Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  One moment on the edge he wobbled horribly, then with that queer sideways motion, rapid yet ungainly, he stepped forward into the middle of the patch and fell heavily upon his face. His eyes, as he dropped, faded shockingly, and across the countenance was written plainly what I can only call an expression of destruction. He looked utterly destroyed. I caught a sound — from Jamie? — but this time not of laughter. It was like a gulp; it was deep and muffled and it dipped away into the earth. Again I thought of a troop of small black horses galloping away down a subterranean passage beneath my feet — plunging into the depths — their tramping growing fainter and fainter into buried distance. In my nostrils was a pungent smell of earth.

  And then — all passed. I came back into myself. Mr. Frene, junior, was lifting his brother’s head from the lawn where he had fallen from the heat, close beside the tea-table. He had never really moved from there. And Jamie, I learned afterwards, had been the whole time asleep upon his bed upstairs, worn out with his crying and unreasoning alarm. Gladys came running out with cold water, sponge and towel, brandy too — all kinds of things. “Mother, it was the heat, wasn’t it?”

  I heard her whisper, but I did not catch Mrs. Frene’s reply. From her face it struck me that she was bordering on collapse herself. Then the butler followed, and they just picked him up and carried him into the house. He recovered even before the doctor came.

  But the queer thing to me is that I was convinced the others all had seen what I saw, only that no one said a word about it; and to this day no one has said a word. And that was, perhaps, the most horrid part of all.

  From that day to this I have scarcely heard a mention of Mr. Frene, senior. It seemed as if he dropped suddenly out of life. The papers never mentioned him. His activities ceased, as it were. His after-life, at any rate, became singularly ineffective. Certainly he achieved nothing worth public mention. But it may be only that, having left the employ of Mrs. Frene, there was no particular occasion for me to hear anything.

  The after-life of that empty patch of garden, however, was quite otherwise. Nothing, so far as I know, was done to it by gardeners, or in the way of draining it or bringing in new earth, but even before I left in the following summer it had changed. It lay untouched, full of great, luscious, driving weeds and creepers, very strong, full-fed, and bursting thick with life.

  CLAIRVOYANCE

  In the darkest corner, where the firelight could not reach him, he sat listening to the stories. His young hostess occupied the corner on the other side; she was also screened by shadows; and between them stretched the horse-shoe of eager, frightened faces that seemed all eyes. Behind yawned the blackness of the big room, running as it were without a break into the night.

  Some one crossed on tiptoe and drew a blind up with a rattle, and at the sound all started: through the window, opened at the top, came a rustle of the poplar leaves that stirred like footsteps in the wind. ‘There’s a strange man walking past the shrubberies,’ whispered a nervous girl; ‘I saw him crouch and hide. I saw his eyes!’ ‘Nonsense! came sharply from a male member of the group; ‘it’s far too dark to see. You heard the wind.’ For mist had risen from the river just below the lawn, pressing close against the windows of the old house like a soft grey hand, and through it the stir of leaves was faintly audible.... Then, while several called for lights, others remembered that hop-pickers were still about in the lanes, and the tramps this autumn overbold and insolent. All, perhaps, wished secretly for the sun. Only the elderly man in the corner sat quiet and unmoved, contributing nothing. He had told no fearsome story. He had evaded, indeed, many openings expressly made for him, though fully aware that to his well-known interest in psychical things was partly due his presence in the week-end party. ‘I never have experiences — that way,’ he said shortly when some one asked him point blank for a tale; ‘I have no unusual powers.’ There was perhaps the merest hint of contempt in his tone, but the hostess from her darkened corner quickly and tactfully covered his retreat. And he wondered. For he knew why she invited him. The haunted room, he was well aware, had been specially allotted to him.

  And then, most opportunely, the door opened noisily and the host came in. He sniffed at the darkness, rang at once for lamps, puffed at his big curved pipe, and generally, by his mere presence, made the group feel rather foolish. Light streamed past him from the corridor. His white hair shone like silver. And with him came the atmosphere of common sense, of shooting, agriculture, motors, and the rest. Age entered at that door. And his young wife sprang up instantly to greet him, as though his disapproval of this kind of entertainment might need humouring.

