Читать книгу The Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood (10 Novels & 80+ Short Stories in One Edition) - Algernon Blackwood - Страница 27

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I kiss you and the world begins to fade.

Land of Hearts Desire.—YEATS.

A few minutes later the door opened softly, and a procession, solemn of face and silent of foot, marched slowly into the room. The moment had come at last for his introduction, and, by a single stroke of unintentional diplomacy, his sister did more to winning her brother's shy heart than by anything else she could possibly have devised. She went out.

'They will prefer to make your acquaintance by themselves,' she said in her gentle way, 'and without any assistance from me.'

The procession advanced to the middle of the room and then stopped short. Evidently, for them, the departure of their mother somewhat complicated matters. They had depended upon her to explain them to their uncle. There they stood, overcome by shyness, moving from one foot to another, with flushed and rosy faces, hair brushed, skin shining, and eyes all prepared to laugh as soon as somebody gave the signal, but not the least knowing how to begin.

And their uncle faced them in similar plight, as, for the second time that afternoon, shyness descended upon him like a cloud, and he could think of nothing to say. His size overwhelmed him; he felt like an elephant. With a sudden rush all his self-possession deserted him. He almost wished that his sister might return so that they should be brought up to him seriatim, named just as Adam named the beasts, and dismissed—which Adam did not do—with a kiss. It was really, of course—and he knew it to his secret mortification—a meeting on both sides of children; they all felt the shyness and self-consciousness of children, he as much as they, and at any moment might take the sudden plunge into careless intimacy, as the way with children ever is.

Meanwhile, however, he took rapid and careful note of them as they stood in that silent, fidgety group before him, with solemn, wide-open eyes fixed upon his face.

The youngest, being in his view little more than a baby, needs no description beyond the fact that it stared quite unintelligently without winking an eye. Its eyes, in fact, looked as though they were not made to close at all. And this is its one and only appearance.

Standing next to the baby, holding its hand, was a boy in a striped suit of knickerbockers, with a big brown curl like a breaking wave on the top of his forehead; he was between eight and nine years old, and his names—for, of course, he had two—were Richard Jonathan, shortened, as Paul learned later, into Jonah. He balanced himself with the utmost care in the centre of a particular square of carpet as though half an inch to either side would send him tumbling into a bottomless abyss. The fingers not claimed by the baby travelled slowly to and fro along the sticky line of his lower lip.

Close behind him, treating similarly another square of carpet, stood a rotund little girl, slightly younger than himself, named Arabella Lucy. There was a touch of audacity in her eyes, and an expression about the mouth that indicated the imminent approach of laughter. She had been distinctly washed and brushed-up for the occasion. Her face shone like a polished onion skin. She had the same sort of brown hair that Jonah considered fashionable, and her name for all common daily purposes was Toby.

The eldest and most formidable of his tormentors, standing a little in advance of the rest, was Margaret Christina, shortened by her father (who, indeed, had been responsible for all the nicknames) into Nixie. And the name fitted her like a skin, for she was the true figure of a sprite, and looked as if she had just stepped out of the water and her hair had stolen the yellow of the sand. Her eyes ran about the room like sunshine from the surface of a stream, and her movements instantly made Paul think of water gliding over pebbles or ribbed sand with easy and gentle undulations. Flashlike he saw her in a clearing of his lonely woods, a creature of the elements. Her big blue eyes, too, were full of wonder and pensive intelligence, and she stood there in a motherly and protective manner as though she were quite equal to the occasion and would presently know how to act with both courage and wisdom.

And Nixie, indeed, it was, after this prolonged and critical pause, who commenced operations. There was a sudden movement in the group, and the next minute Paul was aware that she had left it and was walking slowly towards him. He noticed her graceful, flowing way of moving, and saw a sunburnt arm and hand extended in his direction. The next second she kissed him. And that kiss acted like an electric shock. Something in her that was magical met its kind in his own soul and, flamelike, leaped towards it. A little tide of hot life poured into him, troubling the deeps with a momentary sense of delicious bewilderment.

'How do you do, Uncle Paul,' she said; 'we are very glad you have come—at last.'

The blood ran ridiculously to his head. He found his tongue, and pulled himself sharply together.

'So am I, dear. Of course, it's a long way to come—America.' He stooped and bestowed the necessary kisses upon the others, who had followed their leader and now stood close beside him, staring like little owls in a row.

'I know,' she replied gravely. 'It takes weeks, doesn't it? And mother has told us such a lot about you. We've been waiting a very long time, I think,' she added as though stating a grievance.

'I suppose it is rather a long time to wait,' he said sheepishly. He stroked his beard and waited.

