Algernon Blackwood (49 page)

JOHN HENRY CAMPDEN.

Then, as the days passed, practical life again caught Henry Rogers in
its wholesome grip. Fairyland did not fade exactly, but it dipped a
little below the horizon. Like hell and heaven, it was a state of
mind, open potentially to all, but not to be enjoyed merely for the
asking. Like other desirable things, it was to be 'attained.' Its
remoteness and difficulty of access lent to it a haunting charm; for
though its glory dimmed a little, there was a soft afterglow that shed
its radiance even down Piccadilly and St. James's Street. He was
always conscious of this land beyond the sunset; the stars shone
brightly, though clouds or sunlight interfered to blur their message.

London life, however, by the sheer weight of its grinding daily
machinery, worked its slow effect upon him. He became less sensitive
to impressions. These duller periods were interrupted sometimes by
states of brilliant receptiveness, as at Bourcelles; but there was a
fence between the two—a rather prickly frontier, and the secret of
combining them lay just beyond his reach. For his London mind, guided
by reason, acted in a logical plane of two dimensions, while
imagination, captained by childhood's fairy longings, cantered loose
in all directions at once—impossibly. The first was the world; the
second was the universe. As yet, he was unable to co-ordinate them.
Minks, he was certain, could—and did, sailing therefore upon an even
keel. There was this big harmony in little Minks that he envied. Minks
had an outlet. Sydenham, and even the City, for him were fairyland; a
motor-bus fed his inspiration as surely as a starlit sky; moon always
rhymed with June, and forget with regret. But the inner world of Henry
Rogers was not yet properly connected with the outer. Passage from one
to the other was due to chance, it seemed, not to be effected at will.
Moods determined the sudden journey. He rocked. But for his talks with
little Minks, he might have wrecked.

And the talks with Minks were about—well, he hardly knew what, but
they all played round this map of fairyland he sought to reduce to the
scale of everyday life. They discussed thought, dreams, the
possibility of leaving the body in sleep, the artist temperament, the
source of inspiration as well as the process of the imaginative
faculty that created. They talked even of astronomy. Minks held that
the life of practical, daily work was the bed-rock of all sane
production, yet while preaching this he bubbled over with all the
wild, entrancing theories that were in the air to-day. They were
comical, but never dangerous—did not upset him. They were almost a
form of play.

And his master, listening, found these conversations an outlet somehow
for emotions in himself he could not manage—a scaffolding that
provided outlines for his awakening dreams to build upon. He found
relief. For Minks, with his delightful tact, asked no awkward
questions. He referred neither to the defunct Scheme, nor mentioned
the new one that held 'a beauty of the stars.' He waited. Rogers also
waited.

And, while he waited, he grew conscious more and more of an enormous
thing that passed, driving behind,
below
, his daily external life.
He could never quite get at it. In there, down out of sight somewhere,
he knew everything. His waking existence was fed invisibly from below.
In the daytime he now frequently caught himself attempting to recover
the memory of things that went on elsewhere, things he was personally
involved in, vital things. This daylight effort to recover them was as
irksome as the attempt to draw a loose hair that has wound about the
tongue. He spoke at length to Minks about it.

'Some part of you,' replied the imperturbable secretary, after
listening carefully to his master's vague description of the symptoms,
'is being engaged elsewhere—very actively engaged—'

'Eh?' asked Rogers, puzzled.

'Probably at night, sir, while your brain and body sleep,' Minks
elaborated, 'your energetic spirit is out—on the plane of causes—'

The other gasped slightly, 'While my body lies unconscious?'

'Your spirit may be busy at all kinds of things.
That
can never be
unconscious,' was the respectful answer. 'They say—'

'Yes, what do they say?' He recognised a fairy theory, and jumped at
it.

'That in sleep,' continued the other, encouraged, 'the spirit knows a
far more concentrated life—dips down into the deep sea of being—our
waking life merely the froth upon the shore.'

