Algernon Blackwood (46 page)

Then, midway, in thinking about them, he found himself, as Monkey
said, thinking of something else: of his weeks at Bourcelles again and
what a long holiday it had been, and whether it was wasted time or
well-used time-a kind of general stock-taking, as it were, but chiefly
of how little he had accomplished after all, set down in black and
white. He had enjoyed himself and let himself go, rather foolishly
perhaps, but how much after all had he actually accomplished? He
remembered pleasant conversations with Mother that possibly cheered
and helped her—or possibly were forgotten as soon as ended. He
remembered his cousin's passing words of gratitude—that he had helped
him somehow with his great new story: and he remembered—this least of
all-that his money had done something to relieve a case or two of
suffering. And this was all! The net result so insignificant! He felt
dissatisfied, eager already to make new plans, something definite and
thorough that should retrieve the wasted opportunities. With a little
thought and trouble, how easily he might have straightened out the
tangle of his cousin's family, helped with the education of the
growing children, set them all upon a more substantial footing
generally. It was possible still, of course, but such things are done
best on the spot, the personal touch and presence of value; arranged
by correspondence it becomes another thing at once and loses
spontaneity. The accent lies on the wrong details. Sympathy is watered
by the post.... Importance lodges in angles not intended for it.
Master of his time, with certain means at his disposal, a modicum of
ability as well, he was free to work hard on the side of the angels
wherever opportunity might offer; yet he had wasted all these weeks
upon an unnecessary holiday, frittering the time away in enjoyment
with the children. He felt ashamed and mortified as the meagre record
stared him in the face.

Yet, curiously enough, when Reason had set down the figures
accurately, as he fancied, and totted up the trifling totals, there
flitted before him something more that refused to be set down upon the
paper. The Ledger had no lines for it. What was it? Why was it
pleasant, even flattering? Why did it mitigate his discontent and
lessen the dissatisfied feeling? It passed hovering in and about his
thoughts, though uncaught by actual words; and as his mind played with
it, he felt more hopeful. He searched in vain for a definition, but,
though fruitless, the search brought comfort somehow. Something
had
been accomplished and it was due to himself, because without his
presence it would never have been done. This hint slipped into desire,
yearning, hope—that, after all, a result
had
perhaps been achieved,
a result he himself was not properly aware of—a result of that
incalculable spiritual kind that escapes the chains of definite
description. For he recalled—yet mortified a little the memory should
flatter—that his cousin had netted Beauty in his story, and that
Mother had spoken of living with greater carelessness and peace, and
that each had thanked him as though he were the cause.

And these memories, half thought, half feeling, were comforting and
delicious, so that he revelled in them lingeringly, and wished that
they were really true. For, if true, they were immensely significant.
Any one with a purse could build a hospital or pay an education fee,
but to be helpful because of being oneself was a vast, incalculable
power, something direct from God... and his thoughts, wandering on
thus between fact and fantasy, led him back with a deep inexplicable
thrill again to—the Pleiades, whose beauty, without their being aware
of it, shines nightly for all who can accept it. Here was the old, old
truth once more-that the left hand must not know what the right is
doing, and that to be is of greater importance than to do. Here was
Fairyland once more, the Fairyland he had just left. To think beauty
and love is to become them, to shed them forth without realising it. A
Fairy blesses because she is a Fairy, not because she turns a pumpkin
into a coach and four.... The Pleiades do not realise how their
loveliness may....

