Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  But in real life things are not cut always so neatly to measure, and whether real life is artistic or not as a whole cannot be judged until the true, far end is known. For the perspective is wanting; the scale is on a vaster loom; and of the threads that weave into the pattern and out again, neither end nor beginning are open to inspection.

  The novels Margaret delighted in, with their hotch-potch of duchesses and valets, Ministers of State and footmen, libertines and snobs, while doubtless portraying certain phases of modern life with accuracy, could in no way prepare her for the Pattern that was being woven beneath her eyes by the few and simple characters in this entirely veracious history. And it may be assumed, therefore, that Joan had come into the scenery of Paul’s life with no such commonplace motive — since the high Gods held the threads and wove them to their own satisfaction — as merely to marry off the hero.

  And if Paul did not fall in love with Joan Nicholson, as he might, or ought, to have done, he at least did the next best thing to it. He fell head over ears in love with her work. And since love seeks ever to imitate and to possess, he cast about in his heart for means by which he might accomplish these ends. Already he possessed her secret. Now he had only to imitate her methods.

  He was finding his way to a bigger and better means of self-expression than he had yet dreamed of; while Nixie, the dea ex machina, for ever flitted on ahead and showed the way.

  It remained a fairy-tale of the most delightful kind. That, at least, he realised clearly.

  CHAPTER XXII

  AMONG the branches of the ilex tree, whose thick foliage rose like a giant swarm of bees at the end of the lawn, there were three dark spots visible that might have puzzled the most expert botanist until he came close enough to examine them in detail. The fact that the birds avoided the tree at this particular hour of the evening, when they might otherwise have loved to perch and sing, hidden among the dense shiny leaves, would very likely have furnished a clue, and have suggested to him — if he were a really intelligent man of science — that these dark spots were of human origin.

  In the order in which they rose from the ground towards the top they were, in fact, Toby, Joan Nicholson, Paul, Nixie and, highest of all, Jonah. Paul felt safer in the big fork, Joan in the wide seat with the back. In the upper branches Jonah perched, singing and chattering. Toby hummed to herself happily nearer the ground, and Nixie, her legs swinging dizzily over a serpentine branch immediately above Paul’s head, was really the safest of the lot, though she looked ready to drop at any moment.

  They were all at rest, these wingless human birds, in the tree where Paul had long ago made seats and staircases and bell-ropes.

  ‘I wish the wind would come,’ said Nixie. ‘It would make us all swing about.’

  ‘And Jonah would lose his balance and bring the lot of us down like ripe fruit,’ said Paul.

  ‘On the top of Toby at the bottom,’ added Joan. ‘But my house is well built,’ Paul objected, ‘or it would never have held such a lot of visitors as it did yesterday.’

  ‘Look out! I’m slipping!’ cried Jonah suddenly overhead. ‘No! I’m all right again now,’ he added a second later, having thoroughly alarmed the lodgers on the lower floors, and sent down a shower of bark and twigs.

  ‘It’s certainly more solid than your “Scaffolding of Night,”’ Joan observed mischievously as soon as the shower was past; ‘though, perhaps, not quite as beautiful.’ And presently she added, ‘I think I never saw boys enjoy themselves so much in my life. They’ll remember it as long as they live.’

  ‘It was your idea,’ he said.

  ‘But you carried it out for me!’

  They were resting after prolonged labours that had been, at the same time, a prolonged delight. At three o’clock that afternoon, after twenty-four hours of sunshine among woods and fields, the party of twenty urchins had been seen safely off the premises into the London train. Two large brakes had carried them to the station, and the gardens of the grey house under the hill were dropping back again into their wonted peace and quiet.

  There is nothing unusual — happily — in the sight of poor town-children enjoying an afternoon in the country; but there was something about this particular outing that singled it out from the majority of its kind. Paul had entered heart and soul into it, and the combination of woods, fields, and running water had made possible certain details that are not usually feasible.

