Algernon Blackwood (20 page)

Yet, still the flood of questions, answers, explanations flowed on
without the critical sentence making its appearance. He had led them
well—so far. How in the world, though, was he to keep it up, and
provide definite result at the end?

Then suddenly the truth dawned upon him. It was not he who led after
all; it was they. He was being led. They knew. They understood. The
reins of management lay in their small capable hands, and he had never
really held them at all. Most cleverly, with utmost delicacy, they had
concealed from him his real position. They were Directors, he the
merest shareholder, useful only for 'calls.' The awkward question that
he feared would never come, but instead he would receive instructions.
'Keep close to the children; they will guide you.' The words flashed
back. He was a helpless prisoner; but had only just discovered the
fact. He supplied the funds; they did the construction. Their plans
and schemes netted his feet in fairyland just as surely as the weight
of their little warm, soft bodies fastened him to the boulder where he
sat. He could not move. He could not go further without their will and
leadership.

But his captivity was utterly delightful to him....

The sound of a deep bell from the Colombier towers floated in to them
between the trees. The children sprang from his knees. He rose slowly,
a little cramped and stiff.

'Half-past six,' said Jimbo. 'We must go back for supper.'

He stood there a moment, stretching, while the others waited, staring
up at him as though he were a tree. And he felt like a big tree; they
were two wild-flowers his great roots sheltered down below.

And at that moment, in the little pause before they linked up arms and
started home again, the Question of Importance came, though not in the
way he had expected it would come.

'Cousinenry, do you sleep very tightly at night, please?' Monkey asked
it, but Jimbo stepped up nearer to watch the reply.

'Like a top,' he said, wondering.

Signals he tried vainly to intercept flashed between the pair of them.

'Why do you ask?' as nothing further seemed forthcoming.

'Oh, just to know,' she explained. 'It's all right.'

'Yes, it's quite all right like that,' added Jimbo. And without more
ado they took his arms and pulled him out of the forest.

And Henry Rogers heard something deep, deep down within himself echo
the verdict.

'I think it is all right.'

On the way home there were no puddles, but there were three pairs of
eyes—and the stars were uncommonly thick overhead. The children asked
him almost as many questions as there were clusters of them between
the summits of Boudry and La Tourne. All three went floundering in
that giant Net. It was so different, too, from anything they had been
accustomed to. Their father's stories, answers, explanations, and the
like, were ineffective because they always felt he did not quite
believe them himself even while he gave them. He did not think he
believed them, that is. But Cousin Henry talked of stars and star-
stuff as though he had some in his pocket at the moment. And, of
course, he had. For otherwise they would not have listened. He could
not have held their attention.

They especially liked the huge, ridiculous words he used, because such
words concealed great mysteries that pulsed with wonder and
exquisitely wound them up. Daddy made things too clear. The bones of
impossibility were visible. They saw thin nakedness behind the
explanations, till the sense of wonder faded. They were not babies to
be fed with a string of one-syllable words!

Jimbo kept silence mostly, his instinct ever being to conceal his
ignorance; but Monkey talked fifteen to the dozen, filling the pauses
with long 'ohs' and bursts of laughter and impudent observations. Yet
her cheeky insolence never crossed the frontier where it could be
resented. Her audacity stopped short of impertinence.

'There's a point beyond which—' her cousin would say gravely, when
she grew more daring than usual; and, while answering 'It'll stick
into you, then, not into me,' she yet withdrew from the borders of
impertinence at once.

'What is star-stuff really then?' she asked.

'The primordial substance of the universe,' he answered solemnly, no
whit ashamed of his inaccuracy.

'Ah yes!' piped Jimbo, quietly.
Ecole primaire
he understood. This
must be something similar.

'But what does it do, I mean, and why is it good for people to have it
in them—on them—whatever it is?' she inquired.

'It gives sympathy and insight; it's so awfully subtle and delicate,'
he answered. 'A little of it travels down on every ray and soaks down
into you. It makes you feel inclined to stick to other people and
understand them. That's sympathy.'

