Chapter 4
I
"Then if there is so much sound about in allobjects and forms--if the whole universe, in fact, is sounding," askedSpinrobin with a naive impertinence not intended, but due to the reaction ofhis simple mind from all this vague splendor, "why don't we hear itmore?"
Mr. Skale came upon him like a boomerang from theend of the room. He was smiling. He approved the question.
"With us the question of hearing is merelythe question of wavelengths in the air," he replied; "the lowestaudible sound having a wavelength of sixteen feet, the highest less than aninch. Some people can't hear the squeak of a bat, others the rumble of anearthquake. I merely affirm that in every form sleeps the creative sound thatis its life and being. The ear is a miserable organ at best, and the majorityare far too gross to know clair-audience. What about sounds, for instance, thathave a wavelength of a hundred, a thousand miles on the one hand, or amillionth part of an inch on the other?"
"A thousand miles! A millionth of aninch?" gasped the other, gazing at his interlocutor as though he was somegreat archangel of sound.
"Sound for most of us lies between, say,thirty and many thousand vibrations per second--the cry of the earthquake andthe cricket; it is our limitation that renders the voice of the dewdrop and thevoice of the planet alike inaudible. We even mistake a measure of noise--like acontinuous millwheel or a river, say--for silence, when in reality there is nosuch thing as perfect silence. Other life is all the time singing andthundering about us," he added, holding up a giant finger as though tolisten. "To the imperfection of our ears you may ascribe the fact that wedo not hear the morning stars shouting together."
"Thank you, yes, I quite see now," saidthe secretary. "To name truly is to hear truly." The clergyman'swords seemed to hold a lamp to a vast interior map in his mind that was growinglight. A new dawn was breaking over the great mental prairie where he wanderedas a child. "To find the true name of anything," he added, "youmean, is to hear its sound, its individual note as it were?" Incredibleperspectives swam into his ken, hitherto undreamed of.
"Not 'as it were,'" boomed the other,"You do hear it. After which the next step is to utter it, and so absorbits force into your own being by synchronous vibration--union mystical andactual. Only, you must be sure you utter it correctly. To pronounce incorrectlyis to call it incompletely into life and form--to distort and injure it, and yourselfwith it. To make it untrue--a lie."
They were standing in the dusk by the librarywindow, watching the veil of night that slowly covered the hills. The flyinghorizons of the moors had slipped away into the darkness.
The stars were whispering together their thoughtsof flame and speed. At the back of the room sat Miriam among the shadows, likesome melody hovering in a musician's mind till he should call her forth. It wasclose upon the tea hour. Behind them Mrs. Mawle was busying herself with lampsand fire. Mr. Skale, turning at the sound of the housekeeper, motioned to thesecretary to approach, then stooped down and spoke low in his ear:
"With many names I had greatdifficulty," he whispered. "With hers, for instance," indicatingthe housekeeper behind them. "It took me five years' continuous researchto establish her general voice-outline, and even then I at first only derived aportion of her name. And in uttering it I made such errors of omission andpronunciation that her physical form suffered, and she emerged from the ordealin disorder. You have, of course, noticed her disabilities.... But, later,though only in stammering fashion, I called upon her all complete, and she hassince known a serene blessedness and a sense of her great value in the music oflife that she never knew before." His face lit up as he spoke of it."For in that moment she found herself. She heard her true name, God'screative sound, thunder through her being."
Spinrobin, feeling the clergyman's forces pouringthrough him like a tide at such close proximity, bowed his head. His lips weretoo dry to frame words. He was thinking of the possible effects upon his ownsoul and body when his name too should be "uttered." He rememberedthe withered arm and the deafness. He thought, too, of that slender, ghostlyfigure that haunted the house with its soft movements and tender singing.Lastly, he remembered his strange conviction that somewhere in the greatbuilding, possibly in his own corridor, there were other occupants, other life,Beings of unearthly scale waiting the given moment to appear, summoned byutterance.
"And you will understand now why it is I wanta man of high courage to help me," Skale resumed in a louder tone,standing sharply upright; "a man careless of physical existence, and witha faith wholly beyond the things of this world!"
"I do indeed," he managed to replyaloud, while in his thoughts he was saying, "I will, I must see itthrough. I won't give in!" With all his might he resisted the invadingtide of terror. Even if sad results came later, it was something to have beensacrificed in so big a conception.
