them. I, who loved him and listened, yet never 
 quite apprehended his full meaning. Far more than 
 the common Call of the Wild, it was. He yearned, 
 not so much for a world savage, uncivilized, as for a 
 perfectly natural one that had never known, perhaps 
 never needed civilization — a state of freedom in a life 
 unstained. 
 
 He never wholly understood, I think, the reason 
 why he found himself in such stern protest against 
 the modern state of things, why people produced in 
 him a state of death so that he turned from men to 
 Nature — to find life. The things the nations ex- 
 clusively troubled themselves about all seemed to him 
 so obviously vain and worthless, and, though he 
 never even in his highest moments felt the claims of 
 sainthood, it puzzled and perplexed him deeply that 
 
II THE CENTAUR 15 
 
 the conquest over Nature in all its multifarious forms 
 to-day should seem to them so infinitely more 
 important than the conquest over self What the 
 world with common consent called Reality, seemed 
 ever to him the most crude and obvious, the most 
 transient, the most blatant un-Reality. His love of 
 Nature was more than the mere joy of tumultuous 
 pagan instincts. It was, in the kind of simple life he 
 craved, the first step towards the recovery of noble, 
 dignified, enfranchised living. In the denial of all 
 this external flummery he hated, it would leave the 
 soul disengaged and free, able to turn her activities 
 within for spiritual development. Civilization now 
 suffocated, smothered, killed the soul. Being in the 
 hopeless minority, he felt he must be somewhere 
 wrong, at fault, deceived. For all men, from a 
 statesman to an engine-driver, agreed that the 
 accumulation of external possessions had value, and 
 that the importance of material gain was real. . . . 
 Yet, for himself, he always turned for comfort to the 
 Earth. The wise and wonderful Earth opened her 
 mind and her deep heart to him in a way few other 
 men seemed to know. Through Nature he could 
 move blind-folded along, yet find his way to strength 
 and sympathy. A noble, gracious life stirred in him 
 then which the pettier human world denied. He 
 often would compare the thin help or fellowship he 
 gained from ordinary social intercourse, or from what 
 had seemed at the time quite a successful gathering 
 of his kind, with the power he gained from a visit to 
 the woods or mountains. The former, as a rule, 
 evaporated in a single day ; the other stayed, with 
 ever growing power, to bless whole weeks and 
 months. 
 
 And hence it was, whether owing to the truth or 
 
1 6 THE CENTAUR ii 
 
 ignorance of his attitude, that a sense of bleak loneli- 
 ness spread through all his life, and more and more 
 he turned from men to Nature. 
 
 Moreover, foolish as it must sound, I was some- 
 times aware that deep down in him hid some name- 
 less, indefinable quality that proclaimed him fitted to 
 live in conditions that had never known the restraints 
 of modern conventions — a very different thing to 
 doing without them once known. A kind of child- 
 like, transcendental innocence he certainly possessed, 
 naif^ most engaging, and — utterly impossible. It 
 showed itself indirectly, 1 think, in this distress under 
 modern conditions. The multifarious apparatus of 
 the spirit of To-day oppressed him ; its rush and 
 luxury and artificiality harassed him beyond belief. 
 The terror of cities ran in his very blood. 
 
 When I describe him as something of an outcast, 
 therefore, it will be seen that he was such both 
 voluntarily and involuntarily. 
 
 * What the world has gained by brains is simply 
 nothing to what it has lost by them ' 
 
 'A dream, my dear fellow, a mere dream,' I 
 stopped him, yet with sympathy because I knew he 
 found relief this way. * Your constructive imagina- 
 tion is too active.* 
 
 ' By Gad,' he replied warmly, * but there is a 
 place somewhere, or a state of mind — the same 
 thing — where it's more than a dream. And, what's 
 more, bless your stodgy old heart, some day I'll get 
 there.' 
 
 Not in England, at any rate,' I suggested. 
 
 He stared at me a moment, his eyes suddenly 
 charged with dreams. Then, characteristically, he 
 snorted. He flung his hand out with a gesture that 
 should push the present further from him. 
 
II THE CENTAUR 17 
 
 * IVe always liked the Eastern theory — old theory 
 anyhow if not Eastern — that intense yearnings end 
 by creating a place where they are fulfilled ' 
 
 * Subjectively ' 
 
 * Of course ; objectively means incompletely. I 
 mean a Heaven built up by desire and intense long- 
 ing all your life. Your own thought makes it. 
 Living idea, that ! ' 
 
 ' Another dream, Terence O'Malley,* I laughed, 
 ' but beautiful and seductive.* 
 
 To argue bored him. He loved to state his 
 matter, fill it with detail, blow the heated breath of 
 life into it, and then leave it. Argument belittled 
 without clarifying ; criticism destroyed, sealing up 
 the sources of life. Any fool could argue ; the small, 
 denying minds were always critics. 
 
 ' A dream, but a damned foine one, let me tell 
 you,' he exclaimed, recovering his brogue in his 
 enthusiasm. He glared at me a second, then burst 
 out laughing. * 'Tis better to have dhreamed and 
 waked,' he added, * than never to have dhreamed 
 at all' 
 
 And then he poured out O'Shaughnessy's 
 passionate ode to the Dreamers of the world : 
 
 We are the music-makers, 
 And we are the dreamers of dreams, 
 Wandering by lone sea-breakers, 
 And sitting by desolate streams ; 
 World-losers and world-forsakers, 
 On whom the pale moon gleams ; 
 Yet we are the movers and shakers 
 Of the world for ever, it seems. 
 
 With wonderful deathless ditties 
 We build up the world's great cities. 
 And out of a fabulous story 
 We fashion an empire's glory ; 
 
1 8 THE CENTAUR ii 
 
 One man with a dream, at pleasure, 
 Shall go forth and conquer a crown ; 
 And three with a new song's measure 
 Can trample an empire down. 
 
 We, in the ages lying 
 In the buried past of the earth. 
 Built Nineveh with our sighing. 
 And Babel itself with our mirth ; 
 And o'erthrew them with prophesying 
 To the old of the new world's worth ; 
 For each age is a dream that is dying, 
 Or one that is coming to birth. 
 
 For this passion for some simple old-world 
 innocence and beauty lay in his soul like a lust — self- 
 feeding and voracious. 
 
in 
 
 * Lonely ! Why should I feel lonely ? Is not our planet in the 
 Milky Way ? ' — Thoreau. 
 
 March had passed shouting away, and April was 
 whispering deliciously among her scented showers 
 when O'M alley went on board the coasting steamer 
 at Marseilles for the Levant and the Black Sea. The 
 mistral made the land unbearable, but herds of white 
 horses ran galloping over the bay beneath a sky of 
 childhood's blue. The ship started punctually — he 
 came on board as usual with a bare minute's margin 
 — and from his rapid survey of the thronged upper 
 deck, it seems, he singled out on the instant this 
 man and boy, wondering first vaguely at their 
 uncommon air of bulk, secondly at the absence of 
 detail which should confirm it. They appeared so 
 much bigger than they actually were. The laughter, 
 rising in his heart, however, did not get as far as his 
 lips. 
 
 For this appearance of massive bulk, and of 
 shoulders comely yet almost humped, was not 
 borne out by a direct inspection. It was a mental 
 impression. The man, though broad and well-pro- 
 portioned, with heavy back and neck and uncom- 
 monly sturdy torso, was in no sense monstrous. It 
 was upon the corner of the eye that the bulk and 
 hugeness dawned, a false report that melted under 
 
 19 
 
20 THE CENTAUR iii 
 
 direct vision. O'Malley took him in with attention 
 merging in respect, searching in vain for the detail 
 of back and limbs and neck that suggested so 
 curiously the sense of the gigantic. The boy beside 
 him, obviously son, possessed the same elusive attri- 
 butes — felt yet never positively seen. 
 
 Passing down to his cabin, wondering vaguely to 
 what nationality they might belong, he was immedi- 
 ately behind them, elbowing French and German 
 tourists, when the father abruptly turned and faced 
 him. Their gaze met. O'Malley started. 
 
 ' Whew . . . ! ' ran some silent expression like 
 fire through his brain. 
 
 Out of a massive visage, placid for all its rugged- 
 ness, shone eyes large and timid as those of an 
 animal or child bewildered among so many people. 
 There was an expression in them not so much cowed 
 or dismayed as *un-refuged' — the eyes of the hunted 
 creature. That, at least, was the first thing they 
 betrayed ; for the same second the quick-blooded 
 Celt caught another look : the look of a hunted 
 creature that at last knows shelter and has found it. 
 The first expression had emerged, then withdrawn 
 again swiftly like an animal into its hole where safety 
 lay. Before disappearing, it had flashed a wireless 
 message of warning, of welcome, of explanation — he 
 knew not what term to use — to another of its own 
 kind, to himself. 
 
 O'Malley, utterly arrested, stood and stared. He 
 would have spoken, for the invitation seemed obvious 
 enough, but there came an odd catch in his breath, 
 and words failed altogether. The boy, peering at 
 him sideways, clung to his great parent's side. For 
 perhaps ten seconds there was this interchange of 
 staring, intimate staring, between the three of them 
 
Ill THE CENTAUR 21 
 
 . . . and then the Irishman, confused, more than a 
 little agitated, ended the silent introduction with an 
 imperceptible bow and passed on slowly, knocking 
 absent-mindedly through the crowd, down to his 
 cabin on the lower deck. 
 
 In his heart, deep down, stirred an indescribable 
 sympathy with something he divined in these two 
 that was akin to himself, but that as yet he could 
 not name. On the surface he felt an emotion he 
 knew not whether to call uneasiness or surprise, but 
 crowding past it, half smothering it, rose this other 
 more profound emotion. Something enormously 
 winning in the atmosphere of father and son called 
 to him in the silence : it was significant, oddly 
 buried ; not yet had it emerged enough to be con- 
 fessed and labelled. But each had recognized it in 
 the other. Each knew. Each waited. And it was 
 extraordinarily disturbing. 
 
 Before unpacking, he sat for a long time on his 
 berth, thinking . . . trying in vain to catch through 
 a thunder of surprising emotions the word that 
 might bring explanation. That strange impression 
 of giant bulk, unsupported by actual measurements ; 
 that look of startled security seeking shelter ; that 
 other look of being sure, of knowing where to go 
 and being actually en route^ — all these, he felt, grew 
 from the same hidden cause whereof they were 
 symptoms. It was this hidden thing in the man 
 that had reached out invisibly and fired his own 
 consciousness as their gaze met in that brief instant. 
 And it had disturbed him so profoundly because the 
 very same lost thing lay buried in himself. The 
 man knew, whereas he anticipated merely — as yet. 
 What was it } Why came there with it both happi- 
 ness and fear } 
 
22 THE CENTAUR in 
 
 The word that kept chasing itself in a circle like 
 a kitten after its own tail, yet bringing no explana- 
 tion, was Loneliness — a loneliness that must be 
 whispered. For it was loneliness on the verge of 
 finding relief. And if proclaimed too loud, there 
 might come those who would interfere and prevent 
 relief. The man, and the boy too for that matter, 
 were escaping. They had found the way back, 
 were ready and eager, moreover, to show it to other 
 prisoners. 
 
 And this was as near as O'Malley could come to 
 explanation. He began to understand dimly — and 
 with an extraordinary excitement of happiness. 
 
 * Well — and the bigness ? * I asked, seizing on a 
 practical point after listening to his dreaming, ' what 
 do you make of that ? It must have had some 
 definite cause surely ? ' 
 
 He turned and fixed his light blue eyes on mine 
 as we paced beside the Serpentine that summer 
 afternoon when I first heard the story told. He 
 was half grave, half laughing. 
 
 *The size, the bulk, the bigness,' he replied, 
 * must have been in reality the expression of some 
 mental quality that reached me psychically, producing 
 its effect directly on my mind and not upon the eyes 
 at all.' In telling the story he used a simile omitted 
 in the writing of it, because his sense of humour 
 perceived that no possible turn of phrase could save 
 it from grotesqueness when actually it was far from 
 grotesque — extraordinarily pathetic rather : ' As 
 though,' he said, * the great back and shoulders 
 carried beneath the loose black cape — humps, pro- 
 jections at least ; but projections not ugly in them- 
 selves, comely even in some perfectly natural way, 
 that lent to his person this idea of giant size. His 
 
Ill THE CENTAUR 23 
 
 body, though large, was normal so far as its propor- 
 tions were concerned. In his spirit, though, there 
 hid another shape. An aspect of that other shape 
 somehow reached my mind.' 
 
 Then, seeing that I found nothing at the moment 
 to reply, he added : 
 
 * As an angry man you may picture to yourself as 
 red, or a jealous man as green ! ' He laughed aloud. 
 * D'ye see, now ? It was not really a physical 
 business at all ! ' 
 
IV 
 
 * We think with only a small part of the past, but it is with our 
 entire past, including the original bent of our soul, that we desire, will, 
 and act.' — Henri Bergson. 
 
 The balance of his fellow-passengers were not dis- 
 tinguished. There was a company of French tourists 
 going to Naples, and another lot of Germans bound 
 for Athens, some business folk for Smyrna and 
 Constantinople, and a sprinkling of Russians going 
 home via Odessa, Batoum, or Novorossisk. 
 
 In his own state-room, occupying the upper 
 berth, was a little round-bodied, red-faced Canadian 
 drummer, * travelling' in harvest-machines. The name 
 of the machine, its price, and the terms of purchase 
 were his universe ; he knew them in several languages ; 
 beyond them, nothing. He was good-natured, con- 
 ceding anything to save trouble. ' D'ye mind the 
 light for a bit while I read in bed ? ' asked O'M alley. 
 ' Don't mind anything much,' was the cheery reply. 
 * I'm not particular ; I'm easy-going and you needn't 
 bother.' He turned over to sleep. * Old traveller,' 
 he added, his voice muffled by sheets and blankets, 
 'and take things as they come.' And the only 
 objection O'Malley found in him was that he took 
 things as they came to the point of not taking baths 
 at all, and not even taking all his garments off when 
 he went to bed. 
 
 24 
 
IV THE CENTAUR 25 
 
 The Captain, whom he knew from previous 
 voyages, a genial, rough-voiced sailor from Sassnitz, 
 chided him for so nearly missing the boat — ' as usual.' 
 
 * YouVe too late for a seat at my taple,* he said 
 with his laughing growl ; * it's a pidy. You should 
 have led me know py telegram, and I then kepd your 
 place. Now you find room at the doctor's table 
 howefer berhaps . . . ! ' 
 
 * Steamer's very crowded this time,' O'Malley 
 replied, shrugging his shoulders ; * but you'll let me 
 come up sometimes for a smoke with you on the 
 bridge ? ' 
 
 ' Of course, of course.' 
 
 ' Anybody interesting on board ? ' he asked after a 
 moment's pause. 
 
 The jolly Captain laughed. * 'Pout the zame as 
 usual, you know. Nothing to stop ze ship ! Ask 
 the doctor ; he knows zooner than me. But, any- 
 way, the nice ones, they get zeazick always and 
 dizappear. Going Trebizond this time ? ' he added. 
 
 ' No ; Batoum.' 
 
 ' Ach ! Oil ^ ' 
 
 * Caucasus generally — up in the mountains a bit.' 
 
 * God blenty veapons then, I hope. They shoot 
 you for two pfennig up there ! ' And he was off 
 with his hearty deep laugh and rather ponderous 
 briskness towards the bridge. 
 
 Thus O'Malley found himself placed for meals at 
 the right hand of Dr. Stahl ; opposite him, on the 
 doctor's left, a talkative Moscow fur-merchant who, 
 having come to definite conclusions of his own about 
 things in general, was persuaded the rest of the 
 world must share them, and who delivered verbose 
 commonplaces with a kind of pontifical utterance 
 sometimes amusing, but usually boring ; on his right 
 
26 THE CENTAUR 
 
 IV 
 
 a gentle-eyed, brown-bearded Armenian priest from 
 the Venice monastery that had sheltered Byron, a 
 man who ate everything except soup with his knife, 
 yet with a daintiness that made one marvel, and with 
 hands so graceful they might almost have replaced 
 the knife without offence. Beyond the priest sat 
 the rotund Canadian drummer. He kept silence, 
 watched the dishes carefully lest anything should 
 escape him, and — ate. Lower down on the opposite 
 side, one or two nondescripts between, sat the big, 
 blond, bearded stranger with his son. Diagonally 
 across from himself and the doctor, they were in full 
 view. 
 
 O'Malley talked to all and sundry whom his 
 voice could reach, being easily forthcoming to people 
 whom he was not likely to see again. But he was 
 particularly pleased to find himself next to the ship's 
 doctor. Dr. Heinrich Stahl, for the man both attracted 
 and antagonized him, and they had crossed swords 
 pleasantly on more voyages than one. There was 
 a fundamental contradiction in his character due — 
 O'Malley divined — to the fact that his experiences 
 did not tally as he wished them to do with his 
 beliefs, or vice versa. Affecting to believe in nothing, 
 he occasionally dropped remarks that betrayed a 
 belief in all kinds of things, unorthodox things. 
 Then, having led the Irishman into confessions of his 
 own fairy faith, he would abruptly rule the whole 
 subject out of order with some cynical phrase that 
 closed discussion. In this sarcastic attitude O'Malley 
 detected a pose assumed for his own protection. 
 ' No man of sense can possibly accept such a thing ; 
 it is incredible and foolish.' Yet, the biting way he 
 said the words betrayed him ; the very thing his 
 reason rejected, his soul believed. ... 
 
IV 
 
 THE CENTAUR 27 
 
 These vivid impressions the Irishman had of 
 people, one wonders how accurate they were ! In 
 this case, perhaps, he was not far from the truth. 
 That a man with Dr. Stahl's knowledge and ability- 
 could be content to hide his light under the bushel of 
 a mere schiffsartzt required explanation. His own 
 explanation was that he wanted leisure for thinking 
 and writing. Bald-headed, slovenly, prematurely 
 old, his beard stained with tobacco and snufF, under- 
 sized, scientific in the imaginative sense that made 
 him speculative beyond mere formulae, his was an 
 individuality that inspired a respect one could never 
 quite account for. He had keen dark eyes that 
 twinkled, sometimes mockingly, sometimes, if the 
 word may be allowed, bitterly, yet often too with 
 a good-humoured amusement which sympathy with 
 human weaknesses could alone have caused. A 
 warm heart he certainly had, as more than one forlorn 
 passenger could testify. 
 
 Conversation at their table was slow at first. It 
 began at the lower end where the French tourists 
 chattered briskly over the soup, then crept upwards 
 like a slow fire o'erleaping various individuals who 
 would not catch. For instance, it passed the 
 harvest-machine man ; it passed the nondescripts ; 
 it also passed the big light-haired stranger and his 
 son. 
 
 At the table behind, there was a steady roar and 
 buzz of voices ; the Captain was easy and genial, 
 prophesying to the ladies on either side of him a 
 calm voyage. In the shelter of his big voice even 
 the shy found it easy to make remarks to their 
 neighbours. Listening to fragments of the talk 
 O'Mallcy found that his own eyes kept wandering 
 down the table — diagonally across — to the two 
 
28 THE CENTAUR iv 
 
 strangers. Once or twice he intercepted the doctor's 
 glance traveUing in the same direction, and on these 
 occasions it was on the tip of his tongue to make 
 a remark about them, or to ask a question. Yet the 
 words did not come. Dr. Stahl, he felt, knew a 
 similar hesitation. Each, wanting to speak, yet kept 
 silence, waiting for the other to break the ice. 
 
 ' This mistral is tiresome,' observed the doctor, as 
 the tide of talk flowed up to his end and made a 
 remark necessary. ' It tries the nerves of some.' 
 He glanced at O'Malley, but it was the fur-merchant 
 who replied, spreading a be-ringed hand over his 
 plate to feel the warmth. 
 
 ' I know it well,* he said pompously in a tone 
 of finahty ; * it lasts three, six, or nine days. But 
 once across the Golfe de Lyons we shall be free of it.' 
 
 * You think so ^ Ah, I am glad,' ventured the 
 priest with a timid smile while he adroitly balanced 
 meat and bullet-like green peas upon his knife-blade. 
 Tone, smile, and gesture were so gentle that the use 
 of steel in any form seemed incongruous. 
 
 The voice of the fur - merchant came in 
 domineeringly. 
 
 ' Of course. I have made this trip so often, / 
 know. St. Petersburg to Paris, a few weeks on the 
 Riviera, then back by Constantinople and the Crimea. 
 
 It is nothing. I remember last year ' He pushed 
 
 a large pearl pin more deeply into his speckled tie 
 and began a story that proved chiefly how luxuriously 
 he travelled. His eyes tried to draw the whole end 
 of the table into his circle, but while the Armenian 
 listened politely, with smiles and bows, Dr. Stahl 
 turned to the Irishman again. It was the year of 
 Halley's comet and he began talking interestingly 
 about it. 
 
IV THE CENTAUR 29 
 
 ' . . . Three o'clock in the morning — any morn- 
 ing, yes — is the best time,' the doctor concluded, 
 * and I'll have you called. You must see it through 
 my telescope. End of this week, say, after we leave 
 Catania and turn eastwards . . .' 
 
 And at this instant, following a roar of laughter 
 from the Captain's table, came one of those abrupt 
 pauses that sometimes catch an entire room at once. 
 All voices hushed. Even the merchant, setting down 
 his champagne glass, fell silent. One heard only the 
 beating of the steamer's screw, the rush of water 
 below the port-holes, the soft scuffle of the stewards' 
 feet. The conclusion of the doctor's inconsiderable 
 sentence was sharply audible all over the room — 
 
 * . . . crossing the Ionian Sea towards the Isles of 
 Greece.' 
 
 It rang across the pause, and at the same moment 
 O'Malley caught the eyes of the big stranger lifted 
 suddenly and fixed upon the speaker's face as though 
 the words had summoned him. 
 
 They shifted the same instant to his own, then 
 dropped again to his plate. Again the clatter of 
 conversation drowned the room as before ; the 
 merchant resumed his self-description in terms of 
 gold ; the doctor discussed the gases of the comet's 
 tail. But the swift-blooded Irishman felt himself 
 caught away strangely and suddenly into another 
 world. Out of the abyss of the subconscious there 
 rose a gesture prophetic and immense. The trivial 
 phrase and that intercepted look opened a great door 
 of wonder in his heart. In a second he grew 'absent- 
 minded.' Or, rather, something touched a button 
 and the whole machinery of his personality shifted 
 round noiselessly and instantaneously, presenting an 
 immediate new facet to the world. His normal, 
 
30 THE CENTAUR iv 
 
 puny self-consciousness slipped a moment into the 
 majestic calm of some far larger state that the 
 stranger also knew. The Universe lies in every 
 human heart, and he plunged into that archetypal world 
 that stands so close behind all sensible appearances. 
 He could neither explain nor attempt to explain, but 
 he sailed away into some giant swimming mood of 
 beauty wherein steamer, passengers, talk, faded 
 utterly, the stranger and his son remaining alone real 
 and vital. He had seen ; he could never forget. 
 Chance prepared the setting, but immense powers had 
 rushed in and availed themselves of it. Something 
 deeply buried had flamed from the stranger's eyes 
 and beckoned to him. The fire ran from the big 
 man to himself and was gone. 
 
 'The Isles of Greece ' The words were 
 
 simple enough, yet it seemed to O'Malley that the 
 look they summoned to the stranger's eyes ensouled 
 them, transfiguring them with the significance of 
 vital clues. They touched the fringe of a mystery, 
 magnificent and remote — some transcendent psychical 
 drama in the life of this man whose * bigness ' and 
 whose * loneliness that must be whispered ' were also 
 in their way other vital clues. Moreover, remember- 
 ing his first sight of these two upon the upper deck a 
 few hours before, he understood that his own spirit, 
 by virtue of its peculiar and primitive yearnings, was 
 involved in the same mystery and included in the 
 same hidden passion. 
 
 The little incident illustrates admirably O'Malley's 
 idiosyncrasy of ' seeing whole.' In a lightning flash 
 his inner sense had associated the words and the 
 glance, divining that the one had caused the other. 
 That pause provided the opportunity. ... If 
 Imagination, then it was creative imagination ; if 
 
IV THE CENTAUR 31 
 
 true, it was assuredly spiritual insight of a rare 
 quality. 
 
 He became aware that the twinkling eyes of his 
 neighbour were observing him keenly. For some 
 moments evidently he had been absent-mindedly 
 staring down the table. He turned quickly and 
 looked at the doctor with frankness. This time it 
 was impossible to avoid speech of some kind. 
 
 ' Following those lights that do mislead the 
 morn ? ' asked Dr. Stahl slyly. * Your thoughts 
 have been travelling. You've heard none of my 
 last remarks ! ' 
 
 Under the clamour of the merchant*s voice 
 O'Malley replied in a lowered tone : 
 
 ' I was watching those two half-way down the 
 table opposite. They interest you as well, I see.' 
 It was not a challenge exactly ; if the tone was 
 aggressive, it was merely that he felt the subject 
 was one on which they would differ, and he scented 
 an approaching discussion. The doctor's reply, 
 indicating agreement, surprised him a good deal. 
 
 * They do ; they interest me greatly.' There 
 was no trace of fight in the voice. ' That should 
 cause you no surprise.' 
 
 * Me — they simply fascinate,' said O'Malley, 
 always easily drawn. * What is it ? What do you 
 see about them that is unusual } You, too, see 
 them " big " ^ The doctor did not answer at once, 
 and O'Malley added, ' The father's a tremendous 
 fellow, but it's not that ' 
 
 * Partly, though,' said the other, ' partly, I think.' 
 ' What else, then .? ' The fur - merchant, still 
 
 talking, prevented their being overheard. 'What 
 is it marks them off so from the rest } ' 
 
 * Of all people you should see,' smiled the doctor 
 
32 THE CENTAUR 
 
 IV 
 
 quietly. * If a man of your imagination sees nothing, 
 what shall a poor exact mind like myself see ? ' He 
 eyed him keenly a moment. *You really mean 
 that you detect nothing ? ' 
 
 * A certain distinction, yes ; a certain aloofness 
 from others. Isolated, they seem in a way ; rather 
 a splendid isolation I should call it ' 
 
 And then he stopped abruptly. It was most 
 curious, but he was aware that unwittingly in this 
 way he had stumbled upon the truth, aware at the 
 same time that he resented discussing it with his 
 companion — because it meant at the same time dis- 
 cussing himself or something in himself he wished to 
 hide. His entire mood shifted again with complete- 
 ness and rapidity. He could not help it. It 
 seemed suddenly as though he had been telling the 
 doctor secrets about himself, secrets moreover he 
 would not treat sympathetically. The doctor had 
 been * at him,* so to speak, searching the depths of 
 him with a probing acuteness the casual language 
 had disguised. 
 
 * What are they, do you suppose, Finns, Russians, 
 Norwegians, or what ? ' the doctor asked. And the 
 other replied briefly that he guessed they might be 
 Russians perhaps, South Russians. His tone was 
 different. He wished to avoid further discussion. 
 At the first opportunity he neatly changed the 
 conversation. 
 
 It was curious, the way proof came to him. 
 Something in himself, wild as the desert, something 
 to do with that love of primitive life he discussed 
 only with the few who were intimately sympathetic 
 towards it, this something in his soul was so akin 
 to a similar passion in these strangers that to talk 
 of it was to betray himself as well as them. 
 
IV THE CENTAUR 33 
 
 Further, he resented Dr. StahFs interest in them, 
 because he felt it was critical and scientific. Not far 
 behind hid the analysis that would lay them bare, 
 leading to their destruction. A profound instinctive 
 sense of self-preservation had been stirred within him. 
 
 Already, mysteriously guided by secret affinities, 
 he had ranged himself on the side of the strangers. 
 
* Mythology contains the history of the archetypal world. It 
 comprehends Past, Present, and Future.* — Novalis, Floiver Pollen. 
 Translated by U. C. B. 
 
 In this way there came between these two the slight 
 barrier of a forbidden subject that grew because 
 neither destroyed it. O'Malley had erected it ; 
 Dr. Stahl respected it. Neither referred again for a 
 time to the big Russian and his son. 
 
 In his written account O'Malley, who was 
 certainly no constructive literary craftsman, left out 
 apparently countless little confirmatory details. By 
 word of mouth he made me feel at once that this 
 mystery existed, however ; and to weld the two 
 together is a difficult task. There nevertheless was 
 this something about the Russian and his boy that 
 excited deep curiosity, accompanied by an aversion 
 on the part of the other passengers that isolated 
 them ; also, there was this competition on the part 
 of the two friends to solve it, from opposing 
 motives. 
 
 Had either of the strangers fallen seasick, the 
 advantage would have been easily with Dr. Stahl — 
 professionally ; but since they remained well, and 
 the doctor was in constant demand by the other 
 passengers, it was the Irishman who won the first 
 move and came to close quarters by making a 
 
 34 
 
V THE CENTAUR 35 
 
 personal acquaintance. His strong desire helped 
 matters of course ; for he noticed with indignation 
 that these two, quiet and inoffensive as they were 
 and with no salient cause of offence, were yet 
 rejected by the main body of passengers. They 
 seemed to possess a quality that somehow insulated 
 them from approach, sending them effectually * to 
 Coventry,' and in a small steamer where the 
 travellers settle down into a kind of big family life, 
 this isolation was unpleasantly noticeable. 
 
 It stood out in numerous little details that only a 
 keen observer closely watching could have taken 
 into account. Small advances, travellers* courtesies, 
 and the like that ordinarily should have led to 
 conversation, in their case led to nothing. The 
 other passengers invariably moved away after a few 
 moments, politely excusing themselves, as it were, 
 from further intercourse. And although at first the 
 sight of this stirred in him an instinct of revolt that 
 was almost anger, he soon felt that the couple not 
 merely failed to invite, but even emanated some 
 definite atmosphere that repelled. And each time he 
 witnessed these little scenes, there grew more strongly 
 in him the original picture he had formed of them 
 as beings rejected and alone, hunted by humanity as 
 a whole, seeking escape from loneliness into a place 
 of refuge that they knew of, definitely at last en 
 route. 
 
 Only an imaginative mind, thus concentrated 
 upon them, could have divined all this ; yet to 
 O'Malley it seemed plain as the day. With the 
 certitude, moreover, came the feeling, ever stronger, 
 that the refuge they sought would prove to be also 
 the refuge he himself sought, the difference being 
 that whereas they knew, he still hesitated. 
 
36 THE CENTAUR v 
 
 Yet, in spite of this secret sympathy, imagined 
 or discovered, he found it no easy matter to 
 approach the big man for speech. For a day and a 
 half he merely watched ; attraction so strong excited 
 caution ; he paused, waiting. His attention, how- 
 ever, was so keen that he seemed always to know 
 where they were and what they were doing. By 
 instinct he was aware in what part of the ship they 
 would be found — for the most part leaning over the 
 rail alone in the bows, staring down at the churned 
 water together by the screws, pacing the after-deck 
 in the dusk or early morning when no one was 
 about, or hidden away in some corner of the upper 
 deck, side by side, gazing at sea and sky. Their 
 method of walking, too, made it easy to single them 
 out from the rest — a free, swaying movement of the 
 limbs, a swing of the shoulders, a gait that was 
 lumbering, almost clumsy, half defiant, yet at the 
 same time graceful, and curiously rapid. The body 
 moved along swiftly for all its air of blundering — a 
 motion which was a counterpart of that elusive 
 appearance of great bulk, and equally difficult of 
 exact determination. An air went with them of 
 being ridiculously confined by the narrow little decks. 
 
 Thus it was that Genoa had been made and the 
 ship was already half way on to Naples before the 
 opportunity for closer acquaintance presented itself 
 Rather, O'Malley, unable longer to resist, forced it. 
 It seemed, too, inevitable as sunrise. 
 
 Rain had followed the mistral and the sea was 
 rough. A rich land-taste came about the ship like 
 the smell of wet oaks when wind sweeps their leaves 
 after a sousing shower. In the hour before dinner, 
 the decks slippery with moisture, only one or two 
 wrapped -up passengers in deck-chairs below the 
 
V THE CENTAUR 37 
 
 awning, O'Malley, following a sure inner lead, came 
 out of the stuffy smoking-room into the air. It was 
 already dark and the drive of mist-like rain some- 
 what obscured his vision after the glare. Only for a 
 moment though — for almost the first thing he saw 
 was the Russian and his boy moving in front of him 
 towards the aft compasses. Like a single figure, 
 huge and shadowy, they passed into the darkness 
 beyond with a speed that seemed as usual out of 
 proportion to their actual stride. They lumbered 
 rapidly away. O'Malley caught that final swing of 
 the man's great shoulders as they disappeared, and, 
 leaving the covered deck, he made straight after 
 them. And though neither gave any sign that they 
 had seen him, he felt that they were aware of his 
 coming — and even invited him. 
 
 As he drew close a roll of the vessel brought 
 them almost into each other's arms, and the boy, 
 half hidden beneath his parent's flowing cloak, looked 
 up at once and smiled. The saloon light fell dimly 
 upon his face. The Irishman saw that friendly smile 
 of welcome, and lurched forward with the roll of the 
 deck. They brought up against the bulwarks, and 
 the big 'man put out an arm to steady him. They 
 all three laughed together. At close quarters, as 
 usual again, the impression of bulk had disappeared. 
 
 And then, at first, utterly unlike real life, they 
 said — nothing. The boy moved round and stood 
 close to his side so that he found himself placed 
 between them, all three leaning forward over the 
 rails watching the phosphorescence of the foam- 
 streaked Mediterranean. 
 
 Dusk lay over the sea ; the shores of Italy not 
 near enough to be visible ; the mist, the hour, the 
 loneliness of the deserted decks, and something else 
 
38 THE CENTAUR v 
 
 that was nameless, shut them in, these three, in a 
 little world of their own. A sentence or two rose 
 in O'Malley's mind, but without finding utterance, 
 for he felt that no spoken words were necessary. 
 He was accepted without more ado. A deep 
 natural sympathy- existed between them, recognized 
 intuitively from that moment of first mutual inspec- 
 tion at Marseilles. It was instinctive, almost as with 
 animals. The action of the boy in coming round to 
 his side, unhindered by the father, was the symbol of 
 utter confidence and welcome. 
 
 There came, then, one of those splendid and 
 significant moments that occasionally, for some, 
 burst into life, flooding all barriers, breaking down 
 as with a flaming light the thousand erections of 
 shadow that close one in. Something imprisoned in 
 himself swept outwards, rising like a wave, bringing 
 an expansion of life that * explained.* It vanished, 
 of course, instantly again, but not before he had 
 caught a flying remnant that lit the broken puzzles 
 of his heart and left things clearer. Before thought, 
 and therefore words, could overtake, it was gone ; 
 but there remained at least this glimpse. The fire 
 had flashed a light down subterranean passages of his 
 being and made visible for a passing second some 
 clue to his buried primitive yearnings. He partly 
 understood. 
 
 Standing there between these two this thing came 
 over him with a degree of intelligibility scarcely 
 captured by his words. The man's qualities — his 
 quietness, peace, slowness, silence — betrayed some- 
 how that his inner life dwelt in a region vast and 
 simple, shaping even his exterior presentment with its 
 own huge characteristics, a region wherein the distress 
 of the modern world's vulgar, futile strife could not 
 
V THE CENTAUR 39 
 
 exist — more, could never have existed. The Irish- 
 man, who had never realized exactly why the life of 
 To-day to him was dreadful, now understood it in 
 the presence of this simple being with his atmosphere 
 of stately power. He was like a child, but a child 
 of some pre-existence utterly primitive and utterly 
 forgotten ; of no particular age, but of some state 
 that ante-dates all ages ; simple in some noble, con- 
 centrated sense that was prodigious, almost terrific. 
 To stand thus beside him was to stand beside a 
 mighty silent fire, steadily glowing, a fire that fed all 
 lesser flames, because itself close to the central source 
 of fire. He felt warmed, lighted, vivified — made 
 whole. The presence of this stranger took him at 
 a single gulp, as it were, straight into Nature — a 
 Nature that was alive. The man was part of her. 
 Never before had he stood so close and intimate. 
 Cities and civilization fled away like transient 
 dreams, ashamed. The sun and moon and stars 
 moved up and touched him. 
 
 This word of lightning explanation, at least, came 
 to him as he breathed the other's atmosphere and 
 presence. The region where this man's spirit fed was 
 at the centre, whereas to-day men were active with 
 a scattered, superficial cleverness, at the periphery. 
 He even understood that his giant gait and move- 
 ments were small outer evidences of this inner fact, 
 wholly in keeping. That blundering stupidity, half 
 glorious, half pathetic, with which he moved among 
 his fellows was a physical expression of this psychic 
 fact that his spirit had never learned the skilful 
 tricks taught by civilization to lesser men. It was, 
 in a way, awe-inspiring, for he was now at last 
 driving back full speed for his own region and — 
 escape. 
 
40 THE CENTAUR v 
 
 O'Malley knew himself caught, swept off his feet, 
 momentarily driving with him. . . . 
 
 The singular deep satisfaction of it, standing 
 there with these two in the first moment, he describes 
 as an entirely new sensation in his life — an aware- 
 ness that he was * complete.' The boy touched his 
 side and he let an arm steal round to shelter him. 
 The huge, bearded parent rose in his massiveness 
 against his other shoulder, hemming him in. For a 
 second he knew a swift and curious alarm, passing 
 however almost at once into the thrill of a rare 
 happiness. In that moment, it was not the passengers 
 or the temper of To-day who rejected them ; it was 
 they who rejected the world : because they knew 
 another and superior one — more, they were in it. 
 
 Then, without turning, the big man spoke, the 
 words in heavy accented English coming out labor- 
 iously and with slow, exceeding difficulty as though 
 utterance was a supreme effort. 
 
 ' You . . . come . . . with . . . us .f' ' It was 
 like stammering almost. Still more was it like 
 essential inarticulateness struggling into an utterance 
 foreign to it — unsuited. The voice was a deep and 
 windy bass, merging with the noise of the sea below. 
 
 * Tm going to the Caucasus,' O'Malley replied ; 
 * up into the old, old mountains, to — see things — to 
 
 look about — to search ' He really wanted to 
 
 say much more, but the words lay dead or beyond 
 reach. 
 
 The big man nodded slowly. The boy listened. 
 
 * And yourself — ? ' asked the Irishman, hardly 
 knowing why he faltered and trembled. 
 
 The other smiled ; a beauty that was beyond all 
 language passed with that smile across the great face 
 in the dusk. 
 
V THE CENTAUR 41 
 
 *Some of us ... of ours . . .' he spoke very 
 slowly, very brokenly, quarrying out the words with 
 real labour, '. . . still survive . . . out there . . . 
 We . . . now go back. So very . . . few . . . 
 remain. . . . And you — come with us . . .' 
 
VI 
 
 'In the spiritual Nature-Kingdom, man must everywhere seek his 
 peculiar territory and climate, his best occupation, his particular 
 neighbourhood, in order to cultivate a Paradise in idea ; this is the 
 right system. . . . Paradise is scattered over the whole earth, and that 
 is why it has become so unrecognizable.' — Novalis. Translated by 
 U. C. B. 
 
 ' Man began in instinct and will end in instinct. Instinct is genius 
 in Paradise, before the period of self-abstraction (self-knowledge).* — 
 Ibid. 
 
 * Look here, old man/ he said to me, ' I'll just 
 tell you what it was, because I know you won't laugh.' 
 
 We were lying under the big trees behind the 
 Round Pond when he reached this point, and his 
 direct speech was so much more graphic than the 
 written account that I use it. He was in one of his 
 rare moments of confidence, excited, hat off, his 
 shabby tie escaping from the shabbier grey waistcoat. 
 One sock lay untidily over his boot, showing bare leg. 
 
 Children's voices floated to us from the water- 
 side as though from very far away ; the nursemaids 
 and perambulators seemed tinged with unreality, the 
 London towers were clouds, its roar the roar of 
 waves. I saw only the ship's deck, the grey and 
 misty sea, the uncouth figures of the two who leaned 
 with him over the bulwarks. 
 
 * Go on,' I said encouragingly ; * out with it ! ' 
 
 * It must seem incredible to most men, but, by 
 Gad, I swear to you, it lifted me off my feet, and 
 
 42 
 
VI ^ THE CENTAUR 43 
 
 I've never known anything like it. The mind of 
 that great fellow got hold of me, included me. He 
 made the inanimate world — sea, stars, wind, woods, 
 and mountains — seem all alive. The entire blessed 
 universe was conscious — and he came straight out of 
 it to get me. I understood things about myself IVe 
 never understood before — and always funked rather ; 
 — especially that feeling of being out of touch with 
 my kind, of finding no one in the world to-day who 
 speaks my language quite — that, and the utter, God- 
 forsaken loneliness it makes me suffer ' 
 
 * You always have been a lonely beggar really,' I 
 said, noting the hesitation that thus on the very 
 threshold checked his enthusiasm, quenching the fire 
 in those light-blue eyes. ' Tell me. I shall under- 
 stand right enough — or try to.* 
 
 * God bless you,' he answered, leaping to the 
 sympathy, * I believe you will. There's always been 
 this primitive, savage thing in me that keeps others 
 away — puts them off, and so on. I've tried to 
 smother it a bit sometimes ' 
 
 ' Have you ? ' I laughed. 
 
 * " Tried to," I said, because I've always been 
 afraid of its getting out too much and bustin' my life 
 all to pieces : — something lonely and untamed and 
 sort of outcast from cities and money and all the 
 thick suffocating civilization of to-day ; and I've only 
 saved myself by getting off into wildernesses and free 
 places where I could give it a breathin' chance with- 
 out running the risk of being locked up as a crazy 
 man.' He laughed as he said it, but his heart was 
 in the words. * You know all that ; haven't I told 
 you often enough .f* It's not a morbid egoism, or 
 what their precious academic books so stupidly call 
 ** degenerate," for in me it's damned vital and terrific, 
 
44 THE CENTAUR vi 
 
 and moves always to action. It's made me an alien 
 and — and ' 
 
 ' Something far stronger than the Call of the 
 Wild, isn't it ? ' 
 
 He fairly snorted. * Sure as we're both alive here 
 sittin' on this sooty London grass,' he cried. * This 
 Call of the Wild they prate about is just the call a 
 fellow hears to go on " the bust " when he's had too 
 much town and's got bored — a call to a little bit of 
 licence and excess to safety-valve him down. What 
 I feel,' his voice turned grave and quiet again, ' is 
 quite a different affair. It's the call of real hunger 
 — the call of food. They want to let off steam, but 
 I want to take in stuff to prevent — starvation.' He 
 whispered the word, putting his lips close to my face. 
 
 A pause fell between us, which I was the first to 
 break. 
 
 * This is not your century ! That's what you 
 really mean,' I suggested patiently. 
 
 * Not my centhury ! ' he caught me up, flinging 
 handfuls of faded grass in the air between us and 
 watching it fall ; * why, it's not even my world ! And 
 I loathe, loathe the spirit of to-day with its cheap- 
 jack inventions, and smother of sham universal 
 culture, its murderous superfluities and sordid 
 vulgarity, without enough real sense of beauty left 
 to see that a daisy is nearer heaven than an airship ' 
 
 ' Especially when the airship falls,' I laughed. 
 ' Steady, steady, old boy ; don't spoil your righteous 
 case by overstatement.' 
 
 * Well, well, you know what I mean,' he laughed 
 with me, though his face at once turned earnest again, 
 ' and all that, and all that, and all that. . . . And so 
 this savagery that has burned in me all these years 
 unexplained, these Russian strangers made clear. I 
 
VI THE CENTAUR ^ 45 
 
 can't tell you how because I don't know myself. 
 The father did it — his proximity, his silence stuffed 
 with sympathy, his great vital personality undipped 
 by contact with these little folk who left him alone. 
 His presence alone made me long for the earth and 
 Nature. He seemed a living part of it all. He was 
 magnificent and enormous, but the devil take me if 
 I know how.' 
 
 * He said nothing — that referred to it directly .? * 
 
 * Nothing but what I've told you, — blundering 
 awkwardly with those few modern words. But he 
 had it in him a thousand to my one. He made me 
 feel I was right and natural, untrue to myself to 
 suppress it and a coward to fear it. The speech- 
 centre in the brain, you know, is anyhow a com- 
 paratively recent thing in evolution. They say 
 that ' 
 
 * It wasn't his century either,' I checked him again. 
 
 * No, and he didn't pretend it was, as I've tried 
 to,' he cried, sitting bolt upright beside me. * The 
 fellow was genuine, never dreamed of compromise. 
 D'ye see what I mean ? Only somehow he'd found 
 out where his world and century were, and was off to 
 take possession. And that's what caught me. I 
 felt it by some instinct in me stronger than all else ; 
 only we couldn't talk about it definitely because 
 — because — I hardly know how to put it — for the 
 same reason,' he added suddenly, ' that I can't talk 
 about it to you now ! There are no words. ... 
 What we both sought was a state that passed away 
 before words came into use, and is therefore beyond 
 intelligible description. No one spoke to them on 
 the ship for the same reason, I felt sure, that no one 
 spoke to them in the whole world — because no one 
 could manage even the alphabet of his language. 
 
46 THE CENTAUR vi 
 
 * And this was so strange and beautiful,* he went 
 on, * that standing there beside him, in his splendid 
 atmosphere, the currents of wind and sea reached me 
 through him first, filtered by his spirit so that I 
 assimilated them and they fed me, because he some- 
 how stood in such close and direct relation to Nature. 
 I slipped into my own region, made happy and alive, 
 knowing at last what I wanted, though still unable 
 to phrase it. This modern world Fve so long tried 
 to adjust myself to became a thing of pale remembrance 
 and a dream. . . .' 
 
 *A11 in your mind and imagination, of course, 
 this,* I ventured, seeing that his poetry was luring 
 him beyond where I could follow. 
 
 ' Of course/ he answered without impatience, 
 grown suddenly thoughtful, less excited again, * and 
 that's why it was true. No chance of clumsy senses 
 deceiving one. It was direct vision. What is 
 Reality, in the last resort,' he asked, ' but the thing 
 a man's vision brings to him — to believe } There's 
 no other criterion. The criticism of opposite types of 
 mind is merely a confession of their own limitations.' 
 
 Being myself of the * opposite type of mind,' I 
 naturally did not argue, but suffered myself to 
 accept his half-truth for the whole — temporarily. I 
 checked him from time to time merely lest he should 
 go too fast for me to follow what seemed a very 
 wonderful tale of faery. 
 
 * So this wild thing in me the world to-day has 
 beggared and denied,' he went on, swept by his 
 Celtic enthusiasm, ' woke in its full strength. Calling 
 to me like some flying spirit in a storm, it claimed 
 me. The man's being summoned me back to the 
 earth and Nature, as it were, automatically. I under- 
 stood that look on his face, that sign in his eyes. 
 
VI THE CENTAUR 47 
 
 The " Isles ot Greece " furnished some faint clue, but 
 as yet I knew no more — only that he and 1 were in 
 the same region and that I meant to go with him 
 and that he accepted me with delight that was joy. 
 It drew me as empty space draws a giddy man to 
 the precipice's edge. Thoughts from another's mind,' 
 he added by way of explanation, turning round, 
 * come far more completely to me when I stand in a 
 man's atmosphere, silent and receptive, than when 
 by speech he tries to place them there. Ah ! And 
 that helps me to get at what I mean, perhaps. The 
 man, you see, hardly thought ; he/^//.' 
 
 * As an animal, you mean ? Instinctively — ? ' 
 
 * In a sense, yes,' he replied after a momentary 
 hesitation. *Like some very early, very primitive 
 form of life.' 
 
 * With the best will in the world, Terence, I 
 don't quite follow you ' 
 
 * I don't quite follow meself,' he cried, * because 
 I'm trying to lead and follow at the same time. 
 You know that idea — I came across it somewhere — 
 that in ancient peoples the senses were much less 
 specialized than they are now ; that perception came 
 to them in general, massive sensations rather than 
 divided up neatly into five channels : — that they felt 
 all over so to speak, and that all the senses, as in an 
 overdose of haschish, become one single sense ? The 
 centralizing of perception in the brain is a recent 
 thing, and it might equally well have occurred in any 
 other nervous head-quarters of the body, say, the 
 solar plexus ; or, perhaps, never have been localized 
 at all ! In hysteria patients have been known to 
 read with the finger-tips and smell with the heel. 
 Touch is still all over ; it's only the other four that 
 have got fixed in definite organs. There are systems 
 
48 THE CENTAUR vi 
 
 of thought to-day that still would make the solar 
 plexus the main centre, and not the brain. The 
 word " brain," you know, never once occurs in the 
 ancient Scriptures of the world. You will not find 
 it in the Bible — the reins, the heart, and so forth 
 were what men felt with then. They felt all over 
 — well,* he concluded abruptly, * I think this fellow 
 was like that. D'ye see now ? ' 
 
 I stared at him, greatly wondering. A nursemaid 
 passed close, balancing a child in a spring-per- 
 ambulator, saying in a foolish voice, * Wupsey upj 
 wupsey down ! Wupsey there ! ' O'Malley, in the 
 full stream of his mood, waited impatiently till she 
 had gone by. Then, rolling over on his side, he 
 came closer, talking in a lowered tone. I think I 
 never saw him so deeply stirred, nor understood, 
 perhaps, so little of the extreme passion working in 
 him. Yet it was incredible that he could have 
 caught so much from mere interviews with a semi- 
 articulate stranger, unless what he said was strictly 
 true, and this Russian had positively touched latent 
 fires in his soul by a kind of sympathetic magic. 
 
 * You know,' he went on almost under his breath, 
 ' every man who thinks for himself and feels vividly 
 finds he lives in a world of his own, apart, and 
 believes that one day he'll come across, either in a 
 book or in a person, the Priest who shall make it 
 clear to him. Well — I'd found mine, that's all. I 
 can't prove it to you with a pair of scales or a 
 butcher's meat-axe, but it's true.' 
 
 * And you mean his mere presence conveyed all 
 this without speech almost ? ' 
 
 * Because there was no speech possible,' he replied, 
 dropping his voice to a whisper and thrusting his 
 face yet closer into mine. * We were solitary 
 
VI THE CENTAUR 49 
 
 survivors of a world whose language was either 
 uncreated or * — he italicized the word — ^forgotten, . . / 
 
 *An elaborate and detailed thought-transference, 
 then ? ' 
 
 ' Why not ? ' he murmured. * It's one of the 
 commonest facts of daily life.' 
 
 * And you had never fully realized it before, this 
 loneliness and its possible explanation — that there 
 might exist, I mean, a way of satisfying it — till you 
 met this stranger ? ' 
 
 He answered with deep earnestness. * Always, 
 old man, always, but suffered under it atrociously 
 because Fd never understood it. I had been afraid 
 to face it. This man, a far bigger and less diluted 
 example of it than myself, made it all clear and right 
 and natural. We belonged to the same forgotten 
 place and time. Under his lead and guidance I 
 could find my own — return. ... * 
 
 I whistled a long soft whistle, looking up into 
 the sky. Then, sitting upright like himself, we 
 stared hard at one another, straight in the eye. He 
 was too grave, too serious to trifle with. It would 
 have been unfair too. Besides, I loved to hear him. 
 The way he reared such fabulous superstructures 
 upon slight incidents, interpreting thus his complex 
 being to himself, was uncommonly interesting. It 
 was observing the creative imagination actually at 
 work, and the process in a sense seemed sacred. 
 Only the truth and actuality with which he clothed 
 it all made me a little uncomfortable sometimes. 
 
 ' I'll put it to you quite simply,' he cried suddenly. 
 
 * Yes, and " quite simply " it was ? 
 
 * That he knew the awful spiritual loneliness of 
 living in a world whose tastes and interests were not 
 his own, a world to which he was essentially foreign, 
 
 E 
 
50 THE CENTAUR 
 
 VI 
 
 and at whose hands he suffered continual rebuff and 
 rejection. Advances from either side were mutually 
 and necessarily repelled because oil and water cannot 
 mix. Rejected, moreover, not merely by a family, 
 tribe, or nation, but by a race and time — by the 
 whole World of To-day ; an outcast and an alien, a 
 desolate survival.* 
 
 * An appalling picture ! ' 
 
 * I understood it,' he went on, holding up both 
 hands by way of emphasis, * because in miniature I 
 had suffered the same : he was a supreme case of 
 what lay so deeply in myself. He was a survival of 
 other life the modern mind has long since agreed to 
 exile and deny. Humanity stared at him over a 
 barrier, never dreaming of asking him in. Even had 
 it done so he could not by the law of his being have 
 accepted. Outcast meself in some small way, I 
 understood his terrible loneliness, a soul without a 
 country, visible and external country that is. A 
 passion of tenderness and sympathy for him, and so 
 also for myself, awoke. I saw him as chieftain of 
 all the lonely, exiled souls of life.' 
 
 Breathless a moment, he lay on his back staring 
 at the summer clouds — those thoughts of wind that 
 change and pass before their meanings can be quite 
 seized. Similarly protean was the thought his phrases 
 tried to clothe. The terror, pathos, sadness of this 
 big idea he strove to express touched me deeply, yet 
 never quite with the clarity of his own conviction. 
 
 * There are such souls, dSpaysSes and in exile,' he 
 said suddenly again, turning over on the grass. 
 * They do exist. They walk the earth to-day here 
 and there in the bodies of ordinary men . . . and 
 their loneliness is a loneliness that must be whispered.' 
 
 * You formed any idea what kind of — of survival ? ' 
 
VI THE CENTAUR 51 
 
 I asked gently, for the notion grew in me that after 
 all these two would prove to be mere revolutionaries 
 in escape, political refugees, or something quite 
 ordinary. 
 
 O'Malley buried his face in his hands for a 
 moment without replying. Presently he looked up. 
 I remember that a streak of London black ran from 
 the corner of his mouth across the cheek. He 
 pushed the hair back from his forehead, answering in 
 a manner grown abruptly calm and dispassionate. 
 
 * Don't ye see what a foolish question that is,' 
 he said quietly, * and how impossible to satisfy, 
 inviting that leap of invention which can be only an 
 imaginative lie .f' ... I can only tell you,* and the 
 breeze brought to us the voices of children from the 
 Round Pond where they sailed their ships of equally 
 wonderful adventure, * that my own longing became 
 this : to go with him, to know what he knew, to 
 live where he lived — for ever.' 
 
 * And the alarm you said you felt ? ' 
 He hesitated. 
 
 'That,' he added, *was a kind of mistake. To 
 go involved, I felt, an inner catastrophe that might 
 be Death — that it would be out of the body, I mean, 
 or a going backwards. In reality, it was a going 
 forwards and a way to Life.' 
 
VII 
 
 And it was just before the steamer made Naples that 
 the jolly Captain unwittingly helped matters forward 
 a good deal. For it was his ambition to include in 
 the safe-conduct of his vessel the happy-conduct also 
 of his passengers. He liked to see them contented 
 and of one accord, a big family, and he noted — or 
 had word brought to him perhaps — that there were 
 one or two whom the attitude of the majority left 
 out in the cold. 
 
 It may have been — O'Malley wondered without 
 actually asking — that the man who shared the cabin 
 with the strangers made some appeal for re-arrange- 
 ment, but in any case Captain Burgenfelder approached 
 the Irishman that afternoon on the bridge and asked 
 if he would object to having them in his state-room 
 for the balance of the voyage. 
 
 * Your present gompanion geds off at Naples,' he 
 said. ' Berhaps you would not object. I think — 
 they seem lonely. You are friendly with them. 
 They go alzo to Batoum ^ ' 
 
 This proposal for close quarters gave him pause. 
 He knew a moment or two of grave hesitation, yet 
 without time to analyze it. Then, driven by a 
 sudden decision of the heart that knew no revision 
 of reason, he agreed. 
 
 52 
 
VII THE CENTAUR 53 
 
 ' I had better, perhaps, suggest it to see if they 
 are willing,* he said the next minute, hedging. 
 
 * I already ask him dat/ 
 
 ' Oh, you have ! And he would like it — not 
 object, I mean ? * he added, aware of a subtle sense 
 of half-frightened pleasure. 
 
 * Pleased and flattered on the gontrary,' was the 
 reply, as he handed him the glasses to look at Ischia 
 rising blue from the sea. 
 
 O'Malley felt as though his decision was somehow 
 an act of self-committal, almost grave. It meant 
 that impulsively he accepted a friendship which 
 concealed in its immense attraction — danger. He 
 had taken the plunge. 
 
 The rush of it broke over him like a wave, 
 setting free a tumult of very deep emotion. He 
 raised the glasses automatically to his eyes, but look- 
 ing through them he saw not Ischia nor the opening the 
 Captain explained the ship would make, heading that 
 evening for Sicily. He saw quite another picture that 
 drew itself up out of himself — was thrown up, rather, 
 somewhat with violence, as upon a landscape of 
 dream-scenery. The lens of passionate yearning in 
 himself, ever unsatisfied, focussed it against a back- 
 ground far, far away, in some faint distance that was 
 neither of space nor time, and might equally have 
 been past as future. Large figures he saw, shadowy 
 yet splendid, that ran free-moving as clouds over 
 mighty hills, vital with the abundant strong life of a 
 younger world. . . . Yet never quite saw them, 
 never quite overtook them, for their speed and the 
 manner of their motion bewildered the sight. . . . 
 
 Moreover, though they evaded him in terms of 
 physical definition he knew a sense of curious, half- 
 remembered familiarity. Some portion of his hidden 
 
54 THE CENTAUR vii 
 
 self, uncaught, unharnessed by anything in modern 
 life, rose with a passionate rush of joy and made after 
 them — something in him untamed as wind. His 
 mind stood up, as it were, and shouted * I am 
 coming.' For he saw himself not far behind, as a 
 man, racing with great leaps to join them ... yet 
 never overtaking, never drawing close enough to 
 see quite clearly. The roar of their tramping shook 
 the very blood in his ears. . . . 
 
 His decision to accept the strangers had set free 
 in his being something that thus for the first time in 
 his life — escaped. . . . Symbolically in his mind 
 this Escape had taken picture form. . . . 
 
 The Captain's voice was asking for the glasses ; 
 with a wrench that caused almost actual physical 
 pain he tore himself away, letting this herd of Flying 
 Thoughts sink back into the shadows and disappear. 
 With sharp regret he saw them go — a regret for long, 
 long, far-off things. . . . 
 
 Turning, he placed the field-glasses carefully in 
 that fat open hand stretched out to receive them, 
 and noted as he did so the thick, pink fingers that 
 closed about the strap, the heavy ring of gold, the 
 band of gilt about the sleeve. That wrought gold, 
 those fleshy fingers, the genial guttural voice saying 
 
 * T'anks ' were symbols of an existence tamed and 
 artificial that caged him in again. . . . 
 
 Then he went below and found that the lazy 
 
 * drummer ' who talked harvest-machines to puzzled 
 peasants had landed, and in his place an assortment 
 of indiscriminate clothing belonging to the big 
 Russian and his son lay scattered over the upper 
 berth and upon the sofa-bed beneath the port-hole. 
 
VIII 
 
 * For my own part I find In some of these abnormal or supernormal 
 facts 1 the strongest suggestions in favour of a superior consciousness 
 being possible. I doubt whether we shall ever understand some of 
 them without using the very letter of Fechner^s conception of a great 
 reservoir in which the memories of earth's inhabitants are pooled and 
 preserved, and from which, when the threshold lowers or the valve 
 opens, information ordinarily shut out leaks into the mind of 
 exceptional individuals among us.' — William James, A Pluralistic 
 Uni'verse. 
 
 And it was some hours later, while the ship made 
 for the open sea, that he told Dr. Stahl casually of 
 the new arrangement and saw the change come so 
 suddenly across his face. Stahl stood back from the 
 compass-box whereon they leaned, and putting a hand 
 upon his companion's shoulder, looked a moment into 
 his eyes. With surprise O'Malley noted that the 
 pose of cynical disbelief was gone ; in its place was 
 sympathy, interest, kindness. The words he spoke 
 came from his heart. 
 
 ' Is that true } ' he asked, as though the news 
 disturbed him. 
 
 * Of course. Why not.^ Is there anything 
 wrong } ' He felt uneasy. The doctor's manner 
 confirmed the sense that he had done a rash thing. 
 Instantly the barrier between the two crumbled and 
 he lost the first feeling of resentment that his friends 
 
 ^ Divided or split personality, automatic speech and writing, mediumship 
 and possession generally. 
 
 55 
 
56 THE CENTAUR viii 
 
 should be analyzed. The men thus came together 
 in unhindered sincerity. 
 
 * Only/ said the doctor thoughtfully, half 
 gravely, ' that — I may have done you a vi^rong, placed 
 you, that is, in a position of — ' he hesitated an instant, 
 — * of difficulty. It was I who suggested the change.' 
 
 O'Malley stared at him. 
 
 * I don't understand you quite.' 
 
 * It is this,' continued the other, still holding him 
 with his eyes. He said it deliberately. * I have 
 known you for some time, formed — er — an opinion 
 of your type of mind and being — a very rare and 
 curious one, interesting me deeply ' 
 
 ' I wasn't aware you'd had me under the micro- 
 scope,' O'Malley laughed, but restlessly. 
 
 * Though you felt it and resented it — justly, I 
 may say — to the point of sometimes avoiding me ' 
 
 * As doctor, scientist,' put in O'Malley, while the 
 other, ignoring the interruption, continued in 
 German : — 
 
 * I always had the secret hope, as " doctor and 
 scientist," let us put it then, that I might one day 
 see you in circumstances that should bring out certain 
 latent characteristics I thought I divined in you. I 
 wished to observe you — your psychical being — under 
 the stress of certain temptations, favourable to these 
 characteristics. Our brief voyages together, though 
 they have so kindly ripened our acquaintance into 
 friendship ' — he put his hand again on the other's 
 shoulder smiling, while O'Malley replied with a little 
 nod of agreement — * have, of course, never provided 
 the opportunity I refer to ' 
 
 ^Ah !' 
 
 * Until now ! ' the doctor added. * Until now.' 
 Puzzled and interested the Irishman waited for 
 
VIII THE CENTAUR 57 
 
 him to go on, but the man of science, who was now 
 a ship's doctor, hesitated. He found it difficult, 
 apparently, to say what was in his thoughts. 
 
 * You refer, of course, though I hardly follow you 
 quite — to our big friends.? ' O'Malley helped him. 
 
 The adjective slipped out before he was aware of 
 it. His companion's expression admitted the accuracy 
 of the remark. * You also see them — big, then ? ' he 
 said, quickly taking him up. He was not cross- 
 questioning ; out of keen sympathetic interest he 
 asked it. 
 
 ^Sometimes, yes,' the Irishman answered, more 
 astonished. * Sometimes only ' 
 
 * Exactly. Bigger than they really are ; as though 
 at times they gave out — emanated — something that 
 extended their appearance. Is that it ? ' 
 
 O'Malley, his confidence wholly won, more 
 surprised, too, than he quite understood, seized Stahl 
 by the arm and drew him towards the rails. They 
 leaned over, watching the sea. A passenger, pacing 
 the decks before dinner, passed close behind them. 
 
