“... Useful, perhaps, to see yourself... make you more conscious... more aware...” he whispered behind that straggling beard.
Maria fastened her eyes on the cold, glittering object in her hand, lifting it instantly nearer to her face. She peered into it. For a moment she stood frozen, spellbound. Her entire being seemed congealed, arrested. It was the voice that first recovered its power to function, the muscles followed. A high, uncontrollable shriek rushed echoing through the Barn.
“I’m too late, too late!” rang out in a scream of terror. “Oh! where — where is the Pig Stye?” as she flung the object violently from her.
And she began to run wildly, frantically, but without knowing it, running in a circle, while at her very heels now, like the tread of an animal stalking her, came the following beat: Tick tock! Tick tock!...
CHAPTER XIV
IT was not the fact of at last seeing herself reflected in the Apothecary’s little broken hand-mirror that terrified her, it was the awful dread of being too late, perhaps too late for ever. This was what appalled her.
She had somehow known already that she would “look just like that.” She had expected it. The shock of greying hair, of lines and wrinkles, of dropped muscles along the neck and jaw, of sunken cheeks, was a small matter compared to the amazing fact that she had seemed suddenly to “wake up” to the devastating reality that she might be too late. She had become abruptly more “awake,” more conscious, and the cause lay in something intensely real communicated to her by those eyes. For a flash, at any rate, she now saw more clearly. Here, at last, was a promise of something real.
The numerous intervals, the stretches and periods, had all slipped past her — with nothing done. The nightmare dread increased apace.
“I haven’t really looked at all — not properly, honestly. I’ve found nothing. And now it may be too late. I’m old!”
Tick tock! Tick tock! It put ice into her veins. Any moment the dreaded strike might come, the strike that would mean the end.
More aware, more conscious! What did it mean? What was the flash of something more real she had caught from those penetrating, hanging eyes? Could there be anything more real than this world she was in? How could she become more aware, more conscious?
“I’m wide awake already!” she told herself. “How can I be more awake?”
And a quiet voice mumbled in her ear, “You can wake up a second time,” as she turned to see the Apothecary moving away among the bundles of loose hay. He disappeared among the shadows. The other Fruit Stoners had disappeared too, for no figures were now visible. The light, she fancied, too, was growing less, the shadows encroaching, sharp outlines fading all about her.
“The Pig Stye!” she cried aloud. “I must find the Pig Stye! Where, oh, where is it?” And her voice fell dead and echoless against the masses of hay that swallowed it. Tick tock! was the only sound that held its first sharpness, though it grew no louder, nor apparently drew closer to the dreaded strike. More and more, it now came to her horribly, it resembled the noise made by a footstep, a footstep that dogged her, ever on her heels, the audible pad of a stealthy animal waiting the moment to spring and pounce.
The nightmare power was in full swing about her, the nightmare of some final rush, a rush to find something of overwhelming value and importance, or else — miss the purpose for which she had come.
“The Pig Stye, the Pig Stye,” ran on violently through her mind. “Yes, I must look for it in the Pig Stye, of course. It’s the only place left now.”
With it, however, ran other phrases, too, odd phrases that puzzled and alarmed her, laying nightmare fingers on her heart: for while they held a strange, familiar flavour, they yet brought no meaning she could grasp, nor could she catch the faintest memory where she had heard them before: “You can wake up a second time,” of course the Apothecary had mumbled through his beard, but how did she know queer sentences like, “Before I go hence and be no more seen,” or “The night cometh when no man can work,” and others, too? And what had such odd words to do with looking for something in a Pig Stye?
Tick tock! Tick tock!... It became more and more a definite tread, rather than the mechanical sound of something beating time away. One of the cat tribe occurred to her horribly, one of the great cats stealthily padding at her heels. Already, once or twice before, the idea of a tiger had flashed unpleasantly across her mind. A feline! A great feline! The word flashed and vanished. Yet it brought a memory with it, a memory of something long, long ago, and the picture of a childhood’s pet, a black cat, terribly adored, darted into her brain and out of it again. Jewel, Judas, some such outlandish name the creature had. Then she had been somewhere else before coming here, another sort of place, a kind of Golden Age, where things were more real than anything she experienced here. Or was it perhaps that she had understood them better? She had certainly been happier there, too. Some such wild fancy flashed over her, then vanished utterly again.
Maria stood still and listened. Her breathing came irregularly. The nightmare feeling deepened. The shadows grew.
She was quite alone now, for all the Fruit Stoners had disappeared, had melted away, though, with the exception of the Apothecary, she had not actually seen them go. She stared round her at the huge, deserted Barn, listening, watching, waiting, trying to collect her thoughts. Despite this urgent and imperative sense of panic hurry in her, this desperate necessity for decisive action immediately, she did not move at first. The horror of the true nightmare immobility held her rigid, while she battled to collect her thoughts.
If only she could remember where she came from, and what she had come to find! If only that terrible Tick tock! Tick tock! would stop, or put an end to her suspense — and strike! The actual strike would be better than this hanging suspense.
