September 2, 2025 • 36 mins
Discover the enchanting world of Day And Night Stories, featuring fifteen captivating short tales by Algernon Henry Blackwood, CBE (1869 ‚ì 1951). Renowned as one of the most prolific ghost story writers, Blackwoods work blends the supernatural with the ethereal, inviting readers into a realm of wonder and intrigue. A journalist and broadcasting narrator, he has been acclaimed for his consistently exceptional storytelling, with literary critic S. T. Joshi noting that his contributions stand among the finest in the genre. Immerse yourself in these timeless narratives that explore the mysteries of life and the unknown.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Story eleven of Day and Night Stories by Algernon Blackwood.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Story eleven
h s h In the Mountain club hut to which
he had escaped after weeks of gaiety in the capitol, Delane,
young traveling Englishmen, sat alone and listened to the wind
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that beat the pines with violence. The firelight danced over
the bare stone floor and raftered ceiling, giving the room
an air of movement. And though the solid walls held
steady against the wild spring hurricane, the cannonading of the
wind seemed to threaten the foundations, for the mountain shook,
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the forest roared, and the shadows had a way of
running everywhere, as though the little building trembled. Delane watched
and listened. He piled the logs on. From time to
time he glanced nervously over his shoulder, restless, half uneasy,
as a burst of spray from the branches dashed against
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the window, or a gust of unusual vehemence shook the door.
Overwearied with his long day's climb among impossible conditions, he
now realized in this mountain refuge his utter loneliness for
his mind gave birth to that unwelcome symptom of true
loneliness that he was not after all alone. Continually he
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heard steps and voices in the storm. Another wanderer, another
climber out of season like himself, would presently arrive, and
sleep was out of the question until first he heard
that knocking on the door. Almost he expected someone. He
went for the tenth time to the little window. He
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peered forth into the thick darkness of the dropping night,
shading his eyes against the streaming pane to screen the
fire light, in an attempt to see if another climber,
perhaps a climber in distress, were visible. The surroundings were
desolate and savage, well named the Devil's Saddle, Black faced
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precipices streaked with melting snow rose towering to the north,
where the heights were hidden in seas of vapor. Waterfalls
poured into abysses on two sides, a wall of impenetrable
forests pressed up from the south, and the dangerous ridge
he had climbed all day slid off wickedly into a
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sky of surging cloud. But no human figure was, of course, distinguishable,
for both the lateness of the hour and the elemental
fury of the night rendered it most unlikely. He turned
away with a start as the tempest delivered a blow
with massive impact against his very face. Then, clearing the
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remnants of his frugal supper from the table, he hung
his soaking clothes at a new angle before the fire,
made sure the door was fastened on the inside, climbed
into the bunk, where white pillows and thick Austrian blankets
looked so inviting, and prepared finally for sleep. I must
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be overtired, he sighed after half an hour's weary tossing,
and went back to make up the sinking fire. Wood
is plentiful in these climber's huts. He heaped it on,
but this time he lit the little oil lamp as well, realizing,
though unwilling to acknowledge it, that it was not over
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fatigue that banished sleep, but this unwelcome sense of expecting
someone of being not quite alone. For the feeling persisted
and increased. He drew the wooden bench close up to
the fire, turned the lamp as high as it would go,
and wished unaccountably for the morning was a very pleasant thing,
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and darkness now for the first time since childhood troubled him.
It was outside, but it might so easily come in
and swamp, obliterate, extinguish. The darkness seemed a positive thing already,
somehow it was established in his mind, this sense of enormous,
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aggressive darkness that veiled an undesirable hint of personality, some
shadow from the peaks or from the forest, immense and threatening,
pervaded all his thought. This can't be entirely nerves, he
whispered to himself. I'm not so tired as all that,
And he made the fire roar. He shivered and drew
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closer to the blaze. I'm out of condition. That's part
of it, he realized, and remembered with loathing the weeks
of luxurious indulgence just behind him. For Delanne had rather
wasted his year of educational travel straight from Oxford and
well supplied with money, he had first saturated his mind
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in the latest continental thought, the science of France, the
metaphysics and philosophy of Germany, and had been caught aside
by the gaiety of capitals where the lights were not
turned out at midnight by a Sunday school police. He
had been surfeited physically, emotionally and intellectually, till his mind
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and body longed hungrily for simple living again, and simple
teaching above all the latter. The road of excess leads
to the palace of wisdom for certain temperaments, as Blake
forgot to add, of which Delane was one, For there
was stuff in the youth, and the reaction had set
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in with violent abruptness. His system rebelled. He cut loose
energetically from all soft delights and craved for severity, pure air,
solitude and hardship, clean and simple conditions he must have
without delay, and the tonic of physical battling. It was
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too early in the year to climb seriously, for the
snow was still dangerous and the weather wild. But he
had chosen this most isolated of all the mountain huts
in order to make sure of solitude, and had come
without guide or companion, for a week's strenuous life in
wild surroundings, and to take stock of himself with a
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view to full recovery. And all day long as he
climbed the desolate, unsafe ridge, his mind, good, wholesome, natural
symptom had reverted to his childhood days, to the solid,
worldly wisdom of his church going father, and to the
early teaching, Oh, how sweet and refreshing in its literal
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spirit at his mother's knee. Now, as he watched the
blazer logs, it came back to him again with redoubled force,
the simple, precious, old world stories of heaven and hell,
of a paternal deity, and of a daring, subtle personal devil.
The interruption to his thoughts came with startling suddenness, as
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the roaring night descended against the windows, with a thundering
violence that shook the walls and sucked the flame half
way up the wide stone chimney. The oil lamp flickered
and went out. Darkness invaded the room for a second,
and Delane sprang from his bench, thinking the wet snow
had loosened far above and was about to sweep the
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hut into the depths. And he was still standing, trembling
and uncertain in the middle of the room when a
deep and sawing hush followed sharp upon the elemental outburst,
and in the hush, like a whisper after thunder, he
heard a curious, steady sound that at first he thought
must be a footstep by the door. It was then
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instantly repeated, But it was not a step. It was
someone knocking on the heavy oaken panels, a firm, authoritative sound,
as though the new arrival had the right to enter
and was already impatient at the delay. The Englishman recovered himself, instantly,
realizing with keen relief the new arrival at last another
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climber like himself. Of course, he said, or perhaps the
man who comes to prepare the hut for others. The
season has begun. And he went over quickly, without a
further qualm to unbolt the door. Forgive, he exclaimed in German,
as he threw it wide. I was half asleep before
the fire. It is a terrible night. Come in to
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food and shelter, for both are here, and you shall
share such supper as I possess. And a tall, cloaked
figure passed him swiftly, with a gust of angry wind,
from the impenetrable blackness of the world beyond. On the threshold.
