Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  “It wants to come in. It’s trying,” whispered some one.

  “It’s awfully shy.”

  “It’s lonely and frightfully unhappy.”

  “It likes us and wants to play.”

  There was another pause and silence. No one knew quite what to do. “There’s too much light. Let’s put the lamp out,” said a genius, using the voice of Judy.

  As though by way of answer there followed instantly a sudden burst of wind. The torrent of it drove against the house; it boomed down the chimney, puffing an odour of soot into the room; it shook the door into the passage; it lifted an edge of carpet, flapping it. It shouted, whistled, sang, using a dozen different voices all at once. The roar fell into syllables. It was amazing. A great throat uttered words. They could scarcely believe their ears.

  The wind was shouting with a joyful, boisterous shout: “Open the window! I’ll put out the light!”

  All heard the wonderful thing. Yet it seemed quite natural in a way. Uncle Felix, still standing and waiting as though he knew not exactly what was going to happen, moved forward at once and boldly opened the window’s lower sash. In swept the mighty visitor, the stranger from the air. The lamp gave one quick flicker and went out. Deep stillness followed. There was a silence like the moon.

  The shy Night-Wind had come into the room.

  Ah, there was awe and wonder then! The silence was so unexpected. The whole wind, not merely part of it, was in. It had come so gently, softly, delicately too! In the darkness the outline of the window-frame was visible; Uncle Felix’s big figure blocked against the stars. Judy’s head could be seen in silhouette against the other window, but Tim and Maria, being smaller, were merged in the pool of shadow below the level of the sill. A large, spread thing passed flutteringly up and down the room a moment, then came the rest. It settled over everything at once. A rustle was audible as of trailing, floating hair.

  “It’s hiding in the corners and behind the furniture,” whispered Uncle Felix; “keep quiet. If you frighten it — whew!” — he whistled softly— “it’ll be off above the tree-tops in a second!”

  A low soft whistle answered to his own; somewhere in the room it sounded; there was no mistaking it, though the exact direction was difficult to tell, for while Tim said it was through the keyhole, Judy declared positively that it came from the door of the big, broken cupboard opposite. Maria stated flatly, “Chimney.”

  “Hush! It’s talking.” It was Uncle Felix’s voice breathing very low.

  “It likes us. It feels we’re friendly.”

  A murmur as of leaves was audible, or as of a pine bough sighing in a breeze. Yet there were words as well — actual spoken words:

  “Don’t look for me, please,” they heard. “I do not want to be seen. But you may touch me. I like that.”

  The children spread their hands out in the darkness, groping, searching, feeling.

  “Ah, your touch!” the sighing voice continued.

  “It’s like my softest lawn. Your hair feels as my grass feels on the hill-tops, and the skin of your cheeks is smooth and cool as the water-surface of my lily ponds at midnight. I know you” — it raised its tones to singing. “You are children. I kiss you all!”

  “I feel you,” Judy said in her clear, quiet voice. “But you’re cold.”

  “Not really,” was the answer that seemed all over the room at once. “That’s only the touch of space. I’ve come from very high up to-night. There’s been a change. The lower wind was called away suddenly to the sea, and I dropped down with hardly a moment’s warning to take its place. The sun has been very tiresome all day — overheating the currents.”

  “Uncle, you ask it everything,” whispered Tim, “simply everything!”

  “Say how we love it, please,” sighed Judy. “I feel it closing both my eyes.”

  “It’s over all my face,” put in Maria, drawing her breath in loudly.

  “But my hair’s lifting!” Judy exclaimed. “Oh, it’s lovely, lovely!”

  Uncle Felix straightened himself up in the darkness. They could hear him breathing with the effort. “Please tell us what you do,” he said. “We all can feel you touching us. Play with us as you play with trees and clouds and sleeping flowers along the hedgerows.”