Rogers started. For the thought had borrowed a tune from the rhythm of
the wheels and sleepers, and he had uttered the words aloud in his
corner. Luckily he had the carriage to himself. He flushed. Again a
tender and very exquisite thing had touched him somewhere.... It was
in that involuntary connection his dreaming had found between a Fairy
and the Pleiades. Wings of gauzy gold shone fluttering a moment before
his inner sight, then vanished. He was aware of some one very dear and
wild and tender, with amber eyes and little twinkling feet—some one
whom the Great Tale brought almost within his reach.... He literally
had seen stars for an instant—
a
star! Its beauty brimmed him up. He
laughed in his corner. This thing, whatever it was, had been coming
nearer for some time. These hints of sudden joy that breathe upon a
sensitive nature, how mysterious, how wildly beautiful, how
stimulating they are! But whence, in the name of all the stars, do
they come? A great happiness passed flaming through his heart, an
extraordinary sense of anticipation in it—as though he were going to
meet some one who—who—well, what?—who was a necessity and a delight
to him, the complement needed to make his life effective—some one he
loved abundantly—who would love him abundantly in return. He recalled
those foolish lines he had written on sudden impulse once, then thrown
away....

Thought fluttered and went out. He could not seize the elusive cause
of this delicious joy. It was connected with the Pleiades, but how,
where, why? Above the horizon of his life a new star was swimming into
glory. It was rising. The inexplicable emotion thrilled tumultuously,
then dived back again whence it came... It had to do with children and
with a woman, it seemed, for the next thing he knew was that he was
thinking of children, children of his own, and of the deep yearning
Bourcelles had stirred again in him to find their Mother... and, next,
of his cousin's story and that wonderful detail in it that the
principal role was filled at last, the role in the great Children's
Play he himself had felt was vacant. It was to be filled by that
childless Mother the writer's imagination had discovered or created.
And again the Pleiades lit up his inner world and beckoned to him with
their little fingers of spun gold; their eyes of clouded amber smiled
into his own. It was most extraordinary and delightful. There was
something—come much closer this time, almost within reach of
discovery—something he ought to remember about them, something he had
promised to remember, then stupidly forgotten. The lost, hidden joy
was a torture. Yet, try as he would, no revelation came to clear the
matter up. Had he read it somewhere perhaps? Or was it part of the
Story his cousin had wumbled into his ear when he only partly
listened?

'I believe I dreamed it,' he smiled to himself at last in despair. 'I
do believe it was a dream—a fragment of some jolly dream I had in my
Fairyland of little Bourcelles!'

Children, stars, Fairyland, dreams—these brought it somehow. His
cousin's story also had to do with it, chiefly perhaps after all—this
great story.

'I shall have to go back there to get hold of it completely,' he added
with conviction. He almost felt as if some one were thinking hard
about him—one of the characters in the story, it seemed. The mind of
some one far away, as yet unknown, was searching for him in thought,
sending forth strong definite yearnings which came to rest of their
own accord in his own being, a garden naturally suited to their
growth. The creations of his boyhood's imagination had survived, the
Sweep, the Dustman, and the Lamplighter, then why not the far more
powerful creations in the story...? Thought was never lost!

'But no man in his senses can believe such a thing!' he exclaimed, as
the train ran booming through the tunnel.

'That's the point,' whispered a voice beside him. 'You are
out
of
your senses. Otherwise you could not feel it!'

He turned sharply. The carriage was empty; there was no one there. It
was, of course, another part of himself that supplied the answer; yet
it startled him. The blurred reflection of the lamp, he noticed, cast
a picture against the black tunnel wall that was like a constellation.
The Pleiades again! It almost seemed as if the voice had issued from
that false reflection in the shaking window-pane....

The train emerged from the tunnel. He rushed out into the blaze of the
Interfering Sun. The lovely cluster vanished like a dream, and with it
the hint of explanation melted down in dew. Fields sped past with a
group of haystacks whose tarpaulin skirts spread and lifted in the
gust of wind the train made. He thought abruptly of Mother....
Perhaps, after all, he had taught her something, shown her Existence
as a big, streaming, endless thing in which months and years, possibly
even life itself, were merely little sections, each unintelligible
unless viewed as portions of the Whole, and not as separate,
difficult, puzzling items set apart. Possibly he had drawn her map to
bigger scale, increased her faith, given her more sense of repose and
peace, more courage therefore. She thought formerly of a day, but not
of its relation to all days before and behind. She stuck her husband's
'reviews' in the big book, afflicted by the poor financial results
they represented, but was unable to think of his work as a stage in a
long series of development and progress, no effort lost, no single
hope mislaid. And that was something—
if
he had accomplished it.
Only, he feared he had not. There was the trouble. There lay the
secret of a certain ineffectiveness in his character. For he did not
realise that fear is simply suppressed desire, vivid signs of life,
and that desire is the ultimate causative agent everywhere and always.
'Behind Will stands Desire,' and Desire is Action.

