The Algernon Blackwood Collection

by Algernon Blackwood

  When the room was dark, lit in winter by the dying fire, or in summer by the stars, he would creep out of bed, make quite sure that Tim was asleep, stand on a chair to reach the key from the top of the big cupboard, and carefully unlock the drawer. He had oiled the wood with butter, so that it was silent. The tissue-paper gleamed dimly pink; the Whiff came out to meet him. He lifted the packet, soft and crackling, and set it on the window-sill; he did not open it; its contents had no interest for him, it was the perfume he was after. And the moment the perfume reached his nostrils there came a trembling over him that he could not understand. He both loved and dreaded it. This manly, wholesome-minded, plucky little boy, the basis of whose steady character was common sense, became the prey of a strange, unreasonable fantasy. A faintness stole upon him; he lost the sense of kneeling on a solid chair; something immense and irresistible came piling up behind him; there was nothing firm he could push against to save himself; he began shuffling with his bare feet, struggling to escape from something that was coming, something that would probably overwhelm him yet must positively be faced and battled with. The Wave was rising. It was the wavy feeling.

  He did not turn to look, because he knew quite well there was nothing in the room but beds, a fender, furniture, vague shadows and his brother Tim. That kind of childish fear had no place in what he felt. But the Wave was piled and curving over none the less; it hung between him and the shadowed ceiling, above the roof of the house; it came from beyond the world, far overhead against the crowding stars. It would not break, for the time had not yet come. But it was there. It waited. He knelt beneath its mighty shadow of advance; it was still arrested, poised above his eager life, competent to engulf him when the time arrived. The sweep of its curved mass was mountainous. He knelt inside this curve, small, helpless, but not too afraid to fight. The perfume stole about him. The Whiff was in his nostrils. There was a strange, rich pain—oddly remote, yet oddly poignant.…

  And it was with this perfume that the ritual chiefly had to do. He loved the extraordinary sensations that came with it, and tried to probe their meaning in his boyish way. Meaning there was, but it escaped him. The sweetness clouded something in his brain, and made his muscles weak; it robbed him of that resistance which is fighting strength. It was this battle that he loved, this sense of shoving against something that might so easily crush and finish him. There was a way to beat it, a way to win—could he but discover it. As yet he could not. Victory, he felt, lay more in yielding and going-with than in violent resistance.

  And, meanwhile, in an ecstasy of this half yielding, half resisting, he lent himself fully to the overmastering tide. He was conscious of attraction and repulsion, something that enticed, yet thrust him backwards. Some final test of manhood, character, value, lay in the way he faced it. The strange, rich pain stole marvellously into his blood and nerves. His heart beat faster. There was this exquisite seduction that contained delicious danger. It rose upon him out of some inner depth he could not possibly get at. He trembled with mingled terror and delight. And it invariably ended with a kind of inexpressible yearning that choked him, crumpled him inwardly, as he described it, brought the moisture, hot and smarting, into his burning eyes, and—each time to his bitter shame— left his cheeks wet with scalding tears.

  He cried silently; there was no heaving, gulping, audible sobbing, just a relieving gush of heartfelt tears that took away the strange, rich pain and brought the singular ritual to a finish. He replaced the tissue-paper, blotted with his tears; locked the drawer carefully; hid the key on the top of the cupboard again, and tumbled back into bed.

  Downstairs, meanwhile, a conversation was in progress concerning the welfare of the growing hero.

  ‘I’m glad that dream has left him anyhow. It used to frighten me rather. I did not like it,’ observed his mother.

  ‘He doesn’t speak to you about it any more?’ the father asked.

  For months, she told him, Tommy had not mentioned it. They went on to discuss his future together. The other children presented fewer problems, but Tommy, apparently, felt no particular call to any profession.

  ‘It will come with a jump,’ the doctor inclined to think. ‘He’s been on the level for some time now. Suddenly he’ll grow up and declare his mighty mind.’

  Father liked humour in the gravest talk; indeed the weightier the subject, the more he valued a humorous light upon it. The best judgment, he held, was shaped by humour, sense of proportion lost without it. His wife, however, thought ‘it a pity.’ Grave things she liked grave.

