Jimbo: A Fantasy
by Algernon Blackwood · English · Gutenberg #30974 · 293,060 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Jimbo: A Fantasy
Author: Algernon Blackwood
Release date: January 15, 2010 [eBook #30974]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30974
Credits: Produced by David Clarke, S.D., and the Online Distributed
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JIMBO: A FANTASY ***
Produced by David Clarke, S.D., and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
JIMBO
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA . MADRAS
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO
DALLAS . ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
OF CANADA, LIMITED
TORONTO
JIMBO
A FANTASY
_By_
ALGERNON
BLACKWOOD
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1930
COPYRIGHT
_First Published_ 1909
_The Caravan Library_ 1930
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. "RABBITS" 7
II. MISS LAKE COMES--AND GOES 24
III. THE SHOCK 40
IV. ON THE EDGE OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS 49
V. INTO THE EMPTY HOUSE 54
VI. HIS COMPANION IN PRISON 69
VII. THE SPELL OF THE EMPTY HOUSE 87
VIII. THE GALLERY OF ANCIENT MEMORIES 102
IX. THE MEANS OF ESCAPE 111
X. THE PLUNGE 131
XI. THE FIRST FLIGHT 142
XII. THE FOUR WINDS 153
XIII. PLEASURES OF FLIGHT 165
XIV. AN ADVENTURE 177
XV. THE CALL OF THE BODY 193
XVI. PREPARATION 204
XVII. OFF! 219
XVIII. HOME 232
JIMBO
CHAPTER I
"RABBITS"
Jimbo's governess ought to have known better--but she didn't. If she
had, Jimbo would never have met with the adventures that subsequently
came to him. Thus, in a roundabout sort of way, the child ought to have
been thankful to the governess; and perhaps, in a roundabout sort of
way, he was. But that comes at the far end of the story, and is doubtful
at best; and in the meanwhile the child had gone through his suffering,
and the governess had in some measure expiated her fault; so that at
this stage it is only necessary to note that the whole business began
because the Empty House happened to be really an Empty House--not the
one Jimbo's family lived in, but another of which more will be known in
due course.
Jimbo's father was a retired Colonel, who had married late in life, and
now lived all the year round in the country; and Jimbo was the youngest
child but one. The Colonel, lean in body as he was sincere in mind, an
excellent soldier but a poor diplomatist, loved dogs, horses, guns and
riding-whips. He also really understood them. His neighbours, had they
been asked, would have called him hard-headed, and so far as a
soft-hearted man may deserve the title, he probably was. He rode two
horses a day to hounds with the best of them, and the stiffer the
country the better he liked it. Besides his guns, dogs and horses, he
was also very fond of his children. It was his hobby that he understood
them far better than his wife did, or than any one else did, for that
matter. The proper evolution of their differing temperaments had no
difficulties for him. The delicate problems of child-nature, which defy
solution by nine parents out of ten, ceased to exist the moment he
spread out his muscular hand in a favourite omnipotent gesture and
uttered some extraordinarily foolish generality in that thunderous,
good-natured voice of his. The difficulty for himself vanished when he
ended up with the words, "Leave that to me, my dear; believe me, I know
best!" But for all else concerned, and especially for the child under
discussion, this was when the difficulty really began.
Since, however, the Colonel, after this chapter, mounts his best hunter
and disappears over a high hedge into space so far as our story is
concerned, any further delineation of his wholesome but very ordinary
type is unnecessary.
One winter's evening, not very long after Christmas, the Colonel made a
discovery. It alarmed him a little; for it suggested to his cocksure
mind that he did not understand _all_ his children as comprehensively as
he imagined.
Between five o'clock tea and dinner--that magic hour when lessons were
over and the big house was full of shadows and mystery--there came a
timid knock at the study door.
"Come in," growled the soldier in his deepest voice, and a little girl's
face, wreathed in tumbling brown hair, poked itself hesitatingly through
the opening.
The Colonel did not like being disturbed at this hour, and everybody in
the house knew it; but the spell of Christmas holidays was still somehow
in the air, and the customary order was not yet fully re-established.
Moreover, when he saw who the intruder was, his growl modified itself
into a sort of common sternness that yet was not cleverly enough
simulated to deceive the really intuitive little person who now stood
inside the room.
"Well, Nixie, child, what do you want now?"
"Please, father, will you--we wondered if----"
A chorus of whispers issued from the other side of the door:
"Go on, silly!"
"Out with it!"
"You promised you would, Nixie."
"... if you would come and play Rabbits with us?" came the words in a
desperate rush, with laughter not far behind.
The big man with the fierce white moustaches glared over the top of his
glasses at the intruders as if amazed beyond belief at the audacity of
the request.
"Rabbits!" he exclaimed, as though the mere word ought to have caused an
instant explosion. "Rabbits!"
"Oh, _please_ do."
"Rabbits at this time of night!" he repeated. "I never heard of such a
thing. Why, all good rabbits are asleep in their holes by now. And you
ought to be in yours too by rights, I'm sure."
"We don't sleep in holes, father," said the owner of the brown hair, who
was acting as leader.
"And there's still a nour before bedtime, _really_," added a voice in
the rear.
The big man slowly put his glasses down and looked at his watch. He
looked very savage, but of course it was all pretence, and the children
knew it. "If he was _really_ cross he'd pretend to be nice," they
whispered to each other, with merciless perception.
"Well--" he began. But he who hesitates, with children, is lost. The
door flung open wide, and the troop poured into the room in a medley of
long black legs, flying hair and outstretched hands. They surrounded the
table, swarmed upon his big knees, shut his stupid old book, tried on
his glasses, kissed him, and fell to discussing the game breathlessly
all at once, as though it had already begun.
This, of course, ended the battle, and the big man had to play the part
of the Monster Rabbit in a wonderful game of his own invention. But
when, at length, it was all over, and they were gathered panting round
the fire of blazing logs in the hall, the Monster Rabbit--the only one
with any breath at his command--looked up and spoke.
"Where's Jimbo?" he asked.
"Upstairs."
"Why didn't he come and play too?"
"He didn't want to."
"Why? What's he doing?"
Several answers were forthcoming.
"Nothing in p'tickler."
"Talking to the furniture when I last saw him."
"Just thinking, as usual, or staring in the fire."
None of the answers seemed to satisfy the Monster Rabbit, for when he
kissed them a little later and said good-night, he gave orders, with a
graver face, for Jimbo to be sent down to the study before he went to
bed. Moreover, he called him "James," which was a sure sign of parental
displeasure.
"James, why didn't you come and play with your brothers and sisters just
now?" asked the Colonel, as a dreamy-eyed boy of about eight, with a mop
of dark hair and a wistful expression, came slowly forward into the
room.
"I was in the middle of making pictures."
"Where--what--making pictures?"
"In the fire."
"James," said the Colonel in a serious tone, "don't you know that you
are getting too old now for that sort of thing? If you dream so much,
you'll fall asleep altogether some fine day, and never wake up again.
Just think what that means!"
The child smiled faintly and moved up confidingly between his father's
knees, staring into his eyes without the least sign of fear. But he said
nothing in reply. His thoughts were far away, and it seemed as if the
effort to bring them back into the study and to a consideration of his
father's words was almost beyond his power.
"You must run about more," pursued the soldier, rubbing his big hands
together briskly, "and join your brothers and sisters in their games.
Lie about in the summer and dream a bit if you like, but now it's
winter, you must be more active, and make your blood circulate
healthily,--er--and all that sort of thing."
The words were kindly spoken, but the voice and manner rather
deliberate. Jimbo began to look a little troubled, as his father watched
him.
"Come now, little man," he said more gently, "what's the matter, eh?"
He drew the boy close to him. "Tell me all about it, and what it is
you're always thinking about so much."
Jimbo brought back his mind with a tremendous effort, and said, "I don't
like the winter. It's so dark and full of horrid things. It's all ice
and shadows, so--so I go away and think of what I like, and other
places----"
"Nonsense!" interrupted his father briskly; "winter's a capital time for
boys. What in the world d'ye mean, I wonder?"
He lifted the child on to his knee and stroked his hair, as though he
were patting the flank of a horse. Jimbo took no notice of the
interruption or of the caress, but went on saying what he had to say,
though with eyes a little more clouded.
"Winter's like going into a long black tunnel, you see. It's downhill to
Christmas, of course, and then uphill all the way to the summer
holidays. But the uphill part's so slow that----"
"Tut, tut!" laughed the Colonel in spite of himself; "you mustn't have
such thoughts. Those are a baby's notions. They're silly, silly, silly."
"Do you _really_ think so, father?" continued the boy, as if politeness
demanded some recognition of his father's remarks, but otherwise anxious
only to say what was in his mind. "You wouldn't think them silly if you
really knew. But, of course, there's no one to tell you in the stable,
so you _can't_ know. You've never seen the funny big people rushing past
you and laughing through their long hair when the wind blows so loud.
_I_ know several of them almost to speak to, but you hear only wind. And
the other things with tiny legs that skate up and down the slippery
moonbeams, without ever tumbling off--they aren't silly a bit, only they
don't like dogs and noise. And I've seen the furniture"--he pronounced
it furchinur--"dancing about in the day-nursery when it thought it was
alone, and I've heard it talking at night. I know the big cupboard's
voice quite well. It's just like a drum, only rougher...."
The Colonel shook his head and frowned severely, staring hard at his
son. But though their eyes met, the boy hardly saw him. Far away at the
other end of the dark Tunnel of the Months he saw the white summer
sunshine lying over gardens full of nodding flowers. Butterflies were
flitting across meadows yellow with buttercups, and he saw the
fascinating rings upon the lawn where the Fairy People held their dances
in the moonlight; he heard the wind call to him as it ran on along by
the hedgerows, and saw the gentle pressure of its swift feet upon the
standing hay; streams were murmuring under shady trees; birds were
singing; and there were echoes of sweeter music still that he could not
understand, but loved all the more perhaps on that account....
"Yes," announced the Colonel later that evening to his wife, spreading
his hands out as he spoke. "Yes, my dear, I _have_ made a discovery, and
an alarming one. You know, I'm rarely at fault where the children are
concerned--and I've noted all the symptoms with unusual care. James, my
dear, is an imaginative boy."
He paused to note the effect of his words, but seeing none, continued:
"I regret to be obliged to say it, but it's a fact beyond dispute. His
head is simply full of things, and he talked to me this evening about
tunnels and slippery moonlight till I very nearly lost my temper
altogether. Now, the boy will never make a man unless we take him in
hand properly at once. We must get him a governess, or something,
without delay. Just fancy, if he grew up into a poet or one of
these--these----"
In his distress the soldier could only think of horse-terms, which did
not seem quite the right language. He stuck altogether, and kept
repeating the favourite gesture with his open hand, staring at his wife
over his glasses as he did so.
But the mother never argued.
"He's very young still," she observed quietly, "and, as you have always
said, he's not a bit like other boys, remember."
"Exactly what I say. Now that your eyes are opened to the actual state
of affairs, I'm satisfied."
"We'll get a sensible nursery-governess at once," added the mother.
"A practical one?"
"Yes, dear."
"Hard-headed?"
"Yes."
"And well educated?"
"Yes."
"And--er--firm with children. She'll do for the lot, then."
"If possible."
"And a young woman who doesn't go in for poetry, and dreaming, and all
that kind of flummery."
"Of course, dear."
"Capital. I felt sure you would agree with me," he went on. "It'd be no
end of a pity if Jimbo grew up an ass. At present he hardly knows the
difference between a roadster and a racer. He's going into the army,
too," he added by way of climax, "and you know, my dear, the army would
never stand _that_!"
"Never," said the mother quietly, and the conversation came to an end.
Meanwhile, the subject of these remarks was lying wide awake upstairs in
the bed with the yellow iron railing round it. His elder brother was
asleep in the opposite corner of the room, snoring peacefully. He could
just see the brass knobs of the bedstead as the dying firelight quivered
and shone on them. The walls and ceiling were draped in shadows that
altered their shapes from time to time as the coals dropped softly into
the grate. Gradually the fire sank, and the room darkened. A feeling of
delight and awe stole into his heart.
Jimbo loved these early hours of the night before sleep came. He felt no
fear of the dark; its mystery thrilled his soul; but he liked the
summer dark, with its soft, warm silences better than the chill winter
shadows. Presently the firelight sprang up into a brief flame and then
died away altogether with an odd little gulp. He knew the sound well; he
often watched the fire out, and now, as he lay in bed waiting for he
knew not what, the moonlight filtered in through the baize curtains and
gradually gave to the room a wholly new character.
Jimbo sat up in bed and listened. The house was very still. He slipped
into his red dressing-gown and crept noiselessly over to the window. For
a moment he paused by his brother's bed to make sure that he really was
asleep; then, evidently satisfied, he drew aside a corner of the curtain
and peered out.
"Oh!" he said, drawing in his breath with delight, and again "oh!"
It was difficult to understand why the sea of white moonlight that
covered the lawn should fill him with such joy, and at the same time
bring a lump into his throat. It made him feel as if he were swelling
out into something very much greater than the actual limits of his
little person. And the sensation was one of mingled pain and delight,
too intense for him to feel for very long. The unhappiness passed
gradually away, he always noticed, and the happiness merged after a
while into a sort of dreamy ecstasy in which he neither thought nor
wished much, but was conscious only of one single unmanageable yearning.
The huge cedars on the lawn reared themselves up like giants in silver
cloaks, and the horse-chestnut--the Umbrella Tree, as the children
called it--loomed with motionless branches that were frosted and
shining. Beyond it, in a blue mist of moonlight and distance, lay the
kitchen-garden; he could just make out the line of the high wall where
the fruit-trees grew. Immediately below him the gravel of the carriage
drive sparkled with frost.
The bars of the windows were cold to his hands, yet he stood there for a
long time with his nose flattened against the pane and his bare feet on
the cane chair. He felt both happy and sad; his heart longed dreadfully
for something he had not got, something that seemed out of his reach
because he could not name it. No one seemed to believe all the things he
_knew_ in quite the same way as he did. His brothers and sisters played
up to a certain point, and then put the things aside as if they had only
been assumed for the time and were not real. To him they were always
real. His father's words, too, that evening had sorely puzzled him when
he came to think over them afterwards: "They're a baby's notions....
They're silly, silly, silly." Were these things real or were they not?
And, as he pondered, yearning dumbly, as only these little souls can
yearn, the wistfulness in his heart went out to meet the moonlight in
the air. Together they wove a spell that seemed to summon before him a
fairy of the night, who whispered an answer into his heart: "We are real
so long as you believe in us. It is your imagination that makes us real
and gives us life. Please, never, never stop believing."
Jimbo was not quite sure that he understood the message, but he liked it
all the same, and felt comforted. So long as they believed in one
another, the rest did not matter very much after all. And when at last,
shivering with cold, he crept back to bed, it was only to find through
the Gates of Sleep a more direct way to the things he had been thinking
about, and to wander for the rest of the night, unwatched and free,
through the wonders of an Enchanted Land.
Jimbo, as his father had said, was an imaginative child. Most children
are--more or less; and he was "more," at least, "more" than his brothers
and sisters. The Colonel thought he had made a penetrating discovery,
but his wife had known it always. His head, indeed, was "full of
things,"--things that, unless trained into a channel where they could be
controlled and properly schooled, would certainly interfere with his
success in a practical world, and be a source of mingled pain and joy to
him all through life. To have trained these forces, ever bursting out
towards creation, in his little soul,--to have explained, interpreted,
and dealt fairly by them, would perhaps have been the best and wisest
way; to have suppressed them altogether, cleaned them out by the process
of substitution, this might have succeeded too in less measure; but to
turn them into a veritable rout of horror by the common method of
"frightening the nonsense out of the boy," this was surely the very
worst way of dealing with such a case, and the most cruel. Yet, this was
the method adopted by the Colonel in the robust good-nature of his
heart, and the utter ignorance of his soul.
So it came about that three months later, when May was melting into
June, Miss Ethel Lake arrived upon the scene as a result of the
Colonel's blundering good intentions. She brought with her a kind
disposition, a supreme ignorance of unordinary children, a large store
of self-confidence--and a corded yellow tin box.
CHAPTER II
MISS LAKE COMES--AND GOES
The conversation took place suddenly one afternoon, and no one knew
anything about it except the two who took part in it: the Colonel asked
the governess to try and knock the nonsense out of Jimbo's head, and the
governess promised eagerly to do her very best. It was her first
"place"; and by "nonsense" they both understood imagination. True
enough, Jimbo's mother had given her rather different instructions as to
the treatment of the boy, but she mistook the soldier's bluster for
authority, and deemed it best to obey him. This was her first mistake.
In reality she was not devoid of imaginative insight; it was simply that
her anxiety to prove a success permitted her better judgment to be
overborne by the Colonel's boisterous manner.
The wisdom of the mother was greater than that of her husband. For the
safe development of that tender and imaginative little boy of hers, she
had been at great pains to engage a girl--a clergyman's daughter--who
possessed sufficient sympathy with the poetic and dreamy nature to be of
real help to him; for true help, she knew, can only come from true
understanding. And Miss Lake was a good girl. She was entirely
well-meaning--which is the beginning of well-doing, and her principal
weakness lay in her judgment, which led her to obey the Colonel too
literally.
"She seems most sensible," he declared to his wife.
"Yes, dear."
"And practical."
"I think so."
"And firm and--er--wise with children."
"I hope so."
"Just the sort for young Jimbo," added the Colonel with decision.
"I trust so; she's a little young, perhaps."
"Possibly, but one can't get everything," said her husband, in his
horse-and-dog voice. "A year with her should clean out that fanciful
brain of his, and prepare him for school with other boys. He'll be all
right once he gets to school. My dear," he added, spreading out his
right hand, fingers extended, "you've made a most wise selection. I
congratulate you. I'm delighted."
"I'm so glad."
"Capital, I repeat, capital. You're a clever little woman. I knew you'd
find the right party, once I showed you how the land lay."
* * * * *
The Empty House, that stood in its neglected garden not far from the
Park gates, was built on a point of land that entered wedgewise into the
Colonel's estate. Though something of an eyesore, therefore, he could do
nothing with it.
To the children it had always been an object of peculiar, though not
unwholesome, mystery. None of them cared to pass it on a stormy day--the
wind made such odd noises in its empty corridors and rooms--and they
refused point-blank to go within hailing distance of it after dark. But
in Jimbo's imagination it was especially haunted, and if he had ceased
to reveal to the others what he _knew_ went on under its roof, it was
only because they were unable to follow him, and were inclined to greet
his extravagant recitals with "Now, Jimbo, you know _perfectly_ well
you're only making up."
The House had been empty for many years; but, to the children, it had
been empty since the beginning of the world, since what they called the
"_very_ beginning." They believed--well, each child believed according
to his own mind and powers, but there was at least one belief they all
held in common: for it was generally accepted as an article of faith
that the Indians, encamped among the shrubberies on the back lawn,
secretly buried their dead behind the crumbling walls of its weedy
garden--the "dead" provided by the children's battles, be it understood.
Wakeful ears in the night-nursery had heard strange sounds coming from
that direction when the windows were open on hot summer nights; and the
gardener, supreme authority on all that happened in the night (since
they believed that he sat up to watch the vegetables and fruit-trees
ripen, and never went to bed at all), was evidently of the same
persuasion.
When appealed to for an explanation of the mournful wind-voices, he knew
what was expected of him, and rose manfully to the occasion.
"It's either them Redskins aburyin' wot you killed of 'em yesterday,"
he declared, pointing towards the Empty House with a bit of broken
flower-pot, "or else it's the ones you killed last week, and who was
always astealin' of my strorbriz." He looked very wise as he said this,
and his wand of office--a dirty trowel--which he held in his hand, gave
him tremendous dignity.
"That's just what _we_ thought, and of course if you say so too, that
settles it," said Nixie.
"It's more'n likely, missie, leastways from wot you describes, which it
is a hempty house all the same, though I can't say as I've heard no
sounds, not very distinct that is, myself."
The gardener may have been anxious to hedge a bit, for fear of a
scolding from headquarters, but his cryptic remarks pleased the children
greatly, because it showed, they thought, that they knew more than the
gardener did.
