“I say, Uncle Jim,” he began presently, “it was you—just now—in the wood—wasn’t it?” It made me start, that question put so quietly.
“I have just come through that wood up there,” I answered, pointing in the direction as well as I could remember, “if that’s what you mean. But why? You weren’t there, were you?” It gave me a queer sort of feeling to hear him say it. What in the name of heaven did he mean?
He sat back in his chair with a sigh of relief.
“Oh, that’s all right then,” he said, “if it was you. Did you see,” he asked suddenly; “did you see—anything?”
“Not a thing,” I told him honestly. “It was far too dark.” I laughed. I fancied I twigged his meaning. But I was not the sort of uncle to come prying on him. Life must be dull enough, I remembered, in this mountain village.
But he didn’t understand my laugh. He didn’t mean what I meant.
And there came a pause between us. I discovered that we were talking different lingoes. I leaned over towards him.
“Look here, Arthur,” I said in a lower voice, “what is it, and what do you mean? I’m all right, you know, and you needn’t be afraid of telling me. What d’you mean by—did I see anything?”
We looked each other squarely in the eye. He saw he could trust me, and I saw—well, a whole lot of things, perhaps, but I felt chiefly that he liked me and would tell me things later, all in his own good time. I liked him all the better for that too.
“I only meant,” he answered slowly, “whether you really saw—anything?”
“No,” I said straight, “I didn’t see a thing, but, by the gods, I felt something.”
He started. I started too. An astonishing big look came swimming over his fair, handsome face. His eyes seemed all lit up. He looked as if he’d just made a cool million in wheat or cotton.
“I knew—you were that sort,” he whispered. “Though I hardly remembered what you looked like.”
“Then what on earth was it?” I asked.
His reply staggered me a bit. “It was just that,” he said—“the Earth!”
And then, just when things were getting interesting and promising a dividend, he shut up like a clam. He wouldn’t say another word. He asked after my family and business, my health, what kind of crossing I’d had, and all the rest of the common stock. It fairly bowled me over. And I couldn’t change him either.
I suppose in America we get pretty free and easy, and don’t quite understand reserve. But this young man of half my age kept me in my place as easily as I might have kept a nervous customer quiet in my own office. He just refused to take me on. He was polite and cool and distant as you please, and when I got pressing sometimes he simply pretended he didn’t understand. I could no more get him back again to the subject of the wood than a customer could have gotten me to tell him about the prospects of exchange being cheap or dear—when I didn’t know myself but wouldn’t let him see I didn’t know. He was charming, he was delightful, enthusiastic and even affectionate; downright glad to see me, too, and to chin with me—but I couldn’t draw him worth a cent. And in the end I gave up trying.
And the moment I gave up trying he let down a little—but only a very little.
“You’ll stay here some time, Uncle Jim, won’t you?”
“That’s my idea,” I said, “if I can see you, and you can show me round some.”
He laughed with pleasure. “Oh, rather. I’ve got lots of time. After three in the afternoon I’m free till—any time you like. There’s a lot to see,” he added.
“Come along to-morrow then,” I said. “If you can’t take lunch, perhaps you can come just afterwards. You’ll find me waiting for you—right here.”
“I’ll come at three,” he replied, and we said good-night.
2
He turned up sharp at three, and I liked his punctuality. I saw him come swinging down the dusty road; tall, deep-chested, his broad shoulders a trifle high, and his head set proudly. He looked like a young chap in training, a thoroughbred, every inch of him. At the same time there was a touch of something a little too refined and delicate for a man, I thought. That was the poetic, scholarly vein in him, I guess—grandfather cropping out. This time he wore no cap. His thick light hair, not brushed back like the London shop-boys, but parted on the side, yet untidy for all that, suited him exactly and gave him a touch of wildness.
“Well,” he asked, “what would you like to do, Uncle Jim? I’m at your service, and I’ve got the whole afternoon till supper at seven-thirty.” I told him I’d like to go through that wood. “All right,” he said, “come along. I’ll show you.” He gave me one quick glance, but said no more. “I’d like to see if I feel anything this time,” I explained. “We’ll locate the very spot, maybe.” He nodded.
