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                            THE HUMAN CHORD

                         BY ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

                                 1910




_To those who hear._




Chapter I


I

As a boy he constructed so vividly in imagination that he came to believe
in the living reality of his creations: for everybody and everything he
found names--real names. Inside him somewhere stretched immense
playgrounds, compared to which the hay-fields and lawns of his father's
estate seemed trivial: plains without horizon, seas deep enough to float
the planets like corks, and "such tremendous forests" with "trees like
tall pointed hilltops." He had only to close his eyes, drop his thoughts
inwards, sink after them himself, call aloud and--see.

His imagination conceived and bore--worlds; but nothing in these worlds
became alive until he discovered its true and living name. The name was
the breath of life; and, sooner or later, he invariably found it.

Once, having terrified his sister by affirming that a little man he had
created would come through her window at night and weave a peaked cap for
himself by pulling out all her hairs "that hadn't gone to sleep with the
rest of her body," he took characteristic measures to protect her from
the said depredations. He sat up the entire night on the lawn beneath
her window to watch, believing firmly that what his imagination had made
alive would come to pass.

She did not know this. On the contrary, he told her that the little man
had died suddenly; only, he sat up to make sure. And, for a boy of eight,
those cold and haunted hours must have seemed endless from ten o'clock to
four in the morning, when he crept back to his own corner of the night
nursery. He possessed, you see, courage as well as faith and imagination.

Yet the name of the little man was nothing more formidable than "Winky!"

"You might have known he wouldn't hurt you, Teresa," he said. "Any one
with that name would be light as a fly and awf'ly gentle--a regular dicky
sort of chap!"

"But he'd have pincers," she protested, "or he couldn't pull the hairs
out. Like an earwig he'd be. Ugh!"

"Not Winky! Never!" he explained scornfully, jealous of his offspring's
reputation. "He'd do it with his rummy little fingers."

"Then his fingers would have claws at the ends!" she insisted; for no
amount of explanation could persuade her that a person named Winky could
be nice and gentle, even though he were "quicker than a second." She
added that his death rejoiced her.

"But I can easily make another--such a nippy little beggar, and twice as
hoppy as the first. Only I won't do it," he added magnanimously, "because
it frightens you."

For to name with him was to create. He had only to run out some distance
into his big mental prairie, call aloud a name in a certain commanding
way, and instantly its owner would run up to claim it. Names described
souls. To learn the name of a thing or person was to know all about them
and make them subservient to his will; and "Winky" could only have been a
very soft and furry little person, swift as a shadow, nimble as a
mouse--just the sort of fellow who _would_ make a conical cap out of a
girl's fluffy hair ... and love the mischief of doing it.

And so with all things: names were vital and important. To address beings
by their intimate first names, beings of the opposite sex especially, was
a miniature sacrament; and the story of that premature audacity of Elsa
with Lohengrin never failed to touch his sense of awe. "What's in a
name?" for him, was a significant question--a question of life or death.
For to mispronounce a name was a bad blunder, but to name it wrongly was
to miss it altogether. Such a thing had no real life, or at best a
vitality that would soon fade. Adam knew that! And he pondered much in
his childhood over the difficulty Adam must have had "discovering" the
correct appellations for some of the queerer animals....

As he grew older, of course, all this faded a good deal, but he never
quite lost the sense of reality in names--the significance of a true
name, the absurdity of a false one, the cruelty of mispronunciation. One
day in the far future, he knew, some wonderful girl would come into his
life, singing her own true name like music, her whole personality
expressing it just as her lips framed the consonants and vowels--and he
would love her. His own name, ridiculous and hateful though it was, would
sing in reply. They would be in harmony together in the literal sense, as
necessary to one another as two notes in the same chord....

So he also possessed the mystical vision of the poet. What he
lacked--such temperaments always do--was the sense of proportion and the
careful balance that adjusts cause and effect. And this it is, no doubt,
that makes his adventures such "hard sayings." It becomes difficult to
disentangle what actually did happen from what conceivably might have
happened; what he thinks he saw from what positively _was_.

His early life--to the disgust of his Father, a poor country
squire--was a distressing failure. He missed all examinations, muddled
all chances, and finally, with £50 a year of his own, and no one to
care much what happened to him, settled in London and took any odd job
of a secretarial nature that offered itself. He kept to nothing for
long, being easily dissatisfied, and ever on the look out for the "job"
that might conceal the kind of adventure he wanted. Once the work of
the moment proved barren of this possibility, he wearied of it and
sought another. And the search seemed prolonged and hopeless, for the
adventure he sought was not a common kind, but something that should
provide him with a means of escape from a vulgar and noisy world that
bored him very much indeed. He sought an adventure that should announce
to him a new heaven and a new earth; something that should confirm, if
not actually replace, that inner region of wonder and delight he
reveled in as a boy, but which education and conflict with a prosaic
age had swept away from his nearer consciousness. He sought, that is,
an authoritative adventure of the soul.

To look at, one could have believed that until the age of twenty-five he
had been nameless, and that a committee had then sat upon the subject and
selected the sound best suited to describe him: Spinrobin--Robert. For,
had he never seen himself, but run into that inner prairie of his and
called aloud "Robert Spinrobin," an individual exactly resembling him
would surely have pattered up to claim the name.

He was slight, graceful, quick on his feet and generally alert; took
little steps that were almost hopping, and when he was in a hurry gave
him the appearance of "spinning" down the pavement or up the stairs;
always wore clothes of some fluffy material, with a low collar and
bright red tie; had soft pink cheeks, dancing grey eyes and loosely
scattered hair, prematurely thin and unquestionably like feathers. His
hands and feet were small and nimble. When he stood in his favorite
attitude with hands plunged deep in his pockets, coat-tails slightly
spread and flapping, head on one side and hair disordered, talking in
that high, twittering, yet very agreeable voice of his, it was
impossible to avoid the conclusion that here was--well--Spinrobin, Bobby
Spinrobin, "on the job."

For he took on any "job" that promised adventure of the kind he sought,
and the queerer the better. As soon as he found that his present
occupation led to nothing, he looked about for something new--chiefly in
the newspaper advertisements. Numbers of strange people advertised in the
newspapers, he knew, just as numbers of strange people wrote letters to
them; and Spinny--so he was called by those who loved him--was a diligent
student of the columns known as "Agony" and "Help wanted." Whereupon it
came about that he was aged twenty-eight, and out of a job, when the
threads of the following occurrence wove into the pattern of his life,
and "led to something" of a kind that may well be cause for question and
amazement.

The advertisement that formed the bait read as follows:--

"WANTED, by Retired Clergyman, Secretarial Assistant with courage and
imagination. Tenor voice and some knowledge of Hebrew essential; single;
_unworldly_. Apply Philip Skale,"--and the address.

Spinrobin swallowed the bait whole. "Unworldly" put the match, and he
flamed up. He possessed, it seemed, the other necessary qualifications;
for a thin tenor voice, not unmusical, was his, and also a smattering of
Hebrew which he had picked up at Cambridge because he liked the fine,
high-sounding names of deities and angels to be found in that language.
Courage and imagination he lumped in, so to speak, with the rest, and in
the gilt-edged diary he affected he wrote: "Have taken on Skale's odd
advertisement. I like the man's name. The experience may prove an
adventure. While there's change, there's hope." For he was very fond of
turning proverbs to his own use by altering them, and the said diary was
packed with absurd misquotations of a similar kind.


II

A singular correspondence followed, in which the advertiser explained
with reserve that he wanted an assistant to aid him in certain
experiments in sound, that a particular pitch and quality of voice was
necessary (which he could not decide until, of course, he had heard it),
and that the successful applicant must have sufficient courage and
imagination to follow a philosophical speculation "wheresoever it may
lead," and also be "so far indifferent to worldly success as to consider
it of small account compared to spiritual knowledge--especially if such
knowledge appeared within reach and involved worldly sacrifices." He
further added that a life of loneliness in the country would have to be
faced, and that the man who suited him and worked faithfully should find
compensation by inheriting his own "rather considerable property when the
time came." For the rest he asked no references and gave none. In a
question of spiritual values references were mere foolishness. Each must
judge intuitively for himself.

Spinrobin, as has been said, bit. The letters, written in a fine
scholarly handwriting, excited his interest extraordinarily. He imagined
some dreamer-priest possessed by a singular hobby, searching for things
of the spirit by those devious ways he had heard about from time to time,
a little mad probably into the bargain. The name Skale sounded to him
big, yet he somehow pictured to himself an ascetic-faced man of small
stature pursuing in solitude some impossible ideal. It all attracted him
hugely with its promise of out-of-the-way adventure. In his own phrase it
"might lead to something," and the hints about "experiments in sound" set
chords trembling in him that had not vibrated since the days of his
boyhood's belief in names and the significance of names. The salary,
besides, was good. He was accordingly thrilled and delighted to receive
in reply to his last letter a telegram which read: "Engage you month's
trial both sides. Take single ticket. Skale."

"I like that 'take single ticket,'" he said to himself as he sped
westwards into Wales, dressed in his usual fluffy tweed suit and
anarchist tie. Upon his knees lay a brand new Hebrew grammar which he
studied diligently all the way to Cardiff, and still carried in his hands
when he changed into the local train that carried him laboriously into
the desolation of the Pontwaun Mountains. "It looks as though he approved
of me already. My name apparently hasn't put him off as it does most
people. Perhaps, through it, he divines the real me!"

He smoothed down his rebellious hair as he neared the station in the
dusk; but he was surprised to find only a rickety little cart drawn by a
donkey sent to meet him (the house being five miles distant in the
hills), and still more surprised when a huge figure of a man, hatless,
dressed in knickerbockers, and with a large, floating grey beard, strode
down the platform as he gave up his ticket to the station-master and
announced himself as Mr. Philip Skale. He had expected the small,
foxy-faced individual of his imagination, and the shock momentarily
deprived him of speech.

"Mr. Spinrobin, of course? I am Mr. Skale--Mr. Philip Skale."

The voice can only be described as booming, it was so deep and vibrating;
but the smile of welcome, where it escaped with difficulty from the
network of beard and moustaches, was winning and almost gentle in
contradistinction to the volume of that authoritative voice. Spinrobin
felt slightly bewildered--caught up into a whirlwind that drove too many
impressions through his brain for any particular one to be seized and
mastered. He found himself shaking hands--Mr. Skale, rather, shaking his,
in a capacious grasp as though it were some small indiarubber ball to be
squeezed and flung away. Mr. Skale flung it away, he felt the shock up
the whole length of his arm to the shoulder. His first impressions, he
declares, he cannot remember--they were too tumultuous--beyond that he
liked both smile and voice, the former making him feel at home, the
latter filling him to the brim with a peculiar sense of well-being. Never
before had he heard his name pronounced in quite the same way; it sounded
dignified, even splendid, the way Mr. Skale spoke it. Beyond this general
impression, however, he can only say that his thoughts and feelings
"whirled." Something emanated from this giant clergyman that was somewhat
enveloping and took him off his feet. The keynote of the man had been
struck at once.

"How do you do, sir? This _is_ the train you mentioned, I think?"
Spinrobin heard his own thin voice speaking, by way, as it were, of
instinctive apology that he should have put such a man to the trouble of
coming to meet him. He said "sir," it seemed unavoidable; for there was
nothing of the clergyman about him--bishop, perhaps, or archbishop, but
no suggestion of vicar or parish priest. Somewhere, too, in his
presentment he felt dimly, even at the first, there was an element of the
incongruous, a meeting of things not usually found together. The
vigorous open-air life of the mountaineer spoke in the great muscular
body with the broad shoulders and clean, straight limbs; but behind the
brusqueness of manner lay the true gentleness of fine breeding.

And even here, on this platform of the lonely mountain station, Spinrobin
detected the atmosphere of the scholar, almost of the recluse, shot
through with the strange fires that dropped from the large, lambent, blue
eyes. All these things rushed over the thrilled little secretary with an
effect, as already described, of a certain bewilderment, that left no
single, dominant impression. What remained with him, perhaps, most
vividly, he says, was the quality of the big blue eyes, their luminosity,
their far-seeing expression, their kindliness. They were the eyes of the
true visionary, but in such a personality they proclaimed the mystic who
had retained his health of soul and body. Mr. Skale was surely a
visionary, but just as surely a wholesome man of action--probably of
terrific action. Spinrobin felt irresistibly drawn to him.

"It is not unpleasant, I trust," the other was saying in his deep
tones, "to find some one to meet you, and," he added with a genial
laugh, "to counteract the first impression of this somewhat melancholy
and inhospitable scenery." His arm swept out to indicate the dreary
little station and the bleak and lowering landscape of treeless hills
in the dusk.

The new secretary made some appropriate reply, his sense of loneliness
already dissipated in part by the unexpected welcome. And they fell to
arrangements about the luggage. "You won't mind walking," said Mr. Skale,
with a finality that anticipated only agreement. "It's a short five
miles. The donkey-cart will take the portmanteau." Upon which they
started off at a pace that made the little man wonder whether he could
possibly keep it up. "We shall get in before dark," explained the other,
striding along with ease, "and Mrs. Mawle, my housekeeper, will have tea
ready and waiting for us." Spinrobin followed, panting, thinking vaguely
of the other employers he had known--philanthropists, bankers, ambitious
members of Parliament, and all the rest--commonplace individuals to a
man; and then of the immense and towering figure striding just ahead,
shedding about him this vibrating atmosphere of power and whirlwind,
touched so oddly here and there with a vein of gentleness that was almost
sweetness. Never before had he known any human being who radiated such
vigor, such big and beneficent fatherliness, yet for all the air of
kindliness something, too, that touched in him the sense of awe. Mr.
Skale, he felt, was a very unusual man.

They went on in the gathering dusk, talking little but easily. Spinrobin
felt "taken care of." Usually he was shy with a new employer, but this
man inspired much too large a sensation in him to include shyness, or any
other form of petty self-consciousness. He felt more like a son than a
secretary. He remembered the wording of the advertisement, the phrases of
the singular correspondence--and wondered. "A remarkable personality," he
thought to himself as he stumbled through the dark after the object of
his reflections; "simple--yet tremendous! A giant in all sorts of ways
probably--" Then his thought hesitated, floundered. There was something
else he divined yet could not name. He felt out of his depth in some
entirely new way, in touch with an order of possibilities larger, more
vast, more remote than any dreams his imagination even had yet envisaged.
All this, and more, the mere presence of this retired clergyman poured
into his receptive and eager little soul.

And very soon it was that these nameless qualities began to assert
themselves, completing the rout of Spinrobin's moderate powers of
judgment. No practical word as to the work before them, or the duties of
the new secretary, had yet passed between them. They walked along
together, chatting as equals, acquaintances, almost two friends might
have done. And on the top of the hill, after a four-mile trudge, they
rested for the first time, Spinrobin panting and perspiring, trousers
tucked up and splashed yellow with mud; Mr. Skale, legs apart, beard
flattened by the wind about his throat, and thumbs in the slits of his
waistcoat as he looked keenly about him over the darkening landscape.
Treeless and desolate hills rose on all sides. A few tumbled-down
cottages of grey stone lay scattered upon the lower slopes among patches
of shabby and forlorn cultivation. Here and there an outcrop of rock ran
skywards into somber and precipitous ridges. The October wind passed to
and fro over it all, mournfully singing, and driving loose clouds that
seemed to drop weighted shadows among the peaks.


III

And it was here that Mr. Skale stopped abruptly, looked about him, and
then down at his companion.

"Bleak and lonely--this great spread of bare mountain and falling
cliff," he observed half to himself, half to the other; "but fine, very,
very fine." He exhaled deeply, then inhaled as though the great draught
of air was profoundly satisfying. He turned to catch his companion's
eye. "There's a savage and desolate beauty here that uplifts. It helps
the mind to dwell upon the full sweep of life instead of getting dwarfed
and lost among its petty details. Pretty scenery is not good for the
soul." And again he inhaled a prodigious breastful of the mountain air.
"This is."

"But an element of terror in it, perhaps, sir," suggested the secretary
who, truth to tell, preferred his scenery more smiling, and who,
further, had been made suddenly aware that in this somber setting of
bleak and elemental nature the great figure of his future employer
assumed a certain air of grandeur that was a little too awe-inspiring to
be pleasant.

"In all profound beauty there must be that," the clergyman was saying;
"fine terror, I mean, of course--just enough to bring out the littleness
of man by comparison."

"Perhaps, yes," agreed Spinrobin. His own insignificance seemed
peculiarly apparent at that moment in contrast to Mr. Skale who had
become part and parcel of the rugged landscape. Spinrobin was a lost atom
whirling somewhere outside on his own account, whereas the other seemed
oddly in touch with it, almost merged and incorporated into it. With
those deep breaths the clergyman absorbed something of this latent power
about them--then gave it out again. It broke over his companion like a
wave. Elemental force of some kind emanated from that massive human
figure beside him.

The wind came tearing up the valley and swept past them with a rush as
of mighty wings. Mr. Skale drew attention to it. "And listen to that!"
he said. "How it leaps, singing, from the woods in the valley up to
those gaunt old cliffs yonder!" He pointed. His beard blew suddenly
across his face. With his bare head and shaggy flying hair, his big eyes
and bold aquiline nose, he presented an impressive figure. Spinrobin
watched him with growing amazement, aware that an enthusiasm scarcely
warranted by the wind and scenery had passed into his manner. In his own
person, too, he thought he experienced a birth of something similar--a
little wild rush of delight he was unable to account for. The voice of
his companion, pointing out the house in the valley below, again
interrupted his thoughts.

"How the mountains positively eat it up. It lies in their very jaws,"
and the secretary's eyes, traveling into the depths, made out a cluster
of grey stone chimneys and a clearing in the woods that evidently
represented lawns. The phrase "courage and imagination" flashed unbidden
into his mind as he realized the loneliness of the situation, and for the
hundredth time he wondered what in the world could be the experiments
with sound that this extraordinary man pursued in this isolated old
mansion among the hills.

"Buried, sir, rather," he suggested. "I can only just see it--"

"And inaccessible," Mr. Skale interrupted him. "Hard to get at. No one
comes to disturb; an ideal place for work. In the hollows of these hills
a man may indeed seek truth and pursue it, for the world does not enter
here." He paused a moment. "I hope, Mr. Spinrobin," he added, turning
towards him with that gentle smile his shaggy visage sometimes wore, "I
hope you will not find it too lonely. We have no visitors, I mean;
nothing but our own little household of four."

Spinrobin smiled back. Even at this stage he admits he was exceedingly
anxious to suit. Mr. Skale, in spite of his marked peculiarities,
inspired him with confidence. His personal attraction was growing every
minute; that vague awe he roused probably only increased it. He wondered
who the "four" might be.

"There's nothing like solitude for serious work, sir," replied the
younger man, stifling a passing uneasiness.

And with that they plunged down the hillside into the valley, Mr. Skale
leading the way at a terrific pace, shouting out instructions and
warnings from time to time that echoed from the rocks as though voices
followed them down from the mountains. The darkness swallowed them, they
left the wind behind; the silence that dwells in the folded hills fell
about their steps; the air grew less keen; the trees multiplied,
gathering them in with fingers of mist and shadow. Only the clatter of
their boots on the rocky path, and the heavy bass of the clergyman's
voice shouting instructions from time to time, broke the stillness.
Spinrobin followed the big dark outline in front of him as best he could,
stumbling frequently. With countless little hopping steps he dodged along
from point to point, a certain lucky nimbleness in his twinkling feet
saving him from many a tumble.

"All right behind there?" Mr. Skale would thunder.

"All right, thanks, Mr. Skale," he would reply in his thin tenor,
"I'm coming."

"Come along, then!" And on they would go faster than before, till in due
course they emerged from the encircling woods and reached the more open
ground about the house. Somehow, in the jostling relations of the walk, a
freedom of intercourse had been established that no amount of formal talk
between four walls could have accomplished. They scraped their dirty
boots vigorously on the iron mat.

"Tired?" asked the clergyman, kindly.

"Winded, Mr. Skale, thank you--nothing more," was the reply. He looked up
at the square mass of the house looming dark against the sky, and the
noise his companion made opening the door--the actual rattle of the iron
knob did it--suddenly brought to him a clear realization of two things:
First, he understood that the whole way from the station Mr. Skale had
been watching him closely, weighing, testing, proving him, though by ways
and methods so subtle that they had escaped his observation at the time;
secondly, that he was already so caught in the network of this
personality, vaster and more powerful than his own, that escape if he
desired it would be exceedingly difficult. Like a man in a boat upon the
upper Niagara river, he already felt the tug and suction of the current
below--the lust of a great adventure drawing him forward. Mr. Skale's
hand upon his shoulder as they entered the house was the symbol of
_that_. The noise of the door closing behind him was the passing of the
last bit of quiet water across which a landing to the bank might still
have been possible.

Faint streamers from the dark, inscrutable house of fear reached him even
then and left their vague, undecipherable signatures upon the surface of
his soul. The forces that vibrated so strangely in the atmosphere of Mr.
Skale were already playing about his own person, gathering him in like a
garment. Yet while he shuddered, he liked it. Was he not already losing
something of his own insignificant and diminutive self?


IV

The clergyman, meanwhile, had closed the heavy door, shutting out the
darkness, and now led the way across a large, flagged hall into a room,
ablaze with lamp and fire, the walls lined thickly with books, furnished
cozily if plainly. The laden tea table, and a kettle hissing merrily on
the hob, were pleasant to look upon, but what instantly arrested the gaze
of the secretary was the face of the old woman in cap and
apron--evidently the housekeeper already referred to as "Mrs." Mawle--who
stood waiting to pour out tea. For about her worn and wrinkled
countenance there lay an indefinable touch of something that hitherto he
had seen only in pictures of the saints by the old masters. What
attracted his attention, and held it so arrestingly, was this singular
expression of happiness, aye, of more than mere happiness--of joy and
peace and blessed surety, rarely, if ever, seen upon a human face alive,
and only here and there suggested behind that mask of repose which death
leaves so tenderly upon the features of those few who have lived their
lives to noblest advantage.

Spinrobin caught his breath a little, and stared. Aged and lined as it
unquestionably was, he caught that ineffable suggestion of radiance about
it which proclaimed an inner life that had found itself and was in
perfect harmony with outer things: a life based upon certain knowledge
and certain hope. It wore a gentle whiteness he could find only one word
to describe--glory. And the moment he saw it there flashed across him the
recognition that this was what Mr. Skale also possessed. That giant,
athletic, vigorous man, and this bent, worn old woman both had it. He
wondered with a rush of sudden joy what produced it;--whether it might
perhaps one day be his too. The flame of his own spirit leapt within him.

And, so wondering, he turned to look at the clergyman. In the softer
light of fire and lamp his face had the appearance of forty rather than
sixty as he had first judged; the eyes, always luminous, shone with
health and enthusiasm; a great air of youth and vitality glowed about
him. It was a fine head with that dominating nose and the shaggy tangle
of hair and beard; very big, fatherly and protective he looked, a quite
inexpressible air of tenderness mingled in everywhere with the strength.
Spinrobin felt immensely drawn to him as he looked. With such a leader he
could go anywhere, do anything. There, surely, was a man whose heart was
set not upon the things of this world.

An introduction to the housekeeper interrupted his reflections; it did
not strike him as at all out of the way; doubtless she was more mother
than domestic to the household. At the name of "Mrs." Mawle
(courtesy-title, obviously), he rose and bowed, and the old woman,
looking from one to the other, smiled becomingly, curtseyed, put her cap
straight, and turned to the teapot again. She said nothing.

"The only servant I have, practically," explained the clergyman, "cook,
butler, housekeeper and tyrant all in one; and, with her niece, the only
other persons in the house besides ourselves. A very simple _ménage_, you
see, Mr. Spinrobin. I ought to warn you, too, by-the-by," he added, "that
she is almost stone deaf, and has only got the use of one arm, as perhaps
you noticed. Her left arm is"--he hesitated for a fraction of a
second--"withered."

A passing wonder as to what the niece would be like accompanied the
swallowing of his buttered toast and tea, but the personalities of Mr.
Skale and his housekeeper had already produced emotions that prevented
this curiosity acquiring much strength. He could deal with nothing more
just yet. Bewilderment obstructed the way, and in his room before dinner
he tried in vain to sort out the impressions that so thickly flooded him,
though without any conspicuous degree of success. The walls of his
bedroom, like those of corridor and hall, were bare; the furniture solid
and old-fashioned; scanty, perhaps, yet more than he was accustomed to;
and the spaciousness was very pleasant after the cramped quarters of
stuffy London lodgings. He unpacked his few things, arranged them with
neat precision in the drawers of the tallboy, counted his shirts, socks,
and ties, to see that all was right, and then drew up an armchair and
toasted his toes before the comforting fire. He tried to think of many
things, and to decide numerous little questions roused by the events of
the last few hours; but the only thing, it seems, that really occupied
his mind, was the rather overpowering fact that he was--with Mr. Skale
and in Mr. Skale's house; that he was there on a month's trial; that the
nature of the work in which he was to assist was unknown, immense,
singular; and that he was already being weighed in the balances by his
uncommon and gigantic employer. In his mind he used this very adjective.
There was something about the big clergyman--titanic.

He was in the middle of a somewhat jumbled consideration about "Knowledge
of Hebrew--tenor voice--courage and imagination--unworldly," and so
forth, when a knock at the door announced Mrs. Mawle who came to inform
him that dinner was ready. She stood there, a motherly and pleasant
figure in black, and she addressed him in the third person. "If Mr.
Spinrobin will please to come down," she said, "Mr. Skale is waiting. Mr.
Skale is always _quite_ punctual." She always spoke thus, in the third
person; she never used the personal pronoun if it could be avoided. She
preferred the name direct, it seemed. And as Spinrobin passed her on the
way out, she observed further, looking straight into his eyes as she said
it: "and should Mr. Spinrobin have need of anything, _that_," indicating
it, "is the bell that rings in the housekeeper's room. Mrs. Mawle can see
it wag, though she can't hear it. Day or night," she added with a faint
curtsey, "and no trouble at all, just as with the other gentlemen--"

So there had been other gentlemen, other secretaries! He thanked her with
a nod and a smile, and hurried pattering downstairs in a neat blue suit,
black silk socks and a pair of bright new pumps, Mr. Skale having told
him not to dress. The phrase "day or night," meanwhile, struck him as
significant and peculiar. He remembered it later. At the moment he merely
noted that it added one more to the puzzling items that caused his
bewilderment.


V

Before he had gone very far, however, there came another--crowningly
perplexing. For he was halfway down the darkened passage, making for the
hall that glimmered beyond like the mouth of a cave, when, without the
smallest warning, he became suddenly conscious that something attractive
and utterly delicious had invaded the stream of his being. It came from
nowhere--inexplicably, and at first it took the form of a naked sensation
of delight, keen as a thrill of boyhood days. There passed into him very
swiftly something that satisfied. "I mean, whatever it was," he says, "I
couldn't have asked or wanted more of it. It was all there, complete,
supreme, sufficient." And the same instant he saw close beside him, in
the comparative gloom of the narrow corridor, a vivid, vibrating picture
of a girl's face, pale as marble, of flower-like beauty, with dark
voluminous hair and large grey eyes that met his own from behind a
wavering net of eyelashes. Down to the shoulders he saw her.

Erect and motionless she stood against the wall to let him pass--this
slim young girl whose sudden and unexpected presence had so electrified
him. Her eyes followed him like those of a picture, but she neither bowed
nor curtseyed, and the only movement she made was the slight turning of
the head and eyes as he went by. It was extraordinarily effective, this
silent and delightful introduction, for swift as lightning, and with
lightning's terrific and incalculable surety of aim, she leapt into his
heart with the effect of a blinding and complete possession.

It was, of course, he realized, the niece--the fourth member of the
household, and the first clear thought to disentangle itself from the
resultant jumble of emotions was his instinctive wonder what her name
might be. How was this delightful apparition called? This was the
question that ran and danced in his blood. In another minute he felt sure
he would discover it. It must begin (he felt sure of that) with an M.

He did not pause, or alter his pace. He made no sign of recognition.
Their eyes swallowed each other for a brief moment as he passed--and
then he was pattering with quick, excited steps down the passage beyond,
and the girl was left out of sight in the shadows behind him. He did not
even turn back to look, for in some amazing sense she seemed to move on
beside him, as though some portion of her had merged into his being. He
carried her on with him. Some sweet and marvelous interchange they had
undergone together. He felt strangely blessed, soothed inwardly, made
complete, and more than twice on the way down the name he knew must
belong to her almost sprang up and revealed itself--yet never quite. He
knew it began with M, even with Mir--but could get nothing more. The
rest evaded him. He divined only a portion of the name. He had seen only
a portion of her form.

The first syllable, however, sang in him with an exquisitely sweet
authority. He was aware of some glorious new thing in the penetralia of
his little spirit, vibrating with happiness. Some portion of himself sang
with it. "For it really did vibrate," he said, "and no other word
describes it. It vibrated like music, like a string; as though when I
passed her she had taken a bow and drawn it across the strings of my
inmost being to make them sing...."

"Come," broke in the sonorous voice of the clergyman whom he found
standing in the hall; "I've been waiting for you."

It was said, not complainingly nor with any idea of fault-finding, but
rather--both tone and manner betrayed it--as a prelude to something of
importance about to follow. Somewhat impatiently Mr. Skale took his
companion by the arm and led him forwards; on the stone floor Spinrobin's
footsteps sounded light and dancing, like a child's. The clergyman
strode. At the dining room door he stopped, turning abruptly, and at the
same instant the figure of the young girl glided noiselessly towards
them from the mouth of the dark corridor where she had been waiting.

Her entry, again, was curiously effective; like a beautiful thought in a
dream she moved into the hall, and into Spinrobin's life. Moreover, as
she came wholly into view in the light, he felt, as positively as though
he heard it uttered, that he knew her name complete. The first syllable
had come to him in the passageway when he saw her partly, and the feeling
of dread that "Mir--" might prove to be part of "Miranda," "Myrtle," or
some other enormity, passed instantly. These would only have been gross
and cruel misnomers. Her right name--the only one that described her
soul--must end, as it began, with M. It flashed into his mind, and at the
same moment Mr. Skale picked it off his very lips.

"Miriam," he said in deep tones, rolling the name along his mouth so as
to extract every shade of sound belonging to it, "this is Mr. Spinrobin
about whom I told you. He is coming, I hope, to help us."


VI

At first Spinrobin was only aware of the keen delight produced in him by
the manner of Skale's uttering her name, for it entered his consciousness
with a murmuring, singing sound that continued on in his thoughts like a
melody. His racing blood carried it to every portion of his body. He
heard her name, not with his ears alone but with his whole person--a
melodious, haunting phrase of music that thrilled him exquisitely. Next,
he knew that she stood close before him, shaking his hand, and looking
straight into his eyes with an expression of the most complete trust and
sympathy imaginable, and that he felt a well-nigh irresistible desire to
draw her yet closer to him and kiss her little shining face.
Thirdly--though the three impressions were as a matter of fact almost
simultaneous--that the huge figure of the clergyman stood behind them,
watching with the utmost intentness and interest, like a keen and alert
detective eager for some betrayal of evidence, inspired, however, not by
mistrust, but by a very zealous sympathy.

He understood that this meeting was of paramount importance in Mr.
Skale's purpose.

"How do you do, Mr. Spinrobin," he heard a soft voice saying, and the
commonplace phrase served to bring him back to a more normal standard of
things. But the tone in which she said it caused him a second thrill
almost more delightful than the first, for the quality was low and fluty,
like the gentle note of some mellow wind instrument, and the caressing
way she pronounced his name was a revelation. Mr. Skale had known how to
make it sound dignified, but this girl did more--she made it sound alive.
"I will give thee a new name" flashed into his thoughts, as some
memory-cell of boyhood discharged its little burden most opportunely and
proceeded to refill itself.

The smile of happiness that broke over Spinrobin's face was certainly
reflected in the eyes that gazed so searchingly into his own, without the
smallest sign of immodesty, yet without the least inclination to drop the
eyelids. The two natures ran out to meet each other as naturally as two
notes of music run to take their places in a chord. This slight,
blue-eyed youth, light of hair and sensitive of spirit, and this slim,
dark-skinned little maiden, with the voice of music and the wide-open
grey eyes, understood one another from the very first instant their
atmospheres touched and mingled; and the big Skale, looking on intently
over their very shoulders, saw that it was good and smiled down upon
them, too, in his turn.

"The harmony of souls and voices is complete," he said, but in so low a
tone that the secretary did not hear it. Then, with a hand on a shoulder
of each, he half pushed them before him into the dining room, his whole
face running, as it were, into a single big smile of contentment. The
important event had turned out to his entire satisfaction. He looked like
some beneficent father, well pleased with his two children.

But Spinrobin, as he moved beside the girl and heard the rustle of her
dress that almost touched him, felt as though he stood upon a sliding
platform that was moving ever quicker, and that the adventure upon which
he was embarked had now acquired a momentum that nothing he could do
would ever stop. And he liked it. It would carry him out of himself into
something very big....

And at dinner, where he sat opposite to the girl and studied her face
closely, Mr. Skale, he was soon aware, was occupied in studying the two
of them even more closely. He appeared always to be listening to their
voices. They spoke little enough, however, only their eyes met
continually, and when they did so there was no evidence of a desire to
withdraw. Their gaze remained fastened on one another, on her part
without shyness, without impudence on his. That Mr. Skale wished for them
an intimate and even affectionate understanding was evident, and the
secretary warmed to him on that account more than ever, if on no other.

It surprised him too--when he thought of it, which was rarely--that a
girl who was perforce of humble origin could carry herself with an air of
such complete and natural distinction, and prove herself so absolutely
"the lady." For there was something about her of greater value than any
mere earthly rank or class could confer; her spirit was in its very
essence distinguished, perfectly simple, yet strong with a great and
natural pride. It never occurred to her soul to doubt its own great
value--or to question that of others. She somehow or other made the
little secretary feel of great account. He had never quite realized his
own value before. Her presence, her eyes, her voice served to bring it
out. And a very curious detail that he always mentions just at this point
is the fact that it never occurred to him to wonder what her surname
might be, or whether, indeed, she had one at all. Her name, Miriam,
seemed sufficient. The rest of her--if there was any other part of her
not described by those three syllables--lay safely and naturally included
somewhere in _his own_ name. "Spinrobin" described her as well as
himself. But "Miriam" completed his own personality and at the same time
extended it. He felt all wrapped up and at peace with her. With Philip
Skale, Mrs. Mawle and Miriam, he, Robert Spinrobin, felt that he
naturally belonged as "one of the family." They were like the four notes
in the chord: Skale, the great bass; Mawle, the mellow alto; himself and
Miriam, respectively, the echoing tenor and the singing soprano. The
imagery by which, in the depths of his mind, he sought to interpret to
himself the whole singular business ran, it seems, even then to music and
the analogies of music.

