Algernon Blackwood (53 page)

And the fairies themselves, the sprites, the children! They were
everywhere and anywhere. Jimbo flickered, went out, reappeared, then
flickered again; he held a towel in one hand and a table napkin in the
other. Monkey seemed more in the air than on the solid earth, for one
minute she was obviously a ball, and the next, with a motion like a
somersault, her hair shot loose across the sunlight as though she
flew. Both had their mouths wide open, shouting, though the wind
carried their words all away unheard. And Jane Anne stood apart. Her
welcome, if the gesture is capable of being described at all, was a
bow. She moved at the same time sedately across the field, as though
she intended to be seen separately from the rest. She wore hat and
gloves. She was evidently in earnest with her welcome. But Mr. John
Henry Campden, the author and discoverer of them all, Minks did not
see.

'But I don't see the writer himself!' he cried. 'I don't see Mr.
Campden.'

'You can't,' explained Rogers, 'he's standing behind his wife.'

And the little detail pleased the secretary hugely. The true artist,
he reflected, is never seen in his work.

It all was past and over—in thirty seconds. The spire of the church,
rising against a crimson sky, with fruit trees in the foreground and a
line of distant summits across the shining lake, replaced the row of
wonderful dancing figures. Rogers sank back in his corner, laughing,
and Minks, saying nothing, went across to his own at the other end of
the compartment. It all had been so swift and momentary that it seemed
like the flash of a remembered dream, a strip of memory's pictures, a
vivid picture of some dazzling cinematograph. Minks felt as if he had
just read the entire story again from one end to the other—in thirty
seconds. He felt different, though wherein exactly the difference lay
was beyond him to discover. 'It must be the spell of Bourcelles,' he
murmured to himself. 'Mr. Rogers warned me about it. It is a Fairyland
that thought has created out of common things. It is quite wonderful!'
He felt a glow all over him. His mind ran on for a moment to another
picture his master had painted for him, and he imagined Albinia and
the family out here, living in a little house on the borders of the
forest, a strip of vineyards, sunlight, mountains, happy scented
winds, and himself with a writing-table before a window overlooking
the lake... writing down Beauty.

We never meet; yet we meet day by day
Upon those hills of life, dim and immense:
The good we love, and sleep-our innocence.
O hills of life, high hills! And higher than they,

Our guardian spirits meet at prayer and play.
Beyond pain, joy, and hope, and long suspense,
Above the summits of our souls, far hence,
An angel meets an angel on the way.

Beyond all good I ever believed of thee
Or thou of me, these always love and live.
And though I fail of thy ideal of me,

My angel falls not short. They greet each other.
Who knows, they may exchange the kiss we give,
Thou to thy crucifix, I to my mother.

ALICE MCYNELL.

The arrival at the station interrupted the reverie in which the
secretary and his chief both were plunged.

'How odd,' exclaimed Minks, ever observant, as he leaped from the
carriage, 'there are no platforms. Everything in Switzerland seems on
one level, even the people—everything, that is, except the
mountains.'

'Switzerland
is
the mountains,' laughed his chief.

Minks laughed too. 'What delicious air!' he added, filling his lungs
audibly. He felt half intoxicated with it.

After some delay they discovered a taxi-cab, piled the luggage on to
it, and were whirled away towards a little cluster of lights that
twinkled beneath the shadows of La Tourne and Boudry. Bourcelles lay
five miles out.

'Remember, you're not my secretary here,' said Rogers presently, as
the forests sped by them. 'You're just a travelling companion.'

'I understand,' he replied after a moment's perplexity. 'You have a
secretary here already.'

'His name is Jimbo.'

