Nephelé

Front matter

N ephel6 Nephele By Francis William Bourdillon London George Redway Introduction I am often asked, like most other people, by the less wise of my acquaintance, if I " believe in " ghosts ; and when I answer, simply and seriously, what is to my mind a very serious if not a very simple question, by saying -" Yes," I am met with incredulity and derision. And I find that it is generally regarded as one of the chief gains of educa tion and civilisation to be able to disbelieve in ghosts. Now to my mind, on the contrary, it is one of the worst evils of our modern culture, and the nineteenth century science, of which we are so proud, that men are no longer able to believe in ghosts, or in the Super natural, as supernatural, at all. For it is a simple and unalterable fact, a law of nature as constant as any sequence discovered by the scientists, that as soon as men cease to bev b VI Introduction lieve in a thing, it ceases — not to be — but to reveal itself to them.

Nowadays we have enthroned Reason, and banished Belief. Everything is brought to the test of scientific explanation, that is, of Probability. In fact it has come to this, that whereas the larger mind of elder days balanced restlessly between Possibility and Impossibility, we, on the other hand, keep the index within the more prudent limits of Probability and Improbability. In these matters I am thankful to say that I belong to the old world. There is nothing I distrust more than my own reason — except other people's ; and nothing I more unhesi tatingly trust than those subtle unreasoning instincts, which flash upon the soul as by some sixth sense, clear as eyesight, and as unimpeachable. These few words of prelude are necessary, I think, to introduce the story I am about to write. In my own mind this Belief of mine — or Credulity, if you will : it is a better thing than Incredulity — is the explanation of all that is strange in the tale.

The Introduction things came to me, because I was prepared to believe in them. To many of my readers they will, I fear, throw a different light upon the story. The whole, they will say, are but the imagina tions of a credulous and superstitious nature. Well ; there is no medicine for a mind once blood-poisoned with scepticism ; and in a generation such as this, it is, perhaps, as high an honour to be doubted, as it is in ages of Faith to be believed. ENDYMION GERARD. Nephele

Chapter I

It was in the year 186-, on a warm, bright day of June. I was then a boy of between eighteen and nineteen, at a large public school, fairly popular with boys and masters, fair at work, and fair at play, but avoiding the condemnation of being " fair all round " by one excellence — I was more than fair, I was good, at music. I was born with a great natural taste for music, and had fortunately had great advan tages for its development in living most of my life in a cathedral town. My father and mother had both perished in the Indian Mutiny, and I had been left to the care of a childless uncle and aunt, my uncle being a canon of the cathedral. I A Nephele At school I had free permission to use the chapel organ whenever I would, and indeed I often played the service for the organist. On this particular day, which was a half-holiday, I had gone into the chapel directly after the school dinner, to let the great heat of the midsummer sun pass, before going to the cricket field.

I can recall perfectly even now the cool delicious hush of the great chapel, as I came out of the hot glare of the quadrangle — the tiers of empty seats, a dropped book on the matting-covered marble of the floor, the flecks of coloured light here and there on seat and floor, from the stained-glass windows, the dulled sounds of the crowd of boys outside, separating this wav and that way from the dining-hall. I set the hydraulic power to work, mounted to the organ loft, pulled out a few soft stops, and laid my fingers on the keys. Open in front of me was Mendelssohn's sixth organ concerto, at the andante movement ; and I was about to begin to play this, when some thing seemed to turn aside my will ; my Nephele fingers fell on the notes in a rich soft chord, and half unconsciously, wholly unintention ally, I found myself playing a strange un known air.

I knew quite certainly that it was something I had never heard before, and yet it seemed half familiar, as if I might have heard it in dreams. Very sweet it was, and plaintive, full of human feeling, and with so much of the sense of song about it that I could almost imagine words were being sung to it as I played. Once I played it, and again ; and to make sure that I should not forget it I had begun it a third time, when a strange sensation came over me. I was conscious that some one else was somewhere near me. I turned round, as I was playing, to see if any one had come up into the organ loft. But no, there was only room for one or two persons beside the player, and there was certainly no one there. I rose and went down into the chapel, but it was quite empty; and indeed I had turned the key in the lock, and no one could have come in without knocking at the door for me to let him in.