The meal was short and very simple. Mrs. Mawle carved the joint at the
end of the table, handed the vegetables and looked after their wants with
the precision of long habit. Her skill, in spite of the withered arm, was
noteworthy. They talked little, Mr. Skale hardly at all. Miriam spoke
from time to time across the table to the secretary. She did not ask
questions, she stated facts, as though she already knew all about his
feelings and tastes. She may have been twenty years of age, perhaps, but
in some way she took him back to childhood. And she said things with the
simple audacity of a child, ignoring Mr. Skale's presence. It seemed to
the secretary as if he had always known her.

"I knew just how you would look," she said, without a trace of shyness,
"the moment I heard your name. And you got my name very quickly, too?"

"Only part of it, at first--"

"Oh yes; but when you saw me completely you got it all," she interrupted.
"And I like your name," she added, looking him full in the eye with her
soft grey orbs; "it tells everything."

"So does yours, you know."

"Oh, of course," she laughed; "Mr. Skale gave it to me the day I
was born."

"I _heard_ it," put in the clergyman, speaking almost for the first time.
And the talk dropped again, the secretary's head fairly whirling.

"You used it all, of course, as a little boy," she said presently again;
"names, I mean?"

"Rather," he replied without hesitation; "only I've rather lost it
since--"

"It will come back to you here. It's so splendid, all this world of
sound, and makes everything seem worth while. But you lose your way at
first, of course; especially if you are out of practice, as you must be."

Spinrobin did not know what to say. To hear this young girl make use of
such language took his breath away. He became aware that she was talking
with a purpose, seconding Mr. Skale in the secret examination to which
the clergyman was all the time subjecting him. Yet there was no element
of alarm in it all. In the room with these two, and with the motherly
figure of the housekeeper busying about to and fro, he felt at home,
comforted, looked after--more even, he felt at his best; as though the
stream of his little life were mingling in with a much bigger and
worthier river, a river, moreover, in flood. But it was the imagery of
music again that most readily occurred to him. He felt that the note of
his own little personality had been caught up into the comforting bosom
of a complete chord....


VII

"Mr. Spinrobin," suddenly sounded soft and low across the table, and,
thrilled to hear the girl speak his name, he looked up quickly and found
her very wide-opened eyes peering into his. Her face was thrust forward a
little as she leaned over the table in his direction.

As he gazed she repeated his name, leisurely, quietly, and even more
softly than before: "Mr. Spinrobin." But this time, as their eyes met and
the syllables issued from her lips, he noticed that a singular
after-sound--an exceedingly soft yet vibrant overtone--accompanied it.
The syllables set something quivering within him, something that sang,
running of its own accord into a melody to which his rising pulses beat
time and tune.

"Now, please, speak my name," she added. "Please look straight at me,
straight into my eyes, and pronounce _my_ name."

His lips trembled, if ever so slightly, as he obeyed.

"Miriam ..." he said.

"Pronounce each syllable very distinctly and very slowly," she said, her
grey eyes all over his burning face.

"Mir ... i ... am," he repeated, looking in the center of the eyes
without flinching, and becoming instantly aware that his utterance
of the name produced in himself a development and extension of the
original overtones awakened by her speaking of his own name. It was
wonderful ... exquisite ... delicious. He uttered it again, and then
heard that she, too, was uttering his at the same moment. Each spoke the
other's name. He could have sworn he heard the music within him leap
across the intervening space and transfer itself to her ... and that he
heard his own name singing, too, in _her_ blood.

For the names were true. By this soft intoning utterance they seemed to
pass mutually into the secret rhythm of that Eternal Principle of Speech
which exists behind the spoken sound and is independent of its means of
manifestation. Their central beings, screened and limited behind their
names, knew an instant of synchronous rhythmical vibration. It was their
introduction absolute to one another, for it was an instant of naked
revelation.

"Spinrobin...."

"Miriam...."


VIII

... A great volume of sound suddenly enveloped and caught away the two
singing names, and the spell was broken. Miriam dropped her eyes;
Spinrobin looked up. It was Mr. Skale's voice upon them with a shout.

"Splendid! splendid!" he cried; "your voices, like your names, are made
for one another, in quality, pitch, accent, everything." He was
enthusiastic rather than excited; but to Spinrobin, taking part in this
astonishing performance, to which the other two alone held the key, it
all seemed too perplexing for words. The great bass crashed and boomed
for a moment about his ears; then came silence. The test, or whatever it
was, was over. It had been successful.

Mr. Skale, his face still shining with enthusiasm, turned towards him.
Miriam, equally happy, watched, her hands folded in her lap.

"My dear fellow," exclaimed the clergyman, half rising in his chair, "how
mad you must think us! How mad you must think us! I can only assure you
that when you know more, as you soon shall, you will understand the
importance of what has just taken place...."

He said a good deal more that Spinrobin did not apparently quite take in.
He was too bewildered. His eyes sought the girl where she sat opposite,
gazing at him. For all its pallor, her face was tenderly soft and
beautiful; more pure and undefiled, he thought, than any human
countenance he had ever seen, and sweet as the face of a child. Utterly
unstained it was. A similar light shone in the faces of Skale and Mrs.
Mawle. In their case it had forged its way through the more or less
defiling garment of a worn and experienced flesh. But the light in
Miriam's eyes and skin was there because it had never been extinguished.
She had retained her pristine brilliance of soul. Through the little
spirit of the perplexed secretary ran a thrill of genuine worship and
adoration.

"Mr. Skale's coffee is served in the library," announced the voice of the
housekeeper abruptly behind them; and when Spinrobin turned again he
discovered that Miriam had slipped from the room unobserved and was gone.

Mr. Skale took his companion's arm and led the way towards the hall.

"I am glad you love her," was his astonishing remark. "It is the first
and most essential condition of your suiting me."

"She is delightful, wonderful, charming, sir--"

"Not 'sir,' if you please," replied the clergyman, standing aside at the
threshold for his guest to pass; "I prefer the use of the name, you know.
I think it is important."

And he closed the library door behind them.




Chapter II


I

For some minutes they sat in front of the fire and sipped their coffee in
silence. The secretary felt that the sliding platform on which he was
traveling into this extraordinary adventure had been going a little too
fast for him. Events had crowded past before he had time to look squarely
at them. He had lost his bearings rather, routed by Miriam's beauty and
by the amazing way she talked to him. Had she lived always inside his
thoughts she could not have chosen words better calculated to convince
him that they were utterly in sympathy one with the other. Mr. Skale,
moreover, approved heartily. The one thing Spinrobin saw clearly through
it all was that himself and Miriam--their voices, rather--were necessary
for the success of the clergyman's mysterious experiments. Only, while
Miriam, little witch, knew all about it, he, candidate on trial, knew as
yet--nothing.

And now, as they sat opposite one another in the privacy of the library,
Spinrobin, full of confidence and for once proud of his name and
personality, looked forward to being taken more into the heart of the
affair. Things advanced, however, more slowly than he desired. Mr.
Skale's scheme was too big to be hurried.

The clergyman did not smoke, but his companion, with the other's ready
permission, puffed gently at a small cigarette. Short, rapid puffs he
took, as though the smoke was afraid to enter beyond the front teeth, and
with one finger he incessantly knocked off the ashes into his saucer,
even when none were there to fall. On the table behind them gurgled the
shaded lamp, lighting their faces from the eyes downwards.

"Now," said Mr. Skale, evidently not aware that he thundered, "we can
talk quietly and undisturbed." He caught his beard in a capacious hand,
in such a way that the square outline of his chin showed through the
hair. His voice boomed musically, filling the room. Spinrobin listened
acutely, afraid even to cross his legs. A genuine pronouncement, he felt,
was coming.

"A good many years ago, Mr. Spinrobin," he said simply, "when I was a
curate of a country parish in Norfolk, I made a discovery--of a
revolutionary description--a discovery in the world of real things, that
is, of spiritual things."

He gazed fixedly over the clutched beard at his companion, apparently
searching for brief, intelligible phrases. "But a discovery, the
development of which I was obliged to put on one side until I inherited
with this property the means and leisure which enabled me to continue my
terrific--I say purposely terrific--researches. For some years now I have
been quietly at work here absorbed in my immense pursuit." And again he
stopped. "I have reached a point, Mr. Spinrobin--"

"Yes," interjected the secretary, as though the mention of his name
touched a button and produced a sound. "A point--?"

"Where I need the assistance of some one with a definite quality of
voice--a man who emits a certain note--a certain tenor note." He released
his beard, so that it flew out with a spring, at the same moment
thrusting his head forward to drive home the announcement effectively.

Spinrobin crossed his legs with a fluttering motion, hastily. "As you
advertised," he suggested.

The clergyman bowed.

"My efforts to find the right man," continued the enthusiast, leaning
back in his chair, "have now lasted a year. I have had a dozen men down
here, each on a month's trial. None of them suited. None had the
requisite quality of voice. With a single exception, none of them could
stand the loneliness, the seclusion; and without exception, all of them
were too worldly to make sacrifices. It was the salary they wanted. The
majority, moreover, confused imagination with fancy, and courage with
mere audacity. And, most serious of all, not one of them passed the test
of--Miriam. She harmonized with none of them. They were discords one and
all. You, Mr. Spinrobin, are the first to win acceptance. The instant she
heard your name she cried for you. And she knows. She sings the soprano.
She took you into the chord."

"I hope indeed--" stammered the flustered and puzzled secretary, and then
stopped, blushing absurdly. "You claim for me far more than I should dare
to claim for myself," he added. The reference to Miriam delighted him,
and utterly destroyed his judgment. He longed to thank the girl for
having approved him. "I'm glad my voice--er--suits your--chord." In his
heart of hearts he understood something of what Mr. Skale was driving at,
yet was half-ashamed to admit it even to himself. In this twentieth
century it all seemed so romantic, mystical, and absurd. He felt it was
all half-true. If only he could have run back into that great "mental
prairie" of his boyhood days it might all have been _quite_ true.

"Precisely," continued Mr. Skale, bringing him back to reality,
"precisely. And now, before I tell you more, you will forgive my asking
you one or two personal questions, I'm sure. We must build securely as we
go, leaving nothing to chance. The grandeur and importance of my
experiments demand it. Afterwards," and his expression changed to a
sudden softness in a way that was characteristic of the man, "you must
feel free to put similar questions to me, as personal and direct as you
please. I wish to establish a perfect frankness between us at the start."

"Thank you, Mr. Skale. Of course--er--should anything occur to me to
ask--" A momentary bewilderment, caused by the great visage so close to
his own, prevented the completion of the sentence.

"As to your beliefs, for instance," the clergyman resumed abruptly,
"your religious beliefs, I mean. I must be sure of you on that ground.
What are you?"

"Nothing--I think," Spinrobin replied without hesitation, remembering how
his soul had bounced its way among the various creeds since Cambridge,
and arrived at its present state of Belief in Everything, yet without any
definite label. "Nothing in particular. Nominally, though--a Christian."

"You believe in a God?"

"A Supreme Intelligence, most certainly," was the emphatic reply.

"And spirits?"

Spinrobin hesitated. He was a very honest soul.

"Other life, let me put it," the clergyman helped him; "other beings
besides ourselves?"

"I have often felt--wondered, rather," he answered carefully, "whether
there might not be other systems of evolution besides humanity. Such
extraordinary Forces come blundering into one's life sometimes, and one
can't help wondering where they come from. I have never formulated any
definite beliefs, however--"

"Your world is not a blind chaos, I mean?" Mr. Skale put gravely to him,
as though questioning a child.

"No, no, indeed. There's order and system--"

"In which you personally count for something of value?" asked the
other quickly.

"I like to think so," was the apologetic reply. "There's something that
includes me somewhere in a purpose of very great importance--only, of
course, I've got to do my part, and--"

"Good," Mr. Skale interrupted him. "And now," he asked softly, after
a moment's pause, leaning forward, "what about death? Are you afraid
of death?"

Spinrobin started visibly. He began to wonder where this extraordinary
catechism was going to lead. But he answered at once: he had thought out
these things and knew where he stood.

"Only of its possible pain," he said, smiling into the bearded visage
before him. "And an immense curiosity, of course--"

"It does not mean extinction for you--going out like the flame of a
candle, for instance?"

"I have never been able to believe _that_, Mr. Skale. I continue
somewhere and somehow--forever."

The cross-examination puzzled him more and more, and through it, for the
first time, he began to feel dimly, ran a certain strain of something not
quite right, not permissible in the biggest sense. It was not the
questions themselves that produced this odd and rather disquieting
impression, but the fact that Mr. Skale was preparing the ground with
such extraordinary thoroughness. This conversation was the first swell,
as it were, rolling mysteriously in upon him from the ocean in whose
deeps the great Experiment lay buried. Forces, tidal in strength, oceanic
in volume, shrouded it just now, but he already felt them. They reached
him through the person of the clergyman. It was these forces playing
through his personality that Spinrobin had been aware of the first moment
they met on the station platform, and had "sensed" even more strongly
during the walk home across the mountains.

Behind the play of these darker impressions, as yet only vague and
ambiguous, there ran in and out among his thoughts the vein of something
much sweeter. Miriam, with her large grey eyes and silvery voice, was
continually peeping in upon his mind. He wondered where she was and what
she was doing in the big, lonely house. He wished she could have been in
the room to hear his answers and approve them. He felt incomplete without
her. Already he thought of her as the melody to which he was the
accompaniment, two things that ought not to be separated.

"My point is," Mr. Skale continued, "that, apart from ordinary human
ties, and so forth, you have no intrinsic terror of death--of losing your
present body?"

"No, no," was the reply, more faintly given than the rest. "I love my
life, but--but--" he looked about him in some confusion for the right
words, still thinking of Miriam--"but I look forward, Mr. Skale; I look
forward." He dropped back into the depths of his armchair and puffed
swiftly at the end of his extinguished cigarette, oblivious of the fact
that no smoke came.

"The attitude of a brave man," said the clergyman with approval. Then,
looking straight into the secretary's blue eyes, he added with increased
gravity: "And therefore it would not be immoral of me to expose you to an
experiment in which the penalty of a slip would be--death? Or you would
not shrink from it yourself, provided the knowledge to be obtained seemed
worth while?"

"That's right, sir--Mr. Skale, I mean; that's right," came the answer
after an imperceptible pause.

The result of the talk seemed to satisfy the clergyman. "You must think
my questions _very_ peculiar," he said, the sternness of his face
relaxing a little, "but it was necessary to understand your exact
position before proceeding further. The gravity of my undertaking demands
it. However, you must not let my words alarm you." He waited a moment,
reflecting deeply. "You must regard them, if you will, as a kind of
test," he resumed, searching his companion's face with eagle eyes, "the
beginning of a series of tests in which your attitude to Miriam and hers
to you, so far as that goes, was the first."

"Oh, that's all right, Mr. Skale," was his inadequate rejoinder; for the
moment the name of the girl was introduced his thoughts instantly
wandered out to find her. The way the clergyman pronounced it increased
its power, too, for no name he uttered sounded ordinary. There seemed a
curious mingling in the resonant cavity of his great mouth of the
fundamental note and the overtones.

"Yes, you have the kind of courage that is necessary," Mr. Skale was
saying, half to himself, "the modesty that forgets self, and the
unworldly attitude that is essential. With your help I may encompass
success; and I consider myself wonderfully fortunate to have found you,
wonderfully fortunate...."

"I'm glad," murmured Spinrobin, thinking that so far he had not learned
anything very definite about his duties, or what it was he had to do to
earn so substantial a salary. Truth to tell, he did not bother much about
that part of it. He was conscious only of three main desires: to pass the
unknown tests, to learn the nature of Mr. Skale's discovery, with the
experiment involved, and--to be with Miriam as much as possible. The
whole affair was so unusual that he had already lost the common standards
of judging. He let the sliding platform take him where it would, and he
flattered himself that he was not fool enough to mistake originality for
insanity. The clergyman, dreamer and enthusiast though he might be, was
as sane as other men, saner than most.

"I hope to lead you little by little to what I have in view," Mr. Skale
went on, "so that at the end of our trial month you will have learned
enough to enable you to form a decision, yet not enough to--to use my
knowledge should you choose to return to the world."

It was very frank, but the secretary did not feel offended. He accepted
the explanation as perfectly reasonable. In his mind he knew full well
what his choice would be. This was the supreme adventure he had been so
long a-seeking. No ordinary obstacle could prevent his accepting it.


II

There came a pause of some length, in which Spinrobin found nothing
particular to say. The lamp gurgled; the coals fell softly into the
fender. Then suddenly Mr. Skale rose and stood with his back to the
grate. He gazed down upon the small figure in the chair. He towered
there, a kindly giant, enthusiasm burning in his eyes like lamps. His
voice was very deep, his manner more solemn than before when he spoke.

"So far, so good," he said, "and now, with your permission, Mr.
Spinrobin, I should like to go a step further. I should like to
take--your note."

"My note?" exclaimed the other, thinking he had not heard correctly.

"Your sound, yes," repeated the clergyman.

"My sound!" piped the little man, vastly puzzled, his voice shrill with
excitement. He dodged about in the depths of his big leather chair, as
though movement might bring explanation.

Mr. Skale watched him calmly. "I want to get the vibrations of your
voice, and then see what pattern they produce in the sand," he said.

"Oh, in the sand, yes; quite so," replied the secretary. He remembered
how the vibrations of an elastic membrane can throw dry sand, loosely
scattered upon its surface, into various floral and geometrical figures.
Chladni's figures, he seemed to remember, they were called after their
discoverer. But Mr. Skale's purpose in the main, of course, escaped him.

"You don't object?"

"On the contrary, I am greatly interested." He stood up on the mat beside
his employer.

"I wish to make _quite_ sure," the clergyman added gravely, "that your
voice, your note, is what I think it is--accurately in harmony with
mine and Miriam's and Mrs. Mawle's. The pattern it makes will help to
prove this."

The secretary bowed in perplexed silence, while Mr. Skale crossed the
room and took a violin from its case. The golden varnish of its ribs and
back gleamed in the lamplight, and when the clergyman drew the bow across
the strings to tune it, smooth, mellow sounds, soft and resonant as
bells, filled the room. Evidently he knew how to handle the instrument.
The notes died away in a murmur.

"A Guarnerius," he explained, "and a perfect pedigree specimen; it has
the most sensitive structure imaginable, and carries vibrations almost
like a human nerve. For instance, while I speak," he added, laying the
violin upon his companion's hand, "you will feel the vibrations of my
voice run through the wood into your palm."

"I do," said Spinrobin. It trembled like a living thing.

"Now," continued Mr. Skale, after a pause, "what I first want is to
receive the vibrations of your own voice in the same way--into my very
pulses. Kindly read aloud steadily while I hold it. Stop reading when I
make a sign. I'll nod, so that the vibrations of my voice won't
interfere." And he handed a notebook to him with quotations entered
neatly in his own handwriting, selected evidently with a purpose, and all
dealing with sound, music, as organized sound, and names. Spinrobin read
aloud; the first quotation from Meredith he recognized, but the others,
and the last one, discussing names, were new to him:--

"But _listen in the thought_; so may there come
Conception of a newly-added chord,
Commanding space beyond where ear has home.

"Everything that the sun shines upon sings or can be made to sing, and
can be heard to sing. Gases, impalpable powders, and woolen stuffs, in
common with other non-conductors of sound, give forth notes of different
pitches when played upon by an intermittent beam of white light. Colored
stuffs will sing in lights of different colors, but refuse to sing in
others. The polarization of light being now accomplished, light and sound
are known to be alike. Flames have a modulated voice and can be made to
sing a definite melody. Wood, stone, metal, skins, fibers, membranes,
every rapidly vibrating substance, _all have in them the potentialities
of musical sound_.

"Radium receives its energy from, and responds to, radiations which
traverse all space--as piano strings respond to sounds in unison with
their notes. Space is all a-quiver with waves of radiant energy. We
vibrate in sympathy with a few strings here and there--with the tiny
X-rays, actinic rays, light waves, heat waves, and the huge
electromagnetic waves of Hertz and Marconi; but there are great spaces,
numberless radiations, to which we are stone deaf. Some day, a thousand
years hence, we shall know the full sweep of this magnificent harmony.

"Everything in nature has its name, and he who has the power to call a
thing by its proper name can make it subservient to his will; for its
proper name is not the arbitrary name given to it by man, but the
expression of the totality of its powers and attributes, because the
powers and attributes of each Being are intimately connected with its
means of expression, and between both exists the most exact proportion in
regard to measure, time, and condition."

The meaning of the four quotations, as he read them, plunged down into
him and touched inner chords very close to his own beliefs. Something of
his own soul, therefore, passed into his voice as he read. He read, that
is to say, with authority.

A nod from Mr. Skale stopped him just as he was beginning a fifth
passage. Raising the vibrating instrument to his ear, the clergyman first
listened a moment intently. Then he quickly had it under his chin, beard
flowing over it like water, and the bow singing across the strings. The
note he played--he drew it out with that whipping motion of the bow only
possible to a loving expert--was soft and beautiful, long drawn out with
a sweet singing quality. He took it on the G string with the second
finger--in the "fourth position." It thrilled through him, Spinrobin
declares, most curiously and delightfully. It made him happy to hear it.
It was very similar to the singing vibrations he had experienced when
Miriam gazed into his eyes and spoke his name.

"Thank you," said Mr. Skale, and laid the violin down again. "I've got
the note. You're E flat."

"E flat!" gasped Spinrobin, not sure whether he was pleased or
disappointed.

"That's your sound, yes. You're E flat--just as I thought, just as I
hoped. You fit in exactly. It seems too good to be true!" His voice began
to boom again, as it always did when he was moved. He was striding about,
very alert, very masterful, pushing the furniture out of his way, his
eyes more luminous than ever. "It's magnificent." He stopped abruptly and
looked at the secretary with a gaze so enveloping that Spinrobin for an
instant lost his bearings altogether. "It means, my dear Spinrobin," he
said slowly, with a touch of solemnity that woke an involuntary shiver
deep in his listener's being, "that you are destined to play a part, and
an important part, in one of the grandest experiments ever dreamed of by
the heart of man. For the first time since my researches began twenty
years ago I now see the end in sight."

"Mr. Skale--that _is_ something--indeed," was all the little man could
find to say.

There was no reason he could point to why the words should have produced
a sense of chill about his heart. It was only that he felt again the huge
groundswell of this vast unknown experiment surging against him, lifting
him from his feet--as a man might feel the Atlantic swells rise with him
towards the stars before they engulfed him forever. It seemed getting a
trifle out of hand, this adventure. Yet it was what he had always longed
for, and his courage must hold firm. Besides, Miriam was involved in it
with him. What could he ask better than to risk his insignificant
personality in some gigantic, mad attempt to plumb the Unknown, with that
slender, little pale-faced Beauty by his side? The wave of Mr. Skale's
enthusiasm swept him away deliciously.

"And now," he cried, "we'll get your Pattern too. I no longer have any
doubts, but none the less it will be a satisfaction to us both to see it.
It must, I'm sure, harmonize with ours; it must!"

He opened a cupboard drawer and produced a thin sheet of glass, upon
which he next poured some finely powdered sand out of a paper bag. It
rattled, dry and faint, upon the smooth, hard surface. And while he did
this, he talked rapidly, boomingly, with immense enthusiasm.

"All sounds," he said, half to himself, half to the astonished secretary,
"create their own patterns. Sound builds; sound destroys; and invisible
sound-vibrations affect concrete matter. For all sounds produce
forms--the forms that correspond to them, as you shall now see. Within
every form lies the silent sound that first called it into view--into
visible shape--into being. Forms, shapes, bodies are the vibratory
activities of _sound made visible_."

"My goodness!" exclaimed Spinrobin, who was listening like a man in a
dream, but who caught the violence of the clergyman's idea none the less.

"Forms and bodies are--_solidified Sound_," cried the clergyman in
italics.

"You say something extraordinary," exclaimed the commonplace Spinrobin in
his shrill voice. "Marvelous!" Vaguely he seemed to remember that
Schelling had called architecture "frozen music."

Mr. Skale turned and looked at him as a god might look at an
insect--that he loved.

"Sound, Mr. Spinrobin," he said, with a sudden and effective lowering of
his booming voice, "is the original divine impulsion behind
nature--communicated to language. It is--creative!"

Then, leaving the secretary with this nut of condensed knowledge to crack
as best he could, the clergyman went to the end of the room in three
strides. He busied himself for a moment with something upon the wall;
then he suddenly turned, his great face aglow, his huge form erect,
fixing his burning eyes upon his distracted companion.

"In the Beginning," he boomed solemnly, in tones of profound conviction,
"was--the _Word_." He paused a moment, and then continued, his voice
filling the room to the very ceiling. "At the Word of God--at the thunder
of the Voice of God, worlds leaped into being!" Again he paused. "Sound,"
he went on, the whole force of his great personality in the phrase, "was
the primordial, creative energy. A sound can call a form into existence.
Forms are the Sound-Figures of archetypal forces--the Word made Flesh."
He stopped, and moved with great soft strides about the room.

Spinrobin caught the words full in the face. For a space he could not
measure--considerably less than a second, probably--the consciousness of
something unutterably immense, unutterably flaming, rushed tumultuously
through his mind, with wings that bore his imagination to a place where
light was--dazzling, white beyond words. He felt himself tossed up to
Heaven on the waves of a great sea, as the body of strange belief behind
the clergyman's words poured through him.... For somewhere, behind the
incoherence of the passionate language, burned the blaze of a true
thought at white heat--could he but grasp it through the stammering
utterance.

Then, with equal swiftness, it passed. His present surroundings came
back. He dropped with a dizzy rush from awful spaces ... and was aware
that he was merely--standing on the black, woolly mat before the fire
watching the movements of his new employer, that his pumps were bright
and pointed, his head just level with a dark marble mantelpiece. Dazed,
and a trifle breathless he felt; and at the back of his disordered mind
stirred a schoolboy's memory that the Pythagoreans believed the
universe to have been called out of chaos by Sound, Number, and
Harmony--or something to that effect.... But these huge, fugitive
thoughts that tore through him refused to be seized and dealt with. He
staggered a little, mentally; then, with a prodigious effort, controlled
himself--and watched.


III

Mr. Skale, he saw, had fastened the little sheet of glass by its four
corners to silken strings hanging from the ceiling. The glass plate hung,
motionless and horizontal, in the air with its freight of sand. For
several minutes the clergyman played a series of beautiful modulations in
double-stopping upon the violin. In these the dominating influence was E
flat. Spinrobin was not musical enough to describe it more accurately
than this. Only, with greater skill than he knows, he mentions how Skale
drew out of that fiddle the peculiarly intimate and searching tones by
which strings can reach the spiritual center of a man and make him
respond to delicate vibrations of thoughts beyond his normal gamut....

Spinrobin, listening, understood that he was a greater man than he
knew....

And the sand on the glass sheet, he next became aware, was shifting,
moving, dancing. He heard the tiny hissing and rattling of the dry
grains. It was uncommonly weird. This visible and practical result
made the clergyman's astonishing words seem true and convincing. That
moving sand brought sanity, yet a certain curious terror of the
unknown into it all.

A minute later Mr. Skale stopped playing and beckoned to him.

"See," he said quietly, pointing to the arrangement the particles of
sand had assumed under the influence of the vibrations. "There's your
pattern--your sound made visible. That's your utterance--the Note you
substantially represent and body forth in terms of matter."

The secretary stared. It was a charming but very simple pattern the lines
of sand had assumed, not unlike the fronds of a delicate fern growing out
of several small circles round the base.

"So that's my note--made visible!" he exclaimed under his breath. "It's
delightful; it's quite exquisite."

"That's E flat," returned Mr. Skale in a whisper, so as not to disturb
the pattern; "if I altered the note, the pattern would alter too. E
natural, for instance, would be different. Only, luckily, you are E
flat--just the note we want. And now," he continued, straightening
himself up to his full height, "come over and see mine and Miriam's and
Mrs. Mawle's, and you'll understand what I meant when I said that yours
would harmonize." And in a glass case across the room they examined a
number of square sheets of glass with sand upon them in various patterns,
all rendered permanent by a thin coating of a glue-like transparent
substance that held the particles in position.

"There you see mine and Miriam's and Mrs. Mawle's," he said, stooping to
look. "They harmonize most beautifully, you observe, with your own."

It was, indeed, a singular and remarkable thing. The patterns, though all
different, yet combined in some subtle fashion impossible of analysis to
form a complete and well-proportioned Whole--a design--a picture. The
patterns of the clergyman and the housekeeper provided the base and
foreground, those of Miriam and the secretary the delicate
superstructure. The girl's pattern, he noted with a subtle pleasure, was
curiously similar to his own, but far more delicate and waving. Yet,
whereas his was floral, hers was stellar in character; that of the
housekeeper was spiral, and Mr. Skale's he could only describe as a
miniature whirlwind of very exquisite design rising out of apparently
three separate centers of motion.

"If I could paint over them the color each shade of sound represents,"
Mr. Skale resumed, "the tint of each _timbre_, or _Klangfarbe_, as the
Germans call it, you would see better still how we are all grouped
together there into a complete and harmonious whole."

Spinrobin looked from the patterns to his companion's great face bending
there beside him. Then he looked back again at the patterns. He could
think of nothing quite intelligible to say. He noticed more clearly every
minute that these dainty shapes of sand, stellar, spiral, and floral,
stood to one another in certain definite proportions, in a rising and
calculated ratio of singular beauty.

"There, before you, lies a true and perfect chord made visible," the
clergyman said in tones thrilling with satisfaction, "--three notes in
harmony with the fundamental sound, myself, and with each other. My dear
fellow, I congratulate you, I congratulate you."

"Thank you very much, indeed," murmured Spinrobin. "I don't quite
understand it all yet, but it's--it's extraordinarily fascinating and
wonderful."

Mr. Skale said nothing, and Spinrobin drifted back to his big armchair. A
deep silence pervaded the room for the space of several minutes. In the
heart of that silence lay the mass of direct and vital questions the
secretary burned, yet was afraid, to ask. For such was the plain truth;
he yearned to know, yet feared to hear. The Discovery and the Experiment
of this singular man loomed already somewhat vast and terrible; the
adjective that had suggested itself before returned to him--"not
permissible." ... Of Mr. Skale himself he had no sort of fear, though a
growing and uncommon respect, but of the purpose Mr. Skale had in view
he caught himself thinking more and more, yet without obvious reason,
with a distinct shrinking almost amounting to dismay. But for the fact
that so sweet and gentle a creature as Miriam was traveling the same path
with him, this increased sense of caution would have revealed itself
plainly for what it was--Fear....

"I am deeply interested, Mr. Skale," he said at length, breaking first
the silence, "and sympathetic too, I assure you; only--you will forgive
me for saying it--I am, as yet, still rather in the dark as to where all
this is to lead--" The clergyman's eyes, fixed straight upon his own,
again made it difficult to finish the sentence as he wished.

"Necessarily so, because I can only lead you to my discovery step by
step," replied the other steadily. "I wish you to be thoroughly prepared
for anything that may happen, so that you can deal intelligently with
results that might otherwise overwhelm you."

"Overwhelm--?" faltered his listener.

"_Might_, I said. Note carefully my use of words, for they are accurately
chosen. Before I can tell you all I must submit you, for your own sake,
to certain tests--chiefly to the test of Alteration of Form by Sound. It
is somewhat--er--alarming, I believe, the first time. You must be
thoroughly accustomed to these astonishing results before we dare to
approach the final Experiment; so that you will not tremble. For there
can be no rehearsal. The great Experiment can only be made once ... and I
must be as sure as possible that you will feel no terror in the face of
the Unknown."


IV

Spinrobin listened breathlessly. He hesitated a moment after the other
stopped speaking, then slewed round on his slippery chair and faced him.

"I can understand," he began, "why you want imagination, but you spoke of
courage too? I mean,--is there any immediate cause for alarm? Any
personal danger, for instance, _now_?" For the clergyman's weighty
sentences had made him realize in a new sense the loneliness of his
situation here among these desolate hills. He would appreciate some
assurance that his life was not to be trifled with before he lost the
power to withdraw if he wished to do so.

"None whatever," replied Mr. Skale with decision, "there is no question
at all of physical personal injury. You must trust me and have a little
patience." His tone and manner were exceedingly grave, yet at the same
time inspired confidence.

"I do," said Spinrobin honestly.

Another pause fell between them, longer than the rest; it was broken by
the clergyman. He spoke emphatically, evidently weighing his words with
the utmost care.

"This Chord," he said simply--yet, for all the simplicity, there ran to
and fro behind his words the sense of unlawful and immense forces
impending--"I need for a stupendous experiment with sound, an experiment
which will lead in turn towards a yet greater and final one. There is no
harm in your knowing that. To produce a certain transcendent result I
want a complex sound--a chord, but a complete and perfect chord in which
each note is sure of itself and absolutely accurate."

He waited a moment. There was utter silence about them in the room.
Spinrobin held his breath.

"No instrument can help me; the notes must be human," he resumed in a
lower voice, "and the utterers--pure. For the human voice can produce
sounds 'possessing in some degree the characteristics not only of all
musical instruments, but of all sounds of whatever description.' By means
of this chord I hope to utter a certain sound, a certain _name_, of which
you shall know more hereafter. But a name, as you surely know, need not
be composed of one or two syllables only; a whole symphony may be a name,
and a whole orchestra playing for days, or an entire nation chanting for
years, may be required to pronounce the beginning merely of--of certain
names. Yours, Robert Spinrobin, for instance, I can pronounce in a
quarter of a second; but there may be names so vast, so mighty, that
minutes, days, years even, may be necessary for their full utterance.
There may be names, indeed, which can never be known, for they could
never be uttered--_in time_. For the moment I am content simply to drop
this thought into your consciousness; later you shall understand more. I
only wish you to take in now that I need this perfect chord for the
utterance in due course of a certain complex and stupendous name--the
invocation, that is, of a certain complex and stupendous Force!"

