The Second Algernon Blackwood Megapack

by Algernon Blackwood

  “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 colour 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 country-side 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 colour, 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 note-book, 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 over-tired.”

  “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 marshalling 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 any one.

  And upon that little roof the sight was certainly a unique one. There they all stood, an extraordinary patchwork of colour for the tiles of South-west 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 splendours of the sea.

  A second hush, deeper 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 trap-door, 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 flower-pot 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 hairmaterial 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 over-tired; 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 splendour 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. Some one had opened the door.

  THE GOLDEN FLY

  It fell upon him out of a clear sky just when existence seemed on its very best behaviour, and he savagely resented the undeserved affliction of it. Involving him in an atrocious scandal that reflected directly upon his honour, it destroyed in a moment the erection his entire life had so laboriously built up—his reputation. In the eyes of the world he was a broken, discredited man, at the very moment, moreover, when his most cherished ambitions touched fulfilment. And the cruelty of it appalled his sense of justice, for it was impossible to vindicate himself without inculpating others who were dearer to him than life. It seemed more than he could bear; and the grim course he contemplated—decision itself as yet hung darkly waiting in the background—appeared the only way of escape that offered.

  He had discussed the matter with friends until his brain whirled. Their sympathy maddened him, with hints of qui s’excuse s’accuse, and he turned at last in desperation to something that could not answer back. For the first time in his life he turned to Nature—to that dead, inanimate Nature he had left to poets and rhapsodising women: “I must face it alone,” he put it. For the Finger of God was a phrase without meaning to him, and his entire being contained no trace of the religious instinct. He was a business man, honest, selfish, and ambitious; and the collapse of his worldly position was paramount to the collapse of the universe itself—his universe, at any rate. This “crumbling of the universe” was the thought he took out with him. He left the house by the path that led into solitude, and reached the heathery expanse that formed one of the breathing-places of the New Forest. There he flung himself down wearily in the shadow of a little pine-copse. And his crumbled universe lay down with him, for he could not escape it.

  Taking the pistol from the hip-pocket where it hurt him, he lay upon his back and watched the clouds. Half stunned, half dazed, he stared into the sky. The perfumed wind played softly on his eyes; he smelt the heather-honey; golden flies hung motionless in the air, like coloured pins fastening the sunshine against the blue curtain of the summer, while dragonflies, like darting shuttles, wove across its pattern their threads of gleaming bronze. He heard the petulant crying of the peewits, and watched their tumbling flight. Below him tinkled a rivulet, its brown water rippling between banks of peaty earth. Everywhere was singing, peace, and careless unconcern.

  And this lordly indifference of Nature calmed and soothed him. Neither human pain nor the injustice of man could shift the key of the water, alter the peewits’ cry a single tone, nor influence one fraction of an inch those cloudy frigates of vapour that sailed the sky. The earth bulged sunwards as she had bulged for centuries. The power of her steady gait, superbly calm, breathed everywhere with grandeur—undismayed, unhasting, and supremely confident.… And, like the flash of those golden flies, there leaped suddenly upon him this vivid thought: that his world of agony lay neatly buttoned up within the tiny space of his own brain. Outside himself it had no existence at all. His mind contained it—the minute interior he called his heart. From this vaster world about him it lay utterly apart, like deeds in the black boxes of japanned tin he kept at the office, shut off from the universe, huddled in an overcrowded space within his skull.

  How this commonplace thought reached him, garbed in such startling novelty, was odd enough; for it seemed as though the fiercene
ss of his pain had burned away something. His thoughts it merely enflamed; but this other thing it consumed. Something that had obscured clear vision shrivelled before it as a piece of paper, eaten up by fire, dwindles down into a thimbleful of unimportant ashes. The thicket of his mind grew half transparent. At the farther end he saw, for the first time—light. The perspective of his inner life, hitherto so enormous, telescoped into the proportions of a miniature. Just as momentous and significant as before, it was somehow abruptly different—seen from another point of view. The suffering had burned up rubbish he himself had piled over the head of a little Fact. Like a point of metal that glows yet will not burn, he discerned in the depths of him the essential shining fact that not all this ruinous conflagration could destroy. And this brilliant, indestructible kernel was—his Innocence. The rest was self-reared rubbish: opinion of the world. He had magnified an atom into a universe.…

  Pain, as it seemed, had cleared a way for the sublimity of Nature to approach him. The calm old Universe rolled past. The deep, majestic Day gave him a push, as though the shoulder of some star had brushed his own. He had thought his feelings were the world : instead, they were merely his way of looking at it. The actual “world” was some glorious, unchanging thing he never saw direct. His attitude of mind was but a peephole into it. The choice of his particular peephole, moreover, lay surely within the power of his individual will. The anguish, centred upon so small a point, had seemed to affect the entire spread universe around him, whereas in reality it affected nothing but his attitude of mind towards it. The truism struck him like a blow between the eyes, that a man is what he thinks or feels himself to be. It leaped the barrier between words and meaning. The intellectual concept became a hard-edged fact, because he realised it—for the first time in his very circumscribed life. And this dreadful pain that had made even suicide seem desirable was entirely a fabrication of his own mind. The universe about him rolled on just the same in the majesty of its eternal purpose. His tiny inner world was clouded, but the glory of this stupendous world about him was undimmed, untroubled, unaffected. Even death itself…