Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  She opened her eyes then and looked meaningly at him. Tom made no sound, no movement. He saw only her eyes fixed steadily on Tony, whose last sentence, using the Christian name so softly, rang on inside him like the clanging of a prison bell.

  ‘Sing another verse first,’ said Madame Jaretzka quietly, ‘and we’ll pass judgment afterwards. But I wasn’t asleep, was I, Tom?’ And, following the direction of her eyes, Tony started, and turned round. ‘I shut my eyes to listen better,’ she added, almost impatiently. ‘Now, please go on; we want to hear the rest.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Tom, in as natural a tone as possible. ‘Of course we do. What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Mary Coleridge — the words,’ replied Tony, turning to the piano again. ‘In a moment of aberration I thought I could write the music for it — —’ The softness and passion had left his voice completely.

  ‘Oh, the tune is yours?’

  His cousin nodded. There was a little frown between the watching eyes upon the sofa. ‘Tom, you mustn’t interrupt; it spoils the mood — the rhythm,’ and she again asked Tony to go on. The difference in the two tones she used was too obvious to be missed by any man who heard them — the veiled exasperation and — the tenderness.

  Tony obeyed at once. Striking a preliminary chord as the stool swung round, he said for Tom’s benefit, ‘To me there’s tragedy in the words, real tragedy, so I tried to make the music fit it. Madame Jaretzka doesn’t agree.’ He glanced towards her; her eyes were closed again; her face, Tom thought, was like a mask. Tony did not this time use the little name.

  The next verse began, then suddenly broke off. The voice seemed to fail the singer. ‘I don’t like this one,’ he exclaimed, a suspicion of trembling in his tone. ‘It’s rather too awful. Death comes in, the bread at the feast turns black, the hound falls down — and so on. There’s general disaster. It’s too tragic, rather. I’ll sing the last verse instead.’

  ‘I want to hear it, Tony. I insist,’ came the command from the sofa. ‘I want the tragic part.’

  To Tom it seemed precisely as though the voice had said, ‘I want to see Tom suffer. He knows the meaning of it. It’s right, it’s good, it’s necessary for him.’

  Tony obeyed. He sang both verses:

  The cups of red wine turned pale on the board,

  The white bread black as soot.

  The hound forgot the hand of his lord,

  She fell down at his foot.

  Low let me lie, where the dead dog lies,

  Ere I sit me down again at a feast,

  When there passes a woman with the West in her eyes,

  And a man with his back to the East.

  The song stopped abruptly, the music died away, there was an interval of silence no one broke. Tom had listened spellbound, haunted. He was no judge of poetry or music; he did not understand the meaning of the words exactly; he knew only that both words and music expressed the shadow of tragedy in the air as though they focussed it into a tangible presence. A woman and a man were going in the same direction; there was an onlooker.… A spontaneous quality in the words, moreover, proved that they came burning from the writer’s heart, and in Tony’s music, whether good or bad, there was this same proof of genuine feeling. Judge or no judge, Tom was positive of that. He felt himself the looker-on, an intruder, almost a trespasser.

  This sense of exclusion grew upon him as he listened; it passed without warning into the consciousness of a mournful, freezing isolation. These two, sitting in the room, and separated from him by a few feet of coloured Persian rug, were actually separated from him by unbridgeable distance, wrapped in an intimacy that kept him inexorably outside — because he did not understand. He almost knew an objective hallucination — that the sofa and the piano drew slightly nearer to one another, whereas his own chair remained fixed to the floor, immovable — outside.

  The intensity of his sensations seemed inexplicable, unless some reality, some truth, lay behind them. The bread at the feast turned black before his very eyes. But another line rang on with a sound of ominous and poignant defeat in his heart, now lonely and bereft: ‘Low let me lie, where the dead dog lies…’ To the onlooker the passing of the pair meant death.…

  Then, through his confusion, flashed clearly this bitter certitude: Tom suddenly realised that after all he knew nothing of her real, her inner life; he knew her only through himself and in himself — knew himself in her. Tony, less self-centred, less rigidly contained, had penetrated her by an understanding sympathy greater than his own. She was unintelligible to him, but not to Tony. Tony had the key.… He had touched in her what hitherto had slept.