"I think I understand," whispered the other, afraid to interrupt more.

"And the difficulty I have experienced in finding the three notes has
been immense. I found Mrs. Mawle--alto; then Miriam I found at birth and
trained her--soprano; and now I have found you, Mr. Spinrobin, and my
chord, with myself as bass, is complete. Your note and Miriam's, soprano
and tenor, are closer than the relations between the other notes, and a
tenor has accordingly been most difficult to find. You can now understand
the importance of your being sympathetic to each other."

Spinrobin's heart burned within him as he listened. He began to grasp
some sweet mystical meaning in the sense of perfect companionship the
mere presence of the girl inspired. They were the upper notes in the same
chord together, linked in a singing and harmonious relation, the one
necessary to the other. Moreover, in the presence of Mr. Skale and the
housekeeper, bass and alto in the full chord, their completeness was
still more emphasized, and they knew their fullest life. The adventure
promised to be amazingly seductive. He would learn practically the
strange truth that to know the highest life Self must be lost and merged
in something bigger. And was this not precisely what he had so long been
seeking--escape from his own insignificance?

"And--er--the Hebrew that you require of me, Mr. Skale?" he asked,
returning to practical considerations.

"Our purposes require a certain knowledge of Hebrew," he answered without
hesitation or demur, "because that ancient language and the magical
resources of sound are profoundly linked. In the actual sounds of many of
the Hebrew letters lies a singular power, unguessed by the majority,
undivined especially, of course, by the mere scholar, but available for
the pure in heart who may discover how to use their extraordinary values.
They constitute, in my view at least, a remnant of the original Chaldaean
mysteries, the lore of that magic which is older than religion. The
secret of this knowledge lies in the _psychic values of sound_; for
Hebrew, the Hebrew of the Bahir, remains in the hierarchy of languages a
direct channel to the unknown and inscrutable forces; and the knowledge
of mighty and supersensual things lies locked up in the correct utterance
of many of its words, letters and phrases. Its correct utterance, mark
well. For knowledge of the most amazing and terrible kind is there,
waiting release by him who knows, and who greatly dares.

"And you shall later learn that sound is power. The Hebrew alphabet you
must know intimately, and the intricate association of its letters with
number, color, harmony and geometrical form, all of which are but
symbols of the Realities at the very roots of life. The Hebrew alphabet,
Mr. Spinrobin, is a 'discourse in methods of manifestation, of
formation.' In its correct pronunciation lies a way to direct knowledge
of divine powers, and to conditions beyond this physical existence."

The clergyman's voice grew lower and lower as he proceeded, and the
conviction was unavoidable that he referred to things whereof he had
practical knowledge. To Spinrobin it was like the lifting of a great
veil. As a boy he had divined something of these values of sound and
name, but with the years this knowledge had come to seem fantastic and
unreal. It now returned upon him with the force of a terrific certainty.
That immense old inner playground of his youth, without boundaries or
horizon, rolled up before his mental vision, inviting further and
detailed discovery.

"With the language, qua language," he continued, "you need not trouble,
but the 'Names' of many things you must know accurately, and especially
the names of the so-called 'Angels'; for these are in reality Forces of
immense potency, vast spiritual Powers, Qualities, and the like, all
evocable by correct utterance of their names. This language, as you will
see, is _alive_ and divine in the true sense; its letters are the
vehicles of activities; its words, terrific formulae; and the true
pronunciation of them remains today a direct channel to divine knowledge.
In time you shall see; in time you shall know; in time you shall hear.
Mr. Spinrobin," and he thrust his great head forwards and dropped his
voice to a hushed whisper, "in time we shall all together make this
Experiment in sound which shall redeem us and make us as Gods!"

"Thank you!" gasped the secretary, swept off his feet by this torrent of
uncommon and mystical language, and passing a moist hand through his
feathery hair. He was not entirely ignorant, of course, of the alleged
use of sound in the various systems of so-called magic that have
influenced the minds of imaginative men during the history of the world.
He had heard, more or less vaguely, perhaps, but still with
understanding, about "Words of Power"; but hitherto he had merely
regarded such things as picturesque superstitions, or half-truths that
lie midway between science and imagination. Here, however, was a man in
the twentieth century, the days of radium, flying machines, wireless
telegraphy, and other invitations towards materialism, who apparently had
practical belief in the effective use of sound and in its psychic and
divine possibilities, and who was devoting all of his not inconsiderable
powers of heart and mind to their actual demonstration. It was
astonishing. It was delightful. It was incredible! And, but for the
currents of a strange and formidable fear that this conception of Skale's
audacious Experiment set stirring in his soul, Spinrobin's enthusiasm
would have been possibly as great as his own.

As it was he went up to the big clergyman and held out his hand, utterly
carried away by the strangeness of it all, caught up in a vague splendor
he did not quite understand, prepared to abandon himself utterly.

"I gather something of what you mean," he said earnestly, "if not all;
and I hope most sincerely I may prove suitable for your purpose when the
time comes. As a boy, you know, curiously enough, I always believed in
the efficacy of names and the importance of naming true. I think," he
added somewhat diffidently, looking up straight into the luminous eyes
above him, "if you will allow me to say so, I would follow you anywhere,
Mr. Skale--anywhere you cared to lead."

"'Upon him that overcometh,'" said the clergyman in that gentle voice he
sometimes used, soft as the voice of woman, "'will I write my new
name....'"

He gazed down very searchingly into the other's eyes for a minute or two,
then shook the proffered hand without another word. And so they
separated and went to bed, for it was long past midnight.




Chapter III


I

In his bedroom, though excitement banished sleep in spite of the lateness
of the hour, he was too exhausted to make any effective attempt to reduce
the confusion of his mind to order. For the first time in his life the
diary-page for the day remained blank. For a long time he sat before it
with his pencil--then sighed and put it away. A volume he might have
written, but not a page, much less a line or two. And though it was but
eight hours since he had made the acquaintance of the Rev. Philip Skale,
it seemed to him more like eight days.

Moreover, all that he had heard and seen, fantastic and strained as he
felt it to be, possibly even the product of religious mania, was
nevertheless profoundly disquieting, for mixed up with it somewhere or
other was--truth. Mr. Skale _had_ made a discovery--a giant one; it was
not all merely talk and hypnotism, the glamour of words. His great
Experiment would prove to be real and terrible. He _had_ discovered
certain uses of sound, occult yet scientific, and if he, Spinrobin,
elected to stay on, he would be obliged to play his part in the
dénouement. And this thought from the very beginning appalled while it
fascinated him. It filled him with a kind of horrible amazement. For the
object the clergyman sought, though not yet disclosed, already cast its
monstrous shadow across his path. He somehow discerned that it would deal
directly with knowledge the saner judgment of a commonplace world had
always deemed undesirable, unlawful, unsafe, dangerous to the souls that
dared attempt it, failure involving a pitiless and terrible Nemesis.

He lay in bed watching the play of the firelight upon the high ceiling,
and thinking in confused fashion of the huge clergyman with his
thundering voice, his great lambent eyes and his seductive gentleness; of
his singular speculations and his hints, half menacing, half splendid, of
things to come. Then he thought of the housekeeper with her deafness and
her withered arm, and that white peace about her face; and, lastly, of
Miriam, soft, pale beneath her dark skin, her gem-like eyes ever finding
his own, and of the intimate personal relations so swiftly established
between them....

It was, indeed, a singular household thus buried away in the heart of
these lonely mountains. The stately old mansion was just the right
setting for--for--

Unbidden into his mind a queer, new thought shot suddenly, interrupting
the flow of ideas. He never understood how or whence it came, but with
the picture of all the empty rooms in the corridor about him, he
received the sharp unwelcome impression that when Mr. Skale described the
house as empty it was really nothing of the sort. Utterly unannounced,
the uneasy conviction took possession of him that the building was
actually--populated. It was an extraordinary idea to have. There was
absolutely nothing in the way of evidence to support it. And with it
flashed across his memory echoes of that unusual catechism he had been
subjected to--in particular the questions whether he believed in
spirits,--"other life," as Skale termed it. Sinister suspicions flashed
through his imagination as he lay there listening to the ashes dropping
in the grate and watching the shadows cloak the room. Was it possible
that there were occupants of these rooms that the man had somehow evoked
from the interstellar spaces and crystallized by means of sound into form
and shape--_created?_

Something freezing swept into him from a region far beyond the world. He
shivered. These cold terrors that grip the soul suddenly without apparent
cause, whence do they come? Why, out of these rather extravagant and
baseless speculations, should have emerged this sense of throttling dread
that appalled him? And why, once again, should he have felt convinced
that the ultimate nature of the clergyman's great experiment was impious,
fraught with a kind of heavenly danger, "unpermissible?"

Spinrobin, lying there shivering in his big bed, could not guess. He only
knew that by way of relief his mind instinctively sought out Miriam, and
so found peace. Curled up in a ball between the sheets his body presently
slept, while his mind, intensely active, traveled off into that vast
inner prairie of his childhood days and called her name aloud. And
presumably she came to him at once, for his sleep was undisturbed and his
dreams uncommonly sweet, and he woke thoroughly refreshed eight hours
later, to find Mrs. Mawle standing beside his bed with thin bread and
butter and a cup of steaming tea.


II

For the rest, the new secretary fell quickly and easily into the routine
of this odd little household, for he had great powers of adaptability.
At first the promise of excitement faded. The mornings were spent in the
study of Hebrew, Mr. Skale taking great pains to instruct him in the
vibratory pronunciation (for so he termed it) of certain words, and
especially of the divine, or angelic, names. The correct utterance,
involving a kind of prolonged and sonorous vibration of the vowels,
appeared to be of supreme importance. He further taught him curious
correspondences between Sound and Number, and the attribution to these
again of certain colors. The vibrations of sound and light, as air and
ether, had intrinsic importance, it seemed, in the uttering of certain
names; all of which, however, Spinrobin learnt by rote, making neither
head nor tail of it.

That there were definite results, though, he could not deny--psychic
results; for a name uttered correctly produced one effect, and uttered
wrongly produced another ... just as a wrong note in a chord afflicts the
hearer whereas the right one blesses....

The afternoons, wet or fine, they went for long walks together about the
desolate hills, Miriam sometimes accompanying them. Their talk and
laughter echoed all over the mountains, but there was no one to hear
them, the nearest village being several miles away and the railway
station--nothing but a railway station. The isolation was severe; there
were no callers but the bi-weekly provision carts; letters had to be
fetched and newspapers were neglected.

Arrayed in fluffy tweeds, with baggy knickerbockers and heavily-nailed
boots, he trotted beside his giant companion over the moors, somewhat
like a child who expected its hand to be taken over difficult places. His
confidence had been completely won. The sense of shyness left him. He
felt that he already stood to the visionary clergyman in a relationship
that was more than secretarial. He still panted, but with enthusiasm
instead of with regret. In the background loomed always the dim sense of
the Discovery and Experiment approaching inevitably, just as in childhood
the idea of Heaven and Hell had stood waiting to catch him--real only
when he thought carefully about them. Skale was just the kind of man, he
felt, who would make a discovery, so simple that the rest of the world
had overlooked it, so tremendous that it struck at the roots of human
knowledge. He had the simple originality of genius, and a good deal of
its inspirational quality as well.

Before ten days had passed he was following him about like a dog, hanging
upon his lightest word. New currents ran through him mentally and
spiritually as the fires of Mr. Skale's vivid personality quickened his
own, and the impetus of his inner life lifted him with its more violent
momentum. The world of an ordinary man is so circumscribed, so
conventionally molded, that he can scarcely conceive of things that may
dwell normally in the mind of an extraordinary man. Adumbrations of
these, however, may throw their shadow across his field of vision.
Spinrobin was ordinary in most ways, while Mr. Skale was un-ordinary in
nearly all; and thus, living together in this intimate solitude, the
secretary got peeps into his companion's region that gradually convinced
him. With cleaned nerves and vision he began to think in ways and terms
that were new to him. Skale, like some big figure in story or legend,
moved forward into his life and waved a wand. His own smaller personality
began to expand; thoughts entered unannounced that hitherto had not even
knocked at the door, and the frontiers of his mind first wavered, then
unfolded to admit them.

The clergyman's world, whether he himself were mad or sane, was a real
world, alive, vibrating, shortly to produce practical results. Spinrobin
would have staked his very life upon it....

And, meanwhile, he made love openly--under any other conditions,
outrageously--to Miriam, whose figure of soft beauty moving silently
about the house helped to redeem it. She rendered him quiet little
services of her own accord that pleased him immensely, for occasionally
he detected her delicate perfume about his room, and he was sure it was
not Mrs. Mawle who put the fresh heather in the glass jars upon his
table, or arranged his papers with such neat precision on the desk.

Her delicate, shining little face with its wreath of dark hair, went
with him everywhere, hauntingly, possessingly; and when he kissed her,
as he did now every morning and every evening under Mr. Skale's very
eyes, it was like plunging his lips into a bed of wild flowers that no
artificial process had ever touched. Something in him sang when she was
near. She had, too, what he used to call as a boy "night eyes"--changing
after dusk into such shadowy depths that to look _at_ them was to look
beyond and through them. The sight could never rest only upon their
surface. Through her eyes, then, stretched all the delight of that old
immense play-ground ... where names clothed, described, and summoned
living realities.

His attitude towards her was odd yet comprehensible; for though his
desire was unquestionably great, it was not particularly active, probably
because he knew that he held her and that no aggressive effort was
necessary. Secure in the feeling that she belonged to him, and he to her,
he also found that he had little enough to say to her, never anything to
ask. She knew and understood it all beforehand; expression was uncalled
for. As well might the brimming kettle sing to the water "I contain you,"
or the water reply "I fill you!"

Only this was not the simile he used. In his own thoughts from the very
beginning he had used the analogy of sound--of the chord. As well might
one note feel called upon to cry to another in the same chord, "Hark! I'm
sounding with you!" as that Spinrobin should say to Miriam, "My heart
responds and sings to yours."

After a period of separation, however, he became charged with things he
wanted to say to her, all of which vanished utterly the moment they came
together. Words instantly then became unnecessary, foolish. He heard that
faint internal singing, and his own resonant response; and they merely
stayed there side by side, completely happy, everything told without
speech. This sense of blissful union enwrapped his soul. In the language
of his boyhood he had found her name; he knew her; she was his.

Yet sometimes they did talk; and their conversations, in any other
setting but this amazing one provided by the wizardry of Skale's
enthusiasm, must have seemed exquisitely ludicrous. In the room, often
with the clergyman a few feet away, reading by the fire, they would sit
in the window niche, gazing into one another's eyes, perhaps even holding
hands. Then, after a long interval of silence Mr. Skale would hear
Spinrobin's thin accents:

"You brilliant little sound! I hear you everywhere within me, chanting a
song of life!"

And Miriam's reply, thrilled and gentle:

"I'm but your perfect echo! My whole life sings with yours!"

Whereupon, kissing softly, they would separate, and Mr. Skale would cover
them mentally with his blessing.

Sometimes, too, he would send for the housekeeper and, with the aid of
the violin, would lead the four voices, his own bass included, through
the changes of various chords, for the vibratory utterance of certain
names; and the beauty of these sounds, singing the "divine names," would
make the secretary swell to twice his normal value and importance (thus
he puts it), as the forces awakened by the music poured and surged into
the atmosphere about them. Whereupon the clergyman would explain with
burning words that many a symphony of Beethoven's, a sonata of
Schumann's, or a suite of Tschaikovsky's were the Names, peaceful,
romantic or melancholy, of great spiritual Potencies, heard partially
by these masters in their moments of inspirational ecstasy. The powers
of these Beings were just as characteristic, their existence just as
real, as the simpler names of the Hebrew angels, and their psychic
influence upon the soul that heard them uttered just as sure and
individual.

"For the power of music, my dear Spinrobin, has never yet by science or
philosophy been adequately explained, and never can be until the occult
nature of sound, and its correlations with color, form, and number is
once again understood. 'Rhythm is the first law of the physical
creation,' says one, 'and music is a breaking into sound of the
fundamental rhythm of universal being.' 'Rhythm and harmony,' declares
Plato, 'find their way into the secret places of the soul.' 'It is the
manifestation,' whispers the deaf Beethoven, 'of the inner essential
nature of all that is,' or in the hint of Leibnitz, 'it is a calculation
which the soul makes unconsciously in secret.' It is 'love in search of a
name,' sang George Eliot, nearer in her intuition to the truth than all
the philosophers, since love is the dynamic of pure spirit. But I," he
continued after a pause for breath, and smiling amid the glow of his
great enthusiasm, "go beyond and behind them all into the very heart of
the secret; for you shall learn that to know the sounds of the Great
Names and to utter their music correctly shall merge yourself into the
heart of their deific natures and make you 'as the gods themselves...!'"

And Spinrobin, as he listened, noticed that a slight trembling ran
across the fabric of his normal world, as though it were about to vanish
and give place to another--a new world of divine things made utterly
simple. For many things that Skale said in this easy natural way, he
felt, were in the nature of clues and passwords, whose effect he
carefully noted upon his secretary, being intended to urge him, with a
certain violence even, into the desired region. Skale was testing him
all the time.


III

And it was about this time, more than half way through the trial month,
that the clergyman took Spinrobin, now become far more than merely
secretary, into his fuller confidence. In a series of singular
conversations, which the bewildered little fellow has reported to the
best of his ability, he explained to him something of the science of true
names. And to prove it he made two singular experiments: first he uttered
the true name of Mrs. Mawle, secondly of Spinrobin himself, with results
that shall presently be told.

These things it was necessary for him to know and understand before they
made the great Experiment. Otherwise, if unprepared, he might witness
results that would involve the loss of self-control and the failure,
therefore, of the experiment--a disaster too formidable to contemplate.

By way of leading up to this, however, he gave him some account first of
the original discovery. Spinrobin asked few questions, made few comments;
he took notes, however, of all he heard and at night wrote them up as
best he could in his diary. At times the clergyman rose and interrupted
the strange recital by moving about the room with his soft and giant
stride, talking even while his back was turned; and at times the
astonished secretary wrote so furiously that he broke his pencil with a
snap, and Mr. Skale had to wait while he sharpened it again. His inner
excitement was so great that he almost felt he emitted sparks.

The clue, it appears, came to the clergyman by mere chance, though he
admits his belief that the habits of asceticism and meditation he had
practiced for years may have made him in some way receptive to the
vision, for as a vision, it seems, the thing first presented itself--a
vision made possible by a moment of very rapid hypnosis.

An Anglican priest at the time, in charge of a small Norfolk parish, he
was a great believer in the value of ceremonial--in the use, that is, of
color, odor and sound to induce mental states of worship and
adoration--more especially, however, of sound as uttered by the voice,
the human voice being unique among instruments in that it combined the
characteristics of all other sounds. Intoning, therefore, was to him a
matter of psychic importance, and it was one summer evening, intoning, in
the chancel, that he noticed suddenly certain very curious results. The
faces of two individuals in the congregation underwent a charming and
singular change, a change which he would not describe more particularly
at the moment, since Spinrobin should presently witness it for himself.

It all happened in a flash--in less than a second, and it is probable,
he holds, that his own voice induced an instant of swift and passing
hypnosis upon himself; for as he stood there at the lectern there came
upon him a moment of keen interior lucidity in which he realized beyond
doubt or question what had happened. The use of voice, bell, or gong,
has long been known as a means of inducing the hypnotic state, and
during this almost instantaneous trance of his there came a sudden
revelation of the magical possibilities of sound-vibration. By some
chance rhythm of his intoning voice he had hit upon the exact pitch,
quality and accent which constituted the "Note" of more than one member
of the congregation before him. Those particular individuals, without
being aware of the fact, had at once responded, automatically and
inevitably. For a second he had heard, he knew, their true names! He had
unwittingly "called" them.

Spinrobin's heart leaped with excitement as he listened, for this idea of
"Naming True" carried him back to the haunted days of his childhood
clairvoyance when he had known Winky.

"I don't _quite_ understand, Mr. Skale," he put in, desirous to hear a
more detailed explanation.

"But presently you shall," was all the clergyman vouchsafed.

The clue thus provided by chance he had followed up, but by methods hard
to describe apparently. A corner of the veil, momentarily lifted, had
betrayed the value that lies in the repetition of certain sounds--the
rhythmic reiteration of syllables--in a word, of chanting or incantation.
By diving down into his subconscious region, already prepared by long
spiritual training, he gradually succeeded in drawing out further details
piece by piece, and finally by infinite practice and prayer welding them
together into an intelligible system. The science of true-naming slowly,
with the efforts of years, revealed itself. His mind slipped past the
deceit of mere sensible appearances. Clair-audiently he heard the true
inner names of things and persons....

Mr. Skale rose from his chair. With thumbs in the armholes of his
waistcoat and fingers drumming loudly on his breast he stood over the
secretary, who continued making frantic notes.

"That chance discovery, then, made during a moment's inner vision," he
continued with a grave excitement, "gave me the key to a whole world of
new knowledge, and since then I have made incredible developments. Listen
closely, Mr. Spinrobin, while I explain. And take in what you can."

The secretary laid down his pencil and notebook. He sat forward in an
attitude of intense eagerness upon the edge of his chair. He was
trembling. This strange modern confirmation of his early Heaven of wonder
before the senses had thickened and concealed it, laid bare again his
earliest world of far-off pristine glory.

"The ordinary name of a person, understand then, is merely a sound
attached to their physical appearance at birth by the parents--a
meaningless sound. It is not their true name. That, however, exists
behind it in the spiritual world, and is the accurate description of
the soul. It is the sound you express visibly before me. The Word is
the Life."

Spinrobin surreptitiously picked up his pencil; but the clergyman spied
the movement. "Never mind the notes," he said; "listen closely to me."
Spinrobin obeyed meekly.

"Your ordinary outer name, however," continued Mr. Skale, speaking with
profound conviction, "may be made a conductor to your true, inner one.
The connection between the two by a series of subtle interior links forms
gradually with the years. For even the ordinary name, if you reflect a
moment, becomes in time a sound of singular authority--inwoven with the
finest threads of your psychical being, so that in a sense you _become_
it. To hear it suddenly called aloud in the night--in a room full of
people, in the street unexpectedly--is to know a shock, however small, of
increased vitality. It touches the imagination. It calls upon the soul
built up around it."

He paused a moment. His voice boomed musically about the room, even after
he ceased speaking. Bewildered, wondering, delighted, Spinrobin drank in
every word. How well he knew it all.

"Now," resumed the clergyman, lowering his tone unconsciously, "the first
part of my discovery lies in this: that I have learned to pronounce the
ordinary names of things and people in such a way as to lead me to their
true, inner ones--"

"But," interrupted Spinrobin irrepressibly, "how in the name of--?"

"Hush!" cried Skale quickly. "Never again call upon a mighty name--in
vain. It is dangerous. Concentrate your mind upon what I now tell you,
and you shall understand a part, at least, of my discovery. As I was
saying, I have learned how to find the true name by means of the false;
and understand, if you can, that to pronounce a true name correctly means
to participate in its very life, to vibrate with its essential nature, to
learn the ultimate secret of its inmost being. For our true names are the
sounds originally uttered by the 'Word' of God when He created us, or
'called' us into Being out of the void of infinite silence, and to repeat
them correctly means literally--to--speak--with--His--Voice. It is to
speak the truth." The clergyman dropped his tone to an awed whisper.
"Words are the veils of Being; to speak them truly is to lift a corner of
the veil."

"What a glory! What a thing!" exclaimed the other under his breath,
trying to keep his mind steady, but losing control of language in the
attempt. The great sentences seemed to change the little room into a
temple where sacred things were about to reveal themselves. Spinrobin now
understood in a measure why Mr. Skale's utterance of his own name and
that of Miriam had sounded grand. Behind each he had touched the true
name and made it echo.

The clergyman's voice brought his thoughts back from distances in that
inner prairie of his youth where they had lost themselves.

"For all of us," he was repeating with rapt expression in his shining
eyes, "are Sounds in the mighty music the universe sings to God, whose
Voice it was that first produced us, and of whose awful resonance we are
echoes therefore in harmony or disharmony." A look of power passed into
his great visage. Spinrobin's imagination, in spite of the efforts that
he made, fluttered with broken wings behind the swift words. A flash of
the former terror stirred in the depths of him. The man was at the heels
of knowledge it is not safe for humanity to seek....

"Yes," he continued, directing his gaze again upon the other, "that is a
part of my discovery, though only a part, mind. By repeating your outer
name in a certain way until it disappears in the mind, I can arrive at
the real name within. And to utter it is to call upon the secret soul--to
summon it from its lair. 'I have redeemed thee; I have called thee by
name.' You remember the texts? '_I know thee by name_,' said Jehovah to
the great Hebrew magician, '_and thou art mine_.' By certain rhythms and
vibratory modulations of the voice it is possible to produce harmonics of
sound which awaken the inner name into life--and then to spell it out.
Note well, to _spell_ it,--spell--incantation--the magical use of
sound--the meaning of the Word of Power, used with such terrific effect
in the old forgotten Hebrew magic. Utter correctly the names of their
Forces, or Angels, I am teaching you daily now," he went on reverently,
with glowing eyes and intense conviction; "pronounce them with full
vibratory power that awakens all their harmonics, and you awaken also
their counterpart in yourself; you summon their strength or
characteristic quality to your aid; you introduce their powers actively
into your own psychical being. Had Jacob succeeded in discovering the
'Name' of that 'Angel' with whom he wrestled, he would have become one
with its superior power and have thus conquered it. Only, he asked
instead of commanded, and he found it not..."

"Magnificent! Splendid!" cried Spinrobin, starting from his chair,
seizing with his imagination potently stirred, this possibility of
developing character and rousing the forces of the soul.

"We shall yet call upon the Names, and see," replied Skale, placing a
great hand upon his companion's shoulder, "not aloud necessarily, but by
an inner effort of intense will which sets in vibration the finer
harmonics heard only by the poet and magician, those harmonics and
overtones which embody the psychical element in music. For the methods of
poet and magician, I tell you, my dear Spinrobin, are identical, and all
the faiths of the world are at the heels of that thought. Provided you
have faith you can--move mountains! You can call upon the very gods!"

"A most wonderful idea, Mr. Skale," faltered the other breathlessly,
"quite wonderful!" The huge sentences deafened him a little with their
mental thunder.

"And utterly simple," was the reply, "for all truth is simple."

He paced the floor like a great caged animal. He went down and leaned
against the dark bookcase, with his legs wide apart, and hands in his
coat pockets. "To name truly, you see, is to evoke, to create!" he
roared from the end of the room. "To utter as it should be uttered any
one of the Ten Words, or Creative Powers of the Deity in the old Hebrew
system, is to become master of the 'world' to which it corresponds. For
these names are still in living contact with the realities behind. It
means to vibrate with the powers that called the universe into being
and--into form."

A sort of shadowy majesty draped his huge figure, Spinrobin thought, as
he stood in semi-darkness at the end of the room and thundered forth
these extraordinary sentences with a conviction that, for the moment at
least, swept away all doubt in the mind of his listener. Dreadful ideas,
huge-footed and threatening, rushed to and fro in the secretary's mind.
He was torn away from all known anchorage, staggered, dizzy and dismayed;
yet at the same time, owing to his adventure-loving temperament, a prey
to some secret and delightful exaltation of the spirit. He was out of his
depth in great waters....

Then, quite suddenly, Mr. Skale came swiftly over to his side and
whispered in accents that were soothing in comparison:

"And think for a moment how beautiful, the huge Words by which God called
into being the worlds, and sent the perfect, rounded bodies of the
spheres spinning and singing, blazing their eternal trails of glory
through the void! How sweet the whisper that crystallized in flowers! How
tender the note that fashioned the eyes and face, say, of Miriam...."

At the name of Miriam he felt caught up and glorified, in some delightful
and inexplicable way that brought with it--peace. The power of all these
strange and glowing thoughts poured their full tide into his own rather
arid and thirsty world, frightening him with their terrific force. But
the mere utterance of that delightful name--in the way Skale uttered
it--brought confidence and peace.

"... Could we but hear them!" Skale continued, half to himself, half to
his probationer; "for the sad thing is that today the world has ears yet
cannot hear. As light is distorted by passing through a gross atmosphere,
so sound reaches us but indistinctly now, and few true names can bring
their wondrous messages of power correctly. Men, coarsening with the
materialism of the ages, have grown thick and gross with the luxury of
inventions and the diseases of modern life that develop intellect at the
expense of soul. They have lost the old inner hearing of divine sound,
and but one here and there can still catch the faint, far-off and
ineffable music."

He lifted his eyes, and his voice became low and even gentle as the
glowing words fell from his heart of longing.

"None hear now the morning stars when they sing together to the sun; none
know the chanting of the spheres! The ears of the world are stopped with
lust, and the old divine science of true-naming seems lost forever amid
the crash of engines and the noisy thunder of machinery!... Only among
flowers and certain gems are the accurate old true names still to be
found!... But we are on the track, my dear Spinrobin, we are on the
ancient trail to Power."

The clergyman closed his eyes and clasped his hands, lifting his face
upwards with a rapt expression while he murmured under his breath the
description of the Rider on the White Horse from the Book of the
Revelations, as though it held some inner meaning that his heart knew yet
dared not divulge: "And he had a Name written, that no man knew but he
himself. And he was clothed in a vesture dipped in blood: and his Name is
called The Word of God ... and he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a
name written,--'King of Kings and Lord of Lords....'"

And for an instant Spinrobin, listening to the rolling sound but not to
the actual words, fancied that a faintly colored atmosphere of deep
scarlet accompanied the vibrations of his resonant whisper and produced
in the depths of his mind this momentary effect of colored audition.

It was all very strange and puzzling. He tried, however, to keep an open
mind and struggle as best he might with these big swells that rolled
into his little pool of life and threatened to merge it in a vaster tide
than he had yet dreamed of. Knowing how limited is the world which the
senses report, he saw nothing too inconceivable in the idea that
certain persons might possess a peculiar inner structure of the spirit
by which supersensuous things can be perceived. And what more likely
than that a man of Mr. Skale's unusual caliber should belong to them?
Indeed, that the clergyman possessed certain practical powers of an
extraordinary description he was as certain as that the house was not
empty as he had at first supposed. Of neither had he proof as yet; but
proof was not long in forthcoming.




Chapter IV


I

"Then if there is so much sound about in all objects and forms--if the
whole universe, in fact, is sounding," asked Spinrobin with a naïve
impertinence not intended, but due to the reaction of his simple mind
from all this vague splendor, "why don't we hear it more?"

Mr. Skale came upon him like a boomerang from the end of the room. He was
smiling. He approved the question.

"With us the question of hearing is merely the question of wavelengths in
the air," he replied; "the lowest audible sound having a wavelength of
sixteen feet, the highest less than an inch. Some people can't hear the
squeak of a bat, others the rumble of an earthquake. I merely affirm that
in every form sleeps the creative sound that is its life and being. The
ear is a miserable organ at best, and the majority are far too gross to
know clair-audience. What about sounds, for instance, that have a
wavelength of a hundred, a thousand miles on the one hand, or a millionth
part of an inch on the other?"

"A thousand miles! A millionth of an inch?" gasped the other, gazing at
his interlocutor as though he was some great archangel of sound.

"Sound for most of us lies between, say, thirty and many thousand
vibrations per second--the cry of the earthquake and the cricket; it is
our limitation that renders the voice of the dewdrop and the voice of the
planet alike inaudible. We even mistake a measure of noise--like a
continuous millwheel or a river, say--for silence, when in reality there
is no such thing as perfect silence. Other life is all the time singing
and thundering about us," he added, holding up a giant finger as though
to listen. "To the imperfection of our ears you may ascribe the fact that
we do not hear the morning stars shouting together."

"Thank you, yes, I quite see now," said the secretary. "To name truly is
to hear truly." The clergyman's words seemed to hold a lamp to a vast
interior map in his mind that was growing light. A new dawn was breaking
over the great mental prairie where he wandered as a child. "To find the
true name of anything," he added, "you mean, is to hear its sound, its
individual note as it were?" Incredible perspectives swam into his ken,
hitherto undreamed of.

"Not 'as it were,'" boomed the other, "You _do_ hear it. After which the
next step is to utter it, and so absorb its force into your own being by
synchronous vibration--union mystical and actual. Only, you must be sure
you utter it correctly. To pronounce incorrectly is to call it
incompletely into life and form--to distort and injure it, and yourself
with it. To make it untrue--a lie."

They were standing in the dusk by the library window, watching the veil
of night that slowly covered the hills. The flying horizons of the moors
had slipped away into the darkness.

The stars were whispering together their thoughts of flame and speed. At
the back of the room sat Miriam among the shadows, like some melody
hovering in a musician's mind till he should call her forth. It was close
upon the tea hour. Behind them Mrs. Mawle was busying herself with lamps
and fire. Mr. Skale, turning at the sound of the housekeeper, motioned to
the secretary to approach, then stooped down and spoke low in his ear:

"With many names I had great difficulty," he whispered. "With hers, for
instance," indicating the housekeeper behind them. "It took me five
years' continuous research to establish her general voice-outline, and
even then I at first only derived a portion of her name. And in uttering
it I made such errors of omission and pronunciation that her physical
form suffered, and she emerged from the ordeal in disorder. You have, of
course, noticed her disabilities.... But, later, though only in
stammering fashion, I called upon her all complete, and she has since
known a serene blessedness and a sense of her great value in the music of
life that she never knew before." His face lit up as he spoke of it. "For
in that moment she found herself. She heard her true name, God's creative
sound, thunder through her being."

Spinrobin, feeling the clergyman's forces pouring through him like a tide
at such close proximity, bowed his head. His lips were too dry to frame
words. He was thinking of the possible effects upon his own soul and body
when his name too should be "uttered." He remembered the withered arm and
the deafness. He thought, too, of that slender, ghostly figure that
haunted the house with its soft movements and tender singing. Lastly, he
remembered his strange conviction that somewhere in the great building,
possibly in his own corridor, there were other occupants, other life,
Beings of unearthly scale waiting the given moment to appear, summoned by
utterance.

"And you will understand now why it is I want a man of high courage to
help me," Skale resumed in a louder tone, standing sharply upright; "a
man careless of physical existence, and with a faith wholly beyond the
things of this world!"