Thus the Empty House remained an object of somewhat dreadful delight,
lending a touch of wonderland to that part of the lane where it stood,
and forming the background for many an enchanting story over the nursery
fire in winter-time. It appealed vividly to their imaginations,
especially to Jimbo's. Its dark windows, without blinds, were sometimes
full of faces that retreated the moment they were looked at. That
tangled ivy did not grow over the roof so thickly for nothing; and those
high elms on the western side had not been planted years ago in a
semicircle without a reason. Thus, at least, the children argued, not
knowing exactly what they meant, nor caring much, so long as they proved
to their own satisfaction that the place was properly haunted, and
therefore worthy of their attention.
It was natural they should lead Miss Lake in that direction on one of
their first walks together, and it was natural, too, that she should at
once discover from their manner that the place was of some importance to
them.
"What a queer-looking old house," she remarked, when they turned the
corner of the lane and it came into view. "Almost a ruin, isn't it?"
The children exchanged glances. A "ruin" did not seem the right sort of
word at all; and, besides, was a little disrespectful. Also, they were
not sure whether the new governess ought to be told everything so soon.
She had not really won their confidence yet. After a slight pause--and
a children's pause is the most eloquent imaginable--Nixie, being the
eldest, said in a stiff little voice: "It's the Empty House, Miss Lake.
_We_ know it very well indeed."
"It looks empty," observed Miss Lake briskly.
"But it's not a ruin, of course," added the child, with the cold dignity
of chosen spokesman.
"Oh!" said the governess, quite missing the point. She was talking
lightly on the surface of things, wholly ignorant of the depths beneath
her feet, intuition with her having always been sternly repressed.
"It's a gamekeeper's cottage, or something like that, I suppose," she
said.
"Oh, no; it isn't a bit."
"Doesn't it belong to your father, then?"
"No. It's somebody else's, you see."
"Then you can't have it pulled down?"
"Rather not! Of course not!" exclaimed several indignant voices at once.
Miss Lake perceived for the first time that it held more than ordinary
importance in their mind.
"Tell me about it," she said. "What is its history, and who used to live
in it?"
There came another pause. The children looked into each others' faces.
They gazed at the blue sky overhead; then they stared at the dusty road
at their feet. But no one volunteered an answer. Miss Lake, they felt,
was approaching the subject in an offensive manner.
"Why are you all so mysterious about it?" she went on. "It's only a
tumble-down old place, and must be very draughty to live in, even for a
gamekeeper."
Silence.
"Come, children, don't you hear me? I'm asking you a question."
A couple of startled birds flew out of the ivy with a great whirring of
wings. This was followed by a faint sound of rumbling, that seemed to
come from the interior of the house. Outside all was still, and the hot
sunshine lay over everything. The sound was repeated. The children
looked at each other with large, expectant eyes. Something in the house
was moving--was coming nearer.
"Have you _all_ lost your tongues?" asked the governess impatiently.
"But you see," Nixie said at length, "somebody _does_ live in it now."
"And who is he?"
"I didn't say it was a _man_."
"Whoever it is--tell me about the person," persisted Miss Lake.
"There's really nothing to tell," replied the child, without looking up.
"Oh, but there must be something," declared the logical young governess,
"or you wouldn't object so much to its being pulled down."
Nixie looked puzzled, but Jimbo came to the rescue at once.
"But _you_ wouldn't understand if we did tell you," he said, in a slow,
respectful voice. His tone held a touch of that indescribable scorn
heard sometimes in a child's tone--the utter contempt for the stupid
grown-up creature. Miss Lake noticed, and felt annoyed. She recognised
that she was not getting on well with the children, and it piqued her.
She remembered the Colonel's words about "knocking the nonsense out" of
James' head, and she saw that her first opportunity, in fact her first
real test, was at hand.
"And why, pray, should I not understand?" she asked, with some
sharpness. "Is the mystery so _very_ great?"
For some reason the duty of spokesman now devolved unmistakably upon
Jimbo; and very seriously too, he accepted the task, standing with his
feet firmly planted in the road and his hands in his trousers' pockets.
"You see, Miss Lake," he began gravely, "we know such a lot of Things in
there, that they might not like us to tell you about them. They don't
know you yet. If they did it might be different. But--but--you see, it
isn't."
This was rather crushing to the aspiring educator, and the Colonel's
instructions gained additional point in the light of the boy's
explanation.
"Fiddlesticks!" she laughed, "there's probably nothing at all in there,
except rats and cobwebs. 'Things,' indeed!"
"I knew you wouldn't understand," said Jimbo coolly, with no sign of
being offended. "How could you?" He glanced at his sisters, gaining so
much support from their enigmatical faces that he added, for their
especial benefit, "How could she?"
"The gard'ner said so too," chimed in a younger sister, with a vague
notion that their precious Empty House was being robbed of its glory.
"Yes; but, James, dear, I do understand perfectly," continued Miss Lake
more gently, and wisely ignoring the reference to the authority of the
kitchen-garden. "Only, you see, I cannot really encourage you in such
nonsense----"
"It isn't nonsense," interrupted Jimbo, with heat.
"But, believe me, children, it _is_ nonsense. How do you know that
there's anything inside? You've never been there!"
"You can know perfectly well what's inside a thing without having gone
there," replied Jimbo with scorn. "At least, _we_ can."
Miss Lake changed her tack a little--fatally, as it appeared afterwards.
"I know at any rate," she said with decision, "that there's nothing good
in there. Whatever there may be is bad, thoroughly bad, and not fit for
you to play with."
The other children moved away, but Jimbo stood his ground. They were all
angry, disappointed, sore hurt and offended. But Jimbo suddenly began to
feel something else besides anger and vexation. It was a new point of
view to him that the Empty House might contain bad things as well as
good, or perhaps, only bad things. His imagination seized upon the point
at once and set to work vigorously to develop it. This was his way with
all such things, and he could not prevent it.
"Bad Things?" he repeated, looking up at the governess. "You mean Things
that could hurt?"
"Yes, of course," she said, noting the effect of her words and thinking
how pleased the Colonel would be later, when he heard it. "Things that
might run out and catch you some day when you're passing here alone, and
take you back a prisoner. Then you'd be a prisoner in the Empty House
all your life. Think of that!"
Miss Lake mistook the boy's silence as proof that she was taking the
right line. She enlarged upon this view of the matter, now she was so
successfully launched, and described the _Inmate of the House_ with such
wealth of detail that she felt sure her listener would never have
anything to do with the place again, and that she had "knocked out" this
particular bit of "nonsense" for ever and a day.
But to Jimbo it was a new and horrible idea that the Empty House,
haunted hitherto only by rather jolly and wonderful Red Indians,
contained a Monster who might take him prisoner, and the thought made
him feel afraid. The mischief had, of course, been done, and the terror
in his eyes was unmistakable, when the foolish governess saw her
mistake. Retreat was impossible: the boy was shaking with fear; and not
all Miss Lake's genuine sympathy, or Nixie's explanations and soothings,
were able to relieve his mind of its new burden.
Hitherto Jimbo's imagination had loved to dwell upon the pleasant side
of things invisible; but now he had been severely frightened, and his
imagination took a new turn. Not only the Empty House, but all his inner
world, to which it was in some sense the key, underwent a distressing
change. His sense of horror had been vividly aroused.
The governess would willingly have corrected her mistake, but was, of
course, powerless to do so. Bitterly she regretted her tactlessness and
folly. But she could do nothing, and to add to her distress, she saw
that Jimbo shrank from her in a way that could not long escape the
watchful eye of the mother. But, if the boy shed tears of fear that
night in his bed, it must in justice be told that she, for her part,
cried bitterly in her own room, not that she had endangered her "place,"
but that she had done a cruel injury to a child, and that she was
helpless to undo it. For she loved children, though she was quite
unsuited to take care of them. Her just reward, however, came swiftly
upon her.
A few nights later, when Jimbo and Nixie were allowed to come down to
dessert, the wind was heard to make a queer moaning sound in the ivy
branches that hung over the dining-room windows. Jimbo heard it too. He
held his breath for a minute; then he looked round the table in a
frightened way, and the next minute gave a scream and burst into tears.
He ran round and buried his face in his father's arms.
After the tears came the truth. It was a bad thing for Miss Ethel Lake,
this little sighing of the wind and the ivy leaves, for the Djin of
terror she had thoughtlessly evoked swept into the room and introduced
himself to the parents without her leave.
"What new nonsense is this now?" growled the soldier, leaving his
walnuts and lifting the boy on to his knee. "He shouldn't come down till
he's a little older, and knows how to behave."
"What's the matter, darling child?" asked the mother, drying his eyes
tenderly.
"I heard the bad Things crying in the Empty House."
"The Empty House is a mile away from here!" snorted the Colonel.
"Then it's come nearer," declared the frightened boy.
"Who told you there were bad things in the Empty House?" asked the
mother.
"Yes, who told you, indeed, I should like to know!" demanded the
Colonel.
And then it all came out. The Colonel's wife was very quiet, but very
determined. Miss Lake went back to the clerical family whence she had
come, and the children knew her no more.
"I'm glad," said Nixie, expressing the verdict of the nursery. "I
thought she was awfully stupid."
"She wasn't a real lake at all," declared another, "she was only a sort
of puddle."
Jimbo, however, said little, and the Colonel likewise held his peace.
But the governess, whether she was a lake or only a puddle, left her
mark behind her. The Empty House was no longer harmless. It had a new
lease of life. It was tenanted by some one who could never have friendly
relations with children. The weeds in the old garden took on fantastic
shapes; figures hid behind the doors and crept about the passages; the
rooks in the high elms became birds of ill-omen; the ivy bristled upon
the walls, and the trivial explanations of the gardener were no longer
satisfactory.
Even in bright sunshine a Shadow lay crouching upon the broken roof. At
any moment it might leap into life, and with immense striding legs chase
the children down to the very Park gates.
There was no need to enforce the decree that the Empty House was a
forbidden land. The children of their own accord declared it out of
bounds, and avoided it as carefully as if all the wild animals from the
Zoo were roaming its gardens, hungry and unchained.
CHAPTER III
THE SHOCK
One immediate result of Miss Lake's indiscretion was that the children
preferred to play on the other side of the garden, the side farthest
from the Empty House. A spiked railing here divided them from a field in
which cows disported themselves, and as bulls also sometimes were
admitted to the cows, the field was strictly out of bounds.
In this spiked railing, not far from the great shrubberies where the
Indians increased and multiplied, there was a swinging gate. The
children swung on it whenever they could. They called it Express Trains,
and the fact that it was forbidden only added to their pleasure. When
opened at its widest it would swing them with a rush through the air,
past the pillars with a click, out into the field, and then back again
into the garden. It was bad for the hinges, and it was also bad for the
garden, because it was frequently left open after these carnivals, and
the cows got in and trod the flowers down. The children were not afraid
of the cows, but they held the bull in great horror. And these trivial
things have been mentioned here because of the part they played in
Jimbo's subsequent adventures.
It was only ten days or so after Miss Lake's sudden departure when Jimbo
managed one evening to elude the vigilance of his lawful guardians, and
wandered off unnoticed among the laburnums on the front lawn. From the
laburnums he passed successfully to the first laurel shrubbery, and
thence he executed a clever flank movement and entered the carriage
drive in the rear. The rest was easy, and he soon found himself at the
Lodge gate.
For some moments he peered through the iron grating, and pondered on the
seductiveness of the dusty road and of the ditch beyond. To his surprise
he found, presently, that the gate was moving outwards; it was yielding
to his weight. One thing leads easily to another sometimes, and the open
gate led easily on to the seductive road. The result was that a minute
later Jimbo was chasing butterflies along the green lane, and throwing
stones into the water of the ditch.
It was the evening of a hot summer's day, and the butterflies were
still out in force. Jimbo's delight was intense. The joy of finding
himself alone where he had no right to be put everything else out of his
head, and for some time he wandered on, oblivious of all but the
intoxicating sense of freedom and the difficulty of choosing between so
many butterflies and such a magnificently dirty ditch.
At first he yielded to the seductions of the ditch. He caught a big,
sleepy beetle and put it on a violet leaf, and sent it sailing out to
sea; and when it landed on the farther shore he found a still bigger
leaf, and sent it forth on a voyage in another direction, with a cargo
of daisy petals, and a hairy caterpillar for a bo'sun's mate. But, just
as the vessel was getting under way, a butterfly of amazing brilliance
floated past insolently under his very nose. Leaving the beetle and the
caterpillar to navigate the currents as best they could, he at once gave
chase. Cap in hand, he flew after the butterfly down the lane, and a
dozen times when his cap was just upon it, it sailed away sideways
without the least effort and escaped him.
Then, suddenly, the lane took a familiar turning; the ditch stopped
abruptly; the hedge on his right fell away altogether; the butterfly
danced out of sight into a field, and Jimbo found himself face to face
with the one thing in the whole world that could, at that time, fill him
with abject terror--the Empty House.
He came to a full stop in the middle of the road and stared up at the
windows. He realised for the first time that he was alone, and that it
was possible for brilliant sunshine, even on a cloudless day, to become
somehow lustreless and dull. The walls showed a deep red in the sunset
light. The house was still as the grave. His feet were rooted to the
ground, and it seemed as if he could not move a single muscle; and as he
stood there, the blood ebbing quickly from his heart, the words of the
governess a few days before rushed back into his mind, and turned his
fear into a dreadful, all-possessing horror. In another minute the
battered door would slowly open and the horrible Inmate come out to
seize him. Already there was a sound of something moving within, and as
he gazed, fascinated with terror, a shuddering movement ran over the ivy
leaves hanging down from the roof. Then they parted in the middle, and
something--he could not in his agony see what--flew out with a whirring
sound into his face, and then vanished over his shoulder towards the
fields.
Jimbo did not pause a single second to find out what it was, or to
reflect that any ordinary thrush would have made just the same sound.
The shock it gave to his heart immediately loosened the muscles of his
little legs, and he ran for his very life. But before he actually began
to run he gave one piercing scream for help, and the person he screamed
to was the very person who was unwittingly the cause of his distress. It
was as though he knew instinctively that the person who had created for
him the terror of the Empty House, with its horrible Inmate, was also
the person who could properly banish it, and undo the mischief before it
was too late. He shrieked for help to the governess, Miss Ethel Lake.
Of course, there was no answer but the noise of the air whistling in his
ears as his feet flew over the road in a cloud of dust; there was no
friendly butcher's cart, no baker's boy, or farmer with his dog and gun;
the road was deserted. There was not even the beetle or the caterpillar;
he was beyond reach of help.
Jimbo ran for his life, but unfortunately he ran in the wrong
direction. Instead of going the way he had come, where the Lodge gates
were ready to receive him not a quarter of a mile away, he fled in the
opposite direction.
It so happened that the lane flanked the field where the cows lived; but
cows were nothing compared to a Creature from the Empty House, and even
bulls seemed friendly. The boy was over the five-barred gate in a
twinkling and half-way across the field before he heard a heavy,
thunderous sound behind him. Either the Thing had followed him into the
field, or it was the bull. As he raced, he managed to throw a glance
over his shoulder and saw a huge, dark mass bearing down upon him at
terrific speed. It must be the bull, he reflected--the bull grown to the
size of an elephant. And it appeared to him to have two immense black
wings that flapped at its sides and helped it forward, making a whirring
noise like the arms of a great windmill.
This sight added to his speed, but he could not last very much longer.
Already his body ached all over, and the frantic effort to get breath
nearly choked him.
There, before him, not so very far away now, was the swinging gate. If
only he could get there in time to scramble over into the garden, he
would be safe. It seemed almost impossible, and behind him, meanwhile,
the sound of the following creature came closer and closer; the ground
seemed to tremble; he could almost feel the breath on his neck.
The swinging gate was only twenty yards off; now ten; now only five. Now
he had reached it--at last. He stretched out his hands to seize the top
bar, and in another moment he would have been safe in the garden and
within easy reach of the house. But, before he actually touched the iron
rail, a sharp, stinging pain shot across his back;--he drew one final
breath as he felt himself being lifted, lifted up into the air. The
horns had caught him just behind the shoulders!
There seemed to be no pain after the first shock. He rose high into the
air, while the bushes and spiked railing he knew so well sank out of
sight beneath him, dwindling curiously in size. At first he thought his
head must bump against the sky, but suddenly he stopped rising, and the
green earth rushed up as if it would strike him in the face. This meant
he was sinking again. The gate and railing flew by underneath him, and
the next second he fell with a crash upon the soft grass of the
lawn--upon the other side. He had been tossed over the gate into the
garden, and the bull could no longer reach him.
Before he became wholly unconscious, a composite picture, vivid in its
detail, engraved itself deeply, with exceeding swiftness, line by line,
upon the waxen tablets of his mind. In this picture the thrush that had
flown out of the ivy, the Empty House itself, and its horrible, pursuing
Inmate were all somehow curiously mingled together with the black wings
of the bull, and with his own sensation of rushing--flying
headlong--through space, as he rose and fell in a curve from the
creature's horns.
And behind it he was conscious that the real author of it all was
somewhere in the shadowy background, looking on as though to watch the
result of her unfortunate mistake. Miss Lake, surely, was not very far
away. He associated her with the horror of the Empty House as inevitably
as taste and smell join together in the memory of a certain food; and
the very last thought in his mind, as he sank away into the blackness of
unconsciousness, was a sort of bitter surprise that the governess had
not turned up to save him before it was actually too late.
Moreover, a certain sense of disappointment mingled with the terror of
the shock; for he was dimly aware that Miss Lake had not acted as
worthily as she might have done, and had not played the game as well as
might have been expected of her. And, somehow, it didn't all seem quite
fair.
CHAPTER IV
ON THE EDGE OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS
Jimbo had fallen on his head. Inside that head lay the mass of highly
sensitive matter called the brain, on which were recorded, of course,
the impressions of everything that had yet come to him in life. A severe
shock, such as he had just sustained, was bound to throw these
impressions into confusion and disorder, jumbling them up into new and
strange combinations, obliterating some, and exaggerating others. Jimbo
himself was helpless in the matter; he could exercise no control over
their antics until the doctors had once again reduced them to order; he
would have to wander, lost and lonely, through the comparative chaos of
disproportioned visions, generally known as the region of delirium,
until the doctor, assisted by mother nature, restored him once more to
normal consciousness.
For a time everything was a blank, but presently he stirred uneasily in
the grass, and the pictures graven on the tablets of his mind began to
come back to him line by line.
Yet, with certain changes: the bull, for instance, had so far vanished
into the background of his thoughts that it had practically disappeared
altogether, and he recalled nothing of it but the wings--the huge,
flapping wings. Of the creature to whom the wings belonged he had no
recollection beyond that it was very large, and that it was chasing him
from the Empty House. The pain in his shoulders had also gone; but what
remained with undiminished vividness were the sensations of flight
without escape, the breathless race up into the sky, and the swift,
tumbling drop again through the air on to the lawn.
This impression of rushing through space--short though the actual
distance had been--was the dominating memory. All else was apparently
oblivion. He forgot where he came from, and he forgot what he had been
doing. The events leading up to the catastrophe, indeed everything
connected with his existence previously as "Master James," had entirely
vanished; and the slate of memory had been wiped so clean that he had
forgotten even his own name!
Jimbo was lying, so to speak, on the edge of unconsciousness, and for a
time it seemed uncertain whether he would cross the line into the region
of delirium and dreams, or fall back again into his natural world.
Terror, assisted by the horns of the black bull, had tossed him into the
borderland.
His last scream, however, had reached the ears of the ubiquitous
gardener, and help was near at hand. He heard voices that seemed to come
from beyond the stars, and was aware that shadowy forms were standing
over him and talking in whispers. But it was all very unreal; one minute
the voices sounded up in the sky, and the next in his very ears, while
the figures moved about, sometimes bending over him, sometimes
retreating and melting away like shadows on a shifting screen.
