The Algernon Blackwood Collection

by Algernon Blackwood

  But here the change had been sudden and complete, no shading anywhere. He had leaped a wall. Turmoil and confusion lay on that side; on this lay peace, rest and beauty. Strain and ugliness were left behind, and with them so much that now seemed false, unnecessary, vain. The grandeur of toil, and the insignificance of acquisition—the phrase ran through his mind with the sighing of the pine trees; it was like the first line of a song. The Vicar knew the song complete. Even Minks, perhaps, could pipe it too. Rogers was learning it. ‘I must help them somehow,’ he thought again. ‘It’s not a question of money merely. It’s that they want welding together more—more harmony—more sympathy. They’re separate bits of a puzzle now, whereas they might be a rather big and lovely pattern. …’

  He lay down upon the moss and flung his hat away. He felt that Life stood still within him, watching, waiting, asking beautiful, deep, searching questions. It made him slightly uncomfortable. Henry Rogers, late of Threadneedle Street, took stock of himself, not of set intention, yet somehow deliberately. He reviewed another Henry Rogers who had been unable to leap that wall. The two peered at one another gravely.

  The review, however, took no definite form; precise language hardly came to help with definite orders. A vague procession of feelings, half sad, half pleasurable, floated past his closing eyes. … Perhaps he slept a moment in the sunshine upon that bed of moss and pine needles. …

  Such curious thoughts flowed up and out and round about, dancing like the brimstone butterflies out of reach before he could seize them, calling with voices like the cuckoos, themselves all the time just out of sight. Who ever saw a cuckoo when it’s talking? Who ever foretold the instant when a butterfly would shoot upwards and away? Such darting, fragile thoughts they were, like hints, suggestions. Still, they were thoughts.

  Minks, dragging behind him an enormous Scheme, emerged from the dark vaults of a Bank where gold lay piled in heaps. Minks was looking for him, yet smiling a little, almost pityingly, as he strained beneath the load. It was like a comic opera. Minks was going down the noisy, crowded Strand. Then, suddenly, he paused, uncertain of the way. From an upper window a shining face popped out and issued clear directions —as from a pulpit. ‘That way—towards the river,’ sang the voice—and far down the narrow side street flashed a gleam of flowing water with orchards on the farther bank. Minks instantly turned and went down it with his load so fast that the scenery changed before the heavy traffic could get out of the way. Everything got muddled up with fields and fruit-trees; the Scheme changed into a mass of wild- flowers; a lame boy knocked it over with his crutch; gold fell in a brilliant, singing shower, and where each sovereign fell there sprang up a buttercup or dandelion. Rogers rubbed his eyes … and realised that the sun was rather hot upon his face. A dragon fly was perched upon his hat three feet away. …

  The tea hour at the Den was close, and Jimbo, no doubt, was already looking for him at the carpenter’s house. Rogers hurried home among the silent forest ways that were sweet with running shadows and slanting sunshine. Oh, how fragrant was the evening air! And how the lily of the valley laughed up in his face! Normally, at this time, he would be sitting in a taxi, hurrying noisily towards his Club, thoughts full of figures, politics, philanthropy cut to line and measure—a big Scheme standing in squares across the avenue of the future. Now, moss and flowers and little children took up all the available space. … How curiously out of the world Bourcelles was, to be sure. Newspapers had no meaning any longer. Picture-papers and smart weekly Reviews, so necessary and important in St. James’s Street, here seemed vulgar, almost impertinent—ridiculous even. Big books, yes; but not pert, topical comments issued with an absurd omnipotence upon things merely ephemeral. How the mind accumulated rubbish in a city! It seemed incredible. He surely had climbed a wall and dropped down into a world far bigger, though a world the ‘city’ would deem insignificant and trivial. Yet only because it had less detail probably! A loved verse flashed to him across the years:—

  ‘O to dream, O to awake and wander

  There, and with delight to take and render,

  Through the trance of silence,

  Quiet breath!

  Lo! for there among the flowers and grasses,

  Only the mightier movement sounds and passes;

  Only winds and rivers,

  Life and death.’

