Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  ‘A what?’ he asked, speaking low as they did. ‘Do I know a what?’

  ‘A cave where lost starlight collects,’ Monkey repeated, ‘a Star

  Cave.’

  And Jimbo said aloud the verses he had already learned by heart. While his small voice gave the words, more than a little mixed, a bird high up among the boughs woke from its beauty sleep and sang. The two sounds mingled. But the singing of the bird brought back the scenery of the Vicarage garden, and with it the strange, passionate things the old clergyman had said. The two scenes met in his mind, passed in and out of one another like rings of smoke, interchanged, and finally formed a new picture all their own, where flowers danced upon a carpet of star-dust that glittered in mid-air.

  He knew some sudden, deep enchantment of the spirit. The Fairyland the world had lost spread all about him, and — he had the children close. The imaginative faculty that for years had invented ingenious patents, woke in force, and ran headlong down far sweeter channels — channels that fastened mind, heart, and soul together in a single intricate network of soft belief. He remembered the dusk upon the Crayfield lawns.

  ‘Of course I know a Star Cave,’ he said at length, when Jimbo had finished his recitation, and Monkey had added the details their father had told them. ‘I know the very one your Daddy spoke about. It’s not far from where we’re sitting. It’s over there.’ He pointed up to the mountain heights behind them, but Jimbo guided his hand in the right direction — towards the Boudry slopes where the forests dip upon the precipices of the Areuse.

  ‘Yes, that’s it — exactly,’ he said, accepting the correction instantly; ‘only I go to the top of the mountains first so as to slide down with the river of starlight.’

  ‘We go straight,’ they told him in one breath.

  ‘Because you’ve got more star-stuff in your eyes than I have, and find the way better,’ he explained.

  That touched their sense of pity. ‘But you can have ours,’ they cried, ‘we’ll share it.’

  ‘No,’ he answered softly, ‘better keep your own. I can get plenty now. Indeed, to tell the truth — though it’s a secret between ourselves, remember — that’s the real reason I’ve come out here. I want to get a fresh supply to take back to London with me. One needs a fearful lot in London — —’

  ‘But there’s no sun in London to melt it,’ objected Monkey instantly.

  ‘There’s fog though, and it gets lost in fog like ink in blotting- paper. There’s never enough to go round. I’ve got to collect an awful lot before I go back.’

  ‘That’ll take more than a week,’ she said triumphantly.

  They fastened themselves closer against him, like limpets on a rock.

  ‘I told you there was lots to do here,’ whispered Monkey again.

  ‘You’ll never get it done in a week.’

  ‘And how will you take it back?’ asked Jimbo in the same breath. The answer went straight to the boy’s heart.

  ‘In a train, of course. I’ve got an express train here on purpose — —’

  ‘The “Rapide”?’ he interrupted, his blue eyes starting like flowers from the earth.

  ‘Quicker far than that. I’ve got — —’

  They stared so hard and so expectantly, it was almost like an interruption. The bird paused in its rushing song to listen too.

  ‘ —— a Starlight Express,’ he finished, caught now in the full tide of fairyland. ‘It came here several nights ago. It’s being loaded up as full as ever it can carry. I’m to drive it back again when once it’s ready.’

  ‘Where is it now?’

  ‘Who’s loading it?’

  ‘How fast does it go? Are there accidents and collisions?’

  ‘How do you find the way?’

  ‘May I drive it with you?’

  ‘Tell us exactly everything in the world about it — at once!’

  Questions poured in a flood about him, and his imagination leaped to their answering. Above them the curtain of the Night shook out her million stars while they lay there talking with bated breath together. On every single point he satisfied them, and himself as well. He told them all — his visit to the Manor House, the sprites he found there still alive and waiting as he had made them in his boyhood, their songs and characters, the Dustman, Sweep, and Lamplighter, the Laugher, and the Woman of the Haystack, the blue-eyed Guard ——

  ‘But now her eyes are brown, aren’t they?’ Monkey asked, peering very close into his face. At the same moment she took his heart and hid it deep away among her tumbling hair.

  ‘I was coming to that. They’re brown now, of course, because in this different atmosphere brown eyes see better than blue in the dark. The colours of signals vary in different countries.

  ‘And I’m the mecanicien,’ cried Jimbo. ‘I drive the engine.’

  ‘And I’m your stoker,’ he agreed, ‘because here we burn wood instead of coal, and I’m director in a wood-paving company and so know all about it.’

  They did not pause to dissect his logic — but just tore about full speed with busy plans and questionings. He began to wonder how in the world he would satisfy them — and satisfy himself as well! — when the time should come to introduce them to Express and Cave and Passengers. For if he failed in that, the reality of the entire business must fall to the ground. Yet the direct question did not come. He wondered more and more. Neither child luckily insisted on immediate tangible acquaintance. They did not even hint about it. So far the whole thing had gone splendidly and easily, like floating a new company with the rosiest prospectus in the world; but the moment must arrive when profits and dividends would have to justify mere talk. Concrete results would be demanded. If not forthcoming, where would his position be?

