Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  And another time, talking of the ‘future’ when he should come to join herself and Dick at the close of his earthly pilgrimage, she said between bursts of the merriest laughter he had ever known: ‘But that’s now! already! You come; you join us; we are all together — always!’

  And when he insisted that he could not possibly be in two places at once, and reminded her that she had already told him she was ‘waiting’ for his arrival, the only reply he could get was this jolly laughter, and the assurance that he was ‘awfully muddled and c’fused’ and would ‘never understand it that way!’

  The main thing these ‘silent’ conversations taught him seemed to be that Death brings no revolutionary change as regards character; the soul does not leap into a state much better or much worse than it knew before; the opportunities for discipline and development continue gradually just as they did in the body, only under different conditions; and there is no abrupt change into perfection on the one hand, or into desolation on the other. He gathered, too, that these ‘conditions’ depended very largely upon the kind of life — especially the kind of thought — that the personality had indulged on earth. The things that Nixie ‘imagined’ and yearned for, she found. His communion with her became, as time passed, more frequent and more real, and soon ceased to confine itself only to the quiet night hours. She was with him all day long, whenever he needed her. She guided him in a thousand unimportant details of his life, as well as in the bigger interests of his work in London with his waifs. And in murky London she was just as close to him as in the perfumed stillness of the Dorsetshire garden, or in the retirement of his own chamber....

  And one singular feature of their alliance was that it continued even in sleep. For, sometimes, he would wake in the morning after what had been apparently a dreamless night, yet later in the day there would steal over him the memory of a long talk he had enjoyed with the child during the hours of so-called unconsciousness. Dreams, forgotten in the morning, often, of course, return in this fashion during the day. There is nothing new or unusual in it. Only with him it became so frequent that he now rose to the day’s work with a delightful sense of anticipation: ‘Perhaps later in the day I shall remember! Perhaps we have been together all night!’

  And in this connection he came to notice two things: first, that after these nights together, at first forgotten, he woke wonderfully refreshed, blessed, peaceful in mind and body; and secondly, that what recalled the conversation later was always contact with some object or other that had been associated with the child. Thus — the picturesquely-mended socks, the medicine bottle for scratches, or the spray of birch leaves, now preserved between the pages of his Blake, never failed in this latter respect.

  It was curious, too, how the alliance persisted and fortified itself during the repose of the body; as though, during sleep, the eternal portion of himself with which the child communed, enjoyed a greater measure of freedom. It recalled the closing lines of a sonnet he had always admired, though his own experience was true in a literal sense hardly contained, probably, in the heart of the poetess:

  But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,

  When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,

  And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,

  Must doff my will as raiment laid away —

  With the first dream that comes with the first sleep

  I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart.

  He filled a book with these talks as the years passed, though to give them in more detail could serve little purpose but to satisfy a possible curiosity. They had value and authority for himself, but for the majority might seem to contain little sense, or even coherence. They expressed, of course, his own personal interpretation of life and the universe. And this was quite possibly poetic, queer, fantastic — for others. Yet it was his own. He had learned his own values in his own way, and was now engaged in sorting them out with Nixie’s fairy help to guide him.

  And all souls that find themselves probably do likewise. The strength and blessing they shed about them as a result is beneficial, but the close details of the process by which they have ‘arrived’ can only seem to the world at large unintelligible, possibly even ridiculous; and this late interior blossoming of Uncle Paul, though it actually happened, must seem to many a tissue of dreams knit together with a strange fantastic nonsense.

  CHAPTER XXIX

  Donnez vos yeux, donnez vos mains,

  Donnez vos mains surnaturelles;

  Pour me conduire aux lendemains

  Donnez vos yeux, donnez vos mains,

  Vos mains comme deux roses frôles.

  AND thus, as the region where he met and held communion with the freed child seemed to draw deeper and deeper into his interior being, the reality and value of the experience increased.

  That there was some kind of definite external link, however, was equally true; for the cats, as well as certain other of the animals, most certainly were aware sometimes of her presence. They showed it in many and curious ways. But it was distinctly a shock to Paul to learn one day from his sister that queer stories were afoot concerning himself; that some of the simple country folk declared they had seen ‘Mr Rivers walking with a young lady that was jest like Miss Nixie, only taller,’ who disappeared, however, the moment the observer approached. And the way the household felt her presence was, perhaps, not less remarkable, for more than one of the servants gave notice because the house had become ‘haunted,’ and there had been seen a ‘smallish white figure, all shiny and dancing,’ in his bedroom, or going down the corridor towards his study.

  Perhaps the glamour of his vivid creative thought had cast its effect upon these untrained imaginations, so that his vision was temporarily communicated to them too. Or, perhaps, they had actually seen what they described. But, whatever the explanation may be, the effect upon himself was to increase, if that were possible, the reality of the whole occurrence....