Suddenly a blaze of light flashed upon him, and his eyes flew open; he
tumbled back for a moment into his normal world. He wasn't on the grass
at all, but was lying upon his own bed in the night nursery. His mother
was bending over him with a very white face, and a tall man dressed in
black stood beside her, holding some kind of shining instrument in his
fingers. A little behind them he saw Nixie, shading a lamp with her
hand. Then the white face came close over the pillow, and a voice full
of tenderness whispered, "My darling boy, don't you know me? It's
mother! No one will hurt you. Speak to me, if you can, dear."
She stretched out her hands, and Jimbo knew her and made an effort to
answer. But it seemed to him as if his whole body had suddenly become a
solid mass of iron, and he could control no part of it; his lips and his
hands both refused to move. Before he could make a sign that he had
understood and was trying to reply, a fierce flame rushed between them
and blinded him, his eyes closed, and he dropped back again into utter
darkness. The walls flew asunder and the ceiling melted into air, while
the bed sank away beneath him, down, down, down into an abyss of
shadows. The lamp in Nixie's hands dwindled into a star, and his
mother's anxious face became a tiny patch of white in the distance,
blurred out of all semblance of a human countenance. For a time the man
in black seemed to hover over the bed as it sank, as though he were
trying to follow it down; but it, too, presently joined the general
enveloping blackness and lost its outline. The pain had blotted out
everything, and the return to consciousness had been only momentary.
Not all the doctors in the world could have made things otherwise. Jimbo
was off on his travels at last--travels in which the chief incidents
were directly traceable to the causes and details of his accident: the
terror of the Empty House, the pursuit of its Inmate, the pain of the
bull's horns, and, above all, the flight through the air.
For everything in his subsequent adventures found its inspiration in the
events described, and a singular parallel ran ever between the Jimbo
upon the bed in the night-nursery and the other emancipated Jimbo
wandering in the regions of unconsciousness and delirium.
CHAPTER V
INTO THE EMPTY HOUSE
The darkness lasted a long time without a break, and when it lifted all
recollection of the bedroom scene had vanished.
Jimbo found himself back again on the grass. The swinging gate was just
in front of him, but he did not recognise it; no suggestion of "Express
Trains" came back to him as his eyes rested without remembrance upon the
bars where he had so often swung, in defiance of orders, with his
brothers and sisters. Recollection of his home, family, and previous
life he had absolutely none; or at least, it was buried so deeply in his
inner consciousness that it amounted to the same thing, and he looked
out upon the garden, the gate, and the field beyond as upon an entirely
new piece of the world.
The stars, he saw, were nearly all gone, and a very faint light was
beginning to spread from the woods beyond the field. The eastern
horizon was slowly brightening, and soon the night would be gone. Jimbo
was glad of this. He began to be conscious of little thrills of
expectation, for with the light surely help would also come. The light
always brought relief, and he already felt that strange excitement that
comes with the first signs of dawn. In the distance cocks were crowing,
horses began to stamp in the barns not far away, and a hundred little
stirrings of life ran over the surface of the earth as the light crept
slowly up the sky and dropped down again upon the world with its message
of coming day.
Of course, help would come by the time the sun was really up, and it was
partly this certainty, and partly because he was a little too dazed to
realise the seriousness of the situation, that prevented his giving way
to a fit of fear and weeping. Yet a feeling of vague terror lay only a
little way below the surface, and when, a few moments later, he saw that
he was no longer alone, and that an odd-looking figure was creeping
towards him from the shrubberies, he sprang to his feet, prepared to run
unless it at once showed the most friendly intentions.
This figure seemed to have come from nowhere. Apparently it had risen
out of the earth. It was too large to have been concealed by the low
shrubberies; yet he had not been aware of its approach, and it had
appeared without making any noise. Probably it was friendly, he felt, in
spite of its curious shape and the stealthy way it had come. At least,
he hoped so; and if he could only have told whether it was a man or an
animal he would easily have made up his mind. But the uncertain light,
and the way it crouched half-hidden behind the bushes, prevented this.
So he stood, poised ready to run, and yet waiting, hoping, indeed
expecting every minute a sign of friendliness and help.
In this way the two faced each other silently for some time, until the
feeling of terror gradually stole deeper into the boy's heart and began
to rob him of full power over his muscles. He wondered if he would be
able to run when the time came, and whether he could run fast enough.
This was how it first showed itself, this suggestion of insidious fear.
Would he be able to keep up the start he had? Would it chase him? Would
it run like a man or like an animal, on four legs or on two? He wished
he could see more clearly what it was. He still stood his ground
pluckily, facing it and waiting, but the fear, once admitted to his
mind, was gaining strength, and he began to feel cold and shivery. Then
suddenly the tension came to an end. In two strides the figure came up
close to his side, and the same second Jimbo was lifted off his feet and
borne swiftly away across the field.
He felt quite unable to offer the least resistance, and at the same time
he felt a sense of relief that something had happened at last. He was
still not sure that the figure was unkind; only its shape filled him
with a feeling that was certainly the beginning of real horror. It was
the shape of a man, he thought, but of a very large and ill-constructed
man; for it certainly had moved on two legs and had caught him up in a
pair of tremendously strong arms. But there was something else it had
besides arms, for a kind of soft cloak hung all round it and wrapped the
boy from head to foot, preventing him seeing his captor properly, and at
the same time filling his body with a kind of warm drowsiness that
mitigated his active fear and made him rather like the sensation of
being carried along so easily and so fast.
But was he being carried? The pace they were going was amazing, and he
moved as easily as a sailing boat, and with the same swinging motion.
Could it be some animal like a horse after all? Jimbo tried to see more,
but found it impossible to free himself from the folds of the enveloping
substance, and meanwhile they were swinging forward at what seemed a
tremendous pace over fields and ditches, through hedges, and down long
lanes.
The odours of earth, and dew-drenched grass, and opening flowers came to
him. He heard the birds singing, and felt the cool morning air sting his
cheeks as they raced along. There was no jolting or jarring, and the
figure seemed to cover the ground as lightly as though it hardly touched
the earth. It was certainly not a dream, he was sure of that; but the
longer they went on the drowsier he became, and the less he wondered
whether the figure was going to help him or to do something dreadful to
him. He was now thoroughly afraid, and yet, strange contradiction, he
didn't care a bit. Let the figure do what it liked; it was only a sort
of nightmare person after all, and might vanish as suddenly as it had
arrived.
For a long time they raced forward at this great speed, and then with a
bump and a crash they stopped suddenly short, and Jimbo felt himself let
down upon the solid earth. He tried to free himself at once from the
folds of the clinging substance that enveloped him, but, before he could
do so and see what his captor was really like, he heard a door slam and
felt himself pushed along what seemed to be the hallways of a house. His
eyes were clear now and he could see, but the darkness had come down
again so thickly that all he could discover was that the figure was
urging him along the floor of a large empty hall, and that they were in
a dark and empty building.
Jimbo tried hard to see his captor, but the figure, dim enough in the
uncertain light, always managed to hide its face and keep itself bunched
up in such a way that he could never see more than a great, dark mass of
a body, from which long legs and arms shot out like telescopes, draped
in a sort of clinging cloak. Now that the rapid motion through the air
had ceased, the boy's drowsiness passed a little, and he began to shiver
with fear and to feel that the tears could not be kept back much longer.
Probably in another minute he would have started to run for his life,
when a new sound caught his ears and made him listen intently, while a
feeling of wonder and delight caught his heart, and made him momentarily
forget the figure pushing him forward from behind.
Was it the wind he heard? Or was it the voices of children all singing
together very low? It was a gentle, sighing sound that rose and fell
with mournful modulations and seemed to come from the very centre of the
building; it held, too, a strange, far-away murmur, like the surge of a
faint breeze moving in the tree-tops. It might be the wind playing round
the walls of the building, or it might be children singing in hushed
voices. One minute he thought it was outside the house, and the next he
was certain it came from somewhere in the upper part of the building. He
glanced up, and fancied for one moment that he saw in the darkness a
crowd of little faces peering down at him over the banisters, and that
as they disappeared he heard the sound of many little feet moving, and
then a door hurriedly closing. But a push from the figure behind that
nearly sent him sprawling at the foot of the stairs, prevented his
hearing very clearly, and the light was far too dim to let him feel
sure of what he had seen.
They passed quickly along deserted corridors and through winding
passages. No one seemed about. The interior of the house was chilly, and
the keen air nipped. After going up several flights of stairs they
stopped at last in front of a door, and before Jimbo had a moment to
turn and dash downstairs again past the figure, as he had meant to do,
he was pushed violently forward into a room.
The door slammed after him, and he heard the heavy tread of the figure
as it went down the staircase again into the bottom of the house. Then
he saw that the room was full of light and of small moving beings.
Curiosity and astonishment now for a moment took the place of fear, and
Jimbo, with a thumping heart and clenched fists, stood and stared at the
scene before him. He stiffened his little legs and leaned against the
wall for support, but he felt full of fight in case anything happened,
and with wide-open eyes he tried to take in the whole scene at once and
be ready for whatever might come.
But there seemed no immediate cause for alarm, and when he realised that
the beings in the room were apparently children, and only children, his
rather mixed sensations of astonishment and fear gave place to an
emotion of overpowering shyness. He became exceedingly embarrassed, for
he was surrounded by children of all ages and sizes, staring at him just
as hard as he was staring at them.
The children, he began to take in, were all dressed in black; they
looked frightened and unhappy; their bodies were thin and their faces
very white. There was something else about them he could not quite name,
but it inspired him with the same sense of horror that he had felt in
the arms of the Figure who had trapped him. For he now realised
definitely that he had been trapped; and he also began to realise for
the first time that, though he still had the body of a little boy, his
way of thinking and judging was sometimes more like that of a grown-up
person. The two alternated, and the result was an odd confusion; for
sometimes he felt like a child and thought like a man, while at others
he felt like a man and thought like a child. Something had gone wrong,
very much wrong; and, as he watched this group of silent children facing
him, he knew suddenly that what was just beginning to happen to him _had
happened to them long, long ago_.
For they looked as if they had been a long, long time in the world, yet
their bodies had not kept pace with their minds. Something had happened
to stop the growth of the body, while allowing the mind to go on
developing. The bodies were not stunted or deformed; they were
well-formed, nice little children's bodies, but the minds within them
were grown-up, and the incongruity was distressing. All this he suddenly
realised in a flash, intuitively, just as though it had been most
elaborately explained to him; yet he could not have put the least part
of it into words or have explained what he saw and felt to another.
He saw that they had the hands and figures of children, the heads of
children, the unlined faces and smooth foreheads of children, but their
gestures, and something in their movements, belonged to grown-up people,
and the expression of their eyes in meaning and intelligence was the
expression of old people and not of children. And the expression in the
eyes of every one of them he saw was the expression of terror and of
pain. The effect was so singular that he seemed face to face with an
entirely new order of creatures: a child's features with a man's eyes; a
child's figure with a woman's movements; full-grown souls cramped and
cribbed in absurdly inadequate bodies and little, puny frames; the old
trying uncouthly to express itself in the young.
The grown-up, old portion of him had been uppermost as he stared and
received these impressions, but now suddenly it passed away, and he felt
as a little boy again. He glanced quickly down at his own little body in
the alpaca knickerbockers and sailor blouse, and then, with a sigh of
relief, looked up again at the strange group facing him. So far, at any
rate, he had not changed, and there was nothing yet to suggest that he
was becoming like them in appearance at least.
With his back against the door he faced the roomful of children who
stood there motionless and staring; and as he looked, wild feelings
rushed over him and made him tremble. Who was he? Where had he come
from? Where in the world had he spent the other years of his life, the
forgotten years? There seemed to be no one to whom he could go for
comfort, no one to answer questions; and there was such a lot he wanted
to ask. He seemed to be so much older, and to know so much more than he
ought to have known, and yet to have forgotten so much that he ought
not to have forgotten.
His loss of memory, however, was of course only partial. He had
forgotten his own identity, and all the people with whom he had so far
in life had to do; yet at the same time he was dimly conscious that he
had just left all these people, and that some day he would find them
again. It was only the surface-layers of memory that had vanished, and
these had not vanished for ever, but only sunk down a little below the
horizon.
Then, presently, the children began to range themselves in rows between
him and the opposite wall, without once taking their horrible,
intelligent eyes off him as they moved. He watched them with growing
dread, but at last his curiosity became so strong that it overcame
everything else, and in a voice that he meant to be very brave, but that
sounded hardly above a whisper, he said:
"Who are you? And what's been done to you?"
The answer came at once in a whisper as low as his own, though he could
not distinguish who spoke:
"Listen and you shall know. You, too, are now one of us."
Immediately the children began a slow, impish sort of dance before him,
moving almost with silent feet over the boards, yet with a sedateness
and formality that had none of the unconscious grace of children. And,
as they danced, they sang, but in voices so low, that it was more like
the mournful sighing of wind among branches than human voices. It was
the sound he had already heard outside the building.
"We are the children of the whispering night,
Who live eternally in dreadful fright
Of stories told us in the grey twilight
By--_nurserymaids_!
We are the children of a winter's day;
Under our breath we chant this mournful lay;
We dance with phantoms and with shadows play,
And have no rest.
We have no joy in any children's game,
For happiness to us is but a name,
Since Terror kissed us with his lips of flame
In wicked jest.
We hear the little voices in the wind
Singing of freedom we may never find,
Victims of fate so cruelly unkind,
We are unblest.
We hear the little footsteps in the rain
Running to help us, though they run in vain,
Tapping in hundreds on the window-pane
In vain behest.
We are the children of the whispering night,
Who dwell unrescued in eternal fright
Of stories told us in the dim twilight
By--_nurserymaids_!"
The plaintive song and the dance ceased together, and before Jimbo could
find any words to clothe even one of the thoughts that crowded through
his mind, he saw them moving towards a door he had not hitherto noticed
on the other side of the room. A moment later they had opened it and
passed out, sedate, mournful, unhurried; and the boy found that in some
way he could not understand the light had gone with them, and he was
standing with his back against the wall in almost total darkness.
Once out of the room, no sound followed them, and he crossed over and
tried the handle of the door. It was locked. Then he went back and tried
the other door; that, too, was locked. He was shut in. There was no
longer any doubt as to the Figure's intentions; he was a prisoner,
trapped like an animal in a cage.
The only thought in his mind just then was an intense desire for
freedom. Whatever happened he must escape. He crossed the floor to the
only window in the room; it was without blinds, and he looked out. But
instantly he recoiled with a fresh and overpowering sense of
helplessness, for it was three storeys from the ground, and down below
in the shadows he saw a paved courtyard that rendered jumping utterly
out of the question.
He stood for a long time, fighting down the tears, and staring as if his
heart would break at the field and trees beyond. A high wall enclosed
the yard, but beyond that was freedom and open space. Feelings of
loneliness and helplessness, terror and dismay overwhelmed him. His eyes
burned and smarted, yet, strange to say, the tears now refused to come
and bring him relief. He could only stand there with his elbows on the
window-sill, and watch the outline of the trees and hedges grow clearer
and clearer as the light drew across the sky, and the moment of sunrise
came close.
But when at last he turned back into the room, he saw that he was no
longer alone. Crouching against the opposite wall there was a hooded
figure steadily watching him.
CHAPTER VI
HIS COMPANION IN PRISON
Shocks of terror, as they increase in number, apparently lessen in
effect; the repeated calls made upon Jimbo's soul by the emotions of
fear and astonishment had numbed it; otherwise the knowledge that he was
locked in the room with this mysterious creature beyond all possibility
of escape must have frightened him, as the saying is, out of his skin.
As it was, however, he kept his head in a wonderful manner, and simply
stared at the silent intruder as hard as ever he could stare. How in the
world it got in was the principal thought in his mind, and after that:
what in the world was it?
The dawn must have come very swiftly, or else he had been staring longer
than he knew, for just then the sun topped the edge of the world and the
window-sill simultaneously, and sent a welcome ray of sunshine into the
dingy room. It turned the grey light to silver, and fell full upon the
huddled figure crouching against the opposite wall. Jimbo caught his
breath, and stared harder than ever.
It was a human figure, the figure, apparently, of a man, sitting
crumpled up in a very uncomfortable sort of position on his haunches. It
sat perfectly still. A black cloak, with loose sleeves, and a cowl or
hood that completely concealed the face, covered it from head to foot.
The material of the cloak could not have been very thick, for inside the
hood he caught the gleam of eyes as they roamed about the room and
followed his movements. But for this glitter of the moving eyes it might
have been a figure carved in wood. Was it going to sit there for ever
watching him? At first he was afraid it was going to speak; then he was
afraid it wasn't. It might rise suddenly and come towards him; yet the
thought that it would not move at all was worse still.
In this way the two faced each other for several minutes until, just as
the position was becoming simply unbearable, a low whisper ran round the
room: "At last! Oh! I've found him at last!" Jimbo was not quite sure of
the words, though it was certainly a human voice that had spoken; but,
the suspense once broken, the boy could not stand it any longer, and
with a rush of desperate courage he found his voice--a very husky
one--and moved a step forward.
"Who are you, please, and how _did_ you get in?" he ventured with a
great effort.
Then he fell back against the wall, amazed at his own daring, and waited
with tightly-clenched fists for an answer. But he had not to wait very
long, for almost immediately the figure rose awkwardly to its feet, and
came over to where he stood. Its manner of moving may best be described
as shuffling; and it stretched in front of it a long cloaked arm, on
which the sleeve hung, he thought, like clothes on a washing line.
He breathed hard, and waited. Like many other people with strong wills
and sensitive nerves, Jimbo was both brave and a coward: he hoped
nothing horrid was going to happen, but he was quite ready if it should.
Yet, now that the actual moment had come, he had no particular fear, and
when he felt the touch of the hand on his shoulder, the words sprang
naturally to his lips with a little trembling laugh, more of wonder
perhaps than anything else.
"You do look a horrid ... _brute_," he was going to say, but at the
last moment he changed it to "_thing_," for, with the true intuition of
a child, he recognised that the creature inside the cloak was a kind
creature and well disposed towards him. "But how did you get in?" he
added, looking up bravely into the black visage, "because the doors are
both locked on the outside, and I couldn't get out?"
By way of reply the figure shuffled to one side, and, taking the hand
from his shoulder, pointed silently to a trap-door in the floor behind
him. As he looked, he saw it was being shut down stealthily by some one
beneath.
"Hush!" whispered the figure, almost inaudibly. "He's watching!"
"Who's watching?" he cried, curiosity taking the place of every other
emotion. "I want to see." He ran forward to the spot where the trap-door
now lay flush with the floor, but, before he had gone two steps, the
black arms shot out and caught him. He turned, struggling, and in the
scuffle that followed the cloak shrouding the figure became disarranged;
the hood dropped from the face, and he found himself looking straight
into the eyes, not of a man, but of a woman!
"It's you!" he cried, "YOU--!"
A shock ran right through his body from his head to his feet, like a
current of electricity, and he caught his breath as though he had been
struck. For one brief instant the sinister face of some one who had
terrified him in the past came back vividly to his mind, and he shrank
away in terror. But it was only for an instant, the twentieth part of an
instant. Immediately, before he could even remember the name,
recognition passed into darkness and his memory shut down with a snap.
He was staring into the face of an utter stranger, about whom he knew
nothing and had no feelings particularly one way or another.
"I thought I knew you," he gasped, "but I've forgotten you again--and I
thought you were going to be a man, too."
"Jimbo!" cried the other, and in her voice was such unmistakable
tenderness and yearning that the boy knew at once beyond doubt that she
was his friend, "Jimbo!"
She knelt down on the floor beside him, so that her face was on a level
with his, and then opened both her arms to him. But though Jimbo was
glad to have found a friend who was going to help him, he felt no
particular desire to be embraced, and he stood obstinately where he was
with his back to the window.
The morning sunshine fell upon her features and touched the thick coils
of her hair with glory. It was not, strictly speaking, a pretty face,
but the look of real human tenderness there was very welcome and
comforting, and in the kind brown eyes there shone a strange light that
was not merely the reflection of the sunlight. The boy felt his heart
warm to her as he looked, but her expression puzzled him, and he would
not accept the invitation of her arms.
"Won't you come to me?" she said, her arms still outstretched.
"I want to know who you are, and what I'm doing here," he said. "I feel
so funny--so old and so young--and all mixed up. I can't make out who I
am a bit. What's that funny name you call me?"