"I do indeed," he managed to reply aloud, while in his thoughts he was
saying, "I will, I _must_ see it through. I won't give in!" With all his
might he resisted the invading tide of terror. Even if sad results came
later, it was something to have been sacrificed in so big a conception.

In his excitement he slipped from the edge of the windowsill, where he
was perched, and Mr. Skale, standing close in front of him, caught his
two wrists and set him upon his feet. A shock, like a rush of
electricity, ran through him. He took his courage boldly in both hands
and asked the question ever burning at the back of his mind.

"Then, this great Experiment you--we have in view," he stammered, "is to
do with the correct uttering of the names of some of the great Forces, or
Angels, and--and the assimilating of their powers into ourselves--?"

Skale rose up gigantically beside him. "No, sir," he cried, "it is
greater--infinitely greater than that. Names of mere Angels I can call
alone without the help of any one; but for the name I wish to utter a
whole chord is necessary even to compass the utterance of the opening
syllable; as I have told you already, a chord in which you share the
incalculable privilege of being the tenor note. But for the completed
syllables--the full name--!" He closed his eyes and shrugged his massive
shoulders--"I may need the massed orchestras of half the world, the
chorused voices of the entire nation--or in their place a still small
voice of utter purity crying in the wilderness! In time you shall know
fully--know, see and hear. For the present, hold your soul with what
patience and courage you may."

The words thundered about the room, so that Miriam, too, heard them.
Spinrobin trembled inwardly, as though a cold air passed him. The
suggestion of immense possibilities, vague yet terrible, overwhelmed him
again suddenly. Had not the girl at that moment moved up beside him and
put her exquisite pale face over his shoulder, with her hand upon his
arm, it is probable he would then and there have informed Mr. Skale that
he withdrew from the whole affair.

"Whatever happens," murmured Miriam, gazing into his eyes, "we go on
singing and sounding together, you and I." Then, as Spinrobin bent down
and kissed her hair, Mr. Skale put an arm round each of them and drew
them over to the tea table.

"Come, Mr. Spinrobin," he said, with his winning smile, "you must not be
alarmed, you know. You must not desert me. You are necessary to us all,
and when my Experiment is complete we shall all be as gods together. Do
not falter. There is nothing in life, remember, but to lose oneself; and
I have found a better way of doing so than any one else--by merging
ourselves into the Voice of--"

"Mr. Skale's tea has been standing more than ten minutes," interrupted
the old housekeeper, coming up behind them; "if Mr. Spinrobin will
please to let him come--" as though it was Spinrobin's fault that there
had been delay.

Mr. Skale laughed good-humouredly, as the two men, suddenly in the region
of teacups and buttered toast, looked one another in the face with a
certain confusion. Miriam, sipping her tea, laughed too, curiously.
Spinrobin felt restored to some measure of safety and sanity again. Only
the strange emotion of a few moments before still moved there unseen
among them.

"Listen, and you shall presently hear her name," the clergyman
whispered, glancing up at the other over his teacup, but Spinrobin was
crunching his toast too noisily to notice the meaning of the words fully.


II

The Stage Manager who stands behind all the scenes of life, both great
and small, had prepared the scene well for what was to follow. The
sentences about the world of inaudible sound had dropped the right kind
of suggestion into the secretary's heart. His mind still whirred with a
litter of half-digested sentences and ideas, however, and he was vividly
haunted by the actuality of truth behind them all. His whole inner being
at that moment cried "Hark!" through a hush of expectant wonder.

There they sat at tea, this singular group of human beings: Mr. Skale,
bigger than ever in his loose housesuit of black, swallowing his liquid
with noisy gulps; Spinrobin, nibbling slippery morsels of hot toast, on
the edge of his chair; Miriam, quiet and mysterious, in her corner; and
Mrs. Mawle, sedate, respectful in cap and apron, presiding over the
teapot, the whole scene cozily lit by lamp and fire--when this remarkable
new thing happened. Spinrobin declares always that it came upon him like
a drowning wave, frightening him not with any idea of injury to himself,
but with a dreadful sense of being lost and shelterless among the
immensities of a transcendent new world. Something passed into the room
that made his soul shake and flutter at the center.

His attention was first roused by a sound that he took, perhaps, to be
the wind coming down from the hills in those draughts and gusts he
sometimes heard, only to his imagination now it was a peopled wind
crying round the walls, behind whose voice he detected the great fluid
form of it--running and colored. But, with the noise, a terror that was
no ordinary terror invaded the recesses of his soul. It was the fear of
the Unknown, dreadfully multiplied.

He glanced up quickly from his teacup, and chancing to meet Miriam's eye,
he saw that she was smiling as she watched him. This sound, then, had
some special significance. At the same instant he perceived that it was
not outside but in the room, close beside him, that Mr. Skale, in fact,
was talking to the deaf housekeeper in a low and carefully modulated
tone--a tone she could not possibly have heard, however. Then he
discovered that the clergyman was not speaking actually, but repeating
her name. He was intoning it. It grew into a kind of singing chant, an
incantation.

"Sarah Mawle ... Sarah Mawle ... Sarah Mawle ..." ran through the
room like water. And, in Skale's mouth, it sounded as his own name
had sounded--different. It became in some significant way--thus
Spinrobin expresses it always--stately, important, nay, even august.
It became real. The syllables led his ear away from their normal
signification--away from the outer toward the inner. His ordinary mental
picture of the mere letters SARAHMAWLE disappeared and became merged in
something else--into something alive that pulsed and moved with
vibrations of its own. For, with the outer sound there grew up another
interior one, that finally became separate and distinct.

Now Spinrobin was well aware that the continued repetition of one's own
name can induce self-hypnotism; and he also knew that the reiteration of
the name of an object ends by making that object disappear from the mind.
"Mustard," repeated indefinitely, comes to have no meaning at all. The
mind drops behind the mere symbol of the sound into something that is
unintelligible, if not meaningless. But here it was altogether another
matter, and from the torrent of words and similes he uses to describe it,
this--a curious mixture of vividness and confusion--is apparently what he
witnessed:

For, as the clergyman's resonant voice continued quietly to utter the
name, something passed gradually into the appearance of the motherly old
housekeeper that certainly was not there before, not visible, at least,
to the secretary's eyes. Behind the fleshly covering of the body, within
the very skin and bones it seemed, there flowed with steady splendor an
effect of charging new vitality that had an air of radiating from her
face and figure with the glow and rush of increased life. A suggestion of
grandeur, genuine and convincing, began to express itself through the
humble domestic exterior of her everyday self; at first, as though some
greater personage towered shadowy behind her, but presently with a
growing definiteness that showed it to be herself and nothing separate.
The two, if two they were, merged.

Her mien, he saw, first softened astonishingly, then grew firm with an
aspect of dignity that was unbelievably beautiful. An air of peace and
joy her face had always possessed, but this was something beyond either.
It was something imposing, majestic. So perilously adjusted is the
ludicrous to the sublime, that while the secretary wondered dumbly
whether the word "housekeeper" might also in Skale's new world connote
"angel," he could have laughed aloud, had not the nobility of the
spectacle hinted at the same time that he should have wept. For the tears
of a positive worship started to his eyes at the sight.

"Sarahmawle ... Sarahmawle...." The name continued to pour itself about
him in a steady ripple, neither rising nor falling, and certainly not
audible to those deaf old ears that flanked the vigorous and unwrinkled
face. "Youth" is not the word to describe this appearance of ardent
intensity that flamed out of the form and features of the housekeeper,
for it was something utterly apart from either youth or age. Nor was it
any mere idealization of her worn and crumpled self. It was independent
of physical conditions, as it was independent of the limitations of time
and space; superb as sunshine, simple as the glory that had sometimes
touched his soul of boyhood in sleep--the white fires of an utter
transfiguration.

It was, in a word, as if the name Skale uttered had summoned to the
front, through all disguising barriers of flesh, her true and naked
spirit, that which neither ages nor dies, that which the eyes, when they
rest upon a human countenance, can never see--the Soul itself!

For the first time in his life Spinrobin, abashed and trembling, gazed
upon something in human guise that was genuinely sublime--perfect with a
stainless purity. The mere sight produced in him an exaltation of the
spirit such as he had never before experienced ... swallowing up his
first terror. In his heart of hearts, he declares, he prayed; for this
was the natural expression for an emotion of the volume and intensity
that surged within him....

How long he sat there gazing seems uncertain; perhaps minutes, perhaps
seconds only. The sense of time's passage was temporarily annihilated. It
might well have been a thousand years, for the sight somehow swept him
into eternity.... In that tearoom of Skale's lonely house among the
mountains, the warmth of an earthly fire upon his back, the light of an
earthly oil-lamp in his eyes, holding buttered toast in exceedingly
earthly fingers, he sat face to face with something that yet was not of
this earth, something majestic, spiritual and eternal ... visible
evidence of transfiguration and of "earth growing heaven...."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was, of course, stupid and clumsy of Spinrobin to drop his teacup and
let it smash noisily against the leg of the table; yet it was natural
enough, for in his ecstasy and amazement he apparently lost control of
certain muscles in his trembling fingers.... Though the change came
gradually it seemed very quick. The volume of the clergyman's voice grew
less, and as the tide of sound ebbed the countenance of the housekeeper
also slowly altered. The flames that a moment before had burned so
whitely there flickered faintly and were gone; the glory faded; the
splendor withdrew. She even seemed to dwindle in size.... She resumed her
normal appearance. Skale's voice ceased.

The incident apparently had occupied but a few moments, for Mrs. Mawle,
he realized, was gathering the plates together and fitting them into the
spaces of the crowded tea-tray with difficulty--an operation, he
remembered, she had just begun when the clergyman first began to call
upon her name.

She, clearly, had been conscious of nothing unusual. A moment later,
with her customary combination of curtsey and bow, she was gone from the
room, and Spinrobin, acting upon a strange impulse, found himself
standing upright by the table, looking wildly about him, passing his
hand through his scattered hair, and trying in vain to utter words that
should relieve his overcharged soul of the burden of glory and mystery
that oppressed it.

A pain, profoundly searching, pierced his heart. He thought of the
splendors he had just witnessed, and of the joy and peace upon those
features even when the greater wonder withdrew. He thought of the power
in the countenance of Skale, and of the shining loveliness in the face of
Miriam. Then, with a blast of bitterest disappointment, he realized the
insignificance of his own self--the earthiness of his own personality,
the dead, dull ordinariness of his own appearance. Why, oh, why, could
not all faces let the soul shine through? Why could not all identify
themselves with their eternal part, and thus learn happiness and joy? A
sense of the futile agony of life led him with an impassioned eagerness
again to the thought of Skale's tremendous visions, and of the great
Experiment that beckoned beyond. Only, once more the terror of its
possible meaning dropped upon him, and the little black serpents of fear
shot warningly across this brighter background of his hopes.

Then he was aware that Miriam had crossed the room and stood beside him,
for her delicate and natural perfume announced her even before he turned
and saw. Her soft eyes shining conveyed an irresistible appeal, and with
her came the sense of peace she always brought. She was the one thing at
that moment that could comfort and he opened his arms to her and let her
come nestling in against him, both hands finding their way up under the
lapels of his coat, all the exquisite confidence of the innocent child in
her look. Her hair came over his lips and face like flowers, but he did
not kiss her, nor could he find any words to say. To hold her there was
enough, for the touch of her healed and blessed him.

"So now you have seen her as she really is," he heard her voice against
his shoulder; "you have heard her true name, and seen a little of its
form and color!"

"I never guessed that in this world--" he stammered; then, instead of
completing the sentence, held her more tightly to him and let his face
sink deeper into the garden of her hair.

"Oh yes," she answered, and then peered up with unflinching look into his
eyes, "for that is just how I see you too--bright, splendid and eternal."

"Miriam!" It was as unexpected as a ghost and as incredible. "Me ...?"

"Of course! You see I know your true name. I see you as you are within!"

Something came to steady his swimming brain, but it was only after a
distinct effort that he realized it was the voice of Mr. Skale
addressing him. Then, gradually, as he listened, gently releasing the
girl in order to turn towards him, he understood that what he had
witnessed had been in the nature of a "test"--one of those tests he had
been warned would come--and that his attitude to it was regarded by the
clergyman with approval.

"It was a test more subtle than you know, perhaps, Mr. Spinrobin," he was
saying, "and the feelings it has roused in you are an adequate proof that
you have come well through it. As I knew you would, as I knew you would,"
he added, with evident satisfaction. "They do infinite credit both to
yourself and to our judgment in--er--accepting you."

A wave of singular emotion seemed to pass across the room from one to the
other that, catching the breathless secretary in its tide, filled him
with a high pride that he had been weighed and found worthy, then left
him cold with a sudden reaction as he realized after some delay the
import of the words Mr. Skale was next saying to him.




Chapter V


"And now you shall hear your own name called," boomed the clergyman with
enthusiasm, "and realize the beauty and importance of your own note in
the music of life."

And while Spinrobin trembled from head to toe Mr. Skale bore down upon
him and laid a hand upon his shoulder. He looked up into the clergyman's
luminous eyes. His glance next wandered down the ridge of that masterful
nose and lost itself among the flowing strands of the tangled beard. At
that moment it would hardly have surprised him to see the big visage
disappear, and to hear the Sound, of which it was the visible form, slip
into his ears with a roar.

But side by side with the vague terror of the unknown he was conscious
also of a smaller and more personal pang. For a man may envy other forms,
yet keenly resent the possible loss or alteration of his own. And he
remembered the withered arm and the deafness.

"But," he faltered, yet ashamed of his want of courage, "I don't want to
lose my present shape, or--come back--without--"

"Have no fear," exclaimed the other with decision. "Miriam and myself
have not been experimenting in vain these three weeks. We have found your
name. We know it accurately. For we are all one chord, and as I promised
you, there is no risk." He stopped, lowering his voice; and, taking the
secretary by the arm with a fatherly and possessive gesture, "Spinrobin,"
he whispered solemnly, "you shall learn the value and splendor of your
Self in the melody of the Universe--that burst of divine music! You shall
understand how closely linked you are to myself and Mrs. Mawle, but,
closest of all, to Miriam. For Miriam herself shall call your name, and
you shall hear!"

So little Miriam was to prove his executioner, or his redeemer. That was
somehow another matter. The awe with which these experiments of Mr.
Skale's inspired him ebbed considerably as he turned and saw the
appealing, wistful expression of his other examiner. Brave as a lion he
felt, yet timid as a hare; there was no idea of real resistance in him
any longer.

"I'm ready, then," he said faintly, and the girl came up softly to his
side and sought his face with a frank innocence of gaze that made no
attempt to hide her eagerness and joy. She accepted the duty with
delight, proudly conscious of its importance.

"I know thee by name and thou art mine," she murmured, taking his hand.

"It makes me happy, yet afraid," he replied in her ear, returning the
caress; and at that moment the clergyman who had gone to fetch his
violin, returned into the room with a suddenness that made them both
start--for the first time. Very slightly, with the first sign of that
modesty which comes with knowledge he had yet noticed in her, or felt
conscious of in himself, she withdrew, a wonderful flush tinging her pale
skin, then passing instantly away.

"To make you feel absolutely safe from possible disaster," Mr. Skale was
saying with a smile, "you shall have the assistance of the violin. The
pitch and rhythm shall be thus assured. There is nothing to fear."

And Miriam, equally smiling with confidence, led her friend, perplexed
and entangled as he was by the whole dream-like and confusing puzzle--led
him to the armchair she had just vacated, and then seated herself at his
feet upon a high footstool and stared into his eyes with a sweet and
irresistible directness of gaze that at once increased both his sense of
bewilderment and his confidence.

"First, you must speak my name," she said gently, yet with a note of
authority, "so that I may get the note of your voice into myself. Once or
twice will do."

He obeyed. "Miriam ... Miriam ... Miriam," he said, and watched the tiny
reflection of his own face in her eyes, her "night-eyes." The same moment
he began to lose himself. The girl's lips were moving. She had picked up
his voice and merged her own with it, so that when he ceased speaking her
tones took up the note continuously. There was no break. She carried on
the sound that he had started.

And at the same moment, out of the corner of his eye, he perceived that
the violin had left its case and was under the clergyman's beard. The bow
undulated like a silver snake, drawing forth long, low notes that flowed
about the room and set the air into rhythmical vibrations. These
vibrations, too, carried on the same sound. Spinrobin gave a little
uncontrollable jump; he felt as if he had uttered his own death-warrant
and that this instrument proclaimed the sentence. Then the feeling of
dread lessened as he heard Mr. Skale's voice mingling with the violin,
combining exquisitely with the double-stopping he was playing on the two
lower strings; for the music, as the saying is, "went through him" with
thrills of power that plunged into unknown depths of his soul and lifted
him with a delightful sense of inner expansion to a state where fear was
merged in joy.

For some minutes the voice of Miriam, murmuring so close before him that
he could feel her very breath, was caught in the greater volume of the
violin and bass. Then, suddenly, both Skale and violin ceased together,
and he heard her voice emerge alone. With a little rush like that of a
singing flame, it dropped down on to the syllables of his name--his ugly
and ridiculous outer and ordinary name:

"ROBERTSPINROBIN ... ROBERTSPINROBIN ..." he heard; and the sound flowed
and poured about his ears like the murmur of a stream through summer
fields. And, almost immediately, with it there came over him a sense of
profound peace and security. Very soon, too, he lost the sound
itself--did not hear it, as sound, for it grew too vast and enveloping.
The sight of Miriam's face also he lost. He grew too close to her to see
her, as object. Both hearing and sight merged into something more
intimate than either. He and the girl were together--one consciousness,
yet two aspects of that one consciousness.

They were two notes singing together in the same chord, and he had lost
his little personality, only to find it again, increased and redeemed, in
an existence that was larger.

It seemed to Spinrobin--for there is only his limited phraseology to draw
from--that the incantation of her singing tones inserted itself between
the particles of his flesh and separated them, ran with his blood,
covered his skin with velvet, flowed and purred in the very texture of
his mind and thoughts. Something in him swam, melted, fused. His inner
kingdom became most gloriously extended....

His soul loosened, then began to soar, while something at the heart of
him that had hitherto been congealed now turned fluid and alive. He was
light as air, swift as fire. His thoughts, too, underwent a change: rose
and fell with the larger rhythm of new life as the sound played upon
them, somewhat as wind may rouse the leaves of a tree, or call upon the
surface of a deep sea to follow it in waves. Terror was nowhere in his
sensations; but wonder, beauty and delight ran calling to one another
from one wave to the next, as this tide of sound moved potently in the
depths of his awakening higher consciousness. The little reactions of
ordinary life spun away from him into nothingness as he listened to a
volume of sound that was oceanic in power and of an infinite splendor:
the creative sound by which God first called him into form and
being--the true inner name of his soul.

...Yet he no longer consciously listened... no longer, perhaps,
consciously heard. The name of the soul can sound only in the soul, where
no speech is, nor any need for such stammering symbols. Spinrobin for the
first time knew his true name, and that was enough.

It is impossible to translate into precise language this torrent of
exquisite sensation that the girl's voice awakened. In the secret
chambers of his imagination Spinrobin found the _thoughts_, perhaps, that
clothed it with intelligible description for himself, but in speaking of
it to others he becomes simply semi-hysterical, and talks a kind of
hearty nonsense. For the truth probably is that only poetry or music can
convey any portion of a mystical illumination, otherwise hopelessly
incommunicable. The outer name had acted as a conductor to the inner name
beyond. It filled the room, and filled some far vaster space that opened
out above the room, about the house, above the earth, yet at the same
time was deep, deep down within his own self. He passed beyond the
confines of the world into those sweet, haunted gardens where Cherubim
and Seraphim--vast Forces--continually do sing. It floated him off his
feet as a rising tide overtakes the little shore-pools and floats them
into its own greatness, and on the tranquil bosom of these giant swells
he rose into a state that was too calm to be ecstasy, yet too glorious to
be mere exaltation.

And as his own little note of personal aspiration soared with this vaster
music to which it belonged, he felt mounting out of himself into a
condition where at last he was alive, complete and splendidly important.
His sense of insignificance fled. His ordinary petty and unvalued self
dropped away flake by flake, and he realized something of the essential
majesty of his own real Being as part of an eternal and wonderful Whole.
The little painful throb of his own limited personality slipped into the
giant pulse-beat of a universal vibration.

In his normal daily life, of course, he lost sight of this Whole, blinded
by the details seen without perspective, mistaking his little personality
for all there was of him; but now, as he rose, whirling, soaring, singing
in the body of this stupendous music, he understood with a rush of
indescribable glory that he was part and parcel of this great chord--this
particular chord in which Skale, Mrs. Mawle and Miriam also sang their
harmonious existences--that this chord, again, was part of a vaster music
still, and that all, in the last resort, was a single note in the divine
Utterance of God.

That is, the little secretary, for the first time in his existence, saw
life as a whole, and interpreted the vision so wondrous sweet and simple,
with the analogies of sound communicated to his subliminal mind by the
mighty Skale. Whatever the cause, however, the fine thing was that he
saw, heard, knew. He was of value in the scheme. In future he could pipe
his little lay without despair.

Moreover, with a merciless clarity of vision, he perceived an even
deeper side of truth, and understood that the temporary discords were
necessary, just as evil, so-called, is necessary for the greater final
perfection of the Whole. For it came to him with the clear simplicity of
a child's vision that the process of attuning his being to the right note
must inevitably involve suffering and pain: the awful stretching of the
string, the strain of the lifting vibrations, the stress at first of
sounding in harmony with all the others, and the apparent loss of one's
own little note in order to do so...

This point he reached, it seems, and grasped. Afterwards, however, he
entered a state where he heard things no man can utter because no
language can touch transcendental things without confining or destroying
them. In attempting a version of them he merely becomes unintelligible,
as has been said. Yet the mere memory of it brings tears to his blue eyes
when he tries to speak of it, and Miriam, who became, of course, his
chief confidant, invariably took it upon herself to stop his futile
efforts with a kiss.

       *       *       *       *       *

So at length the tide of sound began to ebb, the volume lessened and grew
distant, and he found himself, regretfully, abruptly, sinking back into
what by comparison was mere noise. First, he became conscious that he
listened--heard--saw; then, that Miriam's voice still uttered his name
softly, but his ordinary, outer name, Robertspinrobin; that he noticed
her big grey eyes gazing into his own, and her lips moving to frame the
syllables, and, finally, that he was sitting in the armchair, trembling.
Joy, peace, wonder still coursed through him like flames, but dying
flames. Mr. Skale's voice next reached him from the end of the room. He
saw the fireplace, his own bright and pointed pumps, the tea table where
they had drunk tea, and then, as the clergyman strode towards him over
the carpet, he looked up, faint with the farewell of the awful
excitement, into his face. The great passion of the experience still
glowed and shone in him like a furnace.

And there, in that masterful bearded visage, he surprised an expression
so tender, so winning, so comprehending, that Spinrobin rose to his feet,
and taking Miriam by the hand, went to meet him. There the three of them
stood upon the mat before the fire. He felt overwhelmingly drawn to the
personality of the man who had revealed to him such splendid things, and
in his mind stirred a keen and poignant regret that such knowledge could
not be permanent and universal, instead of merely a heavenly dream in the
mind of each separate percipient. Gratitude and love, unknown to him
before, rose in his soul. Spinrobin, his heart bursting as with flames,
had cried aloud, "You have called me by my name and I am free!... You
have named me truly and I am redeemed!..." And all manner of speech,
semi-inspirational, was about to follow, when Mr. Skale suddenly moved to
one side and raised his arm. He pointed to the mirror.

Spinrobin was just tall enough to see his own face in the glass, but
the glimpse he caught made him stand instantly on tiptoe to see more.
For his round little countenance, flushed as it was beneath its fringe
of disordered feathery hair, was literally--transfigured. A glory,
similar to the glory he had seen that same evening upon the face of the
housekeeper, still shone and flickered about the eyes and forehead. The
signature of the soul, brilliant in purity, lay there, transforming the
insignificance of the features with the grandeur and nobility of its
own power.

"I am honored,--too gloriously honored!" was the singular cry that
escaped his lips, vainly seeking words to express an emotion of the
unknown, "I am honored as the sun... and as the stars...!"

And so fierce was the tide of emotion that rose within him at the sight,
so strong the sense of gratitude to the man and girl who had shown him
how his true Self might contain so great a glory, that he turned with a
cry like that of a child bewildered by the loss of some incomprehensible
happiness--turned and flung himself first upon the breast of the big
clergyman, and then into the open arms of the radiant Miriam, with sobs
and tears of wonder that absolutely refused to be restrained.




Chapter VI


I

The situation at this point of his amazing adventure seems to have been
that the fear Spinrobin felt about the nature of the final Experiment was
met and equalized by his passionate curiosity regarding it. Had these
been the only two forces at work, the lightest pressure in either
direction would have brought him to a decision. He would have accepted
the challenge and stayed; or he would have hesitated, shirked, and left.

There was, however, another force at work upon which he had hardly
calculated at the beginning, and that force now came into full
operation and controlled his decision with margin and to spare. He
loved Miriam; and even had he not loved her, it is probable that her
own calm courage would have put him to shame and made him "face the
music." He could no more have deserted her than he could have deserted
himself. The die was cast.

Moreover, if the certainty that Mr. Skale was trafficking in dangerous
and unlawful knowledge was formidable enough to terrify him, for Miriam,
at least, it held nothing alarming. She had no qualms, knew no
uneasiness. She looked forward to the end with calmness, even with joy,
just as ordinary good folk look forward to a heaven beyond death. For she
had never known any other ideal. Mr. Skale to her was father, mother and
God. He had brought her up during all the twenty years of her life in
this solitude among the mountains, choosing her reading, providing her
companionship, training her with the one end in view of carrying out his
immense and fire-stealing purpose.

She had never dreamed of any other end, and had been so drilled with the
idea that this life was but a tedious training-place for a worthier state
to come, that she looked forward, naturally enough, with confidence and
relief to the great Experiment that should bring her release. She knew
vaguely that there was a certain awful danger involved, but it never for
one instant occurred to her that Mr. Skale could fail. And, so far,
Spinrobin had let no breath of his own terror reach her, or attempted
ever to put into her calm mind the least suggestion that the experiment
might fail and call down upon them the implacable and destructive forces
that could ruin them body and soul forever. For this, plainly expressed,
was the form in which his terror attacked him when he thought about it.
Skale was tempting the Olympian powers to crush him.

It was about this time, however, as has been seen from a slight incident
in the last chapter, that a change began to steal, at first
imperceptibly, then obviously, over their relations together. Spinrobin
had been in the house three weeks--far longer, no doubt, than any of the
other candidates. There only remained now the final big tests. The
preliminary ones were successfully passed. Miriam knew that very soon the
moment would come for him to stay--or go. And it was in all probability
this reflection that helped her to make certain discoveries in herself
that at first she did not in the least understand.

Spinrobin, however, understood perfectly. His own heart made him
intuitive enough for that. And the first signs thrilled and moved him
prodigiously. His account of it all is like no love story that has ever
been heard, for in the first place this singular girl hardly breathed
about her the reality of an actual world. She had known nothing beyond
the simple life in this hollow of the hills on the one hand, and on the
other the portentous conceptions that peopled the region of dream
revealed by the clergyman. And in the second place she had no standards
but her own instincts to judge by, for Mrs. Mawle, in spite of her
devotion to the girl, suffered under too great disabilities to fill the
place of a mother, while Mr. Skale was too lost in his vast speculations
to guide her except in a few general matters, and too sure of her at the
same time to reflect that she might ever need detailed guidance. Her
exceedingly natural and wholesome bringing-up on the one hand, and her
own native purity and good sense on the other, however, led her fairly
straight; while the fact that Spinrobin, with his modesty and his fine
aspirations, was a "little gentleman" into the bargain, ensured that no
unlawful temptation should be placed in her way, or undue pressure, based
upon her ignorance, employed.


II

They were coming down one afternoon from the mountains soon after the
test of calling his name, and they were alone, the clergyman being
engaged upon some mysterious business that had kept him out of sight all
day. They did not talk much, but they were happy in each other's company,
Spinrobin more than happy. Much of the time, when the ground allowed,
they went along hand in hand like children.

"Miriam," he had asked on the top of the moors, "did I ever tell you
about Winky--my little friend Winky?" And she had looked up with a smile
and shaken her head. "But I like the name," she added; "I should like to
hear, please." And he told her how as a boy he had invoked various folk
to tease his sister, of whom Winky was chief, but in telling the story he
somehow or other always referred to the little person by name, and never
once revealed his sex. He told, too, how he sat all night on the lawn
outside his sister's window to intercept the expected visit.

"Winky," she said, speaking rather low, "is a true name, of course.
You really created Winky--called Winky into being." For to her now
this seemed as true and possible as it had seemed to himself at the
age of ten.

"Oh, I really loved Winky," he replied enthusiastically, and was at the
same moment surprised to feel her draw away her hand. "Winky lived for
years in my very heart."

And the next thing he knew, after a brief silence between them, was
that he heard a sob, and no attempt to smother it either. In less than
a second he was beside her and had both her hands in his. He understood
in a flash.

"You precious baby," he cried, "but Winky was a little man. He
wasn't a girl!"

She looked up through her tears--oh, but how wonderful her grey eyes were
through tears!--and made him stand still before her and repeat his
sentence. And she said, "I know it's true, but I like to hear you say it,
and that's why I asked you to repeat it."

"Miriam," he said to her softly, kneeling down on the heather at her
feet, "there's only one name in my heart, I can tell you that. I heard it
sing and sing the moment I came into this house, the very instant I first
saw you in that dark passage. I knew perfectly well, ages and ages ago,
that one day a girl with your name would come singing into my life to
make me complete and happy, but I never believed that she would look as
beautiful as you are." He kissed the two hands he held. "Or that
she--would--would think of me as you do," he stammered in his passion.

And then Miriam, smiling down on him through her tears, bent and kissed
his feathery hair, and immediately after was on her knees in front of him
among the heather.

"I own you," she said quite simply. "I know your name, and you know mine.
Whatever happens--" But Spinrobin was too happy to hear any more, and
putting both arms round her neck, he kissed the rest of her words away
into silence.

And in the very middle of this it was that the girl gently, but very
firmly, pushed him from her, and Spinrobin in the delicacy of his mind
understood that for the first time in her curious, buried life the
primitive instincts had awakened, so that she knew herself a woman, and a
woman, moreover, who loved.

       *       *       *       *       *

Thus caught in a bewildering network of curiosity, fear, wonder,
and--love, Spinrobin stayed on, and decided further that should the
clergyman approve him he would not leave. Yet his intimate relations now
with Miriam, instead of making it easier for him to learn the facts, made
it on the other hand more difficult. For he could not, of course, make
use of her affection to learn secrets that Mr. Skale did not yet wish him
to know. And, further, he had no desire to be disloyal either to him.
None the less he was sorely tempted to ask her what the final experiment
was, and what the 'empty' rooms contained. And most of all what the great
name was they were finally to utter by means of the human chord.

The emotions playing about him at this time, however, were too
complicated and too violent to enable him to form a proper judgment of
the whole affair. It seems, indeed, that this calmer adjudication never
came to him at all, for even to this day the mere mention of the
clergyman's name brings to his round cheeks a flush of that enthusiasm
and wonder which are the enemies of all sober discrimination. Skale still
remains the great battering force of his life that carried him off his
feet towards the stars, and sent his imagination with wings of fire
tearing through the Unknown to a goal that once attained should make them
all four as gods.




Chapter VII


I

And thus the affair moved nearer to its close. The theory and practice of
molding form by means of sound was the next bang at his mind--delivered
in the clergyman's most convincing manner, and, in view of the proofs
that soon followed, an experience that seemed to dislocate the very
foundations of his visible world, deemed hitherto secure enough at least
to stand on.

Had it all consisted merely of talk on Mr. Skale's part the secretary
would have known better what to think. It was the interludes of practical
proof that sent his judgment so awry. These definite, sensible results,
sandwiched in between all the visionary explanation, left him utterly at
sea. He could not reconcile them altogether with hypnotism. He could
only, as an ordinary man, already with a bias in the mystical direction,
come to the one conclusion that this overwhelming and hierophantic man
was actually in touch with cisterns of force so terrific as to be
dangerous to what he had hitherto understood to be--life. It was easy
enough for the clergyman, in his optimistic enthusiasm, to talk about
their leading to a larger life. But what if the experiment failed, and
these colossal powers ran amok upon the world--and upon the invokers?

Moreover--chief anxiety of all--what was this name to be experimented
with? What was the nature of this force that Skale hoped to invoke--so
mighty that it should make them "as gods," so terrible that a chord alone
could compass even the first of its stupendous syllables?

And, further, he was still haunted with the feeling that other "beings"
occupied certain portions of the rambling mansion, and more than once
recently he had wakened in the night with an idea, carried over from
dreams possibly, that the corridor outside his bedroom was moving and
alive with footsteps. "From dreams possibly," for when he went and peered
shivering through the narrow crack of the half-opened door, he saw
nothing unusual. And another time--he was awake beyond question at the
moment, for he had been reading till two o'clock and had but just
extinguished the candle--he had heard a sound that he found impossible to
describe, but that sent all the blood with a swift rush from the region
of his heart. It was not wind; it was not the wood cracking with the
frost; it was not snow sliding from the slates outside. It was something
that simultaneously filled the entire building, yet sounded particularly
loud just outside his door; and it came with the abrupt suddenness of a
report. It made him think of all the air in the rooms and halls and
passages being withdrawn by immense suction, as though a gigantic dome
had been dropped over the building in order to produce a vacuum. And just
after it he heard, unmistakably, the long soft stride of Skale going past
his door and down the whole length of the corridor--stealthily, very
quickly, with the hurry of anxiety or alarm in his silence and his speed.

This, moreover, had now happened twice, so that imagination seemed a
far-fetched explanation. And on both occasions the clergyman had remained
invisible on the day following until the evening, and had then
reappeared, quiet and as usual, but with an atmosphere of immense
vibratory force somehow about his person, and a glow in his face and eyes
that at moments seemed positively colored.

No word of explanation, however, had as yet been forthcoming of these
omens, and Spinrobin waited with what patience he could, meanwhile, for
the final test which he knew to be close upon him. And in his diary, the
pages usually left blank now because words failed him, he wrote a
portion of Anone's cry that had caught his memory and expressed a little
of what he felt:

... for fiery thoughts
Do shape themselves within me, more and more,
Whereof I catch the issue, as I hear
Dead sounds at night come from the inmost hills,
_Like footsteps upon wool_....


