The Bright Messenger

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  THE BRIGHT MESSENGER

  OTHER WORKS BY ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

  JULIUS LeVALLON THE WAVE: An Egyptian Aftermath TEN MINUTE STORIES DAY AND NIGHT STORIES THE PROMISE OF AIR THE GARDEN OF SURVIVAL THE LISTENER and Other Stories THE EMPTY HOUSE and Other Stories THE LOST VALLEY and Other Stories JOHN SILENCE: Physician Extraordinary

  _With Violet Pearn_ KARMA: A Reincarnation Play

  _With Wilfred Wilson_ THE WOLVES OF GOD and other Fey Stories

  E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

  THE BRIGHT MESSENGER BY ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

  AUTHOR OF "JULIUS LeVALLON," "THE WOLVES OF GOD," ETC.

  NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 681 FIFTH AVENUE

  Copyright 1922, by E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

  _All Rights Reserved_

  _Printed in the United States of America_

  To the Unstable

  THE BRIGHT MESSENGER

  CHAPTER I

  Edward Fillery, so far as may be possible to a man of normal passionsand emotions, took a detached view of life and human nature. At the ageof thirty-eight he still remained a spectator, a searching, critical,analytical, yet chiefly, perhaps, a sympathetic spectator, before thegreat performance whose stage is the planet and whose performers andauditorium are humanity.

  Knowing himself outcast, an unwelcome deadhead at the play, he had yetfelt no bitterness against the parents whose fierce illicit passion haddeprived him of an honourable seat. The first shock of resentment over,he had faced the situation with a tolerance which showed an unusualcharity, an exceptional understanding, in one so young.

  He was twenty when he learned the truth about himself. And it was hiswondering analysis as to why two loving humans could be so careless oftheir offspring's welfare, when the rest of Nature took such pains inthe matter, that first betrayed, perhaps, his natural aptitude. He hadthe innate gift of seeing things as they were, undisturbed by personalemotion, while yet asking himself with scientific accuracy why and howthey came to be so. These were invaluable qualities in the line ofknowledge and research he chose for himself as psychologist and doctor.The terms are somewhat loose. His longing was to probe the motives ofconduct in the first place, and, in the second, to correct the resultsof wrong conduct by removing faulty motives. Psychiatrist and healer,therefore, were his more accurate titles; psychiatrist and healer, indue course, he became.

  His father, an engineer of ability and enterprise, prospecting in theremoter parts of the Caucasus for copper, and making a comfortablefortune in so doing, was carried off his feet suddenly by the beauty ofa Khaketian peasant girl, daughter of a shepherd in these lonely andmajestic mountains, whose intolerable grandeur may well intoxicate aman to madness. A dangerous and disgraceful episode it seems to havebeen between John Fillery, hitherto of steady moral fibre, and thisstrange, lovely pagan girl, whose savage father hunted the pair of themhigh and low for weeks before they finally eluded him in the azaleavalleys beyond Artvine.

  Great passion, possibly great love, born of this enchanted land whosepeaks touch heaven, while their lower turfy slopes are carpeted withlilies, azaleas, rhododendrons, contributed to the birth of Edward,who first saw the light in a secret chamber of a dirty Tiflis house,above the Koura torrent. That same night, when the sun dipped beneaththe Black Sea waters two hundred miles to the westward, his mother hadlooked for the last time upon her northern lover and her wild Caucasianmountains.

  Edward, however, persisted, visible emblem of a few weeks' primalpassion in a primal land. Intense desire, born in this remotewilderness of amazing loveliness, lent him, perhaps, a strain ofillicit, almost unearthly yearning, a secret nostalgia for some lostvale of beauty that held fiercer sunshine, mightier winds and fairerflowers than those he knew in this world.

