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JIMBO
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA . MADRAS
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO
DALLAS . ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
OF CANADA, LIMITED
TORONTO
JIMBO
A FANTASY
_By_
ALGERNON
BLACKWOOD
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1930
COPYRIGHT
_First Published_ 1909
_The Caravan Library_ 1930
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. "RABBITS" 7
II. MISS LAKE COMES--AND GOES 24
III. THE SHOCK 40
IV. ON THE EDGE OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS 49
V. INTO THE EMPTY HOUSE 54
VI. HIS COMPANION IN PRISON 69
VII. THE SPELL OF THE EMPTY HOUSE 87
VIII. THE GALLERY OF ANCIENT MEMORIES 102
IX. THE MEANS OF ESCAPE 111
X. THE PLUNGE 131
XI. THE FIRST FLIGHT 142
XII. THE FOUR WINDS 153
XIII. PLEASURES OF FLIGHT 165
XIV. AN ADVENTURE 177
XV. THE CALL OF THE BODY 193
XVI. PREPARATION 204
XVII. OFF! 219
XVIII. HOME 232
JIMBO
CHAPTER I
"RABBITS"
Jimbo's governess ought to have known better--but she didn't. If she
had, Jimbo would never have met with the adventures that subsequently
came to him. Thus, in a roundabout sort of way, the child ought to have
been thankful to the governess; and perhaps, in a roundabout sort of
way, he was. But that comes at the far end of the story, and is doubtful
at best; and in the meanwhile the child had gone through his suffering,
and the governess had in some measure expiated her fault; so that at
this stage it is only necessary to note that the whole business began
because the Empty House happened to be really an Empty House--not the
one Jimbo's family lived in, but another of which more will be known in
due course.
Jimbo's father was a retired Colonel, who had married late in life, and
now lived all the year round in the country; and Jimbo was the youngest
child but one. The Colonel, lean in body as he was sincere in mind, an
excellent soldier but a poor diplomatist, loved dogs, horses, guns and
riding-whips. He also really understood them. His neighbours, had they
been asked, would have called him hard-headed, and so far as a
soft-hearted man may deserve the title, he probably was. He rode two
horses a day to hounds with the best of them, and the stiffer the
country the better he liked it. Besides his guns, dogs and horses, he
was also very fond of his children. It was his hobby that he understood
them far better than his wife did, or than any one else did, for that
matter. The proper evolution of their differing temperaments had no
difficulties for him. The delicate problems of child-nature, which defy
solution by nine parents out of ten, ceased to exist the moment he
spread out his muscular hand in a favourite omnipotent gesture and
uttered some extraordinarily foolish generality in that thunderous,
good-natured voice of his. The difficulty for himself vanished when he
ended up with the words, "Leave that to me, my dear; believe me, I know
best!" But for all else concerned, and especially for the child under
discussion, this was when the difficulty really began.
Since, however, the Colonel, after this chapter, mounts his best hunter
and disappears over a high hedge into space so far as our story is
concerned, any further delineation of his wholesome but very ordinary
type is unnecessary.
One winter's evening, not very long after Christmas, the Colonel made a
discovery. It alarmed him a little; for it suggested to his cocksure
mind that he did not understand _all_ his children as comprehensively as
he imagined.
Between five o'clock tea and dinner--that magic hour when lessons were
over and the big house was full of shadows and mystery--there came a
timid knock at the study door.
"Come in," growled the soldier in his deepest voice, and a little girl's
face, wreathed in tumbling brown hair, poked itself hesitatingly through
the opening.
The Colonel did not like being disturbed at this hour, and everybody in
the house knew it; but the spell of Christmas holidays was still somehow
in the air, and the customary order was not yet fully re-established.
Moreover, when he saw who the intruder was, his growl modified itself
into a sort of common sternness that yet was not cleverly enough
simulated to deceive the really intuitive little person who now stood
inside the room.
"Well, Nixie, child, what do you want now?"
"Please, father, will you--we wondered if----"
A chorus of whispers issued from the other side of the door:
"Go on, silly!"
"Out with it!"
