The Algernon Blackwood Collection

by Algernon Blackwood

  ‘It’s just there,’ he emphasised, ‘that we—we who know—can ‘elp.

  ‘For we know that death is nothing more nor less than slipping back into your own subconsciousness, and so becoming greater and finer and more active—more useful, too, and with grander powers—than we ever ‘ad in our limited, imperfect bodies. And we know that this separate life, ended at death, is nothing but an episode in our universal life which death can never put an end to because it is imperishable. We are part of the universe, not of this little planet alone.

  ‘There’ll be mourning, but we can ‘elp dry their tears; there’ll be terror, but we can take their fear away; there’ll be loneliness, but we can show them—show ‘em by the way we live—that there’ll be reunion better than before. We all meet in the sub-consciousness, and know each other face to face. For it means reunion in the air, which is everywhere at once and universal, and stands for that denial of space and time—that spiritual haffirmation—we Aquarians call NOW.’

  He held out his hands as in blessing over the intently listening and expectant throng. Gazing above their heads into space, he appeared to concentrate his thoughts a moment. Then his face lightened, as though his mental effort had succeeded.

  ‘After every meeting,’ he then went on, but this time in a conversational tone, as friend to friend, the prophet and his flock put aside, ‘it is our custom, as you know, to find a carrying-away Sentence. Something you can take away and remember easily. Something that sums up all we’ve talked about together. Something to keep in your minds and think about every minute of the day until we meet again. Something you can try to live in your daily lives.’

  He waited a moment to ensure that all listened closely.

  ‘The sentence I’ve chosen this time will ‘elp you to remember all we’ve said to-day. It’s a symbol that includes the ‘ole promise of the air that’s so soon to be fulfilled in us.

  ‘I’ll now give it out—if yer all ready.’ The expectant, eager, attentive faces were a convincing proof that all were ready and listening attentively.

  With a happy and confiding smile, the speaker then pronounced the carrying-away sentence:

  ‘The ‘eart of a bird lies in the centre of its body.’

  CHAPTER XVI.

  ..................

  THE CARRYING-AWAY SENTENCE STUCK IN Wimble’s mind as he journeyed back to the flat on the top of a motor omnibus with Joan, for it expressed a concrete fact, a fact that he could understand. ‘The heart of a bird lies in the centre of its body,’ he murmured to himself happily. It gave him a secret thrill of joy and wonder. His own heart, thrust to the left though it was, felt ageless. The happy, invincible optimism of the bird was in him. To live from the centre was a neat way of expressing what he had been trying to do for so long, and he had not been far wrong in taking the life and attitude of a bird for his symbol. It meant neglecting the strained, laborious effort of the calculating mind, and leaning for help and guidance upon something bigger, deeper, less fallible than the strutting conscious self. The railway guard labelled it the subconscious, that mysterious region in which every soul is linked to every other soul, involving thus that comprehensive sympathy which is the beginning possibly of brotherhood. He phrased it wildly, but that was what he meant. The bigger self that lay like an ocean behind his separate, personal thought shared everything with every one. The joy, the wisdom of the birds! The elasticity and brilliance of the universal air! The divine carelessness that flows from living at the centre!

  ‘Flow, fly, flow!

  Wherever I am, I go;

  I live in the air

  Without thought or care . . . !’

  ‘Daddy, you mustn’t hum in public. It sounds so unusual, and people are staring,’ Joan reminded him. ‘And you’ll forget your hat and leave it behind, if you don’t put it on.’

  He smoothed his ruffled hair and placed his black billycock upon it.

  ‘So you’ve woken up at last, have you?’ he replied, laughing at her. ‘You slept through most of the lecture. What did you make of it,—eh?’

  She looked at him with a puzzled expression in her soft, bright eyes.

  ‘D’you think it was all nonsense? Was it true, I mean?’ he repeated.

  ‘He didn’t lie, but he didn’t tell the truth,’ she said at once. ‘Besides, I wasn’t asleep. I heard it all.’

  ‘You mean he didn’t explain it properly?’ he asked.

  ‘It was the wrong way,’ she said.