Yet I Nephele had still a strong impression of some one near me ; whether in the body of the chapel or in the organ loft, I could not say, but very near me. I went up the stairs again ; certainly there was no one in the winding narrow staircase, dark as it was. I could not have passed another person. I moved the curtains ; certainly there was no one there. And yet I was quite sure there was some one close by. I climbed up on to the seat and peered in among the organ pipes, in the thought that the organ tuner might have got into the organ. I called, but no answer came ; and in fact it was impossible any one could be there without some of the pipes being out of place. I was completely puzzled, and sat down again to play with a strange feeling of constraint, as if I was playing before some one, and some one I did not know.

I tried to shake off the impression, and determined to play some spirited and un sentimental piece — the Athalie March — to change my current of feeling. But in some extraordinary way, I found when I began Nephele to play that I was not playing what I meant ; I was again playing the unknown beautiful air which had had such a curious effect on me. I cannot quite describe the feeling I had at the time. I was firmly willed to play the March, but seemed unable to guide my will, or hold it to its own purpose. I felt much as when in a dream one tries to carry out some intention, and finds that one is doing some other quite unintended thing. However, finding this to be the case, I let my will go, my fingers play as they would, and my reason no more resist the unreasonable sensation, but allow it to have its way with me.

I at once found that I was getting more and more conscious of this presence. I lenew there was some one close to me — exactly where, I could not tell ; but near enough to touch, had it been tangible. Though no vision, real or imagined, rose before my eyes, yet my brain seemed to receive as vivid an impression as from eyesight, an impression sharp, startling, and inspiring as from the sudden sight of a Nephele very beautiful face. And as the impression grew clearer, I became conscious that it was a girl's presence, a girl's spirit, fulfilled with all the graces and sympathies that make the ideal of perfect maidenhood. It was these inward and spiritual attributes that alone seemed to influence my sensation, so that while I knew more of the temper and character of this creature, whoever or whatever she was, than if I had seen her in bodily pre sence, yet of her outward appearance I had no feeling.

The grosser sense of sight seemed dead, and some finer, subtler sense to have wakened, to receive this keen im pression of the unpictured spirit. And as my fingers still played on, I found they were now no longer content with the simple air, but were beginning to entwine it with lovely variations : variations that never obscured the original air, but seemed to mingle with it, and to be the echoes that it woke in all things or people that heard it. Then I became conscious that this girl presence, whose mysteriousness had at first terrified me, was awakening a new sense Nephele not of dread, — that my whole soul was being flooded with its sympathies and graces, and that the unexplained desire, " the desire of the moth for the star," that we call Love, was quickening within me. And with this feeling the music — that I myself was playing — grew more tumultuous, the pure, clear air sounding through a passionate surge of harmonies and discords, while a wild ecstatic yearning thrilled me, that was neither grief nor joy, but an unutterable intermingling of both Where was I ?

What was the knocking ? Some one at the chapel door ? I was still on the organ seat, but with my arms laid on the keys, and my head resting on them. Some one knocked again, and shook the door. I got up, and half-dazed made my way down the stairs, and opened the door. The sunlight dazzled me. " Hullo, Gerard, I thought you must have gone, only I heard a sort of droning going on as if the organ was playing itself. Have you been asleep ? " I had recovered my senses now, and Nephele remembered that my friend, young Lord St. Denys, had promised to come for me at four to play cricket. " Is it four o'clock ? " I asked. " Yes, struck some time ago. What have you been doing ? Did you fall asleep over the keys ? " " I don't know. Yes, I think I must have." Yes, I think I must have, but when ? Before that feeling ? Before that vision ? Or after ?

Chapter II

I will not describe in any detail the next few years of my life. Each of them, of course, brought its own events and its own changes, its own growth of feeling and widen ing of sympathy and deepening of know ledge. But these are things which can be expressed for others only in their results, not in their passing ; and there is no con spicuous event of any visible significance in my life, till about four years had passed since my strange experience in the school chapel. I had meantime finished my school-days, leaving school with a good character and a moderate stock of classical learning, and had been for some time in residence at one of the smaller colleges at Oxford, where I helped in my own maintenance by taking the post and salary of organist in the college chapel. I need not say that I had often and un weariedly tried to reproduce the air which Nephele had come to me then with such strange and inexplicable sensations.

