Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  “Been further east, I suppose?” the engineer observed, one afternoon as the steamer lay off Broussa, taking on a little extra cargo of walnut logs. He looked admiringly at the Irishman’s bronzed skin. “Take a better sun than this to put that on!”

  He laughed in his breezy, vigorous way, and the other laughed with him. Previous conversations had already paved the way to a traveler’s friendship, and the American had taken to him.

  “Up in the mountains,” he replied, “camping out and sleeping in the sun did it.”

  “The Caucasus! Ah, I’d like to get up there myself a bit. I’m told they’re a wonderful thing in the mountain line.”

  Scenery for him was evidently a commercial commodity, or it was nothing.

  It was the most up-to-date nation in the world that spoke — in the van of

  civilization — representing the last word in progress due to triumph over

  Nature.

  O’Malley said he had never seen anything like them. He described the trees, the flowers, the tribes, the scenery in general; he dwelt upon the vast uncultivated spaces, the amazing fruitfulness of the soil, the gorgeous beauty above all. “I’d like to get the overcrowded cities of England and Europe spread all over it,” he said with enthusiasm. “There is room for thousands there to lead a simple life close to Nature, in health and peace and happiness. Even your tired millionaires could escape their restless, feverish worries, lay down their weary burden of possessions, and enjoy the earth at last. The poor would cease to be with us; life become true and beautiful again—” He let it pour out of him, building the scaffolding of his dream before him in the air and filling it in with beauty.

  The American listened in patience, watching the walnut logs being towed through the water to the side of the ship. From time to time he spat on them, or into the sea. He let the beauty go completely past him.

  “Great idea, that!” he interrupted at length. “You’re interested, I see, in socialism and communistic schemes. There’s money in them somewhere right enough, if a man only could hit the right note at the first go off. Take a bit of doing, though!”

  One of the women from Baku came up and leaned upon the rails a little beyond them. The sickly odor of artificial scent wafted down. The attaché strolled along the deck and ogled her.

  “Get a few of that sort to draw the millionaires in, eh?” he added vulgarly.

  “Even those would come, yes,” said the Irishman softly, realizing for the first time within his memory that his gorge did not rise, “for they too would change, grow clean and sweet and beautiful.”

  The engineer looked sharply into his face, uncertain whether he had not missed a clever witticism of his own kind. But O’Malley did not meet his glance. His eyes were far away upon the snowy summit of Olympus where a flock of fleecy clouds hung hovering like the hair of the eternal gods.

  “They say there’s timber going to waste that you could get to the coast merely for the cost of drawing it — Caucasian walnut, too, to burn,” the other continued, getting on to safer ground, “and labor’s dirt cheap. There’s every sort of mineral too God ever made. You could build light railways and run the show by electricity. And water-power for the asking. You’d have to get a Concession from Russia first though,” he added, spitting down upon a huge floating log in the clear sea underneath, “and Russia’s got palms that want a lot of greasing. I guess the natives, too, would take a bit of managing.”

  The woman beyond had shifted several feet nearer, and after a pause the Irishman found no words to fill, his companion turned to address a remark to her. O’Malley took the opening and moved away.

  “Here’s my card, anyway,” the American added, handing him an over-printed bit of large pasteboard from a fat pocket-book that bore his name and address in silver on the outside. “If you develop the scheme and want a bit of money, count me in.”

  He went to the other side of the vessel and watched the peasants on the lower deck. Their dirt seemed nothing by comparison. It was only on their clothes and bodies. The odor of this unwashed humanity was almost sweet and wholesome. It cleansed the sickly taint of that other scent from his palate; it washed his mind of thoughts as well.

  He stood there long in dreaming silence, while the sunlight on Olympus turned from gold to rose, and the sea took on the colors of the fading sky. He watched a dark Kurd baby sliding down the tarpaulin. A kitten was playing with a loose end of rope too heavy for it to move. Further off a huge fellow with bared chest and the hands of a colossus sat on a pile of canvas playing softly on his wooden pipes. The dark hair fell across his eyes, and a group of women listened idly while they busied themselves with the cooking of the evening meal. Immediately beneath him a splendid-eyed young woman crammed a baby to her naked breast. The kitten left the rope and played with the tassel of her scarlet shawl.

  And as he heard those pipes and watched the grave, untamed, strong faces of those wild peasant men and women, he understood that, low though they might be in scale of evolution, there was yet absent from them the touch of that deteriorating something which civilization painted into those other countenances. But whether the word he sought was degradation or whether it was shame, he could not tell. In all they did, the way they moved, their dignity and independence, there was this something, he felt, that bordered on being impressive. Their wants were few, their worldly possessions in a bundle, yet they had this thing that set them in a place apart, if not above, these others: — beyond that simpering attaché for all his worldly diplomacy, that engineer with brains and skill, those painted women with their clever playing upon the feelings and desires of their kind. There was this difference that set the ragged dirty crew in a proud and quiet atmosphere that made them seem almost distinguished by comparison, and certainly more desirable. Rough and untutored though they doubtless were, they still possessed unspoiled that deeper and more elemental nature that bound them closer to the Earth. It needed training, guidance, purifying; yes; but, in the last resort, was it not of greater spiritual significance and value than the mode of comparatively recently-developed reason by which Civilization had produced these other types?