Rogers stared at him. 'Yes, yes,' he answered slowly, 'that's very
pretty, very charming; it's quite delightful. What ideas you have, my
dear Minks! What jolly, helpful ideas!'

Minks beamed with pleasure.

'Not my own, Mr. Rogers, not my own,' he said, with as much pride as
if they
were
his own, 'but some of the oldest in the world, just
coming into fashion again with the turn of the tide, it seems. Our
daily life—even the most ordinary—is immensely haunted, girdled
about with a wonder of incredible things. There are hints everywhere
to-day, though few can read the enormous script complete. Here and
there one reads a letter or a word, that's all. Yet the best minds
refuse to know the language, not even the ABC of it; they read another
language altogether—'

'The best minds!' repeated Rogers. 'What d'you mean by that!' It
sounded, as Minks said it, so absurdly like best families.

'The scientific and philosophical minds, sir. They think it's not
worth learning, this language. That's the pity of it—ah, the great
pity of it!' And he looked both eager and resentful—his expression
almost pathetic. He turned half beseechingly to his employer, as
though
he
might alter the sad state of things. 'As with an iceberg,
Mr. Rogers,' he added, 'the greater part of everything—of ourselves
especially—is invisible; we merely know the detail banked against an
important grand Unseen.'

The long sentence had been suffered to its close because the audience
was busy with thoughts of his own instead of listening carefully.
Behind the wild language stirred some hint of meaning that, he felt,
held truth. For a moment, it seemed, his daylight searching was
explained—almost.

'Well and good, my dear fellow, and very picturesque,' he said
presently, gazing with admiration at his secretary's neat blue tie and
immaculate linen; 'but thinking, you know, is not possible without
matter.' This in a tone of '
Do
talk a little sense.' 'Even if the
spirit does go out, it couldn't think apart from the brain, could it
now, eh?'

Minks took a deep breath and relieved himself of the following:

'Ah, Mr. Rogers'—as much as to say 'Fancy
you
believing that!'—
'but it can experience and know
direct
, since it passes into the
region whence the material that feeds thought issues in the first
instance—causes, Mr. Rogers, causes.'

'Oho!' said his master, 'oho!'

'There is no true memory afterwards,' continued the little dreamer,
'because memory depends upon how much the spirit can bring back into
the brain, you see. We have vague feelings, rather than actual
recollection—feelings such as you were kind enough to confess to me
you had been haunted by yourself—'

'All-overish feelings,' Rogers helped him, seeing that he was losing
confidence a little, 'vague sensations of joy and wonder and—well—in
a word, strength.'

'Faith,' said Minks, with a decision of renewed conviction, 'which is
really nothing but unconscious knowledge—knowledge unremembered. And
it's the half-memory of what you do at night that causes
this sense of anticipation you now experience; for what is
anticipation, after all, but memory thrown forward?'

There was a pause then, during which Rogers lit a cigarette, while
Minks straightened his tie several times in succession.

'You are a greater reader than I, of course,' resumed his employer
presently; 'still, I have come across one or two stories which deal
with this kind of thing. Only, in the books, the people always
remember what they've done at night, out of the body, in the spirit,
or whatever you like to call it. Now,
I
remember nothing whatever.
How d'you account for that, pray?'

Minks smiled a little sadly. 'The books,' he answered very softly,
'are wrong there—mere inventions—not written from personal
experience. There can be no detailed memory unless the brain has been
'out' too—which it hasn't. That's where inaccuracy and looseness of
thought come in. If only the best minds would take the matter up, you
see, we might—'

Rogers interrupted him. 'We shall miss the post, Minks, if we go on
dreaming and talking like this,' he exclaimed, looking at his watch
and then at the pile of letters waiting to be finished. 'It is very
delightful indeed, very—but we mustn't forget to be practical, too.'

And the secretary, not sorry perhaps to be rescued in time from the
depths he had floundered in, switched his mind in concentration upon
the work in hand again. The conversation had arisen from a chance
coincidence in this very correspondence—two letters that had crossed
after weeks of silence.