  As the music wailed its dying cadences into this fateful silence, Tom met her eyes across the room. They were strong, and dark with beauty. He met them with no outer quailing, though with a sense of drenching tears within. They seemed to him the eyes of the angel gazing through the gate. He was outside.…

  He was the first to break a silence that had grown unnatural, oppressive.

  ‘What was it?’ he asked again abruptly. ‘Has it got a name, I mean?’ His voice had the cry of a wounded creature in it.

  Tony struck an idle chord from the piano as he turned on his stool, ‘Oh, yes, it’s got a name. It’s called “Unwelcome.” And Tom, aware that he winced, was also aware that something in his life congealed and stopped its normal flow.

  ‘Tony, you are a genius,’ broke in quickly the voice from the other side of the room; ‘I always said so. Do you know, that’s the most perfect accompaniment I ever heard.’ She spoke with feeling, her tone full of admiration.

  Tony made no reply. He strummed softly, swaying to the rhythm of what he played.

  ‘I meant the setting,’ explained Lettice, ‘the music. It expresses the emotion of the words too, too exactly. It’s wonderful!’

  ‘I didn’t know you composed,’ put in Tom stupidly. He had to say something. He saw them exchange a glance. She smiled. ‘When did you do it?’

  ‘Oh, the other day in a sudden fit,’ said Tony, without turning. ‘While you were at Assouan, I think.’

  ‘And the words, Tom; don’t you think they’re wonderful, too, and strange?’ asked Lettice. ‘I find them really haunting.’

  ‘Y-es,’ he agreed, without looking at her. He realised that the lyric, though new to him, was not new to them; they had discussed it together already; they felt the same emotion about it; it had moved and stirred them before, moved Tony so deeply that he had found the music for it in the depths of himself. It was an enigmatical poem, it now became symbolic. It embodied the present situation somehow for him. Tom did not understand its meaning as they did; to him it was a foreign language. But they knew the language easily. It betrayed their deep emotional intimacy.

  ‘You didn’t hear the first part?’ said Tony.

  ‘Not quite. You had just started — when I came in.’ Tom easily read the meaning in the question. And in his heart the name of the poem repeated itself with significant insistence: Unwelcome! It had come like a blow in the face when Tony mentioned it, bruising him internally. He was bleeding.… He watched the big, dark hands upon the keys as they moved up and down. It suddenly seemed they moved towards himself. There was power, menace in them — there was death. He felt as if they seized — choked him.… They grew stained.…

  The voices of his companions came to him across great distance; there was a gulf between them, they on that side, he on this: he was aware of antagonism between himself and Tony, and between himself and Lettice. It was very dreadful; his feet and hands were cold; he shivered. But he gave no outer sign that he was suffering, and a desperate pride — though he knew it was but a sham, a temporary pride — came to his assistance. Yet at the same time — he saw red. He felt like a boy at school again.

  In imagination, then, he visualised swiftly a definite scene:

  ‘Tony,’ he heard himself say, ‘you’re coming between us. It means all the world to me, to you it means only a passing game. If it means more, it’
s time for you to say so plainly — and let her decide.’

  The situation seemed all cleared up; the clouds of tragedy dissipated, the dreadful accumulation of emotion, suspense, and hidden pain, too long suppressed, too intense to be borne another minute, discharged itself in an immense relief. Lettice at last spoke freely and explained: Tony expressed regret, laughing it all away with his accustomed brilliance and irresponsibility.

  Then, horribly, he heard Tony give a different answer that was far more possible and likely:

  ‘I knew you were great friends, but I did not guess there was anything more between you. You never told me. I’m afraid I — I am desperately fond of her, and she of me. We must leave it — yes, to her. There is no other way.’