 * But, doctor,' he said in a hushed tone as soon as 
 the steps had died away, * you are saying things that 
 I thought were half in my imagination only, not true 
 in the ordinary sense quite — your sense, I mean ? ' 
 
 For some moments the doctor made no reply. In 
 his eyes a curious steady gaze replaced the usual 
 twinkle. When at length he spoke it was evidently 
 following a train of thought of his own, playing 
 round a subject he seemed half ashamed of and yet 
 desired to state with direct language. 
 
 * A being akin to yourself,' he said in low tones, 
 ' only developed, enormously developed ; a Master 
 in your own peculiar region, and a man whose 
 influence acting upon you at close quarters could not 
 
58 THE CENTAUR viii 
 
 fail to arouse the latent mind-storms ' — he chose the 
 word hesitatingly, as though seeking for a better he 
 could not find on the moment, — * always brewing in 
 you just below the horizon.' 
 
 He turned and watched his companion's face 
 keenly. O'Malley was too impressed to feel annoy- 
 ance. 
 
 * Well — ? * he asked, feeling the adventure closing 
 round him with quite a new sense of reality. ' Well ? ' 
 he repeated louder. * Please go on. Vm not offended, 
 only uncommonly interested. You leave me in a fog, 
 so far. I think you owe me more than hints.' 
 
 ' I do,' said the other simply. * About that man 
 is a singular quality too rare for language to have 
 yet coined its precise description : something that is 
 essentially ' — they had lapsed into German now, and 
 he used the German word — * unheimlich' 
 
 The Irishman started. He recognized this for 
 truth. At the same time the old resentment stirred 
 a little in him, creeping into his reply. 
 
 ' You have studied him closely then — had him, too, 
 under the microscope ^ In this short time ^ ' 
 
 This time the answer did not surprise him, however. 
 
 * My friend,' he heard, while the other turned 
 from him and gazed out over the misty sea, * I have 
 not been a ship's doctor — always. I am one now 
 only because the leisure and quiet give me the 
 opportunity to finish certain work, recording work. 
 
 For years I was in the H ' — he mentioned the 
 
 German equivalent for the Salp^tri^re — ' years of 
 research and investigation into the astonishing vagaries 
 of the human mind and spirit — with certain results, 
 followed later privately, that it is now my work to 
 record. And among many cases that might well 
 seem — er — beyond either credence or explanation,' — 
 
VIII THE CENTAUR 59 
 
 he hesitated again slightly — * I came across one, one 
 in a million, let us admit, that an entire section of 
 my work deals with under the generic term of 
 Urmenschen' 
 
 * Primitive men,' O'Malley snapped him up, 
 translating. Through his growing bewilderment 
 ran also a growing uneasiness shot strangely with 
 delight. Intuitively he divined what was coming. 
 
 ' Beings,' the doctor corrected him, * not men. 
 The prefix C/r-, moreover, I use in a deeper sense 
 than is usually attached to it as in Urwald, 
 Urweh, and the like. An Urmensch in the world 
 to-day must suggest a survival of an almost incredible 
 kind — a kind, too, utterly inadmissible and inexpli- 
 cable to the materialist perhaps ' 
 
 ' Paganistic } ' interrupted the other sharply, joy 
 and fright rising over him. 
 
 ' Older, older by far/ was the rejoinder, given 
 with a curious hush and a lowering of the voice. 
 
 The suggestion rushed into full possession of 
 O'Malley's mind. There rose in him something 
 that claimed for his companions the sea, the wind, 
 the stars — tumultuous and terrific. But he said 
 nothing. The conception, blown into him thus for 
 the first time at full strength, took all his life into 
 its keeping. No energy was left over for mere 
 words. The doctor, he was aware, was looking at 
 him, the passion of discovery and belief in his eyes. 
 His manner kindled. It was the hidden Stahl 
 emerging. 
 
 * ... a type, let me put it,' he went on in a 
 voice whose very steadiness thrilled his listener 
 afresh, *that in its strongest development would 
 experience in the world to-day the loneliness of a 
 complete and absolute exile. A return to humanity. 
 
6o THE CENTAUR viii 
 
 you see, of some unexpended power of mythological 
 values. . . .' 
 
 'Doctor . . . !' 
 
 The shudder passed through him and away 
 almost as soon as it came. Again the sea grew 
 splendid, the thunder of the waves held voices call- 
 ing, and the foam framed shapes and faces, wildly 
 seductive, though fugitive as dreams. The words 
 he had heard moved him profoundly. He re- 
 membered how the presence of the stranger had 
 turned the world alive. 
 
 He knew what was coming, too, and gave the 
 lead direct, while yet half afraid to ask the question. 
 
 ' So my friend — this big " Russian " ? ' 
 
 ' I have known before, yes, and carefully studied.' 
 
IX 
 
 * Is it not just possible that there is a mode of being as much tran- 
 scending Intelligence and Will as these transcend mechanical motion ? ' 
 — Herbert Spencer, First Principles. 
 
 The two men left the rail and walked arm in arm 
 along the deserted deck, speaking in lowered 
 voices. 
 
 ' He came first to us, brought by the keeper of 
 an obscure hotel where he was staying, as a case 
 of lapse of memory — loss of memory, I should say, 
 for it was complete. He was unable to say who he 
 was, whence he came, or to whom he belonged. Of 
 his land or people we could learn nothing. His 
 antecedents were an utter blank. Speech he had 
 practically none of his own — nothing but the merest 
 smattering of many tongues, a word here, a word 
 there. Utterance, indeed, of any kind was exceed- 
 ingly difficult to him. For years, evidently, he had 
 wandered over the world, companionless among men, 
 seeking his own, finding no place where to lay his 
 head. People, it seemed, both men and women, 
 kept him at arm's-length, feeling afraid ; the keeper 
 of the little hotel was clearly terrified. This quality 
 he had that I mentioned just now, repelled human 
 beings — even in the Hospital it was noticeable — and 
 placed him in the midst of humanity thus absolutely 
 
 6i 
 
62 THE CENTAUR ix 
 
 alone. It is a quality more rare than ' — hesitating, 
 searching for a word — 'purity, one almost extinct 
 tO"day, one that I have never before or since come 
 across in any other being — hardly ever, that is to 
 say,' he qualified the sentence, glancing significantly 
 at his companion. 
 
 ' And the boy ? ' O'Malley asked quickly, anxious 
 to avoid any discussion of himself, 
 
 * There was no boy then. He has found him 
 since. He may find others too — possibly ! ' The 
 Irishman drew his arm out, edging away impercept- 
 ibly. That shiver of joy reached him from the air 
 and sea, perhaps. 
 
 * And two years ago,' continued Dr. Stahl, as if 
 nothing had happened, ' he was discharged, harmless ' 
 — he lingered a moment on the word, * if not cured. 
 He was to report to us every six months. He has 
 never done so.' 
 
 ' You think he remembers you } ' 
 
 * No. It is quite clear that he has lapsed back 
 completely again into the — er — state whence he 
 came to us, that unknown world where he passed 
 his youth with others of his kind, but of which he 
 has been able to reveal no single detail to us, nor we 
 to trace the slightest clue.' 
 
 They stopped beneath the covered portion of the 
 deck, for the mist had now turned to rain. They 
 leaned against the smoking-room outer wall. In 
 O'Malley's mind the thoughts and feelings plunged 
 and reared. Only with difficulty did he control 
 himself. 
 
 * And this man, you think,' he asked with out- 
 ward calmness, ' is of — of my kind } ' 
 
 ' " Akin," I said. I suggest ' But O'Malley 
 
 cut him short. 
 
IX 
 
 THE CENTAUR 61, 
 
 'So that you engineered our sharing a cabin with 
 a view to putting him again — putting us both — under 
 the microscope ? ' 
 
 ' My scientific interest was very strong,' Dr. Stahl 
 replied carefully. * But it is not too late to change. 
 I offer you a bed in my own roomy cabin on the 
 promenade deck. Also, I ask your forgiveness.' 
 
 The Irishman, large though his imaginative creed 
 was, felt oddly checked, baffled, stupefied by what he 
 had heard. He knew perfectly well what Stahl was 
 driving at, and that revelations of another kind were 
 yet to follow. What bereft him of very definite 
 speech was this new fact slowly awakening in his 
 consciousness which hypnotized him, as it were, with 
 its grandeur. It seemed to portend that his own 
 primitive yearnings, so-called, grew out of far deeper 
 foundations than he had yet dreamed of even. Stahl, 
 should he choose to listen, meant to give him ex- 
 planation, quasi- scientific explanation. This talk 
 about a survival of * unexpended mythological values ' 
 carried him off his feet. He knew it was true. 
 Veiled behind that carefully chosen phrase was some- 
 thing more — a truth brilliantly discovered. He 
 knew, too, that it bit at the platform -boards upon 
 which his personality, his sanity, his very life, perhaps, 
 rested — his modern life. 
 
 ' I forgive you, Dr. Stahl,' he heard himself saying 
 with a deceptive calmness of voice as they stood 
 shoulder to shoulder in that dark corner, * for there 
 is really nothing to forgive. The characteristics 
 of these Urmenschen you describe attract me very 
 greatly. Your words merely give my imagination 
 a letter of introduction to my reason. They burrow 
 among the foundations of my life and being. At 
 least — you have done me no wrong. . . .' He 
 
64 THE CENTAUR ix 
 
 knew the words were wild, impulsive, yet he could 
 find no better. Above all things he wished to con- 
 ceal his rising, grand delight. 
 
 * I thank you,' Stahl said simply, yet with a certain 
 confusion. * I — felt I owed you this explanation — er 
 — this confession.' 
 
 ' You wished to warn me .? ' 
 
 * I wished to say " Be careful " rather. I say it now 
 — Be careful ! I give you this invitation to share 
 my cabin for the remainder of the voyage, and I urge 
 you to accept it.' The offer was from the heart, 
 while the scientific interest in the man obviously half 
 hoped for a refusal. 
 
 * You think harm might come to me ? * 
 
 ' Not physically. The man is gentle and safe in 
 every way.' 
 
 ' But there is danger — in your opinion ? ' insisted 
 the other. 
 
 * There is danger ' 
 
 * That his influence may make me as himself — an 
 Urmensch } ' 
 
 ' That he may — get you,' was the curious answer, 
 given steadily after a moment's pause. 
 
 Again the words thrilled O'Malley to the core of 
 his delighted, half- frightened soul. * You really mean 
 that .^' he asked again; 'as "doctor and scientist," 
 you mean it ? ' 
 
 Stahl replied with a solemn anxiety in eyes and 
 voice. * I mean that you have in yourself that 
 " quality " which makes the proximity of this " being " 
 dangerous : in a word that he may take you — er — 
 with him.' 
 
 * Conversion ? ' 
 
 * Appropriation.' 
 
 They moved further up the deck together for 
 
IX THE CENTAUR 65 
 
 some minutes in silence, but the Irishman's feelings, 
 irritated by the man's prolonged evasion, reached a 
 degree of impatience that was almost anger. *Let 
 us be more definite/ he exclaimed at length a trifle 
 hotly. ' You mean that I might go insane ? ' 
 
 * Not in the ordinary sense,* came the answer 
 without a sign of annoyance or hesitation ; * but 
 that something might happen to you — something 
 that science could not recognize and medical science 
 could not treat ' 
 
 Then O'Malley interrupted him with the vital 
 question that rushed out before he could consider its 
 wisdom or legitimacy. 
 
 * Then what really is he — this man, this " being " 
 whom you call a " survival," and who makes you fear 
 for my safety. Tell me exactly what he is } ' 
 
 They found themselves just then by the doctor's 
 cabin, and Stahl, pushing the door open, led him in. 
 Taking the sofa for himself, he pointed to an arm- 
 chair opposite. 
 
'Superstition is outside reason ; so is revelation.* — Old Saying. 
 
 And O'Malley understood that he had pressed the 
 doctor to the verge of confessing some belief that he 
 was ashamed to utter or to hold, something forced 
 upon him by his out-of-the-way experience of life 
 to which his scientific training said peremptorily * No.' 
 Further, that he watched him keenly all the time, 
 noting the effect his words produced. 
 
 * He is not a human being at all,' he continued 
 with a queer thin whisper that conveyed a gravity of 
 conviction singularly impressive, * in the sense in 
 which you and I are accustomed to use the term. 
 His inner being is not shaped, as his outer body, upon 
 quite — human lines. He is a Cosmic Being — a 
 direct expression of cosmic life. A little bit, a 
 fragment, of the Soul of the World, and in that sense 
 a survival — a survival of her youth.' 
 
 The Irishman, as he listened to these utterly 
 unexpected words, felt something rise within him 
 that threatened to tear him asunder. Whether it was 
 joy or terror, or compounded strangely of the two, 
 he could not tell. It seemed as if he stood upon the 
 edge of hearing something — spoken by a man who 
 was no mere dreamer like himself — that would 
 explain the world, himself, and all his wildest cravings. 
 He both longed and feared to hear it. In his hidden 
 
 66 
 
X THE CENTAUR 67 
 
 and most secret thoughts, those thoughts he never 
 uttered to another, this deep belief in the Earth as a 
 conscious, sentient, living Being had persisted in 
 spite of all the forces education and modern life had 
 turned against it. It seemed in him an undying 
 instinct, an unmovable conviction, though he hardly- 
 dared acknowledge it even to himself. 
 
 He had always ' dreamed ' the Earth alive, a mother- 
 ing organism to humanity ; and himself, via his love of 
 Nature, in some sweet close relation to her that other 
 men had forgotten or ignored. Now, therefore, to 
 hear Stahl talk of Cosmic Beings, fragments of 
 the Soul of the World, *and * survivals of her early 
 life ' was like hearing a great shout of command to 
 his soul to come forth and share it in complete 
 acknowledgment. 
 
 He bit his lips, pinched himself, stared. Then he 
 took the black cigar he was aware was being handed 
 to him, lit it with fingers that trembled absurdly, and 
 smoked as hard as though his sanity depended on his 
 finishing it in a prescribed time. Great clouds rose 
 before his face. But his soul within him came up 
 with a flaming rush of speed, shouting, singing. . . . 
 
 There was enough ash to knock off into the bronze 
 tray beside him before either said a word. He watched 
 the little operation as closely as though he were aiming 
 a rifle. The ash, he saw, broke firmly. * This must 
 be a really good cigar,' he thought to himself, for as 
 yet he had not been conscious of tasting it. The ash- 
 tray, he also saw, was a kind of nymph, her spread 
 drapery forming the receptacle. ' I must get one of 
 those,' he thought. * I wonder what they cost.* 
 Then he puffed violently again. The doctor had 
 risen and was pacing the cabin floor slowly over by 
 the red curtain that concealed the bunk. O'Malley 
 
68 THE CENTAUR x 
 
 absent-mindedly watched him, and as he did so the 
 words he had heard kept on roaring at the back of his 
 mind. 
 
 And then, while silence still held the room, — swift, 
 too, as a second although it takes time to write — 
 flashed through him a memory of Fechner, the 
 German philosopher who held that the Universe was 
 everywhere consciously alive, and that the Earth was 
 the body of a living Entity, and that the World-Soul 
 or Cosmic Consciousness is something more than a 
 picturesque dream of the ancients. . . . 
 
 The doctor came to anchor again on the sofa 
 opposite. To his great relief he was the first to 
 break the silence, for O'Malley simply did not know 
 how or where to begin. 
 
 * We know to-day — you certainly know for Tve 
 read it accurately described in your books — that the 
 human personality can extend itself under certain 
 conditions called abnormal. It can project portions 
 of itself, show itself even at a distance, operate away 
 from the central covering body. In exactly similar 
 fashion may the Being of the Earth have projected 
 portions of herself in the past. Of such great powers 
 or beings there may be conceivably a survival . . . 
 a survival of a hugely remote period when her 
 Consciousness was manifested, perhaps, in shapes and 
 forms long since withdrawn before the tide of 
 advancing humanity . . . forms of which poetry 
 and legend alone have caught a flying memory and 
 called them gods, monsters, mythical beings of all 
 sorts and kinds. . . .' 
 
 And then, suddenly, as though he had been de- 
 liberately giving his imagination rein yet now 
 regretted it, his voice altered, his manner assumed a 
 shade of something colder. He shifted the key, as 
 
X THE CENTAUR 69 
 
 though to another aspect of his belief. The man 
 was talking swiftly of his experiences in the big and 
 private hospitals. He was describing the very belief 
 to which he had first found himself driven — the belief 
 that had opened the door to so much more. So far 
 as O'Malley could follow it in his curiously excited 
 condition of mind, it was little more or less than a 
 belief he himself had often played lovingly with — the 
 theory that a man has a fluid or etheric counterpart 
 of himself which is obedient to strong desire and can, 
 under certain conditions, be detached — projected — in 
 a shape dictated by that desire. 
 
 He only realized this fully later perhaps, for the 
 doctor used a phraseology of his own. Stahl was 
 telling calmly how he had been driven to some such 
 belief by the facts that had come under his notice 
 both in the asylums and in his private practice. 
 
 *. . . That in the amazingly complex personality 
 of a human being,' he went on, * there does exist 
 some vital constituent, a part of consciousness, that 
 can leave the body for a short time without involving 
 death ; that it is something occasionally visible to 
 others ; something malleable by thought and desire — 
 especially by intense and prolonged yearning ; and 
 that it can even bring relief to its owner by satisfying 
 in some subjective fashion the very yearnings that 
 drew it forth.' 
 
 * Doctor ! You mean the ** astral " ? ' 
 
 ' There is no name I know of. I can give it none. 
 I mean in other words that it can create the condi- 
 tions for such satisfaction — dream-like, perhaps, yet 
 intense and seemingly very real at the time. Great 
 emotion, for instance, drives it forth, explaining thus 
 appearances at a distance, and a hundred other 
 phenomena that my investigations of abnormal 
 
70 THE CENTAUR x 
 
 personality have forced me to recognize as true. 
 And nostalgia often is the means of egress, the 
 channel along which all the inner forces and desires 
 of the heart stream elsewhere toward their fulfilment 
 in some person, place, or dreamt 
 
 Stahl was giving himself his head, talking freely 
 of beliefs that rarely found utterance. Clearly it was 
 a relief to him to do so — to let himself be carried 
 away. There was, after all, the poet in him side by 
 side with the observer and analyst, and the funda- 
 mental contradiction in his character stood most 
 interestingly revealed. O'Malley listened, half in a 
 dream, wondering what this had to do with the 
 Cosmic Life just mentioned. 
 
 * Moreover, the appearance, the aspect of this 
 ethcric Double, moulded thus by thought, longing, 
 and desire, corresponds to such thought, longing, and 
 desire. Its shape, when visible shape is assumed, 
 may be various — very various. The form might 
 conceivably be /<?//, discerned clairvoyantly as an 
 emanation rather than actually seen,' he continued. 
 
 Then he added, looking closely at his companion, 
 'and in your own case this Double — it has always 
 seemed to me — may be peculiarly easy of detachment 
 from the rest of you.' 
 
 ' I certainly create my own world and slip into 
 it — to some extent,' murmured the Irishman, absorb- 
 ingly interested ; ' — reverie and so forth ; partially, 
 at any rate.' 
 
 * '* Partially," yes, in your reveries of waking 
 consciousness,' Stahl took him up, * but in sleep — in 
 the trance consciousness — completely 1 And therein 
 lies your danger,' he added gravely ; * for to pass 
 out completely in waking consciousness, is the next 
 step — an easy one ; and it constitutes, not so much 
 
X THE CENTAUR 71 
 
 a disorder of your being, as a readjustment, but a 
 readjustment difficult of sane control.' He paused 
 again. * You pass out while fully awake — a waking 
 delusion. It is usually labelled — though in my 
 opinion wrongly so — insanity.' 
 
 * I'm not afraid of that,' O'Malley laughed, almost 
 nettled. ' I can manage myself all right — have done 
 so far, at any rate.' 
 
 It was curious how the r61es had shifted. 
 O'Malley it was now who checked and criticized. 
 
 * I suggest caution,' was the reply, made earnestly. 
 
 * I suggest caution.' 
 
 * I should keep your warnings for mediums, 
 clairvoyants, and the like,' said the other tartly. He 
 was half amazed, half alarmed even while he said it. 
 It was the personal application that annoyed him. 
 
 * They are rather apt to go off their heads, I believe.' 
 
 Dr. Stahl rose and stood before him as though 
 the words had given him a cue he wanted. ' From 
 that very medium - class,' he said, * my most 
 suggestive " cases " have come, though not for one 
 moment do I think of including you with them. 
 Yet these very " cases " have been due one and all to 
 the same cause — the singular disorder I have just 
 mentioned.' 
 
 They stared at one another a moment in silence. 
 Stahl, whether O'Malley liked it or no, was impressive. 
 He gazed at the little figure in front of him, the 
 ragged untidy beard, the light shining on the bald 
 skull, wondering what was coming next and what all 
 this bewildering confession of unorthodox belief was 
 leading up to. He longed to hear more about that 
 hinted Cosmic Life . . . and how yearning might 
 lead to its realization. 
 
 * For any phenomena of the s6ance-room that may 
 
72 THE CENTAUR x 
 
 be genuine/ he heard him saying, * are produced by 
 this fluid, detachable portion of the personality, the 
 very thing we have been speaking about. They are 
 projections of the personality — automatic projections 
 of the consciousness/ 
 
 And then, like a clap of thunder upon his bewild- 
 ered mind, came this man's amazing ultimatum, 
 linking together all the points touched upon and 
 bringing them to a head. He repeated it emphati- 
 cally. 
 
 * And in similar fashion,* concluded the calm, 
 dispassionate voice beside him, * there have been 
 projections of the Earth's great consciousness — direct 
 expressions of her cosmic life — Cosmic Beings. And 
 of these distant and primitive manifestations, it is 
 conceivable that one or two may still — here and there 
 in places humanity has never stained — actually 
 survive. This man is one of them.' 
 
 He turned on the two electric lights behind him 
 with an admirable air of finality. The extraordinary 
 talk was at an end. He moved about the cabin, 
 putting chairs straight and toying with the papers 
 on his desk. Occasionally he threw a swift and 
 searching glance at his companion, like a man who 
 wished to note the effect of an attack. 
 
 For, indeed, this was the impression that his 
 listener retained above all else. This flood of wild, 
 unorthodox, speculative ideas had been poured upon 
 him helter-skelter with a purpose. And the abrupt- 
 ness of the climax was cleverly planned to induce 
 impulsive, hot confession. 
 
 But O'Malley found no words. He sat there in 
 his arm-chair, passing his fingers through his tumbled 
 hair. His inner turmoil was too much for speech or 
 questions . . . and presently, when the gong for 
 
X THE CENTAUR 73 
 
 dinner rang noisily outside the cabin door, he rose 
 abruptly and went out without a single word. Stahl 
 turned to see him go. He merely nodded with a 
 little smile. 
 
 But he did not go to his state-room. He walked 
 the deck alone for a time, and when he reached the 
 dining-room, Stahl, he saw, had already come and 
 gone. Halfway down the table, diagonally across, 
 the face of the big Russian looked up occasionally at 
 him and smiled, and every time he did so the Irish- 
 man felt a sense of mingled alarm and wonder greater 
 than anything he had ever known in his life before. 
 One of the great doors of life again had opened. 
 The barriers of his heart broke away. He was no 
 longer caged and manacled within the prison of a 
 puny individuality. The world that so distressed 
 him faded. The people in it were dolls. The fur- 
 merchant, the Armenian priest, the tourists and the 
 rest were mere automatic puppets, all made to scale 
 — petty scale, amazingly dull, all exactly alike — 
 tiny, unreal, half alive. 
 
 The ship, meanwhile, he reflected with a joy that 
 was passion, was being borne over the blue sea, and 
 this sea lay spread upon the curved breast of the 
 round and spinning earth. He, too, and the big 
 Russian lay upon her breast, held close by gravity so- 
 called, caught closer still, though, by something else 
 besides. And his longings increased with his under- 
 standing. Stahl, wittingly or unwittingly, had given 
 them an immense push forwards. 
 
XI 
 
 * In scientific terms one can say : Consciousness is everywhere ; it 
 is awake when and wherever the bodily energy underlying the spiritual 
 exceeds that degree of strength which we call the threshold. According 
 to this, consciousness can be localized in time and space/ — Fechner, 
 Buchlein <vom Leben nach dem Tode. . 
 
 The offer of the cabin, meanwhile, remained open. 
 In the solitude that O'Malley found necessary that 
 evening he toyed with it, though knowing that he 
 would never really accept. 
 
 Like a true Celt his imagination took the main 
 body of StahFs words and ensouled them with his 
 own vivid temperament. There stirred in him this 
 nameless and disquieting joy that wrought for itself 
 a Body from material just beyond his thoughts — that 
 region of enormous experience that ever fringes the 
 consciousness of imaginative men. He took the 
 picture at its face value, took it inside with his own 
 thoughts, delighted in it, raised it, of course, very 
 soon to a still higher scale. If he criticized at all it 
 was with phrases like * The man's a poet after all ! 
 Why, he's got creative imagination ! ' To find his 
 own intuitions endorsed, even half explained, by a 
 mind of opposite type was a new experience. It 
 emphasized amazingly the reality of that inner world 
 he lived in. 
 
 This explanation of the big Russian's effect upon 
 74 
 
XI THE CENTAUR 75 
 
 himself was terrific, and that a * doctor ' should have 
 conceived it, glorious. That some portion of a man's 
 spirit might assume the shape of his thoughts and 
 project itself visibly seemed likely enough. Indeed, 
 to him, it seemed already a ' fact,' and his tempera- 
 ment did not linger over it. But that other 
 suggestion fairly savaged him with its strange 
 grandeur. He played lovingly with it. 
 
 That the Earth was a living being was a con- 
 ception divine in size as in simplicity, and that the 
 Gods and mythological figures had been projections 
 of her consciousness — this thought ran with a 
 magnificent new thunder about his mind. It was 
 overwhelming, beautiful as Heaven and as gracious. 
 He saw the ancient shapes of myth and legend still 
 alive in some gorgeous garden of the primal world, a 
 corner too remote for humanity to have yet stained 
 it with their trail of uglier life. He understood 
 in quite a new way, at last, those deep primitive 
 longings that hitherto had vainly craved their full 
 acknowledgment. It meant that he lay so close to 
 the Earth that he felt her pulses as his own. The 
 idea stormed his belief. 
 
 It was the Soul of the Earth herself that all these 
 years had been calling to him. 
 
 And while he let his imagination play with the 
 soaring beauty of the idea, he remembered certain odd 
 little facts. He marshalled them before him in a row 
 and questioned them : The picture he had seen with 
 the Captain's glasses — those speeding shapes of beauty ; 
 the new aspect of a living Nature that the Russian's 
 presence stirred in him ; the man's broken words as 
 they had leaned above the sea in the dusk ; the 
 curious passion that leaped to his eyes when certain 
 chance words had touched him at the dinner-table. 
 
76 THE CENTAUR xi 
 
 And, lastly, the singular impression of giant bulk he 
 produced sometimes upon the mind, almost as though 
 a portion of him — this detachable portion moulded 
 by the quality of his spirit as he felt himself to be — 
 emerged visibly to cause it. 
 
 Vaguely, in this way, O'Malley divined how 
 inevitable was the apparent isolation of these two, 
 and why others instinctively avoided them. They 
 seemed by themselves in an enclosure where the 
 parent lumberingly, and the boy defiantly, disported 
 themselves with a kind of lonely majesty that forbade 
 approach. 
 
 And it was later that same night, as the steamer 
 approached the Lipari Islands, that the drive forward 
 he had received from the doctor's words was increased 
 by a succession of singular occurrences. At the 
 same time, Stahl's deliberate and as he deemed it un- 
 justifiable interference, helped him to make up his 
 mind decisively on certain other points. 
 
 The first * occurrence ' was of the same order as 
 the * bigness ' — extraordinarily difficult, that is, to 
 confirm by actual measurement. 
 
 It was ten o'clock, Stahl still apparently in his 
 cabin by himself, and most of the passengers below 
 at an impromptu concert, when the Irishman, coming 
 down from his long solitude, caught sight of the 
 Russian and his boy moving about the dark after- 
 deck with a speed and vigour that instantly arrested 
 his attention. The suggestion of size, and of rapidity 
 of movement, had never been more marked. It was 
 as though a cloud of the summer darkness moved 
 beside them. 
 
 Then, going cautiously nearer, he saw that they 
 were neither walking quickly, nor running, as he had 
 first supposed, but — to his amazement — were stand- 
 
XI THE CENTAUR 77 
 
 ing side by side upon the deck — stock still. The 
 appearance of motion, however, was not entirely a 
 delusion, for he next saw that, while standing there 
 steady as the mast and life-boats behind them, some- 
 thing emanated shadow-like from both their persons 
 and seemed to hover and play about them — some- 
 thing that was only approximately of their own 
 outer shapes, and very considerably larger. Now 
 it veiled them, now left them clear. He thought 
 of smoke-clouds moving to and fro about dark 
 statues. 
 
 So far as he could focus his sight upon them, these 
 ' shadows,' without any light to cast them, moved in 
 distorted guise there on the deck with a motion that 
 was somehow rhythmical — a great movement as of 
 dance or gambol. 
 
 As with the appearance of ' bigness,' he perceived 
 it first out of the corner of his eye. When he looked 
 again he saw only two dark figures, motionless. 
 
 He experienced the sensation a man sometimes 
 knows on entering a deserted chamber in the night- 
 time, and is aware that the things in it have just that 
 instant — stopped. His arrival puts abrupt end to 
 some busy activity they were engaged in, which 
 begins again the moment he goes. Chairs, tables, 
 cupboards, the very spots and patterns of the wall 
 have just flown back to their usual places whence 
 they watch impatiently for his departure — with the 
 candle. 
 
 This time, on a deck instead of in a room, 
 O'Malley with his candle had surprised them in the 
 act : people, moreover, not furniture. And this 
 shadowy gambol, this silent Dance of the Emanations, 
 immense yet graceful, made him think of Winds 
 flying, visible and uncloaked, somewhere across long 
 
78 THE CENTAUR xi 
 
 hills, or of Clouds passing to a stately, elemental 
 measure over the blue dancing-halls of an open sky. 
 His imagery was confused and gigantic, yet very 
 splendid. Again he recalled the pictured shapes 
 seen with his mind's eye through the Captain's 
 glasses. And as he watched, he felt in himself 
 what he called * the wild, tearing instinct to run and 
 join them,' more even — that by rights he ought to 
 have been there from the beginning — dancing with 
 them — indulging a natural and instinctive and 
 rhythmical movement that he had somehow for- 
 gotten. 
 
 The passion in him was very strong, very urgent, 
 it seems, for he took a step forward, a call of some 
 kind rose in his throat, and in another second he 
 would have been similarly cavorting upon the deck, 
 when he felt his arm clutched suddenly with vigour 
 from behind. Some one seized him and held him 
 back. A German voice spoke with a guttural whisper 
 in his ear. 
 
 Dr. Stahl, crouching and visibly excited, drew 
 him forward a little. * Hold up ! ' he heard 
 whispered — for their india-rubber soles slithered on 
 the wet decks. ' We shall see from here, eh .? See 
 something at last ^ ' He still whispered. O'Malley's 
 sudden anger died down. He could not give vent 
 to it without making noise, for one thing, and above 
 all else he wished to — see. He merely felt a vague 
 wonder how long Stahl had been watching. 
 
 They crouched behind the lee of a boat. The 
 outline of the ship rose, distinctly visible against the 
 starry sky, masts, spars, and cordage. A faint gleam 
 came through the glass below the compass -box. 
 The wheel and the heaps of coiled rope beyond rose 
 and fell with the motion of the vessel, now against 
 
XI THE CENTAUR 79 
 
 the stars, now black against the phosphorescent foam 
 that trailed along the sea like shining lace. But the 
 human figures, he next saw, were now doing nothing, 
 not even pacing the deck ; they were no longer of 
 unusual size either. Quietly leaning over the rail, 
 father and son side by side, they were guiltless of 
 anything more uncommon than gazing into the sea. 
 Like the furniture, they had just — stopped ! 
 
 Dr. Stahl and his companion waited motionless 
 for several minutes in silence. There was no sound 
 but the dull thunder of the screws, and a faint windy 
 whistle the ship's speed made in the rigging. The 
 passengers were all below. Then, suddenly, a burst 
 of music came up as some one opened a saloon port- 
 hole and as quickly closed it again — a tenor voice 
 singing to the piano some trivial modern song with a 
 trashy sentimental lilt. It was — in this setting of 
 sea and sky — painful ; O'Mallcy caught himself 
 thinking of a barrel-organ in a Greek temple. 
 
 The same instant father and son, as though 
 startled, moved slowly away down the deck into the 
 further darkness, and Dr. Stahl tightened his grip 
 of the Irishman's arm with a force that almost made 
 him cry out. A gleam of light from the opened 
 port-hole had fallen about them before they moved. 
 Quite clearly it revealed them bending busily over, 
 heads close together, necks and shoulders thrust 
 forward and down a little. 
 
 * Look, by God ! ' whispered Stahl hoarsely as 
 they moved off. * There's a third ! ' 
 
 He pointed. Where the two had been standing 
 something, indeed, still remained. Concealed hitherto 
 by their bulk, this other figure had been left. They 
 saw its large, dim outline. It moved. Apparently 
 it began to climb over the rails, or to move in some 
 
8o THE CENTAUR 
 
 XI 
 
 way just outside them, hanging half above the sea. 
 There was a free, swaying movement about it, not 
 ungainly so much as big — very big. 
 
 ' Now, quick ! ' whispered the doctor excited, in 
 English ; * this time I find out, sure ! ' 
 
 He made a violent movement forward, a pocket 
 electric lamp in his hand, then turned angrily, 
 furiously, to find that O'Malley held him fast. 
 There was a most unseemly struggle — for a minute, 
 and it was caused by the younger man's sudden 
 passionate instinct to protect his own from discovery, 
 if not from actual capture and destruction. 
 
 Stahl fought in vain, being easily overmatched ; 
 he swore vehement German oaths under his breath ; 
 and the pocket-lamp, of course unlighted, fell and 
 rattled over the deck, sliding with the gentle roll of 
 the steamer to leeward. But O'Malley's eyes, even 
 while he struggled, never for one instant left the spot 
 where the figure and the * movement ' had been ; and 
 it seemed to him that when the bulwarks dipped 
 against the dark of the sea, the moving thing 
 completed its efforts and passed into the waves with 
 a swift leap. When the vessel righted herself again 
 the outline of the rail was clear. 
 
 Dr. Stahl, he then saw, had picked up the lamp 
 and was bending over some mark upon the deck, 
 examining a wide splash of wet upon which he 
 directed the electric flash. The sense of revived 
 antagonism between the men for the moment was 
 strong, too strong for speech. O'Malley feeling 
 half ashamed, yet realized that his action had been 
 instinctive, and that another time he would do just 
 the same. He would fight to the death any too 
 close inspection, since such inspection included also 
 now — himself. 
 
XI THE CENTAUR 8i 
 
 The doctor presently looked up. His eyes shone 
 keenly in the gleam of the lamp, but he was no 
 longer agitated. 
 
 * There is too much water/ he said calmly, as 
 though diagnosing a case ; * too much to permit of 
 definite traces.' He glanced round, flashing the 
 beam about the decks. The other two had dis- 
 appeared. They were alone. ' It was outside the 
 rail all the time, you see,* he added, ' and never quite 
 reached the decks.' He stooped down and examined 
 the splash once more. It looked as though a wave 
 had topped the scuppers and left a running line of 
 foam and water. ' Nothing to indicate its exact 
 nature,' he said in a whisper that conveyed something 
 between uneasiness and awe, again turning the light 
 sharply in every direction and peering about him. 
 
 * It came to them — er — from the sea, though ; it 
 came from the sea right enough. That, at least, is 
 positive.' And in his manner was perhaps just a 
 touch to indicate relief. 
 
 * And it returned into the sea,' exclaimed O'Malley 
 triumphantly. It was as though he related his own 
 escape. 
 
 The two men were now standing upright, facing 
 one another. Dr. Stahl, betraying no sign of resent- 
 ment, looked him steadily in the eye. He put the 
 lamp back into his pocket. When he spoke at 
 length in the darkness, the words were not precisely 
 what the Irishman had expected. Under them his 
 own vexation and excitement faded instantly. He 
 felt almost sheepish when he remembered his 
 violence. 
 
 ' I forgive your behaviour, of course,' Stahl said, 
 
 * for it is consistent — splendidly consistent — with my 
 theory of you ; and of value, therefore. I only now 
 
 G 
 
82 THE CENTAUR xi 
 
 urge you again ' — he moved closer, speaking almost 
 solemnly — ' to accept the offer of a berth in my 
 cabin. Take it, my friend, take it — to-night.' 
 
 'Because you wish to watch me at close 
 quarters.' 
 
 ' No,' was the reply, and there was sympathy in 
 the voice, * but because you are in danger — especially 
 in sleep.' 
 
 There was a moment's pause before O'Malley 
 said anything. 
 
 * It is kind of you, Dr. Stahl, very kind,' he 
 answered slowly, and this time with grave politeness ; 
 * but I am not afraid, and I see no reason to make 
 the change. And as it's now late,' he added some- 
 what abruptly, almost as though he feared he might 
 be persuaded to alter his mind, * I will say good- 
 night and turn in — if you will forgive me — at 
 once.* 
 
 Dr. Stahl said no further word. He watched 
 him, the other was aware, as he moved down the 
 deck towards the saloon staircase, and then turned 
 once more with his lamp to stoop over the splashed 
 portion of the boards. He examined the place 
 apparently for a long time. 
 
 But O'Malley, as he went slowly down the hot 
 and stuffy stairs, realized with a wild and rushing 
 tumult of joy that the * third ' he had seen was of 
 a splendour surpassing the little figures of men, and 
 that something deep within his own soul was most 
 gloriously akin with it. A link with the Universe 
 had been subconsciously established, tightened up, 
 adjusted. From all this living Nature breathing 
 about him in the night, a message had reached the 
 strangers and himself — a message shaped in beauty 
 and in power. Nature had become at last aware of 
 
XI THE CENTAUR 83 
 
 his presence close against her ancient face. Hence- 
 forth would every sight of Beauty take him direct to 
 the place where Beauty comes from. No middleman, 
 no Art was necessary. The gates were opening. 
 Already he had caught a glimpse. 
 
XII 
 
 In the state-room he found, without surprise some- 
 how, that his new companions had already retired for 
 the night. The curtain of the upper berth was 
 drawn, and on the sofa-bed below the opened port- 
 hole the boy already slept. Standing a moment in 
 the little room with these two close, he felt that he 
 had come into a new existence almost. Deep within 
 him this sense of new life thrilled and glowed. He 
 was shaking a little all over, not with the mere 
 tremor of excitement, however, but with the tide of 
 a vast and rising exultation he could scarce contain. 
 For his normal self was too small to hold it. It 
 demanded expansion, and the expansion it claimed 
 had already begun. The boundaries of his personality 
 were enormously extending. 
 
 In words this change escaped him wholly. He 
 only knew that something in him of an old unrest 
 lay down at length and slept. Less acute grew those 
 pangs of starvation his life had ever felt — the ache 
 of that inappeasable hunger for the beauty and 
 innocence of some primal state before thick human 
 crowds had stained the world with all their strife and 
 clamour. The glory of it burned white within him. 
 
 And the way he described it to himself was 
 significant of its true nature. For it was the analogy 
 
 84 
 
XII THE CENTAUR 85 
 
 of childhood. The passion of a boy's longing swept 
 over him. He knew again^ the feelings of those 
 early days when 
 
 A boy's will is the wind's will, 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts, 
 
 when all the world smells sweet and golden as a 
 summer's day, and a village street is endless as the 
 sky. . . , 
 
 This it was, raised to its highest power, that 
 dropped a hint of explanation into that queer heart 
 of his wherein had ever burned the strange desire for 
 primitive existence. It was the Call, though, not of 
 his own youth alone, but of the youth of the world. 
 A mood of the Earth's consciousness — some giant 
 expression of her cosmic emotion — caught him. 
 And it was the big Russian who acted as channel and 
 interpreter. 
 
 Before getting into bed, he drew aside the little 
 red curtain that screened his companion, and peered 
 cautiously through the narrow slit. The big occupant 
 of the bunk also slept, his mane-like hair spread 
 about him over the pillow, and on his great, placid 
 face a look of peace that seemed to deepen with 
 every day the steamer neared her destination. 
 O'Malley gazed for a full minute and more. Then 
 the sleeper felt the gaze, for suddenly the eyelids 
 quivered, moved, and lifted. The large brown eyes 
 peered straight into his own. The Irishman, unable 
 to turn away in time, stood fixed and staring in 
 return. The gentleness and power of the look 
 passed straight down into his heart, filled him to the 
 brim with things their owner knew, and confirmed 
 that appeasement of his own hunger, already begun. 
 
 *I tried — to prevent the — interference,' he 
 
86 THE CENTAUR 
 
 XII 
 
 stammered in a low voice. * I held him back. You 
 saw me .^ ' * 
 
 A huge hand stretched forth from the bunk to 
 stop him. Impulsively he seized it with both his 
 own. At the first contact he started — a little 
 frightened. It felt so wonderful, so mighty. Thus 
 might a gust of wind or a billow of the sea have 
 thrust against him. 
 
 * A messenger — came/ said the man with that 
 laborious slow utterance, and deep as thunder, 
 * from — the — sea.' 
 
 * From — the — sea, yes,' repeated O'Malley beneath 
 his breath, yet conscious rather that he wanted to 
 shout and sing it. He saw the big man smile. 
 His own small hands were crushed in the grasp 
 of power. * I — understand,' he added in a 
 whisper. He found himself speaking with a similar 
 clogged utterance. Somehow, it seemed, the language 
 they ought to have used was either forgotten or 
 unborn. Yet whereas his friend was inarticulate 
 perhaps, he himself was — dumb. These little modern 
 words were all wrong and inadequate. Modern 
 speech could only deal with modern smaller things. 
 
 The giant half rose in his bed, as though at first 
 to leap forward and away from it. He tightened an 
 instant the grasp upon his companion's hands, then 
 suddenly released them and pointed across the cabin. 
 That smile of happiness spread upon his face. 
 O'Malley turned. There the boy lay, deeply 
 slumbering, the clothes flung back so that the air 
 from the port-hole played over the bare neck and 
 chest ; upon his face, too, shone the look of peace 
 and rest his father wore, the hunted expression all 
 gone, as though the spirit had escaped in sleep. 
 The parent pointed, first to the boy, then to himself, 
 
XII THE CENTAUR 87 
 
 then to this new friend standing beside his bed. 
 The gesture including the three of them was of 
 singular authority — invitation, welcome, and com- 
 mand lay in it. More — in some incomprehensible 
 way it was majestic. O'Malley's thought flashed 
 upon him the limb of some great oak tree, swaying 
 in the wind. 
 
 Next, placing a finger on his lips, his eyes once 
 more swept O'Malley and the boy, and he turned 
 again into the little bunk that so difficultly held him, 
 and lay back. The hair flowed down and mingled 
 with the beard, over pillow and neck, almost to the 
 shoulders. And something that was enormous and 
 magnificent lay back with him, carrying with it 
 again that sudden atmosphere of greater bulk. 
 With a deep sound in his throat that was certainly 
 no actual word and yet more expressive than any 
 speech, he turned hugely over among the little, 
 scanty sheets, drew the curtain again before his face, 
 and returned into the world of — sleep. 
 
XIII 
 
 ' It may happen that the earthly body falls asleep in one direction 
 deeply enough to allow it in others to awaken far beyond its usual 
 limits, and yet not so deeply and completely as to awaken no more. 
 Or, to the subjective vision there comes a flash so unusually vivid as 
 to bring to the earthly sense an impression rising above the threshold 
 from an otherwise inaccessible distance. Here begin the wonders of 
 clairvoyance, of presentiments, and premonitions in dreams ; — pure 
 fables, if the future body and the future life are fables ; otherwise signs 
 of the one and predictions of the other ; but what has signs exists, and 
 what has prophecies will come.' — Fechner, Buchle'tn <vom Leben nach 
 dem Tode. 
 
 But 0*Malley rolled into his own berth below without 
 undressing, sleep far from his eyes. He had heard 
 the Gates of ivory and horn swing softly upon their 
 opening hinges, and the glimpse he caught of the 
 garden beyond made any question of slumber 
 impossible. Again he saw those shapes of cloud and 
 wind flying over the long hills, while the name that 
 should describe them ran, hauntingly splendid, along 
 the mysterious passages of his being, though never 
 coming quite to the surface for capture. 
 
 Perhaps, too, he was glad that the revelation was 
 only partial. The size of the vision thus invoked 
 awed him a little, so that he lay there half wondering 
 at the complete surrender he had made to this 
 guidance of another soul. 
 
 Stahl's warnings ran far away and laughed. The 
 idea even came to him that Stahl was playing with 
 him : that his portentous words had been carefully 
 
 88 
 
XIII THE CENTAUR 89 
 
 chosen for their heightening effect upon his own 
 imagination so that the doctor might study an 
 uncommon and extreme * case.' The notion passed 
 through him merely, without Hngering. 
 
 In any event it was idle to put the brakes on 
 now. He was internally committed and must go 
 wherever it might lead. And the thought rejoiced 
 him. He had climbed upon a pendulum that swung 
 into an immense past ; but its return swing would 
 bring him safely back. It was rushing now into that 
 nameless place of freedom that the primitive portion 
 of his being had hitherto sought in vain, and a 
 fundamental, starved craving of his life would know 
 satisfaction at last. Already life had grown all 
 glorious without. It was not steel engines but a 
 speeding sense of beauty that drove the ship over 
 the sea with feet of winged blue darkness. The 
 stars fled with them across the sky, dropping golden 
 leashes to draw him faster and faster forwards — yet 
 within — to the dim days when this old world yet was 
 young. He took his fire of youth and spread it, as 
 it were, all over life till it covered the entire world, 
 far, far away. Then he stepped back into it, and 
 the world herself, he found, stepped with him. 
 
 He lay listening to the noises of the ship, the 
 thump and bumble of the engines, the distant dron- 
 ing of the screws under water. From time to time 
 stewards moved down the corridor outside, and the 
 footsteps of some late passenger still paced the decks 
 overhead. He heard voices, too, and occasionally 
 the clattering of doors. Once or twice he fancied 
 some one moved stealthily to the cabin door and 
 lingered there, but the matter never drew him to 
 investigate, for the sound each time resolved itself 
 naturally into the music of the ship's noises. 
 
90 THE CENTAUR xiri 
 
 And everything, meanwhile, heard or thought, fed 
 the central concern upon which his mind was busy. 
 These superficial sounds, for instance, had nothing to 
 do with the real business of the ship ; that lay below 
 with the buried engines and the invisible screws 
 that worked like demons to bring her into port. 
 And with himself and his slumbering companions 
 the case was similar. Their respective power- 
 stations, working in the subconscious, had urged 
 them towards one another inevitably. How long, 
 he wondered, had the spirit of that lonely, alien 
 * being ' flashed messages into the void that reached 
 no receiving -station tuned to their acceptance? 
 Their accumulated power was great, the currents 
 they generated immense. He knew. For had they 
 not charged full into himself the instant he came 
 on board, bringing an intimacy that was immediate 
 and full-fledged .f^ 
 
 The untamed longings that always tore him when 
 he felt the great winds, moved through forests, or 
 found himself in desolate places, were at last on 
 the high road to satisfaction — to some ' state ' where 
 all that they represented would be explained and 
 fulfilled. And whether such * state ' should prove 
 to be upon the solid surface of the earth, objective ; 
 or in the fluid regions of his inner being, subjective 
 — was of no account whatever. It would be true. 
 The great figure that filled the berth above him, 
 now deeply slumbering, had in him subterraneans 
 that gave access not only to Greece, but far beyond 
 that haunted land, to a state of existence symbolized 
 in the legends of the early world by Eden and the 
 Golden Age. . . . 
 
 * You are in danger,' that wise old speculative 
 doctor had whispered, ' and especially in sleep ! ' 
 
XIII THE CENTAUR 91 
 
 But he did not sleep. He lay there thinking, 
 thinking, thinking, a rising exaltation of desire 
 paving busily the path along which eventually he 
 might escape. 
 
 As the night advanced and the lesser noises 
 retired, leaving only the deep sound of the steamer 
 talking to the sea, he became aware, too, that a 
 change, at first imperceptibly, then swiftly, was steal- 
 ing over the cabin. It came with a riot of silent 
 Beauty. At a loss to describe it with precision, he 
 nevertheless divined that it proceeded from the 
 sleeping figure overhead and in a lesser measure, 
 too, from the boy upon the sofa opposite. It 
 emanated from these two, he felt, in proportion as 
 their bodies passed into deeper and deeper slumber, 
 as though what occurred sometimes upon the decks 
 by an act of direct volition, took place now auto- 
 matically and with a fuller measure of release. Their 
 spirits, free of that other world in sleep, were alert 
 and potently discharging. Unconsciously, their vital, 
 underlying essence escaped into activity. 
 
 Growing about his own person, next, it softly 
 folded him in, casing his inner being with glory 
 and this crowding sense of beauty. This increased 
 manifestation of psychic activity reached down into 
 the very core of himself, like invisible fingers play- 
 ing upon an instrument. Notes — powers — in his 
 soul, hitherto silent because none had known how 
 to sound them, rose singing to the surface. For it 
 seemed at length that forms of some intenser life, 
 busily operating, moved to and fro within the painted 
 white walls of that little cabin, working subtly to 
 bring about a transformation of himself. A singular 
 change was fast and cleverly at work in his own being. 
 It was, he puts it, a silent and irresistible Evocation. 
 
92 THE CENTAUR xiii 
 
 No one of his senses was directly affected ; 
 certainly he neither saw, felt, nor heard anything 
 in the usual acceptance of the terms ; but any 
 instant surely, it seemed that all his senses must 
 awake and report to the mind things that were 
 splendid beyond the common order. In the crudest 
 aspect of it, he felt as though he extended and grew 
 large — that he dreaded to see himself in the mirror 
 lest he might witness an external appearance of 
 bigness which corresponded to this interior expansion. 
 
 For a long time he lay unresisting, letting the 
 currents of this subjective tempest play through and 
 round him. Entrancing sensations of beauty and 
 rapture came with it. The outer world seemed 
 remote and trivial, the passengers unreal — the priest, 
 the voluble merchant, the jovial Captain, all spun 
 like dead things at the periphery of life ; whereas 
 
 he was moving toward the Centre. Stahl ! the 
 
 thought of Dr. Stahl, alone intruded with a certain 
 unwelcome air of hindrance, almost as though he 
 sought to end it, or call a halt. But Stahl, too, 
 himself presently spun off like a leaf before the 
 rising wind. . . . 
 
 And then it was that an external sense was tapped, 
 and he did hear something. From the berth over- 
 head came a faint sound that made his heart stand 
 still, though not with common fear. He listened 
 intently. The blood tearing through his ears at 
 first concealed its actual nature. It was far, far 
 away ; then came closer, as a waft of wind brings 
 near and carries off again a sound of bells in 
 mountains. It fled over vales and hills, to return 
 a moment after with suddenness — a little louder, a 
 little nearer. And with it came an increase of this 
 sense of beauty that stretched his heart, as it were, 
 
XIII THE CENTAUR 93 
 
 to some deep ancient scale of joy once known, but 
 long forgotten. . . . 
 
 Across the cabin, the boy moved uneasily in his sleep. 
 
 * Oh, that I could be with him where he now 
 is ! ' he cried, * in that place of eternal youth and 
 eternal companionship ! ' The cry was instinctive 
 utterly ; his whole being, condensed in the single 
 yearning, pressed through it — drove behind it. The 
 place, the companionship, the youth — all, he knew, 
 would prove in some strange way enormous, vast, 
 ultimately satisfying for ever and ever, far out of 
 this little modern world that imprisoned him. . . . 
 
 Again, most unwelcome and unexplained, the 
 face of Stahl flashed suddenly before him to hinder 
 and interrupt. He banished it with an effort, for 
 it brought a smaller comprehension that somehow 
 involved — fear. 
 
 * Curse the man 1 ' flamed in anger across his 
 world of beauty, and the violence of the contrast 
 broke something in his mind like a globe of coloured 
 glass that had focussed the exquisiteness of the 
 vision. . . . The sound continued as before, but 
 its power of evocation lessened. The thought of 
 Stahl — Stahl in his denying aspect — dimmed it. 
 
 Glancing up at the frosted electric light, O'Malley 
 felt vaguely that if he turned it out he would somehow 
 yet see better, hear better, understand more ; and it was 
 this practical consideration, introduced indirectly by 
 the thought of Stahl, that made him realize now for 
 the first time that he actually and definitely was — 
 afraid. For, to leave his bunk with its comparative, 
 protective dark, and step into the middle of a cabin 
 he knew to be alive with a seethe of invisible charg- 
 ing forces made him realize that distinct effort was 
 necessary — effort of will. If he yielded he would 
 
94 THE CENTAUR xiii 
 
 be caught up and away, swept from his known 
 moorings, borne through high space out of himself. 
 And Stahl with his cowardly warnings and belittle- 
 ments set fear, thus, in the place of free acceptance. 
 Otherwise he might even have come to these long 
 blue hills where danced and raced the giant shapes 
 of cloud, singing while . . . 
 
 * Singing ' ! Ah ! There was the clue ! The 
 sound he heard was singing — faint, low singing ; 
 close beside him too. It was the big man, singing 
 softly in his sleep. 
 
 This ordinary explanation of the ' wonder-sound ' 
 brought him down to earth, and so to a more normal 
 feeling of security again. He stepped cautiously 
 from the bed, careful not to let the rings rattle on 
 the rod of brass, and slowly raised himself upright. 
 And then, through a slit of the curtain, he — saw. 
 The lips of the big sleeper moved gently, the beard 
 rising and falling very slightly with them, and this 
 murmur that he had thought so far away, came out 
 and sang deliciously and faint before his very face. It 
 most curiously — flowed. Easily, naturally, almost 
 automatically, it poured softly forth, and the Irish- 
 man at once understood why he had first mistaken it 
 for an echo of wind from distant hills. The imagery 
 was entirely accurate. For it was precisely the sing- 
 ing cry that wind makes in a keyhole, in a chimney, 
 or passing idly over the sweep of grassy hills. 
 Exactly thus had he often listened to it swishing 
 through the crannies of high rocks, tuneless yet 
 searching. In it, too, there lay some accent of a 
 secret, dim sublimity, deeper far than any other 
 human sound could touch. The terror of a great 
 freedom caught him, a freedom most awfully remote 
 from the smaller personal existence he knew To- 
 
XIII THE CENTAUR 95 
 
 day ... for it suggested, with awe and wonder, the 
 kind of primitive utterance that was before speech or 
 the development of language ; when emotions were 
 still too vague and mighty to be caught by little 
 words, but when beings, close to the heart of their 
 great Mother, expressed the feelings, enormous and 
 uncomplex, of the greater life they shared as portions 
 of her — projections of the Earth herself. 
 
 With a crash in his brain, O^Malley stopped. 
 These thoughts, he suddenly realized, were not his 
 own. An attack of unwonted sensations stung and 
 scattered his mind with a rush of giant splendour 
 that threatened to overwhelm him. He was in the 
 very act of being carried away ; his sense of personal 
 identity menaced ; surrender wellnigh already complete. 
 
 Another moment, especially if those eyes opened 
 and caught him, he would be beyond recall in the 
 region of these other two. The narrow space of 
 that little cabin was charged already to the brim, 
 filled with some overpowering loveliness of wild and 
 simple things, the beauty of stars and winds and 
 flowers, the terror of seas and mountains ; strange 
 radiant forms of gods and heroes, nymphs, fauns 
 and satyrs ; the fierce sunshine of some Golden Age 
 unspoilt, of a stainless region now long forgotten and 
 denied — that world of splendour his heart had ever 
 craved in vain, and beside which the life of To-day 
 faded to a wretched dream. 
 
 It was the Urwelt calling. ... 
 
 With a violent internal effort, he tore his gaze 
 from those eyelids that fortunately opened not. At 
 the same moment, though he did not hear them, 
 steps came close in the corridor, and there was a 
 rattling of the knob. Behind him, a movement 
 from the berth below the port-hole warned him that 
 
96 THE CENTAUR xiii 
 
 he was but just in time. The Vision he was afraid 
 as yet to acknowledge drew with such awful speed 
 towards the climax. 
 
 Quickly he turned away, lifted the hook of the 
 cabin door, and passed into the passage, strangely 
 faint. A great commotion followed him out : father 
 and son both, it seemed, suddenly upon their feet. 
 And at the same time the sound of ' singing ' rolled 
 into the body of a great hushed chorus, as it were of 
 galloping winds that filled big valleys far away with a 
 gust of splendour, faintly roaring in some incredible 
 distance where no cities were, nor habitations of men ; 
 with a freedom, too, that was majestic and sublime. 
 Oh 1 the terrific gait of that life in an open world ! — 
 Golden to the winds ! — uncrowded ! — The cosmic 
 life ! 
 
 O'Malley shivered as he heard. For an instant, 
 the true grain of his inner life, picked out in flame 
 and silver, flashed clear. Almost — he knew himself 
 caught back. 
 
 And there, in the dimly-lighted corridor, against 
 the panelling of the cabin wall, crouched Dr. Stahl 
 — listening. The pain of the contrast was vivid 
 beyond words. It seemed as if he had passed from 
 the thunder of organs to hear the rattling of tin cans. 
 Instantly he understood the force that all along had 
 held him back : the positive, denying aspect of this 
 man's mind — afraid. 
 
 ' Tou ! ' he exclaimed in a high whisper. ' What 
 are you doing here .? ' He hardly remembers what he 
 said. The doctor straightened up and came on tip- 
 toe to his side. He moved hurriedly. 
 
 ' Come away,' he said vehemently under his breath. 
 * Come with me to my cabin — to the decks — any- 
 where away from this — before it's too late.' 
 
And the Irishman then realized that his face was 
 white and that his voice shook. The hand that 
 gripped him by the arm shook too. 
 
 They went quickly along the deserted corridor 
 and up the stairs, O^Malley making no resistance, 
 moving in a kind of dream. He has a fleeting recol- 
 lection of an odour, sweet and slightly pungent as of 
 horses, in his nostrils. The wind of the open decks 
 revived him, and he saw to his amazement that the 
 East was brightening. In that cabin, then, hours 
 had been compressed into minutes. 
 
 The steamer had already slipped by the Straits of 
 Messina. To the right he saw the cones of Etna, 
 shadowy in the sky, calling across the dawn to Strom- 
 boli their smoking brother of the Lipari. To the 
 left over the blue Ionian Sea the lights of a cloudless 
 sunrise rose softly above the world. 
 
 And the hour of enchantment seized and shook 
 him anew. Somewhere, across those faint blue waves, 
 lay the things that he so passionately sought. It 
 was the very essence of their loveliness and wonder 
 that had charged down between the walls of that 
 stuffy cabin below. For every morning still, at 
 dawn, the tired world knows again the splendours of 
 her youth ; and the Irishman, shuddering a little in 
 his sacred joy, felt that he must burst his bonds and 
 fly to join the sunrise and the sea. The yearning, he 
 was aware, had now increased a thousandfold : its 
 fulfilment was merely delayed. 
 
 He passed along the decks all slippery with dew 
 into Dr. Stahl's cabin, and flung himself on the broad 
 sofa to sleep. Sleep, too, came at once ; he was 
 profoundly exhausted ; and, while he slept, Stahl 
 watched over him, covering his body with a thick 
 blanket. 
 
 H 
 
XIV 
 
 *It is a lovely imagination responding to the deepest desires, 
 instincts, cravings of spiritual man, that spiritual rapture should find 
 an echo in the material world ; that in mental communion with God 
 we should find sensible communion with nature ; and that, when the 
 faithful rejoice together, bird and beast, hill and forest, should be not 
 felt only, but seen to rejoice along with them. It is not the truth ; 
 between us and our environment, whatever links there are, this link 
 is wanting. But the yearning for it, the passion which made Words- 
 worth cry out for something, even were it the imagination of a pagan, 
 which would make him " less forlorn," is natural to man ; and 
 simplicity leaps at the lovely fiction of a response. Just here is the 
 opportunity for such alliances between spiritualism and superstition 
 as are the daily despair of seekers after truth.' — Dr. Verrall. 
 
 And though he slept for hours the doctor never 
 once left his side, but sat there with pencil and note- 
 book, striving to catch, yet in vain, some accurate 
 record of the strange fragmentary words that fell 
 from his lips at intervals. His own face was aflame 
 with an interest that amounted to excitement. The 
 very hand that held the pencil trembled. One would 
 have said that thus somewhat a man might behave 
 who found himself faced with confirmation of some 
 vast, speculative theory his mind had played with 
 hitherto from a distance only. 
 
 Towards noon the Irishman awoke. The steamer, 
 still loading oranges and sack« of sulphur in the 
 Catania harbour, was dusty and noisy. Most of the 
 passengers were ashore, hurrying with guide-books 
 and field-glasses to see the statue of the dead Bellini 
 
 98 
 
XIV THE CENTAUR 99 
 
 or watch the lava flow. A blazing, suffocating heat 
 lay over the oily sea, and the summit of the volcano, 
 with its tiny, ever-changing puff of smoke, soared 
 through blue haze. 
 
 To Stahl's remark, ^ You've slept eight hours,* he 
 replied, ' But I feel as though I'd slept eight centuries 
 away.' He took the coffee and rolls provided, and 
 then smoked. The doctor lit a cigar. The red 
 curtains over the port-holes shut out the fierce sun, 
 leaving the cabin cool and dim. The shouting of 
 the lightermen and officers mingled with the roar and 
 scuttle of the donkey-engine. And O'Malley knew 
 perfectly well that while the other moved about 
 carelessly, playing with books and papers on his 
 desk, he was all the time keeping him under close 
 observation. 
 
 ' Yes,' he continued, half to himself, ' I feel as if 
 I'd fallen asleep in one world and awakened into 
 another where life is trivial and insignificant, where 
 men work like devils for things of no value in order 
 to accumulate them in great ugly houses ; always 
 collecting and collecting, like mad children, posses- 
 sions that they never really possess — things external 
 to themselves, valueless and unreal ' 
 
 Dr. Stahl came up quietly and sat down beside 
 him. He spoke gently, his manner kind and grave 
 rather. He put a hand upon his shoulder. 
 
 ' But, my dear boy,' he said, the critical mood all 
 melted away, * do not let yourself go too completely. 
 That is vicious thinking, believe me. All details are 
 important — here and now — spiritually important, if 
 you prefer the term. The symbols change with the 
 ages, that is all.' Then, as the other did not reply, 
 he added : * Keep yourself well in hand. Your 
 experience is of extraordinary interest — may even be 
 
loo THE CENTAUR xiv 
 
 of value, to yourself as well as to — er — others. And 
 what happened to you last night is worthy of record 
 — if you can use it without surrendering your soul 
 to it altogether. Perhaps, later, you will feel able to 
 speak of it — to tell me in detail a little — ? ' 
 
 His keen desire to know more evidently fought 
 with his desire to protect, to heal, possibly even to 
 prevent. 
 