"Jimbo is your name," she said softly.
"Then what's _your_ name?" he asked quickly.
"My name," she repeated slowly after a pause, "is not--as nice as yours.
Besides, you need not know my name--you might dislike it."
"But I must have something to call you," he persisted.
"But if I told you, and you disliked the name, you might dislike _me_
too," she said, still hesitating.
Jimbo saw the expression of sadness in her eyes, and it won his
confidence though he hardly knew why. He came up closer to her and put
his puzzled little face next to hers.
"I like you very much already," he whispered, "and if your name is a
horrid one I'll change it for you at once. Please tell me what it is."
She drew the boy to her and gave him a little hug, and he did not
resist. For a long time she did not answer. He felt vaguely that
something of dreadful importance hung about this revelation of her name.
He repeated his question, and at length she replied, speaking in a very
low voice, and with her eyes fixed intently upon his face.
"My name," she said, "is Ethel Lake."
"Ethel Lake," he repeated after her. The words sounded somehow familiar
to him; surely he had heard that name before. Were not the words
associated with something in his past that had been unpleasant? A
curious sinking sensation came over him as he heard them.
His companion watched him intently while he repeated the words over to
himself several times, as if to make sure he had got them right. There
was a moment's hesitation as he slowly went over them once again. Then
he turned to her, laughing.
"I like your name, Ethel Lake," he said. "It's a nice
name--Miss--Miss----" Again he hesitated, while a little warning tremor
ran through his mind, and he wondered for an instant why he said "Miss."
But it passed as suddenly as it had come, and he finished the
sentence--"Miss Lake, I shall call you." He stared into her eyes as he
said it.
"Then you don't remember me at all?" she cried, with a sigh of intense
relief. "You've quite forgotten?"
"I never saw you before, did I? How can I remember you? I don't remember
any of the things I've forgotten. Are you one of them?"
For reply she caught him to her breast and kissed him. "You precious
little boy!" she said. "I'm so glad, oh, so glad!"
"But do you remember _me_?" he asked, sorely puzzled. "Who am I? Haven't
I been born yet, or something funny like that?"
"If you don't remember _me_," said the other, her face happy with smiles
that had evidently come only just in time to prevent tears, "there's
not much good telling you who _you_ are. But your name, if you really
want to know, is----" She hesitated a moment.
"Be quick, Eth--Miss Lake, or you'll forget it again."
She laughed rather bitterly. "Oh, I never forget. I can't!" she said. "I
wish I could. Your name is James Stone, and Jimbo is 'short' for James.
Now you know."
She might just as well have said Bill Sykes for all the boy knew or
remembered.
"What a silly name!" he laughed. "But it can't be my real name, or I
should know it. I never heard it before." After a moment he added, "Am I
an old man? I feel just like one. I suppose I'm grown up--grown up so
fast that I've forgotten what came before----"
"You're not grown up, dear, at least, not exactly----" She glanced down
at his alpaca knickerbockers and brown stockings; and as he followed her
eyes and saw the dirty buttoned-boots there came into his mind some dim
memory of where he had last put them on, and of some one who had helped
him. But it all passed like a swift meteor across the dark night of his
forgetfulness and was lost in mist.
"You mustn't judge by these silly clothes," he laughed. "I shall change
them as soon as I get--as soon as I can find----" He stopped short. No
words came. A feeling of utter loneliness and despair swept suddenly
over him, drenching him from head to foot. He felt lost and friendless,
naked, homeless, cold. He was ever on the brink of regaining a whole lot
of knowledge and experience that he had known once long ago, ever so
long ago, but it always kept just out of his reach. He glanced at Miss
Lake, feeling that she was his only possible comfort in a terrible
situation. She met his look and drew him tenderly towards her.
"Now, listen to me," she said gently, "I've something to tell you--about
myself."
He was all attention in a minute.
"I am a discharged governess," she began, holding her breath when once
the words were out.
"Discharged!" he repeated vaguely. "What's that? What for?"
"For frightening a child. I told a little boy awful stories that weren't
true. They terrified him so much that I was sent away. That's why I'm
here now. It's my punishment. I am a prisoner here until I can find
him--and help him to escape----"
"Oh, I say!" he exclaimed quickly, as though remembering something. But
it passed, and he looked up at her half-bored, half-politely. "Escape
from what?" he asked.
"From here. This is the Empty House I told the stories about; _and you
are the little boy I frightened_. Now, at last, I've found you, and am
going to save you." She paused, watching him with eyes that never left
his face for an instant.
Jimbo was delighted to hear he was going to be rescued, but he felt no
interest at all in her story of having frightened a little boy, who was
himself. He thought it was very nice of her to take so much trouble, and
he told her so, and when he went up and kissed her and thanked her, he
saw to his surprise that she was crying. For the life of him he could
not understand why a discharged governess whom he met, apparently, for
the first time in the Empty House, should weep over him and show him so
much affection. But he could think of nothing to say, so he just waited
till she had finished.
"You see, if I can save you," she said between her sobs, "it will be all
right again, and I shall be forgiven, and shall be able to escape with
you. I want you to escape, so that you can get back to life again."
"Oh, then I'm dead, am I?"
"Not exactly dead," she said, drying her eyes with the corner of her
black hood. "You've had a funny accident, you know. If your body gets
all right, so that you can go back and live in it again, then you're not
dead. But if it's so badly injured that you can't work in it any more,
then you are dead, and will have to stay dead. You're still joined to
the body in a fashion, you see."
He stared and listened, not understanding much. It all bored him. She
talked without explaining, he thought. An immense sponge had passed over
the slate of the past and wiped it clean beyond recall. He was utterly
perplexed.
"How funny you are!" he said vaguely, thinking more of her tears than
her explanations.
"Water won't stay in a cracked bottle," she went on, "and you can't stay
in a broken body. But they're trying to mend it now, and if we can
escape in time you can be an ordinary, happy little boy in the world
again."
"Then are you dead, too?" he asked, "or nearly dead?"
"I am out of my body, like you," she answered evasively, after a
moment's pause.
He was still looking at her in a dazed sort of way, when she suddenly
sprang to her feet and let the hood drop back over her face.
"Hush!" she whispered, "he's listening again."
At the same moment a sound came from beneath the floor on the other side
of the room, and Jimbo saw the trap-door being slowly raised above the
level of the floor.
"Your number is 102," said a voice that sounded like the rushing of a
river.
Instantly the trap-door dropped again, and he heard heavy steps rumbling
away into the interior of the house. He looked at his companion and saw
her terrified face as she lifted her hood.
"He always blunders along like that," she whispered, bending her head on
one side to listen. "He can't see properly in the daylight. He hates
sunshine, and usually only goes out after dark." She was white and
trembling.
"Is that the person who brought me in here this morning at such a
frightful pace?" he asked, bewildered.
She nodded. "He wanted to get in before it was light, so that you
couldn't see his face."
"Is he such a fright?" asked the boy, beginning to share her evident
feeling of horror.
"He _is_ Fright!" she said in an awed whisper. "But never talk about
him again unless you can't help it; he always knows when he's being
talked about, and he likes it, because it gives him more power."
Jimbo only stared at her without comprehending. Then his mind jumped to
something else he wanted badly to have explained, and he asked her about
his number, and why he was called No. 102.
"Oh, that's easier," she said, "102 is your number among the Frightened
Children; there are 101 of them, and you are the last arrival. Haven't
you seen them yet? It is also the temperature of your broken little body
lying on the bed in the night nursery at home," she added, though he
hardly caught her words, so low were they spoken.
Jimbo then described how the children had sung and danced to him, and
went on to ask a hundred questions about them. But Miss Lake would give
him very little information, and said he would not have very much to do
with them. Most of them had been in the House for years and years--so
long that they could probably never escape at all.
"They are all frightened children," she said. "Little ones scared out of
their wits by silly people who meant to amuse them with stories, or to
frighten them into being well behaved--nursery-maids, elder sisters, and
even governesses!"
"And they can never escape?"
"Not unless the people who frightened them come to their rescue and _run
the risk of being caught themselves_."
As she spoke there rose from the depths of the house the sound of
muffled voices, children's voices singing faintly together; it rose and
fell exactly like the wind, and with as little tune; it was weird and
magical, but so utterly mournful that the boy felt the tears start to
his eyes. It drifted away, too, just as the wind does over the tops of
the trees, dying into the distance; and all became still again.
"It's just like the wind," he said, "and I do love the wind. It makes me
feel so sad and so happy. Why is it?"
The governess did not answer.
"How old am I _really_?" he went on. "How can I be so old and so
ignorant? I've forgotten such an awful lot of knowledge."
"The fact is--well, perhaps, you won't quite understand--but you're
really two ages at once. Sometimes you feel as old as your body, and
sometimes as old as your soul. You're still connected with your body;
so you get the sensations of both mixed up."
"Then is the body younger than the soul?"
"The soul--that is yourself," she answered, "is, oh, so old, awfully
old, as old as the stars, and older. But the body is no older than
itself--of course, how could it be?"
"Of course," repeated the boy, who was not listening to a word she said.
"How could it be?"
"But it doesn't matter how old you are or how young you feel, as long as
you don't hate me for having frightened you," she said after a pause.
"That's the chief thing."
He was very, very puzzled. He could not help feeling it had been rather
unkind of her to frighten him so badly that he had literally been
frightened out of his skin; but he couldn't remember anything about it,
and she was taking so much trouble to save him now that he quite forgave
her. He nestled up against her, and said of course he liked her, and she
stroked his curly head and mumbled a lot of things to herself that he
couldn't understand a bit.
But in spite of his new-found friend the feeling of over-mastering
loneliness would suddenly rush over him. She might be a protector, but
she was not a _real_ companion; and he knew that somewhere or other he
had left a lot of other _real_ companions whom he now missed dreadfully.
He longed more than he could say for freedom; he wanted to be able to
come and go as he pleased; to play about in a garden somewhere as of
old; to wander over soft green lawns among laburnums and sweet-smelling
lilac trees, and to be up to all his old tricks and mischief--though he
could not remember in detail what they were.
In a word, he wanted to escape; his whole being yearned to escape and be
free again; yet here he was a wretched prisoner in a room like a
prison-cell, with a sort of monster for a keeper, and a troop of
horrible frightened children somewhere else in the house to keep him
company. And outside there was only a hard, narrow, paved courtyard with
a high wall round it. Oh, it was too terrible to think of, and his heart
sank down within him till he felt as if he could do nothing else but
cry.
"I shall save you in time," whispered the governess, as though she read
his thoughts. "You must be patient, and do what I tell you, and I
promise to get you out. Only be brave, and don't ask too many questions.
We shall win in the end and escape."
Suddenly he looked up, with quite a new expression in his face. "But I
say, Miss Cake, I'm frightfully hungry. I've had nothing to eat since--I
can't remember when, but ever so long ago."
"You needn't call me Miss Cake, though," she laughed.
"I suppose it's because I'm so hungry."
"Then you'll call me Miss Lake when you're thirsty, perhaps," she said.
"But, anyhow, I'll see what I can get you. Only, you must eat as little
as possible. I want you to get very thin. What you feel is not really
hunger--it's only a memory of hunger, and you'll soon get used to it."
He stared at her with a very distressful little face as she crossed the
room making this new announcement; and just as she disappeared through
the trap-door, only her head being visible, she added with great
emphasis, "The thinner you get the better; because the thinner you are
the lighter you are, and the lighter you are the easier it will be to
escape. Remember, the thinner the better--the lighter the better--and
don't ask a lot of questions about it."
With that the trap-door closed over her, and Jimbo was left alone with
her last strange words ringing in his ears.
CHAPTER VII
THE SPELL OF THE EMPTY HOUSE
It was not long before Jimbo realised that the House, and everything
connected with it, spelt for him one message, and one only--a message of
fear. From the first day of his imprisonment the forces of his whole
being shaped themselves without further ado into one intense, single,
concentrated desire to _escape_.
Freedom, escape into the world beyond that terrible high wall, was his
only object, and Miss Lake, the governess, as its symbol, was his only
hope. He asked a lot of questions and listened to a lot of answers, but
all he really cared about was how he was going to escape, and when. All
her other explanations were tedious, and he only half-listened to them.
His faith in her was absolute, his patience unbounded; she had come to
save him, and he knew that before long she would accomplish her end. He
felt a blind and perfect confidence. But, meanwhile, his fear of the
House, and his horror for the secret Being who meant to keep him
prisoner till at length he became one of the troop of Frightened
Children, increased by leaps and bounds.
Presently the trap-door creaked again, and the governess reappeared; in
her hand was a small white jug and a soup plate.
"Thin gruel and skim milk," she explained, pouring out a substance like
paste into the soup plate, and handing him a big wooden spoon.
But Jimbo's hunger had somehow vanished.
"It wasn't real hunger," she told him, "but only a sort of memory of
being hungry. They're trying to feed your broken body now in the
night-nursery, and so you feel a sort of ghostly hunger here even though
you're out of the body."
"It's easily satisfied, at any rate," he said, looking at the paste in
the soup plate.
"No one actually eats or drinks here----"
"But I'm solid," he said, "am I not?"
"People always think they're solid everywhere," she laughed. "It's only
a question of degree; solidity _here_ means a different thing to
solidity _there_."
"I can get thinner though, can't I?" he asked, thinking of her remark
about escape being easier the lighter he grew.
She assured him there would be no difficulty about that, and after
replying evasively to a lot more questions, she gathered up the dishes
and once more disappeared through the trap-door.
Jimbo watched her going down the ladder into the black gulf below, and
wondered greatly where she went to and what she did down there; but on
these points the governess had refused to satisfy his curiosity, and
every time she appeared or disappeared the atmosphere of mystery came
and went with her.
As he stared, wondering, a sound suddenly made itself heard behind him,
and on turning quickly round he saw to his great surprise that the door
into the passage was open. This was more than he could resist, and in
another minute, with mingled feelings of dread and delight, he was out
in the passage.
When he was first brought to the house, two hours before, it had been
too dark to see properly, but now the sun was high in the heavens, and
the light still increasing. He crept cautiously to the head of the
stairs and peered over into the well of the house. It was still too
dark to make things out clearly; but, as he looked, he thought something
moved among the shadows below, and for a moment his heart stood still
with fear. A large grey face seemed to be staring up at him out of the
gloom. He clutched the banisters and felt as if he hardly had strength
enough in his legs to get back to the room he had just left; but almost
immediately the terror passed, for he saw that the face resolved itself
into the mingling of light and shadow, and the features, after all, were
of his own creation. He went on slowly and stealthily down the
staircase.
It was certainly an empty house. There were no carpets; the passages
were cold and draughty; the paper curled from the damp walls, leaving
ugly discoloured patches about; cobwebs hung in many places from the
ceiling, the windows were more or less broken, and all were coated so
thickly with dirt that the rain had traced little furrows from top to
bottom. Shadows hung about everywhere, and Jimbo thought every minute he
saw moving figures; but the figures always resolved themselves into
nothing when he looked closely.
He began to wonder how far it was safe to go, and why the governess had
arranged for the door to be opened--for he felt sure it was she who had
done this, and that it was all right for him to come out. Fright, she
had said, was never about in the daylight. But, at the same time,
something warned him to be ready at a moment's notice to turn and dash
up the stairs again to the room where he was at least comparatively
safe.
So he moved along very quietly and very cautiously. He passed many rooms
with the doors open--all empty and silent; some of them had tables and
chairs, but no sign of occupation; the grates were black and empty, the
walls blank, the windows unshuttered. Everywhere was only silence and
shadows; there was no sign of the frightened children, or of where they
lived; no trace of another staircase leading to the region where the
governess went when she disappeared down the ladder through the
trap-door--only hushed, listening, cold silence, and shadows that seemed
for ever shifting from place to place as he moved past them. This
illusion of people peering at him from corners, and behind doors just
ajar, was very strong; yet whenever he turned his head to face them, lo,
they were gone, and the shadows rushed in to fill their places.
The spell of the Empty House was weaving itself slowly and surely about
his heart.
Yet he went on pluckily, full of a dreadful curiosity, continuing his
search, and at length, after passing through another gloomy passage, he
was in the act of crossing the threshold of an open door leading out
into the courtyard, when he stopped short and clutched the door-posts
with both hands.
Some one had laughed!
He turned, trying to look in every direction at once, but there was no
sign of any living being. Yet the sound was close beside him; he could
still hear it ringing in his ears--a mocking sort of laugh, in a harsh,
guttural voice. The blood froze in his veins, and he hardly knew which
way to turn, when another voice sounded, and his terror disappeared as
if by magic.
It was Miss Lake's voice calling to him over the banisters at the top of
the house, and its tone was so cheerful that all his courage came back
in a twinkling.
"Go out into the yard," she called, "and play in the sunshine. But don't
stay too long."
Jimbo answered "All right" in a rather feeble little voice, and went on
down the passage and out into the yard.
The June sunshine lay hot and still over the paved court, and he looked
up into the blue sky overhead. As he looked at the high wall that closed
it in on three sides, he realised more than ever that he was caught in a
monstrous trap from which there could be no ordinary means of escape. He
could never climb over such a wall even with a ladder. He walked out a
little way and noticed the rank weeds growing in patches in the corners;
decay and neglect left everywhere their dismal signs; the yard, in spite
of the sunlight, seemed as gloomy and cheerless as the house itself.
In one corner stood several little white upright stones, each about
three feet high; there seemed to be some writing on them, and he was in
the act of going nearer to inspect, when a window opened and he heard
some one calling to him in a loud, excited whisper:
"Hst! Come in, Jimbo, at once. Quick! Run for your life!"
He glanced up, quaking with fear, and saw the governess leaning out of
the open window. At another window, a little beyond her, he thought a
number of white little faces pressed against the glass, but he had no
time to look more closely, for something in Miss Lake's voice made him
turn and run into the house and up the stairs as though Fright himself
were close at his heels. He flew up the three flights, and found the
governess coming out on the top landing to meet him. She caught him in
her arms and dashed back into the room, as if there was not a moment to
be lost, slamming the door behind her.
"How in the world did you get out?" she gasped, breathless as himself
almost, and pale with alarm. "Another second and He'd have had you----!"
"I found the door open----"
"He opened it on purpose," she whispered, looking quickly round the
room. "He meant you to go out."
"But you called to me to play in the yard," he said. "I heard you. So of
course I thought it was safe."
"No," she declared, "I never called to you. That wasn't my voice. That
was one of his tricks. I only this minute found the door open and you
gone. Oh, Jimbo, that was a narrow escape; you must never go out of this
room till--till I tell you. And never believe any of these voices you
hear--you'll hear lots of them, saying all sorts of things--but unless
you _see_ me, don't believe it's my voice."
Jimbo promised. He was very frightened; but she would not tell him any
more, saying it would only make it more difficult to escape if he knew
too much in advance. He told her about the laugh, and the gravestones,
and the faces at the other window, but she would not tell him what he
wanted to know, and at last he gave up asking. A very deep impression
had been made on his mind, however, and he began to realise, more than
he had hitherto done, the horror of his prison and the power of his
dreadful keeper.
But when he began to look about him again, he noticed that there was a
new thing in the room. The governess had left him, and was bending over
it. She was doing something very busily indeed. He asked her what it
was.
"I'm making your bed," she said.
It was, indeed, a bed, and he felt as he looked at it that there was
something very familiar and friendly about the yellow framework and the
little brass knobs.
"I brought it up just now," she explained. "But it's not for sleeping
in. It's only for you to lie down on, and also partly to deceive Him."
"Why not for sleeping?"
"There's no sleeping at all here," she went on calmly.
"Why not?"
"You can't sleep out of your body," she laughed.
"Why not?" he asked again.
"Your body goes to sleep, but _you_ don't," she explained.
"Oh, I see." His head was whirling. "And my body--my real body----"
"Is lying asleep--unconscious they call it--in the night-nursery at
home. It's sound asleep. That's why you're here. It can't wake up till
you go back to it, and you can't go back to it till you escape--even if
it's ready for you before then. The bed is only for you to rest on, for
you can _rest_ though you can't _sleep_."
