Algernon Blackwood (50 page)

Like a mouse who, lost in wonder,
Flicks its whiskers at the thunder!

For, while sprites and yearning were decidedly his own, the
interpretation of them, if not their actual origin, seemed another's.
This other, like some dear ideal on the way to realisation, had taken
him prisoner. The queer sense of anticipation Bourcelles had fostered
was now actual expectation, as though some Morning Spider had borne
his master-longing, exquisitely fashioned by the Story, across the
Universe, and the summons had been answered-from the Pleiades. The
indestructible threads of thought and feeling tightened. The more he
thought about his cousin's interpretation the more he found in it a
loveliness and purity, a crystal spiritual quality, that he could
credit neither to the author's mind nor to his own. This soft and
starry brilliance was another's. Up to a point the interpretation came
through Daddy's brain, just as the raw material came through his own;
but there-after this other had appropriated both, as their original
creator and proprietor. Some shining, delicate hand reached down from
its starry home and gathered in this exquisite form built up from the
medley of fairy thought and beauty that were first its own. The owner
of that little hand would presently appear to claim it.

'We were but channels after all then—both of us,' was the idea that
lay so insistently in him. 'The sea of thought sends waves in all
directions. They roll into different harbours. I caught the feeling,
he supplied the form, but this other lit the original fire!'

And further than this wumbled conclusion he could not get. He went
about his daily work. however, with a secret happiness tugging at his
mind all day, and a sense of expectant wonder glancing brightly over
everything he thought or did. He was a prisoner in fairyland, and what
he called his outer and his inner world were, after all, but different
ways of looking at one and the same thing. Life everywhere was one.

Es stehen unbeweglich
Die Sterne in der Hoh'
Viel tausend Jahr', und schauen
Sich an mit Liebesweh.

Sie sprechen eine Sprache,
Die ist so reich, so schon;
Doch keiner der Philologen
Kann diese Sprache verstehen.

Ich aber hab' sie gelernet,
Und ich vergesse sie nicht;
Mir diente als Grammatik
Der Herzallerliebsten Gesicht.

Heine.

One evening in particular the sense of expectation in him felt very
close upon delivery. All day he had been aware of it, and a letter
received that morning from his cousin seemed the cause. The story, in
its shorter version, had been accepted. Its reality, therefore, had
already spread; one other mind, at least, had judged it with
understanding. Two months from now, when it appeared in print,
hundreds more would read it. Its beauty would run loose in many
hearts. And Rogers went about his work that day as though the pleasure
was his own. The world felt very sweet. He saw the good in every one
with whom he came in contact. And the inner excitement due to
something going to happen was continuous and cumulative.

Yet London just then—it was August—was dull and empty, dusty, and
badly frayed at the edges. It needed a great cleaning; he would have
liked to pour sea water over all its streets and houses, bathed its
panting parks in the crystal fountains of Bourcelles. All day long his
thoughts, indeed, left London for holidays in little Bourcelles. He
was profoundly conscious that the Anticipation he first recognised in
that forest village was close upon accomplishment now. On the journey
back to England he recalled how urgent it had been. In London, ever
since, it had never really left him. But to-day it now suddenly became
more than expectation—he felt it in him as a certainty that
approached fulfilment. It was strange, it was bewildering; it seemed
to him as though something from that under-self he could never
properly reach within him, pushed upwards with a kind of aggressive
violence towards the surface. It was both sweet and vital. Behind the
'something' was the 'some one' who led it into action.

At half-past six he strolled down a deserted St. James's Street,
passed the door of his club with no temptation to go in, and climbed
the stairs slowly to his rooms. His body was languid though his mind
alert. He sank into an arm-chair beside the open window. 'I must
do
something to-night,' he thought eagerly; 'mere reading at the
club is out of the question. I'll go to a theatre or—or—.' He
considered various alternatives, deciding finally upon Richmond Park.
He loved long walks at night when his mind was restless thus; the air
in Richmond Park was peculiarly fresh and scented after dark. He knew
the little gate that was never closed. He would dine lightly, and go
for a ten-mile stretch among the oaks, surprise the deer asleep,
listen to the hum of distant London, and watch the fairy battle
between the lurid reflection of its million lights and the little
stars.... There were places in the bracken where....