For a second, his outline stood full in the blaze
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of firelight, with the sheet of darkness behind it, stately erect, commanding,
his cloak torn fiercely by the wind, but the face
hidden by a low brimmed hat, and an instant later
the door shut with resounding clamor upon the hurricane, and
the two men turned to confront one another in the
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little room. Delaye then realized two things sharply, both of
them fleeting impressions but acutely vivid. First that the outside
darkness seemed to have entered and established itself between him
and the new arrival, and secondly that the stranger's face
was difficult to focus for clear sight. Although the covering
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hat was now removed, there was a blur upon it somewhere,
and this the Englishman ascribed partly to the flickering effect
of firelight, and partly to the lightning glare of the
man's masterful and terrific eyes, which made his own sight
waver in some curious fashion as he gazed upon him.
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These impressions, however, were but momentary and passing, due doubtless
to the condition of his nerves and to the semi
shock of the dramatic, even theatrical entrance. Delane's senses in
this wild setting were guilty of exaggeration. For now, while
helping the man remove his cloak, speaking naturally of shelter,
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food and the savage weather, he lost his first distortion,
and his mind recovered, saying proportion the stranger, after all,
though striking was not of appearance so uncommon as to
cause alarm, the light and the low doorway had touched
his stature with illusion. He dwindled, and the great eyes,
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upon Calmer's subsequent inspection, lost their original fierce lightning. The
entering darkness, moreover, was but an effect of the upheaving
night behind him. As he strode across the threshold, the
closed door proved it. And yet as Delane continued his
quieter examination there remained he saw the startling quality which
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had caused that first magnifying in his mind. His senses,
while reporting accurately, insisted upon this arresting and uncommon touch.
There was about this late wanderer of the night, some evasive,
lofty strangeness that set him utterly apart from ordinary men.
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The Englishman examined him searchingly, surreptitiously, but with a touch
of passionate curiosity. He could not in the least account
for nor explain. There were contradictions of plexing character about him.
For the first presentment had been of splendid youth, while
on the face. Though vigorous and gloriously handsome, he now
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discerned the stamp of tremendous age. It was worn and tired,
while radiant with strength and health and power. It wore
as well, this certain signature of deep exhaustion that great experience,
rather than physical experience, brings. Moreover, he discovered in it
in some way he could not hope to describe man, woman,
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and child. There was a big sad earnestness about it,
yet a touch of humor too. Patience, tenderness, and sweetness
held the mouth and behind a high pale forehead. Intellect
sat enthrone and watchful. In it were both love and hatred,
longing and despair, an expression of being ever on the
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defensive yet hugely mutinous, an heir both hunted and beseeching
great knowledge and great woe. Delayne gave up the search,
aware that something unalterably splendid stood before him. Solemnity and
beauty swept him too. His was never the grotesque assumption
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that man must be the highest being in the universe,
nor that a thing is a miracle merely because it
has never happened before. He groped, while explanation and analysis
both halted, a great teacher, thought fluttered through him, or
a mighty rebel, a distinguished personality beyond all question. Who
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can he be? There was something regal that put respect
upon his imagination instantly, and he remembered the legend of
the countryside that Lutewig of Bavaria was said to be
about when knights were very wild. He wondered into his
speech and manner crept unawares, and attitude of deference that
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was almost reverence, and with it whence came this other quality,
a searching pity. You must be wearied out, he said, respectfully,
busying himself about the room as well as cold and wet.
This fire will draw you, sir. And meanwhile I will
prepare quickly such food as there is, if you will
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eat it. For the other carried no knapsack, nor was
he clothed for the severity of mountain travel. I have
already eaten, said the stranger, courteously, and with my thanks
to you. I am neither wet nor tired. The afflictions
that I bear are of another kind, though ones that
you shall more easily, I am sure relieve. He spoke
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as a man whose words set troops and action, and
Elaine glanced at him, deeply moved by the surprising phrase,
yet hardly marveling that it should be so. He found
no ready answer, but there was evidently question in his look.
For the other continued, and this time with a smile
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that betrayed sheer winning beauty, as of a tender woman.
I saw the light and came to it. It is
unusual at this time. His voice was resonant, but not deep.
There was a ringing quality about it that the bare
room emphasized. It charmed the young Englishman inexplicably. Also, it
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woke in him a sense of infinite pathos. You are
a climber, sir, like myself. Delaye resumed, lifting his eyes
a moment uneasily from the coffee he brewed over a
corner of the fire. You know this neighborhood, perhaps better
at any rate than I can know it, His German halted. Rather,
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he chose his words with difficulty. There was uncommon trouble
in his mind. I know all wild and desolate places,
replied the other, in perfect English, but with a wintry
mournfulness in his voice and eyes, for I feel at
home in them and their stern companionship. My nature craves
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as solace. But unlike yourself, I am no climber. The
heights have no attraction for you, as delane as he mingled,
steaming milk and coffee in the wooden bowl, marveling what
brought him then so high above the valleys. It is
their difficulty and danger that fascinate me always. I find
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the loneliness of the summits intoxicating in a sense, and
regardless of refusal. He set the bread and meat before him,
the apple and the tiny packet of salt, then turned
away to place the coffee pot beside the fire again,
But as he did so, a singular gesture of the
other caught his eyes. Before touching bowl or plait, the
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stranger took the fruit and brushed his lips with it.
He kissed it, then set it on the ground and
crushed it into pope beneath his heel. And seeing this,
the young Englishman knew something dreadfully arrested in his mind,
for as he looked away, pretending the act was unobserved,
a thing of ice and darkness moved past him through
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the room, so that the pot trembled in his hand,
rattling sharply against the hearthstone where he stooped. He could
only interpret it as an act of madness, and the
myth of the sad, drowned monarch wandering through this enchanted
region pressed into him again, unsought and urgent. It was
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a full minute before he had control of his heart
and hand again. The bull was half emptied, and the
man was smiling, this time the smile of a child
who implores the comfort of enveloping and understanding arms. I
am a wanderer rather than a climber, he was saying,
as though there had been no interval. For though the
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lonely summits suit me well, I now find in them
only terror. My feet lose their sureness, and my head
its steady balance. I prefer the hidden gorges of these
mountains and the shadows of the covering forests my days.
