Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  “There was no strike, was there? You didn’t hear anything, did you?” Her voice was shrill with almost feverish anxiety.

  The collective smile grew broader, the faces almost beamed, the eyes were twinkling more and more. They knew no anxiety evidently, no hurry either, these leisurely Fruit Stoners. But why, oh why, couldn’t they say something?

  “You saw him, didn’t you? You heard him?” her voice rang out, to which the only answer was a collective shaking of the smiling heads. “He went like a flash, but he was there,” she repeated, “the Man who Winds the Clocks and gave me my five minutes.”

  “Man who Winds the Clocks... five minutes.. “ they began whispering among themselves, turning to one another as if in amused surprise and question.

  “You’ve given him the slip again anyhow,” laughed the Sailor gaily, sweeping the room with his telescope.

  “He’ll never strike in ‘ere,” exclaimed the Tinker, sharpening his knife idly with a merry grin.

  “Not while you’re with us, Maria,” chuckled the Tailor, and snapped his big shears.

  “Not while we’re with you, Maria,” agreed the Ploughboy, wiping his eyes, though his lips were set for a guffaw.

  “Maria” — but how wrong that sounded. “Maria” was a child’s name. And she was no longer a child. Maria, indeed! Marigold, they should have said, Miss Marigold even! It was not impertinence, she knew, but it was rather careless just the same. This flashed across her mind as she heard it.

  “Maria, Marigold, Marigold, Maria. Miss Marigold...” beat rhythmically through her head, keeping time with the Tick tock! in her heart.

  The Gentleman, she realized, was on his feet.

  “Oh, my Gent—” she began, when his voice drowned her own. The Soldier, she noticed, had just whispered something in his ear, making his report perhaps. Whatever happens, she thought swiftly, I must remember my search. She held on to that with tooth and nail, so to speak. Slowly, she sat down again and listened.

  “It was I, Miss Marigold,” began the Gentleman in his suave, musical voice, raising his hat with consummate grace, “who sent the Army to inquire what your intentions might be...” and his voice trailed away into a long, beautifully modulated series of wordy phrases that she hardly followed, for she found her attention wandering again as his voice meandered on and on. What a lovely voice, what a lovely man! “Miss Marigold”! Why not the intimate and affectionate “Maria”? This hung in the forefront of her mind, while behind it she still gripped with tooth and nail to her urgent decision to begin her search — the search for the Pearl of Great Price she had come to find.

  There... at last his lovely sentences were running down, were coming to their end, and she must get up and reply. “What I’ve got on, what I want to do?” A moment ago, she realized, her reply would have been, “I want to play, I would like some sort of game, a romp,” but now, suddenly, it was no longer play she wanted. “I’m too old for play, too grown up. It’s too late for play!” And this realization brought a shock with it. All in a moment, it seemed, the change had come.

  His voice at last ran downhill and buried itself in his coloured waistcoat somewhere, inaudible, the last words murmured in a whisper, while he bowed, swept his hat across his heart, then sat down and screwed his eyeglass in more tightly. The faces of the Company turned towards herself, all moving together as though a swivel worked. She rose to her feet at once. “I must tell them I’ve got to begin my search, begin my search, begin my search,” whirled in her brain as she got up. “They must help me look, help me look, help me to remember, help me to remember. That’s what I’ve got to tell them. That’s all I want to say.”

  A rather good opening sentence thanking the Gentleman for his charming words, left her mind completely. She used instead the words that came to her naturally, pouring them out spontaneously.

  “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor, Gentleman, Ploughboy, Apothecary, Thief,” her clear young voice rang out through the great room, “I’ve got this on: I want to look for something. I’ve come here to find something — something of extreme, of ultimate importance. And my time is short, frighteningly short. I must begin my search at once, without a second’s delay. And — you’ve already promised to help me. I claim your help.” Staring hard into the ring of upturned faces, she was in the act of sitting down again, when another sentence came rushing up and out: “I’ve already looked in the Big House and the Little House, so that leaves only the Pig Stye and the Barn. And we’ll begin, please, with the Barn.” Plump, she was sitting down again. Her reply was made. “The Barn,” she added finally with a sort of shout.