  Margaret had given Paul and her cousin carte blanche. They had planned the whole affair as generals plan a battle. The children had proved able lieutenants; and the weather had furnished the sun by day and the moon by night, to show that it thoroughly approved. For it was Paul’s idea that the entire company of boys should camp out, cook their meals over wood fires in the open, bathe in the pools he had contrived long ago by damming up the stream, and that not a single minute of the twenty-four hours should they be indoors or under cover.

  With a big barn close at hand in case of necessity, and with four tents large enough to hold five apiece, erected at the far end of the Gwyle woods, where the stream ran wide and full, he had no difficulty in providing for all contingencies. Each boy had brought a little parcel with his things for the night; and blankets, bedding of hay and pillows of selected pine branches — oh, he knew all the tricks for making comfortable sleeping-quarters in the woods! — were ready and waiting when the party of urchins came upon the scene.

  And every astonished ragamuffin had a number pinned on to his coat the moment he arrived, and the same number was to be found at the head of his place in the tent. Each tent, moreover, was under the care of a particular boy who was responsible for order; while, midway in the camp, by the ashes of the fire where they had roasted potatoes and told stories till the moonlight shamed them into sleep, Paul himself lay all night in his sleeping-bag, the happiest of the lot, sentinel and guardian of the troop.

  The place for the main fire, where meals were cooked, had been carefully chosen beforehand, and wood collected by the busy hands of Nixie & Co. The boys sat round it in a large ring; and Paul in the middle, stirring the stew he had learned to make most deliciously in his backwoods life, ladled it out into the tin plates of each in turn, while Joan saw to the bread and cake, and watched the huge kettle of boiling water for tea that swung slowly from the iron tripod near by.

  And that circle of happy urchin faces, seen through the blue smoke against the background of crowding tree stems, flushed with the hours of sunshine, the mystery of happiness in all their eyes, remained a picture in Paul’s memory to the end of his life. The boys, certainly, were not all good, but they were at least all merry. They forgot for the time the heat of airless brick lanes and the clatter of noisy traffic. The perfumes of the wood banished the odour of ill-ventilated rooms. Dark shadows of the streets gave place to veils of a very different kind, as the rising moon dropped upon their faces the tracery of pine branches. And, instead of the roar of a city that for them meant hardship, often cruelty, they heard the singing of birds, the rustle of trees, and the murmur of the stream at their very feet.

  And Paul, as he paced to and fro softly between the sleeping crew, the tents all ghostly among the trees, had long, long thoughts that went with him into his sleeping-bag later and mingled with dreams that were more inspired than he knew, and destined to bear a great harvest in due course....

  The branches of big forest trees shifted noiselessly forwards from the scenery that lay ever in the background of his mind, and pressed his eyelids gently into sleep. With feathery dark fingers they brushed the surface of his thoughts, leaving the perfume of their own large dreams about his pillow.

  The shadowy figures that haunt all ancient woods peered at him from behind a million stems and, while they peered, beckoned; whispering to his soul the secrets of the wilderness, and renewing in him the sources of strength, simplicity, and joy they had erstwhile taught him.

  All that afternoon he had spent with the romping boys, organising their play, seeing to it that they enjoy
ed utter freedom, yet did no mischief. Joan seconded him everywhere, and Nixie flitted constantly between the camp and the source of supplies in the kitchen. And, to see their play, came as a revelation to him in many ways. While the majority were content to shout and tumble headlong with excess of animal spirits let loose, here and there he watched one or two apart, all aghast at the beauty they saw at close quarters for the first time; dreaming; apparently stunned; drinking it all in with eyes and ears and lips; feeling the moss and branches as others feel jewels and costly lace; and on some of the little faces an expression of grave wonder, and of joy too deep for laughter.