The rumbling clatter of a railway van disturbed the picture. His mind
followed the noise instead. Thought flashed along the street to a
station. He saw trains...

'Come at once! You're wanted here—some one calls you!' sounded a
breathless merry voice beside him. 'Come quickly; aussi schnell que
moglich!'

There was a great gulp of happiness in him; his spirit plunged in joy.
He turned and looked about him swiftly. That singing voice, with its
impudent mingling of languages was unmistakable.

'From the Pleiades. Look sharp! You've been further off than ever
lately, and further is further than farther—much! Over the forests
and into the cave, that is the way we must all behave—!'

He opened an eye.

Between him and a great gold sunset ran the wind. It was a slender
violet wind. The sunset, however, was in the act of disappearing for
the Scaffolding of Dusk was passing through the air—he saw the slung
trellis-work about him, the tracery of a million lines, the guy-ropes,
uprights, and the feathery threads of ebony that trailed the Night
behind them like a mighty cloth. There was a fluttering as of
innumerable wings.

'You needn't tug like that,' he gasped. 'I'm coming all right. I'm
out!'

'But you're so slow and sticky,' she insisted. 'You've been sticky
like this for weeks now!'

He saw the bright brown eyes and felt the hair all over his face like
a bath of perfume. They rushed together. His heart beat faster....

'Who wants me in such a hurry?' he cried, the moment he was
disentangled. Laughter ran past him on every side from the world of
trees.

'As if you didn't know! What
is
the good of pretending any longer!
You're both together in the Network, and you know it just as well as
she does!'

Pretending! Just as well as
she
does!

As though he had eyes all over his body he saw the Net of Stars above
him. Below were forests, vineyards, meadows, and the tiny lights of
houses. In the distance shimmered the waters of a familiar lake. Great
purple mountains rolled against the sky line. But immediately over his
head, close yet also distant, filling the entire heavens, there hung a
glittering Pattern that he knew, grown now so vast that at first he
scarcely recognised its dazzling loveliness. From the painted western
horizon it stretched to other fastenings that dipped below the world,
where the East laid its gulfs of darkness to surprise the sun. It
swung proudly down, as though hung from the Pole Star towards the
north, and while the Great Bear 'pointers' tossed its embroidery
across Cassiopeia, the Pleiades, just rising, flung its further
fringes down to Orion, waiting in wonder to receive them far below the
horizon. Old Sirius wore one breadth of it across his stupendous
shoulder, and Aldebaran, with fingers of bronze and fire, drew it
delicately as with golden leashes over the sleeping world.

When first he saw it, there was this gentle fluttering as of wings
through all its intricate parts, but the same moment four shooting
stars pierced its outlying edges with flying nails of gold. It
steadied and grew taut.

'There she is!' cried Monkey, flashing away like a comet towards the
Cave. 'You'll catch it now—and you deserve to!' She turned a
brilliant somersault and vanished.

Then, somehow, the vast Pattern settled into a smaller scale, so that
he saw it closer, clearer, and without confusion. Beauty and wonder
focused for his sight. The perfected design of Daddy's fairy story
floated down into his heart without a hint of wumbling. Never had he
seen it so luminous and simple. For others, of course, meanwhile had
known and understood it. Others believed. Its reality was more
intense, thus, than before.

He rose from the maze of tree-tops where he floated, and stretched his
arms out, no fear or hesitation in him anywhere. Perched in the very
centre of the Pattern, seated like a new-born star upon its throne, he
saw that tiny figure who had thrilled him months ago when he caught it
in a passing instant, fluttering in the web of Daddy's story,—both
its climax and its inspiration. The twinkling feet were folded now. He
saw the soft little eyes that shone like starlight through clear
amber. The hands, palms upwards, were stretched to meet his own.