  For an instant a deep silence reigned, but for an instant only. The chorus then broke out, and it was a bewildering chorus, whirling like a storm about her. Everybody spoke at once. There seemed not merely eight Fruit Stoners, but a score, a hundred. It was difficult, impossible almost, to disentangle the separate voices. All, too, had sprung to their feet, gesticulating, waving their arms like a forest of branches in a wind, while moving from chair to chair round the table, giving the impression of a ring that turned and spun. The faces, so rapid were their movements, merged and separated alternately, and all were lined and crinkly like — yes, like fruit stones — like a single, huge, composite fruit-stone visage even.

  Here and there she picked out a definite voice, attaching it to its owner, but so swiftly, instantaneously even, that both face and voice became merged again hopelessly in the whirling ring of sound and movement. The sentences reached her simultaneously, it seemed, as in a shower of pelting rain where yet each drop makes its sharp impression. Oh, the glamour and tumultuous whirl of life! “This year, next year, some time, never!

  “Silk, satin, calico, rags!”

  “Big House, Little House, Pig Stye, Barn!”

  “Pig Stye, Barn, Pig Stye, Barn, Barn, Barn!”

  “The Man who Winds the Clocks!”

  “Five minutes, five minutes, five minutes!” These words rolled and roared in a continuous chorus behind certain definite sentences that reached her:

  “Ready when you are, Maria. The sea’s a-sparkling and there’s a bellyful of wind!”

  It was the Sailor’s voice, careless and merry as a sandboy, calling her to adventure, while close behind it boomed the Soldier’s steady cry, “Company — march! It’s a forlorn hope, but you and I are leading it. To death or glory!” stern as a roll of drums.

  Breaking across them both like a snatch of song came the Tinker’s drone, “Any old knives to mend, to mend! The ‘oneysuckle’s sweetest when the sun goes down, and ‘ere’s a grand ‘edge for sleeping,” merging into the Ploughboy’s quiet call with its scent of hay and clover, “The cows is milked, only the chickens waitin’ to be fed.”

  Sharp and snappy followed another piping cry with the metallic click of scissors, “All ready to try on now for the final fitting and the best of all. This way, if you please, this way!

  Though all cried simultaneously, she yet heard the phrases separately and distinctly, offering pleasure, adventure, happiness. It was the enticing sweet cry of life itself. The Gentleman’s seductive phrase disturbed her rather too sharply: “The banns are up.” His courtly tones broke through the chorus, “and the Best Man’s on his way,” though there was another voice, low as a whisper yet terribly, compellingly penetrating, that sent a shock like lightning through her, its owner unmistakable, “I’ll show you how it’s done, Maria, when you come to me — teach you in a jiffy, I will. We’ll take everything together when the ‘and deceives the eye!” Only the Thief could speak like that and stir that curious, sharp distaste, yet with the deep, curious afterglow of glamour.

  The voices rose and fell, the ring of faces swirled, each separate call found its way straight into her heart, for all these invitations expressed exactly the things she longed to do and experience. The collective call plunged into her irresistibly, as though one single yearning overmastered her with immense power. If the idea of banns being up already startled her, there wa
s hidden sweetness in the sudden surprise it held; if that other penetrating whisper roused some touch of furious dislike and shrinking, there was yet a terrible attractiveness about it that she knew was inescapable.

  One last voice, however, amid all this incoherent jumble of noisy cries, it seemed, was missing. It came now, last of all. It fell, by chance as it were, into a brief, sudden lull.

  “The Barn,” came the quiet words that seemed muffled through the tangled beard, “the Barn, before it is too late.”

  It dropped with the solemnity of a warning bell into the tumultuous uproar which was the collective voice of the world beating against her ears. It made, as it were, a stillness about her, it brought a touch of coldness, too. None of the others, judging by the way they were going on, had heard it, but she, Maria, had heard it, and it brought her to her feet again with a sudden leap, half-frantic but wholly determined.

  “Stop!” she shouted imperiously, holding out her hand. “Stop this instant! Or — or” — the threat came out spontaneously, as a surprise even to herself—” or I’ll just forget you all!”