His voice drew the loneliness of uttermost space into its
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piteous accents are passed in darkness. I can never climb again.
He spoke, this time, indeed, as a man whose nerve
was gone forever. It was pitiable almost to tears and
delayne unable to explain the amazing contradictions, felt recklessly furiously
drawn to this trapped wanderer with the mien of a king,
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yet the air and speech sometimes of a woman and
sometimes of an outcast child. Ah, then you have known accidents,
Delane replied, with outer calmness, as he his pipe, trying
in vain to keep his hand as steady as his voice.
You have been in one. Perhaps the effect I have
been told is the power and sweetness in that resonant voice.
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Took his breath away as he heard it break in
upon his own uncertain accents. I have fallen, the stranger replied, impressively,
as the rain and wind wailed past the building, mournfully.
Yet a fall that was no part of any accident,
For it was no common fall, the man added, with
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a magnificent gesture of disdain. While yet it broke my
heart in two. He stooped a little as he uttered
the next words with a crying pathos that an outcast
woman might have used. I am, he said, engulfed in
intolerable loneliness. I can never climb again. With a shiver,
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impossible to control half of terror, half of pity, Delane
moved a step nearer to the marvelous stranger. The spirit
of Ludowig, exiled and distraught, had gripped his soul with
a weakening terror. But now sheer beauty lifted him above
all personal shrinking. There seemed some echo of lost divinity,
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worn wild yet grandiose, through which this significant language strained
towards a personal message for himself. In loneliness, he faltered,
sympathy rising in a flood for my kingdom that is
lost to me forever met him in deep throbbing tones
that set the air on fire for my imperial ancient
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heights that jealousy took from me. The stranger paused with
an indescribable air of broken dignity and pain. Outside the
tempest paused a moment before the awful elemental crash that followed.
A bellowing of many winds descended like artillery upon the world.
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A burst of smoke rushed from the fireplace upon them, both,
shrouding the stranger momentarily in a flying veil, and Delane
stood up, uncomfortable in his very bones. What can it be?
He asked himself, sharply, Who is this being that he
should use such language? He watched alarm, chase pity, aware
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that the conversation held something beyond experience. But the pity
returned in greater and greater flood, and love surged through
him too. It was significant, he remembered afterwards, that he
felt it incumbent upon himself to stand curious too, how
the thought of that mad drowned monarch haunted memory with
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such persistence. Some vast emotion that he could not name,
drove out his subsequent words. The smoke had cleared, and
a strange, high stillness held the world. The rain streamed
down in torrents, isolating these two somehow from the haunts
of men. And the Englishman stared then into a countenance
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grown mighty with woe and loneliness. There stood darkly in it,
this incommunicable's magnificence of pain that mingled all with the
pity he had felt. The kingly eyes looked clear into
his own, completing his subjugation out of time. I would
follow you, ran his thought upon its knees. Follow you
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with obedience forever and ever, even into a last damnation.
For you are sublime. You shall come again into your kingdom.
If my own small worship, then blackness sponged the reckless
thought away. He spoke in its place a more guarded,
careful thing. I am aware he faltered, yet conscious that
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he bowed, of standing before a great one of some
world unknown to me. Who he may be, I have
but the privilege of wondering. He has spoken darkly of
a kingdom that is lost, yet he is still I
see a monarch. And he lowered his head and shoulders
involuntarily for an instant. Then, as he said it, the
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eyes before him flashed their original terrific lightnings. The darkness
of the common world faded before the entrance of an
outer darkness from gulfs of terror. At his feet rose
shadows out of the night of time, and a passionate anguish,
as of sudden madness, seized his heart and shook it.
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He listened breathlessly for the words that followed. It seemed
some wind of unutterable despair passed in the breath from
those non human lips. I am still a monarch, yes,
but my kingdom is taken from me, for I have
no single subject, lost in a loneliness that lies out
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of space and time. I am become a throneless ruler,
and my hopelessness is more than I can bear. The
beseeching pathos of the voice tore him in two. The
deity himself, it seemed, stood there, accused of jealousy, of
sin and cruelty. The stranger rose. The power about him
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brought the picture of a planet throned in mid heaven
and poised beyond the salt. Not otherwise boomed the startling words,
as though an avalanche found syllables. Could I now show
myself to you? Delane was trembling horribly. He felt the
next word slip off his tongue. Unconsciously, the shattering truth
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had dawned upon his soul. At last, Then the light
you saw and came to he whispered, was the light
in your heart that guided me? Came the answer, sweet,
beguiling as the music in a woman's tones, the light
of your instant, brief desire that held love in it.
He made an opening movement with his arms as he continued,
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smiling like stars in summer, for you summoned me, summoned
me by your dear and precious belief. How dear, how
precious none can know but I who stand before you.
His figure drew up with an imperial air of proud dominion.
His feet were set among the constellations. The opening movement
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of his arms continued slowly, and the music in his
tones seemed merged in distant thunder. For your single brief belief,
he smiled, with the grandeur of a condescending emperor, shall
give my vanished kingdom back to me, And with an
air of native majesty, he held his hand out to
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be kissed. The black hurricane of night, the terror of
frozen peakest, the yawning horror of the great abyss outside.
All three crowded into the Englishman's mind with a slashing
impact that blocked delivery of any word or action. It
was not that he refused, It was not that he withdrew,
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but that life stood paralyzed and rigid. The floe stopped
dead for the first time since he had left his
mother's womb. The god in him was turned to stone
and rendered ineffective. For an appalling instant god was not.
He realized the stupendous moment before him, drinking his little
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soul out. Merely by his presence, stood one whose habit
of mind, not alone his external accidents, was imperial with
black prerogative. Before the first man drew the breath of life,
Auguste procedure was native to his inner process of existence.
