Algernon Blackwood (39 page)

'The trains,' Jimbo was crying. He darted to and fro, superintending
the embarking of the passengers.

All the sidings of the sky were full of Starlight Expresses.

The loading-up was so quickly accomplished that Mother hardly realised
what was happening. Everybody carried sacks overflowing with dripping
gold and bursting at the seams. As each train filled, it shot away
across the starry heavens; for everyone had been to the Cave and
gathered their material even before she reached the scene of action.
And with every train went a
mecanicien
and a
conducteur
created by
Jimbo's vivid and believing thought; a Sweep, a Lamplighter, and a
Head Gardener went, too, for the children's thinking multiplied these,
too, according to their needs. They realised the meaning of these
Sprites so clearly now—their duties, appearance, laws of behaviour,
and the rest-that their awakened imaginations thought them instantly
into existence, as many as were necessary. Train after train, each
with its full complement of passengers, flashed forth across that
summer sky, till the people in the Observatories must have thought
they had miscalculated strangely and the Earth was passing amid the
showering Leonids before her appointed time.

'Where would you like to go first?' Mother heard her friend ask
softly. 'It's not possible to follow all the trains at once, you
know.'

'So I see,' she gasped. 'I'll just sit still a moment, and think.'

The size and freedom of existence, as she now saw it, suddenly
overwhelmed her. Accustomed too long to narrow channels, she found
space without railings and notice-boards bewildering. She had never
dreamed before that thinking can open the gates to heaven and bring
the Milky Way down into the heart. She had merely knitted stockings.
She had been practical. At last the key to her husband's being was in
her hand. That key at the same time opened a door through him, into
her own. Hitherto she had merely criticised. Oh dear! Criticism, when
she might have created!

She turned to seek him. But only her old friend was there, floating
beside her in a brilliant mist of gold and white that turned the tree-
tops into rows of Burning Bushes.

'Where is he?' she asked quickly.

'Hush!' was the instant reply; 'don't disturb him. Don't think, or
you'll bring him back. He's filling his sack in the Star Cave. Men
have to gather it,—the little store they possess is soon crystallised
into hardness by Reason,—but women have enough in themselves usually
to last a lifetime. They are born with it.'

'Mine crystallised long ago, I fear.'

'Care and anxiety did that. You neglected it a little. But your
husband's cousin has cleaned the channels out. He does it
unconsciously, but he does it. He has belief and vision like a child,
and therefore turns instinctively to children because they keep it
alive in him, though he hardly knows why he seeks them. The world,
too, is a great big child that is crying for its Fairyland....'

'But the practical—' objected Mother, true to her type of mind-an
echo rather than an effort.

'—is important, yes, only it has been exaggerated out of all sane
proportion in most people's lives. So little is needed, though that
little of fine quality, and ever fed by starlight. Obeyed exclusively,
it destroys life. It bricks you up alive. But now tell me,' she added,
'where would you like to go first? Whom will you help? There is time
enough to cover .the world if you want to, before the interfering sun
gets up.'

'
You
!' cried Mother, impulsively, then realised instantly that her
friend was already developed far beyond any help that she could give.
It was the light streaming from the older, suffering woman that was
stimulating her own sympathies so vehemently. For years the process
had gone on. It was at last effective.

'There are others, perhaps, who need it more than I,' flashed forth a
lovely ray.

'But I would repay,' Mother cried eagerly, 'I would repay.' Gratitude
for life rushed through her, and her friend must share it.

'Pass it on to others,' was the shining answer. 'That's the best
repayment after all.' The stars themselves turned brighter as the
thought flashed from her.

Then Ireland vanished utterly, for it had been mixed, Mother now
perceived, with personal longings that were at bottom selfish. There
were indeed many there, in the scenes of her home and childhood, whose
lives she might ease and glorify by letting in the starlight while
they slept; but her motive, she discerned, was not wholly pure. There
was a trace in it, almost a little stain, of personal gratification—
she could not analyse it quite—that dimmed the picture in her
thought. The brilliance of her companion made it stand out clearly.
Nearer home was a less heroic object, a more difficult case, some one
less likely to reward her efforts with results. And she turned instead
to this.

