CHAPTER XVIII
She had found the full name. There was no terror now. The nightmare spell was lifting. Her muscles worked, her heart, her brain, her nerves. Her memory as well. She was young once more, young as a horse-chestnut bud in spring. Age had fled, and horror with it. This almost was a spree. Light-hearted, gay, she felt. Memory and vitality burst round her in a shower of dazzling sparks.
“Glory be! This is a spree!” she almost sang.
Jack alone had worked half a miracle, but it had not taken away that grinding inner horror. It was the Robinson that rooted out that ghastly dread. The name had come back to her in its full glory, the syllables correct, the power of inhuman kind.
“Jack Robinson! Jack Robinson!” she sang, racing like the wind, knowing that, with only three strokes still to come, thirty seconds at most, she was yet safe. The beauty and power of that wondrous name filled her with a glory of the awful stars.
“Golly and glory be!” she cried breathlessly.
How could she have neglected and forgotten it all these ages!
Time stretched out behind her like an immense elastic, yet the faster she ran, the less it drew her back. Jack Robinson, dancing along beside her with immense power and superhuman grace, made Time seem ridiculous.
He was superb, invisible, yet everywhere and always. Faster than Time he was. Thirty seconds and five minutes had no meaning. She was timeless and divine. Young, tireless, inexhaustible. Nothing was left to her, since Time and Experience had taken all. She owed the Apothecary, above all the Thief, a fortune. They had left her, between them, so naked that she was light as wind, and as wind now she raced and flew.
She knew, none the less, that the Man who Wound the Clocks, the Tiger of her nightmare, was at her heels. If she had her limitless eternity, they had their schedule of time and space, as well. She realized quite clearly that she must not be caught and overtaken.
In front of her, too, she could see the rushing Ancient Company of Fruit Stoners going like greased lightning. They kept to their circular formation, balanced carefully round the rim of a large, white spinning plate. Holding on for dear life they were, keeping just ahead of her. She saw them all as they whirled along the floor of the passage, ridiculous yet marvellous. It seemed incredible how they held on to the edge of that whirling plate. Yet they did so quite comfortably. The Sailor’s gold ear-rings flashed, the Tailor’s scissors gleamed, the Soldier saluted the air while polishing his buttons, a burnished tear lay on the Ploughboy’s cheek, and the kettles of the Tinker sang their tinny song. Each and all pursued their usual avocations, the Apothecary thinking too hard to notice the pace, the Gentleman urbanely waving his bright silk hat, the Thief — his exquisite hands in everybody’s pocket in turn — casting his shining eyes back towards her as Sirius might peep across space at a violet....
At the same time, the whole Company continued its idiotic game, the game whose secret still hid away from her. Reduced to the size of pygmies, with crinkled, ageless faces, the Fruit Stoners still played their ancient game, passing her precious Pearl from hand to hand, hiding it beneath their arched knees, slipping it with furious speed from one to another lest someone outside their circle snatch it away.
What was it — oh, what could it be...?
In less than a fraction of a second she saw this going on and took it in. Thirty seconds she had still, racing, racing, rushing, rushing, the air whistling past her ears, yet her mind quite clear and steady, because Jack Robinson flew ever at her side.
She realized quite definitely that she must overtake these mechanical whirling dolls that aped reality and mimicked life; she knew she must catch them up; she knew that one of them held at a given moment her Pearl of Great Price. She knew also that her faith must not for a single instant fail, that close behind her, rushing and ready to roar, followed the wild tread of Time, the Monster, pausing upon his final spring against her neck, with its upright seven feet of hideous yellow terror. The acrid breath came to her nostrils. Her very heels were almost touched.
Thirty seconds! Yes, with Jack Robinson that was enough. But she must not dawdle nor forget. The framed ancestors shot past her like a streak of coloured light, a grinning, deathly series. The doors of the flower-room flashed by. She did not falter, she made no false step. She believed in Jack Robinson, and his majestic power did not, could not, fail her. Her smarting eyes streamed water, her heart pumped and banged against her ribs, but, in spite of that acrid breath, those fearful feet upon her very heels, she kept just ahead.