'
Sympathie
,' said Jimbo for his sister's benefit apparently, but in
reality because he himself was barely treading water.

'But sympathy,' the other went on, 'is no good without insight—which
means seeing things as others see them—from inside. That's insight—
'

'Inside sight,' she corrected him.

'That's it. You see, the first stuff that existed in the universe was
this star-stuff—nebulae. Having nothing else to stick to, it stuck to
itself, and so got thicker. It whirled in vortices. It grew together
in sympathy, for sympathy brings together. It whirled and twirled
round itself till it got at last into solid round bodies—worlds—
stars. It passed, that is, from mere dreaming into action. And when
the rays soak into you, they change your dreaming into action. You
feel the desire to do things—for others.'

'Ah! yes,' repeated Jimbo, 'like that.'

'You must be full of vorty seas, then, because you're so long,' said
Monkey, 'but you'll never grow into a solid round body—'

He took a handful of her hair and smothered the remainder of the
sentence.

'The instant a sweet thought is born in your mind,' he continued, 'the
heavenly stables send their starry messengers to harness it for use. A
ray, perhaps, from mighty Sirius picks it out of your heart at birth.'

'Serious!' exclaimed Jimbo, as though the sun were listening.

'Sirius—another sun, that is, far bigger than our own—a perfect
giant, yet so far away you hardly notice him.'

The boy clasped his dirty fingers and stared hard. The sun
was
listening.

'Then what I
think
is known—like that—all over the place?' he
asked. He held himself very straight indeed.

'Everywhere,' replied Cousinenry gravely. 'The stars flash your
thoughts over the whole universe. None are ever lost. Sooner or later
they appear in visible shape. Some one, for instance, must have
thought this flower long ago'—he stooped and picked a blue hepatica
at their feet—'or it couldn't be growing here now.'

Jimbo accepted the statement with his usual gravity.

'Then I shall always think enormous and tremendous things—powerful
locomotives, like that and—and—'

'The best is to think kind little sweet things about other people,'
suggested the other. 'You see the results quicker then.'

'Mais oui,' was the reply, 'je pourrai faire ca au meme temps, n'est-
ce pas?'

'Parfaitemong,' agreed his big cousin.

'There's no room in her for inside sight,' observed Monkey as a portly
dame rolled by into the darkness. 'You can't tell her front from her
back.' It was one of the governesses.

'We'll get her into the cave and change all that,' her cousin said
reprovingly. 'You must never judge by outside alone. Puddings should
teach you that.'

But no one could reprove Monkey without running a certain risk.

'We don't have puddings here,' she said, 'we have dessert—sour
oranges and apples.'

She flew from his side and vanished down the street and into the
Citadelle courtyard before he could think of anything to say. A
shooting star flashed at the same moment behind the church tower,
vanishing into the gulf of Boudry's shadow. They seemed to go at the
same pace together.

'Oh, I say!' said Jimbo sedately, 'you must punish her for that, you
know. Shall I come with you to the carpenter's?' he added, as they
stood a moment by the fountain. 'There's just ten minutes to wash and
brush your hair for supper.'

'I think I can find my way alone,' he answered, 'thank you all the
same.'

'It's nothing,' he said, lifting his cap as the village fashion was,
and watching his cousin's lengthy figure vanish down the street.

'We'll meet at the Pension later,' the voice came back, 'and in the
morning I shall have a lot of correspondence to attend to. Bring your
shorthand book and lots of pencils, mind.'

'How many?'

'Oh, half a dozen will do.'

The boy turned in and hurried after his sister. But he was so busy
collecting all the pencils and paper he could find that he forgot to
brush his hair, and consequently appeared at the supper table with a
head like a tangled blackberry bush. His eyes were bright as stars.

O pure one, take thy seat in the barque of the Sun,
And sail thou over the sky.
Sail thou with the imperishable stars,
Sail thou with the unwearied stars.

Pyramid Texts, Dynasty VI.