"You promised you would, Nixie."
"... if you would come and play Rabbits with us?" came the words in a
desperate rush, with laughter not far behind.
The big man with the fierce white moustaches glared over the top of his
glasses at the intruders as if amazed beyond belief at the audacity of
the request.
"Rabbits!" he exclaimed, as though the mere word ought to have caused an
instant explosion. "Rabbits!"
"Oh, _please_ do."
"Rabbits at this time of night!" he repeated. "I never heard of such a
thing. Why, all good rabbits are asleep in their holes by now. And you
ought to be in yours too by rights, I'm sure."
"We don't sleep in holes, father," said the owner of the brown hair, who
was acting as leader.
"And there's still a nour before bedtime, _really_," added a voice in
the rear.
The big man slowly put his glasses down and looked at his watch. He
looked very savage, but of course it was all pretence, and the children
knew it. "If he was _really_ cross he'd pretend to be nice," they
whispered to each other, with merciless perception.
"Well--" he began. But he who hesitates, with children, is lost. The
door flung open wide, and the troop poured into the room in a medley of
long black legs, flying hair and outstretched hands. They surrounded the
table, swarmed upon his big knees, shut his stupid old book, tried on
his glasses, kissed him, and fell to discussing the game breathlessly
all at once, as though it had already begun.
This, of course, ended the battle, and the big man had to play the part
of the Monster Rabbit in a wonderful game of his own invention. But
when, at length, it was all over, and they were gathered panting round
the fire of blazing logs in the hall, the Monster Rabbit--the only one
with any breath at his command--looked up and spoke.
"Where's Jimbo?" he asked.
"Upstairs."
"Why didn't he come and play too?"
"He didn't want to."
"Why? What's he doing?"
Several answers were forthcoming.
"Nothing in p'tickler."
"Talking to the furniture when I last saw him."
"Just thinking, as usual, or staring in the fire."
None of the answers seemed to satisfy the Monster Rabbit, for when he
kissed them a little later and said good-night, he gave orders, with a
graver face, for Jimbo to be sent down to the study before he went to
bed. Moreover, he called him "James," which was a sure sign of parental
displeasure.
"James, why didn't you come and play with your brothers and sisters just
now?" asked the Colonel, as a dreamy-eyed boy of about eight, with a mop
of dark hair and a wistful expression, came slowly forward into the
room.
"I was in the middle of making pictures."
"Where--what--making pictures?"
"In the fire."
"James," said the Colonel in a serious tone, "don't you know that you
are getting too old now for that sort of thing? If you dream so much,
you'll fall asleep altogether some fine day, and never wake up again.
Just think what that means!"
The child smiled faintly and moved up confidingly between his father's
knees, staring into his eyes without the least sign of fear. But he said
nothing in reply. His thoughts were far away, and it seemed as if the
effort to bring them back into the study and to a consideration of his
father's words was almost beyond his power.
"You must run about more," pursued the soldier, rubbing his big hands
together briskly, "and join your brothers and sisters in their games.
Lie about in the summer and dream a bit if you like, but now it's
winter, you must be more active, and make your blood circulate
healthily,--er--and all that sort of thing."
The words were kindly spoken, but the voice and manner rather
deliberate. Jimbo began to look a little troubled, as his father watched
him.
"Come now, little man," he said more gently, "what's the matter, eh?"
He drew the boy close to him. "Tell me all about it, and what it is
you're always thinking about so much."
Jimbo brought back his mind with a tremendous effort, and said, "I don't
like the winter. It's so dark and full of horrid things. It's all ice
and shadows, so--so I go away and think of what I like, and other
places----"
"Nonsense!" interrupted his father briskly; "winter's a capital time for
boys. What in the world d'ye mean, I wonder?"
He lifted the child on to his knee and stroked his hair, as though he
were patting the flank of a horse. Jimbo took no notice of the
interruption or of the caress, but went on saying what he had to say,
though with eyes a little more clouded.
