In a few moments we reached the foot of the mound and entered the tangled undergrowth that lay between us and the sunlight of the field. Here the difficulties of fast travelling increased a hundredfold. There were brambles to dodge, low boughs to dive under, and countless tree trunks closing up to make a direct path impossible. Yet Dr. Silence never seemed to falter or hesitate. He went, diving, jumping, dodging, ducking, but ever in the same main direction, following a clean trail. Twice I tripped and fell, and both times, when I picked myself up again, I saw him ahead of me, still forcing a way like a dog after its quarry. And sometimes, like a dog, he stopped and pointed — human pointing it was, psychic pointing, and each time he stopped to point I heard that faint high hissing in the air beyond us. The instinct of an infallible dowser possessed him, and he made no mistakes.
At length, abruptly, I caught up with him, and found that we stood at the edge of the shallow pond Colonel Wragge had mentioned in his account the night before. It was long and narrow, filled with dark brown water, in which the trees were dimly reflected. Not a ripple stirred its surface.
“Watch!” he cried out, as I came up. “It’s going to cross. It’s bound to betray itself. The water is its natural enemy, and we shall see the direction.”
And, even as he spoke, a thin line like the track of a water-spider, shot swiftly across the shiny surface; there was a ghost of steam in the air above; and immediately I became aware of an odour of burning.
Dr. Silence turned and shot a glance at me that made me think of lightning. I began to shake all over.
“Quick!” he cried with excitement, “to the trail again! We must run around. It’s going to the house!”
The alarm in his voice quite terrified me. Without a false step I dashed round the slippery banks and dived again at his heels into the sea of bushes and tree trunks. We were now in the thick of the very dense belt that ran around the outer edge of the plantation, and the field was near; yet so dark was the tangle that it was some time before the first shafts of white sunlight became visible. The doctor now ran in zigzags. He was following something that dodged and doubled quite wonderfully, yet had begun, I fancied, to move more slowly than before.
“Quick!” he cried. “In the light we shall lose it!”
I still saw nothing, heard nothing, caught no suggestion of a trail; yet this man, guided by some interior divining that seemed infallible, made no false turns, though how he failed to crash headlong into the trees has remained a mystery to me ever since. And then, with a sudden rush, we found ourselves on the skirts of the wood with the open field lying in bright sunshine before our eyes.
“Too late!” I heard him cry, a note of anguish in his voice. “It’s out — and, by God, it’s making for the house!”
I saw the Colonel standing in the field with his dogs where we had left him. He was bending double, peering into the wood where he heard us running, and he straightened up like a bent whip released. John Silence dashed passed, calling him to follow.
“We shall lose the trail in the light,” I heard him cry as he ran. “But quick! We may yet get there in time!”
That wild rush across the open field, with the dogs at our heels, leaping and barking, and the elderly Colonel behind us running as though for his life, shall I ever forget it? Though I had only vague ideas of the meaning of it all, I put my best foot forward, and, being the youngest of the three, I reached the house an easy first. I drew up, panting, and turned to wait for the others. But, as I turned, something moving a little distance away caught my eye, and in that moment I swear I experienced the most overwhelming and singular shock of surprise and terror I have ever known, or can conceive as possible.
For the front door was open, and the waist of the house being narrow, I could see through the hall into the dining-room beyond, and so out on to the back lawn, and there I saw no less a sight than the figure of Miss Wragge — running. Even at that distance it was plain that she had seen me, and was coming fast towards me, running with the frantic gait of a terror-stricken woman. She had recovered the use of her legs.
Her face was a livid grey, as of death itself, but the general expression was one of laughter, for her mouth was gaping, and her eyes, always bright, shone with the light of a wild merriment that seemed the merriment of a child, yet was singularly ghastly. And that very second, as she fled past me into her brother’s arms behind, I smelt again most unmistakably the odour of burning, and to this day the smell of smoke and fire can come very near to turning me sick with the memory of what I had seen.
Fast on her heels, too, came the terrified attendant, more mistress of herself, and able to speak — which the old lady could not do — but with a face almost, if not quite, as fearful.
“We were down by the bushes in the sun,” — she gasped and screamed in reply to Colonel Wragge’s distracted questionings,— “I was wheeling the chair as usual when she shrieked and leaped — I don’t know exactly — I was too frightened to see — Oh, my God! she jumped clean out of the chair — and ran! There was a blast of hot air from the wood, and she hid her face and jumped. She didn’t make a sound — she didn’t cry out, or make a sound. She just ran.”
But the nightmare horror of it all reached the breaking point a few minutes later, and while I was still standing in the hall temporarily bereft of speech and movement; for while the doctor, the Colonel and the attendant were half-way up the staircase, helping the fainting woman to the privacy of her room, and all in a confused group of dark figures, there sounded a voice behind me, and I turned to see the butler, his face dripping with perspiration, his eyes starting out of his head.