  At the age of four he was brought to England; his Russian memoriesfaded, though not the birthright of his primitive blood. Settling inLondon, his father increased his fortune as consulting engineer, butdid not marry. To the short vehement episode he had given of his verybest; he remained true to his gorgeous memory and his sin; the creamof his life, its essence and its perfume, had been spent in those wildwind-swept azalea valleys beyond Artvine. The azalea honey was in hisblood, the scent of the lilies in his brain; he still heard the Kouraand Rion foaming down towards ancient Colchis. Edward embodied for himthe spirit of these sweet, passionate memories. He loved the boy, hecherished and he spoilt him.

  But Edward had stuff in him that rendered spoiling harmless. Avigorous, independent youngster, he showed firmness and characteras a lad. To the delight of his father he knew his own mind early,reading and studying on his own account, possessed at the same timeby a vehement love of nature and outdoor life that was far more thanthe average English boy's inclination to open air and sport. There laysome primal quality in his blood that was of ancient origin and leanedtowards wildness. There seemed almost, at the same time, a faunishstrain that turned away from life.

  As a tiny little fellow he had that strange touch of creativeimagination other children have also known--an invisible playmate. Ithad no name, as it, apparently, had no sex. The boy's father couldtrace it directly to no fairy tale read or heard; its origin in thechild's mind remained a mystery. But its characteristics were unusual,even for such fanciful imaginings: too full-fledged to have beencreated gradually by the boy's loneliness, it seemed half goblin andhalf Nature-spirit; it replaced, at any rate, the little brothers andsisters who were not there, and the father, led by his conscience,possibly, to divine or half divine its origin, met the pretence withsympathetic encouragement.

  It came usually with the wind, moreover, and went with the wind, andwind accordingly excited the child. "Listen! Father!" he would exclaimwhen no air was moving anywhere and the day was still as death. Then:"Plop! So there you are!" as though it had dropped through empty spaceand landed at his feet. "It came from a tremenjus height," the childexplained. "The wind's up _there_, you see, to-day." Which struck theparent's mind as odd, because it proved later true. An upper wind, farin the higher strata of air, came down an hour or so afterwards andblew into a storm.

  Fire and flowers, too, were connected with this invisible playmate."_He'll_ make it burn, father," the child said convincingly, when thechimney smoked and the coals refused to catch, and then became verybusy with his friend in the grate and about the hearth, just as thoughhe helped and superintended what was being invisibly accomplished."It's burning better, anyhow," agreed the father, astonished in spiteof himself as the coals began to glow and spurt their gassy flames."Well done; I am very much obliged to you and your little friend."

  "But it's the only thing he can do. He likes it. It's his work really,don't you see--keeping up the heat in things."

  "Oh, it's his natural job, is it? I see, yes. But my thanks to him, allthe same."

  "Thank you very much," said grave Edward, aged five, addressing histiny friend among the fire-irons. "I'm much mobliged to you."

  Edward was a bit older when the flower incident took place--with thegeranium that no amount of care and coaxing seemed able to keep alive.It had been dying slowly for some days, when Edward announced that hesaw its "inside" flitting about the plant, but unable to get back intoit. "It's got out, you see, and can't get back into its body again, soit's dying."

  "Well, what in the world are we to do about it?" asked his father.

  "I'll ask," was the solemn reply. "Now I know!" he cried, delighted,after asking his question of the empty air and listening for theanswer. "Of course.
Now I see. Look, father, there it is--its spirit!"He stood beside the flower and pointed to the earth in the pot.

  "Dear me, yes! Where d'you see it? I--don't see it quite."

  "He says I can pick it up and put it back and then the flower willlive." The child put out a hand as though picking up something thatmoved quickly about the stem.

  "What's it look like?" asked his father quickly.

  "Oh, sort of trinangles and things with lines and corners," was thereply, making a gesture as though he caught it and popped it backinto the red drooping blossoms. "There you are! Now you're aliveagain. Thank you very much, please"--this last remark to the invisibleplaymate who was superintending.

  "A sort of geometrical figure, was it?" inquired the father next day,when, to his surprise, he found the geranium blooming in full healthand beauty once again. "That's what you saw, eh?"

  "It was its spirit, and it was shiny red, like fire," the childreplied. "It's heat. Without these things there'd be no flowers at all."