"Winter's like going into a long black tunnel, you see. It's downhill to
Christmas, of course, and then uphill all the way to the summer
holidays. But the uphill part's so slow that----"
"Tut, tut!" laughed the Colonel in spite of himself; "you mustn't have
such thoughts. Those are a baby's notions. They're silly, silly, silly."
"Do you _really_ think so, father?" continued the boy, as if politeness
demanded some recognition of his father's remarks, but otherwise anxious
only to say what was in his mind. "You wouldn't think them silly if you
really knew. But, of course, there's no one to tell you in the stable,
so you _can't_ know. You've never seen the funny big people rushing past
you and laughing through their long hair when the wind blows so loud.
_I_ know several of them almost to speak to, but you hear only wind. And
the other things with tiny legs that skate up and down the slippery
moonbeams, without ever tumbling off--they aren't silly a bit, only they
don't like dogs and noise. And I've seen the furniture"--he pronounced
it furchinur--"dancing about in the day-nursery when it thought it was
alone, and I've heard it talking at night. I know the big cupboard's
voice quite well. It's just like a drum, only rougher...."
The Colonel shook his head and frowned severely, staring hard at his
son. But though their eyes met, the boy hardly saw him. Far away at the
other end of the dark Tunnel of the Months he saw the white summer
sunshine lying over gardens full of nodding flowers. Butterflies were
flitting across meadows yellow with buttercups, and he saw the
fascinating rings upon the lawn where the Fairy People held their dances
in the moonlight; he heard the wind call to him as it ran on along by
the hedgerows, and saw the gentle pressure of its swift feet upon the
standing hay; streams were murmuring under shady trees; birds were
singing; and there were echoes of sweeter music still that he could not
understand, but loved all the more perhaps on that account....
"Yes," announced the Colonel later that evening to his wife, spreading
his hands out as he spoke. "Yes, my dear, I _have_ made a discovery, and
an alarming one. You know, I'm rarely at fault where the children are
concerned--and I've noted all the symptoms with unusual care. James, my
dear, is an imaginative boy."
He paused to note the effect of his words, but seeing none, continued:
"I regret to be obliged to say it, but it's a fact beyond dispute. His
head is simply full of things, and he talked to me this evening about
tunnels and slippery moonlight till I very nearly lost my temper
altogether. Now, the boy will never make a man unless we take him in
hand properly at once. We must get him a governess, or something,
without delay. Just fancy, if he grew up into a poet or one of
these--these----"
In his distress the soldier could only think of horse-terms, which did
not seem quite the right language. He stuck altogether, and kept
repeating the favourite gesture with his open hand, staring at his wife
over his glasses as he did so.
But the mother never argued.
"He's very young still," she observed quietly, "and, as you have always
said, he's not a bit like other boys, remember."
"Exactly what I say. Now that your eyes are opened to the actual state
of affairs, I'm satisfied."
"We'll get a sensible nursery-governess at once," added the mother.
"A practical one?"
"Yes, dear."
"Hard-headed?"
"Yes."
"And well educated?"
"Yes."
"And--er--firm with children. She'll do for the lot, then."
"If possible."
"And a young woman who doesn't go in for poetry, and dreaming, and all
that kind of flummery."
"Of course, dear."
"Capital. I felt sure you would agree with me," he went on. "It'd be no
end of a pity if Jimbo grew up an ass. At present he hardly knows the
difference between a roadster and a racer. He's going into the army,
too," he added by way of climax, "and you know, my dear, the army would
never stand _that_!"
"Never," said the mother quietly, and the conversation came to an end.
Meanwhile, the subject of these remarks was lying wide awake upstairs in
the bed with the yellow iron railing round it. His elder brother was
asleep in the opposite corner of the room, snoring peacefully. He could
just see the brass knobs of the bedstead as the dying firelight quivered
and shone on them. The walls and ceiling were draped in shadows that
altered their shapes from time to time as the coals dropped softly into
the grate. Gradually the fire sank, and the room darkened. A feeling of
delight and awe stole into his heart.