The stars and confines of the universe owned his sway
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before he fell to trifle away the dreary little centuries
by haunting the minds of feeble men and women, by
hiding himself in nursery cupboards, and by grinning with stained
gargoyles from the roofs of city churches. And the lad's
life stammered, flickered, threatened to go out before the enveloping
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terror of the revelation. I called to you, but called
to you in play, thought whispered, somewhere deep below the
level of any speech, yet not so low that the
audacious sound of it did not crash above the elements outside.
For till now you have been to me but a
coated bogie that my brain disowned with laughter, and my
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heart thought picturesque. If you are here alive, may God
forgive me for my It seemed as though tears, the
tears of love and profound commiseration, drowned the very seed
of thought itself. A sound stopped him that was like
a collapse in heaven, some crashing as of a ruined
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world passed, splintering through his little, timid heart. He did
not yield, but he understood with an understanding which seemed
the delicate first sign of yielding the seductiveness of evil,
the sweet delight of surrendering the will with utter recklessness
to those swelling forces which disintegrate the heroic soul in man.
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He remembered it was true, in the reaction from excess,
he had definitely called upon his childhood's teaching with a
passing moment of genuine belief. And now that yearning of
a fraction of a second bore its awful fruit. The
luscious capitals where he had rioted passed in a colored
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stream before his eyes. The wine, the woman, and the
song stood there before him, clothed in that power which
lies insinuatingly disguised behind their little passing show of innocence,
their glamor donned. This domino of regal and virile grandeur,
He felt entangled beyond recovery. The idea of God seemed
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sterile and without reality. The one real thing, the one
desirable thing, the one possible, strong and beautiful thing, was
to bend his head and kiss those imperial fingers. He
moved noiselessly towards the hand he raised his own to
take it and lift it towards his mouth, when there
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arose in his mind, with startling vividness, a small soft
picture of a child's nursery, a picture of a little
boy kneeling in scanty nightgown, with pink, upturned souls and
asking ridiculous, audacious things. Of a shining figure seated on
a summer cloud above the kitchen garden walnut tree. The
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tiny symbol flashed and went its way, Yet not before
it had lit the entire world with glory, For there
came an absolutely routing power with it. In that half
forgotten instant's craz for the simple teaching of his childhood days,
belief had conjured with two immense traditions. This was the
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second of them. The appearance of the one had inevitably
produced the passage of its opposite, And the hand that
floated in the air before him to be kissed sank
slowly down below the possible level of his lips. He
shrank away, Though laughter tempted something in his brain there
still clung about his heart, the first aching pitying terror,
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But sighs retreated, dwindling somehow as it went. The wind
and rain obliterated every other sound. Yet in that bare,
unfurnished room of a climber's mountain hut, there was a
silence above the roar that drank in everything and broke
the back of speech. In opposition to this masquerading splendor,
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Delane had set up a personal paternal deity. I thought
of you, perhap, perhaps cried the voice of self defense.
But I did not call to you with real belief,
And by the name of God, I did not summon
you for your sweetness, as your power sickens me, and
your hand is black with the curses of all the
mothers of the world, whose prayers and tears. He stopped dead,
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overwhelmed by the cruelty of his reckless utterance, and the
other moved towards him slowly. It was like the summit
of some piqued and terrible height that moved. He spoke,
he changed appallingly. But I claim he roared your heart.
I claim you by that instant of belief you felt,
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for by that alone you shall restore to me my
vanished kingdom. You shall worship me. And the countenance was
a sudden, awful power. But behind the stupefying roar there
was weakness in the voice, as of an imploring and
beseeching child. Wild again, deep love and searching pity seared
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the Englishman's heart as he replied in the gentlest accents
he could find to master. And I claim you, he said,
by my understanding sympathy, and by my sorrow for your
god forsaken loneliness, and by my love for no kingdom
built on hate can stand against the love you would deny.
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Words failed him then, as he saw the Majesty fade
slowly from the face, grown smaller and shadowy. One last
expression of desperate energy in the eyes struck lightnings from
the smoky air, as with an abandoned movement of the
entire figure. He drew back, it seemed, towards the door
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behind him. Delanne moved slowly after him, opening his arms.
Tenderness and big compassion flung wide the gates of love
within him. He found strange language, too, although actual spoken
words did not produce them further than his entrails where
they had their birth. Toys in the world are plentiful, sire,
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and you may have them for your masterpiece of play,
but you must seek them where they still survive in
the churches and in isolated lands where thought lies unawakened.
For they are the children's blocks of make believe, whose palaces,
like your once tremendous kingdom, have no true existence for
the thinking mind. And he stretched his hands towards him
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with the gesture of one who sought to help and save,
then paused as he realized that his arms enclosed sheer
blackness with the emptiness of wind and driving rain. For
the door of the hut stood open, and Delaye balanced
on the threshold, facing the sheet of night above the abyss,
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he heard the waterfalls in the valley far below. The
forest flapped and tossed its myriad branches. Cold drafts swept
down from spectral fields of melting snow above, and the
blackness turned momentarily into the semblance of towers and bastions,
of thick, beaten gloom. Above one soaring turret. Then a
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space of sky appeared, swept naked by a violent, lost wind,
an opening of purple into limitless distance. For one second,
amid the vapors, it was visible, empty and untenanted. The
next there sailed across its small diameter a falling star
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with an air of slow and endless leisure. Yet at
the same time, with terrific speed, it dived behind the
ragged curtain of the clouds, and the space closed up again.
Blackness returned upon the heavens, and through this blackness, plunging
into that of woe. Whence he had momentarily risen the
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figure of the marvelous stranger melted utterly away. Delane, for
a fleeting second was aware of the earnestness in the sad,
imploring countenance, of its sweetness and its power so strangely mingled,
of its mysterious grandeur, and of its pathetic childishness. But
already it was sunk into interminable distance. A star that
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would be baleful yet was merely glorious, passed on its
endless wandering among the teeming systems of the universe, behind
the fixed and steady stars, secure in their appointed places.
It set, it vanished, into the pit of unknown emptiness.
It was gone, God help you, sided across the sea
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of wailing branches, echoing down the dark abyss below. God
give you rest at last, For he saw a princely,
nay an imperial being, homeless forever and forever, wandering, hunted
as by keen, remorseless winds about a universe that held
no corner for his feet, His majesty unworshiped, his rain
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a mockery, his court unfurnished, and his courtiers mere shadows
of deep space, And a thin gray dawn, stealing up
behind clearing summits in the east, crept then against the
windows of the mountain hut. It brought with it a
treacherous sharp air that made the sleeper draw another blanket
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near to shelter him from the sudden cold, for the
fire had died out, and an icy draft sucked steadily
beneath the doorway. End of Story eleven.
