Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  She paused for his reply.

  ‘I promise,’ he said. c He promises,’ repeated three voices together. There was a general clatter and movement in the summer-house. He was forced down again into the rickety chair and the three little officials were clambering upon his knees before he knew where he was. All talked breathlessly at once.

  ‘Now you’re in properly — at last!’

  ‘You needn’t pretend any more—’

  ‘But we knew all along you were really trying hard to get in?’

  ‘I really believe I was,’ said he, getting in a chance remark.

  They covered him with kisses.

  ‘We never thought you were as important as you pretended,’ Jonah said; ‘and your being so big made no difference.’

  ‘Or your beard, Uncle Paul,’ added Toby.

  ‘And we never think people old till they’re married,’ Jonah explained, putting the mitre on his uncle’s head.

  ‘So now we can have our aventures all together,’ exclaimed Nixie, kissing him swiftly, and leaping off his knee. The other two followed her example, and suddenly — he never quite understood how it happened so quickly — the summer-house was empty, and he was alone with the moonlight. A flash of white petticoats and slender black legs on the lawn, and lo, they were gone!

  On the gravel path outside sounded a quick step. Paul started with surprise. The very next minute Mlle. Fleury, in her town clothes and hat, appeared round the corner.

  ‘‘Ow then!’ she exclaimed sharply, ‘the little ones zey are no more ‘ere? Mr. Rivairs....!’ She shook her finger at him.

  Paul tried to look dignified. For the moment, however, he quite forgot the tea-cosy still balanced on his head.

  ‘Mademoiselle Fleury,’ he said politely, ‘the children have gone to bed.’

  ‘It is ‘igh time that they are already in bed, only I hear their voices now this minute,’ she went on excitedly. ‘They ‘ide here, do they not?’

  ‘I assure you, Mademoiselle, they have gone to bed,’ Paul said. The woman stared at him with amazement in her eyes. He wondered why. Then, with a crash, something fell from the skies, hitting his nose on the way down, and bounding on to the ground.

  ‘Oh, the mitre!’ he cried with a laugh, ‘I clean forgot it was there.’ He kicked it aside and stared with confusion at his companion. She looked very neat and trim in her smart town frock. He understood now why she stared so, and his cheeks flamed crimson, though it was too dark for them to be seen.

  ‘Meester Reevairs,’ she said at length, the desire to laugh and the desire to scold having fought themselves to a standstill, so that her face betrayed no expression at all, ‘you lead zem astray, I think.’

  ‘On the contrary, it is they who lead me,’ he said self-consciously. ‘In fact, they have just deprived me of my very best armour—’

  ‘Armour!’ she interrupted, ‘Armoire! Ah! They ‘ide upstairs in the cupboard,’ — and she turned to run.

  ‘Do not be harsh with them,’ he cried after her, ‘it is all my fault really. I am to blame, not they.’

  “Arsh! Oh no!’ she called back to him. ‘Only, you know, if your seester find them at this hour not in bed—’

  Paul lost the end of the sentence as she turned the corner of the house. He gathered up the remnants of the ceremony and followed slowly in her footsteps.

  ‘Now, really,’ he thought, ‘what a simple and charming woman! How her eyes twinkled! And how awfully nice her voice was!’ He flung down the rugs and wands and tea-cosy in the hall. ‘Out there,’ with a jerk in the direction of the Atlantic Ocean, ‘the whole camp would make her a Queen.’ Altogether the excitement of the last hour had been considerable. He felt that something must happen to him unless he could calm down a bit.

  ‘I know,’ he exclaimed aloud, ‘I’ll go and have a hot bath. There’s just time before dinner. That’ll take it out of me.’ And he went up the front stairs, singing like a boy.

  CHAPTER X

  Everything possible to be believed s an image of truth. — Blake.

  FOR some days after that Paul walked on air. Incredible as it may seem to normally constituted persons, he was so delighted to have found a medium in which he could in some measure express himself without fear of ridicule, that the entire world was made anew for him. He thought about it a great deal. He even argued in his muddled fashion, but he got no farther that way. The only thing he really understood was the plain fact that he had found a region where his companions were about his own age, with his own tastes, ready to consider things that were real, and to let the trivial and vulgar world go by.

