Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  ‘Let’s go and cry a bit somewhere,’ she remarked quietly, her eyes very wistful. ‘It helps it out awfully, you know.’

  He reminded her, however, of a sage remark of Toby’s, to the effect that when men grew beards they lost the power to cry. Quick as a flash, then, she turned with one of her exquisite little bits of unconscious poetry.

  ‘Let’s go to the Gwyle then, and make the stream cry for us instead,’ she said gravely, with a profound sympathy, ‘because everybody’s tears must get into the water some time — and so to the sea, mustn’t they?’ And on their way, what with jumping ditches and flower-beds, they forgot all about the crying. On the edge of the woods, however, she raced up again to his side, her blue eyes full of a new wonder.

  ‘I know that wind of inspiration that your poetry said never blew for you,’ she cried. ‘I know where it blows. Quick! I’ll show you!’ The pace made him pant a bit; he almost regretted he had mentioned it. ‘I know where it blows, we’ll catch it, and you shall see. Then you can always, always get it when you want it.’

  And a little farther on, after wading through deep bracken, they stopped, and Nixie took his hand. ‘Come on tiptoe now,’ she whispered mysteriously. ‘Don’t crack the twigs with your feet.’ And, smiling at this counsel of perfection, he obeyed to the best of his ability, while she pretended not to notice the series of explosions that followed his tread.

  It was a curve in the skirts of the wood where they found themselves; a small inlet where the tide of daylight flowed against the dark cliffs of the firs, and then fell back. The thick trees held it at bay so that only the spray of light penetrated beyond, as from advancing waves. ‘Thus far and no farther,’ very plainly said the pine trees, and the sunshine lay there collected in the little hollow with the delicious heat of all the summer. It was a corner hitherto undiscovered by Paul; he saw it with the pleasure of a discovery.

  And there, set brightly against the sombre background, stood the slender figure of a silver birch tree, all sweet and shining, its branches sifting the sunshine and the wind; while behind it, standing forth somewhat from the main body of the wood, a pine, shaggy and formidable, grew close as though to guard it. The picture, with its striking contrast, needed no imagination to make it more appealing. It was patent to any eye.

  ‘That’s my tree,’ said Nixie softly, with both arms linked about his elbow and her cheek laid against the sleeve of his coat. ‘My fav’rite tree. And that’s where your winds of inspiration blow that you said you couldn’t catch. So now you can always come and hear them, you see.’

  Paul entered instantly into the spirit of her dream. The way her child’s imagination seized upon inanimate objects and incorporated them into the substance of her own life delighted him, for it was also his own way, and he understood it.

  ‘Then that old pine,’ he answered, pointing to the other, ‘is my tree. See! It’s come out of the wood to protect the little birch.’

  The child ran from his side and stood close to them. ‘Yes, and don’t you see,’ she cried, her eyes popping with excitement, ‘this is me, and that’s you!’ She patted the two trunks, first the birch and then the pine. ‘It’s us! I never thought of that before, never! It’s you looking after me and taking care of me, and me dancing and laughing round you all the time!’ She ran back to his side and hopped up to plant a kiss in his beard. He quite forgot to correct her a’venturous grammar.

  ‘Of course,’ he cried, ‘so it is. Look! The branches touch too. Your little leaves run up among my old needles!’

  Nixie clapped her hands and ran to and fro, laughing and talking, on errands of further discovery, while Paul sat down to watch the scene and think his own thoughts. It was just the picture to appeal strongly to him. At any time the beauty of the: tree would have seized him, but with no one else could he have enjoyed it in the same way, or spoken of his enjoyment. While Nixie flitted here and there in the sunshine, the little birch behind her bent down and then released itself with a graceful rush of branches as the pressure of the wind passed. Against the blue sky she tossed her leafy hands; then, with a passing shiver, stood still.

  ‘I wonder,’ ran his thought, ‘why poets need invent Dryads when such an incomparable revelation lies plain in one of the commonest of trees like this?’ And, at the same moment, he saw Nixie dart past between the fir trees and the birch, as though the very Dryad he was slighting had slipped out to chide him. Her hair spread in the sunshine like leaves. In the world of trees here, surely, was the very essence of what is feminine caught and imprisoned. Whatever of grace and wonder emanate from the face and figure of a young girl to enchant and bewitch here found expression in the silver stem and branches, in the running limbs so slender, in the twigs that bent with their cataracts of flying hair. Seen against the dark pinewood, this little birch tree laughed and danced; over that silver skin ran, positively, smiles; from the facets of those dainty leaves twinkled mischief and the joys of innocence. Here, in a word, was Nixie herself in the terms of tree-dom; and, as he watched, the wind swept out the branches towards him in a cluster of rustling leaves, — and at the same instant Nixie shot laughing to his side.

  For a second he hardly knew whether it was the child or the silver birch that nestled down beside him and began to murmur in his ear.

  ‘This is it, you see,’ she was saying; ‘and there’s your wind of inspiration blowing now.’

