Algernon Blackwood (6 page)

He shot by like a shadow, then pulled up a window with a rattle,
popped his dirty head out, and called back thickly as if his mouth was
full of smoke or pudding:—

The darkness suits
me
best,
For my old face
Is out of place,
Except in chimney stacks!
Upon my crown
The soot comes down
Filling my eyes with blacks.
Don't light the fire,
Or I'd—.

'Stop it!' cried the Guard, shutting the window with a snap, so that
Rogers never knew whether the missing word used to be 'expire' or
'perspire'; 'and go on to your proper place on the tender.' Then she
turned quickly to fix her big blue eyes upon the next comer. And how
they did come, to be sure! There was the Gypsy, the Creature of the
Gravel-Pit, the long-legged, long-armed thing from the Long Walk—she
could make her arm stretch the whole length like elastic—the enormous
Woman of the Haystack, who lived beneath the huge tarpaulin cover, the
owner of the Big Cedar, and the owner of the Little Cedar, all
treading fast upon one another's heels.

From the Blue Summer-house came the Laugher. Rogers remembered
pretending once that he was going to faint. He had thrown himself upon
the summer-house floor and kicked, and the blue-eyed girl, instead of
being thrilled as both anticipated, had laughed abominably.

'Painters don't kick!' she had said with scorn, while he had answered,
though without conviction, 'Men-fainters do—kick dreadfully.' And she
had simply laughed till her sides ached, while he lay there kicking
till his muscles were sore, in the vain hope of winning her belief.

He exchanged a glance with her now, as the Laugher slipped in past
them. The eyes of the Guard were very soft. He was found out and
forgiven at the same time.

Then came the very mysterious figure of authority—the Head Gardener,
a composite being who included all the lesser under-gardeners as well.
His sunburned face presented a resume of them all. He was the man who
burned the hills of dead leaves in autumn.

'Give me of your fire, please,' whispered Rogers, something between
joy and sadness in his heart, 'for there are hills of leaves that I
would burn up quickly—' but the man hurried on, tossing his trowel
over the Guard's head, and nearly hitting another passenger who
followed too close. This was the Woman of the Haystack, an enormous,
spreading traveller who utterly refused to be hurried, and only
squeezed through the door because Rogers, the Guard, and several
others pushed behind with all their might, while the Sweep, the Tramp,
and those already in tugged breathlessly at the same time....

Last of all, just as the train was starting, came a hurrying shadowy
thing with dreamy eyes, long hair like waving grass, and open hands
that he spread like wings, as though he were sowing something through
the air. And he was singing softly as he came fumbling along the
byeways of the dusk.

'Oh, but I know
you
well,' cried Rogers, watching him come with a
thrill of secret wonder, 'and I love you better than all the rest
together.'

The face was hidden as he wafted silently past them. A delicious odour
followed him. And something, fine as star-dust, as he scattered it all
about him, sifted down before the other's sight. The Dustman entered
like a ghost.

'Oh, give me of your dust!' cried Rogers again, 'for there are eyes
that I would blind with it—eyes in the world that I would blind with
it—your dust of dreams and beauty...!'

The man waved a shadowy hand towards him, and his own eyes filled. He
closed the lids a moment; and when he opened them again he saw two
monster meteors in the sky. They crossed in two big lines of glory
above the house, dropping towards the cedars. The Net of Stars was
being fastened. He remembered then his old Star Cave—cave where lost
starlight was stored up by these sprites for future use.

He just had time to seize the little hand the Guard held out, and to
drop into a seat beside her, when the train began to move. It rose
soundlessly with lightning speed. It shot up to a tremendous height,
then paused, hovering in the night.

The Guard turned her big blue eyes upon him.

'Where to?' she whispered. And he suddenly remembered that it was
always he who decided the destination, and that this time he was at a
loss what to say.

'The Star Cave, of course,' he cried, 'the cave where the lost
starlight gathers.'

'Which direction?' she asked, with the yellow whistle to her lips
ready to signal the driver.

'Oh, out there—to the north-west,' he answered, 'to the mountains of
—across the Channel.'

But this was not precise enough. Formerly he had always given very
precise directions.

'Name, please,' she urged, 'but quickly. The Interfering Sun, you
know—there's no time to lose. We shall be meeting the Morning Spiders
soon.'

