The Algernon Blackwood Collection

by Algernon Blackwood

It was later in the evening that the singular intensity introduced itself into all they said and did, hanging above them like a cloud. It came curiously, was suddenly there—without hint or warning. Tom had the feeling that they moved amid invisible dangers, almost as though explosives lay hidden near them, ready any moment to bring destruction with a sudden crash—final destruction of the happy pre-existing conditions. The menace of a thunder-cloud approached as in his childhood’s dream; disaster lurked behind the quiet outer show. The Wave was rising almost audibly.

  For upon their earlier mood of lighter kind that had preceded Mrs. Haughstone’s exit, and then upon the more serious talk that followed in the garden, there descended abruptly this uncanny quiet that one and all obeyed. The contrast was most marked. Tom remembered how their voices hushed upon a given moment, how they looked about them during the brief silence following, peering into the luminous darkness as though some one watched them—and how Madame Jaretzka, remarking on the chilly air, then rose suddenly and led the way into the house. Both she and Tony, he remembered, had been restless for some little time. ‘It’s chilly. We shall be cosier indoors,’ she said lightly, and moved away, followed by his cousin.

  Tom lingered a few minutes, watching them pass along the verandah to the room beyond. He did not like the change. In the open air, the intimacy he dreaded was less suggested than in the friendly familiarity of a room, her room; out of doors it was more diffused; he preferred the remoteness that the garden lent. At the same time he was glad of a moment by himself—though a moment only. He wanted to collect his thoughts and face things as they were. There should be no ‘shuffling’ if he possibly could prevent it.

  He lingered with his cigarette behind the others. A red moon hung above the mournful hills, and the stars shone in their myriads. Both lay reflected in the quiet river. The night was very peaceful. No wind stirred.… And he strove to force the exquisite Egyptian silence upon the turmoil that was in his soul—to gain that inner silence through which the voice of truth might whisper clearly to him. The poise he craved lay all about him in the solemn stillness, in stars and moon and desert; the temple columns had it, the steadfast, huge Colossi waiting for the sun, the bleak stone hills, the very Nile herself. Something of their immemorial resolution and resistance he might even borrow for his little tortured self… before he followed his companions. For it came to him that within the four walls of her room all that he dreaded must reveal itself in such concentrated, visible form that he no longer would be able to deny it: the established intimacy, the sweetness, the desire, and—the love.

  He made this effort, be it recorded in his favour, and made it bravely; while every minute that he left his companions undisturbed was a long-drawn torment in his heart. For he plainly recognised now a danger he knew not how he might adequately meet. Here was the strangeness of it: that he did not distrust Lettice, nor felt resentment against Tony. Why this was so, or what the meaning was, he could not fathom. He felt vaguely that Lettice, like himself, was the plaything of greater forces than she knew, and that her perplexing conduct was based upon disharmony in herself beyond her possible control. Some part of her, long hidden, had emerged in Egypt, brought out by the deep mystery and passion of the climate, by its burning, sensuous splendour: its magic drove her along unconsciously. There were two persons in her.

  It may have been absurd to divide the woman and the mother as he did; probably it was false psychology as well; where love is, mother and woman blend divinely into one. He did not know: it seemed, as yet, they had not blended. He was positive only that while part of her was going from him, if not already gone, the rest, and the major part, was true and loyal, loving and marvellously tender. The conflict of these certainties left hopeless disorder in every corner of his being.…

  Tossing away his cigarette, he moved slowly up the verandah steps. The Wave was never more sensibly behind, beneath him, than in that moment. He rose upon it, it was under him, he felt its lift and irresistible momentum; almost it bore him up the steps. For he meant to face whatever came; deliberately he welcomed the hurt; it had to come; beyond the suffering beckoned some marvellous joy, pure as the dawn beyond the cruel desert. There was in him that rich, sweet pain he knew of old. It beckoned and allured him even while he shrank. Alone the supreme Self in him looked calmly on, seeming to lessen the part that trembled and knew fear.