But Henry Rogers ran the whole two hundred yards to his lodgings in
the carpenter's house. He ran as though the entire field of brilliant
stars were at his heels. There was bewilderment, happiness,
exhilaration in his blood. He had never felt so light-hearted in his
life. He felt exactly fifteen years of age—and a half. The half was
added to ensure a good, safe margin over the other two.

But he was late for supper too—later than the children, for first he
jotted down some notes upon the back of an envelope. He wrote them at
high speed, meaning to correct them later, but the corrections were
never made. Later, when he came to bed, the envelope had been tidied
away by the careful housewife into the dustbin. And he was ashamed to
ask for them. The carpenter's wife read English.

'Pity,' he said to himself. 'I don't believe Minks could have done it
better!'

The energy that went to the making of those 'notes' would have run
down different channels a few years ago. It would have gone into some
ingenious patent. The patent, however, might equally have gone into
the dustbin. There is an enormous quantity of misdirected energy
pouring loose about the world!

The notes had run something like this—

O children, open your arms to me,
Let your hair fall over my eyes;
Let me sleep a moment—and then awake
In your Gardens of sweet Surprise!
For the grown-up folk
Are a wearisome folk,
And they laugh my fancies to scorn,
My fun and my fancies to scorn.

O children, open your hearts to me,
And tell me your wonder-thoughts;
Who lives in the palace inside your brain?
Who plays in its outer courts?
Who hides in the hours To-morrow holds?
Who sleeps in your yesterdays?
Who tiptoes along past the curtained folds
Of the shadow that twilight lays?

O children, open your eyes to me,
And tell me your visions too;
Who squeezes the sponge when the salt tears flow
To dim their magical blue?
Who draws up their blinds when the sun peeps in?
Who fastens them down at night?
Who brushes the fringe of their lace-veined lids?
Who trims their innocent light?

Then, children, I beg you, sing low to me,
And cover my eyes with your hands;
O kiss me again till I sleep and dream
That I'm lost in your fairylands;
For the grown-up folk
Are a troublesome folk,
And the book of their childhood is torn,
Is blotted, and crumpled, and torn!

Supper at the Pension dissipated effectively the odd sense of
enchantment to which he had fallen a victim, but it revived again with
a sudden rush when Jimbo and his sister came up at half-past eight to
say good-night. It began when the little fellow climbed up to plant a
resounding kiss upon his lips, and it caught him fullest when Monkey's
arms were round his neck, and he heard her whisper in his ear—

'Sleep as tightly as you can, remember, and don't resist. We'll come
later to find you.' Her brown eyes were straight in front of his own.
Goodness, how they shone! Old Sirius and Aldebaran had certainly left
a ray in each.

'Hope you don't get any longer when you're asleep!' she added, giving
him a sly dig in the ribs—then was gone before he could return it, or
ask her what she meant by 'we'll find you later.'

'And don't say a word to Mother,' was the last thing he heard as she
vanished down the stairs.

Slightly confused, he glanced down at the aged pumps he happened to
have on, and noticed that one bow was all awry and loose. He stooped
to fidget with it, and Mother caught him in the act.

'I'll stitch it on for you,' she said at once. 'It won't take a
minute. One of the children can fetch it in the morning.'

But he was ashamed to add to her endless sewing. Like some female
Sisyphus, she seemed always pushing an enormous needle through a
mountain of clothes that grew higher each time she reached the top.

'I always wear it like that,' he assured her gravely, his thoughts
still busy with two other phrases—' find you' and 'sleep tightly.'
What in the world could they mean? Did the children really intend to
visit him at night? They seemed so earnest about it. Of course it was
all nonsense. And yet—!

'You mustn't let them bother you too much,' he heard their mother
saying, her voice sounding a long way off. 'They're so wildly happy to
have some one to play with.'

'That's how I like them,' he answered vaguely, referring half to the
pumps and half to the children. 'They're no trouble at all, believe
me.'

'I'm afraid we've spoilt them rather—'

'But—not at all,' he murmured, still confused. 'They're only a little
loose—er—lively, I mean. That's how they should be.'