Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  And then, with a curious, deep sense of shame, he realised abruptly that his position in regard to her was inappropriate. He, at any rate, had no right to stand. His proper attitude must be a very different one.

  He took her by the hand and, bending his head with an air of humble worship, led her slowly across the room. The touch of her was wonderful — like touching wind — all over him. With a reverence he guided her, all unresisting, to a high-backed chair beside the open window. She lowered herself upon it, and sat upright. She stared fixedly before her into space. No clothing in the world could have stolen from her childish face and figure the nameless air of grandeur that she wore. She was august.

  And he knelt before her. He raised his folded hands. A moment his eyes rested on the dispassionate little face, then looked beyond her into the night of wind and rain. His gaze returning then sought the eyes again.

  And the child, sweet little human interpreter of so vast a Mystery, bent her head downwards and looked into his heart. Wind stirred the hair upon her neck. He saw the bosom gently rise and fall.

  ‘What is it that you have to say to me?’ he whispered, like a prayer for mercy. ‘What is the message that you bring?’

  Her lips moved very slightly. The smile broke out again like moonlight across the lowered face. The words dropped through the sky. Very slowly, very distinctly, they fell into his open heart: simple as wind or rain.

  ‘Leave — me — as — I — am — and — as — you — found — me. Leave — us — together — as — we — are — and — as — we — were.’

  XIV

  THERE came then a sudden blast that swept with a shout across the night; and through his mind passed also a tumult like a roaring wind. Both winds, it seemed to him, were in the room at once. He had the sensation of being lifted from the earth. The candle was extinguished. And then the sound and terror dipped away again into silence and into distance whence it came....

  He found himself standing stiffly upright, though he had no recollection of rising from his knees. With an abruptness utterly disconcerting he was himself again. No item of memory had faded; he remembered the entire series of events. Only, he was in possession of his normal mind and powers, fear, awe, and wonder all departed. Mànya, who had been walking in her sleep, was sitting close before him in the darkness. He could just distinguish her outline against the open window. But he was master of himself again. Even the wild improbability, the extravagance of his own actions, the very lunacy of the picture that the night now smothered, left him unbewildered. And the calmness that thus followed the complete transition proved to him that all he had witnessed, all that had happened, had been — true. In no single detail was there falseness or distortion due to the excitement of a hysterical mood. It had been right and inevitable.

  He lit the candle again quietly, with a hand that did not tremble. He saw Mànya sitting on the high-backed chair with her head sunk forward on her breast. Gently he raised the face. The eyes were now closed, and the regular, deep breathing showed that the girl was sound asleep — but with the normal sleep of tired childhood. The Immensity to which he had knelt and prayed in her was gone, gone from the room, gone out into the open darkness of the Place. It had visited her, it had used her, it had left her. But at the same time he understood, as by some infallible intuition, that the warning to depart she brought him was not yet complete. It had reached his mind, but not as yet his soul. In its fulness the Notice to Quit could not be delivered between close, narrow walls. Its delivery must be outside.

  He looked at the sleeping child in silence for several minutes. She sat there in a semi-collapsed position and in momentary danger of falling from her chair. The lips were parted, the eyes tight shut, the red tam-o’-shanter dropping over one side of the face. Both hands were folded in her lap. By the light of two candles now he watched her, while the perspiration he had not been as yet aware of, dried upon his skin and made him shiver with the cold. And, after long hesitation, he woke her.

  With difficulty the girl came to, stared up into his face with a blank expression, rubbed her eyes, and then, with returning consciousness of who and where she was, looked mightily astonished.

  ‘Mànya, child,’ he began gently, ‘don’t be frightened.’

  ‘I’m not,’ she said at once. ‘But where am I? Is that you, Uncle?’

  ‘Been walking in your sleep. It’s all right. Nothing’s happened. Come, I’ll see you back to bed again.’ And he made a gesture as though to take her hand.

