Algernon Blackwood (28 page)

'By George!' he said aloud. He felt strange, great life pour through
him. He had made a discovery ... in his heart ... deep, deep down.

Something in himself, so long buried it was scarcely recognisable,
stirred out of sight and tried to rise. Some flower of his youth that
time had hardened, dried, yet never killed, moved gently towards
blossoming. It shone. It was still hard a little, like a crystal,
glistening down there among shadows that had gathered with the years.
And then it suddenly melted, running in a tiny thread of gold among
his thoughts into that quiet sea which so rarely in a man may dare the
relief of tears. It was a tiny yellow flower, like a daisy that had
forgotten to close at night, so that some stray starbeam changed its
whiteness into gold.

Forgotten passion, and yearning long denied, stirred in him with that
phrase. His cousin's children doubtless had prepared the way. A faded
Dream peered softly into his eyes across the barriers of the years.
For every woman in the world was a mother, and a childless woman was
the grandest, biggest mother of them all. And he had longed for
children of his own; he, too, had remained a childless father. A
vanished face gazed up into his own. Two vessels, making the same fair
harbour, had lost their way, yet still sailed, perhaps, the empty
seas. Yet the face he did not quite recognise. The eyes, instead of
blue, were amber. ...

And did this explain a little the spell that caught him in this Jura
village, perhaps? Were these children, weaving a network so cunningly
about his feet, merely scouts and pilots? Was his love for the world
of suffering folk, after all, but his love for a wife and children of
his own transmuted into wider channels? Denied the little garden he
once had planned for it, did it seek to turn the whole big world into
a garden? Suppression was impossible; like murder, it must out. A bit
of it had even flamed a passage into work and patents and 'City' life.
For love is life, and life is ever and everywhere one. He thought and
thought and thought. A man begins by loving himself; then, losing
himself, he loves a woman; next, that love spreads itself over a still
bigger field, and he loves his family, his wife and children, and
their families again in turn. But, that expression denied, his love
inevitably, irrepressibly seeking an outlet, finds it in a Cause, a
Race, a Nation, perhaps in the entire world. The world becomes his
'neighbour.' It was a great Fairy Story. ...

Again his thoughts returned to that one singular sentence ... and he
realised what his cousin meant. Only a childless Mother, some woman
charged to the brim with this power of loving to which ordinary
expression had been denied, could fill the vacant role in his great
Children's Play. No man could do it. He and his cousin were mere
'supers' on this stage. His cousin would invent her for his story. He
would make her come. His passion would create her. That was what he
meant.

Rogers smiled to himself, moving away from the window where the
sunshine grew too fierce for comfort. What a funny business it all
was, to be sure! And how curiously every one's thinking had
intermingled! The children had somehow divined his own imaginings in
that Crayfield garden; their father had stolen the lot for his story.
It was most extraordinary. And then he remembered Minks, and all his
lunatic theories about thought and thought-pictures. The garden scene
at Crayfield came back vividly, the one at Charing Cross, in the
orchard, too, with the old Vicar, when they had talked beneath the
stars. Who among them all was the original sponsor? And which of them
had set the ball a-rolling? It was stranger than the story of
creation. ... It
was
the story of creation.

Yet he did not puzzle very long. Actors in a play are never puzzled;
it is the bewildered audience who ask questions. And Henry Rogers was
on the stage. The gauzy curtain hung between him and the outside point
of view. He was already deeply involved in Fairyland. ... His feet
were in the Net of Stars. ... He was a prisoner.

And that woman he had once dreamed might mother his own children—
where was she? Until a few years ago he had still expected, hoped to
meet her. One day they would come together. She waited somewhere. It
was only recently he had let the dream slip finally from him,
abandoned with many another personal ambition.

Idly he picked up a pencil, and before he was aware of it the words
ran into lines. It seemed as though his cousin's mood, thought,
inspiration, worked through him.

Upon what flowering shore,
'Neath what blue skies
She stands and waits,
It is not mine to know;
Only I know that shore is fair,
Those skies are blue.