 ' If I felt sure that your control were sufficient, I 
 could tell you in return some results of my own 
 study of — certain cases in the hospitals, you see, that 
 might throw light upon — upon your own curious 
 experience.* 
 
 O'Malley turned with such abruptness that the 
 cigar ash fell down over his clothes. The bait was 
 strong, but the man's sympathy was not sufficiently 
 of a piece, he felt, to win his entire confidence. 
 
 ' I cannot discuss beliefs,' he said shortly, * in the 
 speculative way you do. They are too real. A man 
 doesn't argue about his love, does he ^ ' He spoke 
 passionately. * To-day everybody argues, discusses, 
 speculates : no one believes. If you had your way, 
 you'd take away my beliefs and put in their place 
 some wretched little formula of science that the next 
 generation will prove all wrong again. It's like the 
 N rays one of you discovered : they never really 
 existed at all.' He laughed. Then his flushed face 
 turned grave again. ' Beliefs are deeper than dis- 
 coveries. They are eternal.' 
 
 Stahl looked at him a moment with admiration. 
 He moved across the cabin towards his desk. 
 
 * I am more with you than perhaps you under- 
 stand,' he said quietly, yet without too obviously 
 humouring him. * I am more — divided, that's all.' 
 
 ' Modern ! ' exclaimed the other, noticing the 
 
XIV THE cEmAuayr^]:} ;v ^ fjoi 
 
 ashes on his coat for the first time and brushing them 
 off impatiently. * Everything in you expresses itself 
 in terms of matter, forgetting that matter being in 
 continual state of flux is the least real of all things * 
 
 * Our training has been different,' observed Stahl 
 simply, interrupting him. *I use another phraseology. 
 Fundamentally, we are not so far apart as you think. 
 Our conversation of yesterday proves it, if you have 
 not forgotten. It is people like yourself who supply 
 the material that teaches people like me — helps me 
 to advance — to speculate, though you dislike the term.' 
 
 The Irishman was mollified, though for some 
 time he continued in the same strain. And the 
 doctor let him talk, realizing that his emotion needed 
 the relief of this safety-valve. He used words 
 loosely, but Stahl did not check him ; it was merely 
 that the effort to express himself — this self that 
 could believe so much — found difficulty in doing so 
 coherently in modern language. He went very far. 
 For the fact that while Stahl criticized and denied, 
 he yet understood, was a strong incentive to talk. 
 O'Malley plunged repeatedly over his depth, and 
 each time the doctor helped him in to shore. 
 
 * Perhaps,' said Stahl at length in a pause, * the 
 greatest difference between us is merely that whereas 
 you jump headlong, ignoring details by the way, I 
 climb slowly, counting the steps and making them 
 secure. I deny at first because if the steps survive 
 such denial, I know that they are permanent. I 
 build scaffolding. You fly.' 
 
 * Flight is quicker,' put in the Irishman. 
 
 ' It is for the few,' was the reply ; * scaffolding is 
 
 - ' You spoke a few days ago of strange things,' 
 O'Malley said presently with abruptness, *and spoke 
 
io?;v : t;; ^ {^^:;tH£vCENTAUR xiv 
 
 seriously too. Tell me more about that, if you will.' 
 He sought to lead the talk away from himself, since 
 he did not intend to be fully drawn. * You said 
 something about the theory that the Earth is alive, a 
 living being, and that the early legendary forms of 
 life may have been emanations — projections of herself 
 — detached portions of her consciousness — or some- 
 thing of the sort. Tell me about that theory. Can 
 there be really men who are thus children of the 
 earth, fruit of pure passion — Cosmic Beings as you 
 hinted ? It interests me deeply.' 
 Dr. Stahl appeared to hesitate. 
 
 * It is not new to me, of course,' pursued the 
 other, * but I should like to know more.' 
 
 Stahl still seemed irresolute. * It is true,' he 
 replied at length slowly, * that in an unguarded 
 moment I let drop certain observations. It is better 
 you should consider them unsaid perhaps : forget 
 them.' 
 
 ' And why, pray ? ' 
 
 The answer was well calculated to whet his appetite. 
 
 * Because,' answered the doctor, bending over to 
 him as he crossed over to his side, ' they are danger- 
 ous thoughts to play with, dangerous to the interests 
 of humanity in its present state to-day, unsettling 
 to the soul, shaking the foundations of sane conscious- 
 ness.' He looked hard at him. * Your own mind,' 
 he added softly, ' appears to me to be already on 
 their track. Whether you are aware of it or not, 
 you have in you that kind of very passionate desire 
 — of yearning — which might reconstruct them and 
 make them come true — for yourself — if you get out.' 
 
 O'Malley, his eyes shining, looked up into his face. 
 
 ' " Reconstruct — make them come true — if I get 
 
 out " r he repeated stammeringly, fearful that if he 
 
XIV THE CENTAUR 103 
 
 appeared too eager the other would stop. *You 
 mean, of course, that this Double in me would escape 
 and build its own heaven ? ' 
 
 Stahl nodded darkly. * Driven forth by your 
 intense desire.* After a pause he added, * The process 
 already begun in you would complete itself.* 
 
 Ah ! So obviously what the doctor wanted was a 
 description of his sensations in that haunted cabin. 
 
 * Temporarily ^ * asked the Irishman under his 
 breath. 
 
 The other did not answer for a moment. 
 0*Malley repeated the question. 
 
 ' Temporarily,* said Stahl, turning away again 
 towards his desk, ' unless — the yearning were too 
 strong.* 
 
 ' In which case ? * 
 
 * Permanently. For it would draw the entire 
 personality with it. . . .* 
 
 ' The soul ? * 
 
 Stahl was bending over his books and papers. 
 The answer was barely audible. 
 
 * Death,* was the whispered word that floated 
 across the heavy air of that little sun-baked cabin. 
 
 The word if spoken at all was so softly spoken 
 that the Irishman scarcely knew whether he actually 
 heard it, or whether it was uttered by his own 
 thought. He only realized — catching some vivid 
 current from the other man's mind — that this separa- 
 tion of a vital portion of himself that Stahl hinted at 
 might involve a kind of nameless inner catastrophe 
 which should mean the loss of his personality as it 
 existed to-day — an idea, however, that held no terror 
 for him if it meant at the same time the recovery of 
 what he so passionately sought. 
 
 And another intuition flashed upon its heels — 
 
104 THE CENTAUR xiv 
 
 namely, that this extraordinary doctor spoke of 
 something he knew as a certainty ; that his amazing 
 belief, though paraded as theory, was to him more 
 than theory. Had he himself imdergone some 
 experience that he dared not speak of, and were his 
 words based upon a personal experience instead of, 
 as he pretended, merely upon the observation of 
 others ? Was this a result of his study of the big 
 man two years ago ? Was this the true explanation 
 
 of his being no longer an assistant at the H 
 
 hospital, but only a ship's doctor? Had this 
 'modem' man, after all, a flaming volcano of 
 ancient and splendid belief in him, akm to what was 
 in himself, yet ever fighting it ? 
 
 Thoughts raced and thundered through his mind 
 as he watched him across the cigar smoke. The 
 rattling of that donkey-engine, the shouts of the 
 lightermen, the thuds of the sulphur-sacks — how 
 ridiculous they all sounded, the clatter of a futile, 
 meaningless existence where men gathered — rubbish, 
 for mere bodies that lived amid dust a few years, 
 then returned to dust for ever. 
 
 He sprang from his sofa and crossed over to the 
 doctor's side. Stahl was stiU bending over a littered 
 desk. 
 
 * You, too,' he cried, and though trying to say it 
 loud, his voice -could only whisper, * you, too, must 
 have the Urmensch in your heart and blood, for 
 how else, by my soul, could you know it all .? Tell 
 me, doctor, tell me ! ' And he was on the very 
 verge of adding, * Join us ! Q)me and join us 1 ' 
 when the little German turned his bald head slowly 
 round and fixed upon the excited Irishman such a 
 cool and quenching stare that instantly he felt himself 
 convicted of foolishness, almost of impertinence. 
 
XIV THE CENTAUR 105 
 
 He dropped backwards into an arm-clmr, and the 
 doctor at the same moment let himself down upon 
 the revolving stool that was nailed to the floor in 
 front of the desk. His hands smoothed out papers. 
 Then he leaned forward, still holding his companion's 
 eyes with that steady stare which forbade familiarity. 
 
 *My friend,' he said quietly in German, * you 
 asked me just now to tell you of the theory — 
 Fechner's theory — ^that the Elarth is a living, conscious 
 Being. If you care to listen, I will do so. We have 
 time.* He glanced round at the shady cabin, took 
 down a book from the shelf before him, puffed his 
 black cigar and began to read. 
 
 ' It is from one of your own people — ^William 
 James ; what you call a " Hibbert Lecture " at 
 Manchester College. It gives you an idea, at least, 
 of what Fechncr saw. It is better than my own 
 words.' 
 
 So Stahl, in his turn, reftised to be 'drawn.' 
 O'Malley, as soon as he recovered from the abrupt- 
 ness of the change from that other conversation, 
 gave all his attention. The uneasy feeling that he 
 was being played with, coaxed as a specimen to the 
 best possible point for the microscope, passed away 
 as the splendour of the vast and beautiful concep- 
 tion dawned upon him, and shaped those nameless 
 yearnings of his Hfe in glowing language. 
 
XV 
 
 The shadows of the September afternoon were 
 lengthening towards us from the Round Pond by 
 the time O'Malley reached this stage of his curious 
 and fascinating story. It was chilly under the trees, 
 and the * wupsey-up, wupsey-down ' babies, as he 
 termed them, had long since gone in to their teas, or 
 whatever it is that London babies take at six o'clock. 
 
 We strolled home together, and he welcomed the 
 idea of sharing a dinner we should cook ourselves in 
 the tiny Knightsbridge flat. * Stew-pot evenings,' 
 he called these occasions. They reminded us of 
 camping trips together, although it must be confessed 
 that in the cage-like room the * stew ' never tasted 
 quite as it did beside running water on the skirts of 
 the forest when the dews were gathering on the little 
 gleaming tent, and the wood-smoke mingled with 
 the scents of earth and leaves. 
 
 Passing that grotesque erection opposite the 
 Albert Hall, gaudy in the last touch of sunset, I 
 saw him shudder. The spell of the ship and sea and 
 that blazing Sicilian sunshine lay still upon us, Etna's 
 cones towering beyond those gilded spikes of the 
 tawdry Memorial. I stole a glance at my companion. 
 His light blue eyes shone, but with the reflection of 
 another sunset — the sunset of forgotten, ancient, 
 far-off scenes when the world was young. 
 
 io6 
 
XV THE CENTAUR 107 
 
 His personality held something of magic in that 
 silent stroll homewards, for no word fell from either 
 one of us to break its charm. The untidy hair 
 escaped from beneath the broad-brimmed old hat, 
 and his faded coat of grey flannel seemed touched 
 with "the shadows that the dusk brings beneath wild- 
 olive trees. I noticed the set of his ears, and how 
 the upper points of them ran so sharply into the 
 hair. His walk was springy, light, very quiet, 
 suggesting that he moved on open turf where a sudden 
 running jump would land him, not into a motor-bus, 
 but into a mossy covert where ferns grew. There 
 was a certain fling of the shoulders that had an air of 
 rejecting streets and houses. Some fancy, wild and 
 sweet, caught me of a faun passing down through 
 underbrush of woodland glades to drink at a forest 
 pool ; and, chance giving back to me a little verse 
 of Alice Corbin's, I turned and murmured it while 
 watching him : 
 
 What dim Arcadian pastures 
 
 Have I known, 
 That suddenly, out of nothing, 
 
 A wind is blown, 
 Lifting a veil and a darkness, 
 
 Showing a purple sea — 
 And under your hair, the faun's eyes 
 
 Look out on me ? 
 
 It was, of course, that whereas his body marched 
 along Hill Street and through Montpelier Square, his 
 thoughts and spirit flitted through the haunted, old- 
 time garden he for ever craved. I thought of the 
 morrow — of my desk in the Life Insurance Office, 
 of the clerks with oiled hair brushed back from the 
 forehead, all exactly alike, trousers neatly turned up 
 to show fancy coloured socks from bargain sales, 
 
io8 THE CENTAUR xv 
 
 their pockets full of cheap cigarettes, their minds 
 busy with painted actresses and the names of 
 horses ! A Life Insurance Office ! All London 
 paying yearly sums to protect themselves against — 
 against the most interesting moment of life. 
 Premiums upon escape and freedom ! 
 
 Again, it was the spell of my companion's 
 personality that turned all this paraphernalia of the 
 busy, modern existence into the counters in some 
 grotesque and rather sordid game. To-morrow, of 
 course, it would all turn real and earnest again, 
 O'Malley's story a mere poetic fancy. But for the 
 moment I lived it with him, and found it 
 magnificent. 
 
 And the talk we had that evening when the stew- 
 pot was empty and we were smoking on the narrow- 
 ledged roof of the prison-house — for he always 
 begged for open air, and with cushions we often sat 
 beneath the stars and against the grimy chimney-pots 
 — that talk I shall never forget. Life became con- 
 Y structed all anew. The power of the greatest fairy 
 tale this world can ever know lay about me, raised to 
 its highest expression. I caught at least some touch 
 of reality — of awful reality — in the idea that this 
 splendid globe whereon wc perched like insects peep- 
 ing timidly from tiny cells, might be the body of a 
 glorious Being — the mighty frame to which some 
 immense Collective Consciousness, vaster than that of 
 men, and wholly different in kind, might be attached. 
 
 In the story, as I found it later in the dusty little 
 Paddington room, O'Malley reported, somewhat 
 heavily, it seemed to me, the excerpts chosen by Dr. 
 Stahl. As an imaginative essay, they were interesting, 
 of course, and vitally suggestive, but in a tale of 
 adventure such as this they overweight the barque of 
 
XV THE CENTAUR 109 
 
 fancy. Yet, in order to appreciate what followed, it 
 seems necessary for the mind to steep itself in some- 
 thing of his ideas. The reader who dreads to think, 
 and Hkes his imagination to soar unsupported, may 
 perhaps dispense with the balance of this section ; 
 but to be faithful to the scaffolding whereon this 
 Irishman built his amazing dream, I must attempt as 
 best I can some precis of that conversation. 
 
XVI 
 
 * Every fragment of visible Nature might, as far as is known, serve 
 as part in some organism unlike our bodies. ... As to that which 
 can, and that which cannot, play the part of an organism, we know 
 very little. A sameness greater or less with our own bodies is the 
 basis from which we conclude to other bodies and souls. ... A certain 
 likeness of outward form, and again some amount of similarity in 
 action, are what we stand on when we argue to psychical life. But 
 our failure, on the other side, to discover these symptoms is no sufficient 
 warrant for positive denial. It is natural in this connection to refer 
 to Fechner's vigorous advocacy.' — F. H. Bradley, Appearance and 
 Reality. 
 
 It was with an innate resistance — at least a stubborn 
 prejudice — -that I heard him begin. The earth, of 
 course, was but a bubble of dried fire, a huge round 
 clod, dead as mutton. How could it be, in any 
 permissible sense of the word — alive ? 
 
 Then, gradually, as he talked there among the 
 chimney-pots of old smoky London, there stole over 
 me this new and disquieting sense of reality — a strange, 
 vast splendour, too mighty to lie in the mind with 
 comfort. Laughter fled away, ashamed. A new 
 beauty, as of some amazing dawn, flashed and 
 broke upon the world. The autumn sky overhead, 
 thick-sown with its myriad stars, came down close, 
 sifting gold and fire about my life's dull ways. That 
 desk in the Insurance Oflice of Cornhill gleamed 
 beyond as an altar or a possible throne. 
 
 The glory of Fechner's immense speculation flamed 
 no 
 
XVI THE CENTAUR iii 
 
 about us both, majestic yet divinely simple. Only 
 a dim suggestion of it, of course, lay caught in the 
 words the Irishman used — words, as I found later, 
 that were a mixture of Professor James and Dr. Stahl, 
 flavoured strongly with Terence O'Malley — but a 
 suggestion potent enough to have haunted me ever 
 since and to have instilled meanings of stupendous 
 divinity into all the commonest things of daily exist- 
 ence. Mountains, seas, wide landscapes, forests, — all 
 I see now with emotions of wonder, delight, and awe 
 unknown to me before. Flowers, rain, wind, even a 
 London fog, have come to hold new meanings. 
 
 I never realized before that the mere size of our 
 old planet could have hindered the perception of so 
 fair a vision, or that her mere quantitative bulk have 
 killed automatically in the mind the possible idea of 
 her being in some sense living. A microbe, endowed 
 with our powers of consciousness, might similarly 
 deny life to the body of the elephant on which it 
 rode ; or some wee arguing atom, endowed with 
 mind and senses, persuade itself that the monster 
 upon whose flesh it dwelt were similarly a * heavenly 
 body ' of dead, inert matter ; the bulk of the ' world ' 
 that carried them obstructing their perception of its 
 Life. 
 
 And Fechner, as it seems, was no mere dreamer, 
 playing with a huge poetical conception. Professor 
 of Physics in Leipzig University, he found time amid 
 voluminous labours in chemistry to study electrical 
 science with the result that his measurements in 
 galvanism are classic to this day. His philosophical 
 work was more than considerable. * A book on the 
 atomic theory, classic also ; four elaborate mathe- 
 matical and experimental volumes on what he called 
 psychophysics (many persons consider Fechner to 
 
112 THE CENTAUR 
 
 XVI 
 
 have practically founded scientific psychology in the 
 first of these books) ; a volume on organic evolution, 
 and two works on experimental aesthetics, in which 
 again Fechner is thought by some judges to have 
 laid the foundations of a new science,' are among his 
 other performances. ... * All Leipsic mourned him 
 when he died, for he was the pattern of the ideal 
 German scholar, as daringly original in his thought 
 as he was homely in his life, a modest, genial, 
 laborious slave to truth and learning. . . . His mind 
 was indeed one of those multitudinously organized 
 cross-roads of truth which are occupied only at rare 
 intervals by children of men, and from which nothing 
 is either too far or too near to be seen in due per- 
 spective. Patientest observation, exactest mathe- 
 matics, shrewdest discrimination, humanest feeling, 
 flourished in him on the largest scale, with no ap- 
 parent detriment to one another. He was in fact a 
 philosopher in the " great " sense.' ^ 
 
 * Yes,' said O'Malley softly in my ear as we 
 leaned against the chimneys and watched the tobacco 
 curl up to the stars, ' and it was this man's imagina- 
 tion that had evidently caught old Stahl and bowled 
 him over. I never fathomed the doctor quite. His 
 critical and imaginative apparatus got a bit mixed 
 up, I suspect, for one moment he cursed me for 
 asking " suspicious questions," and the next sneered 
 sarcastically at me for boiling over with a sudden 
 inspirational fancy of my own. He never gave 
 himself away completely, and left me to guess that 
 he made that Hospital place too hot to hold him. 
 He was a wonderful bird. But every time I aimed 
 at him I shot wide and hit a cloud. Meantime he 
 peppered me all over — one minute urging me into 
 
 1 Professor William James, A Pluralistic Universe. 
 
XVI THE CENTAUR 113 
 
 closer intimacy with my Russian — his cosmic being, 
 his Urmensch type — so that he might study my 
 destruction, and half an hour later doing his utmost 
 apparently to protect me from him and keep me sane 
 and balanced.' His laugh rang out over the roofs. 
 
 * The net result,' he added, his face tilted towards 
 the stars as though he said it to the open sky rather 
 than to me, * was that he pushed me forwards into 
 the greatest adventure life has ever brought to me. 
 1 believe, I verily believe that sometimes, there were 
 moments of unconsciousness — semi-consciousness 
 perhaps — when I really did leave my body — caught 
 away as Moses, or was it Job or Paul ^ — into a Third 
 Heaven, where I touched a bit of Reality that fairly 
 made me reel with happiness and wonder.' 
 
 * Well, but Fechner — and his great idea.?' I 
 brought him back. 
 
 He tossed his cigarette down into the back-garden 
 that fringed the Park, leaning over to watch its zig- 
 zag flight of flame. 
 
 * Is simply this,' he replied, * — " that not alone the 
 earth but the whole Universe in its different spans 
 and wave-lengths, is everywhere alive and conscious." 
 He regards the spiritual as the rule in Nature, not 
 the exception. The professorial philosophers have 
 no vision. Fechner towers above them as a man of 
 vision. He dared to imagine. He made discoveries 
 — whew ! ! ' he whistled, * and such discoveries ! * 
 
 * To which the scholars and professors of to-day,' 
 I suggested, * would think reply not even called for.?*' 
 
 * Ah,' he laughed, ' the solemn-faced Intellectuals 
 with their narrow outlook, their atrophied vision, 
 and their long words ! Perhaps ! But in Fechner's 
 universe there is room for every grade of spiritual 
 being between man and God. The vaster orders of 
 
 I 
 
114 THE CENTAUR xvi 
 
 mind go with the vaster orders of body. He believes 
 passionately in the Earth Soul, he treats her as our 
 special guardian angel ; we can pray to the Earth as 
 men pray to their saints. The Earth has a Collective 
 Consciousness. We rise upon the Earth as wavelets 
 rise upon the ocean. We grow out of her soil as 
 leaves grow from a tree. Sometimes we find our bigger 
 life and realize that we are parts of her bigger col- 
 lective consciousness, but as a rule we are aware only 
 of our separateness, as individuals. These moments 
 of cosmic consciousness are rare. They come with 
 love, sometimes with pain, music may bring them 
 too, but above all — landscape and the beauty of 
 Nature 1 Men are too petty, conceited, egoistic to 
 welcome them, clinging for dear life to their precious 
 individualities.' 
 
 He drew breath and then went on : ' " Fechner 
 likens our individual persons on the earth to so many 
 sense-organs of her soul, adding to her perceptive 
 life so long as our own life lasts. She absorbs our 
 perceptions, just as they occur, into her larger sphere 
 of knowledge. When one of us dies, it is as if an eye 
 of the world were closed, for all perceptive contri- 
 butions from that particular quarter cease." ' ^ 
 
 * Go on,* I exclaimed, realizing that he was ob- 
 viously quoting verbatim fragments from James that 
 he had since pondered over till they had become his 
 own. *Tell me more. It is delightful and very 
 splendid.' 
 
 ' Yes,' he said, * I'll go on quick enough, provided 
 you promise me one thing : and that is — to under- 
 stand that Fechner docs not regard the Earth as a 
 sort of big human being. If a being at all, she is a 
 being utterly different from us in kind, as of course 
 
 1 Professor William James, A Pluralistic Uni'verse. 
 
XVI THE CENTAUR ii5 
 
 we know she is in structure. Planetary beings, as a 
 class, would be totally different from any other beings 
 that we know. He merely protests at the presump- 
 tion of our insignificant human knowledge in denying 
 some kind of life and consciousness to a form so 
 beautifully and marvellously organized as that of the 
 earth ! The heavenly bodies, he holds, are beings 
 superior to men in the scale of life — a vaster order 
 of intelligence altogether. A little two-legged man 
 with his cocksure reason strutting on its tiny brain 
 as the apex of attainment he ridicules. D'ye see, 
 now ? ' 
 
 I gasped. I Ut a big pipe — and listened. He 
 went on. This time it was clearly a page from that 
 Hibbert Lecture Stahl had mentioned — the one in 
 which Professor James tries to give some idea of 
 Fechner's aim and scope, while admitting that he 
 ' inevitably does him miserable injustice by summar- 
 izing and abridging him.' 
 
 * Ages ago the earth was called an animal,* I 
 ventured. * We all know that.' 
 
 ' But Fechner,' he replied, * insists that a planet is 
 a higher class of being than either man or animal — " a 
 being whose enormous size requires an altogether 
 different plan of life." ' 
 
 ^ An inhabitant of the ether — ? ' 
 
 ' You've hit it,' he replied eagerly. * Every 
 element has its own living denizens. Ether, then, 
 also has hers — the globes. "The ocean of ether, 
 whose waves are light, has also her denizens — higher 
 by as much as their element is higher, swimming 
 without fins, flying without wings, moving, immense 
 and tranquil, as by a half-spiritual force through the 
 half-spiritual sea which they inhabit," ^ sensitive to the 
 
 * Professor William James, A Pluralistic Uni'verse. 
 
ii6 THE CENTAUR xvi 
 
 slightest pull of one another's attraction : beings in 
 every way superior to us. Any imagination, you 
 know,' he added, *can play with the idea. It is 
 old as the hills. But this chap showed how and why 
 it could be actually true.' 
 
 * This superiority, though .? ' I queried. ' I should 
 have guessed their stage of development lower than 
 ours, rather than higher.' 
 
 * Different,' he answered, ' different. That's the 
 point.' 
 
 ' Ah ! ' I watched a shooting star dive across our 
 thick, wet atmosphere, and caught myself wondering 
 whether the flash and heat of that hurrying little 
 visitor produced any reaction in this Collect! /e 
 Consciousness of the huge Body whereon we perched 
 and chattered, and upon which later it would fall in 
 finest dust. 
 
 * It is by insisting on the differences as well as on 
 the resemblances,' rushed on the excited O'Malley, 
 'that he makes the picture of the earth's life so 
 concrete. Think a moment. For instance, our 
 animal organization comes from our inferiority. Our 
 need of moving to and fro, of stretching our limbs 
 and bending our bodies, shows only our defect.' 
 
 ' Defect ! ' I cried. ' But we're so proud of it ! ' 
 
 * "What are our legs,' " he laughed, * "but crutches, 
 by means of which, with restless efforts, we go 
 hunting after the things we have not inside ourselves ? 
 The Earth is no such cripple ; why should she who 
 already possesses within herself the things we so 
 painfully pursue, have limbs analogous to ours } 
 What need has she of arms, with nothing to reach 
 for ? Of a neck with no head to carry ? Of eyes or 
 nose, when she finds her way through space without 
 either, and has the millions of eyes of all her animals 
 
XV] 
 
 THE CENTAUR 117 
 
 to guide their movements on her surface, and all their 
 noses to smell the flowers she grows ? " ' ^ 
 
 * We are literally a part of her, then — projections 
 of her immense life, as it were — one of the projections, 
 at least ? ' 
 
 ' Exactly. And just as we are ourselves a part of 
 the earth,' he continued, taking up my thought at 
 once, ' so are our organs her organs. " She is, as 
 it were, eye and ear over her whole extent — all that 
 we see and hear in separation she sees and hears at 
 once." ' ^ He stood up beside me and spread his 
 hands out to the stars and over the trees and paths 
 of the Park at our feet, where the throngs of men and 
 women walked and talked together in the cool of the 
 evening. His enthusiasm grew as the idea of this 
 German's towering imagination possessed him. 
 
 * " She brings forth living beings of countless 
 kinds upon her surface, and their multitudinous 
 conscious relations with each other she takes up into 
 her higher and more general conscious life." ' ^ 
 
 He leaned over the parapet and drew me to his 
 side. I stared with him at the reflection of London 
 town in the sky, thinking of the glow and heat and 
 restless stir of the great city and of the frantic 
 strivings of its millions for success — money, power, 
 fame, a few, here and there, for spiritual success. 
 The roar of its huge trafficking beat across the night 
 in ugly thunder to our ears. I thought of the other 
 cities of the world ; of its villages ; of shepherds 
 among the lonely hills ; of its myriad wild creatures 
 in forest, plain, and mountain. . . . 
 
 * All this she takes up into her great heart as part 
 of herself! ' I murmured. 
 
 * All this,' he replied softly, as the sound of the 
 
 ^ Professor William James, A Pluralistic Uni'verse. 
 
ii8 THE CENTAUR 
 
 XVI 
 
 Band beyond the Serpentine floated over to us on 
 our roof ; * — the separate little consciousnesses of 
 all the cities, all the tribes, all the nations of men, 
 animals, flowers, insects — everything.' He again 
 opened his arms to the sky. He drew in deep breaths 
 of the night air. The dew glistened on the slates 
 behind us. Far across the towers of Westminster a 
 yellow moon rose slowly, dimming the stars. Big 
 Ben, deeply booming, trembled on the air nine of 
 her stupendous vibrations. Automatically, I counted 
 them — subconsciously. 
 
 * And all our subconscious sensations are also 
 hers,' he added, catching my thought again ; ' our 
 dreams but half divined, our aspirations half confessed, 
 our tears, our yearnings, and our — prayers.' 
 
 At the moment it almost seemed to me as if our 
 two minds joined, each knowing the currents of the 
 other's thought, and both caught up, gathered in, 
 folded comfortably away into the stream of a Con- 
 sciousness far bigger than either. It was like a 
 momentary, specific proof of what he urged — a faint 
 pulse-beat we heard of the soul of the earth ; and it 
 was amazingly uplifting. 
 
 * Every form of life, then, is of importance,' I 
 heard myself thinking, or saying, for I hardly knew 
 which. ' The tiniest efl^orts of value — even the 
 unrecognized ones, and those that seem futile.' 
 
 *Even the failures,' he whispered, ' — the 
 moments when we do not trust her.' 
 
 We stood for some moments in silence. Presently, 
 with a hand upon my shoulder, he drew me down 
 again among our rugs against the chimney-stack. 
 
 'And there are some of us,' he said gently, yet 
 with a voice that held the trembling of an immense 
 joy, *who know a more intimate relationship with 
 
XVI THE CENTAUR 119 
 
 their great Mother than the rest, perhaps. By the 
 so-called Love of Nature, or by some artless simplicity 
 of soul, wholly unmodern of course, perhaps felt by 
 children or poets mostly, they lie caught close to her 
 own deep life, knowing the immense sweet guidance 
 of her mighty soul, divinely mothered, strangers to 
 all the strife for material gain — to that " unrest which 
 men miscall delight," — primitive children of her 
 potent youth . . . offspring of pure passion . . . 
 each individual conscious of her weight and drive 
 
 behind him ' His words faded away into a whisper 
 
 that became unintelligible, then inaudible ; but his 
 thought somehow continued itself in my own mind. 
 
 * The simple life,' I said in a low tone ; * the Call 
 of the Wild, raised to its highest power ? ' 
 
 But he changed my sentence a little. 
 
 ' The call,' he answered, without turning to look 
 at me, speaking it into the night about us, ' the call 
 to childhood, the true, pure, vital childhood of the 
 Earth — the Golden Age — before men tasted of the 
 Tree and knew themselves separate ; when the lion 
 and the lamb lay down together and a little child 
 could lead them. A time and state, that is, of which 
 such phrases can be symbolical.' 
 
 * And of which there may be here and there some 
 fearful exquisite survival ? ' I suggested, remembering 
 Stahl's words. 
 
 His eyes shone with the fire of his passion. * Of 
 which on that little tourist steamer I found one ! ' 
 
 The wind that fanned our faces came perhaps across 
 the arid wastes of Bayswater and the North- West. 
 It also came from the mountains and gardens of this 
 lost Arcadia, vanished for most beyond recovery. . . . 
 
 * The Hebrew poets called it Before the Fall,' he 
 went on, * and later poets the Golden Age ; to-day 
 
I20 THE CENTAUR 
 
 XVI 
 
 it shines through phrases like the Land of Heart's 
 Desire, the Promised Land, Paradise, and what not ; 
 while the mind of saint and mystic have ever dreamed 
 of it as union with their deity. For it is possible 
 and open to all, to every heart, that is, not blinded 
 by the cloaking horror of materialism which blocks 
 the doorways of escape and prisons self behind the 
 drab illusion that the outer form is the reality and 
 not the inner thought. . . .' 
 
 The hoarse shouting of a couple of drunken 
 men floated to us from the pavements, and crossing 
 over, we peered down towards the opening of Sloane 
 Street, watching a moment the stream of broughams, 
 motors, and pedestrians. The two men with the 
 rage of an artificial stimulant in their brains reeled 
 out of sight. A big policeman followed slowly. 
 The night-life of the great glaring city poured on 
 unceasingly — the stream of souls all hurrying by divers 
 routes and means towards a state where they sought 
 to lose themselves — to forget the pressure of the 
 bars that held them — to escape the fret and worry 
 of their harassing personalities, and touch some fringe 
 of happiness 1 All so sure they knew the way — yet 
 hurrying really in the wrong direction — outwards 
 instead of inwards ; afraid to be — simple. . . . 
 
 We moved back to our rugs. For a long time 
 neither of us found anything to say. Soon I led the 
 way down the creaking ladder indoors again, and 
 we entered the stuffy little sitting-room of the tiny 
 flat he temporarily occupied. I turned up an electric 
 light, but O'Malley begged me to lower it. 1 only 
 had time to see that his eyes were still aglow. We 
 sat by the open window. He drew a worn note- 
 book from his still more worn coat ; but it was too 
 dark for him to read. He knew it all by heart. 
 
XVII 
 
 Some of Fechner's reasons for thinking the Earth 
 a being superior in the scale to ourselves, he gave/ 
 but it was another passage that lingered chiefly in 
 my heart, the description of the daring German's 
 joy in dwelling upon her perfections — later, too, of 
 
 1 * What are the marks of superiority . . . ? Fechner points out 
 that the earth possesses each and all of them more perfectly than we. 
 He considers in detail the points of difference between us, and shows 
 them all to make for the Earth's higher rank. . . . 
 
 * One of them, of course, is independence of other external beings. 
 External to the earth are only the other heavenly bodies. All the 
 things on which we externally depend for life — air, water, plant and 
 animal food, fellow-men, etc. — are included in her as her constituent 
 parts. She is self-sufficing in a 'million respects in which we are not 
 so. We depend on her for almost everything, she on us for but a 
 small portion of her history. She swings us in her orbit from winter 
 to summer and revolves us from day into night and night into day. 
 
 * Complexity in unity is another sign of superiority. The total 
 earth's complexity far exceeds that of any organism, for she includes 
 all our organisms in herself, along with an infinite number of things 
 that our organisms fail to include. Yet how simple and massive are 
 the phases of her own proper life ! As the total bearing of any 
 animal is sedate and tranquil compared with the agitation of its blood 
 corpuscles, so is the earth a sedate and tranquil being compared with 
 the animals whom she supports. 
 
 * To develop from within, instead of being fashioned from without, 
 is also counted as something superior in men's eyes. An egg is a 
 higher style of being than a piece of clay which an external modeller 
 makes into the image of a bird. The earth's history develops from 
 within. . . . 
 
 * Individuality of type, and difference from other beings of its type, 
 is another mark of rank. The Earth differs from every other planet, 
 and as a class planetary beings are extraordinarily distinct from other 
 beings.' — William James, A Pluralistic Uni'verse. 
 
 121 
 
122 THE CENTAUR xvii 
 
 his first simple vision. Though myself wholly of 
 the earth, earthy in the ordinary sense, the beauty of 
 the thoughts live in my spirit to this day, transfiguring 
 even that dingy Insurance Office, streaming through 
 all my dullest, hardest daily tasks with the inspiration 
 of a simple delight that helps me over many a difficult 
 weary time of work and duty. 
 
 * *' To carry her precious freight through the hours 
 and seasons what form could be more excellent than 
 hers — being as it is horse, wheels, and waggon all in 
 one. Think of her beauty — a shining ball, sky-blue 
 and sunlit over one half, the other bathed in starry 
 night, reflecting the heavens from all her waters, 
 myriads of lights and shadows in the folds of her 
 mountains and windings of her valleys she would be 
 a spectacle of rainbow glory, could one only see her 
 from afar as we see parts of her from her own 
 mountain tops. Every quality of landscape that has 
 a name would then be visible in her all at once — all 
 that is delicate or graceful, all that is quiet, or wild, 
 or romantic, or desolate, or cheerful, or luxuriant, or 
 fresh. That landscape is her face — a peopled land- 
 scape, too, for men*s eyes would appear in it like 
 diamonds among the dew-drops. Green would be 
 the dominant colour, but the blue atmosphere and the 
 clouds would enfold her as a bride is shrouded in 
 her veil — a veil the vapory, transparent folds of 
 which the earth, through her ministers the winds, 
 never tires of laying and folding about herself anew." 
 
 ' She needs, as a sentient organism,' he continued, 
 pointing into the curtain of blue night beyond the 
 window, * no heart or brain or lungs as we do, for 
 she is — different. " Their functions she performs 
 through us ! She has no proper muscles or limbs of 
 her own, and the only objects external to her are 
 
XVII THE CENTAUR 123 
 
 the other stars. To these her whole mass reacts by 
 the most exquisite alterations in its total gait 
 and by the still more exquisite vibratory responses 
 in its substance. Her ocean reflects the lights of 
 heaven as in a mighty mirror, her atmosphere refracts 
 them like a monstrous lens, the clouds and snow-fields 
 combine them into white, the woods and flowers 
 disperse them into colours. . . . Men have always 
 made fables about angels, dwelling in the light, 
 needing no earthly food or drink, messengers between 
 ourselves and God. Here are actually existent 
 beings, dwelHng in the light and moving through the 
 sky, needing neither food nor drink, intermediaries 
 between God and us, obeying His commands. So, 
 if the heavens really are the home of angels, the 
 heavenly bodies must be those very angels, for other 
 creatures there are none. Yes ! the Earth is our 
 great common guardian angel, who watches over all 
 our interests combined." ' 
 
 ' And then,' whispered the Irishman, seeing that I 
 still eagerly listened, * give your ear to one of his 
 moments of direct vision. Note its simplicity, and 
 the authority of its conviction : 
 
 * " On a certain spring morning I went out to walk. 
 The fields were green, the birds sang, the dew 
 glistened, the smoke was rising, here and there a 
 man appeared ; a light as of transfiguration lay on 
 all things. It was only a little bit of the earth ; it 
 was only a moment of her existence ; and yet as my 
 look embraced her more and more it seemed to me 
 not only so beautifiil an idea, but so true and clear 
 a fact, that she is an angel, an angel so rich and 
 fresh and flower-like, and yet going her round in 
 the skies so firmly and so at one with herself, turning 
 her whole living face to Heaven, and carrying me 
 
124 THE CENTAUR 
 
 XVI] 
 
 along with her into that Heaven, that I asked myself 
 how the opinions of men could ever have so spun 
 themselves away from life as to deem the earth only 
 a dry clod, and to seek for angels above it or about 
 it in the emptiness of the sky, — only to find them 
 nowhere." * 
 
 Fire-engines, clanging as with a hurrying anger 
 through the night, broke in upon his impassioned 
 sentences ; the shouts of the men drowned his 
 last words. . . . 
 
 Life became very wonderful inside those tight, 
 confining walls, for the spell and grandeur of the 
 whole conception lifted the heart. Even if belief 
 failed, in the sense of believing — a shilling, it suc- 
 ceeded in the sense of believing — a symphony. The 
 invading beauty swept about us both. Here was 
 a glory that was also a driving power upon which 
 any but a man half dead could draw for practical use. 
 For the big conceptions fan the will. The little 
 pains of life, they make one feel, need not kill true 
 joy, nor deaden effort. 
 
 * Come,' said O'Malley softly, interrupting my 
 dream of hope and splendour, ' let us walk together 
 through the Park to your place. It is late, and you, 
 I know, have to be up early in the morning . . . 
 earlier than I.' 
 
 And presently we passed the statue of Achilles 
 and got our feet upon the turf beyond — a little bit 
 of living planet in the middle of the heavy smother- 
 ing London town. About us, over us, within us, 
 stirred the awe of that immense idea. Upon that bit 
 of living, growing turf we passed towards the Marble 
 Arch, treading, as it were, the skin of a huge Body — 
 the physical expression of a grand angeljc Being, 
 alive, sentient, conscious. Conscious, moreover, of 
 
XVII THE CENTAUR 125 
 
 our little separate individual selves who walked . . . 
 a Being who cared ; who felt us ; who knew, under- 
 stood, and — loved us as a mother her own offspring. 
 ... * To whom men could pray as they pray to 
 their saints.' 
 
 The conception, even thus dimly and confusedly 
 adumbrated, brought a new sense of life — terrific and 
 eternal. All living things upon the earth's surface 
 were emanations of her mighty central soul ; all — 
 from the gods and fairies of olden time who knew it, 
 to the men and women of To-day who have forgotten 
 it. 
 
 The gods . 
 
 Were these then projections of her personality — 
 aspects and facets of her divided self — emanations 
 now withdrawn ? Latent in her did they still exist 
 as moods or Powers — true, alive, everlasting, but 
 unmanifest ^ Still knowable to simple men and to 
 Children of Nature ? 
 
 Was this the giant truth that Stahl had built on 
 Fechner ? 
 
 Everything about us seemed to draw together 
 into an immense and towering configuration that 
 included trees and air and the sweep of open park — 
 the looming and overwhelming beauty of one of these 
 very gods survived — Pan, the eternal and the 
 splendid ... a mood of the Earth-life, a projection 
 clothed with the light of stars, the cloudy air, the 
 passion of the night, the thrill of an august, extended 
 Mood. 
 
 And the others were not so very behind — those 
 other little parcels of Earth's Consciousness the 
 Greeks and early races, the simple, primitive, child- 
 like peoples of the dawn divined the existence of, and 
 labelled * gods ' . . . and worshipped ... so as to 
 
126 THE CENTAUR 
 
 xvu 
 
 draw their powers into themselves by ecstasy and 
 vision . . . ? 
 
 Could, then, worship now still recall them ? Was 
 the attitude of even one true worshipper's heart the 
 force necessary to touch that particular aspect of the 
 mighty total Consciousness of Earth, and call forth 
 those ancient forms of beauty? Could it be that 
 this idea — the idea of ^ the gods ' — was thus for ever 
 true and vital . . . ? And might they be known 
 and felt in the heart if not actually in some suggested 
 form ? 
 
 I only know that as we walked home past the doors 
 of that dingy Paddington house where Terence 
 O'Malley kept his dusty books and papers and so 
 to my own quarters, these things he talked about 
 dropped into my mind with a bewildering splendour 
 to stay for ever. His words I have forgotten, or 
 how he made such speculations worth listening to at 
 all. Yet, I hear them singing in my blood as though 
 of yesterday ; and often when that conflict comes 
 'twixt duty and desire that makes life sometimes so 
 vain and bitter, the memory comes to lift with 
 strength far greater than my own. The Earth can 
 heal and bless. 
 
XVIII 
 
 Slowly, taking life easily, the little steamer puffed 
 its way across the Ionian Sea. The pyramid of Etna, 
 bluer even than the sky, dominated the western 
 horizon long after the heel of Italy had faded, then 
 melted in its turn into the haze of cloud and distance. 
 No other sails were visible. 
 
 With the passing of Calabria spring had leaped 
 into the softness of full summer, and the breezes 
 were gentle as those that long ago fanned the cheeks 
 and hair of lo, beloved of Zeus, as she flew south- 
 wards towards the Nile. The passengers, less lovely 
 than that fair daughter of Argos, and with the unrest 
 of thinner adventure in their blood, basiled lazily 
 in the sun ; but. the sea was not less haunted for 
 those among them whose hearts could travel. The 
 Irishman at any rate slipped beyond the confines of 
 the body, viewing that ancient scene as she had done, 
 from above. His widening consciousness expanded 
 to include it. 
 
 Cachalots spouted ; dolphins danced, as though 
 still to those wild flutes of Dionysus ; porpoises 
 rolled beneath the surface of the transparent waves, 
 diving below the vessel's sides but just in time to save 
 their shiny noses ; and all day long, ignoring the 
 chart upon the stairway walls, the tourists turned their 
 glasses eastwards, searching for a first sight of Greece. 
 
 127 
 
128 THE CENTAUR 
 
 XVIII 
 
 O'Malley, meanwhile, trod the decks of a new 
 ship. For him now sea and sky were doubly peopled. 
 The wind brought messages of some divine deliver- 
 ance approaching slowly ; the heat of that pearly, 
 shining sun warmed centres of his being that hitherto 
 the world kept chill. The land towards which the 
 busy steamer moved he knew, of course, was but the 
 shell from which the inner spirit of beauty once 
 vivifying it had long since passed away. Yet it 
 remained a clue. That ancient loveliness, as a mood 
 of the earth's early consciousness, was buried, not 
 destroyed. Eternally it still flamed somewhere. 
 And, long before the days of Greece, he knew, it 
 had existed in yet fuller and more complete mani- 
 festation : that earliest, vastly splendid Mood of the 
 earth's soul, too mighty for any existence that the 
 history of humanity can recall, and too remote for 
 any but the most daringly imaginative minds even to 
 conceive. The Urwelt Mood, as Stahl himself 
 admitted, even while it called to him, was a re- 
 construction that to men to-day. could only seem — 
 dangerous. 
 
 And his own little Self, guided by the inarticulate 
 stranger, was being led at last towards its complete 
 recapture. 
 
 Yet, while he crawled slowly with the steamer 
 over a tiny portion of the spinning globe, feeling that 
 at the same time he crawled towards a spot upon 
 it where access would be somehow possible to this 
 huge expression of her first Life — what was it, phrased 
 timidly as men phrase big thoughts to-day, that he 
 really believed } Even in our London talks, intimate 
 as they were, interpreted too by gesture, facial ex- 
 pression, and — silence, his full meaning evaded 
 precise definition. ' There are no words, there are 
 
XVIII THE CENTAUR 129 
 
 no words/ he kept saying, shrugging his shoulders 
 and stroking his untidy hair. * In me, deep down, 
 it all lies clear and plain and strong ; but language 
 cannot seize a mode of life that throve before language 
 existed. If you cannot catch the picture from my 
 thoughts, I give up the whole dream in despair.' 
 And in his written account, owing to its strange 
 formlessness, the result was not a little bewildering. 
 
 Briefly stated, however — that remnant, at least, 
 which I discover in my own mind when attempting to 
 tell the story to others — what he felt, believed, livedo 
 at any rate while the adventure lasted, was this : — 
 
 That the Earth, as a living, conscious Being, had 
 known visible projections of her consciousness similar 
 to those projections of our own personality which the 
 advanced psychologists of to-day now envisage as 
 possible ; that the simple savagery of his own nature, 
 and the poignant yearnings derived from it, were in 
 reality due to his intimate closeness to the life of the 
 Earth ; that, whereas in the body the fulfilment of 
 these longings was impossible, in the spirit he might yet 
 know contact with the soul of the planet, and thus 
 experience their complete satisfaction. Further, that 
 the portion of his personality which could thus enter 
 this heaven of its own subjective construction, was 
 that detachable portion Stahl had spoken of as being 
 * malleable by desire and longing,' leaving the body 
 partially and temporarily sometimes in sleep, and, 
 at death, completely. More, — that the state thus 
 entered would mean a quasi-merging back into the 
 life of the Earth herself, of which he was a partial 
 expression. 
 
 This closeness to Nature was to-day so rare as to 
 be almost unrecognized as possible. Its possession 
 constituted its owner what the doctor called a * Cosmic 
 
 K 
 
I30 THE CENTAUR xviii 
 
 Being ' — a being scarcely differentiated from the life of 
 the Earth Spirit herself — a direct expression of her life, 
 a survival of a time before such expressions had 
 separated away from her and become individualized as 
 human creatures. Moreover, certain of these earliest 
 manifestations or projections of her consciousness, 
 knowing in their huge shapes of fearful yet simple 
 beauty a glory of her own being, still also survived. 
 The generic term of * gods ' might describe their 
 status as interpreted to the little human power called 
 Imagination, 
 
 This call to the simple life of primal innocence 
 and wonder that had ever brimmed the heart of the 
 Irishman, acknowledged while not understood, might 
 have slumbered itself away with the years among 
 modern conditions into atrophy and denial, had he 
 not chanced to encounter a more direct and vital 
 instance of it even than himself. The powerfully- 
 charged being of this Russian stranger had summoned 
 it forth. The mere presence of this man quickened 
 and evoked this faintly-stirring centre in his psychic 
 being that opened the channel of return. Speech, as 
 any other explanation, was unnecessary. To resist 
 was still within his power. To accept and go was also 
 open to him. The ' inner catastrophe ' he feared need 
 not perhaps be insuperable or permanent. 
 
 * Remember,* the doctor had said to him at the end 
 of that last significant conversation, * this berth in my 
 state-room is freely at your disposal till Batoum.* And 
 O'Malley, thanking him, had shaken off that restrain- 
 ing hand upon his arm, knowing that he would never 
 make use of it again. 
 
 For the Russian stranger and his son had some- 
 how made him free. 
 
 Between that cabin and the decks he spent his day. 
 
XVIII THE CENTAUR 131 
 
 Occasionally he would go below to report progress, as 
 it were, by little sentences which he divined would be 
 acceptable, and at the same time gave expression to his 
 own growing delight. The boy, meanwhile, was 
 everywhere, playing alone like a wild thing ; one 
 minute in the bows, hat oiF, gazing across the sea 
 beneath a shading hand, and the next leaning over the 
 stern-rails to watch the churning foam that drove 
 them forwards. At regular intervals he, too, rushed 
 to the cabin and brought communications to his parent. 
 
 * To-morrow at dawn,' observed the Irishman, * we 
 shall see Cape Matapan rising from the sea. After 
 that, Athens for a few hours ; then coasting through 
 the Cyclades, close to the mainland often.' And 
 glancing over to the berth, while pretending to be 
 busy with his steamer-trunk, he saw the great smile 
 of happiness break over the other's face like a 
 sunrise. . . . 
 
 For it was clear to him that with the approach to 
 Greece, a change began to come over his companions. 
 It was noticeable chiefly in the father. The joy that 
 filled the man, too fine and large to be named excite- 
 ment, passed from him in radiations that positively 
 seemed to carry with them a physical extension. This, 
 of course, was purely a clairvoyant eff'ect upon the 
 mind — O'Malley's divining faculty visualized the 
 spiritual traits of the man's dilating Self. But, 
 nevertheless, the truth remained that — somehow he 
 increased. He grew ; became interiorly more active, 
 alive, potent ; and of this singular waxing of the 
 inner spirit something passed outwards and stood 
 with rare dignity about his very figure. 
 
 And this manifestation of themselves was due to 
 that expansion of the inner life caused by happiness. 
 The little point of their personalities they showed 
 
132 THE CENTAUR xviii 
 
 normally to the world was but a single facet, a tip as 
 it were of their whole selves. More lay within, beyond. 
 As with the rest of the world, a great emotion stimu- 
 lated and summoned it forth into activity nearer the 
 surface. Clearly, for these two Greece symbolized a 
 point of departure of a great hidden passion. Some- 
 thing they expected lay waiting for them there. 
 Guidance would come thence. 
 
 And, by reflection perhaps as much as by direct 
 stimulation, the same change made itself felt in himself. 
 Joy caught him — the joy of a home-coming, long 
 deferred. . . . 
 
 ^ At the same time, the warning of Dr. Stahl worked 
 in him, if subconsciously only. He showed this by 
 mixing more with the other passengers. He chatted 
 with the Captain, who was as pleased with his big 
 family as though he had personally provided the 
 weather that made them happy ; with the Armenian 
 priest, who was eager to show that he had read ' a 
 much of T'ackeray and Keeplin ' ; and especially with 
 the boasting Moscow merchant, who by this time 
 * owned ' the smoking-room and imposed his verbose 
 commonplaces upon one and all with authoritative 
 self-confidence in six languages — a provincial mind in 
 full display. The latter in particular held him to 
 a normal humanity ; his atmosphere breathed the 
 wholesome thickness of the majority of humankind — 
 ordinary, egoistic, with the simplicity of the uninspir- 
 ing sort. The merchant acted upon him as a sedative, 
 and that day the Irishman took him in large doses, 
 allopathically, for his talk formed an admirable 
 antidote to the stress of that other burning excitement 
 that, according to Stahl, threatened to disintegrate his 
 personality. 
 
 Though hardly in the sense he intended, the fur- 
 
XVIII THE CENTAUR 133 
 
 merchant was entirely delightful — engaging as a child ; 
 for, among other marked qualities, he possessed 
 the unerring instinct of the snob which made him 
 select for his friends those whose names or position 
 might glorify his banal insignificance — and his stories 
 were vivid pictorial illustrations of this useful worldly 
 faculty. O'Malley listened with secret delight, 
 keeping a grave face and dropping in occasional 
 innocent questions to heighten the colour or increase 
 the output. Others in the circle responded in kind, 
 feeling the same chord vibrating in themselves. Even 
 the priest, like a repeating -gun, continually discharged 
 his little secret pride that Byron had occupied a room 
 in that Venetian monastery where he lived ; and at 
 last O'Malley himself was conscious of an inclination 
 to report his own immense and recently discovered 
 kinship with a greater soul and consciousness than his 
 own. After all, he reflected with a deep thrill while 
 he listened, the desire of the snob was but a crude and 
 simple form of the desire of the mystic : — to lose 
 one's little self in a Self which is greater ! 
 
 Then, weary of them all and their minute personal 
 interests, he left the smoking-room and joined the 
 boy again, running absurd races with him from stern 
 to bow, playing hide-and-seek among the decks, even 
 playing shuffle-board together. They sweated in the 
 blazing sun and watched the dance of the sea ; 
 caught the wind in their faces with a shout of joy, 
 or with pointing fingers followed the changing out- 
 lines of the rare, soft clouds that sailed the world of 
 blue above them. There was no speech between 
 them, and both felt that other things, invisible, swift, 
 and spirit-footed, whose home is just beyond the 
 edge of life as the senses report life, played wildly 
 with them. The smoking-room then, with its 
 
134 THE CENTAUR xviii 
 
 occupants so greedy for the things that money 
 connotes — the furs, champagne, cigars, and heavy 
 possessions that were symbols of the personal 
 aggrandizement they sought and valued — seemed to 
 the Irishman like a charnel-house where those about 
 to die sat making inventories in blind pride of the 
 things they must leave behind. 
 
 It was, indeed, a contrast of Death and Life. 
 For beside him, with that playing, silent boy, coursed 
 the power of transforming loveliness which had 
 breathed over the world before her surface knew 
 this swarming race of men. The life of the Earth 
 knew no need of outward acquisition, possessing all 
 things so completely in herself. And he — he was 
 her child — O glory ! Joy passing belief ! 
 
 * Oh ! ' he cried once with passion, turning to the 
 fair-haired figure of youth who stood with him in 
 the bows, meeting the soft wind, — * Oh, to have heard 
 the trees whispering together in the youth of the 
 world, and felt one of the earliest winds that ever 
 blew across the cooling seas ! ' 
 
 And the boy, not understanding the words, but 
 responding with a perfect naturalness to the emotion 
 that drove them forth, seized his hand and with 
 an extraordinarily free motion as of flying, raced 
 with him down the decks, happy, laughing, hair 
 loose over his face, and with a singular action of 
 the shoulders as though he somehow — cantered. 
 O'Malley remembered his vision of the Flying 
 Shapes. . . . 
 
 Towards the evening, however, the boy dis- 
 appeared, keeping close to his father's side, and after 
 dinner both retired early to their cabin. 
 
 And the ship, meanwhile, drew ever nearer to the 
 haunted land. 
 
XIX 
 
 'Privacy is ignorance.' — Josiah Royce. 
 
 Somewhat after the manner of things suffered 
 in vivid dreams, where surprise is numbed and 
 wonder becomes the perfect password, the Irishman 
 remembers the sequence of little events that filled 
 the following day. 
 
 Yet his excitement held nothing of the vicious 
 fling of fever ; it was spread over the entire being 
 rather than located hotly in the brain and blood 
 alone ; and it * derived,' as it were, from tracts of 
 his personality usually unstirred, atrophied indeed 
 in most men, that connected him as by a delicate 
 network of feelers with Nature and the Earth. He 
 came gradually to feel them, as a man in certain 
 abnormal conditions becomes conscious of the bodily 
 processes that customarily go on in himself without 
 definite recognition. 
 
 Stahl could have told him, had he cared to seek 
 the information, that this fringe of wider conscious- 
 ness, stretching to the stars and winds and earth, was 
 the very part that had caused his long unrest and 
 yearning — the part that knew the Earth as mother 
 and sought the sweet and savage freedom of what 
 he called with the poverty of modern terms — 
 primitive. The channels leading towards a state of 
 
 135 
 
136 THE CENTAUR xix 
 
 Cosmic Consciousness, one with the Earth Life, were 
 being now flushed and sluiced by the forces emanat- 
 ing from the persons of his new companions. 
 
 And as this new state slowly usurped command, 
 the readjustment of his spiritual economy thus 
 involved, caused other portions of himself to sink 
 into temporary abeyance. While it alarmed him, it 
 was too delicious to resist. He made no real 
 attempt to resist. Yet he knew full well that the 
 portion sinking thus out of sight was what folk with 
 such high pride call Reason, Judgment, Common 
 Sense ! 
 
 In common with animal, bird, and insect life, all 
 intimately close to Nature, he began to feel as 
 realities those subtle currents of the Earth's 
 personality by which the seals know direction in the 
 depths of a thousand-mile sea, by which the homing 
 pigeons blaze trails through space, birds fly south, 
 the wild bees know their pathways, and all simple 
 life, from the Red Indian to the Red Ant, acknow- 
 ledges the viewless guidance of the mother's envelop- 
 ing heart. The cosmic life ran through his being, 
 lighting signals, ofi^ering service, more — claiming 
 leadership. 
 
 With it, however, came no loss of individuality, 
 but rather a powerful increase of life by means of 
 which for the first time he dreamed of a fuller 
 existence which should eventually harmonize and 
 combine the ancient simplicity of soul that claimed 
 the Earth, with the modern complexity which, 
 indulged alone, rendered the world so ugly and 
 insignificant . . . ! He experienced an immense, 
 driving push upon what Bergson has called the 
 Slan vital of his being. 
 
 The opening charge of his new discovery, how- 
 
XIX THE CENTAUR 137 
 
 ever, was more than disconcerting, and it is not 
 surprising that he lost his balance. Its attack and 
 rush were overwhelming. Thus, it was a kind of 
 exalted speculative wonder lying behind his inner 
 joy that caused his mistakes. He had imagined, for 
 instance, that the first sight of Greece would bring 
 some climax of revelation, making clear to what 
 particular type of early life the spirits of his 
 companions conformed ; more, that they would then 
 betray themselves to one and all for what they were 
 in some effort to escape, in some act of unrestraint, 
 something, in a word, that would explain themselves 
 to the world of passengers, and focus them upon 
 the doctor's microscope for ever. 
 
 Yet when Greece showed her first fair rim of 
 outline, his companions still slept peacefully in their 
 bunks. The anticipated denouement did not appear. 
 Nothing happened. It was not the mere sight of so 
 much land lying upon the sea's cool cheek that 
 could prove vital in an adventure of such a kind. 
 For the adventure remained spiritual. O'Malley 
 had merely confused two planes of consciousness.. 
 As usual, he saw the thing 'whole' in that 
 extraordinary way to which his imagination alone 
 held the key ; and hence his error. 
 
 Yet the moment has ever remained for him one 
 of vital, stirring splendour, significant as life or 
 death. He remembers that he was early on deck 
 and saw the dawn blow up softly from behind the 
 islands with a fresh, salt wind that blew at 
 the same time like music into his very heart. 
 Golden clear it rose ; and just below, like the 
 petals of some vast, archetypal flower that gave it 
 birth, the low blue hills of coast and island opened 
 magically into blossom. The rocky cliffs of Matapan 
 
138 THE CENTAUR xix 
 
 slipped past ; the smooth, bare slopes of the ancient 
 shore-line followed ; treeless peaks and shoulders, 
 abrupt precipices, summits and ridges all exquisitely 
 rosy and alive. He had seen Greece before, yet 
 never thus, and the emotion that invaded every 
 corner of his larger consciousness lay infinitely 
 deeper than any mere pseudo-classical thrill he had 
 knov/n in previous years. He saw it, felt it, knew 
 it from within, instead of as a spectator from without. 
 This dawn-mood of the Earth was also his own ; 
 and upon his spirit, as upon her blue-crowned hills, 
 lay the tide of high light with its delicate swift blush. 
 He saw it with her — through one of her opened 
 eyes. 
 
 The hot hours the steamer lay in the Piraeus 
 Harbour were wearisome, the noise of loading and 
 unloading cargo worse even than at Catania. While 
 the tourist passengers hurried fussily ashore, carrying 
 guide-books and cameras, to chatter among the ruined 
 temples, he walked the decks alone, dreaming his 
 great dream, conscious that he spun through leagues 
 of space with the great Being who more and more 
 possessed him. Beyond the shipping and the masts 
 collected there from all the ports of the Mediterranean 
 and the Levant, he watched the train puffing slowly 
 to the station that lay in the shadow of Theseus' 
 Temple, but his eyes at the same time strained across 
 the haze towards Eleusis Bay, and while his ears 
 caught the tramping feet of the long Torchlight 
 Procession, some power of his remoter consciousness 
 divined the forms of hovering gods, expressions of 
 his vast Mother's personality with which, in worship, 
 this ancient people had believed it possible to merge 
 themselves. The significant truths that lay behind 
 the Higher Mysteries, degraded since because 
 
XIX THE CENTAUR 139 
 
 forgotten and misinterpreted, trooped powerfully 
 down into his mind. For the supreme act of this 
 profound cult, denied by a grosser age that seeks 
 to telephone to heaven, deeming itself thereby 
 
 * advanced,' lay in the union of the disciple with his 
 god, the god he worshipped all his life, and into 
 whose Person he slipped finally at death by a kind 
 of marriage rite. 
 
 * The gods ! ' ran again through his mind with 
 passion and delight, as the letter of his early studies 
 returned upon him, accompanied now for the first 
 time by the in-living spirit that interpreted them. 
 
 * The gods ! — Moods of her giant life, manifestations 
 of her spreading Consciousness pushed outwards, 
 Powers of life and truth and beauty . . . ! ' 
 
 And, meanwhile. Dr. Stahl, sometimes from a 
 distance, sometimes coming close, kept over him a 
 kind of half- paternal, half- professional attendance, 
 the Irishman accepting his ministrations without 
 resentment, almost with indifference. 
 
 ' I shall be on deck between two and three in the 
 morning to see the comet,' the German observed to 
 him casually towards evening as they met on the 
 bridge. * We may meet perhaps ' 
 
 ' All right, doctor ; it's more than possible,' 
 replied O'Malley, realizing how closely he was 
 being watched. 
 
 In his mind at the moment another sentence ran, 
 the thought growing stronger and stronger within 
 him as the day declined : 
 
 * It will come to-night — come as an inner 
 catastrophe not unlike that of death ! I shall hear 
 the call — to escape. . . .' 
 
 For he knew, as well as if it had been told to 
 
I40 THE CENTAUR xix 
 
 him in so many words that the sleep of his two com- 
 panions all day was in the nature of a preparation. 
 The fluid projections of themselves were all the time 
 active elsewhere. Their bodies heavily slumbered ; 
 their spirits were out and alert. Summoned forth 
 by those strange and radiant evocative forces that 
 even in the dullest minds ' Greece ' stirs into life, 
 they had temporarily escaped. Again he saw those 
 shapes of cloud and wind moving with swift freedom 
 over the long, bare hills. Again and again the image 
 returned. With the night a similar separation of 
 the personality might come to himself too. Stahl's 
 warning passed in letters of fire across his inner sight. 
 With a relief that yet contained uneasiness he watched 
 his shambling figure disappear down the stairway. 
 He was alone. 
 
