Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  Yet somehow, by unregistered degrees and secretly, they loosened the joints of his armour day by day and hour by hour.

  CHAPTER IX

  All the Powers that vivify nature must be children, for all the fairies, and gnomes, the goblins, yes, and the great giants too, are only different sizes and shapes and characters of children. — GEORGE MACDONALD.

  IT was a week later, and Paul was smoking his evening pipe on the lawn before dinner. His sister was in London for a couple of days. Mlle. Fleury had gone to the dentist in the neighbouring town and had not yet returned. The children, consequently, had been running rather wild.

  The sun had barely disappeared, when the full moon, rising huge and faint in the east, cast a silvery veil over the gardens and the wood. The night came treading softly down the sky, passing with an almost visible presence from the hills to the motionless trees in the valley, and then sinking gently and mysteriously down into the very roots of the grass and flowers.

  During the day there had been rain — warm showers alternating with dazzling sunshine as in April — and now the earth, before going to sleep, was sending out great wafts of incense. Paul sniffed it in with keen enjoyment.

  The odour of burning wood floated to him over the tree tops, hanging a little heavily in the moist atmosphere; he thought of a hundred fires of his own making — elsewhere, far away! ‘And grey dawns saw his camp-fires in the rain,’ he murmured.

  He wandered down to the Larch Gate, so called by the children because the larches stood there about the entrance of the wood like the porch of some forest temple. He halted, listening to the faint drip-drip of the trees, and as he listened, he thought; and his thoughts, like stones falling through a deep sea, sank down into the depths of him where so little light was that no words came to give them form or substance.

  Overhead, the blue lanes of the sky down which the sunlight had poured all day were slowly softening for the coming of the stars; and in himself the plastic depths, he felt, were a-stirring, as though some great change that he could not alter or control were about to take place in him. He was aware of an unwonted undercurrent of excitement in his blood. It seemed to him that there was ‘something afoot,’ although he had no evidence to warrant the suspicion.

  ‘Something’s up to-night,’ he murmured between the puffs of his pipe. ‘There’s something in the air!’

  He blew a long whiff of smoke and watched it melt away over a bed of mignonette among the blue shadows where the dusk gathered beneath the ilex trees. There, for a moment, his eye followed it, and just as it sifted off into transparency he became aware with a start of surprise that behind the bushes something was moving. He looked closer.

  ‘It’s stopped,’ he muttered; ‘but only a second ago it was moving — moving parallel with myself.’ Paul was well accustomed to watching the motions of wild creatures in the forest; his eye was trained like the eye of an Indian. The gloom at first was too dense for anything to differentiate itself from their general mass, but after a short inspection his sight detected little bits of shadow that were lighter or darker than other little bits. The moving thing began to assume outline.

  ‘It’s a person!’ he decided. ‘It’s somebody watching — watching me!’

  He took a step forward, and the figure likewise advanced, keeping even pace with him. He went faster, and the figure also went faster; it moved very silently, very softly, ‘like an Indian,’ he thought with admiration. Behind the Blue Summer-house, where they sometimes had tea on wet days, it disappeared.

  ‘There are no cattle-stealers, or timber-sneaks in this country,’ he reflected, ‘but there are burglars. Perhaps this is a burglar who knows Margaret is away and thinks—’

  He had not time to finish what the burglar thought, for at that moment, at the top of the Long Walk, where the moonlight already lay in a patch, the figure suddenly dashed out at full speed from the cover of the bushes, and he beheld, not a burglar, but — a little girl in a blue frock with a broad white collar, and long, black spindle legs.

  ‘Nixie, my dear child!’ he exclaimed. ‘But aren’t you in bed?’

  It was a stupid question of course, and she did not attempt to answer it, but came up close to him, picking her way neatly between the flower-beds. The moon gleamed on her shiny black shoes and on her shiny yellow hair; over her summer dress she wore a red cloak, but it was open and only held to her by two thin bands about the neck. Under the hood he saw her elf-like face, the expression grave, but the eyes bright with excitement, and she moved softly over the grass like a shadow, timidly, yet without hesitation. A small, warm hand stole into his.