In his excitement he slipped from the edge of thewindowsill, where he was perched, and Mr. Skale, standing close in front ofhim, caught his two wrists and set him upon his feet. A shock, like a rush ofelectricity, ran through him. He took his courage boldly in both hands andasked the question ever burning at the back of his mind.
"Then, this great Experiment you--we have inview," he stammered, "is to do with the correct uttering of the namesof some of the great Forces, or Angels, and--and the assimilating of theirpowers into ourselves--?"
Skale rose up gigantically beside him. "No,sir," he cried, "it is greater--infinitely greater than that. Namesof mere Angels I can call alone without the help of any one; but for the name Iwish to utter a whole chord is necessary even to compass the utterance of theopening syllable; as I have told you already, a chord in which you share theincalculable privilege of being the tenor note. But for the completedsyllables--the full name--!" He closed his eyes and shrugged his massiveshoulders--"I may need the massed orchestras of half the world, thechorused voices of the entire nation--or in their place a still small voice ofutter purity crying in the wilderness! In time you shall know fully--know, seeand hear. For the present, hold your soul with what patience and courage youmay."
The words thundered about the room, so thatMiriam, too, heard them. Spinrobin trembled inwardly, as though a cold airpassed him. The suggestion of immense possibilities, vague yet terrible,overwhelmed him again suddenly. Had not the girl at that moment moved up besidehim and put her exquisite pale face over his shoulder, with her hand upon hisarm, it is probable he would then and there have informed Mr. Skale that hewithdrew from the whole affair.
"Whatever happens," murmured Miriam,gazing into his eyes, "we go on singing and sounding together, you andI." Then, as Spinrobin bent down and kissed her hair, Mr. Skale put an armround each of them and drew them over to the tea table.
"Come, Mr. Spinrobin," he said, with hiswinning smile, "you must not be alarmed, you know. You must not desert me.You are necessary to us all, and when my Experiment is complete we shall all beas gods together. Do not falter. There is nothing in life, remember, but tolose oneself; and I have found a better way of doing so than any one else--bymerging ourselves into the Voice of--"
"Mr. Skale's tea has been standing more thanten minutes," interrupted the old housekeeper, coming up behind them;"if Mr. Spinrobin will please to let him come--" as though it wasSpinrobin's fault that there had been delay.
Mr. Skale laughed good-humouredly, as the two men,suddenly in the region of teacups and buttered toast, looked one another in theface with a certain confusion. Miriam, sipping her tea, laughed too, curiously.Spinrobin felt restored to some measure of safety and sanity again. Only thestrange emotion of a few moments before still moved there unseen among them.
"Listen, and you shall presently hear hername," the clergyman whispered, glancing up at the other over his teacup,but Spinrobin was crunching his toast too noisily to notice the meaning of thewords fully.
II
The Stage Manager who stands behind all the scenesof life, both great and small, had prepared the scene well for what was tofollow. The sentences about the world of inaudible sound had dropped the rightkind of suggestion into the secretary's heart. His mind still whirred with alitter of half-digested sentences and ideas, however, and he was vividlyhaunted by the actuality of truth behind them all. His whole inner being atthat moment cried "Hark!" through a hush of expectant wonder.
There they sat at tea, this singular group ofhuman beings: Mr. Skale, bigger than ever in his loose housesuit of black,swallowing his liquid with noisy gulps; Spinrobin, nibbling slippery morsels ofhot toast, on the edge of his chair; Miriam, quiet and mysterious, in hercorner; and Mrs. Mawle, sedate, respectful in cap and apron, presiding over theteapot, the whole scene cozily lit by lamp and fire--when this remarkable newthing happened. Spinrobin declares always that it came upon him like a drowningwave, frightening him not with any idea of injury to himself, but with adreadful sense of being lost and shelterless among the immensities of atranscendent new world. Something passed into the room that made his soul shakeand flutter at the center.
His attention was first roused by a sound that hetook, perhaps, to be the wind coming down from the hills in those draughts andgusts he sometimes heard, only to his imagination now it was a peopled windcrying round the walls, behind whose voice he detected the great fluid form ofit--running and colored. But, with the noise, a terror that was no ordinaryterror invaded the recesses of his soul. It was the fear of the Unknown,dreadfully multiplied.