II

It was within three days of the expiration of his trial month that he
then had this conversation with the clergyman, which he understood quite
well was offered by way of preparation for the bigger tests about to
come. He has reported what he could of it; it seemed to him at the time
both plausible and absurd; it was of a piece, that is, with the rest of
the whole fabulous adventure.

Mr. Skale, as they walked over the snowy moors in the semi-darkness
between tea and dinner, had been speaking to him about the practical
results obtainable by sound-vibrations (what he already knew for that
matter), and how it is possible by fiddling long enough upon a certain
note to fiddle down a bridge and split it asunder. From that he passed on
to the scientific fact that the ultimate molecules of matter are not only
in constant whirring motion, but that also they do not actually touch one
another. The atoms composing the point of a pin, for instance, shift and
change without ceasing, and--there is space between them.

Then, suddenly taking Spinrobin's arm, he came closer, his booming tone
dropping to a whisper:

"To change the form of anything," he said in his ear, "is merely to
change the arrangement of those dancing molecules, to alter their rate of
vibration." His eyes, even in the obscurity of the dusk, went across the
other's face like flames.

"By means of sound?" asked the other, already beginning to feel eerie.

The clergyman nodded his great head in acquiescence.

"Just as the vibrations of heat-waves," he said after a pause, "can
alter the form of a metal by melting it, so the vibrations of sound can
alter the form of a thing by inserting themselves between those
whirling molecules and changing their speed and arrangement--change the
outline, that is."

The idea seemed fairly to buffet the little secretary in the face, but
Mr. Skale's proximity was too overpowering to permit of very clear
thinking. Feeling that a remark was expected from him, he managed to
ejaculate an obvious objection in his mind.

"But is there any sound that can produce vibrations fine and rapid
enough--to--er--accomplish such a result?"

Mr. Skale appeared almost to leap for pleasure as he heard it. In reality
he merely straightened himself up.

"That," he cried aloud, to the further astonishment and even alarm of his
companion, "is another part of my discovery--an essential particular of
it: the production of sound-vibrations fine and rapid enough to alter
shapes! Listen and I will tell you!" He lowered his voice again. "I have
found out that by uttering the true inner name of anything I can set in
motion harmonics--harmonics, note well, half the wave length and twice
the frequency!--that are delicate and swift enough to insert themselves
between the whirling molecules of any reasonable object--any object, I
mean, not too closely or coherently packed. By then swelling or lowering
my voice I can alter the scale, size or shape of that object almost
indefinitely, its parts nevertheless retaining their normal relative
proportions. I can scatter it to a huge scale by separating its molecules
indefinitely, or bring them so closely together that the size of the
object would be reduced to a practical invisibility!"

"Re-create the world, in fact!" gasped Spinrobin, feeling the earth he
knew slipping away under his feet.

Mr. Skale turned upon him and stood still a moment. The huge moors,
glimmering pale and unreal beneath their snow, ran past them into
the sky--silent forms corresponding to who knows what pedal notes?
The wind sighed--audible expression of who shall say what mighty
shapes?... Something of the passion of sound, with all its mystery and
splendor, entered his heart in that windy sigh. Was anything real? Was
anything permanent?... Were Sound and Form merely interchangeable symbols
of some deeper uncataloged Reality? And was the visible cohesion after
all the illusory thing?

"Re-mold the whole universe, sir!" he roared through the darkness, in a
way that made the other wish for the touch of Miriam's hand to steady
him. "I could make you, my dear Spinrobin, immense, tiny, invisible, or
by a partial utterance of your name, permanently crooked. I could
overwhelm your own vibrations and withdraw their force, as by suction of
a vacuum, absorbing yourself into my own being. By uttering the name of
this old earth, if I knew it, I could alter its face, toss the forests
like green dust into the sea, and lift the pebbles of the seashore to the
magnitude of moons! Or, did I know the true name of the sun, I could
utter it in such a way as to identify myself with its very being, and so
escape the pitiful terrors of a limited personal existence!"

He seized his companion's arm and began to stride down the mountainside
at a terrific pace, almost lifting Spinrobin from his feet as he did so.
About the ears of the panting secretary the wild words tore like bullets,
whistling a new and dreadful music.

"My dear fellow," he shouted through the night, "at the Word of Power of
a true man the nations would rush into war, or sink suddenly into eternal
peace; the mountains be moved into the sea, and the dead arise. To know
the sounds behind the manifestations of Nature, the names of mechanical
as well as of psychical Forces, of Hebrew angels, as of Christian
virtues, is to know Powers that you can call upon at will--and use! Utter
them in the true vibratory way and you waken their counterpart in
yourself and stir thus mighty psychic powers into activity in your Soul."

He rained the words down upon the other's head like a tempest.

"Can you wonder that the walls of Jericho fell flat before a 'Sound,'
or that the raging waves of the sea lay still before a voice that
called their Name? My discovery, Mr. Spinrobin, will run through the
world like a purifying fire. For to utter the true names of
individuals, families, tribes and nations, will be to call them to the
knowledge of their highest Selves, and to lift them into tune with the
music of the Voice of God."

They reached the front door, where the gleam of lamps shone with a homely
welcome through the glass panels. The clergyman released his companion's
arm; then bent down towards him and added in a tone that held in it for
the first time something of the gravity of death:

"Only remember--that to utter falsely, to pronounce incorrectly, to call
a name incompletely, is the beginning of all evil. For it is to lie with
the very soul. It is also to evoke forces without the adequate
corresponding shape that covers and controls them, and to attract upon
yourself the destructive qualities of these Powers--to your own final
disintegration and annihilation."

Spinrobin entered the house, filled with a sense of awe that was cold and
terrible, and greater than all his other sensations combined. The winds
of fear and ruin blew shrill about his naked soul. None the less he was
steadfast. He would remain to bless. Mr. Skale might be violent in mind,
unbalanced, possibly mad; but his madness thundered at the doors of
heaven, and the sound of that thundering completed the conquest of his
admiration. He really believed that when the end came those mighty doors
would actually open. And the thought woke a kind of elemental terror in
him that was not of this world--yet marvelously attractive.


III

That night the singular rushing sound again disturbed him. It seemed as
before to pass through the entire building, but this time it included a
greater space in its operations, for he fancied he could hear it outside
the house as well, traveling far up into the recesses of the dark
mountains. Like the sweep of immense draughts of air it went down the
passage and rolled on into the sky, making him think of the clergyman's
suggestion that some sounds might require airwaves of a hundred miles
instead of a few inches, too vast to be heard as sound. And shortly after
it followed the great gliding stride of Mr. Skale himself down the
corridor. That, at least, was unmistakable.

During the following day, moreover, Mr. Skale remained invisible.
Spinrobin, of course, had never permitted himself to search the house, or
even to examine the other rooms in his own corridor. The quarters where
Miriam slept were equally unknown to him. But he was quite certain that
these prolonged periods of absence were spent by the clergyman in some
remote part of the rambling building where there existed isolated, if not
actually secret, rooms in which he practiced the rituals of some
dangerous and intrepid worship. And these intimidating and mysterious
sounds at night were, of course, something to do with the forces he
conjured....

The day was still and windless, the house silent as the grave. He walked
about the hills during the afternoon, practicing his Hebrew "Names" and
"Words" like a schoolboy learning a lesson. And all about him the slopes
of mountain watched him, listening. So did the sheet of snow, shining in
the wintry sunlight. The clergyman seemed to have put all sound in his
pocket and taken it away with him. The absence of anything approaching
noise became almost oppressive. It was a Silence that prepares. Spinrobin
went about on tiptoe, spoke to Miriam in whispers, practiced his Names in
hushed, expectant tones. He almost expected to see the moors and
mountains open their deep sides and let the Sounds of which they were the
visible shape escape awfully about him....

In these hours of solitude, all that Skale had told him, and more still
that he divined himself, haunted him with a sense of disquieting reality.
Inaudible sounds of fearful volume, invisible forms of monstrous
character, combinations of both even, impended everywhere about him. He
became afraid lest he might stumble, as Skale had done, on the very note
that should release them and bring them howling, leaping, crashing about
his ears. Therefore, he tried to make himself as small as possible; he
muffled steps and voice and personality. If he could, he would have
completely disappeared.

He looked forward to Skale's return, but when evening came he was still
alone, and he dined _tête-à-tête_ with Miriam for the first time. And
she, too, he noticed, was unusually quiet. Almost they seemed to have
entered the world of Mrs. Mawle, the silent regions of the deaf. But for
the most part it is probable that these queer impressions were due to the
unusual state of Spinrobin's imagination. He knew that it was his last
night in the place--unless the clergyman accepted him; he knew also that
Mr. Skale had absented himself with a purpose, and that the said purpose
had to do with the test of Alteration of Forms by Sound, which would
surely be upon him before the sun rose. So that, one way and another, it
was natural enough that his nerves should have been somewhat overtaxed.

The presence of Miriam and Mrs. Mawle, however, did much to soothe him.
The latter, indeed, mothered the pair of them quite absurdly, smiling all
the time while she moved about softly with the dishes, and doing her best
to make them eat enough for four. Between courses she sat at the end of
the room, waiting in the shadows till Miriam beckoned to her, and once or
twice going so far as to put her hand upon Spinrobin's shoulder
protectively.

His own mind, however, all the time was full of charging visions. He kept
thinking of the month just past and of the amazing changes it had brought
into his thoughts. He realized, too, now that Mr. Skale was away,
something of the lonely and splendid courage of the man, following this
terrific, perhaps mad, ideal, day in day out, week in week out, for
twenty years and more, his faith never weakening, his belief undaunted.
Waves of pity, too, invaded him for the first time--pity for this sweet
girl, brought up in ignorance of any other possible world; pity for the
deaf old housekeeper, already partially broken, and both sacrificed to
the dominant idea of this single, heaven-climbing enthusiast; pity last
of all for himself, swept headlong before he had time to reflect, into
the audacious purpose of this violent and headstrong super-man.

All manner of emotions stirred now this last evening in his perplexed
breast; yet out of the general turmoil one stood forth more clearly than
the rest--his proud consciousness that he was taking an important part in
something really big at last. Behind the screen of thought and emotion
which veiled so puzzlingly the truth, he divined for the first time in
his career a golden splendor. If it also terrified him, that was only his
cowardice.... In the same way it might be splendid to jump into Niagara
just above the falls to snatch a passing flower that seemed more
wonderful than any he had seen before, but--!

"Miriam, tomorrow is my last day," he said suddenly, catching her grey
eyes upon him in the middle of his strange reflections. "Tonight may be
my last night in this house with you."

The girl made no reply, merely looking up and smiling at him. But the
singing sensation that usually accompanied her gaze was not present.

"That was very nearly--a discord," she observed presently, referring to
his remark. "It was out of tune!" And he realized with a touch of shame
what she meant. For it was not true that this was his last evening; he
knew really that he would stay on and that Mr. Skale would accept him.
Quick as a flash, with her simple intuition, she felt that he had said
this merely to coax from her some sign of sympathy or love. And the girl
was not to be drawn. She knew quite well that she held him and that their
fate, whatever it might be, lay together.

The gentle rebuke made him silent again. They sat there smiling at one
another across the table, and old Mrs. Mawle, sitting among the shadows
at the far end of the room, her hands crossed in front of her, her white
evening cap shining like a halo above her patient face, watched them,
also smiling. The rest of the strange meal passed without conversation,
for the great silence that all day had wrapped the hills seemed to have
invaded the house as well and laid its spell upon every room. A deep
hush, listening and expectant, dropped more and more about the building
and about themselves.

After dinner they sat for twenty minutes together before the library
fire, their toes upon the fender, for, contrary to her habit, Miriam had
not vanished at once to her own quarters.

"We're not alone here," remarked Spinrobin presently, in a low voice, and
she nodded her head to signify agreement. The presence of Mr. Skale when
he was in the house but invisible, was often more real and tremendous
than when he stood beside them and thundered. Some part of him, some
emanation, some potent psychic messenger from his personality, kept them
closely company, and tonight the secretary felt it very vividly. His
remark was really another effort to keep in close touch with Miriam, even
in thought. He needed her more than ever in this sea of silence that was
gathering everywhere about him. Gulf upon gulf it rose and folded over
him. His anxiety became every moment more acute, and those black serpents
of fear that he dreaded were not very far away. By every fiber in his
being he felt certain that a test which should shake the very foundations
of his psychical life was slowly and remorselessly approaching him.

Yet, though he longed to speak outright and demand of Miriam what she
knew, and especially that she should reveal the place of the clergyman's
concealment and what portent it was that required all this dread and
muted atmosphere for its preparation, he kept a seal upon his lips,
realizing that loyalty forbade, and that the knowledge of her contempt
would be even worse than the knowledge of the truth.

And so in due course she rose to go, and as he opened the door for her
into the hall, she paused a moment and turned towards him. A sudden
inexplicable thrill flashed through him as she turned her eyes upon his
face, for he thought at first she was about to speak. He has never
forgotten the picture as she stood there so close to his side, the
lamplight on her slim figure in its white silk blouse and neat dark
skirt, the gloom of the unlit hall and staircase beyond--stood there an
instant, then put both her arms about his neck, drew him down to her, and
kissed him gently on both cheeks. Twice she kissed him, then was gone
into the darkness, so softly that he scarcely heard her steps, and he
stood between the shadows and the light, her perfume still lingering, and
with it the sweet and magical blessing that she left behind. For that
caress, he understood, was the innocent childlike caress of their first
days, and with all the power of her loving little soul in it she had
given him the message that he craved: "Courage! And keep a brave heart,
dear Spinny, _tonight_!"




Chapter VIII


I

Spinrobin lingered a while in the library after Miriam was gone, then
feeling slightly ill at ease in the room now that her presence was
withdrawn, put the lights out, saw that the windows were properly barred
and fastened, and went into the hall on his way to bed.

He looked at the front door, tried the chain, and made sure that both
top and bottom bolts were thrown. Why he should have taken these
somewhat unusual precautions was not far to seek, though at the moment
he could not probably have explained. The desire for protection was
awake in his being, and he took these measures of security and defense
because it sought to express itself, as it were, even automatically.
Spinrobin was afraid.

Up the broad staircase he went softly with his lighted candle, leaving
the great hall behind him full to the brim with shadows--shadows that
moved and took shape. His own head and shoulders in monstrous outline
poured over the walls and upper landings, and thence leaped to the
skylight overhead. As he passed the turn in the stairs, the dark
contents of the hall below rushed past in a single mass, like an
immense extended wing, and settled abruptly at his back, following him
thence to the landing.

Once there, he went more quickly, moving on tiptoe, and so reached his
own room halfway down. He passed two doors to get there; another two lay
beyond; all four, as he believed, being always locked. It was these four
rooms that conjured mightily with his imagination always, for these were
the rooms he pictured to himself, though without a vestige of proof, as
being occupied. It was from the further ones--one or other of them--he
believed Mr. Skale came when he had passed down the corridor at two in
the morning, stealthily, hurriedly, on the heels of that rush of sound
that made him shake in his bed as he heard it.

In his own room, however, surrounded by the familiar and personal objects
that reminded him of normal life, he felt more at home. He undressed
quickly, all his candles alight, and then sat before the fire in the
armchair to read a little before getting into bed.

And he read for choice Hebrew--Hebrew poetry, and on this particular
occasion, the books of Job and Ezekiel. For nothing had so soothing and
calming an effect upon him as the mighty yet simple imagery of these
sonorous stanzas; they invariably took him "out of himself," or at any
rate out of the region of small personal alarms. And thus, letting his
fancy roam, it seems, he was delighted to find that gradually the fears
which had dominated him during the day and evening disappeared. He passed
with the poetry into that region of high adventure which his nature in
real life denied him. The verses uplifted him in a way that made his
recent timidity seem the mere mood of a moment, or at least negligible.
His memory, as one thing suggested another, began to give up its dead,
and some of Blake's drawings, seen recently in London with prodigious
effect, began to pass vividly before his mental vision.

The symbolism of what he was reading doubtless suggested the memory. He
felt himself caught in the great invisible nets of wonder that forever
swept the world. The littleness of modern life, compared to that ancient
and profound spirit which sought the permanent things of the soul,
haunted him with curious insistence. He suffered a keen, though somewhat
mixed realization of his actual insignificance, yet of his potential
sublimity could he but identify himself with his ultimate Self in the
region of vision.... His soul was aware of finding itself alternately
ruffled and exalted as he read ... and pondered ... as he visualized to
some degree the giant Splendors, the wonderful Wheels, the spirit Wings
and Faces and all the other symbols of potent imagery evoked by the
imagination of that old Hebrew world....

So that when, an hour later, pacified and sleepy, he rose to go to bed,
this poetry seems to have left a very marked effect upon his
mind--mingled, naturally enough, with the thought of Mr. Skale. For on
his way across the floor, having adjusted the fire-screen, he distinctly
remembered thinking what a splendid "study" the clergyman would have made
for one of Blake's representations of the Deity--the flowing beard, the
great nose, the imposing head and shoulders, the potentialities of the
massive striding figure, surrounded by a pictorial suggestion of all the
sound-forces he was forever talking about....

This thought was his last, and it was without fear of any kind. Merely,
he insists, that his imagination was touched, and in a manner perfectly
accountable, considering the ingredients of its contents at the time.

And so he hopped nimbly into bed. On the little table beside him stood
the candle and the copy of the Hebrew text he had been reading, with its
parallel columns in the two languages. His Jaeger slippers were beneath
the chair, his clothes, carefully folded, on the sofa, his collar, studs
and necktie in a row on the top of the mahogany chest of drawers. On the
mantelpiece stood the glass jar of heather, filled that very day by
Miriam. He saw it just as he blew out the candle, and Miriam,
accordingly, was the last vision that journeyed with him into the country
of dreams and sweet forgetfulness.

The night was perfectly still. Winter, black and hard, lay about the
house like an iron wall. No wind stirred. Snow covered the world of
mountain and moor outside, and Silence, supreme at midnight, poured all
her softest forces upon the ancient building and its occupants.
Spinrobin, curled up in the middle of the big four-poster, slept like a
tired baby.


II

It was a good deal later when somewhere out of that mass of silence rose
the faint beginnings of a sound that stirred first cautiously about the
very foundations of the house, and then, mounting inch by inch, through
the hall, up the staircase, along the corridor, reached the floor where
the secretary slept so peacefully, and finally entered his room. Its
muffled tide poured most softly over all. At first only this murmur was
audible, as of "footsteps upon wool," of wind or drifting snow, a mere
ghost of sound; but gradually it grew, though still gentle and subdued,
until it filled the space from ceiling unto floor, pressing in like water
dripping into a cistern with ever-deepening note as its volume increased.
The trembling of air in a big belfry where bells have been a-ringing
represents best the effect, only it was a trifle sharper in
quality--keener, more alive.

But, also, there was something more in it--something gong-like and
metallic, yet at the same time oddly and suspiciously human. It held a
temper, too, that somehow woke the "panic sense," as does the hurried
note of a drum--some quick emotional timbre that stirs the sleeping
outposts of apprehension and alarm. On the other hand, it was constant,
neither rising nor falling, and thus ordinarily, it need not have stirred
any emotion at all--least of all the emotion of consternation. Yet, there
was that in it which struck at the root of security and life. It was a
revolutionary sound.

And as it took possession of the room, covering everything with its
garment of vibration, it slipped in also, so to speak, between the
crevices of the sleeping, unprotected Spinrobin, coloring his dreams--his
innocent dreams--with the suggestion of nightmare dread. Of course, he
was too deeply wrapped in slumber to receive the faintest intimation of
this waking analysis. Otherwise he might, perhaps, have recognized the
kind of primitive, ancestral dread his remote forefathers knew when the
inexplicable horror of a tidal wave or an eclipse of the sun overwhelmed
them with the threatened alteration of their entire known universe.

The sleeping figure in that big four-poster moved a little as the tide of
sound played upon it, fidgeting this way and that. The human ball
uncoiled, lengthened, straightened out. The head, half hidden by folds of
sheet and pillowcase, emerged.

Spinrobin unfolded, then opened his eyes and stared about him,
bewildered, in the darkness.

"Who's there? Is that you--anybody?" he asked in a whisper, the confusion
of sleep still about him.

His voice seemed dead and smothered, as though the other sound
overwhelmed it. The same instant, more widely awake, he realized that his
bedroom was _humming_.

"What's that? What's the matter?" he whispered again, wondering uneasily
at the noise.

There was no answer. The vague dread transferred itself adroitly from his
dream-consciousness to his now thoroughly awakened mind. It began to dawn
upon him that something was wrong. He noticed that the fire was out, and
the room dark and heavy. He realized dimly the passage of time--a
considerable interval of time--and that he must have been asleep several
hours. Where was he? _Who_ was he? What, in the name of mystery and
night, had been going on during the interval? He began to shake all
over--feverishly. Whence came this noise that made everything in the
darkness tremble?

As he fumbled hurriedly for the matchbox, his fingers caught in the folds
of pillowcase and sheet, and he struggled violently to get them clear
again. It was while doing this that the impression first reached him that
the room was no longer quite the same. It had changed while he slept.
Even in the darkness he felt this, and shuddering pulled the blankets
over his head and shoulders, for this idea of the changed room plucked at
the center of his heart, where terror lay waiting to leap out upon him.

After what seemed five minutes he found the matchbox and struck a light,
and all the time the torrent of sound poured about his ears with such an
effect of bewilderment that he hardly realized what he was doing. A
strange terror poured into him that _he_ would change with the room. At
length the match flared, and while he lit the candle with shaking
fingers, he looked wildly, quickly about him. At once the sounds rushed
upon him from all directions, burying him, so to speak, beneath vehement
vibrations of the air that rained in upon him.... Yes, the room had
indeed changed, actually changed ... but before he could decide where the
difference lay the candle died down to a mere spark, waiting for the wick
to absorb the grease. It seemed like half an hour before the yellow
tongue grew again, so that he finally saw clearly.

But--saw what? Saw that the room had horribly altered while he slept,
yes! But how altered? What in the name of all the world's deities was the
matter with it? The torrent of sound, now growing louder and louder, so
confused him at first, and the dancing patchwork of light and shadow the
candle threw so increased his bewilderment, that for some minutes he
sought in vain to steady his mind to the point of accurate observation.

"God of my Fathers!" cried Spinrobin at last under his breath, and hardly
knowing what he said, "if it's not moving!"

For this, indeed, was what he saw while the candle flame burned steadily
upon a room that was no longer quite recognizable.

At first, with the natural exaggeration due to shock, he thought the
whole room moved, but as his powers of sight came with time to report
more truly, he perceived that this was only true of certain things in it.
It was not the ceiling that poured down in fluid form to meet a floor
ever gliding and shifting forward into outlandish proportions, but it was
certain objects--one here, another there--midway between the two that,
having assumed new and unaccustomed outlines, lent to the rest of the
chamber a general appearance of movement and an entirely altered
expression. And these objects, he perceived, holding tightly to the
bedclothes with both hands as he stared, were two: the dark,
old-fashioned cupboard on his left, and the plush curtains that draped
the window on his right. He himself, and the bed and the rest of the
furniture were stationary. The room as a whole stood still, while these
two common and familiar articles of household furnishing took on a form
and an expression utterly foreign to what he had always known as a
cupboard and a curtain. This outline, this expression, moreover, if not
actually sinister, was grotesque to the verge of the sinister: monstrous.

The difficulty of making any accurate observation at all was further
increased by the perplexity of having to observe two objects, not even on
the same side of the room. Their outlines, however, Spinrobin claims,
altered very slowly, wavering like the distorted reflections seen in
moving water, and unquestionably obeying in some way the pitch and volume
of the sound that continued to pour its resonant tide about the room. The
sound manipulated the shape; the connection between the two was evident.
That, at least, he grasped. Somebody hidden elsewhere in the house--Mr.
Skale probably, of course, in one of his secret chambers--was
experimenting with the "true names" of these two "common objects,"
altering their normal forms by inserting the vibrations of sound between
their ultimate molecules.

Only, this simple statement that his clearing mind made to itself in no
way accounted for the fascination of horror that accompanied the
manifestation. For he recognized it as the joy of horror and not alone
the torment. His blood ran swiftly to the rhythm of these humming
vibrations that filled the space about him; and his terror, his
bewilderment, his curious sense of elation seemed to him as messengers of
far more terrific sensations that communicated to him dimly the rushing
wonder of some aspect of the Unknown in its ultimate nature essentially
beautiful.

This, however, only dawned upon him later, when the experiment was
complete and he had time to reflect upon it all next day; for, meanwhile,
to see the proportions he had known since childhood alter thus before his
eyes was unbelievably dreadful. To see your friend sufficiently himself
still to be recognizable, yet in essentials, at the same time,
grotesquely altered, would doubtless touch a climax of distress and
horror for you. The changing of these two things, so homely and
well-known in themselves, into something that was not themselves,
involved an idea of destruction that was worse than even death, for it
meant that the idea in the mind no longer corresponded to the visible
object there before the eyes. The correspondence was no longer a true
one. The result was a lie.

To describe the actual forms assumed by these shifting and wavering
bodies is not possible, for when Spinrobin gives the details one simply
fails to recognize either cupboard or curtain. To say that the dark,
lumbering cupboard, standing normally against the wall down there in the
shadows, loomed suddenly forward and upward, bent, twisted, and stretched
out the whole of one side towards him like a misshapen arm, can convey
nothing of the world of new sensations that the little secretary felt
while actually watching it in progress in that haunted chamber of Skale's
mansion among the hills. Nor can one be thrilled with the extraordinary
sense of wonder that thrilled Spinrobin when he saw the faded plush
curtain hang across the window in such a way that it might well have
wrapped the whole of Wales into a single fold, yet without extending its
skirts beyond the actual walls of the room. For what he saw apparently
involved contradictions in words, and the fact is that no description of
what he saw is really possible at all.

"Hark! By thunder!" he exclaimed, creeping out of bed with sheer stress
of excitement, while the sounds poured up through the floor as though
from cellars and tunnels where they lay stored beneath the house. They
sang and trembled about him with the menaces of a really exquisite alarm.
He moved cautiously out into the center of the room, not daring to
approach too close to the affected objects, yet furiously anxious to
discover how it was all done. For he was uncommonly "game" through it
all, and had himself well in hand from beginning to end. He was really
too excited, probably, to feel ordinary fear; it all swept him away too
mightily for that; he did not even notice the sting of the hot
candle-grease as it fell upon his bare feet.

There he stood, plucky little Spinny, steady amid this shifting world,
master of his soul amid dissolution, his hair pointing out like ruffled
feathers, his blue eyes wide open and charged with a speechless wonder,
his face pale as chalk, lips apart, jaw a trifle dropped, one hand in the
pocket of his dressing-gown, and the other holding the candle at an angle
that showered grease upon the carpet of the Rev. Philip Skale as well as
upon his own ankles. There he stood, face to face with the grotesque
horror of familiar outlines gone wrong, the altered panorama of his known
world moving about him in a strange riot of sound and form. It was, he
understood, an amazing exhibition of the transforming power of sound--of
sound playing tricks with the impermanence and the illusion of Form.
Skale was making his words good.

And behind the scenes he divined, with a shudder of genuine admiration,
the figure of the master of the ceremonies, somehow or other grown
colossal, as he had thought of him just before going to sleep--Philip
Skale, hidden in the secret places of the building, directing the
operations of this dreadful aspect of his revolutionary Discovery.... And
yet the thought brought a measure of comfort in its train, for was he not
also himself now included in the mighty scheme?... In his mind he saw
this giant Skale, with his great limbs and shoulders, his flowing, shaggy
beard, his voice of thunder and his portentous speculations, and, so
doing, felt himself merged in a larger world that made his own little
terrors and anxieties of but small account. Once again the sense of his
own insignificance disappeared as he realized that at last he was in the
full flood of an adventure that was providing the kind of escape he had
always longed for.

Inevitably, then, his thought flew to Miriam, and as he remembered her
final word to him a few short hours ago in the hall below, he already
felt ashamed of the fear with which he had met the beginning of the
"test." He instantly felt steeped instead in the wonder and power of the
whole thing. His mind, though still trembling and shaken, came to rest.
He drew, that is, upon the larger powers of the Chord.

And the interesting thing was that the moment this happened he noticed a
change begin to come over the room. With extraordinary swiftness the tide
of vibration lessened and the sound withdrew; the humming seemed to sink
back into the depths of the house; the thrill and delight of his recent
terrors fled with it. The air gradually ceased to shake and tremble; the
furniture, with a curious final shiver as of spinning coins about to
settle, resumed its normal shape. Once more the room, and with it the
world, became commonplace and dull. The test apparently was over. He had
met it with success.

Spinrobin, holding the candle straight for the first time, turned back
towards the bed. He caught a passing glimpse of himself in the mirror as
he went--white and scattered he describes his appearance.... He climbed
again into bed, blew the candle out, put the matchbox under his pillow
within easy reach, and so once more curled himself up into a ball and
composed himself to sleep.




Chapter IX


I

But he was hardly settled--there had not even been time to warm the
sheets again--when he was aware that the test, instead of being over,
was, indeed, but just beginning; and the detail that conveyed this
unwelcome knowledge to him, though small enough in itself, was yet
fraught with a crowded cargo of new alarms. It was a step upon the
staircase, approaching his room.

He heard it the instant he lay still in bed after the shuffling process
known generally as "cuddling down." And he knew that it was approaching
because of the assistance the hall clock brought to his bewildered ears.
For the hall clock--a big, dignified piece of furniture with a deep
note--happened just then to strike the hour of two in the morning, and
there was a considerable interval between the two notes. He first heard
the step far below in the act of leaving the flagged hall for the
staircase; then the clock drowned it with its first stroke, and perhaps a
dozen seconds later, when the second stroke had died away, he heard the
step again, as it passed from the top of the staircase on to the
polished boards of the landing. The owner of the step, meanwhile, had
passed up the whole length of the staircase in the interval, and was now
coming across the landing in a direct line towards his bedroom door.

"It _is_ a step, I suppose," it seems he muttered to himself, as with
head partially raised above the blankets he listened intently. "It's a
_step_, I mean...?" For the sound was more like a light tapping of a
little hammer than an actual step--some hard substance drumming
automatically upon the floor, while yet moving in advance. He recognized,
however, that there was intelligence behind its movements, because of the
sense of direction it displayed, and by the fact that it had turned the
sharp corner of the stairs; but the idea presented itself in fugitive
fashion to his mind--Heaven alone knows why--that it might be some
mechanical contrivance that was worked from the hall by a hand. For the
sound was too light to be the tread of a person, yet too "conscious" to
be merely a sound of the night operating mechanically. And it was unlike
the noise that the feet of any animal would make, any animal that he
could think of, that is. A four-footed creature suggested itself to his
mind, but without approval.

The puzzling characteristics of the sound, therefore, contradictory as
they were, left him utterly perplexed, so that for some little time he
could not make up his mind whether to be frightened, interested or
merely curious.

This uncertainty, however, lasted but a moment or two at the most, for an
appreciable pause outside his door was next followed by a noise of
scratching upon the panels, as of hands or paws, and then by the
shuffling of some living body that was flattening itself in an attempt to
squeeze through the considerable crack between door and flooring, and so
to enter the room.

And, hearing it, Spinrobin this time was so petrified with an
instantaneous rush of terror, that at first he dared not even move to
find the matches again under his pillow.

The pause was dreadful. He longed for brilliant light that should reveal
all parts of the room equally, or else for a thick darkness that should
conceal him from everything in the world. The uncertain flicker of a
single candle playing miserably between the two was the last thing in the
world to appeal to him.

And then events crowded too thick and fast for him to recognize any one
emotion in particular from all the fire of them passing so swiftly in and
out among his hopelessly disorganized thoughts. Terror flashed, but with
it flashed also wonder and delight--the audacity of unreflecting
courage--and more--even a breathless worship of the powers, knowledge and
forces that lifted for him in that little bedroom the vast Transparency
that hides from men the Unknown.

It is soon told. For a moment there was silence, and then he knew that
the invader had effected an entrance. There was barely time to marvel at
the snake-like thinness of the living creature that could avail itself of
so narrow a space, when to his amazement he heard the quick patter of
feet across the space of boarded flooring next the wall, and then the
silence that muffled them as they reached the carpet proper.

Almost at the same second something leaped upon his bed, and there shot
swiftly across him a living thing with light, firm tread--a creature, so
far as he could form any judgment at all, about the size of a rabbit or a
cat. He felt the feet pushing through sheets and blankets upon his body.
They were little feet; how many, at that stage, he could not guess. Then
he heard the thud as it dropped to the floor upon the other side.

The panic terror that in the dark it would run upon his bare exposed face
thus passed; and in that moment of intense relief Spinrobin gripped his
soul, so to speak, with both hands and made the effort of his life.
Whatever happened now he must have a light, be it only the light of a
single miserable candle. In that moment he felt that he would have
sacrificed all his hopes of the hereafter to have turned on a flood of
searching and brilliant sunshine into every corner of the
room--instantaneously. The thought that the creature might jump again
upon the bed and touch him before he could see, gave him energy to act.

With dashes of terror shooting through him like spears of ice, he grabbed
the matchbox, and after a frenzied entanglement again with sheets and
pillow-case, succeeded in breaking four matches in quick succession. They
cracked, it seemed to him, like pistol shots, till he half expected that
this creature, waiting there in the darkness, must leap out in the
direction of the sound to attack him. The fifth lit, and a moment later
the candle was burning dimly, but with its usual exasperating leisure and
delay. As the flare died down, then gradually rose again, he fairly
swallowed the room with a single look, wishing there were eyes all over
his body. It was a very faint light. At first he saw nothing, heard
nothing--nothing alive, that is.

"I must act! I must do something--at once!" he remembered thinking. For,
to wait meant to leave the choice and moment of attack to this other....

Cautiously, and very slowly, therefore, he wriggled to the edge of the
bed and slid over, searching with his feet for slippers, but finding
none, yet not daring to lower his eyes to look; then stood upright with
a sudden rush, shading the candle from his eyes with one hand and
peering over it.