“Oh, Jack Robinson,” she cried, “I could face anything with you! Time, age — anything...!”
The green baize door appeared in front of her. It stood ajar. The spinning plate with its freight of Fruit Stoners whisked through like the dart of a frightened dragon-fly. But Maria was after them. Once past it she was in the familiar Little House again. The door closed behind her with its soft, queer, sullen gulp of sound.
Had the monster come through too?
Maria never knew exactly what had happened.
She only knew that the great white plate still spun before her eyes along the familiar corridor, and that the Fruit Stoners, one by one, flew startlingly off its rim and fell higgledy-piggledy upon the carpet. One alone kept his balance — the Gentleman. She saw him bend over suddenly, make a wild clutch in the air, then straighten up again and wave his hand above his top-hat.
“I have it! I have it!” he cried triumphantly, and the voice that issued from his tiny crinkly face was small and tinkly, though it rang clear as a bell.
Maria gasped and held her breath. She shivered.
He held something in his hand, snatched from his companions in the game, her Pearl of Great Price, the thing she had come to find. Oh, what could it be, this jewel above rubies?
But for the knowledge that Jack Robinson was close beside her, breathing the power of his ineffable presence about her like a soft wind of beauty that takes a frozen garden in the spring, she must have collapsed. For the moment was genuinely awful. What could it be, this grand, terrific thing she had spent her life to find, this object clothed in some majesty of ultimate importance, this lost difficult secret, whose finding would explain the meaning and purpose of her entire being, the clue that would bring sense, significance, beauty into her long, tiresome and painful existence?
The Gentleman, waving his silk hat and bowing profoundly, had fallen off the plate and yet stood elegantly upright — against a door. In his hand above the shining top-hat the Thing lay clutched.
Maria stared a second. She gazed upward at that closed hand. She hesitated. Her breath, her muscles, her resolution, all were braced for the effort.
“Jack Robinson she sang out, and power at once poured through her like a mountain wind.
Instantly then she recognized the door. Memory opened like the sky. It was the door of her father’s bedroom. At the same second she saw the Fruit Stoners collected again at her feet, sitting in a circle, waiting for the Gentleman to join them again.
CRASH came the awful roar, as the fourth stroke fell with a shattering bang behind her.
Maria screamed... for in the same instant memory finally flung wide its immense doors.
“It’s Hunt the Slipper — your idiotic game! And what you’ve got in your hand” — turning to the Gentleman with radiant confidence—” is — slippers! That’s what I came to find — Father’s slippers!”
A pair of bedroom slippers!
She pushed and drove upwards to seize them, her Pearl of Great Price, and falling through a figure of mist and air, burst headlong into the room.
“I’m awake at last — more conscious — more aware,” flashed through her, as she cried at the top of her voice, “Good-bye, Jack Robinson, and thanks awfully!”
Then memory closed down like an iron shutter.
She looked quickly about her and thought it was the most untidy room she had ever seen, for its disorder was really disgraceful. It was scandalous that her father’s bedroom should b
e left in such a state.
“It’s nothing but a pig-stye, I declare!” Maria exclaimed in disgust. “Why doesn’t that — that Puss look after him better?”
In the dim light that came through the open door it was difficult to see outlines clearly, and the general litter of clothes and things made it still more difficult.
“Now where can those slippers be?” exclaimed Maria, bustling about and colliding with bits of furniture. “I declare! It’s like a haystack!” She knew she must find them quickly if she was to be back in the library by six o’clock as she had promised.
Something fell with a bang and rattle at her feet, as she bumped against a piece of furniture. There they were at last! She had knocked them off the end of the sofa. She stooped, groped a moment along the floor, and the same instant felt them under her fingers.