  Paul put his pipe, still alight, into his pocket like a naughty boy caught smoking, and turned to face her.

  ‘ ‘Pon my soul, Nixie, I believe you really are a sprite!’

  She let go his hand and sprang away lightly over the lawn, laughing silently, her hood dropping off so that her hair flew out in a net to catch the moonlight, and for an instant he imagined he was looking at running water, swift and dancing; but the very next second she was back at his side again, the red hood replaced, the cloak gathered tightly about her slim person, feeling for his big hand again with both of her own.

  ‘At night I am a sprite,’ she whispered laughing, ‘and mind I don’t bewitch you altogether!’

  She drew him gently across the lawn, choosing the direction with evident purpose, and he, curiously and suddenly bereft of all initiative, allowed her to do as she would.

  ‘But, please, Uncle Paul,’ she went on with vast gravity, ‘I want you to be serious now. I’ve something to say to you, and that’s why I’m not in bed when I ought to be. All the other Sprites are about too, you know, so be very careful how you answer.’

  The big man allowed himself to be led away. He felt his armour dropping off in great flakes as he went. No light is so magical as in that mingled hour of sun and moon when the west is still burning and the east just a-glimmer with the glory that is to come. Paul felt it strongly. He was half with the sun and half with the moon, and the gates of fantasy seemed somewhere close at hand. Curtains were being drawn aside, veils lifting, doors softly opening. He almost heard the rush of the wind behind, and tasted the keen, sweet excitement of another world.

  He turned sharply to look at his companion.

  But first he put the hood back, for she seemed more human that way.

  ‘Well, child!’ he said, as gruffly as he could manage, ‘and what is it you have stayed up so late to ask me?’

  ‘It’s something I have to say to you, not to ask,’ she replied at once demurely. There was a delicious severity about her.

  After a pause of twenty seconds she tripped round in front of him and stared full into his face. He felt as though she cried ‘Hands up’ and held a six-shooter to his head. She pulled the trigger that same moment.

  ‘Isn’t it time now to stop writing all those Reports, and to take off your dressing-up things?’ she asked with decision.

  Paul stopped abruptly and tried to disengage his hand, but she held him so tightly that he could not escape without violence.

  ‘What dressing-up things are you talking about?’ he asked, forcing a laugh which, he admitted himself, sounded quite absurd.

  ‘All this pretending that you’re so old, and don’t know about things — I mean real things — our things.’

  He searched as in a fever for the right words — words that should be true and wise, and safe — but before he could pick them out of the torrent of sentences that streamed through his mind, she had gone on again. She spoke calmly, but very gravely ‘We are so tired of helping to pretend with you; and we’ve been waiting patiently so long. Even Toby knows it’s only ‘sguise you put on to tease us.’

  ‘Even Toby?’ he repeated foolishly, avoiding her brilliant eyes.

  ‘And it really isn’t quite fair, you know. There are so very few that care — and understand—’

  There came a little quaver in her voice. She hardly came up to his sh
oulder. He felt as though a whole bathful of happiness had suddenly been upset inside him, and was running about deliciously through his whole being — as though he wanted to run and dance and sing. It was like the reaction after tight boots — collars — or tight armour — and the blood was beginning to flow again mightily. Nothing could stop it. Some keystone in the fabric of his being dropped or shifted. His whole inner world fell into a new pattern. Resistance was no longer possible or desirable. He had done his best. Now he would give in and enjoy himself at last.

  ‘But, my dear child — my dear little Nixie—’

  ‘No, really, Uncle, there’s no good talking like that,’ she interrupted, her voice under command again, though still aggrieved, ‘because you know quite well we’re all waiting for you to join us properly — our Society, I mean — and have our a’ventures with us—’

  She called it ‘aventures.’ She left out all consonants when excited. The word caught him sharply. Nixie had wounded him better than she knew.