The motor grunted its way up the steep hill above Colombier. Below
them spread the vines towards the lake, sprinkled with lights of farms
and villages. As the keen evening air stole down from forest and
mountain to greet them, the vehicle turned into the quiet village
street. Minks saw the big humped shoulders of La Citadelle, the
tapering church spire, the trees in the orchard of the Pension.
Cudrefin, smoking a cigar at the door of his grocery shop, recognised
them and waved his hand. A moment later Gygi lifted his peaked hat and
called 'bon soir, bonne nuit,' just as though Rogers had never gone
away at all. Michaud, the carpenter, shouted his welcome as he
strolled towards the Post Office farther down to post a letter, and
then the motor stopped with a jerk outside the courtyard where the
fountain sang and gurgled in its big stone basin. Minks saw the plane
tree. He glanced up at the ridged backbone of the building. What a
portentous looking erection it was. It seemed to have no windows. He
wondered where the famous Den was. The roof overlapped like a giant
hood, casting a deep shadow upon the cobbled yard. Overhead the stars
shone faintly.

Instantly a troop of figures shot from the shadow and surrounded them.
There was a babel of laughter, exclamations, questions. Minks thought
the stars had fallen. Children and constellations were mingled all
together, it seemed. Both were too numerous to count. All were rushing
with the sun towards Hercules at a dizzy speed.

'And this is my friend, Mr. Minks,' he heard repeated from time to
time, feeling his hand seized and shaken before he knew what he was
about. Mother loomed up and gave him a stately welcome too.

'He wears gloves in Bourcelles!' some one observed audibly to some one
else.

'Excuse me! This is Riquette!' announced a big girl, hatless like the
rest, with shining eyes. 'It's a she.'

'And this is my secretary, Mr. Jimbo,' said Rogers, breathlessly,
emerging from a struggling mass. Minks and Jimbo shook hands with
dignity.

'Your room is over at the Michauds, as before.'

'And Mr. Mix is at the Pension—there was no other room to be had—'

'Supper's at seven—'

'Tante Jeanne's been
grand-cieling
all day with excitement. She'll
burst when she sees you!'

'She's read the story, too. Elle dit que c'est le bouquet!'

'There's new furniture in the salon, and they've cleaned the sink
while you've been away!...'

The author moved forward out of the crowd. At the same moment another
figure, slight and shadowy, revealed itself, outlined against the
white of the gleaming street. It had been hidden in the tangle of the
stars. It kept so quiet.

'Countess, may I introduce him to you,' he said, seizing the momentary
pause. There was little ceremony in Bourcelles. 'This is my cousin I
told you about—Mr. Henry Rogers. You must know one another at once.
He's Orion in the story.'

He dragged up his big friend, who seemed suddenly awkward, difficult
to move. The children ran in and out between them like playing
puppies, tumbling against each in turn.

'They don't know which is which,' observed Jinny, watching the
introduction. Her voice ran past him like the whir of a shooting star
through space—far, far away. 'Excuse me!' she cried, as she cannoned
off Monkey against Cousinenry. 'I'm not a terminus! This is a regular
shipwreck!'

The three elder ones drew aside a little from the confusion.

'The Countess,' resumed Daddy, as soon as they were safe from
immediate destruction, 'has come all the way from Austria to see us.
She is staying with us for a few days. Isn't it delightful? We call
her the little Grafin.' His voice wumbled a trifle thickly in his
beard. 'She was good enough to like the story—our story, you know—
and wrote to me—'

'My story,' said a silvery, laughing voice.

And Rogers bowed politely, and with a moment's dizziness, at two
bright smiling eyes that watched him out of the little shadow standing
between him and the children. He was aware of grandeur.

He stood there, first startled, then dazed. She was so small. But
something about her was so enormous. His inner universe turned over
and showed its under side. The hidden thing that so long had brushed
his daily life came up utterly close and took him in its gigantic
arms. He stared like an unmannered child.

Something had lit the world
....

'This
is
delicious air,' he heard Minks saying to his cousin in the
distance—to his deaf side judging by the answer:

'Delicious here—yes, isn't it?'

Something had lit the stars.
...

Minks and his cousin continued idly talking. Their voices twittered
like birds in empty space. The children had scattered like marbles
from a spinning-top. Their voices and footsteps sounded in the cobbled
yard of La Citadelle, as they scampered up to prepare for supper.
Mother sailed solemnly after them, more like a frigate than ever. The
world, on fire, turned like a monstrous Catherine wheel within his
brain.

