Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  And his laughter — for just then a puff of wind passed by and shook his sides for him — ran across many feet of lawn.

  “It was a Bumble Bee,” he comforted her. “It came between us for a bit, its shadow fell upon you, nothing more! Such things will happen; we must be prepared for them. It was nothing in myself that dimmed your world.”

  “Another time I will be braver, then,” she told him, “and even in the darkness I shall know you close, ah, very close to me….”

  For a long, long stretch of time, then, they stood joyfully together and watched the lilac growing. They also saw the movement of the sun across the sky. An eternity passed over them…. The vast disc of the sun went slowly gliding….

  But all the enormous things that happened in their lives cannot be told. Lives crammed with a succession of such grand and palpitating adventures lie beyond the reach of clumsy words. The sweetness sometimes was intolerable, and then they shared it with the entire lawn and so obtained relief — yet merely in order to begin again. The humming of the rising Spring continued with the thunderous droning of the turning Earth. Never uncared for, part of everything, full of the big, rich life that brims the world in May — ah, almost fuller than they could hold sometimes — they passed with existence along to their appointed end.

  “We began so long ago, I simply can’t remember it,” she sighed.

  Yet the sun they watched had not left half a degree behind him since they met.

  “There was no beginning,” he reproved her, smiling, “and there will never be any end.”

  And the wind spread their happiness like perfume everywhere until the whole white lawn of daisies lay singing their rapture to the sunshine….

  The minute underworld of grass and stalks seemed of a sudden to grow large; yet, till now, they had not realised it as “large” — but simply natural. A beetle, big and broad as a Newfoundland dog, went lumbering past them, brushing its polished back against their trembling necks; yet, till now, they had not thought of it as “big” — but simply normal. Its footsteps made a grating sound like the gardener’s nailed boots upon the gravel paths. It was strange and startling. Something was different, something was changing. They realised dimly that there was another world somewhere, a world they had left behind long, long ago, forgotten. Something was slipping from them, as sleep slips from the skin and the eyes in the early morning when the bath comes “pinging” upon the floor. What did it mean?

  Big and little, far and near, above, below, inside and outside — all were mixed together in a falling rush.

  They themselves were changing.

  They looked up. They saw an enormous thing rising behind them with vast caverns of square outline opening in its sides — a house. They saw huge, towering shapes whose tops were in the clouds — the familiar lime trees. Big and tiny were inextricably mixed together.

  And that was wrong. For either the forest of grass was as big as themselves — in which case they still were daisies; or else it was tiny and far below them — in which case they were hurrying humans again. There was an odd confusion…while consciousness swung home to its appointed centre and Adventure brought them back towards the old, familiar starting-place again.

  There came an ominous and portentous sound that rushed towards them through the air, and through the solid ground as well. They heard it, and grew pale with terror. Across the entire lawn it rumbled nearer, growing in volume awfully. The very earth seemed breaking into bits about them. And then they knew.

  It was the End of the World that their prophets had long foretold.

  It crashed upon them before they had time to think. The roar was appalling. The whole lawn trembled. The daisies bowed their little faces in a crowd. They had no time even to close their innocent eyes. Before a quarter of their sweet and happy life was known, the End swept them from the world, unsung and unlamented. Two of them who had planned Eternity together fell side by side before one terrible stroke….

  “I do believe—” said Judy, brushing her tumbled hair out of her eyes.

  “Not possible!” exclaimed Uncle Felix, sitting up and stretching himself like a dog. “It’s a thing I never do, never, NEVER! I think my stupid watch has stopped again….”

  They stared at each other with suspiciously sleepy eyes.

  “Promise,” she whispered presently, “promise never to tell the others!”

  “I promise faithfully,” he answered. “But we’d better get up, or we shall have our heads cut off like — all the other daisies.”

  He pulled her to her feet — out of the way of the heavy mowing machine which Weeden was pushing with a whirring, droning noise across the lawn.

