Algernon Blackwood (54 page)

His cousin and Minks, he was aware vaguely, had left him. He was alone
with her. A little way down the hill they turned and called to him. He
made a frantic effort—there seemed just time—to plunge away into
space and seize the cluster of lovely stars with both his hands.
Headlong, he dived off recklessly... driving at a fearful speed, ...
when—the whole thing vanished into a gulf of empty blue, and he found
himself running, not through the sky to clutch the Pleiades, but
heavily downhill towards his cousin and Minks.

It was a most abrupt departure. There was a curious choking in his
throat. His heart ran all over his body. Something white and sparkling
danced madly through his brain. What must she think of him?

'We've just time to wash ourselves and hurry over to supper,' his
cousin said, as he overtook them, flustered and very breathless. Minks
looked at him—regarded him, rather—astonishment, almost disapproval,
in one eye, and in the other, apparently observing the vineyards, a
mild rebuke.

He walked beside them in a dream. The sound of Colombier's bells
across Planeyse, men's voices singing fragments of a Dalcroze song
floated to him, and with them all the dear familiar smells:—

Le coeur de ma mie
Est petit, tout petit petit,
J'en ai l'ame ravie....

It was Minks, drawing the keen air noisily into his lungs in great
draughts, who recalled him to himself.

'I could find my way here without a guide, Mr. Campden,' he was saying
diffidently, burning to tell how the Story had moved him. 'It's all so
vivid, I can almost see the Net. I feel in it,' and he waved one hand
towards the sky.

The other thanked him modestly. 'That's your power of visualising
then,' he added. 'My idea was, of course, that every mind in the world
is related with every other mind, and that there's no escape—we are
all prisoners. The responsibility is vast.'

'Perfectly. I've always believed it. Ah! if only one could
live
it!'

Rogers heard this clearly. But it seemed that another heard it with
him. Some one very close beside him shared the hearing. He had
recovered from his temporary shock. Only the wonder remained. Life was
sheer dazzling glory. The talk continued as they hurried along the
road together. Rogers became aware then that his cousin was giving
information—meant for himself.

'... A most charming little lady, indeed. She comes from over there,'
and he pointed to where the Pleiades were climbing the sky towards the
East, 'in Austria somewhere. She owns a big estate among the
mountains. She wrote to me—I've had
such
encouraging letters, you
know, from all sorts of folk—and when I replied, she telegraphed to
ask if she might come and see me. She seems fond of telegraphing,
rather.' And he laughed as though he were speaking of an ordinary
acquaintance.

'Charming little lady!' The phrase was like the flick of a lash.
Rogers had known it applied to such commonplace women.

'A most intelligent face,' he heard Minks saying, 'quite beautiful,
I
thought—the beauty of mind and soul.'

'... Mother and the children took to her at once,' his cousin's voice
went on. 'She and her maid have got rooms over at the Beguins. And, do
you know, a most singular coincidence,' he added with some excitement,
'she tells me that ever since childhood she's had an idea like this—
like the story, I mean—an idea of her own she always wanted to write
but couldn't——'

'Of course, of course,' interrupted Rogers impatiently; and then he
added quickly, 'but how
very
extraordinary!'

'The idea that Thought makes a network everywhere about the world in
which we all are caught, and that it's a positive duty, therefore, to
think beauty—as much a duty as washing one's face and hands, because
what you think
touches
others all day long, and all night long too—
in sleep.'

'Only she couldn't write it?' asked Rogers. His tongue was like a
thick wedge of unmanageable wood in his mouth. He felt like a man who
hears another spoil an old, old beautiful story that he knows himself
with intimate accuracy.

'She can telegraph, she says, but she can't write!'

'An expensive talent,' thought the practical Minks.

'Oh, she's very rich, apparently. But isn't it odd? You see, she
thought it vividly, played it, lived it. Why, she tells me she even
had a Cave in her mountains where lost thoughts and lost starlight
collected, and that she made a kind of Pattern with them to represent
the Net. She showed me a drawing of it, for though she can't write,
she paints quite well. But the odd thing is that she claims to have
thought out the main idea of my own story years and years ago with the
feeling that some day her idea was bound to reach some one who
would
write it—'

'Almost a case of transference,' put in Minks.

