Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  “Civilization,” I repeated to myself. Then I looked at his eyes which hid carefully in their depths somewhere that tiny cherished flame I loved. “Your ways are really very simple,” I said. “It’s all easy enough to learn. It is so small.”

  “A man studying ants,” he tinkled, “finds them small, but far from simple. You may find complications later. If so, come to me.”

  I promised him, and the fire gleamed faintly in his eyes a moment. “He entrusted you to me. Your mother,” he added softly, “was the woman he loved.”

  “Civilization,” I repeated, for the word set going an odd new rhythm in me that I rather liked, and that tired me less than the other things he said. “What is it then? You are a Race, you told me.”

  “A Race of human beings, of men and women developing — —”

  “The comely ones?”

  “Are the women. Together we make up the Race.”

  “And civilization?”

  “Is realizing that we are a community, learning, growing, all its members living for the others as well as for themselves.”

  Dr. Fillery told me then about men and women and sex, how children are made, and what enormous and endless work was necessary merely to keep them all alive and clothed and sheltered before they could accomplish anything else of any sort at all. Half the labour of the majority was simply to keep alive at all. It was an ugly little system he described. Much I did not hear, because my thinking powers gave out. Some of it gave me an awful feeling he called pain. The confusion and imperfection seemed beyond repair, even beyond the worth of being part of it, of belonging to it at all. Moreover, the making of children, without which the whole thing must end, gave me spasms of irritation he called laughter. Only the Comely Ones, and what he told me of them, made me want to sing.

  “The men,” I said, “but do they see that it is ugly and ludicrous and — —”

  “Comic,” he helped me.

  “Do they know,” I asked, taking his unknown words, “that it’s comic?”

  “The glamour,” he said, “conceals it from them. To the best among them it is sacred even.”

  “And the Comely Ones?”

  “It is their chief mission,” he replied. “Always remember that. It’s sacred.” He fixed his kind eyes gravely on my face.

  “Ah, worship, you mean,” I said. “I understand.” Again we stared for some minutes. “Yet all are not comely, are they?” I asked presently.

  The fire again shone faintly in his eyes as he watched me a moment without answering. It caught me away. I am not sure I heard his words, but I think they ran like this:

  “That’s just the point where civilization — so far — has always stopped.”

  I remember he ceased tinkling then; our talk ceased too. I was exhausted. He told me to remember what he had said, and to lie down and rest. He rang the bell, and a man, one of the four who had held me, came in.

  “Ask Nurse Robbins to come here a moment, please,” he said. And a moment later the Comely One entered softly and stood beside my bed. She did not look at me. Dr. Fillery began again his little tinkling. “... wishes to apologize to you most sincerely, nurse, for his mistake. He meant no harm, believe me. There is no danger in him, nor will he ever repeat it. His ignorance of our ways, I must ask you to believe — —”

  “Oh, it’s nothing, sir,” she interrupted. “I’ve quite forgotten it already. And usually he’s as good as gold and perfectly quiet.” She blushed, glancing shyly at me with clear invitation.

  “It will not recur,” repeated the Doctor positively. “He has promised me. He is very, very sorry and ashamed.”

  The nurse looked more boldly a moment. I saw her silver teeth. I saw the hint of soft fire in her poor pitiful eyes, but far, far away and, as she thought, safely hidden.

  “Pitiful one, I will not touch you,” I said instantly. “I know that you are sacred.”

  I noticed at once that her sweet natural perfume increased about her as I said the words, but her eyes were lowered, though she smiled a little, and her little cheeks grew coloured. I saw her small teeth of silvery marble again. Our work was visible. I liked it.

  “You have promised me,” said Dr. Fillery, rising to go out.

  “I promise,” I said, while the Comely One was arranging my pillows and sheets with quick, clever hands, sometimes touching my cheek on purpose as she did so. “I will not worship, unless it is commanded of me first. The increased sweetness of her smell will tell me.”

  But indeed already I had forgotten her, and I no longer realized who it was that tripped about my bed, doing numerous little things to make me comfortable. My friend, the understanding one, companion of my big friend, Mason, who was dead, also had left the room. His twitching mouth, his laughter, and his shining eyes were gone. I was aware that the Comely One remained, doing all manner of little things about me and my bed, unnecessary things, but my pity and my worship were not asked, so I forgot her. My thinking had wearied me, and my feeling was not touched. I began to hum softly to myself; my giant rhythms rose; I went forth towards my Powers of Wind and Fire, full of my own natural joy. I forgot the Race with its men, its women, its rules and games, its tiny tricks, its civilization. I was free for a little with my own.

  One detail interfered a little with the rhythms, but only for a second and very faintly even then. The Comely One’s face grew dark.

  “He’s gone off asleep — actually,” I heard her mutter, as she left the room with a fling of her little skirts, shutting the door behind her with a bang.

  That bang was far away. I was already rising and falling in that natural happy state which to me meant freedom. It is hard to tell about, but that dear Fillery knows, I am sure, exactly what I know, though he has forgotten it. He has known us somewhere, I feel. He understands our service. But, like me, he has forgotten too.