  CHAPTER XII. TIM’S PARTICULAR ADVENTURE

  Tim’s “particular adventure” was of another kind. It was a self-repeater — of some violence, moreover, when the smallness of the hero is considered. Whether in after-life he become an astronomer-poet or a “silver-and-mechanical engineer” — both dreams of his — he will ever be sharp upon rescuing something. A lost star or a burning mine will be his objective, but with the essential condition that it be — unattainable. Achievement would mean lost interest. For Tim’s desire was, is, and ever will be insatiable. Profoundest mystery, insoluble difficulty, and endless searching were what his soul demanded of life. For him all ponds were bottomless, all gipsies older than the moon. He felt the universe within him, and was born to seek its inexplicable “explanation” — outside. The realisation of such passion, however, is not necessarily confined to writers of epics and lyrics. Tim was a man of action before he was a poet. “Forever questing” was his unacknowledged motto. Besides asking questions about stars and other inaccessible incidents of his Cosmos, he liked to “go busting about,” as he called it — again with one essential condition that the thing should never come to an end by merely happening. Its mystery must remain its beauty.

  “I want to save something from an awful, horrible death,” he announced one evening, looking up from Half-hours with English Battles for a sign of beauty in distress.

  “Not so easy,” his uncle warned him, equally weary of another overrated book — his own.

  “But I feel like it,” he replied. “Come on.”

  Uncle Felix still held back. “That you feel like it doesn’t prove that there’s anything that wants rescuing,” he objected.

  The boy stared at him with patient tolerance and surprise.

  “I promised,” he said simply.

  It was the other’s turn to stare. “And when, pray?” They had been alone for the last half hour. It seemed strange.

  “Oh — just now,” replied the boy carelessly. “A few minutes ago — about.”

  “Indeed!” It seemed stranger still. No one had come in. Yet Tim never prevaricated.

  “Yes,” he said, “I gave my wordy honour.” It was so gravely spoken that, while pledges involving life and death were obviously not new to him, this one was of exceptional kind.

  “Who, then, did you promise — whom, I mean?” the man demanded, fixing him with his stern blue eyes.

  And the answer came out pat: “Myself!”

  “Aha!” said the other, with a sigh and a raising of the eyebrows, by way of apology. “That settles it—”

  “Of course.”

  “Because what you think and say, you must also act,” the man continued. “If you promise yourself a thing, and then don’t do it, you’ve simply told a lie.” And he drew another sigh. He scented action coming.

  “Let’s go at once and find it,” said Tim, putting a text-book into seven words. He hitched his belt up, and looked round to make sure his sisters were not within reach of interference. There was a moment’s pause, during which Uncle Felix hitched his will up. They rose, then, standing side by side. They left the room arm in arm on their way into the garden. The dusk was already laying its first net of shadows to catch the Night.

  “Hadn’t you better change first?” asked Tim, thoughtfully, on his way down. He glanced at his compan
ion’s white flannel suit. “You’re so awfully visible.”

  “Visible!” It was not his bulk. Tim was never deliberately rude. Was it the risk of staining that he meant?

  “Any one can see you miles away like that.”

  The other understood instantly. In an adventure everything sees, everything has eyes, everything watches. The world is alive and full of eyes. He hesitated a moment.

  “Oh, that’s all right,” he replied. “To be easily seen is the best way. It disarms curiosity at once. Tell all about yourself and nobody ever thinks anything. It’s trying to hide that makes the world suspect you. Keep nothing back and show yourself is the best way to go about unnoticed. I’ve tried it.”

  “Ah,” exclaimed Tim, in an eager whisper, “same as walking into the strawberry-bed without asking—”

  “So my white clothes are just the thing,” said the other, avoiding the pit laid for him.

  “Of course, yes.” Tim still chased the big idea in his mind. “Besides,” he added, full of another splendid thought, “like that they won’t expect you to do very much. They’ll watch you instead of me.”