The Morning Spiders! How it all came back! The Morning Spiders that
fly over the fields in the dawn upon their private threads of gossamer
and fairy cotton.

He remembered that, as children, they had never actually found this
Star Cave, for the Interfering Sun had always come too soon and spoilt
it all.

'Name, please, and do hurry up. We can't hover here all night,' rang
in his ears.

And he made a plunge. He suddenly thought of Bourcelles, the little
village in the Jura mountains, where he and his cousin had spent a
year learning French. The idea flashed into him probably because it
contained mountains, caves, and children. His cousin lived there now
to educate his children and write his books. Only that morning he had
got a letter from him.

'Bourcelles, of course, Bourcelles!' he cried, 'and steer for the
slopes of Boudry where the forests dip towards the precipices of the
Areuse. I'll send word to the children to meet us.'

'Splendid!' cried the Guard, and kissed him with delight. The whistle
shrieked, the train turned swiftly in a tremendous sweeping curve, and
vanished along the intricate star-rails into space, humming and
booming as it went. It flew a mane of stars behind it through the sky.

Oh! thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.

Doctor Famtus, CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.

The plop of a water-rat in the pond that occupied the rock-garden in
the middle of the lawn brought him back to earth, and the Vicar's
invitation to tea flashed across his mind.

'Stock Exchange and typewriters!' he exclaimed, 'how rude he'll think
me!' And he rubbed something out of his eyes. He gave one long,
yearning glance at the spangled sky where an inquisitive bat darted
zigzag several times between himself and the Pleiades, that bunch of
star-babies as yet unborn, as the blue-eyed guard used to call them.

'And I shall miss my supper and bed into the bargain!'

He turned reluctantly from his place beside the lime trees, and
crossed the lawn now wet with dew. The whole house seemed to turn its
hooded head and watch him go, staring with amusement in its many
lidless eyes. On the front lawn there was more light, for it faced the
dying sunset. The Big and Little Cedar rose from their pools of
shadow, beautifully poised. Like stately dowagers in voluminous skirts
of velvet they seemed to curtsey to him as he passed. Stars like
clusters of sprinkled blossoms hung upon their dignified old heads.
The whole place seemed aware of him. Glancing a moment at the upper
nursery windows, he could just distinguish the bars through which his
little hands once netted stars, and as he did so a meteor shot across
the sky its flashing light of wonder. Behind the Little Cedar it dived
into the sunset afterglow. And, hardly had it dipped away, when
another, coming crosswise from the south, drove its length of molten,
shining wire straight against the shoulder of the Big Cedar.

The whole performance seemed arranged expressly for his benefit. The
Net was loosed—this Net of Stars and Thoughts—perhaps to go
elsewhere. For this was taking out the golden nails, surely. It would
hardly have surprised him next to see the Starlight Express he had
been dreaming about dart across the heavens overhead. That cool air
stealing towards him from the kitchen-garden might well have been the
wind of its going. He could almost hear the distant rush and murmur of
its flying mass.

'How extraordinarily vivid it all was!' he thought to himself, as he
hurried down the drive. 'What detail! What a sense of reality! How
carefully I must have
thought
these creatures as a boy! How
thoroughly! And what a good idea to go out and see Jack's children at
Bourcelles. They've never known these English sprites. I'll introduce
'em!'

He thought it out in detail, very vividly indeed. His imagination
lingered over it and gave it singular reality.

Up the road he fairly ran. For Henry Rogers was a punctual man; these
last twenty years he had never once been late for anything. It had
been part of the exact training he had schooled himself with, and the
Vicar's invitation was not one he desired to trifle with. He made his
peace, indeed, easily enough, although the excuses sounded a little
thin. It was something of a shock, too, to find that the married
daughter after all was not the blue-eyed girl of his boyhood's
passion. For it was Joan, not May, who came down the gravel path
between the roses to greet him.

On the way up he had felt puzzled. Yet 'bemused,' perhaps, is the word
that Herbert Minks would have chosen for one of his poems, to describe
a state of mind he, however, had never experienced himself. And he
would have chosen it instinctively—for onomatopoeic reasons—because
it hums and drones and murmurs dreamily. 'Puzzled' was too sharp a
word.

Yet Henry Rogers, who felt it, said 'puzzled' without more ado,
although mind, imagination, memory all hummed and buzzed pleasantly
about his ears even while he did so.

