Algernon Blackwood (24 page)

A moment later they were in mid-air on their way to the Citadelle,
singing as they went:—

He keeps that only
For the old and lonely,
Who sleep so little that they need the best.
The rest—
The common stuff—
Is good enough
For Fraulein, or for baby, or for mother,
Or any other
Who likes a bit of dust,
And yet can do without it—
If they must...

Already something of the Dawn's faint magic painting lay upon the
world. Roofs shone with dew. The woods were singing, and the flowers
were awake. Birds piped and whistled shrilly from the orchards. They
heard the Mer Dasson murmuring along her rocky bed. The rampart of the
Alps stood out more clearly against the sky.

'We must be
very
quick,' Cousin Henry flashed across to them,
'quicker than an express train.'

'That's impossible,' cried Jimbo, who already felt the call of waking
into his daily world. 'Hark! There's whistling already....'

The next second, in a twinkling, he was gone. He had left them. His
body had been waked up by the birds that sang and whistled so loudly
in the plane tree outside his window. Monkey and her guide raced on
alone into the very room where he now sat up and rubbed his eyes in
the Citadelle. He was telling his mother that he had just been
'dreaming extraordinary.' But Mother, sleeping like a fossil monster
in the Tertiary strata, heard him not.

'He often goes like that,' whispered Monkey in a tone of proud
superiority. 'He's only a little boy really, you see.'

But the sight they then witnessed was not what they expected.

For Mademoiselle Lemaire herself was working over Mother like an
engine, and Mother was still sleeping like the dead. The radiance that
emanated from the night-body of this suffering woman, compared to
their own, was as sunlight is to candle-light. Its soft glory was
indescribable, its purity quite unearthly, and the patterns that it
wove lovely beyond all telling. Here they surprised her in the act,
busy with her ceaseless activities for others, working for the world
by
thinking
beauty. While her pain-racked body lay asleep in the bed
it had not left for thirty years, nor would ever leave again this side
of death, she found her real life in loving sympathy for the pain of
others everywhere. For thought is prayer, and prayer is the only true
effective action that leaves no detail incomplete. She
thought
light
and glory into others. Was it any wonder that she drew a special,
brilliant supply from the Starlight Cavern, when she had so much to
give? For giving-out involved drawing-in to fill the emptied spaces.
Her pure and endless sources of supply were all explained.

'I've been working on her for years,' she said gently, looking round
at their approach, 'for her life is so thickly overlaid with care, and
the care she never quite knows how to interpret. We were friends, you
see, in childhood.... You'd better hurry on to the carpenter's house.
You'll find Jinny there doing something for her father.' She did not
cease her working while she said it, this practical mind so familiar
with the methods of useful thinking, this loving heart so versed in
prayer while her broken body, deemed useless by the world, lay in the
bed that was its earthly prison-house. '
He
can give me all the help
I need,' she added.

She pointed, and they saw the figure of the Sweep standing in the
corner of the room among a pile of brimming sacks. His dirty face was
beaming. They heard him singing quietly to himself under his breath,
while his feet and sooty hands marked time with a gesture of quaintest
dancing:—

Such
a tremendously busy Sweep,
Catching the world when it's all asleep,
And tossing the blacks on the Rubbish Heap
Over the edge of the world!

'Come,' whispered Cousin Henry, catching at Monkey's hair, 'we can do
something, but we can't do
that
. She needs no help from us!'

They sped across to the carpenter's house among the vineyards.

'What a splendour!' gasped the child as they went. 'My starlight seems
quite dim beside hers.'

'She's an old hand at the game,' he replied, noticing the tinge of
disappointment in her thought. 'With practice, you know—'

'And Mummy must be pretty tough,' she interrupted with a laugh, her
elastic nature recovering instantly.

'—with practice, I was going to say, your atmosphere will get
whiter too until it simply shines. That's why the saints have halos.'

But Monkey did not hear this last remark, she was already in her
father's bedroom, helping Jinny.