'All of us,' she went on. She included the others in this last observation by bending her head at them, and into her uncle's memory leaped the vision of a slender silver birch-tree that grew on the edge of the Big Beaver Pond near the Canadian border. She moved just as that silver birch moved when the breeze caught it.

Her manner was very demure, but she looked so piercingly into the very middle of his eyes that Paul felt as though she had already discovered everything about him. They all stood quite close to him now, touching his knees; ready, there and then, to take him wholly into their confidence.

An impulse that he only just managed to control stirred in him and a curious pang accompanied it. He remembered his 'attitude,' however, and stiffened slightly.

'No, it only takes ten days roughly from where I've come,' he said, leaving the mat and dropping into a deep arm-chair a little farther off. 'The big steamers go very fast, you know, nowadays.'

Their eyes remained simply glued to his face. They switched round a. few points to follow his movement, but did not leave their squares of carpet.

'Madmerzelle said'—it was Toby, née Arabella Lucy, speaking for the first time—' you knew lots of stories about deers and wolves and things, and would look like a Polar bear for us sometimes.'

'Oh yes, and beavers and Indians in snowstorms, and the roarer boryalis,' chimed in Jonah, giving a little hop of excitement that brought him still closer. 'And the songs they sing in canoes when there are rapids,' he added with intense excitement. 'Madmizelle sings them sometimes, but they're not a bit the real thing, because she hasn't enough bass in her voice.'

Paul bit his lip and looked at the carpet. Something in the atmosphere of the room seemed to have changed in the last few minutes. Jolly thrills ran through him such as he knew in the woods with his animals sometimes.

'I'm afraid I can't sing much,' he said, 'but I can tell you a bear story sometimes—if you're good.' He added the condition as an afterthought.

'We are good,' Jonah said disappointedly,' almost always.'

Again that curious pang shot through him. He did not wish to be unkind to them. He pulled back his coat-sleeve suddenly and showed them a scar on his arm.

'That was made by a bear,' he said, 'years ago.'

'Oh, look at the fur!' cried Toby.

'Don't be silly! All proper men have hair on their arms,' put in Jonah. 'Does it still hurt, Uncle Paul?' he asked, examining the place with intense interest.

'Not now. We rolled down a hill together head over heels. Such a big brute, too, he was, and growled like a thunderstorm; it's a wonder he didn't squash me. I've got his claws upstairs. I think, really, he was more frightened than I was.'

They clapped their hands. 'Tell us, oh, do tell us!'

But Nixie intervened in her stately fashion, leaning over a little and stroking the scar with fingers that were like the touch of leaves.

'Uncle Paul's tired after coming such a long way,' she said gravely with sympathy. 'He hasn't even unpacked his luggage yet, have you, Uncle?'

Paul admitted that this was the case. He made the least possible motion to push them off and clear a space round his chair.

'Are you tired? Oh, I'm so sorry,' said Jonah.

'Then he ought to see the animals at once,' decided Toby, 'before they go to bed,'—she seemed to have a vague idea that the whole world must go to bed earlier than usual if Uncle Paul was tired— 'or they'll be awfully disappointed.' Her face expressed the disappointment of the animals as well as her own; her uncle's fatigue had already taken a second place. 'Oughtn't he?' she added, turning to the others.

Paul remembered his intention to remain stiffly grown up.

He made a great effort. Oh, but why did they tug and tear at his heart so, these little fatherless children? And why did he feel at once that he was in their own world, comfortably 'at home' in it? Did this world of children, then, link on so easily and naturally with the poet's region of imagination and wonder in which he himself still dwelt for all his many years, bringing him close to his main passion—to know Reality?

'Of course, I'll come and say good-night to them before they turn in,' he decided kindly, letting Nixie and Toby take his hands, while Jonah followed in the rear to show that he considered this a girl's affair yet did not wholly disapprove.

'Hadn't we better tell your mother where we're going?' he asked as they started.

'Oh, mother won't mind,' came the answer in chorus. 'She hardly ever comes up to the nursery, and, besides, she doesn't care for the animals, you see.'

'They're rather 'noying for mother,' Nixie added by way of explanation. She decapitated many of her long words in this way, and invariably omitted difficult consonants.

It was a long journey, and the explanations about the animals, their characteristics, names, and habits, occupied every minute of the way. He gathered that they were chiefly cats and kittens, to what number he dared not calculate, and that puppies, at least one parrot, a squirrel, a multitude of white mice, and various larger beasts of a parental and aged description, were indiscriminately all mixed up together. Evidently it was a private menagerie that he was invited to say good-night to, and the torrent of outlandish names that poured into his ears produced a feeling of confusion in his mind that made him wonder if he was not turning into some sort of animal himself, and thus becoming free of their language.