XX 
 
 *To everything that a man does he must give his undivided atten- 
 tion or his Ego. When he has done this, thoughts soon arise in him, 
 or else a new method of apprehension miraculously appears. . . . 
 
 ' Very remarkable it is that through this play of his personality man 
 first becomes aware of his specific freedom, and that it seems to him 
 as though he awaked out of a deep sleep, as though he were only now 
 at home in the world, and as if the light of day were breaking now 
 over his interior life for the first time. . . . The substance of these 
 impressions which affect us we call Nature, and thus Nature stands 
 in an immediate relationship to those functions of our bodies which 
 we call senses. Unknown and mysterious relations of our body allow 
 us to surmise unknown and mysterious correlations with Nature, and 
 therefore Nature is that wondrous fellowship into which our bodies 
 introduce us, and which we learn to know through the mode of its 
 constitutions and abilities.' — Novalis, Disciples at Sais, Translated 
 by U. C. B. 
 
 And so, at last, the darkness came, a starry darkness 
 of soft blue shadows and phosphorescent sea out of 
 which the hills of the Cyclades rose faint as pictures 
 of floating smoke a wind might waft away like 
 flowers to the sky. 
 
 The plains of Marathon lay far astern, blushing 
 faintly with their scarlet tamarisk blossoms. The 
 strange purple glow of sunset upon Hymettus had 
 long since faded. A hush grew over the sea, now 
 a marvellous cobalt blue. The earth, gently sleeping, 
 manifested dreamily. Into the subconscious state 
 passed one half of her huge, gentle life. 
 
 The Irishman, responding to the eternal spell of 
 her dream-state, experienced in quite a new way the 
 
 141 
 
142 THE CENTAUR xx 
 
 magic of her Night- Mood. He found it more 
 difficult than ever to realize as separate entities the 
 little things that moved about through the upper 
 surface of her darkness. Wings of silver, powerfully 
 whirring, swept his soul onwards to another place — 
 towards Home. 
 
 And the two worlds intermingled oddly. These 
 little separate * outer things ' going to and fro so 
 busily became as symbols more or less vital, more 
 or less transparent. They varied according to their 
 simplicity. Some of them were channels that led 
 directly where he was going ; others, again, had lost 
 all connection with their vital source and centre of 
 existence. To the former belonged the sailors, 
 children, the tired birds that rested on the ship as 
 they journeyed northwards, swallows, doves, and 
 little travellers with breasts of spotted yellow that 
 nested in the rigging ; even, in a measure, the gentle, 
 brown-eyed priest ; but to the latter, the noisy, 
 vulgar, beer-drinking tourists, and, especially, the 
 fur - merchant. . . . Stahl, interpreter and inter- 
 mediary, hovered between — incarnate compromise. 
 
 Escaping from everybody, at length, he made his 
 way into the bows ; there, covered by the stars, he 
 waited. And the thing he waited for — he felt it 
 coming over him with a kind of massive sensation as 
 little local as heat or cold — was that disentanglement 
 of a part of his personality from the rest against 
 which Stahl had warned him. That portion of 
 his complex personality in which resided desire 
 and longing, matured during these many years of 
 poignant nostalgia, was now slowly and deliberately 
 loosening out from the parent centre. It was the 
 vehicle of his Urwelt yearnings ; and the Urwelt 
 was about to draw it forth. The Call was on its way. 
 
XX THE CENTAUR 143 
 
 Hereabouts, then, near the Isles of Greece, lay a 
 channel to the Earth's far youth, a channel for some 
 reason still unclosed. His companions knew it ; he, 
 too, had half divined it. The increased psychic 
 activity of all three as they approached Greece 
 seemed explained. The sign — would it be through 
 hearing, sight, or touch ? — would shortly come that 
 should convince. 
 
 That very afternoon Stahl had said — ' Greece will 
 betray them,' and he had asked : * Their true form 
 and type ? ' And for answer the old man did an 
 expressive thing, far more convincing than words : 
 he bent forwards and downwards. He made as 
 though to move a moment on all fours. 
 
 O'Malley remembered the brief and vital scene 
 now. The word, however, persistently refused to 
 come into his mind. Because the word was really 
 inadequate, describing but partially a form and 
 outline symbolical of far more, — a measure of 
 Nature and Deity alike. 
 
 And so, as a man dreading the entrance to a 
 great adventure that he yet desires, the Irishman 
 waited there alone beneath the cloud of night. . . . 
 Soft threads of star-gold, trailing the sea, wove with 
 the darkness a veil that hid from his eyes the world 
 of crude effects. All memory of the casual realities 
 of modern life that so distressed his soul, fled far 
 away. The archetypal world, soul of the Earth, 
 swam close about him, enormous and utterly simple. 
 He seemed alone in some hollow of the night which 
 Time had overlooked, and where the powers of sea 
 and air held him in the stretch of their gigantic, 
 changeless hands. In this hollow lay the entrance to 
 the channel down which he presently might flash 
 back to that primal Garden of the Earth's first 
 
144 THE CENTAUR xx 
 
 beauty — her Golden Age . . . down which, at any 
 rate, the authoritative Call he awaited was to 
 come. ... * Oh ! what a power has white sim- 
 plicity ! ' 
 
 Wings from the past, serene and tranquil, bore 
 him towards this ancient peace where echoes of life's 
 brazen clash to-day could never enter. Ages before 
 Greece, of course, it had flourished, yet Greece had 
 caught some flying remnant ere it left the world of 
 men, and for a period had striven to renew its life, 
 though by poetry but half believed. Over the vales 
 and hills of Hellas this mood had lingered bravely 
 for a while, then passed away for ever ... and 
 those who dreamed of its remembrance remain home- 
 less and lonely, seeking it ever again in vain, lost 
 citizens, rejected by the cycles of vainer life and 
 action that succeeded. 
 
 The Spirit of the Earth, yes, whispered in his ears 
 as he waited covered by the night and stars. She 
 called him, as though across all the forests on her 
 breast the long sweet winds went whispering his 
 name. Lying there upon the coils of thick and 
 tarry rope, the Urwelt caught him back with her 
 splendid passion. Currents of Earth life, quasi-deific, 
 gentle as the hands of little children, tugged softly 
 at this loosening portion of his Self, urging his very 
 lips, as it were, once more to the mighty Mother's 
 breasts. Again he saw those cloud-like shapes career- 
 ing over long, bare hills . . . and almost knew him- 
 self among them as they raced with streaming winds 
 . . . free, ancient comrades among whom he was no 
 longer alien and outcast, including his two companions 
 of the steamer. The early memory of the Earth 
 became his own ; as a part of her, he shared it too. 
 
 The Urwelt closed magnificently about him. 
 
XX THE CENTAUR 145 
 
 Vast shapes of power and beauty, other than human, 
 once his comrades thus, but since withdrawn because 
 denied by a pettier age, moved up, huge and dim, 
 across the sham barriers of time and space, singing 
 the great Earth-Song of welcome in his ears. The 
 whisper grew awfully. . . . The Spirit of the Earth 
 flew close and called upon him with a shout . . . ! 
 
 Then, out of this amazing reverie, he woke 
 abruptly to the consciousness that some one was 
 approaching him stealthily, yet with speed, through 
 the darkness. With a start he sat up, peering about 
 him. There was dew on his clothes and hair. The 
 stars, he saw, had shifted their positions. 
 
 He heard the surge of the water from the vessel's 
 bows below. The line of the shore lay close on 
 either side. Overhead he saw the black threads of 
 rigging, quivering with the movement of the ship ; 
 the swaying mast-head light ; the dim, round funnels ; 
 the confused shadows where the boats swung — and 
 nearer, moving between the ropes and windlasses, 
 this hurrying figure whose approach had disturbed 
 him in his gorgeous dream. 
 
 And O'Malley divined at once that, though in 
 one sense a portion of his dream, it belonged out- 
 wardly to the same world as this long dark steamer 
 that trailed after him across the sea. A piece of his 
 vision, as it were, had broken off and remained in 
 the cruder world wherein his body lay upon these 
 tarry ropes. The boy came up and stood a moment 
 by his side in silence, then, stooping to the level of 
 his head, he spoke : — 
 
 ' Come,' he said in low tones of joy ; * come ! 
 We wait long for you already ! ' 
 
 The words, like music, floated over the sea, as 
 O'Malley took the outstretched hand and sufl^ered 
 
 L 
 
146 THE CENTAUR xx 
 
 himself to be led quickly towards the lower deck. 
 He walked at first as in a dream continued after 
 waking ; more than once it seemed as though they 
 stepped together from the boards and moved through 
 space towards the line of peaked hills that fringed the 
 steamer's course so close. For through the salt night 
 air ran a perfimie that suggested flowers, earth, and 
 woods, and there seemed no break in the platforms 
 of darkness that knit sea and shore to the very sub- 
 stance of the vesseL 
 
XXI 
 
 The lights in the saloon were out, the smoking-room 
 empty, the passengers in bed. The ship seemed 
 entirely deserted. Only, on the bridge, the shadow 
 of the first officer paced quietly to and fro. Then, 
 suddenly, as they approached the stem, O'Malley 
 discerned another figure, huge and motionless, ag^nst 
 the background of phosphorescent foam ; and at the 
 first glance it was exactly as though he had detached 
 from the background of his mind one of those 
 Flying Outlines upon the hills — and caught it there, 
 arrested visibly at last. 
 
 He moved along, fairly sure of himself, yet with 
 a tumult of confused sensations, as if consciousness 
 were transferring itself now more rapidly to that 
 portion of him which sought to escape. 
 
 Leaning forward, in a stooping posture over the 
 bulwarks, wrapped in the flowing cape he sometimes 
 wore, the man's back and shoulders married so 
 intimately with the night that it was hard to determine 
 the dividing line between the two. So much more 
 of the deck behind him, and of the sky immediately 
 beyond his ;ieck, was obliterated than by any possible 
 human oudine. Whether owing to obliquity of 
 disturbed vision, tricks of shadow, or movement of 
 the vessel between the stars and foam, the Irishman 
 saw these singular emanations spread about him into 
 
 147 
 
148 THE CENTAUR xxi 
 
 space. He saw them this time directly. And more 
 than ever before they seemed in some way right and 
 comely — true. They were in no sense monstrous ; 
 they reported beauty, though a beauty cloaked in 
 power. 
 
 And, watching him, O'M alley felt that this loosen- 
 ing portion of himself, as once before in the little 
 cabin, likewise began to grow and spread. Within 
 some ancient fold of the Earth's dream-consciousness 
 they both lay caught. In some mighty Dream of 
 her planetary Spirit, dim, immense, slow-moving, 
 they played their parts of wonder. Already they 
 lay close enough to share the currents of her subcon- 
 scious activities. And the dream, as she turned in 
 her vast, spatial sleep, was a dream of a time long 
 gone. 
 
 Here, amid the loneliness of deserted deck and 
 night, this illusion of bulk was more than ever before 
 outwardly impressive, and as he yielded to the 
 persuasion of the boy's hand, he was conscious of 
 a sudden wild inclination to use his own arms and 
 legs in a way he had never before known or dreamed 
 of, yet that seemed curiously familiar. The balance 
 and adjustment of his physical frame sought to shift 
 and alter ; neck and shoulders, as it were, urged 
 forward ; there came a singular pricking in the loins, 
 a rising of the back, a thrusting up and outwards of 
 the chest. He felt that something grew behind him 
 with a power that sought to impel or drive him in 
 advance and out across the world at a terrific gait ; 
 and the hearing of his ears became of a sudden 
 intensely acute. While his body moved ordinarily, 
 he knew that a part of him that was not body moved 
 — otherwise, that he neither walked, ran, nor stepped 
 upon two feet, but — galloped. The motion pro- 
 
XXI ' THE CENTAUR 149 
 
 claimed him kin with the flying shapes upon the hills. 
 At the heart of this portion which sought to detach 
 itself from his central personality — which, indeed, 
 seemed already half escaped — he cantered. 
 
 The experience lasted but a second — this swift, 
 free motion of the escaping Double — then passed 
 away like those flashes of memory that rise and 
 vanish again before they can be seized for examina- 
 tion. He shook himself free of the unaccountable 
 obsession, and with the effort of returning to the 
 actual present, the passing-outwards was temporarily 
 checked. And it was then, just as he held himself 
 in hand again, that glancing sideways, he became 
 aware that the boy beside him had, like his parent, 
 also changed — grown large and shadowy with a similar 
 suggestion of another splendid outline. The extension 
 already half accomplished in himself and fully accom- 
 plished in the father, was in process of accomplish- 
 ment in the smaller figure of the son. Clothed in 
 the emerged true shape of their inner being they 
 slowly revealed themselves. It was as bewildering as 
 watching death, and as stern and beautiful. 
 
 For the boy, still holding his hand, loped along 
 beside him as though the projection that emanated 
 from him, grown almost physical, were somehow diffi- 
 cult to manage. 
 
 In the moment of nearer, smaller consciousness 
 that yet remained to him, O'Malley recalled the 
 significant pantomime of Dr. Stahl two days before 
 in the cabin. It came with a rush of fire. The 
 warning operated ; his caution instantly worked. 
 He dropped the hand, let the clinging fingers slip 
 from his own, overcome by something that appalled. 
 For this, surely, was the inner catastrophe that he 
 dreaded, the radical internal dislocation of his per- 
 
I50 THE CENTAUR xxi 
 
 sonality that involved — death. The thing that had 
 happened, or was happening to these other two, was 
 on the edge of fulfilment in himself — before he was 
 either ready or had decided to accept it. 
 
 At any rate he hesitated ; and the hesitation, 
 shifting his centre of consciousness back into his 
 brain, checked and saved him. A confused sense of 
 forces settling back within himself followed ; a kind 
 of rush and scuttle of moods and powers : and he 
 remained temporarily master of his being, recovering 
 balance and command. Twice already — in that 
 cabin-scene, as also on the deck when Stahl had 
 seized him — the moment had come close. Now, 
 again, had he kept hold of the boy's grasp, that inner 
 transformation, which should later become exter- 
 nalized, must have completed itself. 
 
 ' No, no ! * he tried to cry aloud, * for Tm not yet 
 ready ! ' But his voice rose scarcely above a whisper. 
 The decision of his will, however, had produced 
 the desired result. The ' illusion,* so strangely born, 
 had passed, at any rate for the time. He knew once 
 more the glory of the steadfast stars, realized that he 
 walked normally upon a steamer's deck, heard with 
 welcome the surge of the sea below, and felt the 
 peace of this calm southern night as they coasted 
 with two hundred sleeping tourists between the 
 islands and the Grecian mainland. . . . He remem- 
 bered the fur-merchant, the Armenian priest, the 
 Canadian drummer. . . . 
 
 It seemed his feet half tripped, or at least that he 
 put out a hand to steady himself against the ship's 
 long roll, for the pair of them moved up to the big 
 man's side with a curious, rushing motion that 
 brought them all together with a mild collision. And 
 the boy laughed merrily, his laughter like singing 
 
XXI THE CENTAUR 151 
 
 half completed. O'Malley remembers the little 
 detail, because it serves to show that he was yet still 
 in a state of intensified consciousness, far above the 
 normal level. It was still * like walking in my sleep 
 or acting out some splendid dream,* as he put it in 
 his written version. ' Half out of my body, if you 
 like, though in no sense of the words at all half out 
 of my mind ! ' 
 
XXII 
 
 What followed he relates with passion, half con- 
 fused. Without speaking the big Russian turned his 
 head by way of welcome, and O'Malley saw that 
 the proportions of it were magnificent like a frag- 
 ment of the night and sky. Though too dark to 
 read the actual expression in the eyes, he detected 
 their gleam of joy and splendour. The whole pre- 
 sentment of the man was impressive beyond any words 
 that he could find. Massive, yet charged with swift 
 and alert vitality, he reared there through the night, 
 his inner self now toweringly manifested. At any 
 other time, and without the preparation already 
 undergone, the sight might almost have terrified ; 
 now it only uplifted. For in similar fashion, though 
 lesser in degree, because the mould was smaller, and 
 hesitation checked it, this very transformation had 
 been going forward within himself 
 
 The three of them leaned there upon the rails, 
 rails oddly dwindled now to the size of a toy steamer, 
 while thus the spirit of the dreaming Earth swam 
 round and through them, awful in power, yet at 
 the same time gentle, winning, seductive as wild 
 flowers in the spring. And it was this delicate, hair- 
 like touch of delight, magical with a supreme and 
 utterly simple innocence, that made the grandeur of 
 
 152 
 
XKII 
 
 THE CENTAUR 153 
 
 the whole experience still easily manageable, and terror 
 in it ail unknown. 
 
 The Irishman stood on the outside, towards the 
 vessel's stern, next him the father, beyond, the boy. 
 They touched. A current like a river in flood swept 
 through all three. 
 
 He, too, was caught within those visible extensions 
 of their personalities ; all again, caught within the 
 consciousness of the Earth. Across the sea they 
 gazed together in silence — waiting. 
 
 It was the Oro passage, where the mainland 
 hills on the west and the Isle of Tenos on the 
 east draw close together, and the steamer passes for 
 several miles so near to Greece that the boom of 
 surf upon the shore is audible. That night, how- 
 ever, the sea lay too still for surf; it whispered 
 softly in its sleep ; and in its sleep, too, listened. 
 They heard its multitudinous rush of voices as the 
 surge below raced by — a giant frieze in which the 
 phosphorescence painted dancing forms and palely 
 luminous faces. Unsubstantial shapes of foam held 
 hands in continuous array below the waves, lit by 
 soft-sea-lanterns strung together along the steamer's 
 sides. 
 
 Yet it was not these glimmering shapes the three 
 of them watched, thus intently silent. The lens of 
 yearning focussed not in sight. Down the great 
 channel at whose opening they stood, leading straight 
 to the Earth's old central heart, the message of com- 
 munion would not be a visual one. The sensitive 
 fringe of their stretched personalities, contacting 
 thus actually the consciousness of the planet-soul, 
 would quiver to a reaction of another kind. This 
 point of union, already affected, would presently 
 report itself, unmistakably, yet not to the eyes. The 
 
154 THE CENTAUR xxii 
 
 increased acuteness of the Irishman's hearing — a kind 
 of interior hearing — quickly supplied the key. It 
 was that all three — listened. 
 
 Some primitive sound of Earth would presently 
 vibrate through their extended beings with an 
 authoritative sweet thunder not to be denied. By a 
 Voice, a Call, the Earth would tell them that she 
 heard ; that lovingly she was aware of their presence 
 in her heart. She would call them, with the voice of 
 one of their own kind. 
 
 How strange it all was ! Enormous in con- 
 ception, enormous in distance, scope, stretch ! Yet 
 so tiny, intimate, sweet ! And this vast splendour 
 was to report itself by one of the insignificant little 
 channels by which men, locked in cramped physical 
 bodies, interpret the giant universe — a trivial sense- 
 impression ! That so terrible a communication could 
 reach the soul via the quivering of a wee material 
 nerve was on a par with that other grave splendour 
 — that God can exist in the heart of a child. 
 
 Thus, dimly, yet with an authority that shakes 
 the soul, may little human hearts divine the Immen- 
 sities that travel with a thunder of great glory close 
 about their daily life. Through regions of their 
 sub-liminal consciousness, which transcends the re- 
 stricted physical expression of it called personality 
 as the moisture of the world transcends a drop of 
 water, deific presences pass grandly to and fro. 
 
 For here, to this wild-hearted Irishman with the 
 forbidden strain of the Urmensch in his blood, came 
 the sharp and instant revelation that the Conscious- 
 ness is not contained skin-tight about the body. It 
 spread enormously about him, remote, extended ; and 
 in some distant tract of it this strange occurrence 
 took place. The idea of distance and extension, 
 
XXII THE CENTAUR 155 
 
 of course, were merely intellectual concepts, like that 
 of Time. For what happened, happened near and 
 close, beside, within his actual physical person. 
 That physical person, with its brain, however, he 
 realized, was but a fragment of his total Self. A 
 broken piece of the occurrence filtered through from 
 beyond and fell upon the deck at his feet. The rest 
 he divined, seeing it whole. Only the little bit, 
 however, has he found the language to describe. 
 
 And that for which all three listened was already 
 on the way. For ever it had been * happening,' yet 
 only reached them now because they were ready and 
 open to it. Events upon the physical plane, he 
 grasped, represented the last feeble expression of 
 things that had happened interiorly with a vaster 
 power long ago — and are ever happening still. 
 This sound they listened for, coming from the Spirit 
 of the Earth, lay ever close to men's ears, divinely 
 sweet and splendid. It seemed born somewhere in 
 the heart of the blue gloom that draped the hills 
 of Greece. Thence, across the peaked mountains, 
 stretched the immense pipe of starry darkness that 
 carried it towards them as along a channel. Made 
 possible of approach by the ancient passion of beauty 
 that Greece once knew, it ran down upon the world 
 into their hearts, direct from the Being of the Earth. 
 
 With a sudden rush, it grew nearer, swelling with 
 a draught of sound that sucked whole spaces of sky 
 and sea and stars with it. It emerged. They heard, 
 all three. 
 
 Above the pulse and tremble of the steamer's 
 engines, above the surge and gurgle of the sea, a cry 
 swept towards them from the shore. Long-drawn, 
 sweetly-penetrating, yet with some strident accent 
 of power and command, this voice of Earth rushed 
 
156 THE CENTAUR xxii 
 
 upon them over the quiet water — then died away 
 again among the mountains and the night. Its 
 passage through the sky was torrential. The whole 
 pouring flood of it dipped back with abrupt swift- 
 ness into silence. The Irishman understood that but 
 an echo of its main volume had come through. 
 
 A deep, convulsive movement ran over the great 
 body at his side, and at once communicated itself 
 to the boy beyond. Father and son straightened 
 up abruptly as though the same force lifted both ; 
 then stretched down and forwards over the bulwarks. 
 They seemed to shake themselves free of something. 
 Neither spoke. Something utterly overwhelming 
 lay in that moment. For the cry was at once of 
 enchanting sweetness, yet with a deep and dreadful 
 authority that overpowered. It invited the very 
 soul. 
 
 A moment of silence followed, and the cry was 
 then repeated, thinner, fainter, already further away. 
 It seemed withdrawn, sunk more deeply into the 
 night, higher up, too, floating away northwards into 
 remoter vales and glens that lay beyond the shore- 
 line. Though still a single cry, there were distinct 
 breaks of utterance in it this time, as of words. It 
 was, of a kind — speech : a Message, a Summons, a 
 Command that somehow held entreaty at its heart. 
 
 And this time the appeal in it was irresist- 
 ible. Father and son started forwards as though 
 deliberately pulled ; while from himself shot outwards 
 that loosening portion of his being that all the even- 
 ing had sought release. The vehicle of his yearn- 
 ings, passionately summoned, leaped to the ancient 
 call of the Earth's eternally young life. This vital 
 essence of his personality, volatile as air and fierce as 
 lightning, flashed outwards from its hidden prison 
 
XXII THE CENTAUR 157 
 
 where it lay choked and smothered by the weights 
 and measures of modern life. For the beauty and 
 splendour of that far voice wrung his very heart and 
 set it free. He knew a quasi-physical wrench of 
 detachment. A wild and tameless glory fused the 
 fastenings of ages. 
 
 Only the motionless solidity of the great figure 
 beside him prevented somehow the complete escape, 
 and made him understand that the Call just then 
 was not for all three of them, especially not for 
 himself. The parent rose beside him, massive and 
 stable, secure as the hills which were his true home, 
 and the boy broke suddenly into happy speech which 
 was wild and singing. 
 
 He looked up swiftly into his parent's steady 
 visage. 
 
 ' Father ! * he cried in tones that merged half 
 with the wind, half with the sea, * it is his voice ! 
 Chiron calls — ! ' His eyes shone like stars, his 
 young face was alight with joy and passion. — * Go, 
 father, jo«, or — ' 
 
 He stopped an instant, catching the Irishman's 
 eyes upon his own across the form between them. 
 
 ' — or you ! ' he added with a laughter of delight ; 
 ^ you go ! ' 
 
 The big figure straightened up, standing back a 
 pace from the rails. A low sound rolled from him 
 that was like an echo of thunder among hills. With 
 slow, laborious distinctness it broke off into fragments 
 that were words, with great difficulty uttered, but 
 with a final authority that rendered them command. 
 
 ' No,' O'Malley heard, * you — first. And — carry 
 word — that we — are — on the way.' Staring out 
 across the sea and sky he boomed it deeply. 
 * You — first. We— follow — ! ' And the speech 
 
158 THE CENTAUR xxii 
 
 seemed to flow from the entire surface of his body 
 rather than from the lips alone. The sea and air 
 mothered the syllables. Thus might the Night 
 herself have spoken. 
 
 Chiron ! The word, with its clue of explanation, 
 flamed about him with a roar. Was this, then, the 
 type of cosmic life to which his companions, and 
 himself with them, inwardly approximated . , ,} 
 
 The same instant, before O'Malley could move 
 a muscle to prevent, the boy climbed the rails with 
 an easy, vaulting motion that was swift yet oddly 
 spread, and dropped straight down into the sea. He 
 fell ; and as he fell it was as if the passage through 
 the air drew out a part of him again like smoke. 
 Whether it was due to the flying cloak, or to some 
 dim wizardry of the shadows, there grew over him 
 an instantaneous transformation of outline that was 
 far more marked than anythihg before. For as 
 the steamer drew onwards, and the body thus 
 passed in its downward flight close beneath 
 O'Malley's eyes, he saw that the boy was making 
 the first preparatory motions of swimming, — 
 movements, however, that were not the horizontal 
 sweep of a pair of human arms, but rather the 
 vertical strokes of a swimming animal. He pawed 
 the air. 
 
 The surprise of the whole unexpected thing came 
 upon him with a crash that brought him back 
 effectually again into himself. That part of him, 
 already half emerged in similar escape, now flashed 
 back sheath-like within him. The inner catastrophe 
 he dreaded while desiring it, had not yet completed 
 itself. 
 
 He heard no splash, for the ship was high out of 
 the water, and the place where the body met the sea 
 
XXII THE CENTAUR 159 
 
 already lay far astern ; but when the momentary 
 arrest of his faculties had passed and he found his 
 voice to cry for help, the father turned upon him 
 like a lion and clapped a great, encompassing hand 
 upon his mouth. 
 
 * Quiet ! ' his deep voice boomed. ' It is well — 
 and he — is — safe.' 
 
 And across the huge and simple visage ran an 
 expression of such supreme happiness, while in his 
 act and gesture lay such convincing power, that the 
 Irishman felt himself overborne and forced to 
 acknowledge another standard of authority that 
 somjshow made the whole thing right. To cry 
 ' man overboard,' to stop the ship, throw life-buoys 
 and the rest, was not only unnecessary, but foolish. 
 The boy was safe ; it was well with him ; he was 
 not * lost ' . . . 
 
 'See,' said the parent's deep voice, breaking in 
 upon his thoughts as he drew him to one side with 
 a certain vehemence, ' See ! ' 
 
 He pointed downwards. And there, between 
 them, half in the scuppers, against their very feet, 
 lay the huddled body upon the deck, the arms out- 
 stretched, the face turned upwards to the stars. 
 
 The bewilderment that followed was like the 
 confusion which exists between two states of con- 
 sciousness when the mind passes from sleep to 
 waking, or vice versa. O'Malley lost that power 
 of attention which enables a man to concentrate on 
 details sufficiently to recall their exact sequence after- 
 wards with certainty. 
 
 Two things, however, stood out and he tells 
 them briefly enough : first, that the joy upon the 
 father's face rendered an oiFer of sympathy ludicrous ; 
 
i6o THE CENTAUR 
 
 XXII 
 
 secondly, that Dr. Stahl was again upon the scene 
 with a promptness which proved him to have been 
 close at hand all the time. 
 
 It was between two and three in the morning, 
 the rest of the passengers asleep still, but Captain 
 Burgenfelder and the first officer appeared soon after 
 and an orderly record of the affair was drawn up 
 formally. The depositions of the father and of 
 himself were duly taken down in writing, witnessed, 
 and all the rest. 
 
 The scene in the doctor's cabin remains vividly 
 in his mind : the huge Russian standing by the door 
 — for he refused a seat — incongruously smiling in 
 contrast to the general gravity, his mind obviously 
 brought by an effort of concentration to each ques- 
 tion ; the others seated round the desk some distance 
 away, leaving him in a space by himself; the 
 scratching of the doctor's pointed pen ; the still, 
 young outline underneath the canvas all through the 
 long pantomime, lying upon a couch at the back 
 where the shadows gathered thickly. And then the 
 gust of fresh wind that came in with a little song as 
 they opened the door at the end, and saw the crimson 
 dawn reflected in the dewy, shining boards of the 
 deck. The father, throwing the Irishman a signi- 
 ficant and curious glance, was out to join it on the 
 instant. 
 
 Syncope, produced by excitement, cause unknown, 
 was the scientific verdict, and an immediate burial 
 at sea the parent's wish. As the sun rose over the 
 highlands of Asia Minor it was carried into effect. 
 
 But the father's eyes followed not the drop. 
 They gazed with rapt, intent expression in another 
 direction where the shafts of sunrise sped across 
 the sea towards the glens and dales of distant Pelion. 
 
xxir THE CENTAUR i6i 
 
 At the sound of the plunge he did not even turn his 
 eyes. He pointed, gathering O'Malley somehow 
 into the gesture, across the iEgean Sea to where 
 the shores of north-western Arcadia lay below the 
 horizon, raised his arms with a huge sweep of 
 welcome to the brightening sky, then turned and 
 went below without a single word. 
 
 For a few minutes, puzzled and perhaps a little 
 awed, the group of sailors and ship's officers re- 
 mained standing with bared heads, then disappeared 
 silently in their turn, leaving the decks to the sunrise 
 and the wind 
 
 M 
 
XXIII 
 
 But O'Malley did not immediately return to his 
 own cabin ; he yielded to Dr. StahFs persuasion and 
 dropped into the arm-chair he had already occupied 
 more than once, watching his companion's prepara- 
 tions with the lamp and coffee-pot. 
 
 With his eyes, that is, he watched, staring, as men 
 say, absent-mindedly ; for the fact was, only a little 
 bit of him hovered there about his weary physical 
 frame. The rest of him was off somewhere else 
 across the threshold — subliminal : below, with the 
 Russian, beyond with the travelling spirit of the 
 boy; but the major portion, out deep in space, 
 reclaimed by the Earth. 
 
 So, at least, it felt ; for the circulation of blood 
 in his brain ran low and physicd sensation there was 
 almost none. The driving impulse upon the out- 
 lying tracts of consciousness usually submerged had 
 been tremendous. 
 
 ' That time,' he heard Stahl saying in an oddly 
 distant voice from across the cabin, ' you were nearly 
 — out ' 
 
 ' You heard } You saw it all ? ' he murmured 
 as in half-sleep. For it was an effort to focus his 
 mind even upon simple words. 
 
 The reply he hardly caught, though he felt the 
 significant stare of the man's eye upon him and 
 
 162 
 
XXIII THE CENTAUR 163 
 
 divined the shaking of his head. His life still 
 pulsed and throbbed far away outside his normal 
 self. Complete return was difficult. He felt all 
 over : with the wind and hills and sea, all his little 
 personal sensations tucked away and absorbed into 
 Nature. In the Earth he lay, pervading her whole 
 surface, still sharing her vaster life. With her 
 he moved, as with a greater, higher, and more 
 harmonious creation than himself. In large measure 
 the cosmic instincts still swept these quickened 
 fringes of his deep subconscious personality. 
 
 ' You know them now for what they are,' he 
 heard the doctor saying at the end of much else 
 he had entirely missed. 'The father will be the 
 next to go, and then — yourself. I warn you before 
 it is too late. Beware ! And — resist ! ' 
 
 His thoughts, and with them those subtle energies 
 of the soul that arc the vehicles of thought, followed 
 where the boy had gone. Deep streams of longing 
 swept him. The journey of that spirit, so singularly 
 released, drew half his forces after it. Thither the 
 bereaved parent and himself were also bound ; and 
 the lonely incompleteness of his life lay wholly 
 now explained. That cry within the dawn, though 
 actually it had l^een calling always, had at last 
 reached him ; hitherto he had caught only misin- 
 terpreted echoes of it. From the narrow body it 
 had called him forth. Another moment and he 
 would have known complete emancipation ; and 
 never could he forget that glorious sensation as the 
 vital essence tasted half release. Next time the pro- 
 cess should complete itself, and he would — go ! 
 
 * Drink this,' he heard abruptly in StahFs grating 
 voice, and saw him cross the cabin with a cnp of 
 steaming coffee. ' Concentrate your mind now upon 
 
1 64 THE CENTAUR xxiii 
 
 the things about you here. Return to the present. 
 And tell me, too, if you can bring yourself to do so,* 
 he added, stooping over him with the cup, * a little 
 of what you experienced. The return, I know, is 
 
 pain. But try — try * 
 
 *Like a little bit of death, yes,' murmured the 
 
 Irishman. * I feel caught again and caged small.' 
 
 He could have wept. This ugly little life ! 
 
 * Because youVe tasted a moment of genuine 
 cosmic consciousness and now you feel the limitations 
 of normal personality,' Stahl added, more soothingly. 
 He sat down beside him and sipped his own coffee. 
 
 * Dispersed about the whole earth I felt, deliciously 
 extended and alive,' O'Malley whispered with a faint 
 shiver as he glanced about the little cabin, noticing 
 the small windows and shut door. * Upholstery ' 
 oppressed him. * Now I'm back in prison again.' 
 
 There was silence for a moment. Then presently 
 the doctor spoke, as though he thought aloud, 
 expecting no reply. 
 
 * All great emotions,' he said in lowered tones, 
 * tap the extensions of the personality we now call 
 subconscious, and a man in anger, in love, in ecstasy 
 of any kind is greater than he knows. But to you 
 has come, perhaps, the greatest form of all — a definite 
 and instant merging with the being of the Earth 
 herself. You reached the point where you felt the 
 spirit of the planet's life. You almost crossed the 
 threshold — your extension edged into her own. 
 She bruised you, and you knew ' 
 
 * " Bruised " .^^ ' he asked, startled at the singular 
 expression into closer hearing. 
 
 * We are not " aware " of our interior,' he 
 answered, smiling a little, * until something goes 
 wrong and the attention is focussed. A keen sensa- 
 
xxni THE CENTAUR 165 
 
 tion — pain — and you become aware. Subconscious 
 processes then become consciously recognized. I 
 bruise your lung for instance ; you become conscious 
 of that lung for the first time, and feel it. You 
 gather it up from the general subconscious back- 
 ground into acute personal consciousness. Similarly, 
 a word or mood may sting and stimulate some phase 
 of your consciousness usually too remote to be 
 recognized. Last night — regions of your extended 
 Self, too distant for most men to realize their 
 existence at all, contacted the consciousness of the 
 Earth herself. She bruised you, and via that bruise 
 caught you up into her greater Self. You experienced 
 a genuine cosmic reaction.' 
 
 O'Malley listened, though hardly to the actual 
 words. Behind the speech, which was in difficult 
 German for one thing, his mind heard the rushing 
 past of this man's ideas. They moved together 
 along the same stream of thought, and the Irishman 
 knew that what he thus heard was true, at any rate, 
 for himself. And at the same time he recognized 
 with admiration the skill with which this scientific 
 mystic of a Schiffsarzt sought to lead him back 
 into the safer regions of his normal state. Stahl did 
 not now oppose or deny. Catching the wave of the 
 Celt's experience, he let his thought run sympatheti- 
 cally with it, alongside, as it were, guiding gently 
 and insinuatingly down to earth again. 
 
 And the result justified this cunning wisdom ; 
 O'Malley returned to the common world by degrees. 
 For it was enchanting to find his amazing adventure 
 explained even in this partial, speculative way. Who 
 else among his acquaintances would have listened at 
 all, much less admitted its possibility } 
 
 * But, why in particular me } ' he asked. * Can't 
 
1 66 THE CENTAUR 
 
 XXIII 
 
 everybody know these cosmic reactions you speak of?' 
 It was his intellect that asked the foolish question. 
 His whole Self knew the answer beforehand. 
 
 * Because/ replied the doctor, tapping his saucer 
 to emphasize each word, ' in some way you have 
 retained an almost unbelievable simplicity of heart 
 — an innocence singularly undefiled — a sort of primal, 
 spontaneous innocence that has kept you clean and 
 open. I venture even to suggest that shame, as most 
 men know it, has never come to you at all.' 
 
 The words sank down into him. Passing the 
 intellect that would have criticized, they nested deep 
 within where the intuition knew them true. Behind 
 the clumsy language that is, he caught the thought. 
 
 * As if I were a saint ! ' he laughed faintly. 
 
 Stahl shook his head. ' Rather, because you live 
 detached,' he replied, * and have never identified your 
 Self with the rubbish of life. The channels in you 
 are still open to these tides of larger existence. I 
 wish I had your courage.' 
 
 * While others .? ' 
 
 The German hesitated a moment. ' Most men,' 
 he said, choosing his words with evident care, ' are 
 too grossly organized to be aware that these reactions 
 of a wider consciousness can be possible at all. 
 Their minute normal Self they mistake for the whole, 
 hence denying even the experiences of others. '* Our 
 actual personality may be something considerably 
 unlike that conception of it which is based on our 
 present terrestrial consciousness — a form of conscious- 
 ness suited to, and developed by, our temporary 
 existence here, l?ui not necessarily more than a fraction 
 of our total self. It is quite credible that our entire 
 personality is never terrestrially manifest." ' ^ Obvi- 
 
 1 Oliver Lodge. 
 
XXIII 
 
 THE CENTAUR 167 
 
 ously he quoted. The Irishman had read the words 
 somewhere. He came back more and more into 
 the world — correlated, that is, the subconscious with 
 the conscious. 
 
 ' Yet consciousness apart from the brain is incon- 
 ceivable,' he interposed, more to hear the reply than 
 to express a conviction. 
 
 Whether Stahl divined his intention or not, he 
 gave no sign. 
 
 * " We cannot say with any security that the 
 stuff called brain is the only conceivable machinery 
 which mind and consciousness are able to utilize : 
 though it is true that we know no other." ' ^ The 
 last phrase he repeated : * " though it is true that we 
 know no other." * 
 
 O'Malley sank deeper into his chair, making no 
 reply. His mind clutched at the words * too grossly 
 organized,' and his thoughts ran back for a moment 
 to his daily life in London. He pictured his friends 
 and acquaintances there ; the men at his club, at 
 dinner-parties, in the parks, at theatres ; he heard 
 their talk- — shooting — destruction of exquisite life ; 
 horses, politics, women, and the rest ; yet good, 
 honest, lovable fellows all. But how did they breathi&j 
 in so small a world at all ? Practical-minded 
 specimens of the greatest civilization ever known j) 
 He recalled the heavy, dazed expression on the 
 faces of one or two to whom he had sometimes 
 dared to speak of those wider realms that were so 
 familiar to himself. . . . 
 
 * *' Though it is true that we know no other," ' 
 he heard Stahl repeating slowly as he looked down 
 into his cup and stirred the dregs. 
 
 Then, suddenly, the doctor rose and came over 
 1 IbU 
 
i68 THE CENTAUR xxm 
 
 to his side. His eyes twinkled, and he rubbed his 
 hands vigorously together as he spoke. He laughed. 
 
 ' For instance, I have no longer now the conscious- 
 ness of that coffee I have just swallowed,' he exclaimed, 
 * yet, if it disagreed with me, my consciousness of it 
 would return.' 
 
 ' The abnormal states you mean are a symptom 
 of disorder then } ' the Irishman asked, following 
 the analogy. 
 
 ' At present, yes,' was the reply, ' and will remain 
 so until their correlation with the smaller conscious 
 Self is better understood. These belligerent Powers 
 of the larger Consciousness are apt to overwhelm as 
 yet. That time, perhaps, is coming. Already a few 
 here and there have guessed that the states we call 
 hysteria and insanity, conditions of trance, hypnotism, 
 and the like, are not too satisfactorily explained.' 
 He peered down at his companion. ' If 1 could 
 study your Self at close quarters for a few years,' he 
 added significantly, * and under various conditions, I 
 might teach the world ! ' 
 
 * Thank you ! ' cried the Irishman, now wholly 
 returned into his ordinary self. He could think of 
 nothing else to say, yet he meant the words and gave 
 them vital meaning. He moved across to another 
 chair. Lighting a cigarette, he puffed out clouds of 
 smoke. He did not desire to be caught again 
 beneath this man's microscope. And in his mind 
 he had a sudden picture of the speculative and 
 experimenting doctor being * requested to sever his 
 connection ' with the great Hospital for the sake of 
 the latter's reputation. But Stahl, in no way offended, 
 was following his own thoughts aloud, half speaking 
 to himself. 
 
 '. . . For a being organized as you are, more 
 
XXIII THE CENTAUR 169 
 
 active in the outlying tracts of consciousness than in 
 the centres lying nearer home, — a being like yourself, 
 I say, might become aware of Other Life and other 
 personalities even more advanced and highly organized 
 than that of the Earth/ 
 
 A strange excitement came upon him, making his 
 eyes shine. He walked to and fro, O'Malley 
 watching him, a touch of alarm mingled with his 
 interest. 
 
 ' And to think of the great majority that denies 
 because they are — dead ! ' he cried. ' Smothered ! 
 Undivining ! Living in that uninspired fragment 
 which they deem the whole ! Ah, my friend,' — and 
 he came abruptly nearer — * the pathos, the comedy, 
 the pert self-sufficiency of their dull pride, the crass 
 stupidity and littleness of their denials, in the eyes 
 of those like ourselves who have actually known the 
 
 passion of the larger experience ! For all this 
 
 modern talk about a Subliminal Self is woven round 
 a profoundly significant truth, a truth newly discovered 
 and only just beginning to be understood. We are 
 much greater than we know, and there is a vast sub- 
 conscious part of us. But, what is more important 
 still, there is a super-consciousness as well. The 
 former represents what the race has discarded ; it is 
 past ; but the latter stands for what it reaches out to in 
 the future. The perfect man you dream of perhaps is 
 he who shall eventually combine the two, for there 
 is, I think, a vast amount the race has discarded 
 unwisely and prematurely. It is of value and will 
 have to be recovered. In the subconsciousness it lies 
 secure and waiting. But it is the super-consciousness 
 that you should aim for, not the other, for there lie 
 those greater powers which so mysteriously wait upon 
 the call of genius, inspiration, hypnotism, and the rest.' 
 
I70 THE CENTAUR xxiii 
 
 * One leads, though, to the other,' interrupted 
 O'Malley quickly. ' It is merely a question of the 
 swing of the pendulum ? ' 
 
 * Possibly,* was the laconic reply. 
 
 * They join hands, I mean, behind my back, as it 
 were.' 
 
 ' Possibly.' 
 
 * This stranger, then, may really lead me forward 
 and not back ? ' 
 
 * Possibly,' again was all the answer that he got. 
 For Stahl had stopped short, as though suddenly 
 
 aware that he had said too much, betraying himself in 
 the sudden rush of interest and excitement. The face 
 for a moment had seemed quite young, but now the 
 flush faded, and the light died out from his eyes. 
 O'Malley never understood how the change came 
 about so quickly, for in a moment, it seemed, the 
 doctor was calm again, quietly lighting one of his 
 black cigars over by the desk, peering at him half 
 quizzingly, half mockingly through the smoke. 
 
 * So I urge you again,' he was saying, as though 
 the rest had been some interlude that the Irishman 
 had half imagined, * to proceed with the caution of 
 this sane majority, the caution that makes for safety. 
 Your friend, as I have already suggested to you, is a 
 direct expression of the cosmic life of the earth. 
 Perhaps, you have guessed by now, the particular 
 type and form. Do not submit your inner life too 
 completely to his guidance. Contain your Self — and 
 resist — while it is yet possible.' 
 
 And while he sat on there, sipping hot coffee, half 
 listening to the words that warned of danger while 
 at the same time they cunningly urged him forwards, 
 it seemed that the dreams of childhood revived in 
 him with a power that ofc^l iterated this present day — 
 
XXIII THE CENTAUR 171 
 
 the childhood, however, not of his mere body, but of 
 his spirit, when the world herself was young. . . . 
 He, too, had dwelt in Arcady, known the free life 
 of splendour and simplicity in some Saturnian 
 Reign ; for now this dream, but half remembered, 
 half believed, though eternally yearned for — dream 
 of a Golden Age untouched by Time, still there, 
 still accessible, still inhabited, was actually coming 
 true. 
 
 It surely was that old Garden of innocence and 
 joy where the soul, while all unvexed by a sham and 
 superficial civilization of the mind, might yet know 
 growth — a realm half divined by saints and poets, 
 but to the gross majority forgotten or denied. 
 
 The Simple Life ! This new interpretation of it 
 
 at first overwhelmed. The eyes of his soul turned 
 
 wild with glory; the passion that o'er-runs the 
 
 world in desolate places was his ; his, too, the 
 
 strength of rushing rivers that coursed their parent's 
 
 being. He shared the terror of the mountains and 
 
 the singing of the sweet Spring rains. The spread 
 
 wonder of the woods of the world lay imprisoned 
 
 and explained in the daily hurry of his very blood. 
 
 He understood, because he felt, the power of the 
 
 ocean tides ; and, flitting to and fro through the 
 
 tenderer regions of his extended Self, danced the 
 
 fragrance of all the wild flowers that ever blew. 
 
 That strange allegory of man, the microcosm, and 
 
 1 earth, the macrocosm, became a sudden blazing 
 
 j reality. The feverish distress, unrest, and vanity of 
 
 modern life was due to the distance men had 
 
 I travelled from the soul of the world, away from 
 
 j large simplicity into the pettier state they deemed so 
 
 proudly progress. 
 "^ Out of the transliminal depths of this newly 
 
172 THE CENTAUR xxiii 
 
 awakened Consciousness rose the pelt and thunder of 
 these magical and enormous cosmic sensations — the 
 pulse and throb of the planetary life where his little 
 Self had fringed her own. Those untamed pro- 
 fundities in himself that walked alone, companionless 
 among modern men, suffering an eternal nostalgia, 
 at last knew the approach to satisfaction. For when 
 the * inner catastrophe ' completed itself and escape 
 should come — that transfer of the conscious centre 
 across the threshold into this vaster region stimulated 
 by the Earth — all his longings would be housed at 
 last like homing birds, nested in the gentle places his 
 yearnings all these years had lovingly built for them 
 — in a living Nature ! The fever of modern life, the 
 torture and unrest of a false, external civilization 
 that trained the brain while it still left wars and 
 baseness in the heart, would drop from him like the 
 symptoms of some fierce disease. The god of speed 
 and mechanism that ruled the world to-day, urging 
 men at ninety miles an hour to enter a Heaven 
 where material gain was only a little sublimated and 
 not utterly denied, would pass for the nightmare 
 that it really was. In its place the cosmic life of 
 undifferentiated simplicity, clean and sweet and big, 
 would hold his soul in the truly everlasting arms. 
 
 And that little German doctor, sitting yonder, 
 enlightened yet afraid, seeking an impossible com- 
 promise — Stahl could no more stop his going than a 
 fly could stop the rising of the Atlantic tides. 
 
 Out of all this tumult of confused thought and 
 feeling there rose then the silver face of some 
 forgotten and passionate loveliness. Apparently it 
 reached his lips, for he heard his own voice mur- 
 muring outside him somewhere across the cabin : — 
 
 * The gods of Greece — and of the world ' 
 
XXIII THE CENTAUR 173 
 
 Yet the instant words clothed it, the flashing 
 glory went. The idea plunged back out of sight — 
 untranslatable in language. Thrilled and sad, he 
 lay back in his chair, watching the doctor and trying 
 to focus his mind upon what he was saying. But 
 the lost idea still dived and reared within him like a 
 shining form, yet never showing more than this 
 radiant point above the surface. The passion and 
 beauty of it . . . ! He tried no more to tie a label 
 of modern words about its neck. He let it swim 
 and dive and leap within him uncaught. Only he 
 understood better why, close to Greece, his friends 
 had betrayed their inner selves, and why for the 
 lesser of the two, whose bodily cage was not yet fully 
 clamped and barred by physical maturity, escape, or 
 return rather, had been possible, nay, had been 
 inevitable. 
 
XXIV 
 
 Stahl, he remembers, had been talking for a long 
 time. The general sense of what he said reached 
 him, perhaps, but certainly not many of the words. 
 The doctor, it was clear, wished to coax from him 
 the most intimate description possible of his ex- 
 perience. He put things crudely in order to 
 challenge criticism, and thus to make his companion's 
 reason sit in judgment on his heart. If this visionary 
 Celt would let his intellect pass soberly and dis- 
 sectingly upon these flaming states of wider conscious- 
 ness he had touched, the doctor would have data 
 of real value for his own purposes. 
 
 But this discriminating analysis was precisely 
 what the Irishman found impossible. His soul was 
 too * dispersed ' to concentrate upon modern terms 
 and phrases. These in any case dealt only with 
 the fragments of Self that manifested through brain 
 and body. The rest could be felt only, never truly 
 described. Since the beginning of the world such 
 transcendental experiences had never been translat- 
 able in the language of * common ' sense ; and to- 
 day, even, when a few daring minds sought a 
 laborious classification, straining the resources of 
 psychology, the results were little better than a 
 rather enticing and suggestive confusion. 
 
 In his written account, indeed, he gives no proper 
 174 
 
XXIV THE CENTAUR 175 
 
 report of what Stahl tried to say. A gaping hiatus 
 appears in the manuscript, with only asterisks and 
 numbers that referred to pages of his tumbled note- 
 books. Following these indications I came across 
 the skeletons of ideas which perhaps were the raw 
 material, so to say, of these crude and speculative 
 statements that the German poured out at him across 
 that cabin — blocks of exaggeration he flung at him, 
 in the hope of winning some critical and intelligible 
 response. Like the structure of some giant fairy- 
 tale they read — some toppling scaffolding that needed 
 reduction in scale before it could be focussed for 
 normal human sight. 
 
 * Nature ' was really alive for those who believed 
 — and worshipped ; for worship was that state of 
 consciousness which opens the sense and provides 
 the channel for this singular interior realization. 
 In very desolate and lonely places, unsmothered and 
 unstained by men as they exist to-day, such ex- 
 pressions of the Earth*s stupendous, central vitality 
 were still possible. . . . The * Russian ' himself was 
 some such fragment, some such cosmic being, 
 strayed down among men in a form outwardly human, 
 and the Irishman had in his own wild, untamed 
 heart those same very tender and primitive possi- 
 bilities which enabled him to know and feel it. 
 
 In the body, however, he was fenced ofl^ — without. 
 Only by the disentanglement of his primitive self 
 from the modern development which caged it, could 
 he recover this strange lost Eden and taste in its 
 fulness the mother-life of the planetary consciousness 
 which called him back. This dissociation might be 
 experienced temporarily as a subliminal adventure ; 
 or permanently — in death. 
 
 Here, it seemed, was a version of the pro- 
 
176 THE CENTAUR xxiv 
 
 found mystical idea that a man must lose his 
 life to find it, and that the personal self must be 
 merged in a larger one to know peace — the incessant, 
 burning nostalgia that dwells in the heart of every 
 religion known to men : escape from the endless 
 pain of futile personal ambitions and desires for 
 external things that are unquenchable because never 
 possible of satisfaction. It had never occurred to 
 him before in so literal and simple a form. It ex- 
 plained his sense of kinship with the earth and nature 
 rather than with men. . . . 
 
 There followed, then, another note which the 
 Irishman had also omitted from his complete story as 
 I found it — in this MS. that lay among the dust and 
 dinginess of the Paddington back-room like some 
 flaming gem in a refuse heap. It was brief but 
 pregnant — the block of another idea, Fechner's 
 apparently, hurled at him by the little doctor. 
 
 That, just as the body takes up the fact of the 
 bruised lung into its own general consciousness, 
 lifting it thereby from the submerged, unrealized 
 state ; and just as our human consciousness can be 
 caught up again as a part of the earth's ; so, in turn, 
 the Planet's own vast personality is included in the 
 collective consciousness of the entire Universe — all 
 steps and stages of advance to that final and august 
 Consciousness of which they are fragments, pro- 
 jections, manifestations in Time — GOD. 
 
 And the immense conception, at any rate, gave him 
 a curious, flashing clue to that passionate inclusion 
 which a higher form of consciousness may feel for 
 the countless lesser manifestations below it ; and so 
 to that love for humanity as a whole that saviours 
 feel. . . . 
 
XXIV THE CENTAUR 177 
 
 Yet, out of all this deep flood of ideas and 
 suggestions that somehow poured about Km from the 
 mind of this self-contradictory German, alternately 
 scientist and mystic, O'Malley emerged with his 
 own smaller and vivid personal delight that he would 
 presently himself — escape : escape under the guid- 
 ance of the big Russian into some remote corner 
 of his own extended Being, where he would enjoy 
 a quasi-merging with the Earth-life, and know sub- 
 jectively at least the fruition of all his yearnings. 
 
 The doctor had phrased it once that a part of 
 him fluid, etheric or astral, malleable by desire, 
 would escape and attain to this result. But, after 
 all, the separation of one portion of himself from the 
 main personality could only mean being conscious 
 in another part of it — in a division usually submerged. 
 
 As Stahl so crudely put it, the Earth had bruised 
 him. He would know in some little measure the 
 tides of her own huge life, his longings, loneliness, 
 and nostalgia explained and satisfied. He would 
 find that fair old Garden. He might even know 
 the lesser gods. 
 
 That afternoon at Smyrna the matter was oflicially 
 reported, and so oflicially done with. It caused 
 little enough comment on the steamer. The majority 
 of the passengers had hardly noticed the boy at all, 
 much less his disappearance ; and while many of 
 them landed there for Ephesus, still more left the 
 ship next day at Constantinople. 
 
 The big Russian, though he kept mostly to his 
 own cabin, was closely watched by the ship's officers, 
 and O'Malley, too, realized that he was under 
 observation. But nothing happened ; the emptied 
 steamer pursued her quiet way, and the Earth, 
 
178 THE CENTAUR 
 
 XXIV 
 
 unrealized by her teeming freight so busy with their 
 tiny personal aims, rushed forwards upon her glorious 
 journey through space. 
 
 O'Malley alone realized her presence, aware that 
 he rushed with her amid a living universe. But he 
 kept his new sensations to himself. The remainder of 
 the voyage, indeed, across the Black Sea via Samsoun 
 and Trebizond, is hazy in his mind so far as 
 practical details are concerned, for he found himself 
 in a dreamy state of deep peace and would sometimes 
 sit for hours in reverie, only reminded of the present 
 by certain pricks of annoyance from the outer world. 
 He had returned, of course, to his own state-room, 
 yet felt in such close sympathy with his companion 
 that no outward expression by way of confidence or 
 explanation was necessary. In their Subconscious- 
 ness they were together and at one. 
 
 The pricks of annoyance came, as may be expected, 
 chiefly from Dr. Stahl, and took the form of 
 variations of * I told you so.' The man was in a 
 state of almost anger, caused half by disappoint- 
 ment, half by unsatisfied curiosity. His cargo of oil 
 and water would not mix, yet he knew not which to 
 throw overboard ; here was another instance where 
 facts refused to tally with the beliefs dictated by sane 
 reason ; where the dazzling speculations he played 
 with threatened to win the day and destroy the 
 compromise his soul loved. 
 
 The Irishman, however, did not resent his 
 curiosity, though he made no attempt to satisfy it. 
 He allowed him to become authoritative and pro- 
 fessional, to treat him somewhat as a patient. What 
 could it matter to him, who in a few hours would 
 land at Batoum and go off with his guide and 
 comrade to some place where ? The thought he 
 
XXIV THE CENTAUR 179 
 
 could never see completed in words, for he only knew 
 that the fulfilment of the adventure would take place 
 — somewhere, somehow, somewhen — in that space 
 within the soul of which external space is but an 
 image and a figure. What takes place in the mind 
 and heart are alone the true events ; their outward 
 expression in the shifting and impermanent shapes of 
 matter is the least real thing in all the world. For 
 him the experience would be true, real, authoritative 
 — fact in the deepest sense of the word. Already he 
 saw it ' whole.' 
 
 Faith asks no travellers' questions — exact height 
 of mountains, length of rivers, distance from the sea, 
 precise spelling of names, and so forth. He felt — 
 the quaint and striking simile is in the written 
 account — like a man hunting for a pillar-box in a 
 strange city — absurdly difficult to find, as though 
 purposely concealed by the authorities amid details 
 of street and houses to which the eye is unaccustomed, 
 yet really close at hand all the time. . . . 
 
 But at Trebizond, a few hours before Batoum, 
 Dr. Stahl in his zealous attentions went too far ; for 
 that evening he gave his ^patient' a sleeping-draught in 
 his coffee that caused him to lie for twelve hours on 
 the cabin sofa, and when at length he woke towards 
 noon, the Customs officers had been aboard since nine 
 o'clock, and most of the passengers had already landed. 
 
 Among them, leaving no message, the big Russian 
 had also gone ashore. And, though Stahl may have 
 been actuated by the wisest and kindest motives, he 
 was not quite prepared for the novel experience with 
 which it provided him — namely, of hearing an angry 
 Irishman saying rapidly what he thought of him in a 
 stream of eloquent language that lasted nearly a 
 quarter of an hour without a break ! 
 
XXV 
 
 Although Batoum is a small place, and the trains 
 that leave it during the day are few enough, O'Malley 
 knew that to search for his friend by the methods 
 of the ordinary detective were useless. They would 
 have been also wrong. The man had gone deliber- 
 ately, without attempting to say good-bye^because, 
 having come together in the real and inner sense, 
 real separation was not possible. The vital portion 
 of their beings, thought, feeling, and desire, were 
 close and always would be. Their bodies, busy at 
 different points of the map among the casual realities 
 of external life, could make no change in that. And 
 at the right moment they would assuredly meet again 
 to begin the promised journey. 
 
 Thus, at least, in some fashion peculiarly his own, 
 was the way the Irishman felt ; and this was why, 
 after the first anger with his German friend, he 
 resigned himself patiently to the practical business 
 he had in hand. 
 
 The little incident was characteristically revealing, 
 and shows how firmly rooted in his imaginative 
 temperament was the belief, the unalterable conviction 
 rather, that his life operated upon an outer and an 
 inner plane simultaneously, the one ever reacting 
 upon the other. It was as if he were aware of two 
 separate sets of faculties, subtly linked, one carrying 
 
 1 80 
 
XXV THE CENTAUR i8i 
 
 on the affairs of the physical man in the * practical ' 
 world, the other dealing with the spiritual economy 
 in the subconscious. To attend to the latter alone 
 was to be a useless dreamer among men, unpractical, 
 unbalanced ; to neglect it wholly for the former was 
 to be crassly limited, but half alive ; to combine the 
 two in effective co-operation was to achieve that high 
 level of a successful personality, which some perhaps 
 term genius, some prophet, and others, saint. It 
 meant, at any rate, to have sources of inspiration 
 within oneself. 
 
 Thus he spent the day completing what was 
 necessary for his simple outfit, and put up for the 
 night at one of the little hotels that spread their 
 tables invitingly upon the pavement, so that dinner 
 may be enjoyed in full view of one of the most 
 picturesque streams of traffic it is possible to see. 
 
 The sultry, enervating heat of the day had passed 
 and a cool breeze came shorewards over the Black 
 Sea. With a box of thin Russian cigarettes before 
 him he lingered over the golden Kakhetian wine and 
 watched the crowded street. Knowing enough of 
 the language to bargain smartly for his room, his 
 pillows, sheets, and samovar, he yet could scarcely 
 compass conversation with the strangers about him. 
 Of Russian proper, besides, he heard little ; there 
 was a babel of many tongues, Armenian, Turkish, 
 Georgian, explosive phrases of Swanetian, soft 
 gliding Persian words, and the sharp or guttural 
 exclamations of the big-voiced, giant fellows, all 
 heavily armed, who belonged to the bewildering 
 tribes that dwelt among the mountains beyond. 
 Occasionally came a broken bit of French or 
 German ; but they strayed in, lost and bizarre, as 
 fragments from some distant or forgotten world. 
 
1 82 THE CENTAUR 
 
 XXV 
 
 Down the pavement, jostling his elbows, strode 
 the constant, gorgeous procession of curious, wild, 
 barbaric faces, bearded, with hooked noses, flashing 
 eyes, bourkas flowing ; cartridge-belts of silver and 
 ivory gleaming across chests in the glare of the 
 electric light ; bashliks of white, black, and yellow 
 wool upon the head, increasing the stature ; evil- 
 looking Black Sea knives stuck in most belts, rifles 
 swung across great supple shoulders, long swords 
 trailing ; Turkish gypsies, dark and furtive-eyed, 
 walking softly in leather slippers — of endless and 
 fascinating variety, many coloured and splendid, it 
 all was. From time to time a droschky with two 
 horses, or a private carriage with three, rattled noisily 
 over the cobbles at a reckless pace, stopping with the 
 abruptness of a practised skater ; and officers with 
 narrow belted waists like those of women, their full- 
 skirted cloaks reaching half-way down high boots of 
 shining leather, sprang out to pay the driver and take 
 a vacant table at his side ; and once or twice a 
 body of soldiers, several hundred strong, singing the 
 national songs with a full-throated vigour, hoarse, 
 wild, somehow half terrible, passed at a swinging 
 gait away into the darkness at the end of the street, 
 the roar of their barbaric singing dying away in the 
 distance by the sea where the boom of waves just 
 caught it. 
 
 And O'Malley loved it all, and ' thrilled ' as he 
 watched and listened. From his hidden self within 
 something passed out and joined it. He felt the 
 wild pulse of energetic life that drove along 
 with the tumult of it. The savage, untamed soul 
 in him leaped as he saw ; the blood ran faster. 
 Sitting thus upon the bank of the hurrying stream, 
 he knew himself akin to the main body of the 
 
XXV THE CENTAUR 183 
 
 invisible current further out ; it drew him with it, 
 and he experienced a quickening of all his impulses 
 towards some wild freedom that was mighty — clean — 
 simple. 
 
 Civilian dress was rare, and noticeable when it 
 came. The shipping agents wore black alpaca coats, 
 white trousers, and modern hats of straw. A few 
 ship's officers in blue, with official caps gold-braided, 
 passed in and out like men without a wedding 
 garment, as distressingly out of the picture as tourists 
 in check knickerbockers and nailed boots moving 
 through some dim cathedral aisle. O'Malley recog- 
 nized one or two from his own steamer, and turned 
 his head the other way. It hurt. He caught him- 
 self thinking, as he saw them, of Stock Exchanges, 
 twopenny - tubes, Belgravia dinner-parties, private 
 views, * small and earlies,' musical comedy, and all 
 the rest of the dismal and meagre programme. 
 These harmless little modern uniforms were worse 
 than ludicrous, for they formed links with the glare 
 and noise of the civilization he had left behind, the 
 smeared vulgarity of the big cities where men and 
 women live in their possessions, wasting life in that 
 worship of external detail they call * progress * . . . 
 
 A well-known German voice crashed through his 
 dream. 
 
 * Already at the wine ! These Caucasian vintages 
 are good ; they really taste of grapes and earth and 
 flowers. Yes, thanks, I'll join you for a moment if 
 I may. We only lie three days in port and are glad 
 to get ashore.' 
 
