Something became incandescent in him then. He realized a singular merging of powers in absolute opposition to each other. It was as though they harmonized. Yet it was through this small, silvery voice the apparent magic came. The words, of course, were his own in memory, but they rose from his modern soul, now reawakening.... He started painfully. He noted again that he stood apart, alone, perhaps forgotten of the others. The woman, leading a dancing throng about the blazing brushwood, was far from him. Her mind, too sure of his compliance, had momentarily left him. The chain was weakened. The circuit knew a break.
But this sudden realization was not of spontaneous origin. His heart had not produced it of its own accord. The unholy tumult of the orgy held him too slavishly in its awful sway for the tiny point of his modern soul to have pierced it thus unaided. The light flashed to him from an outside, natural source of simple loveliness — the singing of a bird. From the distance, faint and exquisite, there had reached him the silvery notes of a happy thrush, awake in the night, and telling its joy over and over again to itself. The innocent beauty of its song came through the forest and fell into his soul....
The eyes, he became aware, had shifted, focusing now upon an object nearer to them. The knife was moving. There was a convulsive wriggle of the body, the head dropped loosely forward, no cry was audible. But, at the same moment, the inner battle ceased and an unexpected climax came. Did the soul of the bully faint with fear? Did the spirit leave him at the actual touch of earthly vengeance? The watcher never knew. In that appalling moment when the knife was about to begin the mission that the fire would complete, the roar of inner battle ended abruptly, and that small silvery voice drew the words of invincible power from his reawakening soul. “Ye do it also unto me ...” pealed o’er the forest.
He reeled. He acted instantaneously. Yet before he had dashed the knife from the hand of the executioner, scattered the pile of blazing wood, plunged through the astonished worshippers with a violence of strength that amazed even himself; before he had torn the thongs apart and loosened the fainting victim from the tree; before he had uttered a single word or cry, though it seemed to him he roared with a voice of thousands — he witnessed a sight that came surely from the Heaven of his earliest childhood days, from that Heaven whose God is love and whose forgiveness was taught him at his mother’s knee.
With superhuman rapidity it passed before him and was gone. Yet it was no earthly figure that emerged from the forest, ran with this incredible swiftness past the startled throng, and reached the tree. He saw the shape; the same instant it was there; wrapped in light, as though a flame from the sacrificial fire flashed past him over the ground. It was of an incandescent brightness, yet brightest of all were the little outstretched hands. These were of purest gold, of a brilliance incredibly shining.
It was no earthly child that stretched forth these arms of generous forgiveness and took the bewildered prisoner by the hand just as the knife descended and touched the helpless wrists. The thongs were already loosened, and the victim, fallen to his knees, looked wildly this way and that for a way of possible escape, when the shining hands were laid upon his own. The murderer rose. Another instant and the throng must have been upon him, tearing him limb from limb. But the radiant little face looked down into his own; she raised him to his feet; with superhuman swiftness she led him through the infuriated concourse as though he had become invisible, guiding him safely past the furies into the cover of the trees. Close before his eyes, this happened; he saw the waft of golden brilliance, he heard the final gulp of it, as wind took the dazzling of its fiery appearance into space. They were gone....
9
He stood watching the disappearing motor-cars, wondering uneasily who the occupants were and what their business, whither and why did they hurry so swiftly through the night? He was still trying to light his pipe, but the damp tobacco would not burn.
The air stole out of the forest, cooling his body and his mind; he saw the anemones gleam; there was only peace and calm about him, the earth lay waiting for the sweet, mysterious stars. The moon was higher; he looked up; a late bird sang. Three strips of cloud, spaced far apart, were the footsteps of the South Wind, as she flew to bring more birds from Africa. His thoughts turned to gentle, happy hopes of a day when the lion and the lamb should lie down together, and a little child should lead them. War, in this haunt of ancient peace, seemed an incredible anachronism.
