Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  And it was at this point — as the comparing of notes afterwards established — that Father Norden came in, Norden, the big man’s nephew, having bicycled over from some point beyond Corfe Castle and raced along the hard Studland sand in the moonlight, and then hullood till a boat had ferried him across the narrow channel of Poole Harbour. Sinbad simply brought him in without any preliminary question or announcement. He could not resist the splendid night and the spring air, explained Norden. He felt sure his uncle could ‘find a hammock’ for him somewhere aft, as he put it. He did not add that Sinbad had telegraphed for him just before sundown from the coast-guard hut. Dr. Reese already knew him, but he was introduced to the Major. Norden was a member of the Society of Jesus, an ardent, not clever, and unselfish soul.

  Erricson greeted him with obviously mixed feelings, and with an extraordinary sentence: ‘It doesn’t really matter,’ he exclaimed, after a few commonplaces of talk, ‘for all religions are the same if you go deep enough. All teach sacrifice, and, without exception, all seek final union by absorption into their Deity.’ And then, under his breath, turning sideways to peer out of the window, he added a swift rush of half-smothered words that only Dr. Reese caught: ‘The Army, the Church, the Medical Profession, and Labour — if they would only all come! What a fine result, what a grand offering! Alone — I seem so unworthy — insignificant...!’

  But meanwhile young Norden was speaking before any one could stop him, although the Major did make one or two blundering attempts. For once the Jesuit’s tact was at fault. He evidently hoped to introduce a new mood — to shift the current already established by the single force of his own personality. And he was not quite man enough to carry it off.

  It was an error of judgment on his part. For the forces he found established in the room were too heavy to lift and alter, their impetus being already acquired. He did his best, anyhow. He began moving with the current — it was not the first sea fit he had combated in this extraordinary personality — then found, too late, that he was carried along with it himself like the rest of them.

  ‘Odd — but couldn’t find the bungalow at first,’ he laughed, somewhat hardly. ‘It’s got a bit of seafog all to itself that hides it. I thought perhaps my pagan uncle—’

  The Doctor interrupted him hastily, with great energy. ‘The fog does lie caught in these sand hollows — like steam in a cup, you know,’ he put in. But the other, intent on his own procedure, missed the cue.

  ‘ — thought it was smoke at first, and that you were up to some heathen ceremony or other,’ laughing in Erricson’s face; ‘sacrificing to the full moon or the sea, or the spirits of the desolate places that haunt sand-dunes, eh?’

  No one spoke for a second, but Erricson’s face turned quite radiant.

  ‘My uncle’s such a pagan, you know,’ continued the priest, ‘that as I flew along those deserted sands from Studland I almost expected to hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.., or see fair Thetis’s tinsel-slippered feet....’

  Erricson, suppressing violent gestures, highly excited, face happy as a boy’s, was combing his great yellow beard with both hands, and the other two men had begun to speak at once, intent on stopping the flow of unwise allusion. Norden, swallowing a mouthful of cold soda-water, had put the glass down, spluttering over its bubbles, when the sound was first heard at the window. And in the back room the manservant ran, calling something aloud that sounded like ‘It’s coming, God save us, it’s coming in...!’ Though the Major swears some name was mentioned that he afterwards forgot — Glaucus — Proteus — Pontus — or some such word. The sound itself, however, was plain enough — a kind of imperious tappling on the window-panes as of a multitude of objects. Blown sand it might have been or heavy spray or, as Norden suggested later, a great water-soaked branch of giant seaweed. Every one started up, but Erricson was first upon his feet, and had the window wide open in a twinkling. His voice roared forth over those moonlit sand-dunes and out towards the line of heavy surf ten yards below.

  ‘All along the shore of the Aegean,’ he bellowed, with a kind of hoarse triumph that shook the heart, ‘that ancient cry once rang. But it was a lie, a thumping and audacious lie. And He is not the only one. Another still lives — and, by Poseidon, He comes! He knows His own and His own know Him — and His own shall go to meet Him...!’