  ‘This ain’t always ‘ere, is it, Guv’nor?’ one had asked. And another, whom Paul watched fingering a common fern for a long time, looked up presently and inquired if it was real—’ because it isn’t ‘arf as pretty as what we use!’ He was the son of a scene-shifter at an East End theatre.

  And a detail that made peculiarly keen appeal to his heart, a detail not witnessed by Joan or the children, was the morning ablutions in the stream, when the occupants of each tent in turn, went into the water soon after sunrise, their pinched bodies streaked by the shadow and sunlight of the dawn, their laughter and splashing filling the wood with unwonted sounds. Soap, towels, and water in plenty! Water perfumed from the hills! Faces flushed and almost rosy after the sleep in the open, and the inexhaustible draughts of air to fan them dry again!

  And then the eager circle for breakfast, hatless, eyes all fixed upon the great stew-pot where he mixed the jorum of porridge! And the noise — for noise, it must be confessed, there was — as they smothered it in their tin plates with quarts of milk hot from the cow, and busily swallowed it.

  ‘You took them straight into the Crack, you know,’ Joan said from her seat below.

  ‘Everything came true,’ Nixie’s voice was heard overhead among the branches.

  Jonah clattered down past them and scampered across the lawn with Toby at his heels, for their bedtime was close at hand. The other three lay there, half hidden, a little longer, while the shadows crept down from the hills and gathered underneath. They could no longer see each other properly. For a time there was silence, stirred only by the faint rustle of the ilex leaves. Each was thinking long, deep thoughts.

  ‘Next week,’ said Joan quietly, as though to herself, ‘the other lot will come. Your sister’s as good as gold about it all.’

  Then, after a pause, Nixie’s voice dropped down to them again:

  ‘And had some of them really never seen a wood before?’ she asked. ‘Fancy that! When I grow up I shall have a big wood made specially for them — the “Wood for Lost Children” I shall call it. And you’ll see about the tents and cooking, won’t you, Uncle Paul? Or, perhaps,’ she added, ‘by that time I shall know how to make a real proper stew and porridge, and be able to tell them stories round the fire as you did. Don’t you think so?’

  ‘I think you know most of it already,’ he answered gently. ‘It seems to me somehow that you have always known all the important things like that.’

  ‘Oh, do you really? How splendid if I really did!’

  There was a slight break in her voice — ever so slight. ‘I should so dreadfully like to help — if I could. It’s so slow getting old enough to do anything.’ Paul turned his head up to her. It was too dim to see her body lying along the bough, but he could just make out her eyes peering down between the dark of the leaves, a yellow mist where her hair was, and all the rest hidden. Very eerie, very suggestive it was, to hear this little voice amid the dusk of the branches, putting his own thoughts into words. Were those tears that glistened in the round pools of blue, or was it the reflection of sunset and the coming stars that filtered past her through the thinning tree-top? Again he thought of that silver birch standing under the protection of the shaggy pine.

  ‘Sing us something, Nixie,’ rose the voice of Joan from below.

  ‘What shall I sing?’

  ‘That thing about the two trees Uncle Paul made up.’

  ‘But he hasn’t given me the tune yet!’

  ‘The tune’s still lost,’ murmured the deep voice from the shadows of the big fork. ‘I must go into the Crack and find it. That’s where I found the words, at least—’ The sound of his voice melted away.

  ‘Of course,’ Joan was heard to say faintly, ‘ail lost things are in there, aren’t they?’

  And then something queer happened that was never explained. Perhaps they all slipped through the Crack together; or perhaps Nixie’s funny little singing voice floated down to them through such a filter of listening leaves that both words and tune were changed on the way into something sweeter than they actually were in themselves.

  Who told the Silver Birch tree

  The stories that we made?

  And how can she remember

  The very games we played?

  Who told her heart of silver

  That, almost from her birth,

  The roots of that old Pine tree

  Had sought hers under earth?

  For always when the wind blows

  Her hair about the wood,

  It blows across my eyes too

  Her pictured solitude.