  He was lounging on his sofa by the window, his eyes closed, while these thoughts flashed through him. He had never known such insecurity before; he felt sure of nothing; the foundations of his being seemed sliding into space.… For it came to him suddenly that he was a slave and that she was set upon a throne far, far beyond his reach.…

  Across the room, lit only by a single lamp upon the piano, the voices of his companions floated to him, low pitched, a ceaseless murmuring stream. He had been listening even while busy with his own reflections, intently listening. They were still talking of the poem and the music, exchanging intimate thoughts in the language he could not understand. They had passed on to music and poetry at large — dangerous subjects by whose means innocent words, donning an easy mask, may reveal passionate states of mental and physical kind — and so to personal revelations and confessions the apparently innocent words interpreted. He heard and understood, yet could not wholly follow because the key was missing. He could not take part, much less object. It was all too subtle for his mind. He listened.…

  The moonlight fell upon his stretched-out figure, but left his face in shadow; opening his eyes, he could see the others clearly; the intent expression upon her face fascinated him as he watched. Yet before his eyes had opened, the feeling again came to him that they had changed their positions somehow, and the verification of this feeling was the first detail he then noticed. Tony’s stool was nearer to the bass keys of the piano, while the sofa Lettice lay upon had certainly been drawn up towards him. And Tony leaned over as he talked, bringing their lips within whispering distance. It was all done with that open innocence which increased the cruelty of it. Tom saw and heard and felt all over his body. He lay very still. He half closed his eyes again.

  ‘I do believe Tom’s dropped asleep,’ said Lettice presently. ‘No, don’t wake him,’ as Tony half turned round, ‘he’s tired, poor boy!’

  But Tom could not willingly listen to a private conversation.

  ‘I’m not asleep,’ he exclaimed, ‘not a bit of it,’ and noticed that they both were startled by the suddenness and volume of his voice. ‘But I am tired rather,’ and he got up, lit a cigarette, wandered about the room a minute, and then leaned out of the open window. ‘I think I shall slip off to bed soon — if you’ll forgive me, Lettice.’

  He said it on impulse; he did not really mean to go; to leave them alone together was beyond his strength. She merely nodded. The woman he had felt so proudly would put Tony in his place — nodded consent!

  ‘I must be going too in a moment,’ Tony murmured. He meant it even less than Tom did. He shifted his stool towards the middle of the piano and began to strum again.

  ‘Sing something more first, Tony; I love your ridiculous voice.’

  Tom heard it behind his back; it was said half in banter, half in earnest; yet the tone pierced him. She used the private language she and Tony understood. The little sentence was a paraphrase that, being interpreted, said plainly: ‘He’ll go off presently; then we can talk again of the things we love together — the things he doesn’t understand.’

  With his face thrust into the cold night air Tom felt the blood go throbbing in his temples. He watched the moonlight on the sandy garden paths. The leaves were motionless, the river crept past without a murmur, the dark hills rose out of the distant desert like a wave. There was faint fragrance as of wild flowers, very tiny, very soft. But he kept his eyes upon the gliding river rather than on those dark hills crowded with their ancient dead. For he felt as if some one watched him from their dim recesses. It almost seemed that from those bleak, lonely uplands, silent amid the stream of hurrying life to-day, came his pain, his agony. He could not understand it; the strange, sinister mood he had known already once before stole out from the desolate Theban hills and mastered him again. Any moment, if he looked up, he would meet eyes — eyes that gazed with dim yet definite recognition into his own across the night. They would gaze up at him, for somehow he was placed above them.… He had known all this before, this very situation, these very actors — he now looked down upon it all, a scene mapped out below him. There were two pictures that yet were one.

  ‘What shall it be?’ the voice of Tony floated past him through the open window.

  ‘The gold and ambra one — I like best of all,’ her voice followed like a sigh across the air. ‘But only once — it makes me cry.’

  To Tom, as he heard it, came the shattering conviction that the words were not in English, and that it was neither Lettice nor his cousin who had used them. Reality melted; he felt himself — brain, heart, and body — dropping down through empty space as though towards the speakers. This was another language that they spoke together. He had forgotten it.… They were themselves, yet different. Amazement seized him. A familiarity, intense with breaking pain, came with it. Where, O where…?

  He heard the music steal past him towards these Theban hills.

