AS A FLY IN AMBER.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1775, 14 March 1906, Page 11

AS A FLY IN AMBER.

(By Bernard Capes.)

"‘Sounds,” said Verity, that soar beyond the topmost of our human capacity for hearing are sounds, nevertheless and that is a scientific truism. ’ Pomfret said: '‘Oh, great Scott! as he sat tilted back in his chair, h'.s eyes on the ceiling, his hands behind his head, and a short clay pipe between his teeth. Rawlinson was helping himself at the table to a whisky _ and potass, with an amused smile on his face; and the bread-and-butter boy (or, alternatively, the “Small Skipper,” as we called him) was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, and staring at “The ear,” continued our host, can distinguish, physically, only up to a certain pitch. Beyond that sound is not extinguished, but the power of liear.ng abruptly ceases —or. at best, loses its human definition of a sense. “‘Tho times -have been,” murmured Pomfret, “‘that when the brains were out the man would die.’ ” “Ah!” said Verity; “but I am not wandering.”

Now, I was watchful of our friend, and a little eager that he should talk on. Ilis inclination was always to the abstruse side of metaphysics, whence to mysticism is a shallow step. But this night, so it appeared to me, there was a dogmatic insistence about his note which seemed an earnest of some conviction more determined than any he had hitherto come at. Moreover, I had been conscious ever since we came of an atmosphere in the room as of a constraint which, like stored electricity, was dense with possibilities. We were all from Corby Agricultural College, where the most of us were for practical farming, and only the “Small Skipper”” fur picturesque .entomology; and it was our habit to trudge over to Verity’s of a Saturday night for a pipe and a talk. Our belief in ourselves generally was impermeable—here, again, with the exception of the “Small Skipper,” who thought very small beer of himself, and who was orthodox and wore a collar with a very little bow in it, like a parlourmaid’s cuff. Pomfret, moreover, was an agnostic, and that was against him as a farmer, because in his contempt of a Providence, he desired, to improve upon nature with chemical manures which killed the first crop and debarred all hope of a second. How Verity ever came to be one o£ us I havo no notion- He was at the college some five or six months in my early recollection of it, presumably satisfied Jiim.seif and the authorities as to his inability to take the regular course seriously, retired to a little cottage on the fringe of the high downs a mile above Corby, and had there ever- since lived a life of leisurely solitude, to ease which a few of us chosen ones would put an occasional accent. He had an independence, a semi-diurnal housekeeper, a palid, high-boned face, with an expression on it which was something between a_ slieop’a and an angel’s, thin, rather long hair, the colour of barley straw, eyeglasses on his nose, a great Persian tabby. and some excellent whisky. At our contentious reunions he wore an amber-tinted dressing gown, which gave him rather the appearance of a monkish, ascetic and which was the garment so habitual to him that, in my memory, he never figures in any other. “I am going to talk,” said he, sucking at his pipe, his eyes fixed on the beyond. “I am going to talk, and the odds are not one of you will understand me.” “That’s likely enough,” said Rawlinson. “The fellow’s in King Cambyses’s vein. What’s up with you, Jack? And at wliat unholy altars have you been sacrificing that the place smells like a perfume shop ?” Wo had all noticed this as we walked up to Verity’s that particular evening. There was a faint, sweet scent abroadin the cottage, on the slopes about it, and caught in the privet hedges like hay from a passing waggon—-a most subtle, peculiar scent, the like of which none of us had ever before experienced. Verity noticed the question only by talcing in the speaker with a single hurrying glance. Then he vent on dreamily—

“Speech interprets thought as inadequately as notes interpret tho complications of harmonics which compose them. Utterances are recurring incidents—the merest milestones to direct us along the road of organic existence. They are the confused attempt to express in some coherent form our inexpressible sense of the infinite distance we traverse in imagination between word and word.” . Rawlinson had returned to his chair. Cfnrionsly, I noticed some spirit of glowering uneasiness appeared to liave seized upon every member of the party, and that despite the show of humorous tolerance ■with which each had accepted the vapourings of his host. Seemingly unconscious of our presence, or using us only for hie recurrent milestones, Verity went on—

“Sense, as we have educated it to bear upon our relations one with another, is

a selection of the resi It of combinations (each combination being a nots that is built up of many harmonics; fittest to our purpose. We have been given the world to rovern —a tough problem. To solve ii w - h'We had to learn, not what to accept, but what to reject. Speech and music were unnecessary choice, because ear.lt could l .press, witli;n a like system of hmil j ions, what the other could not. But the ‘passion of tho past’ remains the infinite we have rejected in order that we may acquit ourselves of our obligations to the finite. Pomfret sighed heavily and the “Small Skipper” put in a rapid, bashful word: “I understand, Mr Verity. The wires of that dumb piano there may be full of strange whisperings between the last note and the one to come.”

