Three More John Silence Stories

by Algernon Blackwood

myself close behind him. Ihad already had some experience of my companion's ability to run swiftlythrough a dense wood, and I now had the further proof of his poweralmost to see in the dark. For, once we left the open space about thetents, the trees seemed to absorb all the remaining vestiges of light,and I understood that special sensibility that is said to develop in theblind--the sense of obstacles.

  And twice as we ran we heard the sound of that dismal howling drawingnearer and nearer to the answering faint cry from the point of theisland whither we were going.

  Then, suddenly, the trees fell away, and we emerged, hot and breathless,upon the rocky point where the granite slabs ran bare into the sea. Itwas like passing into the clearness of open day. And there, sharplydefined against sea and sky, stood the figure of a human being. It wasJoan.

  I at once saw that there was something about her appearance that wassingular and unusual, but it was only when we had moved quite close thatI recognised what caused it. For while the lips wore a smile that litthe whole face with a happiness I had never seen there before, the eyesthemselves were fixed in a steady, sightless stare as though they werelifeless and made of glass.

  I made an impulsive forward movement, but Dr. Silence instantly draggedme back.

  "No," he cried, "don't wake her!"

  "What do you mean?" I replied aloud, struggling in his grasp.

  "She's asleep. It's somnambulistic. The shock might injure herpermanently."

  I turned and peered closely into his face. He was absolutely calm. Ibegan to understand a little more, catching, I suppose, something of hisstrong thinking.

  "Walking in her sleep, you mean?"

  He nodded. "She's on her way to meet him. From the very beginning hemust have drawn her--irresistibly."

  "But the torn tent and the wounded flesh?"

  "When she did not sleep deep enough to enter the somnambulistic trancehe missed her--he went instinctively and in all innocence to seek herout--with the result, of course, that she woke and was terrified--"

  "Then in their heart of hearts they love?" I asked finally.

  John Silence smiled his inscrutable smile. "Profoundly," he answered,"and as simply as only primitive souls can love. If only they both cometo realise it in their normal waking states his Double will cease thesenocturnal excursions. He will be cured, and at rest."

  The words had hardly left his lips when there was a sound of rustlingbranches on our left, and the very next instant the dense brushwoodparted where it was darkest and out rushed the swift form of an animalat full gallop. The noise of feet was scarcely audible, but in thatutter stillness I heard the heavy panting breath and caught the swish ofthe low bushes against its sides. It went straight towards Joan--and asit went the girl lifted her head and turned to meet it. And the sameinstant a canoe that had been creeping silently and unobserved round theinner shore of the lagoon, emerged from the shadows and defined itselfupon the water with a figure at the middle thwart. It was Maloney.

  It was only afterwards I realised that we were invisible to him where westood against the dark background of trees; the figures of Joan and theanimal he saw plainly, but not Dr. Silence and myself standing justbeyond them. He stood up in the canoe and pointed with his right arm. Isaw something gleam in his hand.

  "Stand aside, Joan girl, or you'll get hit," he shouted, his voiceringing horribly through the deep stillness, and the same instant apistol-shot cracked out with a burst of flame and smoke, and the figureof the animal, with one tremendous leap into the air, fell back in theshadows and disappeared like a shape of night and fog. Instantly, then,Joan opened her eyes, looked in a dazed fashion about her, and pressingboth hands against her heart, fell with a sharp cry into my arms thatwere just in time to catch her.

  And an answering cry sounded across the lagoon--thin, wailing, piteous.It came from Sangree's tent.

  "Fool!" cried Dr. Silence, "you've wounded him!" and before we couldmove or realise quite what it meant, he was in the canoe and half-wayacross the lagoon.

  Some kind of similar abuse came in a torrent from my lips, too--though Icannot remember the actual words--as I cursed the man for hisdisobedience and tried to make the girl comfortable on the ground. Butthe clergyman was more practical. He was spreading his coat over her anddashing water on her face.

  "It's not Joan I've killed at any rate," I heard him mutter as sheturned and opened her eyes and smiled faintly up in his face. "I swearthe bullet went straight."

  Joan stared at him; she was still dazed and bewildered, and stillimagined herself with the companion of her trance. The strange lucidityof the somnambulist still hung over her brain and mind, though outwardlyshe appeared troubled and confused.

  "Where has he gone to? He disappeared so suddenly, crying that he washurt," she asked, looking at her father as though she did not recognisehim. "And if they've done anything to him--they have done it to metoo--for he is more to me than--"

  Her words grew vaguer and vaguer as she returned slowly to her normalwaking state, and now she stopped altogether, as though suddenly awarethat she had been surprised into telling secrets. But all the way back,as we carried her carefully through the trees, the girl smiled andmurmured Sangree's name and asked if he was injured, until it finallybecame clear to me that the wild soul of the one had called to the wildsoul of the other and in the secret depths of their beings the call hadbeen heard and understood. John Silence was right. In the abyss of herheart, too deep at first for recognition, the girl loved him, and hadloved him from the very beginning. Once her normal waking consciousnessrecognised the fact they would leap together like twin flames, and hisaffliction would be at an end; his intense desire would be satisfied; hewould be cured.