“You know where I mean, don’t you?” I asked, “because you saw me there?” He just said yes, and then we started.
It was hot, and air was scarce. I remember that we went uphill, and that I realised there was considerable difference in our ages. We crossed some fields first—smothered in flowers so thick that I wondered how much grass the cows got out of it!—and then came to a sprinkling of fine young larches that looked as soft as velvet. There was no path, just a wild mountain side. I had very little breath on the steep zigzags, but Arthur talked easily—and talked mighty well, too: the light and shade, the colouring, and the effect of all this wilderness of lonely beauty on the mind. He kept all this suppressed at home in business. It was safety valves. I twigged that. It was the artist in him talking. He seemed to think there was nothing in the world but Beauty—with a big B all the time. And the odd thing was he took for granted that I felt the same. It was cute of him to flatter me that way. “Daulis and the lone Cephissian vale,” I heard; and a few moments later—with a sort of reverence in his voice like worship—he called out a great singing name: “Astarte!”
“Day is her face, and midnight is her hair,
And morning hours are but the golden stair
By which she climbs to Night.”
It was here first that a queer change began to grow upon me too.
“Steady on, boy! I’ve forgotten all my classics ages ago,” I cried.
He turned and gazed down on me, his big eyes glowing, and not a sign of perspiration on his skin.
“That’s nothing,” he exclaimed in his musical, deep voice. “You know it, or you’d never have felt things in this wood last night; and you wouldn’t have wanted to come out with me now!”
“How?” I gasped. “How’s that?”
“You’ve come,” he continued quietly, “to the only valley in this artificial country that has atmosphere. This valley is alive—especially this end of it. There’s superstition here, thank God! Even the peasants know things.”
I stared at him. “See here, Arthur,” I objected. “I’m not a Cath. And I don’t know a thing—at least it’s all dead in me and forgotten—about poetry or classics or your gods and pan—pantheism—in spite of grandfather——”
His face turned like a dream face.
“Hush!” he said quickly. “Don’t mention him. There’s a bit of him in you as well as in me, and it was here, you know, he wrote——”
I didn’t hear the rest of what he said. A creep came over me. I remembered that this ancestor of ours lived for years in the isolation of some Swiss forest where he claimed—he used that setting for his writing—he had found the exiled gods, their ghosts, their beauty, their eternal essences—or something astonishing of that sort. I had clean forgotten it till this moment. It all rushed back upon me, a memory of my boyhood.
And, as I say, a creep came over me—something as near to awe as ever could be. The sunshine on that field of yellow daisies and blue forget-me-nots turned pale. That warm valley wind had a touch of snow in it. And, ashamed and frightened of my baby mood, I looked at Arthur, meaning to choke him off with all this rubbish—and then saw something in his eyes that scared me stiff.
I admit it. What’s the use? T
here was an expression on his fine big face that made my blood go curdled. I got cold feet right there. It mastered me. In him, behind him, near him—blest if I know which, through him probably—came an enormous thing that turned me insignificant. It downed me utterly.
It was over in a second, the flash of a wing. I recovered instantly. No mere boy should come these muzzy tricks on me, scholar or no scholar. For the change in me was on the increase, and I shrank.
“See here, Arthur,” I said plainly once again, “I don’t know what your game is, but—there’s something queer up here I don’t quite get at. I’m only a business man, with classics and poetry all gone dry in me twenty years ago and more——”
He looked at me so strangely that I stopped, confused.
“But, Uncle Jim,” he said as quietly as though we talked tobacco brands, “you needn’t be alarmed. It’s natural you should feel the place. You and I belong to it. We’ve both got him in us. You’re just as proud of him as I am, only in a different way.” And then he added, with a touch of disappointment: “I thought you’d like it. You weren’t afraid last night. You felt the beauty then.”