  This was the fact that stared him in the face and made him happy. For the first time in his life he could play with others. Hitherto he had played alone.

  ‘It’s a safety-valve at last,’ he exclaimed, using his favourite word. ‘Now I can let myself go a bit.

  They will never laugh; on the contrary, they’ll understand and love it. Hooray!’

  ‘And, remember,’ Nixie had again explained to him, ‘you have to write down all the aventures. That’s what keeping the records means. And you must read them out to us at the Meetings.’

  And he chuckled as he thought about it, for it meant having real Reports to write at last, reports that others would read and appreciate.

  The aventures, moreover, began very quickly; they came thick and fast; and he lived in them so intensely that he carried them over into his other dull world, and sometimes hardly knew which world he was in at all. His imagination, hungry and untamed, had escaped, and was seeking all it could devour.

  It was a hot afternoon in mid-June, and Paul was lying with his pipe upon the lawn. His sister was out driving. He was alone with the children and the smaller portion of the menagerie, — smaller in size, that is, not in numbers; cats, kittens, and puppies were either asleep, or on the hunt, all about them. And from an open window a parrot was talking ridiculously in mixed French and English.

  The giant cedars spread their branches; in the limes the bees hummed drowsily; the world lay a scented garden around him, and a very soft wind stole to and fro, stirring the bushes with sleepy murmurs and making the flowers nod.

  China and Japan lay panting in the shade behind him, and not far off reposed the big grey Persian, Mrs. Tompkyns. Regardless of the heat, Pouf, Zezette, and Dumps flitted here and there as though the whole lawn was specially made for their games; and Smoke, the black cat, dignified and mysterious, lay with eyes half-closed just near enough for Paul to stroke his sleek, hot sides when he felt so disposed. He — Smoke that is — blinked indifferently at passing butterflies, or twitched his great tail at the very tip when a bird settled in the branches overhead; but for the most part he was intent upon other matters — matters of genuine importance that concerned none but himself.

  A few yards off Jonah and Toby were doing something with daisies — what it was Paul could not see; and on his other side Nixie lay flat upon the grass and gazed into the sky. The governess was — where all governesses should be out of lesson-time — elsewhere.

  ‘Nixie, you’re sleeping. Wake up.’

  She rolled over towards him. ‘No, Uncle Paul, I’m not. I was only thinking.’

  ‘Thinking of what?’

  ‘Oh, clouds and things; chiefly clouds, I think.’ She pointed to the white battlements of summer that were passing very slowly over the heavens. ‘It’s so funny that you can see them move, yet can’t see the thing that pushes them along.’

  ‘Wind, you mean?’

  ‘H’mmmmm.’

  They lay flat on their backs and watched. Nixie made a screen of her hair and peered through it. Paul did the same with his fingers.

  ‘You can touch it, and smell it, and hear it,’ she went on, half to herself, ‘but you can’t see it.’

  ‘I suspect there are creatures that can see the wind, though,’ he remarked sleepily.

  ‘I ‘spect so too,’ she said softly. ‘I think I could, if I really tried hard enough. If I wa
s very, oh very kind and gentle and polite to it, I think—’

  ‘Come and tell me quietly,’ Paul said with excitement. ‘I believe you’re right.’

  He scented a delightful adventure. The child turned over on the grass twice, roller fashion, and landed against him, lying on her face with her chin in her hands and her heels clicking softly in the air.

  She began to explain what she meant. ‘You must listen properly because it’s rather difficult to explain, you know’; he heard her breathing into his ear, and then her voice grew softer and fainter as she went on. Lower and lower it grew, murmuring like a distant mill-wheel, softer and softer; wonderful sentences and words all running gently into each other without pause, somewhere below ground. It began to sound far away, and it melted into the humming of the bees in the lime trees.... Once or twice it stopped altogether, Paul thought, so that he missed whole sentences.... Gaps came, gaps filled with no definite words, but only the inarticulate murmur of summer and summer life....