Jimbo loved these early hours of the night before sleep came. He felt no
fear of the dark; its mystery thrilled his soul; but he liked the
summer dark, with its soft, warm silences better than the chill winter
shadows. Presently the firelight sprang up into a brief flame and then
died away altogether with an odd little gulp. He knew the sound well; he
often watched the fire out, and now, as he lay in bed waiting for he
knew not what, the moonlight filtered in through the baize curtains and
gradually gave to the room a wholly new character.
Jimbo sat up in bed and listened. The house was very still. He slipped
into his red dressing-gown and crept noiselessly over to the window. For
a moment he paused by his brother's bed to make sure that he really was
asleep; then, evidently satisfied, he drew aside a corner of the curtain
and peered out.
"Oh!" he said, drawing in his breath with delight, and again "oh!"
It was difficult to understand why the sea of white moonlight that
covered the lawn should fill him with such joy, and at the same time
bring a lump into his throat. It made him feel as if he were swelling
out into something very much greater than the actual limits of his
little person. And the sensation was one of mingled pain and delight,
too intense for him to feel for very long. The unhappiness passed
gradually away, he always noticed, and the happiness merged after a
while into a sort of dreamy ecstasy in which he neither thought nor
wished much, but was conscious only of one single unmanageable yearning.
The huge cedars on the lawn reared themselves up like giants in silver
cloaks, and the horse-chestnut--the Umbrella Tree, as the children
called it--loomed with motionless branches that were frosted and
shining. Beyond it, in a blue mist of moonlight and distance, lay the
kitchen-garden; he could just make out the line of the high wall where
the fruit-trees grew. Immediately below him the gravel of the carriage
drive sparkled with frost.
The bars of the windows were cold to his hands, yet he stood there for a
long time with his nose flattened against the pane and his bare feet on
the cane chair. He felt both happy and sad; his heart longed dreadfully
for something he had not got, something that seemed out of his reach
because he could not name it. No one seemed to believe all the things he
_knew_ in quite the same way as he did. His brothers and sisters played
up to a certain point, and then put the things aside as if they had only
been assumed for the time and were not real. To him they were always
real. His father's words, too, that evening had sorely puzzled him when
he came to think over them afterwards: "They're a baby's notions....
They're silly, silly, silly." Were these things real or were they not?
And, as he pondered, yearning dumbly, as only these little souls can
yearn, the wistfulness in his heart went out to meet the moonlight in
the air. Together they wove a spell that seemed to summon before him a
fairy of the night, who whispered an answer into his heart: "We are real
so long as you believe in us. It is your imagination that makes us real
and gives us life. Please, never, never stop believing."
Jimbo was not quite sure that he understood the message, but he liked it
all the same, and felt comforted. So long as they believed in one
another, the rest did not matter very much after all. And when at last,
shivering with cold, he crept back to bed, it was only to find through
the Gates of Sleep a more direct way to the things he had been thinking
about, and to wander for the rest of the night, unwatched and free,
through the wonders of an Enchanted Land.
Jimbo, as his father had said, was an imaginative child. Most children
are--more or less; and he was "more," at least, "more" than his brothers
and sisters. The Colonel thought he had made a penetrating discovery,
but his wife had known it always. His head, indeed, was "full of
things,"--things that, unless trained into a channel where they could be
controlled and properly schooled, would certainly interfere with his
success in a practical world, and be a source of mingled pain and joy to
him all through life. To have trained these forces, ever bursting out
towards creation, in his little soul,--to have explained, interpreted,
and dealt fairly by them, would perhaps have been the best and wisest
way; to have suppressed them altogether, cleaned them out by the process
of substitution, this might have succeeded too in less measure; but to
turn them into a veritable rout of horror by the common method of
"frightening the nonsense out of the boy," this was surely the very
worst way of dealing with such a case, and the most cruel. Yet, this was
the method adopted by the Colonel in the robust good-nature of his
heart, and the utter ignorance of his soul.
So it came about that three months later, when May was melting into
June, Miss Ethel Lake arrived upon the scene as a result of the
Colonel's blundering good intentions. She brought with her a kind
disposition, a supreme ignorance of unordinary children, a large store
of self-confidence--and a corded yellow tin box.