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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Human Chord, by Algernon Blackwood
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Human Chord
+
+Author: Algernon Blackwood
+
+Release Date: April 11, 2004 [EBook #11988]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HUMAN CHORD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+                            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.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Human Chord, by Algernon Blackwood
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Human Chord, by Algernon Blackwood
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Human Chord
+
+Author: Algernon Blackwood
+
+Release Date: April 11, 2004 [EBook #11988]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HUMAN CHORD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+                            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 L50 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 _menage_, 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
+denouement. 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 naive
+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 _tete-a-tete_ 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.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Human Chord, by Algernon Blackwood
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