Suddenly he remembered the little white upright stones he had seen in that corner of[116] the yard, and understood. One by one they vanished just behind those stones.
Jimbo shivered, and drew his head in. He did not like those upright stones; they made him uncomfortable and afraid. Now, however, the last child had disappeared and the song had ceased. He realised what his fate would be if the escape were not successful; he would become one of this band of Frightened Children; dwelling somewhere behind the upright stones; a terrified shadow, waiting in vain to be rescued, waiting perhaps for ever and ever. The thought brought the tears to his eyes, but he somehow managed to choke them down. He knew it was the young portion of him only that felt afraid—the body; the older self could not feel fear, and had nothing to do with tears.
He lay down again upon the hard mattress and waited; and soon afterwards the first crimson streaks of sunrise appeared behind the high elms, and rooks began to caw and shake their wings in the upper branches. A little later the governess came in.
Before he could move out of the way—for he disliked being embraced—she had her arms round his neck, and was covering him with kisses. He saw tears in her eyes.
“You darling Jimbo!” she cried, “they’ve come at last.”
“How do you know?” he asked, surprised at her knowledge and puzzled by her display of emotion.
“I heard you scream to begin with. Besides, I’ve been watching.”
“Watching?”
“Yes, and listening too, every night, every single night. You’ve hardly been a minute out of my sight,” she added.
“I think it’s awfully good of you,” he said doubtfully, “but——”
A flood of questions followed—about the upright stones, the shadowy children, where she spent the night “watching him,” and a hundred other things besides. But he got little satisfaction out of her. He never did when it was Jimbo, the child, that asked; and he remained Jimbo, the child, all that day. She only told him that all was going well. The pains had come; he had grown nice and thin, and light; the children had come into his room as a hint that he belonged to their band, and other things had happened about which she would tell him later. The crisis was close at hand. That was all he could get out of her.
“It won’t be long now,” she said excitedly. “They’ll come to-night, I expect.”
“What will come to-night?” he asked, with querulous wonder.
“Wait and see!” was all the answer he got. “Wait and see!”
She told him to lie quietly on the bed and to have patience.
With asking questions, and thinking, and wondering, the day passed very quickly. With the lengthening shadows his excitement began to grow. Presently Miss Lake took her departure and went off to her unknown and mysterious abode; he watched her disappear through the floor with mingled feelings, wondering what would have happened before he saw her again. She gave him a long, last look as she sank away below the boards, but it was a look that brought him fresh courage, and her eyes were happy and smiling.
Tingling already with expectancy he got into the bed and lay down, his brain alive with one word—ESCAPE.
From where he lay he saw the stars in the narrow strip of sky; he heard the wind whispering in the branches; he even smelt the perfume of the fields and hedges—grass, flowers, dew, and the sweet earth—the odours of freedom.
The governess had, for some reason she refused to explain, taken his blouse away with her. For a long time he puzzled over this, seeking reasons and finding none. But, while in the act of stroking his bare arms, the pains of the night before suddenly returned to both shoulders at once. Fire seemed to run down his back, splitting his bones apart, and then passed even more quickly than before, leaving him with the same wonderful sensations of lightness and strength. He felt inclined to shout and run and jump, and it was only the memory of the governess’s earnest caution to “lie quietly” that prevented his new emotions passing into acts.
With very great effort he lay still all night long; and it was only when the room at last began to get light again that he turned on his side, preparatory to getting up.
But there was something new—something different! He rested on his elbow, waiting. Something had happened to him. Cautiously he sat on the edge of the bed, and stretched out one foot and touched the floor. Excitement ran through him like a wave. There was a great change, a tremendous change; for as he stepped out gingerly on to the floor something followed him from the bed. It clung to his back; it touched both shoulders at once; it stroked his ribs, and tickled the skin of his arms.
Half frightened, he brought the other leg over, and stood boldly upright on both feet. But the weight still clung to his back. He looked over his shoulder. Yes! it was trailing after him from the bed; it was fan-shaped, and brilliant in colour. He put out a hand and touched it; it was soft and glossy; then he took it deliberately between his fingers; it was smooth as velvet, and had numerous tiny ribs running along it.
Seizing it at last with all his courage, he pulled it forward in front of him for a better view, only to discover that it would not come out beyond a certain distance, and seemed to have got caught somehow between his shoulders—just where the pains had been. A second pull, more vigorous than the first, showed that it was not caught, but fastened to his skin; it divided itself, moreover, into two portions, one half coming from each shoulder.
“I do believe they’re feathers!” he exclaimed, his eyes almost popping out of his head.
Then, with a sudden flash of comprehension, he saw it all, and understood. They were, indeed, feathers; but they were something more than feathers merely. They were wings!
Jimbo caught his breath and stared in silence. He felt dazed. Then bit by bit the fragments of the weird mosaic fell into their proper places, and he began to understand. Escape was to be by flight. It filled him with such a whirlwind of delight and excitement that he could scarcely keep from screaming aloud.
