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.