 O'Malley called for a second glass, and passed the 
 cigarettes. 
 
 * I prefer my black cigars, thank you,' was the 
 reply, lighting one. ' You push on to-morrow, I 
 
1 84 THE CENTAUR xxv 
 
 suppose ? Kars, Tiflis, Erzerum, or somewhere a 
 little wilder in the mountains, eh ? ' 
 
 * Towards the mountains, yes,' the Irishman said. 
 Dr. Stahl was the only person he could possibly have 
 allowed to sit next him at such a time. He had 
 quite forgiven him now, and though at first he felt 
 no positive welcome, the strange link between the 
 two men quickly asserted itself and welded them 
 together in that odd harmony they knew in spite 
 of all differences. They could be silent together, 
 too, without distress or awkwardness, sure test 
 that at least some portion of their personalities 
 fused. 
 
 And for a long time they remained silent, watch- 
 ing the surge and movement of the old, old types 
 about them. They sipped the yellow wine and 
 smoked. The stars came out ; the carriages grew 
 less ; from far away floated a deep sonorous echo 
 now and then of the soldiers singing by their barracks. 
 Sometimes a steamer hooted. Cossacks swung by. 
 Often some wild cry rang out from a side street. 
 There were heavy, unfamiliar perfumes in the air. 
 Presently Stahl began talking about the Revolu- 
 tion of a few years before and the scenes of 
 violence he had witnessed in these little streets, the 
 shooting, barricades, bombs thrown into passing 
 carriages, Cossacks charging down the pavements with 
 swords drawn, shouting and howling. O'Malley 
 listened with a part of his mind at any rate. The 
 rest of him was much further away. . . . He was 
 up among the mountain fastnesses. Already, it 
 seemed, he knew the secret places of the mist, the 
 lair of every running wind. . . . 
 
 Two tall mountain tribesmen swaggered past close 
 to their table ; the thick grey bourkas almost swept 
 
XXV THE CENTAUR 185 
 
 their glasses. They walked magnificently with easy, 
 flowing stride, straight from the hips. 
 
 * The earth here,' said O'Malley, taking advantage 
 of a pause in the other's chatter, * produces some 
 splendid types. Look at those two ; they make one 
 think of trees walking — blown along bodily before a 
 wind.' He watched them with admiration as they 
 swung off and disappeared among the crowd. 
 
 Dr. Stahl, glancing keenly at him, laughed a little. 
 
 * Yes,' .he said ; ' brave, generous fellows too as 
 a rule, who will shoot you for a pistol that excites 
 their envy, yet give their life to save one of their 
 savage dogs. They're still — natural^ he added after 
 a moment's hesitation ; * still unspoilt. They live 
 close to Nature with a vengeance. Up among the 
 Ossetines on the high saddles you'll find true Pagans 
 who worship trees, sacrifice blood, and ofi^er bread 
 and salt to the nature-deities.' 
 
 * Still } ' asked O'Malley, sipping his wine. 
 
 ' Still,' replied Stahl, following his example. 
 
 Over the glasses' rims their eyes met. Both 
 smiled, though neither quite knew why. The Irish- 
 man, perhaps, was thinking of the little city clerks 
 he knew at home, pigeon-breasted, pale-faced, under- 
 sized. One of these big men, so full of rushing, 
 vigorous life, would eat a dozen at a sitting. 
 
 * There's something here the rest of the world has 
 lost,' he murmured to himself But the doctor heard 
 him. 
 
 * You feel it } ' he asked quickly, his eyes brighten- 
 ing. ' The awful, primitive beauty — } ' 
 
 * I feel — something, certainly,' was the cautious 
 answer. He could not possibly have said more just 
 then ; yet it seemed as though he heard far echoes 
 of that voice that had been first borne to his ears 
 
1 86 THE CENTAUR xxv 
 
 across the blue i^gean. In the gorges of these 
 terrible mountains it surely sounded still. These 
 men must know it too. 
 
 * The spell of this strange land will never leave 
 you once youVe felt it,' pursued the other quietly, 
 his voice deepening. * Even in the towns here — 
 Tiflis, Kutais — I have felt it. Hereabouts is the 
 cradle of the human race, they say ; and the people 
 have not changed for thousands of years. Some of 
 them you'll find ' — he hunted for a word, then said 
 with a curious, shrugging gesture, * terrific' 
 
 * Ah ' said the Irishman, lighting a fresh 
 
 cigarette from the dying stump so clumsily that the 
 trembling of the hand was noticeable. 
 
 ' And akin most likely,' said Stahl, thrusting his 
 face across the table with a whispering tone, * to that 
 — man — who — tempted you.' 
 
 O'Malley did not answer. He drank the liquid 
 golden sunshine in his glass ; his eyes lifted to the 
 stars that watched above the sea ; between the surge 
 of human figures came a little wind from the grim, 
 mysterious Caucasus beyond. He turned all tender 
 as a child, receiving as with a shock of sudden 
 strength and sweetness a thousand intimate messages 
 from the splendid mood of old Mother-Earth who 
 here expressed herself in such a potent breed of men 
 and mountains. 
 
 He heard the doctor's voice still speaking, as from 
 a distance though : — 
 
 ' For here they all grow with her. They do not 
 fight her and resist. She pours freely through 
 them ; there is no opposition. The channels still lie 
 open ; . . . and they share her life and power.' 
 
 * That beauty which the modern world has lost,' 
 repeated the other to himself, lingering over the 
 
XXV 
 
 THE CENTAUR 187 
 
 words, and wondering why they expressed so little of 
 what he really meant. 
 
 ' But which will never — can never come again,* 
 Stahl completed the sentence. There was a wistful, 
 genuine sadness in his voice and eyes, and the sym- 
 pathy touched the inflammable Celt with fire. It 
 was ever thus with him. The little man opposite, 
 with the ragged beard, and the bald, domed head 
 gleaming in the electric light, had laid a card upon 
 the table, showing a bit of his burning heart. The 
 generous Irishman responded like a child, laying 
 himself bare. So hungry was he for comprehension. 
 
 ' Men have everywhere else clothed her fair body 
 with their smothering, ugly clothing and their herded 
 cities,' he burst out, so loud that the Armenian waiter 
 sidled up, thinking he called for wine. *But here 
 she lies naked and unashamed, sweet in divinity made 
 simple. By Jove ! I tell you, doctor, it burns and 
 sweeps me with a kind of splendid passion that 
 drowns my little shame-faced personality of the 
 twentieth century. I could run out and worship 
 — fall down and kiss the grass and soil and 
 sea ! ' 
 
 He drew back suddenly like a wounded animal ; 
 his face turned scarlet, as though he knew himself 
 convicted of an hysterical outburst. StahFs eyes had 
 changed even as he spoke the flaming words that 
 struggled so awkwardly to seize his mood of rapture 
 — a thought the Earth poured through him for a 
 moment. The bitter, half-mocking smile lay in 
 them, and on the lips the cold and critical expression of 
 the other Stahl, sceptic and science-man. A revulsion 
 of feeling caught them both. But to O'Malley came 
 the thought that once again he had been drawn — was 
 being coaxed for examination beneath the microscope. 
 
1 88 THE CENTAUR xxv 
 
 ' The material here/ Stahl said presently, with the 
 calm tones of a dispassionate diagnosis, * is magnificent 
 as you say, uncivilized without being merely savage, 
 untamed, yet far from crude barbarism. When the 
 progress of the age gets into this land the transforma- 
 tion will be grand. When Russia lets in culture, 
 when modern improvements have developed her 
 resources and trained the wild human forces into 
 useful channels. . . .' 
 
 He went on calmly by the yard, till it was all the 
 Irishman could do not to dash the wine-glass in his 
 face. 
 
 ' Remember my words when you are up in the 
 lonely mountains,' he concluded at length, smiling 
 his queer sardonic smile, * and keep yourself in hand. 
 Put on the brakes when possible. Your experience 
 will thus have far more value.' 
 
 ' And you,' replied O'Malley bluntly, so bluntly it 
 was almost rudeness, * go back to Fechner, and try 
 to save your compromising soul before it is too 
 late ' 
 
 'Still following those lights that do mislead the 
 morn,' Stahl added gently, breaking into English for 
 a phrase he apparently loved. They laughed and 
 raised their glasses. 
 
 A long pause came which neither cared to break. 
 The streets were growing empty, the personality of 
 the mysterious little Black Sea port folding away into 
 the darkness. The wilder element had withdrawn 
 behind the shuttered windows. There came a 
 murmur of the waves, but the soldiers no longer 
 sang. The droschkys ceased to rattle past. The 
 night flowed down more thickly from the mountains, 
 and the air, moist with that malarial miasma which 
 makes the climate of this reclaimed marsh whereon 
 
XXV THE CENTAUR 189 
 
 Batoum is built so unhealthy, closed unpleasantly 
 about them. The stars died in it. 
 
 ' Another glass ? ' suggested Stahl. * A drink to 
 the gods of the Future, and till we meet again, on 
 your return journey, eh ? ' 
 
 ' I'll walk with you to the steamer,* was the reply. 
 * I never care for much wine. And the gods of the 
 Future will prefer my usual offering, I think — 
 imaginative faith.* 
 
 The doctor did not ask him to explain. They 
 walked down the middle of the narrow streets. No 
 one was about, nor were there lights in many 
 windows. Once or twice from an upper story came 
 the faint twanging of a balalaika against the drone of 
 voices, and occasionally they passed a little garden 
 where figures outlined themselves among the trees, 
 with the clink of glasses, laughter of men and girls, 
 and the glowing tips of cigarettes. 
 
 They turned down towards the harbour where the 
 spars and funnels of the big steamers were just visible 
 against the sky, and opposite the unshuttered window 
 of a shop — one of those modern shops that oddly 
 mar the town with assorted German tinware, Paris 
 hats, and oleographs indiscriminately mingled — Stahl 
 stopped a moment and pointed. They moved up 
 idly and looked in. From the shadows of the other 
 side, well hidden, an armed patrol eyed them sus- 
 piciously, though they were not aware of it. 
 
 * It was before a window like this,* remarked 
 Stahl, apparently casually, ' that I once in Tiflis over- 
 heard two mountain Georgians talking together as 
 they examined a reproduction of a modern picture — 
 BScklin's " Centaur." They spoke in half whispers, 
 but I caught the trend of what they said. You know 
 the picture, perhaps ? ' 
 
I90 THE CENTAUR xxv 
 
 * I've seen it somewhere, yes,' was the short reply. 
 * But what were they saying ? ' He strove to keep 
 his voice commonplace and casual like his companion's. 
 
 * Oh, just discussing it together, but with a curious 
 stretched interest,' Stahl went on. * One asked, 
 " What does it say ? " and pointed to the inscription 
 underneath. They could not read. For a long time 
 they stared in silence, their faces grave and half afraid. 
 *' What is it .^ " repeated the first one, and the other, a 
 much older man, heavily bearded and of giant build, 
 replied low, '' It's what I told you about " ; there 
 was awe in his tone and manner ; "they still live in 
 
 the big valley of the rhododendrons beyond " 
 
 mentioning some lonely uninhabited region towards 
 Daghestan ; " they come in the spring, and are very 
 swift and roaring. . . . You must always hide. To 
 see them is to die. But ikey cannot die ; they are of 
 the mountains. They are older, older than the stones. 
 And the dogs will warn you, or the horses, or some- 
 times a great sudden wind, though you must never 
 shoot." They stood gazing in solemn wonder for 
 minutes . . . till at last, realizing that their silence 
 was final, I moved away. There were manifestations 
 of life in the mountains, you see, that they had seen 
 and knew about — old forms akin to that picture 
 apparently.' 
 
 The patrol came out of his shadows, and Stahl 
 quickly drew his companion along the pavement. 
 
 * You have your passport with you .? ' he asked, 
 noticing the man behind them. 
 
 * It went to the police this afternoon. I haven't 
 got it back yet.' O'Malley spoke thickly, in a voice 
 he hardly recognized as his own. How much he 
 welcomed that casual interruption of the practical 
 world he could never explain or tell. For the 
 
XXV 
 
 THE CENTAUR 191 
 
 moment he had felt like wax in the other's hands. 
 He had dreaded searching questions, and felt unspeak- 
 ably relieved. A minute more and he would have 
 burst into confession. 
 
 ' You should never be without it/ the doctor 
 added. ' The police here are perfect fiends, and can 
 cause you endless inconvenience.' 
 
 O'Malley knew it all, but gladly seized the talk 
 and spun it out, asking innocent questions while 
 scarcely listening to the answers. They distanced 
 the patrol and neared the quays and shipping. In 
 the darkness of the sky a great line showed where the 
 spurs of the Lesser Caucasus gloomed huge and 
 solemn to the East and West. At the gangway of 
 the steamer they said good-bye. Stahl held the Irish- 
 man's hand a moment in his own. 
 
 * Remember, when you know temptation strong,' 
 he said gravely, though a smile was in the eyes, * the 
 passwords that I now give you : Humanity and 
 Civilization.' 
 
 ' I'll try.' 
 
 They shook hands warmly enough. 
 
 * Come home by this steamer if you can,' he called 
 down from the deck. * And keep to the middle of 
 the road on your way back to the hotel. It's safer 
 in a town like this.' O'Malley divined the twinkle 
 in his eyes as he said it. ' Forgive my many sins,' 
 he heard finally, ' and when we meet again, tell me 
 your own. . . .' The darkness took the sentence. 
 But the word the Irishman took home with him to 
 the little hotel was the single one — Civilization : and 
 this, owing to the peculiar significance of intonation 
 and accent with which this bewildering and self-con- 
 tradictory being had uttered it. 
 
XXVI 
 
 He walked along the middle of the street as Stahl 
 had advised. He would have done so in any case, 
 unconsciously, for he knew these towns quite as well 
 as the German did. Yet he did not walk alone. 
 The entire Earth walked with him, and personal 
 danger was an impossibility. A dozen ruffians 
 might attack him, but none could *take' his life. 
 
 How simple it all seemed, yet how utterly beyond 
 the reach of intelligible description to those who 
 have never felt it — this sudden surge upwards, down- 
 wards, all around and about of the vaster conscious- 
 ness amid which the sense of normal individuality 
 seemed but a tiny focussed point. That loss of 
 personality he first dreaded as an * inner catastrophe ' 
 appeared to him now for what it actually was — 
 merely an extinction of some phantasmal illusion of 
 self into the only true life. Here, upon the fringe 
 of this wonder-region of the Caucasus, the spirit of 
 the Earth still manifested as of old, reached out 
 lovingly to those of her children who were simple 
 enough to respond, ready to fold them in and heal 
 them of the modern, racking fevers which must 
 otherwise destroy them. . . . The entire sky of soft 
 darkness became a hand that covered him, and 
 stroked him into peace ; the perfume that wafted 
 down that narrow street beside him was the single, 
 
 192 
 
XXVI THE CENTAUR 
 
 193 
 
 enveloping fragrance of the whole wide Earth herself; 
 he caught the very murmur of her splendid journey 
 through the stars. The certitude of some state of 
 boundless being flamed, roaring and immense, about 
 his soul. . . . 
 
 And when he reached his room, a little cell that 
 shut out light and air, he met that sinister denial of 
 the simple life which, for him at least, was the true 
 Dweller on the Threshold. Crashing in to it he 
 choked, as it were, and could have cried aloud. It 
 gripped and caught him by the throat — the word 
 that Stahl — Stahl who understood even while he 
 warned and mocked and hesitated himself — had flung 
 so tauntingly upon him from the decks — Civilization. 
 
 Upon his table lay by chance — the Armenian 
 hotel-keeper had evidently unearthed it for his 
 benefit — a copy of a London halfpenny paper, a 
 paper that feeds the public with the ugliest details of 
 all the least important facts of life by the yard, 
 inventing others when the supply is poor. He read 
 it over vaguely, with a sense of cold distress that 
 was half pain, half nausea. Somehow it stirred his 
 sense of humour ; he returned slowly to his normal, 
 littler state. But it was not the contrast which made 
 him smile ; rather was it the chance juxtaposition of 
 certain of the contents ; for on the page facing the 
 accounts of railway accidents, of people burned alive, * 
 explosions, giant strikes, crumpled air-men and other 
 countless horrors which modern inventions ofl^ered 
 upon the altar of feverish Progress, he read a com- 
 placently boastful leader that extolled the conquest 
 of Nature men had learned hy speed. The ability 
 to pass from one point to another across the skin of 
 the globe in the least possible time was sign of the 
 development of the human soul. 
 
194 THE CENTAUR xxv^i 
 
 The pompous flatulence of the language touched 
 bathos. He thought of the thousands who had read 
 both columns and preened themselves upon that 
 leader. He thought how they would pride themselves 
 upon the latest contrivance for speeding their inert 
 bodies from one point to another * annihilating 
 distance * ; upon being able to get from suburbia to 
 the huge shops that created artificial wants, then filled 
 them ; from the pokey villas with their wee sham 
 gardens to the dingy offices ; from dark airless East 
 End rooms to countless factories that pour out semi- 
 fraudulent, unnecessary wares upon the world, ex- 
 plosives and weapons to destroy another nation, or 
 cheapjack goods to poison their own — all in a few 
 minutes less than they could do it the week 
 before. 
 
 And then he thought of the leisure of the country 
 folk and of those who knew how to be content 
 without external possessions, to watch the sunset and 
 the dawn with hearts that sought realities ; sharing 
 the noble slowness of the seasons, the gradual growth 
 of flowers, trees, and crops, the unhurried dignity or 
 Nature's grand procession, the repose-in-progress of 
 the Mother-Earth. 
 
 The calmness of the unhastening Earth once more 
 possessed his soul in peace. He hid the paper, 
 watching the quiet way the night beyond his window 
 buried it from sight. . . . 
 
 And through that open window came the perfume 
 and the mighty hand of darkness slowly. It seemed 
 to this imaginative Irishman that he caught a sound 
 of awful laughter from the mountains and the sea, a 
 laughter that brought, too, a wave of sighing — of 
 deep and old-world sighing. 
 
 And before he went to sleep he took an antidote 
 
XXVI THE CENTAUR 195 
 
 in the form of a page from that book that accom- 
 panied all his travels, a book which was written 
 wholly in the open air because its message refused to 
 come to the heart of the inspired writer within doors, 
 try as he would, the * sky especially containing for me 
 
 the key, the inspiration ' 
 
 And the fragment that he read expressed a little 
 bit of his own thought and feeling. The seer who 
 wrote it looked ahead, naming it * After Civilization,' 
 whereas he looked back. But they saw the same 
 vision ; the confusion of time was nothing : — 
 
 In the first soft winds of spring, while snow yet lay on the 
 
 ground — 
 Forth from the city into the great woods wandering, 
 Into the great silent white woods where they waited In their 
 
 beauty and majesty 
 For man their companion to come : 
 
 There, in vision, out of the wreck of cities and civilizations. 
 Slowly out of the ruins of the past 
 
 Out of the litter and muck of a decaying world, 
 
 Lo ! even so 
 
 I saw a new life arise. 
 
 sound of waters, jubilant, pouring, pouring — O hidden song in 
 
 the hollows ! 
 
 Secret of the Earth, swelling, sobbing to divulge itself! 
 
 Slowly, building, lifting itself up atom by atom. 
 
 Gathering itself round a new centre — or rather round the world- 
 old centre once more revealed — 
 
 1 saw a new life, a new society, arise. 
 
 Man I saw arising once more to dwell with Nature; 
 (The old old story — the prodigal son returning, so loved. 
 The long estrangement, the long entanglement in vain things) — 
 The child returning to its home — companion of the winter 
 
 woods once more — 
 Companion of the stars and waters — hearing their words at first- 
 hand (more than all science ever taught) — 
 The near contact, the dear dear mother so close — the twilight 
 sky and the young tree-tops against it ; 
 
196 THE CENTAUR xxvi 
 
 The few needs, the exhilarated radiant life — the food and 
 population question giving no more trouble ; 
 
 No hurry more, no striving one to over-ride the other : 
 
 . . . man the companion of Nature. 
 
 Civilization behind him now — the wonderful stretch of the past ; 
 
 Continents, empires, religions, wars, migrations — all gathered up 
 in him ; 
 
 The immense knowledge, the vast winged powers — to use or 
 not to use — . . . 
 
 And as he fell asleep at length it seemed there 
 came a sound of hushed huge trampling underneath 
 his window, and that when he rose to listen, his big 
 friend from the steamer led him forth into the 
 darkness, that those shapes of Cloud and Wind he now 
 so often saw, companioned them across the heights of 
 the night towards some place in the distant mountains 
 where light and flowers were, and all his dream of 
 years most exquisitely fulfilled. . . . 
 
 He slept. And through his sleep there dropped 
 the words of that old tribesman from the wilderness : 
 ' They come in the spring . . . and are very swift 
 and roaring. They are older, older than the stones. 
 They cannot die . . . they are of the mountains, 
 and you must hide.* 
 
 But the dream-consciousness knows no hiding ; 
 and though memory failed to report with detail in 
 the morning, O'Malley woke refreshed and blessed, 
 knowing that companionship awaited him, and that 
 once he found the courage to escape completely, the 
 Simple Life of Earth would claim him in full 
 consciousness. 
 
 Stahl with his little modern ' Intellect ' was no 
 longer there to hinder and prevent. 
 
XXVII 
 
 * Far, very far, steer by my star, 
 
 Leaving the loud world's hurry and clamour. 
 
 In the mid-sea waits you, maybe, 
 
 The Isles of Glamour, where Beauty reigns. 
 
 From coasts of commerce and myriad-marted 
 
 Towns of traffic by wide seas parted. 
 
 Past shoals unmapped and by reefs uncharted, 
 
 The single-hearted my isle attains. 
 
 * Each soul may find faith to her mind. 
 Seek you the peace of the groves Elysian, 
 Or the ivy twine and the wands of vine, 
 The Dionysian, Orphic rite ? 
 
 To share the joy of the Maenad's leaping 
 
 In frenzied train thro' the dusk glen sweeping, 
 
 The dew-drench'd dance and the star-watch'd sleeping, 
 
 Or temple keeping in vestal white ? 
 
 * Ye who regret suns that have set, 
 Lo, each god of the ages golden. 
 Here is enshrined, ageless and kind, 
 Unbeholden the dark years through. 
 Their faithful oracles yet bestowing. 
 
 By laurels whisper and clear streams flowing, 
 Or the leafy stir of the Gods* own going. 
 In oak trees blowing, may answer you ! ' 
 
 From Peregrina's Song. 
 
 For the next month Terence O'Malley possessed his 
 soul in patience ; he worked, and the work saved 
 him. That is to say it enabled him to keep what 
 men call * balanced.' Stahl had — whether intention- 
 ally or not he was never quite certain — raised a 
 tempest in him. More accurately, perhaps, he had 
 
 197 
 
198 THE CENTAUR xxvii 
 
 called it to the top, for it had been raging deep 
 down ever since he could remember, or had begun 
 to think. 
 
 That the earth might be a living, sentient 
 organism, though too vast to be envisaged as such 
 by normal human consciousness, had always been a 
 tenet of his imagination's creed. Now he knew it 
 true, as a dinncr-gong is true. That deep yearnings, 
 impossible of satisfaction in the external conditions of 
 ordinary life, could know subjective fulfilment in the 
 mind, had always been for him poetically true, as for 
 any other poet : now he realized that it was literally 
 true for some outlying tract of consciousness usually 
 inactive, termed by some transliminal. Spiritual 
 nostalgia provided the channel, and the transfer of 
 consciousness to this outlying tract, involving, of 
 course, a trance condition of the usual self, indicated 
 the way — that was all. 
 
 Again, his mystical temperament had always seen 
 objects as forces which from some invisible centre 
 push outwards into visible shape — as bodies : bodies 
 of trees, stones, flowers, men, women, animals ; and 
 others but partially pushed outwards, still invisible 
 to limited physical sight at least, either too huge, too 
 small, or too attenuated for vision. Whereas now, 
 as a result of Stahl and Fechner combined, it flamed 
 into him that this was positively true ; more — that 
 there was a point in his transliminal consciousness 
 where he might * contact ' these forces before they 
 reached their cruder external expression as bodies. 
 Nature, in this sense, had always been for him alive, 
 though he had allowed himself the term by a long 
 stretch of poetic sympathy ; but now he knew that 
 it was actually true, because objects, landscapes, 
 humans, and the rest, were verily aspects of the 
 
XXVII THE CENTAUR 199 
 
 collective consciousness of the Earth, moods of her 
 spirit, phases of her being, expressions of her deep, 
 pure, passionate * heart ' — projections of herself 
 
 He pondered lingeringly over this. Common 
 words revealed their open faces to him. He 
 saw the ideas behind language, saw them naked. 
 Repetition had robbed them of so much that now 
 became vital, like Bible phrases that too great 
 familiarity in childhood kills for all subsequent life 
 as meaningless. His eyes were opened perhaps. 
 He took a flower into his mind and thought about 
 it ; really thought ; meditated lovingly. A flower 
 was literally projected by the earth so far as its form 
 was concerned. Its roots gathered soil and earth- 
 matter, changing them into leaves and blossoms ; its 
 leaves again, took of the atmosphere, also a part of the 
 earth. It was projected by the earth, born of her, 
 fed by her, and at * death ' returned into her. But 
 this was its outward and visible form only. The 
 flower, for his imaginative mind, was a force made 
 visible as literally as a house was a force the mind of 
 the architect made visible. In the mind, or con- 
 sciousness of the Earth this flower first lay latent as 
 a dream. Perhaps, in her consciousness, it nested as 
 that which in us corresponds to a little thought. . . . 
 And from this he leaped, as the way ever was with 
 him, to bigger * projections * — trees, atmosphere, 
 clouds, winds, some visible, some invisible, and so to 
 a deeper yet simpler comprehension of Fechner's 
 thundering conception of human beings as pro- 
 jections. Was he, then, literally, a child of the 
 Earth, mothered by the whole magnificent planet .? . . . 
 All the world akin — that seeking for an eternal home 
 in every human heart explained } . , . And were 
 there — had there been rather — these other, vaster 
 
200 THE CENTAUR xxvii 
 
 projections Stahl had adumbrated with his sudden 
 borrowed stretch of vision — forces, thoughts, moods 
 of her hidden life invisible to sight, yet able to be felt 
 and known interiorly ? 
 
 That ' the gods ' were definitely knowable Powers, 
 accessible to any genuine worshipper, had ever 
 haunted his mind, thinly separated only from definite 
 belief: now he understood that this also had been 
 true, though only partially divined before. For now 
 he saw them as the rare expressions of the Earth's 
 in the morning of her life. That he might ever 
 come to know them close made him tremble with a 
 fearful joy, the idea flaming across his being with a 
 dazzling brilliance that brought him close to that 
 state of consciousness termed ecstasy. And that 
 in certain unique beings, outwardly human like his 
 friend, there might still survive some primitive 
 expression of the Earth-Soul, lesser than the gods, 
 and intermediate as it were, became for him now a 
 fact — wondrous, awe-inspiring, even holy, but still a 
 fact that he could grasp. 
 
 He had found one such ; and Stahl, by warnings 
 that fought with urging invitation at the same time, 
 had confirmed it. 
 
 It was singular, he reflected, how worship had ever 
 turned for him a landscape or a scene enchantingly 
 alive. Worship, he now understood, of course 
 invited * the gods,' and was the channel through 
 which their manifestation became possible to the 
 soul. All the gods, then, were accessible in this 
 interior way, but Pan especially — in desolate places 
 and secret corners of a wood. . . . He remembered 
 dimly the Greek idea of worship in the Mysteries : 
 that the worshipper knew actual temporary union 
 with his deity in ecstasy, and at death went perma- 
 
XXVII THE CENTAUR 201 
 
 nently into his sphere of being. He understood 
 that worship was au fond a desire for loss of personal 
 life — hence its subtle joy ; and a fear lest it be 
 actually accomplished-^— whence its awe and wonder. 
 
 Some glorious, winged thing moved now beside 
 him ; it held him by the hand. The Earth possessed 
 him; and the whole adventure, so far as he can 
 make it plain, was an authoritative summons to the 
 natural, Simple Life. 
 
 For the next month, therefore, O'Malley, un- 
 hurrying, blessed with a deeper sense of happiness 
 than he had ever known before, dismissed the 
 * tempest ' from his surface consciousness, and set to 
 work to gather the picturesque impressions of 
 strange places and strange peoples that the public 
 Hked to read about in occasional letters of travel. 
 And by the time May had passed into June he had 
 moved up and down the Caucasus, observing, learning, 
 expanding, and gathering in the process through 
 every sense — through the very pores of his skin 
 almost — draughts of a new and abundant life that is 
 to be had there merely for the asking. 
 
 That modification of the personality which comes 
 even in cities to all but the utterly hidebound 
 ■ — so that a man in Rome finds himself not quite the 
 same as he was in London or in Paris a few days 
 before — went forward in him on a profounder scale 
 than anything he had known hitherto. Nature fed, 
 stimulated and called him with a passionate intimacy 
 that destroyed all sense of loneliness, and with a 
 vehement directness of attack that simply charged 
 him to the brim with a new joy of living. His 
 vitality, powers, even his physical health, stood at 
 their best and highest. The country laid its spell 
 
202 THE CENTAUR xxvii 
 
 upon him, in a word ; and if he expresses it thus 
 with some intensity it was because life came to him 
 so. His record is the measure of his vision. Those 
 who find exaggeration in it merely confess thereby 
 their own smaller capacity of living. 
 
 Here, as he wandered to and fro among these 
 proud, immense, secluded valleys, through remote 
 and untamed forests, and by the banks of wild rivers 
 that shook their flying foam across untrodden banks, 
 he wandered at the same time deeper and ever 
 deeper into himself, towards a point where he lost 
 touch with all that constituted him * modern,' or held 
 him captive in the spirit of to-day. Nearer and ever 
 nearer he moved into some tremendous freedom, 
 some state of innocence and simplicity that, while 
 gloriously unrestrained, yet knew no touch of license. 
 Dreams had whispered of it ; childhood had fringed 
 its frontiers ; longings had even mapped it faintly to 
 his mind. But now he breathed its very air and 
 knew it face to face. The Earth surged wonderfully 
 about him. 
 
 With his sleeping-bag upon a small Caucasian 
 horse, a sack to hold his cooking things, a pistol in 
 his belt, he wandered thus for days, sleeping beneath 
 the stars, seeing the sunset and the dawn, drenched 
 in new strength and wonder all the time. Here he 
 touched deeper reaches of the Earth that spoke of 
 old, old things, that yet were still young because they 
 knew not change. He walked in the morning of the 
 world, through her primal fire and dew, when all was 
 a first and giant garden. 
 
 The advertised splendours of other lands, even of 
 India, Egypt, and the East, seemed almost vulgar 
 beside this country that had somehow held itself aloof, 
 unstained and clean. The civilization of its little 
 
XXVII THE CENTAUR 203 
 
 towns seemed but a coated varnish that an hour's sun 
 would melt away ; the railway, crawling along the 
 flanks of the great range, but a ribbon of old iron 
 pinned on that, with the first shiver of those giant 
 sides, would split and vanish. 
 
 Here, where the Argonauts once landed, the 
 Golden Fleece still shone o' nights in the depths of 
 the rustling beech woods ; along the shores of that 
 old Phasis their figures might still be seen, tall Jason 
 in the lead, erect and silvery, passing o'er the shining, 
 flowered fields upon their quest of ancient beauty. 
 Further north from this sunny Colchian strand rose 
 the peak of Kasbek, gaunt and desolate pyramid of 
 iron, * sloping through five great zones of climate,' 
 whence the ghost of Prometheus still gazed down from 
 his ^ vast frozen precipice ' upon a world his courage 
 would redeem. For somewhere here was the cradle 
 of the, human race, fair garden of some Edened life 
 before the ' Fall,' when the Earth sang for joy in 
 her first, golden youth, and her soul expressed itself 
 in mighty forms that remain for lesser days but a 
 faded hierarchy of visioned gods. 
 
 A living Earth went with him everywhere, with 
 love that never breathed alarm. It seemed he felt 
 her very thoughts within himself — thoughts, however, 
 that now no longer married with a visible expression 
 as shapes. 
 
 Among these old-world tribes and peoples with 
 their babble of difficult tongues, wonder and beauty, 
 terror and worship, still lay too deeply buried to 
 have as yet externalized themselves in mental forms as 
 legend, myth, and story. In the blood ran all their 
 richness undiluted. Life was simple, full charged 
 with an immense delight. At home little cocksure 
 writers in little cocksure journals, pertly modern and 
 
204 THE CENTAUR xxvii 
 
 enlightened, might dictate how far imaginative vision 
 and belief could go before they overstepped the 
 limits of an artificial schedule ; but here * everything 
 possible to be believed was still an image of truth,' 
 and the stream of life flowed deeper than all mere 
 intellectual denials. 
 
 A little out of sight, but thinly veiled, the powers 
 that in this haunted corner of the earth, too strangely 
 neglected, pushed outwards into men and trees, into 
 mountains, flowers, and the rest, were unenslaved 
 and intensely vital. In his blood O'Malley knew the 
 primal pulses of the world. 
 
 It was irresistibly seductive. Whether he slept 
 with the Aryan Ossetines upon the high ridges of 
 the central range, or shared the stone huts of the 
 mountain Jews, unchanged since Bible days, beyond 
 the Suram heights, there came to all his senses the 
 message of that Golden Age his longings ever sought 
 — the rush and murmur of the Urwelt calling. 
 
 And so it was, about the first week in June that 
 lean, bronzed, and in perfect physical condition, this 
 wandering Irishman found himself in a little 
 Swanetian hamlet beyond Alighir, preparing with a 
 Georgian peasant-guide to penetrate yet deeper into 
 the mountain recesses and feed his heart with what 
 he found of loneliness and beauty. 
 
 This region of Imerethia, bordering on Mingrelia, 
 is smothered beneath an exuberance of vegetation 
 almost tropical, blue and golden with enormous 
 flowers, tangled with wild vines, rich with towering 
 soft beech woods, and finally, in the upper sections, 
 ablaze with leagues of huge rhododendron trees in 
 blossom that give whole mountain-sides the aspect of 
 a giant garden, flowering amid peaks that even dwarf 
 
XXVII THE CENTAUR 205 
 
 the Alps. For here the original garden of the world 
 survives, run wild with pristine loveliness. The 
 prodigality of Nature is bewildering, almost troubling. 
 There are valleys, rarely entered by the foot of man, 
 where monstrous lilies, topping a man on foot and 
 even reaching to his shoulder on horseback, have 
 suggested to botanists in their lavish luxuriance a 
 survival of the original flora of the world. A 
 thousand flowers he found whose names he had never 
 heard of, their hues and forms as strangely lovely as 
 those of another planet. The grasses alone in scale 
 and mass were magnificent. While, in and out of all 
 this splendour, less dense and voluminous only than 
 the rhododendron forests, ran scattered lines of 
 blazing yellow — the crowding clusters of azalea bushes 
 that scented the winds beyond belief. 
 
 Beyond this region of extravagance in size and 
 colour, there ran immense bare open slopes of smooth 
 turf that led to the foot of the eternal snow-fields, 
 with, far below, valleys of prodigious scale and steep- 
 ness that touched somehow with disdain all memory 
 of other mountain ranges he had ever known. 
 
 And here it was this warm June evening — June 
 15th it was — while packing his sack with cheese and 
 maize-flour in the dirty yard of a so-called *post-house,* 
 more hindered than helped by his Georgian guide, 
 that he realized the approach of a familiar, bearded 
 figure. The figure emerged. There was a sudden 
 clutch and lift of the heart . . . then a rush of wild 
 delight. There stood his Russian steamer -friend, 
 part of the scale and splendour, as though grown out 
 of the very soil. He occupied in a flash the middle 
 of the picture. He gave, it meaning. He was part 
 of it, exactly as a tree or big grey boulder were part 
 of it. 
 
XXVIII 
 
 * Seasons and times; Life and Fate — all are remarkable, rhythmic, 
 metric, regular throaghout. In all crafts and arts, in all machines, 
 in organic bodies, in our daily occupations, everywhere there is 
 rhythm, metre, accent, melody. All that we do with a certain skill 
 unnoticed, we do rhythmically. There is rhythm everywhere ; it 
 insinuates itself everywhere. All mechanism is metric, rhythmic. 
 There must be more in it than this. Is it merely the influence of 
 inertia ^ ' — Novalis. Translated by U. C. B. 
 
 Notwithstanding the extent and loneliness of this 
 wild country, coincidence seemed in no way stretched 
 by the abrupt appearance ; for in a sense it was not 
 wholly unexpected. There had been certain indica- 
 tions that the meeting again of these two was 
 imminent. The Irishman had never doubted they 
 would meet. But something more than mere hints 
 or warnings, it seemed, had prepared him. 
 
 The nature of these warnings, however, O'Malley 
 never fully disclosed. Two of them he told to me 
 by word of mouth, but there were others he could 
 not bring himself to speak about at all. Even the 
 two he mentioned do not appear in his written 
 account. His hesitation is not easy to explain, 
 unless it be that language collapsed in the attempt 
 to describe occurrences so remote from common 
 experience. This may be so, although he grappled 
 not unsuccessfully with the rest of the amazing 
 adventure. At any rate I could never coax from 
 
 206 
 
XXVIII THE CENTAUR 207 
 
 him more than the confession that there were other 
 things that had brought him hints. Then came a 
 laugh, a shrug of the shoulders, an expression of 
 confused bewilderment in eyes and manner and — 
 silence. 
 
 The two he spoke of I report as best I can. On 
 the roof of that London apartment-house where so 
 many of our talks took place beneath the stars and 
 to the tune of bustling modern traffic, he told them 
 to me. Both were consistent with his theory that 
 he was becoming daily more active in some out- 
 lying portion of his personality — knowing experiences 
 in a region of extended consciousness stimulated 
 so powerfully by his strange new friend. 
 
 Both, moreover, brought him one and the same 
 conviction that he was no longer — alone. For some 
 days past he had realized this. More than his 
 peasant guide accompanied him. He was both com- 
 panioned and — observed. 
 
 * A dozen times,' he said, * I thought I saw him, 
 and a dozen times I was mistaken. But my mind 
 looked for him. I knew that he was somewhere 
 close.' He compared the feeling to that common 
 experience of the streets when a friend, not known 
 to be near, or even expected, comes abruptly into 
 the thoughts, so that numberless individuals may 
 trick the sight with his appearance before he himself 
 comes suddenly down the pavement. His approach 
 has reached the mind before his mere body turns 
 the corner. 'Something in me was aware of his 
 approach,' he added, * as though his being were 
 sending out feelers in advance to find me. They 
 reached me first, I think ' — he hesitated briefly, 
 hunting for a more accurate term he could not find 
 — ' in dream.' 
 
2o8 THE CENTAUR 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 ' You dreamed that he was coming, then ? * 
 
 ' It came first in dream/ he answered ; ' only 
 when I woke the dream did not fade ; it passed 
 over into waking consciousness, so that I could 
 hardly tell where the threshold lay between the two. 
 And, meanwhile, I was always expecting to see him 
 — at every turn of the trail almost ; a little higher 
 up the mountain, behind a rock, or standing beside 
 a tree, just as in the end I actually did see him. 
 Long before he emerged in this way, he had been 
 close about me, guiding, waiting, watching/ 
 
 He told it as a true thing he did not quite 
 expect me to believe. Yet, in a sense, his sense, 
 I could and did believe it. It was so wholly con- 
 sistent with the^ tenor of his adventure and the 
 condition of abnormal receptivity of mind. For 
 his stretched consciousness was in a state of white 
 sensitiveness whereon the tenderest mental force of 
 another's thought might well record its signature. 
 Acutely impressionable he was all over. Physical 
 distance was of as little, or even of less, account to 
 such forces as it is to electricity. 
 
 'But it was more than the Russian who was 
 close,' he added quietly with one of those sentences 
 that startled me into keen attention. ' He was 
 there — with others — of his kind.' 
 
 And then, hardly pausing to take breath, he 
 plunged, as his manner was, full tilt into the details 
 of this first experience that thrilled my hedging soul 
 with an astonishing power of conviction. As always 
 when his heart was in the words, the scenery about 
 us faded and I lived the adventure with him. The 
 cowled and hooded chimneys turned to trees, the 
 stretch of dim star-lit London Park became a deep 
 Caucasian vale, the thunder of the traflic was the 
 
XXVIII THE CENTAUR 209 
 
 roaring of the snow-fed torrents. The very perfume 
 of strange flowers floated in the air. 
 
 They had been in their blankets, he and his 
 peasant guide, for hours, and a moon approaching 
 the full still concealed all signs of dawn, when he 
 woke out of deep sleep with the odd sensation that 
 it was only a part of him that woke. One portion 
 of him was in the body, while another portion was 
 elsewhere, manifesting with ease and freedom in some 
 state or region whither he had travelled in his sleep 
 — where, moreover, he had not been alone. 
 
 And close about him in the trees was — movement. 
 Yes ! Through and between the scattered trunks 
 he saw it still. 
 
 With eyes a little dazed, the active portion of 
 his brain perceived this processing movement passing 
 to and fro across the glades of moonlight beneath the 
 steady trees. For there was no wind. The shadows 
 of the branches did not stir. He saw swift running 
 shapes, vigorous yet silent, hurrying across the net- 
 work of splashed silver and pools of black in some 
 kind of organized movement that was circular and 
 seemed not due to chance. Arranged it seemed and 
 ordered ; like the regulated revolutions of a set and 
 whirling measure. 
 
 Perhaps twenty feet from where he lay was the 
 outer fringe of what he discerned to be this fragment 
 of some grand gambolling dance or frolic ; yet 
 discerned but dimly, for the darkness combined with 
 his uncertain vision to obscure it. 
 
 And the shapes, as they sped across the silvery 
 patchwork of the moon, seemed curiously familiar. 
 Beyond question he recognized and knew them. 
 For they were akin to those shadowy emanations 
 seen weeks ago upon the steamer's after-deck, to 
 
 p 
 
2IO THE CENTAUR xxviii 
 
 that * messenger * who climbed from out the sea and 
 sky, and to that form the spirit of the boy assumed, 
 set free in death. They were the flying outhnes 
 of Wind and Cloud he had so often glimpsed in 
 vision, racing over the long, bare, open hills — at 
 last come near. 
 
 In the moment of first waking, when he saw 
 them clearest, he declares with emphasis that he knew 
 the father and the boy were among them. Not so 
 much that he saw them actually for recognition, 
 but rather that he felt their rushing presences ; for 
 the first sensation on opening his eyes was the con- 
 viction that both had passed him close, had almost 
 touched and called him. Afterwards he searched in 
 vain among the flying forms that swept in the swift 
 succession of their leaping dance across the silvery 
 pathways. While varying in size all were so similar. 
 
 His description of them is confused a little, for 
 he admits that he could never properly focus them 
 in steady sight. They slipped with a melting swift- 
 ness under the eye ; the moment one seemed caught 
 in vision it passed on further and the next was in 
 its place. It was like following a running wave- 
 form on the sea. He says, moreover, that while 
 erect and splendid, their backs and shoulders seemed 
 prolonged in hugeness as though they often crouched 
 to spring ; they seemed to paw the air ; and that 
 a faint delicious sound to which they kept obedient 
 time and rhythm, held that same sweetness which 
 had issued from the hills of Greece, blown down 
 now among the trees from very far away. And 
 when he says * blown down among the trees,' he 
 qualifies this phrase as well, because at the same 
 time it came to him that the sound also rose up 
 from underneath the earth, as if the very surface 
 
XXVIII 
 
 THE CENTAUR 211 
 
 of the ground ran shaking with a soft vibration of 
 its own. Some marvellous dream it might have been 
 in which the forms, the movement, and the sound 
 were all thrown up and outwards from the quivering 
 surface of the Earth itself. 
 
 Yet, almost simultaneously with the first instant 
 of waking, the body issued its call of warning. 
 For, while he gazed, and before time for the least 
 reflection came, the Irishman experienced this dis- 
 locating conviction that he himself was taking part 
 in the whirling gambol even while he lay and watched 
 it, and that in this way the sense of division in his 
 personality was explained. The fragment of himself 
 within the brain watched some other more vital 
 fragment — some projection of his consciousness 
 detached and separate — playing yonder with its kind 
 beneath the moon. 
 
 This sense of a divided self was not new to him, 
 but never before had he known it so distinct and 
 overwhelming. The definiteness of the division, as 
 well as the importance and vitality of the separated 
 portion, were arrestingly novel. It felt as though he 
 were completely out, or to such a degree, at least, 
 that the fraction left behind with the brain was at 
 first only just sufficient for him to recognize his 
 body at all. 
 
 Yonder with these others he felt the wind of 
 movement pass along his back, he saw the trees slip 
 by, and knew the very contact of the ground between 
 the leaps. His movements were natural and easy, 
 light as air and fast as wind ; they seemed automatic, 
 impelled by something mighty that directed and 
 contained them. He knew, too, the sensation that 
 others pressed behind him and passed before, slipped 
 in and out, and that through the whole wild urgency 
 
212 THE CENTAUR xxviii 
 
 of- it he yet could never make an error. More — he 
 knew that these shifting forms had been close and 
 dancing about him for a time not measurable merely 
 by the hours of a single night, that in a sense they 
 were always there though he had but just discovered 
 them. His earlier glimpses had been a very partial 
 divination of a truth, immense and beautiful, that 
 now dawned quite gorgeously upon him all complete. 
 
 The whole world danced. The Universe was 
 rhythmical as well as metrical. 
 
 For this amazing splendour showed itself in a 
 flash-like revelation to the freed portion of his con- 
 sciousness, and he knew it irresistibly because he 
 himself shared it. Here was an infinite joy, naked 
 and unashamed, born of the mighty Mother's heart 
 and life, a joy which, in its feebler, lesser manifesta- 
 tions, trickles down into human conditions, though 
 still spontaneously even then, so pure its primal 
 urgency as — dancing. 
 
 The entire experience, the entire revelation, he 
 thinks, can have occupied but a fraction of a second, 
 but it seemed to smite the whole of his being at once 
 with the conviction of a supreme authority. And 
 close behind it came, too, that other sister expression 
 of a spontaneous and natural expression, equally 
 rhythmical — the impulse to sing. He could have 
 sung aloud. For this puissant and mysterious 
 rhythm to which all moved was greater than any 
 little measure of their own. Surging through them, 
 it came from outside and beyond, infinitely greater 
 than themselves, springing from something of which 
 they were, nevertheless, a living portion. From the 
 body of the Earth it came direct — it was in fact a 
 manifestation of her own vibrating life. The 
 currents of the Earth pulsed through them. 
 
XXVIII 
 
 THE CENTAUR 213 
 
 * And then,' he says, * I caught this flaming 
 thought of wonder, though so much of it faded 
 instantly upon my full awakening that I can only 
 give you the merest suggestion of what it was/ 
 
 He stood up beside me as he said it, spreading 
 his arms, as so often when he was excited, to the sky. 
 I caught the glow of his eyes, and in his voice was 
 passion. He spoke unquestionably of something he 
 had intimately known, not as men speak of even the 
 vividest dreams, but of realities that have burned the 
 heart and left their trails of glory. 
 
 ' Science has guessed some inkling of the truth,' 
 he cried, * when it declares that the ultimate molecules 
 of matter are in constant vibratory movement one 
 about another, even upon the point of a needle. 
 But I saw — knew^ rather, as if I had always known 
 it, sweet as summer rain, and close in me as love — 
 that the whole Earth with all her myriad expressions 
 of life moved to this primal rhythm as of some divine 
 dancing.' 
 
 ' Dancing ! ' I asked, puzzled. 
 
 ' Rhythmical movement call it then,' he replied. 
 * To share the life of the Earth is to dance and sing 
 in a huge abundant joy ! And the nearer to her 
 great heart, the more natural and spontaneous the 
 impulse — the instinctive dancing of primitive races, 
 of savages and children, still artless and untamed ; 
 the gambolling of animals, of rabbits in the meadows 
 and of deer unwatched in forest clearings — you know 
 naturalists have sometimes seen it ; of birds in the air 
 — rooks, gulls, and swallows ; of the life within the 
 sea ; even of gnats in the haze of summer afternoons. 
 All life simple enough to touch and share the 
 enormous happiness of her deep, streaming, personal 
 Being, dances instinctively for very joy — obedient to 
 
214 THE CENTAUR xxviii 
 
 a greater measure than they know. . . . The natural 
 movement of the great Earth -Soul is rhythmical. 
 The very winds, the swaying of trees and flowers 
 and grasses, the movement of the sea, of water run- 
 ning through the fields with silver feet, of the clouds 
 and edges of the mist, even the trembling of the 
 earthquakes, — all, all respond in sympathetic motions 
 to this huge vibratory movement of her great central 
 pulse. Ay, and the mountains too, though so vastly 
 scaled their measure that perhaps we only know the 
 pauses in between, and think them motionless. . . . 
 The mountains rise and fall and change ; our very 
 breathing, first sign of stirring life, even the circula- 
 tion of our blood, bring testimony ; our speech as 
 well — inspired words arc ever rhythmical, language 
 that pours into the poet's mind from something 
 greater than himself. And not unwisely, but in 
 obedience to a deep instinctive knowledge was 
 dancing once — in earlier, simpler days — a form of 
 worship. You know, at least, how rhythm in music 
 and ceremonial uplifts and cleans and simplifies the 
 heart towards the greater life. . . . You know, 
 perhaps, the Dance of Jesus. . . / 
 
 The words poured from him with passion, yet 
 always uttered gently with a smile of joy upon the 
 face. I saw his figure standing over me, outlined 
 against the starry sky ; and, deeply stirred, I listened 
 with delight and wonder. Rhythm surely lies behind 
 all expression of life. He was on the heels of some 
 simple, dazzling verity though he phrased it wildly. 
 But not a tenth part of all he said could I recapture 
 afterwards for writing down. The steady, gentle 
 swaying of his body I remember clearly, and that 
 somewhere or other in the stream of language, he 
 made apt reference to the rhythmical swaying of 
 
XXVIII THE CENTAUR 215 
 
 those who speak in trance, or know some strange, 
 possessing gust of inspiration. 
 
 The first and natural expression of the Earth's 
 vitality lies in a dancing movement of purest joy and 
 happiness — that for me is the gist of what remains. 
 Those near enough to Nature feel it. I myself 
 remembered days in spring . . . my thoughts, borne 
 upon some sweet emotion, travelled far. . . . 
 
 ' And not of the Earth alone,' he interrupted my 
 dreaming in a voice like singing, ' but of the entire 
 Universe. The spheres and constellations weave 
 across the fields of ether the immense old rhythm of 
 their divine, eternal dance . . . ! * 
 
 Then, with a disconcerting abruptness, and a 
 strange little wayward laugh as of apology for having 
 let himself so freely go, he sat down beside me with 
 his back against the chimney-stack. He resumed 
 more quietly the account of this particular adventure 
 that lay 'twixt dream and waking : 
 
 All that he described had happened in a few 
 seconds. It flashed, complete, authoritative and 
 vivid, then passed away. He knew again the call 
 and warning of his body — to return. For this 
 consciousness of being in two places at once, divided 
 as it were against himself, brought with it the 
 necessity for decision. With which portion should 
 he identify himself.'' By an act of will, it seemed, a 
 choice was possible. 
 
 And with it, then, came the knowledge that to 
 remain * out ' was easier than to return. This time, 
 to come back into himself would be difficult. 
 
 The very possibility seemed to provide the 
 shock of energy necessary for overcoming it ; the 
 experience alarmed him ; it was like holding an 
 
2i6 THE CENTAUR 
 
 XXVIIl 
 
 option upon living — like a foretaste of death. 
 Automatically, as it were, these loosened forces in 
 him answered to the body*s summons. The result 
 was immediate and singular ; one of these Dancing 
 Outlines separated itself from the main herd, 
 approached with a sudden silent rush, enveloped him 
 for a second of darkness and confusion, losing its 
 shape completely on the way, and then merged into 
 his being as smoke slips in and merges with the 
 structure of a tree. 
 
 The projected portion of his personality had 
 returned. The sense of division was gone. There 
 remained behind only the little terror of the weak 
 flesh whose summons had thus brought it back. 
 
 The same instant he was fully awake — the night 
 about him empty of all but the silver dreaming of 
 the moon among the shadows. Beside him lay the 
 sleeping figure of his companion, the bashlik of 
 lamb's wool drawn closely down about the ears 
 and neck, and the voluminous black bourka shroud- 
 ing him from feet to shoulders. A little distance 
 away the horse stood, munching grass. Again he 
 noted that there was no wind, and the shadows of 
 the trees lay motionless upon the ground. The air 
 smelt sweet of forest, soil, and dew. 
 
 The experience — it seemed now — belonged to 
 dreaming rather than to waking consciousness, for 
 there was nothing about him to confirm it outwardly. 
 Only the memory remained — that, and a vast, deep- 
 coursing, subtle happiness. The smaller terror that 
 he felt was of the flesh alone, for the flesh ever 
 instinctively fought against such separation. The 
 happiness, though, contained and overwhelmed the 
 fear. 
 
 Yes, only the memory remained, and even 
 
XXVIII THE CENTAUR 217 
 
 that fast fading. But the substance of what had 
 been, passed into his inmost being : the splendour 
 of that would remain for ever, incorporated with his 
 life. He had shared in this brief moment of extended 
 consciousness some measure of the Mother's cosmic 
 being, simple as sunshine, unrestrained as wind, 
 complete and satisfying. Its natural expression was 
 rhythmical, a deep, pure joy that drove outwards 
 even into little human conditions as dancing and 
 singing. He had known it, too, with companions of 
 his kind. . . . 
 
 Moreover, though no longer visible or audible, 
 it still continued somewhere close. He was 
 blessedly companioned all the time — and watched. 
 They knew him one of themselves — these brother 
 expressions of her cosmic life — these JJrwelt beings 
 that To-day had no external, bodily forms. They 
 waited, knowing well that he would come. Fulfil- 
 ment beckoned surely just beyond. • . , 
 
XXIX 
 
 *. . . . And then suddenly, — 
 
 While perhaps twice my heart was dutiful 
 
 To send my blood upon its little race — 
 
 I was exalted above surety, 
 
 And out of Time did fall.' 
 
 Lascellas Abercrombie, Poems and Interludes. 
 
 This, then, was one of the 'hints' by which 
 O'Malley knew that he was not alone and that the 
 mind of his companion was stretched out to find 
 him. He became aware after it of a distinct 
 guidance, even of direction as to his route of travel. 
 The * impulse came,' as one says, to turn northwards, 
 and he obeyed it without more ado. For this 
 * dream ' had come to him when camped upon the 
 slopes of Ararat, further south towards the Turkish 
 frontier, and though all prepared to climb the 
 sixteen-thousand foot summit, he changed his plans, 
 dismissed the local guide, and turned back for Tiflis 
 and the Central Range. In the wilder, lonelier moun- 
 tains, he felt strongly, was where he ought to be. 
 
 Another man, of course, would have dismissed 
 the dream or forgotten it while cooking his morning 
 coffee ; but, rightly or wrongly, this divining Celt 
 accepted it as real. He held an instinctive belief, 
 that in dreams of a certain order the forces that 
 drive behind the soul at a given moment, may 
 reveal themselves to the subconscious self, becom- 
 ing authoritative in proportion as they are sanely 
 encouraged and interpreted. They dramatize them- 
 
 218 
 
XXIX 
 
 THE CENTAUR 219 
 
 selves in scenes that are open to intuitive interpreta- 
 tion. And O'Malley, it seems, possessed, like the 
 Hebrew prophets of old, just that measure of 
 judgment and divination which go to the making of 
 a true clear-vision. 
 
 Packing up kit and dunnage, he crossed the 
 Georgian Military Route on foot to Vladikavkaz, and 
 thence with another horse and a Mohammedan 
 Georgian as guide, Rostom by name, journeyed via 
 Allghir and Oni up a side valley of unforgettable 
 splendour towards an Imerethian hamlet where they 
 meant to lay-in supplies for a prolonged expedition 
 into the uninhabited wilderness. 
 
 And here, the second occurrence he told me of 
 took place. It was more direct than the first, yet 
 equally strange ; also it brought a similar authority 
 — coming first along the deep mysterious underpaths 
 of sleep — sleep, that short cut into the subconscious. 
 
 They were camped among low boxwood trees, a 
 hot dry night, wind soft and stars very brilliant, 
 when the Irishman turned in his sleeping-bag and 
 abruptly woke. This time there was no dream — 
 only the certainty that something had wakened him 
 deliberately. He sat up, almost with a cry. It was 
 exactly as though he heard himself called by name 
 and recognized the voice that spoke it. He looked 
 quickly round. Nothing but the crowding army of 
 the box- trees was visible, some bushy and round, 
 others straggling in their outline, all whispering 
 gently together in the night. Beyond ran the 
 immense slopes, and far overhead he saw the gleam- 
 ing snow on peaks that brushed the stars. 
 
 No one was visible. This time no flying figures 
 danced beneath the moon. There was, indeed, no 
 
220 THE CENTAUR 
 
 XXIX 
 
 moon. Something, however, he knew had come up 
 close and touched him, calling him from the depths 
 of a profound and tired slumber. It had withdrawn 
 again, vanished into the night. The strong certainty 
 remained, though, that it lingered near about him 
 still, trying to press forwards and outwards into 
 some kind of objective visible expression that 
 included himself. He had responded with an effort 
 in his sleep, but the effort had been unsuccessful. 
 He had merely waked . . . and lost it. 
 
 The horse, tethered a few feet away, was astir and 
 troubled, straining at the rope, whinnying faintly, 
 and Rostom, the Georgian peasant, he saw, was 
 already up to quiet it. A curious perfume passed 
 him through the air — once, then vanished ; unforget- 
 table, however, for he had known it already weeks 
 ago upon the steamer. And before the gardened 
 woods about him smothered it with their richer 
 smells of a million flowers and weeds, he recognized 
 in it that peculiar pungent whiff of horse that had 
 reached him from the haunted cabin. This time it 
 was less fleeting — a fine, clean odour that he liked 
 even while it strangely troubled him. 
 
 Kicking out of his blankets, he joined the man 
 and helped to straighten out the tangled rope. 
 Rostom spoke little Russian, and 0'MaIley*s know- 
 ledge of Georgian lay in a single phrase, ' Look 
 sharp ! * but with the aid of French the man had 
 learned from shooting -parties, he gathered that 
 some one had approached during the night and 
 camped, it seemed, not far away above them. 
 
 Though unusual enough in so unfrequented a 
 region, this was not necessarily alarming, and the 
 first proof O'Malley had that the man experienced 
 no ordinary physical fear was the fact that he had 
 
XXIX THE CENTAUR 221 
 
 left both knife and rifle in his blankets. Hitherto, 
 at the least sign of danger, he changed into a perfect 
 arsenal ; he invariably slept * in his weapons ' ; but 
 now, even in the darkness, the other noted that he was 
 unarmed, and therefore it was no attempt at horse- 
 stealing or of assault upon themselves he feared. 
 
 * Who is it ? What is it ? ' he asked, stumbling 
 over the tangle of string-like roots that netted the 
 ground. * Natives, travellers like ourselves, or — 
 something else .? ' He spoke very low, as though 
 aware that what had waked him still hovered close 
 enough to overhear. * Why do you fear ? ' 
 
 And Rostom looked up a moment from stooping 
 over the rope. He stepped a little nearer, avoiding 
 the animaFs hoofs. In a confused whisper of French 
 and Russian, making at the same time the protective 
 signs of his religion, he muttered a sentence of which 
 the other caught little more than the unassuring word 
 that something was about them close — something 
 * mechant.' This curious, significant word he used. 
 
 The whispered utterance, the manner that went 
 with it, surely the dark and lonely setting of the 
 little scene as well, served to convey the full sugges- 
 tion of the adjective with a force the man himself 
 could scarcely have intended. Something had passed 
 by, not so much evil, wicked, or malign as strange 
 and alien — uncanny. Rostom, a man utterly careless 
 of physical danger, rising to it, rather, with delight, 
 was frightened — in his soul. 
 
 * What do you mean.^' O'Malley asked louder, 
 with an air of impatience assumed. The man was 
 on his knees, but whether praying, or merely 
 struggling with the rope, was hard to see. * What 
 is it you're talking about so foolishly } ' He spoke 
 with a confidence he hardly felt himself. 
 
222 THE CENTAUR xxix 
 
 And the involved reply, spoken with lips against 
 the earth, the head but slightly turned as he 
 knelt, again smothered the words. Only the curious 
 phrase came to him — * de Tancien monde — quelque- 
 chose ' 
 
 The Irishman took him by the shoulders. Not 
 meaning actually to shake him, he yet must have 
 used some violence, for the fact was that he did not 
 like the answers and sought to deny some strong 
 emotion in himself. The man stood up abruptly 
 with a kind of sudden spring. The expression of his 
 face was not easily divined in the darkness, but a gleam 
 of the eyes was clearly visible. It may have been 
 anger, it may have been terror ; vivid excitement it 
 certainly was. 
 
 ' Something — old as the stones, old as the stones,' 
 he whispered, thrusting his dark bearded face un- 
 pleasantly close. * Such things are in these mountains. 
 . . . Mais oui ! C'est moi qui vous le dis ! Old 
 as the stones, I tell you. And sometimes they come 
 out close — with sudden wind. We know ! ' 
 
 He stepped back again sharply and dropped upon 
 his knees, bowing to the ground with flattened palms. 
 He made a repelling gesture as though it was 
 O'Malley's presence that brought the experience. 
 
 ' And to see them is — to die ! ' he heard, muttered 
 against the ground thickly. * To see them is to die ! ' 
 
 The Irishman went back to his sleeping-bag. 
 Some strange passion of the man was deeply stirred ; 
 he did not wish to oiFend his violent beliefs and turn 
 it against himself in a stupid, scrambling fight. He 
 lay and waited. He heard the muttering of the deep 
 voice behind him in the darkness. Presently it ceased. 
 Rostom came softly back to bed. 
 
 * He knows ; he warned me ! ' he whispered, jerk- 
 
XXIX 
 
 THE CENTAUR 223 
 
 ing one hand towards the horse significantly, as they 
 at length lay again side by side in their blankets 
 and the stars shone down upon them from a deep 
 black sky. ' But, for the moment, they have passed, 
 not finding us. No wind has come.' 
 
 ' Another — horse ? ' asked O'Malley suggestively, 
 with a sympathy meant to quiet him. 
 
 But the peasant shook his head ; and this time it 
 was not difficult to divine the expression on his face 
 even in the darkness. At the same moment the 
 tethered animal again uttered a long whinnying cry, 
 plaintive, yet of pleasure rather than alarm it seemed, 
 which instantly brought the man again with a leap 
 from the blankets to his knees. O'Malley did not 
 go to help him ; he stuffed the clothes against his 
 ears and waited ; he did not wish to hear the peasant's 
 sentences. 
 