  Bourcelles was important as London, yes, while simple as the nursery. The same big questions of life and death, of battle, duty, love, ruled the peaceful inhabitants. Only the noisy shouting, the clatter of superfluous chattering and feverish striving had dropped away. Hearts and minds wore fewer clothes among these woods and vineyards. There was no nakedness though … there were flowers and moss, blue sky and peace and beauty. … Thought ran into confused, vague pictures. He could not give them coherence, shape, form. …

  He crossed the meadows and entered the village through the Pension garden. The Widow Jequier gave him a spray of her Persian lilac on the way. ‘It’s been growing twenty-five years for you,’ she said, ‘only do not look at me. I’m in my garden things—invisible.’ He remembered with a smile Jane Anne’s description—that ‘the front part of the house was all at the back.’

  Tumbling down the wooden stairs, he crossed the street and made for the Citadelle, where the children opened the door for him even before he rang. Jimbo and Monkey, just home from school, pulled him by both arms towards the tea-table. They had watched for his coming.

  ‘The samovar’s just boiling,’ Mother welcomed him. Daddy was on the sofa by the open window, reading manuscript over to himself in a mumbling voice; and Jane Anne, apron on, sleeves tucked up, face flushed, poked her head in from the kitchen:

  ‘Excuse me, Mother, the cupboard’s all in distress. I can’t find the marmalade anywhere.’

  ‘But it’s already on the table, child.’

  She saw her Cousin and popped swiftly back again from view. One heard fragments of her sentences—’wumbled … chronic … busy monster. … ‘And two minutes later la famille anglaise was seriously at tea.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  ..................

  What art thou, then? I cannot guess;

  But tho’ I seem in star and flower

  To feel thee some diffusive power,

  I do not therefore love thee less.

  Love and Death, TENNYSON.

  In the act of waking up on the morning of the Star Cave experience, Henry Rogers caught the face of a vivid dream close against his own— but in rapid motion, already passing. He tried to seize it. There was a happy, delightful atmosphere about it. Examination, however, was impossible; the effort to recover the haunting dream dispersed it. He saw the tip, like an express train flying round a corner; it flashed and disappeared, fading into dimness. Only the delightful atmosphere remained and the sense that he had been somewhere far away in very happy conditions. People he knew quite well, had been there with him; Jimbo and Monkey; Daddy too, as he had known him in his boyhood. More than this was mere vague surmise; he could not recover details. Others had been also of the merry company, familiar yet unrecognisable. Who in the world were they? It all seemed oddly real.

  ‘How I do dream in this place, to be sure,’ he thought; ‘I, who normally dream so little! It was like a scene of my childhood— Crayfield or somewhere.’ And he reflected how easily one might be persuaded that the spirit escaped in sleep and knew another order of experience. The sense of actuality was so vivid.

  He lay half dozing for a little longer, hoping to recover the adventures. The flying train showed itself once or twice again, but smaller, and much, much farther away. It curved off into the distance. A deep cutting quickly swallowed it. It emerged for the last time, tiny as a snake upon a chess-board of far-off fields. Then it dipped into mist; the snake shot into its hole. It was gone. He sighed. It had been so lovely. Why must it vanish so entirely? Once or twice during the day it returned, touched him swiftly on the heart and was gone again. But the waking impression of a dream is
never the dream itself. Sunshine destroys the sense of enormous wonder.

  ‘I believe I’ve been dreaming all night long, and going through all kinds of wild adventures.’

  He dressed leisurely, still hunting subconsciously for fragments of that happy dreamland. Its aroma still clung about him. The sunshine poured into the room. He went out on to the balcony and looked at the Alps through his Zeiss field-glasses. The brilliant snow upon the Diablerets danced and sang into his blood; across the broken teeth of the Dent du Midi trailed thin strips of early cloud. Behind him rose great Boudry’s massive shoulders, a pyramid of incredible deep blue. And the limestone precipices of La Tourne stood dazzlingly white, catching the morning sunlight full in their face.