  And in Sangree's tent Dr. Silence and I sat up for the remainder of thenight--this wonderful and haunted night that had shown us such strangeglimpses of a new heaven and a new hell--for the Canadian tossed uponhis balsam boughs with high fever in his blood, and upon each cheek adark and curious contusion showed, throbbing with severe pain althoughthe skin was not broken and there was no outward and visible sign ofblood.

  "Maloney shot straight, you see," whispered Dr. Silence to me after theclergyman had gone to his tent, and had put Joan to sleep beside hermother, who, by the way, had never once awakened. "The bullet must havepassed clean through the face, for both cheeks are stained. He'll wearthese marks all his life--smaller, but always there. They're the mostcurious scars in the world, these scars transferred by repercussion froman injured Double. They'll remain visible until just before his death,and then with the withdrawal of the subtle body they will disappearfinally."

  His words mingled in my dazed mind with the sighs of the troubledsleeper and the crying of the wind about the tent. Nothing seemed toparalyse my powers of realisation so much as these twin stains ofmysterious significance upon the face before me.

  It was odd, too, how speedily and easily the Camp resigned itself againto sleep and quietness, as though a stage curtain had suddenly droppeddown upon the action and concealed it; and nothing contributed sovividly to the feeling that I had been a spectator of some kind ofvisionary drama as the dramatic nature of the change in the girl'sattitude.

  Yet, as a matter of fact, the change had not been so sudden andrevolutionary as appeared. Underneath, in those remoter regions ofconsciousness where the emotions, unknown to their owners, do secretlymature, and owe thence their abrupt revelation to some abruptpsychological climax, there can be no doubt that Joan's love for theCanadian had been growing steadily and irresistibly all the time. It hadnow rushed to the surface so that she recognised it; that was all.

  And it has always seemed to me that the presence of John Silence, sopotent, so quietly efficacious, produced an effect, if one may say so,of a psychic forcing-house, and hastened incalculably the bringingtogether of these two "wild" lovers. In that sudden awakening hadoccurred the very psychological climax required to reveal the passionateemotion accumulated below. The deeper knowledge had leaped across andtransferred itself to her
ordinary consciousness, and in that shock thecollision of the personalities had shaken them to the depths and shownher the truth beyond all possibility of doubt.

  "He's sleeping quietly now," the doctor said, interrupting myreflections. "If you will watch alone for a bit I'll go to Maloney'stent and help him to arrange his thoughts." He smiled in anticipation ofthat "arrangement." "He'll never quite understand how a wound on theDouble can transfer itself to the physical body, but at least I canpersuade him that the less he talks and 'explains' to-morrow, the soonerthe forces will run their natural course now to peace and quietness."

  He went away softly, and with the removal of his presence Sangree,sleeping heavily, turned over and groaned with the pain of his brokenhead.

  And it was in the still hour just before the dawn, when all the islandswere hushed, the wind and sea still dreaming, and the stars visiblethrough clearing mists, that a figure crept silently over the ridge andreached the door of the tent where I dozed beside the sufferer, before Iwas aware of its presence. The flap was cautiously lifted a few inchesand in looked--Joan.

  That same instant Sangree woke and sat up on his bed of branches. Herecognised her before I could say a word, and uttered a low cry. It waspain and joy mingled, and this time all human. And the girl too was nolonger walking in her sleep, but fully aware of what she was doing. Iwas only just able to prevent him springing from his blankets.

  "Joan, Joan!" he cried, and in a flash she answered him, "I'm here--I'mwith you always now," and had pushed past me into the tent and flungherself upon his breast.

  "I knew you would come to me in the end," I heard him whisper.

  "It was all too big for me to understand at first," she murmured, "andfor a long time I was frightened--"

  "But not now!" he cried louder; "you don't feel afraid now of--ofanything that's in me--"

  "I fear nothing," she cried, "nothing, nothing!"

  I led her outside again. She looked steadily into my face with eyesshining and her whole being transformed. In some intuitive way,surviving probably from the somnambulism, she knew or guessed as much asI knew.

  "You must talk to-morrow with John Silence," I said gently, leading hertowards her own tent. "He understands everything."

  I left her at the door, and as I went back softly to take up my place ofsentry again with the Canadian, I saw the first streaks of dawn lightingup the far rim of the sea behind the distant islands.

  And, as though to emphasise the eternal closeness of comedy to tragedy,two small details rose out of the scene and impressed me so vividly thatI remember them to this very day. For in the tent where I had just leftJoan, all aquiver with her new happiness, there rose plainly to my earsthe grotesque sounds of the Bo'sun's Mate heavily snoring, oblivious ofall things in heaven or hell; and from Maloney's tent, so still was thenight, where I looked across and saw the lantern's glow, there came tome, through the trees, the monotonous rising and falling of a humanvoice that was beyond question the sound of a man praying to his God.