Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  And the symbolism of the story, the so-called fantasy, they also easily understood, because they felt it true. To be ‘out’ of the body was merely to think and feel away from self. As they listened they realised themselves in touch with every nation and with every time, with all possible beliefs and disbeliefs, with every conceivable kind of thinking, that is, which ever has existed or ever shall exist….

  The heat and radiance given out by the clear delivery of this ‘inspirational’ fairy-tale must have been very strong; far-reaching it certainly was….

  ‘Ah!’ sighed Rogers to himself, ‘if only I could be like that!’ not realising that he was so.

  ‘Oh dear!’ felt the Woman, ‘that’s what I’ve felt sometimes. I only wish it were true of me!’ unaware that it could be, and even by the fact of her yearning, was so.

  ‘If only I could get up and help the world!’ passed like a flame across the heart of the sufferer who lay on her sleepless bed next door, listening to the sound of the droning voice that reached her through the wall, yet curiously ignorant that this very longing was already majestically effective in the world of definite action.

  And even Mother Plume, pacing her airless room at the further end of the village and tapping her ebony stick upon the floor, turned suspiciously, as at a passing flash of light that warmed her for a sudden instant as it went.

  ‘Perhaps, after all, they don’t mean all these unkind things they do to me!’ she thought; ‘I live so much alone. Possibly I see things less clearly than I used to do!’

  The spell was certainly very potent, though Daddy himself, reading out the little shining chapters, guessed as little as the rest of them how strong. So small a part of what he meant to say, it seemed, had been transferred to the paper. More than he realised, far, far more, lay between the lines, of course. There was conviction in it, because there was vision and belief. Not much was said when he put his roll of paper down and leaned back in his chair. Riquette opened her eyes and blinked narrowly, then closed them again and began to purr. The ticking of the cuckoo clock seemed suddenly very loud and noticeable.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mother quietly in an uncertain kind of voice. ‘The world seems very wonderful now — quite different.’

  She moved in her chair — the first movement she had made for over two hours. Daddy rubbed his eyes, stroked his beard, and lit a cigarette; it went out almost immediately, but he puffed on at it just the same, till his cousin struck a match and stood over him to see it properly alight.

  ‘You have caught Beauty naked in your net of stars,’ he murmured; ‘but you have left her as you found her — shining, silvery, unclothed. Others will see her, too. You have taken us all back into Fairyland, and I, for one, shall never get out again.’

  ‘Nor I,’ breathed some one in the shadows by the window….

  The clock struck two. ‘Odd,’ said Mother, softly, ‘but I never heard it strike once while you were reading!’

  ‘We’ve all been out,’ Rogers laughed significantly, ‘just as you make them get out in the story’; and then, while Riquette yawned and turned a moment from the window-sill to say thank you for her long, warm sleep, Mother lit the spirit-lamp and brewed the cups of chocolate. She tiptoed in next door, and as she entered the sick-room she saw through the steam rising from the cup she carried a curious thing — an impression of brilliance about the bed, as though shafts of light issued from it. Rays pulsed and trembled in the air. There was a perfume of flowers. It seemed she stepped back into the atmosphere of the story for an instant.

  ‘Ah, you’re not asleep,’ she whispered. ‘We’ve brewed some chocolate, and I thought you might like a cup.’

  ‘No, I’m not asleep,’ answered the other woman from the bed she never would leave until she was carried from it, ‘but I have been dreaming. It seemed the stars came down into my room and sang to me; this bed became a throne; and some power was in me by which I could send my thoughts out to help the world. I sent them out as a king sends messengers — to people everywhere — even to people I’ve never heard of. Isn’t it wonderful?’

  ‘You’ve had no pain?’ For Mother knew that these sleepless hours at night brought usually intense suffering. She stared at her, noting how the eyes shone and glistened with unshed moisture.

  ‘None,’ was the answer, ‘but only the greatest joy and peace I’ve ever known.’ The little glass of calmant was untouched; it was not a drug that had soothed the exhausted nerves. In this room at any rate the spell was working still. ‘I was carried through the air by stars, as though my ceaseless yearning to get up and work in the world for once was realised.’