Jimbo stared blankly at the governess for some minutes. He was debating
something in his mind, something very important, and just then it was
his Older Self, and not the child, that was uppermost. Apparently it was
soon decided, for he walked sedately up to her and said very gravely,
with her serious eyes fixed on his face, "Miss Lake, are you _really_
Miss Lake?"
"Of course I am."
"You're not a trick of His, like the voices, I mean?"
"No, Jimbo, I am really Miss Lake, the discharged governess who
frightened you." There was profound anxiety in every word.
Jimbo waited a minute, still looking steadily into her eyes. Then he put
out his hand cautiously and touched her. He rose a little on tiptoe to
be on a level with her face, taking a fold of her cloak in each hand.
The soul-knowledge was in his eyes just then, not the mere curiosity of
the child.
"And are you--_dead_?" he asked, sinking his voice to a whisper.
For a moment the woman's eyes wavered. She turned white and tried to
move away; but the boy seized her hand and peered more closely into her
face.
"I mean, if we escape and I get back into my body," he whispered, "will
you get back into yours too?"
The governess made no reply, and shifted uneasily on her feet. But the
boy would not let her go.
"Please answer," he urged, still in a whisper.
"Jimbo, what funny questions you ask!" she said at last, in a husky
voice, but trying to smile.
"But I want to know," he said. "I must know. I believe you are giving up
everything just to save me--_everything_; and I don't want to be saved
unless you come too. Tell me!"
The colour came back to her cheeks a little, and her eyes grew moist.
Again she tried to slip past him, but he prevented her.
"You must tell me," he urged; "I would rather stay here with you than
escape back into my body and leave you behind."
Jimbo knew it was his Older Self speaking--the freed spirit rather than
the broken body--but he felt the strain was very great; he could not
keep it up much longer; any minute he might slip back into the child
again, and lose interest, and be unequal to the task he now saw so
clearly before him.
"Quick!" he cried in a louder voice. "Tell me! You are giving up
everything to save me, aren't you? And if I escape you will be left
alone----quick, answer me! Oh, be quick, I'm slipping back----"
Already he felt his thoughts becoming confused again, as the spirit
merged back into the child; in another minute the boy would usurp the
older self.
"You see," began the governess at length, speaking very gently and
sadly, "I am bound to make amends whatever happens. I must atone----"
But already he found it hard to follow.
"Atone," he asked, "what does '_atone_' mean?" He moved back a step, and
glanced about the room. The moment of concentration had passed without
bearing fruit; his thoughts began to wander again like a child's.
"Anyhow, we shall escape together when the chance comes, shan't we?" he
said.
"Yes, darling, we shall," she said in a broken voice. "And if you do
what I tell you, it will come very soon, I hope." She drew him towards
her and kissed him, and though he didn't respond very heartily, he felt
he liked it, and was sure that she was good, and meant to do the best
possible for him.
Jimbo asked nothing more for some time; he turned to the bed where he
found a mattress and a blanket, but no sheets, and sat down on the edge
and waited. The governess was standing by the window looking out; her
back was turned to him. He heard an occasional deep sigh come from her,
but he was too busy now with his own sensations to trouble much about
her. Looking past her he saw the sea of green leaves dancing lazily in
the sunshine. Something seemed to beckon him from beyond the high wall,
and he longed to go out and play in the shade of the elms and hawthorns;
for the horror of the Empty House was closing in upon him steadily but
surely, and he longed for escape into a bright, unhaunted atmosphere,
more than anything else in the whole world.
His thoughts ran on and on in this vein, till presently he noticed that
the governess was moving about the room. She crossed over and tried
first one door and then the other; both were fastened. Next she lifted
the trap-door and peered down into the black hole below. That, too,
apparently was satisfactory. Then she came over to the bedside on
tiptoe.
"Jimbo, I've got something very important to ask you," she began.
"All right," he said, full of curiosity.
"You must answer me very exactly. Everything depends on it."
"I will."
She took another long look round the room, and then, in a still lower
whisper, bent over him, and asked:
"Have you any pain?"
"Where?" he asked, remembering to be exact.
"Anywhere."
He thought a moment.
"None, thank you."
"None at all--anywhere?" she insisted.
"None at all--anywhere," he said with decision.
She seemed disappointed.
"Never mind; it's a little soon yet, perhaps," she said. "We must have
patience. It will come in time."
"But I don't want any pain," he said, rather ruefully.
"You can't escape till it comes."
"I don't understand a bit what you mean." He began to feel alarmed at
the notion of escape and pain going together.
"You'll understand later, though," she said soothingly, "and it won't
hurt _very_ much. The sooner the pain comes, the sooner we can try to
escape. Nowhere can there be escape without it."
And with that she left him, disappearing without another word into the
hole below the trap, and leaving him, disconsolate yet excited, alone in
the room.
CHAPTER VIII
THE GALLERY OF ANCIENT MEMORIES
With every one, of course, the measurement of time depends largely upon
the state of the emotions, but in Jimbo's case it was curiously
exaggerated. This may have been because he had no standard of memory by
which to test the succession of minutes; but, whatever it was, the hours
passed very quickly, and the evening shadows were already darkening the
room when at length he got up from the mattress and went over to the
window.
Outside the high elms were growing dim; soon the stars would be out in
the sky. The afternoon had passed away like magic, and the governess
still left him alone; he could not quite understand why she went away
for such long periods.
The darkness came down very swiftly, and it was night almost before he
knew it. Yet he felt no drowsiness, no desire to yawn and get under
sheets and blankets; sleep was evidently out of the question, and the
hours slipped away so rapidly that it made little difference whether he
sat up all night or whether he slept.
It was his first night in the Empty House, and he wondered how many more
he would spend there before escape came. He stood at the window, peering
out into the growing darkness and thinking long, long thoughts. Below
him yawned the black gulf of the yard, and the outline of the enclosing
wall was only just visible, but beyond the elms rose far into the sky,
and he could hear the wind singing softly in their branches. The sound
was very sweet; it suggested freedom, and the flight of birds, and all
that was wild and unrestrained. The wind could never really be a
prisoner; its voice sang of open spaces and unbounded distances, of
flying clouds and mountains, of mighty woods and dancing waves; above
all, of wings--free, swift, and unconquerable wings.
But this rushing song of wind among the leaves made him feel too sad to
listen long, and he lay down upon the bed again, still thinking,
thinking.
The house was utterly still. Not a thing stirred within its walls. He
felt lonely, and began to long for the companionship of the governess;
he would have called aloud for her to come only he was afraid to break
the appalling silence. He wondered where she was all this time and how
she spent the long, dark hours of the sleepless nights. Were all these
things really true that she told him? Was he actually out of his body,
and was his name really Jimbo? His thoughts kept groping backwards, ever
seeking the other companions he had lost; but, like a piece of stretched
elastic too short to reach its object, they always came back with a snap
just when he seemed on the point of finding them. He wanted these
companions very badly indeed, but the struggling of his memory was
painful, and he could not keep the effort up for very long at one time.
The effort once relaxed, however, his thoughts wandered freely where
they would; and there rose before his mind's eye dim suggestions of
memories far more distant--ghostly scenes and faces that passed before
him in endless succession, but always faded away before he could
properly seize and name them.
This memory, so stubborn as regards quite recent events, began to play
strange tricks with him. It carried him away into a Past so remote that
he could not connect it with himself at all, and it was like dreaming of
scenes and events that had happened to some one else; yet, all the time,
he knew quite well those things had happened to him, and to none else.
It was the memory of the soul asserting itself now that the clamour of
the body was low. It was an underground river coming to the surface, for
odd minutes, here and there, showing its waters to the stars just long
enough to catch their ghostly reflections before it rolled away
underground again.
Yet, swift and transitory as they were, these glimpses brought in their
train sensations that were too powerful ever to have troubled his
child-mind in its present body. They stirred in him the strong emotions,
the ecstasies, the terrors, the yearnings of a much more distant past;
whispering to him, could he but have understood, of an infinitely deeper
layer of memories and experiences which, now released from the burden of
the immediate years, strove to awaken into life again. The soul in that
little body covered with alpaca knickerbockers and a sailor blouse
seemed suddenly to have access to a storehouse of knowledge that must
have taken centuries, rather than a few short years, to acquire.
It was all very queer. The feeling of tremendous age grew mysteriously
over him. He realised that he had been wandering for ages. He had been
to the stars and also to the deeps; he had roamed over strange mountains
far away from cities or inhabited places of the earth, and had lived by
streams whose waves were silvered by moonlight dropping softly through
whispering palm branches....
Some of these ghostly memories brought him sensations of keenest
happiness--icy, silver, radiant; others swept through his heart like a
cold wave, leaving behind a feeling of unutterable woe, and a sense of
loneliness that almost made him cry aloud. And there came Voices
too--Voices that had slept so long in the inner kingdoms of silence that
they failed to rouse in him the very slightest emotion of
recognition....
Worn out at length with the surging of these strange hosts through him,
he got up and went to the open window again. The night was very dark and
warm, but the stars had disappeared, and there was the hush and the
faint odour of coming rain in the air. He smelt leaves and the earth and
the moist things of the ground, the wonderful perfume of the life of the
soil.
The wind had dropped; all was silent as the grave; the leaves of the
elm trees were motionless; no bird or insect raised its voice;
everything slept; he alone was watchful, awake. Leaning over the
window-sill, his thoughts searched for the governess, and he wondered
anew where she was spending the dark hours. She, too, he felt sure, was
wakeful somewhere, watching with him, plotting their escape together,
and always mindful of his safety....
His reverie was suddenly interrupted by the flight of an immense
night-bird dropping through the air just above his head. He sprang back
into the room with a startled cry, as it rushed past in the darkness
with a great swishing of wings. The size of the creature filled him with
awe; it was so close that the wind it made lifted the hair on his
forehead, and he could almost feel the feathers brush his cheeks. He
strained his eyes to try and follow it, but the shadows were too deep
and he could see nothing; only in the distance, growing every moment
fainter, he could hear the noise of big wings threshing the air. He
waited a little, wondering if another bird would follow it, or if it
would presently return to its perch on the roof; and then his thoughts
passed on to uncertain memories of other big birds--hawks, owls,
eagles--that he had seen somewhere in places now beyond the reach of
distinct recollections....
Soon the light began to dawn in the east, and he made out the shape of
the elm trees and the dreadful prison wall; and with the first real
touch of morning light he heard a familiar creaking sound in the room
behind him, and saw the black hood of the governess rising through the
trap-door in the floor.
"But you've left me alone all night!" he said at once reproachfully, as
she kissed him.
"On purpose," she answered. "He'd get suspicious if I stayed too much
with you. It's different in the daytime, when he can't see properly."
"Where's he been all night, then?" asked the boy.
"Last night he was out most of the time--hunting----"
"Hunting!" he repeated, with excitement. "Hunting what?"
"Children--frightened children," she replied, lowering her voice.
"That's how he found you."
It was a horrible thought--Fright hunting for victims to bring to his
dreadful prison--and Jimbo shivered as he heard it.
"And how did you get on all this time?" she asked, hurriedly changing
the subject.
"I've been remembering, that is half-remembering, an awful lot of
things, and feeling, oh, so old. I never want to remember anything
again," he said wearily.
"You'll forget quick enough when you get back into your body, and have
only the body-memories," she said, with a sigh that he did not
understand. "But, now tell me," she added, in a more serious voice,
"have you had any pain yet?"
He shook his head. She stepped up beside him.
"None _there_?" she asked, touching him lightly just behind the shoulder
blades.
Jimbo jumped as if he had been shot, and uttered a piercing yell.
"That hurts!" he screamed.
"I'm so glad," cried the governess. "That's the pains coming at last."
Her face was beaming.
"Coming!" he echoed, "I think they've _come_. But if they hurt as much
as that, I think I'd rather not escape," he added ruefully.
"The pain won't last more than a minute," she said calmly. "You must be
brave and stand it. There's no escape without pain--from anything."
"If there's no other way," he said pluckily, "I'll try,--but----"
"You see," she went on, rather absently, "at this very moment the doctor
is probing the wounds in your back where the horns went in----"
But he was not listening. Her explanations always made him want either
to cry or to laugh. This time he laughed, and the governess joined him,
while they sat on the edge of the bed together talking of many things.
He did not understand all her explanations, but it comforted him to hear
them. So long as somebody understood, no matter who, he felt it was all
right.
In this way several days and nights passed quickly away. The pains were
apparently no nearer, but as Miss Lake showed no particular anxiety
about their non-arrival, he waited patiently too, dreading the moment,
yet also looking forward to it exceedingly.
During the day the governess spent most of the time in the room with
him; but at night, when he was alone, the darkness became enchanted, the
room haunted, and he passed into the long, long Gallery of Ancient
Memories.
CHAPTER IX
THE MEANS OF ESCAPE
A week passed, and Jimbo began to wonder if the pains he so much
dreaded, yet so eagerly longed for, were ever coming at all. The
imprisonment was telling upon him, and he grew very thin, and
consequently very light.
The nights, though he spent them alone, were easily borne, for he was
then intensely occupied, and the time passed swiftly; the moment it was
dark he stepped into the Gallery of Memories, and in a little while
passed into a new world of wonder and delight. But the daytime seemed
always long. He stood for hours by the window watching the trees and the
sky, and what he saw always set painful currents running through his
blood--unsatisfied longings, yearnings, and immense desires he never
could understand.
The white clouds on their swift journeys took with them something from
his heart every time he looked upon them; they melted into air and blue
sky, and lo! that "something" came back to him charged with all the wild
freedom and magic of open spaces, distance, and rushing winds.
But the change was close at hand.
One night, as he was standing by the open window listening to the drip
of the rain, he felt a deadly weakness steal over him; the strength went
out of his legs. First he turned hot, and then he turned cold; clammy
perspiration broke out all over him, and it was all he could do to crawl
across the room and throw himself on to the bed. But no sooner was he
stretched out on the mattress than the feelings passed entirely, and
left behind them an intoxicating sense of strength and lightness. His
muscles became like steel springs; his bones were strong as iron and
light as cork; a wonderful vigour had suddenly come into him, and he
felt as if he had just stepped from a dungeon into fresh air. He was
ready to face anything in the world.
But, before he had time to realise the full enjoyment of these new
sensations, a stinging, blinding pain shot suddenly through his right
shoulder as if a red-hot iron had pierced to the very bone. He screamed
out in agony; though, even while he screamed, the pain passed. Then the
same thing happened in his other shoulder. It shot through his back with
equal swiftness, and was gone, leaving him lying on the bed trembling
with pain. But the instant it was gone the delightful sensations of
strength and lightness returned, and he felt as if his whole body were
charged with some new and potent force.
The pains had come at last! Jimbo had no notion how they could possibly
be connected with escape, but Miss Lake--his kind and faithful friend,
Miss Lake--had said that no escape was possible without them; and had
promised that they should be brief. And this was true, for the entire
episode had not taken a minute of time.
"ESCAPE, ESCAPE!"--the words rushed through him like a flame of fire.
Out of this dreadful Empty House, into the open spaces; beyond the
prison wall; out where the wind and the rain could touch him; where he
could feel the grass beneath his feet, and could see the whole sky at
once, instead of this narrow strip through the window. His thoughts flew
to the stars and the clouds....
But a strange humming of voices interrupted his flight of imagination,
and he saw that the room was suddenly full of moving figures. They were
passing before him with silent footsteps, across the window from door to
door. How they had come in, or how they went out, he never knew; but his
heart stood still for an instant as he recognised the mournful figures
of the Frightened Children filing before him in a slow procession. They
were singing--though it sounded more like a chorus of whispering than
actual singing--and as they moved past with the measured steps of their
sorrowful dance, he caught the words of the song he had heard them sing
when he first came into the house:--
"We hear the little voices in the wind
Singing of freedom we may never find."
Jimbo put his fingers into his ears, but still the sound came through.
He heard the words almost as if they were inside himself--his own
thoughts singing:--
"We hear the little footsteps in the rain
Running to help us, though they run in vain,
Tapping in hundreds on the window-pane."
The horrible procession filed past and melted away near the door. They
were gone as mysteriously as they had come, and almost before he
realised it.
He sprang from the bed and tried the doors; both were locked. How in
the world had the children got in and out? The whispering voices rose
again on the night air, and this time he was sure they came from
outside. He ran to the open window and thrust his head out cautiously.
Sure enough, the procession was moving slowly, still with the steps of
that impish dance across the courtyard stones. He could just make out
the slow waving arms, the thin bodies, and the white little faces as
they passed on silent feet through the darkness, and again a fragment of
the song rose to his ears as he watched, and filled him with an
overpowering sadness:--
"We have no joy in any children's game,
For happiness to us is but a name,
Since Terror kissed us with his lips of flame."
Then he noticed that the group was growing smaller. Already the numbers
were less. Somewhere, over there in the dark corner of the yard, the
children disappeared, though it was too dark to see precisely how or
where.
"We dance with phantoms, and with shadows play," rose to his ears.
Suddenly he remembered the little white upright stones he had seen in
that corner of the yard, and understood. One by one they vanished just
behind those stones.
Jimbo shivered, and drew his head in. He did not like those upright
stones; they made him uncomfortable and afraid. Now, however, the last
child had disappeared and the song had ceased. He realised what his fate
would be if the escape were not successful; he would become one of this
band of Frightened Children; dwelling somewhere behind the upright
stones; a terrified shadow, waiting in vain to be rescued, waiting
perhaps for ever and ever. The thought brought the tears to his eyes,
but he somehow managed to choke them down. He knew it was the young
portion of him only that felt afraid--the body; the older self could not
feel fear, and had nothing to do with tears.
He lay down again upon the hard mattress and waited; and soon afterwards
the first crimson streaks of sunrise appeared behind the high elms, and
rooks began to caw and shake their wings in the upper branches. A little
later the governess came in.
Before he could move out of the way--for he disliked being embraced--she
had her arms round his neck, and was covering him with kisses. He saw
tears in her eyes.
"You darling Jimbo!" she cried, "they've come at last."
"How do you know?" he asked, surprised at her knowledge and puzzled by
her display of emotion.
"I heard you scream to begin with. Besides, I've been watching."
"Watching?"
"Yes, and listening too, every night, every single night. You've hardly
been a minute out of my sight," she added.
"I think it's awfully good of you," he said doubtfully, "but----"
A flood of questions followed--about the upright stones, the shadowy
children, where she spent the night "watching him," and a hundred other
things besides. But he got little satisfaction out of her. He never did
when it was Jimbo, the child, that asked; and he remained Jimbo, the
child, all that day. She only told him that all was going well. The
pains had come; he had grown nice and thin, and light; the children had
come into his room as a hint that he belonged to their band, and other
things had happened about which she would tell him later. The crisis was
close at hand. That was all he could get out of her.
"It won't be long now," she said excitedly. "They'll come to-night, I
expect."
"What will come to-night?" he asked, with querulous wonder.
"Wait and see!" was all the answer he got. "Wait and see!"
She told him to lie quietly on the bed and to have patience.
With asking questions, and thinking, and wondering, the day passed very
quickly. With the lengthening shadows his excitement began to grow.
Presently Miss Lake took her departure and went off to her unknown and
mysterious abode; he watched her disappear through the floor with
mingled feelings, wondering what would have happened before he saw her
again. She gave him a long, last look as she sank away below the boards,
but it was a look that brought him fresh courage, and her eyes were
happy and smiling.
Tingling already with expectancy he got into the bed and lay down, his
brain alive with one word--ESCAPE.
From where he lay he saw the stars in the narrow strip of sky; he heard
the wind whispering in the branches; he even smelt the perfume of the
fields and hedges--grass, flowers, dew, and the sweet earth--the odours
of freedom.
The governess had, for some reason she refused to explain, taken his
blouse away with her. For a long time he puzzled over this, seeking
reasons and finding none. But, while in the act of stroking his bare
arms, the pains of the night before suddenly returned to both shoulders
at once. Fire seemed to run down his back, splitting his bones apart,
and then passed even more quickly than before, leaving him with the same
wonderful sensations of lightness and strength. He felt inclined to
shout and run and jump, and it was only the memory of the governess's
earnest caution to "lie quietly" that prevented his new emotions passing
into acts.
