A Prisoner in Fairyland

A Prisoner in Fairyland







By


Algernon Blackwood



Web-Books.Com












A Prisoner in Fairyland


Chapter 1 4
Chapter 2 9
Chapter 3 18
Chapter 4 23
Chapter 5 29
Chapter 6 39
Chapter 7 43
Chapter 8 51
Chapter 9 57
Chapter 10 68
Chapter 11 74
Chapter 12 80
Chapter 13 84
Chapter 14 97
Chapter 15 102
Chapter 16 112
Chapter 17 120
Chapter 18 128
Chapter 19 137
Chapter 20 144
Chapter 21 152
Chapter 22 155
Chapter 23 165
Chapter 24 178
Chapter 25 188
Chapter 26 197
Chapter 27 208
Chapter 28 215
Chapter 29 224
Chapter 30 233
Chapter 31 239
Chapter 32 247
Chapter 33 254
Chapter 34 263

Chapter 1

Man is his own star; and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man
Commands all light, all influence, all fate,
Nothing to him falls early, or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
Minks Herbert Montmorency was now something more than secretary, even
than private secretary: he was confidential-private-secretary, adviser, friend; and
this, more because he was a safe receptacle for his employer's enthusiasms than
because his advice or judgment had any exceptional value. So many men need
an audience. Herbert Minks was a fine audience, attentive, delicately responsive,
sympathetic, understanding, and above all silent. He did not leak. Also, his
applause was wise without being noisy. Another rare quality he possessed was
that he was honest as the sun. To prevaricate, even by gesture, or by saying
nothing, which is the commonest form of untruth, was impossible to his
transparent nature. He might hedge, but he could never lie. And he was 'friend,'
so far as this was possible between employer and employed, because a pleasant
relationship of years' standing had established a bond of mutual respect under
conditions of business intimacy which often tend to destroy it.
Just now he was very important into the bargain, for he had a secret from his wife
that he meant to divulge only at the proper moment. He had known it himself but
a few hours. The leap from being secretary in one of Henry Rogers's companies
to being that prominent gentleman's confidential private secretary was, of course,
a very big one. He hugged it secretly at first alone. On the journey back from the
City to the suburb where he lived, Minks made a sonnet on it. For his emotions
invariably sought the safety valve of verse. It was a wiser safety valve for high
spirits than horse-racing or betting on the football results, because he always
stood to win, and never to lose. Occasionally he sold these bits of joy for half a
guinea, his wife pasting the results neatly in a big press album from which he
often read aloud on Sunday nights when the children were in bed. They were
signed 'Montmorency Minks'; and bore evidence of occasional pencil corrections
on the margin with a view to publication later in a volume. And sometimes there
were little lyrical fragments too, in a wild, original metre, influenced by Shelley
and yet entirely his own. These had special pages to themselves at the end of
the big book. But usually he preferred the sonnet form; it was more sober, more
dignified. And just now the bumping of the Tube train shaped his emotion into
something that began with
Success that poisons many a baser mind
With thoughts of self, may lift
but stopped there because, when he changed into another train, the jerkier
movement altered the rhythm into something more lyrical, and he got somewhat
confused between the two and ended by losing both.
He walked up the hill towards his tiny villa, hugging his secret and anticipating
with endless detail how he would break it to his wife. He felt very proud and very
happy. The half-mile trudge seemed like a few yards.
He was a slim, rather insignificant figure of a man, neatly dressed, the City clerk
stamped plainly over all his person. He envied his employer's burly six-foot
stature, but comforted himself always with the thought that he possessed in its
place a certain delicacy that was more becoming to a man of letters whom an