“The laundry’s on fire!” he cried; “the laundry building’s a-caught!”
I remember his odd expression “a-caught,” and wanting to laugh, but finding my face rigid and inflexible.
“The devil’s about again, s’help me Gawd!” he cried, in a voice thin with terror, running about in circles.
And then the group on the stairs scattered as at the sound of a shot, and the Colonel and Dr. Silence came down three steps at a time, leaving the afflicted Miss Wragge to the care of her single attendant.
We were out across the front lawn in a moment and round the corner of the house, the Colonel leading, Silence and I at his heels, and the portly butler puffing some distance in the rear, getting more and more mixed in his addresses to God and the devil; and the moment we passed the stables and came into view of the laundry building, we saw a wicked-looking volume of smoke pouring out of the narrow windows, and the frightened women-servants and grooms running hither and thither, calling aloud as they ran.
The arrival of the master restored order instantly, and this retired soldier, poor thinker perhaps, but capable man of action, had the matter in hand from the start. He issued orders like a martinet, and, almost before I could realise it, there were streaming buckets on the scene and a line of men and women formed between the building and the stable pump.
“Inside,” I heard John Silence cry, and the Colonel followed him through the door, while I was just quick enough at their heels to hear him add, “the smoke’s the worst part of it. There’s no fire yet, I think.”
And, true enough, there was no fire. The interior was thick with smoke, but it speedily cleared and not a single bucket was used upon the floor or walls. The air was stifling, the heat fearful.
“There’s precious little to burn in here; it’s all stone,” the Colonel exclaimed, coughing. But the doctor was pointing to the wooden covers of the great cauldron in which the clothes were washed, and we saw that these were smouldering and charred. And when we sprinkled half a bucket of water on them the surrounding bricks hissed and fizzed and sent up clouds of steam. Through the open door and windows this passed out with the rest of the smoke, and we three stood there on the brick floor staring at the spot and wondering, each in our own fashion, how in the name of natural law the place could have caught fire or smoked at all. And each was silent — myself from sheer incapacity and befuddl
ement, the Colonel from the quiet pluck that faces all things yet speaks little, and John Silence from the intense mental grappling with this latest manifestation of a profound problem that called for concentration of thought rather than for any words.
There was really nothing to say. The facts were indisputable.
Colonel Wragge was the first to utter.
“My sister,” he said briefly, and moved off. In the yard I heard him sending the frightened servants about their business in an excellently matter-of-fact voice, scolding some one roundly for making such a big fire and letting the flues get over-heated, and paying no heed to the stammering reply that no fire had been lit there for several days. Then he dispatched a groom on horseback for the local doctor.
Then Dr. Silence turned and looked at me. The absolute control he possessed, not only over the outward expression of emotion by gesture, change of colour, light in the eyes, and so forth, but also, as I well knew, over its very birth in his heart, the masklike face of the dead he could assume at will, made it extremely difficult to know at any given moment what was at work in his inner consciousness. But now, when he turned and looked at me, there was no sphinx-expression there, but rather the keen triumphant face of a man who had solved a dangerous and complicated problem, and saw his way to a clean victory.
“Now do you guess?” he asked quietly, as though it were the simplest matter in the world, and ignorance were impossible.
I could only stare stupidly and remain silent. He glanced down at the charred cauldron-lids, and traced a figure in the air with his finger. But I was too excited, or too mortified, or still too dazed, perhaps, to see what it was he outlined, or what it was he meant to convey. I could only go on staring and shaking my puzzled head.
“A fire-elemental,” he cried, “a fire-elemental of the most powerful and malignant kind—”
“A what?” thundered the voice of Colonel Wragge behind us, having returned suddenly and overheard.
“It’s a fire-elemental,” repeated Dr. Silence more calmly, but with a note of triumph in his voice he could not keep out, “and a fire-elemental enraged.”
The light began to dawn in my mind at last. But the Colonel — who had never heard the term before, and was besides feeling considerably worked up for a plain man with all this mystery he knew not how to grapple with — the Colonel stood, with the most dumfoundered look ever seen on a human countenance, and continued to roar, and stammer, and stare.
“And why,” he began, savage with the desire to find something visible he could fight— “why, in the name of all the blazes — ?” and then stopped as John Silence moved up and took his arm.
“There, my dear Colonel Wragge,” he said gently, “you touch the heart of the whole thing. You ask ‘Why.’ That is precisely our problem.” He held the soldier’s eyes firmly with his own. “And that, too, I think, we shall soon know. Come and let us talk over a plan of action — that room with the double doors, perhaps.”
The word “action” calmed him a little, and he led the way, without further speech, back into the house, and down the long stone passage to the room where we had heard his stories on the night of our arrival. I understood from the doctor’s glance that my presence would not make the interview easier for our host, and I went upstairs to my own room — shaking.