  ‘There’s something very deep in Tommy,’ she observed, as though he were developing a hidden malady.

  ‘Hum,’ agreed her husband. ‘His subconscious content is unusual, both in kind and quantity.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘It’s possible he may turn out an artist, or a preacher. If the former, I’ll bet his output will be original; and, as for the latter,’—he paused a second—’he’s too logical and too fearless to be orthodox. Already he thinks things out for himself.’

  ‘I should like to see him in the Church, though,’ said Mother. ‘He would do a lot of good. But he is uncompromising, rather.’

  ‘His honesty certainly is against him,’ sighed his father. ‘What do you think he asked me the other day?’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know, John.’ The answer completed itself with the unspoken ‘He never asks me anything now.’

  ‘He came straight up to me and said, ‘Father, is it good to feel pain? To let it come, I mean, or try to dodge it?’’

  ‘Had he hurt himself?’ the woman asked quickly. It seemed she winced.

  ‘Not physically. He had been feeling something inside. He wanted to know how ‘a man’ should meet the case.’

  ‘And what did you tell him, dear?’

  ‘That pain was usually a sign of growth, to be understood, accepted, faced. That most pain was cured in that way——’

  ‘He didn’t tell you what had hurt him?’ she interrupted.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t ask him. He’d have shut up like a clam. Tommy likes to deal with things alone in his own way. He just wanted to know if his way was—well, my way.’

  There fell a pause between them; then Mother, without looking up, enquired: ‘Have you noticed Lettice lately? She’s here a good deal now.’

  But her husband only smiled, making no direct reply. ‘Tommy will have a hard time of it when he falls in love,’ he remarked presently. ‘He’ll know the real thing and won’t stand any nonsense—just as I did.’ Whereupon his wife informed him that if he was not careful he would simply ruin the boy—and the brief conversation died away of its own accord. As she was leaving the room a little later, unsatisfied but unaggressive, he asked her: ‘Have you left the picture books, my dear?’ and she pointed to an ominous heap upon the table in the window, with the remark that Jane had ‘unearthed every book that Tommy had set eyes upon since he was three. You’ll find everything that’s ever interested him,’ she added as she went out, ‘every picture, that is—and I suppose it is the pictures that you want.’

  For an hour and a half the great specialist turned pages without ceasing— well-thumbed pages; torn, crumpled, blotted, painted pages. It was easy to discover the boy’s favourite pictures; and all were commonplace enough, the sort that any normal, adventure-loving boy would find delightful. But nothing of special significance resulted from the search; nothing that might account for the recurrent nightmare, nothing in the way of eyes or wave. He had already questioned Jane as to what stories she told him, and which among them he liked best. ‘Hunting or travel or collecting,’ Jane had answered, and it was about ‘collecting that he asks most questions. What kind of collecting, sir? Oh, treasure or rare beetles mostly, and sometimes—just bones.’

  ‘Bones! What kind of bones?’

  ‘The villin’s, sir,’ explained the frightened Jane. ‘He always likes the villin to get lost, and for the jackals to pick his bones in the desert——’

  ‘Any particular desert?’
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  ‘No, sir; just desert.’

  ‘Ah—just desert! Any old desert, eh?’

  ‘I think so, sir—as long as it is desert.’

  Dr. Kelverdon put the woman at her ease with the humorous smile that made all the household love—and respect—him; then asked another question, as if casually: Had she ever told him a story in which a wave or a pair of eyes were in any way conspicuous?

  ‘No, never, sir,’ replied the honest Jane, after careful reflection. ‘Nor I wouldn’t,’ she added, ‘because my father he was drowned in a tidal wave; and as for eyes, I know that’s wrong for children, and I wouldn’t tell Master Tommy such a thing for all the world——’

  ‘Because?’ enquired the doctor kindly, seeing her hesitation.

  ‘I’d be frightening myself, sir, and he’d make such fun of me,’ she finally confessed.