  ‘You can do everything from your bed,’ her friend murmured, sitting down beside her. ‘You do. Your thoughts go out so strongly. I’ve often felt them myself. Perhaps that’s why God put you here in bed like this,’ she added, surprised at the power in herself that made her say such things— ‘just to think and pray for the world.’

  ‘I do pray sometimes for others,’ the tortured woman answered modestly, ‘but this time I was not conscious of praying at all. It all swept out of me of its own accord. The force in me seemed so free and inexhaustible that it overflowed. It was irresistible. I felt able to save the world.’

  ‘You were out,’ said Mother softly, ‘out of yourself, I mean,’ she corrected it. ‘And your lovely thoughts go everywhere. You do save the world.’

  There fell a long silence then between them.

  ‘You’ve been reading aloud,’ Mlle. Lemaire said presently. ‘I heard the drone of the voice through the wall—’

  ‘Daddy was reading his new story to us,’ the other said. ‘It didn’t disturb you?’

  ‘On the contrary. I think it was the voice somehow that brought the vision. I listened vaguely at first, trying to sleep; then, opening my eyes suddenly, the room, as I told you, was full of stars. Their rays caught hold of me and drew these forces out of my very heart. I yielded, giving and giving and giving … such life flowed from me, and they carried it away in streams…. Oh, it was really like a divine sensation.’ ‘It was divine,’ said Mother, but whether she meant the story or her friend’s experience, she hardly knew herself.

  ‘And the story — was it not about our little Bourcelles?’ asked the other.

  Mother held her hands up as though words failed her. She opened her arms wide. She was not quite sure of her voice.

  ‘It was,’ she said at length, ‘but Bourcelles had grown into the universe. It’s a fairy-tale, but it’s like a great golden fire. It warmed my heart till my whole body seemed all heart, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It makes you see that the whole world is one, and that the sun and moon and stars lie in so small and unimportant a thing as, say, Jimbo’s mischief, or Monkey’s impudence, or Jinny’s backwardness and absurdity. All are in sympathy together, as in a network, and to feel sympathy with anything, even the most insignificant, connects you instantly with the Whole. Thought and sympathy are the Universe — they are life.’

  While Mother paused for breath, her old friend smiled a curious, meaning smile, as though she heard a thing that she had always known.

  ‘And all of us are in the story, and all the things we think are alive and active too, because we have created them. Our thoughts populate the world, flying everywhere to help or hinder others, you see.’

  The sound of a door opening was heard. Mother got up to go. Shafts of light again seemed to follow her from the figure in the bed.

  ‘Good-night,’ she whispered with a full heart, while her thought ran suddenly— ‘You possess the secret of life and of creation, for suffering has taught it to you, and you have really known it always. But Daddy has put it into words for everybody.’ She felt proud as a queen.

  There were whispered good-nights then in the corridor, for Rogers and her husband were on their way home to bed.

  ‘Your chocolate is getting cold,’ said Daddy kindly.

  ‘We thought you would probably stay in there. We’re going over n
ow.

  It’s very late,’ Rogers added. They said good-night again.

  She closed and locked the great door of the Citadelle behind them, hearing their steps upon the cobbles in the yard, and for some time afterwards upon the road. But their going away seemed the same as coming nearer. She felt so close to everything that lived. Everything did live. Her heart included all that existed, that ever had existed, that ever could exist. Mother was alive all over. ‘I have just been created,’ she laughed, and went back into the Den to drink her cup of tepid chocolate.

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  See, the busy Pleiades,

  Sisters to the Hyades,

  Seven by seven

  Across the heaven,

  Light desire

  With their fire,

  Working cunningly together in a soft and tireless band,

  Sweetly linking

  All our thinking

  In the Net of Sympathy that brings back Fairyland.

  A Voice.

  The prophecy of the children that Bourcelles was a difficult place to get away from found its justification next morning, for Rogers slept so heavily that he nearly missed his train. It was six o’clock when he tumbled downstairs, too late for a real breakfast, and only just in time to get his luggage upon the little char that did duty for all transport in this unsophisticated village. The carpenter pulled it for him to the station.