Here there were no complications, no need for assistance from a Sweep,
or Gardener, or Lamplighter. It was a case for pulling, pure and
simple. Daddy was wumbled, nothing more. Body, mind, and heart were
all up-jumbled. In making up the verse about the starlight he had
merely told the truth—about himself. The poem was instinctive and
inspirational confession. His atmosphere, as he lay there, gently
snoring in his beauty sleep, was clear and sweet and bright, no
darkness in it of grey or ugliness; but its pattern was a muddle, or
rather there were several patterns that scrambled among each other for
supremacy. Lovely patterns hovered just outside him, but none of them
got really in. And the result was chaos. Daddy was not clear-headed;
there was no concentration. Something of the perplexed confusion that
afflicted his elder daughter in the daytime mixed up the patterns
inextricably. There was no main pathway through his inner world.

And the picture proved it. It explained why Jinny pulled in vain. His
night-body came out easily as far as the head, then stuck hopelessly.
He looked like a knotted skein of coloured wools. Upon the paper where
he had been making notes before going to sleep—for personal
atmosphere is communicated to all its owner touches—lay the same
confusion. Scraps of muddle, odds and ends of different patterns,
hovered in thick blots of colour over the paragraphs and sentences.
His own uncertainty was thus imparted to what he wrote, and his
stories brought no conviction to his readers. He was too much the
Dreamer, or too much the Thinker, which of the two was not quite
clear. Harmony was lacking.

'That's probably what I'M like, too,' thought his friend, but so
softly that the children did not hear it. That Scheme of his passed
vaguely through his mind.

Then he cried louder—a definite thought:—

'There's no good tugging like that, my dears. Let him slip in again.
You'll only make him restless, and give him distorted dreams.'

'I've tugged like this every night for months,' said Jinny, 'but the
moment I let go he flies back like elastic.'

'Of course. We must first untie the knots and weave the patterns into
one. Let go!'

Daddy's night-body flashed back like a sword into its sheath. They
stood and watched him. He turned a little in his sleep, while above
him the lines twined and wriggled like phosphorus on moving water, yet
never shaped themselves into anything complete. They saw suggestions
of pure beauty in them here and there that yet never joined together
into a single outline; it was like watching the foam against a
steamer's sides in moonlight—just failing of coherent form.

'They want combing out,' declared Jane Anne with a brilliant touch of
truth. 'A rake would be best.'

'Assorting, sifting, separating,' added Cousinenry, 'but it's not
easy.' He thought deeply for a moment. 'Suppose you two attend to the
other things,' he said presently, 'while I take charge of the combing-
out.'

They knew at once his meaning; it was begun as soon as thought, only
they could never have thought of it alone; none but a leader with real
sympathy in his heart could have discovered the way.

Like Fairies, lit internally with shining lanterns, they flew about
their business. Monkey picked up his pencils and dipped their points
into her store of starlight, while Jinny drew the cork out of his ink-
pot and blew in soft-shiny radiance of her own. They soaked his books
in it, and smoothed his paper out with their fingers of clean gold.
His note-books, chair, and slippers, his smoking-coat and pipes and
tobacco-tins, his sponge, his tooth-brush and his soap—everything
from dressing-gown to dictionary, they spread thickly with their
starlight, and continued until the various objects had drunk in enough
to make them shine alone.

Then they attacked the walls and floor and ceiling, sheets and bed-
clothes. They filled the tin-bath full to the very brim, painted as
well the windows, door-handles, and the wicker chair in which they
knew he dozed after dejeuner. But with the pencils, pens, and ink-pots
they took most trouble, doing them very thoroughly indeed. And his
enormous mountain-boots received generous treatment too, for in these
he went for his long lonely walks when he thought out his stories
among the woods and valleys, coming home with joy upon his face—'I
got a splendid idea to-day—a magnificent story—if only I can get it
on to paper before it's gone...!' They understood his difficulty now:
the 'idea' was wumbled before he could fashion it. He could not get
the pattern through complete.

And his older friend, working among the disjointed patterns, saw his
trouble clearly too. It was not that he lacked this sympathy that
starlight brings, but that he applied it without discernment. The
receiving instrument was out of order, some parts moving faster than
others. Reason and imagination were not exaccurately adjusted. He
gathered plenty in, but no clear stream issued forth again; there was
confusion in delivery. The rays were twisted, the golden lines caught
into knots and tangles. Yet, ever just outside him, waiting to be
taken in, hovered these patterns of loveliness that might bring joy to
thousands. They floated in beauty round the edges of his atmosphere,
but the moment they sank in to reach his mind, there began the
distortion that tore their exquisite proportions and made designs mere
disarrangement. Inspiration, without steady thought to fashion it, was
of no value.