We all stared and Rawlinson sniggered uneasily. But Verity turned a serene, kindly look on the lad and said: “That’s right—that’s right. There are some of us who know that every breath of air may evoke silent laughter in it; every step in the house sets its strings secretly gossiping.” Pomfret jumped, up suddenly. “Look here, Verity!” he said. “I don’t know what the ’nation you’re driving at, or what possesses you to go on in this way. You’re too fond of these abstract speculations—ail very right, I dare say—but He broke off, passed bis hand in a bewildered manner across hi.s forehead and continued in an amazed voice: “I feel between the devil and the deep sea 1” Rawlinson was next on his feet. His assumed jocosity was all gone m an irritable quiver of nerves. “I’m off!” lie cried. “I’m jigged if I can stand this any longer. Wliat foolery have you been up to in the house, Jack? There’s an ’ atmosphere—an atmosphere, I say— —” He, too, came to a stop; and all we careless men stared at one another with bewildered looks.

“Good night, George.” he said. “You’re right to go, and so’s Pomfret. _ You’ve taught me something for which I’m grateful. But practical agriculture's your forte, and that don’t include directions for grafting on the Tree of Knowledge.” “Bally rot!” muttered Rawlinson. “There’s something here, I say ■” Verity interrupted him in the same gentle tone. “Yes, yes; I know —I know.” Then he turned to me. “Are you off, too?” “No,” I said; “I’ll stop if I may.” “And me, too,” gulped t-lie “Small

Verity came forwai'd, a peculiarly sweet and tolerant smile on his face. He held out his hand

“Bally rot!” muttered Rawlinson. “There’s something here, I say ■” Verity interrupted him in the same gentle tone. “Yes, yes; I know —I know.” Then he turned to me. “Are you off, too?” “No,” I said; “I’ll stop if I may.” “And me, too,” gulped the “Small Skipper,” who was not matriculated in grammar. Promfret faced upon the youngster determinedly. “Now, don’t yorr be an ass!” he said. “There’s too much electricity about for you. Your little milky brain’ll turn sour.” “Mr Verity!” cried the boy, eagerly, “do say I’m to ©top. I like to hear you talk, and it doesn’t frighten me a bit.” I put in a word. “He’s under my wing. I’ll see that no harm comes to him. This is really going too far, you fellows.” “No, I’ll be hanged if it is!” said Pomfret. But ThS two men went out sullenly together. 11.

As their steps echoed away down the road. Verity turned to me with a radiant smile on his lips. “I’m sorry,” he said, softly; “but I wished them to go. I have a revelation for you that it was impossible to utter before such unsympathetic rogues.” I looked toward the bread-and-butter-fly boy doubtingly. “Ah!” said our host. “You must not bo apprehensive. This secret of mine is all lapped in sorrow and tenderness, and can startle you into nothing more unaccustomed than tears.” If I did not write our friend down a maniac, it was because I, too, seemed inexplicably .associated with the emotion which possessed him. The boy’s eyes were shining and spiritual, and his breath came quickly. Ha spoke out in a hurried, wondering voice—“l havo never felt so little a fool as I do to-niglit. I seem to remember a hundred things. Mr Verity, have you invented a new gas? And what were you going to say when they interrupted ycu ?’’ I seconded the question with a look. After .all, the boy had put my own extraordinary sensations into words. Verity went and placed his hand kindly on the lad’s shoulder, and so standing, addressed his speech in a caressing monotone to both of us.

“I was coming to this: if you can force yourself to forget words altogether, to put speech and the faculty of it in abeyance, you begin, by very small degrees at first, to be conscious of the whisperings of the abnormal, to be conscious of regaining the power to understand and interpret the hitherto secrets of the periods between uttered words 1 and between uttered notes.” I burst out with—

“You can! I am bewilderingly conscious of the power myself, here and now, though I have been making no effort toward self-abstraction.” He turned to me, his face full of a gentle rebuke. “You have always played the sceptic and the disbeliever—you and your friends. ‘ Look here!”