'You're right,' smiled the other, following her thought; 'and you
couldn't begin with a better bit of work than that. Your old mother
has cut herself off so long from giving sympathy to her kind that now
she cannot accept it from others without feeling suspicion and
distrust. Ease and soften her outlook if you can. Pour through her
gloom the sympathy of stars. And remember,' she added, as Mother rose
softly out of the trees and hovered a moment overhead, 'that if you
need the Sweep or the Lamplighter, or the Gardener to burn away her
dead leaves, you have only to summon them. Think hard, and they'll be
instantly beside you.'

Upon an eddy of glowing wind Mother drifted across the fields to the
corner of the village where her mother occupied a large single room in
solitude upon the top floor, a solitude self-imposed and rigorously
enforced.

'Use the finest quality,' she heard her friend thinking far behind
her, 'for you have plenty of it. The Dustman gave it to you when you
were not looking, gathered from the entire Zodiac... and from the
careless meteor's track....'

The words died off into the forest.

That
he keeps only
For the old and lonely,
(And is very strict about it)
Who sleep so little that they need the best—'

The words came floating behind her. She felt herself brimful—charged
with loving sympathy of the sweetest and most understanding quality.
She looked down a moment upon her mother's roof. Then she descended.

And also there's a little star—
So white, a virgin's it must be;—
Perhaps the lamp my love in heaven
Hangs out to light the way for me.

Song
, THEOPHILE MARZIALS.

In this corner of Bourcelles the houses lie huddled together with an
air of something shamefaced; they dare not look straight at the
mountains or at the lake; they turn their eyes away even from the
orchards at the back. They wear a mysterious and secret look, and
their shoulders have a sly turn, as though they hid their heads in the
daytime and stirred about their business only after dark.

They lie grouped about a cobbled courtyard that has no fountain in it.
The fair white road goes quickly by outside, afraid to look in
frankly; and the entrance to the yard is narrow. Nor does a single
tree grow in it. If Bourcelles could have a slum, this would be it.

Why the old lady had left her cosy quarters in Les Glycines and
settled down in this unpleasant corner of the village was a puzzle to
everybody. With a shrug of the shoulders the problem was generally
left unsolved. Madame Jequier discussed it volubly a year ago when the
move took place, then dismissed it as one of those mysteries of old
people no one can understand. To the son-in-law and the daughter, who
got nearer the truth, it was a source of pain and sadness beyond their
means of relief. Mrs. 'Plume'—it was a play in French upon her real
name,—had been four years in the Pension, induced to come from a
lonely existence in Ireland by her daughter and throw in her lot with
the family, and at first had settled down comfortably enough. She was
over seventy, and possessed 80 pounds a year—a dainty, witty, amusing
Irish lady, with twinkling eyes and a pernicketty strong will, and a
brogue she transferred deliciously into her broken French. She loved
the children, yet did not win their love in return, because they stood
in awe of her sarcastic criticisms. Life had gone hardly with her; she
had lost her fortune and her children, all but this daughter, with
whose marriage she was keenly disappointed. An aristocrat to the
finger-tips, she could not accept the change of circumstances;
distress had soured her; the transplanting hastened her decline; there
was no sweetness left in her. She turned her heart steadily against
the world.

The ostensible cause of this hiding herself away with her sorrow and
disappointment was the presence of Miss Waghorn, with whom she
disagreed, and even quarrelled, from morning till night. They formed a
storm-centre that moved from salon to dining-room, and they squabbled
acutely about everything—the weather, the heating, the opening or
shutting of windows, the details of the food, the arrangement of the
furniture, even the character of the cat. Miss Waghorn loved. The
bickerings were incessant. They only had to meet for hot disagreement
to break out. Mrs. Plume, already bent with age, would strike the
floor with the ebony stick she always carried, and glare at the erect,
defiant spinster—'That horrud, dirrty cat; its always in the room!'
Then Miss Waghorn: 'It's a very nice cat, Madame'—she always called
her Madame—'and when
I
was a young girl I was taught to be kind to
animals.'—'The drawing-room is
not
the place for animals,' came the
pricking answer. And then the scuffle began in earnest.