  It may have been the light — that witchery of half-lights from the fire and the corridor, or it may have been the abrupt entrance of the Practical upon the soft Imaginative that traced the outline with such pitiless, sharp conviction. At any rate, the contrast — for those who had this inner clairvoyant sight all had been prating of so glibly! — was unmistakably revealed. It was poignantly dramatic, pain somewhere in it — naked pain. For, as she paused a moment there beside him in the light, this childless wife of three years’ standing, picture of youth and beauty, there stood upon the threshold of that room the presence of a true ghost story.

  And most marevellously she changed — her lineaments, her very figure, her whole presentment. Etched against the gloom, the delicate, unmarked face shone suddenly keen and anguished, and a rich maturity, deeper than any mere age, flushed all her little person with its secret grandeur. Lines started into being upon the pale skin of the girlish face, lines of pleading, pity, and love the daylight did not show, and with them an air of magic tenderness that betrayed, though for a second only, the full soft glory of a motherhood denied, yet somehow mysteri¬ously enjoyed. About her slenderness rose all the deep-bosomed sweetness of maternity, a potential mother of the world, and a mother, though she might know no dear fulfilment, who yet yearned to sweep into her immense embrace all the little helpless things that ever lived.

  Light, like emotion, can play strangest tricks. The change pressed almost upon the edge of revelation.... Yet, when a moment later lamps were brought, it is doubtful if any but the silent guest who had told no marvellous tale, knew no psychical experience, and disclaimed the smallest clairvoyant faculty, had received and registered the vivid, poignant picture. For an instant it had flashed there, mercilessly clear for all to see who were not blind to subtle spiritual wonder thick with pain. And it was not so much mere picture of youth and age ill-matched, as of youth that yearned with the oldest craving in the world, and of age that had slipped beyond the power of sympathetically divining it.... It passed, and all was as before.

  The husband laughed with genial good-nature, not one whit annoyed. ‘They’ve been frightening you with stories, child,’ he said in his jolly way, and put a protective arm about her. ‘Haven’t they now? Tell me the truth. Much better,’ he added, ‘have joined me instead at billiards, or for a game of Patience, eh?’ She looked up shyly into his face, and he kissed her on the forehead. ‘Perhaps they have — a little, dear,’ she said, ‘but now that you’ve come, I feel all right again.’ ‘Another night of this,’ he added in a graver tone, ‘and you’d be at your old trick of putting guests to sleep in the haunted room. I was right after all, you see, to make it out of bounds.’ He glanced fondly, paternally down upon her. Then he went over and poked the fire into a blaze. Some one struck up a waltz on the piano, and couples danced. All trace of nervousness vanished, and the butler presently brought in the tray with drinks and biscuits. And slowly the group dispersed. Candles were lit. They passed down the passage into the big hail, talking in lowered voices of to-morrow’s plans. The laughter died away as they went up the stairs to bed, the silent guest and the young wife lingering a moment over the embers.

  ‘You have not, after all then, put me in your haunted room?’ he asked quietly. ‘You mentioned, you remember, in your letter—’

  ‘I admit,’ she replied at once, her manner gracious beyon
d her years, her voice quite different, ‘that I wanted you to sleep there — some one, I mean, who really knows, and is not merely curious. But — forgive my saying so — when I saw you’ — she laughed very slowly— ‘and when you told no marvellous story like the others, I somehow felt—’

  ‘But I never see anything—’ he put in hurriedly.

  ‘You feel, though,’ she interrupted swiftly, the passionate tenderness in her voice but half suppressed. ‘I can tell it from your—’

  ‘Others, then,’ he interrupted abruptly, almost bluntly, ‘have slept there — sat up, rather?’

  ‘Not recently. My husband stopped it.’ She paused a second, then added, ‘I had that room — for a year — when first we married.’

  The other’s anguished look flew back upon her little face like a shadow and was gone, while at the sight of it there rose in himself a sudden deep rush of wonderful amazement beckon¬ing almost towards worship. He did not speak, for his voice would tremble.