  ‘Er — then do you have adventures?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course — wonderful.’

  ‘But not — er — the sort — er — I could join in?’

  ‘Of course; very wonderfulindeedaventures. That’s what Daddy used to call them — before he went away.’

  It was Dick himself speaking. Paul imagined he could hear the very voice. Another, and deeper, emotion surged through him, making all the heartstrings quiver.

  He turned and looked about him, still holding the child tightly by the hand....

  Behind him he heard the air moving in the larches, combing out their long green hair; the pampas grass rustled faintly on the lawn just beyond; and from the wood, now darkening, came the murmur of the brook. On his right, the old house looked shadowy and unreal. There stood the chimneys, like draped figures watching him, with the first stars peeping over their hunched shoulders. Dew glistened on the slates of the roof; beyond them he saw the clean outline of the hill, darkly sweeping up into the pallor of the sunset. There, too, past the wall of the house, he saw the great distances of heathland moving down through crowds of shadows to the sea. And the moon was higher.

  ‘There’s seats in the Blue Summer-house,’ the voice beside him said, with insinuation as well as command.

  He found it impossible to resist; indeed, the very desire to resist had been spirited away. Slowly they made their way across the silvery patchwork of the lawn to the door of the Blue Summer-house. This was a tumble-down structure with a thatched roof; it had once been blue, but was now no colour at all. Low seats ran round the inside walls, and as Paul stood at the dark entrance he perceived that these seats were already occupied; and he hesitated. But Nixie pulled him gently in.

  ‘This is a regular Meeting,’ she said, as naturally as though she had been wholly innocent of a part in the plot. ‘They’ve only been waiting for us. Please come in.’ She even pushed him.

  ‘It may be regular, but it is most unexpected,’ he said, breathless rather, and curiously shy as he crossed the threshold and peered round at the silent faces about him. Eyes, he saw, were big and round and serious, shining with excitement. Clearly it was a very important occasion. He wondered what an ‘irregular’ meeting would be like.

  ‘We waited till mother was away/ explained a candid voice, speaking with solemnity from the recesses.

  ‘And till Madmerzelle had to go to the dentist and stay to tea,’ added another.

  ‘So that it would be easier for you to come,’ concluded Nixie, lest he should think all these excuses were only on their own account.

  She led him across the cobbled floor to a wooden arm-chair with crooked and shattered legs, and persuaded him to sit down. He did so.

  ‘There was some sense in that, at any rate,’ he remarked irrelevantly, not quite sure whether he referred to the children, or Mademoiselle, or the chair, and landing at the same instant with a crash upon the rickety support which was much lower than he thought it was. The joints and angles of the wood entered his ribs. He lost all memory of how to be sedate after that. He began to enjoy himself absurdly.

  Silvery laughter was heard, followed immediately by the sound of rushing little feet as a dozen small shadows shot out into the moonlight and tore across the lawn at top speed. China and Japan he recognised, and a cohort of furry creatures in their rear.

  ‘Now you’ve frightened them all away,’ exclaimed the voice that had spoken first.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ replied the other, who evidently spoke with authority; ‘Uncle Paul was in before they left. They saw the introduction. That’s enough. So now,’ it added with decision, ‘if you’re quite ready we’d better begin.’

  Paul grasped by this time that he was the central figure in some secret ceremony of the children, that it was of vital importance to them, as well as a profound compliment to himself. The animals formed part of it so long as they could be persuaded to stay. Their own rituals, however, were so vastly more wonderful and dignified — especially the Ritual of the Cats — that they were somewhat contemptuous, and had escaped at the earliest opportunity. It was, of course, his formal initiation into their world of make-believe and imagination. He stood before them on the floor of this tumbled - down Blue Summer-house in the capacity of the Candidate. Strange chills began to chase one another down his long spine. A shy happiness swept through him and made him shiver. ‘Can they possibly guess,’ he wondered, ‘how far more important this is to me than to them?’

