Day and Night Stories

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  DAY AND NIGHT STORIES

  BY ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

  Author _of_ "Ten Minute Stories," "Julius Le Vallon," "The Wave," etc.

 

  NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & CO. 681 FIFTH AVENUE

  COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY E. P. DUTTON & CO.

  Printed in the United States of America

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER PAGE

  I. THE TRYST 1

  II. THE TOUCH OF PAN 16

  III. THE WINGS OF HORUS 41

  IV. INITIATION 66

  V. A DESERT EPISODE 94

  VI. THE OTHER WING 112

  VII. THE OCCUPANT OF THE ROOM 134

  VIII. CAIN'S ATONEMENT 145

  IX. AN EGYPTIAN HORNET 154

  X. BY WATER 162

  XI. H. S. H. 171

  XII. A BIT OF WOOD 187

  XIII. A VICTIM OF HIGHER SPACE 192

  XIV. TRANSITION 216

  XV. THE TRADITION 223

  DAY AND NIGHT STORIES

  I

  THE TRYST

  "_Je suis la premiere au rendez-vous. Je vous attends._"

  As he got out of the train at the little wayside station he rememberedthe conversation as if it had been yesterday, instead of fifteen yearsago--and his heart went thumping against his ribs so violently that healmost heard it. The original thrill came over him again with all itsinfinite yearning. He felt it as he had felt it _then_--not with thattragic lessening the interval had brought to each repetition of itsmemory. Here, in the familiar scenery of its birth, he realised withmingled pain and wonder that the subsequent years had not destroyed,but only dimmed it. The forgotten rapture flamed back with all thefierce beauty of its genesis, desire at white heat. And the shock ofthe abrupt discovery shattered time. Fifteen years became a negligiblemoment; the crowded experiences that had intervened seemed but a dream.The farewell scene, the conversation on the steamer's deck, wereclear as of the day before. He saw the hand holding her big hat thatfluttered in the wind, saw the flowers on the dress where the long coatwas blown open a moment, recalled the face of a hurrying steward whohad jostled them; he even heard the voices--his own and hers:

  "Yes," she said simply; "I promise you. You have my word. I'll wait----"

  "Till I come back to find you," he interrupted.

  Steadfastly she repeated his actual words, then added: "Here; athome--that is."

  "I'll come to the garden gate as usual," he told her, trying to smile."I'll knock. You'll open the gate--as usual--and come out to me."

  These words, too, she attempted to repeat, but her voice failed, hereyes filled suddenly with tears; she looked into his face and nodded.It was just then that her little hand went up to hold the hat on--hesaw the very gesture still. He remembered that he was vehementlytempted to tear his ticket up there and then, to go ashore with her,to stay in England, to brave all opposition--when the siren roared itsthird horrible warning ... and the ship put out to sea.

  * * * * *

  Fifteen years, thick with various incident, had passed between themsince that moment. His life had risen, fallen, crashed, then risenagain. He had come back at last, fortune won by a lucky coup--atthirty-five; had come back to find her, come back, above all, to keephis word. Once every three months they had exchanged the brief letteragreed upon: "I am well; I am waiting; I am happy; I am unmarried.Yours----." For his youthful wisdom had insisted that no "man" had theright to keep "any woman" too long waiting; and she, thinking thatletter brave and splendid, had insisted likewise that he was free--iffreedom called him. They had laughed over this last phrase in theiragreement. They put five years as the possible limit of separation.By then he would have won success, and obstinate parents would havenothing more to say.

  But when the five years ended he was "on his uppers" in a westernmining town, and with the end of ten in sight those uppers, thoughchanged, were little better, apparently, than patched and mended. Andit was just then, too, that the change which had been stealing overhim betrayed itself. He realised it abruptly, a sense of shame andhorror in him. The discovery was made unconsciously--it discloseditself. He was reading her letter as a labourer on a Californian fruitfarm: "Funny she doesn't marry--some one else!" he heard himself say.The words were out before he knew it, and certainly before he couldsuppress them. They just slipped out, startling him into the truth;and he knew instantly that the thought was fathered in him by a hiddenwish.... He was older. He had lived. It was a memory he loved.

  Despising himself in a contradictory fashion--both vaguely andfiercely--he yet held true to his boyhood's promise. He did notwrite and offer to release her, as he knew they did in stories. Hepersuaded himself that he meant to keep his word. There was this fine,stupid, selfish obstinacy in his character. In any case, she wouldmisunderstand and think he wanted to set free--himself. "Besides--I'mstill--awfully fond of her," he asserted. And it was true; only thelove, it seemed, had gone its way. Not that another woman took it; hekept himself clean, held firm as steel. The love, apparently, justfaded of its own accord; her image dimmed, her letters ceased tothrill, then ceased to interest him.