  What really happened to me? Where did I go, what did I see and feel when my rhythms took me off?

  Thinking is nowhere in it — I can tell him that. I am conscious of the Sun.

  One difficulty is that my being here confuses me. Here I am already caught, confined and straitened. I am within certain limits. I can only move in three ways, three measurements, three dimensions. The space I am in here allows only little rhythms; they are coarse and slow and heavy, and beat against confining walls as it were, are thrown back, cross and recross each other, so that while they themselves grow less, their confusion grows greater. The forms and outlines I can build with them are poor and clumsy and insignificant. Spirals I cannot make. Then I forget.

  Into these small rhythms I cannot compress myself; the squeezing hurts. Yet neither can I make them bigger to suit myself. I would break forth towards the Sun.

  Thus I feel cramped, confused and crippled. It is almost impossible to tell of my big rhythms, for it is an attempt to tell of one thing in terms of another. How can I fix fire and wind upon the point of a pin, for instance, and examine them through a magnifying-glass? The Sun remains. What I experience, really, when I go off into my own freedom is release. My rhythms are of the Sun. They are his messengers, they are my law, they are my life and happiness. By means of them I fulfill the purpose of my being. I work, so Fillery calls it. I build.

  That, at any rate, is literally true. My thinking stops at that point, perhaps; but “I think” I mean by “release” — that I escape back from being trapped by all these separate little individualities, human beings each working on his own, for his own, and against all the others — escape from this stifling tangle into the sweep of my big rhythms which work together and in unison. I search for lost companions, but do not find them — the golden skins and radiant faces, the mighty figures and the splendid shapes.

  They work without effort, however. That is another difference.

  I, too, work, only I work with them, and never against them. I can draw upon them as they can draw upon me. We do draw on one another. We know harmony. Service is our method and system.

  My dear Fillery als
o wants to know who “we” are. How can I tell him? The moment I try to “think,” I seem to forget. This forgetting, indeed, is one of the limits against which I bang myself, so that I am flung back upon the tangle of criss-cross, tiny rhythms which confuse and obliterate the very thing he wants to know. Yet the Sun I never forget — father of fire and wind. My companions are lost temporarily. I am shut off from them. It seems I cannot have them and the Race at the same time. I yearn and suffer to rejoin them. The service we all know together is great joy. Of love, this love between two isolated individuals the Race counts the best thing they have — we know nothing.

  Now, here is one thing I can understand quite clearly:

  I have watched and helped the Race, as he calls it, for countless ages. Yet from outside it. Never till now have I been inside its limits with it. And a dim sense of having watched it through a veil or curtain comes to me. I can faintly recall that I tried to urge my big rhythms in among its members, as great waves of heat or sound might be launched upon an ant-heap. I used to try to force and project my vast rhythms into their tiny ones, hoping to make these latter swell and rise and grow — but never with success. Though a few members, here and there, felt them and struggled to obey and use their splendid swing, the rest did not seem to notice them at all.... Indeed, they objected to the struggling efforts of the few who did feel them, for their own small accustomed rhythms were interfered with. The few were generally broken into little pieces and pushed violently out of the way.

  And this made me feel pitiful, I remember dimly; because these smaller rhythms, though insignificant, were exquisite. They were of extraordinary beauty. Could they only have been increased, the Race that knew and used them must have changed my own which, though huge and splendid of their kind, lacked the intense, perfect loveliness of the smaller kind.

  The Race, had it accepted mine and mastered them, must have carried themselves and me towards still mightier rhythms which I alone could never reach.

  This, then, is clear to me, though very faint now. Fillery, who can think for a long time, instead of like me for seconds only, will understand what I mean. For if I tell him what “we” did, he may be able to think out what “we” were.

  “Your work?” he asked me too.

  I’m not sure I know what he means by “work.” We were incessantly active, but not for ourselves. There was no effort. There was easy and sure accomplishment — in the sense that nothing could stop or hinder our fulfilling our own natures. Obstacles, indeed, helped our power and made it greater, for everything feeds fire and opposition adds to the pressure of wind. Our main activity was to make perfect forms. We were form-builders. Apart from this, our “work” was to maintain and keep active all rhythms less than our own, yet of our kind. I speak of my own kind alone. We had no desire to be known outside our kind. We worked and moved and built up swiftly, but out of sight — an endless service.

  “You are the Powers behind what we call Nature, then?” the dear Fillery asked me. “You operate behind growing things, even behind inanimate things like trees and stones and flowers. Your big rhythms, as you call them, are our Laws of Nature. Your own particular department, your own elements evidently, were heat and air.”

  I could not answer that. But, as he said it, I saw in his grey eyes the flash of fire which so few of his Race possessed; and I felt vaguely that he was one of the struggling members who was aware of the big rhythms and who would be put away in little pieces later by the rest. It made me pitiful. “Forget your own tiny rhythms,” I said, “and come over to us. But bring your tiny rhythms with you because they are so exquisitely lovely. We shall increase them.”

  He did not answer me. His mouth twitched at the corners, and he had an attack of that irritation which, he says, is relieved and expressed by laughter. Yet the face shone.

