The Algernon Blackwood Collection

by Algernon Blackwood

  “You see,” began the governess at length, speaking very gently and sadly, “I am bound to make amends whatever happens. I must atone——”

  But already he found it hard to follow.

  “Atone,” he asked, “what does ‘atone‘ mean?” He moved back a step, and glanced about the room. The moment of concentration had passed without bearing fruit; his thoughts began to wander again like a child’s. “Anyhow, we shall escape together when the chance comes, shan’t we?” he said.

  “Yes, darling, we shall,” she said in a broken voice. “And if you do what I tell you, it will come very soon, I hope.” She drew him towards her and kissed him, and though he didn’t respond very heartily, he felt he liked it, and was sure that she was good, and meant to do the best possible for him.

  Jimbo asked nothing more for some time; he turned to the bed where he found a mattress and a blanket, but no sheets, and sat down on the edge and waited. The governess was standing by the window looking out; her back was turned to him. He heard an occasional deep sigh come from her, but he was too busy now with his own sensations to trouble much about her. Looking past her he saw the sea of green leaves dancing lazily in the sunshine. Something seemed to beckon him from beyond the high wall, and he longed to go out and play in the shade of the elms and hawthorns; for the horror of the Empty House was closing in upon him steadily but surely, and he longed for escape into a bright, unhaunted atmosphere, more than anything else in the whole world.

  His thoughts ran on and on in this vein, till presently he noticed that the governess was moving about the room. She crossed over and tried first one door and then the other; both were fastened. Next she lifted the trap-door and peered down into the black hole below. That, too, apparently was satisfactory. Then she came over to the bedside on tiptoe.

  “Jimbo, I’ve got something very important to ask you,” she began.

  “All right,” he said, full of curiosity.

  “You must answer me very exactly. Everything depends on it.”

  “I will.”

  She took another long look round the room, and then, in a still lower whisper, bent over him, and asked:

  “Have you any pain?”

  “Where?” he asked, remembering to be exact.

  “Anywhere.”

  He thought a moment.

  “None, thank you.”

  “None at all—anywhere?” she insisted.

  “None at all—anywhere,” he said with decision.

  She seemed disappointed.

  “Never mind; it’s a little soon yet, perhaps,” she said. “We must have patience. It will come in time.”

  “But I don’t want any pain,” he said, rather ruefully.

  “You can’t escape till it comes.”

  “I don’t understand a bit what you mean.” He began to feel alarmed at the notion of escape and pain going together.

  “You’ll understand later, though,” she said soothingly, “and it won’t hurt very much. The sooner the pain comes, the sooner we can try to escape. Nowhere can there be escape without it.”

  And with that she left him, disappearing without another word into the hole below the trap, and leaving him, disconsolate yet excited, alone in the room.

  CHAPTER VIII: THE GALLERY OF ANCIENT MEMORIES

  ..................

  WITH EVERY ONE, OF COURSE, the measurement of time depends largely upon the state of the emotions, but in Jimbo’s case it was curiously exaggerated. This may have been because he had no standard of memory by which to test the succession of minutes; but, whatever it was, the hours passed very quickly, and the evening shadows were already darkening the room when at length he got up from the mattress and went over to the window.

  Outside the high elms were growing dim; soon the stars would be out in the sky. The afternoon had passed away like magic, and the governess still left him alone; he could not quite understand why she went away for such long periods.

  The darkness came down very swiftly, and it was night almost before he knew it. Yet he felt no drowsiness, no desire to yawn and get under sheets and blankets; sleep was evidently out of the question, and the hours slipped away so rapidly that it made little difference whether he sat up all night or whether he slept.

  It was his first night in the Empty House, and he wondered how many more he would spend there before escape came. He stood at the window, peering out into the growing darkness and thinking long, long thoughts. Below him yawned the black gulf of the yard, and the outline of the enclosing wall was only just visible, but beyond the elms rose far into the sky, and he could hear the wind singing softly in their branches. The sound was very sweet; it suggested freedom, and the flight of birds, and all that was wild and unrestrained. The wind could never really be a prisoner; its voice sang of open spaces and unbounded distances, of flying clouds and mountains, of mighty woods and dancing waves; above all, of wings—free, swift, and unconquerable wings.

  But this rushing song of wind among the leaves made him feel too sad to listen long, and he lay down upon the bed again, still thinking, thinking.

  The house was utterly still. Not a thing stirred within its walls. He felt lonely, and began to long for the companionship of the governess; he would have called aloud for her to come only he was afraid to break the appalling silence. He wondered where she was all this time and how she spent the long, dark hours of the sleepless nights. Were all these things really true that she told him? Was he actually out of his body, and was his name really Jimbo? His thoughts kept groping backwards, ever seeking the other companions he had lost; but, like a piece of stretched elastic too short to reach its object, they always came back with a snap just when he seemed on the point of finding them. He wanted these companions very badly indeed, but the struggling of his memory was painful, and he could not keep the effort up for very long at one time.

