Algernon Blackwood (8 page)

'You have the big and simple things alive in you,' the voice carried
on his pictured thought among the flowers. 'In your heart they lie all
waiting to be used. Nothing can smother them. Only-you must give them
out.'

'If only I knew how—!'

'Keep close to the children,' sifted the strange answer through the
fruit-trees; 'the world is a big child. And catch it when it lies
asleep—not thinking of itself,' he whispered.

'The time is so short—'

'At forty you stand upon the threshold of life, with values learned
and rubbish cleared away. So many by that time are already dead—in
heart. I envy your opportunities ahead. You have learned already one
foundation truth—the grandeur of toil and the insignificance of
acquisition. The other foundation thing is even simpler—you have a
neighbour. Now, with your money to give as flowers, and your Belief to
steer you straight, you have the world before you. And—keep close to
the children.'

'Before there are none left,' added Rogers under his breath. But the
other heard the words and instantly corrected him—

'Children of any age, and wherever you may find them.'

And they turned slowly and made their way in silence across the
soaking lawn, entering the house by the drawing-room window.

'Good-night,' the old man said, as he lit his candle and led him to
his room; 'and pleasant, happy, inspiring dreams.'

He seemed to say it with some curious, heartfelt meaning in the common
words. He disappeared slowly down the passage, shading the candle with
one hand to pick his way, and Rogers watched him out of sight, then
turned and entered his own room, closing the door as softly as
possible behind him.

It had been an astonishing conversation. All his old enthusiasm was
stirred. Embers leaped to flame. No woman ever had done as much. This
old fellow, once merely respected tutor, had given him back his first
original fire and zeal, yet somehow cleansed and purified. And it
humbled him at the same time. Dead leaves, dropped year by year in his
City life, were cleared away as though a mighty wind had swept him.
The Gardener was burning up dead leaves; the Sweep was cleaning out
the flues; the Lamplighter waving his golden signal in the sky—far
ahead, it is true, but gleaming like a torch and beacon. The Starlight
Express was travelling at top speed among the constellations. He stood
at the beginning of the important part of life....

And now, as he lay in bed and heard the owls hooting in the woods, and
smelt the flowers through the open window, his thoughts followed
strongly after that old Star Train that he used to drive about the
sky. He was both engine-driver and passenger. He fell asleep to dream
of it.

And all the vital and enchanting thoughts of his boyhood flowed back
upon him with a rush, as though they had never been laid aside. He
remembered particularly one singular thing about them—that they had
never seemed quite his own, but that he had either read or heard them
somewhere else. As a child the feeling was always strong that these
'jolly thoughts,' as he called them, were put into him by some one
else—some one who whispered to him—some one who lived close behind
his ears. He had to listen very hard to catch them. It was
not
dreams, yet all night long, especially when he slept tightly, as he
phrased it, this fairy whispering continued, and in the daytime he
remembered what he could and made up his stories accordingly. He stole
these ideas about a Star Net and a Starlight Express. One day he would
be caught and punished for it. It was trespassing upon the preserves
of some one else.

Yet he could never discover who this some one else was, except that it
was a 'she' and lived among the stars, only coming out at night. He
imagined she hid behind that little dusty constellation called the
Pleiades, and that was why the Pleiades wore a veil and were so dim—
lest he should find her out. And once, behind the blue gaze of the
guard-girl, who was out of his heart by this time, he had known a
moment of thrilling wonder that was close to awe. He saw another pair
of eyes gazing out at him They were ambery eyes, as he called them—
just what was to be expected from a star. And, so great was the shock,
that at first he stood dead still and gasped, then dashed up suddenly
close to her and stared into her face, frightening her so much that
she fell backwards, and the amber eyes vanished instantly. It was the
'some one else' who whispered fairy stories to him and lived behind
his ear. For a second she had been marvellously close. And he had lost
her!