 And this pantomime went on at intervals for an 
 hour or more, when at length the horse grew quiet 
 and O'Malley snatched moments of unrefreshing 
 sleep. The night lay thick about them with a 
 silence like the silence of the sky. The boxwood 
 bushes ran together into a single sheet of black, the 
 far peaks faded out of sight, the air grew keen and 
 sharp towards the dawn on the wave of wind the 
 sunrise drives before it round the world. But to 
 and fro across the Irishman's mind as he lay between 
 sleep and dozing ran the feeling that his friends were 
 close, and that those dancing forms of cosmic life to 
 which all three approximated had come near once 
 more to summon him. He also knew that what 
 the horse had felt was something far from terror. 
 The animal instinctively had divined the presence of 
 something to which it, too, was remotely kin. 
 
 Rostom, however, remained keenly on the alert, 
 
224 THE CENTAUR xxix 
 
 much of the time apparently praying. Not once did 
 he touch the weapons that lay ready to hand upon 
 the folded bourka . . . and when at last the dawn 
 came, pale and yellow, through the trees, showing 
 the outlines of the individual box and azalea bushes, 
 he got up earlier than usual and began to make 
 the fire for coffee. In the fuller light which soon 
 poured swiftly over the eastern summits and dropped 
 gold and silver into the tremendous valley at their 
 feet, the men made a systematic search of the 
 immediate surroundings, and then of the clearings 
 and more open stretches beyond. In silence they 
 made it. They found, however, no traces of another 
 camping-party. And it was clear from the way they 
 went about the search that neither expected to find 
 anything. The ground was unbroken, the bushes 
 undisturbed. 
 
 Yet still, both knew. That * something ' which 
 the night had brought and kept concealed, still 
 hovered close about them. 
 
 And it was at this scattered hamlet, consisting of 
 little more than a farm of sorts and a few shepherds' 
 huts of stone, where they stopped two hours later 
 for provisions, that O'Malley looked up thus 
 suddenly and recognized the figure of his friend. 
 He stood among the trees a hundred yards away. 
 At first the other thought he was a tree — his stalwart 
 form the stem, his hair and beard the branches — so 
 big and motionless he stood between the other trunks. 
 O'Malley saw him for a full minute before he under- 
 stood. The man seemed so absolutely a part of the 
 landscape, a giant detail in keeping with the rest — a 
 detail that had suddenly emerged. 
 
 The same moment a great draught of wind, rising 
 
XXIX THE CENTAUR 225 
 
 from depths of the valley below, swept overhead 
 with a roaring sound, shaking the beech and box 
 trees and setting all the golden azalea heads in a 
 sudden agitation. It passed as swiftly as it came. 
 The peace of the June morning again descended on 
 the mountains. 
 
 It was broken by a wild, half-smothered cry, — a 
 cry of genuine terror. 
 
 For O'Malley had turned to Rostom with some 
 word that here, in this figure, lay the explanation of 
 the animal's excitement in the night, when he saw 
 that the peasant, white as chalk beneath the tangle 
 of black hair that covered his face, had stopped dead 
 in his tracks. His mouth was open, his arms up- 
 raised to shield ; he was staring fixedly in the same 
 direction as himself. The next instant he was on his 
 knees, bowing and scraping towards Mecca, groaning, 
 hiding his eyes with both hands. The sack he held 
 had toppled over ; the cheese and flour rolled upon 
 the ground ; and from the horse came that long- 
 drawn whinnying of the night. 
 
 There was a momentary impression — entirely in 
 the Irishman's mind, of course, — that the whole 
 landscape veiled a giant, rushing movement that 
 passed across it like a wave. The surface of the 
 earth, it seemed, ran softly quivering, as though that 
 wind had stirred response together with the trembling 
 of the million leaves . . . before it settled back 
 again to stillness. It passed in the flash of an eyelid. 
 The earth lay tranquil in repose. 
 
 But, though the suddenness of the stranger's 
 arrival might conceivably have startled the ignorant 
 peasant, with nerves already overwrought from the 
 occurrence of the night, O'Malley was not prepared 
 for the violence of the man's terror as shown by the 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE CENTAUR xxix 
 
 immediate sequel. For after several moments' prayer 
 and prostration, with groans half smothered against 
 the very ground, he sprang impetuously to his feet 
 again, turned to his employer with eyes that gleamed 
 wildly in that face of chalk, cried out — the voice 
 thick with the confusion of his fear — * It is the Wind 1 
 They come ; from the mountains they come 1 Older 
 than the stones they are. Save yourself. . . . Hide 
 your eyes ... fly ... ! ' — and was gone. Like a 
 deer he went. He waited neither for food nor pay- 
 ment, but flung the great black bourka round his 
 face — and ran. 
 
 And to O'Malley, bereft of all power of movement 
 as he watched in complete bewilderment, one thing 
 seemed clear : the man went in this extraordinary 
 fashion because he was afraid of something he had 
 felt, not seen. For as he ran with wild and leaping 
 strides, he did not run away from the figure. He 
 took the direction straight towards the spot where 
 the stranger still stood motionless as a tree. So close 
 he passed him that he must almost have brushed his 
 very shoulder. He did not see him. 
 
 The last thing the Irishman noted was that in his 
 violence the man had dropped the yellow bashlik 
 from his head. O'Malley saw him stoop with a 
 flying rush to pick it up. He seemed to catch it as 
 it fell. 
 
 And then the big figure moved. He came slowly 
 forward from among the trees, his hands outstretched 
 in greeting, on his great visage a shining smile of 
 welcome that seemed to share the sunrise. In that 
 moment for the Irishman all was forgotten as though 
 unknown, unseen, save the feelings of extraordinary 
 happiness that filled him to the brim. 
 
XXX 
 
 *The poets are thus liberating gods. The ancient British bards 
 had for the title of their order, " Those who are free throughout the 
 world." They are free, and they make free. An imaginative book 
 renders us much more service at first, by stimulating us through its 
 tropes, than afterward, when we arrive at the precise sense of the 
 author. I think nothing is of any value in books, excepting the 
 transcendental and extraordinary. If a man is inflamed and carried 
 away by his thought, to that degree that he forgets the authors and 
 the public, and heeds only this one dream, which holds him like an 
 insanity, let me read his paper, and you may have all the arguments 
 and histories and criticism.' — Emerson. 
 
 To criticize, deny, perhaps to sneer, is no very difficult 
 or uncommon function of the mind, and the story as 
 I first heard him tell it, lying there in the grass beyond 
 the Serpentine that summer evening, roused in me, 
 I must confess, all of these very ordinary faculties. 
 Yet, as I listened to his voice that mingled with the 
 rustle of the poplars overhead, and watched his eager 
 face and gestures, it came to me dimly that a man's 
 mistakes may be due to his attempting bigger things 
 than his little critic ever dreamed perhaps. And 
 gradually I shared the vision that this unrhyming 
 poet by my side had somehow lived out in action. 
 
 Inner experience for him was ever the reality — 
 not the mere forms or deeds that clothe it in partial ^ 
 physical expression. 
 
 There was no question, of course, that he had 
 actually met this big, inarticulate Russian on the 
 
 227 
 
228 THE CENTAUR 
 
 XXX 
 
 steamer ; that Stahl's part in the account was un- 
 varnished ; that the boy had fallen on the deck from 
 heart disease ; and that, after an interval, chance had 
 brought O'Malley and the father together again in 
 this valley of the Central Caucasus. All that was 
 as literal as the superstitious terror of the Georgian 
 peasant. Further, that the Russian possessed pre- 
 cisely those qualities of powerful sympathy with the 
 other's hidden longings which the subtle-minded Celt 
 had been so quick to appropriate — this, too, was 
 literal enough. Here, doubtless, was the springboard 
 whence he leaped into the stream of this quasi- 
 spiritual adventure with an eagerness of fine, whole- 
 hearted belief which must make this dull world a 
 very wonderful place indeed to those who know it ; 
 for it is the visioned faculty of correlating the 
 commonest event with the procession of august Powers 
 that pass ever to and fro behind life's swaying curtain, 
 and of divining in the most ordinary of yellow 
 buttercups the golden fires of a dropped star. 
 
 Again, for Terence O'Malley there seemed no 
 definite line that marked off one state of consciousness 
 from another, just as there seems no given instant 
 when a man passes actually from sleep to waking, 
 from pleasure to pain, from joy to grief. There 
 is, indeed, no fixed threshold between the states 
 of normal and abnormal consciousness. In this 
 stranger he imagined a sense of companionship that 
 by some magic of alchemy transformed his deep lone- 
 liness into joy, and satisfied his passionate yearnings 
 by bringing their subjective fulfilment within range. 
 To have found acceptance in his sight was thus a 
 revolutionary fact in his existence. While a part of 
 my mind may have labelled it all as creative imagina- 
 tion, another part recognized it as plainly true — 
 
XXX THE CENTAUR 229 
 
 because his being lived it out without the least 
 denial. 
 
 He, at any rate, was not inventing ; nor ever 
 knew an instant's doubt. He simply told me what 
 had happened. The discrepancies — the omissions 
 in his written account especially — were simply due, 
 I feel, to the fact that his skill in words was not 
 equal to the depth and brilliance of the emotions 
 that he experienced. But the fact remains : he did 
 experience them. His fairy tale convinced. 
 
 His faith had made him whole — one with the 
 Earth. The sense of disunion between his outer and 
 his inner self was gone. 
 
 And now, as these two began their journey 
 together into the wilder region of these stupendous 
 mountains, 0*Malley says he realized clearly that the 
 change he had dreaded as an * inner catastrophe ' 
 simply would mean the complete and final transfer of 
 his consciousness from the * without ' to the * within.' 
 It would involve the loss only of what constituted 
 him a person among the external activities of the 
 world to-day. He would lose his Hfe to find it. The 
 deeper self thus quickened by the stranger must 
 finally assert its authority over the rest. To join 
 these Urwelt beings and share their eternal life of 
 beauty close to the Earth herself, he must shift the 
 centre. Only thus could he enter the state before 
 the * Fall ' — that ancient Garden of the World-Soul, 
 walled-in so close behind his daily life — and know 
 deliverance from the discontent of modern conditions 
 that so distressed him. 
 
 To do this temporarily, perhaps, had long been 
 possible to him — in dream, in reverie, in those 
 imaginative trances when he almost seemed to leave 
 his body altogether ; but to achieve it permanently 
 
230 THE CENTAUR xxx 
 
 was something more than any such passing disable- 
 ment of the normal self. It involved, he now saw 
 clearly, that which he had already witnessed in the 
 boy : the final release of his Double in so-called 
 death. 
 
 Thus, as they made their way northwards, nomin- 
 ally towards the mighty Elbruz and the borders of 
 Swanetia, the Irishman knew in his heart that they in 
 reality came nearer to the Garden long desired, and 
 to those lofty Gates of horn and ivory that hitherto 
 he had never found — because he feared to let himself 
 go. Often he had camped beneath the walls, had 
 smelt the flowers, heard the songs, and even caught 
 glimpses of the life that moved so gorgeously within. 
 But the Gates themselves had never shone for him, even 
 against the sky of dream, because his vision had been 
 clouded by alarm. They swung, it had seemed to him 
 before, in only one direction — for those who enter : 
 he had always hesitated, lost his way, returned. . . . 
 And many, like him, make the same mistake. Once 
 in, there need be no return, for in reality the walls 
 spread outwards and — enclose the entire world. 
 
 Civilization and Humanity, the man of smaller 
 vision had called out to him as passwords to safety. 
 Simplicity and Love, he now discovered were the truer 
 clues. His big friend in silence taught him. Now 
 he knew. 
 
 For in that little hamlet their meeting had taken 
 place — in silence. No actual speech had passed. 
 ' You go — so .? ' the Russian conveyed by a look and 
 by a movement of his whole figure, indicating the 
 direction ; and to the Irishman's assenting inclination 
 of the head he made an answering gesture that merely 
 signified compliance with a plan already known to 
 
XXX THE CENTAUR 231 
 
 both. * We go, together then.' And, there and 
 then, they started, side by side. 
 
 The suddenness of this concerted departure only 
 seemed strange afterwards when O'Malley looked 
 back upon it, for at the time it seemed as inevitable 
 as being obliged to swim once the dive is taken. He 
 stood upon a pinnacle whence lesser details were 
 invisible ; he knew a kind of exaltation — of loftier 
 vision. Small facts that ordinarily might fill the day 
 with trouble sank below the horizon then. He did 
 not even notice that they went without food, horse, 
 or blankets. It was reckless, unrestrained, and utterly 
 unhindered, this free setting-forth together. Thus 
 might he have gone upon a journey with the wind, 
 the sunshine, or the rain. Departure with a thought, 
 a dream, a fancy could not have been less unhampered. 
 
 The only detail of his outer world that lingered 
 — and that, already sinking out of sight like a stone 
 into deep water — was the image of the running peasant. 
 For a moment he recalled the picture. He saw the 
 man in the act of stooping after the fallen bashlik. 
 He saw him seize it, lift it to his head again. But 
 the picture was small — already very far away. Before 
 the bashlik actually reached the head, the detail 
 dipped into mist and vanished. . • 
 
XXXI 
 
 It was spring — and the flutes of Pan played every- 
 where. The radiance of the world's first morning 
 shone undimmed. Life flowed and sang and danced, 
 abundant and untamed. It bathed the mountains 
 and that sky of stainless blue. It bathed him too. 
 Dipped, washed, and shining in it, he walked the 
 Earth as she lay radiant in her early youth. The 
 crystal presence of her everlasting Spring flew laugh- 
 ing through a world of light and flowers — flowers 
 |-hat none could ever pluck to die, light that could 
 never fade to darkness within walls and roofs. 
 
 All day they wound easily, as though on winged 
 feet, through the steep belt of box and beech woods, 
 and in sparkling brilliant heat across open spaces 
 where the azaleas shone ; a cooling wind, fresh as 
 the dawn, seemed ever to urge them forwards. The 
 country, for all its huge scale and wildness, was park- 
 like ; the giant, bushy trees wore an air of being 
 tended by the big winds that ran with rustling music 
 among their waving foliage. Between the rhododen- 
 drons were avenues of turf, broad-gladed pathways, 
 yet older than the moon, from which a thousand 
 gardeners of wind and dew had gone but a moment 
 before to care for others further on. Over all 
 brimmed up some primal, old-world beauty of a 
 simple life — some immemorial soft glory of the dawn. 
 
 232 
 
XXXI 
 
 THE CENTAUR 233 
 
 Closer and closer, deeper and deeper, ever swifter, 
 ever more direct, O'Malley passed down towards the 
 heart of his mother's being. Along the tenderest 
 pathways of his inner being, so wee, so soft, so 
 simple that for most men they lie ignored or over- 
 grown, he slipped with joy a little nearer — one stage 
 perhaps — towards Reality. 
 
 Pan ' blew in power ' across these Caucasian heights 
 and valleys. 
 
 Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan ! 
 
 Piercing sweet by the river ! 
 Blinding sweet, O great god Pan ! 
 The sun on the hill forgot to die, 
 And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly 
 
 Came back to dream on the river. 
 
 In front his big leader, no longer blundering 
 clumsily as on that toy steamer with the awkward 
 and lesser motion known to men, pressed forward 
 with a kind of giant sure supremacy along paths he 
 knew, or rather over a trackless, pathless world which 
 the great planet had charted lovingly for his splendid 
 feet. That wind, blowing from the depths of 
 valleys left long since behind, accompanied them 
 wisely. They heard, not the faint horns of Elfland 
 faintly blowing, but the blasts of the Urwelt 
 trumpets growing out of the still distance, nearer, 
 ever nearer. For leagues below the beech woods 
 poured over the enormous slopes in a sea of soft 
 green foam, and through the meadow spaces they 
 saw the sweet nakedness of running water, and 
 listened to its song. At noon they rested in the 
 greater heat, sleeping beneath the shado\^ of big 
 rocks ; and sometimes travelled late into the night, 
 when the stars guided them and they knew the 
 pointing of the winds. The very moonlight then, 
 
234 THE CENTAUR xxxi 
 
 that washed this lonely world with silver, sheeting the 
 heights of snow beyond, was friendly, half divine . . . 
 and it seemed to O'Malley that while they slept they 
 were watched and cared for — as though Others who 
 awaited had already come halfway out to meet them. 
 And ever, more and more, the passion of his 
 happiness increased ; he knew himself complete, 
 fulfilled, made whole. It was as though his Self were 
 passing outwards into hundreds of thousands, and 
 becoming countless as the sand. He was everywhere ; 
 in everything ; shining, singing, dancing. . . . With 
 the ancient woods he breathed ; slipped with the 
 streams down the still darkened valleys ; called from 
 each towering summit to the Sun ; and flew with all 
 the winds across the immense, untrodden slopes. 
 About him lay this whole spread being of the flowered 
 Caucasus, huge and quiet, drinking in the sunshine 
 at its leisure. But it lay also within himself, for his 
 expanding consciousness included and contained it. 
 Through it — this early potent Mood of Nature — 
 he passed towards the Soul of the Earth within, 
 even as a child, caught by a mood of winning tender- 
 ness in its mother, passes closer to the heart that 
 gave it birth. Some central love enwrapped him. 
 He knew the surrounding power of everlasting arms. 
 
XXXII 
 
 ' Inward, ay, deeper far than love or scorn, 
 
 Deeper than bloom of virtue, stain of sin, 
 
 Rend thou the veil and pass alone within, 
 Stand naked there and know thyself forlorn. 
 
 Nay ! in what world, then, spirit, wast thou born ? 
 
 Or to what World-Soul art thou entered in ? 
 
 Feel the Self fade, feel the great life begin. 
 With Love re-rising in the cosmic morn. 
 
 The Inward ardour yearns to the inmost goal ; 
 
 The endless goal is one with the endless way ; 
 
 From every gulf the tides of Being roll, 
 
 From every zenith burns the indwelling day ; 
 And life in Life has drowned thee and soul in Soul 
 And these are God, and thou thyself art they.' 
 
 F. W. H. Myers. From * A Cosmic Outlook.* 
 
 The account of what followed simply swept me into 
 fairyland, yet a Fairyland that is true because it lives 
 in every imaginative heart that does not dream itself 
 shut off from the Universe in some wee compartment 
 all alone. 
 
 If O'Malley's written account, and especially his 
 tumbled note-books, left me bewildered and confused, 
 the fragments that he told me brought this sense of 
 an immense, sweet picture that actually existed. I 
 caught small scenes of it, set in some wild high light. 
 Their very incoherence conveyed the gorgeous 
 splendour of the whole better than any neat ordered 
 sequence could possibly have done. 
 
 Climax, in the story-book meaning, there was 
 none. The thing flowed round and round for ever. 
 
 235 
 
236 THE CENTAUR xxxii 
 
 A sense of something eternal wrapped me as I listened ; 
 for his imagination set the whole adventure out of time 
 and space, and I caught myself dreaming too. * A 
 thousand years in His sight* — I understood the old 
 words as refreshingly new — might be a day. Thus 
 felt that monk, perhaps, for whose heart a hundred 
 years had passed while he listened to the singing of a 
 httle bird. 
 
 My practical questions — it was only at the 
 beginning that I was dull enough to ask them — he 
 did not satisfy, because he could not. There was 
 never the least suggestion of the artist's mere 
 invention. 
 
 * You really felt the Earth about and in you,' I 
 had asked, * much as one feels the presence of a friend 
 and living person ? ' 
 
 * Drowned in her, yes, as in the thoughts and 
 atmosphere of some one awfully loved.' His voice 
 a little trembled as he said it. 
 
 ' So speech unnecessary ? ' 
 
 * Impossible — fatal,' was the laconic, comprehensive 
 reply, * limiting : destructive even.' 
 
 That, at least, I grasped : the pitifulness of words 
 before that love by which self goes wholly lost in the 
 being of another, adrift yet cared for, gathered 
 all wonderfully in. 
 
 *And your Russian friend — your leader .f^' I 
 ventured, haltingly. 
 
 His reply was curiously illuminating : — 
 
 *Like some great guiding Thought within her 
 mind — some flaming w^o///— interpreting her love and 
 splendour — leading me straight.' 
 
 * As you felt at Marseilles, a clue — a vital clue .? ' 
 For I remembered the singular phrase he had used in 
 the note-book 
 
XXXII THE CENTAUR 237 
 
 * Not a bad word,' he laughed ; * certainly, as far 
 as it goes, not a wrong one. For he — it — was at 
 the same time within myself. We merged, as our 
 life grew and spread. We swept things along with 
 us from the banks. We were in flood together,* he 
 cried. * We drew the landscape with us ! * 
 
 The last words baffled me ; I found no immediate 
 response. He pushed away the plates on the table 
 before us, where we had been lunching in the back 
 room of a dingy Soho restaurant. We now had the 
 place to ourselves. He drew his chair a little nearer. 
 
 * Don't ye see — our journey also was within^ he 
 added abruptly. 
 
 The pale London sunlight came through the 
 window across chimneys, dreary roofs, courtyards. 
 Yet where it touched his face it seemed at once to 
 shine. His voice was warm and eager. I caught 
 from him, as it were, both heat and light. 
 
 ' You moved actually, though, over country — } ' 
 
 * While at the same time we moved within, ad- 
 vanced, sank deeper,' he returned ; ' call it what you 
 will. Our condition moved. There was this cor- 
 respondence between the two. Over her face we 
 walked, yet into her as well. We " travelled " with 
 One greater than ourselves, both caught and merged 
 in her, in utter sympathy with one another as with 
 herself . . .' 
 
 This stopped me dead. I could not pretend more 
 than a vague sympathetic understanding with such 
 descriptions of a mystical experience. Nor, it was 
 clear, did he expect it of me. Even his own heart 
 was troubled, and he knew he spoke of things that 
 only few may deal with sanely, still fewer hear with 
 patience. 
 
 But, oh, that little room in Greek Street smelt of 
 
238 THE CENTAUR xxxii 
 
 forests, dew, and dawn as he told it, — that dear way- 
 ward Child of Earth ! For * his voice fell, like music 
 that makes giddy the dim brain, faint with intoxica- 
 tion of keen joy/ I watched those delicate hands 
 he spread about him through the air ; the tender, 
 sensitive lips, the light blue eyes that glowed. I 
 noted the real strength in the face, — a sort of nobility 
 it was — his shabby suit of grey, his tie never caught 
 properly in the collar, the frayed cuiFs, and the 
 enormous boots he wore even in London — ' policeman 
 boots ' as we used to call them with a laugh. 
 
 So vivid was the picture that he painted ! Almost, 
 it seemed, I knew myself the pulse of that eternal 
 Spring beneath our feet, beating in vain against the 
 suffocating weight of London's bricks and pavements 
 laid by civilization — the Earth's deHght striving 
 to push outwards into visible form as flowers. She 
 flashed some scrap of meaning thus into me, though 
 blunted on the way, I fear, and crudely paraphrased. 
 
 Yes, as he talked across the airless gloom of that 
 little back room, in some small way I caught the 
 splendour of his vision. Behind the words, I caught 
 it here and there. My own wee world extended. 
 My being stretched to understand him and to net in 
 fugitive fragments the scenes of wonder that he knew 
 complete. 
 
 Perhaps his larger consciousness fringed my own 
 to * bruise ' it, as he claimed the Earth had done to 
 him, so that I glimpsed in tinier measure an experience 
 that in himself blazed whole and thundering. It 
 was, I must admit, exalting and invigorating, if a 
 little breathless ; and the return to streets and 
 omnibuses painful — a descent to ugliness and dis- 
 appointment. For things I can hardly understand 
 now, even in my own descriptions of them, seemed 
 
XXXII THE CENTAUR 239 
 
 at the time quite clear — or clear-ish at any rate. 
 Whereas normally I could never have compassed 
 them at all. 
 
 It taught me : that, at least, I know. In some 
 spiritual way I quickened to the view that all great 
 teaching really comes in some such curious fashion — 
 via a temporary stretching or extension of the ' heart ' 
 to receive it. The little normal self is pushed aside 
 to make room, even to the point of loss, in order to 
 contain it. Later, the consciousness contracts again. 
 But it has expanded — and there has been growth. 
 Was this, I wondered, perhaps what mystics speak of 
 when they say the personal life ftiust slip aside, be 
 trampled on, submerged, before there can be room 
 for the divine Presences . . . .? 
 
 At any rate, as he talked there over coffee that 
 grew cold and cigarette smoke that made the air yet 
 thicker than it naturally was, his words conveyed with 
 almost grandeur of conviction this reality of a pro- 
 found inner experience. I shared in some faint way 
 its truth and beauty, so that when I saw it in his 
 written form I marvelled to find the thing so thin and 
 cold and dwindled. The key his personal presence 
 supplied, of guidance and interpretation, of course 
 was gone. 
 
XXXIII 
 
 * Why, what is this patient entrance into Nature's deep resources 
 But the child's most gradual learning to walk upright without bane ? 
 When we drive out, from the cloud of steam, majestical white horses, 
 Are we greater than the first men who led black ones by the mane ? * 
 
 E. B. Browning. 
 
 The * Russian ' led. 
 
 O'Malley styled him thus to the end for want of 
 a larger word, perhaps — a word to phrase the inner 
 and the outer. Although the mountains were devoid 
 of trails, he seemed always certain of his way. An 
 absolute sense of orientation possessed him ; or, 
 rather, the whole earth became a single pathway. Her 
 being, in and about their hearts, concealed no secrets ; 
 he knew the fresh, cool water-springs as surely as the 
 corners where the wild honey gathered. It seemed 
 natural that the bees should leave them unmolested, 
 giving them freely of their store, as that the savage 
 dogs in the aouls, or villages, they passed so rarely 
 now, should refrain from attack. Even the peasants 
 shared with them some common, splendid life. 
 Occasionally they passed an Ossetine on horseback, a 
 rifle swung across his saddle, a covering bourka 
 draping his shoulders and the animal's haunches in a 
 single form that seemed a very outgrowth of the 
 mountains. But not even a greeting was exchanged. 
 They passed in silence ; often very close, as though 
 they did not see these two on foot. And once or 
 
 240 
 
xxxiii THE CENTAUR 241 
 
 twice the horses reared and whinnied, while their 
 riders made the signs of their religion. . . . Sentries 
 they seemed. But for the password known to both 
 they would have stopped the travellers. In these 
 forsaken fastnesses mere unprotected wandering 
 means death. Yet to the happy Irishman there 
 never came a thought of danger or alarm. All was 
 a portion of himself, and no man can be afraid of his 
 own hands or feet. Their convoy was immense, 
 invisible, a guaranteed security of the vast Earth 
 herself. No little personal injury could pass so huge 
 defence. Others, armed with a lesser security of 
 knives and guns and guides, would assuredly have 
 been turned back, or had they shown resistance, 
 would never have been heard to tell the tale. Dr. 
 Stahl and the fur-merchant, for instance 
 
 But such bothering little thoughts with their hard 
 edges no longer touched reality ; they spun away and 
 found no lodgment ; they were — untrue ; false 
 items of some lesser world unrealized. 
 
 For, in proportion as he fixed his thoughts success- 
 fully on outward and physical things, the world 
 wherein he now walked grew dim : he missed the 
 path, stumbled, saw trees and flowers indistinctly, 
 failed to hear properly the call of birds and wind, 
 to feel the touch of sun ; and, most unwelcome of 
 all, — was aware that his leader left him, dwindling 
 in size, dropping away somehow among shadows far 
 behind or far ahead. 
 
 The inversion was strangely complete : what men 
 called solid, real, and permanent he now knew as the 
 veriest shadows of existence, fleeting, unsatisfactory, 
 false. 
 
 Their dreary make-believe had all his life oppressed 
 him. He now knew why. Men, driving their 
 
 R 
 
242 THE CENTAUR xxxiu 
 
 forces outwards for external possessions had lost the 
 way so utterly. It truly was amazing. He no 
 longer quite understood how such feverish strife was 
 possible to intelligent beings : the fur-merchant, the 
 tourists, his London friends, the great majority of 
 men and women he had known, pain in their hearts 
 and weariness in their eyes, the sad strained faces, 
 the furious rush to catch a little pleasure they deemed 
 joy. It seemed like some wild senseless game that 
 madness plays. He found it difficult to endow 
 them, one and all, with any sense of life. He saw 
 them groping in thick darkness, snatching with hands 
 of shadow at things of even thinner shadow, all 
 moving in a wild and frantic circle of artificial 
 desires, while just beyond, absurdly close to many, 
 blazed this great living sunshine of Reality and 
 Peace and Beauty. If only they would turn — and 
 look within — ! 
 
 In fleeting moments these sordid glimpses of that 
 dark and shadow- world still afflicted his outer sight 
 — the nightmare he had left behind. It played like 
 some gloomy memory through a corner of conscious- 
 ness not yet wholly disentangled from it. Already 
 he burned to share his story with the world. . . ! 
 A few he saw who here and there half turned, touched 
 by a flashing ray — then rushed away into the old 
 blackness as though frightened, not daring to escape. 
 False images thrown outward by the intellect pre- 
 vented. Stahl he saw . . . groping ; a soft light of 
 yearning in his eyes ... a hand outstretched to 
 push the shadows from him, yet ever gathering them 
 instead. . . . Men he saw by the million, youth still in 
 their hearts, yet slaving in darkened trap-like cages 
 not merely to earn a competency but to pile more gold 
 fgr things not really wanted; faces of greed round 
 
xxxiir THE CENTAUR 243 
 
 gambling-tables ; the pandemonium of Exchanges ; 
 even fair women, playing Bridge through all a 
 summer afternoon — the strife and lust and passion 
 for possessions degrading every heart, choking the 
 channels of simplicity. . . . Over the cities of the 
 world he heard the demon Civilization sing its song 
 of terror and desolation. Its music of destruction 
 shook the nations. He saw the millions dance. 
 And mid the bewildering ugly thunder of that sound 
 few could catch the small sweet voice played by the 
 Earth upon the little Pipes of Pan ... the fluting 
 call of Nature to the Simple Life — which is the Inner. 
 For now, as he moved closer to the Earth, deeper 
 ever deeper into the enfolding moods of her vast 
 collective consciousness, he drew nearer to the Reality 
 that satisfies. He approached that centre where 
 outward activity is less, yet energy and vitality far 
 greater — because it is at rest. Here he met things 
 halfway, as it were, en route for the outer physical 
 world where they would appear later as * events,' but 
 not yet emerged, still alive and breaking with their 
 undischarged and natural potencies. Modern life, he 
 discerned, dealt only with these forces when they had 
 emerged, masquerading at the outer rim of life as 
 complete embodiments, whereas actually they are but 
 partial and symbolical expressions of their eternal 
 prototypes behind. And men to-day were busy at 
 this periphery only, touch with the centre lost, madly 
 consumed with the unimportant details that concealed 
 the inner glory. It was the spirit of the age to mis- 
 take the outer shell for the inner reality. He at last 
 understood the reason of his starved loneliness amid 
 the stupid uproar of latter-day life, why he distrusted 
 * Civilization,' and stood apart. His yearnings were 
 explained. His heart dwelt ever in the Golden Age 
 
244 THE CENTAUR xxxiii 
 
 of the Earth*s first youth, and at last — he was coming 
 home. 
 
 Like mud settling in dirty water, the casual 
 realities of that outer life all sank away. He grew 
 clear within, one with the primitive splendour, 
 beauty, grace of a fresh world. Over his inner self, 
 flooding slowly the passages and cellars, those 
 subterranean ways that honeycomb the dim-lit 
 foundations of personality, this tide of power rose. 
 Filling chamber after chamber, melting down walls and 
 ceiling, eating away divisions softly and irresistibly, 
 it climbed in silence, merging all moods and disunion 
 of his separate Selves into the single thing that made 
 him comprehensible to himself and able to know the 
 Earth as Mother. He saw himself whole ; he knew 
 himself divine. A strange tumult as of some 
 ecstasy of old remembrance invaded him. He 
 dropped back into a more spacious scale of time, 
 long long ago when a month might be a moment, 
 or a thousand years pass round him as a single 
 day. . . . 
 
 The qualities of all the Earth lay too, so easily 
 contained, within himself. He understood that old 
 legend by which man the microcosm represents and 
 ,sums up Earth, the macrocosm in himself, so that 
 Nature becomes the symbol and interpreter of his 
 inner being. The strength and dignity of the trees 
 he drew into himself; the power of the wind was 
 his ; with his unwearied feet ran all the sweet and 
 facile swiftness of the rivulets, and in his thoughts 
 the graciousness of flowers, the wavy softness of 
 the grass, the peace of open spaces and the calm 
 of that vast sky. The murmur of the Urwelt was 
 in his blood, and in his heart the exaltation of her 
 golden Mood of Spring. 
 
XXXIII THE CENTAUR 245 
 
 How, then, could speech be possible, since both 
 shared this common life? The communion with his 
 friend and leader was too profound and perfect for 
 any stammering utterance in the broken, partial 
 symbols known as language. This was done for 
 them : the singing of the birds, the wind-voices, the 
 rippling of water, the very humming of the myriad 
 insects even, and rustling of the grass and leaves, 
 shaped all they felt in some articulate expression that 
 was right, complete, and adequate. The passion of 
 the larks set all the sky to music, and songs far 
 sweeter than the nightingales* made every dusk 
 divine. 
 
 He understood now that laborious utterance .of 
 his friend upon the steamer, and why his difficulty 
 with words was more than he could overcome. 
 
 Like a current in the sea he still preserved 
 identity, yet knew the freedom of a boundless being. 
 And meanwhile the tide was ever rising. With 
 this singular companion he neared that inner realiza- 
 tion which should reveal them as they were — 
 Thoughts in the Earth's old Consciousness too 
 primitive, too far away, too vital and terrific to be 
 confined in any outward physical expression of the 
 * civilized ' world to-day. . . . The earth shone, 
 glittered, sang, holding them close to the rhythm of 
 her gigantic heart. Her glory was their own. In 
 the blazing summer of the inner life they floated, 
 happy, caught away, at peace . . . emanations of her 
 living Self. 
 
 . The valleys far below were filled with mist, 
 cutting them off literally from the world of men, 
 but the beauty of the upper mountains grew more 
 and more bewilderingly enticing. The scale was so 
 
246 THE CENTAUR xxxiii 
 
 immense, while the brilliant clearness of the air 
 brought distance close before the eyes, altered 
 perspective, and robbed * remote ' and ' near ' of any 
 definite meaning. Space fled away. It shifted here 
 and there at pleasure, according as they feU. It was 
 within them, not without. They passed, dispersed 
 and swift about the entire landscape, a very part of 
 it, diffused in terms of light and air and colour, 
 scattered in radiance, distributed through flowers, 
 spread through the sky and grass and forests. Space 
 is a form of thought. But they no longer 
 ' thought ' : they felt . . . . O, that prodigious, 
 clean, and simple Feeling of the Earth ! Love that 
 redeems and satisfies ! Power that fills and blesses ! 
 Electric strength that kills the germ of separateness, 
 making whole ! The medicine of the world ! 
 
 For days and nights it was thus — or was it years 
 and minutes ? — while they skirted the slopes and 
 towers of the huge Dykh-Taou, and Elbrous, 
 supreme and lonely in the heavens, beckoned 
 solemnly. The snowy Kochtan-Taou rolled past, 
 yet through, them ; Kasbek superbly thundered ; 
 hosts of lesser summits sang in the dawn and 
 whispered to the stars. And longing sank away — 
 impossible. 
 
 * My boy, my boy, could you only have been 
 with me . . . ! ' broke his voice across the splendid 
 dream, bringing me back to the choking, dingy room 
 I had forgotten. It was like a cry — a cry of 
 passionate yearning. 
 
 ' Fm with you now,* I murmured, some similar 
 rising joy half breaking in my breast. ' That's 
 something * 
 
 He sighed in answer. ' Something, perhaps. 
 But I have got it always ; it's all still part of me. 
 
XXXIII THE CENTAUR 247 
 
 Oh, oh ! that I could give it to the world and lift 
 the ache of all humanity . . . ! ' His voice 
 trembled. I saw the moisture of immense com- 
 passion in his eyes. I felt myself swim out into 
 universal being. 
 
 * Perhaps,' I stammered half beneath my breath, 
 ' perhaps some day you may . . . ! ' 
 
 He shook his head. His face turned very sad. 
 
 * How should they listen, much less under- 
 stand ? Their energies drive outwards, and separa- 
 tion is their God. There is no '* money in it " 1 . . . 
 
XXXIV 
 
 * Oh ! whose heart Is not stirred with tumultuous joy when the 
 intimate Life of Nature enters into his soul with all its plenitude, . . . 
 when that mighty sentiment for which language has no other name 
 than Love is diffused in him, like some powerful all-dissolving vapour ; 
 when he, shivering with sweet terror, sinks into the dusky, enticing 
 bosom of Nature ; when the meagre personality loses itself in the over- 
 powering waves of passion, and nothing remains but the focal point 
 of the incommensurable generative Force, an engulphing vortex in 
 the ocean ?* — Novalis, Disciples at Sals. Translated by U. C. B. 
 
 Early in the afternoon they left the bigger trees 
 behind, and passed into that more open country 
 where the shoulders of the mountains were strewn 
 with rhododendrons. These formed no continuous 
 forest, but stood about in groups some twenty-five 
 feet high, their rounded masses lighted on the surface 
 with fires of mauve and pink and purple. When the 
 wind stirred them, and the rattling of their stiff leaves 
 was heard, it seemed as if the skin of the mountains 
 trembled to shake out coloured flames. The air 
 turned radiant through a mist of running tints. 
 
 Still climbing, they passed along broad glades of 
 turfy grass between the groups. More rapidly now, 
 O'Malley says, went forward that inner change of 
 being which accompanied the progress of their outer 
 selves. So intimate henceforth was this subtle corre- 
 spondence that the very landscape took the semblance 
 of their feelings. They moved as ' emanations ' of 
 
 248 
 
xxxiv THE CENTAUR 249 
 
 the landscape. Each melted in the other, dividing 
 lines all vanished. 
 
 Their union with the Earth approached this 
 strange and sweet fulfilment. 
 
 And so it was that, though at this height the 
 vestiges of bird and animal life were wholly gone, 
 there grew more and more strongly the sense that, in 
 their further depths and shadows, these ancient bushes 
 screened Activities even more ancient than themselves. 
 Life, only concealed because they had not reached its 
 plane of being, pulsed everywhere about their pathway, 
 immense in power, moving swiftly, very grand and 
 very simple, and sometimes surging close, seeking to 
 draw them in. More than once, as they moved 
 through glade and clearing, the Irishman knew thrills 
 of an intoxicating happiness, as this abundant, driving 
 life brushed past him. It came so close, it glided 
 before his eyes, yet still was viewless. It strode behind 
 him and before, peered down through space upon him, 
 lapped him about with the stir of mighty currents. 
 The deep suction of its invitation caught his soul, 
 urging the change within himself more quickly for- 
 ward. Huge and delightful, he describes it, awful, 
 yet bringing no alarm. 
 
 He was always on the point of seeing. Surely the 
 next turning would reveal ; beyond the next dense, 
 tangled group would come — disclosure ; behind that 
 clustered mass of purple blossoms, shaking there 
 mysteriously in the wind, some half-veiled countenance 
 of splendour watched and welcomed ! Before his 
 face passed swift, deific figures, tall, erect, compelling, 
 charged with this ancient, golden life that could 
 never wholly pass away. And only just beyond the 
 fringe of vision. Vision already strained upon the 
 edge. His consciousness stretched more and more 
 
250 THE CENTAUR xxxiv 
 
 to reach them, while They came crowding near to let 
 him know inclusion. 
 
 These projections of the Earth's old consciousness 
 moved thick and soft about them, eternal in their 
 giant beauty. Soon he would know, perhaps, the 
 very forms in which she had projected them — dear 
 portions of her streaming life the earhest races half 
 divined and worshipped, and never quite withdrawn. 
 Worship could still entice them out. A single wor- 
 shipper sufficed. For worship meant retreat into the 
 heart where still they dwelt. And he had loved and 
 worshipped all his life. 
 
 And always with him, now at his side or now a 
 little in advance, his leader moved in power, with 
 vigorous, springing gestures like to dancing, singing 
 that old tuneless song of the wind, happier even 
 than himself. 
 
 The splendour of the Urwelt closed about them. 
 They drew nearer to the Gates of that old Garden, 
 the first Time ever knew, whose frontiers were not 
 less than the horizons of the entire world. For this 
 lost Eden of a Golden Age when * first God dawned on 
 chaos * still shone within the soul as in those days of 
 innocence before the ' Fall,' when men first separated 
 themselves from their great Mother. 
 
 A little before sunset they halted. A hundred yards 
 above the rhododendron forest, in a clear wide space 
 of turf that ran for leagues among grey boulders to the 
 lips of the eternal snow-fields, they waited. Through 
 a gap of sky, with others but slightly lower than him- 
 self, the pyramid of Kasbek, grim and towering, stared 
 down upon them, dreadfully close though really miles 
 away. At their feet yawned the profound valley they 
 had climbed. Halfway into it, unable to reach the 
 
XXXIV THE CENTAUR 251 
 
 depths, the sun's last rays dropped shafts like rivers 
 slanting. Already in soft troops the shadows crept 
 downwards from the eastern-facing summits over- 
 head. 
 
 Out of these very shadows Night drew swiftly 
 down about the world, building with her masses of 
 silvery architecture a barrier that rose to heaven. 
 These two lay down beside it. Beyond it spread 
 that shining Garden . . . only the shadow-barrier 
 between. 
 
 With the rising of the moon this barrier softened 
 marvellously, letting the starbeams in. It trembled 
 like a line of wavering music in the wind of night. It 
 settled downwards, shaking a little, towards the ground, 
 while just above them came a curving inwards like a 
 bay of darkness, with overhead two stately towers, 
 their outline fringed with stars. 
 
 * The Gateway . . . ! * whispered something through 
 the mountains. 
 
 It may have been the leader's voice ; it may have 
 been the Irishman's own leaping thought ; it may 
 have been merely a murmur from the rhododendron 
 leaves below. It came sifting gently through the 
 shadows. O'Malley knew. He followed his leader 
 higher. Just beneath this semblance of an old-world 
 portal which Time could neither fashion nor destroy, 
 they lay upon the earth — and waited. Beside them 
 shone the world, dressed by the moon in silver. 
 The wind stood still to watch. The peak of Kasbek 
 from his cloudy distance listened too. 
 
 For, floating upwards across the spaces came a 
 sound of simple, old-time piping — the fluting music 
 of a little reed. It drew near, stopped for a moment 
 as though the player watched them ; then, with a 
 plunging swiftness, passed off through starry distance 
 
252 THE CENTAUR xxxiv 
 
 up among the darker mountains. The lost, forsaken 
 Asian valley covered them. Nowhere were they 
 extraneous to it. They slept. And while they slept, 
 they moved across the frontiers of fulfilment. 
 
 The moon-blanched Gate of horn and ivory swung 
 open. The consciousness of the Earth possessed 
 them. They passed within. 
 
XXXV 
 
 * For of old the Sun, our sire, 
 
 Came wooing the mother of men. 
 
 Earth, that was virginal then. 
 Vestal fire to his fire. 
 Silent her bosom and coy, 
 
 But the strong god sued and press'd j 
 And born of their starry nuptial joy 
 
 Are all that drink of her breast. 
 
 •And the triumph of him that begot, 
 
 And the travail of her that bore, 
 
 Behold they are evermore 
 As warp and weft in our lot. 
 We are children of splendour and flame, 
 
 Of shuddering, also, and tears. 
 Magnificent out of the dust we came. 
 
 And abject from the spheres. 
 
 *0 bright irresistible lord ! 
 
 We are fruit of Earth's womb, each one, 
 And fruit of thy loins, O Sun, 
 Whence first was the seed outpour'd. 
 To thee as our Father we bow, 
 
 Forbidden thy Father to see, 
 Who is older and greater than thou, as thou 
 Art greater and older than we.* 
 
 William Watson, 'Ode in May.* 
 
 Very slowly the dawn came. The sky blushed rose, 
 trembled, flamed. A breath of wind stirred the 
 vapours that far below sheeted the surface of the 
 Black Sea. But it was still in that gentle twilight 
 before the actual colour comes that O'Malley found 
 he was lying with his eyes wide open, watching the 
 
 253 
 
254 THE CENTAUR xxxv 
 
 rhododendrons. He may have slept meanwhile, 
 though ' sleep/ he says, involving loss of conscious- 
 ness, seemed no right description. A sense of interval 
 there was at any rate, a * transition-blank,' — whatever 
 that may mean — he phrased it in the writing. 
 
 And, watching the rhododendron forest a hundred 
 yards below, he saw it move. Through the dim 
 light this movement passed and ran, here, there, and 
 everywhere. A curious soft sound accompanied it 
 that made him remember the Bible phrase of wind 
 * going in the tops of the mulberry trees.* Hushed, 
 swift, elusive murmur, it passed about him through the 
 dusk. He caught it next behind him and, turning, 
 noticed groups upon the slopes, — groups that he had 
 not seen the night before. These groups seemed also 
 now to move ; the isolated scattered clusters came 
 together, merged, ran to the parent forest below, or 
 melted just beyond the line of vision above. 
 
 The wind sprang up and rattled all the million 
 leaves. That rattling filled the air, and with it came 
 another, deeper sound like to a sound of tramping 
 that seemed to shake the earth. Confusion caught 
 him then completely, for it was as if the mountain- 
 side awoke, rose up, and shook itself into a wild 
 and multitudinous wave of life. 
 
 At first he thought the wind had somehow torn 
 the rhododendrons loose from their roots and was 
 strewing them with that tramping sound about the 
 slopes. But the groups passed too swiftly over the 
 turf for that, swept completely from their fastenings, 
 while the tramping grew to a roaring as of cries and 
 voices. That roaring had the quality of the voice 
 that reached him weeks ago across the iEgean Sea. 
 A strange, keen odour, too, that was not wholly 
 unfamiliar, moved upon the wind. 
 
XXXV THE CENTAUR 255 
 
 And then he knew that what he had been watch- 
 ing all along were not rhododendrons at all, but living, 
 splendid creatures. A host of others, moreover, 
 large ones and small together, stood shadowy in the 
 background, stamping their feet upon the turf, manes 
 tossing in the early wind, in their entire mass awful as 
 in their individual outline somehow noble. 
 
 The light spread upwards from the east. With a 
 fire of terrible joy and wonder in his heart, O'Malley 
 held his breath and stared. The lustre of their 
 glorious bodies, golden bronze in the sunlight, dazed 
 the sight. He saw the splendour of ten hundred 
 velvet flanks in movement, with here and there the 
 uprising whiteness of a female outline that flashed 
 and broke above the general mass like foam upon a 
 great wave's crest — figures of incomparable grace 
 and power ; the sovereign, upright carriage ; the 
 rippling muscles upon massive limbs, and shoulders 
 that held defiant strength and softness in exquisite 
 combination. And then he heard huge murmurs of 
 their voices that filled the dawn, aged by lost thousand 
 years, and sonorous as the booming of the sea. A 
 cry that was like singing escaped him. He saw 
 them rise and sweep away. There was a rush of 
 magnificence. They cantered — wonderfully. They 
 were gone. 
 
 The roar of their curious commotion travelled 
 over the mountains, dying into distance very swiftly. 
 The rhododendron forest that had concealed their 
 approach resumed its normal aspect, but burning now 
 with colours innumerable as the sunrise caught its 
 thousand blossoms. And O'Malley understood that 
 during ' sleep ' he had passed with his companion 
 through the gates of ivory and horn, and stood now 
 within the first Garden of the early world. All 
 
256 THE CENTAUR xxxv 
 
 frontiers crossed, all barriers tehind, he stood within 
 the paradise of his heart's desire. The Conscious- 
 ness of the Earth included him. These were early 
 forms of life she had projected — some of the living 
 prototypes of legend, myth, and fable — embodiments 
 of her first manifestations of consciousness, and eternal, 
 accessible to every heart that holds a true and passion- 
 ate worship. All his life this love of Nature, which 
 was worship, had been his. It now fulfilled itself. 
 Merged by love into the consciousness of the Being 
 loved, he felt her thoughts, her powers, and mani- 
 festations of life as his own. 
 
 In a flash, of course, this all passed clearly before 
 him ; but there was no time to dwell upon it. For 
 the activity of his companion had likewise become 
 suddenly tremendous. He had risen into complete 
 revelation at last. His own had called him. He 
 was off to join his kind. 
 
 The transformation came upon both of them, it 
 seems, at once, but in that moment of bewilderment, 
 the Irishman only realized it first in his leader. 
 
 For on the edge of the advancing sunlight first 
 this Cosmic Being crouched, then rose with alert and 
 springing movement, leaping to his feet in a single 
 bound that propelled him with a stride of more than 
 a man's two limbs. His great sides quivered as he 
 shook himself. A roar, similar to that sound the 
 distance already swallowed, rolled forth into the air. 
 With head thrown back, chest forward, too, for all 
 the backward slant of the mighty shoulders, he stood 
 there, grandly outlined, pushing the wind before him. 
 The great brown eyes shone with the joy of freedom 
 and escape — a superb and regal transformation. 
 
 Urged by the audacity of his strange excitement, 
 the Irishman obeyed an impulse that came he knew 
 
XXXV 
 
 THE CENTAUR 257 
 
 not whence. The single word sprang to his lips 
 before he could guess its meaning, much less hold it 
 back. 
 
 *Lapithae . . . !' he cried aloud ; *Lapithae . . . !' 
 The stalwart figure turned with an awful spring 
 as though it would trample him to the ground. A 
 moment the brown eyes flamed with a light of 
 battle. Then, with another roar, and a gesture that 
 was somehow both huge and simple, he seemed to 
 rise and paw the air. The next second this figure of 
 the Urwelt^ come once more into its own, bent down 
 and forward, leaped wonderfully — then, cantering, 
 raced away across the slopes to join his kind. He 
 went like a shape of wind and cloud. The heritage 
 of racial memory was his, and certain words remained 
 still vividly evocative. That old battle with the 
 Lapithas was but one item of the scenes of ancient 
 splendour lying pigeon-holed in his mighty Mother's 
 consciousness. The instant he had called, the Irish- 
 man himself lay caught in lost memory's tumultuous 
 whirl. The lonely world about him seemed of a 
 sudden magnificently peopled — sky, woods, and 
 torrents. 
 
 He watched a moment the fierce rapidity with 
 which he sped towards the mountains, the sound of 
 his feet already merged in that other, vaster tramp- 
 ing, and then he turned — to watch himself. For a 
 similar transformation was going forward in himself, 
 and with the happiness of wild amazement he saw it. 
 Already, indeed, it was accomplished. All white and 
 shining lay the sunlight over his own extended form. 
 Power was in his limbs ; he rose above the ground 
 in some new way ; the usual little stream of breath 
 became a river of rushing air he drew into stronger 
 more capacious lungs ; likewise his bust grew 
 
 s 
 
258 THE CENTAUR xxxv 
 
 strangely deepened, pushed the wind before it ; and 
 the sunshine glowed on shaggy flanks agleam with 
 dew that powerfully drove the ground behind him 
 while he ran. 
 
 He ran, yet only partly as a man runs ; he found 
 himself shot forwards through the air, upright, yet 
 at the same time upon all fours. Brandishing his 
 arms he flew with a free, unfettered motion, travers- 
 ing the surface of the mother*s mind and body. Free 
 of the entire Earth he was. 
 
 And as he raced to join the others, there passed 
 again across his memory faintly — it was like the little 
 memory of some physical pain almost — the picture 
 of the boy who swam so strangely in the sea, the 
 picture of the parent's curious emanations on the 
 deck, and, lastly, of those flying shapes of cloud and 
 wind his inner vision brought so often speeding over 
 long, bare hills. This was the final fragment of the 
 outer world that reached him. . . . 
 
 He tore along the mountains in the dawn, the 
 awful speed at last explained. His going made a 
 sound upon the wind, and like the wind he raced. 
 Far beyond him in the distance, he saw the shadow 
 of that disappearing host spreading upon the valleys 
 like a mist. Faintly still he caught their sound of 
 roaring ; but it was his own feet now that made that 
 trampling as of hoofs upon the turf. The landscape 
 moved and opened, gathering him in. . . . 
 
 And, hardly had he gone, when there stole upon 
 the place where he had stood, a sweet and simple 
 sound of music — the little piping of a reed. It 
 dropped down through the air, perhaps, or came 
 from the forest edge, or possibly the sunrise brought 
 it — this ancient little sound of fluting on those Pipes 
 men call the Pipes of Pan. . • . 
 
XXXVI 
 
 * Here we but peak and dwindle : 
 
 The clank of chain and crane, 
 The whir of crank and spindle 
 
 Bewilder heart and brain j 
 The ends of our endeavour 
 
 Are wealth and fame, 
 Yet in the still Forever 
 
 We're one and all the same ; 
 
 ' Yet beautiful and spacious 
 
 The wise, old world appears. 
 Yet frank and fair and gracious 
 
 Outlaugh the jocund years. 
 Our arguments disputing, 
 
 The universal Pan 
 Still wanders fluting — fluting — 
 
 Fluting to maid and man. 
 Our weary well-a-waying 
 
 His music cannot still : 
 Come ! let us go a-maying. 
 
 And pipe with him our fill.* 
 
 W. E. Henley. 
 
 In a detailed description, radiant with a wild loveli- 
 ness of some forgotten beauty, and of necessity often 
 incoherent, the Irishman conveyed to me, sitting in 
 that dreary Soho restaurant, the passion of his vision. 
 With an astonishing vitality and a wealth of deep 
 conviction it all poured from his lips. There was 
 no halting and no hesitation. Like a man in trance 
 he talked, and like a man in trance he lived it over 
 again while imparting it to me. None came to 
 
 259 
 
26o THE CENTAUR xxxvi 
 
 disturb us in our dingy corner. Indeed there is no 
 quieter place in ail London town than the back room 
 of these eating-houses of the French Quarter between 
 the hours of lunch and dinner. The waiters vanish, 
 the ' patron ' disappears ; no customers come in. 
 But I know surely that its burning splendour came 
 not from the actual words he used, but was due to 
 definite complete transference of the vision itself into 
 my own heart. I caught the fire from his very 
 thought. His heat inflamed my mind. Words, 
 both in the uttered and the written version, dimmed 
 it all distressingly. 
 
 And the completeness of the transference is 
 proved for me by the fact that I never once had 
 need to ask a question. I saw and understood it all 
 as he did. And hours must have passed during the 
 strange recital, for towards the close people came in 
 and took the vacant tables, the lights were up, and 
 grimy waiters clattered noisily about with plates and 
 knives and forks, thrusting an inky carte du jour 
 beneath our very faces. 
 
 Yet how to set it down I swear I know not. Nor 
 he, indeed. The note-books that I found in that old 
 sack of Willesden canvas were a disgrace to any man 
 who bid for sanity, — a disgrace to paper and pencil 
 too! 
 
 All memory of his former life, it seems, at first, 
 had fallen utterly away ; nothing survived to remind 
 him of it ; and thus he lost all standard of com- 
 parison. The state he moved in was too complete 
 to admit of standards or of critical judgment. For 
 these confine, imprison, and belittle, whereas he was 
 free. His escape was unconditioned. From the 
 thirty years of his previous living, no single fragment 
 broke through. The absorption was absolute. 
 
XXXVI THE CENTAUR 261 
 
 * I really do believe and know myself/ he said to 
 me across that spotted table-cloth, * that for the time 
 I was merged into the being of another, a being 
 immensely greater than myself Perhaps old Stahl 
 was right, perhaps old crazy Fechner ; and it actually 
 was the consciousness of the Earth. I can only tell 
 you that the whole experience left no room in me for 
 other memories ; all I had previously known was 
 gone, wiped clean away. Yet much of what came in 
 its place is beyond me to describe ; and for a curious 
 reason. It's not the size or splendour that prevent 
 the telling, but rather the sublime simplicity of it all. 
 I know no language to-day simple enough to utter 
 it. Far behind words it lies, as difficult of full 
 recovery as the dreams of deep sleep, as the ecstasy 
 of the religious, elusive as the mystery of Kubla 
 Khan or the Patmos visions of St. John. Full 
 recapture, I am convinced, is not possible at all in 
 words. 
 
 * And at the time it did not seem like vision ; it 
 was so natu/al ; unstudied, unprepared, and ever 
 there ; spontaneous too and artless as a drop of 
 water or a baby's toy. The natural is ever the 
 unchanging. My God ! I tell you, man, it was 
 divine ! ' 
 
 He made about him a vehement sweeping gesture 
 with his arm which emphasized more poignantly than 
 speech the contrast he felt here where we sat — tight, 
 confining walls, small stifling windows, chairs to rest 
 the body, smothering roof and curtains, doors of 
 narrow entrance and exit, floors to lift above the 
 sweet surface of the soil, — all of them artificial 
 barriers to shut out light and separate away from the 
 Earth. * See what weVe come to ! ' it said plainly. 
 And it included even his clothes and boots and collar. 
 
262 THE CENTAUR 
 
 XXXVI 
 
 the ridiculous hat upon the peg, the unsightly * brolly ' 
 in the dingy corner. Had there been room in me 
 for laughter, I could well have laughed aloud. 
 
 For as he raced across that stretch of splendid 
 mountainous Earth, watching the sunrise kiss the 
 valleys and the woods, shaking the dew from his feet 
 and swallowing the very wind for breath, he realized 
 that other forms of life similar to his own were 
 everywhere about him — also moving. 
 
 * They were a part of the Earth even as I was. 
 Here she was crammed to the brim with them — 
 projections of her actual self and being, crowded with 
 this incomparable ancient beauty that was strong as 
 her hills, swift as her running streams, radiant as her 
 wild flowers. Whether to call them forms or 
 thoughts or feelings, or Powers perhaps, I swear, old 
 man, I know not. Her Consciousness through which 
 I sped, drowned, lost, and happy, wrapped us all in 
 together as a mood contains its own thoughts and 
 feelings. For she was a Being — of sor^^s. And I 
 was in her mind, mood, consciousness, call it what 
 you best can. These other thoughts and presences I 
 felt were the raw material of forms, perhaps — Forces 
 that when they reach the minds of men must clothe 
 themselves in form in order to be known, whether 
 they be Dreams, or Gods, or any other kind of 
 inspiration. Closer than that I cannot get ... I 
 knew myself within her being like a child, and I felt 
 the deep, eternal pull — to simple things.' 
 
 And thus the beauty of the early world com- 
 panioned him, and all the forgotten gods moved 
 Torward into life. They hovered everywhere, 
 immense and stately. The rocks and trees and 
 
XXXVI THE CENTAUR 263 
 
 peaks that half concealed them, betrayed at the same 
 time great hints of their mighty gestures. Near him, 
 they were ; he moved towards their region. If 
 definite sight refused to focus on them the fault 
 was not their own but his. He never doubted that 
 they could be seen. Yet, even thus partially, they 
 manifested — terrifically. He was aware of their 
 overshadowing presences. Sight, after all, was an 
 incomplete form of knowing — a thing he had left 
 behind — elsewhere. It belonged, with the other 
 limited sense-channels, to some attenuated dream 
 now all forgotten. Now he knew all over. He 
 himself was of them. 
 
 * I am home ! ' it seems he cried as he ran 
 cantering across the sunny slopes. 'At last I have 
 found you ! Home . . . ! ' and the stones shot 
 wildly from his thundering tread. 
 
 A roar of windy power filled the sky, and far 
 away that echoing tramping paused to listen. 
 
 * We have called you ! Come ! . . .' 
 
 And the forms moved down slowly from their 
 mountainous pedestals; the woods breathed out a 
 sigh ; the running water sang ; the slopes all 
 murmured through their grass and flowers. For a 
 worshipper, strayed from the outer world of the dead 
 stood within the precincts of their ancient temple. 
 He had passed the Angel with the flaming sword those 
 very dead had set there long ago. The Garden now 
 enclosed him. He had found the heart of the Earth, 
 his mother. Self-realization in the perfect union with 
 Nature was fulfilled. He knew the Great At-one- 
 ment. 
 
 The quiet of the dawn still lay upon the world ; 
 dew sparkled ; the air was keen and fresh. Yet, in 
 
264 THE CENTAUR xxxvi 
 
 spite of all this vast sense of energy, this vigour and 
 delight, O'Malley no longer felt the least goading of 
 excitement. There was this animation and this fine 
 delight ; but craving for sensation of any kind, was 
 gone. Excitement, as it tortured men in that outer 
 world he had left, could not exist in this larger state 
 of being ; for excitement is the appetite for some- 
 thing not possessed, magnified artificially till it has 
 become a condition of dis-ease. All that he needed 
 was now contained within himself; he was at-ease ; 
 and, literally, that unrest which men miscall delight 
 could touch him not nor torture him again. 
 
 If this were death — how exquisite ! 
 
 And Time was not a passing thing, for it lay, he 
 says, somehow in an ocean everywhere, heaped up in 
 gulfs and spaces. It was as though he could help 
 himself and take it. That morning, had he so 
 wished, could last for ever ; he could go backwards 
 and taste the shadows of the night again, or forward 
 and bask in the glory of hot noon. There were no 
 parts of things, and so no restlessness, no sense of 
 incompleteness, no divisions. 
 
 This quiet of the dawn lay in himself, and, since 
 he loved it, lay there, cool and sweet and sparkling 
 for — years ; almost — for ever. 
 
 Moreover, while this giant form of Urweh-life 
 his inner self had assumed was new, it yet seemed 
 somehow familiar. The speed and weight and 
 power caused him no distress, there was no detail 
 that he could not manage easily. To race thus o'er 
 the world, keeping pace with an eternal dawn, was as 
 simple as for the Earth herself to spin through space. 
 His union with her was as complete as that. In 
 every item of her being lay the wonder of her perfect 
 
XXXVI THE CENTAUR 265 
 
 form — a sphere. It was complete. Nothing could 
 add to it. 
 
 Yet, while all recollection of his former, pettier 
 self was gone, he began presently to remember — men. 
 Though never in relation to himself, he retained 
 dimly a picture of that outer world of strife and 
 terror. As a memory of illness he recalled it — 
 dreadfully, a nightmare fever from which he had 
 recovered, its horror already fading out. Cities and 
 crowds, poverty, illness, pain and all the various 
 terror of Civilization, robbed of the power to afflict, 
 yet still hung hovering about the surface of his 
 consciousness, though powerless to break his 
 peace. 
 
 For the power to understand it vanished ; no 
 part of him knew sympathy with it ; so clearly he 
 now saw himself sharing the Earth, that a vague 
 wonder filled him when he recalled the mad desires 
 of men to possess external forms of things. It was 
 amazing and perplexing. How could they ever 
 have devised such wild and childish efforts — all in 
 the wrong direction ? 
 
 If that outer life were the real one how could any 
 intelligent being think it worth while to live ? How 
 could any thinking man hold up his head and walk 
 along the street with dignity if that was what he 
 believed ? Was a man satisfied with it worth 
 keeping alive at all? What bigger scheme could 
 ever use him ^ The direction of modern life to-day 
 was diametrically away from happiness and truth. 
 
 Peace was the word he knew, peace and a singing 
 joy. 
 
 He played with the Earth's great dawn and raced 
 along these mountains through her mind. 0/ course 
 
266 THE CENTAUR xxxvi 
 
 the hills could dance and sing and clap their hands. 
 He saw it clear. How could it be otherwise? 
 They were expressions of her giant moods — what in 
 himself were thoughts — phases of her ample, surging 
 Consciousness. . . . 
 