But I had never succeeded. Nothing in all the four years had brought back one echo of that mysterious music, or one reflex of those strange sensations. My time of life was that in which the mind develops fastest, and new phases of thought had succeeded each other so fast that my old boyish life altogether seemed far behind me, and the time in the school chapel seemed most dream-like of all. Indeed I had come to believe that it had been nothing but a dream. Meantime I had become possessed — like many a young Oxford student — with an enthusiasm for Greek art. I had covered the walls of my rooms with photographs and engravings of the most famous and beautiful Greek statues, and looked forward to nothing on earth so much as to a visit to Italy, and to Greece itself, where these wonders were to be seen in their actual existent reality.

I had always had some turn for drawing, though my musical talent had so much preponderated that other Nephele tastes had been subordinated to it. But now I took to copying vigorously all pic tures and reproductions of Greek statuary to which I could get access. At first my efforts were poor and unsatisfactory, but after a year or so I found myself able to copy the features of a statue or engraving, or even of a living face, with some fidelity. And so it happened that on a certain afternoon in early June, when the sun shone hot and drowsily into my window, I had before me a sheet of drawing paper, and began half idly to draw an imaginary head — a face after the Greek type, turned full towards me. Listlessly I began; and without much thought, having caught the habit of drawing heads in right proportion, I drew the outline ; when lo, as I drew, I became aware, slowly and yet startlingly, that I was copying something or some one.

How I could be copying with nothing visible before me, I could not then or now explain ; but I had all the sensations of following some exact model, of raising my eyes from my own drawing to compare it with the original, Nephele and of taking minute pains to get the exact expression and shape of the features, pro cesses which were now become so familiar to me. And then, as the drawing drew near completion, and as I was realising, with an almost awe-struck fluttering of the heart, that the face which my own hands had drawn was that of a more lovely woman than I had ever seen, a face absolutely perfect in its beauty of line, and in its expression of all qualities of goodness and nobleness : then of a sudden there came to me again the air I had played in the school chapel. I dropped my pencil, I flew to the piano, set my trembling hands to the keys, and played.

Yes — the same air came up again out of the thin sweetness of the wires as out of the rich fulness of the organ-pipes. Again I felt the same curious feeling of will lessness, as if I was plaving not of my own act, nor out of my own mind. And again, just as before, there came upon me the consciousness of a presence beside me, Nephele a presence that I knew certainly to be the same girl-spirit I had known before. But I could distinguish, in some inexplicable way, that the four years that had changed me from boy to man, had also changed this girl to woman. She was nearer to me than if she had stood close beside me. I was more conscious of all that she was than if I could have seen or touched her. Her consciousness and mine seemed to mingle for the time in one stream, our sensations to move in unison, our natures to infuse and pervade each other.

For I was aware that not only was I influenced by this wondrous being, but— oh ecstacy ! that I had the power to influence her in the same way. That just as 'twixt lovers, face to face, looks pass and words, by which they move each other's feelings ; so between us passed the waves of emotion, to and fro from one to the other, with no need of thought or touch or utterance, and without the hindrance born of such need. I know not how long I continued in this trance or vision, my hands playing over Nephele and over again the same beautiful air, each time with fuller tones and fresh variations. I seemed to be growing in knowledge of this wonderful creature, and in intimacy. I could say of her, She is my friend ! in more absolute certainty than of any of my oldest friends. And in the delight of this new friendship, of the alternate exploring of her spirit and laying open to her of mine, which seemed to be going on between us, I took no heed of time or other circumstance.

When suddenly a loud knock at my door, followed by the immediate entrance of some one, startled me, and I rose almost staggering from my seat. " Hullo ! old man, what's the matter ? I heard you playing the wildest and queerest stuff as I came up — something like Wagner only-much-more-so. You look as if you'd been playing in your sleep." The intruder — so at the moment I felt him — was, curiously enough, the same friend as had broken in upon my former dream music in the school-chapel, Lord St. Denys. Our friendship had ripened and deepened Nephele with our growth, and we were now at the same college. I remembered that I had engaged to go on the river with him at five ; and being recovered enough to feel anxious to hide from him all I had been feeling, I stretched myself, with a yawn. " Is it five o'clock ?

