Algernon Blackwood

Clairvoyance

Algernon Blackwood

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In the darkest corner, where the firelight could not reach him, he

sat listening to the stories. His young hostess occupied the corner on

the other side; she was also screened by shadows; and between them

stretched the horse-shoe of eager, frightened faces that seemed all

eyes. Behind yawned the blackness of the big room, running as it were

without a break into the night.

Some one crossed on tiptoe and drew a blind up with a rattle, and

at the sound all started: through the window, opened at the top, came

a rustle of the poplar leaves that stirred like footsteps in the wind.

‘There’s a strange man walking past the shrubberies,’ whispered a

nervous girl; ‘I saw him crouch and hide. I saw his eyes!’ ‘Nonsense!

came sharply from a male member of the group; ‘it’s far too dark to

see. You heard the wind.’ For mist had risen from the river just below

the lawn, pressing close against the windows of the old house like a

soft grey hand, and through it the stir of leaves was faintly

audible…. Then, while several called for lights, others remembered

that hop-pickers were still about in the lanes, and the tramps this

autumn overbold and insolent. All, perhaps, wished secretly for the

sun. Only the elderly man in the corner sat quiet and unmoved,

contributing nothing. He had told no fearsome story. He had evaded,

indeed, many openings expressly made for him, though fully aware that

to his well-known interest in psychical things was partly due his

presence in the week-end party. ‘I never have experiences— that way,’

he said shortly when some one asked him point blank for a tale; ‘I have

no unusual powers.’ There was perhaps the merest hint of contempt in

his tone, but the hostess from her darkened corner quickly and

tactfully covered his retreat. And he wondered. For he knew why she

invited him. The haunted room, he was well aware, had been specially

allotted to him.

And then, most opportunely, the door opened noisily and the host

came in. He sniffed at the darkness, rang at once for lamps, puffed at

his big curved pipe, and generally, by his mere presence, made the

group feel rather foolish. Light streamed past him from the corridor.

His white hair shone like silver. And with him came the atmosphere of

common sense, of shooting, agriculture, motors, and the rest. Age

entered at that door. And his young wife sprang up instantly to greet

him, as though his disapproval of this kind of entertainment might need

humouring.

It may have been the light—that witchery of half-lights from the

fire and the corridor, or it may have been the abrupt entrance of the

Practical upon the soft Imaginative that traced the outline with such

pitiless, sharp conviction. At any rate, the contrast—for those who

had this inner clairvoyant sight all had been prating of so

glibly!—was unmistakably revealed. It was poignantly dramatic, pain

somewhere in it—naked pain. For, as she paused a moment there beside

him in the light, this childless wife of three years’ standing, picture

of youth and beauty, there stood upon the threshold of that room the

presence of a true ghost story.

And most marevellously she changed—her lineaments, her very

figure, her whole presentment. Etched against the gloom, the delicate,

unmarked face shone suddenly keen and anguished, and a rich maturity,

deeper than any mere age, flushed all her little person with its

secret grandeur. Lines started into being upon the pale skin of the

girlish face, lines of pleading, pity, and love the daylight did not

show, and with them an air of magic tenderness that betrayed, though

for a second only, the full soft glory of a motherhood denied, yet

somehow mysteriously enjoyed.