Her voice I may not hear,
Nor see her eyes,
Yet there are times
When in the wind she speaks.
When stars and flowers
Tell me of her eyes.
When rivers chant her name.

If ever signs were sure,
I know she waits;
If not, what means this sweetness in the wind,
The singing in the rain, the love in flowers?
What mean these whispers in the air,
This calling from the hills and from the sea?
These tendernesses of the Day and Night?
Unless she waits!

What in the world was this absurd sweetness running in his veins?

He laughed a little. A slight flush, too, came and went its way. The
tip of the pencil snapped as he pressed too heavily on it. He had
drawn it through the doggerel with impatience, for he suddenly
realised that he had told a deep, deep secret to the paper. It had
stammered its way out before he was aware of it. This was youth and
boyhood strong upon him, the moods of Crayfield that he had set long
ago on one side—deliberately. The mood that wrote the Song of the
Blue Eyes had returned, waking after a sleep of a quarter of a
century.

'What rubbish!' he exclaimed; 'I shall be an author next!' He tore it
up and, rolling the pieces into a ball, played catch with it. 'What
waste of energy! Six months ago that energy would have gone into
something useful, a patent—perhaps an improvement in the mechanism
of—of—' he hesitated, then finished the sentence with a sigh of
yearning and another passing flush—'a perambulator!'

He tossed it out of the window and, laughing, leaned out to watch it
fall. It bounced upon a head of tousled hair beneath, then flew off
sideways in the wind and rattled away faintly among the vines. The
head was his cousin's.

'What are you up to?' cried the author, looking up. 'I'm not a waste-
paper basket.' There was a cigarette ash in his beard.

'Sending you ideas, he answered. 'I'm coming myself now. Look out!' He
was in high spirits again. He believed in that Fairy Princess.

'All right; I've put you in already. Everybody will wonder who
Cousinenry is. ...' The untidy head of hair popped in again.

'Hark!' cried Rogers, trying to look round the corner of the house. He
edged himself out at a dangerous angle. His ears had caught another
sound. There was music in the air.

The sweet spring winds came laughing down the street, bearing a voice
that mingled with their music.

Daddy! Daddy! vite; il y a un paquet!'
sounded in a child's excited
cry. 'It arrives this afternoon. It's got the Edinburgh postmark. Here
is the notice.
C'est enorme!'

The figure of Jimbo shot round the corner, dancing into view. He waved
a bit of yellow paper in his hand. A curious pang tore its way into
the big man's heart as he saw him—a curious, deep, searching pain
that yet left joy all along its trail. Positively moisture dimmed his
eyes a second.

But Jimbo belonged to some one else.

Daddy's wumbled head projected instantly again from the window
beneath.

'A box?' he asked, equally excited. 'A box from Scotland? Why, we had
one only last month. Bless their hearts! How little they know what
help and happiness. ... 'The rest of the sentence disappeared with the
head; and a moment later Jimbo was heard scampering up the stairs.
Both men went out to meet him.

The little boy was breathless with excitement, yet the spirit of the
man of affairs worked strongly in him. He deliberately suppressed
hysterics. He spoke calmly as might be, both hands in his trouser-
pockets beneath the blouse of blue cotton that stuck out like a ballet
skirt all round. The belt had slipped down. His eyes were never still.
He pulled one hand out, holding the crumpled paper up for inspection.

'It's a
paquet
,' he said, '
comme ca.
' He used French and English
mixed, putting the latter in for his cousin's benefit. He had little
considerate ways like that. It's coming from Scotland,
et puis ca
pese soixante-quinze kilos
. Oh, it's big. It's enormous. The last one
weighed,' he hesitated, forgetful, 'much, much less,' he finished. He
paused, looking like a man who has solved a problem by stating it.

'One hundred and fifty pounds,' exclaimed his father, just as eager as
the boy. 'Let me look,' and he held his hand out for the advice from
the railway. 'What
can
be in it?'

'Something for everybody,' said Jimbo decidedly. 'All the village
knows it. It will come by the two o'clock train from Bale, you know.'
He gave up the paper unwillingly. It was his badge of office. 'That's
the paper about it,' he added again.