  A singing, whistling sound passed softly round the room; there was a whirr and a flutter as when a flight of bees or birds goes down the sky, and a voice, a plaintive yet happy voice, like the plover who cry to each other on the moors, was audible:

  ”I run about the world at night,

  Yet cannot see;

  My hair has grown so thick these millions years,

  It covers me.

  So, like a big, blind thing

  I run about,

  And know all things by touching them.

  I touch them with my wings;

  I know each one of you

  By touching you;

  I touch your hearts!”

  “I feel you!” cried Judy. “I feel you touching me!”

  “And I, and I!” the others cried. “It’s simply wonderful!”

  An enormous sigh of happiness went through that darkened room.

  “Then play with me!” they heard. “Oh, children, play with me!”

  The wild, high sweetness in the windy voice was irresistible. The children rose with one accord. It was too dark to see, but they flew about the room without a fault or slip. There was no stumbling; they seemed guided, lifted, swept. The sound of happy, laughing voices filled the air. They caught the Wind, and let it go again; they chased it round the table and the sofa; they held it in their arms until it panted with delight, half smothered into silence, then marvellously escaping from them on the elastic, flying feet that tread on forests, clouds, and mountain tops. It rushed and darted, drove them, struck them lightly, pushed them suddenly from behind, then met their faces with a puff and shout of glee. It caught their feet; it blew their eyelids down. Just when they cried, “It’s caught! I’ve got it in my hands!” it shot laughing up against the ceiling, boomed down the chimney, or whistled shrilly as it escaped beneath the crack of the door into the passage. The keyhole was its easiest escape. It grew boisterous, singing with delight, yet was never for a moment rough. It cushioned all its blows with feathers.

  “Where are you now? I felt your hair all over me. You’ve gone again!”

  It was Judy’s voice as she tore across the floor.

  “You’re whacking me on the head!” cried Tim. “Quick, quick! I’ve got you in my hands!” He flew headlong over the sofa where Maria sat clutching the bolster to prevent being blown on to the carpet.

  They felt its soft, gigantic hands all over them; its silky coils of hair entangled every movement; they heard its wings, its rushing, sighing voice, its velvet feet. The room was in a whirr and uproar.

  “Uncle! Can’t you help? You’re the biggest!”

  “But it’s blown me inside out,” he answered, in a curiously muffled voice. “My fingers are blown off. It’s taken all my breath away.”

  The pictures rattled on the wall; loose bits of paper fluttered everywhere; the curtains flapped out horizontally into the air.

  “Catch it! Hold it! Stop it!” cried the breathless voices.

  “Join hands,” he gasped. “We’ll try.” And, holding hands, they raced across the floor. They managed to encircle something with their spread arms and legs. Into the corner by the door they forced a great, loose, flowing thing against the wall. Wedged tight together like a fence, they stooped. They pounced upon it.

  “Caught!” shouted Tim. “We’ve got you!”

  There was a laughing whistle in the keyhole just behind them. It was gone.

  The window shook. They heard the wild, high laughter. It was out of the room. The next minute it passed shouting above the cedar tops and up into the open sky. And their own laughter went out to follow it across the night.

  The room became suddenly very still again. Some one had closed the window. The twig no longer tapped.
The game was over. Uncle Felix collected them, an exhausted crew, upon the sofa by his side.

  “It was very wonderful,” he whispered. “We’ve done what no one has ever done before. We’ve played with the Night-Wind, and the Night-Wind’s played with us. It feels happier now. It will always be our friend.”

  “It was awfully strong,” said Tim in a tone of awe. “It fairly banged me.”

  “But awfully gentle,” Judy sighed. “It kissed me hundreds of times.”

  “I felt it,” announced Maria.

