Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  The whole world danced. The Universe was rhythmical as well as metrical.

  For this amazing splendor showed itself in a flash-like revelation to the freed portion of his consciousness, and he knew it irresistibly because he himself shared it. Here was an infinite joy, naked and unashamed, born of the mighty Mother’s heart and life, a joy which, in its feebler, lesser manifestations, trickles down into human conditions, though still spontaneously even then, so pure its primal urgency, as — dancing.

  The entire experience, the entire revelation, he thinks, can have occupied but a fraction of a second, but it seemed to smite the whole of his being at once with the conviction of a supreme authority. And close behind it came, too, that other sister expression of a spontaneous and natural expression, equally rhythmical — the impulse to sing. He could have sung aloud. For this puissant and mysterious rhythm to which all moved was greater than any little measure of their own. Surging through them, it came from outside and beyond, infinitely greater than themselves, springing from something of which they were, nevertheless, a living portion. From the body of the Earth it came direct — it was in fact a manifestation of her own vibrating life. The currents of the Earth pulsed through them.

  “And then,” he says, “I caught this flaming thought of wonder, though so much of it faded instantly upon my full awakening that I can only give you the merest suggestion of what it was.”

  He stood up beside me as he said it, spreading his arms, as so often when he was excited, to the sky. I caught the glow of his eyes, and in his voice was passion. He spoke unquestionably of something he had intimately known, not as men speak of even the vividest dreams, but of realities that have burned the heart and left their trails of glory.

  “Science has guessed some inkling of the truth,” he cried, “when it declares that the ultimate molecules of matter are in constant vibratory movement one about another, even upon the point of a needle. But I saw — knew, rather, as if I had always known it, sweet as summer rain, and close in me as love — that the whole Earth with all her myriad expressions of life moved to this primal rhythm as of some divine dancing.”

  “Dancing?” I asked, puzzled.

  “Rhythmical movement call it then,” he replied. “To share the life of the Earth is to dance and sing in a huge abundant joy! And the nearer to her great heart, the more natural and spontaneous the impulse — the instinctive dancing of primitive races, of savages and children, still artless and untamed; the gamboling of animals, of rabbits in the meadows and of deer unwatched in forest clearings — you know naturalists have sometimes seen it; of birds in the air — rooks, gulls, and swallows; of the life within the sea; even of gnats in the haze of summer afternoons. All life simple enough to touch and share the enormous happiness of her deep, streaming, personal Being, dances instinctively for very joy — obedient to a greater measure than they know…. The natural movement of the great Earth-Soul is rhythmical. The very winds, the swaying of trees and flowers and grasses, the movement of the sea, of water running through the fields with silver feet, of the clouds and edges of the mist, even the trembling of the earthquakes, — all, all respond in sympathetic motions to this huge vibratory movement of her great central pulse. Ay, and the mountains too, though so vastly scaled their measure that perhaps we only know the pauses in between, and think them motionless…. The mountains rise and fall and change; our very breathing, first sign of stirring life, even the circulation of our blood, bring testimony; our speech as well — inspired words are ever rhythmical, language that pours into the poet’s mind from something greater than himself. And not unwisely, but in obedience to a deep instinctive knowledge was dancing once — in earlier, simpler days — a form of worship. You know, at least, how rhythm in music and ceremonial uplifts and cleans and simplifies the heart toward the greater life…. You know, perhaps, the Dance of Jesus….”

  The words poured from him with passion, yet always uttered gently with a smile of joy upon the face. I saw his figure standing over me, outlined against the starry sky; and, deeply stirred, I listened with delight and wonder. Rhythm surely lies behind all expression of life. He was on the heels of some simple, dazzling verity though he phrased it wildly. But not a tenth part of all he said could I recapture afterwards for writing down. The steady, gentle swaying of his body I remember clearly, and that somewhere or other in the stream of language, he made apt reference to the rhythmical swaying of those who speak in trance, or know some strange, possessing gust of inspiration.

  The first and natural expression of the Earth’s vitality lies in a dancing movement of purest joy and happiness — that for me is the gist of what remains. Those near enough to Nature feel it. I myself remembered days in spring … my thoughts, borne upon some sweet emotion, traveled far….

  “And not of the Earth alone,” he interrupted my dreaming in a voice like singing, “but of the entire Universe. The spheres and constellations weave across the fields of ether the immense old rhythm of their divine, eternal dance…!”

  Then, with a disconcerting abruptness, and a strange little wayward laugh as of apology for having let himself so freely go, he sat down beside me with his back against the chimney-stack. He resumed more quietly the account of this particular adventure that lay ‘twixt dream and waking:

  All that he described had happened in a few seconds. It flashed, complete, authoritative and vivid, then passed away. He knew again the call and warning of his body — to return. For this consciousness of being in two places at once, divided as it were against himself, brought with it the necessity for decision. With which portion should he identify himself? By an act of will, it seemed, a choice was possible.

  And with it, then, came the knowledge that to remain “out” was easier than to return. This time, to come back into himself would be difficult.

