The Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood. Algernon Blackwood

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СКАЧАТЬ even hint about it. So far the whole thing had gone splendidly and easily, like floating a new company with the rosiest prospectus in the world; but the moment must arrive when profits and dividends would have to justify mere talk. Concrete results would be demanded. If not forthcoming, where would his position be?

      Yet, still the flood of questions, answers, explanations flowed on without the critical sentence making its appearance. He had led them well—so far. How in the world, though, was he to keep it up, and provide definite result at the end?

      Then suddenly the truth dawned upon him. It was not he who led after all; it was they. He was being led. They knew. They understood. The reins of management lay in their small capable hands, and he had never really held them at all. Most cleverly, with utmost delicacy, they had concealed from him his real position. They were Directors, he the merest shareholder, useful only for 'calls.' The awkward question that he feared would never come, but instead he would receive instructions. 'Keep close to the children; they will guide you.' The words flashed back. He was a helpless prisoner; but had only just discovered the fact. He supplied the funds; they did the construction. Their plans and schemes netted his feet in fairyland just as surely as the weight of their little warm, soft bodies fastened him to the boulder where he sat. He could not move. He could not go further without their will and leadership.

      But his captivity was utterly delightful to him….

      The sound of a deep bell from the Colombier towers floated in to them between the trees. The children sprang from his knees. He rose slowly, a little cramped and stiff.

      'Half-past six,' said Jimbo. 'We must go back for supper.'

      He stood there a moment, stretching, while the others waited, staring up at him as though he were a tree. And he felt like a big tree; they were two wild-flowers his great roots sheltered down below.

      And at that moment, in the little pause before they linked up arms and started home again, the Question of Importance came, though not in the way he had expected it would come.

      'Cousinenry, do you sleep very tightly at night, please?' Monkey asked it, but Jimbo stepped up nearer to watch the reply.

      'Like a top,' he said, wondering.

      Signals he tried vainly to intercept flashed between the pair of them.

      'Why do you ask?' as nothing further seemed forthcoming.

      'Oh, just to know,' she explained. 'It's all right.'

      'Yes, it's quite all right like that,' added Jimbo. And without more ado they took his arms and pulled him out of the forest.

      And Henry Rogers heard something deep, deep down within himself echo the verdict.

      'I think it is all right.'

      On the way home there were no puddles, but there were three pairs of eyes—and the stars were uncommonly thick overhead. The children asked him almost as many questions as there were clusters of them between the summits of Boudry and La Tourne. All three went floundering in that giant Net. It was so different, too, from anything they had been accustomed to. Their father's stories, answers, explanations, and the like, were ineffective because they always felt he did not quite believe them himself even while he gave them. He did not think he believed them, that is. But Cousin Henry talked of stars and star- stuff as though he had some in his pocket at the moment. And, of course, he had. For otherwise they would not have listened. He could not have held their attention.

      They especially liked the huge, ridiculous words he used, because such words concealed great mysteries that pulsed with wonder and exquisitely wound them up. Daddy made things too clear. The bones of impossibility were visible. They saw thin nakedness behind the explanations, till the sense of wonder faded. They were not babies to be fed with a string of one-syllable words!

      Jimbo kept silence mostly, his instinct ever being to conceal his ignorance; but Monkey talked fifteen to the dozen, filling the pauses with long 'ohs' and bursts of laughter and impudent observations. Yet her cheeky insolence never crossed the frontier where it could be resented. Her audacity stopped short of impertinence.

      'There's a point beyond which—' her cousin would say gravely, when she grew more daring than usual; and, while answering 'It'll stick into you, then, not into me,' she yet withdrew from the borders of impertinence at once.

      'What is star-stuff really then?' she asked.

      'The primordial substance of the universe,' he answered solemnly, no whit ashamed of his inaccuracy.

      'Ah yes!' piped Jimbo, quietly. Ecole primaire he understood. This must be something similar.

      'But what does it do, I mean, and why is it good for people to have it in them—on them—whatever it is?' she inquired.

      'It gives sympathy and insight; it's so awfully subtle and delicate,' he answered. 'A little of it travels down on every ray and soaks down into you. It makes you feel inclined to stick to other people and understand them. That's sympathy.'

      'Sympathie,' said Jimbo for his sister's benefit apparently, but in reality because he himself was barely treading water.

      'But sympathy,' the other went on, 'is no good without insight—which means seeing things as others see them—from inside. That's insight—- '

      'Inside sight,' she corrected him.

      'That's it. You see, the first stuff that existed in the universe was this star-stuff—nebulae. Having nothing else to stick to, it stuck to itself, and so got thicker. It whirled in vortices. It grew together in sympathy, for sympathy brings together. It whirled and twirled round itself till it got at last into solid round bodies—worlds— stars. It passed, that is, from mere dreaming into action. And when the rays soak into you, they change your dreaming into action. You feel the desire to do things—for others.'

      'Ah! yes,' repeated Jimbo, 'like that.'

      'You must be full of vorty seas, then, because you're so long,' said

       Monkey, 'but you'll never grow into a solid round body——'

      He took a handful of her hair and smothered the remainder of the sentence.

      'The instant a sweet thought is born in your mind,' he continued, 'the heavenly stables send their starry messengers to harness it for use. A ray, perhaps, from mighty Sirius picks it out of your heart at birth.'

      'Serious!' exclaimed Jimbo, as though the sun were listening.

      'Sirius—another sun, that is, far bigger than our own—a perfect giant, yet so far away you hardly notice him.'

      The boy clasped his dirty fingers and stared hard. The sun was listening.

      'Then what I think is known—like that—all over the place?' he asked. He held himself very straight indeed.

      'Everywhere,' replied Cousinenry gravely. 'The stars flash your thoughts over the whole universe. None are ever lost. Sooner or later they appear in visible shape. Some one, for instance, must have thought this flower long ago'—he stooped and picked a blue hepatica at their feet—'or it couldn't be growing here now.'

      Jimbo accepted the statement with his usual gravity.

      'Then I shall always think enormous and tremendous things—powerful СКАЧАТЬ