TO Edward Fillery, the deep pain of frustration baffling all his mental processes, the end had come with a strange, bewildering swiftness. He knew there had been a prolonged dislocation of his being, possibly, even a partial loss of memory with regard to much that went on about him, but he could not, did not, admit that no value or reality had attached to his experiences. The central self in him had projected a limb, an arm, that, feeling its way across the confining wall of the prison house, groping towards an unbelievably wonderful revelation of new possibilities, had abruptly now withdrawn again. The dissociation in his personality was over. He was, in other words, no longer aware of “N.H.” Like Devonham, he now did not “perceive” “N.H.,” but only LeVallon. But, unlike Devonham, he had perceived him....
He had met half-way a mighty and magnificent Vision. Its truth and beauty remained for him enduring. The revelation had come and gone. That its close was sudden, simple, undramatic, above all untheatrical, satisfied him. “N.H.” had “escaped,” leaving the commonplace LeVallon. in his place. But, at least, he had known “N.H.”
His whole being, an odd, sweet, happy pain in him, yearned ever to the glorious memory of it all. The melancholy, the peculiar shyness he felt, were not without an indefinite pleasure. His nature still vibrated to those haunting and inspiring rhythms, but his normal, earthly faculties, he flattered himself, were in no sense permanently disorganized. Professionally, he still cared for LeVallon, disenchanted dust though he might be, compared to “N.H.”... He approved of Devonham’s proposal to take him for a few days to the sea. He also approved of Paul’s advice that he should accept Father Collins’ invitation to spend a day or two at his country cottage. The Khilkoffs would be there, father and daughter. The Home, in charge of an assistant, could be reached in a few hours in case of need. The magic of Devonham’s wise, controlling touch lay in every detail, it seemed....
He saw the trio for Nurse Robbins was of the party off to Seaford. “The final touches to his cure,” Paul mentioned slyly, with a smile, as the guard whistled. But of whose cure he did not explain. “He’ll bathe in the sea,” he added, the reference obvious this time. “And when we return I shall be best man. I’ve already promised!” There was a triumph of skilled wisdom in both sentences.
“The time isn’t ripe yet, Edward, for too magnificent ideas. And your ideas have been a shade too magnificent, perhaps.” He talked on lightly, even carelessly. And, as usual, there was purpose, meaning, “treatment” his friend easily discerned it now in every detail of his attitude.
Fillery laughed. Through his mind ran Povey’s sentence, “Never argue with the once-born!” but aloud he said, “At any rate, I’ve no idea that I’m Emperor of Japan or or the Archangel Gabriel!” And the other, pleased and satisfied that a touch of humour showed itself, shook hands firmly, affectionately, through the window as the train moved off. LeVallon raised his hat to his chief and smiled an ordinary smile....
With the speed and incongruity of a dream these few days slipped by, their happenings vivid enough, yet all set to a curiously small scale, a cramped perspective, blurred a little as by a fading light. Only one thing retained its brilliance, its intense reality, its place in the bigger scale, its vast perspective remaining unchanged. The same immense sweet rhythm swept Iraida and himself inevitably together. Some deep obsession that hitherto prevented had been withdrawn.
She had called that very morning Paul’s touch visible here again, he believed, though he had not asked. He looked on and smiled. After the ordeal of breakfast with Devonham and LeVallon her visit was announced. It was Paul, after a little talk downstairs, who showed her in. With the radiance of a spring wildflower opening to the early sunshine, her unexpected visit to his study seemed clothed. Unexpected, yes, but surely inevitable as well. With the sweet morning wind through the open window, it seemed, she came to him, the letter of invitation from Father Collins in her hand. His own lay among his correspondence, still untouched. Her perfume rose about him as she explained something he hardly heard or followed.
“You’ll come, Edward, won’t you? You’ll come too.”
“Of course,” he answered. But it was a song he heard, and no dull spoken words. She ran dancing towards him through a million flowers; her hair flew loose along the scented winds; her white limbs glowed with fire. He danced to meet her. It was in the Valley that he caught her hands and met her eyes. “It’s happened,” he heard himself saying. “It’s happened at last just as you said it must. Escape! He has escaped!”
“But we shall follow after when the time comes, Edward.”
“Where the wild bee never flew!”...
“When the time comes,” she repeated.
Her voice, her smile, her eyes brought him back sharply into the little room. The furniture showed up again. The Valley faded. He noticed suddenly that for the first time she wore no flowers in her dress as usual.
“Iraida!” he exclaimed. “Then you knew!”