  He watched them long. The sun sank out of sight, the sea turned dark, ten thousand stars shone softly in the sky, and while the steamer swung about and made for peaked Andros and the coast of Greece, he still stood on in reverie and wonder. The wings of his great Dream stirred mightily … and he saw pale millions of men and women trooping through the gates of horn and ivory into that Garden where they should find peace and happiness in clean simplicity close to the Earth….

  CHAPTER XLII

  There followed four days then of sea, Greece left behind, Messina and the Lipari Islands past; and the blue outline of Sardinia and Corsica began to keep pace with them as they neared the narrow straits of Bonifacio between them. The passengers came up to watch the rocky desolate shores slip by so close, and Captain Burgenfelder was on the bridge.

  Grey-headed rocks rose everywhere close about the ship; overhead the seagulls cried and circled; no vegetation was visible on either shore, no houses, no abode of man — nothing but the lighthouses, then miles of deserted rock dressed in those splendors of the sun’s good-night. The dinner-gong had sounded but the sight was too magnificent to leave, for the setting sun floated on an emblazoned sea and stared straight against them in level glory down the narrow passage. Unimaginable colors painted sky and wave. The ruddy cliffs of bleak loneliness rose from a bed of flame. Soft airs fanned the cheeks with welcome coolness after the fierce heat of the day. There was a scent of wild honey in the air borne from the purple uplands far, far away.

  “I wonder, oh, I wonder, if they realized that a god is passing close…!” the Irishman murmured with a rising of the heart, “and that here is a great mood of the Earth-Consciousness inviting them to peace! Or do they merely see a yellow sun that dips beneath a violet sea…?”

  The washing of the water past the steamer’s sides caught away the rest of the half-whispered words.
He remembered that host of many thousand heads that bowed in silence while a god swept by…. It was almost a shock to hear a voice replying close beside him: —

  “Come to my cabin when you’re ready. My windows open to the west. We can be alone together. We can have there what food we need. You would prefer it perhaps?”

  He felt the touch of that sympathetic hand upon his shoulder, and bent his head to signify agreement.

  For a moment, face to face with that superb sunset, he had known a deep and utter peace in the vast bosom of this greater soul about him. Her consciousness again had bruised and fringed his own. Across that delicately divided threshold the beauty and the power of the gods had poured in a flood into his being. And only there was peace, only there was joy, only there was the death of those ancient yearnings that tortured his little personal and separate existence. The return to the world was aching pain again. The old loneliness that seemed more than he could bear swept icily through him, contracting life and freezing every spring of joy. For in that single instant of return he felt pass into him a loneliness of the whole travailing world, the loneliness of countless centuries, the loneliness of all the races of the Earth who were exiled and had lost the way.

  Too deep it lay for words or tears or sighs. The doctor’s invitation came most opportunely. And presently in silence he turned his back upon that opal sky of dream from which the sun had gone, and walked slowly down the deck toward Stahl’s cabin.

  “If only I can share it with them,” he thought as he went; “if only men will listen, if only they will come. To keep it all to myself, to dream alone, will kill me.”

  And as he stood before the door it seemed he heard wild rushing through the sky, the tramping of a thousand hoofs, a roaring of the wind, the joy of that free, torrential passage with the Earth. He turned the handle and entered the cozy room where weeks before they held the inquest on the little empty tenement of flesh, remembering how that other figure had once stood where he now stood — part of the sunrise, part of the sea, part of the morning winds.

  * * * * *

  They had their meal almost in silence, while the glow of sunset filled the cabin through the western row of port-holes, and when it was over Stahl made the coffee as of old and lit the familiar black cigar. Slowly O’Malley’s pain and restlessness gave way before the other’s soothing quiet. He had never known him before so calm and gentle, so sympathetic, almost tender. The usual sarcasm seemed veiled in sadness; there was no irony in the voice, nor mockery in the eyes.

  Then to the Irishman it came suddenly that all these days while he had been lost in dreaming the doctor had kept him as of old under close observation. The completeness of his reverie had concealed from him this steady scrutiny. He had been oblivious to the fact that Stahl had all the time been watching, investigating, keenly examining. Abruptly he now realized it.

  And then Stahl spoke. His tone was winning, his manner frank and inviting. But it was the sadness about him that won O’Malley’s confidence so wholly.

  “I can guess,” he said, “something of the dream you’ve brought with you from those mountains. I can understand — more, perhaps, than you imagine, and I can sympathize — more than you think possible. Tell me about it fully — if you can. I see your heart is very full, and in the telling you will find relief. I am not hostile, as you sometimes feel. Tell me, my dear, young clear-eyed friend. Tell me your vision and your hope. Perhaps I might even help … for there may be things that I could also tell to you in return.”