I've been half asleep, I believe, over the piano. I don't wonder you heard some funny music." Alas ! I had forgotten my drawing. I heard an exclamation from him, and turn ing to the table, saw he had it in his hand. " By Jove ! what's this ? " " What's what ? " I said. " This face — this head ? " " Oh, that's nothing," I said, trying to speak carelessly, but feeling as conscious as a lover, and intensely vexed at his having seen it. " But where did you get it from ? " he persisted. " Oh, I drew it. " You drew it ! What from ? " Nephele " How do you mean ? " I asked. " I simply drew it out of my head." He stared hard at me, and I suppose I showed some of the uncomfortable conscious ness that I was feeling, because he said, half laughing but half vexed — " That's all rot, old man ! Excuse my saying so.

But how did you get hold of her photograph ? and how did you find out anything about her ? " It was now my turn to ask surprised questions. " Whose photograph ? I really don't know what you mean." " Do you mean to sav you didn't copy that from a photograph of Nephele Delisle?" No," I said. "Who is Nephele Delisle?" " Well," he replied, " this is a most extraordinary thing if you didn't. It's pre cisely like her — a very good likeness." " But who is she?" " Why, as I've told you her name I may as well tell you the rest. The fact is I got engaged to her in the winter, but her people and mine don't want it published till I've Nephele taken my degree. So nobody knows about it, and I keep her photograph carefully locked up — don't even carry it about me for fear of accidents. Do you really mean you haven't somehow found out about this, and copied it for me ?

By Jove ! I believe you must have. Thanks awfully if you did. It's a ripping good picture of her." I had hard work to convince him that this was not the case ; but at last he got so far as to say he'd believe me if he found the photograph hadn't been removed from the place where he left it, and he went off to his room, which was only to me. on the next staircase He soon came back graph in his hand. with a cabinet photo- " Well, I suppose photograph," he said, to have been touched you didn't see this " as it doesn't seem but you must have seen another ! Just look at them together." He laid the photograph on the table, by the picture, and the likeness was certainly extraordinary. There was, it is true, a slight difference, almost indefinable, in the 17 B Nephele expression ; and the dress, which in my drawing was misty and indefinite, was, in the photograph, a becoming and fashionable modern attire.

But otherwise the resem blance was exact, with just the difference which makes, and will always make, an artist's likeness superior to a photograph, the difference of life, and the " something more," which nothing but a sympathetic human touch can lend a picture. " Now," he said, " the murder's out for both of us ! I've had to confess to the engagement, and by drawing this picture you've confessed to knowing Nephele. Tell me when you knew her and where ? I don't wonder at your wanting to draw her. But don't tell me she gave you her photograph, because I won't believe it ! You got one of some one else's, or remembered one you had seen." " My good fellow," I said earnestly, " this is a most extraordinary thing ; but you must really believe me. I have never to my knowledge seen Miss Delisle, nor a photograph of her ; and I drew that face Nephele simply out of my own head just now before I began playing."

He looked hard at me. " Will you swear that ? " he said. " Yes," I said ; " if you care to ask me to swear it, I will." " Well," he said, " I can't very well refuse to believe your oath, but this beats any thought - reading or mesmerism I've ever heard of. I can't understand it." " No more can I," I said to myself. " At all events," he went on, " you'll give me this picture, won't you ? You've managed in a wonderful way to give some thing there isn't in the photograph. Your picture really brings her before me more than this does." This was just the request I had been dreading. It was so natural for him to ask — so unnatural (as it seemed) for me to refuse. And yet how could I give up the picture ? It had recalled for me that won derful music ; had brought back to me that invisible visitant now dearer to me than all the visible world ; had lifted me into the Nephele rich golden ecstacy of a throbbing first love.

Already my eyes were in love with the pictured face, as my soul was with the unseen creature whom the music had in voked, or revealed to me. Half unconsciously I reached my hand out to the paper. But St. Denys, probably thinking I was going to refuse, hastily snatched at it, meaning to be beforehand with me. We both caught up the paper at the same moment, and it rent asunder right down the beautiful face, and we remained each of us holding a profitless portion. St. Denys laughed — half triumphantly. " That settles it ! " he said. And before I thought to stop him, he had plucked the ragged-edged paper out of mv hand, and torn the two halves into quarters and eighths and shreds, which he lightly fluttered out of the open window, to be caught and scattered and lost for ever on the losel summer breezes.