  The very possibility seemed to provide the shock of energy necessary for overcoming it; the experience alarmed him; it was like holding an option upon living — like a foretaste of death. Automatically, as it were, these loosened forces in him answered to the body’s summons. The result was immediate and singular; one of these Dancing outlines separated itself from the main herd, approached with a sudden silent rush, enveloped him for a second of darkness and confusion, losing its shape completely on the way, and then merged into his being as smoke slips in and merges with the structure of a tree.

  The projected portion of his personality had returned. The sense of division was gone. There remained behind only the little terror of the weak flesh whose summons had thus brought it back.

  The same instant he was fully awake — the night about him empty of all but the silver dreaming of the moon among the shadows. Beside him lay the sleeping figure of his companion, the bashlik of lamb’s wool drawn closely down about the ears and neck, and the voluminous black burka shrouding him from feet to shoulders. A little distance away the horse stood, munching grass. Again he noted that there was no wind, and the shadows of the trees lay motionless upon the ground. The air smelt sweet of forest, soil, and dew.

  The experience — it seemed now — belonged to dreaming rather than to waking consciousness, for there was nothing about him to confirm it outwardly. Only the memory remained — that, and a vast, deep-coursing, subtle happiness. The smaller terror that he felt was of the flesh alone, for the flesh ever instinctively fought against such separation. The happiness, though, contained and overwhelmed the fear.

  Yes, only the memory remained, and even that fast fading. But the substance of what had been, passed into his inmost being: the splendor of that would remain forever, incorporated with his life. He had shared in this brief moment of extended consciousness some measure of the Mother’s cosmic being, simple as sunshine, unrestrained as wind, complete and satisfying. Its natural expression was rhythmical, a deep, pure joy that drove outwards even into little human conditions as dancing and singing. He had known it, too, with companions of his kind…

  Moreover, though no longer visible or audible, it stil
l continued somewhere close. He was blessedly companioned all the time — and watched. They knew him one of themselves — these brother expressions of her cosmic life — these Urwelt beings that Today had no external, bodily forms. They waited, knowing well that he would come. Fulfillment beckoned surely just beyond…

  CHAPTER XXIX

  “… And then suddenly, —

  While perhaps twice my heart was dutiful

  To send my blood upon its little race —

  I was exalted above surety,

  And out of Time did fall.”

  — LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE, Poems and Interludes

  This, then, was one of the “hints” by which O’Malley knew that he was not alone and that the mind of his companion was stretched out to find him. He became aware after it of a distinct guidance, even of direction as to his route of travel. The “impulse came,” as one says, to turn northwards, and he obeyed it without more ado. For this “dream” had come to him when camped upon the slopes of Ararat, further south toward the Turkish frontier, and though all prepared to climb the sixteen-thousand foot summit, he changed his plans, dismissed the local guide, and turned back for Tiflis and the Central Range. In the wilder, lonelier mountains, he felt strongly, was where he ought to be.

  Another man, of course, would have dismissed the dream or forgotten it while cooking his morning coffee; but, rightly or wrongly, this divining Celt accepted it as real. He held an instinctive belief, that in dreams of a certain order the forces that drive behind the soul at a given moment, may reveal themselves to the subconscious self, becoming authoritative in proportion as they are sanely encouraged and interpreted. They dramatize themselves in scenes that are open to intuitive interpretation. And O’Malley, it seems, possessed, like the Hebrew prophets of old, just that measure of judgment and divination which go to the making of a true clear-vision.

  Packing up kit and dunnage, he crossed the Georgian Military Route on foot to Vladikavkaz, and thence with another horse and a Mohammedan Georgian as guide, Rostom by name, journeyed via Alighir and Oni up a side valley of unforgettable splendor toward an Imerethian hamlet where they meant to lay-in supplies for a prolonged expedition into the uninhabited wilderness.

  And here, the second occurrence he told me of took place. It was more direct than the first, yet equally strange; also it brought a similar authority — coming first along the deep mysterious underpaths of sleep — sleep, that short cut into the subconscious.

  They were camped among low boxwood trees, a hot dry night, wind soft and stars very brilliant, when the Irishman turned in his sleeping-bag and abruptly woke. This time there was no dream — only the certainty that something had wakened him deliberately. He sat up, almost with a cry. It was exactly as though he heard himself called by name and recognized the voice that spoke it. He looked quickly round. Nothing but the crowding army of the box-trees was visible, some bushy and round, others straggling in their outline, all whispering gently together in the night. Beyond ran the immense slopes, and far overhead he saw the gleaming snow on peaks that brushed the stars.

  No one was visible. This time no flying figures danced beneath the moon. There was, indeed, no moon. Something, however, he knew had come up close and touched him, calling him from the depths of a profound and tired slumber. It had withdrawn again, vanished into the night. The strong certainty remained, though, that it lingered near about him still, trying to press forwards and outwards into some kind of objective visible expression that included himself. He had responded with an effort in his sleep, but the effort had been unsuccessful. He had merely waked … and lost it.