It was the beginning of a very trying ordeal for him, this being half pulled, half shoved along the intricate passages of the old house; now down a couple of unexpected steps that made him stumble; now up another which made him trip; through narrow doorways, where Jonah had the audacity to push him from behind lest he should stick half-way; and, finally, at full speed, the girls tugging at his arms in front, down a long corridor which proved to be the home-stretch to the nursery.

'I was afraid we'd lost the trail,' he gasped. 'It's poorly blazed.' 'Oh, but we haven't got any tails to lose,' laughed Toby, misunderstanding him. 'And they wouldn't blaze if we had.'

'Look out, Nixie! Not so fast! Uncle Paul's losing his wind as well as his trail,' shouted Jonah from the rear. And at that moment they reached the door of the nursery and came to an abrupt halt, Paul puffing like a lumberman.

It was impossible for him to remain sedate, but he did the next best thing—he remained silent.

Then Jonah, pushing past him, turned the handle, and he was ushered, still panting, into so typical a nursery-schoolroom that the scenes of his forgotten boyhood rushed back to him with a vividness that seemed to destroy the passage of time at a single stroke. The past stood reconstructed. The actual, living mood of his own childhood rose out of the depths of blurred memories and caused a mist to rise before his eyes. An emotion he was utterly unable to define shook his heart.

The room was filled with the slanting rays of the setting sun, and the air from the open windows smelt of garden trees, lawns, and flower-beds. Sea and heather, too, added their own sharper perfumes. It caught him away for a moment—oh, that strange power of old perfumes—to the earliest scenes of his own life, the boyhood in the gardens of Kent before America had claimed him. And then the details of the room itself became so insistent that he almost lost his head and turned back without more ado into a boy of fifteen.

He looked swiftly about him. There was the old-fashioned upright piano against the wall, the highly coloured pictures hanging crooked on the wall, the cane chairs, the crowded mantelpiece, the high wire fender before the empty grate, the general atmosphere of toys, untidiness and broken articles of every sort and kind—and, above all, the figures of these excited children all bustling recklessly about him with their glowing and expectant faces.

There was Toby, her blue sash all awry, running busily about the room; and Nixie, now in sunshine, now in shadow, with her hair of yellow sand and her blue dreaming eyes that saw into the Beyond; and little Jonah, moving about somewhat pompously to prepare the performance that was to follow. It all combined to produce a sudden shock that swept down upon him so savagely, that he was within an ace of bolting through the door and making his escape into safer quarters.

The False Paul, that is, was within an ace of running away with all his elaborate armour, and leaving the True Paul dancing on the floor, a child among children, a spirit of impulse, enthusiasm and imagination, laughing with the sheer happiness of his perpetual youth.

It was a dangerous moment; he was within measurable distance of revealing himself. For a moment his clothes felt far too large for him; and only just in time did he remember his 'attitude,' and the danger of being young when he really was old, and the absurdity of being anything else than a large, sedate man of forty-five. Only he wished that Nixie would not watch him so appealingly with those starry eyes of hers . . . and look so strangely like the forms that haunted his own wild forests and streams on the other side of the Atlantic.

He stiffened quickly, drew himself up, and turned to give his elderly attention to the chorus of explanation and introduction that was already rising about him with the sound and murmur of the sea.

Something was happening.

For the floor of the room, he now perceived, had become suddenly full of movement, as though the carpet had turned alive. He felt a rubbing against his legs and ankles; with a soft thud something leaped upon the table and covered his hand with smooth, warm fur, uttering little sounds of pleasure at the same time. On the top of the piano, a thing he had taken for a heap of toys rose and stretched itself into an odd shape of straight lines and arching curves. From the window-sill, where the sun poured in, a round grey substance dropped noiselessly down upon the carpet and advanced with measured and calculated step towards him; while, from holes and hiding-places undivined, three or four little fluffy things, with padded feet and stiff pointing tails, shot out like shadows and headed straight for a row of saucers that he now noticed for the first time against the farther wall. The whole room seemed to fill with soft and graceful movement; and, mingled with the voices of the children, he caught a fine composite murmur that was soothing as the sound of flowing wind and water.

It was the sound and the movement of many animals.

'Here they are,' said a voice—'some of them. The others are lost, or out hunting.'

For the moment Paul did not stop to ask how many 'others' there were. He stood rigidly still for fear that if he moved he might tread on something living.

There came a scratching sound at the door, and Toby dashed forward to open it.

