Algernon Blackwood (43 page)

O crested goddess, thatched and top-knotted,
O reckless Stack!
Of wives that to the Wind have been allotted
There is no lack;
You've spurned my love as though I were a worm;
But next September when I see thy form,
I'll woo thee with an equinoctial storm!
I have that knack!'

'Far less wumbled than usual,' thought Rogers, as the children danced
about the room, making up new ridiculous rhymes, of which 'I'll give
you a whack' seemed the most popular. Only Jane Anne was quiet. A
courtship even so remote and improbable as between the Wind and a
Haystack sent her thoughts inevitably in the dominant direction.

'It must be nice when one is two,' she whispered ambiguously to Mother
with a very anxious face, 'but I'm sure that if a woman can't cook,
love flies out of the window. It's a positive calamity, you know.'

But it was Cousin Henry's last night in Bourcelles, and the spirit of
pandemonium was abroad. Neither parent could say no to anything, and
mere conversation in corners was out of the question. The door was
opened into the corridor, and while Mother played her only waltz,
Jimbo and Monkey danced on the splintery boards as though it were a
parquet floor, and Rogers pirouetted somewhat solemnly with Jane Anne.
She enjoyed it immensely, yet rested her hand very gingerly upon his
shoulder. 'Please don't hold me
quite
so tight,' she ventured. 'I've
never danced with a strange man before, you see'; and he no more
laughed at her than he had laughed at Mother's 'nunculus.' Even Jane
Anne, he knew, would settle down comfortably before long into the
great big pattern where a particular nook awaited—aye, needed—her
bizarre, odd brilliance. The most angular fragments would nest softly,
neatly in. A little filing, a little polishing, and all would fit
together. To force would only be to break. Hurry was of the devil. And
later, while Daddy played an ancient tune that was written originally
as a mazurka yet did duty now for a two-step, he danced with Mother
too, and the children paused to watch out of sheer admiration.

'Fancy, Mother dancing!' they exclaimed with glee—except Jinny, who
was just a little offended and went to stand by the piano till it was
over. For Mother danced as lightly as a child for all her pride of
measurement, and no frigate ever skimmed the waves more gracefully
than Mother glided over those uneven boards.

'The Wind and the Haystack' of course, was Monkey's description.

'You'll wind and haystack to bed now,' was the reply, as Mother sat
and fanned herself in the corner. The 'bed-sentence' as the children
called it, was always formed in this way. Whatever the child was
saying when the moment came, Mother adopted as her verb. 'Shall I put
some peat on, Mother?' became 'Peat yourself off to bed-it's nine
o'clock'—and the child was sorry it had spoken.

Good-byes had really been said at intervals all day long, and so to-
night were slight enough; the children, besides, were so 'excitey-
tired,' as Monkey put it, that they possessed no more emotion of any
kind. There were various disagreeable things in the immediate future
of To-morrow—getting up early, school, and so forth; and Cousin
Henry's departure they lumped in generally with the mass, accepted but
unrealised. Jimbo could hardly keep his eyes alight, and Monkey's hair
was like a baby haystack the wind had treated to an equinoctial storm.
Jinny, stiff, perplexed, and solemn with exhaustion, yet dared not
betray it because she was older, in measurable distance of her hair
going up.

'Why don't you play with the others, child?' asked Mother, finding her
upright on a sofa while the romp went on.

'Oh, to-night,' Jinny explained, 'I sit indifferent and look on. I
don't always feel like skedivvying about!'

To skedivvy was to chivvy and skedaddle—its authority not difficult
to guess.

'Good-bye, Cousinenry,' each gasped, as his big arms went round them
and squeezed out the exclamation. 'Oh, thank you most awfully,' came
next, with another kiss, produced by his pressing something hard and
round and yellow into each dirty little hand. 'It's only a bit of
crystallised starlight,' he explained, 'that escaped long ago from the
Cave. And starlight, remember, shines for everybody as well as for
yourselves. You can buy a stamp with it occasionally, too,' he added,
'and write to me.'

'We will. Of course!'

Jimbo straightened up a moment before the final collapse of sleep.