  The effect was magically effective. The whirling crew subsided like burst bubbles in a glass of soda-water. The Tinker, in the act of coming up to her, sank into the nearest chair. The Tailor followed suit, and so quickly that he almost sat down on his dreadful shears. The Sailor’s dance ended in a slither, as he whipped neatly into a third seat. The Ploughboy flopped abruptly, the straw he was chewing dropping from his opened mouth, and the Soldier, attempting a clumsy salute, jerked himself stiffly on to a fifth. The Thief also came to a dead stop, yet so cleverly and subtly, that he gave the impression he had never moved at all. The Gentleman, alone gracefully nonchalant among them all, resumed his seat calmly, screwing in his eyeglass and adjusting his top hat as he did so. And the Apothecary — ah, the Apothecary, whose low warning it was that had brought her to her senses — the Apothecary, she saw, having never left his chair at all, remained where he was, his eyes cast down in thought, while he went on searching absent-mindedly for a crumb that was lost in the tangle of his beard.

  The whole violent whirl subsided in a moment, the shouting uproar ceased. A deep hush fell upon the great room, where all now sat motionless and silent in their chairs. The eight heads and sixteen eyes turned to Maria, still standing in her place.

  “I mean to begin and search in the Barn at once,” she announced firmly in a tone of quiet authority, “and I count upon your promise to help — help me to hunt as well as to remember.”

  The eight heads bowed like one man, and it was a bow obviously of assent.

  “Willingly,” said the Gentleman, rising and taking his hat off, while a murmur of agreement ran round the entire table.

  “Thank you, my Fruit Stoners, thank you,” replied Maria, though she could tell by their faces that their help was not likely to be of value. They wore the same vague, polite expression as when she spoke of the Clock Man and her Five Minutes, the only difference being that their expression held no hint of amusement, far less of laughter. Earnest, even slightly troubled perhaps, but certainly not indifferent.

  And may we inquire,” resumed the Gentleman, on his feet again, “the nature of the search? What, precisely, the object is you desire to find?”

  That s just the bother,” Maria informed him with blunt honesty, “I’ve forgotten what it is. I knew,” she added, “when I first came here, but now it’s left my mind completely.”

  “Ah!” murmured the Gentleman, with his perfect, non-committal smile. Did he shrug his shoulders? She really could not say.

  “And I think you’re to blame,” Maria went on boldly. “All of you, I mean,” she qualified quickly. “You make me so happy that I forget. Your invitations and proposals” — she felt herself stupidly blushing—” are so wonderful. I think of nothing else.”

  “We have waited your coming so long,” apologized the Gentleman in his blandest voice, “that we feel there is nothing — nothing we can do — nothing adequate — to show our overpowering sense of—”

  “Is it going to be worth while when you do find it, Maria?” interrupted the Sailor bluntly.

  “And ‘ow are you going to reckernize it if you don’t know wot it is?” the Soldier rather gruffly followed suit.

  “And reely valuable, is it?” the Thief chimed in with a sly grin.

  “Everything,” mumbled the Apothecary in his beard, “is here. So a search is bound to find it sooner or later.”

  These several interruptions came in a shower all at once, and so abruptly that even the suave, self-possessed Gentleman seemed nonplussed. Pretending he had not heard them, he began to brush his top-hat with his sleeve.

  “What would its measurements be, do you suggest, Miss?” asked the Tailor, fingering his tape, but his meek voice was drowned the same moment by the Ploughboy who, leaning forward with both elbows on the table, cried in loud, earthy tones, as though a bull bellowed:

  “Tell us what it is, Miss. Then we shall know.”

  “I can’t think,” cried Maria in desperation. “That’s just it, you see.” She gazed into his friendly face. She saw the smile of sympathy spread over the broad features.

  “I understand, Miss,” he said slowly. “Thinking’s awful hard.”

  But the Gentleman, she saw, was sweeping his hat about and bowing. These interruptions were ridiculous, his gesture said. He was evidently on the point of another long-winded sentence when Maria, determined to stop him, took charge again.

  “Fruit Stoners,” she began, “I simply cannot answer all your questions truthfully — because I simply do not know. I only can tell you that I have come here to find something that is of — of supreme importance to me. It’s the reason why I’m here at all. It is, to me, a matter of life and death, I believe. I must look for it and find it. For if I don’t — there was no sense in my coming here at all. When I see it, I shall know it. It is my Pearl of Great Price, and by God I mean to find it.” And then she added in a louder voice, “Before I am too late!”