Something had lit the universe.
...

He stood there in the dusk beneath the peeping stars, facing the
slender little shadow. It was all he saw at first—this tiny figure.
Demure and soft, it remained motionless before him, a hint of
childhood's wonder in its graceful attitude. He was aware of something
mischievous as well—that laughed at him.... He realised then that she
waited for him to speak. Yet, for the life of him, he could find no
words, because the eyes, beneath the big-brimmed hat with its
fluttering veil, looked out at him as though some formidable wild
creature watched him from the opening of its cave. There was a glint
of amber in them. The heart in him went thumping. He caught his
breath. Out, jerked, then, certain words that he tried hard to make
ordinary—

'But surely—we have met before—I think I know you—'

He just said it, swallowing his breath with a gulp upon the unfinished
sentence. But he said it—somewhere else, and not here in the twilight
street of little Bourcelles. For his sight swam somehow far away, and
he was giddy with the height. The roofs of the houses lay in a sea of
shadow below him, and the street wound through them like a ribbon of
thin lace. The tree-tops waved very softly in a wind that purred and
sighed beneath his feet, and this wind was a violet little wind, that
bent them all one way and set the lines and threads of gold a-quiver
to their fastenings. For the fastenings were not secure; any minute he
might fall. And the threads, he saw, all issued like rays from two
central shining points of delicate, transparent amber, radiating forth
into an exquisite design that caught the stars. Yet the stars were not
reflected in them. It was they who lit the stars....

He
was
dizzy. He tried speech again.

'I told you I
should
—' But it was not said aloud apparently.

Two little twinkling feet were folded. Two hands, he saw, stretched
down to draw him close. These very stars ran loose about him in a
cloud of fiery sand. Their pattern danced in flame. He picked out
Sirius, Aldebaran—the Pleiades! There was tumult in his blood, a wild
and exquisite confusion. What in the world had happened to him that he
should behave in this ridiculous fashion? Yet he was doing nothing. It
was only that, for a passing instant, the enormous thing his life had
been dimly conscious of so long, rose at last from its subterranean
hiding-place and overwhelmed him. This picture that came with it was
like some far-off dream he suddenly recovered. A glorious excitement
caught him. He felt utterly bewildered.

'Have we?' he heard close in front of him. 'I do not think I have had
the pleasure'—it was with a slightly foreign accent—'but it is so
dim here, and one cannot see very well, perhaps.'

And a ripple of laughter passed round some gigantic whispering gallery
in the sky. It set the trellis-work of golden threads all trembling.
He felt himself perched dizzily in this shaking web that swung through
space. And with him was some one whom he knew.... He heard the words
of a song:

'Light desire With their fire.'

Something had lit his heart.
...

He lost himself again, disgracefully. A mist obscured his sight,
though with the eyes of his mind he still saw crystal-clear. Across
this mist fled droves and droves of stars. They carried him out of
himself—out, out, out!... His upper mind then made a vehement effort
to recover equilibrium. An idea was in him that some one would
presently turn a somersault and disappear. The effort had a result, it
seemed, for the enormous thing passed slowly away again into the
caverns of his under-self, ... and he realised that he was conducting
himself in a foolish and irresponsible manner, which Minks, in
particular, would disapprove. He was staring rudely—at a shadow, or
rather, at two eyes in a shadow. With another effort—oh, how it
hurt!—he focused sight again upon surface things. It seemed his turn
to say something.

'I beg your pardon,' he stammered, 'but I thought—it seemed to me for
a moment—that I—remembered.'

The face came close as he said it. He saw it clear a moment. The
figure grew defined against the big stone fountain—the little hands
in summer cotton gloves, the eyes beneath the big brimmed hat, the
streaming veil. Then he went lost again—more gloriously than before.
Instead of the human outline in the dusky street of Bourcelles, he
stared at the host of stars, at the shimmering design of gold, at the
Pleiades, whose fingers of spun lustre swung the Net loose across the
world....

'Flung from huge Orion's hand...'

he caught in a golden whisper,

'Sweetly linking
All our thinking....'