“Got ‘em!” she cried, clutching them, one in each hand, and was out in the passage at once, banging the door noisily behind her as she ran.
“Maria, child! Where are you?” sounded a high voice somewhere in the house, for the banging door had betrayed her. But Maria did not answer. The sound of a clock striking took all her attention. She counted the strokes: One, two, three, four. Then it stopped. It was the presentation clock on the landing, of course, and it was out of order. That was why the Man who Wound the Clocks was fiddling with it.
“I can just do it!” she thought, as she tore along the passage, aware that Judas was scampering beside her. “Just! But I must be quicker than Jack Robinson!”
Whipping along at full speed, she raced past the Man who was fiddling with the clock, noticing his striped trousers as he moved a little to let her pass, and hearing a grinding of the machinery as though the next strike was just coming. There was only a second or two left if she was to reach the library in time. She was down the stairs like a lamplighter. As she flung across the hall the fifth stroke fell with a crash behind her in the gallery.
CHAPTER XIX
THE door of the library stood ajar. There! She had forgotten to close it in her hurry when she left five minutes before. She hoped her father had not noticed. Pushing it wide, she burst into the room, and as she crossed the threshold the last stroke of six rang out from the white-faced clock on the mantelpiece.
“There, Father,” she cried breathlessly, “I’ve done it! I took just five minutes. And here are your slippers!”
She flung across the room to his side, giving a queer sudden start as she saw the great tiger-skin with its yellow stripes — then sat down on its head and began to undo her father’s heavy boots.
He looked up with a jerk from what was evidently a moment’s doze, the newspaper slipping from his knees. Judas, she noticed, was playing with the prune stones arranged round the edge of the white plate where the tea-tray stood close to the ground on a dump. His black paw, tentatively stretched out, had already knocked one off — the eighth, she saw, quickly counting in her head.
“The Thief,” darted across her mind, as she glanced at the dark, crinkly little object on the carpet. “He’s come with me...” but she had no notion why she said it or what she meant. A touch of supreme ecstasy poured over her that turned the world golden with an incredible hope, followed the same instant by a deep yearning pity, a sense of compassion that passed all telling. She felt that she was going to burst into tears.
“Get out, you rascal!” exclaimed her father, smacking Judas playfully, then turning to thank her. “You’ve been wonderfully quick,” he praised her, “quicker than Jack Robinson. But then I knew you would be. One, two, three — go!” as with a final effort the big shooting boot came off and fell noisily on to the floor. “And did you find them easily?” he went on. “Of course you did. Just where I left ’em — eh?”
Maria heard the words but made no answer. She was looking round the room, taking everything in. Her free hand stole automatically to her bead necklace, her hair-ribbon, her belt. Was all this quite real — her father’s talk, the library, the tea-tray, the prune stones, Judas, her own self? A curious deep doubt flashed swiftly. Her life in this Big House in the country, the failing family fortunes, Mrs. Binks, her daily existence, her age, her occupations, hopes, fears, pleasures... were they all quite real? Wasn’t it all a dream of sorts, something she might wake up from — if only she were more aware, more conscious — waking up a second time...?
For an instant her whole being ached with the poignant certainty that something much more real lay just beyond her reach.
“... just where I left ‘em, eh?” she heard her father’s voice.
“Oh, but, Father,” she burst out, still breathless a little from her headlong run, bewildered, too, as the haunting passion raked her heart and mind in vanishing, “your room is simply awful, you know — awful” — starting on the other boot—” and it’s a wonder you don’t lose everything you’ve got!”
“Eh?” he said innocently, watching the operations with a scrunched-up expression on his face. “You don’t mean it — really?”
“I do,” Maria insisted. “I’ve never seen a room in such a mess in my whole life. It was a perfect Pig-Stye.”
“There!” he grunted, as the boot came off with a sudden jerk. “You really mean it,” he went on laughingly. “A perfect pig-stye?”
“I do,” she declared with emphasis, and she looked up into his face with sympathy and pity, but with indignation too.