  But she avoided him. Still looking bewildered and perplexed, she said:

  ‘Oh — I remember now — I wanted to go out and see things. I want to go out still.’ Then she added quickly as the thought struck her, ‘But does Fräulein know? You haven’t told Fràulein, Uncle, have you? I mean, you won’t?’

  He shook his head. This was no time for chiding.

  ‘I often go out like this — at night, when you’re all asleep. It’s the only time now, since—’

  He stopped her instantly at that. ‘You fell asleep while dreaming! Was that it?’ He tried to laugh a little, but the laughter would not come.

  ‘I suppose so.’ She glanced down at her extraordinary garments. But no smile came to the eyes or lips. Then she looked round her, and gazed for a minute through the open window. The rain had ceased, the wind had died away. Moist, fragrant air stole in with many perfumes. ‘I don’t remember quite. I was in bed. I had been asleep already, I think. Then — something woke me.’ She paused.

  ‘There was something crying in the night.’

  ‘Something crying in the night?’ he repeated quickly, half to himself.

  She nodded. ‘Crying for me,’ she explained in a tone that sent a shudder all through him before he could prevent it. ‘So I thought I’d go out and see. Uncle, I had to go out,’ she added earnestly, still whispering, ‘because they were crying — to get at you. And unless I brought them — unless they came through me,’ she stopped abruptly, her eyes grew moist, she was on the verge of tears— ‘it would have been so terrible for you, I mean—’

  He stiffened as he heard it. He made a violent effort at control, stopping her further explanation.

  ‘And you weren’t afraid — to go out like this into the dark?’ he asked, more to cover retreat than because he wanted to hear the reply.

  ‘I put myself out for you,’ she answered simply. ‘I let them come in. That way you couldn’t get hurt. In me they had to come gently. They were an army. Only, nothing out of me could hurt you, Uncle.’ She suddenly put her arms about his neck and kissed him. ‘Oh, Uncle Dick, it was lucky I was there and ready, wasn’t it?’

  And Eliot, remembering that great Disturbance in the woods, pressed the child tenderly to himself, praying that she might not understand his heart too well, nor feel the cold that made his entire body tremble like a leaf. He had thought of an angry animal Presence lurking in the darkness. It had been bigger than that, and a thousand times more dangerous!

  ‘You see,’ she added with a little gasp for breath when he released her, ‘they waked me up on purpose. I dressed at an awful rate. I got to the door — I remember that perfectly well — and then—’ An expression of bewilderment came into her face again.

  ‘Yes,’ he helped her, ‘and then — what?’

  ‘Well, I forget exactly; but something stopped me. Something came all round me and took me in their arms. It was like arms of wind. I was lifted up and carried in the air. And after that I forget the rest, forget everything — till now.’

  She stopped. She took off her tam-o’-shanter and smoothed her untidy hair back from the forehead. And as he looked a moment at her — this little human organism still vibrating with the passage of a universal Power that had obsessed her, making her far more than merely child, yet still leaving in her the sweetness of her simple love — he came to a sudden, bold decision. He would face the thing complete. He would go outside.

  ‘Mànya,’ he whispered, looking hard at her, ‘would you like to
go out — now — with me? Come, child! Suppose we go together!’

  She stared at him, then darted about the room with little springs of excitement. She clapped her hands softly, her eyes alight and shining.

  ‘Uncle Dick! You really mean it? Wouldn’t it be grand!’

  ‘Of course, I mean it. See! I’m dressed and ready!’ And he pointed to his boots and clothes.

  ‘It’s the very best thing we can do, really,’ she said, trying to speak gravely, but the mischievous element uppermost at the idea of the secret nocturnal journey. ‘They’ll see that you’re not afraid, and you’ll be safe then for ever and ever and ever! Hooray!’

  She twirled the tam-o’-shanter in the air above her head, skipping in her childish joy.

  ‘And we’ll go past Fräulein’s door,’ she insisted mischievously, as he took her outstretched hand and led the way on tiptoe down the dark front stairs. ‘Hush!’ he whispered gruffly. ‘Don’t talk so loud.’ She fastened up her garments, and they moved like shadows through the sleeping house.

