The Algernon Blackwood Collection

by Algernon Blackwood

  He walked beside them in a dream. The sound of Colombier’s bells across Planeyse, men’s voices singing fragments of a Dalcroze song floated to him, and with them all the dear familiar smells:—

  Le coeur de ma mie

  Est petit, tout petit petit,

  J’en ai l’ame ravie….

  It was Minks, drawing the keen air noisily into his lungs in great draughts, who recalled him to himself.

  ‘I could find my way here without a guide, Mr. Campden,’ he was saying diffidently, burning to tell how the Story had moved him. ‘It’s all so vivid, I can almost see the Net. I feel in it,’ and he waved one hand towards the sky.

  The other thanked him modestly. ‘That’s your power of visualising then,’ he added. ‘My idea was, of course, that every mind in the world is related with every other mind, and that there’s no escape—we are all prisoners. The responsibility is vast.’

  ‘Perfectly. I’ve always believed it. Ah! if only one could live it!’

  Rogers heard this clearly. But it seemed that another heard it with him. Some one very close beside him shared the hearing. He had recovered from his temporary shock. Only the wonder remained. Life was sheer dazzling glory. The talk continued as they hurried along the road together. Rogers became aware then that his cousin was giving information—meant for himself.

  ‘… A most charming little lady, indeed. She comes from over there,’ and he pointed to where the Pleiades were climbing the sky towards the East, ‘in Austria somewhere. She owns a big estate among the mountains. She wrote to me—I’ve had such encouraging letters, you know, from all sorts of folk—and when I replied, she telegraphed to ask if she might come and see me. She seems fond of telegraphing, rather.’ And he laughed as though he were speaking of an ordinary acquaintance.

  ‘Charming little lady!’ The phrase was like the flick of a lash.

  Rogers had known it applied to such commonplace women.

  ‘A most intelligent face,’ he heard Minks saying, ‘quite beautiful, I thought—the beauty of mind and soul.’

  ‘… Mother and the children took to her at once,’ his cousin’s voice went on. ‘She and her maid have got rooms over at the Beguins. And, do you know, a most singular coincidence,’ he added with some excitement, ‘she tells me that ever since childhood she’s had an idea like this— like the story, I mean—an idea of her own she always wanted to write but couldn’t——-’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ interrupted Rogers impatiently; and then he added quickly, ‘but how very extraordinary!’

  ‘The idea that Thought makes a network everywhere about the world in which we all are caught, and that it’s a positive duty, therefore, to think beauty—as much a duty as washing one’s face and hands, because what you think touches others all day long, and all night long too— in sleep.’

  ‘Only she couldn’t write it?’ asked Rogers. His tongue was like a thick wedge of unmanageable wood in his mouth. He felt like a man who hears another spoil an old, old beautiful story that he knows himself with intimate accuracy.

  ‘She can telegraph, she says, but she can’t write!’

  ‘An expensive talent,’ thought the practical Minks.

  ‘Oh, she’s very rich, apparently. But isn’t it odd? You see, she thought it vividly, played it, lived it. Why, she tells me she even had a Cave in her mountains where lost thoughts and lost starlight collected, and that she made a kind of Pattern with them to represent the Net. She showed me a drawing of it, for though she can’t write, she paints quite well. But the odd thing is that she claims to have thought out the main idea of my own story years and years ago with the feeling that some day her idea was bound to reach some one who would write it—-’

  ‘Almost a case of transference,’ put in Minks.

  ‘A fairy tale, yes, isn’t it!’

  ‘Married?’ asked Rogers, with a gulp, as they reached the door. But apparently he had not said it out loud, for there was no reply.

  He tried again less abruptly. It required almost a physical effort to drive his tongue and frame the tremendous question.

  ‘What a fairy story for her children! How they must love it!’ This time he spoke so loud that Minks started and looked up at him.

  ‘Ah, but she has no children,’ his cousin said.

  They went upstairs, and the introductions to Monsieur and Madame Michaud began, with talk about rooms and luggage. The mist was over him once more. He heard Minks saying:—

  ‘Oui, je comprongs un poo,’ and the clatter of heavy boots up and down the stairs, … and then found himself washing his hands in stinging hot water in his cousin’s room.

