The Algernon Blackwood Collection

by Algernon Blackwood

  The possibility that Some Day was coming—was close at hand—had in some mysterious way become a probability. It was clear at last why Uncle Felix had been so heavy and preoccupied.

  “You see what’s happened?” he continued after the long pause. “You see what it all means—this strange stopping of the clock—at Dawn?”

  They admitted nothing; the least mistake on their part might prevent, might spoil or cripple it. The depth and softness of his tone warned them. They stared and waited. He gathered them closer to him with both arms. Even Maria wriggled slightly nearer—an inch or so.

  “It means,” he said in still lower tones, “the calendar,"—then stopped abruptly to examine the effect upon them.

  Now, ordinarily, they knew quite well what a calendar was; but this new, strange emphasis he put upon it robbed the word suddenly of all its original meaning. Their minds went questioning at once:

  “What is a calendar?” asked Judy carefully—"exactly?” she added, to make her meaning absolutely clear. It sounded almost like a nonsense word.

  “Exactly,” he repeated cautiously, yet with some great emotion working in him, “what is a calendar? That’s the whole question. I’ll try and tell you what a calendar is.” He drew a deeper breath, a great effort being evidently needed. “A calendar,” he went on, while the word sounded less real each time it was uttered, “is an invention of clever, scientific men to note the days as they pass; it records the passing days. It’s a plan to measure Time. It’s made of paper and has the date and the name of the day stamped in ink on separate sheets. When a day has passed you tear off a sheet. That day is done with—gone. There are three hundred and sixty-five of these separate sheets in a year. It’s just an invention of scientific men to measure the passing of—Time, you see?”

  They said they saw.

  “Another invention,” he resumed, his face betraying more and more emotion, “is a clock. A clock is just a mechanical invention that ticks off the movements of the sun into seconds and minutes and hours. Both clocks and calendars, therefore, are mere measuring tricks. Time goes on, or does not go on, just the same, whether you possess these inventions or whether you do not possess them. Both clocks and calendars go at the same rate whether Time goes fast or slow. See?”

  A tremendous discovery began to poke its nose above the edge of their familiar world. But they could not pull it up far enough to “see” as yet. Uncle Felix continued to pull it up for them. That he, too, was muddled never once occurred to them.

  “Scientific men, like all other people, are not always to be relied upon,” he went on. “They make mistakes like—you, or Thompson, or Mrs. Horton, or—or even me. Clocks, we all know, are full of mistakes, and for ever going wrong. But the same thing has happened to calendars as well. Calendars are notoriously inaccurate; they simply cannot be depended upon. No calendar has ever been entirely veracious, nor ever will be. Like elastic, they are sometimes too long and sometimes too short—imperfectly constructed.”

  He paused and looked at them. “Yes,” they said breathlessly, aware dimly that accustomed foundations were already sliding from beneath their feet.

  “Half the calendars of the world are simply wrong,” he continued, more boldly still, “and the people who live by them are in a muddle consequently—a muddle about Time. England is no exception to the rest. Is it any wonder that Time bothers us in the way it does—always time to do this, or time to do that, or not time enough to finish, and so on?”

  “No,” they said promptly, “it isn’t.”

  “Of course,” he resumed. “Well, sometimes a nation finds out its mistake and alters its calendar. Russia has done this; the Russian New Year and Easter are not the same as ours. Pope Gregory, the thirteenth, ordered that the day after October 4, 1582, should be called October 15. He called it the Gregorian Calendar; but there are lots of other calendars besides—there’s the Jewish and Mohammedan, and a variety of calendars in the East. All of them can’t be right. The result is that none of them are right, and the world is in confusion. Some calendars mark off too many days, others mark off too few. Half the world is ahead of Time, and the other half behind it. The Governments know this quite well, but they dare not say anything, because their officials are muddled enough as it is. There is everywhere this fearful rush and hurry to keep up with Time. All are terrified of being late—too late or too early.”

  “Naturally.”

  “And the extraordinary result of all these mistakes,” he went on marvellously, “is simply this: that a considerable amount of Time has never been recorded at all by any of them. There are a lot of extra days, unused, unrecorded days, still at large—if only we could find them.”