  ‘Ah! words——’

  ‘He ought to have danced it,’ she said suddenly with decision. ‘It’s too quick, too flashing for words. I could have shown it to them easily, by dancing it.’

  He remembered the amazing ideas her dancing gestures on the roof had once put into him. Then, thinking of the teachers of the world conveying their meaning by dancing and gestures from the pulpits, he chuckled.

  ‘Shall we join the Aquarians?’ he asked slyly. ‘What do you say to becoming members of their Society?’

  She took her answer out of his own mind, it seemed.

  ‘If you belong, you belong. You needn’t join. Societies are only cages, Daddy. You’re caught and you can’t fly on.’

  ‘We could spend the money better, yes,’ he mumbled. ‘Garden-gloves for mother, a lawn-mower, a hurricane lantern for stormy nights or something——’

  ‘Much, much better,’ she agreed.

  ‘When once we’ve found the cottage,’ he went on vaguely.

  ‘It’s there,’ she interrupted instantly. ‘Let’s get the hurricane lantern. I’d love to choose it with you. May I?’

  Wimble looked about him as the heavy vehicle lumbered clumsily along its swaying journey. The soft autumn sunshine of hazy gold lay on the streets, but there was a nip, a sharpness in the air that put an electric sparkle into everything. The solid world was really lighter than it looked. There was a covert brilliance ready to dart forth into swift-rushing flame. He felt the throbbing sheen and rustle in the golden light, and his heart sang with joy above the heavy streets and pavements. He was aware of a point of view that almost denied weight to inert matter, making the dead mass of the universe alive and dancing. This nip and sparkle in the air interpenetrated all these fixed and heavy things, these laborious structures, these rigid forms, dissolving them into flowing, ever-changing patterns of fluid loveliness. He saw them again as powder, the parks and road blown everywhere, the pavements lifted, the walls wide open to the sky. The solid earth became transparent, flooded with light and air. It seemed etherealised. It spread great golden wings towards the blazing sun and limitless sky. Air knew no fixed and rigid forms. Societies, of course, were only cages. He saw the huge cage of the earth blow open. Humanity flew out at last. . . .

  ‘We’ll get three, and at once,’ he remarked, referring to the lanterns. ‘And a pair of hedge-clippers as well, a ladder for the fruit trees, two pair of best garden-gloves for mother, and a revolving summer-house where she can follow the sun—and sit in peace.’

  That ridiculous lecture acted like some mental cuckoo that had chucked him finally out of the nest into the air. If he did not actually fly, he certainly walked on air, with the same faith that had once been claimed for walking on the sea. He became a daring and a happy soul. Air represented a confident and free imagination in which everything was possible. Earth he still loved, but only as a place to land on and take off from. Imagination and intuition must still, at his present stage, be backed and checked by reason; earth was still there to sleep on. But that spontaneous way of living which is air, using the ground merely as the swallow does—a swallow that exists in space and almost entirely neglects its legs—this careless and new attitude leaped forward in him towards realisation. A bird, he remembered, though apparently so free and careless, works actually with an ordered precision towards great purposes.

  He seemed conscious suddenly of a complete and absolute independence, beyond the need of any one’s comprehension. Few, if any, would understand him, but that di
d not matter. The need to be understood was left behind, below. He had soared beyond the loneliness even of a god. He felt very humble, but very happy. And the loneliness would be but temporary, for the rest of the world would follow before long. . . .

  The motor omnibus lurched and stopped with grunting noises. Wimble, led by his more nimble daughter, climbed down the narrow spiral stair. He glanced upwards longingly as he descended. He saw the flashing birds. ‘The brotherhood of the air,’ he thought. ‘Oh, how the earth must yearn for it!’

  ‘There’s an ironmonger,’ cried Joan, pointing across the road. And they went in to buy the hurricane lanterns. They assumed, that is, that the cottage was already found.

  Then, after luncheon, while Mother criticised the garden-gloves, observing with regard to the hurricane lanterns that it was ‘living backwards, rather, to buy things before we have the place to use them in,’ he took from the book-shelf his copy of the Queen of the Air and read once again a favourite passage. It was thumb-marked, the margin scored by his pencil long years ago.