'Silly, naughty babies!' she cried, nearly tumbling over the fender in her attempt to seize two round bouncing things that came tearing into the room like a couple of yellow puddings. 'Uncle Paul has come to see you all the way from America! And then you're late like this! For shame!'

With a series of thuds and bangs that must have bruised anything not unusually well padded, the new arrivals, who looked for all the world like small fat bears, or sable muffs on short brown legs with feet of black velvet, dashed round the room in a mad chase after nothing at all. A hissing and spitting issued from dark corners and from beneath various pieces of furniture, but the two balls confined their attentions almost at once to the honoured guest. They charged up against his legs as though determined to upset his balance—this mountain of a man—and then careered clumsily round the room, knocking over anything small enough that came in their way, and behaving generally as though they wanted to clear the whole place in the shortest possible time for their own particular and immediate benefit.

Next, lifting his eyes for a moment from this impetuous attack, he saw a brilliantly coloured thing behind bars, standing apparently on its head and looking upside-down at him with an expression of undisguised and scornful amusement; while not far from it, in a cage hanging by the cuckoo clock, some one with a tail as large as his body, shot round and round on a swinging trapeze that made Paul think of a midget practising in a miniature gymnasium.

'These are our animals, you see, Uncle Paul,' Jonah announced proudly from his position by the door. There was a trace of condescension in his tone.

'We have lots of out-of-door animals as well, though,' Toby hastened to explain, lest her uncle should be disappointed.

'I suppose they're out of doors?' said Paul lamely. 'Of course they are,' replied Jonah; 'in the stables and all about.' He turned to Nixie, who stood quietly by her uncle's side in a protective way, superintending. Nixie nodded corroboration.

'Now, we'll introduce you—gradgilly,' announced Toby, stooping down and lifting with immense effort the large grey Persian that had been sleeping on the window-sill when they came in,' She held it with great difficulty in her arms and' hands, but in spite of her best efforts only a portion of it found actual support, the rest straggling away like a loosely stuffed bolster she could not encompass.

It was evidently accustomed to being dealt with thus in sections, for it continued to purr sleepily, blinking its large eyes with the usual cat-smile, and letting its head fall backwards as though it suddenly desired to examine the ceiling from an entirely fresh point of view. None of its real attention, of course, was given to the actual proceeding. It merely suffered the absurd affair—absent-mindedly and with condescension. Its whiskers moved gently.

'What's its name?' he asked kindly.

'Her name,' whispered Nixie.

'We call her Mrs. Tompkyns, because it's old now,' Toby explained, ignoring genders.

'After the head-gardener's gra'mother,' Nixie explained hastily in his ear; 'but we might change it to Uncle Paul in honour of you now, mightn't we?' 'Mrs. Uncle Paul,' corrected Jonah, looking on with slight disapproval, and anxious to get to the white mice and the squirrel.

'It would be a pity to change the name, I think,' Paul said, straightening himself up dizzily from the introduction, and watching the splendid creature fall upon its head from Toby's weakening grasp, and then march away with unperturbed dignity to its former throne upon the window-sill. 'I feel rather afraid of Mrs. Tompkyns,' he added; 'she's so very majestic.'

'Oh, you needn't be,' they cried in chorus. 'It's all put on, you know, that sort of grand manner. We knew her when she was a kitten.'

The object-lesson was not lost upon him. Of all creatures in the world, he reflected as he watched her, cats have the truest dignity. They absolutely refuse to be laughed at. No cat would ever betray its real self, yet here was he, a grown-up, intelligent man, vacillating, and on the verge already of hopeless capitulation.

'And what's the name of these persons?' he asked quickly, turning for safety to Nixie, who had her arms full of a writhing heap she had been diligently collecting from the corners of the room.

'Oh, that's only Mrs. Tompkyns' family,' exclaimed Jonah impatiently; 'the last family, I mean. She's had lots of others.'

'The last family before this was only two,' Nixie told him. 'We called them Ping and Pong. They live in the stables now. But these we call Pouf, Sambo, Spritey, Zezette, and Dumps—'

'And the next ones,' Toby broke in excitedly, 'we're going to call with the names on the engines when we go up to London to see the dentist.'

'Or the names of the Atlantic steamers wouldn't be bad,' said Paul.

'Not bad,' Jonah said, with lukewarm approval; 'only the engines would be much better.'

'There may not be any next ones,' opined Toby, emerging from beneath a sofa after a frantic, but vain, attempt to catch something alive.

Jonah snorted with contempt. 'Of course there will. They come in bunches all the time, just like grapes and chestnuts and things. Madmizelle told me so. There's no end to them. Don't they Uncle Paul?'

'I believe so,' said the authority appealed to extracting his finger with difficulty from the teeth and claws of several kittens.

