Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  He produced the key sent to him by Messrs. Costa & Delay, and opened the door. It was cool after the glare of the burning street, and delightfully silent. He remembered the chorus of crying birds that had greeted his last appearance. The silence now was eloquent.

  “Good, good,” he said to himself, with a quiet smile, as he noticed the temporary counter built across the front room for cloaks and parcels, Then he went upstairs, climbing painfully, for he was still easily exhausted. There was hardly a stick of furniture in the house, nor an inch of carpet on the floor and stairs, but the rooms had been swept and scrubbed; everything was fresh and scrupulously clean, and the tenant to whom he was to sub-let could have no fault to find on that score.

  In the first-floor rooms he saw with pleasure the flowers arranged about the boards as he had directed. The air was sweet and perfumed. The windows at the back — the sills deep with jars of roses — opened upon a small bit of green garden, and Parnacute looked out and saw the blue sky and the clouds floating lazily across it.

  “Good, very good,” he exclaimed again, sitting down on the stairs a moment to recover his breath. The excitement and the heat of the day tired him. And, as he sat, he put his hand to his ear and listened attentively. A sound of birds singing reached him faintly from the upper part of the house.

  “Ah!” he said, drawing a deep breath, and color coming into his cheeks. “Ah! Now I hear them.”

  The sound of singing came nearer, as on a passing wind. He climbed laboriously to the top floor, and then, after resting again, scrambled up a ladder through an open skylight on to the roof. The moment he put his perspiring face above the tiles a wild chorus of singing birds greeted him with a sound like a whole countryside in spring.

  “If only my friend, the park policeman, could see this!” he said aloud, with a delighted chuckle, “and hear it!” He sought a precarious resting-place upon the butt of a chimney-stack, mopping his forehead.

  All around him the sea of London roofs and chimneys rolled away in a black sea, but here, like an oasis in a desert, was a roof of limited extent, and not very high compared to others, converted into a perfect garden. Flowers — but why describe them, when he himself did not even know the names? It was enough that his orders had been carried out to his entire satisfaction, and that this little roof was a world of living color, moving in the wind, scenting the air, welcoming the sunshine.

  Everywhere among the pots and boxes of flowers stood the cages. And in the cages the thrushes and blackbirds, the larks and linnets, poured their hearts out with a chorus of song that was more exquisite, he thought, than anything he had ever heard. And there in the corner by the big chimney, carefully shaded from the glare, stood the large cage containing the owls.

  “I can almost believe they have guessed my purpose after all,” exclaimed the Professor.

  For a long time he sat there, leaning against the chimney, oblivious of a blackened collar, listening to the singing, and feasting his eyes upon the garden of flowers all about him. Then the sound of a bell ringing downstairs roused him suddenly into action, and he climbed with difficulty down again to the hall door.

  “Here they come,” he thought, greatly excited. “Dear me, I do trust I shall not make any mistakes.”

  He felt in his pocket for his notebook, and then opened the door into the street.

  “Oh, it’s only you!” he exclaimed, as his nurse came in with her arms full of parcels.

  “Only me,” she laughed, “but I’ve brought the lemonade and the biscuits. The others will be here now any minute. It’s after three. There’s just time to arrange the glasses and plates. We must expect about fifty according to the letters you got. And mind you don’t get overtired.”

  “Oh, I’m all right! “he answered.

  She ran upstairs. Before her steps had sounded once on the floor above, a carriage-and-pair stopped at the door, and a footman came up smartly and asked if Professor Parnacute was at home.

  “Indeed I am,” answered the old man, blushing and laughing at the same time, and then going down himself to the carriage to welcome the little girl and boy who got out. He bowed stiffly and awkwardly to the pretty lady in the victoria, who thanked him for his kindness with a speech he did not hear properly, and then led his callers into the house. They were very shy at first, and hardly knew what to make of it all, but once inside, the boy’s sense of adventure was stirred by the sight of the empty shop, and the counter, and the strange array of flowers upon the floor.