From that moment, however, his belief in her increased enormously, and
he never saw a pair of brown-ambery eyes without feeling sure that she
was somewhere close about him. The lame boy, for instance, had the
same delicate tint in his sad, long, questioning gaze. His own collie
had it too! For years it was an obsession with him, haunting and
wonderful—the knowledge that some one who watched close beside him,
filling his mind with fairy thoughts, might any moment gaze into his
face through a pair of ordinary familiar eyes. And he was certain that
all his star-imagination about the Net, the Starlight Express, and the
Cave of Lost Starlight came first into him from this hidden 'some one
else' who brought the Milky Way down into his boy's world of fantasy.

'If ever I meet her in real life,' he used to say, 'I'm done for. She
is my Star Princess!'

And now, as he fell asleep, the old atmosphere of that Kentish garden
drew thickly over him, shaking out clusters of stars about his bed.
Dreams usually are determined by something more remote than the talk
that has just preceded going to bed, but to-night it was otherwise.
And two things the old Vicar had let fall—two things sufficiently
singular, it seemed, when he came to think about them—influenced his
night adventures. 'Catch the world when it's asleep,' and 'Keep close
to the children'—these somehow indicated the route his dream should
follow. For he headed the great engine straight for the village in the
Jura pine woods where his cousin's children lived. He did not know
these children, and had seen his cousin but rarely in recent years;
yet, it seemed, they came to meet the train up among the mountain
forests somewhere. For in this village, where he had gone to study
French, the moods of his own childhood had somehow known continuation
and development. The place had once been very dear to him, and he had
known delightful adventures there, many of them with this cousin. Now
he took all his own childhood's sprites out in this Starlight Express
and introduced them to these transplanted children who had never made
acquaintance with the English breed. They had surprising, wild
adventures all together, yet in the morning he could remember very
little of it all. The interfering sun melted them all down in dew. The
adventures had some object, however; that was clear; though what the
object was, except that it did good somewhere to. some one, was gone,
lost in the deeps of sleep behind him. They scurried about the world.
The sprites were very active indeed—quite fussily energetic. And his
Scheme for Disabled Something-or other was not anywhere discoverable
in these escapades. That seemed forgotten rather, as though they found
bigger, more important things to do, and nearer home too. Perhaps the
Vicar's hint about the 'Neighbour' was responsible for that. Anyhow,
the dream was very vivid, even though the morning sun melted it away
so quickly and completely. It seemed continuous too. It filled the
entire night.

Yet the thing that Rogers took off with him to town next morning was,
more than any other detail, the memory of what the old tutor had said
about the living reality and persistence of figures that passionate
thinking has created—that, and the value of Belief.

Be thou my star, and thou in me be seen
To show what source divine is, and prevails.
I mark thee planting joy in constant fire.

To Sirius
, G. MEREDITH.

And he rather astonished the imperturbable Minks next day by the
announcement that he was thinking of going abroad for a little
holiday. 'When I return, it will be time enough to take up the Scheme
in earnest,' he said. For Minks had brought a sheaf of notes embodying
the results of many hours' labour, showing what others had already
done in that particular line of philanthropy.

'Very good indeed, Minks, very good. I'll take 'em with me and make a
careful study of the lot. I shall be only gone a week or so,' he
added, noticing the other's disappointment. For the secretary had
hoped to expound these notes himself at length. 'Take a week's holiday
yourself,' he added. 'Mrs. Minks might like to get to the sea,
perhaps. There'll only be my letters to forward. I'll give you a
little cheque.' And he explained briefly that he was going out to
Bourcelles to enjoy a few days' rest before they attacked great
problems together. After so many years of application to business he
had earned it. Crayfield, it seemed, had given him a taste for
sentimental journeys. But the fact was, too, the Tramp, the Dustman,
the Lamplighter, and the Starlight Express were all in his thoughts
still.