  “Extra Days!” they gasped. Tim and Judy’s mouths were open now, and slowly opening wider every minute. Only Maria’s mouth kept closed. Her great blue eyes were closed as well. She looked as if she could have told them all this in a couple of words!

  “Knocking about on the loose,” he explained further, then paused and stared into the upturned faces; “sort of escaped days that have never been torn off calendars or ticked away by clocks—unused, unfilled, unlived—slipped out of Time, that is—”

  “Then when Daddy said, ‘A day is coming,’ and all that—?” Tim managed to squeeze out as though the pain of the excitement hurt his lips.

  “Of course,” replied Uncle Felix, nodding his great head, “of course. Sooner or later one of these lost Extra Days is bound to crop up. And what’s more—” he glanced down significantly at the stopped alarum-clock—"I think—”

  He broke off in the middle of the sentence. They all stood up. Tim picked up the clock and handed it to his uncle, who held it tightly against his chest a moment, then put it into his capacious pocket.

  “I think,” he went on enormously, “it’s come!”

  An entire minute passed without a sound.

  “We can fill it with anything we like?” asked Judy, overawed a little.

  “Anything we like,” came the sublime reply.

  “And do things over and over again—sort of double—and no hurry?” Tim whispered.

  “Anything, anywhere, anyhow, and no end to it all,” he answered gloriously. “No hurry either!” It was too much to think about all at once, too big to realise. They all sat down again beside Maria, who had not moved an inch in any direction at all. She was a picture of sublime repose.

  “We have only got to find it, then climb into it, then sail away,” murmured Uncle Felix, with a strange catch in his breath they readily understood.

  “When will it begin?” both children asked in the same breath.

  “At dawn,” he said.

  “To-morrow morning?”

  “At dawn to-morrow morning.”

  “But to-morrow’s Sunday,” they objected.

  “To-morrow’s—an Extra Day,” he said amazingly.

  They hesitated a moment, stared, frowned, smiled, then opened their eyes and mouths still wider than before.

  “Oh, like that!” they exclaimed.

  “Like that, yes,” he said finally. “It means getting in behind Time, you see. There’s no Time in an Extra Day because it’s never been recorded by calendar or clock. And that means getting behind the great hurrying humbug of a thing that blinds and confuses everybody all the world over—it means getting closer to the big Reality that—”

  He broke off sharply, aware that his own emotion was carrying him out of his depth, and out of their depth likewise. He changed the sentence: “We shall be in Eternity,” he whispered very softly, so softly that it was scarcely audible perhaps.

  And it was then that Maria, still seated solidly upon the lawn, looked up and asked another baffling and unexpected question. For this was her private and particular adventure: and, living ever at the centre of the circle, Maria claimed even Eternity as especially her own. Her question was gigantic. It was infinitely bigger than her original question, “Why?” It was the greatest question in the universe, because it answered
itself adequately at once. It was the question the undying gods have flung about the listening cosmos since Time first began its tricky cheating of delight—and still fling into the echoing hearts of men and children everywhere. The stars and insects, the animals and birds, even the stones and flowers, all keep the glorious echo flying.

  “Why not?” she asked.

  It was unanswerable.

  CHAPTER XV: “A DAY WILL COME”

  ..................

  THEY WENT INTO THE HOUSE as though wafted—thus does a shining heart deduct bodily weight from life’s obstructions; they had their tea; after tea they played games as usual, quite ordinary games; and in due course they went to bed. That is, they followed a customary routine, feeling it was safer. To do anything unusual just then might attract attention to their infinite Discovery and so disturb its delicate equilibrium. Its balance was precarious. Once an Authority got wind of anything, the Extra Day might change its course and sail into another port. Aunt Emily, even from a distance…! In any case, they behaved with this intuitive sagacity which obviated every risk—by taking none.

