Algernon Blackwood (4 page)

'Thank'ee,' said his chief as luncheon time drew near; 'and now, if
you'll get those letters typed, you might leave 'em here for me on
your way home to sign. That's all we have to-day, isn't it?'

'You wanted, I think, to draft your Scheme for Disabled—' began the
secretary, when the other cut him short.

'Yes, yes, but that must wait. I haven't got it clear yet in my own
mind. You might think it out a bit yourself, perhaps, meanwhile, and
give me your ideas, eh? Look up what others have done in the same
line, for instance, and tell me where they failed. What the weakness
of their schemes was, you know—and—er—so forth.'

A faint smile, that held the merest ghost of merriment, passed across
the face of Minks, leaping, unobserved by his chief, from one eye to
the other. There was pity and admiration in it; a hint of pathos
visited those wayward lips. For the suggestion revealed the weakness
the secretary had long ago divined—that the practical root of the
matter did not really lie in him at all, and Henry Rogers forever
dreamed of 'Schemes' he was utterly unable and unsuited to carry out.
Improvements in a silk machine was one thing, but improvements in
humanity was another. Like the poetry in his soul they could never
know fulfilment. He had inspiration, but no constructive talent. For
the thousandth time Minks wondered, glancing at his employer's face,
how such calm and gentle features, such dreamy eyes and a Vandyke
beard so neatly trimmed, could go with ambitions so lofty and so
unusual. This sentence he had heard before, and was destined often to
hear again, while achievement came no nearer.

'I will do so at the first opportunity.' He put the oblong note-book
carefully in his pocket, and stood by the table in an attitude of 'any
further instructions, please?' while one eye wandered to the unopened
letter that was signed 'Albinia Minks, with heartfelt gratitude.'

'And, by the by, Minks,' said his master, turning as though a new idea
had suddenly struck him and he had formed a hasty plan, 'you might
kindly look up an afternoon train to Crayfield. Loop line from Charing
Cross, you know. Somewhere about two o'clock or so. I have to—er—I
think I'll run down that way after luncheon.'

Whereupon, having done this last commission, and written it down upon
a sheet of paper which he placed with care against the clock, beside
the unopened letter, the session closed, and Minks, in his mourning
hat and lavender gloves, walked up St. James's Street apparently
en route
for the Ritz, but suddenly, as with careless
unconsciousness, turning into an A.B.C. Depot for luncheon, well
pleased with himself and with the world, but especially with his
considerate employer.

Ten minutes later Mr. Rogers followed him on his way to the club, and
just when Minks was reflecting with pride of the well-turned phrases
he had dictated to his wife for her letter of thanks, it passed across
the mind of its recipient that he had forgotten to read it altogether.
And, truth to tell, he never yet has read it; for, returning late that
evening from his sentimental journey down to Crayfield, it stood no
longer where he had left it beside the clock, and nothing occurred to
remind him of its existence. Apart from its joint composers, no one
can ever know its contents but the charwoman, who, noticing the
feminine writing, took it back to Lambeth and pored over it with a
candle for full half an hour, greatly disappointed. 'Things like
that,' she grumbled to her husband, whose appearance suggested that he
went for bigger game, 'ain't worth the trouble of taking at all,
whichever way you looks at it.' And probably she was right.

And what if All of animated nature
Be but as Instruments diversely framed
That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps
One infinite and intellectual Breeze,
At once the Soul of each, and God of all?

The AEolian Harp
, S. T. COLERIDGE.

In the train, even before St. John's was passed, a touch of inevitable
reaction had set in, and Rogers asked himself why he was going. For a
sentimental journey was hardly in his line, it seemed. But no
satisfactory answer was forthcoming—none, at least, that a Board or a
Shareholders' Meeting would have considered satisfactory.

