Algernon Blackwood Read Online Free

For the City hardly
encouraged it. One bit of gilt after another had been knocked off his
brilliant dream, one jet of flame upon another quenched. The single
eye that fills the body full of light was a thing so rare that its
possession woke suspicion. Even of money generously given, so little
reached its object; gaping pockets and grasping fingers everywhere
lined the way of safe delivery. It sickened him. So few, moreover,
were willing to give without acknowledgment in at least one morning
paper. 'Bring back the receipt' was the first maxim even of the
office-boys; and between the right hand and the left of every one were
special 'private wires' that flashed the news as quickly as possible
about the entire world.
    Yet, while inevitable disillusion had dulled his youthful dreams, its
glory was never quite destroyed. It still glowed within. At times,
indeed, it ran into flame, and knew something of its original
splendour. Women, in particular, had helped to keep it alive, fanning
its embers bravely. For many women, he found, dreamed his own dream,
and dreamed it far more sweetly. They were closer to essential
realities than men were. While men bothered with fuss and fury about
empires, tariffs, street-cars, and marvellous engines for destroying
one another, women, keeping close to the sources of life, knew, like
children, more of its sweet, mysterious secrets—the things of value
no one yet has ever put completely into words. He wondered, a little
sadly, to see them battling now to scuffle with the men in managing
the gross machinery, cleaning the pens and regulating ink-pots. Did
they really think that by helping to decide whether rates should rise
or fall, or how many buttons a factory-inspector should wear upon his
uniform, they more nobly helped the world go round? Did they never
pause to reflect who would fill the places they thus vacated? With
something like melancholy he saw them stepping down from their thrones
of high authority, for it seemed to him a prostitution of their sweet
prerogatives that damaged the entire sex.
    'Old-fashioned bachelor, no doubt, I am,' he smiled quietly to
himself, coming back to the first reflection whence his thoughts had
travelled so far—the reflection, namely, that now at last he
possessed the freedom he had longed and toiled for.
    And then he paused and looked about him, confronted with a difficulty.
To him it seemed unusual, but really it was very common.
    For, having it, he knew not at first what use to make of it. This
dawned upon him suddenly when the sunlight splashed his tawdry
slippers with its gold. The movement to the open window was really
instinctive beginning of a search, as though in the free, wonderful
spaces out of doors he would find the thing he sought to do. Now,
settled back in the deep arm-chair, he realised that he had not found
it. The memories of childhood had flashed into him instead. He renewed
the search before the dying fire, waiting for the sound of Minks'
ascending footsteps on the stairs. ...
    And this revival of the childhood mood was curious, he felt, almost
significant, for it was symbolical of so much that he had
deliberately, yet with difficulty, suppressed and put aside. During
these years of concentrated toil for money, his strong will had
neglected of set purpose the call of a robust imagination. He had
stifled poetry just as he had stifled play. Yet really that
imagination had merely gone into other channels—scientific invention.
It was a higher form, married at least with action that produced
poetry in steel and stone instead of in verse. Invention has ever
imagination and poetry at its heart.
    The acquirement of wealth demanded his entire strength, and all
lighter considerations he had consistently refused to recognise, until
he thought them dead. This sudden flaming mood rushed up and showed
him otherwise. He reflected on it, but clumsily, as with a mind too
long trained in the rigid values of stocks and shares, buying and
selling, hard