  No, it was clear that the nurse was not responsible for the vivid impression in Tommy’s mind which bore fruit in so strange a complex of emotions. Nor were other lines of enquiry more successful. There was a cause, of course, but it would remain unascertainable unless some clue offered itself by chance. Both the doctor and the father in him were pledged to a persistent search that was prolonged over several months, but without result. The most perplexing element in the problem seemed to him the whiff. The association of terror with a wave needed little explanation; the introduction of the eyes, however, was puzzling, unless some story of a drowning man was possibly the clue; but the addition of a definite odour, an Eastern odour, moreover, with which the boy could hardly have become yet acquainted,—this combination of the three accounted for the peculiar interest in the doctor’s mind.

  Of one thing alone did he feel reasonably certain: the impression had been printed upon the deepest part of Tommy’s being, the very deepest; it arose from those unplumbed profundities—though a scientist, he considered them unfathomable—of character and temperament whence emerge the most primitive of instincts,—the generative and creative instinct, choice of a mate, natural likes and dislikes,—the bed-rock of the nature. A girl was in it somewhere, somehow.…

  Midnight had sounded from the stable clock in the mews when he stole up into the boys’ room and cautiously approached the yellow iron bed where Tommy lay. The reflection of a street electric light just edged his face. He was sound asleep—with tear-stains marked clearly on the cheek not pressed into the pillow. Dr. Kelverdon paused a moment, looked round the room, shading the candle with one hand. He saw no photograph, no pictures anywhere. Then he sniffed. There was a faint and delicate perfume in the air. He recognised it. He stood there, thinking deeply.

  ‘Lettice Aylmer,’ he said to himself presently as he went softly out again to seek his own bed; ‘I’ll try Lettice. It’s just possible.… Next time I see her I’ll have a little talk.’ For he suddenly remembered that Lettice Aylmer, his daughter’s friend and playmate, had very large and beautiful dark eyes.

  CHAPTER III.

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  LETTICE AYLMER, DAUGHTER OF THE Irish Member of Parliament, did not provide the little talk that he anticipated, however, because she went back to her Finishing School abroad. Dr. Kelverdon was sorry when he heard it. So was Tommy. She was to be away a year at least. ‘I must remember to have a word with her when she comes back,’ thought the father, and made a note of it in his diary twelve months ahead. ‘Three hundred and sixty-five days,’ thought Tommy, and made a private calendar of his own.

  It seemed an endless, zodiacal kind of period; he counted the days, a sheet of foolscap paper for each month, and at the bottom of each sheet two columns showing the balance of days gone and days to come. Tuesday, when he had first seen her, was underlined, and each Tuesday had a number attached to it, giving the total number of weeks since that wonderful occasion. But Saturdays were printed. On Saturday Lettice had spoken to him; she had smiled, and the words were, ‘Don’t forget me, Tommy!’ And Tommy, looking straight into her great dark eyes, that seemed to him more tender even than his mother’s, had stammered a reply that he meant with literal honesty: ‘I won’t—never…’; and she was gone… to France… across the sea.

  She took his soul away with her, leaving him behind to pore over his father’s big atlas and learn French sentences by heart. It seemed the only way. Life had begun, and he must be prepared. Also, his career was chosen. For Lettice had said another thing—one other thing. When Mary, his sister, introduced him, ‘This is Tommy,’ Lettice looked down and asked: ‘Are you going to be an engineer?’ adding proudly, ‘My brother is.’ Before he could answer she was scampering away with Mary, the dark hair flying in a cloud, the bright bow upon it twinkling like a star in heaven—and Tommy, hating his ridiculous boyish name with an intense hatred, stood there trembling, but aware that the die was cast—he was going to be an engineer.

  Trembling, yes; for he felt dazed and helpless, caught in a mist of fire and gold, the furniture whirling round him, and something singing wildly in his heart. Two things, each containing in them the essence of genuine shock, had fallen upon him: shock, because there was impetus in them as of a blow. They had been coming; they had reached him. There was no doubt or question possible. He staggered from the impact. Joy and terror touched him; at one and the same moment he felt the enticement and the shrinking of his dream.… He longed to seize her and prevent her ever going away, yet also he wanted to push her from him as though she somehow caused him pain.