With very great effort he lay still all night long; and it was only when
the room at last began to get light again that he turned on his side,
preparatory to getting up.
But there was something new--something different! He rested on his
elbow, waiting. Something had happened to him. Cautiously he sat on the
edge of the bed, and stretched out one foot and touched the floor.
Excitement ran through him like a wave. There was a great change, a
tremendous change; for as he stepped out gingerly on to the floor
_something followed him from the bed_. It clung to his back; it touched
both shoulders at once; it stroked his ribs, and tickled the skin of his
arms.
Half frightened, he brought the other leg over, and stood boldly upright
on both feet. But the weight still clung to his back. He looked over his
shoulder. Yes! it was trailing after him from the bed; it was
fan-shaped, and brilliant in colour. He put out a hand and touched it;
it was soft and glossy; then he took it deliberately between his
fingers; it was smooth as velvet, and had numerous tiny ribs running
along it.
Seizing it at last with all his courage, he pulled it forward in front
of him for a better view, only to discover that it would not come out
beyond a certain distance, and seemed to have got caught somehow between
his shoulders--just where the pains had been. A second pull, more
vigorous than the first, showed that it was not caught, but _fastened_
to his skin; it divided itself, moreover, into two portions, one half
coming from each shoulder.
"I do believe they're feathers!" he exclaimed, his eyes almost popping
out of his head.
Then, with a sudden flash of comprehension, he saw it all, and
understood. They were, indeed, feathers; but they were something more
than feathers merely. _They were wings!_
Jimbo caught his breath and stared in silence. He felt dazed. Then bit
by bit the fragments of the weird mosaic fell into their proper places,
and he began to understand. Escape was to be by flight. It filled him
with such a whirlwind of delight and excitement that he could scarcely
keep from screaming aloud.
Lost in wonder, he took a step forward, and watched with bulging eyes
how the wings followed him, their tips trailing along the floor. They
were a beautiful deep red, and hung down close and warm beside his body;
glossy, sleek, magical. And when, later, the sun burst into the room and
turned their colour into living flame, he could not resist the
temptation to kiss them. He seized them, and rubbed their soft surfaces
over his face. Such colours he had never seen before, and he wanted to
be sure that they really belonged to him and were intended for actual
use.
Slowly, without using his hands, he raised them into the air. The effort
was a perfectly easy muscular effort from the shoulders that came
naturally, though he did not quite understand how he accomplished it.
The wings rose in a fine, graceful sweep, curving over his head till the
tips of the feathers met, touching the walls as they rose, and almost
reaching to the ceiling.
He gave a howl of delight, for this sight was more than he could manage
without some outlet for his pent-up emotion; and at the same moment the
trap-door shot open, and the governess came into the room with such a
bang and a clatter that Jimbo knew at once her excitement was as great
as his own. In her hands she carried the blouse she had taken away the
night before. She held it out to him without a word. Her eyes were
shining like electric lamps. In less than a second he had slipped his
wings through the neatly-made slits, but before he could practise them
again, Miss Lake rushed over to him, her face radiant with happiness.
"Jimbo! My darling Jimbo!" she cried--and then stopped short, apparently
unable to express her emotion.
The next instant he was enveloped, wings and all, in a warm confusion of
kisses, congratulations and folds of hood.
When they became disentangled again the governess went down on her
knees and made a careful examination; she pulled the wings out to their
full extent and found that they stretched about four feet and a half
from tip to tip.
"They _are_ beauties!" she exclaimed enthusiastically, "and full grown
and strong. I'm not surprised they took so long coming."
"Long!" he echoed, "I thought they came awfully quickly."
"Not half so quickly as they'll go," she interrupted; adding, when she
saw his expression of dismay, "I mean, you'll fly like the wind with
them."
Jimbo was simply breathless with excitement. He wanted to jump out of
the window and escape at once. The blue sky and the sunshine and the
white flying clouds sent him an irresistible invitation. He could not
wait a minute longer.
"Quick," he cried, "I can't wait! They may go again. Show me how to use
them. Oh! do show me."
"I'll show you everything in time," she answered. There was something in
her voice that made him pause in his excitement. He looked at her in
silence for some minutes.
"But how are _you_ going to escape?" he asked at length. "You haven't
got"----he stopped short.
The governess stepped back a few paces from him. She threw back the hood
from her face. Then she lifted the long black cloak that hung like a
cassock almost to her ankles and had always enveloped her hitherto.
Jimbo stared. Falling from her shoulders, and folding over her hips, he
saw long red feathers clinging to her; and when he dashed forward to
touch them with his hands, he found they were just as sleek and smooth
and glossy as his own.
"And you never told me all this time?" he gasped.
"It was safer not," she said. "You'd have been stroking and feeling your
shoulders the whole time, and the wings might never have come at all."
She spread out her wings as she spoke to their full extent; they were
nearly six feet across, and the deep crimson on the under side was so
exquisite, gleaming in the sunlight, that Jimbo ran in and nestled
beneath the feathers, tickling his cheeks with the fluffy surface and
running his fingers with childish delight along the slender red quills.
"You precious child," she said, tenderly folding her wings round him
and kissing the top of his head. "Always remember that I really love
you; no matter what happens, remember that, and I'll save you."
"And we shall escape together?" he asked, submitting for once to the
caresses with a good grace.
"We shall escape from the Empty House together," she replied evasively.
"How far we can go after that depends--on you."
"On me?"
"If you love me enough--as I love you, Jimbo--we can never separate
again, because love ties us together for ever. Only," she added, "it
must be mutual."
"I love you very much," he said, puzzled a little. "Of course I do."
"If you've really forgiven me for being the cause of your coming here,"
she said, "we can always be together, but----"
"I don't remember, but I've forgiven you--that _other you_--long ago,"
he said simply. "If you hadn't brought me here, I should never have met
you."
"That's not real forgiveness--quite," she sighed, half to herself.
But Jimbo could not follow this sort of conversation for long; he was
too anxious to try his wings for one thing.
"Is it _very_ difficult to use them?" he asked.
"Try," she said.
He stood in the centre of the floor and raised them again and again.
They swept up easily, meeting over his head, and the air whistled
musically through them. Evidently, they had their proper muscles, for it
was no great effort, and when he folded them again by his side they fell
into natural curves over his arms as if they had been there all his
life. The sound of the feathers threshing the air filled him with
delight and made him think of the big night-bird that had flown past the
window during the night. He told the governess about it, and she burst
out laughing.
"I was that big bird!" she said.
"You!"
"I perched on the roof every night to watch over you. I flew down that
time because I was afraid you were trying to climb out of the window."
This was indeed a proof of devotion, and Jimbo felt that he could never
doubt her again; and when she went on to tell him about his wings and
how to use them he listened with his very best attention and tried hard
to learn and understand.
"The great difficulty is that you can't practise properly," she
explained. "There's no room in here, and yet you can't get out till you
_fly_ out. It's the first swoop that decides all. You have to drop
straight out of this window, and if you use the wings properly they will
carry you in a single swoop over the wall and right up into the sky."
"But if I miss----?"
"You can't miss," she said with decision, "but, if you did, you would be
a prisoner here for ever. HE would catch you in the yard and tear your
wings off. It is just as well that you should know this at once."
Jimbo shuddered as he heard her.
"When can we try?" he asked anxiously.
"Very soon now. The muscles must harden first, and that takes a little
time. You must practise flapping your wings until you can do it easily
four hundred times a minute. When you can do that it will be time for
the first start. You must keep your head steady and not get giddy; the
novelty of the motion--the ground rushing up into your face and the
whistling of the wind--are apt to confuse at first, but it soon passes,
and you must have confidence. I can only help you up to a certain
point; the rest depends on you."
"And the first jump?"
"You'll have to make that by yourself," she said; "but you'll do it all
right. You're very light, and won't go too near the ground. You see,
we're like bats, and cannot rise from the earth. We can only fly by
dropping from a height, and that's what makes the first plunge rather
trying. But you won't fall," she added, "and remember, I shall always be
within reach."
"You're awfully kind to me," said Jimbo, feeling his little soul more
than ever invaded by the force of her unselfish care. "I promise you
I'll do my best." He climbed on to her knee and stared into her anxious
face.
"Then you are beginning to love me a little, aren't you?" she asked
softly, putting her arms round him.
"Yes," he said decidedly. "I love you very much already."
Four hundred times a minute sounded a very great deal of wing-flapping;
but Jimbo practised eagerly, and though at first he could only manage
about twice a second, or one hundred and twenty times a minute, he found
this increased very soon to a great deal more, and before long he was
able to do the full four hundred, though only for a few minutes at a
time.
He stuck to it pluckily, getting stronger every day. The governess
encouraged him as much as possible, but there was very little room for
her while he was at work, and he found the best way to practise was at
night when she was out of the way. She told him that a large bird moved
its wings about four times a second, two up-strokes and two
down-strokes; but a small bird like a partridge moved its wings so
rapidly it was impossible for the eye to distinguish or count the
strokes. A middle course of four hundred suited his own case best, and
he bent all his energies to acquire it.
He also learned that the convex outside curve of wings allowed the wind
to escape over them, while the under side, being concave, held every
breath. Thus the upward stroke did not simply counterbalance the
downward and keep him stationary. Moreover, she showed him how the
feathers underlapped each other so that the downward stroke pressed them
closely together to hold the wind, whereas in the upward stroke they
opened and separated, letting the air slip easily through them, thus
offering less resistance to the atmosphere.
By the end of a week Jimbo had practised so hard that he could keep
himself off the floor in mid-air for half an hour at a time, and even
then without feeling any great fatigue. His excitement became intense;
and, meanwhile, in his body on the nursery bed, though he did not know
it, the fever was reaching its crisis. He could think of nothing else
but the joys of flying, and what the first, awful plunge would be like,
and when Miss Lake came up to him one afternoon and whispered something
in his ear, he was so wildly happy that he hugged her for several
minutes without the slightest coaxing.
"It's bright and clear," she explained, "and Fright will not come after
us, for he fears the light, and can only fly on dark and gloomy nights."
"So we can start----?" he stammered joyfully.
"To-night," she answered, "for our first practice-flight."
CHAPTER X
THE PLUNGE
To enter the world of wings is to enter a new state of existence. The
apparent loss of weight; the ability to attain full speed in a few
seconds, and to stop suddenly in a headlong rush without fear of
collapse; the power to steer instantly in any direction by merely
changing the angle of the body; the altered and enormous view of the
green world below--looking down upon forests, seas and clouds; the easy
voluptuous rhythm of rising and falling in long, swinging undulations;
and a hundred other things that simply defy description and can be
appreciated only by actual experience, these are some of the delights of
the new world of wings and flying. And the fearful joy of very high
speed, especially when the exhilaration of escape is added to it, means
a condition little short of real ecstasy.
Yet Jimbo's first flight, the governess had been careful to tell him,
could not be the flight of final escape; for, even if the wings proved
equal to a prolonged effort, escape was impossible until there was
somewhere safe to escape to. So it was understood that the practice
flights might be long, or might be short; the important thing,
meanwhile, was to learn to fly as well as possible. For skilled flying
is very different to mere headlong rushing, and both courage and
perseverance are necessary to acquire it.
With rare common sense Miss Lake had said very little about the
possibility of failure. Having warned him about the importance of not
falling, she had then stopped, and the power of suggestion had been
allowed to work only in the right direction of certain success. While
the boy knew that the first plunge from the window would be a moment
fraught with the highest danger, his mind only recognised the mere
off-chance of falling and being caught. He felt confidence in himself,
and by so much, therefore, were the chances of disaster lessened.
For the rest of the afternoon Jimbo saw nothing of his faithful
companion; he spent the time practising and resting, and when weary of
everything else, he went to the window and indulged in thrilling
calculations about the exact height from the ground. A drop of three
storeys into a paved courtyard with a monster waiting to catch him, and
a high wall too close to allow a proper swing, was an alarming matter
from any point of view. Fortunately, his mind dwelt more on the delight
of prospective flight and freedom than on the chances of being caught.
The yard lay hot and naked in the afternoon glare and the enclosing wall
had never looked more formidable; but from his lofty perch Jimbo could
see beyond into soft hayfields and smiling meadows, yellow with cowslips
and buttercups. Everything that flew he watched with absorbing interest:
swift blackbirds, whistling as they went, and crows, their wings purple
in the sunshine. The song of the larks, invisible in the sea of blue air
sent a thrill of happiness through him--he, too, might soon know
something of that glad music--and even the stately flight of the
butterflies, which occasionally ventured over into the yard, stirred
anticipations in him of joys to come.
The day waned slowly. The butterflies vanished; the rooks sailed
homewards through the sunset; the wind dropped away, and the shadows of
the high elms lengthened gradually and fell across the window.
The mysterious hour of the dusk, when the standard of reality changes
and other worlds come close and listen, began to work its subtle spell
upon his soul. Imperceptibly the shadows deepened as the veil of night
drew silently across the sky. A gentle breathing filled the air; trees
and fields were composing themselves to sleep; stars were peeping; wings
were being folded.
But the boy's wings, trembling with life to the very tips of their long
feathers, these were not being folded. Charged with excitement, like
himself, they were gathering all their forces for the supreme effort of
their first journey out into the open spaces where they might touch the
secret sources of their own magical life.
For a long, long time he waited; but at last the trap-door lifted and
Miss Lake appeared above the floor. The moment she stood in the room he
noticed that her wings came through two little slits in her gown and
folded down close to the body. They almost touched the ground.
"Hush!" she whispered, holding up a warning finger.
She came over on tiptoe and they began to talk in low whispers.
"He's on the watch; we must speak very quietly. We couldn't have a
better night for it. The wind's in the south and the moon won't be up
till we're well on our way."
Now that the actual moment was so near the boy felt something of fear
steal over him. The night seemed so vast and terrible all of a
sudden--like an immense black ocean with no friendly islands where they
could fold their wings and rest.
"Don't waste your strength thinking," whispered the governess. "When the
time comes, act quickly, that's all!"
She went over to the window and peered out cautiously, after a while
beckoning the child to join her.
"He is there," she murmured in his ear. Jimbo could only make out an
indistinct shadowy object crouching under the wall, and he was not even
positive of that.
"Does he know we're going?" he asked in an awed whisper.
"He's there on the chance," she muttered, drawing back into the room.
"When there's a possibility of any one getting frightened he's bound to
be lurking about somewhere near. That's Fright all over. But he can't
hurt you," she added, "because you're not going to get frightened.
Besides, he can only fly when it's dark; and to-night we shall have the
moon."
"I'm not afraid," declared the boy in spite of a rather fluttering
heart.
"Are you ready?" was all she said.
At last, then, the moment had come. It was actually beside him, waiting,
full of mystery and wonder, with alarm not far behind. The sun was
buried below the horizon of the world, and the dusk had deepened into
night. Stars were shining overhead; the leaves were motionless; not a
breath stirred; the earth was silent and waiting.
"Yes, I'm ready," he whispered, almost inaudibly.
"Then listen," she said, "and I'll tell you exactly what to do: Jump
upwards from the window ledge as high as you can, and the moment you
begin to drop, open your wings and strike with all your might. You'll
rise at once. The thing to remember is to _rise as quickly as possible_,
because the wall prevents a long, easy, sweeping rise; and, whatever
happens, you must clear that wall!"
"I shan't touch the ground then?" asked a faint little voice.
"Of course not! You'll get near it, but the moment you use your wings
you'll stop sinking, and rise up, up, up, ever so quickly."
"And where to?"
"To me. You'll see me waiting for you above the trees. Steering will
come naturally; it's quite easy."
Jimbo was already shaking with excitement. He could not help it. And he
knew, in spite of all Miss Lake's care, that Fright was waiting in the
yard to catch him if he fell, or sank too near the ground.
"I'll go first," added the governess, "and the moment you see that I've
cleared the wall you must jump after me. Only do not keep me waiting!"
The girl stood for a minute in silence, arranging her wings. Her fingers
were trembling a little. Suddenly she drew the boy to her and kissed him
passionately.
"Be brave!" she whispered, looking searchingly into his eyes, "and
strike hard--you can't possibly fail."
In another minute she was climbing out of the window. For one second he
saw her standing on the narrow ledge with black space at her feet; the
next, without even a cry, she sprang out into the darkness, and was
gone.
Jimbo caught his breath and ran up to see. She dropped like a stone,
turning over sideways in the air, and then at once her wings opened on
both sides and she righted. The darkness swallowed her up for a moment
so that he could not see clearly, and only heard the threshing of the
huge feathers; but it was easy to tell from the sound that she was
rising.
Then suddenly a black form cleared the wall and rose swiftly in a
magnificent sweep into the sky, and he saw her outlined darkly against
the stars above the high elm tree. She was safe. Now it was his turn.
"Act quickly! Don't think!" rang in his ears. If only he could do it all
as quickly as she had done it. But insidious fear had been working all
the time below the surface, and his refusal to recognise it could not
prevent it weakening his muscles and checking his power of decision.
Fortunately something of his Older Self came to the rescue. The emotions
of fear, excitement, and intense anticipation combined to call up the
powers of his deeper being: the boy trembled horribly, but the old,
experienced part of him sang with joy.
Cautiously he began to climb out on to the window-sill; first one foot
and then the other hung over the edge. He sat there, staring down into
black space beneath.
For a minute he hesitated; despair rushed over him in a wave; he could
never take that awful jump into emptiness and darkness. It was
impossible. Better be a prisoner for ever than risk so fearful a plunge.
He felt cold, weak, frightened, and made a half-movement back into the
room. The wings caught somehow between his legs and nearly flung him
headlong into the yard.
"Jimbo! I'm waiting for you!" came at that moment in a faint cry from
the stars, and the sound gave him just the impetus he needed before it
was too late. He could not disappoint her--his faithful friend. Such a
thing was impossible.
He stood upright on the ledge, his hands clutching the window-sash
behind, balancing as best he could. He clenched his fists, drew a deep,
long breath, and jumped upwards and forwards into the air.
Up rushed the darkness with a shriek; the air whistled in his ears; he
dropped at fearful speed into nothingness.
At first everything was forgotten--wings, instructions, warnings, and
all. He even forgot to open his wings at all, and in another second he
would have been dashed upon the hard paving-stones of the courtyard
where his great enemy lay waiting to seize him.
But just in the nick of time he remembered, and the long hours of
practice bore fruit. Out flew the great red wings in a tremendous sweep
on both sides of him, and he began to strike with every atom of strength
he possessed. He had dropped to within six feet of the ground; but at
once the strokes began to tell, and oh, magical sensation! he felt
himself rising easily, lightly, swiftly.
A very slight effort of those big wings would have been sufficient to
lift him out of danger, but in his terror and excitement he quite
miscalculated their power, and in a single moment he was far out of
reach of the dangerous yard and anything it contained. But the mad rush
of it all made his head swim; he felt dizzy and confused, and, instead
of clearing the wall, he landed on the top of it and clung to the
crumbling coping with hands and feet, panting and breathless.
The dizziness was only momentary, however. In less than a minute he was
on his feet and in the act of taking his second leap into space. This
time it came more easily. He dropped, and the field swung up to meet
him. Soon the powerful strokes of his wings drove him at great speed
upwards, and he bounded ever higher towards the stars.
Overhead, the governess hovered like an immense bird, and as he rose up
he caught the sound of her wings beating the air, while far beneath him,
he heard with a shudder a voice like the rushing of a great river. It
made him increase his pace, and in another minute he found himself among
the little whirlwinds that raced about from the beating of Miss Lake's
great wings.
"Well done!" cried the delighted governess. "Safe at last! Now we can
fly to our heart's content!"
Jimbo flew up alongside, and together they dashed forward into the
night.
CHAPTER XI
THE FIRST FLIGHT
There was not much talking at first. The stress of conflicting emotions
was so fierce that the words choked themselves in his throat, and the
desire for utterance found its only vent in hard breathing.
The intoxication of rapid motion carried him away headlong in more
senses than one. At first he felt as if he never would be able to keep
up; then it seemed as if he never would get down again. For with wings
it is almost easier to rise than to fall, and a first flight is, before
anything else, a series of vivid and audacious surprises.