'A fairy tale, yes, isn't it!'

'Married?' asked Rogers, with a gulp, as they reached the door. But
apparently he had not said it out loud, for there was no reply.

He tried again less abruptly. It required almost a physical effort to
drive his tongue and frame the tremendous question.

'What a fairy story for her children! How
they
must love it!' This
time he spoke so loud that Minks started and looked up at him.

'Ah, but she has no children,' his cousin said.

They went upstairs, and the introductions to Monsieur and Madame
Michaud began, with talk about rooms and luggage. The mist was over
him once more. He heard Minks saying:—

'Oui, je comprongs un poo,' and the clatter of heavy boots up and down
the stairs, ... and then found himself washing his hands in stinging
hot water in his cousin's room.

'The children simply adore her already,' he heard, 'and she won
Mother's confidence at the very start. They can't manage her long
name. They just call her the Little Countess—die kleine Grafin. She's
doing a most astonishing work in Austria, it seems, with children...
the Montessori method, and all that....'

'By George, now; is it possible? Bourcelles accepted her at once
then?'

'She accepted Bourcelles rather—took it bodily into herself—our
poverty, our magic boxes, our democratic intimacy, and all the rest;
it was just as though she had lived here with us always. And she kept
asking who Orion was—that's you, of course—and why you weren't
here—'

'And the Den too?' asked Rogers, with a sudden trembling in his heart,
yet knowing well the answer.

'Simply appropriated it—came in naturally without being asked; Jimbo
opened the door and Monkey pushed her in. She said it was her Star
Cave. Oh, she's a remarkable being, you know, rather,' he went on more
gravely, 'with unusual powers of sympathy. She seems to feel at once
what you are feeling. Takes everything for granted as though she knew.
I think she
does
know, if you ask me—'

'Lives the story in fact,' the other interrupted, hiding his face
rather in the towel, 'lives her belief instead of dreaming it, eh?'

'And, fancy this!' His voice had a glow and softness in it as he said
it, coming closer, and almost whispering, 'she wants to take Jinny and
Monkey for a bit and educate them.' He stood away to watch the effect
of the announcement. 'She even talks of sending Edward to Oxford,
too!' He cut a kind of wumbled caper in his pleasure and excitement.

'She loves children then, evidently?' asked the other, with a coolness
that was calculated to hide other feelings. He rubbed his face in the
rough towel as though the skin must come off. Then, suddenly dropping
the towel, he looked into his cousin's eyes a moment to ensure a
proper answer.

'Longs for children of her own, I think,' replied the author; 'one
sees it, feels it in all she says and does. Rather sad, you know,
that! An unmarried mother—'

'In fact,' put in Rogers lightly, 'the very character you needed to
play the principal role in your story. When you write the longer
version in book form you'll have to put her in.'

'And find her a husband too—which is a bore. I never write love
stories, you see. She's finer as she is at present—mothering the
world.'

Rogers's face, as he brushed his hair carefully before the twisted
mirror, was not visible.

There came a timid knock at the door.

'I'm ready, gentlemen, when you are,' answered the voice of Minks
outside.

They went downstairs together, and walked quickly over to the Pension
for supper. Rogers moved sedately enough so far as the others saw, yet
inwardly he pranced like a fiery colt in harness. There were golden
reins about his neck. Two tiny hands directed him from the Pleiades.
In this leash of sidereal fire he felt as though he flew. Swift
thought, flashing like a fairy whip, cut through the air from an
immense distance, and urged him forwards. Some one expected him and he
was late—years and years late. Goodness, how his companions crawled
and dawdled!

'... she doesn't come over for her meals,' he heard, 'but she'll join
us afterwards at the Den. You'll come too, won't you, Mr. Minks?'

'Thank you, I shall be most happy—if I'm not intruding,' was the
reply as they passed the fountain near the courtyard of the Citadelle.
The musical gurgle of its splashing water sounded to Rogers like a
voice that sang over and over again, 'Come up, come up, come up! You
must come up to me!'