Her heart was thumping audibly, she felt it hammering against her ribs. Passing, passing, passing, rushing, rushing, rushing, its beat warned her remorselessly, while that other stealthy tread that was like the padding of a great animal kept rhythm with it.
Shivering all over, eager to be off and yet afraid to start, Maria made a valiant effort to force some memory back at least, to reduce some of her whirling thoughts to order. But such was their kaleidoscopic speed that she could retain nothing for more than a fleeting glance. Her very feelings were a turmoil of criss-cross currents in which nothing had more than an instant’s permanence.
Life, life, life! What a tumultuous rush of incoherence it all was!
One thing, however, stood out with a naked and frightening sincerity that she felt convinced was genuine. If her own existence here was nothing but a huge interrogation mark, the life and world of the Fruit Stoners were more questionable still. If her own existence here was less real than some other state she had tasted long ago, their life and existence, with its incoherence, its futility, its absurdities, were an utter sham and illusion, the flimsiest of elaborate phantasmagorias.
“It is possible to wake up a second time” slipped in and out between her whirling thoughts incessantly.
And at the heart of the whole ridiculous phantasmagoria was not fun — but horror. Here lay the essence of this hideous nightmare. Trapped in unreality, caged and prisoned in bitter limitations, these puppets she had herself created were merely fooling her. By coming among them, she had taken on their own futile conditions. They told her she would set them free, release them, save them, yet she could not even set herself free. She was caged and imprisoned equally with them. She had come for a brief Five Minutes, and had passed an entire lifetime. She could control them, having made them! Could she, indeed? What did she control, she asked herself? Nothing. When she imagined she controlled and drove things, she was actually being driven herself. Something outside her happened and she just responded automatically, as a stove gets hot when coal is shovelled in. She did nothing — of herself. Nothing. Things were done through her merely. They merely happened outside her and she responded. She was not enough aware, not conscious enough, not awake en
ough even to be real.
“But you can wake up — a second time,” the words flashed back.
Ah! Her memory made a violent and frantic effort to snatch at something that presented a peeping tip — only to vanish instantly again. There was, she vaguely remembered, a name she had once known, had even used — a name she had forgotten and neglected....
Her thoughts whirled away towards the Fruit Stoners instead, and the positive certainty came over her again that they had merely deluded and enticed her, that their helping in her search was nothing but deliberate sham and nonsense. A glittering phantasmagoria! They wanted to keep her here. They did not want her to go. The Thief — yes, it was he, the Thief, whose eyes had galvanized her with that strange, haunting message of something more real and permanent only a little time ago — the Thief had admitted as much with honesty.
And it was the thought of the Thief, now darting into her hopeless confusion, that galvanized her suddenly with its customary shock, so that her nightmare immobility lifted slightly. The Thief, whom she had made with the best in herself! She must act at once. She must depend on herself alone. She must search for that vital, missing thing while there was still time. Before it was too late for ever. Her Pearl of Great Price she had come to find. That was the message those haunting eyes had flashed. He promised something real — at last.
All her whirling thoughts, her tumultuous impressions, her terrifying sensations ended in this overpowering conviction — that to find her Pearl of Great Price was the only thing that mattered. This was the reason of her being here. She must fulfil her great purpose by finding what she had come to seek.
She must ignore, even forget, the Fruit Stoners, leave on one side all their fun and jollity, their efforts to amuse, their idle, vain pretences of being real. It was just so much flummery and nonsense. Let them play and act their parts, let them voyage on country roads and the high seas, let them fight their battles, plough their fields, design their dresses, mix their medicines, dine with kings and queens. Let them marry and give in marriage too, though she forgot for the moment that she herself, being the only woman among eight men, might play a responsible part in altering a state of celibacy no single one of them had as yet complained of. Let them go their own way, anyhow, was what she decided, while she went hers.
She had made up her mind, and the Tick tock! she fancied, became slightly less insistent, less mercilessly audible perhaps. “The Pig Stye! The Pig Stye!” echoed down her bewildered, but now determined, mind.
But a Pig Stye was not likely to be found in a Barn. She would have to go outside. So far, in all her long experience, she had never once been outside. Outside — where there were trees and fields and flowers and sweet fresh air blowing, even perhaps a garden. Yet where also, it suddenly struck her with a gust of hideous terror, she might see, might even meet face to face, the owner of the dreaded steps, the great animal whose stealthy, audible tread haunted her whole life.
It was a fugitive memory of the Thief’s challenging eyes that brought back her courage to the sticking point. She put out a leg, a foot, and naturally her body followed. She moved forward towards the great wooden doors that closed the Bam.
“My Pearl of Great Price!” The words hummed in her heart. “I shall find it at last — in the Pig Stye — and then — escape!”
Escape!
As she moved slowly forward an intolerable yearning swept over her, shaking her to the very core, so that trembling a little, she felt she must burst into tears. Somewhere, she knew, lay an incredible happiness, a reality grand and satisfying, a beauty beyond words, yet also just beyond her reach unless she first found her pearl. Her whole being strained towards it, and the intensity of this wild, fierce yearning amazed her, as though her heart must break. But, sweeping over her like a tempest, it was too vehement to last. It was already fading, weakening, passing away, yet leaving behind it a golden trail, so that she realized herself a prisoner, a prisoner in some sort of cage that was yet a cage of her own making.