Daddy read out slowly the advice of consignment, with dates and
weights and address of sender and recipient, while Jimbo corrected the
least mistake. He knew it absolutely by heart.

'There'll be dresses and boots for the girls this time,' he announced,
'and something big enough for Mother to wear, too. You can tell—'

'How can you tell?' asked Daddy, laughing slyly, immensely pleased
about it all.

'Oh, by the weight of the
paquet, comme ca
,' was the reply. 'It
weighs 75 kilos. That means there must be something for Mummy in it.'

The author turned towards his cousin, hiding his smile. 'It's a box of
clothes,' he explained, 'from my cousins in Scotland, Lady X you know,
and her family. Things they give away—usually to their maids and
what-not. Awfully good of them, isn't it? They pay the carriage too,'
he added. It was an immense relief to him.

'Things they can't wear,' put in Jimbo, 'but
very
good things—
suits, blouses, shirts, collars, boots, gloves, and—oh,
toute sorte
de choses comme ca
.'

'Isn't it nice of 'em,' repeated Daddy. It made life easier for him—
ever so much easier. 'A family like that has such heaps of things. And
they always pay the freight. It saves me a pretty penny I can tell
you. Why, I haven't bought the girls a dress for two years or more.
And Edward's dressed like a lord, I tell you,' referring to his eldest
boy now at an expensive tutor's. 'You can understand the excitement
when a box arrives. We call it the Magic Box.'

Rogers understood. It had puzzled him before why the children's
clothes, Daddy's and Mummy's as well for that matter, were such an
incongruous assortment of village or peasant wear, and smart, well-cut
garments that bore so obviously the London mark.

'They're very rich indeed,' said Jimbo. 'They have a motor car. These
are the only things that don't fit them. There's not much for me
usually; I'm too little yet. But there's lots for the girls and the
others.' And 'the others,' it appeared, included the Widow Jequier,
the Postmaster and his wife, the carpenter's family, and more than one
household in the village who knew the use and value of every
centimetre of ribbon. Even the retired governesses got their share. No
shred or patch was ever thrown away as useless. The assortment of
cast-off clothing furnished Sunday Bests to half the village for weeks
to come. A consignment of bullion could not have given half the
pleasure and delight that the arrival of a box produced.

But
midi
was ringing, and
dejeuner
had to be eaten first. Like a
meal upon the stage, no one ate sincerely; they made a brave pretence,
but the excitement was too great for hunger. Every one was in the
secret—the Postmaster (he might get another hat out of it for
himself) had let it out with a characteristic phrase: 'Il y a un
paquet pour la famille anglaise!' Yet all feigned ignorance. The
children exchanged mysterious glances, and afterwards the governesses
hung about the Post Office, simulating the purchase of stamps at two
o'clock. But every one watched Daddy's movements, for he it was who
would say the significant words.

And at length he said them. 'Now, we had better go down to the
station,' he observed casually, 'and see if there is anything for us.'
His tone conveyed the impression that things often arrived in this
way; it was an everyday affair. If there was nothing, it didn't matter
much. His position demanded calmness.

'Very well,' said Jimbo. 'I'll come with you.' He strutted off,
leading the way.

'And I, and I,' cried Monkey and Jane Anne, for it was a half-holiday
and all were free. Jimbo would not have appeared to hurry for a
kingdom.

'I think I'll join you, too,' remarked Mother, biting her lips, 'only
please go slowly.' There were hills to negotiate.

They went off together in a party, and the governesses watched them
go. The Widow Jequier put her head out of the window, pretending she
was feeding the birds. Her sister popped out opportunely to post a
letter. The Postmaster opened his
guichet
window and threw a bit of
string into the gutter; and old Miss Waghorn, just then appearing for
her daily fifteen minutes' constitutional, saw the procession and
asked him, 'Who in the world all those people were?' She had
completely forgotten them. 'Le barometre a monte,' he replied, knowing
no word of English, and thinking it was her usual question about the
weather. He reported daily the state of the barometer. 'Vous n'aurez
pas besoin d'un parapluie.' 'Mercy,' she said, meaning
merci
.