He glanced up quickly from his teacup, andchancing to meet Miriam's eye, he saw that she was smiling as she watched him.This sound, then, had some special significance. At the same instant heperceived that it was not outside but in the room, close beside him, that Mr.Skale, in fact, was talking to the deaf housekeeper in a low and carefullymodulated tone--a tone she could not possibly have heard, however. Then hediscovered that the clergyman was not speaking actually, but repeating hername. He was intoning it. It grew into a kind of singing chant, an incantation.
"Sarah Mawle ... Sarah Mawle ... Sarah Mawle..." ran through the room like water. And, in Skale's mouth, it sounded ashis own name had sounded--different. It became in some significant way--thusSpinrobin expresses it always--stately, important, nay, even august. It becamereal. The syllables led his ear away from their normal signification--away fromthe outer toward the inner. His ordinary mental picture of the mere lettersSARAHMAWLE disappeared and became merged in something else--into somethingalive that pulsed and moved with vibrations of its own. For, with the outersound there grew up another interior one, that finally became separate anddistinct.
Now Spinrobin was well aware that the continuedrepetition of one's own name can induce self-hypnotism; and he also knew thatthe reiteration of the name of an object ends by making that object disappearfrom the mind. "Mustard," repeated indefinitely, comes to have nomeaning at all. The mind drops behind the mere symbol of the sound intosomething that is unintelligible, if not meaningless. But here it wasaltogether another matter, and from the torrent of words and similes he uses todescribe it, this--a curious mixture of vividness and confusion--is apparentlywhat he witnessed:
For, as the clergyman's resonant voice continuedquietly to utter the name, something passed gradually into the appearance ofthe motherly old housekeeper that certainly was not there before, not visible,at least, to the secretary's eyes. Behind the fleshly covering of the body, withinthe very skin and bones it seemed, there flowed with steady splendor an effectof charging new vitality that had an air of radiating from her face and figurewith the glow and rush of increased life. A suggestion of grandeur, genuine andconvincing, began to express itself through the humble domestic exterior of hereveryday self; at first, as though some greater personage towered shadowybehind her, but presently with a growing definiteness that showed it to beherself and nothing separate. The two, if two they were, merged.
Her mien, he saw, first softened astonishingly,then grew firm with an aspect of dignity that was unbelievably beautiful. Anair of peace and joy her face had always possessed, but this was somethingbeyond either. It was something imposing, majestic. So perilously adjusted isthe ludicrous to the sublime, that while the secretary wondered dumbly whetherthe word "housekeeper" might also in Skale's new world connote"angel," he could have laughed aloud, had not the nobility of the spectaclehinted at the same time that he should have wept. For the tears of a positiveworship started to his eyes at the sight.
"Sarahmawle ... Sarahmawle...." The namecontinued to pour itself about him in a steady ripple, neither rising norfalling, and certainly not audible to those deaf old ears that flanked thevigorous and unwrinkled face. "Youth" is not the word to describethis appearance of ardent intensity that flamed out of the form and features ofthe housekeeper, for it was something utterly apart from either youth or age.Nor was it any mere idealization of her worn and crumpled self. It wasindependent of physical conditions, as it was independent of the limitations oftime and space; superb as sunshine, simple as the glory that had sometimestouched his soul of boyhood in sleep--the white fires of an uttertransfiguration.
It was, in a word, as if the name Skale utteredhad summoned to the front, through all disguising barriers of flesh, her trueand naked spirit, that which neither ages nor dies, that which the eyes, whenthey rest upon a human countenance, can never see--the Soul itself!
For the first time in his life Spinrobin, abashedand trembling, gazed upon something in human guise that was genuinelysublime--perfect with a stainless purity. The mere sight produced in him anexaltation of the spirit such as he had never before experienced ... swallowingup his first terror. In his heart of hearts, he declares, he prayed; for thiswas the natural expression for an emotion of the volume and intensity thatsurged within him....
How long he sat there gazing seems uncertain;perhaps minutes, perhaps seconds only. The sense of time's passage wastemporarily annihilated. It might well have been a thousand years, for thesight somehow swept him into eternity.... In that tearoom of Skale's lonelyhouse among the mountains, the warmth of an earthly fire upon his back, thelight of an earthly oil-lamp in his eyes, holding buttered toast in exceedinglyearthly fingers, he sat face to face with something that yet was not of thisearth, something majestic, spiritual and eternal ... visible evidence oftransfiguration and of "earth growing heaven...."