He did not go farther; he did not enter the forest; he turned back along the quiet road he had come, ate his food on a farmer’s gate, and over a pipe sat dreaming of his sure belief that humanity had advanced. He went home to his hotel soon after midnight. He slept well, and next day walked back the four miles from the hospitals, instead of using the car. Another hospital searcher walked with him. They discussed the news.
“The weather’s better anyhow,” said his companion. “In our favour at last!”
“That’s something,” he agreed, as they passed a gang of prisoners and crossed the road to avoid saluting.
“Been another escape, I hear,” the other mentioned. “He won’t get far. How on earth do they manage it? The M.O. had a yarn that he was helped by a motor-car. I wonder what they’ll do to him.”
“Oh, nothing much. Bread and water and extra work, I suppose?”
The other laughed. “I’m not so sure,” he said lightly. “Humanity hasn’t advanced very much in that kind of thing.”
A fugitive memory flashed for an instant through the other’s brain as he listened. He had an odd feeling for a second that he had heard this conversation before somewhere. A ghostly sense of familiarity brushed his mind, then vanished. At dinner that night the table in front of him was unoccupied. He did not, however, notice that it was unoccupied.
THE END
MISCELLANEOUS STORIES
THE DOLL
THE OLIVE
THE LITTLE BEGGAR
THE MAN WHO WAS MILLIGAN
THE PIKESTAFFE CASE
THE TROD
THE SINGULAR DEATH OF MORTON
THE KIT-BAG
THE DOLL
Some nights are merely dark, others are dark in a suggestive way as though something ominous, mysterious, is going to happen. In certain remote outlying suburbs, at any rate, this seems true, where great spaces between the lamps go dead at night, where little happens, where a ring at the door is a summons almost, and people cry “Let’s go to town!” In the villa gardens the mangy cedars sigh in the wind, but the hedges stiffen, there is a muffling of spontaneous activity.
On this particular November night a moist breeze barely stirred the silver pine in the narrow drive leading to the “Laurels” where Colonel Masters lived, Colonel Hymber Masters, late of an Indian regiment, with many distinguished letters after his name. The housemaid in the limited staff being out, it was the cook who answered the bell when it rang with a sudden, sharp clang soon after ten o’clock — and gave an audible gasp half of surprise, half of fear. The bell’s sudden clangour was an unpleasant and unwelcome sound. Monica, the Colonel’s adored yet rather neglected child, was asleep upstairs, but the cook was not frightened lest Monica be disturbed, nor because it seemed a bit late for the bell to ring so violently; she was frightened because when she opened the door to let the fine rain drive in she saw a black man standing on the steps. There, in the wind and the rain, stood a tall, slim nigger holding a parcel.
Dark-skinned, at any rate, he was, she reflected afterwards, whether negro, hindu or arab; the word “nigger” describing any man not really white. Wearing a stained yellow mackintosh and dirty slouch hat, and “looking like a devil, so help me God,” he shoved the little parcel at her out of the gloom, the light from the hall flaring red into his gleaming eyes. “For Colonel Masters,” he whispered rapidly, “and very special into his own personal touch and no one else.” And he melted away into the night with his “strange foreign accent, his eyes of fire, and his nasty hissing voice.”
He was gone, swallowed up in the w
ind and rain.
“But I saw his eyes,” swore the cook the next morning to the housemaid, “his fiery eyes, and his nasty look, and his black hands and long thin fingers, and his nails all shiny pink, and he looked to me — if you know wot I mean — he looked like — death. . . .”