  ‘If I’ve forgotten anything, my cousin will send it after me,’ he told

  Mme. Michaud, as he gulped down hot coffee on the steps.

  ‘Or we can keep it for you,’ was the answer. ‘You’ll be coming back soon.’ She knew, like the others, that one always came back to Bourcelles. She shook hands with him as if he were going away for a night or two. ‘Your room will always be ready,’ she added. ‘Ayez la bonte seulement de m’envoyer une petite ligne d’avance.’

  ‘There’s only fifteen minutes,’ interrupted her husband, ‘and it’s uphill all the way.’

  They trundled off along the dusty road, already hot in the early July sun. There was no breath of wind; swallows darted in the blue air; the perfume of the forests was everywhere; the mountains rose soft and clear into the cloudless sky. They passed the Citadelle, where the awning was already being lowered over the balcony for Mlle. Lemaire’s bed to be wheeled out a little later. Rogers waved his handkerchief, and saw the answering flutter inside the window. Riquette, on her way in, watched him from the tiles. The orchards then hid the lower floors; he passed the tinkling fountain; to the left he saw the church and the old Pension, the wistaria blossoms falling down its walls in a cascade of beauty.

  The Postmaster put his head out and waved his Trilby hat with a solemn smile. ‘Le barometre est tres haut…’ floated down the village street, instead of the sentence of good-bye. Even the Postmaster took it for granted that he was not leaving. Gygi, standing in the door of his barn, raised his peaked hat and smiled. ‘Fait beau, ce matin,’ he said, ‘plus tard il fera rudement chaud.’ He spoke as if Rogers were off for a walk or climb. It was the same everywhere. The entire village saw him go, yet behaved as if he was not really leaving. How fresh and sweet the morning air was, keen mountain fragrance in it, and all the delicious, delicate sharpness of wet moss and dewy fields.

  As he passed the courtyard near the Guillaume Tell, and glanced up at the closed windows of Mother Plume’s apartment, a pattering step startled him behind, and Jimbo came scurrying up. Rogers kissed him and lifted him bodily upon the top of his portmanteau, then helped the carpenter to drag it up the hill. ‘The barriers at the level crossing are down, the warning gongs are ringing. It’s signalled from Auvernier.’ They were only just in time. The luggage was registered and the train panting up the steep incline, when Monkey, sleep still thick in her eyes, appeared rolling along the white road. She was too breathless to speak; she stood and stared like a stuffed creature in a Museum. Jimbo was beside the engine, having a word with the mecanicien.

  ‘Send a telegram, you know — like that,’ he shouted, as the carriage slid past him, ‘and we’ll bring the char.’ He knew his leader would come back. He took his cap off politely, as a man does to a lady — the Bourcelles custom. He did not wave his handkerchief or make undignified signs. He stood there, watching his cousin to the last, and trying to see the working of the engine at the same time. He had already told him the times and stopping places, and where he had to change; there was nothing more for a man to say.

  Monkey, her breath recovered now, shouted something impudent from the road. ‘The train will break down with you in it before it gets to Pontarlier, and you’ll be back for tea — worse luck!’ He heard it faintly, above the grinding of the wheels. She blew him a kiss; her hair flew out in a cloud of brown the sunshine turned half golden. He almost saw the shining of her eyes. And then the belt of the forest hid her from view, hid Jimbo and the village too. The last thing he saw of Bourcelles was the top of the church spire and the red roof of the towering Citadelle. The crest of the sentinel poplar topped them both for a minute longer, waved a slight and stately farewell, then lowered itself into the forest and vanished in its turn.

  And Rogers came back with a start and a bump to what is called real life.