  Subsequent reflection made him realise other details about himself.In the interval he had suffered hardships, had learned the uncertaintyof life that depends for its continuance on a little food, but thatfood often hard to come by, and had seen so many others go under thathe held it more cheaply than of old. The wandering instinct, too, hadcaught him, slowly killing the domestic impulse; he lost his desire fora settled place of abode, the desire for children of his own, lost thedesire to marry at all. Also--he reminded himself with a smile--he hadlost other things: the expression of youth _she_ was accustomed to andheld always in her thoughts of him, two fingers of one hand, his hair!He wore glasses, too. The gentlemen-adventurers of life get scarredin those wild places where he lived. He saw himself a rather batteredspecimen well on the way to middle age.

  There was confusion in his mind, however, _and_ in his heart: astruggling complex of emotions that made it difficult to know exactlywhat he did feel. The dominant clue concealed itself. Feelings shifted.A single, clear determinant did not offer. He was an honest fellow."I can't quite make it out," he said. "What is it I really feel? Andwhy?" His motive seemed confused. To keep the flame alight for ten longbuffeting years was no small achievement; better men had succumbed inhalf the time. Yet something in him still held fast to the girl as witha band of steel that _would_ not let her go entirely. Occasionallythere came strong reversions, when he ached with longing, yearning,hope; when he loved her again; remembered passionately each detail ofthe far-off courtship days in the forbidden rectory garden beyond thesmall, white garden gate. Or was it merely the image and the memory heloved "again"? He hardly knew himself. He could not tell. That "again"puzzled him. It was the wrong word surely.... He still wrote thepromised letter, however; it was so easy; those short sentences couldnot betray the dead or dying fires. One day, besides, he would returnand claim her. He meant to keep his word.

  And he had kept it. Here he was, this calm September afternoon, withinthree miles of the village where he first had kissed her, where themarvel of first love had come to both; three short miles between himand the little white garden gate of which at this very moment she wa
sintently thinking, and behind which some fifty minutes later she wouldbe standing, waiting for him....

  He had purposely left the train at an earlier station; he would walkover in the dusk, climb the familiar steps, knock at the white gatein the wall as of old, utter the promised words, "I have come back tofind you," enter, and--keep his word. He had written from Mexico a weekbefore he sailed; he had made careful, even accurate calculations: "Inthe dusk, on the sixteenth of September, I shall come and knock," headded to the usual sentences. The knowledge of his coming, therefore,had been in her possession seven days. Just before sailing, moreover,he had heard from her--though not in answer, naturally. She was well;she was happy; she was unmarried; she was waiting.

  And now, as by some magical process of restoration--possible to deephearts only, perhaps, though even by them quite inexplicable--the stateof first love had blazed up again in him. In all its radiant beauty itlit his heart, burned unextinguished in his soul, set body and mindon fire. The years had merely veiled it. It burst upon him, captured,overwhelmed him with the suddenness of a dream. He stepped from thetrain. He met it in the face. It took him prisoner. The familiar treesand hedges, the unchanged countryside, the "field-smells known ininfancy," all these, with something subtly added to them, rolled backthe passion of his youth upon him in a flood. No longer was he boundupon what he deemed, perhaps, an act of honourable duty; it was lovethat drove him, as it drove him fifteen years before. And it drovehim with the accumulated passion of desire long forcibly repressed;almost as if, out of some fancied notion of fairness to the girl, hehad deliberately, yet still unconsciously, said "No" to it; that _she_had not faded, but that he had decided, "_I_ must forget her." Thatsentence: "Why doesn't she marry--some one else?" had not betrayedchange in himself. It surprised another motive: "It's not fair to--her!"

  His mind worked with a curious rapidity, but worked within one circleonly. The stress of sudden emotion was extraordinary. He remembered athousand things--yet, chief among them, those occasional reversionswhen he had felt he "loved her again." Had he not, after all, deceivedhimself? Had she ever really "faded" at all? Had he not felt he oughtto let her fade--release her that way? And the change in himself?--thatsentence on the Californian fruit-farm--what did they mean? Which hadbeen true, the fading or the love?

  The confusion in his mind was hopeless, but, as a matter of fact,he did not think at all: he only _felt_. The momentum, besides, wasirresistible, and before the shattering onset of the sweet revival hedid not stop to analyse the strange result. He knew certain things, andcared to know no others: that his heart was leaping, his blood runningwith the heat of twenty, that joy recaptured him, that he must see,hear, touch her, hold her in his arms--and marry her. For the fifteenyears had crumbled to a little thing, and at thirty-five he felthimself but twenty, rapturously, deliciously in love.