  The air had the freshness of the sea. Men were singing at their work among the vineyards. The tinkle of cow-bells floated to him from the upper pastures upon Mont Racine. Little sails like sea-gulls dipped across the lake. Goodness, how happy the world was at Bourcelles! Singing, radiant, careless of pain and death. And, goodness, how he longed to make it happier still!

  Every day now this morning mood had been the same. Desire to do something for others ran races with little practical schemes for carrying it out. Selfish considerations seemed to have taken flight, all washed away while he slept. Moreover, the thought of his Scheme had begun to oppress him; a touch of shame came with it, almost as though an unworthy personal motive were somewhere in it. Perhaps after all—he wondered more and more now—there had been an admixture of personal ambition in the plan. The idea that it would bring him honour in the eyes of the world had possibly lain there hidden all along. If so, he had not realised it; the depravity had been unconscious. Before the Bourcelles standard of simplicity, artificial elements dropped off automatically, ashamed. … And a profound truth, fished somehow out of that vanished dreamland, spun its trail of glory through his heart. Kindness that is thanked-for surely brings degradation—a degradation almost as mean as the subscription acknowledged in a newspaper, or the anonymous contribution kept secret temporarily in order that its later advertisement may excite the more applause. Out flashed this blazing truth: kind acts must be instinctive, natural, thoughtless. One hand must be in absolute ignorance of the other’s high adventures. … And when the carpenter’s wife brought up his breakfast tray, with the bunch of forest flowers standing in a tumbler of water, she caught him pondering over another boyhood’s memory—that friend of his father’s who had given away a million anonymously.

  … In his heart plans shaped themselves with soft, shy eyes and hidden faces…. He longed to get la famille anglaise straight … for one thing. …

  It was an hour later, while he still sat dreaming in the sunshine by the open window, that a gentle tap came at the door, and Daddy entered. The visit was a surprise. Usually, until time for dejeuner, he kept his room, busily unwumbling stories. This was unusual. And something had happened to him; he looked different. What was it that had changed? Some veil had cleared away; his eyes were shining. They greeted one another, and Rogers fell shyly to commonplaces, while wondering what the change exactly was.

  But the other was not to be put off. He was bursting with something.

  Rogers had never seen him like this before.

  ‘You’ve stopped work earlier than usual,’ he said, providing the opening. He understood his diffidence, his shyness in speaking of himself. Long disappointments lay so thinly screened behind his unfulfilled enthusiasm.

  But this time the enthusiasm swept diffidence to the winds. It had been vitally stirred.

  ‘Early indeed,’ he cried. ‘I’ve been working four hours without a break, man. Why, what do you think?—I woke at sunrise, a thing I never do, with—with a brilliant idea in my head. Brilliant, I tell you. By Jove, if only I can carry it out as I see it——!’

  ‘You’ve begun it already?’

  ‘Been at it since six o’clock, I tell you. It was in me when I woke— idea, treatment, everything complete, all in a perfect pattern of Beauty.’

  There was a glow upon his face, his hair was untidy; a white muffler with blue spots was round his neck instead of collar. One end stuck up against his chin. The safety pin was open.

  ‘By Jove! I am delighted!’ Rogers had seen him excited before over a ‘brilliant idea,’ but the telling of it always left him cold. It touched the intellect, yet not the heart. It was merely clever. This time, however, there was a new thing in his manner. ‘How did you get it?’ he repeated. Methods of literary production beyond his own doggerels were a mystery to him. ‘Sort of inspiration, eh?’

  ‘Woke with it, I tell you,’ continued his cousin, twisting the muffler so that it tickled his ear now instead of his chin. ‘It must have come to me in sleep——’ ‘In sleep,’ exclaimed the other; ‘you dreamt it, then?’

  ‘Kind of inspiration business. I’ve heard of that sort of thing, but never experienced it——’ The author paused for breath.

  ‘What is it? Tell me.’ He remembered how ingenious details of his patents had sometimes found themselves cleared up in the morning after refreshing slumber. This might be something similar. ‘Let’s hear it,’ he added; ‘I’m interested.’

  His cousin’s recitals usually ended in sad confusion, so that all he could answer by way of praise was—’ You ought to make something good out of that. I shall like to read it when you’ve finished it.’ But this time, he felt, there was distinctly a difference. There were new conditions.