  He remembered the letter his father had read out from Professor Parnacute a week ago.

  “My Lot is No. 7, isn’t it, Mr. Professor?” he cried. “I let out a cage of linnets, and get a guinea-pig and a mealy-something-or-other as a present, don’t I?”

  Mr. Parnacute, shaky and beaming, consulted his notebook hurriedly, and replied that this was “perfectly correct.”

  “Master Edwin Burton,” he read out; “to release — Lot 7. To take away —— one guinea-pig, and one mealy rosella.”

  “I’m Lot 8, please,” piped the voice of the little girl, standing with wide-open eyes beside him.

  “Oh, are you, my dear?” said he; “yes, yes, I believe you are.” He fumbled anew with the notebook. “Here it is,” he added, reading aloud again— “Miss Angelina Burton;” he peered closely in the gloom to decipher the writing; “To release — Lot 8 — that’s woodlarks, my dear, you know. To take away — one angulated tortoise. Quite correct, yes; quite correct.”

  He called to the nurse upstairs to show the children their presents hidden away in boxes among the flowers — their rosella and tortoise — and then went again to the door to receive his other guests, who now began to arrive in a steady stream. To the number of twenty or thirty they came, and not one of them appeared to be much over twelve. And the majority of them left their elders at the door and came in unattended.

  The marshaling of this array of youngsters among the birds and flowers was a matter of some difficulty, but here the nurse came to the Professor’s assistance with energy and experience, so that his strength was economized and the children were arranged without danger to anyone.

  And upon that little roof the sight was certainly a unique one. There they all stood, an extraordinary patchwork of color for the tiles of Southwest London — the bright frocks of the girls, the plumage of the birds, the blues and yellows and scarlets of the flowers; while the singing and voices sent up a chorus that brought numerous surprised faces to the windows of the higher buildings about them, and made people stop in the street below and ask themselves with startled faces where in the world these sounds came from this still June afternoon!

  “Now!” cried Simon Parnacute, when all lots and owners had been placed carefully side by side. “The moment I give the word of command, open your cages and let the prisoners escape! And point in the direction of the park.”

  The children stooped and picked up their cages. The voices and the singing in a hundred busy little throats ceased. A hush fell upon the roof and upon the strange gathering. The sun poured blazingly down over everything, and the Professor’s face streamed.

  “One,” he cried, his voice tremulous with excitement, “two, three — and away!”

  There was a rattling sound of opening doors and wire bars — and then a sudden burst of half-suppressed, long-drawn “Ahhhhs.” At once there followed a rush of fluttering feathers, a rapid vibration of the air, and the small host of prisoners shot out like a cloud into the air, and a moment later with a great whirring of wings had disappeared over the walls beyond the forest of chimneys and were lost to view. Blackbirds, thrushes, linnets and finches were gone in a twinkling, so that the eye could hardly follow them. Only the sea-gulls, puzzled by their sudden freedom, with wings still stiff after their cramped quarters, lingered on the edge of the roof for a few minutes, and looked about them in a dazed fashion, until they, too, realized their liberty and sailed off into the open sky to search for splendors of the sea.

  A second hush, dee
per even than the first, fell over all for a moment, and then the children with one accord burst into screams of delight and explanation, shouting, for all who cared to listen, the details of how their birds, respectively, had flown; where they had gone; what they thought and looked like; and a hundred other details as to where they would build their nests and the number of eggs they would lay.

  And then came the descent for the presents and refreshment. One by one they approached the Professor, holding out the tickets with the number of their “lot” and the description of animal they were to receive and find a home for. The few accompanied by elders came first.

  “The owls, I think?” said the pink-faced clergyman who had chaperoned other children besides his own, picking his way across the roof as the crowd tapered off down the skylight. “Two owls,” he repeated, with a smile. “In the windy towers of my belfry under the Mendips, I hope—”

  “Oh, the very thing, the very place,” replied Parnacute, with pleasure, remembering his correspondent. For, of course, the owls had not been released with the other birds.