Flattery is a darned subtle thing at any time. To see him standing over me in that superior way and talking down at my poor business mind—well, it just came over me that I was laying my cards on the table a bit too early. After so many years of city life——!
Anyway, I pulled myself together. “I was only kidding you, boy,” I laughed. “I feel this beauty just as much as you do. Only, I guess, you’re more accustomed to it than I am. Come on now,” I added with energy, getting upon my feet, “let’s push on and see the wood. I want to find that place again.”
He pulled me with a hand of iron, laughing as he did so. Gee! I wished I had his teeth, as well as the muscles in his arm. Yet I felt younger, somehow, too—youth flowed more and more into my veins. I had forgotten how sweet the winds and woods and flowers could be. Something melted in me. For it was Spring, and the whole world was singing like a dream. Beauty was creeping over me. I don’t know. I began to feel all big and tender and open to a thousand wonderful sensations. The thought of streets and houses seemed like death. ...
We went on again, not talking much; my breath got shorter and shorter, and he kept looking about him as though he expected something. But we passed no living soul, not even a peasant; there were no chalets, no cattle, no cattle shelters even. And then I realised that the valley lay at our feet in haze and that we had been climbing at least a couple of hours. “Why, last night I got home in twenty minutes at the outside,” I said. He shook his head, smiling. “It seemed like that,” he replied, “but you really took much longer. It was long after ten when I found you in the hall.” I reflected a moment. “Now I come to think of it, you’re right, Arthur. Seems curious, though, somehow.” He looked closely at me. “I followed you all the way,” he said.
“You followed me!”
“And you went at a good pace too. It was your feelings that made it seem so short—you were singing to yourself and happy as a dancing faun. We kept close behind you for a long way.”
I think it was “we” he said, but for some reason or other I didn’t care to ask.
“Maybe,” I answered shortly, trying uncomfortably to recall what particular capers I had cut. “I guess that’s right.” And then I added something about the loneliness, and how deserted all this slope of mountain was. And he explained that the peasants were afraid of it and called it No Man’s Land. From one year’s end to another no human foot went up or down it; the hay was never cut; no cattle grazed along the splendid pastures; no chalet had even been built within a mile of the wood we slowly made for. “They’re superstitious,” he told me. “It was just the same a hundred years ago when he discovered it—there was a little natural cave on the edge of the forest where he used to sleep sometimes—I’ll show it to you presently—but for generations this entire mountain-side has been undisturbed. You’ll never meet a living soul in any part of it.” He stopped and pointed above us to where the pine wood hung in mid-air, like a dim blue carpet. “It’s just the place for Them, you see.”
And a thrill of power went smashing through me. I can’t describe it. It drenched me like a waterfall. I thought of Greece—Mount Ida and a thousand songs! Something in me—it was like the click of a shutter—announced that the “change” was suddenly complete. I was another man; or rather a deeper part of me took command. My very language showed it.
The calm of halcyon weather lay over all. Overhead the peaks rose clear as crystal; below us the village lay in a bluish smudge of smoke and haze, as though a great finger had rubbed them softly into the earth. Absolute loneliness fell upon me like a clap. From the world of human beings we seemed quite shut off. And there began to steal over me again the strange elation of the night before. ... We found ourselves almost at once against the edge of the wood.
It rose in front of us, a big wall of splendid trees, motionless as if cut out of dark green metal, the branches hanging stiff, and the crowd of trunks lost in the blue dimness underneath. I shaded my eyes with one hand, trying to peer into the solemn gloom. The contrast between the brilliant sunshine on the pastures and this region of heavy shadows blurred my sight.
“It’s like the entrance to another world,” I whispered.
“It is,” said Arthur, watching me. “We will go in. You shall pluck asphodel. ...”