  ‘We shall have to alter the first verse then,’ he said gravely:

  ‘The winds of inspiration blow,

  Yet never pass me by.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ she whispered, listening half to her uncle, half to the rustle in the branches. ‘And now,’ she added presently, c you can always come and write your poetry here, and it will be verywonderfulindeed poetry, you see. And if you leave a bit of paper on the tree you’ll find it in the morning covered with all sorts of things in very fine writing — oh, but very very fine writing, so small that no one can see it except you and me. One of the Little Winds we saw, you know, will twine round it and leave marks. And the big pine is you and the birch is me, isn’t it?’ she ended with sudden conviction.

  The game, of course, was after her own heart. Up she sprang then suddenly again, picked a spray of leaves from a hanging branch, and brought it back to him.

  ‘And here’s a bit of me for a present, so that you can’t ever forget,’ she said with a gravity that held no smile. And she fastened it with much tugging and arranging in his buttonhole. ‘A bit of my tree, and so of me.’

  ‘Then I might leave a bit of paper in the water too,’ he remarked slyly on their way home, ‘so as to get the thoughts of the stream.’

  ‘Easily,’ she said, ‘only it must be wrapped up in something. I’ll get Jonah’s sponge-bag and lend it you. Only you must promise faithfully to return it in case we go to the seaside in the summer.’

  ‘And perhaps some of those tears we were talking about will stick on it and leave their marks before they go on to the sea,’ he suggested.

  ‘Oh, but they’d be too sad,’ she answered quickly. ‘They’re much better lost in the sea, aren’t they?’

  * * * *

  Thus the poetry in his soul that he could not utter, he lived.

  Without any conscious effort of the imagination, the instant Nixie, or the thought of her, stood beside him — lo, he was in Fairyland. It was so real that it was positively bewildering.

  And the rest of that quiet household, without knowing it, contributed to its reality. For, to begin with, the place was delightfully ‘out of the world’; and, after that, the gradations between the two regions seemed so easy and natural: the shadowy personality of his sister; the dainty little French governess flitting everywhere with her plaintive voice in the wake of the elusive children; then the children themselves — Jonah, the mischievous; Toby with her shining face of onion-skin; and, last of all, the host of tumbling animals, the mysterious cats, the kittens, all fluff and wonder; and the whole of it set amid the scenery of f
lowers, hills, and sea. It was impossible to tell exactly where the actual threshold lay, this shifting, fluid threshold dividing the two worlds; but there can be no question that Paul passed it day by day without the least difficulty, and that it was Nixie who knew all the quickest short-cuts.

  And to all who — since childhood — have lived in Fairyland and tasted of its sweet innocence and loveliness, comes sooner or later the desire to transfer something of these qualities to the outer world. Paul felt this more and more as the days passed. The wish to beautify the lives of others grew in him with a sudden completeness that proved it to have been there latent all the time. Through the voices of Nixie, Jonah, and Toby, as it were, he heard the voices — those myriad, faint, unhappy voices — of the world’s neglected children a-calling to him: ‘Tell us the Aventures too!’— ‘Take us with you through that Crack!’— ‘Show us the Wind, and let us climb with you the Scaffolding of Night.’

  And Paul, listening in his deep heart, began to understand that Nixie’s education of himself was but a beginning: all unconsciously that elfin child was surely becoming also his inspiration. This first lesson in self-expression she had taught him was like the trickle that would lead to the bursting of the dam. The waters of his enthusiasms would presently pour out with the rush of genuine power behind them. What he had to say, do, and live — all forms of self-expression — were to find a larger field of usefulness than the mere gratification of his personal sense of beauty.

  As yet, however, the thought only played dimly to and fro at the back of his mind, seeking a way of escape. The greater outlet could not come all at once. The germ of the desire lay there in secret development, but the thing he should do had not yet appeared.

  So, for the time being, he continued to live in Fairyland and write Aventures.

  It was really incalculable the effect of enchantment this little yellow-haired girl cast upon him — hard to believe, hard to realise. So true, so exquisite was it, however, that he almost came to forget her age, and that she was actually but a child. To him she seemed more and more an intimate companion of the soul who had existed always, and that both he and she were ageless. It was their souls that played, talked, caressed, not merely their minds or bodies. In her flower - like little figure dwelt assuredly an old and ripened soul; one, too, it seemed to him sometimes, that hardly belonged to this world at all.

  There was that about their relationship which made it eternal — it always had been somewhere, it always would be — somewhere. No confinings of flesh, no limitations of mind and sense, no conditions of mere time and space, could lay their burden upon it for long. It belonged most sweetly to the real things which are conditionless.

  Moreover, one of the chief effects of the world of Faery, experts say, is that Time is done away with; emotions are inexhaustible and last for ever, continually renewing themselves; the Fairies dance for years instead of only for a night; their minds and bodies grow not old; their desires, and the objects of their desires, pass not away.

  ‘So, unquestionably,’ said Paul to himself from time to time as he reflected upon the situation, ‘I am bewitched. I must see what there is that I can do in the matter to protect myself from further depredations!’