  And then Aventures gather

  On little hidden feet,

  And mystery and laughter

  The magic things repeat.

  For, O my Silver Birch tree,

  Full half the ‘things’ we do,

  We did — or e’er you sweetened

  The starlight and the dew!

  They stood there, all in order,

  Ready and waiting even,

  Before the sunlight kissed you,

  Or you, the winds of heaven.

  Who told you, then, O Birch Tree,

  The’Ventures that we play?

  And how can you remember

  The wonder — and the Way?

  CHAPTER XXIII

  PANTHEA. Look, sister, where a troop of spirits gather

  Like flocks of cloud in spring’s delightful weather,

  Thronging in the blue air!

  IONE — And see! More come.

  Like fountain-vapours when the winds are dumb,

  That climb up the ravines in scattered lines.

  And hark! Is it the music of the pines?

  Is it the lake? Is it the waterfall?

  PANTHEA. ’Tis something sadder, sweeter far than all.

  Prometheus Unbound.

  ‘IT’S all very well for you two to play at being trees,’ the voice of Joan was heard to object, ‘but I should like to know what part I’

  ‘Hush! Hush! I hear them coming,’ Nixie said quickly with a new excitement.

  She had apparently floated up higher into the ilex to the place vacated by Jonah. Her voice had a ring of the sky in it.

  ‘Come up to where I am, and we can all see.

  They’re rising already—’

  ‘Who — what’s rising?’ called Joan from below; ‘I’m not!’

  ‘There’s something up, I expect,’ said Paul quickly. ‘I’ll help you.’ He knew by the child’s voice there was adventure afoot. ‘Give me your hand, Joan. And put your feet where I tell you. We’re all in the Crack, remember, so everything’s possible.’

  ‘Undoubtedly something’s up, but it’s not me, I’m afraid,’ she laughed.

  ‘Hush! Hush! Hush!’ Nixie’s voice reached them from the higher branches. ‘Talk in whispers, please, or you’ll frighten them. And be quick. They’re rising everywhere. Any minute now they may be off and you’ll miss them—’

  Joan and Paul obeyed; though in his record of the adventure he never described the details of their ascent. A few minutes later they were perched beside the child near the rounded top of the ilex.

  ‘It’s fearfully rickety,’ Joan said breathlessly.

  ‘But there’s no danger,’ whispered Nixie, ‘because this is an evergreen tree, and it doesn’t go with the others.’

  ‘How— “Go with the others?”’ asked the
two in the same breath.

  ‘Trees,’ answered the child. ‘They’re emigrating. Look! Listen!’

  ‘Migrating,’ suggested Paul.

  ‘Of course,’ Nixie said, poking her head higher to see into the sky. ‘Trees go away south in the autumn just like birds — the real trees; their insides, I mean—’

  ‘Their spirits,’ Paul explained in his lowest whisper to Joan.

  ‘That’s why they lose their leaves. And in the spring they come back with all their new blossoms and things. If they find nicer places in the south, they stay, that’s all. They — die. Listen — you can hear them going!’

  High up in that still autumn sky there ran a sweet and curious sound, difficult to describe. Joan thought it was like the rustle of countless leaves falling: the tiny tapping noise made by a dying leaf as it settles on the ground — multiplied enormously; but to Paul it seemed that sudden, dream-like whirr of a host of birds when they wheel sharply in mid-air — heard at a distance. There was no question about the distance at any rate.

  ‘Are they just the trees of our woods, then?’ asked Joan in a whisper that held delight and awe, ‘or — ?’

  The child laughed under her breath. ‘Oh, no,’ was the reply, ‘all the South of England below a certain line meets here. This is one of the great starting-places. It’s just like swallows collecting on the wires. Some big tree, higher than the rest, gives a sign one night — and then all the other woods flock in by thousands. Uncle Paul knew that!’ There was a touch in her voice of something between scorn and surprise.