Flames Part 13

"Oh, a very simple one. I believe that men in the ma.s.s express eternal truths more readily, more certainly, than men as individuals. Put a lot of bad men, or--we won't call them bad, why should we?--loose, careless, thoughtless men, together in the pit of a theatre. Many of them, perhaps, drink, and are rendered cruel by drink. Many of them care nothing for morality, and have wounded, in the worst way, the souls of women. Many of them show incessant hardness in most of the relations of life. What, then, is it, that makes all these individuals respond so directly, so certainly, to every touch of goodness, and gentleness, and unselfishness, and purity, and faith, that is put before them upon the stage? I think it must be that eternal truth--the rocks of good that lie forever beneath the wild seas of evil. Those men don't know themselves; don't know that it is all useless for them to try to hide the n.o.bility which has been put into them, to thrust it down, and, metaphorically, to dance on it. They can't get rid of it, do what they will. I like to think of goodness as the shadow of evil through life, the shadow that, at death, or perhaps long after death, becomes the substance."

"You think we cannot kill the good that is in us?"

"Not quite. But I think we can go near to killing it, so near that it will take longer to recover and to be itself again, longer far than the most relapsing typhoid patient."

"And have you other reasons for your belief?"

"Perhaps. But some of them are difficult to define, and would carry no conviction to any one but myself. There is one in this very room with us."

Julian glanced up, surprised.

"What is that, doctor?" he said.

"You ought to know better than I," Levillier answered.

He was looking at Valentine, who, apparently quite unconscious of their presence, was still playing rather softly. Julian followed his eyes.

The light in the room was dim, a carefully manufactured twilight. It is strange how many things, and how slight, stir, control, influence in one direction or another, the emotions. Light and the absence of light can divert a heart as easily as the pressing of a b.u.t.ton can give a warship to the sea. Twilight and music can change a beast into a man, a man into an angel, for the moment. Long after that evening was dead, both Julian and Doctor Levillier anxiously, and in their different ways a.n.a.lytically, considered it. They submitted it to a secret process of probing, such as many men enforce upon what they imagine to be great causes in their lives. That hour became an hour of wonder, an hour of amazement, viewed in the illumination of subsequent events. They found in it a curious climax of misunderstanding, a culmination of all deceptive things.

And yet, in that hour they only watched a young man of London, a modern intellectual youth, playing in a Victoria Street drawing-room upon a Steinway grand piano.

They were sitting sideways to Valentine, and a little behind him.

Therefore he could not easily see them unless he slightly turned his head. But they could observe him, and, obeying Doctor Levillier's mute injunction, Julian now did so.

Valentine was gazing straight before him over the top, of the piano, and his eyes seemed to be fixed upon the dim figure of Christ in the picture of "The Merciful Knight." Was he not playing to the picture, playing to that figure in it? And did not his musical imagination seek to reproduce in sound the vision of the life of that mailed knight who never lived and died? The purity of his expression, always consummate, was to-night more peculiar, more unearthly, than before in any place, at any moment. And, as mere line can convey to the senses of man a conception of a great virtue or of a great vice, the actual shape of his features, thus seen in profile, was the embodiment of an exquisitely ascetic purity, as much an embodiment as is a drop of water pierced by a sunbeam. This struck both Doctor Levillier and Julian, and the doctor was amazed anew at the silent decree that the invisible shall be made visible in forms comprehensible to the commonest minds. Sin would surely flee from a temple sculptured in such a shape as the body of Valentine, as a vampire would flee from the bloodless courts of the heaven of the Revelation. l.u.s.t cannot lie at ease on a crystal couch, or rest its dark head upon a pillow of pale ivory. And the message of this strange, unearthly youth now given in music, and to the air and the dust--for Valentine had lost knowledge of his friends--was crystalline too. In his improvisation he journeyed through many themes of varying characters. He hymned the knight's temptation no less than his triumph. But purity was in the hymn even at the hour of temptation, and sang like a bird in every scene of the life,--a purity cla.s.sical, detached, so refined as to be almost physically cold.