  XV

  THAT journey he made with this ‘child of Nature’ among the dripping trees and along soaked paths was one that Eliot never forgot. For him its meaning was unmistakable. His early life again supplied a parallel. He had once seen a wretched man marched out of camp with two days’ rations to shift for himself in the wilderness as best he might, — a prisoner convicted of treachery, but whose life was spared on the chance that he might redeem it, or die in the attempt. He had seen it done by redskins, he had seen it done by white. And hanging had been better. Yet the crime — stealing a horse, or sneaking another’s ‘grub-stakes’ — was one that civilisation punishes with a paltry fine, or condones daily as permissible ‘business acumen.’

  In primitive conditions it was a crime against the higher law. It was sinning against Nature. And Nature never is deceived.

  Richard Eliot was now being drummed out of camp. And the child who led him, mischief in her eyes and the joy of forbidden pleasure in her heart, was all unconscious of the awful rôle she played. Yet it was she who as well had pleaded for his life and saved him.

  Nature turned him out; the Place rejected him; and Mànya saw him safely to the confines of that wilderness of houses, ugliness, commercial desolation where he must wander till he re-made his soul or lost it altogether.

  They cautiously opened the front door, and the damp air rushed to meet them.

  ‘Hush!’ he repeated, closing it carefully behind him. But the child was already upon the lawn. Beyond her, dark blots against the sky, rose the massed outline of the little pointed hills. There were no stars anywhere, though the clouds were breaking into thinning troops; but it was not too dark to see, for a moon watched them somewhere from her place of hiding. The air was warm and very sweet, left breathing by the storm.

  ‘Hush, Mànya!’ he whispered again, ill at ease to see her go. She ran back, her feet inaudible upon the thick, wet lawn, and took his hand. ‘We’ll go by the Piney Valley,’ she said, assuming leadership. And he made no objection, though this was the direction of the sample pits. It led also, he remembered, to the Mill — the spot where she who had left him in charge had gone upon her long long journey.

  They went forward side by side. The wind below them hummed gently in the tree-tops, but it did not reach their faces. The whole wet world lay breathing softly about them, exhausted by the tempest. It was very still. It watched them pass. There was no effort to detain them. And in Dick Eliot’s heart was a pain that searched him like a pain of death itself.

  But his companion, he now clearly realised, was merely the child again — eerie, wonderful, eldritch, but still the little Mànya that he knew so well. Mischief was in her heart, and the excitement of unlawful adventure in her blood; but nothing more. The vast obsessing Entity that had constituted her judge and executioner was now entirely gone. He was spared the added shame of knowing that she realised what she did.

  Sometimes she left his side, to come back presently with a little rush of pleasurable alarm. He was uncertain whether he liked best her going from him or her sudden return. Their tread was now muffled by the needles as they went slowly down the pathways of the Piney Valley. The occasional snapping of small twigs alone betrayed their movements. Heavy branches, soaked like sponges, splashed showers on the ground when their shoulders brushed them in passing, and drops fell of their own weight with mysterious little thuds like footsteps everywhere about them in the woods.

  Mànya dived away from his side. She came back sometimes in front of him and sometimes behind. He never quite knew where she was. His mind, indeed, neglected her, for his thoughts were concentrated within himself. Her movements were the movements of a block of shadow, shifting here and there like shadows of trees and clouds in faint moonlight.

  ‘Uncle, tell me one thing,’ he heard with a start, as she suddenly stood in front of him across the narrow pathway, and so close that he nearly bumped against her. ‘Isn’t there something here that’s angry with you? Something you’ve done wrong to?’

  ‘Hush, child! Don’t say such things!’ He felt the shiver run through him. He pushed her forward with his hands.

  ‘But they’re being said — all round us. Uncle, don’t you hear them?’ she insisted.

  ‘I’ve always loved the Place. We’ve always been happy here together.’ He whispered it, as though a terror was in him lest it should be overheard and — contradicted.

  Her answer flabbergasted him. Her intuitions were so uncannily direct and piercing.