Thus the cook, so far as she was intelligently articulate next day, but standing now against the closed door with the small brown paper parcel in her hands, impressed by the orders that it was to be given into his personal touch, she was relieved by the fact that Colonel Masters never returned till after midnight and that she need not act at once. The reflection brought a certain comfort that restored her equanimity a little though she still stood there, holding the parcel gingerly in her grimy hands, reluctant, hesitating, uneasy. A parcel, even brought by a mysterious dark stranger, was not in itself frightening, yet frightened she certainly felt. Instinct and superstition worked perhaps; the wind, the rain, the fact of being alone in the house, the unexpected black man, these also contributed to her discomfort. A vague sense of horror touched her, her Irish blood stirred ancient dreams, so that she began to shake a little, as though the parcel contained something alive, explosive, poisonous, unholy, almost as though it moved, and, her fingers loosening their hold, the parcel — dropped. It fell on the tiled floor with a queer, sharp clack, but it lay motionless. She eyed it closely, cautiously, but, thank God, it did not move, an inert, brown paper parcel. Brought by an errand boy in daylight, it might have been groceries, tobacco, even a mended shirt. She peeped and tinkered, that sharp clack puzzled her. Then, after a few minutes, remembering her duty, she picked it up gingerly even while she shivered. It was to be handed into the Colonel’s “personal touch.” She compromised, deciding to place it on his desk and to tell him about it in the morning; only Colonel Masters, with those mysterious years in the East behind him, his temper and his tyrannical orders, was not easy of direct approach at the best of times, in the morning least of all.
The cook left it at that — that is, she left it on the desk in his study, but left out all explanations about its arrival. She had decided to be vague about such unimportant details, for Mrs. O’Reilly was afraid of Colonel Masters, and only his professed love of Monica made her believe that he was quite human. He paid her well, oh yes, and sometimes he smiled, and he was a handsome man, if a bit too dark for her fancy, yet he also paid her an occasional compliment about her curry, and that soothed her for the moment. They suited one another, at any rate, and she stayed, robbing him comfortably, if cautiously.
“It ain’t no good,” she assured the housemaid next day, “Wot with that ‘personal touch into his hands, and no one else,’ and that black man’s eyes and that crack when it came away in my hands and fell on the floor. It ain’t no good, not to us nor anybody. No man as black as he was means lucky stars to anybody. A parcel indeed — with those devil’s eyes—”
“What did you do with it?” enquired the housemaid.
The cook looked her up and down. “Put it in the fire o’ course,” she replied. “On the stove if you want to know exact.”
It was the housemaid’s turn to look the cook up and down.
“I don’t think,” she remarked.
The cook reflected, probably because she found no immediate answer.
“Well,” she puffed out presently, “d’you know wot I think? You don’t. So I’ll tell you. It was something the master’s afraid of, that’s wot it was. He’s afraid of something — ever since I been here I’ve known that. And that’s wot it was. He done somebody wrong in India long ago and that lanky nigger brought wot’s coming to him, and that’s why I says I put it on the stove — see?” She dropped her voice. “It was a bloody idol,” she whispered, “that’s wot it was, that parcel, and he — why, he’s a bloody secret worshipper.” And she crossed herself. “That’s why I said I put on the stove — see?”
The housemaid stared and gasped.
“And you mark my words, young Jane!” added the cook, turning to her dough.
And there the matter rested for a period, for the cook, being Irish, had more laughter in her than tears, and beyond admitting to the scared housemaid that she had not really burnt the parcel but had left it on the study table, she almost forgot the incident. It was not her job, in any case, to answer the front door. She had “delivered” the parcel. Her conscience was quite clear.
Thus, nobody “marked her words” apparently, for nothing untoward happened, as the way is in remote Suburbia, and Monica in her lonely play was happy, and Colonel Masters as tyrannical and grim as ever. The moist wintry wind blew through the silver pine, the rain beat against the bow window, and no one called. For a week this lasted, a longish time in uneventful Suburbia.
But suddenly one morning Colonel Masters rang his study bell and, the housemaid being upstairs, it was the cook who answered. He held a brown paper parcel in his hands, half opened, the string dangling.
“I found this on my desk. I haven’t been in my room for a week. Who brought it? And when did it come?” His face, yellow as usual, held a fiery tinge.
Mrs. O’Reilly replied, post-dating the arrival vaguely.
“I asked who brought it?” he insisted sharply.