'Your train leaves at 6.23,' he said, with the authority of exclusive
information. 'You must be at the station at six to get the
bagages
enregistrees
. It's a slow train to Pontarlier, but you'll find a
wagon direct
for Paris in front, next to the engine. I shall be
at the station to see you off.'

'
I
shan't,' said Monkey.

Rogers realised with delight the true meaning of these brief and
unemotional good-byes. 'They know I'm coming back; they feel that the
important part of me is not going away at all. My thinking stays here
with them.'

Jinny lingered another ten minutes for appearance's sake. It was long
past her bed-time, too, but dignity forbade her retiring with the
others. Standing by the window she made conversation a moment, feeling
it was the proper, grown-up thing to do. It was even expected of her.

'Look! It's full moon,' she observed gravely, as though suggesting
that she could, if she liked, go out and enjoy the air. 'Isn't it
lovely?'

'No, yesterday was full moon,' Rogers corrected her, joining her and
looking out. 'Two nights ago, to be exact, I think.'

'Oh,' she replied, as solemnly as though politics or finance were
under discussion, 'then it's bigger than full moon now. It goes on,
does it, getting fuller and fuller, till—'

'Now, Jinny dear, it's very late, and you'd better full-moon off to
bed,' Mother interrupted gently.

'Yes, Mother; I'm just saying good-night.' She held her hand out, as
though she was afraid he might kiss her, yet feared he would not.
'Good-bye, Mr. Cousin Henry, and I hope you'll have an exceedingly
happy time in the train and soon come back and visit us again.'

'Thank you,' he said, 'I'm sure I shall.' He gave her a bit of solid
starlight as he said it, then suddenly leaned forward and kissed her
on the cheek. Making a violent movement like an experienced boxer who
dodges an upper cut, Jinny turned and fled precipitately from the
room, forgetting her parents altogether. That kiss, she felt, consumed
her childhood in a flash of fiery flame. In bed she decided that she
must lengthen her skirts the very next day, and put her hair up too.
She must do something that should give her protection and yet freedom.
For a long time she did not sleep. She lay thinking it over. She felt
supremely happy—wild, excited, naughty. 'A man has kissed me; it was
a man; it was Mr. Rogers, Daddy's cousin.... He's not
my
cousin
exactly, but just "a man."' And she fell asleep, wondering how she
ought to begin her letter to him when she wrote, but, more perplexing
still, how she ought to—end it! That little backward brain sought the
solution of the problem all night long in dreams. She felt a criminal,
a dare-devil caught in the act, awaiting execution. Light had been
flashed cruelly upon her dark, careful secret—the greatest and finest
secret in the world. The child lay under sentence indeed, only it was
a sentence of life, and not of death.

Asia
.
... I feel, I see
Those eyes which burn through smiles that fade in tears,
Like stars half quenched in mists of silver dew.

Prometheus Unbound, SHELLEY.

It was only ten o'clock, really, and the curfew was ringing from every
village on the mountain-side. The sound of the bells, half musical,
half ominous, was borne by the bise across the vineyards, for the
easterly wind that brings fine weather was blowing over lake and
forest, and seemed to drive before it thin sheets of moonlight that
turned the whole world soft. The village lay cosily dreaming beneath
the sky. Once the curfew died away there was only the rustling of the
plane trees in the old courtyard. The great Citadelle loomed above the
smaller houses, half in shadow half in silver, nodding heavily to the
spire of the Church, and well within sight of the sentinelle poplar
that guarded the village from the forest and the mountains. Far away,
these mountains now lowered their enormous shoulders to let night flow
down upon the sleeping world. The Scaffolding that brought it had long
since sailed over France towards the sea....

Mother, still panting from the ritual of fastening the younger
children into bed, had gone a moment down the passage to say good-
night to Mlle. Lemaire, and when she returned, the three of them—
herself, her husband, and Cousin Henry—dropped into chairs beside the
window and watched the silvery world in silence for a time. None felt
inclined to speak. There was drama somehow in that interval of
silence—that drama which lurks everywhere and always behind life's
commonest, most ordinary moments. Actions reveal it—sometimes—but it
mostly lies concealed, and especially in deep silences like this, when
the ticking of a cuckoo clock upon the wall may be the sole hint of
its presence.