 He passed with the sunlight down the laughing 
 valleys, spread with the morning wind above the 
 woods, shone on the snowy peaks, and leaped with a 
 rushing laughter among the crystal streams. These 
 were his swift and darting signs of joy, words of his 
 singing as it were. His main and central being 
 swung with the pulse of the Earth, too great for any 
 telling. 
 
 He read the book of Nature all about him, yes, 
 but read it singing. He understood how this 
 patient Mother hungered for her myriad lost children, 
 how in the passion of her summers she longed to 
 bless them, to wake their high yearnings with the 
 sweetness of her springs, and to whisper through her 
 autumns how she prayed for their return . . . ! 
 
 Instinctively he read the giant Page before him. 
 For ^ every form in nature is a symbol of an idea 
 and represents a sign or letter. A succession of such 
 symbols forms a language ; and he who is a true 
 child of nature may understand this language and 
 know the character of everything. His mind 
 becomes a mirror wherein the attributes of natural 
 things are reflected and enter the field of his 
 consciousness. . . . For man himself is but a 
 thought pervading the ocean of mind.* 
 
 Whether or not he remembered these stammering 
 yet pregnant words from the outer world now left 
 behind, the truth they shadowed forth rose up 
 and took him . . . and so he flowed across the 
 mountains like a thing of wind and cloud, and so at 
 
XXXVI THE CENTAUR 267 
 
 length came up with the stragglers of that mighty 
 herd of Urwelt life. He joined them in a river-bed 
 of those ancient valleys. They welcomed him and 
 took him to themselves. 
 
 For the particular stratum, as it were, of the 
 Earth's enormous Collective Consciousness to which 
 he belonged, or rather that part and corner in which 
 he was first at home, lay with these lesser ancient 
 forms. Although aware of far mightier expressions of 
 her life, he could not yet readily perceive or join them. 
 And this was easily comprehensible by the analogy 
 of his own smaller consciousness. Did not his own 
 mind hold thoughts of various kinds that could not 
 readily mingle.? His thoughts of play and frolic, 
 for instance, could not combine with the august and 
 graver sentiments of awe and worship, though both 
 could dwell together in the same heart. And here 
 apparently, as yet, he only touched that frolicsome 
 fringe of consciousness that knew these wild and 
 playful lesser forms. Thus, while he was aware of 
 other more powerful figures of wonder all about him, 
 he never quite achieved their full recognition. The 
 ordered, deeper strata of her Consciousness to which 
 they belonged still lay beyond him. 
 
 Yet everywhere he fringed them. They haunted 
 the entire world. They brooded hugely with a 
 kind of deep magnificence that was like the slow 
 brooding of the Seasons ; they rose, looming and 
 splendid, through the air and sky, proud, strong, 
 and tragic. For, standing aloof from all the rest, 
 in isolation, like dreams in a poet's mind, too potent 
 for expression, they thus knew tragedy — the tragedy 
 of long neglect and loneliness. 
 
 Seated on peak and ridge, rising beyond the 
 
268 THE CENTAUR xxxvi 
 
 summits in the clouds, filling the valleys, spread over 
 watercourse and forest, they passed their life of lonely 
 majesty — apart, their splendour too remote for him 
 as yet to share. Long since had Earth withdrawn 
 them from the hearts of men. Her lesser children 
 knew them no more. But still through the deep 
 recesses of her further consciousness they thundered 
 and were glad . . . though few might hear that 
 thunder, share that awful joy. . . . 
 
 Even the Irishman — who in ordinary life had felt 
 instinctively that worship which is close to love, and 
 so to the union that love brings — even he, in this 
 new-found freedom, only partially discerned their 
 presences. He felt them now, these stately Powers 
 men once called the gods, but felt them from a 
 distance ; and from a distance, too, they saw and 
 watched him come. He knew their gorgeous forms 
 half dimmed by a remote and veiled enchantment ; 
 knew that they reared aloft like ancient towers, 
 ruined by neglect and ignorance, starved and lonely, 
 but still hauntingly splendid and engaging, still 
 terrifically alive. And it seemed to him that some- 
 times their awful eyes flashed with the sunshine over 
 slope and valley, and that wherever they rested flowers 
 sprang to life. 
 
 Their nearness sometimes swept him like a storm, 
 and then the entire herd with which he mingled 
 would stand abruptly still, caught by a wave of awe 
 and wonder. The host of them stood still upon the 
 grass, their frolic held a moment, their voices hushed, 
 only deep panting audible and the soft shuffling of 
 their hoofs among the flowers. They bowed their 
 splendid heads and waited — while a god went past 
 .them. ... And through himself, as witness of the 
 passage, a soft, majestic power also swept. With the 
 
XXXVI THE CENTAUR 269 
 
 lift of a hurricane, yet with the gentleness of dew, he 
 felt the noblest in himself irresistibly evoked. It was 
 gone again as soon as come. It passed. But it left 
 him charged with a regal confidence and joy. As in 
 the mountains a shower of snow picks out the highest 
 peaks in white, tracing its course and pattern over 
 the entire range, so in himself he knew the highest 
 powers — aspirations, yearnings, hopes — raised into 
 shining, white activity, and by these quickened 
 splendours of his soul could recognize the nature of 
 the god who came so close. 
 
 And, keeping mostly to the river-beds, they 
 splashed in the torrents, played and leaped and 
 cantered. From the openings of many a moist cave 
 others came to join them. Below a certain level, 
 though, they never went ; the forests knew them 
 not ; they loved the open, windy heights. They 
 turned and circulated as by a common consent, 
 wheeling suddenly together as if a single desire 
 actuated the entire mass. One instinct spread, as it 
 were, among the lot, shared instantly, conveying to 
 each at once the general impulse. Their movements 
 in this were like those of birds whose flight in coveys 
 obeys the order of a collective consciousness of which 
 each single one is an item — expressions of one single 
 Bird-Idea behind, distributed through all. 
 
 And O'Malley without questioning or hesitation 
 obeyed, while yet he was free to do as he wished 
 alone. To do as they did was the greatest pleasure, 
 that was all. 
 
 For sometimes with two of them, one fully-formed, 
 the other of lesser mould — he flew on little journeys 
 of his own. These two seemed nearer to him than 
 the rest. He felt he knew them and had been with 
 
270 THE CENTAUR xxxvi 
 
 them before. Their big brown eyes continually 
 sought his own with pleasure. It almost seemed as 
 if they had all three been separated long away from 
 one another, and had at last returned. No definite 
 memory of the interval came back, however ; the sea, 
 the steamer, and the journey's incidents all had 
 faded — part of that world of lesser insignificant dream 
 where they had happened. But these two kept close 
 to him ; they ran and danced together. . . . 
 
 The time that passed included many dawns and 
 nights and also many noons of splendour. It all 
 seemed endless, perfect, and serene. That anything 
 could finish here did not once occur to him. Com- 
 plete things cannot finish. He passed through seas 
 and gulfs of glorious existence. For the strange 
 thing was that while he only remembered afterwards 
 the motion, play, and laughter, he yet had these 
 other glimpses here and there of some ordered and 
 progressive life existing just beyond. It lay hidden 
 deeper within. He skimmed its surface ; but some- 
 thing prevented his knowing it fully. And the 
 limitation that held him back belonged, it seemed, 
 to that thin world of trivial dreaming he had left 
 behind. He had not shaken it off entirely. It still 
 obscured his sight. 
 
 The scale and manner of this greater life faintly 
 reached him, nothing more. It may be that he only 
 failed to bring back recollection, or it may be that he 
 did not penetrate deeply enough to know. At any 
 rate, he recognized that this sudden occasional passing 
 by of vast deific figures had to do with it, and that 
 all this ocean of Earth's deeper Consciousness was 
 peopled with forms of life that obeyed some splendid 
 system of progressive ordered existence. To be 
 gathered up in this one greater consciousness was 
 
XXXVI THE CENTAUR 271 
 
 not the end. . . . Rather was it merely the begin- 
 ning. . . . 
 
 Meantime he learned that here, among these lesser 
 thoughts of the great Mother, all the Pantheons of 
 the world had first their origin — the Greek, the 
 Eastern, and the Northern too. Here all the gods 
 that men have ever half divined, still ranged the 
 moods of Her timeless consciousness. Their train of 
 beauty, too, accompanied them. 
 
 I cannot half recall the . streams of passionate 
 description with which his words clothed these 
 glowing memories of his vision. Great pictures of 
 it haunt the background of my mind, pictures that 
 lie in early mists, framed by the stars and glimmering 
 through some golden, flowered dawn. Besides the 
 huger outlines that stood breathing in the back- 
 ground like dark mountains, there flitted here and 
 there strange dreamy forms of almost impossible 
 beauty, slender as lilies, eyes soft and starry shining 
 through the dusk, hair flying past them like a rain 
 of summer flowers. Nymph-like they moved down 
 all the pathways of the Earth's young mind, singing 
 and radiant, spring blossoms in the Garden of her 
 Consciousness. . . . And other forms, more vehement 
 and rude, urged to and fro across the pictures ; 
 crowding the movement ; some playful and protean ; 
 some clothed as with trees, or air, or water ; and 
 others dark, remote, and silent, ranging her deeper 
 layers of thought and dream, known rarely to the 
 outer world at all. 
 
 The rush and glory of it all is more than my mind 
 can deal with. I gather, though, O'Malley saw no 
 definite forms, but rather knew * forces,' powers, 
 aspects of this Soul of Earth, facets she showed in 
 
272 THE CENTAUR xxxvi 
 
 long-forgotten days to men. Certainly the very 
 infusoria of his imagination were kindled and aflame 
 when he spoke of them. Through the tangled 
 thicket of his ordinary mind there shone this passion 
 of an uncommon loveliness and splendour. 
 
XXXVIl 
 
 'The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only 
 hours when we really live, so that the longer we can stay among these 
 things, so much the more is snatched from inevitable time.* — Richard 
 Jefferies. 
 
 In the relationship that his everyday mind bore 
 to his present state there lay, moreover, a wealth 
 of pregnant suggestion. The bridge connecting his 
 former * civilized ' condition with this cosmic ex- 
 perience was a curious one. That outer, lesser 
 state, it seemed, had known a foretaste sometimes of 
 the greater. And it was hence had come those 
 dreams of a Golden Age that used to haunt him. 
 
 For he began now to recall the existence of that 
 outer world of men and women, though by means 
 of certain indefinite channels only. And the things 
 he remembered were not what the world calls 
 important. They were moments when he had 
 known — beauty ; beauty, however, not of the 
 grandiose sort that holds the crowd, but of so 
 simple and unadvertised a kind that most men over- 
 look it altogether. 
 
 He understood now why the thrill had been so 
 wonderful. He saw clearly why those moments of 
 ecstasy he had often felt in Nature used to torture 
 him with an inexpressible yearning that was rather 
 pain than joy. For they were precisely what he now 
 
 273 T 
 
274 THE CENTAUR xxxvii 
 
 experienced when the viewless figure of a god passed 
 by him. Down there, out there, below — in that 
 cabined lesser state — they had been partial, but were 
 now complete. Those moments of worship he had 
 known in woods, among mountains, by the shores of 
 desolate seas, even in a London street, perhaps at the 
 sight of a tree in spring or of a pathway of blue sky 
 between the summer clouds, — these had been, one and 
 all, tentative, partial revelations of the Consciousness 
 of the Soul of Earth he now knew face to face. 
 
 These were his only memories of that outer world. 
 Of people, cities, or of civilization apart from these, 
 he had no single remembrance. 
 
 Certain of these little partial foretastes now came 
 back to him, like fragments of dream that trouble the 
 waking day. 
 
 He remembered, for instance, one definite picture : 
 a hot autumn sun upon a field of stubble where the 
 folded corn-sheaves stood ; thistles waving by the 
 hedges ; a yellow field of mustard rising up the slope 
 against the sky-line, and beyond a row of peering elms 
 that rustled in the wind. The beauty of the little 
 scene was somehow poignant. He recalled it vividly. 
 It had flamed about him, transfiguring the world ; he 
 had trembled, yearning to see more, for just behind 
 it he divined with an exulting passionate worship this 
 gorgeous, splendid Earth-Being with whom at last he 
 now actually moved. In that instant of a simple 
 loveliness her consciousness had fringed his own — 
 had bruised it. He had known it only by the partial 
 channels of sight and smell and hearing, but had felt 
 the greater thing beyond, without being able to 
 explain it. And a portion of what he felt had burst 
 in speech from his lips. 
 
XXXVII THE CENTAUR 275 
 
 He was there, he remembered, with two persons, 
 a man and woman whose name and face, however, 
 he could not summon, and he recalled that the 
 woman smiled incredulously when he spoke of the 
 exquisite perfume of those folded corn-sheaves in the 
 air. She told him he imagined it. He saw again 
 the pretty woman's smile of incomprehension ; he 
 saw the puzzled expression in the eyes of the man ; 
 he heard him murmur something prosaic about the 
 soul, about birds, too, and the prospects of killing 
 hundreds later — sport ! He even saw the woman 
 picking her way with caution as though the touch 
 of earth could stain or injure her. He especially 
 recalled the silence that had followed on his words 
 that sought to show them — Beauty. . . . He 
 remembered, too, above all, the sense of loneliness 
 among men that it induced in himself. 
 
 But the memory brought him a curious, sharp 
 pain ; and turning to that couple who were now his 
 playmates in this Garden of the Earth, he called 
 them with a singing cry and cantered over leagues of 
 flowers, wind, and sunshine before he stopped again. 
 They leaped and danced together, exulting in their 
 spacious Urwelt freedom . . . want of comprehen- 
 sion no longer possible. 
 
 The memory fled away. He shook himself free 
 of it. Then others came in its place, another and 
 another, not all with people, blind, deaf, and un- 
 receptive, yet all of * common,' simple scenes of 
 beauty when something vast had surged upon him 
 and broken through the barriers that stand between 
 the heart and Nature. Such curious little scenes 
 they were. In most of them he had evidently been 
 alone. But one and all had touched his soul with 
 
276 THE CENTAUR xxxvii 
 
 a foretaste of this same nameless ecstasy that now he 
 knew complete. In every one the Consciousness of 
 the Earth had * bruised ' his own. 
 
 Utterly simple they had been, one and all, these 
 partial moments of blinding beauty in that lesser, 
 outer world : — A big, brown, clumsy bee he saw, 
 blundering into the petals of a wild-flower on which 
 the dew lay sparkling. ... A wisp of coloured 
 cloud driving loosely across the hills, dropping a 
 purple shadow. . . . Deep, waving grass, plunging 
 and shaking in the wind that drew out its under- 
 world of blue and silver over the whole spread surface 
 of a field. ... A daisy closed for the night upon 
 the lawn, eyes tightly shut, hands folded. ... A 
 south wind whispering through larches. . . . The 
 pattering of summer rain upon young oak leaves in 
 the dawn. . . . Fingers of long blue distance upon 
 dreamy woods. . . . Anemones shaking their pale and 
 starry little faces in the wind. . . . The columned 
 stillness of a pinewood in the dusk. . . . Young 
 birch trees mid the velvet gloom of firs. . . . The 
 new moon setting in a cloud of stars. . . . The hush 
 of stars in many a summer night. . . . Sheep grazing 
 idly down a sun-baked hill. . . . A path of moonlight 
 on a lake. ... A little wind through bare and wintry 
 woods. . . . Oh ! he recalled the wonder, loveliness, 
 and passion of a thousand more ! 
 
 They thronged and passed, and thronged again, 
 crowding one another : — all golden moments of 
 revelation when he had caught glimpses of the Earth, 
 and her greater Moods had swept him up into 
 herself. Moments in which a god had passed. . . . 
 
 These were his only memories of that outer world 
 he had left behind : flashes of simple beauty. 
 
 Was thus the thrill of beauty then explained.^ 
 
XXXVII THE CENTAUR 277 
 
 Was loveliness, as men know it, a revelation of the 
 Earth-Soul behind ? And were the blinding flash, the 
 dazzling wonder, and the dream men seek to render 
 permanent in music, colour, line and language, a 
 vision of her nakedness ? Down there, the poets and 
 those simple enough of heart to stand close to Nature, 
 could catch these whispered fragments of the enormous 
 message, told as in secret ; but now, against her very 
 heart he heard the thunder of the thing complete. 
 Now, in the glory of all naked bodily forms, — of 
 women, men and children, of swift animals, of flowers, 
 trees, and running water, of mountains and of seas, — 
 he understood these partial revelations of the great 
 Earth-Soul that bore them, gave them life. For one 
 and all were channels for her loveliness. He saw the 
 beauty of the * natural ' instincts, the passion of 
 motherhood and fatherhood — Earth's seeking to 
 project herself in endless forms and variety. He 
 understood why love increased the heart and made 
 It feel at one with all the world. 
 
 Moreover in some amazing fashion he was aware 
 that others from that outer world beside himself 
 had access here, and that from this Garden of the 
 Earth's deep central personality came all the inspira- 
 tion known to men. He divined that others were 
 even now drawing upon it like himself. The 
 thoughts of the poets went past him like thin 
 flames ; the dreams of millions — mute, inexpressible 
 yearnings like those he had himself once known — 
 streamed by in pale white light, to shoot forward 
 with a little nesting rush into some great Figure . . . 
 and then return in double volume to the dreaming 
 heart whence first they issued. Shadows, too, he 
 saw, by myriads — faint, feeble gropings of men and 
 
 V 
 
278 THE CENTAUR xxxvii 
 
 women seeking it eagerly, yet hardly knowing what 
 they sought ; but, above all, long, singing, beautiful 
 tongues of coloured flame that were the instincts of 
 divining children and of the pure in heart. These 
 came in rippling floods unerringly to their goal, 
 lingered for long periods before returning. And 
 all, he knew, were currents of the great Earth Life, 
 moods, thoughts, dreams — expressions of her various 
 Consciousness with which she mothered, fed, and 
 blessed all whom it was possible to reach. Their pas- 
 sionate yearning, their worship, made access possible. 
 Along the tenderest portions of her personaHty these 
 latter came, as by a spread network of infinitely deli- 
 cate filaments that extended from herself, deliciously 
 inviting. » . . 
 
 The thing, however, that remained with him 
 long after his return to the normal state of lesser 
 consciousness was the memory of those blinding 
 moments when a god went past him, or, as he 
 phrased it in another way, when he caught glimpses 
 of the Earth — naked. For these were instantaneous 
 flashes of a gleaming whiteness, a dazzling and 
 supreme loveliness that staggered thought and 
 arrested feeling, while yet of a radiant simplicity 
 that brought — for a second at least — a measure of 
 comprehension. 
 
 He then knew not mere partial projections. He 
 saw beyond — deep down into the flaming centre 
 that gave them birth. The blending of his being 
 with the Cosmic Consciousness was complete enough 
 for this. He describes it as a spectacle of sheer 
 glory, stupendous, even terrifying. The refulgent 
 majesty of it utterly possessed him. The shock of 
 its magnificence came, moreover, upon his entire 
 
XXXVII THE CENTAUR 279 
 
 being, and was not really of course a * sight * at all. 
 The message came not through any small division of 
 a single sense. With a massed yet soaring power it 
 shook him free of all known categories. He then 
 fringed a region of yet greater being wherein he 
 tasted for a moment some secret comprehension of a 
 true * divinity.' The deliverance into ecstasy was 
 complete. 
 
 In these flashing moments, when a second seemed 
 a thousand years, he further understood the splendour 
 of the stage beyond. Earth in her turn was but a 
 Mood in the Consciousness of the Universe, that 
 Universe again was mothered by another vaster 
 one . . . and the total that included them all was 
 not the gods — but God. 
 
XXXVIII 
 
 The litter of disordered note-books filled to the 
 covers with fragments of such beauty that they 
 almost seem to burn with a light of their own, lies at 
 this moment before me on my desk. I still hear 
 the rushing torrent of his language across the spotted 
 table-cloth in that dark restaurant corner. But the 
 incoherence seems only to increase with my best 
 efforts to combine the two. 
 
 * Go home and dream it,* as he said at last when 
 I ventured a question here and there towards the 
 end of the recital. ' You'll see it best that way — in 
 sleep. Get clear away from me^ and my surface 
 physical consciousness. Perhaps it will come to you 
 then.' 
 
 There remains, however, to record the manner of 
 his exit from that great Garden of the Earth's fair 
 youth. And he tells it more simply. Or, perhaps, 
 it is that I understand it better. 
 
 For suddenly, in the midst of all the joy and 
 splendour that he tasted, there came unbidden a 
 strengthening of the tie that held him to his ^ outer,' 
 lesser state. A wave of pity and compassion surged 
 in upon him from the depths. He saw the struggling 
 millions in the prisons and cages civilization builds. 
 He felt with them. No happiness, he understood, 
 
 280 
 
XXXVIII THE CENTAUR 281 
 
 could be complete that did not also include them all ; 
 and — he longed to tell them. The thought and the 
 desire tore across him burningly. 
 
 * If only I can get this back to them ! ' passed 
 through him, like a flame. ' I'll save the world by 
 bringing it again to simple things ! IVe only got to 
 tell it and all will understand at once — and follow ! ' 
 
 And with the birth of the desire there ran a deep 
 convulsive sound like music through the greater 
 Consciousness that held him close. Those Moods 
 that were the gods, thronged gloriously about him, 
 almost pressing forwards into actual sight. . . . He 
 might have lingered where he was for centuries, or 
 for ever ; but this thought pulled him back — the 
 desire to share his knowledge with the world, the 
 passion to heal and save and rescue. 
 
 And instantly, in the twinkling of an eyelid, the 
 Urwelt closed its gates of horn and ivory behind 
 him. An immense dark shutter dropped noiselessly 
 with a speed of lightning across his mind. He 
 stood without. . . . 
 
 ' He found himself near the tumbled-down stone 
 huts of a hamlet that he recognized. He staggered, 
 rubbed his eyes, and stared. A forest of beech trees 
 shook below him in a violent wind. He saw the 
 branches tossing. A Caucasian saddle-horse beside 
 him nosed a sack that spilt its flour on the ground 
 at his feet, he heard the animal's noisy breathing ; 
 he noted the sliding movement of the spilt flour 
 before it finally settled ; and some fifty yards beyond 
 him, down the slopes, he saw a human figure — 
 running. 
 
 It was his Georgian guide. The man, half 
 stooping, caught the woollen bashlik that had fallen 
 from his head. 
 
282 THE CENTAUR xxxviii 
 
 O'Malley watched the man complete the gesture. 
 Still running, he replaced the cap upon his head. 
 
 And coming up to his ears upon the wind were 
 the words of a broken French sentence that he 
 also recognized. Disjointed by terror, it completed 
 an interrupted phrase : — 
 
 * . . . one of them is close upon us. Hide 
 your eyes ! Save yourself ! They come from the 
 mountains. They are old as the stones . . . 
 run . . . ! ' 
 
 No other living being was in sight. 
 
XXXIX 
 
 The extraordinary abruptness of the transition pro- 
 duced no bewilderment, it seems. Realizing that 
 without Rostom he would be in a position of helpless- 
 ness that might be serious, the Irishman put his hands 
 to his lips and called out with authority to the running 
 figure of his frightened guide. He shouted to him 
 to stop. 
 
 * There is nothing to fear. Come back ! Are 
 you afraid of a gust of wind ^ ' 
 
 And in his face and voice, perhaps too in his 
 manner, was something he had brought back from 
 the vision, for the man stopped at once in his headlong 
 course, paused a moment to stare and question, and 
 then, though still looking over his shoulder and 
 making occasional signs of his religion, came slowly 
 back to his employer's side again. 
 
 *It has passed,* said O'Malley in a voice that 
 seemed to crumble in his mouth. * It is gone again 
 into the mountains whence it came. We are safe. 
 With me,' he added, not without a secret sense of 
 humour stirring in him, * you will always be safe. 
 I can protect us both.' He felt as normal as a 
 British officer giving orders to his soldiers. And the 
 Georgian slowly recovered his composure, yet for a 
 long time keeping close to the other's side. 
 
 283 
 
284 THE CENTAUR xxxix 
 
 The transition, thus, had been as sudden and 
 cohiplete as anything well could be. O'Malley 
 described it as the instantaneous dropping of a shutter 
 across his mind. The entire vision had lasted but a 
 fraction of a second, and in a fraction of a second, 
 too, he had returned to his state of everyday lesser 
 consciousness. That blending with the Earth's great 
 Consciousness was but a flashing glimpse after all. 
 The extension of personality had been momentary. 
 
 So absolute, moreover, was the return that at first, 
 remembering nothing, he took up life again exactly 
 where he had left it. The guide completed the 
 gesture and the sentence which the vision had inter- 
 rupted, and O'Malley, similarly, resumed his own 
 thread of thought and action. 
 
 Only a hint remained. That, and a curious sense 
 of interval, alone were left to witness this flash of an 
 immense vision, — of cosmic consciousness — that 
 apparently had filled so many days and nights. ., 
 
 * It was like waking suddenly in the night out of 
 deep sleep,' he said; *not of one's own accord, or gradu- 
 ally, but as when someone shakes you out of slumber 
 and you are wide awake at once. You have been 
 dreaming vigorously — thick, lively, crowded dreams, 
 and they all vanish on the instant. You catch the 
 tail-end of the procession just as it's diving out of 
 sight. In less than a second all is gone.' 
 
 For this was the hint that remained. He caught 
 the flying tail-end of the vision. He knew he had 
 seen something. But, for the moment, that was all. 
 
 Then, by degrees and afterwards, the details re- 
 emerged. In the days that followed, while with 
 Rostom he completed the journey already planned, 
 the deeper consciousness gave back its memory piece 
 by piece ; and piece by piece he set it down in note- 
 
XXXIX THE CENTAUR 285 
 
 books as best he could. The memory was on deposit 
 deep within him, and at intervals he tapped it. Hence, 
 of course, is due the confused and fragmentary 
 character of those bewildering entries ; hence, at the 
 same time, too, their truth and value. For here was 
 no imaginative dream concocted in a mood of high 
 invention. The parts were disjointed, incomplete, 
 just as they came. The lesser consciousness, it seems, 
 could not contain the thing complete ; nor to the 
 last, I judge, did he ever know complete recapture. 
 
 They wandered for two weeks and more about the 
 mountains, meeting various adventure by the way, 
 reported duly in his letters of travel. But these con- 
 cerned the outer man and have no proper place in this 
 strange record . . . and by the middle of July 
 he found himself once more in — civilization. At 
 Michaelevo he said good-bye to Rostom and took 
 the train. 
 
 And it was with the return to the conditions of 
 modern life that the reaction set in and stirred the 
 deeper layers of consciousness to reproduce their store 
 of magic. For this return to what seemed the paltry 
 activities of an age of machinery, physical luxury, and 
 superficial contrivances brought him a sense of pain 
 that was acute and trenchant, more — a deep and 
 poignant sense of loss. The yearnings, no longer 
 satisfied, began again to reassert themselves. It was 
 not the actual things the world seemed so busy about 
 that pained him, but rather the point of view from 
 which the world approached them — those that it 
 deemed with one consent ' important,' and those, with 
 rare exceptions, it obviously deemed worth no 
 consideration at all, and ignored. For himself these 
 values stood exactly reversed. 
 
286 THE CENTAUR xxxix 
 
 The Vision then came back to him, rose from the 
 depths, bhnded his eyes with maddening beauty, sang 
 in his ears, possessed his heart and mind. He burned 
 to tell it. The world of tired, restless men, he felt, 
 must equally burn to hear it. Some vision of a simple 
 life lived close to Nature came before his inner eye as 
 the remedy for the vast disease of restless self-seeking 
 of the age, the medicine that should cure the entire 
 world. A return to Nature was the first step towards 
 the great Deliverance men sought. And, most of 
 all, he yearned to tell it first to Heinrich Stahl. 
 
 To hear him talk about it, as he talked perhaps to 
 me alone, was genuinely pathetic, for here, in Terence 
 O'Malley, I thought to see the essential futility of 
 all dreamers nakedly revealed. His vision was so 
 fine, sincere, and noble ; his difficulty in imparting it 
 so painful ; and its marriage with practical action so 
 ludicrously impracticable. At any rate that combina- 
 tion of vision and action, called sometimes genius, 
 which can shake the world, assuredly was not his. 
 For his was no constructive mind ; he was not 
 * intellectual ' ; he saw^ but with the heart ; he could 
 not build. To plan a new Utopia was as impossible 
 to him as to shape even in words the splendour he 
 had known and lived. Bricks and straw could only 
 smother him before he laid what most would deem 
 foundations. 
 
 At first, too, in those days while waiting for the 
 steamer in Batoum, he kept strangely silent. Even 
 in his own thoughts was silence. He could not speak 
 of what he knew. Even paper refused it. But all 
 the time this glorious winged thing, that yet was simple 
 as the sunlight or the rain, went by his side, while 
 his soul knew the relief of some divine, proud utterance 
 that, he felt, could never know complete confession 
 
XXXIX THE CENTAUR 287 
 
 in speech or writing. Later he stammered over it — 
 to his note-books and to me, and partially also to 
 Dr. Stahl. But at first it dwelt alone and hidden, 
 contained in this deep silence. 
 
 The days of waiting he filled with walks about the 
 streets, watching the world with new eyes. He took 
 the Russian steamer to Poti, and tramped with a 
 knapsack up the Tchourokh gorge beyond Bourtchka, 
 regardless of the Turkish gypsies and encampments 
 of wild peoples on the banks. The sense of personal 
 danger was impossible ; he felt the whole world kin. 
 That sense protected him. Pistol and cartridges lay 
 in his bag, forgotten at the hotel. 
 
 Delight and pain lay oddly mingled in him. The 
 pain he recognized of old, but this great radiant 
 happiness was new. The nightmare of modern 
 cheapjack Hfe was all explained ; unjustified, of course, 
 as he had always dimly felt, symptom of deep disorder ; 
 all due, this feverish, external business, to an odd 
 misunderstanding with the Earth. Humanity had 
 somehow quarrelled with her, claiming an independ- 
 ence that could not really last. For her the centuries 
 of this estrangement was but a little thing perhaps — 
 a moment or two in that huge life which counted a 
 million years to lay a narrow bed of chalk. They 
 would come back in time. Meanwhile she ever called. 
 A few, perhaps, already dreamed of return. Move- 
 ments, he had heard, were afoot — a tentative endeavour 
 here and there. They heard, these few, the splendid 
 whisper that, sweetly calling, ever passed about the 
 world. 
 
 For her voice in the last resort was more potent 
 than all others — an enchantment that never wholly 
 faded ; men had but temporarily left her mighty 
 sides and gone astray, eating of trees of knowledge 
 
288 THE CENTAUR 
 
 XXXIX 
 
 that brought them deceptive illusions of a mad self- 
 intoxication ; fallen away into the pains of separate- 
 ness and death. Loss of direction and central control 
 was the result ; the babel of many tongues so clumsily 
 invented, by which all turned one against another. 
 Insubordinate, artificial centres had assumed disastrous 
 command. Each struggled for himself against his 
 neighbours. Even religions fought to the blood. 
 A single sect coUld damn the rest of humanity, yet 
 in the same breath sing complaisantly of its own 
 Heaven. 
 
 Meanwhile She smiled in love and patience, letting 
 them learn their lesson ; meanwhile She watched and 
 waited while, like foolish children, they toiled and 
 sweated after futile transient things that brought no 
 single letter of content. She let them coin their 
 millions from her fairest thoughts, the gold and 
 silver in her veins ; and let them turn it into 
 engines of destruction, knowing that each * life lost,' 
 returned into her arms and heart, crying with the 
 pain of its wayward foolishness, the lesson learned ; 
 She watched their tears and struggling just outside 
 the open nursery door, knowing they must at length 
 return for food ; and while thus waiting, watching, 
 She heard all prayers that reached her ; She answered 
 them with love and forgiveness ever ready ; and to 
 the few who realized their folly — naughtiness, perhaps, 
 at worst it was — this side of * death,' She brought full 
 measure of peace and joy and beauty. 
 
 Not permanently could they hurt themselves, for 
 evil was but distance from her side, the ignorance of 
 those who had wandered furthest into the little dark 
 labyrinth of a separated self. The * intellect ' they 
 were so proud of had misled them. 
 
 And sometimes, here and there across the ages. 
 
XXXIX THE CENTAUR 289 
 
 with a glory that refused utterly to be denied, She 
 thundered forth her old sweet message of deliverance. 
 Through poet, priest, or child she called her children 
 home. The summons rang like magic across the 
 wastes of this dreary separated existence. Some 
 heard and listened, some turned back, some wondered 
 and were strangely thrilled ; some, thinking it too 
 simple to be true, were puzzled by the yearning and 
 the tears and went back to seek for a more difficult 
 way ; while most, denying the secret glory in their 
 hearts, sought to persuade themselves they loved the 
 strife and hurrying fever best. 
 
 At other times, again, she chose quite different 
 ways, and sent the amazing message in a flower, a 
 breath of evening air, a shell upon the shore ; though 
 oftenest, perhaps, it hid in a strain' of music, a patch 
 of colour on the sea or hills, a rustle of branches in 
 a little twilight wind, a whisper in the dusk or in 
 the dawn. He remembered his own first visions 
 of it. . . . 
 
 Only never could the summons come to her 
 children through the intellect, for this it was that 
 led them first away. Her message enters ever by 
 the heart. 
 
 The simple life ! He smiled as he thought ot the 
 bald Utopias here and there devised by men, for he 
 had seen a truth whose brilliance smote his eyes too 
 dazzlingly to permit of the smallest corner of dark- 
 ness. Remote, no doubt, in time that day when the 
 lion shall lie down with the lamb and men shall live 
 together in peace and gentleness ; when the inner life 
 shall be admitted as the Reality, strife, gain, and loss 
 unknown because possessions undesired, and petty 
 selfhood merged in the larger life — remote, of course, 
 yet surely not impossible. He had seen the Face 
 
 u 
 
290 THE CENTAUR xxxix 
 
 of Nature, heard her Call, tasted her joy and peace ; 
 and the rest of the tired world might do the same. 
 It only waited to be shown the way. The truth he 
 now saw so dazzling was that all who heard the call 
 might know it for themselves at once, cuirassed with 
 shining love that makes the whole world kin, the 
 Earth a mother literally divine. Each soul might 
 thus provide a channel along which the summons 
 home should pass across the world. To live with 
 Nature and share her greater consciousness, en route 
 for states yet greater, nearer to the eternal home — 
 this was the beginning of the truth, the life, the 
 way. 
 
 He saw * religion ' all explained : and those hard 
 sayings that make men turn away : — the imagined 
 dread of losing life to find it ; the counsel of per- 
 fection that the neighbour shall be loved as self ; the 
 fancied injury and outrage that made it hard for rich 
 men to enter the kingdom. Of these, as of a hundred 
 other sayings, he saw the necessary truth. It all 
 seemed easy now. The world would see it with 
 him ; it must ; it could not help itself Simplicity 
 as of a little child, and selflessness as of the mystic — 
 these were the splendid clues. 
 
 Death and the grave, indeed, had lost their victory. 
 For in the stages of wider consciousness beyond this 
 transient physical phase he saw all loved ones joined 
 and safe, as separate words upgathered each to each 
 in the parent sentence that explains them, the sentence 
 in the paragraph, the paragraph in the whole grand 
 story all achieved — and so at length into the eternal 
 library of God that consummates the whole. 
 
 He saw the glorious series, timeless and serene, 
 advancing to the climax, and somehow understood 
 that individuality at each stage was never lost but 
 
XXXIX THE CENTAUR 291 
 
 rather extended and magnified. Love of the Earth, 
 life close to Nature, and denial of so-called civiliza- 
 tion was the first step upwards. In the Simple Life, 
 in this return to Nature, lay the opening of the little 
 path that climbed to the stars and heaven. 
 
XL 
 
 At the end of the week the little steamer dropped 
 her anchor in the harbour and the Irishman booked 
 his passage home. He was standing on the wharf 
 to watch the unloading when a hand tapped him on 
 the shoulder and he heard a well-known voice. His 
 heart leaped with pleasure. There were no pre- 
 liminaries between these two. 
 
 * I am glad to see you safe. You did not find 
 your friend, then ^ ' 
 
 O'Malley looked at the bronzed face beside him, 
 noted the ragged tobacco-stained beard, and saw the 
 look of genuine welcome in the twinkling brown 
 eyes. He watched him lift his cap and mop that 
 familiar dome of bald head. 
 
 * Vm safe,' was all he answered, ' because I found 
 him.' 
 
 For a moment Dr. Stahl looked puzzled. He 
 dropped the hand he held so tightly and led him 
 down the wharf. 
 
 * We'll get out of this devilish sun,' he said, 
 leading the way among the tangle of merchandise 
 and bales, *it's enough to boil our brains.' They 
 passed through the crowd of swarthy, dripping 
 Turks, Georgians, Persians, and Armenians who 
 laboured half naked in the heat, and moved towards 
 the town. A Russian gunboat lay in the Bay, side 
 
 292 
 
XL THE CENTAUR 293 
 
 by side with freight and passenger vessels. An oil- 
 tank steamer took on cargo. The scene was drenched 
 in sunshine. The Black Sea gleamed like molten 
 metal. Beyond, the wooded spurs of the Caucasus 
 climbed through haze into cloudless blue. 
 
 * It's beautiful/ remarked the German, pointing 
 to the distant coast-line, * but hardly with the beauty 
 of those Grecian Isles we passed together. Eh ? ' 
 He watched him closely. ' You're coming back on 
 our steamer .? ' he asked in the same breath. 
 
 * It's beautiful,' O'Malley answered ignoring the 
 question, * because it lives. But there is dust upon 
 its outer loveliness, dust that has gathered through 
 long ages of neglect, dust that I would sweep away 
 — I've learnt how to do it. He taught me.' 
 
 Stahl did not even look at him, though the words 
 were wild enough. He walked at his side in silence. 
 Perhaps he partly understood. For this first link 
 with the outer world of appearances was difficult for 
 him to pick up. The person of Stahl, thick-coated 
 with the civilization whence he came, had brought it, 
 and out of the ocean of glorious vision in his soul, 
 O'Malley took at random the first phrases he could 
 find. 
 
 * Yes, I've booked a passage on your steamer,' he 
 added presently, remembering the question. It did 
 not seem strange to him that his companion ignored 
 both clues he offered. He knew the man too well 
 for that. It was only that he waited for more before 
 he spoke. 
 
 They went to the little table outside the hotel 
 pavement where several weeks ago they had drunk 
 Kakhetian wine together and talked of deeper things. 
 The German called for a bottle, mineral water, ice, 
 and cigarettes. And while they sipped the cooling 
 
294 THE CENTAUR xl 
 
 golden liquid, hats off and coats on the backs of their 
 chairs, Stahl gave him the news of the world of men 
 and events that had transpired meanwhile. O'Malley 
 listened vaguely as he smoked. It seemed remote, 
 unreal, almost fantastic, this long string of ugly, 
 frantic happenings, all symptoms of some disordered 
 state that was like illness. The scream of politics, 
 the roar and rattle of flying -machines, financial 
 crashes, furious labour upheavals, rumours of war, the 
 death of kings and magnates, awful accidents and 
 strange turmoil in enormous cities. Details of some 
 sad prison life, it almost seemed, pain and distress 
 and strife the note that bound them all together. 
 Men were mastered by these things instead of master- 
 ing them. These unimportant things they thought 
 would make them free only imprisoned them. 
 
 They lunched there at the little table in the shade, 
 and in turn the Irishman gave an outline of his 
 travels. Stahl had asked for it and listened atten- 
 tively. The pictures interested him. 
 
 *YouVe done your letters for the papers,' he 
 questioned him, *and now, perhaps, you'll write a 
 book as well ^ ' 
 
 ' Something may force its way out — come 
 blundering, thundering out in fragments, yes.' 
 
 ' You mean you'd rather not — ? ' 
 
 * I mean it's all too big and overwhelming. He 
 showed me such blinding splendours. I might tell 
 it, but as to writing — ! ' He shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 And this time Dr. Stahl ignored no longer. He 
 took him up. But not with any expected words or 
 questions. He merely said, ' My friend, there's 
 something that I have to tell you — or, rather, I 
 should say, to show you.' He looked most keenly 
 at him, and in the old familiar way he placed a hand 
 
XL THE CENTAUR 295 
 
 upon his shoulder. His voice grew soft. * It may- 
 upset you ; it may unsettle — prove a shock perhaps. 
 But if you are prepared, we'll go * 
 
 * What kind of shock .? ' O'Malley asked, startled 
 a moment by the gravity of manner. 
 
 'The shock of death/ was the answer, gently 
 spoken. 
 
 The Irishman only knew a swift ruch of joy and 
 wonder as he heard it. 
 
 ' But there is no such thing ! ' he cried, almost 
 with laughter. 'He taught me that above all else. 
 There is no death ! ' 
 
 'There is 'Agoing away," though,' came the re- 
 joinder, spoken low ; ' there is earth to earth and dust 
 to dust ' 
 
 * That's of the body ! ' 
 
 ' That's of the body, yes,' the older man repeated 
 darkly. 
 
 ' There is only " going home," escape and freedom. 
 I tell you there's only that. It's nothing but joy 
 and splendour when you really understand.' 
 
 But Dr. Stahl made no immediate answer, nor any 
 comment. He paid the bill and led him down the 
 street. They took the shady side. Passing beyond 
 the skirts of the town they walked in silence. The 
 barracks where the soldiers sang, the railway line to 
 Tiflis and Baku, the dome and minarets of the church, 
 were left behind in turn, and presently they reached 
 the hot, straight dusty road that fringed the sea. 
 They heard the crashing of the little waves and 
 saw the foam creamily white against the dark grey 
 pebbles of the beach. 
 
 And when they reached a small enclosure where 
 thin trees were planted among sparse grass all brown 
 and withered by the sun, they paused, and Stahl 
 
296 THE CENTAUR xl 
 
 pointed to a mound, marked at either end by a 
 rough stone boulder. A date was on it, but no name. 
 O'Malley calculated the difference between the 
 Russian Calendar and the one he was accustomed to. 
 Stahl checked him. 
 
 * The fifteenth of June,' the German said. 
 
 * The fifteenth of June, yes,' said O'Malley very 
 slowly, but with wonder and excitement in his heart. 
 * That was the day that Rostom tried to run away — 
 the day I saw him come to me from the trees — the 
 day we started off together ... to the Garden. . . .' 
 
 He turned to his companion questioningly. For 
 a moment the rush of memory was quite bewildering. 
 
 * He never left Batoum at all, you see,' Stahl 
 continued, without looking up. ' He went straight 
 to the hospital the day we came into port. I was 
 summoned to him in the night — that last night 
 while you slept so deeply. His old strange fever 
 was upon him then, and I took him ashore before 
 the other passengers were astir. I brought him to 
 the hospital myself. And he never left his bed.' 
 He pointed down to the little nameless grave at 
 their feet where a wandering wind from the sea just 
 stirred the grasses. * That was the date on which he 
 died.' 
 
 * He went away in the early morning,' he added 
 in a low voice that held both sadness and sympathy. 
 
 * He went home,' said the Irishman, a tide of joy 
 rising tumuituously through his heart as he re- 
 membered. The secret of that complete and absolute 
 Leadership was out. He understood it all. It had 
 been a spiritual adventure to the last. 
 
 Then followed a pause. 
 
 In silence they stood there for some minutes. 
 There grew no flowers on that grave, but O'Malley 
 
XL THE CENTAUR 297 
 
 stooped down and picked a strand of the withered 
 grass. He put it carefully between the pages of his 
 note-book ; and then, lying flat against the ground 
 where the sunshine fell in a patch of white and 
 burning glory, he pressed his lips to the crumbling 
 soil. He kissed the Earth. Oblivious of Stahl's 
 presence, or at least ignoring it, he worshipped. 
 
 And while he did so he heard that little sound he 
 loved so well — which more than any words or music 
 brought peace and joy, because it told his Passion all 
 complete. With his ears close to the earth he heard 
 it, yet at the same time heard it everywhere. For it 
 came with the falling of the waves upon the shore, 
 through the murmur of the rustling branches over- 
 head, and even across the whispering of the withered 
 grass about him. Deep down in the centre of the 
 mothering Earth he heard it too in faintly rising 
 pulse. It was the exquisite little piping on a reed — 
 the ancient fluting of the everlasting Pan. . . . 
 
 And when he rose he found that Stahl had turned 
 away and was gazing at the sea, as though he had not 
 noticed. 
 
 * Doctor,' he cried, yet so softly it was a whisper 
 rather than a call, * I heard it then again ; it's every- 
 where ! Oh, tell me that you hear it too ! ' 
 
 Stahl turned and looked at him in silence. There 
 was a moisture in his eyes, and on his face a look of 
 softness that a woman might have worn. 
 
 * Tve brought it back, you see, Tve brought it 
 back. For that's the message — that's the sound and 
 music I must give to all the world. No words, no 
 book can tell it.' His hat was ofl^, his eyes were 
 shining, his voice broke with the passion of joy he 
 yearned to share yet knew so little how to impart. 
 * If I can pipe upon the flutes of Pan the millions all 
 
298 THE CENTAUR xl 
 
 will listen, will understand, and — follow. Tell me, 
 oh, tell me, that you heard it too ! ' 
 
 * My friend, my dear young friend,' the German 
 murmured in a voice of real tenderness, * you heard 
 it truly — but you heard it in your heart. Few hear 
 the Pipes of Pan as you do. Few care to listen. 
 To-day the world is full of other sounds that drown 
 it. And even of those who hear,' he shrugged his 
 shoulders as he led him away towards the sea, — * how 
 few will care to follow — how fewer still will dare.^ 
 
 And while they lay upon the beach and watched 
 the line of foam against their feet and saw the sea- 
 gulls curving idly in the blue and shining air, he 
 added underneath his breath — O'Malley hardly 
 caught the murmur of his words so low he 
 murmured them : — 
 
 ' The simple life is lost for ever. It lies asleep in 
 the Golden Age, and only those who sleep and dream 
 can ever find it. If you would keep your joy, dream 
 on, my friend ! Dream on, but dream alone ! ' 
 
XLI 
 
 Summer blazed everywhere and the sea lay like a 
 blue pool of melted sky and sunshine. The summits 
 of the Caucasus soon faded to the east and north, 
 and to the south the wooded hills of the Black Sea 
 coast accompanied the ship in a line of wavy blue 
 that joined the water and the sky indistinguishably. 
 
 The first-class passengers were few ; O'Malley 
 hardly noticed their existence even. An American 
 engineer, building a railway in Turkey, came on 
 board at Trebizond ; there were one or two light 
 women on their way home from Baku, and the 
 attach^ of a foreign embassy from Teheran. But the 
 Irishman felt more in touch with the hundred peasant- 
 folk who joined the ship at Ineboli from the interior 
 of Asia Minor and were bound as third-class 
 emigrants for Marseilles and far America. Dark- 
 skinned, wild-eyed, ragged, very dirty, they had 
 never seen the sea before, and the sight of a porpoise 
 held them spellbound. They lived on the after- 
 deck, mostly cooking their own food, the women 
 and children sleeping beneath a large tarpaulin that 
 the sailors stretched for them across the width of 
 deck. At night they played their pipes and danced, 
 singing, shouting, and waving their arms — always the 
 same tune over and over again. 
 
 O'Malley watched them for hours together. He 
 299 
 
300 THE CENTAUR xli 
 
 also watched the engineer, the over-dressed women, 
 the attache. He understood the difference between 
 them as he had never understood it before. He 
 understood the difficulty of his task as well. How 
 in the world could he ever explain a single syllable 
 of his message to these latter, or waken in them the 
 faintest echo of desire to know and listen. The 
 peasants, though all unconscious of the blinding 
 glory at their elbows, stood far nearer to the truth. 
 
 * Been further east, I suppose .? ' the engineer 
 observed, one afternoon as the steamer lay off 
 Broussa, taking on a little extra cargo of walnut logs. 
 He looked admiringly at the Irishman's bronzed 
 skin. *Take a better sun than this to put that 
 on!' 
 
 He laughed in his breezy, vigorous way, and the 
 other laughed with him. Previous conversations 
 had already paved the way to a traveller's friendship, 
 and the American had taken to him. 
 
 * Up in the mountains,' he replied, * camping out 
 and sleeping in the sun did it.' 
 
 ' The Caucasus ! Ah, I'd like to get up there 
 myself a bit. I'm told they're a wonderful thing in 
 the mountain line.' 
 
 Scenery for him was evidently a commercial 
 commodity, or it was nothing. It was the most 
 up-to-date nation in the world that spoke — in the 
 van of civilization — representing the last word in 
 progress due to triumph over Nature. 
 
 O'Malley said he had never seen anything like 
 them. He described the trees, the flowers, the 
 tribes, the scenery in general ; he dwelt upon the 
 vast uncultivated spaces, the amazing fruitfulness of 
 the soil, the gorgeous beauty above all. * I'd like to 
 
xLi THE CENTAUR 301 
 
 get the overcrowded cities of England and Europe 
 spread all over it,' he said with enthusiasm. * There's 
 room for thousands there to lead a simple life close 
 to Nature, in health and peace and happiness. Even 
 your tired millionaires could escape their restless, 
 feverish worries, lay down their weary burden of 
 possessions, and enjoy the earth at last. The poor 
 would cease to be with us ; life become true and 
 beautiful again. . . .' He let it pour out of him, 
 building the scaffolding of his dream before him in 
 the air and filling it in with beauty. 
 
 The American listened in patience, watching the 
 walnut logs being towed through the water to the 
 side of the ship. From time to time he spat on 
 them, or into the sea. He let the beauty go com- 
 pletely past him. 
 
 * Great idea, that ! ' he interrupted at length. 
 * You're interested, I see, in socialism and communistic 
 schemes. There's money in them somewhere right 
 enough, if a man only could hit the right note at the 
 first go off. Take a bit of doing, though ! ' 
 
 One of the women from Baku came up and 
 leaned upon the rails a little beyond them. The 
 sickly odour of artificial scent wafted down. The 
 attach^ strolled along the deck and ogled her. 
 
 * Get a few of that sort to draw the millionaires 
 in, eh .? ' he added vulgarly. 
 
 * Even those would come, yes,' said the Irishman 
 softly, realizing for the first time within his memory 
 that his gorge did not rise, * for they too would 
 change, grow clean and sweet and beautiful.' 
 
 The engineer looked sharply into his face, un- 
 certain whether he had not missed a clever witticism 
 of his own kind. But O'Malley did not meet his 
 glance. His eyes were far away upon the snowy 
 
302 THE CENTAUR xli 
 
 summit of Olympus where a flock of fleecy clouds 
 hung hovering like the hair of the eternal gods. 
 
 ' They say there's timber going to waste that you 
 could get to the coast merely for the cost of drawing 
 it — Caucasian walnut, too, to burn,' the other 
 continued, getting on to safer ground, * and labour's 
 dirt cheap. There's every sort of mineral too God 
 ever made. You could build light railways and run 
 the show by electricity. And water-power for the 
 asking. You'd have to get a Concession from 
 Russia first though,' he added, spitting down upon a 
 huge floating log in the clear sea underneath, ' and 
 Russia's got palms that want a lot of greasing. I 
 guess the natives, too, would take a bit of managing.' 
 
 The woman beyond had shifted several feet nearer, 
 and after a pause the Irishman found no words to 
 fill, his companion turned to address a remark to her. 
 O'Malley took the opening and moved away. 
 
 ' Here's my card, anyway,' the American added, 
 handing him an over-printed bit of large pasteboard 
 from a fat pocket-book that bore his name and 
 address in silver on the outside. * If you develop the 
 scheme and want a bit of money, count me in.' 
 
 He went to the other side of the vessel and 
 watched the peasants on the lower deck. Their dirt 
 seemed nothing by comparison. It was only on 
 their clothes and bodies. The odour of this un- 
 washed humanity was almost sweet and wholesome. 
 It cleansed the sickly taint of that other scent from 
 his palate ; it washed his mind of thoughts as well. 
 
 He stood there long in dreaming silence, while 
 the sunlight on Olympus turned from gold to rose, 
 and the sea took on the colours of the fading sky. 
 He watched a dark Kurd baby sliding down the 
 tarpaulin. A kitten was playing with a loose end of 
 
xLi THE CENTAUR 303 
 
 rope too heavy for it to move. Further off a huge 
 fellow with bared chest and the hands of a colossus 
 sat on a pile of canvas playing softly on his wooden 
 pipes. The dark hair fell across his eyes, and a 
 group of women listened idly while they busied 
 themselves with the cooking of the evening meal. 
 Immediately beneath him a splendid-eyed young 
 woman crammed a baby to her naked breast. The 
 kitten left the rope and played with the tassel of her 
 scarlet shawl. 
 
 And as he heard those pipes and watched the 
 grave, untamed, strong faces of those wild peasant 
 men and women, he understood that, low though they 
 might be in scale of evolution, there was yet absent 
 from them the touch of that deteriorating something 
 which civilization painted into those other counte- 
 nances. But whether the word he sought was de- 
 gradation or whether it was shame, he could not tell. 
 In all they did, the way they moved, their dignity 
 and independence, there was this something, he felt, 
 that bordered on being impressive. Their wants 
 were few, their worldly possessions in a bundle, yet 
 they had this thing that set them in a place apart, 
 if not above, these others : — beyond that simpering 
 attach^ for all his worldly diplomacy, that engineer 
 with brains and skill, those painted women with their 
 clever playing upon the feelings and desires of their 
 kind. There was this difference that set the ragged 
 dirty crew in a proud and quiet atmosphere that made 
 them seem almost distinguished by comparison, and 
 certainly more desirable. Rough and untutored 
 though they doubtless were, they still possessed 
 unspoilt that deeper and more elemental nature that 
 bound them closer to the Earth. It needed training, 
 guidance, purifying ; yes ; but, in the last resort, was 
 
304 THE CENTAUR xli 
 
 it not of greater spiritual significance and value than 
 the mode of comparatively recently-developed reason 
 by which Civilization had produced these other types ? 
 He watched them long. The sun sank out of sight, 
 the sea turned dark, ten thousand stars shone softly 
 in the sky, and while the steamer swung about and 
 made for peaked Andros and the coast of Greece, 
 he still stood on in reverie and wonder. The 
 wings of his great Dream stirred mightily . . . 
 and he saw pale millions of men and women trooping 
 through the gates of horn and ivory into that Garden 
 where they should find peace and happiness in clean 
 simplicity close to the Earth. . . . 
 
XLII 
 
 There followed four days then of sea, Greece left 
 behind, Messina and the Lipari Islands past, and the 
 blue outline of Sardinia and Corsica began to keep 
 pace with them as they neared the narrow straits of 
 Bonifacio between them. The passengers came up 
 to watch the rocky desolate shores slip by so close, 
 and Captain Burgenfelder was on the bridge. 
 
 Grey-headed rocks rose everywhere close about 
 the ship ; overhead the seagulls cried and circled ; no 
 vegetation was visible on either shore, no houses, no 
 abode of man — nothing but the lighthouses, then 
 miles of deserted rock dressed in those splendours of 
 the sun's good-night. The dinner-gong had sounded 
 but the sight was too magnificent to leave, for the 
 setting sun floated on an emblazoned sea and stared 
 straight against them in level glory down the narrow 
 passage. Unimaginable colours painted sky and 
 wave. The ruddy cliffs of bleak loneliness rose from 
 a bed of flame. Soft airs fanned the cheeks with 
 welcome coolness after the fierce heat of the day. 
 There was a scent of wild honey in the air borne 
 from the purple uplands far, far away. 
 
 ' I wonder, oh, I wonder, if they realized that a 
 god is passing close . . . ! ' the Irishman murmured 
 with a rising of the heart, * and that here is a great 
 mood of the Earth-Consciousness inviting them to 
 
 305 . X 
 
3o6 THE CENTAUR xlii 
 
 peace ! Or do they merely see a yellow sun that dips 
 beneath a violet sea . . . ? ' 
 
 The washing of the water past the steamer's sides 
 caught away the rest of the half-whispered words. He 
 remembered that host of many thousand heads that 
 bowed in silence while a god swept by. ... It was 
 almost a shock to hear a voice replying close beside 
 him : — 
 
 * Come to my cabin when youVe ready. My 
 windows open to the west. We can be alone together. 
 We can have there what food we need. You would 
 prefer it perhaps ? ' 
 
 He felt the touch of that sympathetic hand 
 upon his shoulder, and bent his head to signify 
 agreement. 
 
 For a moment, face to face with that superb sun- 
 set, he had known a deep and utter peace in the vast 
 bosom of this greater soul about him. Her conscious- 
 ness again had bruised and fringed his own. Across 
 that delicately divided threshold the beauty and the 
 power of the gods had poured in a flood into his 
 being. And only there was peace, only there was 
 joy, only there was the death of those ancient yearn- 
 ings that tortured his little personal and separate 
 existence. The return to the world was aching pain 
 again. The old loneliness that seemed more than he 
 could bear swept icily through him, contracting life 
 and freezing every spring of joy. For in that single 
 instant of return he felt pass into him a loneliness of 
 the whole travailing world, the loneliness of countless 
 centuries, the loneliness of all the races of the Earth 
 who were exiled and had lost the way. 
 
 Too deep it lay for words or tears or sighs. The 
 doctor's invitation came most opportunely. And 
 presently in silence he turned his back upon that 
 
xLii THE CENTAUR 307 
 
 opal sky of dream from which the sun had gone, and 
 walked slowly down the deck towards Stahl's cabin. 
 
 ' If only I can share it with them/ he thought as 
 he went ; ' if only men will listen, if only they will 
 come. To keep it all to myself, to dream alone, will 
 kill me; 
 
 And as he stood before the door it seemed he 
 heard, wild rushing through the sky, the tramping of 
 a thousand hoofs, a roaring of the wind, the joy 
 of that free, torrential passage with the Earth. He 
 turned the handle and entered the cosy room where 
 weeks before they held the inquest on the little empty 
 tenement of flesh, remembering how that other figure 
 had once stood where he now stood — part of the 
 sunrise, part of the sea, part of the morning winds. 
 
 They had their meal almost in silence, while the 
 glow of sunset filled the cabin through the western 
 row of port-holes, and when it was over Stahl made 
 the cofi^ee as of old and lit the familiar black cigar. 
 Slowly O'Malley's pain and restlessness gave way 
 before the other's soothing quiet. He had never 
 known him before so calm and gentle, so sympathetic, 
 almost tender. The usual sarcasm seemed veiled in 
 sadness ; there was no irony in the voice, nor mockery 
 in the eyes. 
 
 Then to the Irishman it came suddenly that all 
 these days while he had been lost in dreaming the 
 doctor had kept him as of old under close observation. 
 The completeness of his reverie had concealed from 
 him this steady scrutiny. He had been oblivious to 
 the fact that Stahl had all the time been watching, 
 investigating, keenly examining. Abruptly he now 
 realized it. 
 
 And then Stahl spoke. His tone was winning, 
 
3o8 THE CENTAUR xlii 
 
 his manner frank and inviting. But it was the sadness 
 about him that won O'Malley's confidence so wholly. 
 
 * I can guess,' he said, * something of the dream 
 youVe brought with you from those mountains. I 
 can understand — more, perhaps, than you imagine, 
 and I can sympathize — more than you think possible. 
 Tell me about it fully — if you can. I see your heart 
 is very full, and in the telHng you will find relief. I 
 am not hostile, as you sometimes feel. Tell me, my 
 dear, young clear-eyed friend. Tell me your vision 
 and your hope. Perhaps I might even help . . . 
 for there may be things that I could also tell to you 
 in return.' 
 
 Something in the choice of words, none of which 
 offended ; in the atmosphere and setting, no detail 
 of which jarred ; and in the degree of balance between 
 utterance and silence his world of inner forces just 
 then knew, combined to make the invitation irresist- 
 ible. Moreover, he had wanted to tell it all these 
 days. Stahl was already half convinced. Stahl would 
 surely understand and help him. It was the psycho- 
 logical moment for confession. The two men rose 
 in the same moment, Stahl to lock the cabin doors 
 against interruption, O'Malley to set their chairs more 
 closely side by side so that talking should be easiest. 
 
 And then without demur or hesitation he opened 
 his heart to this other and let the floodgates of his 
 soul swing wide. He told the vision and he told the 
 dream ; he told his hope as well. And the story of 
 his passion, filled in with pages from those note-books 
 he ever carried in his pocket, still lasted when the 
 western glow had faded from the sky and the thick- 
 sown stars shone down upon the gliding steamer. 
 The hush of night lay soft upon the world before he 
 finished. 
 
xLii THE CENTAUR 309 
 
 He told the thing complete, much, I imagine, as 
 he told it all to me upon the roof of that apartment 
 building and in the dingy Soho restaurant. He 
 told it without reservations — his life-long yearnings : 
 the explanation brought by the presence of the silent 
 stranger upon the outward voyage : the journey to 
 the Garden : the vision that all life — from gods to 
 flowers, from men to mountains — lay contained in 
 the conscious Being of the Earth, that Beauty was 
 but glimpses of her essential nakedness ; and that 
 salvation of the world's disease of modern life was to 
 be found in a general return to the simplicity of 
 Nature close against her mothering heart. He told 
 it all — in words that his passionate joy chose fault- 
 lessly. 
 
 And Heinrich Stahl in silence listened. He asked 
 no single question. He made no movement in 
 his chair. His black cigar went out before the half 
 of it was smoked. The darkness hid his face im- 
 penetrably. 
 
 And no one came to interrupt. The murmur of 
 the speeding steamer, and occasional footsteps on the 
 deck as passengers passed to and fro in the cool of 
 the night, were the only sounds that broke the music 
 of that incurable idealist's impassioned story. 
 
XLIII 
 
 And then at length there came a change of voice 
 across the cabin. The Irishman had finished. He 
 sank back in the deep leather chair, exhausted 
 physically, but with the exultation of his mighty 
 hope still pouring at full strength through his heart. 
 For he had ventured further than ever before and 
 had spoken of a possible crusade — a crusade that 
 should preach peace and happiness to every living 
 creature. 
 
 And Dr. Stahl, in a voice that showed how deeply 
 he was moved, asked quietly : — 
 
 * By leading the nations back to Nature you think 
 they shall advance to Truth at last ? ' 
 
 ' With time,' was the reply. * The first step lies 
 there : — in changing the direction of the world's 
 activities, changing it from the transient Outer to the 
 eternal Inner. In the simple life, external possessions 
 unnecessary and recognized as vain, the soul would 
 turn within and seek Reality. Only a tiny section 
 of humanity has time to do it now. There is no 
 leisure. Civilization means acquirement for the 
 body : it ought to mean development for the soul. 
 Once sweep aside the trash and rubbish men seek 
 outside themselves to-day, and the wings of their 
 smothered souls would stir again. Consciousness 
 would expand. Nature would draw them first. 
 
 310 
 
xLiii THE CENTAUR 311 
 
 They would come to feel the Earth as I did. Self 
 would disappear, and with it this false sense of separ- 
 ateness. The greater consciousness would waken in 
 them. The peace and joy and blessedness of inner 
 growth would fill their lives. But, first, this childish 
 battling to the death for external things must cease, 
 and Civilization stand revealed for the bleak and 
 empty desolate thing it really is. It leads away from 
 God and from the things that are eternal.' 
 