  Yet, still the flood of questions, answers, explanations flowed on without the critical sentence making its appearance. He had led them well — so far. How in the world, though, was he to keep it up, and provide definite result at the end?

  Then suddenly the truth dawned upon him. It was not he who led after all; it was they. He was being led. They knew. They understood. The reins of management lay in their small capable hands, and he had never really held them at all. Most cleverly, with utmost delicacy, they had concealed from him his real position. They were Directors, he the merest shareholder, useful only for ‘calls.’ The awkward question that he feared would never come, but instead he would receive instructions. ‘Keep close to the children; they will guide you.’ The words flashed back. He was a helpless prisoner; but had only just discovered the fact. He supplied the funds; they did the construction. Their plans and schemes netted his feet in fairyland just as surely as the weight of their little warm, soft bodies fastened him to the boulder where he sat. He could not move. He could not go further without their will and leadership.

  But his captivity was utterly delightful to him….

  The sound of a deep bell from the Colombier towers floated in to them between the trees. The children sprang from his knees. He rose slowly, a little cramped and stiff.

  ‘Half-past six,’ said Jimbo. ‘We must go back for supper.’

  He stood there a moment, stretching, while the others waited, staring up at him as though he were a tree. And he felt like a big tree; they were two wild-flowers his great roots sheltered down below.

  And at that moment, in the little pause before they linked up arms and started home again, the Question of Importance came, though not in the way he had expected it would come.

  ‘Cousinenry, do you sleep very tightly at night, please?’ Monkey asked it, but Jimbo stepped up nearer to watch the reply.

  ‘Like a top,’ he said, wondering.

  Signals he tried vainly to intercept flashed between the pair of them.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ as nothing further seemed forthcoming.

  ‘Oh, just to know,’ she explained. ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘Yes, it’s quite all right like that,’ added Jimbo. And without more ado they took his arms and pulled hi
m out of the forest.

  And Henry Rogers heard something deep, deep down within himself echo the verdict.

  ‘I think it is all right.’

  On the way home there were no puddles, but there were three pairs of eyes — and the stars were uncommonly thick overhead. The children asked him almost as many questions as there were clusters of them between the summits of Boudry and La Tourne. All three went floundering in that giant Net. It was so different, too, from anything they had been accustomed to. Their father’s stories, answers, explanations, and the like, were ineffective because they always felt he did not quite believe them himself even while he gave them. He did not think he believed them, that is. But Cousin Henry talked of stars and star- stuff as though he had some in his pocket at the moment. And, of course, he had. For otherwise they would not have listened. He could not have held their attention.

  They especially liked the huge, ridiculous words he used, because such words concealed great mysteries that pulsed with wonder and exquisitely wound them up. Daddy made things too clear. The bones of impossibility were visible. They saw thin nakedness behind the explanations, till the sense of wonder faded. They were not babies to be fed with a string of one-syllable words!

  Jimbo kept silence mostly, his instinct ever being to conceal his ignorance; but Monkey talked fifteen to the dozen, filling the pauses with long ‘ohs’ and bursts of laughter and impudent observations. Yet her cheeky insolence never crossed the frontier where it could be resented. Her audacity stopped short of impertinence.

  ‘There’s a point beyond which—’ her cousin would say gravely, when she grew more daring than usual; and, while answering ‘It’ll stick into you, then, not into me,’ she yet withdrew from the borders of impertinence at once.

  ‘What is star-stuff really then?’ she asked.

  ‘The primordial substance of the universe,’ he answered solemnly, no whit ashamed of his inaccuracy.

  ‘Ah yes!’ piped Jimbo, quietly. Ecole primaire he understood. This must be something similar.

  ‘But what does it do, I mean, and why is it good for people to have it in them — on them — whatever it is?’ she inquired.

  ‘It gives sympathy and insight; it’s so awfully subtle and delicate,’ he answered. ‘A little of it travels down on every ray and soaks down into you. It makes you feel inclined to stick to other people and understand them. That’s sympathy.’

  ‘Sympathie,’ said Jimbo for his sister’s benefit apparently, but in reality because he himself was barely treading water.

  ‘But sympathy,’ the other went on, ‘is no good without insight — which means seeing things as others see them — from inside. That’s insight—’

  ‘Inside sight,’ she corrected him.

  ‘That’s it. You see, the first stuff that existed in the universe was this star-stuff — nebulae. Having nothing else to stick to, it stuck to itself, and so got thicker. It whirled in vortices. It grew together in sympathy, for sympathy brings together. It whirled and twirled round itself till it got at last into solid round bodies — worlds — stars. It passed, that is, from mere dreaming into action. And when the rays soak into you, they change your dreaming into action. You feel the desire to do things — for others.’

  ‘Ah! yes,’ repeated Jimbo, ‘like that.’

  ‘You must be full of vorty seas, then, because you’re so long,’ said

  Monkey, ‘but you’ll never grow into a solid round body — —’

  He took a handful of her hair and smothered the remainder of the sentence.

  ‘The instant a sweet thought is born in your mind,’ he continued, ‘the heavenly stables send their starry messengers to harness it for use. A ray, perhaps, from mighty Sirius picks it out of your heart at birth.’