As a rule, in moments of overwhelming emotion, the eyes search too
eagerly, too furiously, to see properly at all; but this does not seem to
have been the case with Spinrobin. The shadows ran about like water and
the flickering of the candle-flame dazzled, but there, opposite to him,
over by the darkness of the dead fireplace, he saw instantly the small
black object that was the immediate cause of his terror. Its actual shape
was merged too much in the dark background to be clearly ascertainable,
but near the top of it, where presumably the head was, the candle-flame
shone reflected in two brilliant points of light that were directed
straight upon his face, and he knew that he was looking into the eyes of
a living creature that was not the very least on the defensive. It was a
living creature, aggressive and unafraid.

For perhaps a couple of minutes--or was it seconds only?--these two
beings with the breath of life in them faced one another. Then Spinrobin
made a step cautiously in advance; lowering his candle he moved towards
it. This he did, partly to see better, partly to protect his bare legs.
The idea of protection, however, seems to have been merely instinct, for
at once this notion that it might dash forward to attack him was merged
in the unaccountable realization of a far grander emotion, as he
perceived that this "living creature" facing him was, for all its
diminutive size, both dignified and imposing. Something in its
atmosphere, something about its mysterious presentment there upon the
floor in its dark corner, something, perhaps, that flashed from its
brilliant and almost terrible eyes, managed to convey to him that it was
clothed with an importance and a significance not attached normally to
the animal world. It had "an air." It bore itself with power, with value,
almost with pride.

This incongruous impression bereft him of the sensations of ordinary
fear, while it increased the sources of his confusion. Yet it convinced.
He knew himself face to face with some form of life that was considerable
in the true sense--spiritually. It exercised a fascination over him that
was at the moment beyond either explanation or belief.

As he moved, moreover, the little dark object also moved--away from him,
as though resenting closer inspection. With action--again unlike the
action of any animal he could think of, and essentially dignified--both
rapid and nicely calculated, it ran towards the curtains behind. This
appearance of something stately that went with it was indefinable and
beyond everything impressive; for how in the world could such small
proportions and diminutive movements convey grandeur? And again Spinrobin
found it impossible to decide precisely how it moved--whether on four
legs or on two.

Keeping the two points of light always turned upon him, it shot across
the floor, leaped easily upon a chair, passed with a nimble spring from
this to a table by the wall, still too much in obscurity to permit a
proper view; and then, while the amazed secretary approached cautiously
to follow its movements better, it crawled to the edge of the table, and
in so doing passed for the first time full across the pale zone of
flickering candlelight.

Spinrobin, in that quick second, caught a glimpse of flying hair, and saw
that it moved either as a human being or as a bird--on two legs.

The same moment it sprang deftly from the high table to the mantelpiece,
turned, stood erect, and looked at him with the whole glare of the light
upon its face; and Spinrobin, bereft of all power of intelligible
sensation whatever, saw to his unutterable distress that it was--a man.
The dignity of its movements had already stirred vaguely his sense of
awe, but now the realization beyond doubt of its diminutive _human_ shape
added a singularly acute touch of horror; and it was the combination of
the two emotions, possibly, that were responsible also for the two
remarkable impulses of which he was first conscious: first, a mad desire
to strike and kill; secondly, an imperious feeling that he must hide his
eyes in some act or other of worship!

And it was then he realized that the man was--Philip Skale!

Mr. Skale, scarcely a foot high, dressed as usual in black, flowing
beard, hooked nose, lambent, flashing eyes and all, stood there upon the
mantelpiece level with his secretary's face, not three feet separating
them, and--smiled at him. He was small as a Tanagra figure, and in
perfect proportion.

It was unspeakably terrible.


II

"Of course--I'm dreaming," cried Spinrobin, half aloud, half to the
figure before him. He searched behind him with one hand for solid
support. "You're a dream thing. It's some awful trick--God will
protect me--!"

Mr. Skale's tiny lips moved. "No, no," his voice said, and it sounded as
from a great distance. "I'm no dream thing at all, and you are wide
awake. Look at me well. I am the man you know--Philip Skale. Look
straight into my eyes and be convinced." Again he smiled his kindly,
winning smile. "What you now see is nothing but a result of sounding my
true name in a certain way--very softly--to increase the cohesion of my
physical molecules and reduce my visible expression. Listen, and watch!"

And Spinrobin, half stupefied, obeyed, feeling that his weakening knees
must in another moment give way and precipitate him to the floor. He was
utterly unnerved. The onslaught of terror and amazement was overwhelming.
For something dreadful beyond all words lay in the sight of this man,
whom he was accustomed to reverence in his gigantic everyday shape, here
reduced to the stature of a pygmy, yet compelling as ever, terrific even
when thus dwarfed. And to hear the voice of thunder that he knew so well
come to him disguised within this thin and almost wailing tone, passed
equally beyond the limits of what he could feel as emotion or translate
into any intelligible words or gesture.

While, therefore, the secretary stood in awful wonder, doing as he was
told simply because he could do nothing else, the figure of the clergyman
moved with tiny steps to the edge of the mantelpiece, until it seemed as
though he meant in another moment to leap on to his companion's shoulder,
or into his arms. At the edge, however, he stopped--the brink of a
precipice, to him!--and Spinrobin then became aware that from his moving
lips, doll-like though bearded, his voice was issuing with an
ever-growing volume of sound and power.

Vibrations of swiftly-increasing depth and wave-length were spreading
through the air about him, filling the room from floor to ceiling. What
the syllables actually uttered may have been he was too dazed to realize,
for no degree of concentration was possible to his mind at all; he only
knew that, before his smarting eyes, with this rising of the voice to its
old dominant inflexion, the figure of Mr. Philip Skale grew likewise,
indescribably; swelled, rose, spread upwards and outwards, but with the
parts ever passing slowly in consistent inter-relation, from minute to
minute. He became, always in perfect proportion, magnified and extended.
The growing form, moreover, kept pace exactly, and most beautifully, with
the increasing tide of sonorous vibration that flooded himself, its
utterer and the whole room.

Spinrobin, it seems, had just sufficient self-control left to realize
that this sound was similar in quality to that which had first awakened
him and caused the outlines of the furniture to alter, when the sight of
Mr. Skale's form changing thus terribly before his eyes, and within the
touch of his very hand, became too much for him altogether....

What precisely happened he never knew. The sounds first enveloped him,
then drove him backwards with a sense of immense applied resistance. He
collapsed upon the sofa a few feet behind him, as though irresistibly
pushed. The power that impelled him charged vehemently through the little
room till it seemed the walls must burst asunder to give it scope, while
the sounds rose to such a volume that he figured himself drowned and
overpowered by their mighty vibrations as by the storm swells of the
Atlantic. Before he lost them as sound he seems thus to have been aware
of them as moving waves of air.... The next thing he took in was that
amid the waste of silence that now followed his inability to hear, the
figure of Philip Skale towered aloft towards the ceiling, till it seemed
positively to occupy all the available space in the room about him.

Had he dropped upon the floor instead of upon the sofa it is probable
that at this point Spinrobin would have lost consciousness, at any rate
for a period; but that sofa, which luckily for his bones was so close
behind, galvanized him sharply back into some measure of self-control
again. Being provided with powerful springs, it shot him up into the air,
whence he relapsed with a series of smaller bounds into a normal sitting
posture. Still holding the lighted candle as best he could, the little
secretary bounced upon that sofa like a tennis ball. And the violent
motion shook him into himself, as it were. His tottering universe
struggled back into shape once more. He remembered vaguely that all this
was somehow a test of his courage and fitness. And this thought,
strengthened by a law of his temperament which forced him to welcome the
sweet, mad terror of the whole adventure, helped to call out the reserves
of his failing courage.

He bounced upon his feet again--those bare feet plastered with candle
grease--and, turning his head, saw the clergyman, of incredible stature,
yet still apparently increasing, already over by the door. He was turning
the key with a hand the size--O horror!--of Spinrobin's breast. The next
moment his vast stooping body filled the entire entrance, blotting out
whole portions of the walls on either side, then was gone from the room.

Leaving the candlestick on the sofa, his heart aflame with a fearful
ecstasy of curiosity, he dashed across the floor in pursuit, but Mr.
Skale, silently and with the swiftness of a river, was already down the
stairs before he had covered half the distance.

Through the framework of the door Spinrobin saw this picture:

Skale, like some awful Cyclops, stood upon the floor of the hall some
twenty feet below, yet rearing terrifically up through the well of the
building till his head and shoulders alone seemed to fill the entire
space beneath the skylight. Though his feet rested unquestionably upon
the ground, his face, huge as a planet in the sky, rose looming and half
lighted above the banisters of this second storey, his tangled locks
sweeping the ceiling, and his beard, like some dark river of hair,
flowing downwards through the night. And this spreading countenance of
cloud it was, hanging in the semi-darkness, that Spinrobin saw turn
slowly towards him across the faint flicker of the candlelight, look
straight down into his face, and smile. The great mouth and eyes
unquestionably smiled. And that smile, for all its vast terror, was
beyond words enchanting--like the spread laughter of a summer landscape.

Among the spaces of the immense visage--reminding him curiously of his
boyhood's conception of the Creator--Spinrobin lost himself and grew
dizzy with a deadly yet delicious faintness. The mighty tenderness, the
compassion, the splendor of that giant smile overpowered him and
swallowed him up.

For one second, in dreadful silence, he gazed. Then, rising to meet the
test with a courage that he felt might somehow involve the alteration if
not the actual destruction of his own little personality, but that also
proved his supreme gameness at the same time, he tried to smile in
return.... The strange and pitiful attempt upon his own face perhaps, in
the semi-obscurity, was not seen. He only remembers that he somehow found
strength to crawl forward and close the door with a bang, though not the
strength to turn the key and lock it, and that two seconds later, having
kicked the candle over and out in his flying leap, he was in the middle
of the bed under a confused pile of sheets and blankets, weeping with
muffled sobs in the darkness as though his heart must burst with the
wonder and terror of all he had witnessed.

For, to the simple in heart, at the end of all possible stress and strain
of emotion, comes mercifully the blinding relief of tears....

And then, although too overcome to be able to prove it even to himself,
it was significant that, lying there smothered among the bedclothes, he
became aware of the presence of something astonishingly sweet and
comforting in his consciousness. It came quite suddenly upon him; the
reaction he experienced, he says, was very wonderful, for with it the
sense of absolute safety and security returned to him. Like a terrified
child in the darkness who suddenly knows that its mother stands by the
bed, all-powerful to soothe, he felt certain that some one had moved into
the room, was close beside him, and was even trying to smooth his pillow
and arrange the twisted bedclothes.

He did not dare uncover his face to see, for he was still dominated by
the memory of Mr. Skale's portentous visage; but his ears were not so
easily denied, and he was positive that he heard a voice that called his
name as though it were the opening phrase of some sweet, childhood
lullaby. There was a touch about him somewhere, it seemed, of delicate
cool hands that brought with them the fragrance as of a scented summer
wind; and the last thing he remembered before he sank away into welcome
unconsciousness was an impression, fugitive and dreamlike, of a gentle
face, unstained and pale as marble, that bent above his pillow, and,
singing, called him away to forgetfulness and peace.


III

And several hours later, when he woke after a refreshing sleep to find
Mrs. Mawle smiling down upon him over a tray of steaming coffee, he
recalled the events of the night with a sense of vivid reality that if
possible increased his conviction of their truth, but without the
smallest symptom of terror or dismay. For the blessing of the presence
that had soothed him into sleep lay still upon him like a garment to
protect. The test had come and he had not wholly failed.

With something approaching amusement, he watched the housekeeper pick up
a candlestick from the middle of the floor and put his Jaeger slippers
beneath the chair, having found one by the cupboard and the other over by
the fireplace.

"Mr. Skale's compliments and Mr. Spinrobin is not to hurry himself," he
heard her saying, as she put the tray beside the bed and went out of the
room. He looked at his watch and saw that it was after ten o'clock.

Half an hour later he was dressed and on his way downstairs, conscious
only of an overwhelming desire to see Mr. Skale, but to see him in his
normal and fatherly aspect again. For a strain of worship mingled oddly
with his devouring curiosity, and he was thirsty now for the rest of the
adventure, for the complete revelation of the Discovery in all its
bearings. And the moment he saw the clergyman in the hall he ran towards
him, scarcely realizing what it was he meant to say or do. Mr. Skale
stretched out both hands to meet him. His face was alight with pleasure.

But, before they could meet and touch, a door opened and in slipped
Miriam between them; she, too, was radiant, and her hands outstretched.

"Me first, please! Me first!" she cried with happy laughter, and before
Spinrobin realized what was happening, she had flung her arms about his
neck and kissed him. "You were splendid!" she whispered in his ear, "and
I _am_ proud of you--ever so proud!"

The next minute Skale had him by the hands.

"Well done! well done!" his voice boomed, while he gazed down into his
face with enthusiastic and unqualified approval. "It was all magnificent.
My dear little fellow, you've got the heart of a god, and, by Heavens,
you shall become as a god too! For you are worthy!" He shook him
violently by both hands, while Miriam looked eagerly on with admiration
in her wide grey eyes.

"I'm so glad, so awfully glad--" stammered the secretary, remembering
with shame his moments of vivid terror. He hardly knew what he said at
the moment.

"The properties of things," thundered the clergyman, "as you have now
learned, are merely the 'muffled utterances of the Sounds that made
them.' The thing itself is its name."

He spoke rapidly, with intense ardor and with reverence. "You have seen
with your own eyes a scientific proof of my Discovery on its humblest
level--how the physical properties of objects can be manipulated by the
vibratory utterance of their true names--can be extended, reduced,
glorified. Next you shall learn that spiritual qualities--the attributes
of higher states of being--can be similarly dealt with and
harnessed--exalted, intensified, _invoked_--and that the correct
utterance of mighty Names can seduce their specific qualities into your
own soul to make you mighty and eternal as themselves, and that to call
upon the Great Names is no idle phrase.... When the time comes,
Spinrobin, you shall not shrink, you shall not shrink...." He flung his
arms out with a great gesture of delight.

"No," repeated Spinrobin, yet aware that he felt mentally battered at the
prospect, "I shall not shrink. I think--now--I can manage--anything!"

And then, watching Miriam with lingering glance as she vanished laughing
up the staircase, he followed Mr. Skale into the library, his thoughts
tearing wildly to and fro, swelling with delight and pride, thrilling
with the wonder of what was yet to come. There, with fewest possible
sentences, the clergyman announced that he now accepted him and would,
therefore, carry out the promise with regard to the bequeathal of his
property to him in the event of any untoward circumstances arising later.
He also handed to him in cash the salary for the "trial month," together
with a check for the first quarter in advance. He was beaming with the
satisfaction he felt at having found at last a really qualified helper.
Spinrobin looked into his face as they shook hands over the bargain. He
was thinking of other aspects he had seen of this amazing being but a few
hours before--the minute, the colossal, the changing-between-the-two
Skales....

"I'm game, Mr. Skale," he said simply, forgetting all his recent doubts
and terrors.

"I know you are," the clergyman replied. "I knew it all along."




Chapter X


I

The first thing Spinrobin knew when he ran upstairs to lock away the
money in his desk was that his whole being, without his directing it,
asked a question of momentous import. He did not himself ask it
deliberately. He surprised his sub-consciousness asking it:

"WHAT IS THIS NAME THAT PHILIP SKALE FOREVER SEEKS?"

It was no longer mere curiosity that asked it, but that sense of
responsibility which in all men of principle and character lies at the
root of action and of life. And Spinrobin, for all his little weaknesses,
was a man of character and principle. There came a point when he could no
longer follow blindly where others led, even though the leader were so
grand an individual as Philip Skale. This point is reached at varying
degrees of the moral thermometer, and but for the love that Miriam had
wakened in his heart, it might have taken much longer to send the mercury
of his will so high in so short a time. He now felt responsibility for
two, and in the depths of his queer, confused, little mind stirred the
thought that possibly after all the great adventure he sought was only
the supreme adventure of a very wonderful Love.

He records these two questions at this point, and it is only just to
himself, therefore, to set them down here. To neither was the answer yet
forthcoming.

For some days the routine of this singular household followed its normal
course, the only change being that while the secretary practiced his
Hebrew names and studied the relations between sound, color, form and the
rest, he kept himself a little better in hand, for Love is a mighty
humanizer and holds down the nose upon the grindstone of the wholesome
and practical values of existence. He turned, so to speak, and tried to
face the matter squarely; to see the adventure as a whole; to get all
round it and judge. It seems, however, that he was too much in the thick
of it to get that bird's-eye view which reduces details to the right
proportion. Skale's personality was too close, and flooded him too
violently. Spinrobin remained confused and bewildered; but also
unbelievably happy.

"Coming out all right," he wrote shakily in that gilt-edged diary.
"Beginning to understand why I'm in the world. Am just as important as
anybody else--_really_. Impossible explain more." His entries were
very like telegrams, in which a man attempts to express in a lucid
shorthand all manner of things that the actual words hardly compass.
And life itself is not unlike some mighty telegram that seeks vainly
to express, between the extremes of silence and excess, all that the
soul would say....

"Skale is going too far," perhaps best expresses the daily burden of his
accumulating apprehension. "He is leading up to something that makes me
shrink--something not quite legitimate. Playing with an Olympian fire
that may consume us both." And there his telegram stopped; for how in
the world could he put into mere language the pain and distress involved
in the thought that it might at the same time consume Miriam? It all
touched appalling depths of awe in his soul. It made his heart shake. The
girl had become a part of his very self.

Vivid reactions he suffered, alternating with equally vivid enthusiasms.
He realized how visionary the clergyman's poetical talk was, but the next
minute the practical results staggered him again, as it were, back into a
state of conviction. For the poetry obscured his judgment and fired his
imagination so that he could not follow calmly. The feeling that it was
not only illogical but insane troubled him; yet the physical effects
stared him in the face, and to argue with physical results is waste of
time. One must act.

Yet how "act?" The only way that offered he accepted: he fell back upon
the habits of his boyhood, read his Bible, and at night dropped humbly
upon his knees and prayed.

"Keep me straight and pure and simple, and bless ... Miriam. Grant
that I may love and strengthen her ... and that my love may bring her
peace ... and joy ...and guide me through all this terror, I beseech
Thee, into Truth...."

For, in the beauty of his selfless love, he dared not even admit that it
was love; feeling only the highest, he could not quite correlate his
sweet and elevated passion with the common standards of what the World
called love. The humility of a great love is ever amazing.

And then followed in his prayers the more cowardly cry for ordinary
protection from the possible results of Skale's audacity. The Love of God
he could understand, but the Wrath of God was a conception he was still
unemancipated enough to dread; and a dark, portentous terror that Skale
might incur it, and that he might be dragged at its heels into some
hideous catastrophe, chased him through the days and nights. It all
seemed so unlawful, impious, blasphemous....

"... And preserve us from vain presumptions of the heart and brain, I
pray Thee, lest we be consumed.... Please, O God, forgive the insolence
of our wills ... and the ignorant daring of our spirit.... Permit
not the innocent to suffer for the guilty ... and especially
bless ... Miriam...."

Yet through it all ran that exquisite memory of the calling of his true
name in the spaces of his soul. The beauty of far-off unattainable
things hovered like a star above his head, so that he went about the
house with an insatiable yearning in his heart, a perpetual smile of
wonder upon his face, and in his eyes a gleam that was sometimes terror,
sometimes delight.

It was almost as if some great voice called to him from the mountaintops,
and the little chap was forever answering in his heart, "I'm coming! I'm
coming!" and then losing his way purposely, or hiding behind bushes on
the way for fear of meeting the great invisible Caller face to face.


II

And, meanwhile, the house became for him a kind of Sound-Temple as it
were, protected from desecration by the hills and desolate spaces that
surrounded it. From dawn to darkness its halls and corridors echoed with
the singing violin, Skale's booming voice, Miriam's gentle tones, and his
own plaintive yet excited note, while outside the old grey walls the air
was ever alive with the sighing of the winds and the ceaseless murmur of
falling water. Even at night the place was not silent. He understood at
last what the clergyman had told him--that perfect silence does not
exist. The universe, down to its smallest detail, sings through every
second of time.

The sounds of nature especially haunted him. He never heard the wind now
without thinking of lost whispers from the voice of God that had strayed
down upon the world to sweeten and bewilder the hearts of men--whispers
a-search for listeners simple enough to understand. And when their walks
took them as far as the sea, the dirge of the waves troubled his soul
with a kind of distressing exaltation that afflicted the very deeps of
his being. It was with a new comprehension he understood his employer's
dictum that the keynote of external nature was middle F--this employer
who himself possessed that psychic sense of absolute pitch--and that the
roar of a city, wind in forest trees, the cry of trains, the rushing of
rivers and falling water, Niagara itself, all produced this single
utterance; and he loved to sing it on the moors, Miriam laughing by his
side, and to realize that the world, literally, sang with them.

Behind all sounds he divined for the first time a majesty that appalled;
his imagination, glorified by Skale, instantly fell to constructing the
forms they bodied forth. Out of doors the flutes of Pan cried to him to
dance: indoors the echoes of yet greater music whispered in the
penetralia of his spirit that he should cry. In this extraordinary new
world of Philip Skale's revelation he fairly spun.

It was one thing when the protective presence of the clergyman was about
him, or when he was sustained by the excitement of enthusiasm, but when
he was alone, at his normal level, timid, yet adventurous, the too vivid
sense of these new things made him tremble. The terrifying beauty of
Skale's ideas; the realization in cold blood that all forms in the world
about him were silently a-singing, and might any moment vanish and
release their huge bodies into primal sounds; that the stones in the
road, the peaked hills, the very earth herself might alter in shape
before his eyes: on the other hand, that the viewless forces of life and
death might leap into visibility and form with the calling of their
names; that himself, and Skale, and Mrs. Mawle, and that pale fairy
girl-figure were all enmeshed in the same scheme with plants, insects,
animals and planets; and that God's voice was everywhere too sublimely
close--all this, when he was alone, oppressed him with a sense of things
that were too intimate and too mighty for daily life.

In these moments--so frequent now as to be almost continuous--he
preferred the safety of his ordinary and normal existence, dull though it
might be; the limited personality he had been so anxious to escape from
seemed wondrous sweet and comforting. The Terror of the approaching
Experiment with this mighty name appalled him.

The forces, thus battling within his soul, became more and more
contradictory and confused. The outcome for himself seemed to be the
result of the least little pressure this way or that--possibly at the
very last moment, too. Which way the waiting Climax might draw him was a
question impossible to decide.


III

And then, suddenly, the whole portentous business moved a sharp stage
nearer that hidden climax, when one afternoon Mr. Skale came up
unexpectedly behind him and laid a great hand upon his shoulder in a way
that made him positively jump.

"Spinrobin," he said, in those masterful, resonant tones that shamed his
timidity and cowardice, "are you ready?"

"For anything and everything," was the immediate reply, given almost
automatically as he felt the clergyman's forces flood into his soul
and lift him.

"The time is at hand, then," continued the other, leading his companion
by the arm to a deep leather sofa, "for you to know certain things that
for your own safety and ours, I was obliged to keep hidden till
now--first among which is the fact that this house is not, as you
supposed, empty."

Prepared as he was for some surprising announcement, Spinrobin
nevertheless started. It was so abrupt.

"Not empty!" he repeated, eager to hear more, yet quaking. He had never
forgotten the nightly sounds and steps in his own passage.

"The rooms beyond your own," said Skale, with a solemnity that amounted
to reverence, "are occupied--"

"By--" gasped the secretary.

"Captured Sounds--gigantic," was the reply, uttered almost below
the breath.

The two men looked steadily at one another for the space of several
seconds, Spinrobin charged to the brim with anxious questions pressing
somehow upon the fringe of life and death, Skale obviously calculating
how much he might reveal or how little.

"Mr. Spinrobin," he said presently, holding him firmly with his eyes,
"you are aware by this time that what I seek is the correct pronunciation
of certain names--of a certain name, let us say, and that so complex is
the nature of this name that no single voice can utter it. I need a
chord, a human chord of four voices."

Spinrobin bowed.

"After years of research and experiment," resumed the clergyman, "I have
found the first three notes, and now, in your own person, has come my
supreme happiness in the discovery of the fourth. What I now wish you to
know, though I cannot expect you to understand it all at first, is that
the name I seek is broken up into four great divisions of sound, and that
to each of these separate divisions the four notes of our chord form
introductory channels. When the time comes to utter it, each one of us
will call the syllable or sound that awakens the mighty response in one
of these immense and terrific divisions, so that the whole name will
vibrate as a single chord sung perfectly in tune."

Mr. Skale paused and drew deep breaths. This approach to his great
experiment, even in speech, seemed to exhaust him so that he was obliged
to call upon reserves of force that lay beneath. His whole manner
betrayed the gravity, the reverence, the mingled respect and excitement
of--death.

And the simple truth is that at the moment Spinrobin could not find in
himself sufficient courage to ask what this fearful and prodigious name
might be. Even to put ordinary questions about the four rooms was a
little beyond him, for his heart beat like a hammer against his ribs, and
he heard its ominous drum sounding through both his temples.

"And in each of the rooms in your corridor, ready to leap forth when
called, lie the sounds or voices I have captured and imprisoned, these
separate chambers being sheeted and prepared--huge wax receptacles, in
fact, akin to the cylinders of the phonograph. Together with the form or
pattern belonging to them, and the color, there they lie at present in
silence and invisibility, just as the universe lay in silence and
invisibility before the word of God called it into objective being.
But--_know them and they are mine_."

"All these weeks--so close to me," whispered Spinrobin, too low for Skale
to notice.

Then the clergyman leaned over towards him. "These captured sounds are
as yet by no means complete," he said through his beard, as though afraid
to admit it; "for all I have of them really is their initial letters, of
their forms the merest faint outlines, and of their colors but a first
suggestion. And we must be careful, we must be absolutely wise. To utter
them correctly will mean to transfer to us the qualities of Gods, whereas
to utter falsely may mean to release upon the surface of the world forces
that--" He shrugged his great shoulders and an ashen pallor spread
downwards over the face to the very lips. The sentence remained
unfinished; and its very incompleteness left Spinrobin with the most
grievous agony of apprehension he had yet experienced.

"So that, if you are ready, our next step shall be to show you the room
in which your own particular sound lies," added Mr. Skale after a long
pause; "the sound in the chord it will be your privilege to utter when
the time comes. For each of us will utter his or her particular letter,
the four together making up the first syllable in the name I seek."

Mr. Skale looked steadily down into the wide blue eyes of his companion,
and for some minutes neither of them spoke.

"The letter I am to utter," repeated the secretary at length; "the letter
in some great name?"

Mr. Skale smiled upon him with the mighty triumph of the Promethean idea
in his eyes.

"The room," he muttered deeply and softly, "in which it lies waiting for
you to claim it at the appointed time ... the room where you shall learn
its color, become attuned to its great vibratory activity, see its form,
and _know_ its power in your own person."

Again they looked long into one another's eyes.

"I'm game," murmured Spinrobin almost inaudibly; "I'm game, Mr. Skale."
But, as he said it, something in his round head turned dizzy, while his
thoughts flew to Miriam and to the clergyman's significant phrase of a
few minutes ago--"we must be careful, we must be absolutely wise."


IV

And the preparation the clergyman insisted upon--detailed, thorough
and scrupulous--certainly did not lessen in Spinrobin's eyes the
gravity of the approaching ordeal. They spent two days and nights in
the very precise and punctilious study, and utterance, of the Hebrew
names of the "angels"--that is, forces--whose qualities were essential
to their safety.

Also, at the same time, they fasted.

But when the time came for the formal visit to those closed rooms, of
which the locked doors were like veils in a temple, Spinrobin declares it
made him think of some solemn procession down ancient passageways of
crypt or pyramid to the hidden places where inscrutable secrets lay. It
was certainly thrilling and impressive. Skale went first, moving slowly
with big strides, grave as death, and so profoundly convinced of the
momentous nature of their errand that an air of dignity, and of dark
adventure almost majestic, hung about his figure. The long corridor, that
dreary December morning, stretched into a world of shadows, and about
half-way down it he halted in front of a door next but one to Spinrobin's
room and turned towards his companion.

Spinrobin, in a mood to see anything, yet striving to hide behind one
of those "bushes," as it were, kept his distance a little, but Mr.
Skale took him by the arm and drew him forward to his side. Slowly he
stooped, till the great bearded lips were level with his ear, and
whispered solemnly:

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see--and _hear_ God."

Then he turned the key and led the way inside.

But apparently there were double doors, for they found themselves at
first in a cupboard-like space that formed a tiny vestibule to the room
itself; and here there was light enough to see that the clergyman was
taking from nails on the wall two long garments like surplices, colored,
so far as Spinrobin could make out, a deep red and a deep violet.

"For our protection," whispered Skale, enveloping himself in the red one,
while he handed the other to his companion and helped him into it. "Wear
it closely about your body until we come out." And while the secretary
struggled among the folds of this cassock-like garment, that was several
feet too long for his diminutive stature, the clergyman added, still with
a gravity and earnestness that impressed the imagination beyond all reach
of the ludicrous:

"For sound and color are intimately associated, and there are
combinations of the two that can throw the spiritual body into a
condition of safe receptivity, without which we should be deaf and blind
even in the great Presences themselves."

Trivial details, presenting themselves in really dramatic moments, may
impress the mind with extraordinary aptness. At this very moment
Spinrobin's eyes noticed in the corner of wall and door a tiny spider's
web, with the spider itself hanging in the center of its little
net--shaking. And he has never forgotten it. It expressed pictorially
exactly what he felt himself. He, too, felt that he was shaking in
midair--as in the center of a web whose strands hung suspended from the
very stars.

And the words, spoken in that slow deep whisper, filled the little space
in which the two men stood, and somehow completed for Spinrobin the sense
of stupendous things adequately approached.

Then Mr. Skale closed the outer door, shutting out the last feeble
glimmer of day, at the same moment turning the handle of the portal
beyond. And as they entered the darkness, Spinrobin, holding up his
violet robe with one hand to prevent tripping, with the other caught hold
of the tail of the flowing garment in front of him. For a second or two
he stopped breathing altogether.


V

On the very threshold a soft murmur of beauty met them; and, as plainly
as though the darkness had lifted into a blaze of light, the secretary at
once realized that he stood in the presence of something greater than all
he had hitherto known in this world. He had managed to find the
clergyman's big hand, and he held it tightly through a twisted corner of
his voluminous robe. The inner door next closed behind them. Skale, he
was aware, had again stooped in the darkness to the level of his ear.

"I'll give you the sound--the note," he heard him whisper. "Utter it
inwardly--in your thoughts only. Its vibrations correspond to the color,
and will protect us."

"Protect us?" gasped Spinrobin with dry lips.

"From being shattered and destroyed--owing to the intense activity of the
vibrations conveyed to our ultimate physical atoms," was the whispered
reply, as the clergyman proceeded to give him under his breath a
one-syllable sound that was unlike any word he knew, and that for the
life of him he has never been able to reproduce since.

Mr. Skale straightened himself up again and Spinrobin pictured him
standing there twice his natural size, a huge and impressive figure as he
had once before seen him, clothed now with the double dignity of his
strange knowledge. Then, advancing slowly to the center of the room, they
stood still, each uttering silently in his thoughts the syllable that
attuned their inner beings to safety.

Almost immediately, as the seconds passed, the secretary became aware
that the room was beginning to shake with a powerful but regular
movement. All about him had become alive. Vitality, like the vitality
of youth upon mountain tops, pulsed and whirled about them, pouring
into them the currents of a rushing glorious life, undiluted, straight
from the source. In his little person he felt both the keenness of
sharp steel and the vast momentum of a whole ocean. Thus he describes
it. And the more clearly he uttered in his thoughts the sound given to
him by his leader, the greater seemed the influx of strength and glory
into his heart.

The darkness, meanwhile, began to lift. It moved upwards in spirals that,
as they rose, hummed and sang. A soft blaze of violet like the color of
the robe he wore became faintly visible in the air. The chamber, he
perceived, was about the same size as his own bedroom, and empty of all
furniture, while walls, floor, and ceiling were draped in the same shade
of violet that covered his shoulders; and the sound he uttered, _and
thought_, called forth the color and made it swim into visibility. The
walls and ceiling sheeted with wax opened, so to speak, their giant lips.

Mr. Skale made a movement and drew him closer. He raised one arm into the
air, and Spinrobin, following the motion, saw what at first he imagined
to be vast round faces glimmering overhead, outlined darkly against the
violet atmosphere. Mr. Skale, with what seemed a horrible audacity, was
reaching up to touch them, and as he did so there issued a low, soft,
metallic sound, humming and melodious, that dropped sweetly about his
ears. Then the secretary saw that they were discs of metal--immense gongs
swinging in midair, suspended in some way from the ceiling, and each one
as Skale touched it emitted its beautiful note till all combined together
at length into a single chord.

And this chord, though Spinrobin talks whole pages in describing it,
apparently brought in its train the swell and thunder of something
beyond,--the far sweetness of exquisite harmonics, thousands upon
thousands, inwoven with the strands of deeper notes that boomed with
colossal vibrations about them. And, in some fashion that musical people
will understand, its gentler notes caught up the sound that Spinrobin was
uttering in his mind, and took possession of it. They merged. An
extraordinary volume, suggesting a huge aggregation of sound behind
it--in the same way that a murmur of wind may suggest the roar of
tempests--rose and fell through the room, lifted them up, bore them away,
sang majestically over their heads, under their feet, and through their
very minds. The vibrations of their own physical atoms fell into pace
with these other spiritual activities by a kind of sympathetic resonance.

The combination of power and simplicity was what impressed him most, it
seems, for it resembled--resembled only--the great spiritual simplicity
in Beethoven that rouses and at the same time satisfies the profoundest
yearnings of the soul. It swept him into utter bliss, into something for
once complete. And Spinrobin, at the center of his glorified yet quaking
little heart, understood vaguely that the sound he uttered, and the sound
he heard, were directly connected with the presence of some august and
awful Name....


VI

Suddenly Mr. Skale, he was aware, became rigid beside him. Spinrobin
pressed closer, seeking the protective warmth of his body, and realizing
from the gesture that something new was about to happen. And something
did happen, though not precisely in the sense that things happen in the
streets and in the markets of men. In the sphere of his mind, perhaps, it
happened, but was none the less real for that.