  Yet everything was different. Behind the routine lay the potent emphasis of some strange new factor, as though a lofty hope, a brave ideal, had the power of transmuting common duties into gold and crystal. This new factor pushed softly behind each little customary act, urging what was commonplace over the edge into the marvellous. The habitual became wonderful. It felt like Christmas Eve, like the last night of the Old Year, like the day before the family moved for the holidays to the sea—only more so. Even To-morrow-will-be-Sunday had entirely disappeared. A thrill of mysterious anticipation gilded everything with wonder and beauty that were impossible, yet true. Some Day, the Thing that Nobody could Understand—Somebody—was coming at last.

  Uncle Felix was in an extraordinary state; his acts were normal enough, but his speech betrayed him shamefully; they had to warn him more than once about it. He seemed unable to talk ordinary prose, saying that “Everything ought to rhyme, At such a time,” and, instead of walking like other people, his feet tried to keep in time with his language. “But you don’t understand,” he replied to Tim’s grave warnings; “you don’t understand what a gigantic discovery it is. Why, the whole world will thank us! The whole world will get its breath back! The one thing it’s always dreaded more than anything else—being too late—will come to an end! We ought to dance and sing—”

  “Oh, please hush!” warned Judy. “Aunt Emily, you know—” Even at

  Tunbridge Wells Aunt Emily might hear and send a telegram with No in it.

  “Has it lost its breath?” Tim asked, however. But, though it was in the middle of tea, Uncle Felix could not restrain himself, and burst into one of his ridiculous singing fits, instead of answering in a whisper as he should have done. “Burst” described it accurately. And his feet kept time beneath the table. It was the proper place for Time, he explained.

  The clocks are stopped, the calendars are wrong, Time holds gigantic finger-hands Before his guilty face. Listen a moment! I can hear the song That no one understands—

  “It’s the blue dragon-fly,” interrupted Tim, remembering the story of long ago.

  “It’s the Night-Wind—out by day,” cried Judy.

  “It’s both and neither,” sang the man,

  “This song I hear. It first began

  Before the hurrying race

  Of ticking, and of tearing pages

  Deafened the breathless ages:

  It is the happy singing

  Of wind among the rigging

  Of our Extra Day!”

  “It’s something anyhow,” decided Judy, rather impressed by her uncle’s fit of bursting.

  And, somehow, Dawn was the password and Tomorrow the key. No one knew more than that. It had to do with Time, for Uncle Felix had taken the stopped clock to his room and hidden it there lest somebody like Jackman or Thompson should wind it up. Later, however, he gave it for safer keeping to Maria, because she moved so rarely and did so little that was unnecessary that she seemed the best repository of all. Also, this was her particular adventure, and what risk there was belonged properly to her. But beyond this they knew nothing, and they didn’t want to know. In the immediate future, just before the gateway of To-morrow’s dawn, a great gap lay waiting, a gap they had discovered alone of all the world. The scientists had made a mistake, the Government had been afraid to deal with it, the rest of the world lay in ignorance of its very existence even. It satisfied all the conditions of real adventure, since it was unique, impossible, and had never happened to any one before. They, with Uncle Felix, had discovered it. It belonged to them entirely—the most marvellous secret that anybody could possibly imagine. Maria, they took for granted, would share it with them. A hole in Time lay waiting to receive them. A Day Will Come at last was actually coming.

  “We’d better pack up,” said Judy after tea. She said it calmly, but the voice had a whisper of intense expectancy in it.

  “Pack up nothing,” Uncle Felix reproved her quickly. “The important thing is—don’t wind up. Just go on as usual. It will be best,” he added significantly, “if you all hand over your timepieces to me at once.” And, without a word, they recognised his wisdom and put their treasures into his waistcoat pockets—watches of silver, tin, and gunmetal. His use of the strange word “timepieces” was convincing. The unusual was in the air.

  “There’s Thompson’s and Jackman’s and Mrs. Horton’s,” Judy reminded him, her eyes shining like polished door-knobs.

  “Too wrong to matter,” decided Uncle Felix. “They’re always slow or fast.”

  “Then there’s the kitchen clock,” Tim mentioned; “the grandfather thing.”

  Uncle Felix reflected a moment. His reply was satisfactory and conclusive:

  “I’ll go down to-night,” he explained in a low voice, “when the servants are in bed. I’ll take the weights off.”