And, before I knew it, he had me by the hand. We were advancing. We left the light behind us. The cool air dropped upon me like a sheet. There was a temple silence. The sun ran down behind the sky, leaving a marvellous blue radiance everywhere. Nothing stirred. But through the stillness there rose power, power that has no name, power that hides at the foundations somewhere—foundations that are changeless, invisible, everlasting. What do I mean? My mind grew to the dimensions of a planet. We were among the roots of life—whence issues that one thing in infinite guise that seeks so many temporary names from the protean minds of men.
“You shall pluck asphodel in the meadows this side of Erebus,” Arthur was chanting. “Hermes himself, the Psychopomp, shall lead, and Malahide shall welcome us.”
Malahide ...!
To hear him use that name, the name of our scholar-ancestor, now dead and buried close upon a century—the way he half chanted it—gave me the goose-flesh. I stopped against a tree-stem, thinking of escape. No words came to me at the moment, for I didn’t know what to say; but, on turning to find the bright green slopes just left behind, I saw only a crowd of trees and shadows hanging thick as a curtain—as though we had walked a mile. And it was a shock. The way out was lost. The trees closed up behind us like a tide.
“It’s all right,” said Arthur; “just keep an open mind and a heart alive with love. It has a shattering effect at first, but that will pass.” He saw I was afraid, for I shrank visibly enough. He stood beside me in his grey flannel suit, with his brilliant eyes and his great shock of hair, looking more like a column of light than a human being. “It’s all quite right and natural,” he repeated; “we have passed the gateway, and Hecate, who presides over gateways, will let us out again. Do not make discord by feeling fear. This is a pine wood, and pines are the oldest, simplest trees; they are true primitives. They are an open channel; and in a pine wood where no human life has ever been you shall often find gateways where Hecate is kind to such as us.”
He took my hand—he must have felt mine trembling, but his own was cool and strong and felt like silver—and led me forward into the depths of a wood that seemed to me quite endless. It felt endless, that is to say. I don’t know what came over me. Fear slipped away, and elation took its place. ... As we advanced over ground that seemed level, or slightly undulating, I saw bright pools of sunshine here and there upon the forest floor. Great shafts of light dropped in slantingly between the trunks. There was movement everywhere, though I never could see what moved. A delicious, scented air stirred through the lower branches. Running water sang not very far aw
ay. Figures I did not actually see; yet there were limbs and flowing draperies and flying hair from time to time, ever just beyond the pools of sunlight. ... Surprise went from me too. I was on air. The atmosphere of dream came round me, but a dream of something just hovering outside the world I knew—a dream wrought in gold and silver, with shining eyes, with graceful beckoning hands, and with voices that rang like bells of music. ... And the pools of light grew larger, merging one into another, until a delicate soft light shone equably throughout the entire forest. Into this zone of light we passed together. Then something fell abruptly at our feet, as though thrown down ... two marvellous, shining sprays of blossom such as I had never seen in all my days before!
“Asphodel!” cried my companion, stooping to pick them up and handing one to me. I took it from him with a delight I could not understand. “Keep it,” he murmured; “it is the sign that we are welcome. For Malahide has dropped these on our path.”
And at the use of that ancestral name it seemed that a spirit passed before my face and the hair of my head stood up. There was a sense of violent, unhappy contrast. A composite picture presented itself, then rushed away. What was it? My youth in England, music and poetry at Cambridge and my passionate love of Greek that lasted two terms at most, when Malahide’s great books formed part of the curriculum. Over against this, then, the drag and smother of solid worldly business, the sordid weight of modern ugliness, the bitterness of an ambitious, over-striving life. And abruptly—beyond both pictures—a shining, marvellous Beauty that scattered stars beneath my feet and scarved the universe with gold. All this flashed before me with the utterance of that old family name. An alternative sprang up. There seemed some radical, elemental choice presented to me—to what I used to call my soul. My soul could take or leave it as it pleased. ...
I looked at Arthur moving beside me like a shaft of light. What had come over me? How had our walk and talk and mood, our quite recent everyday and ordinary view, our normal relationship with the things of the world—how had it all slipped into this? So insensibly, so easily, so naturally!
The Algernon Blackwood Collection Page 389