For the Presence he had been aware of in the room from the moment of
entrance became then suddenly almost concrete. It came closer--sheeted in
wonder inscrutable. The form and body of the sounds that filled the air
pressed forward into partial visibility. Spinrobin's powers of interior
sight, he dimly realized, increased at the same time. Vast as a mountain,
as a whole range of mountains; beautiful as a star, as a whole heaven of
stars; yet simple as a flower of the field; and singing this little song
of pure glory and joy that he felt was the inmost message of the
chord--this Presence in the room sought to push forward into objective
reality. And behind it, he knew, lay the stupendous urgency and drive of
some power that held the entire universe in its pulses as easily as the
ocean holds a shoal of minnows....

But the limits of realization for him were almost reached. Spinrobin
wanted to close his eyes, yet could not. He was driven along with the
wave of sound thus awakened and forced to see what was to be seen. This
time there was no bush behind which he could screen himself. And there,
dimly sketched out of the rhythmical vibrations of the seething violet
obscurity, rose that looming Outline of wonder and majesty that clothed
itself about them with a garment as of visible sound. The Unknown,
suggesting incredible dimensions, stood at his elbow, tremendously draped
in these dim, voluminous folds of music and color--very fearful, very
seductive, yet so supremely simple at the same time that a little child
could have understood without fear.

But only partially there, only partially revealed. The ineffable glory
was never quite told. Spinrobin, amid all the torrent of words in which
he sought later to describe the experience, could only falter out a
single comprehensible sentence: "I felt like stammering in intoxication
over the first letter of a name I loved--loved to the point of
ecstasy--to the point even of giving up my life for it."

And meanwhile, breathless and shaking, he clung to Skale, still murmuring
in his heart the magic syllable, but swept into some region of glory
where pain and joy both ceased, where terror and delight merged into some
perfectly simple form of love, and where he became in an instant of time
an entirely new and emancipated Spinrobin, driving at full speed towards
the ultimate sound and secret of the universe--God.

       *       *       *       *       *

He never remembered exactly how he got out of the room, but it always
seemed as though he dropped with a crash from some enormous height. The
sounds ceased; the gongs died into silence; the violet faded; the
quivering wax lay still.... Mr. Skale was moving beside him, and the next
minute they were in the narrow vestibule between the doors, hanging up
ordinary colored surplices upon ordinary iron nails.

Spinrobin stumbled. Skale caught him. They were in the corridor
again--cold, cheerless, full of December murk and shadows--and the
secretary was leaning against the clergyman's shoulder breathless and
trembling as though he had run a mile.




Chapter XI


I

"And the color of _my_ sound is a pale green," he heard behind him in
tones as sweet as a muted violin string, "while the form of my note fits
into yours just like a glove. Dear Spinny, don't tremble so. We shall
always be together, remember, you and I...."

And when, turning, he saw Miriam at his side, radiant with her shining
little smile of welcome, the relief was so great that he took her in his
arms and would not let her go. She drew him tenderly away downstairs, for
the clergyman, it seemed, was still busy with something in the room, and
had left them....

"_I_ know, _I_ know," she said softly, making him sit down beside her on
the sofa, "I know the rush of pain and happiness it brings. It shifts the
whole key of your life, doesn't it? When I first went into my 'room' and
learned the letter I was to utter in the Name, I felt as if I could never
come back to ordinary things again, or--"

"What name?" interrupted Spinrobin, drawing sharply away from her, and
the same second amazed at the recklessness that had prompted the one
question he dreaded.

The inevitable reaction had come. He realized for the first time that
there _was_ an alternative. All the passion of battle was upon him. The
terrific splendors of Skale's possible achievement dazzled the very
windows of his soul, but at the same time the sweet uses of normal human
life called searchingly to him from within. He had been circling about
this fight for days; at last it was unexpectedly upon him. He might climb
to Skale's impossible Heaven, Skale's outrageous Heaven ... on the wings
of this portentous experience, or--he might sink back into the stream of
wholesome and commonplace life, with a delicious little human love to
companion him across the years, the unsoiled love of an embryonic soul
that he could train practically from birth. Miriam was beside him, soft
and yielding, ready, doubtless, to be molded for either path.

"What name?" he repeated, holding his breath once the words were out.

"_The_ name, of course," she answered gently, smiling up into his
eyes. "The name I have lived to know and that you came here to learn,
so that when our voices sing and utter it together in the chord we
shall both become--"

Spinrobin set his mouth against her own to stop her speech. She yielded
to him with her whole little body. Her eyes smiled the great human
welcome as she stared so closely into his.

"Shall become--what we are not now," he cried fiercely, drawing his face
back, but holding her body yet more closely to him. "Lose each other,
don't you see? Don't you realize that?"

"No, no," she said faintly, "find each other--you mean--"

"Yes--if all goes well!" He spoke the words very low. For perhaps thirty
seconds they stared most searchingly into each other's eyes, drawing
slightly apart. Very slowly her face, then, went exceedingly pale.

"_If--all goes well_" she repeated, horrified. Then, after a pause, she
added: "You mean--that he might make a mistake--or--?"

And Spinrobin, drinking in the sweet breath that bore the words
so softly from her lips, answered, measuring his words with ponderous
gravity as though each conveyed a sentence of life or death,
"_If--all--goes--well_."

She watched him with something of that utter clinging mother-love in her
eyes that claims any degree of suffering gladly rather than the loss of
her own--passionately welcoming misery in preference to loss. She, too,
had divined the alternative.

Then, kissing his cheeks and eyes and lips, she untied his arms from
about her neck and ran, blushing furiously, from the room. And with her
went doubt, for the first time--doubt as to the success of the great
experiment--doubt as to their Leader's power.


II

And while Spinrobin still sat there, trembling with the two passions that
tore his soul in twain--the passion to climb forbidden skies with Skale,
and the passion to know sweet human love with Miriam--there came
thundering into the room no less a personage than the giant clergyman,
straight from those haunted rooms. Pallor hung about his face, but there
was a light radiating through it--a high, luminous whiteness--that made
the secretary think of his childhood's pictures of the Hebrew prophet
descending from Mount Sinai, the glory of internal spheres still
reflected upon the skin and eyes. Skale, like a flame and a wind, came
pouring into the room. The thing he had remained upstairs to complete
had clearly proved successful. The experiment had moved another
stage--almost the final one--nearer accomplishment.

The reaction was genuinely terrific. Spinrobin felt himself swept away
beyond all power of redemption. Miriam and the delicious human life faded
into insignificance again. What, in the name of the eternal fires, were a
girl's lips and love compared to the possibilities of Olympian
achievement promised by Skale's golden audacities? Earth faded before the
lights of heaven. The whole tide of human emotion was nothing compared to
a drop of this terrible salt brine from seas in unknown stars.... As
usual Skale's personality caught him up into some seventh heaven of the
soaring imagination.

"Spinrobin, my glorious companion in adventure," thundered the clergyman,
"your note suits perfectly the chord! I am delighted beyond all words.
You chime with amazing precision and accuracy into the complex
Master-Tone I need for the proper pronunciation of the Name! Your coming
has been an inspiration permitted of Him who owns it." His excitement was
profoundly moving. The man was in earnest if ever man was. "We shall
succeed!" And he caught him in his arms. "For the Name manifests the
essential attributes of the Being it describes, and in uttering it we
shall know mystical union with it.... We shall be as Gods!"

"Splendid! Splendid!" exclaimed Spinrobin, utterly carried away by this
spiritual enthusiasm. "I will follow you to the end--"


III

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when framed in the doorway,
delicate and seductive as a witch, again stood Miriam, then moved softly
forward into the room. Her face was pale as the grave. Her little,
delicate mouth was set with resolution. Clearly she had overheard, but
clearly also she had used the interval for serious reflection.

"We cannot possibly--_fail_, can we?" she asked, gliding up like a
frightened fawn to the clergyman's side.

He turned upon her, stern, even terrible. So relentless was his swift
appearance, so implacable in purpose, that Spinrobin felt the sudden
impulse to fly to her assistance. But instantly his great visage broke
into a smile like the smile of thunderous clouds when unexpectedly the
sun breaks through, then quickly hides itself again.

"Everywhere," he roared, "true things are great and clean.... Have
faith... have faith...." And he looked upon them both as though his eyes
would sweep from their petty souls all vestige of what was afraid and
immature. "We all are--pure ... we all are true ... each calls his note
in singleness of heart ... we cannot fail!"

And just here Spinrobin, a little beyond himself with excitement
probably, pattered across the room to his giant leader's side and peered
up into his visage. He stood on tiptoe, craning his neck forwards, then
spoke very low:

"I have the right, _we_ have the right--for I have earned it--to be taken
now fully into confidence, and to know everything--_everything_," came
the words; and the reply, simple and immediate, that dropped back upon
him through all that tangle of ragged beard was brief and to the point:

"You have. Listen, then--" And he led them both by the hand like two
children towards the sofa, and then, standing over them, began to speak.


IV

"I seek," he said slowly and gravely, "the correct utterance of a certain
mighty and ineffable name, and in each of those four rooms lies a letter
of its first syllable. For all these years of research"--his voice
dropped suddenly--"have only brought me to that--the first syllable. And
the name itself is composed of four, each more mighty than the last."

A violent trembling ran over both listeners. Spinrobin, holding a cold
little hand in his, dreaded unuttered sentences. For if mere letters
could spell so vast a message, what must be the meaning of a whole
syllable, and what the dire content of the completed name itself!

"Yes," Skale went on with a reverence born of profoundest awe, "the
captured sounds I hold are but the opening vibrations of this tremendous
name, and the task is of such magnitude that absolute courage and
absolute faith are essential. For the sounds are themselves creative
sounds, and the consequences in case of faulty utterance might be too
appalling to contemplate--"

"Creative!" fell from the little man on the sofa, aghast at the
possibility. Yet the one burning question that lay trembling just behind
his lips dared not frame itself in words, for there was something in Mr.
Skale's face and manner that rendered the asking of it not yet possible.
The revelation of the name must wait.

"Even singly, as you saw, their power is terrific," he went on, ignoring
the pathetic interruption, "but united--as we shall unite them while each
of us utters his letter and summons forth the entire syllable by means of
the chord--they will constitute a Word of Power which shall make us as
Gods if uttered correctly; if incorrectly, shall pour from this house to
consume and alter the surface of the entire world with the destructive
tempest due to mispronunciation and a lie."

Miriam nestled closer into her companion's side. There was otherwise no
sign outwardly of the emotions that surged through the two little figures
upon the sofa.

"And now--now that you have this first syllable complete?" faltered a
high and sharing tenor voice.

"We must transfer it to a home where it shall wait in silence and in
safety until we have also captured the other remaining three." Skale came
forward and lowered his mouth to his companions' ears. "We shall transfer
it, as you now understand, by chanting the four letters. Our living chord
will summon forth that first syllable into visible form and shape. Our
four voices, thus trained and purified, each singing a mighty letter,
shall create the astounding pattern of the name's first syllable--"

"But the home," stammered Spinrobin; "this home where it shall await
the rest?"

"My rooms," was the reply, "can contain letters only, for a whole
syllable I need a larger space. In the crypt-like cellars beneath this
house I have the necessary space all ready and prepared to hold this
first syllable while we work upon the second. Come, and you shall see!"

They crossed the hall and went down the long stone passage beyond the
dining room till they reached a swinging baize door, and so came to the
dark stairs that plunged below ground. Skale strode first, Spinrobin
following with beating heart; he held Miriam by the hand; his steps,
though firm enough, made him think of his efforts as a boy when treading
water for solid ground out of his depth.


V

Cold air met them, yet it was neither dank nor unpleasant as air usually
is that has never tasted sunlight. There was a touch of vitality about it
wholly remarkable. Miriam pressed closer. Every detail, every little
incident that brought them nearer to the climax was now interpreted by
these two loving children as something that might eventually spell for
them separation. Yet neither referred to it directly. The pain of the
ultimate choice possessed them deep within.

"Here," exclaimed the clergyman in a hushed tone that yet woke echoes on
all sides, while he lit a candle and held it aloft, "you see the cellar
vaults all ready for the first great syllable when our chord shall bring
it leaping down from the rooms upstairs. Here will reside the pattern of
the name's opening syllable till we shall have accomplished the
construction of the others."

And like some august master of forbidden ceremonies, looking twice his
natural size as the shadows played tricks with his arms and shoulders,
merging his outline into walls and ceiling, Skale stood and looked
about him.

Spaces stretched away on all sides as in the crypt of a cathedral, most
beautifully and harmoniously draped with the separate colors of the four
rooms, red, yellow, violet and green; immense gongs, connected apparently
with some intricate network of shining wires, hung suspended in midair
beneath the arches; rising from the floor were gigantic tuning forks,
erect and silent, immediately behind which gaped artificial air-cavities
placed to increase the intensity of the respective notes when caught; and
in the dim background the clergyman pointed out an elaborate apparatus
for quickly altering the temperature of the air, and another for the
rapid production of carbonic acid gas, since by means of a lens of
carbonic acid gas sound can be refracted like light, and by changing the
temperature of the air that conveys it, sound can be bent, also like a
ray of light, in any desired direction. The whole cellar seemed in some
way to sum up and synthesize the distinctive characteristics of the four
rooms. Over it all, sheeting ceiling and walls, lay the living and
receptive wax. Singularly suggestive, too, was the appearance of those
huge metal discs, like lifeless, dark faces waiting the signal to open
their bronze lips and cry aloud, ready for the advent of the Sound that
should give them birth and force them to proclaim their mighty secret.
Spinrobin stared, silent and fascinated, almost expecting them to begin
there and then their dreadful and appalling music.

Yet the place was undeniably empty; no ghost of a sound stirred the
gorgeous draperies; nothing but a faint metallic whispering seemed to
breathe out from the big discs and forks and wires as Skale's voice,
modulated and hushed though it was, vibrated gently against them. Nothing
moved, nothing uttered, nothing lived--as yet.

"Destitute of all presence, you see it now," whispered the clergyman,
shading the candle with one huge hand; "though before long, when we
transfer our great captured syllable down here, you shall know it alive
and singing with a thousand thunders. The Letters shall not escape me.
The gongs and colors correspond exactly. They will retain both the sounds
and the outlines ... and the wax is sensitive as the heart of a child."
And his big face shone quite dreadfully as the whole pomp and splendor of
his dream come true set fire to his thoughts.

But Spinrobin was glad when at length they turned and moved slowly again
up the stone steps and emerged into the pale December daylight. That
dark cellar, wired, draped, waxed and be-gonged, awaiting its mighty
occupant, filled his mind with too vast a sensation of wonder and
anticipation for peace.

"And for the syllables to follow," Skale resumed when they were once more
in the library, "we shall want spaces larger still. There are great holes
in these hills"--stretching out an arm to indicate the mountains above
the house--"and down yonder in the heart of those cliffs by the sounding
sea there are caverns. They are far, but the distance is of no
consequence. They will serve us well. I know them. I have marked them.
They are ready."

He swept his beard to and fro with one hand. Spinrobin already saw those
holes and caverns in the terms of sound and color.

"And--for the entire name--when completed?" he asked, knowing that the
question was but a feeble substitute for that other one he burned to ask,
yet dared not allow his lips to utter. Skale turned and looked at him. He
raised his hands aloft. His voice boomed again as of old.

"The open sky!" he cried with enthusiasm; "the vault of heaven itself!
For no solid structure exists in the world, not even the ribs of these
old hills, that could withstand the power of that--of that eternal and
terrific--"

Spinrobin leapt to his feet. The question swept from his lips at last
like a flame. Miriam clung to his arm, trying in vain to stop him.

"Then tell me," he cried aloud, "tell me, you great blasphemer, whose is
the Name that you seek to utter under heaven ... and tell me why it is my
soul faints and is so fearfully afraid?"

Mr. Skale looked at him for a moment as a man might look at some trifling
phenomenon of life that puzzled yet interested him. But there was love in
his eyes--love, and the forgiveness of a great soul. Spinrobin, afraid at
his own audacity, met his eyes recklessly, while Miriam peered from one
to the other, perplexed and questioning.

"Spinrobin," said the clergyman at length, in a voice turned soft and
tender with compassion, "the name I seek--this awful name we may all
eventually utter together, completely formed--is one that no living man
has spoken for nigh two thousand years, though all this time the search
has been kept alive by a few men in every age and every country of the
world. Some few, they say--ah, yes, '_they say_'--have found it, then
instantly forgotten it again; for once pronounced it may not be retained,
but goes utterly lost to the memory on the instant. Only once, so far as
we may know"--he lowered his voice to a hushed and reverent whisper that
thrilled about them in the air like the throbbing of a string--"has it
been preserved: the Prophet of Nazareth, purer and simpler than all other
men, recovered the correct utterance of the first two syllables, and
swiftly--very swiftly--phonetically, too, of necessity,--wrote them down
before the wondrous memory had time to fade; then sewed the piece of
parchment into his thigh, and hence 'had Power' all his life.

"It is a name," he continued, his tone rising to something of its old
thunder, "that sounds like the voice of many waters, that piles the ocean
into standing heaps and makes the high hills to skip like little lambs.
It is a name the ancient Hebrews concealed, as Tetragrammaton, beneath a
thousand devices, the name, they said, that 'rusheth through the
universe,' to call upon which--that is, to utter correctly--is to call
upon that name which is far above all others that can be named--"

He paused midway in the growing torrent of his speech and lifted his
companion out of the sofa. He set him upon his feet, holding both his
hands and peering deep into his eyes--those bewildered yet unflinching
blue eyes of the little man who sought terrific adventure as an escape
from insignificance--

"--to know which," he added, in a sudden awed whisper, "is to know the
ultimate secrets of life and death, and to read the riddle of the world
and the soul--to become even as itself--Gods."

He stopped abruptly, and again that awful, flaming smile ran over his
face, flushing it from chin to forehead with the power of his burning and
tremendous belief.

Spinrobin was already weeping inwardly, without sound. He understood at
last, only too well, what was coming. Skale's expression held the whole
wild glory, and the whole impious audacity of what seemed his blasphemous
spiritual discovery. The fires were alight in his eyes. He stooped down
lower and opened wide his capacious arms. The next second, Spinrobin,
Miriam, and Mrs. Mawle, who had unexpectedly come upon them from behind,
were gathered all together against his breast. His voice then dropped
suddenly to a tiny whisper of awful joy that seemed to creep from his
lips like some message too mighty to be fully known, and half lost itself
among the strands of his beard.

"My wonderful redeemed children, notes in my human chord," he whispered
over their heads, "it is the Name that shall make us as God, for it is
none other than the Name that rusheth through the universe"--his breath
failed him most curiously for an instant--"the NAME OF THE ALMIGHTY!"




Chapter XII


I

A certain struggling incoherence is manifest in Spinrobin's report of it
all, as of a man striving to express violent thoughts in a language he
has not yet mastered. It is evident, for instance, as those few familiar
with the "magical" use of sound in ceremonial and the power that resides
in "true naming" will realize, that he never fully understood Skale's
intended use of the chord, or why this complex sound was necessary for
the utterance of the complex "Name."

Moreover, the powers concealed in the mere letters, while they laid hold
upon his imagination, never fully entered his understanding. Few minds,
it seems, can conceive of any deity as other than some anthropomorphic
extension of themselves, for the idea is too greatly blinding to admit
human thought within a measurable distance even of a faintest conception.
The true, stupendous nature of the forces these letters in the opening
syllable clothed, Spinrobin unquestionably never apprehended. Miriam,
with her naked and undefiled intuitions, due to utter ignorance of
worldly things from birth, came nearer to the reality; but then Miriam
was now daily more and more caught up into the vortex of a sweet and
compelling human love, and in proportion as this grew she feared the
great experiment that might--so Spinrobin had suggested--spell Loss.
Gradually dread closed the avenues of her spirit that led so fearfully to
Heaven; and in their place she saw the dear yet thorny paths that lay
with Spinny upon the earth.

They no longer, these two bewildered loving children, spoke of one
another in the far-fetched terminology of sound and music. He no longer
called her his "brilliant little sound," nor did she respond with "you
perfect echo"; they fell back--sign of a gradual concession to more human
things--upon the gentler terminology, if the phrase may be allowed, of
Winky. They shared Winky between them ... though neither one nor other of
them divined yet what Winky actually meant in their just-opening lives.

"Winky is yours," she would say, "because you made him, but he belongs to
me too, because he simply can't live without me!"

"Or I without you, Little Magic," he whispered, laughing tenderly. "So,
you see, we are all three together."

Her face grew slightly troubled.

"He only pays me visits, though. Sometimes I think you hide him, or tell
him not to come." And far down in her deep grey eyes swam the first
moisture of rising tears. "Don't you, my wonderful Spinny?"

"Sometimes I forget him, perhaps," he replied gravely, "but that is only
when I think of what may be coming if--the experiment succeeds--"

"Succeeds?" she exclaimed. "You mean if it fails!" Her voice dropped
instinctively, and they looked over their shoulders to make sure they
were alone.

He came up very close to her and spoke in her small pink ear. "If it
succeeds," he whispered, "we go to Heaven, I suppose; if it fails we
stay upon the earth." Then he stood off, holding her hands at arm's
length and gazing down upon her. "Do you want to go to Heaven?" he asked
very deliberately, "or to stay here upon the earth with me and Winky--?"

She was in his arms the same second, laughing and crying with the strange
conflict of new and inexplicable emotions.

"I want to be with you here, and forever. Heaven frightens me now.
But--oh, Spinny, dear protecting thing, I want--I also want--" She broke
off abruptly, and Spinrobin, unable to see her face buried against his
shoulder, could not guess whether she was laughing or weeping. He only
divined that something in her heart, profound as life itself, something
she had never been warned to conceal, was clamoring for comprehension and
satisfaction.

"Miriam, tell me exactly. I'm sure I shall understand--"

"I want Winky to be with us always--not only sometimes--on little
visits," he heard between the broken breathing.

"I'll tell him--"

"But there's no good telling _him_," she interrupted almost fiercely, "it
is _me_ you must tell...."

Spinrobin's heart sank within him. She was in pain and he could not quite
understand. He pressed her hard against him, keeping silence.

Presently she lifted her face from his coat, and he saw the tears of
mingled pain and happiness in her eyes--the eyes of this girl-woman who
knew not the common ugly standards of life because no woman had ever told
them to her.

"You see, Winky is not really mine unless I have some share in making him
too," she said very softly. "When I have made him too, then he will stay
forever with us, I think."

And Spinrobin, beginning to understand, knowing within him that singular
exultation of triumphant love which comes to a pure man when he meets the
mother-to-be of his firstborn, lowered his own face very reverently to
hers, and kissed her on the cheeks and eyes--saying nothing, and vaguely
wondering whether the awful name that Skale sought with so much thunder
and lightning, did not lie at that very moment, sweetly singing its
divinest message, between the contact of this pair of youthful lips, the
lips of himself and Miriam.


II

And Philip Skale, meanwhile, splendid and independent of all common
obstacles, thundered along his tempestuous mad way, regardless and
ignorant of all signs of disaffection. The rest of that week--a week of
haunting wonder and beauty--was devoted to the carrying out of the
strange program. It is not possible to tell in detail the experience of
each separate room. Spinrobin does it, yet only succeeds in repeating
himself; and, as has been seen, his powers failed even in that first
chamber of awe. The language does not exist in which adventures so remote
from normal experience can be clothed without straining the mind to the
verge of the unintelligible. It appears, however, that each room
possessed its color, note and form, which later were to issue forth and
combine in the even vaster pattern, chord and outline which should
include them all.

Even the thought of it strained the possibilities of belief and the
resources of the imagination.... His soul fluttered and shrank.

They continued the processes of prayer and fasting Skale had ordained as
the time for the experiment drew near, and the careful vibratory
utterance of the "word" belonging to each room, the vibrations of which
threw their inner selves into a condition of safe--or comparatively
safe--receptivity. But Spinrobin no longer said his prayers, for the
thought that soon he was to call upon the divine and mighty name in
reality prevented his doing so in the old way of childhood--nominally. He
feared there might come an answer.

He literally walked the dizzy edge of precipices that dropped over the
edge of the world. The incoherence of all this traffic with sound and
name had always bewildered him, even to the point of darkness, whereas
now it did more, it appalled him in some sense that was monstrous and
terrifying. Yet, while weak with terror when he tried to face the
possible results, and fevered with the notion of entering some new
condition (even though one of glory) where Miriam might no longer be as
he now knew her, it was the savage curiosity he felt that prevented his
coming to a definite decision and telling Mr. Skale that he withdrew from
the whole affair.

Then the idea grew in his mind that the clergyman was obsessed by some
perverted spiritual force, some "Devil" who deceived him, and that the
name he sought to pronounce was after all not good--not God. His
thoughts, fears, hopes, all became hopelessly entangled, through them one
thing alone holding clear and steady--the passionate desire to keep
Miriam as she was now, and to be with her forever. His mind played tricks
with him too. Day and night the house echoed with new sounds; the very
walls grew resonant; the entire building, buried away among these
desolate hills, trembled as though he were imprisoned within the belly of
some monstrous and gigantic fiddle.

Mr. Skale, too, began to change, it seemed. While physically he
increased, as it were, with the power of his burning enthusiasm, his
beard longer and more ragged, his eyes more luminous, and his voice
shaking through the atmosphere almost like wind, his personality, in some
curious fashion, seemed at the same time to retire and become oddly
tinged with a certain remoteness from reality. Spinrobin once or twice
caught himself wondering if he were not after all some legendary or pagan
figure, some mighty character of dream or story, and that presently he,
Spinrobin, would awake and write down the most wonderful vision the world
had ever known. His imagination, it will be seen, was affected in more
ways than one....

With a tremendous earnestness the clergyman went about the building, down
the long dark corridors and across the halls, his long soft strides took
him swiftly everywhere; his mere presence charged with some potent force
that betrayed itself in the fire of his eyes and the flush of his cheeks.

Spinrobin thought of him as some daring blasphemer, knocking at a door in
the sky. The sound of that knocking ran all about the universe. And when
the door opened, the heavens would roll back like an enormous, flat
curtain....

"Any moment almost," Skale whispered to him, smiling, "the day may be
upon us. Keep yourself ready--and--in tune."

And Spinrobin, expecting a thunderclap in his sleep, but ever plucky,
answered in his high-pitched voice, "I'm ready, Mr. Philip Skale, I'm
ready! I'm game too!" when, truthfully speaking, perhaps, he was neither
one nor other.

He would start up from sleep in the nighttime at the least sound, and the
roar of the December gales about the house became voices of portent that
conveyed far more than the mere rushing of inarticulate winds....

"When the hour comes--and it is close at hand--we shall not fail to know
it," said Skale, pallid with excitement. "The Letters will be out upon
us. They will live! But with an intense degree of exuberant life far
beyond what we know as life--we, in our puny, sense-limited bodies!" And
the scorn in his voice came from the center of his heart. "For what we
hear as sound is only a section," he cried, "only a section of
sound-vibrations--as they exist."

"The vibrations our ears can take are _very_ small, I know," interpolated
Spinrobin, cold at heart, while Miriam, hiding behind chairs and tables
that offered handy protection, watched with mingled anxiety and
confidence, knowing that in the last resort her adorable and "wonderful
Spinny" would guide her aright. Love filled her heart, ousting that other
portentous Heaven!


III

And then Skale announced that the time was ready for rehearsals.

"Let us practice the chord," he said, "so that when the moment comes
suddenly upon us, in the twinkling of an eye, in the daytime or in the
night, we shall be prepared, and each shall fly to his appointed place
and utter his appointed note."

The reasons for these definite arrangements he did not pretend to
explain, for they belonged to a part of his discovery that he kept
rigidly to himself; and why Spinrobin and Miriam were to call their notes
from the corridor itself, while Skale boomed his great bass in the
prepared cellar, Mrs. Mawle chanting her alto midway in the hall, acting
as a connecting channel in some way, was apparently never made fully
clear. In Spinrobin's imagination it was very like a practical
illustration of the written chord, the notes rising from the bass clef to
the high soprano--the cellar to the attic, so to speak. But, whatever the
meaning behind it, Skale was exceedingly careful to teach to each of
them his and her appointed place.

"When the Letters move of themselves, and make the first sign," he
repeated, "we shall know it beyond all doubt or question. At any moment
of the day or night it may come. Each of you then hasten to your
appointed place and wait for the sound of my bass in the cellar. There
will be no mistake about it; you will hear it rising through the
building. Then, each in turn, as it reaches you, lift your voices and
call your notes. The chord thus rising through the building will gather
in the flying Letters: it will unite them; it will summon them down to
the fundamental master-tone I utter in the cellar. The moment the Letter
summoned by each particular voice reaches the cellar, that voice must
cease its utterance. Thus, one by one, the four mighty Letters will come
to rest below. The gongs will vibrate in sympathetic resonance; the
colors will tremble and respond; the finely drawn wires will link the
two, and the lens of gas will lead them to the wax, and the record of the
august and terrible syllable will be completely chained. At any desired
moment afterwards I shall be able to reawaken it. Its phonetic utterance,
its correct pronunciation, captured thus in the two media of air and
ether, sound and light, will be in my safe possession, ready for use.

"But"--and he looked down upon his listeners with a dreadful and
impressive gravity that yet only just concealed the bursting exultation
the thought caused him to feel--"remember that once you have uttered your
note, you will have sucked out from the Letter a portion of its own
terrific life and force, which will immediately pass into yourself. You
will instantly absorb this, for you will have called upon a mighty
name--the mightiest--and your prayer will have been answered." He stooped
and whispered as in an act of earnest prayer, "_We shall be as Gods_!"

Something of cold splendor, terribly possessing, came close to them as
he spoke the words; for this was no empty phrase. Behind it lay the great
drive of a relentless reality. And it struck at the very root of the fear
that grew every moment more insistent in the hearts of the two lovers.
They did not want to become as gods. They desired to remain quietly human
and to _love_!

But before either of them could utter speech, even had they dared, the
awful clergyman continued; and nothing brought home to them more vividly
the horrible responsibility of the experiment, and the results of
possible failure, than the few words with which he concluded.

"And to mispronounce, to utter falsely, to call inaccurately, will mean
to summon into life upon the world--and into the heart of the
utterer--that which is incomplete, that which is not God--Devils!--devils
of that subtle Alteration which is destruction--the devils of a Lie."

       *       *       *       *       *

And so for hours at a time they rehearsed the sounds of the chord, but
very softly, lest the sound should rise and reach the four rooms and
invite the escape of the waiting Letters prematurely.

Mrs. Mawle, holding the bit of paper on which her instructions were
clearly written, was as eager almost as her master, and as the note she
had to utter was practically the only one left in the register of her
voice, her deafness provided little difficulty.

"Though when the letters awake into life and cry aloud," said Skale,
beaming upon her dear old apple-skinned face, "it will be in tones that
even the deaf shall hear. For they will spell a measure of redemption
that shall destroy in a second of time all physical disabilities
whatsoever...."

It was at this moment Spinrobin asked a question that for days had
been hovering about his lips. He asked it gravely, hesitatingly, even
solemnly, while Miriam hung upon the answer with an anxiety as great
as his own.

"And if any one of us fails," he said, "and pronounces falsely, will the
result affect all of us, or only the utterer?"

"The utterer only," replied the clergyman. "For it is his own spirit that
must absorb the forces and powers invoked by the sound he utters."

He took the question lightly, it seemed. The possibility of failure was
too remote to be practical.




Chapter XIII


I

But Spinrobin was hardly prepared for the suddenness of the denouement.
He had looked for a longer period of preparation, with the paraphernalia
of a considerable, even an august ceremony. Instead, the announcement
came with an abrupt simplicity that caught him with a horrid shock of
surprise. He was taken wholly unawares.

"The only thing I fear," Mr. Skale had confided to them, "is that the
vibrations of our chord may have already risen to the rooms and cause a
premature escape. But, even so, we shall have ample warning. For the
deaf, being protected from the coarser sounds of earth, are swift to hear
the lightest whispers from Heaven. Mrs. Mawle will know. Mrs. Mawle will
instantly warn us...."

And this, apparently, was what happened, though not precisely as Mr.
Skale had intended, nor with the margin for preparation he had hoped. It
was all so swift and brief and shattering, that to hear Spinrobin tell it
makes one think of a mass of fireworks that some stray spark has sent
with blazing explosion into the air, to the complete loss of the
calculated effect had they gone off seriatim as intended.

And in the awful stress of excitement there can be no question that
Spinny acted out of that subconscious region of the mind which considers
and weighs deeds before passing them on to the surface mind, translating
them into physical expression and thinking itself responsible for the
whole operation. The course he adopted was thus instinctive, and, since
he had no time to judge, blameless.

Neither he nor Miriam had any idea really that their minds,
subconsciously, were already made up. Yet only that morning he had been
talking with her, skirting round the subject as they always did, ashamed
of his doubts about success, and trying to persuade her, and, therefore,
himself, that the path of duty lay in following their leader blindly to
the very end.

He had seen her on the stairs ahead of him, and had overtaken her
quickly. He drew her down beside him, and they sat like two children
perched on the soft-carpeted steps.

"It's coming, you know," he said abruptly, "the moment's getting
very close."

He felt the light shudder that passed through her into himself. She
turned her face to him and he saw the flush of excitement painted in the
center of the usually pale cheeks. He thought of some rare flower,
delicately exotic, that had sprung suddenly into blossom from the heart
of the bleak December day, out of the very boards whereon they sat.

"We shall then be as gods," he added, "filled with the huge power of
those terrific Letters. And that is only the beginning." In himself he
was striving to coax a fading enthusiasm, and to pour it into her. Her
little hand stole into his. "We shall be a sort of angel together, I
suppose. Just think of it...!" His voice was not as thrilling as it ought
to have been, for very human notes vibrated down below in the part he
tried to keep back. He saw the flush fade from her cheeks, and the pallor
spread. "You and I, Miriam--something tremendous together, greater than
any other man and woman in the whole world. Think of it, dear baby; just
think of it...!"

A tiny frown gathered upon her forehead, darkening the grey eyes
with shadows.

"But--lose our Winky!" she said, nestling against his coat, her voice
singularly soft, her fingers scratching gently the palm of his hand
where they lay.

"Hush, hush!" he answered, kissing her into silence. "We must have more
faith. I think everything will be all right. And there is no reason why
we should lose our Winky," he added, very tenderly, smothering the doubt
as best he could, "although we may find his name changed. Like the rest
of us, he will get a 'new name' I suppose."

"Then he won't be _our_ Winky any longer," she objected, with a touch of
obstinacy that was very seductive. "We shall all be different. Perhaps
we shall be too wonderful to need each other any more.... Oh, Spinny,
you precious thing my life needs, think of that! We may be too wonderful
even to care!"