There came a lull in the proceedings, the majority of the animals having escaped, and successfully concealed themselves among what Toby called 'the furchinur.' Paul was still following a prior train of reflection.

'Yes, cats are really rather wonderful creatures, he mused aloud in spite of himself, turning instinctively in the direction of Nixie. 'They possess a mysterious and superior kind of intelligence.'

For a moment it was exactly as if he had tapped his armour and said, 'Look! It's all sham!'

The child peered sharply up in his face. There was a sudden light in her eyes, and her lips were parted. He had not exactly expected her to answer, but somehow or other he was not surprised when she did. And the answer she made was just the kind of thing he knew she would say. He was annoyed with himself for having said so much.

'And they lead secret little lives somewhere else, and only let us see what they want us to see. I knew you understood really? She said it with an elfin smile that was certainly borrowed from moonlight on a mountain stream. With one fell swoop it caught him away into a world where age simply did not exist. His mind wavered deliciously. The singing in his heart was almost loud enough to be audible.

But he just saved himself. With a sudden movement he leaned forward and buried his face in the pie of kittens that nestled in her arms, letting them lose their paws for a moment in his beard. The kittens might understand, but at least they could not betray him by putting it into words. It was a narrower escape than he cared for.

'And these are the Chow puppies,' cried Jonah, breathless from a long chase after the sable muffs. 'We call them China and Japan.'

Paul welcomed the diversion. Their teeth were not nearly so sharp as the kittens', and they burrowed with their black noses into his sleeves. So thick was their fur that they seemed to have no bones at all; their dark eyes literally dripped laughter.

With an effort he put on a more sedate manner.

'You i got a lot of beasts,' he said.

'Animals,' Nixie corrected him. 'Only toads, rats, and hedgehogs are beasts. And, remember, if you're rude to an animal, as Mademoiselle Fleury was once, it only 'spises you—and then

'I beg their pardon,' he put in hurriedly; 'I quite understand, of course.'

'You see it's rather important, as they want to like you, and unless you respect them they can't, can they?' she finished earnestly.

'I do respect them, believe me, Nixie, and I appreciate their affection. Affection and respect must always go together.'

The children were wholly delighted. Paul had completely won their hearts from the very beginning. The parrot, the squirrel, and the white mice were all introduced in turn to him, and he heard sundry mysterious allusions to 'the owl in the stables,' 'Juliet and her two kids,' to say nothing of dogs, ponies, pigeons, and peacocks, that apparently dwelt in the regions of outer space, and were to be reserved for the morrow.

The performance was coming to an end. Paul was already congratulating himself upon having passed safely, if not with full credit, through a severe ordeal, when the door opened and a woman of about twenty-five, with a pleasant face full of character and intelligence, stood in the doorway. A torrent of French instantly broke loose on all sides. The woman started a little when she perceived that the children were not alone.

'Oh, Mademoiselle, this is Uncle Paul,' they cried, each in a different fashion. 'This is our Uncle Paul! He's just been introduced to the animals, and now he must be introduced to you.'

Paul shook hands with her, and the introduction passed off easily enough; the woman was charming, he saw at the first glimpse, and possessed of tact. She at once took his side and pretended to scold her charges for having plagued and bothered him so long. Evidently she was something more to them than a mere governess. The lassitude of his sister, no doubt, gave her rights and responsibilities.

But what impressed Paul when he was alone—for her simple remark that it was past bedtime was followed by sudden kisses and disappearance—was the remarkable change that her arrival had brought about in the room. It came to him with a definite little shock. It was more than significant, he felt.

And it was this: that the children, though obviously they loved her, treated her as some one] grown up and to be obeyed, whereas himself, he now realised, they had all along treated as one of themselves to whom they could be quite open and natural. His 'attitude' they had treated with respect, just as he had treated the attitude of the animals with respect, but at the same time he had been made to feel one of themselves, in their world, part and parcel of their own peculiar region. There had been nothing forced about it whatever. Whether he I liked it or not they accepted him. His 'attitude' was not regarded seriously. It was not regarded at all. And this was grave.

He was so simple that he would never have thought of this but for the entrance of the governess. Her arrival threw it all into sharp relief. Clearly the children recognised no barrier between themselves and him; he had been taken without parley straight into their holy of holies. Nixie, as leader and judge, had carried him off' at once.

And this was a very subtle and powerful compliment that made him think a great deal. He would either have to drop his armour altogether or make it very much more effective.

Indeed, it was the immediate problem in his mind as he slowly made his way downstairs to find his sister on the lawn, and satisfy her rather vague curiosity by telling her that the children had introduced him to the animals, and that he had got on famously with them all.