For a long time Jimbo was so dizzy with excitement and the novelty of
the sensation that he forgot his deliverer altogether.
And what a flight it was! Instead of the steady race of the carrier
pigeon, or of the rooks homeward bound at evening, it was the see-saw
motion of the wren's swinging journey across the lawn; only heavier,
faster, and with more terrific impetus. Up and down, each time with a
rise and fall of twenty feet, he careered, whistling through the summer
night; at the drop of each curve, so low that the scents of dewy grass
rose into his face; at the crest of it, so high that the trees and
hedges often became mere blots upon the dark surface of the earth.
The fields rushed by beneath him; the white roads flashed past like
streaks of snow. Sometimes he shot across sheets of water and felt the
cooler air strike his cheeks; sometimes over sheltered meadows, where
the sunshine had slept all day and the air was still soft and warm; on
and on, as easily as rain dropping from the sky, or wind rushing
earthwards from between the clouds. Everything flew past him at an
astonishing rate--everything but the bright stars that gazed calmly down
overhead; and when he looked up and saw their steadfastness it helped to
keep within bounds the fine alarm of this first excursion into the great
vault of the sky.
"Gently, child!" gasped Miss Lake behind him. "We shall never keep it up
at this rate."
"Oh! but it's so wonderful," he cried, drawing in the air loudly
between his teeth, and shaking his wings rapidly like a hawk before it
drops.
The pace slackened a little and the girl drew up alongside. For some
time they flew forward together in silence.
They had been skirting the edge of a wood, when suddenly the trees fell
away and Jimbo gave a scream and rose fifty feet into the air with a
single bound. Straight in front of him loomed an immense, glaring disc
that seemed to swim suddenly up into the sky above the trees. It hung
there before his eyes and dazzled him.
"It's only the moon," cried Miss Lake from below.
Jimbo dropped through the air to her side again with a gasp.
"I thought it was a big hole in the sky with fire rushing through," he
explained breathlessly.
The boy stared, full of wonder and delight, at the huge flaming circle
that seemed to fill half the heavens in front of him.
"Look out!" cried the governess, seizing his hand.
Whish! whew! whirr! A large bird whipped past them like some winged imp
of darkness, vanishing among the trees far below. There would certainly
have been a collision but for the girl's energetic interference.
"You must be on the look-out for these night-birds," she said. "They fly
so unexpectedly, and, of course, they don't see us properly. Telegraph
wires and church steeples are bad too, but then we shan't fly over
cities much. Keep a good height, it's safer."
They altered their course a little, flying at a different angle, so that
the moon no longer dazzled them. Steering came quite easily by turning
the body, and Jimbo still led the way, the governess following heavily
and with a mighty business of wings and flapping.
It was something to remember, the glory of that first journey through
the air. Sixty miles an hour, and scarcely an effort! Skimming the long
ridges of the hills and rushing through the pure air of mountain tops;
threading the star-beams; bathing themselves from head to foot in an
ocean of cool, clean wind; swimming on the waves of viewless
currents--currents warmed only by the magic of the stars, and kissed by
the burning lips of flying meteors.
Far below them the moonlight touched the fields with silver and the
murmur of the world rose faintly to their ears, trembling, as it were,
with the inarticulate dreams of millions. Everywhere about them thrilled
and sang the unspeakable power of the night. The mystery of its great
heart seemed laid bare before them.
It was like a wonder-journey in some Eastern fairy tale. Sometimes they
passed through zones of sweeter air, perfumed with the scents of hay and
wild flowers; at others, the fresh, damp odour of ploughed fields rose
up to them; or, again, they went spinning over leagues of forest where
the tree-tops stretched beneath them like the surface of a wide, green
sea, sleeping in the moonlight. And, when they crossed open water, the
stars shone reflected in their faces; and all the while the wings,
whirring and purring softly through the darkness, made pleasant music in
their ears.
"I'm tired," declared Jimbo presently.
"Then we'll go down and rest," said his breathless companion with
obvious relief.
She showed him how to spread his wings, sloping them towards the ground
at an angle that enabled him to shoot rapidly downwards, at the same
time regulating his speed by the least upward tilt. It was a glorious
motion, without effort or difficulty, though the pace made it hard to
keep the eyes open, and breathing became almost impossible. They dropped
to within ten feet of the ground and then shot forward again.
But, while the boy was watching his companion's movements, and paying
too little attention to his own, there rose suddenly before him out of
the ground a huge, bulky form of something--and crash--he flew headlong
into it.
Fortunately it was only a haystack; but the speed at which he was going
lodged his head several inches under the thatch, whence he projected
horizontally into space, feet, arms, and wings gyrating furiously. The
governess, however, soon released him with much laughter, and they
dropped down into the fallen hay upon the ground with no worse result
than a shaking.
"Oh, what a lark!" he cried, shaking the hay out of his feathers, and
rubbing his head rather ruefully.
"Except that larks are hardly night-birds," she laughed, helping him.
They settled with folded wings in the shadow of the haystack; and the
big moon, peeping over the edge at them, must have surely wondered to
see such a funny couple, in such a place, and at such an hour.
"Mushrooms!" suddenly cried the governess, springing to her feet. "There
must be lots in this field. I'll go and pick some while you rest a bit."
Off she went, trapesing over the field in the moonlight, her wings
folded behind her, her body bent a little forward as she searched, and
in ten minutes she came back with her hands full. That was undoubtedly
the time to enjoy mushrooms at their best, with the dew still on their
tight little jackets, and the sweet odour of the earth caught under
their umbrellas.
Soon they were all eaten, and Jimbo was lying back on a pile of hay, his
shoulders against the wall of the stack, and his wings gathered round
him like a warm cloak of feathers. He felt cosy and dozy, full of
mushrooms inside and covered with hay and feathers outside. The
governess had once told him that a sort of open-air sleep sometimes came
after a long flight. It was, of course, not a real sleep, but a state in
which everything about oneself is forgotten; no dreams, no movement, no
falling asleep and waking up in the ordinary sense, but a condition of
deep repose in which recuperation is very great.
Jimbo would have been greatly interested, no doubt, to know that his
real body on the bed had also just been receiving nourishment, and was
now passing into a quieter and less feverish condition. The parallel
always held true between himself and his body in the nursery, but he
could not know anything about this, and only supposed that it was this
open-air sleep that he felt gently stealing over him.
It brought at first strange thoughts that carried him far away to other
woods and other fields. While Miss Lake sat beside him eating her
mushrooms, his mind was drawn off to some other little folk. But it was
always stopped just short of them. He never could quite see their faces.
Yet his thoughts continued their search, groping in the darkness; he
felt sure he ought to be sharing his adventures with these other little
persons, whoever they were; they ought to have been sitting beside him
at that very moment, eating mushrooms, combing their wings, comparing
the length of their feathers, and snuggling with him into the warm hay.
But they obstinately hovered just outside his memory, and refused to
come in and surrender themselves. He could not remember who they were,
and his yearnings went unsatisfied up to the stars, as yearnings
generally do, while his thoughts returned weary from their search and he
yielded to the seductions of the soothing open-air sleep.
The moon, meanwhile, rose higher and higher, drawing a silver veil over
the stars. Upon the field the dews of midnight fell silently. A faint
mist rose from the ground and covered the flowers in their dim seclusion
under the hedgerows. The hours slipped away swiftly.
"Come on, Jimbo, boy!" cried the governess at length. "The moon's below
the hills, and we must be off!"
The boy turned and stared sleepily at her from his nest in the hay.
"We've got miles to go. Remember the speed we came at!" she explained,
getting up and arranging her wings.
Jimbo got up slowly and shook himself.
"I've been miles away," he said dreamily, "miles and miles. But I'm
ready to start at once."
They looked about for a raised place to jump from. A ladder stood
against the other side of the haystack. The governess climbed up it and
Jimbo followed her drowsily. Hand in hand they sprang into the air from
the edge of the thatched roof, and their wings spread out like sails to
catch the wind. It smote their faces pleasantly as they plunged
downwards and forwards, and the exhilarating rush of cool air banished
from the boy's head the last vestige of the open-air sleep.
"We must keep up a good pace," cried the governess, taking a stream and
the hedge beyond in a single sweep. "There's a light in the east
already."
As she spoke a dog howled in a farmyard beneath them, and she shot
upwards as though lifted by a sudden gust of wind.
"We're too low," she shouted from above. "That dog felt us near. Come up
higher. It's easier flying, and we've got a long way to go."
Jimbo followed her up till they were several hundred feet above the
earth and the keen air stung their cheeks. Then she led him still
higher, till the meadows looked like the squares on a chess-board and
the trees were like little toy shrubs. Here they rushed along at a
tremendous speed, too fast to speak, their wings churning the air into
little whirlwinds and eddies as they passed, whizzing, whistling,
tearing through space.
The fields, however, were still dim in the shadows that precede the
dawn, and the stars only just beginning to fade, when they saw the dark
outline of the Empty House below them, and began carefully to descend.
Soon they topped the high elms, startling the rooks into noisy cawing,
and then, skimming the wall, sailed stealthily on outspread wings across
the yard.
Cautiously dropping down to the level of the window, they crawled over
the sill into the dark little room, and folded their wings.
CHAPTER XII
THE FOUR WINDS
The governess left the boy to his own reflections almost immediately. He
spent the hours thinking and resting; going over again in his mind every
incident of the great flight and wondering when the real, final escape
would come, and what it would be like. Thus, between the two states of
excitement he forgot for a while that he was still a prisoner, and the
spell of horror was lifted temporarily from his heart.
The day passed quickly, and when Miss Lake appeared in the evening, she
announced that there could be no flying again that night, and that she
wished instead to give him important instruction for the future. There
were rules, and signs, and times which he must learn carefully. The time
might come when he would have to fly alone, and he must be prepared for
everything.
"And the first thing I have to tell you," she said, exactly as though
it was a schoolroom, "is: _Never fly over the sea._ Our kind of wings
quickly absorb the finer particles of water and get clogged and heavy
over the sea. You finally cannot resist the drawing power of the water,
and you will be dragged down and drowned. So be very careful! When you
are flying high it is often difficult to know where the land ends and
the sea begins, especially on moonless nights. But you can always be
certain of one thing: if there are no sounds below you--hoofs, voices,
wheels, wind in trees--you are over the sea."
"Yes," said the child, listening with great attention. "And what else?"
"The next thing is: _Don't fly too high._ Though we fly like birds,
remember we are not birds, and we can fly where they can't. We can fly
in the ether----"
"Where's that?" he interrupted, half afraid of the sound.
She stooped and kissed him, laughing at his fear.
"There is nothing to be frightened about," she explained. "The air gets
lighter and lighter as you go higher, till at last it stops altogether.
Then there's only ether left. Birds can't fly in ether because it's too
thin. We can, because----"
"Is that why it was good for me to get lighter and thinner?" he
interrupted again in a puzzled voice.
"Partly, yes."
"And what happens in the ether, please?" It still frightened him a
little.
"Nothing--except that if you fly too high you reach a point where the
earth ceases to hold you, and you dash off into space. Weight leaves you
then, and the wings move without effort. Faster and faster you rush
upwards, till you lose all control of your movements, and then----"
Miss Lake hesitated a moment.
"And then----?" asked the fascinated child.
"You may never come down again," she said slowly. "You may be sucked
into anything that happens to come your way--a comet, or a shooting
star, or the moon."
"I should like a shooting star best," observed the boy, deeply
interested. "The moon frightens me, I think. It looks so dreadfully
clean."
"You won't like any of them when the time comes," she laughed. "No one
ever gets out again who once gets in. But you'll never be caught that
way after what I've told you," she added, with decision.
"I shall never want to fly as high as that, I'm sure," said Jimbo. "And
now, please, what comes next?"
The next thing, she went on to explain, was the _weather_, which, to all
flying creatures, was of the utmost importance. Before starting for a
flight he must always carefully consider the state of the sky, and the
direction in which he wished to go. For this purpose he must master the
meaning and character of the Four Winds and be able to recognise them in
a moment.
"Once you know these," she said, "you cannot possibly go wrong. To make
it easier, I've put each Wind into a little simple rhyme, for you."
"I'm listening," he said eagerly.
"The North Wind is one of the worst and most dangerous, because it blows
so much faster than you think. It's taken you ten miles before you think
you've gone two. In starting with a North Wind, always fly _against_ it;
then it will bring you home easily. If you fly _with_ it, you may be
swept so far that the day will catch you before you can get home; and
then you're as good as lost. Even birds fly warily when this wind is
about. It has no lulls or resting-places in it; it blows steadily on and
on, and conquers everything it comes against--everything except the
mountains."
"And its rhyme?" asked Jimbo, all ears.
"It will show you the joy of the birds, my child,
You shall know their terrible bliss;
It will teach you to hide, when the night is wild,
From the storm's too passionate kiss.
For the Wind of the North
Is a volleying forth
That will lift you with springs
In the heart of your wings,
And may sweep you away
To the edge of the day.
So, beware of the Wind of the North, my child,
Fly not with the Wind of the North!"
"I think I like him all the same," said Jimbo. "But I'll remember always
to fly against him."
"The East Wind is worse still, for it hurts," continued the governess.
"It stings and cuts. It's like the breath of an ice-creature; it brings
hail and sleet and cold rain that beat down wings and blind the eyes.
Like the North Wind, too, it is dreadfully swift and full of little
whirlwinds, and may easily carry you into the light of day that would
prove your destruction. Avoid it always; no hiding-place is safe from
it. This is the rhyme:
"It will teach you the secrets the eagles know
Of the tempests' and whirlwinds' birth;
And the magical weaving of rain and snow
As they fall from the sky to the earth.
But an Easterly wind
Is for ever unkind;
It will torture and twist you
And never assist you,
But will drive you with might
To the verge of the night.
So, beware of the Wind of the East, my child,
Fly not with the Wind of the East."
"The West Wind is really a very nice and jolly wind in itself," she went
on, "but it's dangerous for a special reason: _it will carry you out to
sea_. The Empty House is only a few miles from the coast, and a strong
West Wind would take you there almost before you had time to get down to
earth again. And there's no use struggling against a really steady West
Wind, for it's simply tireless. Luckily, it rarely blows at night, but
goes down with the sun. Often, too, it blows hard to the coast, and then
drops suddenly, leaving you among the fogs and mists of the sea."
"Rather a nice, exciting sort of wind though," remarked Jimbo, waiting
for the rhyme.
"So, at last, you shall know from their lightest breath
To which heaven each wind belongs;
And shall master their meaning for life or death
By the shout of their splendid songs.
Yet the Wind of the West
Is a wind unblest;
It is lifted and kissed
By the spirits of mist;
It will clasp you and flee
To the wastes of the sea.
So, beware of the Wind of the West, my child,
Fly not with the Wind of the West!"
"A jolly wind," observed Jimbo again. "But that doesn't leave much over
to fly with," he added sadly. "They all seem dangerous or cruel."
"Yes," she laughed, "and so they are till you can master them--then
they're kind, only one that's really always safe and kind is the Wind of
the South. It's a sweet, gentle wind, beloved of all that flies, and you
can't possibly mistake it. You can tell it at once by the murmuring way
it stirs the grasses and the tops of the trees. Its taste is soft and
sweet in the mouth like wine, and there's always a faint perfume about
it like gardens in summer. It is the joy of this wind that makes all
flying things sing. With a South Wind you can go anywhere and no harm
can come to you."
"Dear old South Wind," cried Jimbo, rubbing his hands with delight. "I
hope it will blow soon."
"Its rhyme is very easy, too, though you will always be able to tell it
without that," she added.
"For this is the favourite Wind of all,
Beloved of the stars and night;
In the rustle of leaves you shall hear it call
To the passionate joys of flight.
It will carry you forth in its wonderful hair
To the far-away courts of the sky,
And the breath of its lips is a murmuring prayer
For the safety of all who fly.
For the Wind of the South
Is like wine in the mouth,
With its whispering showers
And perfume of flowers,
When it falls like a sigh
From the heart of the sky."
"Oh!" interrupted Jimbo, rubbing his hands, "that _is_ nice. That's _my_
wind!"
"It will bear you aloft
With a pressure so soft
That you hardly shall guess
Whose the gentle caress."
"Hooray!" he cried again.
"It's the kindest of weathers
For our red feathers,
And blows open the way
To the Gardens of Play.
So, fly out with the Wind of the South, my child,
With the wonderful Wind of the South."
"Oh, I love the South Wind already," he shouted, clapping his hands
again. "I hope it will blow very, _very_ soon."
"It may be rising even now," answered the governess, leading him to the
window. But, as they gazed at the summer landscape lying in the fading
light of the sunset, all was still and resting. The air was hushed, the
leaves motionless. There was no call just then to flight from among the
tree-tops, and he went back into the room disappointed.
"But why can't we escape at once?" he asked again, after he had given
his promise to remember all she had told him, and to be extra careful if
he ever went out flying alone.
"Jimbo, dear, I've told you before, it's because your body isn't ready
for you yet," she answered patiently. "There's hardly any circulation
in it, and if you forced your way back now the shock might stop your
heart beating altogether. Then you'd be really dead, and escape would be
impossible."
The boy sat on the edge of the bed staring intently at her while she
spoke. Something clutched at his heart. He felt his Older Self, with its
greater knowledge, rising up out of the depths within him. The child
struggled with the old soul for possession.
"Have _you_ got any circulation?" he asked abruptly at length. "I mean,
has _your_ heart stopped beating?"
But the smile called up by his words froze on her lips. She crossed to
the window and stood with her back to the fading light, avoiding his
eyes.
"My case, Jimbo, is a little different from yours," she said presently.
"The important thing is to make certain about your escape. Never mind
about me."
"But escape without you is nothing," he said, the Older Self now wholly
in possession. "I simply wouldn't go. I'd rather stay here--with you."
The governess made no reply, but she turned her back to the room and
leaned out of the window. Jimbo fancied he heard a sob. He felt a great
big heart swelling up within his little body, and he crossed over beside
her. For some minutes they stood there in silence, watching the stars
that were already shining faintly in the sky.
"Whatever happens," he said, nestling against her, "I shan't go from
here without you. Remember that!"
He was going to say a lot more, but somehow or other, when she stooped
over to kiss his head--he hardly came up to her shoulder--it all ran
suddenly out of his mind, and the little child dropped back into
possession again. The tide of his thoughts that seemed about to rise,
fast and furious, sank away completely, leaving his mind a clean-washed
slate without a single image; and presently, without any more words, the
governess left him and went through the trap-door into the silence and
mystery of the house below.
Several hours later, about the middle of the night, there came over him
a most disagreeable sensation of nausea and dizziness. The ground rose
and fell beneath his feet, the walls swam about sideways, and the
ceiling slid off into the air. It only lasted a few minutes, however,
and Jimbo knew from what she had told him that it was the Flying
Sickness which always followed the first long flight.
But, about the same time, another little body, lying in a night-nursery
bed, was being convulsed with a similar attack; and the sickness of the
little prisoner in the Empty House had its parallel, strangely enough,
in the half-tenanted body miles away in a different world.
CHAPTER XIII
PLEASURES OF FLIGHT
Since the night when Jimbo had nearly fallen into the yard and risked
capture, Fright, the horrible owner of the house, had kept himself well
out of the way, and had allowed himself to be neither seen nor heard.
But the boy was not foolish enough to fall into the other trap, and
imagine, therefore, that He did not know what was going on. Jimbo felt
quite sure that He was only waiting his chance; and the governess's
avoidance of the subject tended to confirm this supposition.
"He's disappeared somewhere and taken the children with him," she
declared when he questioned her. "And now you know almost as much as I
do."
"But not quite!" he laughed mischievously.
"Enough, though," she replied. "We want all our energy for escape when
it comes. Don't bother about anything else for the moment."
During the day, when he was alone, his thoughts and fancies often
terrified him; but at night, when he was rushing through the heavens,
the intense delight of flying drove all minor emotions out of his
consciousness, and he even forgot his one great desire--to escape. One
night, however, something happened that brought it back more keenly than
ever.
He had been out flying alone, but had not gone far when he noticed that
an easterly wind had begun to rise and was blowing steadily behind him.