  "Who makes everything grow?" he asked suddenly, a moment later.

  "You mean _what_ makes them grow."

  "Who," he repeated with emphasis. "Who builds the bodies up and looksafter them?"

  "Ah! the structure, you mean, the form?"

  Edward nodded. His father had the feeling he was not being asked forinformation, but was being cross-examined. A faint pressure, as ofuneasiness, touched him.

  "They develop automatically--that means naturally, under the laws ofnature," he replied.

  "And the laws--who keeps them working properly?"

  The father, with a mental gulp, replied that God did.

  "A beetle's body, for instance, or a daisy's or an elephant's?"persisted the child undeceived by the theological evasion. "Or mine, ora mountain's----?"

  John Fillery racked his brain for an answer, while Edward continued hislist to include sea-anemones, frost-patterns, fire, wind, moon, sunand stars. All these forms to him were bodies apparently.

  "I know!" he exclaimed suddenly with intense conviction, clapping hishands together and standing on his toes.

  "Do you, indeed! Then you know more than the rest of us."

  "_They do_, of course," came the positive announcement. "The otherkind! It's their work. Yours, for instance"--he turned to his playmate,but so naturally and convincingly that a chill ran down his father'sspine as he watched--"is fire, isn't it? You showed me once. And waterstops you, but wind helps you ..." and he continued long after hisfather had left the room.

  With advancing years, however, Edward either forgot his playmate orkept its activities to himself. He no longer referred to it, at anyrate. His energies demanded a bigger field; he roamed the fields andwoods, climbed the hills, stayed out all night to see the sunrise, madefires even when fires were not exactly needed, and hunted with RedIndians and with what he called "Windy-Fire people" everywhere. He wasnever in the house. He ran wild. Great open spaces, trees and flowerswere what he liked. The sea, on the other hand, alarmed him. Only windand fire comforted him and made him happy and full of life. He was aplaymate of wind and fire. Water, in large quantities at any rate, wasinimical.

  With concealed approval, masking a deep love fulfilled yet incomplete,his father watched the growth of this fiercer strain that mere covertshooting could not satisfy, nor ordinary sporting holidays appease.

  "England's too small for you, Edward, isn't it?" he asked oncetentatively, when the boy was about fifteen.

  "The English people, you mean, father?"

  "You find them dull, don't you? And the island a bit cramped--eh?"

  Edward waited without replying. He did not quite understand what hisindulgent father intended, or was leading up to.

  "You'd like to travel and see things and people for yourself, I mean?"

  He watched the boy without, as he thought, the latter noticing. Theanswer pleased but puzzled him.

  "We're all much the same, aren't we?" said Edward.

  "Well--with differences--yes, we are. But still----"

  "It's only the same over and over again, isn't it?" Then, while hisfather was thinking of this reply, and of what he should say to it, theboy asked suddenly with arresting intensity:

  "Are we the only people--the only sort of beings, I mean? Just menand women like us all over the world? No others of any sort--bigger,for instance, or--more wild and wonderful?" Then he added, a thrustof strange yearning in his face and eyes: "More beautiful?" He almostwhispered the last words.

  His father winced. He divined the origin of that strange inquiry.Upon those immense and lonely mountains, distant in space and timefor him, imagination, rich and pagan, ran, he well knew, to vast andmighty beings, superior to human, benignant and maleficent, akin tothe stimulating and exhilarating conception of the gods, and certainlynon-human.

  "Nothing, Edward, that we know of. Why should there be?"

  "Oh, I don't know, dad. I just wondered--sometimes. But, as you say,we've not a scrap of evidence, of course."

  "Not a scrap," agreed his father. "Poetic legends ain't evidence."

  The mind ruled the heart in Edward; he had his father's brains, at anyrate; and all his powers and longings focused in a single line thatindicated plainly what his career should be. The Public Schools couldhelp him little; he went to Edinburgh to study medicine; he passedeventually with all possible honours; and the day he brought home thenews his father, dying, told him the secret of his illegitimate birth.