adverse fate prevented from being a regular minor poet. There was that touch of
melancholy in his fastidious appearance that suggested the atmosphere of
frustrated dreams. Only the firmness of his character and judgment decreed
against the luxury of longish hair; and he prided himself upon remembering that
although a poet at heart, he was outwardly a City clerk and, as a strong man,
must permit no foolish compromise.
His face on the whole was pleasing, and rather soft, yet, owing to this warring of
opposing inner forces, it was at the same time curiously deceptive. Out of that
dreamy, vague expression shot, when least expected, the hard and practical
judgment of the City or vice versa. But the whole was gentle admirable quality
for an audience, since it invited confession and assured a gentle hearing. No
harshness lay there. Herbert Minks might have been a fine, successful mother
perhaps. The one drawback to the physiognomy was that the mild blue eyes
were never quite united in their frank gaze. He squinted pleasantly, though his
wife told him it was a fascinating cast rather than an actual squint. The chin, too,
ran away a little from the mouth, and the lips were usually parted. There was, at
any rate, this air of incompatibility of temperament between the features which,
made all claim to good looks out of the question.
That runaway chin, however, was again deceptive. It did, indeed run off, but the
want of decision it gave to the countenance seemed contradicted by the
prominent forehead and straight eyebrows, heavily marked. Minks knew his
mind. If sometimes evasive rather than outspoken, he could on occasion be
surprisingly firm. He saw life very clearly. He could certainly claim the good
judgment stupid people sometimes have, due perhaps to their inability to see
alternatives just as some men's claim to greatness is born of an audacity due to
their total lack of humour.
Minks was one of those rare beings who may be counted on a quality better
than mere brains, being of the heart. And Henry Rogers understood him and
read him like an open book. Preferring the steady devotion to the brilliance a high
salary may buy, he had watched him for many years in every sort of
circumstance. He had, by degrees, here and there, shown an interest in his life.
He had chosen his private secretary well. With Herbert Minks at his side he might
accomplish many things his heart was set upon. And while Minks bumped down
in his third-class crowded carriage to Sydenham, hunting his evasive sonnet,
Henry Rogers glided swiftly in a taxi-cab to his rooms in St. James's Street, hard
on the trail of another dream that seemed, equally, to keep just beyond his actual
reach.
It would certainly seem that thought can travel across space between minds
sympathetically in tune, for just as the secretary put his latch-key into his shiny
blue door the idea flashed through him, 'I wonder what Mr. Rogers will do, now
that he's got his leisure, with a fortune and me!' And at the same moment
Rogers, in his deep arm-chair before the fire, was saying to himself, 'I'm glad
Minks has come to me; he's just the man I want for my big Scheme!' And then
'Pity he's such a lugubrious looking fellow, and wears those dreadful fancy
waistcoats. But he's very open to suggestion. We can change all that. I must look
after Minks a bit. He's rather sacrificed his career for me, I fancy. He's got high
aims. Poor little Minks!'
'I'll stand by him whatever happens,' was the thought the slamming of the blue
door interrupted. 'To be secretary to such a man is already success.' And again
he hugged his secret and himself.
As already said, the new-fledged secretary was married and wrote poetry on the
sly. He had four children. He would make an ideal helpmate, worshipping his
employer with that rare quality of being interested in his ideas and aims beyond
the mere earning of a salary; seeing, too, in that employer more than he, the
latter, supposed. For, while he wrote verses on the sly, 'my chief,' as he now
preferred to call him, lived poetry in his life.

