The Collected Novels of Algernon Blackwood (11 Titles in One Edition). Algernon Blackwood

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The Collected Novels of Algernon Blackwood (11 Titles in One Edition) - Algernon  Blackwood

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the kind of thought—that the personality had indulged on earth. The things that Nixie 'imagined' and yearned for, she found.

      His communion with her became, as time passed, more frequent and more real, and soon ceased to confine itself only to the quiet night hours. She was with him all day long, whenever he needed her. She guided him in a thousand unimportant details of his life, as well as in the bigger interests of his work in London with his waifs. And in murky London she was just as close to him as in the perfumed stillness of the Dorsetshire garden, or in the retirement of his own chamber. . . .

      And one singular feature of their alliance was that it continued even in sleep. For, sometimes, he would wake in the morning after what had been apparently a dreamless night, yet later in the day there would steal over him the memory of a long talk he had enjoyed with the child during the hours of so-called unconsciousness. Dreams, forgotten in the morning, often, of course, return in this fashion during the day. There is nothing new or unusual in it. Only with him it became so frequent that he now rose to the day's work with a delightful sense of anticipation: 'Perhaps later in the day I shall remember! Perhaps we have been together all night!'

      And in this connection he came to notice two things: first, that after these nights together, at first forgotten, he woke wonderfully refreshed, blessed, peaceful in mind and body; and secondly, that what recalled the conversation later was always contact with some object or other that had been associated with the child. Thus—the picturesquely-mended socks, the medicine bottle for scratches, or the spray of birch leaves, now preserved between the pages of his Blake, never failed in this latter respect.

      It was curious, too, how the alliance persisted and fortified itself during the repose of the body; as though, during sleep, the eternal portion of himself with which the child communed, enjoyed a greater measure of freedom. It recalled the closing lines of a sonnet he had always admired, though his own experience was true in a literal sense hardly contained, probably, in the heart of the poetess:

      But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,

       When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,

       And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,

      Must doff my will as raiment laid away—

       With the first dream that comes with the first sleep I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart.

      He filled a book with these talks as the years passed, though to give them in more detail could serve little purpose but to satisfy a possible curiosity. They had value and authority for himself, but for the majority might seem to contain little sense, or even coherence. They expressed, of course, his own personal interpretation of life and the universe. And this was quite possibly poetic, queer, fantastic—for others. Yet it was his own. He had learned his own values in his own way, and was now engaged in sorting them out with Nixie's fairy help to guide him. And all souls that find themselves probably do likewise. The strength and blessing they shed about them as a result is beneficial, but the close details of the process by which they have 'arrived' can only seem to the world at large unintelligible, possibly even ridiculous; and this late interior blossoming of Uncle Paul, though it actually happened, must seem to many a tissue of dreams knit together with a strange fantastic nonsense.

      CHAPTER XXIX

       Table of Contents

      Donnez vos yeux, donnez vos mains,

       Donnez vos mains surnaturelles;

       Pour me conduire aux lendemains

       Donnez vos yeux, donnez vos mains,

       Vos mains comme deux roses freles.

      And thus, as the region where he met and held communion with the freed child seemed to draw deeper and deeper into his interior being, the reality and value of the experience increased.

      That there was some kind of definite external link, however, was equally true; for the cats, as well as certain other of the animals, most certainly were aware sometimes of her presence. They showed it in many and curious ways. But it was distinctly a shock to Paul to learn one day from his sister that queer stories were afoot concerning himself; that some of the simple country folk declared they had seen 'Mr Rivers walking with a young lady that was jest like Miss Nixie, only taller,' who disappeared, however, the moment the observer approached. And the way the household felt her presence was, perhaps, not less remarkable, for more than one of the servants gave notice because the house had become 'haunted,' and there had been seen a 'smallish white figure, shiny and dancing,' in his bedroom, or going down the corridor towards his study.

      Perhaps the glamour of his vivid creative thought had cast its effect upon these untrained imaginations, so that his vision was temporarily communicated to them too. Or, perhaps, they had actually seen what they described. But, whatever the explanation may be, the effect upon himself was to increase, if that were possible, the reality of the whole occurrence. . . .

      And when the spring came round again with its charged memories of perfume, and sight, and the singing of its happy winds; when the tree-spirits returned to their garden haunts, all flaming with the beauty of new dresses gathered over-seas; when the silver birch tree combed out her glittering hair to the sun and shook her leaves in the very face of that old pine tree—then Paul felt in himself, too, the rejuvenation that was going forward in all the world around him. He tasted in his heart all the regenerative forces that were bursting into form and energy with the spring, and knew that the pain and desolation he had felt temporarily in the winter were only spiritual growing-pains and the passing distress of a soul forging its way outwards through development to the best possible Expression it could achieve.

      For Nixie came back, too, gay and glorious like the rest of the world—sometimes dressed in blossoms of lilac or laburnum, sometimes with skirts of daisies and feet resting upon the Little Winds, sometimes with the soft hood of darkness over her head, the cloak of night about her shoulders, the stars caught all shivering in her hair, and dusk in the deeps of her eyes. . . .

      His life became 'inner' in the best sense—a Life within a Life; not given over to useless dreaming, but ever drawing from the inner one the sustenance that provided the driving force for the outer one: the mystic as man of action!

      The Wind of Inspiration blew for him now always, and steadily; but it was no longer the little wind that stirred the measure of his personal emotion into stammering verse, but the big, eternal wind that 'blew the stars to flame,' and at the same time impelled him irresistibly along the path of High A'venture to the Joss of Self in work for others. . .

      'Then why is it we are in the body—and spend so much time there?' he asked in one of those intimate and mysterious conversations he held with the child to the very end of his life. 'Why need the soul descend to such clumsy confinings?'

      For their talk was very close now about 'real things,' and neither found any difficulty in the words of question or answer.

      'To get experience that can only be got through the pains of limitation,' the answer sang within him, as he lay there upon the lawn beneath the cedars, absorbing the spring beauty. 'Everything is doing the same thing everywhere—from Smoke, Mrs. Tompkyns and Madmerzelle, right up to you, me, Daddy, and the waifs! They all have a bit of Reality in them working upwards to God. Even stones and plants and trees are learning experiences they could learn only in those particular forms—'

      'I know it! Of course, I know it!' Paul interrupted, with a rush of joy

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