  “It’s only a child, really,” Uncle Felix added, half to himself, “a great wild child that plays with itself in space—”

  He went on murmuring for several minutes, but the children hardly heard the words he used. They had their own sensations. For the wind had touched their hearts and made them think. They heard it singing now above the cedars as they had never heard it sing before. It was alive and lovely, it meant a new thing to them. For they had their little aching sorrows too; it had taken them all away: they had their little passionate yearnings and desires; it had prophesied fulfilment. The dreamy melancholy of childhood, the long, long days, the haunted nights, the everlasting afternoons — all these were in its wild, great, windy voice, the sighing, the mystery, the laughter too. The joy of strange fulfilment woke in their wind-kissed hearts. The Night-Wind was their friend; they had played with it. Now everything could come true.

  And next day Maria, lost to the Authorities for over an hour, was at length discovered by the forbidden pigsties in a fearful state of mess, but very pleased and happy about something. She was watching the pigs with eyes brimful of questioning wonder and excitement. She was listening intently too. She wanted to find out for certain whether pigs really — really and truly — saw — anything unusual!

  CHAPTER VIII. WHERE WONDER HIDES

  The children had never been to London, but they knew the direction in which it lay — beyond the crumbling kitchen-garden wall, where the wall-flowers grew in a proud colony. The sky looked different there, a threatening quality in it. Both snow and thunderstorm came that way, and the dirty sign-post “London Road” outside the lodge-gates was tilted into the air significantly.

  They regarded London as a terrible place, though a necessity: Daddy’s office was there; Christmas and Birthday presents came from London, but also it was where the Radical govunment lived — an enormous, evil, octopus kind of thing that made Daddy poor. Weeden, too, had been known to say dark things with regard to selling vegetables, hay, and stuff. “What can yer igspect when a Radical govunment’s in?” And the fact that neither he nor Daddy did anything to move it away proved what a powerful thing it was, and made them feel something hostile to their happiness dwelt London-way beyond that crumbling wall.

  The composite picture grew steadily in their little minds. When ominous clouds piled up on that northern horizon, floating imperceptibly towards them, it was a fragment of London that had broken off and come rolling along to hover above the old Mill House. A very black cloud was the Seat of Govunment.

  London itself, however, remained as obstinately remote as Heaven, yet the two visibly connected; for while the massed vapours were part of London, the lanes and holes of blue were certainly the vestibule of Heaven. “His seat is in the Heavens” must mean something, they argued. They were quite sweetly reverent about it. They merely obeyed the symbolism of primitive age.

  “I shall go to Heaven,” Tim said once, when they discussed dying as if it were a game. He wished to define his position, as it were.

  “But you haven’t been to London yet,” came the higher criticism from

  Judy. “London’s a metropolis.”

  Metropolis! It was an awful thing to say, though no one quite knew why. Part of their dread was traceable to this word. Ever since some one had called it “the metropolis” in their hearing, they had associated vague awe with the place. The ending “opolis” sounded to them like something that might come “ontopofus” — and that, again, brought “octopus” into the mind. It seemed reckless to mention London and Heaven together — yet was right and proper at the same time. Both must one day be seen and known, one inevitably as the other. Thus heavenly rights were included in their minds with a ticket to London, far, far away, when they were much, much older. And both trips were dreaded yet looked forward to.

  Maria, however, held no great opinion of either locality. She disliked the idea of long journeys to begin with. Having no objection to moving her eyes, she was opposed to moving her body — unless towards an approved certainty. Puddings, bonfires, and laps at story-time were approved certainties; Heaven and London apparently were not. She was contented where she was. “London’s a bother,” was her opinion: it meant a rush in the hall when the dog-cart was waiting for the train and Daddy was too late to hear about bringing back a new blue eye for a broken doll. And as for the other place — her ultimatum was hardly couched in diplomatic language, to say the least. An eternal Sunday was not her ideal of happiness. Aunt Emily, it was stated, would live in Heaven when she died, and the place had lost its attractiveness in consequence. For Aunt Emily used long words and heard their “Sunday Colics,” and the clothes she wore on that seventh workless day reminded them of village funerals or unhappy women who came to see over the house when it was to be let, and asked mysterious questions about something called “the drains.” Daddy’s top-hat with a black band was another item in the Sunday and Metropolis picture. London and Heaven, as stated, were not looked forward to unreservedly.