Story eleven of Day and Night Stories by Algernon Blackwood.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Story eleven
h s h In the Mountain club hut to which
he had escaped after weeks of gaiety in the capitol, Delane,
young traveling Englishmen, sat alone and listened to the wind
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that beat the pines with violence. The firelight danced over
the bare stone floor and raftered ceiling, giving the room
an air of movement. And though the solid walls held
steady against the wild spring hurricane, the cannonading of the
wind seemed to threaten the foundations, for the mountain shook,
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the forest roared, and the shadows had a way of
running everywhere, as though the little building trembled. Delane watched
and listened. He piled the logs on. From time to
time he glanced nervously over his shoulder, restless, half uneasy,
as a burst of spray from the branches dashed against
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the window, or a gust of unusual vehemence shook the door.
Overwearied with his long day's climb among impossible conditions, he
now realized in this mountain refuge his utter loneliness for
his mind gave birth to that unwelcome symptom of true
loneliness that he was not after all alone. Continually he
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heard steps and voices in the storm. Another wanderer, another
climber out of season like himself, would presently arrive, and
sleep was out of the question until first he heard
that knocking on the door. Almost he expected someone. He
went for the tenth time to the little window. He
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peered forth into the thick darkness of the dropping night,
shading his eyes against the streaming pane to screen the
fire light, in an attempt to see if another climber,
perhaps a climber in distress, were visible. The surroundings were
desolate and savage, well named the Devil's Saddle, Black faced
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precipices streaked with melting snow rose towering to the north,
where the heights were hidden in seas of vapor. Waterfalls
poured into abysses on two sides, a wall of impenetrable
forests pressed up from the south, and the dangerous ridge
he had climbed all day slid off wickedly into a
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sky of surging cloud. But no human figure was, of course, distinguishable,
for both the lateness of the hour and the elemental
fury of the night rendered it most unlikely. He turned
away with a start as the tempest delivered a blow
with massive impact against his very face. Then, clearing the
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remnants of his frugal supper from the table, he hung
his soaking clothes at a new angle before the fire,
made sure the door was fastened on the inside, climbed
into the bunk, where white pillows and thick Austrian blankets
looked so inviting, and prepared finally for sleep. I must
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be overtired, he sighed after half an hour's weary tossing,
and went back to make up the sinking fire. Wood
is plentiful in these climber's huts. He heaped it on,
but this time he lit the little oil lamp as well, realizing,
though unwilling to acknowledge it, that it was not over
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fatigue that banished sleep, but this unwelcome sense of expecting
someone of being not quite alone. For the feeling persisted
and increased. He drew the wooden bench close up to
the fire, turned the lamp as high as it would go,
and wished unaccountably for the morning was a very pleasant thing,
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and darkness now for the first time since childhood troubled him.
It was outside, but it might so easily come in
and swamp, obliterate, extinguish. The darkness seemed a positive thing already,
somehow it was established in his mind, this sense of enormous,
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aggressive darkness that veiled an undesirable hint of personality, some
shadow from the peaks or from the forest, immense and threatening,
pervaded all his thought. This can't be entirely nerves, he
whispered to himself. I'm not so tired as all that,
And he made the fire roar. He shivered and drew
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closer to the blaze. I'm out of condition. That's part
of it, he realized, and remembered with loathing the weeks
of luxurious indulgence just behind him. For Delanne had rather
wasted his year of educational travel straight from Oxford and
well supplied with money, he had first saturated his mind
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in the latest continental thought, the science of France, the
metaphysics and philosophy of Germany, and had been caught aside
by the gaiety of capitals where the lights were not
turned out at midnight by a Sunday school police. He
had been surfeited physically, emotionally and intellectually, till his mind
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and body longed hungrily for simple living again, and simple
teaching above all the latter. The road of excess leads
to the palace of wisdom for certain temperaments, as Blake
forgot to add, of which Delane was one, For there
was stuff in the youth, and the reaction had set
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in with violent abruptness. His system rebelled. He cut loose
energetically from all soft delights and craved for severity, pure air,
solitude and hardship, clean and simple conditions he must have
without delay, and the tonic of physical battling. It was
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too early in the year to climb seriously, for the
snow was still dangerous and the weather wild. But he
had chosen this most isolated of all the mountain huts
in order to make sure of solitude, and had come
without guide or companion, for a week's strenuous life in
wild surroundings, and to take stock of himself with a
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view to full recovery. And all day long as he
climbed the desolate, unsafe ridge, his mind, good, wholesome, natural
symptom had reverted to his childhood days, to the solid,
worldly wisdom of his church going father, and to the
early teaching, Oh, how sweet and refreshing in its literal
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spirit at his mother's knee. Now, as he watched the
blazer logs, it came back to him again with redoubled force,
the simple, precious, old world stories of heaven and hell,
of a paternal deity, and of a daring, subtle personal devil.
The interruption to his thoughts came with startling suddenness, as
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the roaring night descended against the windows, with a thundering
violence that shook the walls and sucked the flame half
way up the wide stone chimney. The oil lamp flickered
and went out. Darkness invaded the room for a second,
and Delane sprang from his bench, thinking the wet snow
had loosened far above and was about to sweep the
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hut into the depths. And he was still standing, trembling
and uncertain in the middle of the room when a
deep and sawing hush followed sharp upon the elemental outburst,
and in the hush, like a whisper after thunder, he
heard a curious, steady sound that at first he thought
must be a footstep by the door. It was then
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instantly repeated, But it was not a step. It was
someone knocking on the heavy oaken panels, a firm, authoritative sound,
as though the new arrival had the right to enter
and was already impatient at the delay. The Englishman recovered himself, instantly,
realizing with keen relief the new arrival at last another
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climber like himself. Of course, he said, or perhaps the
man who comes to prepare the hut for others. The
season has begun. And he went over quickly, without a
further qualm to unbolt the door. Forgive, he exclaimed in German,
as he threw it wide. I was half asleep before
the fire. It is a terrible night. Come in to
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food and shelter, for both are here, and you shall
share such supper as I possess. And a tall, cloaked
figure passed him swiftly, with a gust of angry wind,
from the impenetrable blackness of the world beyond. On the threshold.