Work was instantly resumed. It went on as though it had never been
interrupted. Pride and admiration stirred the heart of Minks as he
noticed how keenly and accurately his master's brain took up the lost
threads again. 'A grand fellow!' he thought to himself, 'a splendid
man! He lives in both worlds at once, yet never gets confused, nor
lets one usurp his powers to the detriment of the other. If only I
were equally balanced and effective. Oh dear!' And he sighed.

And there were many similar conversations of this kind. London seemed
different, almost transfigured sometimes. Was this the beginning of
that glory which should prove it a suburb of Bourcelles?

Rogers found his thoughts were much in that cosy mountain village: the
children capered by his side all day; he smelt the woods and flowers;
he heard the leaves rustle on the poplar's crest; and had merely to
think of a certain room in the tumble-down old Citadelle for a wave of
courage and high anticipation to sweep over him like a sea. A new
feeling of harmony was taking him in hand. It was very delightful; and
though he felt explanation beyond his reach still, his talks with
Minks provided peep-holes through which he peered at the enormous
thing that brushed him day and night.

A great settling was taking place inside him. Thoughts certainly began
to settle. He realised, for one thing, that he had left the theatre
where the marvellous Play had been enacted. He stood outside now, able
to review and form a judgment. His mind loved order. Undue
introspection he disliked, as a form of undesirable familiarity; a
balanced man must not be too familiar with himself; it endangered
self-respect.

He had been floundering rather. After years of methodical labour the
freedom of too long a holiday was disorganising. He tried to steady
himself. And the Plan of Life, answering to control, grew smaller
instantly, reduced to proportions he could examine reasonably. This
was the beginning of success. The bewildering light of fairyland still
glimmered, but no longer so diffused. It focused into little definite
kernels he could hold steady while he scrutinised them.

And these kernels he examined carefully as might be: in the quiet,
starry evenings usually, while walking alone in St. James's Park after
his day of board meetings, practical work with Minks, and the like.

Gradually then, out of the close survey, emerged certain things that
seemed linked together in an intelligible sequence of cause and
effect. There was still mystery, for subconscious investigation ever
involves this background of shadow. Question and Wonder watched him.
But the facts emerged.

He jotted them down on paper as best he could. The result looked like
a Report drawn up by Minks, only less concise and—he was bound to
admit it—less intelligible. He smiled as he read them over....

'My thoughts and longings, awakened that night in the little Crayfield
garden,' he summed it up to himself, having read the Report so far,
'went forth upon their journey of realisation. I projected them—
according to Minks—vividly enough for that! I thought Beauty—and
this glorious result materialised! More—my deepest, oldest craving of
all has come to life again—the cry of loneliness that yearns to—that
seeks—er—'

At this point, however, his analysis grew wumbled; the transference of
thought and emotion seemed comprehensible enough; though magical, it
was not more so than wireless telegraphy, or that a jet of steam
should drive an express for a hundred miles. It was conceivable that
Daddy had drawn thence the inspiration for his wonderful story. What
baffled him was the curious feeling that another was mixed up in the
whole, delightful business, and that neither he nor his cousin were
the true sponsors of the fairy fabric. He never forgot the description
his cousin read aloud that night in the Den—how the Pattern of his
Story reached its climax and completeness when a little starry figure
with twinkling feet and amber eyes had leaped into the centre and made
itself at home there. From the Pleiades it came. The lost Pleiad was
found. The network of thought and sympathy that contained the universe
had trembled to its uttermost fastenings. The principal role was
filled at last.

It was here came in the perplexing thing that baffled him. His mind
sat down and stared at an enormous, shadowy possibility that he was
unable to grasp. It brushed past him overhead, beneath, on all sides.
He peered up at it and marvelled, unconvinced, yet knowing himself a
prisoner. Something he could not understand was coming, was already
close, was watching him, waiting the moment to pounce out, like an
invisible cat upon a bewildered mouse. The question he flung out
brought no response, and he recalled with a smile the verse that
described his absurd position:—