  ‘I had to give it up,’ she finished, very low.

  ‘Was it so terrible?’ after a pause he ventured.

  She bowed her head. ‘I had to change,’ she repeated softly.

  ‘And since then — now — you see nothing?’ he asked.

  Her reply was singular. ‘Because I will not, not because it’s gone.’ ... He followed her in silence to the door, and as they passed along the passage, again that curious great pain of emptiness, of loneliness, of yearning rose upon him, as of a sea that never, never can swim beyond the shore to reach the flowers that it loves...

  ‘Hurry up, child, or a ghost will catch you,’ cried her husband, leaning over the banisters, as the pair moved slowly up the stairs towards him. There was a moment’s silence when they met. The guest took his lighted candle and went down the corridor. Good-nights were said again. They moved away, she to her loneliness, he to his unhaunted room. And at his door he turned. At the far end of the passage, silhouetted against the candle-light, he watched them — the fine old man with his silvered hair and heavy shoulders, and the slim young wife with that amazing air as of some great bountiful mother of the world for whom the years yet passed hungry and un-harvested. They turned the corner, and he went in and closed his door.

  Sleep took him very quickly, and while the mist rose up and veiled the countryside, something else, veiled equally for all other sleepers in that house but two, drew on towards its climax.... Some hours later he awoke; the world was stills and it seemed the whole house listened; for with that clear vision which some bring out of sleep, he remembered that there had been no direct denial, and of a sudden realised that this big, gaunt chamber where he lay was after all the haunted room. For him, however, the entire world, not merely separate rooms in it, was ever haunted; and he knew no terror to find the space about him charged with thronging life quite other than his own.... He rose and lit the candle, crossed over to the window where the mist shone grey, knowing that no bar¬riers of walls or door or ceiling could keep out this host of Presences that poured so thickly everywhere about him. It was like a wall of being, with peering eyes, small hands stretched out, a thousand pattering wee feet, and tiny voices crying in a chorus very faintly and beseeching.... The haunted room! Was it not, rather, a temple vestibule, prepared and sanctified by yearning rites few men might ever guess, for all the childless women of the world? How could she know that he would understand — this woman he had seen but twice in all his life? And how entrust to him so great a mystery that was her secret? Had she so easily divined in him a similar yearning to which, long years ago, death had denied fulfilment? Was she clairvoyant in the true sense, and did all faces bear on them so legibly this great map that sorrow traced?...

  And then, with awful suddenness, mere feelings dipped away, and something concrete happened. The handle of the door had faintly rattled. He turned. The round brass knob was slowly moving. And first, at the sight, something of common fear did grip him, as though his heart had missed a beat, but on the instant he heard the voice of his own mother, now long beyond the stars, calling to him to go softly yet with speed. He watched a moment the feeble efforts to undo the door, yet never afterwards could swear that he saw actual movement, for something in him, tragic as blindness, rose through a mist of tears and darkened vision utterly....

  He went towards the door. He took the handle very gently, and very softly then he opened it. Beyond was darkness. He saw the empty passage, the edge of the banisters where the great hall yawned below, and, dimly, the outline of the Alpine photograph and the stuffed deer’s head upon the wall. And then he dropped upon his knees and opened wide his arms to something that came in upon uncertain, viewless feet. All the young winds and flowers and dews of dawn passed with it ... filling him to the brim ... covering closely his breast and eyes and lips. There clung to him all the small beginnings of life that cannot stand alone ... the little helpless hands and arms that have no confidence ... and when the wealth of tears and love that flooded his heart seemed to break upon the frontiers of some mysterious yet impossible fulfilment, he rose and went with curious small steps towards the window to taste the cooling, misty air of that other dark Emptiness that waited so patiently there above the entire world. He drew the sash up. The air felt soft and tender as though there were somewhere children in it too — children of stars and flowers, of mists and wings and music, all that the Universe contains unborn and tiny.... And when at length he turned again the door was closed. The room was empty of any life but that which lay so wonderfully blessed within himself. And this, he felt, had marvelously increased and multiplied....