And if he
had
accomplished this, how was it done? Not by preaching,
certainly. Was it, then, simply by being, thinking, feeling it? A
glorious thought, if true! For assuredly he had this faculty of seeing
life whole, and even in boyhood he had looked ahead over its entire
map. He had, indeed, this way of relating all its people, and all its
parts together, instead of seeing them separate, unintelligible
because the context was left out. He lived intensely in the present,
yet looked backwards and forwards too at the same time. This large
sympathy, this big comforting vision was his gift. Consequently he
believed in Life. Had he also, then, the gift of making others feel
and believe it too...?

There he was again, thinking in a circle, as Laroche flew past with
its empty platforms, and warned him that Paris was getting close. He
bumped out of Fairyland, yet tumbled back once more for a final
reverie before the long ugly arms of the city snatched him finally
out. 'To see life whole,' he reflected, 'is to see it glorious. To
think one's self part of humanity at large is to bring the universe
down into the heart. But to see life whole, a whole heart is
necessary.... He's done it in that splendid story, and he bagged the
raw idea somehow from me. That's something at any rate. ... So few
think Beaaty.... But will others see it? That's the point!'

'No, it isn't,' answered the voice beside him. 'The point is that he
has thought it, and the universe is richer. Even if others do not read
or understand, what he has thought
is there now
, for ever and ever.'

'True,' he reflected, 'for that Beauty may float down and settle in
other minds when they least are looking for it, and ignoring utterly
whence comes the fairy touch. Divine! Delicious! Heavenly!'

'The Beauty he has written came through you, yet was not yours,' the
voice continued very faintly. 'A far more beautiful mind first
projected it into that network which binds all minds together. 'Twas
thence you caught it flying, and, knowing not how to give it shape,
transferred it to another—who could use it—for others.... Thought is
Life, and Sympathy is living....'

The voice died away; he could not hear the remainder clearly; the
passing scenery caught his attention again; during his reverie it had
been unnoticed utterly. 'Thought is Life, but Sympathy is living—'
it rolled and poured through him as he repeated it. Snatches of
another sentence then came rising into him from an immense distance,
falling upon him from immeasurable heights—barely audible:-

'... from a mind that so loved the Pleiades she made their loveliness
and joy her own... Alcyone, Merope, Maia...' It dipped away into
silence like a flower closing for the night, and the train, he
realised, was slackening speed as it drew into the hideous Gare de
Lyon.

'I'll talk to Minks about it, perhaps,' he thought, as he stood
telling the Customs official that he had no brandy, cigarettes, or
lace. 'He knows about things like that. At any rate, he'll
sympathise.'

He went across Paris to the Gare du Nord, and caught the afternoon
boat train to London. The sunshine glared up from the baking streets,
but he never forgot that overhead, though invisible, the stars were
shining all the time—Starlight, the most tender and least suspected
light in all the world, shining bravely even when obscured by the
Interfering Sun, and the Pleiades, softest, sweetest little group
among them all.

And when at eleven o'clock he entered his St. James's flat, he took a
store of it shining in his heart, and therefore in his eyes. Only that
was no difficult matter, for all the lamps far up the heights were lit
and gleaming, and caught old mighty London in their gorgeous net.

Think with passion
That shall fashion
Life's entire design, well planned.

Woman of the Haystack
.