For a second, his outline stood full in the blaze
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of firelight, with the sheet of darkness behind it, stately erect, commanding,
his cloak torn fiercely by the wind, but the face
hidden by a low brimmed hat, and an instant later
the door shut with resounding clamor upon the hurricane, and
the two men turned to confront one another in the
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little room. Delaye then realized two things sharply, both of
them fleeting impressions but acutely vivid. First that the outside
darkness seemed to have entered and established itself between him
and the new arrival, and secondly that the stranger's face
was difficult to focus for clear sight. Although the covering
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hat was now removed, there was a blur upon it somewhere,
and this the Englishman ascribed partly to the flickering effect
of firelight, and partly to the lightning glare of the
man's masterful and terrific eyes, which made his own sight
waver in some curious fashion as he gazed upon him.
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These impressions, however, were but momentary and passing, due doubtless
to the condition of his nerves and to the semi
shock of the dramatic, even theatrical entrance. Delane's senses in
this wild setting were guilty of exaggeration. For now, while
helping the man remove his cloak, speaking naturally of shelter,
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food and the savage weather, he lost his first distortion,
and his mind recovered, saying proportion the stranger, after all,
though striking was not of appearance so uncommon as to
cause alarm, the light and the low doorway had touched
his stature with illusion. He dwindled, and the great eyes,
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upon Calmer's subsequent inspection, lost their original fierce lightning. The
entering darkness, moreover, was but an effect of the upheaving
night behind him. As he strode across the threshold, the
closed door proved it. And yet as Delane continued his
quieter examination there remained he saw the startling quality which
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had caused that first magnifying in his mind. His senses,
while reporting accurately, insisted upon this arresting and uncommon touch.
There was about this late wanderer of the night, some evasive,
lofty strangeness that set him utterly apart from ordinary men.
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The Englishman examined him searchingly, surreptitiously, but with a touch
of passionate curiosity. He could not in the least account
for nor explain. There were contradictions of plexing character about him.
For the first presentment had been of splendid youth, while
on the face. Though vigorous and gloriously handsome, he now
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discerned the stamp of tremendous age. It was worn and tired,
while radiant with strength and health and power. It wore
as well, this certain signature of deep exhaustion that great experience,
rather than physical experience, brings. Moreover, he discovered in it
in some way he could not hope to describe man, woman,
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and child. There was a big sad earnestness about it,
yet a touch of humor too. Patience, tenderness, and sweetness
held the mouth and behind a high pale forehead. Intellect
sat enthrone and watchful. In it were both love and hatred,
longing and despair, an expression of being ever on the
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defensive yet hugely mutinous, an heir both hunted and beseeching
great knowledge and great woe. Delayne gave up the search,
aware that something unalterably splendid stood before him. Solemnity and
beauty swept him too. His was never the grotesque assumption
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that man must be the highest being in the universe,
nor that a thing is a miracle merely because it
has never happened before. He groped, while explanation and analysis
both halted, a great teacher, thought fluttered through him, or
a mighty rebel, a distinguished personality beyond all question. Who
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can he be? There was something regal that put respect
upon his imagination instantly, and he remembered the legend of
the countryside that Lutewig of Bavaria was said to be
about when knights were very wild. He wondered into his
speech and manner crept unawares, and attitude of deference that
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was almost reverence, and with it whence came this other quality,
a searching pity. You must be wearied out, he said, respectfully,
busying himself about the room as well as cold and wet.
This fire will draw you, sir. And meanwhile I will
prepare quickly such food as there is, if you will
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eat it. For the other carried no knapsack, nor was
he clothed for the severity of mountain travel. I have
already eaten, said the stranger, courteously, and with my thanks
to you. I am neither wet nor tired. The afflictions
that I bear are of another kind, though ones that
you shall more easily, I am sure relieve. He spoke
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as a man whose words set troops and action, and
Elaine glanced at him, deeply moved by the surprising phrase,
yet hardly marveling that it should be so. He found
no ready answer, but there was evidently question in his look.
For the other continued, and this time with a smile
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that betrayed sheer winning beauty, as of a tender woman.
I saw the light and came to it. It is
unusual at this time. His voice was resonant, but not deep.
There was a ringing quality about it that the bare
room emphasized. It charmed the young Englishman inexplicably. Also, it
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woke in him a sense of infinite pathos. You are
a climber, sir, like myself. Delaye resumed, lifting his eyes
a moment uneasily from the coffee he brewed over a
corner of the fire. You know this neighborhood, perhaps better
at any rate than I can know it, His German halted. Rather,
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he chose his words with difficulty. There was uncommon trouble
in his mind. I know all wild and desolate places,
replied the other, in perfect English, but with a wintry
mournfulness in his voice and eyes, for I feel at
home in them and their stern companionship. My nature craves
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as solace. But unlike yourself, I am no climber. The
heights have no attraction for you, as delane as he mingled,
steaming milk and coffee in the wooden bowl, marveling what
brought him then so high above the valleys. It is
their difficulty and danger that fascinate me always. I find
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the loneliness of the summits intoxicating in a sense, and
regardless of refusal. He set the bread and meat before him,
the apple and the tiny packet of salt, then turned
away to place the coffee pot beside the fire again,
But as he did so, a singular gesture of the
other caught his eyes. Before touching bowl or plait, the
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stranger took the fruit and brushed his lips with it.
He kissed it, then set it on the ground and
crushed it into pope beneath his heel. And seeing this,
the young Englishman knew something dreadfully arrested in his mind,
for as he looked away, pretending the act was unobserved,
a thing of ice and darkness moved past him through
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the room, so that the pot trembled in his hand,
rattling sharply against the hearthstone where he stooped. He could
only interpret it as an act of madness, and the
myth of the sad, drowned monarch wandering through this enchanted
region pressed into him again, unsought and urgent. It was
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a full minute before he had control of his heart
and hand again. The bull was half emptied, and the
man was smiling, this time the smile of a child
who implores the comfort of enveloping and understanding arms. I
am a wanderer rather than a climber, he was saying,
as though there had been no interval. For though the
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lonely summits suit me well, I now find in them
only terror. My feet lose their sureness, and my head
its steady balance. I prefer the hidden gorges of these
mountains and the shadows of the covering forests my days.