  ‘Are you ready then?’ Nixie asked again.

  ‘Quite ready,’ he replied in a deep and tremulous voice.

  ‘Go ahead then,’ said the voice of decision.

  A little bell rang, manipulated by some invisible hand in the darkness, and Nixie darted forward and drew a curtain that bore a close resemblance to a carriage rug across the doorway, so that only the faintest gleam of moonlight filtered through the cracks on either side. Then the owner of the voice of authority left his throne on the back wall and stepped solemnly forward in the direction of the candidate. Paul recognised Jonah with some difficulty. He tripped twice on the way.

  The stumbling was comprehensible. On his head he wore a sort of mitre that on ordinary occasions was evidently used to keep the tea hot on the schoolroom table; for it was beyond question a tea-cosy. A garment of variegated colours wrapped his figure down to the heels and trailed away some distance, behind him. It was either a table-cloth or a housemaid’s Sunday dress, and it invested him with a peculiar air of quaint majesty. He might have been King of the Gnomes. On his hands were large leathern gauntlets — very large indeed; and with loose fingers whose movements were clearly difficult to control, he grasped a stick that once may have been a hunting crop, but now was certainly a wand of office.

  In front of Paul he came to a full stop, gathering his robes about him.

  He made a little bow, during which the mitre shifted dangerously to one side, and then tapped the candidate lightly with the wand on the head, shoulders, and breast.

  ‘Please answer now,’ he said in a low tone, and then went backwards to his seat against the wall. His robe of office so impeded him that he was obliged to use the wand as a common walking-stick. Once or twice, too, he hopped.

  ‘But you’ve forgotten to ask it,’ whispered Nixie from the door where she was holding up the curtains with both hands. ‘He’s got nothing to answer.’

  Quickly correcting his mistake, Jonah then stood up on his seat and said, rather shyly, the following lines, evidently learned by heart with a good deal of trouble: —

  You’ve applied to our Secret Society,

  Which is full of unusual variety,

  And, in spite of your past,

  We admit you at last,

  But — we hope you’ll behave with propriety.

  ‘Now, stand up and answer, please,’ whispered Nixie. ‘Daddy made all this up, you know. It’s your turn to answer now.’

  Paul rose with difficulty. At first it seemed as if the chair meant to rise with
him, so tightly did it fit; but in the end he stood erect without it, and bowing to the President, he said in solemn tones — and the words came genuinely from his heart:

  ‘I appreciate the honour done to me. I am very grateful indeed.’

  ‘That’s very good, I think,’ Nixie whispered under her breath to him.

  Then Toby advanced, climbing down laboriously from her perch on the broken bench, and stalked up to the spot just vacated by her brother. She, too, was suitably dressed for the occasion, but owing to her diminutive size, and the fact that she did not reach up to the patch of moonlight, it was not possible to distinguish more than the white cap pinned on to her hair. It looked like a housekeeper’s cap. She, too, carried a wand of office. Was it a hunting crop or poker, Paul wondered?

  Toby, then, with much more effort than Jonah, repeated the formula of admission. She got the lines a little mixed, however: —

  You’ve applied to our Secret Society,

  Which is full of unusual propriety,

  And, in spite of your past,

  We admit you at last,

  But we hope you’ll behave with variety.

  ‘I will endeavour to do so,’ said Paul, replying with a low bow.

  When he rose again to an upright position, Nixie was standing close in front of him. One arm still held up the curtains, but the other pointed directly into his face.

  ‘Your ‘ficial position in the Society,’ she said in her thin, musical little voice, also repeating words learned by heart, ‘will be that of Recording Secretary, and your principal duties to keep a record of all the Aventures and to read them aloud at Regular Meetings. Any Meeting anywhere is a Regular Meeting. You must further promise on your living oath not to reveal the existence of the Society, or any detail of its proceedings, to any person not approved of by the Society as a whole.’