'He's got it, you know, my dear,' he announced to his wife, as he kissed her and
arranged his tie in the gilt mirror over the plush mantelpiece in the 'parlour'; 'he's
got the divine thing in him right enough; got it, too, as strong as hunger or any
other natural instinct. It's almost functional with him, if I may say so' which meant
'if you can understand me' 'only, he's deliberately smothered it all these years.
He thinks it wouldn't go down with other business men. And he's been in
business, you see, from the word go. He meant to make money, and he couldn't
do both exactly. Just like myself '
Minks wandered on. His wife noticed the new enthusiasm in his manner, and was
puzzled by it. Something was up, she divined.
'Do you think he'll raise your salary again soon?' she asked practically, helping
him draw off the paper cuffs that protected his shirt from ink stains, and throwing
them in the fire. 'That seems to be the real point.'
But Herbert evaded the immediate issue. It was so delightful to watch her and
keep his secret a little longer.
'And you do deserve success, dear,' she added; 'you've been as faithful as a
horse.' She came closer, and stroked his thick, light hair a moment.
He turned quickly. Had he betrayed himself already? Had she read it from his
eyes or manner?
'That's nothing,' he answered lightly. 'Duty is duty.'
'Of course, dear,' and she brought him his slippers. He would not let her put them
on for him. It was not gallant to permit menial services to a woman.
'Success,' he murmured, 'that poisons many a baser mind ' and then stopped
short. 'I've got a new sonnet,' he told her quickly, determined to prolong his
pleasure, 'got it in the train coming home. Wait a moment, and I'll give you the
rest. It's a beauty, with real passion in it, only I want to keep it cold and splendid if
I can. Don't interrupt a moment.' He put the slippers on the wrong feet and stared
hard into the fire.
Then Mrs. Minks knew for a certainty that something had happened. He had not
even asked after the children.
'Herbert,' she said, with a growing excitement, 'why are you so full of poetry to-
night? And what's this about success and poison all of a sudden?' She knew he
never drank. 'I believe Mr. Rogers has raised your salary, or done one of those
fine things you always say he's going to do. Tell me, dear, please tell me.' There
were new, unpaid bills in her pocket, and she almost felt tempted to show them.
She poked the fire fussily.
'Albinia,' he answered importantly, with an expression that brought the chin up
closer to the lips, and made the eyebrows almost stern, 'Mr. Rogers will do the
right thing always when the right time comes. As a matter of fact' here he
reverted to the former train of thought 'both he and I are misfits in a practical,
sordid age. We should have been born in Greece '
'I simply love your poems, Herbert,' she interrupted gently, wondering how she
managed to conceal her growing impatience so well, 'but there's not the money
in them that there ought to be, and they don't pay for coals or for Ronald's
flannels '
'Albinia,' he put in softly, 'they relieve the heart, and so make me a happier and a
better man. But I should say he would,' he added, answering her distant
question about the salary.
The secret was almost out. It hung on the edge of his lips. A moment longer he
hugged it deliciously. He loved these little conversations with his wife. Never a
shade of asperity entered into them. And this one in particular afforded him a
peculiar delight.
'Both of us are made for higher things than mere money-making,' he went on,
lighting his calabash pipe and puffing the smoke carefully above her head from
one corner of his mouth, 'and that's what first attracted us to each other, as I
have often mentioned to you. But now' his bursting heart breaking through all
control 'that he has sold his interests to a company and retired into private life
er my own existence should be easier and less exacting. I shall have less
routine, be more my own master, and also, I trust, find time perhaps for '
'Then something has happened!' cried Mrs. Minks, springing to her feet.
'It has, my dear,' he answered with forced calmness, though his voice was near
the trembling point.
She stood in front of him, waiting. But he himself did not rise, nor show more
feeling than he could help. His poems were full of scenes like this in which the
men strong, silent fellows were fine and quiet. Yet his instinct was to act quite
otherwise. One eye certainly betrayed it.
'It has,' he repeated, full of delicious emotion.
'Oh, but Herbert !'
'And I am no longer that impersonal factor in City life, mere secretary to the
Board of a company '
'Oh, Bertie, dear!'
'But private secretary to Mr. Henry Rogers private and confidential secretary at
-'
'Bert, darling !'
'At 300 pounds a year, paid quarterly, with expenses extra, and long, regular
holidays,' he concluded with admirable dignity and self-possession.
There was a moment's silence.
'You splendour!' She gave a little gasp of admiration that went straight to his
heart, and set big fires alight there. 'Your reward has come at last! My hero!'
This was as it should be. The beginning of an epic poem flashed with tumult
through his blood. Yet outwardly he kept his admirable calm.
'My dear, we must take success, like disaster, quietly.' He said it gently, as when
he played with the children. It was mostly put on, of course, this false
grandiloquence of the prig. His eyes already twinkled more than he could quite
disguise.
'Then we can manage the other school, perhaps, for Frank?' she cried, and was
about to open various flood-gates when he stopped her with a look of proud
happiness that broke down all barriers of further pretended secrecy.
'Mr. Rogers,' was the low reply, 'has offered to do that for us as a start.' The
words were leisurely spoken between great puffs of smoke. 'That's what I meant
just now by saying that he lived poetry in his life, you see. Another time you will
allow judgment to wait on knowledge '
'You dear old humbug,' she cried, cutting short the sentence that neither of them
quite understood, 'I believe you've known this for weeks '
'Two hours ago exactly,' he corrected her, and would willingly have prolonged the
scene indefinitely had not his practical better half prevented him. For she came
over, dropped upon her knees beside his chair, and, putting both arms about his
neck, she kissed his foolish sentences away with all the pride and tenderness
that filled her to the brim. And it pleased Minks hugely. It made him feel, for the
moment at any rate, that he was the hero, not Mr. Henry Rogers.
But he did not show his emotion much. He did not even take his pipe out. It
slipped down sideways into another corner of his wandering lips. And, while he
returned the kiss with equal tenderness and pleasure, one mild blue eye looked
down upon her soft brown hair, and the other glanced sideways, without a trace
of meaning in it, at the oleograph of Napoleon on Elba that hung upon the wall.
Soon afterwards the little Sydenham villa was barred and shuttered, the four
children were sound asleep, Herbert and Albinia Minks both lost in the world of
happy dreams that sometimes visit honest, simple folk whose consciences are
clean and whose aims in life are commonplace but worthy.