  Judy and Tim appreciated the seriousness of the occasion more than ever.

  “Into Mrs. Horton’s kitchen?” they whispered.

  “Into Mrs. Horton’s kitchen,” he agreed, beneath his breath.

  Maria, meanwhile, said nothing. Her eyes kept open very wide, but no audible remark got past her lips. She paid no attention to the singing nor to the whispered conversation; she ate an enormous tea, finishing up all the cakes that the others neglected in their excitement and preoccupation; but she appeared as calm and unconcerned as the tea-cosy that concealed the heated, stimulating teapot beneath it. She looked more circular and globular than ever. Even the knowledge that this was the eve of her own particular adventure did not rouse her. Her expression seemed to say, “I never have believed in Time; at the centre where I live, clocks and calendars are not recognised”; and later, when Judy blew the candle out and asked as usual, “Are you all right, Maria?” her reply came floating across the darkened room without the smallest alteration in tone or accent: “I’m alright.” The stopped alarum-clock was underneath her pillow; Uncle Felix had tucked them up, each in turn; everything was all right. She fell asleep, the others fell asleep, Time also fell asleep.

  And above the Old Mill House that warm June night the darkness kept the secret faithfully, yet offered little signs and hints to those who did not sleep too heavily. The feeling that something or somebody was coming hung in the very air; there was a gentle haze beneath the stars; and a breeze that passed softly through the lime trees dropped semi-articulate warnings. There were curious, faint echoes flying between the walls and the Wood without a Centre; the daisies heard them and opened half an eyelid; the Night-Wind whispered and sighed as it bore them to and fro. Maria’s question entered the dream of the entire garden: “Why not? Why not? Why not?”

  An owl in the barn beyond the stables heard the call and took it up, and told it to some swallows fast asleep below the eaves, who woke with sudden chattering and mentioned it to a robin in the laurel shrubberies below. The robin pretended not to be at all surprised, but f
elt it a duty to inform a coot who lived a quarter of a mile away among the reeds of the lower pond. When it returned from its five-minute flight, the swallows had gone to sleep again, and only the owl went on hooting softly through the summer darkness. “It really needn’t go on so long about it,” thought the robin, then fell asleep again with its head between exactly the same feathers as before. But the news had been distributed; the garden was aware; the birds, as natural guardians of the dawn, had delivered the message as their duty was. “Why not? Why not?” hummed all night long through the dreams of the Mill House garden. Weeden turned in his sleep and sighed with happiness.

  Nothing could now prevent it; a day was coming at last, an extra, unused, unrecorded day. The immemorial expectancy of childhood, the universal anticipation, the promise that something or somebody was coming—all this would be fulfilled. This promise is really but the prelude to creation. God felt it before the world appeared. And children have stolen it from heaven. Conceived of wonder, born of hope, and realised by belief, it is the prerogative of all properly-beating hearts. Everything living feels it, and—everything lives. The Postman; the Figure coming down the road; the Visitor on the pathway; the Knock upon the door; even the Stranger in the teacup—all are embodiments of this exquisite scrap of heaven, divine expectancy. It may be Christmas, it may be only To-morrow, but equally it may be the End of the World. Something is coming—into the heart—something satisfying. It is the eternal beginning. It is the—dawn.

  Long after the children had retired to bed Uncle Felix sat up alone in the big house thinking. He made himself cosy in the library, meaning to finish a chapter of the historical novel he had sadly neglected these past days, and he set himself to the work with a will. But, try as he would, the story would not run; he fixed his mind upon the scene in vain; he concentrated hard, visualised the place and characters as his habit was, reconstructed the incidents and conversation exactly as though he had seen them happen and remembered them—but the imagination that should have given them life failed to operate. It became a mere effort of invention. The characters would not talk of their own accord; the incidents did not flow in a stream as when he worked successfully; life was not in them. He began again, wrote and rewrote, but failed to seize the atmosphere of reality that alone could make them interesting. Interest—he suddenly realised it—had vanished. He felt no interest in the stupid chapter. He tore it up—and knew it was the right thing to do, because he heard the characters laughing.