  ‘That’s what I meant. You’ve been unkind. You’ve hurt it.’

  ‘Mànya,’ he repeated severely, ‘you must not say such things. And you must not think them.’

  ‘I’m so awfully sorry, Uncle Dick,’ she said softly in the dark, and promptly kissed him. The kiss went like a stab into his heart.

  Then she was gone again, and he caught her light footstep several yards in front, as though a shower of drops had fallen on the needles.

  ‘Uncle,’ came her voice again close beside him. She stood on tiptoe and pulled his ear down to the level of her lips. ‘Hold my hand tight. We’re coming near now.’ She was curiously excited.

  ‘To the Mill?’ he asked, knowing quite well she meant another thing.

  ‘No, to the pits the men dug,’ she answered, nestling in against him, while his own voice echoed faintly, ‘Yes, the sample pits.’ He felt like passing the hostile outposts of the Camp who would shoot him but for the presence of the appointed escort.

  A sigh of lonely wind went past them with its shower of drops. And these little hands of wind with their fingers of sweet rain helped forward his expulsion. The empty wilderness beyond lay waiting for his soul. It heard him coming.

  And a curious, deep revelation of the child’s state of mind then rushed suddenly upon him. He knew that she expected something. And her answer to the question he put explained his own thought to himself.

  ‘What is it you expect, Mànya?’ he had asked unwisely.

  ‘Not expect exactly, Uncle, for that would be the wrong way. But I know’

  And several kinds of fear shot through him as he heard it, for the words lifted a veil and let him see into her mind a moment. She had said another of her profoundly mystical truths. Expectation, anticipation, he divined, would provide a mould for what was coming, would give it shape, but yet not quite its natural shape. To anticipate keenly meant to attract too quickly: to force. The expectant desire would coax what was coming into an unnatural form that might be dreadful because not quite true. Let the thing approach in its own way, uninvited by imaginative dread. Let it come upon them as it would, deciding its own shape of arrival. To expect was to invite distortion. This flashed across him behind her simple words.

  ‘You fearful child!’ he whispered, forcing an unnatural little laugh.

  ‘The soft, wet, sticky things, half yellow and half white,’ she began, resenting his laughter, ‘always moving, and never looking twice the same—’

&
nbsp; Then, before he could stop her, she stopped of her own accord.

  She clutched his arm. He understood that it was the closeness of the thing that had inspired the atrocious words. She held his arm so tightly that it hurt. They stood in the presence of others than themselves.

  Yet these Others had not come to them. The movement of approach was not really movement at all. It was a condition in himself had altered so that he knew. Out here the veil had thinned a little, as it had thinned in the room an hour ago. And he saw space otherwise. This Power that in humanity lies normally inarticulate was breaking through. In the room its language had been a stammer; it was a stammer now. Or, in the terms of sight, it was a little fragment utterly inexplicable by itself, since the entire universe is necessary for its complete expression.

  Yet Eliot did perceive the enormous thing behind — the thing to which he had been unfaithful by prostituting his first original love. And the fact that it was interwoven with his ordinary little human feelings at the same time only added to the bewilderment of its stupendous reality.

  He saw for a fleeting moment just as Mànya saw — from her immediate point of view.

  ‘It’s here,’ she whispered, in a voice that sounded most oddly everywhere; ‘it’s here, the angry thing you’ve hurt.’

  On either side of the path, where the heatherland came close, he saw the openings the men had dug — pale, luminous patches of whitish yellow. Between the bushy tufts they shone faintly gleaming against the night. Perspective, in that instant, became the merest trick of sight, a trivial mental jugglery. That slope of coal-black moor actually was extraordinarily near. The tree-tops were just as well beneath his feet, or he stood among their roots. Either was true. There was neither up nor down. The sky was in his hands, a little thing; or the stars and moon hid washed within the current of his blood. Size was illusion, as relative as time. No object in itself had any ‘size’ at all. He saw her universe, all true, as ever, but from another point of view. And the entire Place ran down here to a concentrated point. The sample pits pressed close against his face.