The young people each made appropriate appreciative comments. Coburn commented that it was remarkable that he should be able to be so accurate in his anatomical detail without the aid of a model.
“But I have a model,” he answered. “She was here last week. See?” He glanced toward the empty model’s throne. Coburn and his companions followed the glance, and saw, poised on the throne, a young girl, obviously the model for the picture, frozen in the action of the painting.
She was as real as bread and butter.
Charles glanced away. The model’s throne was again vacant.
The second instance was not so dramatic, but still less comprehensible. They had met, and chatted with, a Mrs. Draper, a comfortable, matronly soul, who knitted and rocked as they talked.
After they had left her Phil inquired about her.
“She is possibly our most able and talented artist,” Bierce told him.
“In what field?”
Bierce’s shaggy eyebrows came together as he chose his words. “I don’t believe I can tell you adequately at this time. She composes moods—arranges emotional patterns in harmonic sequences. It’s our most advanced and our most completely human form of art, and yet, until you have experienced it, it is very difficult for me to tell you about it.”
“How is it possible to arrange emotions?”
“Your great grandfather no doubt thought it impossible to record music. We have a technique for it. You will understand later.”
“Is Mrs. Draper the only one who does this?”
“Oh no. Most of us try our hand at it. It’s our favorite art form. I work at it myself but my efforts aren’t popular—too gloomy.”
The three talked it over that night in the living room they had first entered. This suite had been set aside for their use, and Bierce had left them with the simple statement that he would call on them on the morrow.
They felt a pressing necessity to exchange views, and yet each was reluctant to express opinion. Phil broke the silence..”What kind of people are these? They make me feel as if I were a child who had wandered in where adults were working, but that they were too polite to put me out.”
“Speaking of working—there’s something odd about the way they work. I don’t mean what it is they do—that’s odd, too, but it’s something else, something about their attitude, or the tempo at which they work.”
“I know what you mean, Ben,” Joan agreed, “they are busy all the time, and yet they act as if they had all eternity to finish it. Bierce was like that when he was strapping up your leg. They never hurry.” She turned to Phil. “What are you frowning about?”
“I don’t know. There is something else we haven’t mentioned yet. They have a lot of special talents, sure, but we three know something about special talents—that ought not to confuse us.
But there is something else about them that is different.”
The other two agreed with him but could offer no help. Sometime later Joan said that she was going to bed and left the room. The two men stayed for a last cigaret.
Joan stuck her head back in the room. “I know what it is that is so different about these people,” she anounced,—”They are so alive.”
Chapter Six Ichabod!
Philip Huxley went to bed and to sleep as usual. From there on nothing was usual.
He became aware that he was inhabiting another’s body, thinking with another’s mind. The Other was aware of Huxley, but did not share Huxley’s thoughts.
The Other was at home, a home never experienced by Huxley, yet familiar. It was on Earth, incredibly beautiful, each tree and shrub fitting into the landscape as if placed there in the harmonic scheme of an artist. The house grew out of the ground.
The Other left the house with his wife and prepared to leave for the capital of the planet.
Huxley thought of the destination as a “capital” yet he knew that the idea of government imposed by force was foreign to the nature of these people. The “capital” was merely the accustomed meeting place of the group whose advice was followed in matters affecting the entire race.