  That reference to the Aegean ‘cry’! It was so wonderful. Every one, of course, except the soldier, seized the allusion. It was a comprehensive, yet subtle, way of suggesting the idea. And meanwhile all spoke at once, shouted rather, for the Invasion was somehow — monstrous.

  ‘Damn it — that’s a bit too much. Something’s caught my throat!’ The Major, like a man drowning, fought with the furniture in his amazement and dismay. Fighting was his first instinct, of course. ‘Hurts so infernally — takes the breath,’ he cried, by way of explaining the extraordinarily violent impetus that moved him, yet half ashamed of himself for seeing nothing he could strike. But Malcolm Reese struggled to get between his host and the open window, saying in tense voice something like ‘Don’t let him get out! Don’t let him get out!’ While the shouts of warning from Sinbad in the little cramped back offices added to the general confusion. Only Father Norden stood quiet — watching with a kind of admiring wonder the expression of magnificence that had flamed into the visage of Erricson.

  ‘Hark, you fools! Hark!’ boomed the Viking figure, stand¬ing erect and splendid.

  And through that open window, along the far-drawn line of shore from Canford Cliffs to the chalk bluffs of Studland Bay, there certainly ran a sound that was no common roar of surf. It was articulate — message from the sea — an announce¬ment — a thunderous warning of approach. No mere surf breaking on sand could have compassed so deep and multi¬tudinous a voice of dreadful roaring — far out over the enter¬ing tide, yet at the same time close in along the entire sweep of shore, shaking all the ocean, both depth and surface, with its deep vibrations. Into the bungalow chamber came — the Sea!

  Out of the night, from the moonlit spaces where it had been steadily accumulating, into that little cabined room so full of humanity and tobacco smoke, came invisibly — the Power of the Sea. Invisible, yes, but mighty, pressed forward by the huge draw of the moon, soft-coated with brine and moisture — the great Sea. And with it, into the minds of those three other men, leaped instantaneously, not to be denied, overwhelm¬ing suggestions of water-power, the tear and strain of thousand-mile currents, the irresistible pull and rush of tides, the suction of giant whirlpools — more, the massed and awful impetus of whole driven oceans. The air turned salt and briny, and a welter of seaweed clamped their very skins.

  ‘Glaucus! I come to Thee, great God of the deep Water¬ways.... Father and Master!’ Erricson cried aloud in a voice that most marvelously conveyed supreme joy.

  The little bungalow trembled as from a blow at the founda¬tions, and the same second the big man was through the window and running down the moonlit sands towards the foam.

  ‘God in Heaven! Did you all see that?’ shouted Major Reese, for the manner in which the great body slipped through the tiny window-frame was incredible. And then, first tottering with a sudden weakness, he recovered himself and rushed round by the door, followed by his brother. Sinbad, invisible, but not inaudible, was calling aloud from the passage at the back. Father Norden, slimmer than the others — well controlled, too — was through the little window before either of them reached the fringe of beach beyond the sand-dunes. They joined forces halfway down to the water’s edge. The figure of Erricson, towering in the moonlight, flew before them, coasting rapidly along the wave-line.

  No one of them said a word; they tore along side by side, Norden a trifle in advance. In front of them, head turned seawards, bounded Erricson in great flying leaps, singing as he ran, impossible to overtake.

  Then, what they witnessed, all three witnessed; the weird grandeur of it in the moonshine was too splendid to allow the smaller emotions of personal alarm, it seems.
At any rate, the divergence of opinion afterwards was unaccountably insignificant. For, on a sudden, that heavy roaring sound far out at sea came close in with a swift plunge of speed, followed simultaneously — accompanied, rather — by a dark line that was no mere wave moving: enormously, up and across, between the sea and sky it swept close in to shore. The moonlight caught it for a second as it passed, in a cliff of her bright silver.

  And Erricson slowed down, bowed his great head and shoul¬ders, spread his arms out and...

