The education of Uncle Paul

by Algernon Blackwood

Without any conscious effort of the imagination, the instant Nixie, or the thought of her, stood beside him—lo, he was in Fairyland. It was so real that it was positively bewildering.

And the rest of that quiet household, without knowing it, contributed to its reality. For, to begin with, the place was delightfully ‘out of the world’; and, after that, the gradations between the two regions seemed so easy and natural: the shadowy personality of his sister; the dainty little French governess flitting everywhere with her plaintive voice in the wake of the elusive children; then the children themselves—Jonah, the mischievous; Toby with her shining face of onion skin; and, last of all, the host of tumbling animals, the mysterious cats, the kittens, all fluff and wonder; and the whole of it set amid the scenery of flowers, hills, and sea. It was impossible to tell exactly where the actual threshold lay, this shifting, fluid threshold dividing the two worlds; but there can be no question that Paul passed it day by day without the least difficulty, and that it was Nixie who knew all the quickest short-cuts.

And to all who—since childhood—have lived in Fairyland and tasted of its sweet innocence and loveliness, comes sooner or later the desire to transfer something of these qualities to the outer world. Paul felt this more and more as the days passed. The wish to beautify the lives of others grew in him with a sudden completeness that proved it to have been there latent all the time. Through the voices of Nixie, Jonah, and Toby, as it were, he heard the voices—those myriad, faint, unhappy voices—of the world’s neglected children a-calling to him: ‘Tell us the Aventures too!’—‘Take us with you through that Crack!’—‘Show us the Wind, and let us climb with you the Scaffolding of Night.’

And Paul, listening in his deep heart, began to understand that Nixie’s education of himself was but a beginning: all unconsciously that elfin child was surely becoming also his inspiration. This first lesson in self-expression she had taught him was like the trickle that would lead to the bursting of the dam. The waters of his enthusiasms would presently pour out with the rush of genuine power behind them. What he had to say, do, and live—all forms of self-expression—were to find a larger field of usefulness than the mere gratification of his personal sense of beauty.

As yet, however, the thought only played dimly to and fro at the back of his mind, seeking a way of escape. The greater outlet could not come all at once. The germ of the desire lay there in secret development, but the thing he should do had not yet appeared.

So, for the time being, he continued to live in Fairyland and write Aventures.

It was really incalculable the effect of enchantment this little yellow-haired girl cast upon him—hard to believe, hard to realise. So true, so exquisite was it, however, that he almost came to forget her age, and that she was actually but a child. To him she seemed more and more an intimate companion of the soul who had existed always, and that both he and she were ageless. It was their souls that played, talked, caressed, not merely their minds or bodies. In her flower-like little figure dwelt assuredly an old and ripened soul; one, too, it seemed to him sometimes, that hardly belonged to this world at all.

There was that about their relationship which made it eternal—it always had been somewhere, it always would be—somewhere. No confinings of flesh, no limitations of mind and sense, no conditions of mere time and space, could lay their burden upon it for long. It belonged most sweetly to the real things which are conditionless.

Moreover, one of the chief effects of the world of Faery, experts say, is that Time is done away with; emotions are inexhaustible and last for ever, continually renewing themselves; the Fairies dance for years instead of only for a night; their minds and bodies grow not old; their desires, and the objects of their desires, pass not away.

‘So, unquestionably,’ said Paul to himself from time to time as he reflected upon the situation, ‘I am bewitched. I must see what there is that I can do in the matter to protect myself from further depredations!’