 The German made no answer ; O'Malley ceased 
 to speak ; a long silence fell between them. Then, 
 presently, Stahl rehghted his cigar, and lapsing into 
 his native tongue — always a sign with him of deepest 
 seriousness — he began to talk. 
 
 ' YouVe honoured me,' he said, * with a great con- 
 fidence ; and I am deeply, deeply grateful. You 
 have told your inmost dream — the thing men find 
 it hardest of all to speak about.' He felt in the 
 darkness for his companion's hand and held it tightly 
 for a moment. He made no other comment upon what 
 he had heard. * And in return — in some small way 
 of return,' he continued, * I may ask you to listen to 
 something of my own, something of possible interest. 
 No one has ever known it from my lips. Only, in 
 our earlier conversations on the outward voyage, I 
 hinted at it once or twice. I sometimes warned 
 you ' 
 
 * I remember. You said he'd " get " me, " win *' 
 me over — " appropriation " was the word you used.' 
 
 * I suggested caution, yes ; urged you not to let 
 yourself go too completely ; told you he represented 
 danger to yourself, and to humanity as it is organized 
 to-day ' 
 
 *And all the rest,' put in O'Malley a shade 
 impatiently. * I remember perfectly.' 
 
312 THE CENTAUR xliii 
 
 * Because I knew what I was talking about.' 
 The doctor's voice came across the darkness some- 
 what ominously. And then he added in a louder 
 tone, evidently sitting forward as he said it : * For 
 the thing that has happened to yourself as I foresaw 
 it would, had already almost happened to me too ! ' 
 
 * To you, doctor, too ? ' exclaimed the Irishman 
 in the moment's pause that followed. 
 
 * I saved myself just in time — by getting rid of 
 the cause.' 
 
 * You discharged him from the hospital, because 
 you were afraid ! ' He said it sharply as though an 
 instant of the old resentment had flashed up. 
 
 By way of answer Stahl rose from his chair and 
 abruptly turned up the electric lamp upon the desk 
 that faced them across the cabin. Evidently he pre- 
 ferred the light. O'Malley saw that his face was 
 white and very grave. He grasped for the first time 
 that the man was speaking professionally. The truth 
 came driving next behind it — that Stahl regarded 
 him as a patient. 
 
 * Please go on, doctor,' he said, keenly on the 
 watch. * I'm deeply interested.' The wings of his 
 great dream still bore him too far aloft for him to 
 feel more than the merest passing annoyance at his 
 discovery. Resentment had gone too. Sadness and 
 disappointment for an instant touched him pprhaps, 
 biit momentarily. In the end he felt sure that Stahl 
 would stand at his side, completely won over and 
 convinced. 
 
 * You had a similar experience to my own, you 
 say,' he urged him. * I am all eagerness and sym- 
 pathy to hear ' 
 
 * We'll talk in the open air,' the doctor answered, 
 
XLIII 
 
 THE CENTAUR 313 
 
 and ringing the bell for the steward to clear away, 
 he drew his companion out to the deserted decks. 
 They moved towards the bows, past the sleeping 
 peasants. The stars were mirrored in a glassy sea 
 and towards the north the hills of Corsica stood 
 faintly outlined in the sky. It was already long 
 after midnight. 
 
 ' Yes, a similar thing nearly happened to me,' he 
 resumed as they settled themselves against a coil of 
 rope where only the murmur of the washing sea 
 could reach them, * and might have happened to 
 others too. Inmates of that big Krankenhaus 
 were variously affected. My action, tardy I must 
 admit, saved myself and them.' 
 
 And the German then told his story as a man 
 might tell of his escape from some grave disaster. In 
 the emphatic sentences of his native language he told 
 it, congratulating himself all through. The Russian 
 had almost won him over, gained possession of his 
 heart and mind, persuaded him, but in the end had 
 failed — because the other ran away. It was like 
 hearing a man describe an attempt to draw him into 
 Heaven, then boast of his escape. His caution and 
 his judgment, as he put it, saved him, but to the 
 listening Celt it rather seemed that his compromise it 
 was that damned him. The Kingdom of Heaven is 
 hard to enter, for Stahl had possessions not of the 
 wood and metal order, but possessions of the brain 
 and reason he was too proud to forego completely. 
 They kept him out. 
 
 With increasing sadness, too, he heard it ; for 
 here he realized was the mental attitude of an 
 educated, highly civilized man to-day — a representa- 
 tive type regarded by the world as highest. It was 
 this he had to face. Moreover Stahl was more than 
 
314 THE CENTAUR xliii 
 
 merely educated, he was understandingly sympathetic, 
 meeting the great dream halfway ; seeing in it possi- 
 bilities ; admitting its high beauty, and even some- 
 times speaking of it with hope and a touch of 
 enthusiasm. Its originator none the less he regarded 
 as a reactionary dreamer, an unsettling and disordered 
 influence, a patient, if not even something worse ! 
 
 Stahl's voice and manner were singular while he 
 told it all, revealing one moment the critical mind 
 that analysed and judged, and the next an enthusiasm 
 almost of the mystic. Alternately, like the man and 
 woman of those quaint old weather-glasses, each 
 peered out and showed a face, the reins of compro- 
 mise yet ever seeking to hold them well in leash and 
 drive them together. 
 
 Hardly, it seems, had the strange Russian been 
 under his care a week before he passed beneath the 
 sway of his curious personality and experienced the 
 attack of singular emotions upon his heart and mind. 
 
 He described at first the man's arrival, telling it 
 with the calm and balanced phrases a doctor uses 
 when speaking merely of a patient who had stirred 
 his interest. He first detailed the method of sugges- 
 tion he had used to revive the lapsed memory — and 
 its utter failure. Then he passed on to speak of him 
 more generally : but briefly and condensed. 
 
 ' The man,' he said, * was so engaging, so docile, 
 his personality altogether so attractive and mysteri- 
 ous, that I took the case myself instead of delegating 
 it to my assistants. All eflx)rts to trace his past 
 collapsed. It was as if he had drifted into that little 
 hotel out of the night of time. Of madness there 
 was no evidence whatever. The association of ideas 
 in his mind, though limited, was logical and rigid. 
 His health was perfect, barring strange, sudden fever ; 
 
xLiii THE CENTAUR 315 
 
 his vitality tremendous ; yet he ate most sparingly 
 and the only food he touched was fruit and milk 
 and vegetables. Meat made him sick, the huge 
 frame shuddered when he saw it. And from all the 
 human beings in the place with whom he came in 
 contact he shrank with a kind of puzzled dismay. 
 With animals, most oddly it seemed, he sought 
 companionship ; he would run to the window if a 
 dog barked, or to hear a horse's hoofs ; a Persian cat 
 belonging to one of the nurses never left his side, and 
 I have seen the trees in the yard outside his window 
 thick with birds, and even found them in the room 
 and on the sill, flitting about his very person, 
 unafraid and singing. 
 
 ' With me, as with the attendants, his speech was 
 almost nil — laconic words in various languages, 
 clipped phrases that sometimes combined Russian, 
 French, or German, other tongues as well. 
 
 * But, strangest of all, with animal life he seemed 
 to hold this kind of communication that was in- 
 telligible both to himself and them. Animals cer- 
 tainly were "aware" of him. It was not speech. It 
 ran in a deep, continuous murmur like a droning, 
 humming sound of wind. I took the hint thus 
 faintly offered. I gave him his freedom in the yards 
 and gardens. The open air and intercourse with 
 natural life was what he craved. The sadness and 
 the air of puzzled fretting then left his face, his eyes 
 grew bright, his whole presentment happier ; he ran 
 and laughed and even sang. The fever that had 
 troubled him all vanished. Often myself I took the 
 place of nurse or orderly to watch him, for the man's 
 presence more than interested me: it gave me a 
 renewed sense of life that was exhilarating, invigor- 
 ating, delightful. And in his appearance, meanwhile, 
 
3i6 THE CENTAUR xliii 
 
 something that was not size or physical measurement 
 turned — tremendous. 
 
 * A part of me that was not mind — a sort of for- 
 gotten instinct blindly groping — came of its own 
 accord to regard him as some loose fragment of a 
 natural, cosmic life that had somehow blundered 
 down into a human organism it sought to use. . . . 
 
 * And then it was for the first time I recognized 
 the spell he had cast upon me ; for, when the Com- 
 mittee decided there was no reason to keep him 
 longer, I urged that he should stay. Making a 
 special plea, I took him as a private patient of my 
 own. I kept him under closer personal observation 
 than ever before. I needed him. Something deep 
 within me, something undivined hitherto, called out 
 into life by his presence, could not do without him. 
 This new craving, breakingly wild and sweet, awoke 
 in my Blood and cried for him. His presence 
 nourished it in me. Most insidiously it attacked 
 me. It stirred deep down among the roots of my 
 being. It " threatened my personality " seems the 
 best way I can put it ; for, turning a critical analysis 
 upon it, I discovered that it was an undermining and 
 revolutionary change going steadily forward in my 
 character. Its growth had hitherto been secret. 
 When I first recognized its presence, the thing was 
 already strong. For a long time, it had been 
 building. 
 
 * And the change in a word — you will grasp my 
 meaning from the shortest description of essentials 
 — was this : that ambition left mc, ordinary desire 
 crumbled, the outer world men value so began to 
 fade.' 
 
 ' And in their place .? ' cried O'Malley breath- 
 lessly, interrupting for the first time. 
 
xLiii THE CENTAUR 317 
 
 * Came a rushing, passionate desire to escape from 
 cities and live for beauty and simplicity " in the 
 wilderness " ; to taste the life he seemed to know ; 
 to go out blindly with him into woods and desolate 
 places, and be mixed and blended with the loveliness 
 of Earth and Nature. This was the first thing I 
 knew. It was like an expansion of my normal 
 world — almost an extension of consciousness. It 
 somehow threatened my sense of personal identity. 
 And — it made me hesitate/ 
 
 O'Malley caught the tremor in his voice. Even 
 in the telling of it the passion plucked at him, for 
 here, as ever, he stood on the border-line of com- 
 promise, his heart tempting him towards salvation, 
 his brain and reason tugging at the brakes. 
 
 * The sham and emptiness of modern life, its drab 
 vulgarity, the unworthiness of its very ideals stood 
 appallingly revealed before some inner eye just open- 
 ing. I felt shaken to the core of what had seemed 
 hitherto my very solid and estimable self. How the 
 man thus so powerfully affected me lies beyond all 
 intelligible explanation. To use the obvious catch- 
 word " hypnotism " is to use a toy and stop a leak 
 with paper. For his influence was unconsciously 
 exerted. He cast no net of clever, persuasive words 
 about my thought. Out of that deep, strange silence 
 of the man it somehow came. His actions and his 
 simple happiness of face and manner — both in some 
 sense the raw material of speech perhaps — may have 
 operated as potently suggestive agents ; but no 
 adequate causes to justify the result, apart from the 
 fantastic theories I have mentioned, have ever yet 
 come within the range of my understanding. I can 
 only give you the undeniable effects.' 
 
 *Your sense of extended consciousness,' asked 
 
3i8 THE CENTAUR xliii 
 
 his listener, * was this continuous, once it had 
 begun ? ' 
 
 * It came in patches,' Stahl continued. * My 
 normal, everyday self was thus able to check it. 
 While it derided, commiserated this everyday self, 
 the latter stood in dread of it and even awe. My 
 training, you see, regarded it as symptom of dis- 
 order, a beginning of unbalance that might end in 
 insanity, the thin wedge of a dissociation of the 
 personality Morton Prince and others have described.* 
 
 His speech grew more and more jerky, even 
 incoherent, evidently the material had not even now 
 been fully reduced to order in his mind. 
 
 'Among other curious symptoms I soon estab- 
 lished that this subtle spreading of my consciousness 
 grew upon me especially during sleep. The business 
 of the day distracted, scattered it. On waking in the 
 morning, as with the physical fatigue that comes 
 towards the closing of the day, it was strongest. 
 
 ' And so, in order to examine it closely when in 
 fullest manifestation, I came to spend the nights 
 with him. I would creep in while he slept and stay 
 till morning, alternately sleeping and waking myself. 
 I watched the two of us together. I also watched 
 the *' two " in me. And thus it was I made the 
 further strange discovery that the influence he exerted 
 on me was strongest while he slept. It is best 
 described by saying that in his sleep I was conscious 
 that he sought to draw me with him — away some- 
 where into his own wonderful world — the state or 
 region, that is, where he manifested completely instead 
 of partially as I knew him here. His personality 
 was a channel somewhere out into a living, conscious 
 Nature. . . .' 
 
 'Only,' interrupted O'Malley, 'you felt that to 
 
xLiii THE CENTAUR 319 
 
 yield and go involved some nameless inner catastrophe, 
 and so resisted ? ' He chose his phrase with purpose. 
 ' Because I discovered/ was the pregnant answer, 
 given steadily while he watched his listener closely 
 through the darkness, * that this desire for escape the 
 man had wakened in me was nothing more or less 
 than the desire to leave the world, to leave the condi- 
 tions that prevented — in fact to leave the body. My 
 discontent with modern life had gone as far as that. 
 It was the birth of the suicidal mania.* 
 
 The pause that followed the words, on the part of 
 Dr. Stahl at any rate, was intentional. O'Malley 
 held his peace. The men shifted their places on the 
 coil of rope, for both were cramped and stiff with the 
 lengthy session. For a minute or two they leaned 
 over the bulwarks and watched the phosphorescent 
 foam in silence. The blue mountainous shores slipped 
 past in shadowy line against the stars. But when 
 they sat down again their relative positions were not 
 what they had been before. Dr. Stahl had placed 
 himself between his listener and the sea. And 
 O'Malley did not let the manoeuvre escape him. 
 Smiling to himself he noticed it. Just as surely he 
 noticed, too, that the whole recital was being told 
 him with a purpose. 
 
 *You really need not be afraid/ he could not 
 resist saying. 'The idea of escape rhaf way has 
 never even come to me at all. And, anyhow, I've 
 far too much on hand first in telling the world my 
 message.' He laughed in the silence that took his 
 words, for Stahl said nothing and made as though he 
 had not heard. But the Irishman understood that it 
 was in the spirit of feeble compromise that danger 
 lay — if danger there was at all, and he himself was far 
 
320 THE CENTAUR xliii 
 
 beyond such weakness. His eye was single and his 
 body full of light, and the faith that plays with 
 mountains had made him whole. Return to Nature 
 for him involved no denial of human life, nor 
 depreciation of human interests, but only a revolu- 
 tionary shifting of values. 
 
 'And it was one night while he slept and I 
 watched him in the little room,* resumed the German 
 as though there had been no interruption, ' I noticed 
 first so decisively this growing of a singular size about 
 him 1 have already mentioned, and grasped its 
 meaning. For the bulk of the man while growing 
 — emerging, rather, I should say — assumed another 
 shape than his own. It was not my eyes that saw 
 it. I saw him as he felt himself to he. The creature's 
 personality, his essential inner being, was acting 
 directly upon my own. His influence was at me from 
 another point or angle. First the emotions, then 
 the senses you see. It was a finely organized attack. 
 
 ' I definitely understood at last that my mind was 
 affected — and proved it too, for the instant effort I 
 made at recovery resulted in my seeing him normal 
 again. The size and shape retreated the moment I 
 denied them.' 
 
 O'Malley noticed how the speaker's voice lingered 
 over the phrase. Again he knew the intention of the 
 pause that followed. He held his peace, however, 
 and waited. 
 
 * Nor was sight the only sense affected,' Stahl 
 continued, ' for smell and hearing also brought their 
 testimony. Through all but touch, indeed, the 
 hallucination attacked me. For sometimes at night 
 while I sat up watching in the little room, there 
 rose outside the open window in the yards and 
 gardens a sound of tramping, a distant roaring as of 
 
xLiii THE CENTAUR 321 
 
 voices in a rising wind, a rushing, hollow murmur, 
 confused and deep like that of forests, or the swift 
 passage of a host of big birds across the sky. I 
 heard it, both in the air and on the ground — this 
 tramping on the lawns, this curious shaking of the 
 atmosphere. And with it at the same time a 
 sharp and mingled perfume that made me think of 
 earth and leaves, of flowers after rain, of plains and 
 open spaces, most singular of all — of animals and 
 horses. 
 
 * Before the firm denial of my mind, they vanished, 
 just as the change of form had vanished. But both 
 left me weaker than they found me, more tender to 
 attack. Moreover, I understood most plainly, that 
 they emanated all from him. These " emanations " 
 came, too, chiefly, as I mentioned, whilst he slept. 
 In sleep, it seemed, he set them free. The slumber 
 of the body disengaged them. And then the instinct 
 came to warn me — presenting itself with the authority 
 of an unanswerable intuition — the realization, namely, 
 that if, for a single moment in his presence, I slept 
 the changes would leap forward in my own being, 
 and I should join him.' 
 
 * Escape ! Know freedom in a larger conscious- 
 ness ! ' cried the other. 
 
 * And for a man of my point of view and training 
 to have permitted such a conviction at all,' he went 
 on, the interruption utterly ignored again, ' proves 
 how far along the road I had already travelled 
 without knowing it. Only at the time I was not 
 aware of this. It was the shock of full discovery 
 later that brought me to my senses, when, seeking 
 to withdraw, — I found I could not.' 
 
 * And so you ran away.' It came out bluntly 
 enough, with a touch of scorn but ill concealed. 
 
 Y 
 
322 THE CENTAUR xliii 
 
 * We discharged him. But before that came 
 there was more I have to tell you — if you still care 
 to hear it/ 
 
 ' I'm not tired, if that's what you mean. I could 
 listen all night, as far as that goes/ 
 
 He rose to stretch his legs a moment, and Stahl 
 rose too — instantly. Together they leaned over the 
 bulwarks. The German's hat was off and the air 
 made by the steamer's passage drew his beard out. 
 The warm soft wind brought odours of sea. and 
 shore. It caressed their faces, then passed on across 
 those sleeping peasants on the lower deck. The 
 masts and rigging swung steadily against the host 
 of stars. 
 
 * Before I thus knew myself half caught,' continued 
 the doctor, standing now close enough beside him 
 for actual contact, * and found it difficult to get away, 
 other things had happened, things that confirmed the 
 change so singularly begun in me. They happened 
 everywhere ; confirmation came from many quarters ; 
 though slight enough, they filled in all the gaps and 
 crevices, strengthened the joints, and built the huge 
 illusion round me all complete until it held me like 
 a prison. 
 
 ' And they are difficult to tell. Only, indeed, to 
 yourself who underwent a similar experience up there 
 in the mountains, could they bring much meaning. 
 You had the same temptation and you — weathered 
 the same storm.' He caught O'Malley's arm a 
 moment and held it. ' You escaped this madness 
 just as I did, and you will realize what I mean when 
 I say that the sensation of losing my sense of per- 
 sonal identity became so dangerously, so seductively 
 strong. The feeling of extended consciousness became 
 delicious — too delicious to resist. A kind of pagan 
 
xLiii THE CENTAUR 
 
 3'^3 
 
 joy and exultation known to some in early youth, 
 but put away with the things of youth, possessed 
 me. In the presence of this other's soul, so strangely 
 powerful in its silence and simplicity, I felt as though 
 I touched new sources of life. I tapped them. 
 They poured down and flooded me — with dreams 
 — dreams that could really haunt — with unsettling 
 thoughts of glory and delight beyond the body. I 
 got clean away into Nature. I felt as though some 
 portion of me just awakening reached out across him 
 into rain and sunshine, far up into the sweet and 
 starry sky — as a tree growing out of a thicket that 
 chokes its lower part finds light and freedom at 
 the top.' 
 
 * It caught you badly, doctor,' O'Malley mur- 
 mured. * The gods came close ! ' 
 
 *So badly that I loathed the prisoned darkness 
 that held me so thickly in the body. I longed to 
 know my being all dispersed through Nature, 
 scattered with dew and wind, shining with the star- 
 light and the sun. And the manner of escape I 
 hinted to you a little while ago came to seem right 
 and necessary. Lawful it seemed, and obvious. 
 The mania literally obsessed me, though still I tried 
 to hide it even from myself . . . and struggled in 
 resistance.' 
 
 ' You spoke just now of other things that came to 
 confirm it,' the Irishman said while the other paused 
 to take breath. All this he knew. He grew weary 
 of Stahl's clever labouring the point that it was 
 madness. A little knowledge is ever dangerous, and 
 he saw so clearly why the hesitation of the merely 
 intellectual man had led him into error. ' Did you 
 mean that others acknowledged this influence as well 
 as yourself ? ' 
 
 X 
 
324 THE CENTAUR xliii 
 
 ' You shall read that for yourself to-morrow/ 
 came the answer, * in the detailed report I drew up 
 afterwards ; it is far too long to tell you now. But, 
 I may mention something of it. That breaking out 
 of patients was a curious thing, their trying to escape, 
 their dreams and singing, their efforts sometimes to 
 approach his room, their longing for the open and 
 the gardens; the deep, prolonged entrancing of a 
 few ; the sounds of rushing, tramping that they, too, 
 heard, the violence of some, the silent ecstasy of 
 others. The thing may find its parallel, perhaps, in 
 the collective mania that sometimes afflicts religious 
 communities, in monasteries or convents. Only here 
 there w^s no preacher and eloquent leader to induce 
 hysteria — nothing but that silent dynamo of power, 
 gentle and winning as a little child, a being who could 
 not put a phrase together, exerting his potent spell 
 unconsciously, and chiefly while he slept.' 
 
 * For the phenomena almost without exception 
 came in the night, and often at their fullest 
 strength, as afterwards reported to me, while I 
 dozed in his room and watched beside his motionless 
 and slumbering form. Oh, and there was more as 
 well, much more, as you shall read. The stories 
 my assistants brought me, the tales of frightened 
 nurse and warder, the amazing yarns the porter 
 stammered out, of strangers who had rung the bell 
 at dawn, trying to push past him through the door, 
 saying they were messengers and had been summoned, 
 sent for, had to come, — large, curious, windy figures, 
 or, as he sometimes called them with unconscious 
 humour, 'like creatures out of fairy books or 
 circuses' that always vanished as suddenly as they 
 came. Making every allowance for excitement and 
 exaggeration, the tales were strange enough, I can 
 
xLiir THE CENTAUR 325 
 
 assure you, and the way many of the patients knew 
 their visions intensified, their illusions doubly 
 strengthened, their efforts even to destroy them- 
 selves in many cases almost more than the staff 
 could deal with — all this brought the matter to a 
 climax and made my duty very plain at last.' 
 
 * And the effect upon yourself — at its worst ? ' 
 asked his listener quietly. 
 
 Stahl sighed wearily a little as he answered with a 
 new-found sadness in his tone. 
 
 * I've told you briefly that,' he said ; ' repetition 
 cannot strengthen it. The worthlessness of the 
 majority of human aims to-day expresses it best — 
 what you have called yourself the " horror of 
 civilization." The vanity of all life's modern, so- 
 called up-to-date tendencies for outer, mechanical 
 developments. A wild, mad beauty streaming from 
 that man's personality over-ran the whole place and 
 caught the lot of us, myself especially, with a lust 
 for simple, natural things, and with a passion for 
 spiritual beauty to accompany them. Fame, wealth, 
 position seemed the shadows then, and something 
 else it's hard to name announced itself as the 
 substance. ... I wanted to clear out and live with 
 Nature, to know simplicity, unselfish purposes, a 
 golden state of childlike existence close to dawns 
 and dew and running water, cared for by woods and 
 blessed by all the winds. . . .' He paused again for 
 breath, then added :— 
 
 ' And that's just where the mania caught at me so 
 cunningly — till I saw it and called a halt.' 
 *Ah!' 
 
 * For the thing I sought, the thing he knew, and 
 perhaps remembered, was not possible in the body. 
 It was a spiritual state ' 
 
326 THE CENTAUR xliii 
 
 * Or to be known subjectively ! ' O'Malley 
 checked him. 
 
 * I am no lotos-eater by nature/ he went on with 
 energy, 'and so I fought and conquered it. But 
 first, I tell you, it came upon me like a tempest — a 
 hurricane of wonder and delight. I've always held, 
 like yourself perhaps, that civilization brings its own 
 army of diseases, and that the few illnesses known to 
 ruder savage races can be cured by simple means 
 the earth herself supplies. And along this line of 
 thought the thing swept into me — the line of my 
 own head- learning. This was natural enough ; 
 natural enough, too, that it thus at first deceived me. 
 
 ' For the quack cures of history come to this — 
 herb simples and the rest ; only we know them now 
 as sun-cure, water-cure, open-air cure, old Kneipp, 
 sea-water, and a hundred others. Doctors have 
 never swarmed before as they do now, and these 
 artificial diseases civilization brings in such quantity 
 seemed all at once to mean the abeyance of some 
 central life or power men ought to share with — 
 Nature. . . . You shall read it all in my written 
 report. I merely wish to show you now how the 
 insidious thing got at me along the line of my 
 special knowledge. I saw the truth that priests and 
 doctors are the only possible and necessary " pro- 
 fessions " in the world, and — that they should be 
 really but a single profession. . , .' 
 
XLIV 
 
 He drew suddenly back with a kind of jerk. It 
 was as though he realized abruptly that he had said 
 too much — had overdone4t. He took his companion 
 by the arm and led him down the decks. 
 
 As they passed the bridge the Captain called out 
 a word of welcome to them ; and his jolly, boisterous 
 laugh ran down the wind. The American engineer 
 came from behind a dark corner, almost running 
 into them ; his face was flushed. * It's like a 
 furnace below,' he said in his nasal familiar manner ; 
 
 * too hot to sleep. Tve run up for a gulp of air.' 
 He made as though he would join them. 
 
 * The wind's behind us, yes,' replied the doctor in a 
 difl^erent'tone, 'and there's no draught.' With a 
 gesture, half bow, half dismissal, he made even this 
 thick-skinned member of * the greatest civilization on 
 earth ' understand he was not wanted. And they 
 turned at the cabin door, O'Malley a moment 
 wondering at the admirable dignity with which the 
 
 * little ' man had managed the polite dismissal. 
 
 Himself, perhaps, he would not have minded the 
 diversion. He was a little weary of the German's 
 long recital. The confession had not been complete, 
 he felt. Much had been held back. It was not 
 altogether straightforward. The dishonesty which 
 hides in compromise peeped through it everywhere. 
 
 327 
 
328 THE CENTAUR xliv 
 
 And the incoherence of the latter part had ahnost 
 bored him. For it was, he easily divined, a studied 
 incoherence. It was meant to touch a similar 
 weakness in himself — if there. But it was not there. 
 He saw through the whole manoeuvre. Stahl 
 wished to warn and save him by showing that the 
 experience they had partly shared was nothing but a 
 strange mental disorder. He wished to force in this 
 subtle way his own interpretation of it upon his 
 friend. Yet at the same time the intuitive Irishman 
 discerned that other tendency in the man which 
 would so gladly perhaps have welcomed a different 
 explanation, and even in some fashion did actually 
 accept it. 
 
 O'Malley smiled inwardly as he watched him 
 prepare the coffee as of old. And patiently he 
 waited for the rest that was to come. In a certain 
 sense it all was useful. It would be helpful later. 
 This was an attitude he would often have to face 
 when he returned to civilized life and tried to tell 
 his Message to the thinking, educated men of to-day 
 — the men he must win over somehow to his dream 
 — the men, without whose backing, no Movement 
 could hope to meet with even a measure of success. 
 
 * So, like myself/ said Stahl, as he carefully tended 
 the flame of the spirit-lamp between them, * you 
 have escaped by the skin of your teeth, as it were. 
 And I congratulate you — heartily.' 
 
 * I thank you/ said the other drily. 
 
 * You write your version now, and Til write 
 mine — indeed it is already almost finished — then 
 we'll compare notes. Perhaps we might even 
 publish them together.' 
 
 He poured out the fragrant coffee. They faced 
 each other across the little table. But O'Malley did 
 
xLiv THE CENTAUR 329 
 
 not take the bait. He wished to hear the balance 
 his companion still might tell. 
 And presently he asked for it. 
 
 * With the discharge of your patient the trouble 
 ceased at once, then ? * 
 
 ' Comparatively soon. It gradually subsided, yes.' 
 
 * And as regards yourself.? ' 
 
 * I came back to my senses. 1 recovered my 
 control. The insubordinate impulses I had known 
 retired.' He smiled as he sipped his coffee. * You 
 see me now,' he added, looking his companion 
 steadily in the eyes, * a sane and commonplace ship's 
 doctor.' 
 
 * I congratulate you — * 
 
 * Viel Dank.' He bowed. 
 
 *On what you missed, yet almost accomplished,' 
 the other finished. *You might have known, like 
 me, the cosmic consciousness ! You might have met 
 the gods ! ' 
 
 *In a strait -waistcoat,* the doctor added with a 
 snap. 
 
 They laughed at one another across their coffee 
 cups as once before they had laughed across their 
 glasses of Kakhetian wine — two eternally antagonistic 
 types that will exist as long as life itself 
 
 But, contrary to his expectations, the German 
 had little more to tell. He mentioned how the 
 experience had led his mind into strange and novel 
 reading in his desire to know what other minds 
 might have to offer by way of explanation, even the 
 most fanciful and far-fetched. He told, though 
 very briefly, how he had picked up Fechner among 
 others, and carefully studied his * poetic theories,' 
 and read besides the best accounts of * spiritistic ' 
 phenomena, as also of the rarer states of hysteria, 
 
330 THE CENTAUR xliv 
 
 double-consciousness, multiple personality, and even 
 those looser theories which suggest that a portion of 
 the human constitution called ' astral * or * etheric ' 
 may escape from the parent centre and, carrying 
 with it the subtler forces of desire and yearning, 
 construct a vivid subjective state of mind which is 
 practically its Heaven of hope and longing all ful- 
 filled. 
 
 He did not, however, betray the results upon 
 himself of all this curious reading and study, nor 
 mention what he found of truth or probability in it 
 all. He merely quoted books and authors, in at 
 least three languages, that stretched in a singular and 
 catholic array from Plato and the Neo-Platonists 
 across the ages to Myers, Du Prel, Flournoy, Lodge, 
 and Morton Prince. 
 
 Out of the lot, perhaps, — O'Malley gathered it 
 by inference rather than from actual statement, from 
 fragments of their talks upon the outward voyage 
 more than from anything let fall just then — Fechner 
 had proved the most persuasive to this man's contra- 
 dictory and original mind. It certainly seemed, at 
 least, as if he knew some secret sympathetic leaning 
 towards the idea that consciousness and matter were 
 inseparable, and that a Cosmic Consciousness * of 
 sorts ' might pertain to the Earth as, equally, to all 
 the other stars and planets. The Urwelt idea, he 
 so often referred to, had seized a part of his imagina- 
 tion — that, at least, was clear. 
 
 The Irishman drank it all in, but he was too 
 exhausted now to argue, and too full besides to ask 
 questions. His natural volubility forsook him. He 
 let the doctor have his say without interruptions. 
 He took the warnings with the rest of it. Nothing 
 the other said had changed him. 
 
xLiv THE CENTAUR 331 
 
 It was not the first sunrise they had watched 
 together, and as they took the morning air on deck 
 once more, Corsica rising Hke a dream the night had 
 left behind her on the sea, he listened with fainter 
 interest to the German's concluding sentences. 
 
 'At any rate you now understand why on that 
 other voyage I was so eager to watch you with your 
 friend, so keen to separate you, to prevent your 
 sleeping with him, and at the same time so desirous 
 to see his influence upon you at close quarters ; and 
 also — why I always understood so well what was 
 going on both outwardly and within.' 
 
 O'Malley quietly reiterated the belief he still held 
 in the power of his own dream. 
 
 * I shall go home and give my message to the 
 world,' was what he said quietly. ' I think it's true.' 
 
 * It's better to keep silent,' was the answer, * for, 
 even if true, the world is not ready yet to listen. It 
 will evaporate, you'll find, in the telHng. You'll find 
 there's nothing to tell. Besides, a dream like yours 
 must dawn on all at once, and not on merely one. 
 No one will understand you.' 
 
 * I can but try.' 
 
 * You will reach no men of action ; and few of 
 intellect. You will merely stuff the dreamers who 
 are already stujffed enough. What is the use, I ask 
 you ? What is the use } ' 
 
 * It will set the world on fire for simplicity,' the 
 other murmured, knowing the great sweet passion 
 flame within him as he watched the sun come slowly 
 out of the rosy sea. * All the use in the world.' 
 
 ' None,' was the laconic answer. 
 
 * They might know the gods ! ' cried O'Malley, 
 using the phrase that symbolized for him the entire 
 Vision. 
 
332 THE CENTAUR xliv 
 
 Stahl looked at him for some time before he spoke. 
 Again that expression of wistful, almost longing 
 admiration shone in the brown eyes. 
 
 ' My friend/ he answered gravely, * men do not 
 want to know the gods. They prefer their delights 
 less subtle. They crave the cruder physical sensations 
 that bang them towards excitement ' 
 
 * Of disease, of pain, of separatcness,' put in the 
 other. 
 
 The German shrugged his shoulders. * It's the 
 stage they're at,' he said. * You, if you have success, 
 will merely make a few uncomfortable. The majority 
 will hardly turn their heads. To one in a million 
 you may bring peace and happiness.' 
 
 * It's worth it,' cried the Irishman, * even for that 
 one!' 
 
 Stahl answered very gently, smiling with his new 
 expression of tenderness and sympathy. * Dream 
 your great dream if you will, but dream it, my 
 friend, alone — in peace and silence. That " one " I 
 speak of is yourself 
 
 The doctor pressed his hand and turned towards 
 his cabin. O'Malley stood a little longer to share 
 the sunrise. Neither spoke another word. He 
 heard the door shut softly behind him. The 
 unspoken answer in his mind was in two words 
 — two common little adjectives : * Coward and 
 selfish ! ' 
 
 But Stahl, once in the privacy of his cabin, 
 judging by the glance visible on his face ere he closed 
 the door, may probably have known a very different 
 thought. And possibly he uttered it below his 
 breath. A sigh most certainly escaped his lips, a sigh 
 half sadness, half relief. For O'Malley remembered 
 it afterwards. 
 
xLiv THE CENTAUR 333 
 
 ' Beautiful, foolish dreamer among men ! But, 
 thank God, harmless — to others and — himself.' 
 
 And soon afterwards O'Malley also went to his 
 cabin. Before sleep took him he lay deep in a mood 
 of sadness — almost as though he had heard his friend's 
 unspoken thought. He realized the insuperable 
 difficulties that lay before him. The world would 
 think him * mad but harmless.' 
 
 Then, with full sleep, he slipped across that 
 sunrise and found the old-world Garden. He held 
 the eternal password. 
 
 ' I can but try . . . I * 
 
XLV 
 
 And here the crowded, muddled note-books come 
 to an end. The rest was action — and inevitable 
 disaster. 
 
 The brief history of O'Malley's mad cam- 
 paign may be imagined. To a writer who found 
 interest in the study of forlorn hopes and their 
 leaders, a detailed record of this particular one 
 might seem worth while. For me personally it is 
 too sad and too pathetic. I cannot bring myself to 
 tell, much less to analyse the story of a broken heart, 
 when that heart and story are those of a close and 
 deeply admired intimate, a man who gave me 
 genuine love and held my own. 
 
 Besides, although a curious chapter in uncommon 
 human nature, it is not by any means a new one. 
 It is the true story of many a poet and dreamer 
 since the world began, though perhaps not often 
 told nor even guessed. And only the poets them- 
 selves, especially the little poets who cannot utter 
 half the fire that consumes them, may know the 
 searing pain and passion and the true inwardness of 
 it all. 
 
 Most of those months it chanced I was away, and 
 only fi*agments of the foolish enterprise could reach 
 me. But nothing, I think, could have stopped him, 
 nor any worldly selfish wisdom made him even 
 
 334 
 
xLv ' THE CENTAUR 335 
 
 pause. The thing possessed him utterly ; it had to 
 flame its way out as best it could. To high and 
 low, he preached by every means in his power the 
 Simple Life ; he preached the mystical life as well — 
 that the true knowledge and the true progress are 
 within, that they both pertain to the inner being and 
 have no chief concern with external things. He 
 preached it wildly, lopsidedly, in or out of season, 
 knowing no half measures. His enthusiasm obscured 
 his sense of proportion and the extravagance hid the 
 germ of truth that undeniably lay in his message. 
 
 To put the movement on its feet at first he 
 realized every possession that he had. It left him 
 penniless, if he was not almost so already, and in the 
 end it left him smothered beneath the glory of his 
 blinding and unutterable Dream. He never under- 
 stood that suggestion is more effective than a 
 sledge-hammer. His faith was no mere little seed of 
 mustard, but a full-fledged forest singing its message 
 in a wind of thunder. He shouted it aloud to the 
 world. 
 
 I think the acid disappointment that lies beneath 
 that trite old phrase ' a broken heart ' was never 
 really his ; for indeed it seemed that his cruel, 
 ludicrous failure merely served to strengthen hope 
 and purpose by making him seek for a better 
 method of imparting what he had to say. In the 
 end he learned the bitter lesson to the full. But 
 faith never trailed a single feather. Those jeering 
 audiences in the Park ; those empty benches in many 
 a public hall, those brief, ignoring paragraphs in the 
 few newspapers that filled a vacant corner by label- 
 Hng him crank and long-haired prophet ; even the 
 silence that greeted his pamphlets, his letters to the 
 Press, and all the rest, hurt him for others rather 
 
336 THE CENTAUR xlv 
 
 than for himself. His pain was altruistic, never 
 personal. His dream and motive, his huge, un- 
 wieldy compassion, his genuine love for humanity, 
 all were big enough for that. 
 
 And so, I think, he missed the personal mortifica- 
 tion that disappointment so deep might bring to 
 dreamers with an aim less unadulteratedly pure. 
 His eye was single to the end. He attributed only 
 the highest motives to all who offered help. The 
 very quacks and fools who flocked to his banner, 
 eager to exploit their smaller fads by joining them to 
 his own, he welcomed, only regretting that, as Stahl 
 had warned him, he could not attract a better class 
 of mind. He did not even see through the 
 manoeuvres of the occasional women of wealth and 
 title who sought to conceal their own mediocrity by 
 advertising in their drawing-rooms the eccentricities 
 of men like himself. And to the end he had the 
 courage of his glorious convictions. 
 
 The change of method that he learned at last, 
 moreover, was characteristic of this faith and courage. 
 
 ' I've begun at the wrong end,' he said ; * I shall 
 never reach men through their intellects. Their 
 brains to-day are occupied by the machine-made 
 gods of civilization. I cannot change the direction 
 of their thoughts and lusts from outside ; the 
 momentum is too great to stop that way. I must 
 get at them from within. To reach their hearts, the 
 new ideas must rise up from within. I see the truer 
 way. I must do it from the other side. It must 
 come to them — in Beauty.' 
 
 For he was to the last convinced that death 
 would merge him in the being of the Earth's 
 Collective Consciousness, and that, lost in her deep 
 eternal beauty, he thus might reach the hearts of 
 
xLv THE CENTAUR 337 
 
 men in some stray glimpse of nature's loveliness, and 
 register his flaming message. He loved to quote 
 from Adonais : 
 
 He is made one with Nature : there is heard 
 His voice in all her music, from the moan 
 Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird ; 
 He is a presence to be felt and known 
 In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, 
 Spreading itself where'er that Power may move 
 Which has withdrawn his being to its own. 
 
 He is a portion of the loveliness 
 Which once he made more lovely : he doth bear 
 His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress 
 Sweeps through the dull dense world . . . 
 
 And this thought, phrased in a dozen different 
 ways, was always on his lips. To dream was right 
 and useful, even to dream alone, because the beauty 
 of the dream must add to the beauty of the Whole 
 of which it is a part and an interpretation. It was 
 not really lost or vain. All must come back in time 
 to feed the world. He had known gracious thoughts 
 of Earth too big to utter, almost too big to hold. 
 Such thoughts could not ever be really told ; they 
 were incommunicable. For the mystical revelation 
 is incommunicable. It has authority only for him 
 who feels it. A corporate revelation is impossible. 
 Only those among men could know, in whose hearts 
 it rose intuitively and made its presence felt as innate 
 ideas. Inspiration brings it, and beauty is the vehicle. 
 Their hearts must change before their minds could 
 be reached. 
 
 * I can work it better from the other side — from 
 that old, old Garden which is the Mother's heart. 
 In this way I can help at any rate ... 1' 
 
XLVI 
 
 It was at the close of a wet and foggy autumn that 
 we met again, winter in the air, all London desolate ; 
 and his wasted, forlorn appearance told me the truth 
 at once. Only the passionate eagerness of voice and 
 manner were there to prove that the spirit had not 
 weakened. There glowed within a fire that showed 
 itself in the translucent shining of the eyes and face. 
 
 * I've made one great discovery, old man,' he 
 exclaimed with old, familiar, high enthusiasm, ' one 
 great discovery at least.' 
 
 * You've made so many,' I answered cheerfully, 
 while my real thoughts were busy with his bodily 
 state of health. For his appearance shocked me. 
 He stood among a litter of papers, books, neckties, 
 nailed boots, knapsacks, maps and what-not, that 
 rolled upon the floor from the mouth of the 
 Willesden canvas sack. His old grey flannel suit 
 hung literally upon a bag of bones, all the life there 
 was seemed concentrated in his face and eyes — those 
 far-seeing, light blue eyes. They were darker than 
 usual now, eyes like the sea, I thought. His hair, 
 long and disordered, tumbled over his forehead. 
 He was pale, and at the same time flushed. It was 
 almost a disembodied spirit that I saw. 
 
 ' You've made so many. I love to hear them. 
 Is this one finer than the others ^ ' 
 
 338 
 
xLvi THE CENTAUR 339 
 
 He looked a moment at me through and through, 
 almost uncannily. He looked in reality beyond me. 
 It was something else he saw, and in the dusk I 
 turned involuntarily. 
 
 'Simpler,* he said quickly, 'much simpler.' 
 
 He moved up close beside me, whispering. Was 
 it all imagination that a breath of flowers came with 
 him ? There was certainly a curious fragrance in 
 the air, wild and sweet like orchards in the spring. 
 
 ' And it is—.? ' 
 
 ' That the Garden's everywhere \ You needn't go 
 to the distant Caucasus to find it. It's all about this 
 old London town, and in these foggy streets and 
 dingy pavements. It's even in this cramped, 
 undusted room. Now at this moment, while that 
 lamp flickers and the thousands go to sleep. The 
 gates of horn and ivory are here,' he tapped his 
 breast. ' And here the flowers, the long, clean open 
 hills, the giant herd, the nymphs, the sunshine and 
 the gods ! ' 
 
 So attached was he now to that little room in 
 Paddington where his books and papers lay, that 
 when the curious illness that had caught him grew 
 so much worse, and the attacks of the nameless fever 
 that afflicted him turned serious, I hired a bedroom 
 for him in the same house. And it was in that 
 poky, cage-like den he breathed his last. 
 
 His illness I called curious, his fever nameless, 
 because they really were so and puzzled every one. 
 He simply faded out of life, it seemed ; there was no 
 pain, no sleeplessness, no suff^ering of any physical 
 kind. He uttered no complaint, nor were there 
 symptoms of any known disorder. 
 
 'Your friend is sound organically,' the doctor 
 told me when I pressed him for the truth there on the 
 
340 THE CENTAUR xlvi 
 
 stairs, * sound as a bell. He wants the open air and 
 plenty of wholesome food, that's all. His body is 
 ill-nourished. His trouble is mental — some deep 
 and heavy disappointment doubtless. If you can 
 change the current of his thoughts, awaken interest 
 in common things, and give him change of scene, 
 perhaps — — ' He shrugged his shoulders and looked 
 very grave. 
 
 ' You think he's dying } ' 
 
 * I think, yes, he is dying.' 
 «From— .?' 
 
 * From lack of living pure and simple,' was the 
 answer. * He has lost all hold on life.' 
 
 ' He has abundant vitality still.' 
 ' Full of it. But it all goes — elsewhere. The 
 physical organism gets none of it.' 
 
 * Yet mentally,' I asked, ' there's nothing actually 
 wrong ? ' 
 
 * Not in the ordinary sense. The mind is clear 
 and active. So far as I can test it, the process of 
 thought is healthy and undamaged. It seems to 
 me — ' 
 
 He hesitated a moment on the doorstep while the 
 driver wound the motor handle. I waited with a 
 sinking heart for the rest of the sentence. 
 
 *. . . like certain cases of nostalgia I have known 
 — very rare and very difficult to deal with. Acute 
 and vehement nostalgia, yes, sometimes called a 
 broken heart,' he added, pausing another instant at 
 the carriage door, ' in which the entire stream of a 
 man's inner life flows to some distant place, or person, 
 or — or to some imagined yearning that he craves to 
 satisfy.' 
 
 ' To a dream ? ' 
 
 ' It might be even that,' he answered slowly. 
 
xLvi THE CENTAUR 341 
 
 stepping in. * It might be spiritual. The religious 
 and poetic temperament are most open to it, and 
 the most difficult to deal with when afflicted.' He 
 emphasized the little word as though the doubt he 
 felt was far less strong than the conviction he only 
 half concealed. * If you would save him, try to 
 change the direction of his thoughts. There is 
 nothing — in all honesty I must say it — nothing that 
 / can do to help.* 
 
 And then, pulling at the grey tuft on his chin 
 and looking keenly at me a moment over his glasses, 
 — ' Those flowers,' he said hesitatingly, * you might 
 move those flowers from the room, perhaps. Their 
 perfume is a trifle strong. ... It might be better.' 
 Again he looked sharply at me. There was an odd 
 expression in his eyes. And in my heart there was 
 an odd sensation too, so odd that I found myself 
 bereft a moment of any speech at all, and when my 
 tongue became untied, the carriage was already dis- 
 appearing down the street. For in that dingy 
 sick-room there were no flowers at all, yet the perfume 
 of woods and fields and open spaces had reached the 
 doctor too, and obviously perplexed him. 
 
 ' Change the direction of his thoughts ' ! I went 
 indoors, wondering how any honest and even half- 
 unselfish friend, knowing what I knew, could follow 
 such advice. With what but the lowest motive, of 
 keeping him alive for my own happiness, could I 
 seek to change his thoughts of some imagined joy 
 and peace to the pain and sordid facts of an earthly 
 existence that he loathed } 
 
 But when I turned I saw the tousled yellow- 
 headed landlady standing in the breach. Mrs. 
 Heath stopped me in the hall to inquire whether 
 I could say * anythink abart the rent pcr'aps ? ' 
 
342 THE CENTAUR xlvi 
 
 Her manner was defiant. I found three months 
 were owing. 
 
 ' It*s no good arsking 'im/ she said, though not 
 unkindly on the whole. ' Tm sick an' tired of always 
 being put oiF. He talks about the gawds and a Mr. 
 Pan, or some such gentleman who he says will look 
 after it all. But I never sees 'im — not this Mr. Pan. 
 And his stuff up there,' jerking her head towards the 
 little room, ' ain't worth a Sankeymoody 'ymn-book, 
 take the lot of it at cost ! ' 
 
 I reassured her. It was impossible to help 
 smiling. For some minds, I reflected, a Sankey 
 hymn-book might hold dreams that were every bit as 
 potent as his own, and far less troublesome. But 
 that * Mr. Pan, or some such gentleman ' should 
 serve as a * reference ' between lodger and landlady 
 was an unwitting comment on the modern point of 
 view that made me want to cry rather than to laugh. 
 O'Malley and Mrs. Heath between them had made 
 a profounder criticism' than they knew. 
 
 And so by slow degrees he went, leaving the outer 
 fury for the inner peace. The centre of conscious- 
 ness gradually shifted from the transient form which 
 is the true ghost, to the deeper, permanent state which 
 is the eternal reality. For this was how he phrased 
 it to me in one of our last, strange talks. He 
 watched his own withdrawal. 
 
 In bed he would lie for hours with fixed and happy 
 eyes, staring apparently at nothing, the expression on 
 his face quite radiant. The pulse sank often danger- 
 ously low ; he scarcely seemed to breathe ; yet it was 
 never complete unconsciousness or trance. My 
 voice, when I found the heart to try and coax his 
 own for speech, would win him back. The eyes 
 
XLVI 
 
 THE CENTAUR 343 
 
 would then grow dimmer, losing their happier light, 
 as he turned to the outer world to look at mc. 
 
 ' The pull is so tremendous now,' he whispered ; 
 ' I was far, so far away, in the deep life of Earth. 
 Why do you bring me back to all these little pains ? 
 I can do nothing here ; t/iere I am of use. . . . ' 
 
 He spoke so low I had to bend my head to catch 
 the words. It was very late at night and for hours I 
 had been watching by his side. Outside an ugly 
 yellow fog oppressed the town, but about him like an 
 atmosphere I caught again that fragrance as of trees 
 and flowers. It was too faint for any name — that 
 fugitive, mild perfume one meets upon bare hills and 
 round the skirts of forests. It was somehow, I 
 fancied, in the very breath. 
 
 * Each time the effort to return is greater. In 
 there I am complete and full of power. I can work 
 and send my message back so splendidly. Here,' 
 he glanced down at his wasted body with a curious 
 smile, ' I am only on the fringe — it's pain and 
 failure. All so ineffective.' 
 
 That other look came back into the eyes, more 
 swiftly than before. 
 
 ' I thought you might like to speak, to tell me — 
 something,' I said, keeping the tears with difficulty 
 from my voice. * Is there no one you would like to 
 see ? ' 
 
 He shook his head slowly, and gave the peculiar 
 answer : 
 
 * They're all in there.' 
 
 * But Stahl, perhaps— if I could get him here .? ' 
 An expression of gentle disapproval crossed his 
 
 face, then melted softly into a wistful tenderness 
 as of a child. 
 
 * He's not there — yet,' he whispered, * but he will 
 
344 THE CENTAUR 
 
 XLVI 
 
 come too in the end. In sleep, I think, he goes 
 there even now/ 
 
 * Where are you really then ? ' I ventured. 
 * And where is it you go to ? ' 
 
 The answer came unhesitatingly ; there was no 
 doubt or searching. 
 
 * Into myself, my real and deeper self, and so 
 beyond it into her — the Earth. Where all the 
 others are — all, all, all.' 
 
 And then he frightened me by sitting up in bed 
 abruptly. His eyes stared past me — out beyond the 
 close confining walls. The movement was so 
 startling with its suddenness and vigour that I 
 shrank back a moment. The head was sideways. 
 He was intently listening. 
 
 * Hark ! ' he whispered. * They are calling me ! 
 Do you hear . . .V 
 
 The look of joy that broke over the face like 
 sunshine made me hold my breath. Something in 
 his low voice thrilled me beyond all I have ever 
 known. I listened too. Only the rumble of the 
 traffic down the distant main street broke the 
 silence, the rattle of a nearer cart, and the footsteps 
 of a few pedestrians. No other noises came across 
 the night. There was no wind. Thick yellow fog 
 muffled everything. 
 
 * I hear nothing,' I answered softly. * What is it 
 that you hear } ' 
 
 And, making no reply, he presently lay down 
 again among the pillows, that look of joy and glory 
 still upon his face. It lay there to the end like 
 sunrise. 
 
 The fog came in so thickly through the window 
 that I rose to close it. He never closed that 
 window, and I hoped he would not notice. For a 
 
XLVI 
 
 THE CENTAUR 345 
 
 sound of wretched street-music was coming nearer — 
 some beggar playing dismally upon a penny whistle 
 — and I feared it would disturb him. But in a flash 
 he was up again. 
 
 * No, no ! ' he cried, raising his voice for the first 
 time that night. * Do not shut it. I shan't be able 
 to hear then. Let all the air come in. Open it 
 wider . . . wider ! I love that sound ! * 
 
 * The fog ' 
 
 * There is no fog. It's only sun and flowers and 
 music. Let them in. Don't you hear it now ? ' he 
 added. And, more to bring him peace than 
 anything else, I bowed my head to signify agreement. 
 For the last confusion of the mind, I saw, was upon 
 him, and he made the outer world confirm some 
 imagined detail of his inner dream. I drew the sash 
 down lower, covering his body closely with the 
 blankets. He flung them ofF impatiently at once. 
 The damp and freezing night rushed in upon us like 
 a presence. It made me shudder, but O'Malley only 
 raised himself upon one elbow to taste it better, and 
 — to listen. 
 
 Then, waiting patiently for the return of the 
 quiet, trance-like state when I might cover him 
 again, I moved towards the window and looked out. 
 The street was empty, save for that beggar playing 
 vilely on his penny whistle. The wretch came to 
 a standstill immediately before the house. The 
 lamplight fell from the room upon his tattered, 
 broken figure. I could not see his face. He 
 groped and felt his way. 
 
 Outside that homeless wanderer played his penny 
 pipe in the night of cold and darkness. 
 
 Inside the Dreamer listened, dreaming of his gods 
 and garden, his great Earth Mother, his visioned 
 
346 THE CENTAUR xlvi 
 
 life of peace and simple things with a living 
 Nature. . . . 
 
 And I felt somehow that player watched us. I 
 made an angry sign to him to go. But it was the 
 sudden touch upon my arm that made me turn 
 round with such a sudden start that I almost cried 
 aloud. O'Malley in his night-clothes stood close 
 against me on the floor, slight as a spirit, eyes ashine, 
 lips moving faintly into speech through the most 
 wonderful smile a human face has ever shown me. 
 
 * Do not send him away,' he whispered, joy 
 breaking from him like a light, * but tell him that 
 I love it. Go out and thank him. Tell him I hear 
 and understand, and say that I am coming. Will 
 you . . . .f* ' 
 
 Something within me whirled. It seemed that 
 I was lifted from my feet a moment. Some tide of 
 power rushed from his person to my own. The 
 room was filled with blinding light. But in my 
 heart there rose a great emotion that combined tears 
 and joy and laughter all at once. 
 
 ' The moment you are back in bed,' I heard my 
 voice like one speaking from a distance, * I'll go ' 
 
 The momentary, wild confusion passed as suddenly 
 as it came. I remember he obeyed at once. As 
 I bent down to tuck the clothes about him, that 
 fragrance as of flowers and open spaces rose about 
 my bending face like incense — bewilderingly sweet. 
 
 And the next second I was standing in the street. 
 The man who played upon the pipe, I saw, was 
 blind. His hand and fingers were curiously large. 
 
 I was already close, ready to press all that my 
 pockets held into his hand — ay, and far more than 
 merely pockets held because O'Malley said he loved 
 the music — when something made me turn my head 
 
xLvi THE CENTAUR 347 
 
 away. I cannot say precisely what it was/for first it 
 seemed a tapping at the window of his room behind 
 me, and then a little noise within the room itself, 
 and next — more curious than either, — a feeling that 
 something came out rushing past me through the 
 air. It whirled and shouted as it went. . . . 
 
 I only remember clearly that in the very act of 
 turning, and while my look still held that beggar's 
 face within the field of vision, I saw the sightless 
 eyes turn bright a moment as though he opened 
 them and saw. He did most certainly smile ; to 
 that I swear. 
 
 But when I turned again the street immediately 
 about me was empty. The beggar-man was gone. 
 
 And down the pavement, moving swiftly through 
 the curtain of fog, I saw his vanishing figure. It 
 was large and spreading. In the fringe of light the 
 lamp-post gave, its upper edges seemed far above 
 the ground. Someone else was with him. There 
 were two figures. 
 
 I heard that sound of piping far away. It 
 sounded faint and almost flute-like in the air. And 
 in the mud at my feet the money lay — spurned utterly. 
 I heard the last coins ring upon the pavement as 
 they settled. But in the room, when I got back, 
 the body of Terence O'Malley had ceased to 
 breathe. 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburjih. 
 
By ALGERNON BLACKWOOD 
 
 Crown Zvo. 6s. each. 
 
 THE EXTRA DAY 
 
 DAILY TELEGRAPH.— '' The Extra Day is a wonderful 
 book altogether, full of insight, replete with fanciful extravagance, 
 compact with imagination." 
 
 STANDARD. — ** Mr, Blackwood has never written a more 
 delightful tale of childhood than this, never one in which he has 
 shown as completely his power of entering into the fancies and 
 imaginations of children." 
 
 DAILY GRAPHIC— ''The book is a thing of rare beauty, 
 rich in inspiring humour, and, above all, pervaded by the ethereal 
 atmosphere of the soul of beauty which dwells within all material 
 phenomena." 
 
 SPECTATOR.— ''This most delightful book." 
 
 EVENING STANDARD.—" The Extra Day gives us back 
 our long-lost youth, and once again we feel the glorious thrill of 
 rushing through the golden dawn in search of something beautiful 
 that always seems on the point of revealing itself, but never does. 
 ... It is a book to possess, to lend, but above all to keep." 
 
 INCREDIBLE ADVENTURES 
 
 TIMES. — "A collection of remarkable stories of a strange 
 imaginativeness. " 
 
 OBSERVER. — *'A11 the tales are works of supreme artistry; 
 and it is, moreover, a rare pleasure to find a connoisseur of the 
 occult who so emphatically repudiates sensationalism." 
 
 WESTMINSTER GAZETTE.— "Mi. Blackwood has the 
 gift, and this latest of his books shows him exercising it with more 
 potency than before. We congratulate him." 
 
 MORNING POST.—" Mr. Blackwood's latest volume contains 
 five stories, and each of them is in its way a masterpiece of mystical 
 speculation. . . . The most magical and majestical of the five is 
 * The Damned,' which represents, in our judgment, the climax of 
 its author's achievement, both in imaginative power and in sheer 
 craftsmanship." 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd., LONDON. 
 
By ALGERNON BLACKWOOD 
 
 Crown Svo. 6s. each. 
 
 THE EDUCATION OF 
 UNCLE PAUL 
 
 GUARDIAN.— ''^zx^ and exquisite book. . . . It is all of a 
 strange loveliness, and, despite its aerial quality, of real sincerity. 
 Thi Education of Uncle Paul is a book to puzzle the 'average 
 reader 'and rejoice the elect." 
 
 TIMES.—'' Wholly delightful book." 
 
 PALL MALL GAZETTE.— ''Tht book is as delightful, as 
 poetical, and as well written as might be expected from an author 
 so rarely gifted as Mr. Blackwood unquestionably is." 
 
 BAIL V NEWS. — " For a book so steeped in a sense of beauty, 
 swept through and through by the clean, exhilarating winds that 
 belong to dreams, we are unfeignedly grateful." 
 
 A PRISONER IN FAIRYLAND 
 
 (THE BOOK THAT "UNCLE PAUL" WROTE) 
 
 SPECTA TOR.—'' A romance of unfaltering beauty. The streak 
 of genius in it is unmistakable. It has the madness of dreams, the 
 wildness, and the largeness. In Mr. Kipling's words, the author 
 has ' splashed at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comets' hair.' " 
 
 WESTMINSTER GAZETTE.— " A. hoo\i which every lover 
 of Mr. Blackwood's unique work will hail with enthusiasm and close 
 with satisfaction." 
 
 DAILY EXPRESS.— " A supremely beautiful book. Every 
 now and again one reads a book that gives one complete joy, and 
 then analysis and summary become impossible, and all the reviewer 
 can do is to express his gratitude, and to implore his readers to buy 
 or borrow the book and read it for themselves." 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd., LONDON. 
 
By ALGERNON BLACKWOOD 
 
 Crown Svo. 6s. each. 
 
 THE HUMAN CHORD 
 
 DAILY NEWS. — '' There is a rush and a splendour about the 
 whole narrative that sweeps the reader from his feet. . . . The 
 Human Chord is a book to haunt and to inspire. " 
 
 DAILY TELEGRAPH.—'' The author has had, one may say, 
 a stupendous idea, and he has carried it out with all the zeal and all 
 the talent which is in him. . . . It is a wonderful tale." 
 
 ATHENyEUM.—'' Com])2iC\. and intense, Mr. Blackwood's 
 story captivates the reader." 
 
 GUARDIAN. — "In his present novel Mr. Blackwood reaches 
 a height not previously attained ; he touches on deeper problems, 
 and is perhaps more arresting than he has ever been." 
 
 PAN'S GARDEN 
 
 A VOLUME OF NATURE STORIES 
 
 DAILY GRAPHIC— ''They reveal Mr. Blackwood once 
 again as the possessor of a unique talent among present - day 
 writers." 
 
 SPECTA TOR. — " The stories are never merely grim or horrible, 
 but enthralling in their power of imagination and delightful in their 
 picturesque and carefully chosen language." 
 
 STANDARD.—" In these short stories we find Mr. Blackwood 
 at his best." 
 
 DAILY TELEGRAPH.— "\n the fifteen stories that make 
 up Pans Garden readers will find much to fascinate them with a 
 half-pleasant, half-fearful fascination. Mr. Blackwood has an extra- 
 ordinary literary abihty in the presentation of weird and wonderful 
 imaginings, and his work possesses an attraction, therefore, for 
 those who place a value upon style, as well as for those who merely 
 seek to be thrilled by things mysterious and eerie." 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd., LONDON. 
 
By ALGERNON BLACKWOOD 
 
 Crown Svo. 3^. 6d. net. 
 Pott Svo. yd, net, 
 
 JIMBO 
 
 A FANTASY 
 
 DAILY CHRONICLE.— '\fimbo is a delicious book, and one 
 tliat should be read by all who long at times to escape from this 
 working-day world into the region of haunting and half-remembered 
 things." 
 
 DAILY EXPRESS.— ^^ Jimbo is a perfect thing, a dainty 
 masterpiece. We have never read a book quite like it. We have 
 rarely read a book that has given us such unqualified delight." 
 
 SPECTATOR. — *' As a fantastic exposition of the psychology 
 of fright, as an attempt to illustrate the workings of the mind in the 
 spectral world of delirium, it is of engrossing interest." 
 
 DAILY TELEGRAPH.— '' K singularly powerful piece of 
 psychological analysis. . . . The thing is wonderfully well done, 
 and will evoke an eerie feeling in the least imaginative nature." 
 
 OBSER VER.—'' The Ixxjk is a remarkable achievement. All 
 through, the sense of mystery and vagueness and terror are conveyed 
 with singular sureness where just a touch too much might have 
 destroyed all." 
 
 Pott Svo. jd, net. 
 
 JOHN SILENCE 
 
 OBSER VER.—'* Not since the days of Poe have we read any- 
 thing in his peculiar genre fit to be compared with tliis remarkable 
 lx)ok." 
 
 WORLD. — "No one should miss a book of such singular in- 
 genuity and power ; but no nervous person can be advised to read 
 it except at a considerably interval before going to bed." 
 
 mci ^ 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd., LONDON. 
 
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 6-month loans may be recharged by bringing books to Circulation 
 Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due dat( 
 
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 OCT 07 1983 
 
 lO-CIR. OCT 5 •83 
 
 FORM NO. DD 6, 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKI 
 BERKELEY CA 94720 
 
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 LD 21A-50m-4,'59 
 (A17248l0)476B 
 
 General Library 
 
 University of California 
 
 Berkeley 
 
U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
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