He left the hoy and came to me. As he did so, the former, whose face had worn a rapt, tranced look under his touch, uttered a deep sigh, and then an exclamation of impatience. Verity put his fingers lightly on my arm. 'With the contact a darting shoal of harmonies (I can express it no better) seemed to people my very spring of life —a glittering dust of sounds and thoughts and clipped threads of fancy, which made of mere being a poignant ecstacy. It

was as if the precipitate of thirty years had been stirred with a diviner’s rod*. He removed his hand, and the illusion simmered down (again I d'espair of expression), and left me wondering, as before, on the hither side of the abnormal. . I cried out hysterically— 1 — "What is it all? Where did yon get the power?” And he answered—— "I touched and it came to me, and 1 touch you and transmit it.” "Touched! Touched what?” "Ah I” he said, "that is the point. And now you must put your scepticism, to school.” His manner was always that of a gentle mystic, but this night he seemed exalted on the very pinions of divine forbearance—unruffled and serene. "Oh!” he murmured 1 , "believe what I tell you. Beyond this, there is at least one other existence which is yet not the £nal achievement of the spiritual, but still much nearer that achievement than is ours.”

"The proof.” I muttered. "And now,” he went on with a smile, f 'we come to prose.” He looked in my face, but did not again touch me. "I am rightly inspired,” he said, “to reveal this secret of mine to ready recipients. To die with it locked' in my breast were to show a greater lust of cruelty than Caracalla’s. What is the known composition of asteroids?” The abrupt change of theme was so like bathos that it half restored me to myself; and T gave a little pouf of a laugh—- " Stone and meteoric iron ana magnesium principally, I believe,” said I. "Anything else?” "Oh! I daresay.” "But anything else, I mean—any metal, or substance, or combination of substances which is as completely outside our human knowledge and' experience as is the—the conventional presentiment of an angel, for instance?” "No —certainly not.” He gave a great sigh. Hie whole face lighted up, as if from an inward radiance. "I can upset that- belief, ’ said he. "Will you come and look?” "Look? At what?” *

"At an asteroid —a meteor. There was talk of a brilliant one seen in the neighbourhood four —-no five nights ago.” "There was, indeed. More than one person swore to its falling upon the earth.” "More than one person was right. It feTT, and lies buried in my garden.” 111. ’ I have often sought to convince myself that among the influences of that extraordinary night, when the three of us stole like thieves over Verity’s flower beds, were the atmospheric conditions under which we laboured. As we came out by the little rustic door at the back, a low boom of storm surged 'over the hills, like the sound of a train crossing the high bridge in the valley below. The dfcy was thronged with great blots of cloud's, which ever soaked and spread till they overlapped one another in monstrous scales of thunder. The trees stood stiff, and the hedges seemed all bristling with expectancy of some dreadful onset. . He, Verity, led. as to the very middle of a bare patch, where the soil—for it was November —had been recently stripped and turned against the coming frosts. Here, under a lofty birch pole, whose bark gleamed as if it were printed with dapples of moonlight, an excavation in the ground had been hastily and roughly boarded over.* Standing with his foot upon -this flooring, he turned to us who followed, the lantern swinging in his hand. “You must be brave and pitiful,” he said, "for it is a sight to drain the very spring of tears.” The "Small Skipper” was pressing upon me from the back. I heard and felt his breath at my ear. He seemed half choking. Slewing my head about. I caught a glimpse of his face in the pallid radiance. It was drawn and wrhite—semitransparent, it seemed —and with a movemehf under the skin, as if the soul, appropriately, were struggling to burst its anrelia. "Will he do it?” I thought. it wa9 too late now for retreat. With our every step toward the place at which we were now arrived, that unnamable atmosphere had increased in density; and here the scent —or the colour, or the language—which was it?— wrought in one’s brain like intoxication. Then, in a moment. Verity had bung Ms lantern from a branch, and had lifted and thrown back one, two, three boards—and lo! the mingled perfume of a -world of flowers came up to us, 60 that we staggered and near swooned in the . mere delight of inhaling it. And we heard his voice murmuring, “Look down!” Then I only know that over a plunging hollow in the ground, into which he Bwung his lantern for guidance to us, we bent our heads to gaze, and- that, gazing we saw—what? How can I describe, or shadow forth description even, of that vision? There was the scent, gushing forth in volume now, and something occupying the pit—something that might have been the materialised' rapture of the perfume—a nameless inorganic body—a great sleek block of crystal which, in the fluttering light, threw out glints and spars of soundless inhuman music as a prism emits rays of colour. Is speech adequate to convey ibis expression it attempts? How nine's. —how much less, indeed, even a faint description of the wonder within this wonder! For imbedded, whole and almost uninjured, in the heart of the slab, the crystal,- was the figure of f> yaked child. Such they 1 seemed,- and such I knew they were not. For the block was neither white nor violet, though these are the only hues of all to mention which in that divine connection seems the