He worked with infinite pains to disentangle the mass of complicated
lines, and one knot after another yielded and slipped off into
rivulets of gold, all pouring inwards to reach heart and brain. It was
exhilarating, yet disappointing labour. New knots formed themselves so
easily, yet in the end much surely had been accomplished. Channels had
been cleared; repetition would at length establish habit.

But the line of light along the eastern horizon had been swiftly
growing broader meanwhile. It was brightening into delicate crimson.
Already the room was clearer, and the radiance of their bodies fading
into a paler glory. Jane Anne grew clumsier, tumbling over things, and
butting against her more agile sister. Her thoughts became more
muddled. She said things from time to time that showed it—hints that
waking was not far away.

'Daddy's a wumbled Laplander, you know, after all. Hurry up!' The
foolish daylight speech came closer.

'Give his ink-pot one more blow,' cried Monkey. Her body always slept
at least an hour longer than the others. She had more time for work.

Jane Anne bumped into the washhand-stand. She no longer saw quite
clearly.

'I'm a plenipotentiary, that's what I am. I'm afraid of nothing. But
the porridge has to be made. I must get back....'

She vanished like a flash, just as her brother had vanished half an
hour before.

'We'll go on with it to-morrow night,' signalled Cousin Henry to his
last remaining helper. 'Meet me here, remember, when...the moon...is
high enough to...cast...a...shadow....'

The opening and shutting of a door sounded through his sleep. He
turned over heavily. Surely it was not time to get up yet. That could
not be hot water coming! He had only just fallen asleep. He plunged
back again into slumber.

But Monkey had disappeared.

'What a spanking dream I've had...!' Her eyes opened, and she saw her
school-books on the chair beside the bed. Mother was gently shaking
her out of sleep. 'Six o'clock, darling. The bath is ready, and
Jinny's nearly got the porridge done. It's a lovely morning!'

'Oh, Mummy, I—'

But Mummy lifted her bodily out of bed, kissed her sleepy eyes awake,
and half carried her over to the bath. 'You can tell me all about that
later,' she said with practical decision; 'when the cold water's
cleared your head. You're always fuzzy when you wake.'

Another day had begun. The sun was blazing high above the Blumlisalp.
The birds sang in chorus. Dew shone still on the fields, but the men
were already busy in the vineyards.

And presently Cousin Henry woke too and stared lazily about his room.
He looked at his watch.

'By Jove,' he murmured. 'How one does sleep in this place! And what a
dream to be sure—I who never dream!'

He remembered nothing more. From the moment he closed his eyes, eight
hours before, until this second, all was a delicious blank. He felt
refreshed and wondrously light-hearted, at peace with all the world.
There was music in his head. He began to whistle as he lay among the
blankets for half an hour longer. And later, while he breakfasted
alone downstairs, he remembered that he ought to write to Minks. He
owed Minks a letter. And before going out into the woods he wrote it.
'I'm staying on a bit,' he mentioned at the end. 'I find so much to do
here, and it's such a rest. Meanwhile I can leave everything safely in
your hands. But as soon as I get a leisure moment I'll send you the
promised draft of my Scheme for Disabled, etc., etc.'

But the Scheme got no further somehow. New objections, for one thing,
kept cropping up in his mind. It would take so long to build the
place, and find the site, satisfy County Councils, and all the rest.
The Disabled, moreover, were everywhere; it was invidious to select
one group and leave the others out. Help the world, yes—but what was
'the world'? There were so many worlds. He touched a new one every day
and every hour. Which needed his help most? Bourcelles was quite as
important, quite as big and hungry as any of the others. 'That old
Vicar knew a thing or two,' he reflected later in the forest, while he
gathered a bunch of hepaticas and anemones to take to Mlle. Lemaire.
'There are "neighbours" everywhere, the world's simply chock full of
'em. But what a pity that we die just when we're getting fit and ready
to begin. Perhaps we go on afterwards, though. I wonder...!'