  He went quickly, eagerly down the little street to the inn, stillfeeling only, not thinking anything. The vehement uprush of the oldemotion made reflection of any kind impossible. He gave no furtherthought to those long years "out there," when her name, her letters,the very image of her in his mind, had found him, if not cold, atleast without keen response. All that was forgotten as though it hadnot been. The steadfast thing in him, this strong holding to a promisewhich had never wilted, ousted the recollection of fading and decaythat, whatever caused them, certainly _had_ existed. And this steadfastthing now took command. This enduring quality in his character ledhim. It was only towards the end of the hurried tea he first receivedthe singular impression--vague, indeed, but undeniably persistent--thestrange impression that he was _being_ led.

  Yet, though aware of this, he did not pause to argue or reflect.The emotional displacement in him, of course, had been more thanconsiderable: there had been upheaval, a change whose abruptness waseven dislocating, fundamental in a sense he could not estimate--shock.Yet he took no count of anything but the one mastering desire to get toher as soon as possible, knock at the small, white garden gate, hearher answering voice, see the low wooden door swing open--take her.There was joy and glory in his heart, and a yearning sweet delight. Atthis very moment she was expecting him. And he--had come.

  Behind these positive emotions, however, there lay concealed allthe time others that were of a negative character. Consciously, hewas not aware of them, but they were there; they revealed theirpresence in various little ways that puzzled him. He recognised themabsentmindedly, as it were; did not analyse or investigate them.For, through the confusion upon his faculties, rose also a certainhint of insecurity that betrayed itself by a slight hesitancy ormiscalculation in one or two unimportant actions. There was a touchof melancholy, too, a sense of something lost. It lay, perhaps, inthat tinge of sadness which accompanies the twilight of an autumn day,when a gentler, mournful beauty veils a greater beauty that is past.Some trick of memory connected it with a scene of early boyhood, when,meaning to see the sunrise, he overslept, and, by a brief half-hour,was just--too late. He noted it merely, then passed on; he did notunderstand it; he hurried all the more, this hurry the only sign thatit _was_ noted. "I must be quick," flashed up across his stronglypositive emotions.

  And, due to this hurry, possibly, were the slight miscalculationsthat he made. They were very trivial. He rang for sugar, though thebowl stood just before his eyes, yet when the girl came in he forgotcompletely what he rang for--and inquired instead about the eveningtrains to London. And, when the time-table was laid before him, heexamined it without intelligence, then looked up suddenly into themaid's face with a question about flowers. Were there flowers to be hadin the village anywhere? What kind of flowers? "Oh, a bouquet or a"--hehesitated, searching for a word that tried to present itself, yet wasnot the word _he_ wanted to make use of--"or a wreath--of some sort?"he finished. He took the very word he did not want to take. In severalthings he did and said, this hesitancy and miscalculation betrayedthemselves--such trivial things, yet significant in an elusive way thathe disliked. There was sadness, insecurity somewhere in them. And heresented them, aware of their existence only because they qualifiedhis joy. There was a whispered "No" floating somewhere in the dusk.Almost--he felt disquiet. He hurried, more and more eager to be offupon his journey--the final part of it.

  Moreover, there were other signs of an odd miscalculation--dislocation,perhaps, properly speaking--in him. Though the inn was familiar fromhis boyhood days, kept by the same old couple, too, he volunteeredno information about himself, nor asked a single question about thevillage he was bound for. He did not even inquire if the rector--herfather--still were living. And when he left he entirely neglected thegilt-framed mirror above the mantelpiece of plush, dusty pampas-grassin waterless vases on either side. It did not matter, apparently,whether he looked well or ill, tidy or untidy. He forgot that whenhis cap was off the absence of thick, accustomed hair must alter himconsiderably, forgot also that two fingers were missing from one hand,the right hand, the hand that she would presently clasp. Nor did itoccur to him that he wore glasses, which must change his expressionand add to the appearance of the years he bore. None of these obviousand natural things seemed to come into his thoughts at all. He wasin a hurry to be off. He did not think. But, though his mind may nothave noted these slight betrayals with actual sentences, his attitude,nevertheless, expressed them. This was, it seemed, the _feeling_ inhim: "What could such details matter to her _now_? Why, indeed, shouldhe give to them a single thought? It was himself she loved and waitedfor, not separate items of his external, physical image." As well thinkof the fact that she, too, must have altered--outwardly. It never onceoccurred to him. Such details were of To-day.... He was only impatientto come to her quickly, very quickly, instantly, if possible. Hehurried.