'You, of course, must come up—to me,' he heard.

And climbing the lace-like tracery of the golden web, he knelt before
her. But, almost before both knees were bent, her hands had caught
him—the touch ran like a sheath of fire through every nerve—and he
was seated beside her in that shining centre.

'But why did it suddenly grow small?' he asked at once. He felt
absolutely at home. It was like speaking to a child who loved him
utterly, and whom he, in his turn, knew intimately inside out.

'Because you suddenly understood,' was the silvery, tiny answer. 'When
you understand, you bring everything into yourself, small as a toy. It
is size that bewilders. Men make size. Fairy things, like stars and
tenderness, are always small.'

'Of course,' he said; 'as if I didn't know it already!'

'Besides,' she laughed, half closing her brilliant eyes and peering at
him mischievously, 'I like everything so tiny that you can find it
inside a shell. That makes it possible to do big things.'

'Am
I
too big—?' he exclaimed, aware of clumsiness before this
exquisite daintiness.

'A little confused, that's all,' her laughter rippled. 'You want
smoothing down. I'll see to that.'

He had the feeling, as she said it, that his being included the entire
Pattern, even to its most distant edges where it fastened on to the
rim of the universe. From this huge sensation, he came back swiftly to
its tiny correspondence again. His eyes turned to study her. But she
seemed transparent somehow, so that he saw the sky behind her, and in
it, strangely enough—just behind her face—the distant Pleiades,
shining faintly with their tender lustre. They reached down into her
little being, it seemed, as though she emanated from them. Big
Aldebaran guided strongly from behind. For an instant he lost sight of
the actual figure, seeing in its place a radiant efflorescence,
purified as by some spiritual fire—the Spirit of a Star.

'I'm here, quite close beside you,' whispered the tiny voice. 'Don't
let your sight get troublesome like your size. Inside-sight, remember,
is the thing!'

He turned, or rather he focused sight again to find her. He was
startled a little. For a moment it seemed like his own voice speaking
deep down within himself.

'Make yourself at home,' it continued, 'you belong here—almost as
much as I do.' And at the sound of her voice all the perplexities of
his life lay down. It brushed him smooth, like a wind that sets rough
feathers all one way,

He remembered again where he was, and what was going on.

'I do,' he answered, happy as a boy. 'I am at home. It is perfect.'

'Do you, indeed! You speak as though this story were your own!'

And her laugh was like the tinkle of hare-bells in the wind.

'It is,' he said; 'at least I had—I
have
, rather, a considerable
hand in the making of it.'

'Possibly,' she answered, 'but the story belongs to the person who
first started it. And that person is myself. The story is mine
really!'

'Yours!' he gasped.

'Because—I am the story!'

He stared hard to find the face that said this thing. Thought stopped
dead a moment, blocked by a marvel that was impossible, yet true.

'You mean—?' he stammered.

'You heard perfectly what I said; you understood it, too. There's no
good pretending,' impatience as well as laughter in the little voice.
'I am the story,—the story that you love.'

A sudden joy burst over him in a flood. Struggle and search folded
their wings and slept. An immense happiness wrapped him into the very
woof of the pattern wherein they sat. A thousand loose and ineffective
moods of his life found coherence, as a thousand rambling strands were
gathered home and fastened into place.

And the Pattern quivered and grew brighter.

'I am the story because I thought of it first. You, as a version of
its beauty—a channel for its delivery—belong utterly to me. You can
no more resist me than a puddle can resist the stars' reflection. You
increase me. We increase each other.'

'You say you thought it first,' he cried, feeling the light he
radiated flow in and mingle with her own. 'But who are you? Where do
you come from?'

'Over there somewhere, I think,' she laughed, while a ray like fire
flashed out in the direction of the Pleiades that climbed the sky
towards the East. 'You ought to know. You've been hunting for me long
enough!'

'But who
are
you?' he insisted again, 'for I feel it's you that have
been looking for me—I've so often heard you calling!'