There was an answer in him somewhere, but he couldn't quite get down
to it. The spring glory had enticed him back to childhood. The journey
was symbolical of escape. That was the truth. But the part of him that
knew it had lain so long in abeyance that only a whisper flitted
across his mind as he sat looking out of the carriage window at the
fields round Lee and Eltham. The landscape seemed hauntingly familiar,
but what surprised him was the number of known faces that rose and
smiled at him. A kind of dream confusion blurred his outer sight;

At Bexley, as he hurried past, he caught dimly a glimpse of an old
nurse whom he remembered trying to break into bits with a hop-pole he
could barely lift; and, most singular thing, on the Sidcup platform, a
group of noisy schoolboys, with smudged faces and ridiculously small
caps stuck on the back of their heads, had scrambled viciously to get
into his compartment. They carried brown canvas satchels full of
crumpled books and papers, and though the names had mostly escaped
him, he remembered every single face. There was Barlow—big, bony chap
who stammered, bringing his words out with a kind of whistling sneeze.
Barlow had given him his first thrashing for copying his stammer.
There was young Watson, who funked at football and sneaked to a master
about a midnight supper. He stole pocket-money, too, and was expelled.
Then he caught a glimpse of another fellow with sly face and laughing
eyes; the name had vanished, but he was the boy who put jalap in the
music-master's coffee, and received a penny from five or six others
who thus escaped a lesson. All waved their hands to him as the train
hurried away, and the last thing he saw was the station lamp where he
had lit the cigar that made three of them, himself included, deadly
sick. Familiar woods and a little blue-eyed stream then hid the vision
... and a moment later he was standing on the platform of his
childhood's station, giving up his first-class ticket (secretly
ashamed that it was not third) to a station-master-ticket-collector
person who simply was not real at all.

For he had no beard. He was small, too, and insignificant. The way he
had dwindled, with the enormous station that used to be a mile or so
in length, was severely disappointing. That STATION-MASTER with the
beard ought to have lived for ever. His niche in the Temple of Fame
was sure. One evening he had called in full uniform at the house and
asked to see Master Henry Rogers, the boy who had got out 'WHILE-THE-
TRAIN-WAS-STILL-IN-MOTION,' and had lectured him gravely with a face
like death. Never again had he left a train 'whilestillinmotion,'
though it was years before he discovered how his father had engineered
that awful, salutary visit.

He asked casually, in a voice that hardly seemed his own, about the
service back to town, and received the answer with a kind of wonder.
It was so respectful. The porters had not found him out yet; but the
moment they did so, he would have to run. He did not run, however. He
walked slowly down the Station Road, swinging the silver-knobbed cane
the office clerks had given him when he left the City. Leisurely,
without a touch of fear, he passed the Water Works, where the huge
iron crank of the shaft rose and fell with ominous thunder against the
sky. It had once been part of that awful hidden Engine which moved the
world. To go near it was instant death, and he always crossed the road
to avoid it; but this afternoon he went down the cinder pathway so
close that he could touch it with his stick. It was incredible that so
terrible a thing could dwindle in a few years to the dimensions of a
motor piston. The crank that moved up and down like a bending,
gigantic knee looked almost flimsy now. ...

Then the village street came into view and he suddenly smelt the
fields and gardens that topped the hill beyond. The world turned gold
and amber, shining beneath a turquoise sky. There was a rush of
flaming sunsets, one upon another, followed by great green moons, and
hosts of stars that came twinkling across barred windows to his very
bedside ... that grand old Net of Stars he made so cunningly. Cornhill
and Lombard Street flashed back upon him for a second, then dived away
and hid their faces for ever, as he passed the low grey wall beside
the church where first he had seen the lame boy hobbling, and had
realised that the whole world suffered.

A moment he stood here, thinking. He heard the wind sighing in the yew
trees beside the dark brown porch. Rooks were cawing among the elms
across the churchyard, and pigeons wheeled and fluttered about the
grey square tower. The wind, the tower, the weather-stained old porch
—these had not changed. This sunshine and this turquoise sky were
still the same.