  And when the spring came round again with its charged memories of perfume, and sight, and the singing of its happy winds; when the tree-spirits returned to their garden haunts, all flaming with the beauty of new dresses gathered over-seas; when the silver birch tree combed out her glittering hair to the sun and shook her leaves in the very face of that old pine tree — then Paul felt in himself, too, the rejuvenation that was going forward in all the world around him. He tasted in his heart all the regenerative forces that were bursting into form and energy with the spring, and knew that the pain and desolation he had felt temporarily in the winter were only spiritual growing-pains and the passing distress of a soul forging its way outwards through development to the best possible Expression it could achieve.

  For Nixie came back, too, gay and glorious like the rest of the world — sometimes dressed in blossoms of lilac or laburnum, sometimes with skirts of daisies and feet resting upon the Little Winds, sometimes with the soft hood of darkness over her head, the cloak of night about her shoulders, the stars caught all shivering in her hair, and dusk in the deeps of her eyes....

  His life became ‘inner’ in the best sense — a Life within a Life; not given over to useless dreaming, but ever drawing from the inner one the sustenance that provided the driving force for the outer one: the mystic as man of action!

  The Wind of Inspiration blew for him now always, and steadily; but it was no longer the little wind that stirred the measure of his personal emotion into stammering verse, but the big, eternal wind that ‘blew the stars to flame,’ and at the same time impelled him irresistibly along the path of High A’venture to the loss of Self in work for others...

  ‘Then why is it we are in the body — and spend so much time there?’ he asked in one of those intimate and mysterious conversations he held with the child to the very end of his life. ‘Why need the soul descend to such clumsy confinings?’

  For their talk was very close now about ‘real things,’ and neither found any difficulty in the words of question or answer.

  ‘To get exp
erience that can only be got through the pains of limitation,’ the answer sang within him, as he lay there upon the lawn beneath the cedars, absorbing the spring beauty. ‘Everything is doing the same thing everywhere — from Smoke, Mrs. Tompkyns and Madmerzelle, right up to you, me, Daddy, and the waifs! They all have a bit of Reality in them working upwards to God. Even stones and plants and trees are learning experiences they could learn only in those particular forms—’

  ‘I know it! Of course, I know it!’ Paul interrupted, with a rush of joy in his heart he could not restrain; ‘but go on and tell me more, for I love to hear your little voice say it all.’

  ‘It’s only, perhaps, that the stones are learning patience and endurance; the flowers sweetness; the trees strength and comfort; and the rivers joy. Later they change about, so that in the end each ‘Bit of Reality’ has gathered all possible experiences in nature before it passes on into men and women.

  ‘Think, Uncle Paul, of the joy of a stone, who after centuries of patience and endurance, cramped and pressed down, knows suddenly the freedom of wind and sea! Of the restlessness of flame that, after ages of leaping unsatisfied to the sky, learns the repose of a tree, moved only by the outside forces of wind and rain! And think of the delight of all these when they pass still further upwards and reach the stage of consciousness in animals and men — and in time enter the region of development where I — where you and I, and all we knew and loved, continue together, ever climbing, fighting, learning—’

  It was curious. Afterwards he could never remember the way she ended the sentence. For the life of him he could not write it down. Definite recollection failed him, together with the loss of the actual words. Only the general sense remained in such a way as to open to his inner eye a huge vista of spiritual endeavour and advance that left him breathless and dizzy when he contemplated it, but at the same time charged most splendidly with courage and with hope.

  ‘Then the pains of limitation,’ he remembered asking, ‘the anguish of impossible yearnings that vainly seek expression — these are symptoms of growth that in the end may produce something higher and nobler?’

  Must!’ he heard the answer amid a burst of happy laughter, as though from where she stood it were possible to look back upon earthly pangs and see them in the terms of joy; ‘just like any other suffering! Like the stress of heat and pressure that turns common clay into gems—’

  He interrupted her swiftly, high hopes crowding through his spirit like the rush of an army.

  ‘Then the life in us all — the “Bits of Reality” in you and me — have passed through all possible forms in their huge upward journey to reach our present stage — ?’ He stammered amid a multitude of golden memories, half captured.

  ‘Of course. Uncle Paul, of course!’ he caught deep, deep within him the silvery faint reply. ‘And your love and sympathy with trees, winds, hills, with all Nature, even with animals’ — again her laughter ran out to him like a song—’ is because you passed long ago through them all, and half remember. You still feel with them, and your imagination for ever strives to reconstruct the various beauty known in each stage. You remember in the depths of you the longings of every particular degree — even of the time when your soul was less advanced, and groping upwards as your London waifs grope even now. This is why your sympathy with them, too, is deep and true. You half remember.’

  ‘And Death,’ he whispered, trembling with the joy of infinite spiritual desire.

  The answer sank down into him with the Little Wind that stirred the cedars overhead, or else rose singing up from the uttermost depths of his listening heart — to the end of his days he never could tell which.