  Such was the determination and authority in her voice that the words were again followed by a deep silence. No voice was raised. A faint sound of shuffling feet was audible beneath the table, but no one moved visibly. All eyes remained fixed upon her face, but they were expressionless eyes. The Gentleman’s mouth hung slightly open, a proof that he, at any rate, had nothing he could find to say. To her surprise, the old Apothecary then rose up slowly. So great was the tension that though he first wiped his stained fingers on the Gentleman’s shiny coat, the latter remained unaware that he had done so.

  “Our promise is given,” he mumbled, “and we will keep it. Whether this search pertains to her world or to ours, to her time or to our own, we need not inquire. Let us be content to honour our commitments faithfully. It may be — and can we question it in view of her shattering arrival in our midst — it may be, I repeat, that there are more worlds than one. Let us go, then, to the Barn! Let us search with open minds!”

  His voice, as he proceeded, had changed from its first mumbling sound to a note of clear-toned power, as though wisdom, learning, even authority lay behind it. That the few sentences held his audience was unmistakable. They listened with deference, if a trifle uneasily perhaps. Maria herself was conscious that she shivered slightly. The Apothecary seemed suddenly head and shoulders greater than them all. If they did not comprehend him, they were undeniably impressed. But it was what he said next that brought the most extraordinary change into the room. It was two words only, but it was the way he uttered them that perhaps explained the change. For as he spoke the four syllables, the hush deepened profoundly, and even the rustling, as the whole company of Fruit Stoners dropped on their knees and hid their faces behind folded hands, was scarcely audible. With bowed heads all knelt and hid their faces.

  And the two words, the four syllables, the old Apothecary pronounced sent through Maria a great wave of hope and yearning.

  “Jack Robinson,” was what she heard.

&nb
sp; She also heard the low voices about the table issue from the lowered, hidden faces. “Amen, amen,” came from them in accents of great awe. A majesty of sound like a rushing, roaring wind swept through the room. It entered, tore across, and passed out. She heard it, felt its touch against her face and body, but she saw no visible outline, it was gone.

  The Apothecary sat down again, the Fruit Stoners raised their heads once more, the Gentleman, waving his hat, was on his feet.

  “We shall meet, then, in the Barn, Maria,” he said with an entrancing smile.

  “Thank you,” replied Maria. She felt suddenly exhausted, tired, as though she wanted to sleep, and yet she felt extraordinarily stimulated. “Before the search begins I think I had better rest a little.”

  And she crossed the great hall, passed up the wide staircase, and walked slowly down the corridor towards the door of Queen Elizabeth’s Room. Her sense of panic hurry, of frantic haste, had left her, the fear of being too late was gone. “That marvellous name!” she whispered in her heart. “That glorious, tremendous name!”

  CHAPTER XI

  What thoughts, what emotions were in her at this moment she hardly knew herself. There was now no press, no urgent need for haste; ample leisure and ample time were hers, and it was due, this wondrous change, to the power of Jack Robinson. She was not in her own world, but in that of the Fruit Stoners. That, at least, she realized, and the feeling of peace it brought was marvellous.

  While still determined to search — oh, yes — the sense of frantic hurry had left her. It could wait a little after all. She wanted to rest first.

  At the top of the stairs she paused an instant and looked back, and the Fruit Stoners, she saw with a smile, were already busily searching among themselves in a muddled, futile way. They were looking under the chairs and tables, lifting cups and saucers and peering underneath them, hunting even in their own pockets. They were very leisurely about it, turning this way and that, keeping somehow their old circular formation, and moving generally, it occurred to her, almost automatically, even mechanically, so that, for a second, the picture she watched below her suggested an unreality of dream, if not of nightmare. But one of the figures, she then noticed with a start, had broken out of the ring, and was following her upstairs. The Gentleman, she remembered, when she spoke of going up to rest, had made a gesture of conducting her himself, but his deep bow was so endlessly prolonged that she had slipped away before he straightened up again. This following figure, moreover, was not the Gentleman. It was the Thief. Invariably quicker than any of the others, he had nipped in like a flash and seized his chance. Already he was close upon her heels, then, quick as lightning, had actually passed her and now stood ready to open the door for her as she reached it.