  For, on the two occasions when speech had taken place between himself and Lettice, the dream had transferred itself boldly into his objective life— yet not entirely. Two characteristics only had been thus transferred. When his sister first came into the hall with ‘This is Tommy,’ the wavy feeling had already preceded her by a definite interval that was perhaps a second by the watch. He was aware of it behind him, curved and risen—not curving, rising—from the open fireplace, but also from the woods behind the house, from the whole of the country right back to the coast, from across the world, it seemed, towering overhead against the wintry sky. And when Lettice smiled and asked that question of childish admiration about being an engineer, he was already shuffling furiously with his feet upon the Indian rug. She was gone again, luckily, he hoped, before the ridiculous pantomime was noticeable.

  He saw her once or twice. He was invariably speechless when she came into his presence, and his silence and awkwardness made him appear at great disadvantage. He seemed intentionally rude. Nervous self-consciousness caused him to bridle over nothing. Even to answer her was a torture. He dreaded a snub appallingly, and bridled in anticipation. Furious with himself for his inability to use each precious opportunity, he pretended he didn’t care. The consequence was that when she once spoke to him sweetly, he was too overpowered to respond as he might have done. That she had not even noticed his anguished attitude never occurred to him.

  ‘We’re always friends, aren’t we, Tommy?’

  ‘Rather,’ he blurted, before he could regain his composure for a longer sentence.

  ‘And always will be, won’t we?’

  ‘Rather,’ he repeated, cursing himself later for thinking of nothing better to say. Then, just as she flew off in that dancing way of hers, he found his tongue. Out of the jumbled mass of phrases in his head three words got loose and offered themselves: ‘We’ll always be!’ he flung at her retreating figure of intolerable beauty. And she turned her head over her shoulder, waved her hand without stopping her career, and shouted ‘Rather!’

  That was the Tuesday in his calendar. But on Saturday, the printed Saturday following it, the second characteristic of his dream announced itself: he recognised the Eyes. Why he had not recognised them on the Tuesday lay beyond explanation; he only knew it was so. And afterwards, when he tried to think it over, it struck him that she had scampered out of the hall with peculiar speed and hurry; had made her escape without the extra word or two the occasion naturally demanded—almost as though she, too, felt something that uneasily surprised her.

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nbsp; Tommy wondered about it till his head spun round. She, too, had received an impact that was shock. He was as thorough about it as an instinctive scientist. He also registered this further fact—that the dream-details had not entirely reproduced themselves in the affair. There was no trace of the Whiff or of the other pair of Eyes. Some day the three would come together; but then.…

  The main thing, however, undoubtedly was this: Lettice felt something too: she was aware of feelings similar to his own. He was too honest to assume that she felt exactly what he felt; he only knew that her eyes betrayed familiar intimacy when she said ‘Don’t forget me, Tommy,’ and that when she rushed out of the hall with that unnecessary abruptness it was because—well, he could only transfer to her some degree of the ‘wavy’ feeling in himself.

  And he fell in love with abandonment and a delicious, infinite yearning. From that moment he thought of himself as Tom instead of Tommy.

  It was an entire, sweeping love that left no atom or corner of his being untouched. Lettice was real; she hid below the horizon of distant France, yet could not, did not, hide from him. She also waited.

  He knew the difference between real and unreal people. The latter wavered about his life and were uncertain; sometimes he liked them, sometimes he did not; but the former—remained fixed quantities: he could not alter towards them. Even at this stage he knew when a person came into his life to stay, or merely to pass out again. Lettice, though seen but twice, belonged to this first category. His feeling for her had the Wave in it; it gathered weight and mass, it was irresistible. From the dim, invisible foundations of his life it came, out of the foundations of the world, out of that inexhaustible sea-foundation that lay below everything. It was real; it was not to be avoided. He knew. He persuaded himself that she knew too.

  And it was then, realising for the first time the searching pain of being separated from something that seemed part of his being by natural right, he spoke to his father and asked if pain should be avoided. This conversation has been already sufficiently recorded; but he asked other things as well. From being so long on the level he had made a sudden jump that his father had foretold; he grew up; his mind began to think; he had peered into certain books; he analysed. Out of the nonsense of his speculative reflections the doctor pounced on certain points that puzzled him completely. Probing for the repressed elements in the boy’s psychic life that caused the triple complex of Wave and Eyes and Whiff, he only saw the cause receding further and further from his grasp until it finally lost itself in ultimate obscurity. The disciple of Freud was baffled hopelessly.…