She bent her head, smiling divinely. She took both his hands in hers. At her touch every obstacle between them melted. His own private, personal inhibition he saw as the trivial barriers a little child might raise. His complex against humanity, as Paul called it, had disappeared. Their minds, their beings, their natures became most strangely one, he felt, and yet quite naturally. There was nothing they did not share.
“With the first dawn,” he heard her say in a low voice. “Never never again,” he seemed to hear, “shall we destroy his their work of ages.”
“A flower,” he whispered, “has no need to wear a flower!” He was convinced that she too had shared an experience similar to his own, perhaps had even seen the bright, marvellous Deva faces peering, shining.... He did not ask. She said no more. Life flowed between them in an untroubled stream....
Like the flow of a stream, indeed, things went past him, yet with incidents and bits of conversation thus picked out with vivid sharpness. The dissociation of his being was still noticeable here and there, he supposed. The swell after the storm took time to settle down. Slowly, however, the waves that had been projected, leaping to heaven, returned to the safe, quiet dead level of the normal calm.... The depths lay still once more. And his melancholy passed a little, lifted. He knew, at any rate, those depths were now accessible.
“I’ve seen over the wall a moment,” he said to himself. “Paul is both right and wrong. What I’ve seen lies too far ahead of the Race to be intelligible or of use. I should be cast out, crucified, my other, simpler work destroyed. To control rhythms so powerful, so different to anything we now know, is not yet possible. They would shatter, rather than construct.” He smiled sadly, yet with resignation. There was pain and humour in his eyes. “I should be regarded as a Promethean merely, an extremist Promethean, and probably be locked up for contravening some County Council bye-law or offending Church and State. That’s where he, perhaps, is right Paul!” He thought of him with affection and pity, with understanding love. “How wise and faithful, how patient and how skilled within his limits. The stable are the useful; the stable are the leaders; the stable rule the world. People with steady if unvisioned eyes like Paul, with money like Lady Gleeson.... But, oh!” he sighed “how slow, ye gods! how slow!”...
The visit was a strange one. Nayan sat between him and her father in the motor. It was not far from London, the ancient little house among the trees where Father Collins secreted himself from time to time upon occasional “retreats.”
Within the grounds it might have been the centre of the New Forest, but for the sound of tramcar bells that sometimes came jangling faintly through the thick screen of leaves. There were old-world paved courtyards with sweet playing fountains, miniature lawns, tangles of flowers, small sunken gardens with birds of cut box and yew, stone nymphs, and a shaggy, moss-grown Pan, whose hand that once held the pipes had broken off. Suburbia lay outside, yet, by walking wisely, it was possible to move among these delights for half an hour, great trees ever rustling overhead, and a clear small stream winding peacefully in and out with gentle lapping murmurs. Nature here lay undisturbed as it had lain for centuries.
The little ancient house, moreover, seemed to have grown up with the green things out of the soil, so naturally, it all belonged together. The garden ran indoors, it seemed, through open doors and windows. Butterflies floated from courtyard into drawing-room and out again, leaves blew through dining-room windows, scurrying to another little bit of lawn; the sun and wind, even the fountains’ spray, found the walls no obstacle as though unaware of them. Bees murmured, swallows hung below the eaves. It was, indeed, a healing spot, a natural retreat....
“I really believe the river rises in your library,” exclaimed Fillery, after a tour of inspection with his host, “and my bedroom is in the heart of that big chestnut across the lawn. Do my feet touch carpet, grass, or bark when I get out of bed in the morning?”
“I’ve learnt more here,” began Father Collins, “than at all the conferences and learned meetings I ever attended.. ..”
The group of four stood in the twilight by the playing fountain where the dignified stone Pan watched the paved little court, listening to the splash of the water and the wind droning among the leaves. The lap of the winding stream came faintly to them. The stillness cast a spell about them, dropping a screen against the outer world.
“Hark!” said Father Collins, holding a curved hand to his ear. “You hear the music...?”
“‘Why, in the leafy greenwood lone
Sit you, rustic Pan, and drone
On a dulcet resonant reed?’”
He paused, peering across to the stone figure as for an answer. All stood listening, waiting, only wind and water breaking the silence. The bats were now flitting; overhead hung the saffron arch of fading sunset. In a deep ringing voice, very gruff and very low, Father Collins gave the answer:
“‘So that yonder cows may feed
Up the dewy mountain passes,
Gathering the feathered grasses.’
“That’s Pan’s work,” he said, laughing pleasantly, “Pan and all his splendid hierarchy. Always at work, though invisibly, with music, colour, beauty!...”
It was scraps like this that stood out in Fillery’s memory, adding to his conviction that Paul had enlisted even this strange priest in his deep-laid plan....
“Each man is saturated with certain ideas, thoughts, phrases in a line of his own. These constitu............