  Something in the choice of words, none of which offended; in the atmosphere and setting, no detail of which jarred; and in the degree of balance between utterance and silence his world of inner forces just then knew, combined to make the invitation irresistible. Moreover, he had wanted to tell it all these days. Stahl was already half convinced. Stahl would surely understand and help him. It was the psychological moment for confession. The two men rose in the same moment, Stahl to lock the cabin doors against interruption, O’Malley to set their chairs more closely side by side so that talking should be easiest.

  And then without demur or hesitation he opened his heart to this other and let the floodgates of his soul swing wide. He told the vision and he told the dream; he told his hope as well. And the story of his passion, filled in with pages from those notebooks he ever carried in his pocket, still lasted when the western glow had faded from the sky and the thick-sown stars shone down upon the gliding steamer. The hush of night lay soft upon the world before he finished.

  He told the thing complete, much, I imagine, as he told it all to me upon the roof of that apartment building and in the dingy Soho restaurant. He told it without reservations — his life-long yearnings: the explanation brought by the presence of the silent stranger upon the outward voyage: the journey to the Garden: the vision that all life — from gods to flowers, from men to mountains — lay contained in the conscious Being of the Earth, that Beauty was but glimpses of her essential nakedness; and that salvation of the world’s disease of modern life was to be found in a general return to the simplicity of Nature close against her mothering heart. He told it all — in words that his passionate joy chose faultlessly.

  And Heinrich Stahl in silence listened. He asked no single question. He made no movement in his chair. His black cigar went out before the half of it was smoked. The darkness hid his face impenetrably.

  And no one came to interrupt. The murmur of the speeding steamer, and occasional footsteps on the deck as passengers passed to and fro in the cool of the night, were the only sounds that broke the music of that incurable idealist’s impassioned story.

  CHAPTER XLIII

  And then at length there came a change of voice across the cabin. The Irishman had finished. He sank back in the deep leather chair, exhausted physically, but with the exultation of his mighty hope still pouring at full strength through his heart. For he had ventured further than ever before and had spoken of a possible crusade — a crusade that should preach peace and happiness to every living creature.

  And Dr. Stahl, in a voice that showed how deeply he was moved, asked quietly: —

  “By leading the nations back to Nature you think they shall advance to Truth at last?”

  “With time,” was the reply. “The first step lies there: — in changing the direction of the world’s activities, changing it from the transient Outer to the eternal Inner. In the simple life, external possessions unnecessary and recognized as vain, the soul would turn within and seek Reality. Only a tiny section of humanity has time to do it now. There is no leisure. Civilization means acquirement for the body: it ought to mean development for the soul. Once sweep aside the trash and rubbish men seek outside themselves today, and the wings of their smothered souls would stir again. Consciousness would expand. Nature would draw them first. They would come to feel the Earth as I did. Self would disappear, and with it this false sense of separateness. The greater consciousness would waken in them. The peace and joy and blessedness of inner growth would fill their lives. But, first, this childish battling to the death for external things must cease, and Civilization stand revealed for the bleak and empty desolate thing it really is. It leads away from God and from the things that are eternal.”

  The German made no answer; O’Malley ceased to speak; a long silence fell between them. Then, presently, Stahl relighted his cigar, and lapsing into his native tongue — always a sign with him of deepest seriousness — he began to talk.

  “You’ve honored me,” he said, “with a great confidence; and I am deeply, deeply grateful. You have told your inmost dream — the thing men find it hardest of all to speak about.” He felt in the darkness for his companion’s hand and held it tightly for a moment. He made no other comment upon what he had heard. “And in return — in some small way of return,” he continued, “I may ask you to listen to something of my own, something of possible interest. No one has ever known it from my lips. Only, in our earlier conversations on the outward voyage, I hinted at it once or
twice. I sometimes warned you—”

  “I remember. You said he’d ‘get’ me, ‘win’ me over— ‘appropriation’ was the word you used.”

  “I suggested caution, yes; urged you not to let yourself go too completely; told you he represented danger to yourself, and to humanity as it is organized today—”

  “And all the rest,” put in O’Malley a shade impatiently. “I remember perfectly.”

  “Because I knew what I was talking about.” The doctor’s voice came across the darkness somewhat ominously. And then he added in a louder tone, evidently sitting forward as he said it: “For the thing that has happened to yourself as I foresaw it would, had already almost happened to me too!”

  “To you, doctor, too?” exclaimed the Irishman in the moment’s pause that followed.

  “I saved myself just in time — by getting rid of the cause.”

  “You discharged him from the hospital, because you were afraid!” He said it sharply as though are instant of the old resentment had flashed up.

  By way of answer Stahl rose from his chair and abruptly turned up the electric lamp upon the desk that faced them across the cabin. Evidently he preferred the light. O’Malley saw that his face was white and very grave. He grasped for the first time that the man was speaking professionally. The truth came driving next behind it — that Stahl regarded him as a patient.

  * * * * *

  “Please go on, doctor,” he said, keenly on the watch. “I’m deeply interested.” The wings of his great dream still bore him too far aloft for him to feel more than the merest passing annoyance at his discovery. Resentment had gone too. Sadness and disappointment for an instant touched him perhaps, but momentarily. In the end he felt sure that Stahl would stand at his side, completely won over and convinced.