'A dream is a dream,' he reflected as he raced along the familiar
dusty road in the twilight, 'and a reverie is a reverie; but that, I'd
swear, went a bit further than either one or t'other. It puzzles me.
Does vivid thinking, I wonder, make pictures everywhere?... And—can
they last?'

For the detailed reality of the experience had been remarkable, and
the actuality of those childhood's creations scarcely belonged to
dream or reverie. They were certainly quite as real as the sleek
Directors who sat round the long Board Room table, fidgeting with fat
quill pens and pewter ink-pots; more alive even than the Leading
Shareholder who rose so pompously at Annual Meetings to second the
resolution that the 'Report and Balance Sheet be adopted without
criticism.'

And he was conscious that in himself rose, too, a deep, passionate
willingness to accept the whole experience, also 'without criticism.'
Those picturesque passengers in the Starlight Express he knew so
intimately, so affectionately, that he actually missed them. He felt
that he had said good-bye to genuine people. He regretted their
departure, and was keenly sorry he had not gone off with them—such a
merry, wild, adventurous crew! He must find them again, whatever
happened. There was a yearning in him to travel with that blue-eyed
guard among the star-fields. He would go out to Bourcelles and tell
the story to the children. He thought very hard indeed about it all.

And now, in the Vicarage drawing-room after dinner, his bemusement
increased rather than grew less. His mind had already confused a face
and name. The blue-eyed May was not, after all, the girl of his
boyhood's dream. His memory had been accurate enough with the
passengers in the train. There was no confusion there. But this gentle
married woman, who sang to her own accompaniment at her father's
request, was not the mischievous, wilful creature who had teased and
tortured his heart in years gone by, and had helped him construct the
sprites and train and star-trips. It was, surely, the other daughter
who had played that delicious role. Yet, either his memory was at
fault, or the Vicar had mixed the names up. The years had played this
little unimportant trick upon him anyhow. And that was clear.

But if with so-called real people such an error was possible, how
could he be sure of anything? Which after all, he asked himself, was
real? It was the Vicar's mistake, he learned later, for May was now a
teacher in London; but the trivial incident served to point this
confusion in his mind between an outer and an inner world—to the
disadvantage, if anything, of the former.

And over the glass of port together, while they talked pleasantly of
vanished days, Rogers was conscious that a queer, secret amusement
sheltered in his heart, due to some faint, superior knowledge that
this Past they spoke of had not moved away at all, but listened with
fun and laughter just behind his shoulder, watching them. The old
gentleman seemed never tired of remembering his escapades. He told
them one after another, like some affectionate nurse or mother, Rogers
thought, whose children were—to her—unique and wonderful. For he had
really loved this good-for-nothing pupil, loved him the more, as
mothers and nurses do, because of the trouble he had given, and
because of his busy and fertile imagination. It made Rogers feel
ridiculously young again as he listened. He could almost have played a
trick upon him then and there, merely to justify the tales. And once
or twice he actually called him 'Sir.' So that even the conversation
helped to deepen this bemusement that gathered somewhat tenderly about
his mind. He cracked his walnuts and watched the genial, peace-lit
eyes across the table. He chuckled. Both chuckled. They spoke of his
worldly success too—it seemed unimportant somehow now, although he
was conscious that something in him expected, nay demanded tribute—
but the former tutor kept reverting to the earlier days before
achievement.

'You were indeed a boy of mischief, wonder, and mystery,' he said, his
eyes twinkling and his tone almost affectionate; 'you made the whole
place alive with those creatures of your imagination. How Joan helped
you too—or was it May? I used to wonder sometimes—' he glanced up
rather searchingly at his companion a moment—' whether the people who
took the Manor House after your family left did not encounter them
sometimes upon the lawn or among the shrubberies in the dusk—those
sprites of yours. Eh?' He passed a neatly pared walnut across the
table to his guest. 'These ghosts that people nowadays explain
scientifically—what are they but thoughts visualised by vivid
thinking such as yours was—creative thinking? They may be just
pictures created in moments of strong passionate feeling that persist
for centuries and reach other minds direct They're not seen with the
outer eye; that's certain, for no two people ever see them together.
But I'm sure these pictures flame up through the mind sometimes just
as clearly as some folk see Grey Ladies and the rest flit down the
stairs at midnight.'