  He closed his eyes and leaned back in his corner, feeling he had suddenly left his childhood behind him for the second time, not gradually as it ought to happen, but all in one dreadful moment. A great ache lay in his heart. The perfect book of fairy-tales he had been reading was closed and finished. Weeks had passed in the delicious reading, but now the last page was turned; he came back to duty — duty in London — great, noisy, overwhelming London, with its disturbing bustle, its feverish activities, its complex, artificial, unsatisfying amusements, and its hosts of frantic people. He grew older in a moment; he was forty again now; an instant ago, just on the further side of those blue woods, he had been fifteen. Life shrank and dwindled in him to a little, ugly, unattractive thing. He was returning to a flat in the dolorous edifice of civilisation. A great practical Scheme, rising in sombre bricks and mortar through a disfiguring fog, blocked all the avenues of the future.

  The picture seemed sordid somewhere, the contrast was so striking. In a great city was no softness; hard, sharp angles everywhere, or at best an artificial smoothness that veiled ugliness and squalor very thinly. Human relationship worked like parts of a machine, cramped into definite orbits, each wheel, each pulley, the smallest deviation deemed erratic. In Bourcelles, the mountain village, there was more latitude, room for expansion, space. The heart leaped up spontaneously like a spring released. In the city this spring was held down rigidly in place, pressed under as by a weight; and the weight, surely, was that one for ever felt compelled to think of self — self in a rather petty, shameful way — personal safety. In the streets, in the houses, in public buildings, shops, and railway stations, even where people met to eat and drink in order to keep alive, were Notice Boards of caution and warning against their fellow kind. Instead of the kindly and unnecessary, even ridiculous little Gygi, there were big, grave policemen by the score, a whole army of them; and everywhere grinned the Notice Boards, like automatic, dummy policemen, mocking joy with their insulting warnings. The heart was oppressed with this constant reminder that safety could only be secured by great care and trouble — safety for the little personal self; protection from all kinds of robbery, depredation, and attack; beware of pickpockets, the proprietor is not responsible for overcoats and umbrellas even! And burglar alarms and doors of steel and iron everywhere — an organised defence from morning till night — against one’s own kind.

  He had lived among these terrible conditions all his life, proud of the personal security that civilisation provided, but he had never before viewed it from outside, as now he suddenly did. A spiritual being, a man, lives in a city as in a state of siege among his own kind. It was deplorable, it was incredible. In little Bourcelles, a mountain village most would describe pityingly as half civilised and out of the world, there was safety a
nd joy and freedom as of the universe…. His heart contracted as he thus abruptly realised the distressing contrast. Although a city is a unit, all classes neatly linked together by laws and by-laws, by County Councils, Parliaments, and the like, the spirit of brotherhood was a mockery and a sham. There is organised charity, but there is not — Charity. In a London Square he could not ring the bell and ask for a glass of milk…. In Bourcelles he would walk into any house, since there were no bells, and sit down to an entire meal!

  He laughed as the absurd comparison darted across his mind, for he recognised the foolish exaggeration in it; but behind the laughter flamed the astonishing truth. In Bourcelles, in a few weeks, he had found a bigger, richer life than all London had supplied to him in twenty years; he had found wings, inspiration, love, and happiness; he had found the universe. The truth of his cousin’s story blazed upon him like an inner sun. In this new perspective he saw that it was a grander fairy-tale than he had guessed even when close to it. What was a Scheme for Disabled Thingumabobs compared to the endless, far- reaching schemes that life in Bourcelles suggested to him! There was the true centre of life; cities were accretions of disease upon the surface merely! He was leaving Fairyland behind him.

  In sudden moments like this, with their synthetic bird’s-eye view, the mind sometimes sees more clearly than in hours of careful reflection and analysis. And the first thing he saw now was Minks, his friendly, ridiculous little confidential secretary. From all the crowds of men and women he knew, respected, and enjoyed in London, as from the vast deluge of human mediocrity which for him was London, he picked out suddenly — little Minks — Herbert Montmorency Minks. His mind, that is, darting forward in swift, comprehensive survey, and searching automatically for some means whereby it might continue the happiness and sweetness recently enjoyed, selected Minks. Minks was a clue. Minks possessed — no matter how absurd the proportions of their mixing — three things just left behind: Vision, Belief, Simplicity, all products of a spiritual imagination.