Miss Waghorn, owing to her want of memory, forgot the squabble five
minutes afterwards, and even forgot that she knew her antagonist at
all. She would ask to be introduced, or even come up sweetly and
introduce herself within half an hour of the battle. But Madame Plume
forgot nothing; her memory was keen and accurate. She did not believe
in the other's failing. 'That common old woman!' she exclaimed with
angry scorn to her daughter.

'It's deliberate offensiveness, that's all it is at all!' And she left
the Pension.

But her attitude to the harmless old Quaker lady was really in small
her attitude to humanity at large. She drew away in disgust from a
world that had treated her so badly. Into herself she drew, growing
smaller every day, more sour, more suspicious, and more averse to her
own kind. Within the restricted orbit of her own bitter thoughts she
revolved towards the vanishing point of life which is the total loss
of sympathy. She felt
with
no one but herself. She belonged to that,
alas, numerous type which, with large expectations unrealised, cannot
accept disillusionment with the gentle laughter it deserves. She
resented the universe. Sympathy was dead.

And she had chosen this unsavoury corner to dwell in because 'the
poor' of the village lived there, and she wished to count herself
among them. It emphasised the spite, the grudge, she felt against
humanity. At first she came into
dejeuner
and
souper
, but
afterwards her meals were sent over twice a day from the Pension. She
discovered so many reasons for not making the little journey of a
hundred yards. On Sunday the 'common people' were in the streets; on
Saturday it was cleaning-day and the Pension smelt of turpentine;
Monday was for letter-writing, and other days were too hot or too
cold, too windy or too wet. In the end she accomplished her heart's
desire. Madame Cornu, who kept the grocer's shop, and lived on the
floor below with her husband, prepared the two principal meals and
brought them up to her on a tray. She ate them alone. Her breakfast
cup of tea she made herself, Mme. Cornu putting the jug of milk
outside the door. She nursed her bitter grievance against life in
utter solitude. Acidity ate its ugly pattern into her heart.

The children, as in duty bound, made dolorous pilgrimages to that
upper floor from time to time, returning frightened, and Mother went
regularly twice a week, coming home saddened and distressed. Her
husband rarely went at all now, since the time when she told him to
his face he came to taunt her. She spent her time, heaven only knows
how, for she never left the building. According to Mother she was
exceedingly busy doing nothing. She packed, unpacked, and then
repacked all her few belongings. In summer she chased bees in her room
with a wet towel; but with venom, not with humour. The Morning Post
came daily from London. 'I read my paper, write a letter, and the
morning's gone,' she told her daughter, by way of complaint that time
was so scanty. Mme. Cornu often heard her walking up and down the
floor, tapping her ebony stick and talking softly to herself. Yet she
was as sane as any old body living in solitude with evil thinking well
can be. She starved-because she neither gave nor
asked
.

As Mother thought of her, thus finding the way in instantly, the
church clock sounded midnight. She entered a room that was black as
coal and unsweetened as an airless cellar. The fair rays that had been
pouring out of her returned with a little shock upon themselves—
repulsed. She felt herself reduced, and the sensation was so
unpleasant at first that she almost gasped. It was like suffocation.
She felt enclosed with Death. That her own radiance dimmed a moment
was undeniable, but it was for a moment only, for, thinking instantly
of her friend, she drew upon that woman's inexhaustible abundance, and
found her own stores replenished.

Slowly, as a wintry sun pierces the mist in some damp hollow of the
woods, her supply of starlight lit up little pathways all about her,
and she saw the familiar figure standing by the window. The figure was
also black; it stood like an ebony statue in an atmosphere that was
thick with gloom, turgid, sinister, and wholly rayless. It was like a
lantern in a London fog. A few dim lines of sombre grey issued heavily
from it, but got no farther than its outer surface, then doubled back
and plunged in again. They coiled and twisted into ugly knots. Her
mother's atmosphere was opaque, and as dismal as a November fog. There
was a speck of light in the room, however, and it came, the visitor
then perceived, from a single candle that stood beside the bed. The
old lady had been reading; she rarely slept before two o'clock in the
morning.