  Then, as he neared the room, a sound of music floated out to meet him— Tony was singing to his own accompaniment. Lettice, upon a sofa in the corner, looked up and placed a finger on her lips, then closed her eyes again, listening to the song. And Tom was glad she closed her eyes, glad also that Tony’s back was towards him, for as he crossed the threshold a singular impulse took possession of his legs and he was only just able to stop a ridiculous movement of shuffling with his feet upon the matting. Quickly he gained a sofa by the window and dropped down upon it, watching, listening. Tony was singing softly, yet with deep expression half suppressed:

  We were young, we were merry, we were very very wise,

  And the door stood open at our feast,

  When there passed us a woman with the West in her eyes,

  And a man with his back to the East.

  O, still grew the hearts that were beating so fast,

  The loudest voice was still.

  The jest died away on our lips as they passed,

  And the rays of July struck chill.

  He sang the words with an odd, emphatic slowness, turning to look at Lettice between the phrases. He was not yet aware that Tom had entered. The tune held all the pathos and tragedy of the world in it. ‘Both going the same way together,’ he said in a suggestive undertone, his hands playing a soft running chord; ‘the man and the woman.’ He again leaned in her direction. ‘It’s a pregnant opening, don’t you think? The music I found in the very depths of me somewhere. Lettice, I believe you’re asleep!’ he whispered tenderly after a second’s pause.

  She opened her eyes then and looked meaningly at him. Tom made no sound, no movement. He saw only her eyes fixed steadily on Tony, whose last sentence, using the Christian name so softly, rang on inside him like the clanging of a prison bell.

  ‘Sing another verse first,’ said Madame Jaretzka quietly, ‘and we’ll pass judgment afterwards. But I wasn’t asleep, was I, Tom?’ And, following the direction of her eyes, Tony started, and turned round. ‘I shut my eyes to listen better,’ she added, almost impatiently. ‘Now, please go on; we want to hear the rest.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Tom, in as natural a tone as possible. ‘Of course we do. What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Mary Coleridge—the words,’ replied Tony, turning to the piano again. ‘In a moment of aberration I thought I could write the music for it——’ The softness and passion had left his voice completely.

  ‘Oh, the tune is yours?’

  His cousin nodded. There was a little frown between the watching eyes upon the sofa. ‘Tom, you mustn’t interrupt; it spoils the mood—the rhythm,’ and she again asked Tony to go on. The difference in the two tones she used was too obvious to be missed by any man who heard them—the veiled exasperation and—the tenderness.

  Tony obeyed at once. Striking a preliminary chord as the stool swung round, he said for Tom’s benefit, ‘To me there’s tragedy in the words, real tragedy, so I tried to make the music fit it. Madame Jaretzka doesn’t agree.’ He glanced towards her; her eyes were closed again; her face, Tom thought, was like a mask. Tony did not this time use the little name.

  The next verse began, then suddenly broke off. The voice seemed to fail the singer. ‘I don’t like this one,’ he exclaimed, a suspicion of trembling in his tone. ‘It’s rather too awful. Death comes in, the bread at the feast turns black, the hound falls down—and so on. There’s general disaster. It’s too tragic, rather. I’ll sing the last verse instead.’

  ‘I want to hear it, Tony. I insist,’ came the command from the sofa. ‘I want the tragic part.’

  To Tom it seemed precisely as
though the voice had said, ‘I want to see Tom suffer. He knows the meaning of it. It’s right, it’s good, it’s necessary for him.’

  Tony obeyed. He sang both verses:

  The cups of red wine turned pale on the board,

  The white bread black as soot.

  The hound forgot the hand of his lord,

  She fell down at his foot.

  Low let me lie, where the dead dog lies,

  Ere I sit me down again at a feast,

  When there passes a woman with the West in her eyes,

  And a man with his back to the East.

  The song stopped abruptly, the music died away, there was an interval of silence no one broke. Tom had listened spellbound, haunted. He was no judge of poetry or music; he did not understand the meaning of the words exactly; he knew only that both words and music expressed the shadow of tragedy in the air as though they focussed it into a tangible presence. A woman and a man were going in the same direction; there was an onlooker.… A spontaneous quality in the words, moreover, proved that they came burning from the writer’s heart, and in Tony’s music, whether good or bad, there was this same proof of genuine feeling. Judge or no judge, Tom was positive of that. He felt himself the looker-on, an intruder, almost a trespasser.