  ‘The children simply adore her already,’ he heard, ‘and she won Mother’s confidence at the very start. They can’t manage her long name. They just call her the Little Countess—die kleine Grafin. She’s doing a most astonishing work in Austria, it seems, with children… the Montessori method, and all that….’

  ‘By George, now; is it possible? Bourcelles accepted her at once then?’

  ‘She accepted Bourcelles rather—took it bodily into herself—our poverty, our magic boxes, our democratic intimacy, and all the rest; it was just as though she had lived here with us always. And she kept asking who Orion was—that’s you, of course—and why you weren’t here—-’

  ‘And the Den too?’ asked Rogers, with a sudden trembling in his heart, yet knowing well the answer.

  ‘Simply appropriated it—came in naturally without being asked; Jimbo opened the door and Monkey pushed her in. She said it was her Star Cave. Oh, she’s a remarkable being, you know, rather,’ he went on more gravely, ‘with unusual powers of sympathy. She seems to feel at once what you are feeling. Takes everything for granted as though she knew. I think she does know, if you ask me—-’

  ‘Lives the story in fact,’ the other interrupted, hiding his face rather in the towel, ‘lives her belief instead of dreaming it, eh?’

  ‘And, fancy this!’ His voice had a glow and softness in it as he said it, coming closer, and almost whispering, ‘she wants to take Jinny and Monkey for a bit and educate them.’ He stood away to watch the effect of the announcement. ‘She even talks of sending Edward to Oxford, too!’ He cut a kind of wumbled caper in his pleasure and excitement.

  ‘She loves children then, evidently?’ asked the other, with a coolness that was calculated to hide other feelings. He rubbed his face in the rough towel as though the skin must come off. Then, suddenly dropping the towel, he looked into his cousin’s eyes a moment to ensure a proper answer.

  ‘Longs for children of her own, I think,’ replied the author; ‘one sees it, feels it in all she says and does. Rather sad, you know, that! An unmarried mother—-’

  ‘In fact,’ put in Rogers lightly, ‘the very character you needed to play the principal role in your story. When you write the longer version in book form you’ll have to put her in.’

  ‘And find her a husband too—which is a bore. I never write love stories, you see. She’s finer as she is at present—mothering the world.’

  Rogers’s face, as he brushed his hair carefully before the twisted mirror, was not visible.

  There came a timid knock at the door.

  ‘I’m ready, gentlemen, when you are,’ answered the voice of Minks outside.

  They went downstairs together, and walked quickly over to the Pension for supper. Rogers moved sedately enough so far as the others saw, yet inwardly he pranced like a fiery colt in harness. There were golden reins about his neck. Two tiny hands directed him from the Pleiades. In this leash of sidereal fire he felt as though he flew. Swift thought, flashing like a fairy whip, cut through the air from an immense distance, and urged him forwards. Some one expected him and he was late—years and years late. Goodness, how his companions crawled and dawdled!

  ‘… she doesn’t come over for her meals,’ he heard, ‘but she’ll join us afterwards at the Den. You’ll come too, won’t you, Mr. Minks?’

  ‘Thank you, I shall be most
happy—if I’m not intruding,’ was the reply as they passed the fountain near the courtyard of the Citadelle. The musical gurgle of its splashing water sounded to Rogers like a voice that sang over and over again, ‘Come up, come up, come up! You must come up to me!’

  ‘How brilliant your stars are out here, Mr. Campden,’ Minks was saying when they reached the door of La Poste. He stood aside to let the others pass before him. He held the door open politely. ‘No wonder you chose them as the symbol for thought and sympathy in your story.’ And they climbed the narrow, creaking stairs and entered the little hall where the entire population of the Pension des Glycines awaited them with impatience.