With the recent instructions fresh in his head, he thought it wiser to
turn homewards rather than fight his way back later against a really
strong wind from this quarter. Flying low along the surface of the
fields so as to avoid its full force, he suddenly rose up with a good
sweep and settled on the top of the wall enclosing the yard.
The moonlight lay bright over everything. His approach had been very
quiet. He was just about to sail across to the window when something
caught his eye, and he hesitated a moment, and stared.
Something was moving at the other end of the courtyard.
It seemed to him that the moonlight suddenly grew pale and ghastly; the
night air turned chilly; shivers began to run up and down his back.
He folded his wings and watched.
At the end of the yard he saw several figures moving busily to and fro
in the shadow of the wall. They were very small; but close beside them
all the time stood a much larger figure which seemed to be directing
their movements. There was no need to look twice; it was impossible to
mistake these terrible little people and their hideous overseer. Horror
rushed over the boy, and a wild scream was out in the night before he
could possibly prevent it. At the same moment a cloud passed over the
face of the moon and the yard was shrouded in darkness.
A minute later the cloud passed off; but while it was still too dark to
see clearly, Jimbo was conscious of a rushing, whispering sound in the
air, and something went past him at a tremendous pace into the sky. The
wind stirred his hair as it passed, and a moment later he heard voices
far away in the distance--up in the sky or within the house he could
not tell--singing mournfully the song he now knew so well:--
We dance with phantoms and with shadows play.
But when he looked down at the yard he saw that it was deserted, and the
corner by the little upright stones lay in the clear moonlight, empty of
figures, large or small.
Shivering with fright, he flew across to the window ledge, and almost
tumbled into the arms of the governess who was standing close inside.
"What's the matter, child?" she asked in a voice that trembled a little.
And, still shuddering, he told her how he thought he had seen the
children working by the gravestones. All her efforts to calm him at
first failed, but after a bit she drew his thoughts to pleasanter
things, and he was not so certain after all that he had not been
deceived by the cunning of the moonlight and the shadows.
A long interval passed, and no further sign was given by the owner of
the house or his band of frightened children. Jimbo soon lost himself
again in the delights of flying and the joy of his increasing powers.
Most of all he enjoyed the quiet, starlit nights before the moon was
up; for the moon dazzled the eyes in the rarefied air where they flew,
whereas the stars gave just enough light to steer by without making it
uncomfortable.
Moreover, the moon often filled him with a kind of faint terror, as of
death; he could never gaze at her white face for long without feeling
that something entered his heart with those silver rays--something that
boded him no good. He never spoke of this to the governess; indeed, he
only recognised it himself when the moon was near the full; but it lay
always in the depths of his being, and he felt dimly that it would have
to be reckoned with before he could really escape for good. He took no
liberties when the moon was at the full.
He loved to hover--for he had learned by this time that most difficult
of all flying feats; to hold the body vertical and whirr the wings
without rising or advancing--he loved to hover on windless nights over
ponds and rivers and see the stars reflected in their still pools.
Indeed, sometimes he hovered till he dropped, and only saved himself
from a wetting by sweeping up in a tremendous curve along the surface of
the water, and thus up into the branches of the trees where the
governess sat waiting for him. And then, after a little rest, they
would launch forth again and fly over fields and woods, sometimes even
as far as the hills that ran down the coast of the sea itself.
They usually flew at a height of about a thousand feet, and the earth
passed beneath them like a great streaked shadow. But as soon as the
moon was up the whole country turned into a fairyland of wonder. Her
light touched the woods with a softened magic, and the fields and hedges
became frosted most delicately. Beneath a thin transparency of mist the
water shone with a silvery brilliance that always enabled them to
distinguish it from the land at any height; while the farms and country
houses were swathed in tender grey shadows through which the trees and
chimneys pierced in slender lines of black. It was wonderful to watch
the shadows everywhere spinning their blue veil of distance that lent
even to the commonest objects something of enchantment and mystery.
Those were wonderful journeys they made together into the pathways of
the silent night, along the unknown courses, into that hushed centre
where they could almost hear the beatings of her great heart--like
winged thoughts searching the huge vault, till the boy ached with the
sensations of speed and distance, and the old yellow moon seemed to
stagger across the sky.
Sometimes they rose very high into freezing air, so high that the earth
became a dull shadow specked with light. They saw the trains running in
all directions with thin threads of smoke shining in the glare of the
open fire-boxes. But they seemed very tiny trains indeed, and stirred in
him no recollections of the semi-annual visits to London town when he
went to the dentist, and lunched with the dreaded grandmother or the
stiff and fashionable aunts.
And when they came down again from these perilous heights, the scents of
the earth rose to meet them, the perfume of woods and fields, and the
smells of the open country.
There was, too, the delight, the curious delight of windy nights, when
the wind smote and buffeted them, knocking them suddenly sideways,
whistling through their feathers as if it wanted to tear them from their
sockets; rushing furiously up underneath their wings with repeated
blows; turning them round, and backwards and forwards, washing them from
head to foot in a tempestuous sea of rapid and unexpected motion.
It was, of course, far easier to fly with a wind than without one. The
difficulty with a violent wind was to get down--not to keep up. The
gusts drove up against the under-surfaces of their wings and kept them
afloat, so that by merely spreading them like sails they could sweep and
circle without a single stroke. Jimbo soon learned to manoeuvre so that
he could turn the strength of a great wind to his own purposes, and
revel in its boisterous waves and currents like a strong swimmer in a
rough sea.
And to listen to the wind as it swept backwards and forwards over the
surface of the earth below was another pleasure; for everything it
touched gave out a definite note. He soon got to know the long sad cry
from the willows, and the little whispering in the tops of the poplar
trees; the crisp, silvery rattle of the birches, and the deep roar from
oaks and beech woods. The sound of a forest was like the shouting of the
sea.
But far more lovely, when they descended a little, and the wind was more
gentle, were the low pipings among the reeds and the little wayward
murmurs under the hedgerows.
The pine trees, however, drew them most, with their weird voices, now
far away, now near, rising upwards with a wind of sighs.
There was a grove of these trees that trooped down to the waters of a
little lake in the hills, and to this spot they often flew when the wind
was low and the music likely, therefore, to be to their taste. For, even
when there was no perceptible wind, these trees seemed always full of
mysterious, mournful whisperings; their branches held soft music that
never quite died away, even when all other trees were silent and
motionless.
Besides these special expeditions, they flew everywhere and anywhere.
They visited the birds in their nests in lofty trees, and exchanged the
time of night with wise-eyed owls staring out upon them from the ivy.
They hovered up the face of great cliffs, and passed the hawks asleep on
perilous ledges; skimmed over lonely marshes, frightening the
water-birds paddling in and out among the reeds. They followed the
windings of streams, singing among the meadows, and flew along the wet
sands as they watched the moon rise out of the sea.
These flights were unadulterated pleasure, and Jimbo thought he could
never have enough of them.
He soon began to notice, too, that the trees emanated something that
affected his own condition. When he sat in their branches this was very
noticeable. Currents of force passed from them into himself. And even
when he flew over their crests he was aware that some woods exhaled
vigorous, life-giving forces, while others tired and depleted him.
Nothing was visible actually, but fine waves seemed to beat up against
his eyes and thoughts, making him stronger or weaker, happy or
melancholy, full of hope and courage, or listless and indifferent.
These emanations of the trees--this giving-forth of their own personal
forces--were, of course, very varied in strength and character. Oaks and
pines were the best combination, he found, before the stress of a long
flight, the former giving him steadiness, and the latter steely
endurance and the power to steer in sinuous, swift curves, without
taking thought or trouble.
Other trees gave other powers. All gave something. It was impossible to
sit among their branches without absorbing some of the subtle and
exhilarating tree-life. He soon learned how to gather it all into
himself, and turn it to account in his own being.
"Sit quietly," the governess said. "Let the forces creep in and stir
about. Do nothing yourself. Give them time to become part of yourself
and mix properly with your own currents. Effort on your part prevents
this, and you weaken them without gaining anything yourself."
Jimbo made all sorts of experiments with trees and rocks and water and
fields, learning gradually the different qualities of force they gave
forth, and how to use them for himself. Nothing, he found, was really
dead. And sometimes he got himself into strange difficulties in the
beginning of his attempts to master and absorb these nature-forces.
"Remember," the governess warned him more than once, when he was
inclined to play tricks, "they are in quite a different world to ours.
You cannot take liberties with them. Even a sympathetic soul like
yourself only touches the fringe of their world. You exchange
surface-messages with them, nothing more. Some trees have terrible
forces just below the surface. They could extinguish you
altogether--absorb you into themselves. Others are naturally hostile.
Some are mere tricksters. Others are shifty and treacherous, like the
hollies, that move about too much. The oak and the pine and the elm are
friendly, and you can always trust them absolutely. But there are
others----!"
She held up a warning finger, and Jimbo's eyes nearly dropped out of his
head.
"No," she added, in reply to his questions, "you can't learn all this at
once. Perhaps----" She hesitated a little. "Perhaps, if you don't
escape, we should have time for all manner of adventures among the trees
and other things--but then, we _are_ going to escape, so there's no good
wasting time over _that_!"
CHAPTER XIV
AN ADVENTURE
But Miss Lake did not always accompany him on these excursions into the
night; sometimes he took long flights by himself, and she rather
encouraged him in this, saying it would give him confidence in case he
ever lost her and was obliged to find his way about alone.
"But I couldn't get really lost," he said once to her. "I know the winds
perfectly now and the country round for miles, and I never go out in
fog----"
"But these are only practice flights," she replied. "The flight of
escape is a very different matter. I want you to learn all you possibly
can so as to be prepared for anything."
Jimbo felt vaguely uncomfortable when she talked like this.
"But you'll be with me in the Escape Flight--the final one of all," he
said; "and nothing ever goes wrong when you're with me."
"I should like to be always with you," she answered tenderly, "but it's
well to be prepared for anything, just the same."
And more than this the boy could never get out of her.
On one of these lonely flights, however, he made the unpleasant
discovery that he was being followed.
At first he only imagined there was somebody after him because of the
curious vibrations of the very rarefied air in which he flew. Every time
his flight slackened and the noise of his own wings grew less, there
reached him from some other corner of the sky a sound like the
vibrations of large wings beating the air. It seemed behind, and
generally below him, but the swishing of his own feathers made it
difficult to hear with distinctness, or to be certain of the direction.
Evidently it was a long way off; but now and again, when he took a spurt
and then sailed silently for several minutes on outstretched wings, the
beating of distant, following feathers seemed unmistakably clear, and he
raced on again at full speed more than terrified. Other times, however,
when he tried to listen, there was no trace of this other flyer, and
then his fear would disappear, and he would persuade himself that it had
been imagination. So much on these flights he knew to be
imagination--the sentences, voices, and laughter, for instance, that
filled the air and sounded so real, yet were actually caused by the wind
rushing past his ears, the rhythm of the wing-beats, and the tips of the
feathers occasionally rubbing against the sides of his body.
But at last one night the suspicion that he was followed became a
certainty.
He was flying far up in the sky, passing over some big city, when the
sound rose to his ears, and he paused, sailing on stretched wings, to
listen. Looking down into the immense space below, he saw, plainly
outlined against the luminous patch above the city, the form of a large
flying creature moving by with rapid strokes. The pulsations of its
great wings made the air tremble so that he both heard and felt them. It
may have been that the vapours of the city distorted the thing, just as
the earth's atmosphere magnifies the rising or setting of the moon; but,
even so, it was easy to see that it was something a good deal larger
than himself, and with a much more powerful flight.
Fortunately, it did not seem this time to be actually on his trail, for
it swept by at a great pace, and was soon lost in the darkness far
ahead. Perhaps it was only searching for him, and his great height had
proved his safety. But in any case he was exceedingly terrified, and at
once turned round, pointed his head for the earth, and shot downwards in
the direction of the Empty House as fast as ever he could.
But when he spoke to the governess she made light of it, and told him
there was nothing to be afraid of. It might have been a flock of
hurrying night-birds, she said, or an owl distorted by the city's light,
or even his own reflection magnified in water. Anyhow, she felt sure it
was not chasing him, and he need pay no attention to it.
Jimbo felt reassured, but not quite satisfied. He knew a flying monster
when he saw one; and it was only when he had been for many more flights
alone, without its reappearance, that his confidence was fully restored,
and he began to forget about it.
Certainly these lonely flights were very much to his taste. His Older
Self, with its dim hauntings of a great memory somewhere behind him,
took possession then, and he was able to commune with nature in a way
that the presence of the governess made impossible. With her his Older
Self rarely showed itself above the surface for long; he was always the
child. But, when alone, Nature became alive; he drew force from the
trees and flowers, and felt that they all shared a common life together.
Had he been imprisoned by some wizard of old in a tree-form, knowing of
the sunset and the dawn only by the sweet messages that rustled in his
branches, the wind could hardly have spoken to him with a more intimate
meaning; or the life of the fields, eternally patient, have touched him
more nearly with their joys and sorrows. It seemed almost as if, from
his leafy cell, he had gazed before this into the shining pools with
which the summer rains jewelled the meadows, sending his soul in a
stream of unsatisfied yearning up to the stars. It all came back dimly
when he heard the wind among the leaves, and carried him off to the
woods and fields of an existence far antedating this one----
And on gentle nights, when the wind itself was half asleep and dreaming,
the pine trees drew him most of all, for theirs was the song he loved
above all others. He would fly round and round the little grove by the
mountain lake, listening for hours together to their sighing voices. But
the governess was never told of this, whatever she may have guessed; for
it seemed to him a joy too deep for words, the pains and sweetness being
mingled too mysteriously for him ever to express in awkward sentences.
Moreover, it all passed away and was forgotten the moment the child took
possession and usurped the older memory.
One night, when the moon was high and the air was cool and fragrant
after the heat of the day, Jimbo felt a strong desire to get off by
himself for a long flight. He was full of energy, and the space-craving
cried to be satisfied. For several days he had been content with slow,
stupid expeditions with the governess.
"I'm off alone to-night," he cried, balancing on the window ledge, "but
I'll be back before dawn. Good-bye!"
She kissed him, as she always did now, and with her good-bye ringing in
his ears, he dropped from the window and rose rapidly over the elms and
away from earth.
This night, for some reason, the stars and the moon seemed to draw him,
and with tireless wings he mounted up, up, up, to a height he had never
reached before. The intoxication of the strong night air rose into his
brain and he dashed forward ever faster, with a mad delight, into the
endless space before him.
Mile upon mile lay behind him as he rushed onwards, always pointing a
little on the upward slope, drunk with speed. The earth faded away to a
dark expanse of shadow beneath him, and he no longer was conscious of
the deep murmur that usually flowed steadily upwards from its surface.
He had often before risen out of reach of the earth noises, but never so
far that this dull reverberating sound, combined of all the voices of
the world merged together, failed to make itself heard. To-night,
however, he heard nothing. The stars above his head changed from yellow
to diamond white, and the cold air stung his cheeks and brought the
water to his eyes.
But at length the governess's warning, as he explored these forbidden
regions, came back to him, and in a series of gigantic bounds that took
his breath away completely, he dropped nearer to the earth again and
kept on at a much lower level.
The hours passed and the position of the moon began to alter
noticeably. Some of the constellations that were overhead when he
started were now dipping below the horizon. Never before had he ventured
so far from home, and he began to realise that he had been flying much
longer than he knew or intended. The speed had been terrific.
The change came imperceptibly. With the discovery that his wings were
not moving quite so easily as before, he became suddenly aware that this
had really been the case for some little time. He was flying with
greater effort, and for a long time this effort had been increasing
gradually before he actually recognised the fact.
Although no longer pointing towards the earth he seemed to be sinking.
It became increasingly difficult to fly upwards. His wings did not seem
to fail or weaken, nor was he conscious of feeling tired; but something
was ever persuading him to fly lower, almost as if a million tiny
threads were coaxing him downwards, drawing him gradually nearer to the
world again. Whatever it was, the earth had come much closer to him in
the last hour, and its familiar voices were pleasant to hear after the
boundless heights he had just left.
But for some reason his speed grew insensibly less and less. His wings
moved apparently as fast as before, but it was harder to keep up. In
spite of himself he kept sinking. The sensation was quite new, and he
could not understand it. It almost seemed as though he were being
_pulled_ downwards.
Jimbo began to feel uneasy. He had not lost his bearings, but he was a
very long way from home, and quite beyond reach of the help he was so
accustomed to. With a great effort he mounted several hundred feet into
the air, and tried hard to stay there. For a short time he succeeded,
but he soon felt himself sinking gradually downwards again. The force
drawing him was a constant force without rise or fall; and with a deadly
feeling of fear the boy began to realise that he would soon have to
yield to it altogether. His heart beat faster and his thoughts turned to
the friend who was then far away, but who alone could save him.
She, at least, could have explained it and told him what best to do. But
the governess was beyond his reach. This problem he must face alone.
Something, however, had to be done quickly, and Jimbo, acting more as
the man than as the boy, turned and flew hurriedly forward in another
direction. He hoped this might somehow counteract the force that still
drew him downwards; and for a time it apparently did so, and he flew
level. But the strain increased every minute, and he looked down with
something of a shudder as he realised that before very long he would be
obliged to yield to this deadly force--and drop!
It was then for the first time he noticed a change had come over the
surface of the earth below. Instead of the patchwork of field and wood
and road, he saw a vast cloud stretching out, white and smooth in the
moonlight. The world was hidden beneath a snowy fog, dense and
impenetrable. It was no longer even possible to tell in what direction
he was flying, for there was nothing to steer by. This was a new and
unexpected complication, and the boy could not understand how the change
had come about so quickly; the last time he had glanced down for
indications to steer by, everything had been clear and easily visible.
It was very beautiful, this carpet of white mist with the silver moon
shining upon it, but it thrilled him now with an unpleasant sense of
dread. And, still more unpleasant, was a new sound which suddenly broke
in upon the stillness and turned his blood into ice. He was certain that
he heard wings behind him. He was being followed, and this meant that it
was impossible to turn and fly back.
There was nothing now to do but fly forwards and hope to distance the
huge wings; but if he was being followed by the powerful flyer he had
seen a few nights before, the boy knew that he stood little chance of
success, and he only did it because it seemed the one thing possible.
The cloud was dense and chill as he entered it; its moisture clung to
his wings and made them heavy; his muscles seemed to stiffen, and motion
became more and more difficult. The wings behind him meanwhile came
closer.
He was flying along the surface of the mist now, his body and wings
hidden, and his head just above the level. He could see along its white,
even top. If he sank a few more inches it would be impossible to see at
all, or even to judge where he was going. Soon it rose level with his
lips, and at the same time he noticed a new smell in the air, faint at
first, but growing every moment stronger. It was a fresh, sweet odour,
yet it somehow added to his alarm, and stirred in him new centres of
uneasiness. He tried vainly to increase his speed and distance the wings
which continued to gain so steadily upon him from behind.
The cloud, apparently, was not everywhere of the same density, for here
and there he saw the tops of green hills below him as he flew. But he
could not understand why each green hill seemed to have a little lake on
its summit--a little lake in which the reflected moon stared straight up
into his face. Nor could he quite make out what the sounds were which
rose to his ears through the muffling of the cloud--sounds of tumultuous
rushing, hissing, and tumbling. They were continuous, these sounds, and
once or twice he thought he heard with them a deep, thunderous roar that
almost made his heart stop beating as he listened.
Was he, perhaps, over a range of high mountains, and was this the sound
of the tumbling torrents?
Then, suddenly, it came to him with a shock that the ordinary sounds of
the earth had wholly ceased.
Jimbo felt his head beginning to whirl. He grew weaker every minute;
less able to offer resistance to the remorseless forces that were
sucking him down. Now the mist had closed over his head, and he could no
longer see the moonlight. He turned again, shaking with terror, and
drove forward headlong through the clinging vapour. A sensation of
choking rose in his throat; he was tired out, ready to drop with
exhaustion. The wings of the following creature were now so close that
he thought every minute he would be seized from behind and plunged into
the abyss to his death.
It was just then that he made the awful discovery that the world below
him was not stationary: the _green hills were moving_. They
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