  “And for my little girl you thought, perhaps, a lorikeet—”

  “A scaly-breasted lorikeet, papa,” she interrupted, with a degree of excitement too intense for smiles, and pronouncing the name as she had learned it — in a single word; “and a lizard.”

  They moved off towards the trapdoor, the owl cage under the clergyman’s arm. They would receive the lorikeet and lizard downstairs from the nurse on presenting their ticket.

  “And remember,” added Parnacute slyly, addressing the child, “to comb their feathered trousers with a very fine comb!”

  The clergyman turned a moment at the skylight as he helped the owls and children to squeeze through.

  “I shall have something to say about this in my sermon next Sunday,” he said. He smiled as his head disappeared.

  “Oh, but, my dear sir—” cried the Professor, tripping over a flowerpot in his pleasure and embarrassment, and just reaching the skylight in time to add, “And, remember, there are cakes and lemonade on the floor below!”

  The animals had all been provided with happy homes; the last cab had driven away, and the nurse had gone to find the flower-man. Parnacute had strewn the roof with food, and with moss and hair-material for nesting, in case any of the birds returned. He stood alone and watched the sunset pour its gold over the myriad houses — the cages of the men and women of London town. He felt exhausted; the sky was soothing and pleasant to behold....

  He sat down to rest, conscious of a great weakness now that the excitement was over and the reaction had begun to set in. Probably he had exerted himself unduly.

  His mind reverted to his first impulsive eccentricity of two months before.

  “I knew I should pay for it,” he murmured, with a smile, “and I have. But it was worth it.”

  He stopped abruptly and caught his breath a moment. He was thoroughly overtired; the excitement of it all had been too much for him. He must get home as quickly as possible to rest. The nurse would be back any minute now.

  A sound of wings rapidly beating the air passed overhead, and he looked up and saw a flight of pigeons wheeling by. He fancied, too, that he just caught the notes of a thrush singing far away in the park at the end of the street. He recalled the phrases of that dreadfully haunting list. “Wild singing note,”

  “Can be heard two hundred yards off,”

  “Raving with song.” A momentary spasm passed through his frame. Far up in the air the sea-gulls still circled, making their way with all the splendor of real freedom to the sea.

  “Tonight,” he thought, “they will roost on the marshes, or perched upon the lonely cliffs. Good, good, very good!”

  He got up, stiffly and with difficulty, to watch the pigeons better, and to hear the thrush, and, as he did so, the bell rang downstairs to admit the nurse and the flower-man.

  “Odd,” he thought; “I gave her the key!”

  He made his way towards the skylight, picking his way with uncertain tread between the flower-boxes; but before he could reach it a head and shoulders suddenly appeared above the opening.

  “Odd,” he thought again, “that she should have come up so quickly—”

  But he did not complete the thought. It was not the nurse at all. A very different figure followed the emerging head and shoulders, and there in front of him on the roof stood — a policeman.

  It was the policeman.

  “Oh,” said Parnacute quietly, “it’s you!” A wild tumult of yearning and happiness caught at his heart and made it impossible to think of anything else to say.

  The big blue figure smiled his shining smile.

  “One more flight, sir,” said the silvery, ringing voice respectfully, “and the last.”

  The pigeons wheeled past overhead with a sharp whirring of wings. Both men looked up significantly at their vanishing outline over the roofs. A deep silence fell between them. Parnacute was aware that he was smiling and contented.

  “I am quite ready, I think,” he said in a low tone. “You promised—”

  “Yes,” returned the other in the voice that was like the ringing of a silver gong, “I promised — without pain.”

  The Policeman moved softly over to him; he made no sound; the constellations of Orion and the Pleiades shone on his coat-collar. There was another whirring rush as the pigeons swept again overhead and wheeled abruptly, but this time there was no one on the roof to watch them go, and it seemed that their flying wedge, as they flashed away, was larger and darker than before....

