The education of Uncle Paul

by Algernon Blackwood

And that circle of happy urchin faces, seen through the blue smoke against the background of crowding tree stems, flushed with the hours of sunshine, the mystery of happiness in all their eyes, remained a picture in Paul’s memory to the end of his life. The boys, certainly, were not all good, but they were at least all merry. They forgot for the time the heat of airless brick lanes and the clatter of noisy traffic. The perfumes of the wood banished the odour of ill-ventilated rooms. Dark shadows of the streets gave place to veils of a very different kind, as the rising moon dropped upon their faces the tracery of pine branches. And, instead of the roar of a city that for them meant hardship, often cruelty, they heard the singing of birds, the rustle of trees, and the murmur of the stream at their very feet.

And Paul, as he paced to and fro softly between the sleeping crew, the tents all ghostly among the trees, had long, long thoughts that went with him into his sleeping-bag later and mingled with dreams that were more inspired than he knew, and destined to bear a great harvest in due course....

The branches of big forest trees shifted noiselessly forwards from the scenery that lay ever in the background of his mind, and pressed his eyelids gently into sleep. With feathery dark fingers they brushed the surface of his thoughts, leaving the perfume of their own large dreams about his pillow. The shadowy figures that haunt all ancient woods peered at him from behind a million stems and, while they peered, beckoned; whispering to his soul the secrets of the wilderness, and renewing in him the sources of strength, simplicity, and joy they had erstwhile taught him.

All that afternoon he had spent with the romping boys, organising their play, seeing to it that they enjoyed utter freedom, yet did no mischief. Joan seconded him everywhere, and Nixie flitted constantly between the camp and the source of supplies in the kitchen. And, to see their play, came as a revelation to him in many ways. While the majority were content to shout and tumble headlong with excess of animal spirits let loose, here and there he watched one or two apart, all aghast at the beauty they saw at close quarters for the first time; dreaming; apparently stunned; drinking it all in with eyes and ears and lips; feeling the moss and branches as others feel jewels and costly lace; and on some of the little faces an expression of grave wonder, and of joy too deep for laughter.

‘This ain’t always ’ere, is it, Guv’nor?’ one had asked. And another, whom Paul watched fingering a common fern for a long time, looked up presently and inquired if it was real—‘because it isn’t ’arf as pretty as what we use!’ He was the son of a sceneshifter at an East End theatre.

And a detail that made peculiarly keen appeal to his heart, a detail not witnessed by Joan or the children, was the morning ablutions in the stream, when the occupants of each tent in turn, went into the water soon after sunrise, their pinched bodies streaked by the shadow and sunlight of the dawn, their laughter and splashing filling the wood with unwonted sounds. Soap, towels, and water in plenty! Water perfumed from the hills! Faces flushed and almost rosy after the sleep in the open, and the inexhaustible draughts of air to fan them dry again!

And then the eager circle for breakfast, hatless, eyes all fixed upon the great stew-pot where he mixed the jorum of porridge! And the noise—for noise, it must be confessed, there was—as they smothered it in their tin plates with quarts of milk hot from the cow, and busily swallowed it.

‘You took them straight into the Crack, you know,’ Joan said from her seat below.

‘Everything came true,’ Nixie’s voice was heard overhead among the branches.

Jonah clattered down past them and scampered across the lawn with Toby at his heels, for their bedtime was close at hand. The other three lay there, half hidden, a little longer, while the shadows crept down from the hills and gathered underneath. They could no longer see each other properly. For a time there was silence, stirred only by the faint rustle of the ilex leaves. Each was thinking long, deep thoughts.