  There were compensations, though. They knew the joy of deciding who would go there. Stumper, of course, for one: it was the only place he would not come back from: he would be K.C.B. Uncle Felix, too, because it was his original source of origin. Mother repeatedly called him “angel,” and even if she hadn’t, it was clear he knew all about both places by the way he talked. Stumper’s India was not quite believed in owing to the way he described it, but Uncle Felix’s London was real and living, while the other marvellous things he told them could only have happened in some kind of heavenly place. His position, therefore, was unshakable, and Mother and Daddy also had immemorial rights. Others of their circle, however, found themselves somewhat equivocally situated. Thompson and Mrs. Horton were uncertain, for since there was “no marriage” there, there could be no families to wait upon and cook for. Weeden, also, was doubtful. Having never been to London, the alternative happiness was not properly within his grasp, whereas the Postman might be transferred from the metropolis to the stars at any minute of the day or night. Those London letters he brought settled his case beyond all argument whatever.

  All of which needs mention because there was a place called the End of the World, and the title has of course to do with it. For the End of the World is the hiding-place of Wonder.

  Beyond that crumbling kitchen-garden wall was a very delightful bit of the universe. A battered grey fence kept out the road, but there were slits between the boards through which the Passers-by could be secretly observed. All Passers-by were criminals or heroes on their way to mysterious engagements; the majority were disguised; many of them could be heard talking darkly to themselves. They were a queer lot, those Passers-by. Those who came from London were escaping, but those going north were intent upon awful business in the sinister metropolis — explosions, murders, enormous jewel robberies, and conspiracies against the Radicalgovunment. The solitary policeman who passed occasionally was in constant terror of his life. They longed to warn him. Yet he had his other side as well — his questionable side.

  This neglected patch of kitchen-garden, however, possessed other claims to charm as well as the tattered fence. It was uncultivated. Some rows of tangled currant bushes offered excellent cover; there was a fallen elm tree whose trunk was “home”; a pile of rubbish that included scrap-iron, old wheel-barrows, broken ladders, spades, and wire-netting, and, chief of all, there was the spot behind the currant bushes where Weeden, the Gardener, burnt dead leaves. It was sad, but mysteri
ous and beautiful too, this burning of the leaves; though, according to Uncle Felix, who gave the Gardener’s explanation, it was right and necessary. They loved the smoke, too, hanging in the air above the lawn, with its fragrant smell and shadowy distances:

  “Oh, Gardener! How can you let them burn?”

  “Because,” he explained, “they’ve ‘ad their turn, And nobody wants their shade.

  These withered-up messes

  Is worn-out old dresses

  I tuck round the boots

  Of the shiverin’ roots

  Till the Spring makes ’em over

  Like roses and clover —

  But nobody wants dead leaves, dead leaves,

  Nor nobody wants their shade!”

  A deserted corner, yet crowded gloriously with life. Adventure lurked in every inch. There was danger, too, terror, wonder, and excitement. And since for them it was the beginning of all things, they called it, naturally, The End of the World. To escape to the End of the World, unaccompanied by grown-ups, and, if possible, their whereabouts unknown to anybody, was a daily duty second to no other. It was a duty, wet or fine, they seldom left, neglected.

  Besides themselves, two others alone held passes to this sanctuary: Uncle Felix, because he loved to go there (he wrote his adventure stories there, saying anything might happen in such a lonely place), and the Gardener, because he was obliged to. Come-Back Stumper was excluded. They had taken him once, and he had said such an abominable thing that he was never allowed to visit it again. “A messy hole,” he called it. Mr. Jinks had never even seen it, but, after his death in the railway accident, his remains, recovered without charge from the Hospital, had been buried somewhere in the scrap-heap. From this point of view alone he knew the End of the World; he was worthy of no other. His epitaph was appalling — too horrible to mention really. Tim composed it, but Uncle Felix distinctly said that it never, never must be referred to audibly again: