Algernon Blackwood (22 page)

'There are no eyes or puddles to-night. Everybody sleeps. Hooray,
hooray!' they cried together.

There were cross-currents, though. The main, broad, shining stream
poured downwards in front of them towards the opening of the Cave, a
mile or two beyond, where the forests dipped down among the precipices
of the Areuse; but from behind—from some house in the slumbering
village—came a golden tributary too, that had a peculiar and
astonishing brightness of its own. It came, so far as they could make
out, from the humped outline of La Citadelle, and from a particular
room there, as though some one in that building had a special source
of supply. Moreover, it scattered itself over the village in separate
swift rivulets that dived and dipped towards particular houses here
and there. There seemed a constant coming and going, one stream
driving straight into the Cave, and another pouring out again, yet
neither mingling. One stream brought supplies, while the other
directed their distribution. Some one, asleep or awake—they could not
tell—was thinking golden thoughts of love and sympathy for the world.

'It's Mlle. Lemaire,' said Jimbo. 'She's been in bed for thirty
years—' His voice was very soft.

'The Spine, you know,' exclaimed Monkey, a little in the rear.

'—and even in the daytime she looks white and shiny,' added the
boy. 'I often go and talk with her and tell her things.' He said it
proudly. 'She understands everything—better even than Mother.' Jimbo
had told most. It was all right. His leadership was maintained and
justified. They entered the main stream and plunged downwards with it
towards the earth—three flitting figures dipped in this store of
golden brilliance.

A delicious and wonderful thing then happened. All three remembered.

'This was where we met you first,' they told him, settling down among
the trees together side by side. 'We saw your teeth of gold. You came
in that train—'

'I was thinking about it—in England,' he exclaimed, 'and about coming
out to find you here.'

'The Starlight Express,' put in Jimbo.

'—and you were just coming up to speak to us when we woke, or you
woke, or somebody woke—and it all went,' said Monkey.

'That was when I stopped thinking about it,' he explained.

'It all vanished anyhow. And the next time was'—she paused a moment—
'you—we saw your two gold teeth again somewhere, and half recognised
you—'

It was the daylight world that seemed vague and dreamlike now, hard to
remember clearly.

'In another train—' Jimbo helped her, 'the Geneva omnibus that starts
at—at—' But even Jimbo could not recall further details.

'You're wumbled,' said Rogers, helping himself and the others at the
same time. 'You want some starlight to put you in touch again. Come
on; let's go in. We shall find all the others inside, I suspect, hard
at it.'

'At what?' asked two breathless voices.

'Collecting, of course—for others. Did you think they ate the stuff,
just to amuse themselves?'

'They glided towards the opening, cutting through the little tributary
stream that was pouring out on its way down the sky to that room in La
Citadelle. It was brighter than the main river, they saw, and shone
with a peculiar brilliance of its own, whiter and swifter than the
rest. Designs, moreover, like crystals floated on the crest of every
wave.

'That's the best quality,' he told them, as their faces shone a moment
in its glory. 'The person who deserves it must live entirely for
others. That he keeps only for the sad and lonely. The rest, the
common stuff, is good enough for Fraulein or for baby, or for mother,
or any other—' The words rose in him like flowers that he knew.

'Look out,
mon vieux
! 'It was Monkey's voice. They just had time to
stand aside as a figure shot past them and disappeared into the
darkness above the trees. A big bundle, dripping golden dust, hung
down his back.

'The Dustman!' they cried with excitement, easily recognising his
energetic yet stooping figure; and Jimbo added, 'the dear old
Dustman!' while Monkey somersaulted after him, returning breathless a
minute later with, 'He's gone; I couldn't get near him. He went
straight to La Citadelle—'

And then collided violently with the Lamplighter, whose pole of office
caught her fairly in the middle and sent her spinning like a
conjurer's plate till they feared she would never stop. She kept on
laughing the whole time she spun—like a catherine wheel that laughs
instead of splutters. The place where the pole caught her, however—it
was its lighted end—shines and glows to this day: the centre of her
little heart.

'Do let's be careful,' pleaded Jimbo, hardly approving of these wild
gyrations. He really did prefer his world a trifle more dignified. He
was ever the grave little gentleman.

They stooped to enter by the narrow opening, but were stopped again—
this time by some one pushing rudely past them to get in. From the
three points of the compass to which the impact scattered them, they
saw a shape of darkness squeeze itself, sack and all, to enter. An
ordinary man would have broken every bone in his body, judging by the
portion that projected into the air behind. But he managed it somehow,
though the discomfort must have been intolerable, they all thought.
The darkness dropped off behind him in flakes like discarded clothing;
he turned to gold as he went in; and the contents of his sack—he
poured it out like water—shone as though he squeezed a sponge just
dipped in the Milky Way.

'What a lot he's collected,' cried Rogers from his point of vantage
where he could see inside. 'It all gets purified and clean in there.
Wait a moment. He's coming out again—off to make another collection.'

And then they knew the man for what he was. He shot past them into the
night, carrying this time a flat and emptied sack, and singing like a
blackbird as he went:—

Sweeping chimneys and cleaning flues,
That is the work I love;
Brushing away the blacks and the blues,
And letting in light from above!
I twirl my broom in your tired brain
When you're tight in sleep up-curled,
Then scatter the stuff in a soot-like rain
Over the edge of the world.

The voice grew fainter and fainter in the distance—

For I'm a tremendously busy Sweep,
Catching the folk when they're all asleep,
And tossing the blacks on the Rubbish Heap
Over the edge of the world...!

The voice died away into the wind among the high branches, and they
heard it no more.

'There's a Sweep worth knowing,' murmured Rogers, strong yearning in
him.

'There are no blacks or blues in
my
brain,' exclaimed Monkey, 'but
Jimbo's always got some on his face.'

The impudence passed ignored. Jimbo took his cousin's hand and led him
to the opening. The 'men' went in first together; the other sex might
follow as best it could. Yet somehow or other Monkey slipped between
their legs and got in before them. They stood up side by side in the
most wonderful place they had ever dreamed of.

And the first thing they saw was—Jane Anne.

'I'm collecting for Mother. Her needles want such a chronic lot, you
see.' Her face seemed full of stars; there was no puzzled expression
in the eyes now. She looked beautiful. And the younger children stared
in sheer amazement and admiration.

'I have no time to waste,' she said, moving past them with a load in
her spread apron that was like molten gold; 'I have to be up and awake
at six to make your porridge before you go to school. I'm a busy
monster, I can tell you!' She went by them like a flash, and out into
the night.

Monkey felt tears in her somewhere, but they did not fall. Something
in her turned ashamed—for a moment. Jimbo stared in silence. 'What a
girl!' he thought. 'I'd like to be like that!' Already the light was
sticking to him.

'So this is where she always comes,' said Monkey, soon recovering from
the temporary attack of emotion. 'She's better out than in; she's
safest when asleep! No wonder she's so funny in the daytime.'

Then they turned to look about them, breathing low as wild-flowers
that watch a rising moon.

The place was so big for one thing—far bigger than they had expected.
The storage of lost starlight must be a serious affair indeed if it
required all this space to hold it. The entire mountain range was
surely hollow. Another thing that struck them was the comparative
dimness of this huge interior compared with the brilliance of the
river outside. But, of course, lost things are ever dim, and those
worth looking for dare not be too easily found.

A million tiny lines of light, they saw, wove living, moving patterns,
very intricate and very exquisite. These lines and patterns the three
drew in with their very breath. They swallowed light—the tenderest
light the world can know. A scent of flowers—something between a
violet and a wild rose—floated over all. And they understood these
patterns while they breathed them in. They read them. Patterns in
Nature, of course, are fairy script. Here lay all their secrets
sweetly explained in golden writing, all mysteries made clear. The
three understood beyond their years; and inside-sight, instead of
glimmering, shone. For, somehow or other, the needs of other people
blazed everywhere, obliterating their own. It was most singular.

Monkey ceased from somersaulting and stared at Jimbo.

'You've got two stars in your face instead of eyes. They'll never
set!' she whispered. 'I love you because I understand every bit of
you.'

'And you,' he replied, as though he were a grande personne, 'have got
hair like a mist of fire. It will never go out!'

'Every one will love me now,' she cried, 'my underneath is gold.'

But her brother reproved her neatly:—

'Let's get a lot—simply an awful lot'—he made a grimace to signify
quantity—'and pour it over Daddy's head till it runs from his eyes
and beard. He'll write real fairy stories then and make a fortune.'

And Cousin Henry moved past them like a burning torch. They held their
breath to see him. Jane Anne, their busy sister, alone excelled him in
brightness. Her perfume, too, was sweeter.

'He's an old hand at this game,' Monkey said in French.

'But Jinny's never done anything else since she was born,' replied her
brother proudly.

And they all three fell to collecting, for it seemed the law of the
place, a kind of gravity none could disobey. They stooped—three semi-
circles of tender brilliance. Each lost the least desire to gather for
himself; the needs of others drove them, filled them, made them eager
and energetic.

'Riquette would like a bit,' cried Jimbo, almost balancing on his head
in his efforts to get it all at once, while Monkey's shining fingers
stuffed her blouse and skirts with sheaves of golden gossamer that
later she meant to spread in a sheet upon the pillow of Mademoiselle
Lemaire.

'She sleeps so little that she needs the best,' she sang, realising
for once that her own amusement was not the end of life. 'I'll make
her nights all wonder.'

Cousinenry, meanwhile, worked steadily like a man who knows his time
is short. He piled the stuff in heaps and pyramids, and then
compressed it into what seemed solid blocks that made his pockets
bulge like small balloons. Already a load was on his back that bent
him double.

'Such a tiny bit is useful,' he explained, 'if you know exactly how
and where to put it. This compression is my own patent.'

'Of course,' they echoed, trying in vain to pack it up as cleverly as
he did.

Nor were these three the only gatherers. The place was full of
movement. Jane Anne was always coming back for more, deigning no
explanations. She never told where she had spent her former loads. She
gathered an apron full, sped off to spend and scatter it in places she
knew of, and then came bustling in again for more. And they always
knew her whereabouts because of the whiter glory that she radiated
into the dim yellow world about them.

And other figures, hosts of them, were everywhere—stooping, picking,
loading one another's backs and shoulders. To and fro they shot and
glided, like Leonids in autumn round the Earth. All were collecting,
though the supply seemed never to grow less. An inexhaustible stream
poured in through the narrow opening, and scattered itself at once in
all directions as though driven by a wind. How could the world let so
much escape it, when it was what the world most needed every day. It
ran naturally into patterns, patterns that could be folded and rolled
up like silken tablecloths. In silence, too. There was no sound of
drops falling. Sparks fly on noiseless feet. Sympathy makes no bustle.

'Even on the thickest nights it falls,' a voice issued from a robust
patch of light beside them that stooped with huge brown hands all
knotted into muscles; 'and it's a mistake to think different.' His
voice rolled on into a ridiculous bit of singing:—

It comes down with the rain drops,
It comes down with the dew,
There's always 'eaps for every one—
For 'im and me and you.

They recognised his big face, bronzed by the sun, and his great neck
where lines drove into the skin like the rivers they drew with blunt
pencils on their tedious maps of Europe. It was several faces in one.
The Head Gardener was no stranger to their imaginations, for they
remembered him of old somewhere, though not quite sure exactly where.
He worked incessantly for others, though these 'others' were only
flowers and cabbages and fruit-trees. He did his share in the world,
he and his army of queer assistants, the under-gardeners.

Peals of laughter, too, sounded from time to time in a far away corner
of the cavern, and the laughter sent all the stuff it reached into
very delicate, embroidered patterns. For it was merry and infectious
laughter, joy somewhere in it like a lamp. It bordered upon singing;
another touch would send it rippling into song. And to that far
corner, attracted by the sound, ran numberless rivulets of light,
weaving a lustrous atmosphere about the Laugher that, even while it
glowed, concealed the actual gatherer from sight. The children only
saw that the patterns were even more sweet and dainty than their own.
And they understood. Inside-sight explained the funny little mystery.
Laughter is magical—brings light and help and courage. They laughed
themselves then, and instantly saw their own patterns wave and tremble
into tiny outlines that they could squeeze later even into the
darkest, thickest head.