  ‘What you call Death is only slipping through the Crack to a great deal more memory, and a great deal more power of seeing and telling — towards the greatest Expression that ever can be known. It is, I promise you faithfully, Uncle Paul, nothing but a verywonderfulindeed Adventure, after all!’

  THE HUMAN CHORD

  First published in 1910, this horror novel introduces the protagonist Spinrobin, who answers an advertisement placed by the Rev. Philip Skale for a new secretary. Skale lives in a house in a remote corner of Wales, where he indulges his conviction that all physical matter is a manifestation of sound waves and that the right sounds could manipulate reality itself. To this end, Skale is conducting occult experiments into sound in the hope that he will be able to gain tremendous power by uncovering the ‘true name’ of all beings and things – even of the gods themselves…

  The Welsh setting and the central theme of a man of learning using occult practices to discover an underlying truth about ancient cosmic forces reflect the influence of Arthur Machen – another writer of weird fiction, whom Blackwood greatly admired.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  To those who hear.

  Chapter I

  I

  As a boy he constructed so vividly in imagination that he came to believe in the living reality of his creations: for everybody and everything he found names — real names. Inside him somewhere stretched immense playgrounds, compared to which the hay-fields and lawns of his father’s estate seemed trivial: plains without horizon, seas deep enough to float the planets like corks, and “such tremendous forests” with “trees like tall pointed hilltops.” He had only to close his eyes, drop his thoughts inwards, sink after them himself, call aloud and — see.

  His imagination conceived and bore — worlds; but nothing in these worlds became alive until he discovered its true and living name. The name was the breath of life; and, sooner or later, he invariably found it.

  Once, having terrified his sister by affirming that a little man he had created would come through her window at night and weave a peaked cap for himself by pulling out all her hairs “that hadn’t gone to sleep with the rest of her body,” he took characteristic measures to protect her from the said depredations. He sat up the entire night on the lawn beneath her window to watch, believing firmly that what his imagination had made alive would come to pass.

  She did not know this. On the contrary, he told her that the little man had died suddenly; only, he sat up to make sure. And, for a boy of eight, those cold and haunted hours must have seemed endless from ten o’clock to four in the morning, when he crept back to his own corner of the night nursery. He possessed, you see, courage as well as faith and imagination.

  Yet the name of the little man was nothing more formidable than “Winky!”

  “You might have known he wouldn’t hurt you, Teresa,” he said. “Any one with that name would be light as a fly and awf’ly gentle — a regular dicky sort of chap!”

  “But he’d have pincers,” she protested, “or he couldn’t pull the hairs out. Like an earwig he’d be. Ugh!”

  “Not Winky! Never!” he explained scornfully, jealous of his offspring’s reputation. “He’d do it with his rummy little fingers.”

  “Then his fingers would have claws at the ends!” she insisted; for no amount of explanation could persuade her that a person named Winky could be nice and gentle, even though he were “quicker than a second.” She added that his death rejoiced her.

  “But I can easily make another — such a nippy little beggar, and twice as hoppy as the first. Only I won’t do it,” he added magnanimously, “because it frightens you.”

  For to name with him was to create. He had only to run out some distance into his big mental prairie, call aloud a name in a certain commanding way, and instantly its owner would run up to claim it. Names described souls. To learn the name of a thing or person was to know all about them and make them subservient to his will; and “Winky”
could only have been a very soft and furry little person, swift as a shadow, nimble as a mouse — just the sort of fellow who would make a conical cap out of a girl’s fluffy hair … and love the mischief of doing it.

  And so with all things: names were vital and important. To address beings by their intimate first names, beings of the opposite sex especially, was a miniature sacrament; and the story of that premature audacity of Elsa with Lohengrin never failed to touch his sense of awe. “What’s in a name?” for him, was a significant question — a question of life or death. For to mispronounce a name was a bad blunder, but to name it wrongly was to miss it altogether. Such a thing had no real life, or at best a vitality that would soon fade. Adam knew that! And he pondered much in his childhood over the difficulty Adam must have had “discovering” the correct appellations for some of the queerer animals….

  As he grew older, of course, all this faded a good deal, but he never quite lost the sense of reality in names — the significance of a true name, the absurdity of a false one, the cruelty of mispronunciation. One day in the far future, he knew, some wonderful girl would come into his life, singing her own true name like music, her whole personality expressing it just as her lips framed the consonants and vowels — and he would love her. His own name, ridiculous and hateful though it was, would sing in reply. They would be in harmony together in the literal sense, as necessary to one another as two notes in the same chord….

  So he also possessed the mystical vision of the poet. What he lacked — such temperaments always do — was the sense of proportion and the careful balance that adjusts cause and effect. And this it is, no doubt, that makes his adventures such “hard sayings.” It becomes difficult to disentangle what actually did happen from what conceivably might have happened; what he thinks he saw from what positively was.