  The older man leaned closer, his face alight, his manner shyly, eagerly confidential. The morning sunshine blazed upon his untidy hair. A bread crumb from breakfast still balanced in his beard.

  ‘It’s difficult to tell in a few words, you see,’ he began, the enthusiasm of a boy in his manner, ‘but—I woke with the odd idea that this little village might be an epitome of the world. All the emotions of London, you see, are here in essence—the courage and cowardice, the fear and hope, the greed and sacrifice, the love and hate and passion—everything. It’s the big world in miniature. Only—with one difference.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Rogers, trying to remember when it was he had told his cousin this very thing. Or had he only thought it? ‘And what is the difference?’

  ‘The difference,’ continued the other, eyes sparkling, face alight, ‘that here the woods, the mountains and the stars are close. They pour themselves in upon the village life from every side—above, below, all round. Flowers surround it; it dances to the mountain winds; at night it lies entangled in the starlight. Along a thousand imperceptible channels an ideal simplicity from Nature pours down into it, modifying the human passions, chastening, purifying, uplifting. Don’t you see? And these sweet, viewless channels—who keeps them clean and open? Why, God bless you——. The children! My children!’

  ‘By Jingo, yes; your children.’

  Rogers said it with emphasis. But there was a sudden catch at his heart; he was conscious of a queer sensation he could not name. This was exactly what he had felt himself—with the difference that his own thought had been, perhaps, emotion rather than a reasoned-out idea. His cousin put it into words and gave it form. A picture—had he seen it in a book perhaps?—flashed across his mind. A child, suspiciously like Monkey, held a pen and dipped it into something bright and flowing. A little boy with big blue eyes gathered this shining stuff in both hands and poured it in a golden cataract upon the eyelids of a sleeping figure. And the figure had a beard. It was a man … familiar. … A touch of odd excitement trembled through his undermind … thrilled … vanished. …

  All dived out of sight again with the swiftness of a darting swallow. His cousin was talking at high speed. Rogers had lost a great deal of what he had been saying.

  ‘… it may, of course, have come from something you said the other night as we walked up the hill to supper—you remember?—something about the brilliance of our stars here and how they formed a shining network that hung from Boudry and La Tourne. It’s impossible to say. The germ of a true inspirat
ion is never discoverable. Only, I remember, it struck me as an odd thing for you to say. I was telling you about my idea of the scientist who married—no, no, it wasn’t that, it was my story of the materialist doctor whom circumstances compelled to accept a position in the Community of Shakers, and how the contrast produced an effect upon his mind of—of—you remember, perhaps? It was one or the other; I forget exactly,’—then suddenly— ‘No, no, I’ve got it—it was the analysis of the father’s mind when he found——’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ interrupted Rogers. ‘We were just passing the Citadelle fountain. I saw the big star upon the top of Boudry, and made a remark about it.’ His cousin was getting sadly wumbled. He tried to put severity and concentration into his voice.

  ‘That’s it,’ the other cried, head on one side and holding up a finger, ‘because I remember that my own thought wandered for a moment —thought will, you know, in spite of one’s best effort sometimes—and you said a thing that sent a little shiver of pleasure through me for an instant—something about a Starlight Train—and made me wonder where you got the idea. That’s it. I do believe you’ve hit the nail on the head. Isn’t it curious sometimes how a practical mind may suggest valuable material to the artist? I remember, several years ago——’

  ‘Starlight Express, wasn’t it?’ said his friend with decision in his voice. He thumped the table vigorously with one fist. ‘Keep to the point, old man. Follow it out. Your idea is splendid.’

  ‘Yes, I do believe it is.’ Something in his voice trembled.

  One sentence in particular Rogers heard, for it seemed plucked out of the talk he had with the children in the forest that day two weeks ago.

  ‘You see, all light meets somewhere. It’s all one, I mean. And so with minds. They all have a common meeting-place. Sympathy is the name for that place—that state—they feel with each other, see flash-like from the same point of view for a moment. And children are the conduits. They do not think things out. They feel them, eh?’ He paused an instant.