It was not the good-byes that made all three realise it so near,
though good-byes are always solemn and momentous things; it was
something that stirred and rose upon them from a far deeper strata of
emotion than that caused by apparent separation. For no pain lay in
it, but a power much more difficult to express in the sounds and
syllables of speech—Joy. A great joy, creative and of big
significance, had known accomplishment. Each felt it, knew it,
realised it. The moonlit night was aware of it. The entire universe
knew it, too. The drama lay in that. There had been creation—of more
light.... The world was richer than it had been. Some one had caught
Beauty in a net, and to catch Beauty is to transform and recreate all
common things. It is revelation.

Through the mind of each of these three flowed the stream of casual
thinking—images, reflections, and the shadowy scaffoldings of many
new emotions—sweeping along between the banks of speech and silence.
And this stream, though in flood, did not overflow into words for a
long time. With eyes turned inwards, each watched the current pass.
Clear and deep, it quietly reflected—stars. Each watched the same
stream, the same calm depths, the same delicate reflections. They were
in harmony with themselves, and therefore with the universe....

Then, suddenly, one of the reflections—it was the Pleiades—rose to
the surface to clasp its lovely original. It was the woman who netted
the golden thought and drew it forth for all to see.

'Couldn't you read it to us, Daddy?' she whispered softly across the
silence.

'If it's not too long for you.' He was so eager, so willing to comply.

'We will listen till the Morning Spiders take us home,' his cousin
said.

'It's only the shorter version,' Daddy agreed shiningly, 'a sketch for
the book which, of course, will take a year to write. I might read
that
, perhaps.'

'Do,' urged Mother. 'We are all in it, aren't we? It's our story as
well as yours.'

He rose to get the portfolio from the shelf where he had laid it, and
while Rogers lit the lamp, Riquette stole in at the window, picking
her way daintily across the wet tiles. She stood a moment, silhouetted
against the sky; then shaking her feet rapidly each in turn like bits
of quivering wire, she stepped precisely into the room. 'I am in it
too,' she plainly said, curling herself up on the chair Daddy had just
vacated, but resigning herself placidly enough to his scanty lap when
he came back again and began to read. Her deep purring, while he
stroked her absent-mindedly, became an undercurrent in the sound of
his voice, then presently ceased altogether....

On and on he read, while the moon sailed over La Citadelle, bidding
the stars hush to listen too. She put her silvery soft hands across
their eyes that they might hear the better. The blue wind of night
gathered up the meaning and spread it everywhere. The forest caught
the tale from the low laughter in the crest of the poplar, and passed
it on to the leagues of forest that bore it in turn across the
frontiers into France. Thence snowy Altels and the giant Blumlisalp
flashed it south along the crowding peaks and down among the Italian
chestnut woods, who next sent it coursing over the rustling waves of
the Adriatic and mixed it everywhere with the Mediterranean foam. In
the morning the shadows upon bare Grecian hills would whisper it among
the ancient islands, and the East catch echoes of it in the winds of
dawn. The forests of the North would open their great gloomy eyes with
wonder, as though strange new wild-flowers had come among them in the
night. All across the world, indeed, wherever there were gardened
minds tender enough to grow fairy seed, these flakes of thought would
settle down in sleep, and blossom in due season into a crop of magic
beauty.

He read on and on.... The village listened too, the little shadowy
street, the familiar pine woods, the troubled Pension, each, as its
image was evoked in the story, knew its soul discovered, and stirred
in its sleep towards the little room to hear. And the desolate ridges
of La Tourne and Boudry, the clefts where the wild lily of the valley
grew unknown, high nooks and corners where the buzzards nested, these
also knew and answered to the trumpet summons of the Thought that made
them live. A fire of creation ran pulsing from this centre. All were
in the Pattern of the Story.

To the two human listeners it seemed as familiar as a tale read, in
childhood long ago, and only half forgotten. They always knew a little
of what was coming next. Yet it spread so much further than mere
childhood memories, for its golden atmosphere included all countries
and all times. It rose and sang and sparkled, lighting up strange deep
recesses of their unconscious and half-realised life, and almost
revealing the tiny silver links that joined them on to the universe at
large. The golden ladders from the Milky Way were all let down. They
climbed up silvery ropes into the Moon....