She must get out of this cage, she must escape. It was possible to wake up “a second time.”
She reached the huge wooden doors and pushed against them. On the other side she would find the reality his marvellous eyes had flashed to her — something really real and satisfying at last....
CHAPTER XV
YET even here the nightmare sense was present, for the massive doors yielded rather too easily to her touch as she opened them cautiously a quarter of an inch and peeped outside through the narrow crack. The blaze of sunshine was dazzling after the gloomy shadows of the Barn. With the fragrant freshness of the open air came a suggestion of some more pungent odour that sent a shiver down her spine, for it held a faint acrid tang that brought with it one of those queer reminders that so puzzled her because they remained beyond all possible recapture. A sense of danger lurked in it somewhere, and that was all she knew.
The dazzle passed. After blinking once or twice, her eyes accustomed themselves to the delicious brilliance, and she pushed the doors another inch, and then another. She could see clearly now. The miracle of the open air made her catch her breath. It was Out of Doors at last. She had not been out of doors for ages. Drawing a deep, invigorating draught of this sweet air into her lungs, she pressed her eyes against the rough wood and peered through the widening crack.
Instead of the rough fields she had expected, a lovely garden lay before her, drenched in bright sunshine. A smooth lawn spread its emerald carpet, daisies creaming its surface, with fringes of golden buttercups spilling their yellow glory round the farther edges. It was, thank heaven, empty. No figures were visible. Nothing moved. She waited a moment, staring intently, watching, listening, then boldly flung the great doors wide open and stepped outside.
The first terror that something would dart up and seize her passed. Not a living soul was there. No one rushed up. Only the haunting beat of the stealthy padding footsteps still sounded in the air, though fainter, she fancied, less insistent perhaps. The sound, indeed, seemed everywhere about her, even in the sky, as though something still watched her, circling, waiting the moment to come close, yet always keeping a measurable distance. And though that unpleasant odour still stung her nostrils, she now caught another sweeter smell that drowned it, a perfume of flowers, of lilacs, pinks, verbena, wallflowers. She inhaled it with keen delight, taking a dozen steps out on to the lawn and looking nervously about her.
“The Pig Stye,” she said under her breath quickly, “I must find the Pig Stye. That’s where my Pearl of Great Price lies hidden!”
Maria, however, made no further movement for some time; she stood motionless, taking in the scene with all its fragrant loveliness. She realized instantly that this happy, tender garden, for all its beauty which intoxicated her, was not quite complete. Something was missing, something that could have made it perfect.
Yet what this something was escaped her; she knew only that it was akin to hunger or thirst, an essential lack her whole being missed. Yes, it was something she felt was real.
She stood still, breathing the fragrant air, and looked about her. Behind her rose the great wooden Barn, with fields and farm-lands stretching beyond it into the summery haze of blue distance, but at her feet lay this lovely garden, the wide lawn dotted with beds of flowers and intersected by winding paths whose gravel looked like brown sugar. There were nooks and glades and clumps of rhododendrons, a thatched summer-house, and farther off two spreading cedars towered into the blue sky. Beyond these she saw an old grey stone house, flanked by a large conservatory, its glass glistening in the sun. The stone walls were covered with ivy, and from a single chimney a column of pale blue smoke rose straight into the air.
Maria took it all in and felt peculiarly at home. She had seen a picture of it somewhere — the ivied house, the cedars above all, she had seen these before. The whole garden, in its peace and stillness, was familiar. She had known it long, long ago, perhaps in that forgotten Golden Age far, far behind her, for it held this haunt
ing atmosphere, as of some sweet, imperishable glory, some radiant happiness almost too fugitive to last.
Something was trying to break through into her mind, pushing up tiny fronds as it were, but whether from the past or future, whether of memory or anticipation, she could not tell.
For there stole over her the sense that she was now ageless, neither old nor young, or perhaps both old and young together; that her nightmare fear and her ineffable yearning were merely different ways of looking at the same thing; that the moments of alternate peace and panic sweeping over her were also one.
“If I was more awake — just a little more awake,” came to her, “I should understand. A bit — just a little bit more conscious and I should see it all clearly.... Age has nothing to do with it.”
But this flash of radiance came and passed like a meteor; even as she experienced it, it was gone. Yet it left a gleaming trail she caught at. “I know what’s missing!” she cried suddenly. “I know now why it’s incomplete...!” And before the words were wholly out of her mouth, she became aware of the slight stirring of the lilac bush, saw the hanging blossoms move aside, so that first the bright, penetrating eyes appeared, then the face in which they hung like lamps, and after that the tall, thin figure to which they belonged. He stepped across the lawn towards her, this man who moved with the graceful lightness of a fairy prince, and the garden in that instant was complete, with nothing lacking. Something real at last was coming to her.
“Thief! My Thief!” she cried, as the lightning shock passed through her heart. “Oh, I knew you would come, I knew it!”
Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood Page 314