  Sleep then came back to him, and in the morning he left the house before the others were astir, pleading some over¬looked engagement. For he had seen Ghosts indeed, but yet no ghost that he could talk about with others round an open fire.

  THE GOLDEN FLY

  It fell upon him out of a clear sky just when existence seemed on its very best behaviour, and he savagely resented the un¬deserved affliction of it. Involving him in an atrocious scandal that reflected directly upon his honour, it destroyed in a moment the erection his entire life had so laboriously built up — his reputation. In the eyes of the world he was a broken, discredited man, at the very moment, moreover, when his most cherished ambitions touched fulfilment. And the cruelty of it appalled his sense of justice, for it was impossible to vindicate himself without inculpating others who were dearer to him than life. It seemed more than he could bear; and the grim course he contemplated — decision itself as yet hung darkly waiting in the background — appeared the only way of escape that offered.

  He had discussed the matter with friends until his brain whirled. Their sympathy maddened him, with hints of qui s’excuse s’accuse, and he turned at last in desperation to something that could not answer back. For the first time in his life he turned to Nature — to that dead, inanimate Nature he had left to poets and rhapsodising women: ‘I must face it alone,’ he put it. For the Finger of God was a phrase without meaning to him, and his entire being contained no trace of the religious instinct. He was a business man, honest, selfish, and ambitious; and the collapse of his worldly position was paramount to the collapse of the universe itself — his universe, at any rate. This ‘crumbling of the universe’ was the thought he took out with him. He left the house by the path that led into solitude, and reached the heathery expanse that formed one of the breathing-places of the New Forest. There he flung himself down wearily in the shadow of a little pine-copse. And his crumbled universe lay down with him, for he could not escape it.

  Taking the pistol from the hip-pocket where it hurt him, he lay upon his back and watched the clouds. Half stunned, half dazed, he stared into the sky. The perfumed wind played softly on his eyes; he smelt the heather-honey; golden flies hung motionless in the air, like coloured pins fastening the sunshine against the blue curtain of the summer, while dragon¬flies, like darting shuttles, wove across its pattern their threads of gleaming bronze. He heard the petulant crying of the
peewits, and watched their tumbling flight. Below him tinkled a rivulet, its brown water rippling between banks of peaty earth. Every¬where was singing, peace, and careless unconcern.

  And this lordly indifference of Nature calmed and soothed him. Neither human pain nor the injustice of man could shift the key of the water, alter the peewits’ cry a single tone, nor influence one fraction of an inch those cloudy frigates of vapour that sailed the sky. The earth bulged sunwards as she had bulged for centuries. The power of her steady gait, superbly cairn, breathed everywhere with grandeur — undismayed, un¬hasting, and supremely confident.... And, like the flash of those golden flies, there leaped suddenly upon him this vivid thought: that his world of agony lay neatly buttoned up within the tiny space of his own brain. Outside himself it had no existence at all. His mind contained it — the minute interior he called his heart. From this vaster world about him it lay utterly apart, like deeds in the black boxes of japanned tin he kept at the office, shut off from the universe, huddled in an overcrowded space within his skull.

  How this commonplace thought reached him, garbed in such startling novelty, was odd enough; for it seemed as though the fierceness of his pain had burned away something. His thoughts it merely enflamed; but this other thing it consumed. Something that had obscured clear vision shrivelled before it as a piece of paper, eaten up by fire, dwindles down into a thimbleful of unimportant ashes. The thicket of his mind grew half transparent. At the farther end he saw, for the first time — light. The perspective of his inner life, hitherto so enormous, telescoped into the proportions of a miniature. Just as momentous and significant as before, it was somehow abruptly different — seen from another point of view. The suffering had burned up rubbish he himself had piled over the head of a little Fact. Like a point of metal that glows yet will not burn, he discerned in the depths of him the essential shining fact that not all this ruinous conflagration could destroy. And this brilliant, indestructible kernel was — his Innocence. The rest was self-reared rubbish: opinion of the world. He had magnified an atom into a universe....