  Then, without warning, he became conscious of a curious sinking sensation, as though the solid lawn beneath him had begun to undulate. The turf grew soft like air, and swam up over him in green waves till his head was covered. His ears became muffled; Nixie’s voice no longer reached him as something outside himself; it was within — curiously running, so to speak, with his blood. He sank deeper and deeper into a delicious, soothing medium that both covered and penetrated him.

  The child had him by the hand, that was all he knew, then — a long sliding motion, and forgetfulness.

  ‘I’m off,’ he remembered thinking, ‘off at last into a real adventure!’

  Down they sank, down, down; through soft darkness, and long, shadowy places, passing through endless scented caverns, and along dim avenues that stretched, for ever and ever it seemed, beneath the gloom of mighty trees. The air was cool and perfumed with earth. They were in some underworld, strangely muted, soundless, mysterious. It grew very dark.

  ‘Where are we, Nixie?’ He did not feel alarm; but a sense of wonder, touched delightfully by awe, had begun to send thrills along his nerves.

  Her reply in his ear was like a voice in a tiny trumpet, far away, very soft. ‘Come along! Follow me!’

  ‘I’m coming. But it’s so dark.’

  ‘Hush,’ she whispered. ‘We’re in a dream together. I’m not sure where exactly. Keep close to me.’

  ‘I’m coming,’ he repeated, blundering over the roots beside her; ‘but where are we? I can’t see a bit.’

  ‘Tread softly. We’re in a lost forest — just before the dawn,’ he heard her voice answer faintly.

  ‘A forest underground — ? You mean a coal measure?’ he asked in amazement.

  She made no answer. ‘I think we’re going to see the wind,’ she added presently.

  Her words thrilled him inexplicably. It was as if — in that other world of gross values — some one had said, ‘You’re going to make a million!’ It was all hushed and soft and subdued. Everything had a coating of plush.

  ‘We’ve gone backwards somewhere — a great many years. But it’s all right. There’s no time in dreams.’

  ‘It’s dreadfully dark,’ he whispered, tripping again.

  The persuasion of her little hand led him along over roots and through places of deep moss. Great spaces, he felt, were about him. Shadows coated everything with silence. It was like the vast primeval forests of his country across the seas. The map of the world had somehow shifted, and here, in little England, he found the freedom of those splendid scenes of desolation that he craved. Millions of huge trees reared up about them through the gloom, and he felt their presence, though invisible.

  ‘The sun isn’t up yet,’ she added after a bit. He held her hand tightly, as they stumbled slowly forward together side by side. He began to feel extraordinarily alive. Exhilaration seized him. He could have shouted with excitement.

  ‘Hush!’ whispered his guide, ‘do be careful. You’ll upset us both.’ The trembling of his hand betrayed him. ‘You stumble like an om’ibus!’

  ‘I’m all right. Go ahead!’ he replied under his breath. ‘I can see better now!’

  ‘Now look,’ she said, stopping in front of him and turning round.

  The darkness lifted somewhat as he bent down to follow the direction of her gaze. On every side, dim and thronging, he saw the stems of immense trees rising upwards into obscurity. There were hundreds upon hundreds of them. His eyes followed their outline till the endless number bewildered him. Overhead, the stars were shining faintly through the tangled network of their branches. Odours of earth and moss and leaves, cool and delicate, rose about them; vast depths of silence stretched away in every direction. Great ferns stood motionless, with all the magic of frosted window-panes, among their roots. All was still and dark and silent. It was the heart of a great forest before the dawn — prehistoric, unknown to man.

  ‘Oh, I wonder — I wonder—’ began Paul, groping about him clumsily with his hands to feel the way.

  ‘Oh, please don’t talk so loud,’ Nixie whispered, pinching his arm; ‘we shall wake up if you do. Only people in dreams come to places like this.’

  ‘You know the place?’ he exclaimed with increasing excitement. ‘So do I almost. I’m sure this has all happened before, only I can’t remember—’

  ‘We must keep as still as mice.’

  ‘We are — still as mice.’

  ‘This is where the winds sleep when they’re not blowing. It’s their resting-place.’