  There was a flood of boyhood's joy in him. He paid for his tea, givinga tip that was twice the price of the meal, and set out gaily andimpetuously along the winding lane. Charged to the brim with a sweetpicture of a small, white garden gate, the loved face close behind it,he went forward at a headlong pace, singi
ng "Nancy Lee" as he used tosing it fifteen years before.

  With action, then, the negative sensations hid themselves, obliteratedby the positive ones that took command. The former, however, merely layconcealed; they waited. Thus, perhaps, does vital emotion, overlongrestrained, denied, indeed, of its blossoming altogether, take revenge.Repressed elements in his psychic life asserted themselves, selecting,as though naturally, a dramatic form.

  The dusk fell rapidly, mist rose in floating strips along the meadowsby the stream; the old, familiar details beckoned him forwards, thendrove him from behind as he went swiftly past them. He recognisedothers rising through the thickening air beyond; they nodded, peered,and whispered; sometimes they almost sang. And each added to his innerhappiness; each brought its sweet and precious contribution, and builtit into the reconstructed picture of the earlier, long-forgottenrapture. It was an enticing and enchanted journey that he made,something impossibly blissful in it, something, too, that seemedcuriously--inevitable.

  For the scenery had not altered all these years, the details of thecountry were unchanged, everything he saw was rich with dear andprecious association, increasing the momentum of the tide that carriedhim along. Yonder was the stile over whose broken step he had helpedher yesterday, and there the slippery plank across the stream whereshe looked above her shoulder to ask for his support; he saw thevery bramble bushes where she scratched her hand, a-blackberrying,the day before ... and, finally, the weather-stained signpost, "Tothe Rectory." It pointed to the path through the dangerous fieldwhere Farmer Sparrow's bull provided such a sweet excuse for holding,leading--protecting her. From the entire landscape rose a steam ofrecent memory, each incident alive, each little detail brimmed with itscargo of fond association.

  He read the rough black lettering on the crooked arm--it was ratherfaded, but he knew it too well to miss a single letter--and hurriedforward along the muddy track; he looked about him for a sign of FarmerSparrow's bull; he even felt in the misty air for the little hand thathe might take and lead her into safety. The thought of her drew him onwith such irresistible anticipation that it seemed as if the cumulativedrive of vanished and unsated years evoked the tangible phantom almost.He actually felt it, soft and warm and clinging in his own, that was nolonger incomplete and mutilated.

  Yet it was not he who led and guided now, but, more and more, he whowas being led. The hint had first betrayed its presence at the inn;it now openly declared itself. It had crossed the frontier into apositive sensation. Its growth, swiftly increasing all this time, hadaccomplished itself; he had ignored, somehow, both its genesis andquick development; the result he plainly recognised. She was expectinghim, indeed, but it was more than expectation; there was calling init--she summoned him. Her thought and longing reached him along thatold, invisible track love builds so easily between true, faithfulhearts. All the forces of her being, her very voice, came towards himthrough the deepening autumn twilight. He had not noticed the curiousphysical restoration in his hand, but he was vividly aware of this moremagical alteration--that _she_ led and guided him, drawing him evermore swiftly towards the little, white garden gate where she stood atthis very moment, waiting. Her sweet strength compelled him; there wasthis new touch of something irresistible about the familiar journey,where formerly had been delicious yielding only, shy, tentativeadvance. He realised it--inevitable.

  His footsteps hurried, faster and ever faster; so deep was theallurement in his blood, he almost ran. He reached the narrow, windinglane, and raced along it. He knew each bend, each angle of the hollyhedge, each separate incident of ditch and stone. He could have plungedblindfold down it at top speed. The familiar perfumes rushed athim--dead leaves and mossy earth and ferns and dock leaves, bringingthe bewildering currents of strong emotion in him all together as ina rising wave. He saw, then, the crumbling wall, the cedars toppingit with spreading branches, the chimneys of the rectory. On his rightbulked the outline of the old, grey church; the twisted, ancient yews,the company of gravestones, upright and leaning, dotting the groundlike listening figures. But he looked at none of these. For, on hisleft, he already saw the five rough steps of stone that led from thelane towards a small, white garden gate. That gate at last shone beforehim, rising through the misty air. He reached it.

  He stopped dead a moment. His heart, it seemed, stopped too, then tookto violent hammering in his brain. There was a roaring in his mind, andyet a marvellous silence--just behind it. Then the roar of emotion diedaway. There was utter stillness. This stillness, silence, was all abouthim. The world seemed preternaturally quiet.