His voice drew the loneliness of uttermost space into its
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piteous accents are passed in darkness. I can never climb again.
He spoke, this time, indeed, as a man whose nerve
was gone forever. It was pitiable almost to tears and
delayne unable to explain the amazing contradictions, felt recklessly furiously
drawn to this trapped wanderer with the mien of a king,
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yet the air and speech sometimes of a woman and
sometimes of an outcast child. Ah, then you have known accidents,
Delane replied, with outer calmness, as he his pipe, trying
in vain to keep his hand as steady as his voice.
You have been in one. Perhaps the effect I have
been told is the power and sweetness in that resonant voice.
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Took his breath away as he heard it break in
upon his own uncertain accents. I have fallen, the stranger replied, impressively,
as the rain and wind wailed past the building, mournfully.
Yet a fall that was no part of any accident,
For it was no common fall, the man added, with
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a magnificent gesture of disdain. While yet it broke my
heart in two. He stooped a little as he uttered
the next words with a crying pathos that an outcast
woman might have used. I am, he said, engulfed in
intolerable loneliness. I can never climb again. With a shiver,
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impossible to control half of terror, half of pity, Delane
moved a step nearer to the marvelous stranger. The spirit
of Ludowig, exiled and distraught, had gripped his soul with
a weakening terror. But now sheer beauty lifted him above
all personal shrinking. There seemed some echo of lost divinity,
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worn wild yet grandiose, through which this significant language strained
towards a personal message for himself. In loneliness, he faltered,
sympathy rising in a flood for my kingdom that is
lost to me forever met him in deep throbbing tones
that set the air on fire for my imperial ancient
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heights that jealousy took from me. The stranger paused with
an indescribable air of broken dignity and pain. Outside the
tempest paused a moment before the awful elemental crash that followed.
A bellowing of many winds descended like artillery upon the world.
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A burst of smoke rushed from the fireplace upon them, both,
shrouding the stranger momentarily in a flying veil, and Delane
stood up, uncomfortable in his very bones. What can it be?
He asked himself, sharply, Who is this being that he
should use such language? He watched alarm, chase pity, aware
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that the conversation held something beyond experience. But the pity
returned in greater and greater flood, and love surged through
him too. It was significant, he remembered afterwards, that he
felt it incumbent upon himself to stand curious too, how
the thought of that mad drowned monarch haunted memory with
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such persistence. Some vast emotion that he could not name,
drove out his subsequent words. The smoke had cleared, and
a strange, high stillness held the world. The rain streamed
down in torrents, isolating these two somehow from the haunts
of men. And the Englishman stared then into a countenance
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grown mighty with woe and loneliness. There stood darkly in it,
this incommunicable's magnificence of pain that mingled all with the
pity he had felt. The kingly eyes looked clear into
his own, completing his subjugation out of time. I would
follow you, ran his thought upon its knees. Follow you
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with obedience forever and ever, even into a last damnation.
For you are sublime. You shall come again into your kingdom.
If my own small worship, then blackness sponged the reckless
thought away. He spoke in its place a more guarded,
careful thing. I am aware he faltered, yet conscious that
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he bowed, of standing before a great one of some
world unknown to me. Who he may be, I have
but the privilege of wondering. He has spoken darkly of
a kingdom that is lost, yet he is still I
see a monarch. And he lowered his head and shoulders
involuntarily for an instant. Then, as he said it, the
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eyes before him flashed their original terrific lightnings. The darkness
of the common world faded before the entrance of an
outer darkness from gulfs of terror. At his feet rose
shadows out of the night of time, and a passionate anguish,
as of sudden madness, seized his heart and shook it.
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He listened breathlessly for the words that followed. It seemed
some wind of unutterable despair passed in the breath from
those non human lips. I am still a monarch, yes,
but my kingdom is taken from me, for I have
no single subject, lost in a loneliness that lies out
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of space and time. I am become a throneless ruler,
and my hopelessness is more than I can bear. The
beseeching pathos of the voice tore him in two. The
deity himself, it seemed, stood there, accused of jealousy, of
sin and cruelty. The stranger rose. The power about him
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brought the picture of a planet throned in mid heaven
and poised beyond the salt. Not otherwise boomed the startling words,
as though an avalanche found syllables. Could I now show
myself to you? Delane was trembling horribly. He felt the
next word slip off his tongue. Unconsciously, the shattering truth
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had dawned upon his soul. At last, Then the light
you saw and came to he whispered, was the light
in your heart that guided me? Came the answer, sweet,
beguiling as the music in a woman's tones, the light
of your instant, brief desire that held love in it.
He made an opening movement with his arms as he continued,
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smiling like stars in summer, for you summoned me, summoned
me by your dear and precious belief. How dear, how
precious none can know but I who stand before you.
His figure drew up with an imperial air of proud dominion.
His feet were set among the constellations. The opening movement
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of his arms continued slowly, and the music in his
tones seemed merged in distant thunder. For your single brief belief,
he smiled, with the grandeur of a condescending emperor, shall
give my vanished kingdom back to me, And with an
air of native majesty, he held his hand out to
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be kissed. The black hurricane of night, the terror of
frozen peakest, the yawning horror of the great abyss outside.
All three crowded into the Englishman's mind with a slashing
impact that blocked delivery of any word or action. It
was not that he refused, It was not that he withdrew,
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but that life stood paralyzed and rigid. The floe stopped
dead for the first time since he had left his
mother's womb. The god in him was turned to stone
and rendered ineffective. For an appalling instant god was not.
He realized the stupendous moment before him, drinking his little
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soul out. Merely by his presence, stood one whose habit
of mind, not alone his external accidents, was imperial with
black prerogative. Before the first man drew the breath of life,
Auguste procedure was native to his inner process of existence.
The stars and confines of the universe owned his sway
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before he fell to trifle away the dreary little centuries
by haunting the minds of feeble men and women, by
hiding himself in nursery cupboards, and by grinning with stained
gargoyles from the roofs of city churches. And the lad's
life stammered, flickered, threatened to go out before the enveloping
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terror of the revelation. I called to you, but called
to you in play, thought whispered, somewhere deep below the
level of any speech, yet not so low that the
audacious sound of it did not crash above the elements outside.