  The laughter, however, was a very quick, full, natural answer, all the same. It was happy and enthusiastic. I saw that laughter made his rhythms bigger at once. Then laughter was probably the means to use. It was a sort of bridge.

  “Your instantaneous comprehension of our things puzzles me,” he said. “You grasp our affairs in all their relations so swiftly. Yet it is all new to you.” His voice and face made me wish to stroke and help him, he was so dear and eager. “How do you manage it?” he asked point blank. “Our things are surely foreign to your nature.”

  “But they are of children,” I told him. “They are small and so very simple. There are no difficulties. Your language is block letters because your self-expression, as you call it, is so limited. It all comes to me at a glance. I and my kind can remember a million tiniest details without effort.”

  He did not laugh, but his face looked full of questions. I could not help him further. “A scrap, probably, of what you’ve taught us,” I heard him mumble, though no further questions came. “Well,” he went on presently, while I lay and watched the pale fire slip in tiny waves about his eyes, “remember this: since our alphabet is so easy to you, follow it, stick to it, do not go outside it. There’s a good rule that will save trouble for others as well as for yourself.”

  “I remember and I try. But it is not always easy. I get so cramped and stiff and lifeless with it.”

  “This sunless, chilly England, of course, cannot feed you,” he said. “The sense of beauty in our Race, too, is very poor.”

  Once he suddenly looked up and fixed his eyes on my face. His manner became very earnest.

  “Now, listen to me,” he said. “I’m going to read you something; I want you to tell me what you make of it. It’s private; that is, I have no right to show it to others, but as no one would understand it — with the exception possibly of yourself — secrecy is not of importance.” And his mouth twitched a little.

  He drew a sheaf of papers from an inner pocket, and I saw they were covered with fine writing. I laughed; this writing always made me laugh — it was so laborious and slow. The writing I knew best, of course, lay all over and inside the earth and skies. The privacy also made me laugh, so strange seemed the idea to me, and so impossible — this idea of secrecy. It was such an admission of ignorance.

  “I will understand it quickest by reading it,” I said. “I take in a page at once — in your block letters.”

  But he preferred to read it out himself, so that he could note the effect upon me, he explained, of definite passages. He saw that I guessed his purpose, and we laughed together a moment. “When you tire of listening,” he said, “just tell me and I’ll pause.” I gave him my hand to hold. “It helps me to stay here,” I explained, and he nodded as he grasped me in his warm firm clasp.

  “It’s written by one who may have known you and your big rhythms, though I can’t be sure,” he added. “One of — er — my patients wrote it, someone who believed she was in communication with a kind of immense Nature-spirit.”

  Then he began to read in his clear, windy voice:

  “‘I sit and weave. I feel strange; as if I had so much consciousness that words cannot explain it. The failure of others makes my work more hard, but my own purposes never fail, I am associated with those who need me. The universal doors are open to me. I compass Creation.’”

  But already I began to hum my songs, though to please him I kept the music low, and he, dear Fillery, did not bid me stop, but only tightened his grasp upon my hand. I listened with pleasure and satisfaction. Therefore I hummed.

  “‘I am silent, seeking no expression, needing no communication, satisfied with the life that is in me. I do not even wish to be known about — —’”

  “That’s where your Race,” I put in, “is to me as children. All they do must be shouted about so loud or they think it has not happened.”

  “‘I do not wish to be forced to obtrude myself,’” he went on. “‘There are hosts like me. We do not want that which does not belong to us. We do not want that hindrance, that opposition which rouses an undesirable consciousness; for without that opposition we could never have known of disobedience. We are forml
ess. The formless is the real. That cannot die. It is eternal.’”

  Again he tightened his grasp, and this time also laid his eyes a moment on my own, over the top of his paper, so that I kept my music back with a great effort. For it was hard not to express myself when my own came calling in this fashion.

  He continued reading aloud. He selected passages now, instead of going straight through the pages. The words helped memory in me; flashes of what I had forgotten came back in sheets of colour and waves of music; the phrases built little spirals, as it were, between two states. Of these two states, I now divined, he understood one perfectly — his own, and the other — mine — partially. Yet he had a little of both, I knew, in himself. With me it was similar, only the understood state was not the same with us. To the Race, of course, what he read would have no meaning.

  “The Comely One and the four figures,” I said, “how they would turn white and run if they could hear you, showing their yellow teeth and dim eyes!”

  His face remained grave and eager, though I could see the laughter running about beneath the tight brown skin as he went on reading his little bits.

  “‘We heard nothing of man, and were rarely even conscious of him, although he benefited by our work in all that sustained and conditioned him. The wise are silent, the foolish speak, and the children are thus led astray, for wisdom is not knowledge, it is a realization of the scheme and of one’s own part in it.’”

  He took a firmer, broader grip of my hand as he read the next bit. I felt the tremble of his excitement run into my wrist and arm. His voice deepened and shook. It was like a little storm:

  “‘Then, suddenly, we heard man’s triumphant voice. We became conscious of him as an evolving entity. Our Work had told. We had built his form and processes so faithfully. We knew that when he reached his height we must be submissive to his will.’”