  The horse, tethered a few feet away, was astir and troubled, straining at the rope, whinnying faintly, and Rostom, the Georgian peasant, he saw, was already up to quiet it. A curious perfume passed him through the air — once, then vanished; unforgettable, however, for he had known it already weeks ago upon the steamer. And before the gardened woods about him smothered it with their richer smells of a million flowers and weeds, he recognized in it that peculiar pungent whiff of horse that had reached him from the haunted cabin. This time it was less fleeting — a fine, clean odor that he liked even while it strangely troubled him.

  Kicking out of his blankets, he joined the man and helped to straighten out the tangled rope. Rostom spoke little Russian, and O’Malley’s knowledge of Georgian lay in a single phrase, “Look sharp!” but with the aid of French the man had learned from shooting-parties, he gathered that some one had approached during the night and camped, it seemed, not far away above them.

  Though unusual enough in so unfrequented a region, this was not necessarily alarming, and the first proof O’Malley had that the man experienced no ordinary physical fear was the fact that he had left both knife and rifle in his blankets. Hitherto, at the least sign of danger, he changed into a perfect arsenal; he invariably slept “in his weapons”; but now, even in the darkness, the other noted that he was unarmed, and therefore it was no attempt at horse-stealing or of assault upon themselves he feared.

  “Who is it? What is it?” he asked, stumbling over the tangle of string-like roots that netted the ground. “Natives, travelers like ourselves, or — something else?” He spoke very low, as though aware that what had waked him still hovered close enough to overhear. “Why do you fear?”

  And Rostom looked up a moment from stooping over the rope. He stepped a little nearer, avoiding the animal’s hoofs. In a confused whisper of French and Russian, making at the same time the protective signs of his religion, he muttered a sentence of which the other caught little more than the unassuring word that something was about them close — something “méchant.” This curious, significant word he used.

  The whispered utterance, the manner that went with it, surely the dark and lonely setting of the little scene as well, served to convey the full suggestion of the adjective with a force the man himself could scarcely have intended. Something had passed by, not so much evil, wicked, or malign as strange and alien — uncanny. Rostom, a man utterly careless of physical danger, rising to it, rather, with delight, was frightened — in his soul.

  “What do you mean?” O’Malley asked louder, with an air of impatience assumed. The man was on his knees, but whether praying, or merely struggling with the rope, was hard to see. “What is it you’re talking about so foolishly?” He spoke with a confidence he hardly felt himself.

  And the involved reply, spoken with lips against the earth, the head but slightly turned as he knelt, again smothered the words. Only the curious phrase came to him— “de l’ancien monde — quelque-chose—”

  The Irishman took him by the shoulders. Not meaning actually to shake him, he yet must have used some violence, for the fact was that he did not like the answers and sought to deny some strong emotion in himself. The man stood up abruptly with a kind of sudden spring. The expression of his face was not easily divined in the darkness, but a gleam of the eyes was clearly visible. It may have been anger, it may have been terror; vivid excitement it certainly was.

  “Something — old as the stones, old as the stones,” he whispered, thrusting his dark bearded face unpleasantly close. “Such things are in these mountains…. Mais oui! C’est moi qui vous le dis! Old as the stones, I tell you. And sometimes they come out close — with sudden wind. We know!”

  He stepped back again sharply and dropped upon his knees, bowing to the ground with flattened palms. He made a repelling gesture as though it was O’Malley’s presence that brought the experience.

  “And to see them is — to die!” he heard, muttered against the ground thickly. “To see them is to die!”

  The Irishman went back to his sleeping-bag. Some strange passion of the man was deeply stirred; he did not wish to offend his violent beliefs and turn it against himself in a stupid, scrambling fight. He lay and waited. He heard the muttering of the deep voice behind him in the darkness. Presently it ceased. Rostom came softly back to bed.

  “He knows; he warned me!” he whispered, jerking
one hand toward the horse significantly, as they at length lay again side by side in their blankets and the stars shone down upon them from a deep black sky. “But, for the moment, they have passed, not finding us. No wind has come.”

  “Another — horse?” asked O’Malley suggestively, with a sympathy meant to quiet him.

  But the peasant shook his head; and this time it was not difficult to divine the expression on his face even in the darkness. At the same moment the tethered animal again uttered a long whinnying cry, plaintive, yet of pleasure rather than alarm it seemed, which instantly brought the man again with a leap from the blankets to his knees. O’Malley did not go to help him; he stuffed the clothes against his ears and waited; he did not wish to hear the peasant’s sentences.

  And this pantomime went on at intervals for an hour or more, when at length the horse grew quiet and O’Malley snatched moments of unrefreshing sleep. The night lay thick about them with a silence like the silence of the sky. The boxwood bushes ran together into a single sheet of black, the far peaks faded out of sight, the air grew keen and sharp toward the dawn on the wave of wind the sunrise drives before it round the world. But to and fro across the Irishman’s mind as he lay between sleep and dozing ran the feeling that his friends were close, and that those dancing forms of cosmic life to which all three approximated had come near once more to summon him. He also knew that what the horse had felt was something far from terror. The animal instinctively had divined the presence of something to which it, too, was remotely kin.