Lost in wonder, he took a step forward, and watched with bulging eyes how the wings followed him, their tips trailing along the floor. They were a beautiful deep red, and hung down close and warm beside his body; glossy, sleek, magical. And when, later, the sun burst into the room and turned their colour into living flame, he could not resist the temptation to kiss them. He seized them, and rubbed their soft surfaces over his face. Such colours he had never seen before, and he wanted to be sure that they really belonged to him and were intended for actual use.
Slowly, without using his hands, he raised them into the air. The effort was a perfectly easy muscular effort from the shoulders that came naturally, though he did not quite understand how he accomplished it. The wings rose in a fine, graceful sweep, curving over his head till the tips of the feathers met, touching the walls as they rose, and almost reaching to the ceiling.
He gave a howl of delight, for this sight was more than he could manage without some outlet for his pent-up emotion; and at the same moment the trap-door shot open, and the governess came into the room with such a bang and a clatter that Jimbo knew at once her excitement was as great as his own. In her hands she carried the blouse she had taken away the night before. She held it out to him without a word. Her eyes were shining like electric lamps. In less than a second he had slipped his wings through the neatly-made slits, but before he could practise them again, Miss Lake rushed over to him, her face radiant with happiness.
“Jimbo! My darling Jimbo!” she cried—and then stopped short, apparently unable to express her emotion.
The next instant he was enveloped, wings and all, in a warm confusion of kisses, congratulations and folds of hood.
When they became disentangled again the governess went down on her knees and made a careful examination; she pulled the wings out to their full extent and found that they stretched about four feet and a half from tip to tip.
“They are beauties!” she exclaimed enthusiastically, “and full grown and strong. I’m not surprised they took so long coming.�
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“Long!” he echoed, “I thought they came awfully quickly.”
“Not half so quickly as they’ll go,” she interrupted; adding, when she saw his expression of dismay, “I mean, you’ll fly like the wind with them.”
Jimbo was simply breathless with excitement. He wanted to jump out of the window and escape at once. The blue sky and the sunshine and the white flying clouds sent him an irresistible invitation. He could not wait a minute longer.
“Quick,” he cried, “I can’t wait! They may go again. Show me how to use them. Oh! do show me.”
“I’ll show you everything in time,” she answered. There was something in her voice that made him pause in his excitement. He looked at her in silence for some minutes.
“But how are you going to escape?” he asked at length. “You haven’t got"——he stopped short.
The governess stepped back a few paces from him. She threw back the hood from her face. Then she lifted the long black cloak that hung like a cassock almost to her ankles and had always enveloped her hitherto.
Jimbo stared. Falling from her shoulders, and folding over her hips, he saw long red feathers clinging to her; and when he dashed forward to touch them with his hands, he found they were just as sleek and smooth and glossy as his own.
“And you never told me all this time?” he gasped.
“It was safer not,” she said. “You’d have been stroking and feeling your shoulders the whole time, and the wings might never have come at all.”
She spread out her wings as she spoke to their full extent; they were nearly six feet across, and the deep crimson on the under side was so exquisite, gleaming in the sunlight, that Jimbo ran in and nestled beneath the feathers, tickling his cheeks with the fluffy surface and running his fingers with childish delight along the slender red quills.
“You precious child,” she said, tenderly folding her wings round him and kissing the top of his head. “Always remember that I really love you; no matter what happens, remember that, and I’ll save you.”
“And we shall escape together?” he asked, submitting for once to the caresses with a good grace.
“We shall escape from the Empty House together,” she replied evasively. “How far we can go after that depends—on you.”
“On me?”
“If you love me enough—as I love you, Jimbo—we can never separate again, because love ties us together for ever. Only,” she added, “it must be mutual.”
“I love you very much,” he said, puzzled a little. “Of course I do.”
“If you’ve really forgiven me for being the cause of your coming here,” she said, “we can always be together, but——”
“I don’t remember, but I’ve forgiven you—that other you—long ago,” he said simply. “If you hadn’t brought me here, I should never have met you.”
“That’s not real forgiveness—quite,” she sighed, half to herself.
But Jimbo could not follow this sort of conversation for long; he was too anxious to try his wings for one thing.
“Is it very difficult to use them?” he asked.
“Try,” she said.
He stood in the centre of the floor and raised them again and again. They swept up easily, meeting over his head, and the air whistled musically through them. Evidently, they had their proper muscles, for it was no great effort, and when he folded them again by his side they fell into natural curves over his arms as if they had been there all his life. The sound of the feathers threshing the air filled him with delight and made him think of the big night-bird that had flown past the window during the night. He told the governess about it, and she burst out laughing.
“I was that big bird!” she said.
“You!”
“I perched on the roof every night to watch over you. I flew down that time because I was afraid you were trying to climb out of the window.”
This was indeed a proof of devotion, and Jimbo felt that he could never doubt her again; and when she went on to tell him about his wings and how to use them he listened with his very best attention and tried hard to learn and understand.