Spinrobin turned and faced her. He tried to speak with authority and
conviction, but he was a bad actor always. He met her soft grey eyes,
already moist and shining with a tenderness of love beyond belief, and
gazed into them with what degree of sternness he could.

"Miriam," he said solemnly, "is it possible that you do not want us to
be as gods?"

Her answer came this time without hesitation. His pretended severity only
made her happy, for nothing could intimidate by a hair's breadth this
exquisite first love of her awakening soul.

"Some day, perhaps, oh, my sweet Master," she whispered with trembling
lips, "but not now. I want to be on earth first with you--and with
our Winky."

To hear that precious little voice call him "sweet Master" was almost
more than he could bear. He made an effort, however, to insist upon this
fancied idea of "duty" to Skale; though everything, of course, betrayed
him--eyes, voice, gestures.

"But we owe it to Mr. Skale to become as gods," he faltered, trying to
make the volume of his voice atone for its lack of conviction.

And it was then she uttered the simple phrase that utterly confounded
him, and showed him the new heaven and new earth wherein he and she and
Winky already lived.

"I am as God _now_," she said simply, the whole passion of a clean,
strong little soul behind the words. "You have made me so! You love me!"


II

The same moment, before they could speak or act, Skale was upon them from
behind with a roar.

"Practicing your splendid notes together!" he cried, thundering down the
steps past them, three at a time, clothed for the first time in the
flowing scarlet robe he usually wore only in the particular room where
his own "note" lived. "That's capital! Sing it together in your hearts
and in your souls and in your minds; and the more the better!"

He swept by them like a storm, vanishing through the hall below like some
living flame of fire. They both understood that he wore that robe for
protection, and that throughout the house the heralds of the approaching
powers of the imprisoned Letters were therefore already astir. His steps
echoed below them in the depths of the building as he descended to the
cellar, intent upon some detail of the appalling consummation that drew
every minute nearer.

They turned and faced one another, breathless a little. Tenderness and
terror shone plainly in their eyes, but Spinrobin, ever an ineffectual
little man, and with nothing of the "Master" really in his composition
anywhere, found no word to speak. That sudden irruption of the terrific
clergyman into their intimate world had come with an effect of dramatic
and incalculable authority. Like a blast of air that drives the furnace
to new heat and turns the metal white, his mind now suddenly saw clear
and sure. The effect of the incident was too explosive, however, for him
to find expression. Action he found in a measure, but no words. He took
Miriam passionately into his arms as they stood there in the gathering
dusk upon the staircase of that haunted and terrible building, and Miriam
it was who found the words upon which they separated and went quietly
away to the solitude each needed for the soul.

"We'll leave the gods alone," she said with gentle decision, yet
making it seem as though she appealed to his greater strength and
wisdom to decide; "I want nothing but you--you and Winky. And all you
really want is me."

But in his room he heard the vibrations of the clergyman's voice rising
up through the floor and walls as he practiced in the cellar the sounds
with which the ancient Hebrews concealed the Tetragrammaton:
YOD--HE--VAU--HE: JEHOVAH--JAHVE--of which the approaching great
experiment, however, concerned itself only with the opening vibrations of
the first letter--YOD....

And, as he listened, he hesitated again ... wondering after all whether
Miriam was right.


III

It was towards the end of their short silent dinner that very night--the
silence due to the fact that everybody was intently listening--when
Spinrobin caught the whisper of a singular faint sound that he took first
to be the rising of wind. The wind sometimes came down that way with
curious gulps from the terraces of the surrounding moors. Yet in this
sound was none of that rush and sigh that the hills breed. It did not
drop across the curves of the world; it rose from the center.

He looked up sharply, then at once realized that the sound was not
outside at all, but inside--inside the very room where he sat facing
Skale and Miriam. Then something in his soul recognized it. It was the
first wave in an immense vibration.

Something stretched within him as foam stretches on the elastic side of a
heaped Atlantic roller, retreated, then came on again with a second
gigantic crest. The rhythm of the huge sound had caught him. The life in
him expanded awfully, rose to far summits, dropped to utter depths. A
sense of glowing exaltation swept through him as though wings of power
lifted his heart with enormous ascendancy. The biggest passions of his
soul stirred--the sweetest dreams, yearnings, aspirations he had ever
known were blown to fever heat. Above all, his passion for Miriam waxed
tumultuous and possessed him.

Mr. Skale dropped his fruit knife and uttered a cry, but a cry of so
peculiar a character that Spinrobin thought for a moment he was about to
burst into song. At the same instant he stood up, and his chair fell
backwards with a crash upon the floor. Spinrobin stood up too. He asserts
always that he was lifted up. He recognized no conscious effort of his
own. It was at this point, moreover, that Miriam, pale as linen, yet
uttering no sound and fully mistress of herself, left her side of the
table and ran round swiftly to the protection of her lover.

She came close up. "Spinny," she said, "it's come!"

Thus all three were standing round that dinner table on the verge of some
very vigorous action not yet disclosed, as people, vigilant and alert,
stand up at a cry of fire, when the door from the passage opened noisily
and in rushed Mrs. Mawle, surrounded by an atmosphere of light such as
might come from a furnace door suddenly thrown wide in some dark foundry.
Only the light was not steady; it was whirling.

She ran across the floor as though dancing--the dancing of a
child--propelled, it seemed, by an irresistible drive of force behind;
while with her through the opened door came a roaring volume of sound
that was terrible as Niagara let loose, yet at the same time exquisitely
sweet, as birds or children singing. Upon these two incongruous qualities
Spinrobin always insists.

"The deaf shall hear--!" came sharply from the clergyman's lips, the
sentence uncompleted, for the housekeeper cut him short.

"They're out!" she cried with a loud, half-frightened jubilance; "Mr.
Skale's prisoners are bursting their way about the house. And one of
them," she added with a scream of joy and terror mingled, "is in my
throat...!"

If the odd phrase she made use of stuck vividly in Spinrobin's memory,
the appearance she presented impressed him even more. For her face was
shining and alight, radiant as when Skale had called her true name weeks
before. Flashes of flame-like beauty ran about the eyes and mouth; and
she looked eighteen--eternally eighteen--with a youth that was permanent
and unchanging. Moreover, not only was hearing restored to her, but her
left arm, withered for years, was in the act of pointing to the ceiling,
instinct with vigorous muscular life. Her whole presentment was
splendid, intense--redeemed.

"The deaf hear!" repeated Skale in a shout, and was across the room with
the impetus of a released projectile. "The Letters are out and alive! To
your appointed places! The syllable has caught us! Quick, quick! If you
love your soul and truth ... fly!"

Deafening thunders rushed and crashed and blew about the room,
interpenetrated everywhere at the same time by that searching strain of
sweetness Spinrobin had first noticed. The sense of life, running free
and abundant, was very remarkable. The same moment he found his hand
clasped, and felt himself torn along by the side of the rushing clergyman
into the hall. Behind them "danced" Mrs. Mawle, her cap awry, her apron
flying, her elastic-side boots taking the light, dancing step of youth.
With quick, gliding tread Miriam, still silent, was at his heels. He
remembers her delicate, strange perfume reaching him faintly through all
the incredible turmoil of that impetuous exit.

In the hall the roar increased terrifically about his ears. Skale, in his
biggest booming voice, was uttering the names of Hebrew
"angels"--invoking forces, that is, to his help; and behind him Mrs.
Mawle was singing--singing fragments apparently of the "note" she had to
utter, as well as fragments of her own "true name" thus magically
recovered. Her restored arm gyrated furiously, her tripping youth spelt
witchery. Yet the whole madness of the scene came to Spinrobin with a
freezing wind of terror; for about it was a lawless, audacious blasphemy,
that must surely win for itself a quite appalling punishment....

Yet nothing happened at once--nothing destructive, at least. Skale
and the housekeeper, he saw, were hurriedly robing themselves in the
red and yellow surplices that hung from nails in the hall, and the
instinct to laugh at the sight was utterly overwhelmed when he remembered
that these were the colors which were used for safety in their respective
"rooms." ... It was a scene of wild confusion and bewilderment which the
memory refuses to reproduce coherently. In his own throat already began a
passionate rising of sound that he knew was the "note" he had to utter
attempting to escape, summoned forth automatically by these terrible
vibrating Letters in the air. A cataract of sound seemed to fill the
building and made it shake to its very foundations.

But the hall, he saw, was not only alive with "music," it was ablaze with
light--a white and brilliant glory that at first dazzled him to the point
of temporary blindness.

The same second Mr. Skale's voice, storming its way somehow above the
tumult, made itself heard:

"To the rooms upstairs, Spinrobin! To the corridor with Miriam! And when
you hear my voice from the cellar--_utter_! We may yet be in time to
unite the Letters...!"

He released the secretary's hand, flinging it from him, and was off with
a bounding, leaping motion like an escaped animal towards the stone
passage that led to the cellar steps; and Spinrobin, turning about
himself like a top in a perfect frenzy of bewilderment, heard his great
voice as he disappeared round the corner:

"It has come upon me like a thief in the night! Before I am fully
prepared it has called me! May the powers of the Name have mercy upon my
soul...!" And he was gone. For the last time had Spinrobin set his eyes
upon the towering earthly form of the Rev. Philip Skale.


IV

Then, at first, it seems, the old enthusiasm caught him, and with him,
therefore, caught Miriam, too. That savage and dominant curiosity to know
clutched him, overpowering even the assaults of a terror that fairly
battered him. Through all the chaos and welter of his dazed mind he
sought feverishly for the "note" he had to utter, yet found it not, for
he was too horribly confused. Fiddles, sand-patterns, colored robes,
gongs, giant tuning-forks, wax-sheeted walls, aged-faces-turned-young and
caverns-by-the-sea jostled one another in his memory with a jumble of
disproportion quite inextricable.

Next, impelled by that driving sense of duty to Skale, he turned to the
girl at his side: "Can you do it?" he cried.

Unable to make her voice heard above the clamor she nodded quickly in
acquiescence. Spinrobin noticed that her little mouth was set rather
firmly, though there was a radiance about her eyes and features that made
her sweetly beautiful. He remembers that her loveliness and her pluck
uplifted him above all former littlenesses of hesitation; and, seizing
her outstretched hand, they flew up the main staircase and in less than a
minute reached the opening of the long corridor where the rooms were.

Here, however, they stopped with a gasp, for a hurricane of moving air
met them in the face like the draught from some immense furnace. Again
the crest of a wave in the colossal sound-vibration had caught them.
Staggering against the wall, they tried again and again to face the
tempest of sound and light, but the space beyond them was lit with the
same unearthly brilliance as the hall, and out of the whole long throat
of that haunted corridor issued such a passion of music and such a
torrent of gorgeous color, that it seemed impossible for any aggregation
of physical particles--least of all poor human bodies--to remain coherent
for a single instant before the concentrated onslaught.

Yet, game to the inmost core of his little personality, and raised far
above his normal powers by the evidence of Miriam's courage and fidelity,
he struggled with all his might and searched through the chambers of his
being for the note he was ordained to utter in the chord. The ignominy of
failure, now that the great experiment was full upon him--failure in
Miriam's eyes, too--was simply impossible to contemplate. Yet, in spite
of every effort, the memory of that all-important note escaped him
utterly, for the forces of his soul floundered, helpless and disheveled,
before the too mighty splendors that were upon him at such close
quarters. The sounds he actually succeeded in emitting between dry and
quivering lips were pitiful and feeble beyond words.

Down that living corridor, meanwhile, he saw the doors of the four rooms
were gone, consumed like tissue paper; and through the narrow portals
there shouldered forward, bathed in light ineffable, the separate
outlines of the Letters so long imprisoned in inactivity. And with their
appearance the sounds instantly ceased, having overpassed the limits of
what is audible to human ears. A great stillness dropped about them with
an abrupt crash of utter silence. For a "crash" of silence it
was--all-shattering.

And then, from the categories of the incomprehensible and unmanifest,
"something" loomed forth towards them where, limp and shaking, they
leaned against the wall, and they witnessed the indescribable operation
by which the four Letters, whirling and alive, ran together and melted
into a single terrific semblance of a FORM ... the sight of which entered
the heart of Spinrobin and threatened to split it asunder with the joy of
the most sublime terror and adoration a human soul has ever known.

And the whole gigantic glory of Skale's purpose came upon him like a
tempest. The magnificent effrontery by which the man sought to storm his
way to heaven again laid its spell upon him. The reaction was of amazing
swiftness. It almost seemed as though time ceased to operate, so
instantaneously did his mood pass from terror to elation--wild, ecstatic
elation that could dare anything and everything to share in the awful
delight and wonder of Skale's transcendent experiment.

And so, forgetting himself and his little disabilities of terror and
shrinking, he sought once again for the note he was to utter in the
chord. And this time he found it.


V

Very faintly, yet distinctly audible in the deep stillness, it sounded
far away down in the deeps of his being. And, with a splendid spiritual
exultation tearing and swelling in his heart, he turned at once
triumphantly to Miriam beside him.

"Utter your note too!" he cried. "Utter it with mine, for any moment now
we shall hear the command from the cellar.... Be ready...!"

And the FORM, meanwhile, limned in the wonder of an undecipherable
or at least untranslatable geometry, silently roaring, enthroned in
the undiscoverable colors beyond the spectrum, swept towards them
as he spoke.

At the same instant Miriam answered him, her exquisite little face set
like a rock, her marble pallor painted with the glory of the approaching
splendors. Just when the moment of success was upon them; when the
flying Letters were abroad; when all the difficult weeks of preparation
were face to face with the consummation; and when any moment Skale's
booming bass might rise from the bowels of the building as the signal to
utter the great chord and unite the fragments of the first divine
syllable; when Spinrobin had at last conquered his weakness and recovered
his note--then, at this decisive and supreme moment, Miriam asserted
herself and took the reins of command.

"No," she said, looking with sudden authority straight into his eyes,
"no! I will not utter the note. Nor shall you utter yours!" And she
clapped her little hand tight upon his mouth.

In that instant of unutterable surprise the two great forces of his life
and personality met together with an explosive violence wholly beyond his
power to control. For on the one hand lay the fierce enticement of
Skale's heaven, with all that it portended, and on the other the deep
though temporarily submerged human passion of his love for the girl.
Miriam's sudden action revealed the truth to him better than any
argument. In a flash he realized that her choice was made, and that she
was in entire and final revolt against the whole elaborate experiment and
all that it involved. The risk of losing her Spinny, or finding him
changed in some condition of redemption where he would no longer be the
little human thing she so dearly loved, had helped her to this final,
swift conclusion.

With her hand tight over his lips, and her face of white decision before
him, he understood. She called him with those big grey eyes to the sweet
and common uses of life, instead of to the heights of some audacious
heaven where they might be as gods with Philip Skale. She clung to
humanity. And Spinrobin, seeing her at last with spiritual eyes fully
opened, knew finally that she was right.

"But oh," he always cries, "in that moment I knew the most terrible
choice I have ever had to make, for it was not a choice between life and
death, but a choice between two lives, each of infinite promised wonder.
And what do you think it was that decided me, and made me choose the
wholesome, humble life with little Miriam in preference to the grandeur
of Skale's vast dream? What _do_ you think?" And his face always turns
pink and then flame-colored as he asks it, hesitating absurdly before
giving the answer. "I'll tell you, because you'd never guess in this
world." And then he lowers his voice and says, "It was the delicious
little sweet perfume of her fingers as she held them over my lips....!"

That delicate, faint smell was the symbol of human happiness, and
through all the whirlwind of sound and color about him, it somehow
managed to convey its poignant, searching message of the girl's utter
love straight into his heart. Thus curiously out of proportion and
insignificant, indeed, are sometimes the decisive details that in
moments of overwhelming experience turn the course of life's river this
way or that....

With a single wild cry in his soul that found no audible expression, he
gave up the unequal struggle. He turned, and with Miriam by his side,
flew down the corridor from the advent of the Immensity that was upon
them--from the approach of the escaping Letters.


VI

How Spinrobin found his way out of that sound-stricken house remains an
unsolved mystery. He never understood it himself; he remembers only that
when they reached the ground floor the vibrations of Skale's opening bass
note had already begun. Its effect, too, was immediately noticeable. For
the roar of the escaping Letters, which upstairs had reached so immense a
volume as to be recognized only in terms of silence, now suddenly grew in
a measure harnessed and restrained. Their vibration became reduced--down
closer to the sixteen-foot wavelength which is the limit of human
audition. They were being leashed in by the summoning master-tone. They
grew once more audible.

On the rising swirl of sound the two humans were swept down passages
and across halls, as two leaves are borne by a tempest, and after
frantic efforts, in which Spinrobin bruised his body against doors and
walls without number, he found himself at last in the open air, and at
a considerable distance from the house of terror. Stars shone overhead.
He saw the outline of hills. Breaths of cool wind fanned his burning
skin and eyes.

But he dared not turn to look or listen. The music of that opening note,
now rising through the building from the cellar, might catch him and win
him back. The chord in which himself and Miriam were to have uttered
their appointed tones, even half-told, was still mighty to overwhelm. Its
effect upon the Letters themselves had been immediate.

The feeling that he had proved faithless to Skale, unworthy of the great
experiment, never properly attuned to this fearful music of the
gods--this was forgotten in the overmastering desire to escape from it
all into the safety of common human things with Miriam. Setting his
course ever up the hills, he ran on and on, till breath failed him
utterly and he was obliged to stop for lack of strength. And it was only
then he realized that the whole time the girl had been in his arms. He
had been carrying her.

Placing her on the ground, he caught a glimpse of her eyes in the
darkness, and saw that they were still charged with the one devouring
passion that had made the sacrifice of Skale and of all her training
since birth inevitable. Soft and glowing with her first knowledge of
love, her grey eyes shone like stars newly risen.

"Come, come!" he whispered hoarsely; "we must get as far as
possible--away from it all. Across the hills we shall find safety. Once
the splendors overtake us we are lost...."

Seizing her by the hand, they pressed on again, the ocean of sound rising
and thundering behind them and below.

Without knowing it, he had taken the path by which the clergyman had
brought him from the station weeks ago on the day of his first arrival.
With a confused memory, as of a dream, he recognized it. The ground was
slippery with dead leaves whose odor penetrated sharply the air of night.
Everywhere about him, as they paused from time to time in the little open
spaces, the trees pressed up thickly; and ever from the valley they had
just left the increasing tide of sound came pouring up after them like
the roar of the sea escaping through doors upon the surface of the world.

And even now the marvelous, enticing wonder of it caught him more than
once and made him hesitate. The sense of what he was giving up sickened
him with a great sudden yearning of regret. The mightiness of that loved
leader, lonely and unafraid, trafficking with the principalities and
powers of sound, and reckoning without misgiving upon the cooperation of
his other "notes"--this plucked fearfully at his heartstrings. But only
in great tearing gusts, so to speak, which passed the instant he realized
the little breathless, grey-eyed girl at his side, charged with her
beautiful love for him and the wholesome ambition for human things.

"Oh! but the heaven we're losing...!" he cried once aloud,
unable to contain himself. "Oh, Miriam ... and I have proved
unworthy ... small...!"

"Small enough to stay with me forever and ever ... here on the earth,"
she replied passionately, seizing his hand and drawing him further up the
hill. Then she stopped suddenly and gathered a handful of dead leaves,
moss, twigs and earth. The exquisite familiar perfume as she held it to
his face pierced through him with a singular power of conviction.

"We should lose _this_," she exclaimed; "there's none of this ... in
heaven! The earth, the earth, the dear, beautiful earth, with you ... and
Winky ... is what I want!"

And when he stopped her outburst with a kiss, fully understanding the
profound truth she so quaintly expressed, he smelt the trees and
mountains in her hair, and her fragrance was mingled there with the
fragrance of that old earth on which they stood.


VII

The rising flood of sound sent them charging ahead the same minute, for
it seemed upon them with a rush; and it was only after much stumbling and
floundering among trees and boulders that they emerged into the open
space of the hills beyond the woods. Actually, perhaps, they had been
running for twenty minutes, but to them it seemed that they had been
running for days. They stood still and looked about them.

"You shall never regret, never, never," Miriam whispered quickly. "I can
make you happier than all this ever could," and she waved her arm towards
the house below. "And you know it, my little Master."

But before he could reply, or do more than place an arm about her waist
to support her, something came to pass that communicated its message to
their souls with an incalculable certainty neither could explain.
Perhaps it was that distance enabled them to distinguish between the
sounds more clearly, or perhaps their beings were still so intimately
connected with Skale that some psychic warning traveled up to them across
the night; but at any rate there then came about this sharp and sudden
change in the quality of the sound-tempest round them that proclaimed the
arrival of an exceedingly dramatic moment. The nature of the rushing,
flying vibrations underwent alteration. And, looking one another in the
eyes, they realized what it meant.

"He's beginning ..." faltered Spinrobin in some skeleton of a voice.
"Skale has begun to _utter_...!" He said it beneath his breath.

Down in the cellar of that awful house the giant clergyman, alone and
undismayed, had begun to call the opening vibration of the living chord
which was to gather in this torrent of escaping Letters and unite them in
temporary safety in the crypts of the prepared vault. For the first time
in eighteen hundred years the initial sound of the "Name that rusheth
through the universe"--the first sound of its opening syllable, that
is--was about to thunder its incalculable message over the earth.

Crouching close against each other they stood there on the edge of the
woods, the night darkly smothering about them, the bare, open hills lying
beyond in the still sky, waiting for the long-apprehended climax--the
utterance of the first great syllable.

"It will make him ... as God," crashed the thought through Spinrobin's
brain as he experienced the pangs of the fiercest remorse he had ever
known. "Even without our two notes the power will be sublime...!"

But, through Miriam's swiftly-beating heart, as she pressed closer and
closer: "I know your true name ... and you are mine. What else in heaven
or earth can ever matter...?"




Chapter XIV


I

Skale had indeed begun to utter. And to these two bewildered children
standing there alone with their love upon the mountain, it seemed that
the whole world knew.

Those desolate hills that rolled away like waves beneath the stars; the
whispering woods about them; the distant sea, eternally singing its own
note of sadness; the boulders at their feet; the very stars themselves,
listening in the heart of night--one and all were somehow aware that a
portion of the great Name which first called them into being was about to
issue from the sleep of ages once again into manifestation....Perhaps
to quicken them into vaster life, perhaps to change their forms, perhaps
to merge them all back into the depths of the original "word" of
creation ... with the roar of a dissolving universe....

Through everything, from the heart of the hidden primroses below the soil
to the center of the huge moors above, there ran some swift thrill of
life as the sounds of which they were the visible expression trembled in
sympathetic resonance with the opening vibrations of the great syllable.

Philip Skale had begun to utter. Alone in the cellar of that
tempest-stricken house, already aware probably that the upper notes of
his chord had failed him, he was at last in the act of calling upon the
Name that Rusheth through the Universe ... the syllable whose powers
should pass into his own being and make him as the gods....

And, first of all, to the infinite surprise of these two listening,
shaking lovers, the roaring thunders that had been battling all about
them, grew faint and small, and then dropped away into mere trickles of
sound, retreating swiftly down into the dark valley where the house
stood, as though immense and invisible leashes drew them irresistibly
back. One by one the Letters fled away, leaving only a murmur of
incredibly sweet echoes behind them in the hills, as the master-sound,
spoken by this fearless and audacious man, gathered them into their
appointed places in the cellar.

But if they expected stupendous things to follow they were at first
singularly disappointed. For, instead of woe and terror, instead of the
foundering of the visible universe, there fell about the listening world
a cloak of the most profound silence they had ever known, soft beyond
conception. The Name was not in the whirlwind. Out of the heart of that
deathly stillness it came--a small, sweet voice, that was undeniably the
voice of Philip Skale, its awful thunders all smoothed away. With it,
too, like a faint overtone, came the yet gentler music of another voice.
The bass and alto were uttering their appointed notes in harmony and
without dismay.

Everywhere the sound rose up through the darkness of great distance, yet
at the same time ran most penetratingly sweet, close beside them in their
very ears. So magically intimate indeed was it, yet so potentially huge
for all its soft beginning, that Spinrobin declares that what he heard
was probably not the actual voices, but only some high liberated
harmonics of them.

The sounds, moreover, were not distinguishable as consonants and vowels
in the ordinary sense, and to this day remain for him beyond all reach
of possible reproduction. He did not hear them as "word" or "syllable,"
but as some incalculably splendid Message that was too mighty to be
taken in, yet at the same time was sweeter than all imagined music,
simple as a little melody "sweetly sung in tune," artless as wind
through rustling branches.

And, moreover, as this small, sweet voice ran singing everywhere about
them in the darkness of hills and woods, Spinrobin realized, with a
whole revolution of wonder sweeping through him, that the sound, for all
its gentleness, was at work vehemently upon the surface of the
landscape, altering and shifting the pattern of the solid earth, just as
the sand had wreathed into outlines at the sound of his own voice weeks
ago, and as the form of the clergyman had changed at the vibrations of
the test night.

The first letters of the opening syllable of this divine and magical
name were passing over the world ... shifting the myriad molecules that
composed it by the stress and stir of its vast harmonics ... changing
the pattern.

But this time the change was not dreadful; the new outline, even before
he actually perceived it, was beautiful above all known forms of beauty.
The outer semblance of the old earth appeared to melt away and reveal
that heart of clean and dazzling wonder which burns ever at its inmost
core--the naked spirit divined by poets and mystics since the beginning
of time. It was a new heaven and a new earth that pulsed below them in
response to the majesty of this small sweet voice. All nature knew, from
the birds that started out of sleep into passionate singing, to the fish
that stirred in the depths of the sea, and the wild deer that sprang
alert in their wintry coverts, scenting an eternal spring. For the earth
rolled up as a scroll, shaking the outworn skin of centuries from her
face, and suffering all her rocky structure to drop away and disclose the
soft and glowing loveliness of an actual being--a being most tenderly and
exquisitely alive. It was the beginning of spiritual vision in their own
hearts. The name had set them free. The blind saw--a part of God....


II

And then, in Spinrobin's heart, the realization of failure--that he was
not in his appointed place, following his great leader to the stars,
clashed together with the splendor of his deep and simple love for this
trembling slip of a girl beside him.

The thought that God, as it were, had called him and he had been afraid
to run and answer to his name overpowered his timid, aching soul with
such a flood of emotion that he found himself struggling with a glorious
temptation to tear down the mountainside again to the house and play his
appointed part--utter his note in the chord even thus late. For the
essential bitterness and pain that lies at the heart of all transitory
earthly things--the gnawing sense of incompleteness and vanity that
touches the section of transitory existence men call "life," met face to
face with this passing glimpse of reality, timeless and unconditioned,
which the sound of the splendid name flashed so terrifically before his
awakened soul-vision,--and threatened to overwhelm him.

In another instant he would have yielded and gone; forgotten even
Miriam, and all the promised sweetness of life with her half-planned,
when something came to pass abruptly that threw his will and all his
little calculations into a dark chaos of amazement where, by a kind
of electrically swift reaction, he realized that the one true,
possible and right thing for him was this very love he was about to cast
aside. His highest destiny was upon the unchanged old earth ... with
Miriam ... and Winky....

She turned and flung her arms round his neck in a passion of tears as
though she had divined his unspoken temptation ... and at the same time
this awful new thing was upon them both. It caught them like a tempest.
For a disharmony--a discord--a lying sound was loose upon the air from
those two voices far below.

"Call me by my true name," she cried quickly, in an anguish of
terror; "for my soul is afraid.... Oh, love me most utterly, utterly,
utterly ... and save me!"

Unnerved and shaking like a leaf, Spinrobin pressed her against
his heart.

"I know you by name and you are mine," he tried to say, but the words
never left his lips. It was the love surging up in his tortured heart
that alone held him to sanity and prevented--as it seemed to him in that
appalling moment--the dissolution of his very being and hers.

For Philip Skale had somewhere _uttered falsely_.

A darting zigzag crack, as of lightning, ran over the giant fabric of
vibrations that covered the altering world as with a flood ... and sounds
that no man may hear and not die leaped awfully into being. The
suddenness and immensity of the catastrophe blinded these two listening
children-souls. Awe and terror usurped all other feelings ... but one.
Their love, being born of the spirit, held supreme, insulating them, so
to speak, from all invading disasters.

Philip Skale had made a mistake in the pronunciation of the Name.

The results were dreadful and immediate, and from all the surface of the
wakening world rose anguished voices. Spinrobin started up, lifting
Miriam into his arms. He spun dizzily for a moment between boulders and
trees, giving out a great wailing cry, unearthly enough had there been
any to hear it. Then he began to run wildly through the thick darkness.
In his ear--for her head lay close--he heard her dear voice, between the
sobs of collapse, calling his inner name most sweetly; and the sound
summoned to the front all in him that was best and manly.

"My sweet Master, my sweet Master!"

But he did not run far. About him on every side the night lifted as
though it were suddenly day. He saw the summits of the bleak mountains
agleam with the reflection of some great light that rushed upon them from
the valley. All the desolate landscape, hesitating like some hovering
ocean between the old pattern and the new, seemed to hang suspended amid
the desolation of the winter skies. Everything roared. It seemed the
ground shook. The very bones of the woods went shuddering together; the
hills toppled; and overhead, in some incredible depths of space, boomed
sounds as though the heavens split off into fragments and hurled the
constellations about the vault to swell these shattering thunders of a
collapsing world.

The Letters of that terrible and august Name were passing over the face
of the universe--distorted because mispronounced--creative sounds,
disheveled and monstrous, because incompletely and incorrectly uttered.

"Put me down," he heard Miriam cry where she lay smothered in his arms,
"and we can face everything together, and be safe. Our love is bigger
than it all and will protect us...."

"Because it is complete," he cried incoherently in reply, seizing the
truth of her thought, and setting her upon the ground; "it includes even
this. It is a part of ... the Name ... correctly uttered ... for it is
true and pure."

He heard her calling his inner name, and he began forthwith to call her
own as they stood there clinging to one another, mingling arms and hair
and lips in such a tumult of passion that it seemed as though all this
outer convulsion of the world was a small matter compared to the
commotion in their own hearts, revolutionized by the influx of a divine
love that sought to melt them into a single being.

And as they looked down into the valley at their feet, too bewildered to
resist these mighty forces that stole the breath from their throats and
the strength from their muscles, they saw with a clearness as of day that
the House of Awe in which their love had wakened and matured was passing
away and being utterly consumed.

In a flame of white fire, tongued and sheeted, streaked with gulfs of
black, and most terribly roaring, it rose with a prodigious crackling of
walls and roof towards the sky. Volumes of colored smoke, like hills
moving, went with it; and with it, too, went the forms--the substance of
their forms, at least, of their "sounds" released--of Philip Skale, Mrs.
Mawle, and all the paraphernalia of gongs, drapery, wires, sheeted walls,
sand-patterns, and the preparations of a quarter of a century of labor
and audacious research. For nothing could possibly survive in such a
furnace. The heat of it struck their faces where they stood even here
high upon the hills, and the currents of rising wind blew the girl's
tresses across his eyes and moved his own feathery hair upon his head.
The notes of those leaping flames were like thunder.

"Watch now!" cried Miriam, though he divined the meaning from the gesture
of her free hand rather than actually heard the words.

And, leaning their trembling bodies against a great boulder behind
them, they then saw in the midst of the conflagration, or hovering
dimly above it rather, the vast outlines of the captured sounds--the
Letters--escaping back again into the womb of eternal silence from which
they had been with such appalling courage evoked. In forms of dazzling
blackness they passed upwards in their chariots of flame, yet at the same
time passed _inwards_ in some amazing kind of spiral motion upon their
own axes, vanishing away with incredible swiftness and beauty deep down
into themselves ... and were gone.

Realizing in some long-forgotten fashion of childhood the fearful majesty
of the wrath of Jehovah, yet secretly undismayed because each felt so
gloriously lost in their wonderful love, the bodies of Miriam and
Spinrobin dropped instinctively upon their knees, and, still tightly
clasped in one another's arms, bowed their foreheads to the ground,
touching the earth and leaves.

But how long they rested thus upon the heart of the old earth, or
whether they slept, or whether, possibly, the inevitable reaction to all
the overstrain of the past hours led them through a period of
unconsciousness, neither of them quite knew. Nor was it possible for
them to have known, perhaps, that the lonely valley sheltering the House
of Awe, running tongue-like into these desolate hills, had the
unenviable reputation of trembling a little in sympathy with any
considerable shock of earthquake that came to move that portion of the
round globe from her sleep. Of this they knew as little, no doubt, as
they did of the ill-defined line of demarcation between experiences that
are objective, capable of being weighed and measured, and those that are
subjective, taking place--though with convincing authority--only in the
sphere of the mind....

All they do know, and Spinrobin tells it with an expression of supreme
happiness upon his shining round face, is that at length they stirred
as they lay, opened their eyes, turned and looked at one another, then
stood up. On Miriam's hair and lashes lay the message of the dew, and
in her clear eyes all the soft beauty of the stars that had watched
over them.

But the stars themselves had gone. Over the hills ran the colored feet of
the dawn, swift and rosy, touching the spread of heathery miles with the
tints of approaching sunrise. The tops of the leafless trees stirred
gently with a whisper of wind that stole up from the distant sea. The
birds were singing. Over the surface of the old earth flew the magical
thrill of life. It caught these two children-lovers, sweeping them into
each other's arms as with wings.

Out of all the amazing tempest of their recent experiences emerged this
ever-growing splendor of their deep and simple love. The kindly earth
they had chosen beckoned them down into the valley; the awful heaven they
had rejected smiled upon them approvingly, as the old sun topped the
hills and peeped upon them with his glorious eye.

"Come, Miriam," breathed Spinrobin softly into her little ear;
"we'll go down into another valley ... and live happily together
forever and ever...."

"Yes," she murmured, blushing with the rosiness of that exquisite
winter's dawn; "... you and I ... and ... and ..."

But Spinrobin kissed the unborn name from her lips. "Hush!" he
whispered, "hush!"

For the little "word" between these two was not yet made flesh. But the
dawn-wind caught up that "hush" and carried it to the trees and
undergrowth about them, and then ran thousand-footed before them to
whisper it to the valley where they were going.

And Miriam, knowing the worship and protection in his delicate caress,
looked up into his face and smiled--and the smile in her grey eyes was
that ancient mother-smile which is coeval with life. For the word of
creation flamed in these two hearts, waiting only to be uttered.