  This sense of exclusion grew upon him as he listened; it passed without warning into the consciousness of a mournful, freezing isolation. These two, sitting in the room, and separated from him by a few feet of coloured Persian rug, were actually separated from him by unbridgeable distance, wrapped in an intimacy that kept him inexorably outside—because he did not understand. He almost knew an objective hallucination—that the sofa and the piano drew slightly nearer to one another, whereas his own chair remained fixed to the floor, immovable—outside.

  The intensity of his sensations seemed inexplicable, unless some reality, some truth, lay behind them. The bread at the feast turned black before his very eyes. But another line rang on with a sound of ominous and poignant defeat in his heart, now lonely and bereft: ‘Low let me lie, where the dead dog lies…’ To the onlooker the passing of the pair meant death.…

  Then, through his confusion, flashed clearly this bitter certitude: Tom suddenly realised that after all he knew nothing of her real, her inner life; he knew her only through himself and in himself—knew himself in her. Tony, less self-centred, less rigidly contained, had penetrated her by an understanding sympathy greater than his own. She was unintelligible to him, but not to Tony. Tony had the key.… He had touched in her what hitherto had slept.

  As the music wailed its dying cadences into this fateful silence, Tom met her eyes across the room. They were strong, and dark with beauty. He met them with no outer quailing, though with a sense of drenching tears within. They seemed to him the eyes of the angel gazing through the gate. He was outside.…

  He was the first to break a silence that had grown unnatural, oppressive.

  ‘What was it?’ he asked again abruptly. ‘Has it got a name, I mean?’ His voice had the cry of a wounded creature in it.

  Tony struck an idle chord from the piano as he turned on his stool, ‘Oh, yes, it’s got a name. It’s called “Unwelcome.” And Tom, aware that he winced, was also aware that something in his life congealed and stopped its normal flow.

  ‘Tony, you are a genius,’ broke in quickly the voice from the other side of the room; ‘I always said so. Do you know, that’s the most perfect accompaniment I ever heard.’ She spoke with feeling, her tone full of admiration.

  Tony made no reply. He strummed softly, swaying to the rhythm of what he played.

  ‘I meant the setting,’ explained Lettice, ‘the music. It expresses the emotion of the words too, too exactly. It’s wonderful!’

  ‘I didn’t know you composed,’ put in Tom stupidly. He had to say something. He saw them exchange a glance. She smiled. ‘When did you do it?’

  ‘Oh, the other day in a sudden fit,’ said Tony, without turning. ‘While you were at Assouan, I think.’

  ‘And the words, Tom; don’t you think they’re wonderful, too, and strange?’ asked Lettice. ‘I find them really haunting.’

  ‘Y-es,’ he agreed, without looking at her. He realised that the lyric, though new to him, was not new to them; they had discussed it together already; they felt the same emotion about it; it had moved and stirred them before, moved Tony so deeply that he had found the music for it in the depths of himself. It was an enigmatical poem, it now became symbolic. It embodied the present situation somehow for him. Tom did not understand its meaning as they did; to him it was a foreign language. But they knew the language easily. It betrayed their deep emotional intimacy.

  ‘You didn’t hear the first part?’ said Tony.

  ‘Not quite. You had just started—when I came in.’ Tom easily read the meaning in the question. And in his heart the name of the poem repeated itself with significant insistence: Unwelcome! It had come like a blow in the face when Tony mentioned it, bruising him internally. He was bleeding.… He watched the big, dark hands upon the keys as they moved up and down. It suddenly seemed they moved towards himself. There was power, menace in them—there was death. He felt as if they seized—choked him.… They grew stained.…

  The voices of his companions came to him across great distance; there was a gulf between them, they on that side, he on this: he was aware of antagonism between himself and Tony, and between himself and Lettice. It was very dreadful; his feet and hands were cold; he shivered. But he gave no outer sign that he was suffering, and a desperate pride—though he knew it was but a sham, a temporary pride—came to his assistance. Yet at the same time—he saw red. He felt like a boy at school again.

  In imagination, then, he visualised swiftly a definite scene:

  ‘Tony,’ he heard himself say, ‘you’re coming between us. It means all the world to me, to you it means only a passing game. If it means more, it’s time for you to say so plainly—and let her decide.’