  ‘ . . . the bird, in which the breath, or spirit, is more full than in any other creature and the earth-power least. . . . It is little more than a drift of the air brought into form by plumes; the air is in all its quills, it breathes through its whole frame and flesh, and glows with air in its flying, like a blown flame: it rests upon the air, subdues it, surpasses it, outraces it;—is the air, conscious of itself, conquering itself, ruling itself.

  ‘Also, into the throat of the bird is given the voice of the air. All that in the wind itself is weak, wild, useless in sweetness, is knit together in its song . . . unwearied, rippling through the clear heaven in its gladness, interpreting all intense passion through the soft spring nights, bursting into acclaim and rapture of choir at daybreak, or lisping and twittering among the boughs and hedges through heat of day, like little winds that only make the cowslip bells shake, and ruffle the petals of the wild rose. . . .’

  His reading was interrupted by the entrance from the passage of his wife, her face heavily veiled; she was dressed for the street, in solemn black; she wore a mysterious yet very confident expression. ‘Joe dear, I’m going out. I have an appointment at three o’clock sharp. I mustn’t be late.’

  He watched her with an absent-minded air for a moment, as though he saw her for the first time almost; all he could remember about her just then was that during the cinema performance she had said with proud superiority: ‘I’m glad I’m English.’ Then, recognising his wife, he realised that she was going to confession, of course, for he guessed it by the way she folded her hands, waiting patiently for a word of commendation.

  ‘All right, my dear,’ he said, ‘and good luck. You’ll be back for tea, I suppose.’ He rose and kissed her on her heavy veil, and she went out with a smile. ‘I’m so glad,’ he added.

  ‘That’s her stage,’ he thought to himself, ‘and the critic and the Aquarian quack have their stage, and I have mine. It’s all right.’

  There were immense tracts of experience in everybody, unknown, unused, but waiting to be known and used. Some people lived in one tract only, caged and fixed, unaware of the vast freedom a little farther outside themselves. Different people knew different tracts, each positive that his own particular tract alone was right—as for him, assuredly, it was— thinking also that it was the only one, the whole, which, assuredly, it was not. There was, however, assuredly, a point of view, the bird’s, that saw all these tracts at once, the boundaries and divisions between them mere walls erected by the mind in ignorance. The bird’s-eye view looked down and saw the landscape whole, the divisions unreal, the separation false. This attitude was the attitude of air; air unified; the unity of humanity was realised. Consciousness, focussed hitherto upon little separate tracts with feeble light, blazed upon all at once with shining splendour.

  It was true. A great world-telepathy was being ‘engendered,’ barriers of creed and class were crumbling, democracy was combing out its mighty wings; the ‘tracts’ inhabited by Mother, Tom, the quack, the critic, by himself and by Joan, by that narrow snob and gossip at the tea-party who asked, ‘Who was she?’—all these would be seen as adjoining little strips belonging to the universal air which knows neither strips, divisions nor boundaries.

  A great light blazed into his heart. He wondered. Apparently it was the little, simple, insignificant people, and not the great minds of the day, who were the first to become aware of air. The great ones were too rigid. Air rushed first into the hearts of the uneducated, the ignorant, the unformed and informal—the little children of the race. It has been ever so. The learned, knowing too much, solid with facts and explanations, are no longer fluid. They neither flow nor fly. The brotherhood of air, he grasped, would come first through the untaught babes and little children of earth’s vast, scattered family.

  And, while these vague reflections danced across his mind, dropping their curious shadows upon his own little tract of experience, his wife was whispering her sins to another mind who should forgive them for her, the critic was writing a vehement pamphlet to prove that he alone was right, Tom, in the office, was scheming new plans for making money that should satisfy his natural desires for pleasure and self-indulgence, the quack was elaborating Zodiacal Explanations in his studio next to his Private Consulting Room, and Joan——

  He listened. A light, tripping step went down the corridor, passed his door and began to climb the ladder to the open skylight in the hall. He listened closely, eagerly, a new rhythm catching at his heart. The little song came to him faintly through the obstructing barriers of brick and mortar. He caught the tap and tremble of her feet upon the roof.