  He looked about him, drawing a deep breath.

  ‘Look out; you’ll wake them if you breathe like that whispered the child.

  ‘Are they asleep now?’

  ‘Of course. Can’t you see?’

  ‘Not much — yet!’

  ‘Move like a cat, and speak in whispers. We may see them when they wake.’

  ‘How soon?’

  ‘Dawn. The wind always wakes with the sun. It’s getting closer now.’

  It was very wonderful. No words can describe adequately the still splendour of that vast forest as they stood there, waiting for the sunrise. Nothing stirred. The trees were carved out of some marvellous dream-stuff, motionless, yet conveying the impression of life. Paul knew it and recognised it. All primeval woods possess that quality — trees that know nothing of men and have never heard the ringing of the axe. The silence was of death, yet a sense of life that is far beyond death pulsed through it. Cisterns of quiet, gigantic, primitive life lay somewhere hidden in these shadowed glades. It seemed the counterpart of a man’s soul before rude passion and power have stirred it into activity. Here all slept potentially, as in a human soul. The huge, sombre pines rose from their beds of golden moss to shake their crests faintly to the stars, awaiting the coming of the true passion — the great Sun of life, that should call them to splendour, to reality, and to the struggle of a bigger life than they yet knew, when they might even try to shake free from their roots in the hard, confining earth, and fly to the source of their existence — the sun.

  And the sun was coming now. The dawn was at hand. The trees moved gently together, it seemed. The wood grew lighter. An almost imperceptible shudder ran through it as through a vast spider’s web.

  ‘Look!’ cried Nixie. His simple, intuitive little guide was nearer, after all, to reality than he was, for all his subtle vision. ‘Look, Uncle Paul!’

  His attempt to analyse wonder had prevented his seeing it sooner, but as she spoke he became aware that something very unusual was going forward about them. His skin began to tickle, and a strange sense of excitement took possession of him.

  A pale, semi-transparent substance he saw hung everywhere in the air about them, clinging in spirals and circles to the trunks, and hanging down from the branches in long slender ribbons that reached almost to the ground. The colour was a delicate pearl-grey. It covered everything as with the softest of filtered light, and hung motionless in the air in painted streamers of thinnest possible vapour.

&n
bsp; The silken threads of these gossamer ribbons dropped from the sky in millions upon millions. They wrapped themselves round the very star-beams, and lay in sheets upon the ground; they curled themselves round the stones and crept in among the tiniest crevices of moss and bark; they clothed the ferns with their fairy gauze. Paul could even feel them coiling about his hair and beard and eyelashes. They pervaded the entire scene as light does. The colour was uniform; whether in sheets or ribbons, it did not vary in shade or in degree of transparency. The entire atmosphere was pervaded by it, frozen into absolute stillness.

  ‘That’s the winds — all that stuff,’ Nixie whispered, her voice trembling with excitement. ‘They’re asleep still. Aren’t they awful and wonderful?’

  As she spoke a faint vibration ran everywhere through the ribbons. Involuntarily he tightened his grasp on the child’s hand.

  ‘That’s their beginning to wake,’ she said, drawing closer to him, ‘like people moving in sleep.’

  The vibration ran through the air again. It quivered as reflections in the surface of a pool quiver to a ghost of passing wind. They seated themselves on a fallen trunk and waited. The trees waited too; as gigantic notes in a set piece, Paul thought, that the coming sun would presently play upon like a hand upon a vast instrument. Then something ‘moved a few feet away, and he jumped in spite of himself.

  ‘Only Jonah,’ explained his guide. ‘He’s asleep like us. Don’t wake him; he’s having a dream too.’

  It was indeed Jonah, wandering vaguely this way and that, disappearing and reappearing, wholly unaware, it seemed, of their presence. He looked like a gnome. His feet made no sound as he moved about, and after a few minutes he lost himself behind a big trunk and they saw him no more. But almost at once behind him the round figures of China and Japan emerged into view. They came, moving fast and busily, blundering against the trees, tumbling down, and butting into everything that came in their path as though they could not see properly. Paul watched them with astonishment.