“Well, a perfect one is better than an imperfect one,” she heard him say with a chuckle that seemed to come from a distance, his voice far away in the air almost. For a moment the odd feeling came over her again — the feeling that they were talking in a dream, that her father’s outline in the chair turned shadowy, the tea-tray, the heavy boots, the slippers she was fumbling with, the entire room, in fact, and everything in it, all were merely insubstantial pictures in her mind.
A faint odour, slightly acrid, rose to her nostrils from the tiger-skin on which she sat, and a sudden shiver ran swiftly through her. Turning her head she saw that a group of tall, silent figures stood about her, shadowy, their outlines only just visible. They crowded the air against the book-shelves, all still and motionless, but with eager, peering, spectral faces. Who were they? What were they? Why did her heart ache so? Were they merely shadows? She looked more closely, and as she did so a moment’s icy horror swept her, followed by a deep, yearning pang that gripped her very entrails. There was something she half remembered, something that floated over her like the ghost of a forgotten dream. These figures were real. Somewhere she had known them, loved them, feared them, played with them. They belonged to some lost portion of her life and being, half sweet, half terrible, but at least indubitably real. They had filled her hours, her days, her years; in childhood, youth and age they had been comrades. She had known adventure with them, but she had known dread and anguish too. She had known... love.
The storm of pity in her grew and deepened. Compassion swept her like a tempest.
“I love you,” she whispered, the pain in her almost unbearable, “for I made you with my very best.”
A passion of affection, longing, of fierce regret rushed over her, but no answer came from the row of dim, undecipherable faces. She was aware of their friendliness, their patience, their reverence, their loving worship, their steadfast belief, and somehow of their courage too. She could not understand it. What they meant escaped her. The spectral faces caused her an extraordinary pain as she strove to recall them to her memory, but without success.
... Real, real, real they were, she felt positive, for all their shadowy insubstantiality.
A face thrust closer from the general group, so that she saw dimly a grey straggling beard, and caught a whiff of something that reminded her of a medicine cupboard as it came close against her own.
“Real then, of course we were,” issued a clear whisper from the tangled hair, “just as now all this seems real,” and his hand swept round the library. “But you can awaken from all this too, awaken a second time...” as both hands inc
luded the room with a gesture — and the same instant the whole strange picture shivered before her eyes, shattered into a thousand fragments....
“Maria, child! Where are you? Don’t bang the doors like that!” came in a shrill voice somewhere on the upper landing.
Her father gave a little start.
“And if my room is really as unddy as all that,” he went on, “I suppose I must do something about it. I must have it seen to, mustn’t I? Yes, Maria darling, I must have it seen to. I’ll speak to Mrs. Binks to-morrow. She’ll soon send the maids about their business. My things have never been done properly since I had to let William go.”
He drew her down upon his knee, for both slippers were now safely and comfortably on.
“She’s wonderful, really wonderful,” he went on, putting his arm about Maria’s waist. “I don’t know what I should have done without her. Why, you’re still out of breath, Maria. Your body’s trembling. You took those stairs too fast. It’s tired you out, you little monkey!”
“It’s nothing, Father. Only Jack Robinson’s pace is terrific, you see.”
She nestled down against her father’s shoulder. He had stopped speaking, but she knew quite well what was coming. She could feel him drawing a deeper breath so to speak, could feel all his inner machinery collecting itself as with a clock just going to strike. His voice, as he praised Mrs. Binks, had softened a little, a note of shyness, yes, of tenderness, in it. Oh, she knew what was coming well enough, and that queer feeling of having been through this all before came over her again. She had lived it over and over again, as though it just went on happening for ever, a recurrent business, a recurrent sort of dream. It had no reality. It was all something she could wake up from — if only she knew the way: wake up into something else that was finally and definitely real, wake up a second time....
A touch of drowsiness was stealing over her as she waited.
“Yes, Father...” she murmured almost sleepily, trying to help him.
Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood Page 317