Algernon Blackwood Read Online Free PDF Page A

pathos
visited those wayward lips. For the suggestion revealed the weakness
the secretary had long ago divined—that the practical root of the
matter did not really lie in him at all, and Henry Rogers forever
dreamed of 'Schemes' he was utterly unable and unsuited to carry out.
Improvements in a silk machine was one thing, but improvements in
humanity was another. Like the poetry in his soul they could never
know fulfilment. He had inspiration, but no constructive talent. For
the thousandth time Minks wondered, glancing at his employer's face,
how such calm and gentle features, such dreamy eyes and a Vandyke
beard so neatly trimmed, could go with ambitions so lofty and so
unusual. This sentence he had heard before, and was destined often to
hear again, while achievement came no nearer.
    'I will do so at the first opportunity.' He put the oblong note-book
carefully in his pocket, and stood by the table in an attitude of 'any
further instructions, please?' while one eye wandered to the unopened
letter that was signed 'Albinia Minks, with heartfelt gratitude.'
    'And, by the by, Minks,' said his master, turning as though a new idea
had suddenly struck him and he had formed a hasty plan, 'you might
kindly look up an afternoon train to Crayfield. Loop line from Charing
Cross, you know. Somewhere about two o'clock or so. I have to—er—I
think I'll run down that way after luncheon.'
    Whereupon, having done this last commission, and written it down upon
a sheet of paper which he placed with care against the clock, beside
the unopened letter, the session closed, and Minks, in his mourning
hat and lavender gloves, walked up St. James's Street apparently
en route
for the Ritz, but suddenly, as with careless
unconsciousness, turning into an A.B.C. Depot for luncheon, well
pleased with himself and with the world, but especially with his
considerate employer.
    Ten minutes later Mr. Rogers followed him on his way to the club, and
just when Minks was reflecting with pride of the well-turned phrases
he had dictated to his wife for her letter of thanks, it passed across
the mind of its recipient that he had forgotten to read it altogether.
And, truth to tell, he never yet has read it; for, returning late that
evening from his sentimental journey down to Crayfield, it stood no
longer where he had left it beside the clock, and nothing occurred to
remind him of its existence. Apart from its joint composers, no one
can ever know its contents but the charwoman, who, noticing the
feminine writing, took it back to Lambeth and pored over it with a
candle for full half an hour, greatly disappointed. 'Things like
that,' she grumbled to her husband, whose appearance suggested that he
went for bigger game, 'ain't worth the trouble of taking at all,
whichever way you looks at it.' And probably she was right.

Chapter III
*
    And what if All of animated nature
Be but as Instruments diversely framed
That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps
One infinite and intellectual Breeze,
At once the Soul of each, and God of all?
    The AEolian Harp
, S. T. COLERIDGE.
    In the train, even before St. John's was passed, a touch of inevitable
reaction had set in, and Rogers asked himself why he was going. For a
sentimental journey was hardly in his line, it seemed. But no
satisfactory answer was forthcoming—none, at least, that a Board or a
Shareholders' Meeting would have considered satisfactory.
    There was an answer in him somewhere, but he couldn't quite get down
to it. The spring glory had enticed him back to childhood. The journey
was symbolical of escape. That was the truth. But the part of him that
knew it had lain so long in abeyance that only a whisper flitted
across his mind as he sat looking out of the carriage window at the
fields round Lee and Eltham. The landscape seemed hauntingly familiar,
but what surprised him was the number of known faces that rose and
smiled at him. A kind of dream confusion blurred his outer sight;
    At Bexley, as he hurried past,