'How brilliant your stars are out here, Mr. Campden,' Minks was saying
when they reached the door of La Poste. He stood aside to let the
others pass before him. He held the door open politely. 'No wonder you
chose them as the symbol for thought and sympathy in your story.' And
they climbed the narrow, creaking stairs and entered the little hall
where the entire population of the Pension des Glycines awaited them
with impatience.

The meal dragged out interminably. Everybody had so much to say.
Minks, placed between Mother and Miss Waghorn, talked volubly to the
latter and listened sweetly to all her stories. The excitement of the
Big Story, however, was in the air, and when she mentioned that she
looked forward to reading it, he had no idea, of course, that she had
already done so at least three times. The Review had replaced her
customary Novel. She went about with it beneath her arm. Minks,
feeling friendly and confidential, informed her that he, too,
sometimes wrote, and when she noted the fact with a deferential phrase
about 'you men of letters,' he rose abruptly to the seventh heaven of
contentment. Mother meanwhile, on the other side, took him bodily into
her great wumbled heart. 'Poor little chap,' her attitude said
plainly, 'I don't believe his wife half looks after him.' Before the
end of supper she knew all about Frank and Ronald, the laburnum tree
in the front garden, what tea they bought, and Albinia's plan for
making coal last longer by mixing it with coke.

Tante Jeanne talked furiously and incessantly, her sister-in-law told
her latest dream, and the Postmaster occasionally cracked a solemn
joke, laughing uproariously long before the point appeared. It was a
merry, noisy meal, and Henry Rogers sat through it upon a throne that
was slung with golden ropes from the stars. He was in Fairyland again.
Outside, the Pleiades were rising in the sky, and somewhere in
Bourcelles—in the rooms above Beguin's shop, to be exact—some one
was waiting, ready to come over to the Den. His thoughts flew wildly.
Passionate longing drove behind them. 'You must come up to me,' he
heard. They all were Kings and Queens.

He played his part, however; no one seemed to notice his
preoccupation. The voices sounded now far, now near, as though some
wind made sport with them; the faces round him vanished and
reappeared; but he contrived cleverly, so that none remarked upon his
absent-mindedness. Constellations do not stare at one another much.

'Does your Mother know you're "out"?' asked Monkey once beside him—it
was the great joke now, since the Story had been read—and as soon as
she was temporarily disposed of, Jimbo had serious information to
impart from the other side. 'She's a real Countess,' he said, speaking
as man to man. 'I suppose if she went to London she'd know the King—
visit him, like that?'

Bless his little heart! Jimbo always knew the important things to talk
about.

There were bursts of laughter sometimes, due usually to statements
made abruptly by Jane Anne—as when Mother, discussing the garden with
Minks, reviled the mischievous birds:—

'They want thinning badly,' she said.

'Why don't they take more exercise, then?' inquired Jinny gravely.

And in these gusts of laughter Rogers joined heartily, as though he
knew exactly what the fun was all about. In this way he deceived
everybody and protected himself from discovery. And yet it seemed to
him that he shouted his secret aloud, not with his lips indeed, but
with his entire person. Surely everybody knew it...! He was self-
conscious as a schoolgirl.

'You must come up—to me,' rang continuously through his head like
bells. 'You must come up to me.'

How many times do I love thee, dear?
Tell me how many thoughts there be
In the atmosphere
Of a new fall'n year,
Whose white and sable hours appear
The latest flake of Eternity:—
So many times do I love thee, dear.

How many times do I love again?
Tell me how many beads there are
In a silver chain
Of evening rain,
Unravelled from the tumbling main,
And threading the eye of a yellow star:—
So many times do I love again.

THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES.

A curious deep shyness settled upon Henry Rogers as they all trooped
over to the Den. The others gabbled noisily, but to him words came
with difficulty. He felt like a boy going up for some great test,
examination, almost for judgment. There was an idea in him that he
must run and hide somewhere. He saw the huge outline of Orion tilting
up above the Alps, slanting with the speed of his eternal hunt to
seize the Pleiades who sailed ever calmly just beyond his giant arms.
Yet what that old Hunter sought was at last within his reach. He knew
it, and felt the awe of capture rise upon him.