Chapter 2


When the creation was new and all the stars shone in their first splendour, the
gods held their assembly in the sky and sang 'Oh, the picture of perfection! the
joy unalloyed!'
But one cried of a sudden 'It seems that somewhere there is a break in the chain
of light and one of the stars has been lost.'
The golden string of their harp snapped, their song stopped, and they cried in
dismay 'Yes, that lost star was the best, she was the glory of all heavens!'
From that day the search is unceasing for her, and the cry goes on from one to
the other that in her the world has lost its one joy!
Only in the deepest silence of night the stars smile and whisper among
themselves 'Vain is this seeking! Unbroken perfection is over all!'
RABINDRANATH TAGORE. (Prose translation by Author from his original
Bengali.)
It was April 30th and Henry Rogers sat in his rooms after breakfast, listening to
the rumble of the traffic down St. James's Street, and found the morning dull. A
pile of letters lay unopened upon the table, waiting the arrival of the
discriminating Mr. Minks with his shorthand note-book and his mild blue eyes. It
was half-past nine, and the secretary was due at ten o'clock.
He smiled as he thought of this excellent fellow's first morning in the promoted
capacity of private secretary. He would come in very softly, one eye looking more
intelligent than the other; the air of the City clerk discarded, and in its place the
bearing that belonged to new robes of office worn for the first time. He would
bow, say 'Good morning, Mr. Rogers,' glance round with one eye on his
employer and another on a possible chair, seat himself with a sigh that meant 'I
have written a new poem in the night, and would love to read it to you if I dared,'
then flatten out his oblong note-book and look up, expectant and receptive.
Rogers would say 'Good morning, Mr. Minks. We've got a busy day before us.
Now, let me see ' and would meet his glance with welcome. He would look
quickly from one eye to the other- to this day he did not know which one was
right to meet-and would wonder for the thousandth time how such an insignificant
face could go with such an honest, capable mind. Then he smiled again as he
remembered Frank, the little boy whose schooling he was paying for, and
realised that Minks would bring a message of gratitude from Mrs. Minks, perhaps
would hand him, with a gesture combining dignity and humbleness, a little note of
thanks in a long narrow envelope of pale mauve, bearing a flourishing monogram
on its back.
And Rogers scowled a little as he thought of the air of gruffness he would
assume while accepting it, saying as pleasantly as he could manage, 'Oh, Mr.
Minks, that's nothing at all; I'm only too delighted to be of service to the lad.' For
he abhorred the expression of emotion, and his delicate sense of tact would
make pretence of helping the boy himself, rather than the struggling parents.
Au fond he had a genuine admiration for Minks, and there was something lofty in
the queer personality that he both envied and respected. It made him rely upon
his judgment in certain ways he could not quite define. Minks seemed devoid of
personal ambition in a sense that was not weakness. He was not insensible to
the importance of money, nor neglectful of chances that enabled him to do well
by his wife and family, but he was after other things as well, if not chiefly. With a
childlike sense of honesty he had once refused a position in a company that was
not all it should have been, and the high pay thus rejected pointed to a
scrupulous nicety of view that the City, of course, deemed foolishness. And
Rogers, aware of this, had taken to him, seeking as it were to make this loss
good to him in legitimate ways. Also the fellow belonged to leagues and armies
and 'things,' quixotic some of them, that tried to lift humanity. That is, he gave of
his spare time, as also of his spare money, to help. His Saturday evenings,
sometimes a whole bank holiday, he devoted to the welfare of others, even
though the devotion Rogers thought misdirected.
For Minks hung upon the fringe of that very modern, new-fashioned, but almost
freakish army that worships old, old ideals, yet insists upon new-fangled names
for them. Christ, doubtless, was his model, but it must be a Christ properly and
freshly labelled; his Christianity must somewhere include the prefix 'neo,' and the
word 'scientific' must also be dragged in if possible before he was satisfied.
Minks, indeed, took so long explaining to himself the wonderful title that he was
sometimes in danger of forgetting the brilliant truths it so vulgarly concealed. Yet
never quite concealed. He must be up-to-date, that was all. His attitude to the
world scraped acquaintance with nobility somewhere. His gift was a rare one.
Out of so little, he gave his mite, and gave it simply, unaware that he was doing
anything unusual.
This attitude of mind had made him valuable, even endeared him, to the
successful business man, and in his secret heart Rogers had once or twice felt
ashamed of himself. Minks, as it were, knew actual achievement because he
was, forcedly, content with little, whereas he, Rogers, dreamed of so much, yet
took twenty years to come within reach of what he dreamed. He was always
waiting for the right moment to begin.
His reflections were interrupted by the sunlight, which, pouring in a flood across
the opposite roof, just then dropped a patch of soft April glory upon the black and
yellow check of his carpet slippers. Rogers got up and, opening the window wider
than before, put out his head. The sunshine caught him full in the face. He tasted
the fresh morning air. Tinged with the sharp sweetness of the north it had a
fragrance as of fields and gardens. Even St. James's Street could not smother its
vitality and perfume. He drew it with delight into his lungs, making such a to-do
about it that a passer-by looked up to see what was the matter, and noticing the
hanging tassel of a flamboyant dressing-gown, at once modestly lowered his
eyes again.
But Henry Rogers did not see the passer-by in whose delicate mind a point of
taste had thus vanquished curiosity, for his thoughts had flown far across the
pale-blue sky, behind the cannon-ball clouds, up into that scented space and
distance where summer was already winging her radiant way towards the earth.

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