  And when the nurse returned with the man for the boxes, they came up to the roof and found the body of Simon Parnacute, late Professor of Political Economy, lying face upwards among the flowers. The human cage was empty. Someone had opened the door.

  PAN’S GARDEN

  A VOLUME OF NATURE STORIES

  CONTENTS

  THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED

  THE SOUTH WIND

  THE SEA FIT

  THE ATTIC

  THE HEATH FIRE

  THE MESSENGER

  THE GLAMOUR OF THE SNOW

  THE RETURN

  SAND

  THE TRANSFER

  CLAIRVOYANCE

  THE GOLDEN FLY

  SPECIAL DELIVERY

  THE DESTRUCTION OF SMITH

  THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY

  The original frontispiece

  TO

  M. S. K.

  WHO MADE WITH ME THESE LITTLE PATHS

  ACROSS PAN’S TANGLED GARDEN.

  PREFATORY NOTE

  MY thanks are due to the Editor of the Westminster Gazette for permission to include in this volume three stories, ‘The Messenger,’ ‘The Attic,’ and ‘The South Wind,’ which originally appeared in his columns.

  A. B.

  THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED

  I

  He painted trees as by some special divining instinct of their essential qualities. He understood them. He knew why in an oak forest, for instance, each individual was utterly distinct from its fellows, and why no two beeches in the whole world were alike. People asked him down to paint a favorite lime or silver birch, for he caught the individuality of a tree as some catch the individuality of a horse. How he managed it was something of a puzzle, for he never had painting lessons, his drawing was often wildly inaccurate, and, while his perception of a Tree Personality was true and vivid, his rendering of it might almost approach the ludicrous. Yet the character and personality of that particular tree stood there alive beneath his brush — shining, frowning, dreaming, as the case might be, friendly or hostile, good or evil. It emerged.

  There was nothing else in the wide world that he could paint; flowers and landscapes he only muddled away into a smudge; with people he was helpless and hopeless; also with animals. Skies he could sometimes manage, or effects of wind in foliage, but as a rule he left these all severely alone. He kept to trees, wisely following an instinct that was guided by love. It was quite arresting
, this way he had of making a tree look almost like a being — alive. It approached the uncanny.

  “Yes, Sanderson knows what he’s doing when he paints a tree!” thought old David Bittacy, C.B., late of the Woods and Forests. “Why, you can almost hear it rustle. You can smell the thing. You can hear the rain drip through its leaves. You can almost see the branches move. It grows.” For in this way somewhat he expressed his satisfaction, half to persuade himself that the twenty guineas were well spent (since his wife thought otherwise), and half to explain this uncanny reality of life that lay in the fine old cedar framed above his study table.

  Yet in the general view the mind of Mr. Bittacy was held to be austere, not to say morose. Few divined in him the secretly tenacious love of nature that had been fostered by years spent in the forests and jungles of the eastern world. It was odd for an Englishman, due possibly to that Eurasian ancestor. Surreptitiously, as though half ashamed of it, he had kept alive a sense of beauty that hardly belonged to his type, and was unusual for its vitality. Trees, in particular, nourished it. He, also, understood trees, felt a subtle sense of communion with them, born perhaps of those years he had lived in caring for them, guarding, protecting, nursing, years of solitude among their great shadowy presences. He kept it largely to himself, of course, because he knew the world he lived in. HE also kept it from his wife — to some extent. He knew it came between them, knew that she feared it, was opposed. But what he did not know, or realize at any rate, was the extent to which she grasped the power which they wielded over his life. Her fear, he judged, was simply due to those years in India, when for weeks at a time his calling took him away from her into the jungle forests, while she remained at home dreading all manner of evils that might befall him. This, of course, explained her instinctive opposition to the passion for woods that still influenced and clung to him. It was a natural survival of those anxious days of waiting in solitude for his safe return.