  But the pause was too brief to measure. For the tide of emotion hadreceded only to come on again with redoubled power. He turned, leapedforward, clambered impetuously up the rough stone steps, and flunghimself, breathless and exhausted, against the trivial barrier thatstood between his eyes and--hers. In his wild, half violent impatience,however, he stumbled. That roaring, too, confused him. He fell forward,it seemed, for twilight had merged in darkness, and he misjudged thesteps, the distances he yet knew so well. For a moment, certainly, helay at full length upon the uneven ground against the wall; the stepshad tripped him. And then he raised himself and knocked. His right handstruck upon the small, white garden gate. Upon the two lost fingers hefelt the impact. "I am here," he cried, with a deep sound in his throatas though utterance was choked and difficult. "I have come back--tofind you."

  For a fraction of a second he waited, while the world stood still andwaited with him. But there was no delay. Her answer came at once: "I amwell.... I am happy.... I am waiting."

  And the voice was dear and marvellous as of old. Though the wordswere strange, reminding him of something dreamed, forgotten, lost,it seemed, he did not take special note of them. He only wonderedthat she did not open instantly that he might see her. Speech couldfollow, but sight came surely first! There was this lightning-flashof disappointment in him. Ah, she was lengthening out the marvellousmoment, as often and often she had done before. It was to tease himthat she made him wait. He knocked again; he pushed against theunyielding surface. For he noticed that it was unyielding; and therewas a depth in the tender voice that he could not understand.

  "Open!" he cried again, but louder than before. "I have come back tofind you!" And as he said it the mist struck cold and thick against hisface.

  But her answer froze his blood.

  "I cannot open."

  And a sudden anguish of despair rose over him; the sound of her voicewas strange; in it was faintness, distance--as well as depth. It seemedto echo. Something frantic seized him then--the panic sense.

  "Open, open! Come out to me!" he tried to shout. His voice failedoddly; there was no power in it. Something appalling struck him betweenthe eyes. "For God's sake, open. I'm waiting here! Open, and come outto me!"

  The reply was muffled by distance that already seemed increasing; hewas conscious of freezing cold about him--in his heart.

  "I cannot open. You must come in to me. I'm here and--waiting--always."

  He knew not exactly then what happened, for the cold grew deeper andthe icy mist was in his throat. No words would come. He rose to hisknees, and from his knees to his feet. He stooped. With all his forcehe knocked again; in a blind frenzy of despair he hammered and beatagainst the unyielding barrier of the small, white garden gate. Hebattered it till the skin of his knuckles was torn and bleeding--thefirst two fingers of a hand already mutilated. He remembers the tornand broken skin, for he noticed in the gloom that stains upon thegate bore witness to his violence; it was not till afterwards thathe remembered the other fact--that the hand had already sufferedmutilation, long, long years ago. The power of sound was feebly inhim; he called aloud; there was no answer. He tried to scream, but thescream was muffled in his throat before it issued properly; it was anightmare scream. As a last resort he flung himself bodily upon theunyielding gate, with such precipitate violence, moreover, that hisface struck against its surface.

  From the friction, then, along the whole length
of his cheek he knewthat the surface was not smooth. Cold and rough that surface was; butalso--it was not of wood. Moreover, there was writing on it he had notseen before. How he deciphered it in the gloom, he never knew. Thelettering was deeply cut. Perhaps he traced it with his fingers; hisright hand certainly lay stretched upon it. He made out a name, a date,a broken verse from the Bible, and the words, "died peacefully." Thelettering was sharply cut with edges that were new. For the date was ofa week ago; the broken verse ran, "When the shadows flee away ..." andthe small, white garden gate was unyielding because it was of--stone.

  * * * * *

  At the inn he found himself staring at a table from which the teathings had not been cleared away. There was a railway time-table inhis hands, and his head was bent forwards over it, trying to decipherthe lettering in the growing twilight. Beside him, still fingering ashilling, stood the serving-girl; her other hand held a brown traywith a running dog painted upon its dented surface. It swung to andfro a little as she spoke, evidently continuing a conversation hercustomer had begun. For she was giving information--in the colourless,disinterested voice such persons use:

  "We all went to the funeral, sir, all the country people went. Thegrave was her father's--the family grave...." Then, seeing that hercustomer was too absorbed in the time-table to listen further, she saidno more but began to pile the tea things on to the tray with noisyclatter.

  Ten minutes later, in the road, he stood hesitating. The signal atthe station just opposite was already down. The autumn mist was rising.He looked along the winding road that melted away into the distance,then slowly turned and reached the platform just as the London traincame in. He felt very old--too old to walk six miles....