by Algernon Blackwood (1936)
On looking back, it seemed incredible to young Monson that this could have come out of such commonplace conditions. For it started while he was reading poetic stuff about the Paestum Temples, and then about the temples of Baalbec and the worship of Jupiter Ammon, and his thoughts had run off waywardly towards Christ and Buddha, and he had been wondering vaguely — Man in the Street that he was — how such vital and terrific forms of belief and worship could ever die — when, abruptly, someone came into his study with a tiresome interruption:
"This note come by and, please, sir, and would you please answer immedshately, thank you, sir."
Monson acted immedshately and read the note:
"Do forgive me, dear. I'm a man short. 1:15 for 1:30. If you can … do. Felicity."
Now, he believed he loved Felicity. He could. He did.
"Telephone immedshately to her ladyship to say Mr. Monson will be delighted to lunch today at 1:15," he gave his answer. And in due course he went.
Further, it lies quite beyond him to explain why all the way to Curzon Street, walking leisurely this fine May morning, he was still aflame with Baalbec, the Pyramids, the Paestum Temples, and all that sort of delicious ancient, romantic pagan stuff. Imagination ran that way. He left it at that. Some old-world glamour caught him away into some strange, wild heaven. He found himself suddenly loathing the modern drabness, the senseless speed, the artificial mechanism, the clever, infinite invention that was smart and up-to-date, and all the rest of the rushing, uncomfortable nonsense. Machinery did everything, the individual nothing. A deep yearning possessed him for the slow, worthwhile, steady liveableness of other days, when a man could believe in a mountain nymph on many-fountained Ida and worship her, by God, with a conviction of positive reaction. He heard the old, old winds among the olives and saw the spindrift blow across great Triton's horn, his sandals trod upon acanthus leaves, the wild thyme stung his nostrils. …
In which ridiculous, even hysterical mood, he rang the bell in Curzon Street at 1:15 and waited upon admittance.
So ordinary was the next step, and the routine of the steps following, that he found nothing to remark upon them.
"So sweet of you to come and save me. Lord Falsestep had a sudden Cabinet Meeting. … I think you know everybody. …"
He caught instantly the usual deadly savour. The cocktails and the preliminary chatter shared this deadliness, so that he found himself harking back to Baalbec and Paestum and his earlier foolishness, when, suddenly a late guest was announced, but in such a way that both his eye and ear were caught, held, arrested — what is the precise word? — startled is probably the most accurate, but, at any rate, taken with vivid painfulness.
"Painfulness?" Yes, assuredly, because it hurt. A sharp, terrible sting ran through him from head to foot. Something in him blenched, ran hot and cold, with an effect of dislocation somewhere, so that his heart seemed to stop.
Some Bright Young Thing, or its equivalent, chanced to engage him at the moment, though "engage" is wrong because the trivial glitter held no power of any sort, and glitter is at best a surface quality. It was, at any rate, while exchanging glittering vacancies thus, that he heard the foot-man's voice and turned to look.
To look! Rather to stare. Was it man or woman, this late guest? Such outlines, he knew, were easily interchangeable today. It might have been one or the other. "Or both," ran like fiery lightning through him, so that he turned faint with the sweetness of some amazing apprehension.
The chatter in his ear seemed suddenly miles away, and not miles alone, but ages. Its tinkle reached him, none the less, distinctly enough: " … so you simply must come. It will be too adorable. Without you it would be just ashes. Wear anything you like, of course, and doors open till dawn … "
The Bright Young Thing's invitation, yes, oozing past her violent lipstick reached him distinctly enough, though it now had a sharply hideous sound — because at the same moment he had caught the voice of the late arrival: "Thank you for asking me," and the words, so softly spoken, had a quality that made them sing above the general roar.
Why then, did a wave of life rush drenching through him as he heard them? Why did his bones seem to melt and run to gold and silver? Whence came that breath of flower-laden wind across the drowned atmosphere of smoke and female perfume? That tang as of sea and desert air that for a moment seemed too sweet, too strong, to bear?
" … you promise. I'll expect you," clanged the invitation.
"Of course, I shall be delighted," came his mechanical acceptance. "And I'll be there before dawn."
They turned away mutually — he, because he felt curiously shamed a trifle — she, because a young man with a lisping voice approached with a wobbling glass. Shamed perhaps, yet faint as well, faint towards the Mayfair room and atmosphere, but at the same time so alive and exhilarated toward something else that he was intoxicated. He caught at the edge of a sofa to hold him down. He had a fear that he must rise to touch a star, a nebula, an outer galaxy.
There was confusion inextricable. then somehow they were all in the ultra-luxurious dining-room, and Felicity, his friend's wife whom he believed he loved, was dropping a hurried whisper in his ear.
"You are an angel, darling, to come. A woman has failed me too — that impossible Ursula again. Do you mind terribly? No, Lovely, on your left. Just an empty chair … !"
And so it was that the space next to him was unoccupied, an empty chair, just beyond which, he realized with a lift of his whole being, sat the late arrival whose voice, with its singing beauty, had swept Today into the rubbish heap.
Now, until this moment, young Monson — young as well as simple he assuredly was — had held full command of himself, since he had eschewed strong drink and was besides frankly bored, even feeling sorry he had come at all. And boredom engenders pessimism, not optimism. At the same time, contrariwise, it awakens a sense of superiority, false of course, yet compensating, because the mind comforts itself thereby that it is superior to the cause of its boredom. And until that amazing voice had echoed across the room packed with notables and nobodies, young Monson's mood was as stated, below par — bored a little. The Bright Young Thing had exasperated with her affectations. His spirits, though for the sake of politeness to Felicity, his lovely hostess, he had forced them to spurious activity, were distinctly low. There was nothing, therefore, to account for the stupendous, gripping interest he now felt suddenly in that empty space, the breadth of an unoccupied chair, that gaped — otherwise somewhat menacingly — between him and his neighbour. The interest and stimulus lay in this: that across the narrow emptiness the stranger sat. One other thing lay equally beyond his explanation — that, instead of the sense of false superiority referred to, he was aware now of inferiority in himself that wakened a humility of heart so deep and genuine that he found no honestly descriptive words.
