The Human Chord | Page 3

the gilt-edged diary he affected he wrote: "Have taken

on Skale's odd advertisement. I like the man's name. The experience
may prove an adventure. While there's change, there's hope." For he
was very fond of turning proverbs to his own use by altering them, and
the said diary was packed with absurd misquotations of a similar kind.
II
A singular correspondence followed, in which the advertiser explained
with reserve that he wanted an assistant to aid him in certain
experiments in sound, that a particular pitch and quality of voice was
necessary (which he could not decide until, of course, he had heard it),
and that the successful applicant must have sufficient courage and
imagination to follow a philosophical speculation "wheresoever it may
lead," and also be "so far indifferent to worldly success as to consider it
of small account compared to spiritual knowledge--especially if such
knowledge appeared within reach and involved worldly sacrifices." He
further added that a life of loneliness in the country would have to be
faced, and that the man who suited him and worked faithfully should
find compensation by inheriting his own "rather considerable property
when the time came." For the rest he asked no references and gave
none. In a question of spiritual values references were mere foolishness.
Each must judge intuitively for himself.
Spinrobin, as has been said, bit. The letters, written in a fine scholarly
handwriting, excited his interest extraordinarily. He imagined some
dreamer-priest possessed by a singular hobby, searching for things of
the spirit by those devious ways he had heard about from time to time,
a little mad probably into the bargain. The name Skale sounded to him
big, yet he somehow pictured to himself an ascetic-faced man of small
stature pursuing in solitude some impossible ideal. It all attracted him
hugely with its promise of out-of-the-way adventure. In his own phrase
it "might lead to something," and the hints about "experiments in
sound" set chords trembling in him that had not vibrated since the days
of his boyhood's belief in names and the significance of names. The
salary, besides, was good. He was accordingly thrilled and delighted to
receive in reply to his last letter a telegram which read: "Engage you
month's trial both sides. Take single ticket. Skale."

"I like that 'take single ticket,'" he said to himself as he sped westwards
into Wales, dressed in his usual fluffy tweed suit and anarchist tie.
Upon his knees lay a brand new Hebrew grammar which he studied
diligently all the way to Cardiff, and still carried in his hands when he
changed into the local train that carried him laboriously into the
desolation of the Pontwaun Mountains. "It looks as though he approved
of me already. My name apparently hasn't put him off as it does most
people. Perhaps, through it, he divines the real me!"
He smoothed down his rebellious hair as he neared the station in the
dusk; but he was surprised to find only a rickety little cart drawn by a
donkey sent to meet him (the house being five miles distant in the hills),
and still more surprised when a huge figure of a man, hatless, dressed
in knickerbockers, and with a large, floating grey beard, strode down
the platform as he gave up his ticket to the station-master and
announced himself as Mr. Philip Skale. He had expected the small,
foxy-faced individual of his imagination, and the shock momentarily
deprived him of speech.
"Mr. Spinrobin, of course? I am Mr. Skale--Mr. Philip Skale."
The voice can only be described as booming, it was so deep and
vibrating; but the smile of welcome, where it escaped with difficulty
from the network of beard and moustaches, was winning and almost
gentle in contradistinction to the volume of that authoritative voice.
Spinrobin felt slightly bewildered--caught up into a whirlwind that
drove too many impressions through his brain for any particular one to
be seized and mastered. He found himself shaking hands--Mr. Skale,
rather, shaking his, in a capacious grasp as though it were some small
indiarubber ball to be squeezed and flung away. Mr. Skale flung it
away, he felt the shock up the whole length of his arm to the shoulder.
His first impressions, he declares, he cannot remember--they were too
tumultuous--beyond that he liked both smile and voice, the former
making him feel at home, the latter filling him to the brim with a
peculiar sense of well-being. Never before had he heard his name
pronounced in quite the same way; it sounded dignified, even splendid,
the way Mr. Skale spoke it. Beyond this general impression, however,

he can only say that his thoughts and feelings "whirled." Something
emanated from this giant clergyman that was somewhat enveloping and
took him off his feet. The keynote of the man