It was, of course, stupid and clumsy of Spinrobinto drop his teacup and let it smash noisily against the leg of the table; yetit was natural enough, for in his ecstasy and amazement he apparently lostcontrol of certain muscles in his trembling fingers.... Though the change camegradually it seemed very quick. The volume of the clergyman's voice grew less,and as the tide of sound ebbed the countenance of the housekeeper also slowlyaltered. The flames that a moment before had burned so whitely there flickeredfaintly and were gone; the glory faded; the splendor withdrew. She even seemedto dwindle in size.... She resumed her normal appearance. Skale's voice ceased.
The incident apparently had occupied but a fewmoments, for Mrs. Mawle, he realized, was gathering the plates together andfitting them into the spaces of the crowded tea-tray with difficulty--anoperation, he remembered, she had just begun when the clergyman first began tocall upon her name.
She, clearly, had been conscious of nothingunusual. A moment later, with her customary combination of curtsey and bow, shewas gone from the room, and Spinrobin, acting upon a strange impulse, foundhimself standing upright by the table, looking wildly about him, passing hishand through his scattered hair, and trying in vain to utter words that shouldrelieve his overcharged soul of the burden of glory and mystery that oppressedit.
A pain, profoundly searching, pierced his heart.He thought of the splendors he had just witnessed, and of the joy and peaceupon those features even when the greater wonder withdrew. He thought of thepower in the countenance of Skale, and of the shining loveliness in the face ofMiriam. Then, with a blast of bitterest disappointment, he realized theinsignificance of his own self--the earthiness of his own personality, thedead, dull ordinariness of his own appearance. Why, oh, why, could not allfaces let the soul shine through? Why could not all identify themselves with theireternal part, and thus learn happiness and joy? A sense of the futile agony oflife led him with an impassioned eagerness again to the thought of Skale'stremendous visions, and of the great Experiment that beckoned beyond. Only,once more the terror of its possible meaning dropped upon him, and the littleblack serpents of fear shot warningly across this brighter background of hishopes.
Then he was aware that Miriam had crossed the roomand stood beside him, for her delicate and natural perfume announced her evenbefore he turned and saw. Her soft eyes shining conveyed an irresistibleappeal, and with her came the sense of peace she always brought. She was theone thing at that moment that could comfort and he opened his arms to her andlet her come nestling in against him, both hands finding their way up under thelapels of his coat, all the exquisite confidence of the innocent child in herlook. Her hair came over his lips and face like flowers, but he did not kissher, nor could he find any words to say. To hold her there was enough, for thetouch of her healed and blessed him.
"So now you have seen her as she reallyis," he heard her voice against his shoulder; "you have heard hertrue name, and seen a little of its form and color!"
"I never guessed that in this world--"he stammered; then, instead of completing the sentence, held her more tightlyto him and let his face sink deeper into the garden of her hair.
"Oh yes," she answered, and then peeredup with unflinching look into his eyes, "for that is just how I see youtoo--bright, splendid and eternal."
"Miriam!" It was as unexpected as aghost and as incredible. "Me ...?"
"Of course! You see I know your true name. Isee you as you are within!"
Something came to steady his swimming brain, but itwas only after a distinct effort that he realized it was the voice of Mr. Skaleaddressing him. Then, gradually, as he listened, gently releasing the girl inorder to turn towards him, he understood that what he had witnessed had been inthe nature of a "test"--one of those tests he had been warned wouldcome--and that his attitude to it was regarded by the clergyman with approval.
"It was a test more subtle than you know,perhaps, Mr. Spinrobin," he was saying, "and the feelings it hasroused in you are an adequate proof that you have come well through it. As Iknew you would, as I knew you would," he added, with evident satisfaction."They do infinite credit both to yourself and to our judgmentin--er--accepting you."
A wave of singular emotion seemed to pass acrossthe room from one to the other that, catching the breathless secretary in itstide, filled him with a high pride that he had been weighed and found worthy,then left him cold with a sudden reaction as he realized after some delay theimport of the words Mr. Skale was next saying to him.