For till now you have been to me but a
coated bogie that my brain disowned with laughter, and my
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heart thought picturesque. If you are here alive, may God
forgive me for my It seemed as though tears, the
tears of love and profound commiseration, drowned the very seed
of thought itself. A sound stopped him that was like
a collapse in heaven, some crashing as of a ruined
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world passed, splintering through his little, timid heart. He did
not yield, but he understood with an understanding which seemed
the delicate first sign of yielding the seductiveness of evil,
the sweet delight of surrendering the will with utter recklessness
to those swelling forces which disintegrate the heroic soul in man.
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He remembered it was true, in the reaction from excess,
he had definitely called upon his childhood's teaching with a
passing moment of genuine belief. And now that yearning of
a fraction of a second bore its awful fruit. The
luscious capitals where he had rioted passed in a colored
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stream before his eyes. The wine, the woman, and the
song stood there before him, clothed in that power which
lies insinuatingly disguised behind their little passing show of innocence,
their glamor donned. This domino of regal and virile grandeur,
He felt entangled beyond recovery. The idea of God seemed
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sterile and without reality. The one real thing, the one
desirable thing, the one possible, strong and beautiful thing, was
to bend his head and kiss those imperial fingers. He
moved noiselessly towards the hand he raised his own to
take it and lift it towards his mouth, when there
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arose in his mind, with startling vividness, a small soft
picture of a child's nursery, a picture of a little
boy kneeling in scanty nightgown, with pink, upturned souls and
asking ridiculous, audacious things. Of a shining figure seated on
a summer cloud above the kitchen garden walnut tree. The
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tiny symbol flashed and went its way, Yet not before
it had lit the entire world with glory, For there
came an absolutely routing power with it. In that half
forgotten instant's craz for the simple teaching of his childhood days,
belief had conjured with two immense traditions. This was the
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second of them. The appearance of the one had inevitably
produced the passage of its opposite, And the hand that
floated in the air before him to be kissed sank
slowly down below the possible level of his lips. He
shrank away, Though laughter tempted something in his brain there
still clung about his heart, the first aching pitying terror,
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But sighs retreated, dwindling somehow as it went. The wind
and rain obliterated every other sound. Yet in that bare,
unfurnished room of a climber's mountain hut, there was a
silence above the roar that drank in everything and broke
the back of speech. In opposition to this masquerading splendor,
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Delane had set up a personal paternal deity. I thought
of you, perhap, perhaps cried the voice of self defense.
But I did not call to you with real belief,
And by the name of God, I did not summon
you for your sweetness, as your power sickens me, and
your hand is black with the curses of all the
mothers of the world, whose prayers and tears. He stopped dead,
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overwhelmed by the cruelty of his reckless utterance, and the
other moved towards him slowly. It was like the summit
of some piqued and terrible height that moved. He spoke,
he changed appallingly. But I claim he roared your heart.
I claim you by that instant of belief you felt,
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for by that alone you shall restore to me my
vanished kingdom. You shall worship me. And the countenance was
a sudden, awful power. But behind the stupefying roar there
was weakness in the voice, as of an imploring and
beseeching child. Wild again, deep love and searching pity seared
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the Englishman's heart as he replied in the gentlest accents
he could find to master. And I claim you, he said,
by my understanding sympathy, and by my sorrow for your
god forsaken loneliness, and by my love for no kingdom
built on hate can stand against the love you would deny.
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Words failed him then, as he saw the Majesty fade
slowly from the face, grown smaller and shadowy. One last
expression of desperate energy in the eyes struck lightnings from
the smoky air, as with an abandoned movement of the
entire figure. He drew back, it seemed, towards the door
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behind him. Delanne moved slowly after him, opening his arms.
Tenderness and big compassion flung wide the gates of love
within him. He found strange language, too, although actual spoken
words did not produce them further than his entrails where
they had their birth. Toys in the world are plentiful, sire,
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and you may have them for your masterpiece of play,
but you must seek them where they still survive in
the churches and in isolated lands where thought lies unawakened.
For they are the children's blocks of make believe, whose palaces,
like your once tremendous kingdom, have no true existence for
the thinking mind. And he stretched his hands towards him
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with the gesture of one who sought to help and save,
then paused as he realized that his arms enclosed sheer
blackness with the emptiness of wind and driving rain. For
the door of the hut stood open, and Delaye balanced
on the threshold, facing the sheet of night above the abyss,
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he heard the waterfalls in the valley far below. The
forest flapped and tossed its myriad branches. Cold drafts swept
down from spectral fields of melting snow above, and the
blackness turned momentarily into the semblance of towers and bastions,
of thick, beaten gloom. Above one soaring turret. Then a
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space of sky appeared, swept naked by a violent, lost wind,
an opening of purple into limitless distance. For one second,
amid the vapors, it was visible, empty and untenanted. The
next there sailed across its small diameter a falling star
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with an air of slow and endless leisure. Yet at
the same time, with terrific speed, it dived behind the
ragged curtain of the clouds, and the space closed up again.
Blackness returned upon the heavens, and through this blackness, plunging
into that of woe. Whence he had momentarily risen the
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figure of the marvelous stranger melted utterly away. Delane, for
a fleeting second was aware of the earnestness in the sad,
imploring countenance, of its sweetness and its power so strangely mingled,
of its mysterious grandeur, and of its pathetic childishness. But
already it was sunk into interminable distance. A star that
(35:28):
would be baleful yet was merely glorious, passed on its
endless wandering among the teeming systems of the universe, behind
the fixed and steady stars, secure in their appointed places.
It set, it vanished, into the pit of unknown emptiness.
It was gone, God help you, sided across the sea
(35:50):
of wailing branches, echoing down the dark abyss below. God
give you rest at last, For he saw a princely,
nay an imperial being, homeless forever and forever, wandering, hunted
as by keen, remorseless winds about a universe that held
no corner for his feet, His majesty unworshiped, his rain
(36:15):
a mockery, his court unfurnished, and his courtiers mere shadows
of deep space, And a thin gray dawn, stealing up
behind clearing summits in the east, crept then against the
windows of the mountain hut. It brought with it a
treacherous sharp air that made the sleeper draw another blanket
(36:36):
near to shelter him from the sudden cold, for the
fire had died out, and an icy draft sucked steadily
beneath the doorway. End of Story eleven.
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