Chapter III

Lord St. Denys apologised for destroying my drawing. He was of an impulsive nature, and I could quite understand a man who was in love with that face doing anything if his jealousy was ever aroused. The loss to me was so great, that I sought instinctively to hide all appearance of feeling, and pre tended, as best I could, that I did not mind. But the incident proved rather a breach in our friendship, though outwardly we never quarrelled ; and during the remainder of that summer term we saw less of one another than before. As the end of the term drew near, he asked me one day if I was going to stay up for Commemoration ; and when I answered that I thought I should, he seemed a little put out. " I thought you never did," he said " I never have yet ; but I don't know Nephele why I shouldn't," I answered.

" I suppose you will be up for it ? " " Oh yes, I suppose so. I'm one of the stewards of the Freemasons' Ball. But I should think you'd find it precious dull staying up, if you don't care for balls, and haven't any people coming up." It was evident that he rather hoped I was not going to stay up ; and it flashed across my mind that possibly Nephele Delisle was coming to Oxford for Commemoration. I was in a most curious state of feeling with regard to this unknown, and yet (as I thought) so well-known, being. Since the day of the destruction of the picture I had had no recurrence of the vision, or trance, or whatever I can call it. I had in vain attempted to draw the face again, or to recall the melody with which it was in such a strange way associated. But in my own mind I did not doubt that the personality of whom I had been con scious — whom I had, so to speak, evoked by music — had an objective existence in the world, and was that very Nephele Delisle Nephele to whom Lord St. Denys declared he was engaged.

But here came in the strangest part of my feeling in the matter. Though to him, or to any dispassionate person, it must have seemed that he was the rightful authorised lover, and I a base unjustified rival and intruder, to my feeling it was exactly the reverse. Had I not known, beyond the power of external looks or words to show, her very heart of hearts, and she mine ? How was it possible for her to be soul's mate to any other than me ? I would not, could not, did not believe it. And I felt a calm triumphant assurance that the time was near when we should meet face to face, and that even at our first meeting our spirits would be drawn together as irresistibly as the mist-drops come together to make the rain-drop. The very thought that she might be coming to Oxford sent a thrill and a throb through all my veins.

But how could she be coming ? Hardly on St. Denvs' invitation, if, as he said, their en- Nephele gagement was to be kept a secret. On whose then ? I got down my Oxford Calendar, and found there was a Delisle an undergraduate at one of the colleges. And then I suddenly remembered that St. Denys had of late often gone out to dine at that college with some friend whose name I had not heard. A day or two later I passed him in the street, walking with a man I did not know. They were so deep in conversation they did not notice me, and I heard St. Denys say — " Then you'll want four tickets for the Masonic ? " " Yes," was the answer. " You're sure Miss Delisle is coming ? ' St. Denys went on. " Quite sure. I've set my heart on it, and Nephele has too ; and when that's the case in the family, the thing is considered a physical necessity."

He laughed, with a light assurance too pleasant to be called conceit, and they passed out of hearing. It was evident that I should have not only Nephele to stay up for Commemoration, but to go to the Masonic Ball. For that I should have to get a ticket. Fortunately I knew another of the stewards, and I at once went to him and asked for one. " Why didn't you get it out of Lord St. Denys ? " he laughed, as I paid for it. " He's a steward, and might have let you have it cheap ! " As to what would happen at the ball, how I should ever get introduced to Miss Delisle, or how conduct myself in this flag rant attempt to cut out my friend — of all this I hardly thought at all. My whole mind was intoxicated with the idea of seeing her, the rest would be as it would. Fortune fought on my side. Though I did not see much of St. Denys, I could not help noticing when we did meet a suppressed excitement, which increased as the end of the term drew near.

Indeed it was evident to every one. He was louder and more boisterous, and his ringing laugh could be heard all over the college more often than usual. Nephele The last night of the term there was a big supper. One or two wealthy men were leaving, and our boat had gone up four places, so they gave a joint supper to nearly the whole college. The younger dons were invited, and all passed decorously enough ; but after the supper St. Denys and a few others went off to another man's rooms, and there, it seems, after a game of loo or nap, a bowl of punch was brewed, and they all drank too much. Anyhow, at about three or four o'clock in the morning there was such a row in the Quadrangle, that I got up and looked out at the staircase window (my rooms faced the other way), and saw in the beautiful fresh summer morning a group of four or five unsteady men, in dress clothes and college " blazers," standing on the grass plot in the Quadrangle, and throwing stones with wildish aim at the college clock.