littler sacrilege. But it was of no colour that ever was before on the world or in the goa, and of a like unearthliness was the form, which, was windowed in its transparency. This form, I can only insist, was of a beautiful pale child, sleeping, one might have thought, with closed lids. Its dead limbs—for by that coarse adjective alone can I express the -withdrawal of animate self-control from matter refined beyond our conception s>—were not flesh, but were rather such an ideal of it as evades an artist's supernatural vision the moment he handles his brush. Their colour was like spiritualised apple blossoms; their texture, the texture of unburdened joy and happiness. Hair like the-curl and caress of little whispering flames thatched the large shut eyes with beauty. The arms—stretched out, as if he had fallen backward and been so overwhelmed—were the pinions, go to which in its loveliness was like those iridescent, opal jellyfish which one sees mystically globed in the under waters of warm bays. This web appeared to proceed from hie shoulders and to be part of him, as if it were a certain condition of light or movement. The wonderful thing lay completely imbedded in the block with which it had fallen, but the little left hand was gone—for it had projected beyond the surface, and there was a scar to denote it. Now, as I gazed, while Verity silently swung the lantern to and fro in the pit, I heard the boy whimpering at my shoulder, and suddenly the infinite pathos of the sight before me so wrought upon my human mood that I, too, found myself choking convulsively. But in the very act a shame of seliconsciousness seized me, and I looked up at Verity and cried, defiantly : "It proves nothing hut that there are other spheres of being—which we never doubted. Our concern is with the world —'to proceed from it, to live and perish, and return to it. This is no token of a hereafter, but only that to die is not necessarily to be human.” My friend looked down upon me, his eyes largo and sorrowful, but peaceful, in the lamplight. "Need I answer you ?” he said softly. "Your conscious scepticism is its own rebuke. The soul, the atmosphere, the loveliness which proceed from this iallen aerolite —ah! you know them and breathe them, and must acknowledge them.” "I acknowledge,” I persisted, "that a wondrous phenomenon is presented to me. I protest that because it is foreign to our experience, it is not of necessity the less a condition of some part of our system.” . . "Nor I,” said Verity—"but a divine ordinance, nevertheless,” "No, no, Verity—no, no!” He gave a sudden queer little cry—- " Blind, blind! Oh, believe me when I tell you! This boy—this loveliness—this angel—who has passed, as you see him here, under conditions altogether unconceived of our remotest knowledge into yet another state toward the final achievement —this hoy is, was, a human child, a little patient fellow of the streets, whose mangled body I myself carried to the hospital, and who died there in my arms ten years ago.” I know 1 gave out a hoarse protest. “It is true,” he said, "it is true. Should I not recognise him?” His voice was shattered with emotion. He stooped toward the "Small Skipper,” who lay stretched upon the soil, gazing —gazing down into the pit, and touched him on the shoulder.

"Will you help me?” he said. "I want to have it to the light—to lift it out — to carry it into the cottage.” The boy rose to his feet. "Mr Verity,” he said—"yes, yes. But can we ?”

"Come, and you shall see/’ Together they leapt down into the hollow beside the nameless thing. This had' plunged into the ground to a depth of eome five or six feet; and Verity, it appeared, had since wrought around it, tGiling to remove the earth, so that now it lay cleansed and isolated. I heard him say, in quick breathing gasps, “Stone! Magnesium! Meteoric iron! Is it this or that or anything in our experience? I have wrought on it with a crowbar. Not a flake splintered from its surface. Yet it i© so light a child could heave it out of the pit.” As in a dream I saw them stoop, and in a moment rise again. Something—the perfume, a luminous haze —came up at me. In my wildness, beating down' my ecstasy at its approach, madly striving to hold by the little formulae of life, I sprang back, covering my face with my hands.

There came a stunning slam in my brain —fire seemed, to burst between my fingers, and thereafter was nothing and still nothing in endless terraces of night.

» • « * ■ “Pomfret is that you ?” "Yes, you beggar. Lie still !” “Mayn't I have a gleam of light yet—just an accidental slit between the curtains to find my handkerchief by?” “No, you mayn't.” "But I've lain in darkness three yeara —or three days—which is it? And there's no comfort in smoking when you don't see the smoke.” “Then put your pipe out.” “Smoke it out you mean. And you’ll give me a trickle of light just to shame the doctors'?” "I won't. Don't he an ass! At any rate, I'm not going to be one.” I sighed through a long pause. “Pomfret!” “Yes?” “Have they buried those two poor fellows?”

“Now shut up! Yes. They’re underground.” . "Struck by lightning, eh ? To kill two and spare one! Nature shows a most detestable partiality. And there was no aerolite?” _ , _ . "I’ve told you fifty times. _ The stuff is all the froth of your deliriffun. There were nothing but... three fools —Heaven save the other two —who stood under a tree in a thunderstorm.” "But there was a scent?” "Blow the scent l” a-.t that exclamation I must

close. For truly it was a scent that only the "spectre hound” could follow.— "Illustrated London New®.”