And it was spring. He felt this sudden desire to see his cousin again,
and make the acquaintance of his cousin's children. He remembered how
the two of them had tramped the Jura forests as boys. They had met in
London at intervals since. He dictated a letter to him then and there
—Minks taking it down like lightning—and added a postscript in his
own handwriting:—

'I feel a longing,' he wrote, 'to come out and see the little haven of
rest you have chosen, and to know your children. Our ways have gone
very far apart—too far—since the old days when we climbed out of the
windows of
la cure
with a sheet, and tramped the mountains all night
long. Do you remember? I've had my nose on the grindstone ever since,
and you've worked hard too, judging by your name in publishers' lists.
I hope your books are a great success. I'm ashamed I've never any time
to read now. But I'm "retired" from business at last and hope to do
great things. I'll tell you about a great Scheme I have in hand when
we meet. I should like your advice too.

'Any room will do—sunny aspect if possible. And please give my love
to your children in advance. Tell them I shall come out in the
Starlight Express. Let me have a line to say if it's all right.'

In due course the line—a warm-hearted one—arrived. Minks came to
Charing Cross to see him off, the gleam of the sea already in his
pale-blue eyes.

'The Weather Report says "calm," Mr. Rogers,' he kept repeating.
'You'll have a good crossing, I hope and trust. I'm taking Mrs. Minks
myself—'

'Yes, yes, that's good,' was the quick reply. 'Capital. And—let me
see-I've got your notes with me, haven't I? I'll draft out a general
plan and send it to you as soon as I get a moment. You think over it
too, will you, while I'm away. And enjoy yourself at the same time.
Put your children in the sea—nothing like the sea for children—sea
and sun and sand and all that sort of thing.'

'Thank you very much, Mr. Rogers, and I trust—'

Somebody bumped against him, cutting short a carefully balanced
sentence that was intended to be one-third good wishes, one-third
weather remark, and the last third Mrs. Minks. Her letter of thanks
had never been referred to. It rankled, though very slightly.

'What an absurd-looking person!' exclaimed the secretary to himself,
following the aggressor with one eye, and trying to recapture the lost
sentence at the same time. 'They really should not allow such people
in a railway terminus,' he added aloud. The man was ragged and unkempt
to the last degree—a sort of tramp; and as he bought a ticket at the
third-class wicket, just beyond, he kept looking up slyly at Minks and
his companion. 'The way he knocked against me almost seemed
intentional,' Minks thought. The idea of pickpockets and cleverly
disguised detectives ran confusedly in his mind. He felt a little
flustered for some reason.

'I beg your pardon,' Mr. Rogers was saying to a man who tried to push
in front of him. 'But we
must
each take our turn, you know.' The
throng of people was considerable. This man looked like a dustman.
He, too, was eagerly buying a ticket, but had evidently mistaken the
window. 'Third-class is lower down I think,' Mr. Rogers suggested with
a touch of authority.

'What a lot of foreigners there are about,' remarked Minks. 'These
stations are full of suspicious characters.' The notice about
loitering flashed across him.

He took the ticket Mr. Rogers handed to him, and went off to register
the luggage, and when later he joined his chief at the carriage door
he saw him talking to a couple of strangers who seemed anxious to get
in.

'I took
this
corner seat for you, Mr. Rogers,' he explained, both to
prove his careful forethought and to let the strangers know that his
master was a person of some importance. They were such an
extraordinary couple too! Had there been hop-pickers about he could
have understood it. They were almost figures of masquerade; for while
one resembled more than anything else a chimney-sweep who had
forgotten to wash his face below the level of the eyes, the other
carried a dirty sack across his shoulders, which apparently he had
just been trying to squeeze into the rack.

They moved off when they saw Minks, but the man with the sack made a
gesture with one hand, as though he scattered something into the
carriage through the open door.

The secretary threw a reproachful look at a passing guard, but there
was nothing he could do. People with tickets had a right to travel.
Still, he resented these crowding, pushing folk. 'I'm sorry, Mr.
Rogers,' he said, as though he had chosen a poor train for his
honoured chief; 'there must be an excursion somewhere. There's a big
fete of Vegetarians, I know, at Surbiton to-day, but I can hardly
think these people—'