  His heart was no longer beating; it was still. Life paused, as it were, to let the voice insert itself into another setting, out of due place, yet at the same time true and natural. An intolerable sweetness in the music swept him. But there was anguish too. The pain and pleasure were but one sensation.… All the melancholy blue and gold of Egypt’s beauty passed in that singing before his soul, and something of transcendant value he had lost, something ancient it seemed as those mournful Theban hills, rose with it. It was offered to him again. He saw it rise within his reach — once more. Upon this tide of blue and of gold it floated to his hand, could he but seize it.… Emotion then blocked itself through sheer excess; the tide receded, the vision dimmed, the gold turned dull and faded, the music and the singing ceased. Yet an instant, above the pain, Tom had caught a flush of inexplicable happiness. Beyond the anguish he felt joy breaking upon him like the dawn.…

  ‘Joy cometh in the morning,’ he remembered, with a feeling as of some modern self and sanity returning. He had been some one else; he now was Tom again. The pain belonged to that ‘some one else.’ It must be faced, for the final outcome would be joy.… He turned round into the room now filled with tense silence only.

  ‘Tony,’ he asked, ‘what on earth was it?’ His voice was low but did not tremble. The atmosphere seemed drawn taut before him as though it must any instant split open upon a sound of crying. He saw Lettice on her sofa, the lamplight in her wide-open eyes that shone with moisture. She looked at Tony, not at him. There was no decipherable expression on her face. That elusive Eastern touch hung mysteriously about her. It was all half fabulous.

  Without turning Tony answered shortly: ‘Oh, just a little native Egyptian song — very old — dug up somewhere, I believe,’ and he strummed softly to himself as though he did not wish to talk more about it.

  Lettice watched him for several minutes, then fixed her eyes on Tom; they stared at each other across the room; her expression was enigmatical, yet he read resolution into it, a desire and a purpose. He returned her gaze with a baffled yearning, thinking how mysteriously beautiful she looked, frail, elusive, infinitely desirable, yet hopelessly beyond his reach.… And then he saw the eyelids lower slightly, and a shadowy darkness like a veil fall over her. A smile stole down towards the lips. Terror and fascination caught him; he turned away lest she should reach his
secret and communicate her own. She looked right through him. Words, too, were spoken, ordinary modern words, though he did not hear them properly: ‘You’re tired out… you know. There’s no need to be formal where I’m concerned…’ or something similar. He listened, but he did not hear; they were remote, unreal, not audible quite; they were far away in space. He was only aware that the voice was tender and the tone was very soft.…

  He made no answer. The pain in her leaped forth to clasp his own, it seemed. For in that instant he knew that the joy divined a little while before was her, but also that he must wade through intolerable pain to reach it.

  The spell was broken. The balance of the evening, a short half-hour at the most, was uninspired, even awkward. There was strain in the atmosphere, cross-purposes, these purposes unfulfilled, each word and action charged with emotion that was unable to express itself. A desultory talk between Tony and his hostess seemed to struggle through clipped sentences that hung in the air as though afraid to complete themselves. The unfinished phrases floated, but dared not come to earth; they gathered but remained undelivered. Tom had divined the deep, essential intimacy at last, and his companions knew it.

  He lay silent on his sofa by the window, or nearly silent. The moonlight had left him, he lay in shadow. Occasionally he threw in words, asked a question, ventured upon a criticism; but Lettice either did not hear or did not feel sufficient interest to respond. She ignored his very presence, though readily, eagerly forthcoming to the smallest sign from Tony. She hid herself with Tony behind the shadowy screen of words and phrases.

  Tony himself was different too, however. There was acute disharmony in the room, where a little time before there had been at least an outward show of harmony. A heaviness as of unguessed tragedy lay upon all three, not only upon Tom. Spontaneous gaiety was gone out of his cousin, whose attempts to be his normal self became forced and unsuccessful. He sought relief by hiding himself behind his music, and his choice, though natural enough, seemed half audacious and half challenging — the choice of a devious soul that shirked fair open fight and felt at home in subterfuge. From Grieg’s Ich liebe Dich he passed to other tender, passionate fragments Tom did not recognise by name yet understood too well, realising that sense of ghastly comedy, and almost of the ludicrous, which ever mocks the tragic.