“The great difficulty is that you can’t practise properly,” she explained. “There’s no room in here, and yet you can’t get out till you fly out. It’s the first swoop that decides all. You have to drop straight out of this window, and if you use the wings properly they will carry you in a single swoop over the wall and right up into the sky.”
“But if I miss——?”
“You can’t miss,” she said with decision, “but, if you did, you would be a prisoner here for ever. HE would catch you in the yard and tear your wings off. It is just as well that you should know this at once.”
Jimbo shuddered as he heard her.
“When can we try?” he asked anxiously.
“Very soon now. The muscles must harden first, and that takes a little time. You must practise flapping your wings until you can do it easily four hundred times a minute. When you can do that it will be time for the first start. You must keep your head steady and not get giddy; the novelty of the motion—the ground rushing up into your face and the whistling of the wind—are apt to confuse at first, but it soon passes, and you must have confidence. I can only help you up to a certain point; the rest depends on you.”
“And the first jump?”
“You’ll have to make that by yourself,” she said; “but you’ll do it all right. You’re very light, and won’t go too near the ground. You see, we’re like bats, and cannot rise from the earth. We can only fly by dropping from a height, and that’s what makes the first plunge rather trying. But you won’t fall,” she added, “and remember, I shall always be within reach.”
“You’re awfully kind to me,” said Jimbo, feeling his little soul more than ever invaded by the force of her unselfish care. “I promise you I’ll do my best.” He climbed on to her knee and stared into her anxious face.
“Then you are beginning to love me a little, aren’t you?” she asked softly, putting her arms round him.
“Yes,” he said decidedly. “I love you very much already.”
Four hundred times a minute sounded a very great deal of wing-flapping; but Jimbo practised eagerly, and though at first he could only manage about twice a second, or one hundred and twenty times a minute, he found this increased very soon to a great deal more, and before long he was able to do the full four hundred, though only for a few minutes at a time.
He stuck to it pluckily, getting stronger every day. The governess encouraged him as much as possible, but there was very little room for her while he was at work, and he found the best way to practise was at night when she was out of the way. She told him that a large bird moved its wings about four times a second, two up-strokes and two down-strokes; but a small bird like a partridge moved its wings so rapidly it was impossible for the eye to distinguish or count the strokes. A middle course of four hundred suited his own case best, and he bent all his energies to acquire it.
He also learned that the convex outside curve of wings allowed the wind to escape over them, while the under side, being concave, held every breath. Thus the upward stroke did not simply counterbalance the downward and keep him stationary. Moreover, she showed him how the feathers underlapped each other so that the downward stroke pressed them closely together to hold the wind, whereas in the upward stroke they opened and separated, letting the air slip easily through them, thus offering less resistance to the atmosphere.
By the end of a week Jimbo had practised so hard that he could keep himself off the floor in mid-air for half an hour at a time, and even then without feeling any great fatigue. His excitement became intense; and, meanwhile, in his body on the nursery bed, though he did not know it, the fever was reaching its crisis. He could think of nothing else but the joys of flying, and what the first, awful plunge would be like, and when Miss Lake came up to him one afternoon and whispered something in his ear, he was so wildly happy that he hugged her for several minutes without t
he slightest coaxing.
“It’s bright and clear,” she explained, “and Fright will not come after us, for he fears the light, and can only fly on dark and gloomy nights.”
“So we can start——?” he stammered joyfully.
“To-night,” she answered, “for our first practice-flight.”
CHAPTER X: THE PLUNGE
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TO ENTER THE WORLD OF wings is to enter a new state of existence. The apparent loss of weight; the ability to attain full speed in a few seconds, and to stop suddenly in a headlong rush without fear of collapse; the power to steer instantly in any direction by merely changing the angle of the body; the altered and enormous view of the green world below—looking down upon forests, seas and clouds; the easy voluptuous rhythm of rising and falling in long, swinging undulations; and a hundred other things that simply defy description and can be appreciated only by actual experience, these are some of the delights of the new world of wings and flying. And the fearful joy of very high speed, especially when the exhilaration of escape is added to it, means a condition little short of real ecstasy.
Yet Jimbo’s first flight, the governess had been careful to tell him, could not be the flight of final escape; for, even if the wings proved equal to a prolonged effort, escape was impossible until there was somewhere safe to escape to. So it was understood that the practice flights might be long, or might be short; the important thing, meanwhile, was to learn to fly as well as possible. For skilled flying is very different to mere headlong rushing, and both courage and perseverance are necessary to acquire it.
With rare common sense Miss Lake had said very little about the possibility of failure. Having warned him about the importance of not falling, she had then stopped, and the power of suggestion had been allowed to work only in the right direction of certain success. While the boy knew that the first plunge from the window would be a moment fraught with the highest danger, his mind only recognised the mere off-chance of falling and being caught. He felt confidence in himself, and by so much, therefore, were the chances of disaster lessened.
The Algernon Blackwood Collection Page 36