  The situation seemed all cleared up; the clouds of tragedy dissipated, the dreadful accumulation of emotion, suspense, and hidden pain, too long suppressed, too intense to be borne another minute, discharged itself in an immense relief. Lettice at last spoke freely and explained: Tony expressed regret, laughing it all away with his accustomed brilliance and irresponsibility.

  Then, horribly, he heard Tony give a different answer that was far more possible and likely:

  ‘I knew you were great friends, but I did not guess there was anything more between you. You never told me. I’m afraid I—I am desperately fond of her, and she of me. We must leave it—yes, to her. There is no other way.’

  He was lounging on his sofa by the window, his eyes closed, while these thoughts flashed through him. He had never known such insecurity before; he felt sure of nothing; the foundations of his being seemed sliding into space.… For it came to him suddenly that he was a slave and that she was set upon a throne far, far beyond his reach.…

  Across the room, lit only by a single lamp upon the piano, the voices of his companions floated to him, low pitched, a ceaseless murmuring stream. He had been listening even while busy with his own reflections, intently listening. They were still talking of the poem and the music, exchanging intimate thoughts in the language he could not understand. They had passed on to music and poetry at large—dangerous subjects by whose means innocent words, donning an easy mask, may reveal passionate states of mental and physical kind—and so to personal revelations and confessions the apparently innocent words interpreted. He heard and understood, yet could not wholly follow because the key was missing. He could not take part, much less object. It was all too subtle for his mind. He listened.…

  The moonlight fell upon his stretched-out figure, but left his face in shadow; opening his eyes, he could see the others clearly; the intent expression upon her face fascinated him as he watched. Yet before his eyes had opened, the feeling again came to him that they had changed their positions somehow, and the verification of this feeling w
as the first detail he then noticed. Tony’s stool was nearer to the bass keys of the piano, while the sofa Lettice lay upon had certainly been drawn up towards him. And Tony leaned over as he talked, bringing their lips within whispering distance. It was all done with that open innocence which increased the cruelty of it. Tom saw and heard and felt all over his body. He lay very still. He half closed his eyes again.

  ‘I do believe Tom’s dropped asleep,’ said Lettice presently. ‘No, don’t wake him,’ as Tony half turned round, ‘he’s tired, poor boy!’

  But Tom could not willingly listen to a private conversation.

  ‘I’m not asleep,’ he exclaimed, ‘not a bit of it,’ and noticed that they both were startled by the suddenness and volume of his voice. ‘But I am tired rather,’ and he got up, lit a cigarette, wandered about the room a minute, and then leaned out of the open window. ‘I think I shall slip off to bed soon—if you’ll forgive me, Lettice.’

  He said it on impulse; he did not really mean to go; to leave them alone together was beyond his strength. She merely nodded. The woman he had felt so proudly would put Tony in his place—nodded consent!

  ‘I must be going too in a moment,’ Tony murmured. He meant it even less than Tom did. He shifted his stool towards the middle of the piano and began to strum again.

  ‘Sing something more first, Tony; I love your ridiculous voice.’

  Tom heard it behind his back; it was said half in banter, half in earnest; yet the tone pierced him. She used the private language she and Tony understood. The little sentence was a paraphrase that, being interpreted, said plainly: ‘He’ll go off presently; then we can talk again of the things we love together—the things he doesn’t understand.’

  With his face thrust into the cold night air Tom felt the blood go throbbing in his temples. He watched the moonlight on the sandy garden paths. The leaves were motionless, the river crept past without a murmur, the dark hills rose out of the distant desert like a wave. There was faint fragrance as of wild flowers, very tiny, very soft. But he kept his eyes upon the gliding river rather than on those dark hills crowded with their ancient dead. For he felt as if some one watched him from their dim recesses. It almost seemed that from those bleak, lonely uplands, silent amid the stream of hurrying life to-day, came his pain, his agony. He could not understand it; the strange, sinister mood he had known already once before stole out from the desolate Theban hills and mastered him again. Any moment, if he looked up, he would meet eyes—eyes that gazed with dim yet definite recognition into his own across the night. They would gaze up at him, for somehow he was placed above them.… He had known all this before, this very situation, these very actors—he now looked down upon it all, a scene mapped out below him. There were two pictures that yet were one.