  There was confusion in the utterance, but things were rather crowding in upon him, to tell the truth, and imagination leaped ahead upon two trails at once. He looked at his big companion with more approval. “You’ll do,” he signified, pulling his cap over his eyes, thrusting both hands in his pockets, and slithering rapidly down the bannisters in advance.

  “Thanks,” said Uncle Felix, following him, three steps at a time, with effort.

  In the hall they paused a moment — a question of doors.

  “Back,” said Uncle Felix.

  “Front’s better,” decided the boy. “Then nobody’ll think anything, you see.” He was quick to put the new principle into practice.

  On the lawn there was another pause, this time a question of direction.

  “The wood, of course!” And they set off together at a steady trot. Few words were wasted when Tim went “busting about” in this way. Uncle Felix resigned himself and looked to him for guidance; there was some one to be rescued; there was danger to be run; the risk was bigger than either of them realised; but more than that he knew not.

  “Got a handkerchief with you?” the boy asked presently.

  “Yes, thanks; got everything,” panted the other.

  “For signalling,” was offered three minutes later by way of explanation, “in case we get lost — or anything like that.”

  “Quite so.”

  “Is it a clean one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good!”

  They climbed the swinging gate of iron, rushed the orchard, crossed the smaller hayfield in the open, heedless of the rabbits that rolled like fat balls into pockets made to fit them, slipped out of sight behind a stack of straw whose threatening lopsidedness seemed to support a ladder, and so eventually came to a breathless and perspiring halt upon the edges of a — wood.

  It was a very ordinary wood, small, inconspicuous, and unimposing. No big trees towered; there was no fence of thick, black trunks. It was not mysterious, like the dense evergreens on the other side of the grounds where the west wind shook half a mile of dripping branches in stormy weather:

  Where the yew trees are gigantic,

  And the yellow coast of “Spain,”

  Breasting on the dim “Atlantic,”

  Stores the undesired rain.

  It grew there in a kind of untidy muddle, on the very outskirts of the estate, meekly — rather disappointingly, Uncle Felix thought. There was no hint of anything haunted or terrible about it. Round rabbits fussed busily about its edges, darting as though pulled by wires, and the older wood-pigeons, no doubt, slept comfortably in its middle. But game despised it heartily, and traps were never laid. There was not even a trespassers’ board, without which no wood is properly attractive. Indeed, for most people it was simply not worth the trouble of entering at all. Apparently no one ever bothered about it.

  Yet, precisely for these very reasons, it was real. Tim described it afterwards as a “naked” wood. It had no fence to hold it together, it was not dressed up by human beings, it just grew naturally. To this very openness and want of concealment it owed its deep security, its safety was due entirely to the air of innocence it wore. But in reality it was disguised. It was a forest — without a middle, without a heart.

  “This is our wood,” announced Tim in a low voice, as they stood and mopped their faces. His tone suggested that they would enter at their peril.

  “And is it a big wood?” the other asked with caution, as though he had not noticed it before.

  “Much bigger than it looks,” the boy replied. “You can easily get lost.” Then added, with the first touch of awe about him, “It has no centre.”

  “That’s the worst kind,” said his companion shivering slightly. “Like a pond that has no bottom.”

  Tim nodded. His face had grown a trifle paler. He showed no immediate anxiety to make the first advance, reserving that privilege for his comrade. A breath of wind stole out and set the dry leaves rustling.

  “We must look out,” he said at length. “There’ll be a sign.”

  Uncle Felix listened attentively to every word. The boy had moved up closer to him. “And if anything happens one of us must climb a tree and signal. You’ve got the clean handkerchief. You see, it’s at the centre that it gets rather nasty — because anybody who gets there simply disappears and is never heard of again. That’s why there’s no centre at all really. It’s a terrible rescue we’ve got to do.”

  The adventure fulfilled the desire of his heart, for, since there was no centre, the search would last for ever.