“A stranger,” she fumbled. “No one,” she added nervously, “from hereabouts. No one I ever seen before. It was a man.”
“What did he look like?” The question came like a bullet.
Mrs. O’Reilly was rather taken by surprise. “D-darkish,” she stumbled. “Very darkish,” she added, “if I saw him right. Only he came and went so quick I didn’t get his face proper like, and . . .”
“Any message?” the Colonel cut her short She hesitated. “There was no answer,” she began remembering former occasions.
“Any message, I asked you?” he thundered.
“No message, sir, none at all. And he was gone before I could get his name and address, sir, but I think it was a sort of black man, or it may have been the darkness of the night — I couldn’t reely say, sir . . .”
In another minute she would have burst into tears or dropped to the floor in a faint, such was her terror of her employer especially when she was lying blind. The Colonel, however, saved her both disasters by abruptly holding out the half opened parcel towards her. He neither cross-examined nor cursed her as she had expected. He spoke with the curtness that betrayed anger and anxiety, almost it occurred to her, distress.
“Take it away and burn it,” he ordered in his army voice, passing it into her outstretched hands. “Burn it,” he repeated it, “or chuck the damned thing away.” He almost flung it at her as though he did not want to touch it. “If the man comes back,” he ordered in a voice of steel, “tell him it’s been destroyed — and say it didn’t reach me,” laying tremendous emphasis on the final words. “You understand?’’ He almost chucked it at her.
“Yes, sir. Exactly, sir,’’ and she turned and stumbled out, holding the parcel gingerly in her arms rather than in her hands and fingers, as though it contained something that might bite or sting.
Yet her fear had somehow lessened, for if he, Colonel Masters, could treat the parcel so contemptuously, why should she feel afraid of it. And, once alone in her kitchen among her household gods, she opened it. Turning back the thick paper wrappings. she started, and to her rather disappointed amazement, she found herself staring at nothing but a fair, waxen faced doll that could be bought in any toy-shop for one shilling and sixpence. A commonplace little cheap doll! Its face was pallid, white, expressionless, its flaxen hair was dirty, its tiny ill-shaped hands and fingers lay motionless by its side, its mouth was closed, though somehow grinning, no teeth visible, its eyelashes ridiculously like a worn toothbrush, its entire presentment in its flimsy skirt, contemptible, harmless, even ugly.
A doll! She giggled to herself, all fear evaporated.
“Gawd,” she thought. “The master must have a conscience like the floor of a parrot’s cage! And worse than that!” She was too afraid of him to despise
him, her feeling was probably more like pity. “At any rate,’’ she reflected, “he had the wind up pretty had. It was something else he expected — not a two-penny halfpenny doll!’’ Her warm heart felt almost sorry for him.
Instead of “chucking the damned thing away or burning it,’’ however, for it was quite a nice looking doll, she presented it to Monica, and Monica, having few new toys, instantly adored it, promising faithfully, as gravely warned by Mrs. O’Reilly, that she would never, never let her father know she had it.
Her father, Colonel Hymber Masters, was, it seems, what’s called a “disappointed” man, a man whose fate forced him to live in surroundings he detested, disappointed in his career probably, possibly in love as well, Monica a love-child doubtless, and limited by his pension to face daily conditions that he loathed.
He was a silent, bitter sort of fellow, no more than that, and not so much disliked in the neighbourhood, as misunderstood. A sombre man they reckoned him, with his dark, furrowed face and silent ways. Yet “dark” in the suburbs meant mysterious, and “silent” invited female fantasy to fill the vacuum. It’s the frank, corn-haired man who invites sympathy and generous comment. He enjoyed his Bridge, however, and was accepted as a first-class player. Thus, he went out nightly, and rarely came back before midnight. He was welcome among the gamblers evidently, while the fact that he had an adored child at home softened the picture of this “mysterious” man. Monica, though rarely seen, appealed to the women of the neighbourhood, and “whatever her origin” said the gossips, “he loves her.”
Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood Page 564