But in the solitude of my room the vivid memories of the last hour revived so mercilessly that I began to feel I should never in my whole life lose the dreadful picture of Miss Wragge running — that dreadful human climax after all the non-human mystery in the wood — and I was not sorry when a servant knocked at my door and said that Colonel Wragge would be glad if I would join them in the little smoking-room.
“I think it is better you should be present,” was all Colonel Wragge said as I entered the room. I took the chair with my back to the window. There was still an hour before lunch, though I imagine that the usual divisions of the day hardly found a place in the thoughts of any one of us.
The atmosphere of the room was what I might call electric. The Colonel was positively bristling; he stood with his back to the fire, fingering an unlit black cigar, his face flushed, his being obviously roused and ready for action. He hated this mystery. It was poisonous to his nature, and he longed to meet something face to face — something he could gauge and fight. Dr. Silence, I noticed at once, was sitting before the map of the estate which was spread upon a table. I knew by his expression the state of his mind. He was in the thick of it all, knew it, delighted in it, and was working at high pressure. He recognised my presence with a lifted eyelid, and the flash of the eye, contrasted with his stillness and composure, told me volumes.
“I was about to explain to our host briefly what seems to me afoot in all this business,” he said without looking up, “when he asked that you should join us so that we can all work together.” And, while signifying my assent, I caught myself wondering what quality it was in the calm speech of this undemonstrative man that was so full of power, so charged with the strange, virile personality behind it and that seemed to inspire us with his own confidence as by a process of radiation.
“Mr. Hubbard,” he went on gravely, turning to the soldier, “knows something of my methods, and in more than one — er — interesting situation has proved of assistance. What we want now” — and here he suddenly got up and took his place on the mat beside the Colonel, and looked hard at him— “is men who have self-control, who are sure of themselves, whose minds at the critical moment will emit positive forces, instead of the wavering and uncertain currents due to negative feelings — due, for instance, to fear.”
He looked at us each in turn. Colonel Wragge moved his feet farther apart, and squared his shoulders; and I felt guilty but said nothing, conscious that my latent store of courage was being deliberately hauled to the front. He was winding me up like a clock.
“So that, in what is yet to come,” continued our leader, “each of us will contribute his share of power, and ensure success for my plan.”
“I’m not afraid of anything I can see,” said the Colonel bluntly.
“I’m ready,” I heard myself say, as it were automatically, “for anything,” and then added, feeling the declaration was lamely insufficient, “and everything.”
Dr. Silence left the mat and began walking to and fro about the room, both hands plunged deep into the pockets of his shooting-jacket. Tremendous vitality streamed from him. I never took my eyes off the small, moving figure; small yes, — and yet somehow making me think of a giant plotting the destruction of worlds. And his manner was gentle, as always, soothing almost, and his words uttered quietly without emphasis or emotion. Most of what he said was addressed, though not too obviously, to the Colonel.
“The violence of this sudden attack,” he said softly, pacing to and fro beneath the bookcase at the end of the room, “is due, of course, partly to the fact that tonight the moon is at the full” — here he glanced at me for a moment— “and partly to the fact that we have all been so deliberately concentrating upon the matter. Our thinking, our investigation, has stirred it into unusual activity. I mean that the intelligent force behind these manifestations has realised that some one is busied about its destruction. And it is now on the defensive: more, it is aggressive.”
“But ‘it’ — what is ‘it’?” began the soldier, fuming. “What, in the name of all that’s dreadful, is a fire-elemental?”
“I cannot give you at this moment,” replied Dr. Silence, turning to him, but undisturbed by the interruption, “a lecture on the nature and history of magic, but can only say that an Elemental is the active force behind the elements, — whether earth, air, water, or fire, — it is impersonal in its essential nature, but can be focused, personified, ensouled, so to say, by those who know how — by magicians, if you will — for certain purposes of their own, much in the same way that steam and electricity can be harnessed by the practical man of this century.
“Alone, these blind elemental energies can accomplish little, bu
t governed and directed by the trained will of a powerful manipulator they may become potent activities for good or evil. They are the basis of all magic, and it is the motive behind them that constitutes the magic ‘black’ or ‘white’; they can be the vehicles of curses or of blessings, for a curse is nothing more than the thought of a violent will perpetuated. And in such cases — cases like this — the conscious, directing will of the mind that is using the elemental stands always behind the phenomena—”
“You think that my brother — !” broke in the Colonel, aghast.
“Has nothing whatever to do with it — directly. The fire-elemental that has here been tormenting you and your household was sent upon its mission long before you, or your family, or your ancestors, or even the nation you belong to — unless I am much mistaken — was even in existence. We will come to that a little later; after the experiment I propose to make we shall be more positive. At present I can only say we have to deal now, not only with the phenomenon of Attacking Fire merely, but with the vindictive and enraged intelligence that is directing it from behind the scenes — vindictive and enraged,” — he repeated the words.
“That explains—” began Colonel Wragge, seeking furiously for words he could not find quickly enough.
Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood Page 378