  “Keep a sharp look-out for the sign,” replied the man, feeling a small hand steal into his own. “We’d better go in before it gets any darker.”

  “Oh, that’s nothing,” was the whispered comment. “The great thing is not to lose our way. Just follow me!”

  They then went into this wood without a centre, without a middle, without a heart. Into this heartless wood they moved stealthily, Uncle Felix singing under his breath to keep his courage up:

  “A wood is a mysterious place,

  It never looks you in the face,

  But stares behind you all the time.

  Your safest plan is just to — climb!

  For, otherwise you lose your way,

  The week, the month, the time of day;

  It turns you round, it makes you blind,

  And in the end you lose your mind!

  Avoid the centre,

  If you enter!

  “It grows upon you — grows immense,

  Its peace is not indifference,

  It sees you — and it takes offence,

  It knows you’re interfering.

  Its sleepliness is all pretence,

  With trunks and twigs and foliage dense

  It’s watching you, alert, intense,

  It’s furious; it’s peering.

  “Upon the darkening paths below,

  Whichever way you try to go

  You’ll meet with strange resistance.

  So climb a tree and wave your hand,

  The birds will see and understand,

  And may bring you assistance.

  Avoid the centre,

  If you enter,

  For once you’re there

  You — disappear!

  Smothered by depth and distance!”

  Tim listened without a sign of interest. Every one has his peculiarity, he supposed, and, provided his companion did not dance as well as sing, it was all right. The noise was unnecessary, perhaps, still — the sound of a human voice was not without its charm. The house was a very long way off; the gardeners never came this way. A wood was a mysterious place! “Is that all?” he asked — but whether glad or sorry, no man could possibly have told.

  “For the present,” came the reply, and the sound of both their voices fell a little dead, muffled by the density of the un
dergrowth. “Are we going right?”

  “There’ll be a sign,” Tim explained again. And the way he said it, the air of positive belief in tone and manner, stung the man’s consciousness with a thrill of genuine adventure. It began to creep over him. He kept near to the comforting presence of the boy, aware in quite a novel way of the Presence of the Wood. This very ordinary wood, without claim to particular notice, much less to a notice-board, changed his normal feelings by arresting their customary flow. An unusual sensation replaced what he meant to feel, expected to feel. He was aware of strangeness. He felt included in the purpose of a crowd of growing trees. “But it’s just a common little wood,” he assured himself, realising as he said it that both adjectives were wrong. For nothing left to itself is ever common, and as for “little” — well, it had suddenly become enormous.

  Outside, in what was called the big world, things were going on with frantic hurry and change, but in here the leisured calm was huge, gigantic, so much so that the other dwindled into a kind of lost remoteness. “Smothered by depth and distance,” he could almost forget it altogether. Out there nations were at war, republics fighting, empires tottering to ruin; great-hearted ladies were burning furniture and stabbing lovely pictures (not their own) to prove themselves intelligent enough to vote; and gallant gentlemen were flying across the Alps and hunting for the top and bottom of the earth instead of hurrying to help them. All manner of tremendous things were happening at a frightful pace — while this unnoticed wood just stood and grew, watching the sun and stars and listening to the brushing winds. Its unadvertised foliage concealed a busy universe of multitudinous, secret life.

  How still the trees were — far more imposing than in a storm! Still, quiet things are much more impressive than things that draw attention to themselves by making a noise. They are more articulate. The strength of all these trees emerged in their silence. Their steadiness might easily wear one down.

  And now, into its quiet presence, a man and a boy from that distressful outer world had entered. They moved with effort and difficulty into its untrodden depths. Uninvited and unasked, they sought its hidden and invisible centre, the mysterious heart of it which the younger of the adventurers could only describe by saying that “It isn’t there, because when you get there, you disappear!” Two ways of expressing the same thing, of course! Moreover, entering involved getting out again. Escape and Rescue — the Wood always in opposition — took possession of the man’s slow mind….