  The effort once relaxed, however, his thoughts wandered freely where they would; and there rose before his mind’s eye dim suggestions of memories far more distant—ghostly scenes and faces that passed before him in endless succession, but always faded away before he could properly seize and name them.

  This memory, so stubborn as regards quite recent events, began to play strange tricks with him. It carried him away into a Past so remote that he could not connect it with himself at all, and it was like dreaming of scenes and events that had happened to some one else; yet, all the time, he knew quite well those things had happened to him, and to none else. It was the memory of the soul asserting itself now that the clamour of the body was low. It was an underground river coming to the surface, for odd minutes, here and there, showing its waters to the stars just long enough to catch their ghostly reflections before it rolled away underground again.

  Yet, swift and transitory as they were, these glimpses brought in their train sensations that were too powerful ever to have troubled his child-mind in its present body. They stirred in him the strong emotions, the ecstasies, the terrors, the yearnings of a much more distant past; whispering to him, could he but have understood, of an infinitely deeper layer of memories and experiences which, now released from the burden of the immediate years, strove to awaken into life again. The soul in that little body covered with alpaca knickerbockers and a sailor blouse seemed suddenly to have access to a storehouse of knowledge that must have taken centuries, rather than a few short years, to acquire.

  It was all very queer. The feeling of tremendous age grew mysteriously over him. He realised that he had been wandering for ages. He had been to the stars and also to the deeps; he had roamed over strange mountains far away from cities or inhabited places of the earth, and had lived by streams whose waves were silvered by moonlight dropping softly through whispering palm branches....

  Some of these ghostly memories brought him sensations of keenest happiness—icy, silver, radiant; others swept through his heart like a cold wave, leaving behind a feeling of unutterable woe, and a sense of loneliness that almost made him cry aloud. And there cam
e Voices too—Voices that had slept so long in the inner kingdoms of silence that they failed to rouse in him the very slightest emotion of recognition....

  Worn out at length with the surging of these strange hosts through him, he got up and went to the open window again. The night was very dark and warm, but the stars had disappeared, and there was the hush and the faint odour of coming rain in the air. He smelt leaves and the earth and the moist things of the ground, the wonderful perfume of the life of the soil.

  The wind had dropped; all was silent as the grave; the leaves of the elm trees were motionless; no bird or insect raised its voice; everything slept; he alone was watchful, awake. Leaning over the window-sill, his thoughts searched for the governess, and he wondered anew where she was spending the dark hours. She, too, he felt sure, was wakeful somewhere, watching with him, plotting their escape together, and always mindful of his safety....

  His reverie was suddenly interrupted by the flight of an immense night-bird dropping through the air just above his head. He sprang back into the room with a startled cry, as it rushed past in the darkness with a great swishing of wings. The size of the creature filled him with awe; it was so close that the wind it made lifted the hair on his forehead, and he could almost feel the feathers brush his cheeks. He strained his eyes to try and follow it, but the shadows were too deep and he could see nothing; only in the distance, growing every moment fainter, he could hear the noise of big wings threshing the air. He waited a little, wondering if another bird would follow it, or if it would presently return to its perch on the roof; and then his thoughts passed on to uncertain memories of other big birds—hawks, owls, eagles—that he had seen somewhere in places now beyond the reach of distinct recollections....

  Soon the light began to dawn in the east, and he made out the shape of the elm trees and the dreadful prison wall; and with the first real touch of morning light he heard a familiar creaking sound in the room behind him, and saw the black hood of the governess rising through the trap-door in the floor.

  “But you’ve left me alone all night!” he said at once reproachfully, as she kissed him.

  “On purpose,” she answered. “He’d get suspicious if I stayed too much with you. It’s different in the daytime, when he can’t see properly.”

  “Where’s he been all night, then?” asked the boy.

  “Last night he was out most of the time—hunting——”

  “Hunting!” he repeated, with excitement. “Hunting what?”

  “Children—frightened children,” she replied, lowering her voice. “That’s how he found you.”

  It was a horrible thought—Fright hunting for victims to bring to his dreadful prison—and Jimbo shivered as he heard it.

  “And how did you get on all this time?” she asked, hurriedly changing the subject.

  “I’ve been remembering, that is half-remembering, an awful lot of things, and feeling, oh, so old. I never want to remember anything again,” he said wearily.

  “You’ll forget quick enough when you get back into your body, and have only the body-memories,” she said, with a sigh that he did not understand. “But, now tell me,” she added, in a more serious voice, “have you had any pain yet?”

  He shook his head. She stepped up beside him.

  “None there?” she asked, touching him lightly just behind the shoulder blades.

  Jimbo jumped as if he had been shot, and uttered a piercing yell.

  “That hurts!” he screamed.

  “I’m so glad,” cried the governess. “That’s the pains coming at last.” Her face was beaming.

  “Coming!” he echoed, “I think they’ve come. But if they hurt as much as that, I think I’d rather not escape,” he added ruefully.

  “The pain won’t last more than a minute,” she said calmly. “You must be brave and stand it. There’s no escape without pain—from anything.”