  And what? For no one of those amazed witnesses could swear exactly what then came to pass. Upon this impossibility of telling it in language they all three agreed. Only those eyeless dunes of sand that watched, only the white and silent moon overhead, only that long, curved beach of empty and deserted shore retain the complete record, to be revealed some day perhaps when a later Science shall have learned to develop the photographs that Nature takes incessantly upon her secret plates. For Erricson’s rough suit of tweed went out in ribbons across the air; his figure somehow turned dark like strips of tide-sucked seaweed; something enveloped and overcame him, half shrouding him from view. He stood for one instant upright, his hair wild in the moonshine, towering, with arms again outstretched; then bent forward, turned, drew out most curiously sideways, uttering the singing sound of tumbling waters. The next instant, curving over like a falling wave, he swept along the glistening surface of the sands — and was gone. In fluid form, wave-like, his being slipped away into the Being of the Sea. A violent tumult convulsed the surface of the tide near in, but at once, and with amazing speed, passed careering away into the deeper water — far out. To his singular death, as to a wedding, Erricson had gone, singing, and well content.

  ‘May God, who holds the sea and all its powers in the hollow of His mighty hand, take them both into Himself!’ Norden was on his knees, praying fervently.

  The body was never recovered ... and the most curious thing of all was that the interior of the cabin, where they found Sinbad shaking with terror when they at length returned, was splashed and sprayed, almost soaked, with salt water. Up into the bigger dunes beside the bungalow, and far beyond the reach of normal tides, lay, too, a great streak and furrow as of a large invading wave, caking the dry sand. A hundred tufts of the coarse grass tussocks had been torn away.

  The high tide that night, drawn by the Easter full moon, of course, was known to have been exceptional, for it fairly flooded Poole Harbour, flushing all the coves and bays towards the mouth of the Frome. And the natives up at Arne Bay and Wych always declare that the noise of the sea was heard far inland even up to the nine Barrows of the Purbeck Hills — triumphantly singing.

  THE ATTIC

  The forest-girdled village upon the Jura slopes slept soundly, although it was not yet many minutes after ten o’clock. The clang of the couvre-feu had indeed just ceased, its notes swept far into the woods by a wind that shook the mountains. This wind now rushed down the deserted street. It howled about the old rambling building called La Citadelle, whose roof towered gaunt and humped above the smaller houses — Château left unfinished long ago by Lord Wemyss, the exiled Jacobite. The families who occupied the various apartments listened to the storm and felt the building tremble. ‘It’s the mountain wind. It will bring the snow,’ the mother said, without looking up from her knitting. ‘And how sad it sounds.’

  But it was not the wind that brought sadness as we sat round the open fire of peat. It was the wind of memories. The lamplight slanted along the narrow room towards the table where breakfast things lay ready for the morning. The double windows were fastened. At the far end stood a door ajar, and on the other side of it the two elder children lay asleep in the big bed. But beside the window was a smaller unused bed, that had been empty now a year. And to-night was the anniversary....

  And so the wind brought sadness and long thoughts. The little chap that used to lie there was already twelve months gone, far, far beyond the Hole where the Winds came from, as he called it; yet it seemed only yesterday that I went to tell him a tuck-up story, to stroke Riquette, the old motherly cat that cuddled against his back and laid a paw beside his pillow like a human being, and to hear his funny little earnest whisper say, ‘Oncle, tu sais, j’ai prié pour Petavel.’ For La Citadelle had its unhappy ghost — of Petavel, the usurer, who had hanged himself in the attic a century gone by, and was known to walk its dreary corridors in search of peace — and this wise Irish mother, calming the boys’ fears with wisdom, had told him, ‘If you pray for Petavel, you’ll save his soul and make him happy, and he’ll only love you.’ And, thereafter, this little imaginative boy had done so every night. With a passionate seriousness he did it. He had wonderful, delicate ways like that. In all our hearts he made his fairy nests of wonder. In my own, I know, he lay closer than any joy imaginable, with his big blue eyes, his queer soft questionings, and his splendid child’s unselfishness — a sun-kissed flower of innocence that, had he lived, might have sweetened half a world.