"I understand you," Julian whispered to the little doctor. "Yes, you are right. He is a great reason why what you think may be true. And yet"--here Julian lowered his voice to a breath, lest he might disturb the player--"he is not religious, as--as--well, as you are. Forgive the allusion--."

"Are the angels religious?" said Doctor Levillier. "Why should you refrain, my dear boy? But you are right. There is a curious unconsciousness about Cresswell--about Valentine--which seems to exclude even definite religious belief as something in a way self-conscious, and so impossible to him. There is an extraordinary strain of the child in Cresswell, such as I conceive to be in unearthly beings, who have never had the power to sin. And the best-behaved, sweetest child in the world might catch flies or go to sleep during the Litany or a sermon. This very absence of controversial or dogmatic religion gives Valentine much of his power, seems positively to lift him higher than religionists of any creed."

"You think--you think that perhaps it is something in him of which he is unconscious which does so much for me?"

"Perhaps it is."

Valentine now glided into an accompaniment, and began to sing. And the doctor and Julian ceased to talk. Valentine certainly did not sing with such peculiar skill as he showed in playing, but he had a charming voice which he used with great ease, and he never sang a single note, or phrased a pa.s.sage, without complete intelligence and understanding of his composer. Only he lacked power. This scarcely interfered with the pleasure he could give in a drawing-room, and to-night both Levillier and Julian were rather in a mood for supreme delicacy than for great pa.s.sion.

They listened with silent pleasure for a time. Then Levillier said:

"Do you remark how wonderfully the timbre of Cresswell's voice expresses the timbre of his mind? The parallel is exact."

Julian nodded.

"That is his soul written in sound," the doctor added.

It was at this point that Valentine ceased and got up from the piano.

"I must smoke too," he said. "No, not a cigar, I'll have a cigarette to-night."

"You are fond of that picture, Cresswell?" said Doctor Levillier as Valentine sat down.

"'The Merciful Knight'? Yes, I love it. Have you told Julian your opinion of our sittings, doctor?"

"No. He didn't ask me for it."

"I should be glad to have it, all the same," Julian said.

"Well, my opinion is entirely adverse to your proceedings," Levillier said, with his usual frankness.

"You are, in fact, at the opposite pole from Marr," Julian answered.

"Marr! Who is Marr? I never heard of him."

"Nor I, until the other evening," Julian said. "But now I see him every day. He was at the theatre to-night. I saw him as we came out."

"What is he, a spiritualist? A professional?"

"Oh dear, no! He calls himself an occultist. He goes out in society a great deal, apparently. I met him at dinner first. Since then he has taken the keenest interest in my sittings with Valentine."

"Indeed! You know him, Cresswell?"

Valentine shook his head, and Julian laughed.

"The fun of it is that Marr doesn't wish to know Valentine," he said.

"Why?" the doctor asked.

Julian told him the words Marr had used in reference to Valentine, and gave a fairly minute description of Marr's att.i.tude towards their proceedings. Levillier listened with great attention.

"Then this man urges you to go on with your sittings?" he said when Julian had finished.

"Scarcely that. But he certainly seems anxious that we should."

"You have both resolved to give them up, haven't you?"

"Certainly, doctor," Valentine replied.

"Does Marr know that?" Levillier asked of Julian.

"No. I haven't seen him to speak to since our final sitting."

The little doctor sat in apparent meditation for two or three minutes.

Then he remarked, with abruptness:

"Addison, will you think me an impertinent elderly person if I give you a piece of advice?"

"You--doctor! Of course not. What is it?"

"Well, you young fellows know me, know that I am not a mere sentimentalist or believer in every humbug that is the fashion of the moment. But one thing I do firmly believe, that certain people are born with a power to command, or direct others, which amounts to force. The world doesn't completely recognize this. The law doesn't recognize, perhaps ought not to recognize it. Some call it hypnotism.

I call it suggestion."