  “If there’s no other way,” he said pluckily, “I’ll try,—but——”

  “You see,” she went on, rather absently, “at this very moment the doctor is probing the wounds in your back where the horns went in——”

  But he was not listening. Her explanations always made him want either to cry or to laugh. This time he laughed, and the governess joined him, while they sat on the edge of the bed together talking of many things. He did not understand all her explanations, but it comforted him to hear them. So long as somebody understood, no matter who, he felt it was all right.

  In this way several days and nights passed quickly away. The pains were apparently no nearer, but as Miss Lake showed no particular anxiety about their non-arrival, he waited patiently too, dreading the moment, yet also looking forward to it exceedingly.

  During the day the governess spent most of the time in the room with him; but at night, when he was alone, the darkness became enchanted, the room haunted, and he passed into the long, long Gallery of Ancient Memories.

  CHAPTER IX: THE MEANS OF ESCAPE

  ..................

  A WEEK PASSED, AND JIMBO began to wonder if the pains he so much dreaded, yet so eagerly longed for, were ever coming at all. The imprisonment was telling upon him, and he grew very thin, and consequently very light.

  The nights, though he spent them alone, were easily borne, for he was then intensely occupied, and the time passed swiftly; the moment it was dark he stepped into the Gallery of Memories, and in a little while passed into a new world of wonder and delight. But the daytime seemed always long. He stood for hours by the window watching the trees and the sky, and what he saw always set painful currents running through his blood—unsatisfied longings, yearnings, and immense desires he never could understand.

  The white clouds on their swift journeys took with them something from his heart every time he looked upon them; they melted into air and blue sky, and lo! that “something” came back to him charged with all the wild freedom and magic of open spaces, distance, and rushing winds.

  But the change was close at hand.

  One night, as he was standing by the open window listening to the drip of the rain, he felt a deadly weakness steal over him; the strength went out of his legs. First he turned hot, and then he turned cold; clammy perspiration broke out all over him, and it was all he could do to crawl across the room and throw himself on to the bed. But no sooner was he stretched out on the mattress than the feelings passed entirely, and left behind them an intoxicating sense of strength and lightness. His muscles became like steel springs; his bones were strong as iron and light as cork; a wonderful vigour had suddenly come into him, and he felt as if he had just stepped from a dungeon into fresh air. He was ready to face anything in the world.

  But, before he had time to realise the full enjoyment of these new sensations, a stinging, blinding pain shot suddenly through his right shoulder as if a red-hot iron had pierced to the very bone. He screamed out in agony; though, even while he screamed, the pain passed. Then the same thing happened in his other shoulder. It shot through his back with equal swiftness, and was gone, leaving him lying on the bed trembling with pain. But the instant it was gone the delightful sensations of strength and lightness returned, and he felt as if his whole body were charged with some new and potent force.

  The pains had come at last! Jimbo had no notion how they could possibly be connected with escape, but Miss Lake—his kind and faithful friend, Miss Lake—had said that no escape was possible without them; and had promised that they should be brief. And this was true, for the entire episode had not taken a minute of time.

  “ESCAPE, ESCAPE!“—the words rushed through him like a flame of fire. Out of this dreadful Empty House, into the open spaces; beyond the prison wall; out where the wind and the rain could touch him; where he could feel the grass beneath his feet, and could see the whole sky at once, instead of this narrow strip through the window. His thoughts flew to the stars and the clouds....

  But a strange humming of voices interrupted his flight of imagination, and he saw that the room was sud
denly full of moving figures. They were passing before him with silent footsteps, across the window from door to door. How they had come in, or how they went out, he never knew; but his heart stood still for an instant as he recognised the mournful figures of the Frightened Children filing before him in a slow procession. They were singing—though it sounded more like a chorus of whispering than actual singing—and as they moved past with the measured steps of their sorrowful dance, he caught the words of the song he had heard them sing when he first came into the house:—

  “We hear the little voices in the wind Singing of freedom we may never find.”

  Jimbo put his fingers into his ears, but still the sound came through. He heard the words almost as if they were inside himself—his own thoughts singing:—

  “We hear the little footsteps in the rain Running to help us, though they run in vain, Tapping in hundreds on the window-pane.”

  The horrible procession filed past and melted away near the door. They were gone as mysteriously as they had come, and almost before he realised it.

  He sprang from the bed and tried the doors; both were locked. How in the world had the children got in and out? The whispering voices rose again on the night air, and this time he was sure they came from outside. He ran to the open window and thrust his head out cautiously. Sure enough, the procession was moving slowly, still with the steps of that impish dance across the courtyard stones. He could just make out the slow waving arms, the thin bodies, and the white little faces as they passed on silent feet through the darkness, and again a fragment of the song rose to his ears as he watched, and filled him with an overpowering sadness:—

  “We have no joy in any children’s game, For happiness to us is but a name, Since Terror kissed us with his lips of flame.”

  Then he noticed that the group was growing smaller. Already the numbers were less. Somewhere, over there in the dark corner of the yard, the children disappeared, though it was too dark to see precisely how or where.

  “We dance with phantoms, and with shadows play,” rose to his ears.