  ‘Let’s put more peat on,’ the mother said, as a handful of rain like stones came flinging against the windows; ‘that must be hail.’ And she went on tiptoe to the inner room. ‘They’re sleeping like two puddings,’ she whispered, coming presently back. But it struck me she had taken longer than to notice merely that; and her face wore an odd expression that made me uncomfortable. I thought she was somehow just about to laugh or cry. By the table a second she hesitated. I caught the flash of indecision as it passed. ‘Pan,’ she said suddenly — it was a nickname, stolen from my tuck-up stories, he had given me— ‘I wonder how Riquette got in.’ She looked hard at me. ‘It wasn’t you, was it?’ For we never let her come at night since he had gone. It was too poignant. The beastie always went cuddling and nestling into that empty bed. But this time it was not my doing, and I offered plausible explana¬tions. ‘But — she’s on the bed. Pan, would you be so kind—’ She left the sentence unfinished, but I easily understood, for a lump had somehow risen in my own throat too, and I remembered now that she had come out from the inner room so quickly — with a kind of hurried rush almost. I put ‘mère Riquette’ out into the corridor. A lamp stood on the chair outside the door of another occupant further down, and I urged her gently towards it. She turned and looked at me — straight up into my face; but, instead of going down as I suggested, she went slowly in the opposite direction. She stepped softly towards a door in the wall that led up broken stairs into the attics. There she sat down and waited. And so I left her, and came back hastily to the peat fire and compan¬ ionship. The wind rushed in behind me and slammed the door.

  And we talked then somewhat busily of cheerful things; of the children’s future, the excellence of the cheap Swiss schools, of Christmas presents, ski-ing, snow, tobogganing. I led the talk away from mournfulness; and when these subjects were exhausted I told stories of my own adventures in distant parts of the world. But ‘mother’ listened the whole time — not to me. Her thoughts were all elsewhere. And her air of intently, secretly listening, bordered, I felt, upon the uncanny. For she often stopped her knitting and sat with her eyes fixed upon the air before her; she stared blankly at the wall, her head slightly on one side, her figure tense, attention strained — elsewhere. Or, when my talk positively demanded it, her nod was oddly mechanical and her eyes looked through and past me. The wind continued very loud and roaring; but the fire glowed, the room was warm and cosy. Yet she shivered, and when I drew attention to it, her reply, ‘I do feel cold, but I didn’t know I shivered,’ was given as though she spoke across the air to some one else. But what impressed me even more uncomfortably were her repeated questions about Riquette. When a pause in my tales permitted, she would look up with ‘I wonder where Riquette went?’ or, thinking of the inclement night, ‘I hope mère Riquette’s not out of doors. Perhaps Madame Favre has taken her in?’ I offered to go and see. Indeed I was already half-way across the room when there came the heavy bang at the door that rooted me to the ground where I stood. It was not wind. It was
something alive that made it rattle. There was a second blow. A thud on the corridor boards followed, and then a high, odd voice that at first was as human as the cry of a child.

  lt is undeniable that we both started, and for myself I can answer truthfully that a chill ran down my spine; but what frightened me more than the sudden noise and the eerie cry was the way ‘mother’ supplied the immediate explanation. For behind the words ‘It’s only Riquette; she sometimes springs at the door like that; perhaps we’d better let her in,’ was a certain touch of uncanny quiet that made me feel she had known the cat would come, and knew also why she came. One cannot explain such impressions further. They leave their vital touch, then go their way. Into the little room, however, in that moment there came between us this uncom¬fortable sense that the night held other purposes than our own — and that my companion was aware of them. There was something going on far, far removed from the routine of life as we were accustomed to it. Moreover, our usual routine was the eddy, while this was the main stream. It felt big, I mean.