  ‘Serious!’ exclaimed Jimbo, as though the sun were listening.

  ‘Sirius — another sun, that is, far bigger than our own — a perfect giant, yet so far away you hardly notice him.’

  The boy clasped his dirty fingers and stared hard. The sun was listening.

  ‘Then what I think is known — like that — all over the place?’ he asked. He held himself very straight indeed.

  ‘Everywhere,’ replied Cousinenry gravely. ‘The stars flash your thoughts over the whole universe. None are ever lost. Sooner or later they appear in visible shape. Some one, for instance, must have thought this flower long ago’ — he stooped and picked a blue hepatica at their feet— ‘or it couldn’t be growing here now.’

  Jimbo accepted the statement with his usual gravity.

  ‘Then I shall always think enormous and tremendous things — powerful locomotives, like that and — and — —’

  ‘The best is to think kind little sweet things about other people,’ suggested the other. ‘You see the results quicker then.’

  ‘Mais oui,’ was the reply, ‘je pourrai faire ca au meme temps, n’est- ce pas?’

  ‘Parfaitemong,’ agreed his big cousin.

  ‘There’s no room in her for inside sight,’ observed Monkey as a portly dame rolled by into the darkness. ‘You can’t tell her front from her back.’ It was one of the governesses.

  ‘We’ll get her into the cave and change all that,’ her cousin said reprovingly. ‘You must never judge by outside alone. Puddings should teach you that.’

  But no one could reprove Monkey without running a certain risk.

  ‘We don’t have puddings here,’ she said, ‘we have dessert — sour oranges and apples.’

  She flew from his side and vanished down the street and into the Citadelle courtyard before he could think of anything to say. A shooting star flashed at the same moment behind the church tower, vanishing into the gulf of Boudry’s shadow. They seemed to go at the same pace together.

  ‘Oh, I say!’ said Jimbo sedately, ‘you must punish her for that, you know. Shall I come with you to the carpenter’s?’ he added, as they stood a moment by the fountain. ‘There’s just ten minutes to wash and brush your hair for supper.’

  ‘I think I can find my way alone,’ he answered, ‘thank you all the same.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he said, lifting his cap as the village fashion was, and watching his cousin’s lengthy figure vanish down the street.

  ‘We’ll meet at the Pension later,’ the voice came back, ‘and in the morning I shall have a lot of correspondence to attend to. Bring your shorthand book and lots of pencils, mind.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Oh, half a dozen will do.’

  The boy turned in and hurried after his sister. But he was so busy collecting all the pencils and paper he could find that he forgot to brush his hair, and consequently appeared at the supper table with a head like a tangled blackberry bush. His eyes were bright as stars.

  CHAPTER XIV

  O pure one, take thy seat in the barque of the Sun,

  And sail thou over the sky.

  Sail thou with the imperishable stars,

  Sail thou with the unwearied stars.

  Pyramid Texts, Dynasty VI.

  But Henry Rogers ran the whole two hundred yards to his lodgings in the carpenter’s house. He ran as though the entire field of brilliant stars were at his heels. There was bewilderment, happiness, exhilaration in his blood. He had never felt so light-hearted in his life. He felt exactly fifteen years of age — and a half. The half was added to ensure a good, safe margin over the other two.

  But he was late for supper too — later than the children, for first he jotted down some notes upon the back of an envelope. He wrote them at high speed, meaning to correct them later, but the corrections were never made. Later, when he came to bed, the envelope had been tidied away by the careful housewife into the dustbin. And he was ashamed to ask for them. The carpenter’s wife read English.

  ‘Pity,’ he said to himself. ‘I don’t believe Minks could have done it better!’

  The energy that went to the making of those ‘notes’ would have run down different channels a few years ago. It would have gone into s
ome ingenious patent. The patent, however, might equally have gone into the dustbin. There is an enormous quantity of misdirected energy pouring loose about the world!

  The notes had run something like this —

  O children, open your arms to me,

  Let your hair fall over my eyes;

  Let me sleep a moment — and then awake

  In your Gardens of sweet Surprise!

  For the grown-up folk

  Are a wearisome folk,

  And they laugh my fancies to scorn,

  My fun and my fancies to scorn.

  O children, open your hearts to me,

  And tell me your wonder-thoughts;

  Who lives in the palace inside your brain?

  Who plays in its outer courts?

  Who hides in the hours To-morrow holds?

  Who sleeps in your yesterdays?

  Who tiptoes along past the curtained folds

  Of the shadow that twilight lays?

  O children, open your eyes to me,

  And tell me your visions too;

  Who squeezes the sponge when the salt tears flow

  To dim their magical blue?

  Who draws up their blinds when the sun peeps in?

  Who fastens them down at night?

  Who brushes the fringe of their lace-veined lids?

  Who trims their innocent light?

  Then, children, I beg you, sing low to me,

  And cover my eyes with your hands;

  O kiss me again till I sleep and dream

  That I’m lost in your fairylands;

  For the grown-up folk

  Are a troublesome folk,