How calm, gentle, silent, almost meek, yet never uncomfortable nor out of place, the stranger sat there, and not in any smallest degree embarrassed. Entirely self-possessed, moreover. He might have been the host, a careless, understanding host, whose carelessness and understanding derived from the certain knowledge that all were glad to be there. Yes, it was a he, Monson now knew, a guest quite unimpressed by the fact that this was the luncheon of a famous social and political hostess, and that "those present" would be blazoned tomorrow with photographs in the daily press. Meek, perhaps, yet how strangely powerful, how radiant, and — the words seem childish — how beautiful, with a power and beauty beyond crumbling Baalbec and the wind-worn Pyramids. And upon some scale of mightiness that dislocated his mind perhaps a little, since a perfect blizzard of unrelated pictures suddenly swept and poured across his thoughts like an immense panorama, pictures all scaled to mightiness, so that his being seemed stretched to capacity to receive them, packed thus into a single flashing second. They roared up, passed, were gone, all simultanously … great Stonehenge with its ache of grandeur, Paestum with its rapture, the ghastly loneliness of the Easter Island images, the unanswerable Sphinx and Pyramids, and then, with a leap of terror, to the crystal iciness of the deserted moon, the awful depths of the nine-mile ocean bed … roared past and vanished again, as he stole a glance, wondering how for Felicity's sake, his anxious hostess whom he loved, he might approach his neighbour with a word.
On the stranger's further side, he saw, perched an empty-headed Duchess, avoiding him deliberately. He met Felicity's beseeching eye. He made a plunge across that gaping chair:
"We must bridge this empty space," he ventured smilingly, leaning over a little. "Some lady evidently has been detained. The stress of London life just now is hard upon punctuality … "
Something of the sort he said. The words rather tumbled from his mouth. There was a scent of wild thyme as he leaned over slightly.
The other smiled, lifting clear, shining eyes, so that young Monson admitted to something again akin to shock, a singular deep thrill of wonder, beauty, humility. Was it man or woman after all? shot through his mind.
"Not detained perhaps," the answer floated to him, "but unaware. Not dead, that is, but sleeping."
Oddly, there was no shock of surprise at the choice of curious words a foreigner might have found, or one unaccustomed to modern usage, and Monson felt he had merely misunderstood perhaps. The voice was soft as music, very low.
"Late, at any rate," he murmured in some confusion, his eyes upon his place, as though in search of steadiness. "Too late," he added, his search for the commonplace still operating, "for this delicious lobster mousse — or whatever it may be."
That sweet, gentle smile again, that scent and purity of wild flowers, as he crumbled his bread and gazed across the narrow space towards his young neighbour, who sat unaccountably trembling before something he had never known before. Trembling, it seemed to himself, with happiness and wonder, yet with a touch of awe due to the new sense of power and splendour that rose in his heart. In his heart alone, yes, not in his mind. He established that, at any rate. His mind, if watchful perhaps and steady enough, seemed suddenly inoperative. What happened, what was happening, lay in the heart alone. Thus he found no explanation, as equally no doubt or question, about seeing those slender fingers radiant, the bread-crumbs shining upon the table beneath the other's touch, nor why, though raised repeatedly to his mouth, they multiplied on the cloth even while he took from them. …
The eye of Felicity from the top of the long table flared at him.
Since the stranger offered nothing, Monson, making a desperate effort to get at his mind, rather than allow his heart full sway, tried again after a moment's interval. To entertain one's neighbour was the acknowledged price of admission to any feast, to sit silent, at any rate, was not permissible. Again, the words fell tumbling from his lips without reflection, or rather from his heart:
"My plans for today were otherwise," he mumbled, almost stammeringly, leaning over a little as before. "I didn't really want to come, but I'm awfully g-glad I did. It's so difficult to — to live one's own life and — and keep in the swim nowadays." He paused, watching a smile that opened in those glorious eyes, yet did not travel downwards to the tender lips. "I was summoned at the last moment because some Cabinet Minister and a lady failed," he fumbled on, "but I wouldn't have missed it for — for — everything in the world."
He stopped dead. The other's lips were moving. There was a light about the face and head.
"I myself was asked indirectly perhaps, but in true sincerity. And none call on me in vain."
These were the actual words, spoken so low as to be just audible, that floated across the space of the empty chair. It seemed only a glance from Felicity's eye along the table length that held young Monson to his seat.
"Poor hostesses," he thinks he heard himself murmuring, attempting a smile of charitable understanding. For at the same instant, turning abruptly, he met the other's eyes at the full. One look he saw, a look of fire and glory like dawn upon the Caucasus … and then a sense of fading, the passing away of an intolerable radiance that for a moment had forced his eyelids to drop. Yet in that fraction of a second, before they lifted again, the words came floating in a still, small voice that made them absolutely clear:
"From her heart, it came. 'Oh, Christ,' she prayed, 'Do please, come. I need you.'"
There was a stir in the room, a shuffling along the table, as Sir Thomas and Lady Ursula Smith-Ponsonby arrived with many apologies and slid gracefully into the two empty chairs on young Monson's left.