The Collected Novels of Algernon Blackwood (11 Titles in One Edition). Algernon Blackwood
horizon, he read his sister's invitation and found it charming. There was spontaneous affection in it.
'We shall fix things up between us so that no one would ever know.' He did not explain what it was 'no one would ever know,' but went on to finish the letter. He was to make his home with her in the country, he read, until he decided what to do with himself. The tone of the letter made his heart bound. It was a real welcome, and he responded to it instantly like a boy. Only one thing in it seriously disturbed his equanimity. Absurd as it may seem, the fact that his sister's welcome included also that of the children, had a subtly disquieting effect upon him.
... for they are dying to see you and to find out for themselves what the big old uncle they have heard so much about is really like. All their animals are being cleaned and swept so as to be ready for your arrival, and, in anticipation of your stories of the backwoods, no other tales find favour with them any more.
An expression of perplexity puckered his face. 'I declare, I'm afraid of those children—Dick's children!' he thought, holding the open letter to his mouth and squinting down the page, while his eyebrows rose and his forehead broke into lines. 'They'll find out what I am. They'll betray me. I shall never be able to hold out against them. 'He knew only too well how searching was the appeal that all growing and immature life made to him. It touched the very centre of him that had refused to grow up and that made him young with itself. 'I can no more resist them than I could resist the baby bears, or that little lynx that used to eat out' of my hand.' He shrugged his big shoulders, looking genuinely distressed. 'And then every one will know what I am—an overgrown boy—a dumb poet—a dreamer of dreams that bear no fruit!'
He was not morbidly introspective. He was merely trying to face the little problem squarely. He got up and staggered across the cabin, steadying himself against the rolling of the ship in front of the looking-glass.
'Big Old Uncle!'
He stuffed the letter into his pocket and surveyed himself critically. Big he certainly was, but that other adjective brought with it a sensation of weariness that had never yet troubled him in his wilderness existence. He was only a little, just a very little, on the shady side of forty-five, but to the children he might seem really old, aged^ and to his sister, who was considerably his junior, as elderly, "and perhaps in need of the comforts of the elderly. He squared his shoulders and looked more closely into the glass. There, opposite to him, stood a tall, dignified man in a blue suit, with a spotless linen collar and a neat tie passing through a gold ring, instead of the unkempt fellow he was accustomed to in a flannel shirt, red handkerchief and big sombrero hat pulled over his eyes; a man weighing the best part of fifteen stones, lean, well-knit, vigorous, and nearly six feet three in his socks. A pair of brown eyes, kindly brown eyes he thought, met his own questioningly, and a brown beard—yes, it was still brown—covered the lower part of the face. He put up a hand to stroke it, and noticed that it was a strong, muscular hand, sunburnt but well kept, with neat finger-nails, and a heavy signet ring on one finger. It brushed across the rather deep lines on the bronzed forehead, without brushing them away, however, and then travelled higher to the rough parting in the dark-brown hair, and the hair, he noticed, was brushed in a particular way evidently, a way he thought no one would notice but himself and the lumber-camp barber who first taught him, so as to cover up a few places where the wind made little chilly feelings in winter-time under his fur cap.
Old? No, not old yet—but "getting on" was a gentler phrase he could not deny, and there were certainly odd traces where the crows had walked on his skin while he slept in the forest, and had hopped up even to the corners of his eyes to see if he were really asleep. There were other lines, too—lines of exposure, traced by wind and sun, and one or two queer marks that are said only to come from prolonged hardship and severest want. For he had known both sides of the wilderness life, and on his long journeys Nature had not always been kind to him.
He stared for a long time at his reflection in the glass, lost in reverie. This coming back to England after so many years was like looking at a picture of himself as he was when he had left; it furnished him with a ready standard of comparison; the changes of the years stood out very sharply, as though they had come about in a single night.
Yes, his face and figure had aged a good deal. He admitted it. And when he frowned he had distinctly an appearance of middle age. This, of course, was the absurd part of it, for in spirit he had remained as young as he was at twenty, as enthusiastic, hopeful, spontaneous as ever, just as much in love with the world, and just as full of boyhood's dreams as when he went to Cambridge. And in his eyes still burned the strange flames that sought to pierce behind the veil of appearances.
'And those children will find it out and make me look ridiculous before I've been there a week!' he exclaimed again, sitting down on his bunk with a crash as the steamer gave a sudden lurch; 'and then where shall I be, I'd like to know?'
He lay on his back for an hour thinking out a plan of action. For, of course, he decided that he must go; only—he must go disguised. And he spent hours inventing the disguise, and more hours perfecting it. For the first time in his life he would adopt a distinct attitude, and, having carefully thought out the attitude he intended to adopt by way of disguise, he buckled it on like armour and fastened it very securely indeed to his large person.
He would be kind; he would even meet the children half-way, kiss them if necessary at stated times, in a stated way, and perhaps occasionally unbend a little as opportunity served and circumstances permitted. But never must he forget, or allow them to forget, that he was a stiff and elderly man, a little grim and gruff, sometimes even severe and short-tempered, and never to be trifled with at any time, or under any conditions.
Over the tenderer emotions he must keep especial watch; these were a direct channel to his secrets, and once the old unsatisfied enthusiasms escaped, there was no saying what might happen. The thought frightened him, for the pain involved might be very great indeed.
With people of his own age, he realised, the danger would be less. Silence and reserve cover a multitude of shortcomings. But children, he knew, had a simple audacity, a merciless penetration, that no mere pose could ever withstand. And this he felt intuitively, knowing nothing of children, but being taught by these very qualities in himself. Like little animals they would soon find the direct channel to his heart unless well guarded, and come tumbling along it without delay. And then!
So Paul Rivers left London the very next day, glad in many ways to think that he had this haven of refuge to go to from the noisy horror of the huge strange city; yet with a sinking of his heart lest his true self should be discovered, and held up to scorn.
Moreover, the strange part of it was that as he sped down through the smiling green country that spring afternoon, armed from head to foot in the rigid steel casings of his disguise, he seemed to hear a faint singing deep within him, a singing that belonged to the youngest part of him and yet sprang from that which was vastly ancient, but as to the cause of which he was so puzzled that, in his efforts to analyse it, he forgot about his journey altogether, and was nearly carried past the station where he had to get out.
CHAPTER IV
No man worth his spiritual salt can ever become really entangled in locality.
—A. H. L.
The house, like the description of himself in the letter, was big and old. It consisted of three rambling wings, each added at a different period to an original farmhouse, and was thus full of unexpected staircases, sudden rising passages, and rooms of queer shapes. It resembled, indeed, the structure of a mind that has grown by chance and not by system, and was just as difficult for a stranger to find his way in.
It stood among pine-woods, at the foot of hills that ran on another five miles to drop their chalk cliffs abruptly into the sea. Where the lawns stopped on one side and the kitchen-garden on the other began an expanse of undulating heather-land, dotted with pools of brown water and yellow with patches of gorse and broom. Here rabbits increased and multiplied; sea-gulls screamed and flew, using some of the more