The village stopped at the churchyard—significant boundary. No single
building ventured farther; the houses ran the other way instead,
pouring down the steep hill in a cataract of bricks and roofs towards
the station. The hill, once topped, and the churchyard left behind, he
entered the world of fields and little copses. It was just like going
through a gateway. It was a Gateway. The road sloped gently down for
half-a-mile towards the pair of big iron gates that barred the drive
up to the square grey house upon whose lawns he once had chased
butterflies, but from whose upper windows he once had netted—stars.

The spell came over him very strongly then as he went slowly down that
road. The altered scale of distance confused him; the road had
telescoped absurdly; the hayfields were so small. At the turn lay the
pond with yellow duckweed and a bent iron railing that divided it to
keep the cows from crossing. Formerly, of course, that railing had
been put to prevent children drowning in its bottomless depths; all
ponds had been bottomless then, and the weeds had spread to entice the
children to a watery death. But now he could have jumped across it,
weed and railing too, without a run, and he looked in vain for the
shores that once had been so seductively far away. They were mere
dirty, muddy edges.

This general shrinkage in space was very curious. But a similar
contraction, he realised, had taken place in time as well, for,
looking back upon his forty years, they seemed such a little thing
compared to the enormous stretch they offered when he had stood beside
this very pond and looked ahead. He wondered vaguely which was the
reality and which the dream. But his effort was not particularly
successful, and he came to no conclusion. Those years of strenuous
business life were like a few weeks, yet their golden results were in
his pockets. Those years of childhood had condensed into a jumble of
sunny hours, yet their golden harvest was equally in his heart. Time
and space were mere bits of elastic that could stretch or shrink as
thought directed, feeling chose. And now both thought and feeling
chose emphatically. He stepped back swiftly. His mind seemed filled
with stars and butterflies and childhood's figures of wonder.
Childhood took him prisoner.

It was curious at first, though, how the acquired nature made a
struggle to assert itself, and the practical side of him, developed in
the busy markets of the world, protested. It was automatic rather, and
at best not very persistent; it soon died away. But, seeing the gravel
everywhere, he wondered if there might not be valuable clay about,
what labour cost, and what the nearest stations were for haulage; and,
seeing the hop-poles, he caught himself speculating what wood they
were made of, and what varnish would best prevent their buried points
from going rotten in this particular soil. There was a surge of
practical considerations, but quickly fading. The last one was stirred
by the dust of a leisurely butcher's cart. He had visions of a paste
for motor-roads, or something to lay dust ... but, before the dust had
settled again through the sunshine about his feet, or the rumble of
the cart died away into distance, the thought vanished like a
nightmare in the dawn. It ran away over the switchback of the years,
uphill to Midsummer, downhill to Christmas, jumping a ditch at Easter,
and a hedge at that terrible thing known as "Clipse of the Moon.' The
leaves of the elm trees whispered overhead. He was moving through an
avenue that led towards big iron gates beside a little porter's lodge.
He saw the hollies, and smelt the laurustinus. There lay the triangle
of uncut grass at the cross-roads, the long, grey, wooden palings
built upon moss-grown bricks; and against the sky he just caught a
glimpse of the feathery, velvet cedar crests, crests that once held
nails of golden meteors for his Net of Stars.

Determined to enjoy his cake and eat it at the same time as long as
possible, he walked down the road a little distance, eyeing the lawns
and windows of the house through narrow gaps between the boarding of
the fence. He prolonged the pleasures of anticipation thus, and,
besides, he wished to see if the place was occupied or empty. It
looked unkempt rather, the gardens somewhat neglected, and yet there
hung an air of occupancy about it all. He had heard the house had
changed hands several times. But it was difficult to see clearly; the
sunshine dazzled; the lilac and laburnum scattered sheets of colour
through which the shadows wove themselves an obscuring veil, He kept
seeing butterflies and chasing them with his sight.

'Can you tell me if this house is occupied?' he asked abruptly of an
old gentleman who coughed suddenly behind him.

It was an explanation as well as a question, for the passer-by had
surprised him in a remarkable attitude. He was standing on tiptoe upon
the parapet of brick, pulling himself up above the fence by his hands,
and his hat had fallen into the road.