  Yet all he did immediately, so far as can be ascertained among the sources of this veracious history, was to collect the ‘Aventures’ already ‘written and journey with them one fine day to London, where he had an interview of some length with a publisher — Dick’s publisher. The result, at any rate, was — the records prove it — that some time afterwards he received a letter in which it was plainly stated that ‘the success of such a book is hard to predict, but it has qualities, both literary and imaginative, which entitle it to a hearing’; and thus that in due course the said ‘Aventures of a Prisoner in Fairyland’ appeared upon the bookstalls. For the publishers, being the foremost in the land, took the high view that seemed almost independent of mercenary calculations; and it is interesting to note that the years justified their judgment, and that the ‘Aventures’ may now be found upon the table of every house in England where there dwells a true child, be that child seven or seventy.

  And any profits that Paul collected from the sale went, not into his own pocket, but were put aside, as the sequel shall show, for a secret purpose that lay hidden at this particular stage of the story among the very roots of his heart and being.

  The summer, meanwhile, passed quickly away, and August melted into September, finding him still undecided about his return to America.

  For the rest, there was no hurry. There was another six months in which to make up his mind. Meanwhile, also, he made frequent use of the ‘Crack,’ and the changes in his soul went rapidly forward.

  CHAPTER XIX

  There was a Being whom my spirit oft

  Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft,

  In the clear golden prime of my youth’s dawn,

  Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn,

  Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves

  Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves

  Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor

  Paved her light steps; — on an imagined shore

  Under the grey beak of some promontory

  She met me, robed in such exceeding glory,

  That I beheld her not

  Epipsychidion

  ONE afternoon in late September he made his way alone across the hills. Clouds blew thinly over a sky of watery blue, driven by an idle wind the roses had left behind. It seemed a day strayed from out the summer that now found itself, thrilled and a little confused, in the path of autumn — and summer had sent forth this soft wind to bring it back to the fold.

  The ‘Crack’ was always near at hand on such a day, and Paul slipped in without the least difficulty. He found himself in a valley of the Blue Mountains hitherto unknown, and, so wandering, came presently to a bend of the river where the sand stretched smooth and inviting.

  For a moment he stopped to watch the slanting waves and listen, when to his sudden amazement he saw upon the shore, half concealed by the reeds near the bank — a human figure. A second glance showed him that it was the figure of a young girl, lying there in the sun, her bare feet just beyond reach of the waves, and her yellow hair strewn about the face so as to screen it almost entirely from view. A white dress covered her body; she was slim, he saw, as a child. She was asleep.

  Paul stood and stared.

  ‘Shall I wake her?’ was his first thought. But his second thought was truer: ‘Can I help waking her?’ And then a third came to him, subtle and inexplicable, yet scarcely shaping itself in actual language: ‘Is she after all a stranger?’

  Flying memories, half-formed, half-caught, ran curiously through his brain. What was it in the turn of the slender neck, in the lines of the little mouth, just visible where he stood, that seemed familiar? Did he not detect upon that graceful figure lying motionless in repose some indefinable signature that recalled his outer life? Or was it merely that fancy played tricks, and that he reconstructed a composite picture from the galleries of memory, with the myriad expression and fugitive magic of dream or picture — ideal figures he had conjured with in the past and set alive in some inner frame of his deepest thoughts? He was conscious of a delicious bewilderment. A singular emotion stirred in his heart. Yet the face and figure he sought utterly evaded him.

  Then, the first sharp instinct to turn aside passed. He accepted the adventure. Stooping down for a stone, he flung it with a noisy splash into the river. The girl opened her eyes, threw her hair back in a cloud, and sat up.

  At once a wave of invincible shyness descended upon Paul, rendering words or action impossible; he felt ridiculously embarrassed, and sought hurriedly in his mind for ways of escape. But, before any feasible plan for undoing what was already done suggested itself, he became aware of a very singular thing — the face of the girl was covered! He could not see it clearly. Something, veil-like and misty, hung before it so that his ey
es could not focus properly upon the features. The recognition he had half anticipated, therefore, did not come.

  And this helped to restore his composure. It was, in any case, futile to pretend he did not see her. For one thing, he realised that she was staring at him just as hard as he was staring at her. The very next instant she rose and came across the hot sand towards him, her hair flying loose, and both hands outstretched by way of greeting. Again, the halfrecognition that refused to complete itself swept confusingly over him.

  But this spontaneous and unexpected action had an immediate effect upon him of another kind. His embarrassment vanished. What she did seemed altogether right and natural, and the beauty of the girl drove all minor emotions from his mind. His whole being rose in a wave of unaffected delight, and almost before he was aware of it, he had stepped forward and caught both her hands in his own.

  This strange golden happiness at first troubled his speech.

  ‘But surely I know you!’ he cried. ‘If only I could see your face — !’

  ‘You ought to know me,’ she replied at once with a laugh as of old acquaintance, ‘for you have called for me often enough, I’m sure!’ Her voice was soft; curiously familiar accents rang in it; yet, as with the face, he knew not whose it was.

  She looked up at him, and though he could not make out the features, he discerned the expression they wore — an expression of peace and confidence. The girl trusted him delightfully.

  ‘Then what hides you from me?’ he insisted.

  She answered him so low that he hardly caught the words. Certainly, at the moment he did not understand them, for happiness still confused him. ‘The body,’ she murmured; ‘the veil of the body.’