  The meal dragged out interminably. Everybody had so much to say. Minks, placed between Mother and Miss Waghorn, talked volubly to the latter and listened sweetly to all her stories. The excitement of the Big Story, however, was in the air, and when she mentioned that she looked forward to reading it, he had no idea, of course, that she had already done so at least three times. The Review had replaced her customary Novel. She went about with it beneath her arm. Minks, feeling friendly and confidential, informed her that he, too, sometimes wrote, and when she noted the fact with a deferential phrase about ‘you men of letters,’ he rose abruptly to the seventh heaven of contentment. Mother meanwhile, on the other side, took him bodily into her great wumbled heart. ‘Poor little chap,’ her attitude said plainly, ‘I don’t believe his wife half looks after him.’ Before the end of supper she knew all about Frank and Ronald, the laburnum tree in the front garden, what tea they bought, and Albinia’s plan for making coal last longer by mixing it with coke.

  Tante Jeanne talked furiously and incessantly, her sister-in-law told her latest dream, and the Postmaster occasionally cracked a solemn joke, laughing uproariously long before the point appeared. It was a merry, noisy meal, and Henry Rogers sat through it upon a throne that was slung with golden ropes from the stars. He was in Fairyland again. Outside, the Pleiades were rising in the sky, and somewhere in Bourcelles—in the rooms above Beguin’s shop, to be exact—some one was waiting, ready to come over to the Den. His thoughts flew wildly. Passionate longing drove behind them. ‘You must come up to me,’ he heard. They all were Kings and Queens.

  He played his part, however; no one seemed to notice his preoccupation. The voices sounded now far, now near, as though some wind made sport with them; the faces round him vanished and reappeared; but he contrived cleverly, so that none remarked upon his absent-mindedness. Constellations do not stare at one another much.

  ‘Does your Mother know you’re “out”?’ asked Monkey once beside him—it was the great joke now, since the Story had been read—and as soon as she was temporarily disposed of, Jimbo had serious information to impart from the other side. ‘She’s a real Countess,’ he said, speaking as man to man. ‘I suppose if she went to London she’d know the King— visit him, like that?’

  Bless his little heart! Jimbo always knew the important things to talk about.

  There were bursts of laughter sometimes, due usually to statements made abruptly by Jane Anne—as when Mother, discussing the garden with Minks, reviled the mischievous birds:—

  ‘They want thinning badly,’ she said.

  ‘Why don’t they take more exercise, then?’ inquired Jinny gravely.

  And in these gusts of laughter Rogers joined heartily, as though he knew exactly what the fun was all about. In this way he deceived everybody and protected himself from discovery. And yet it seemed to him that he shouted his secret aloud, not with his lips indeed, but with his entire person. Surely everybody knew it…! He was self- conscious as a schoolgirl.

  ‘You must come up—to me,’ rang continuously through his head like bells. ‘You must come up to me.’

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  ..................

  How many times do I love thee, dear?

  Tell me how many thoughts there be

  In the atmosphere

  Of a new fall’n year,

  Whose white and sable hours appear

  The latest flake of Eternity:—

  So many times do I love thee, dear.

  How many times do I love again?

  Tell me how many beads there are

  In a silver chain

  Of evening rain,

  Unravelled from the tumbling main,

  And threading the eye of a yellow star:—

  So many times do I love again.

  THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES.

  A curious deep shyness settled upon Henry Rogers as they all trooped over to the Den. The others gabbled noisily, but to him words came with difficulty. He felt like a boy going up for some great test, examination, almost for judgment. There was an idea in him that he must run and hide somewhere. He saw the huge outline of Orion tilting up above the Alps, slanting with the speed of his eternal hunt to seize the Pleiades who sailed ever calmly just beyond his giant arms. Yet what that old Hunter sought was at last within his reach. He knew it, and felt the awe of capture rise upon him.

  ‘You’ve eaten so much supper you can’t speak,’ said Monkey, whose hand was in his coat-pocket for loose chicken-feed, as she called centimes. ‘The Little Countess will regler ton affaire all right. Just wait till she gets at you.’

  ‘You love her?’ he asked gently, feeling little disposed to play.

  The child’s reply was cryptic, yet uncommonly revealing:—

  ‘She’s just like a relation. It’s so funny she didn’t know us long, long ago—find us out, I mean.’