  Joan sang and danced above the world.

  CHAPTER XVII.

  ..................

  ‘CARELESS AS A BIRD! BIRD-HAPPY and bird-wise,’ he murmured to himself as they moved in a month later. For he had found a cottage as by instinct. It was not on the agents’ list of modern, ugly and comfortless cages, but was an old-world little place that had caught his eye by the corner of the lane as he returned to the country station, weary and almost faith-less, after a vain inspection. A white board suddenly peered at him through the branches of a yew, there were roses up the walls, a tiny fountain played on the lawn, and beyond he caught a glimpse of a neglected orchard, sloping fields of yellow ragwort, and a stream. The stream, moreover, ran under the road just there, so that he could look down into it from the old stone bridge. The water ran swiftly, but deep enough to grow long weeds of green and gold that swung with the current like thick fairy hair. Two or three silver birches shone and rustled by the wicket-gate. He went in. A robin hopped up, inspected him, and hopped away into the shadow of the yew.

  The interior seemed to him like a bit of forest—the beams, the panelling, the dark, stained settles. Yet there was a bathroom, too, the kitchen was large and light, the bedrooms airy, the living-rooms just right in size and number. The front windows looked out across the rose-plot to the little green where the geese were gabbling, while the back ones opened straight into the orchard, where fruit and walnut trees stood ankle deep in uncut grass. The windows, too, were wide and high, letting in big stretches of the sky. Also, there were a mulberry-bush and several heavy quince trees. And the stream ran singing and bubbling between the orchard and the farther fields, where, amid the sprinkled gold of the ragwort, scuttled countless rabbits.

  Moreover, it was cheap, the drains were safe, the church was as picturesque as an old-fashioned Christmas card, and the vicar was brother to a peer. Thus there was something for everybody. The nest was found. Mother inspected it in due course and gave her modified approval; Tom said it ‘sounded ripping,’ he would ‘run down for week-ends’ whenever he could; and Joan, catching her breath when she saw it first on the afternoon of a golden-brown October day, felt a lump in her throat and moisture in her eyes, such happiness rose in her breast. She stood with her father in the sandy lane,—Mother had gone inside at once,—the larches rustling and the
excited geese examining their stiff town clothing from behind. On the topmost branch of an apple tree a big brown thrush was singing its heart out over the garden, its small packed outline silhouetted against the pale blue sky. Joan caught her father’s hand.

  ‘Look!’ she whispered, pointing. ‘Listen!’

  He did so. He felt the strange excitement in the child. Her lips were parted and her shining eyes turned heavenwards a moment. The thrush poured forth its liquid song deliciously; and the sound sank into his heart as though it expressed the full happiness of the air that welcomed them to the cottage and the garden. He experienced surely something of the soft air-magic as he stood there watching, listening. The natural joy and sweetness of it touched him deeply. And his daughter sang a strange thing then, murmuring it to herself. He only just caught the curious words:

  ‘There’s a bird for me

  On the apple tree!

  It’s explaining all the garden!’

  Up the scaffolding of the quaint phrases he passed, as it were, with her into the clear air beside the singing bird: that scrap of nonsense ‘explaining all the garden’ did the trick. A sack of meanings seemed emptied before him out of the sweet October sky. The interesting, valuable ideas in life began, he realised, just where language stops— intelligible, sensible language, that is. Then came either poetry, legend, nonsense, or else mere silence. Joan used a combination of the former.

  ‘Words are parvenu people,’ he recalled a Primer sentence, ‘as compared with thought and action. Communications between God and man must always be either above or below them; for with words come in translations.’

  ‘Explaining all the garden!’ The touch of nonsense brought a thousand ‘translations’ into his mind. The air was full of fluttering meanings that showered about him. He balanced aloft on the twig beside the singing thrush, his sight darting, as with the bird’s-eye view, upon recent happenings. He read various translations instantaneously.