  ‘Mother likes her awfully,’ added Jimbo, as though that established the matter of her charm for ever. ‘It’s a pity she’s not a man’—just to show that Cousinenry’s position was not endangered.

  They chattered on. Rogers hardly remembers how he climbed the long stone steps. He found himself in the Den. It came about with a sudden jump as in dreams. She was among them before the courtyard was crossed; she had gone up the steps immediately in front of him…. Jinny was bringing in the lamp, while Daddy struggled with a load of peat for the fire, getting in everybody’s way. Riquette stood silhouetted against the sky upon the window sill. Jimbo used the bellows. A glow spread softly through the room. He caught sight of Minks standing rather helplessly beside the sofa talking to Jane Anne, and picking at his ear as he always did when nervous or slightly ill at ease. He wondered vaguely what she was saying to him. He looked everywhere but at the one person for whose comfort the others were so energetic.

  His eyes did not once turn in her direction, yet he knew exactly how she was dressed, what movements she made, where she stood, the very words, indeed, she used, and in particular the expression of her face to each in turn. For he was guilty of a searching inner scrutiny he could not control. And, above all, he was aware, with a divine, tumultuous thrill, that she, for her part, also neither looked at him nor uttered one sentence that he could take as intended for himself.

  Because, of course, all she said and did and looked were meant for him, and her scrutiny was even closer and more searching than his own.

  In the Den that evening there was one world within another, though only these two, and probably the intuitive and diabolically observant Minks, perceived it. The deep furnaces of this man’s inner being, banked now so long that mere little flames had forgotten their way out, lay open at last to that mighty draught before whose fusing power the molten, fluid state becomes inevitable.

  ‘You must come up to me’ rang on in his head like a chime of bells. ‘O think Beauty: it’s your duty….’

  The chairs were already round the open fireplace, when Monkey pushed him into the big one with the broken springs he always used, and established herself upon his knee. Jimbo was on the other in a twinkling. Jane Anne plumped down upon the floor against him. Her hair was up, and grown-ups might sit as they pleased. Minks in a hard, straight-backed chair, firmly assured everybody that he was exceedingly comfortable and really preferred stiff chairs. He found safety next to Mother who, pleased and contented, f
illed one corner of the sofa and looked as though she occupied a pedestal. Beyond her perched Daddy, on the music stool, leaning his back against the unlighted fourneau. The Wumble Book was balanced on his knees, and beside him sat the little figure of the visitor who, though at the end, was yet somehow the true centre of the circle. Rogers saw her slip into her unimportant place. She took her seat, he thought, as softly as a mouse. For no one seemed to notice her. She was so perfectly at home among them. In her little folded hands the Den and all its occupants seemed cared for beyond the need of words or definite action. And, although her place was the furthest possible remove from his own, he felt her closer to him than the very children who nestled upon his knees.

  Riquette then finally, when all were settled, stole in to complete the circle. She planted herself in the middle of the hearth before them all, looked up into their faces, decided that all was well, and began placidly to wash her face and back. A leg shot up, from the middle of her back apparently, as a signal that they might talk. A moment later she composed herself into that attitude of dignified security possible only to the feline species. She made the fourth that inhabited this world within a world. Rogers, glancing up suddenly from observing her, caught—-for the merest fraction of an instant—a flash of starfire in the air. It darted across to him from the opposite end of the horse- shoe. Behind it flickered the tiniest smile a human countenance could possibly produce.

  ‘Little mouse who, lost in wonder,

  Flicks its whiskers at the thunder.’

  It was Jane Anne repeating the rhyme for Minks’s benefit. How appropriately it came in, he thought. And voices were set instantly in motion; it seemed that every one began to speak at once.

  Who finally led the conversation, or what was actually said at first, he has no more recollection than the man in the moon, for he only heard the silvery music of a single voice. And that came rarely. He felt washed in glory from head to foot. In a dream of happy starlight he swam and floated. He hid his face behind the chair of Monkey, and his eyes were screened below the welcome shelter of Jimbo’s shoulder.