



Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive/American
Libraries.) DAY AND NIGHT STORIES

  BY
  ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

  Author _of_ "Ten Minute Stories," "Julius Le Vallon,"
  "The Wave," etc. [Illustration]

  NEW YORK
  E. P. DUTTON & CO.
  681 FIFTH AVENUE




  COPYRIGHT, 1917,
  BY E. P. DUTTON & CO. Printed in the United States of America




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                              PAGE

       I. THE TRYST                       1

      II. THE TOUCH OF PAN               16

     III. THE WINGS OF HORUS             41

      IV. INITIATION                     66

       V. A DESERT EPISODE               94

      VI. THE OTHER WING                112

     VII. THE OCCUPANT OF THE ROOM      134

    VIII. CAIN'S ATONEMENT              145

      IX. AN EGYPTIAN HORNET            154

       X. BY WATER                      162

      XI. H. S. H.                      171

     XII. A BIT OF WOOD                 187

    XIII. A VICTIM OF HIGHER SPACE      192

     XIV. TRANSITION                    216

      XV. THE TRADITION                 223




DAY AND NIGHT STORIES

I

THE TRYST

"_Je suis la première au rendez-vous. Je vous attends._"


As he got out of the train at the little wayside station he remembered
the conversation as if it had been yesterday, instead of fifteen years
ago--and his heart went thumping against his ribs so violently that he
almost heard it. The original thrill came over him again with all its
infinite yearning. He felt it as he had felt it _then_--not with that
tragic lessening the interval had brought to each repetition of its
memory. Here, in the familiar scenery of its birth, he realised with
mingled pain and wonder that the subsequent years had not destroyed,
but only dimmed it. The forgotten rapture flamed back with all the
fierce beauty of its genesis, desire at white heat. And the shock of
the abrupt discovery shattered time. Fifteen years became a negligible
moment; the crowded experiences that had intervened seemed but a dream. The farewell scene, the conversation on the steamer's deck, were
clear as of the day before. He saw the hand holding her big hat that
fluttered in the wind, saw the flowers on the dress where the long coat
was blown open a moment, recalled the face of a hurrying steward who
had jostled them; he even heard the voices--his own and hers:

"Yes," she said simply; "I promise you. You have my word. I'll wait----"

"Till I come back to find you," he interrupted. Steadfastly she repeated his actual words, then added: "Here; at
home--that is." "I'll come to the garden gate as usual," he told her, trying to smile. "I'll knock. You'll open the gate--as usual--and come out to me." These words, too, she attempted to repeat, but her voice failed, her
eyes filled suddenly with tears; she looked into his face and nodded. It was just then that her little hand went up to hold the hat on--he
saw the very gesture still. He remembered that he was vehemently
tempted to tear his ticket up there and then, to go ashore with her,
to stay in England, to brave all opposition--when the siren roared its
third horrible warning ... and the ship put out to sea. *       *       *       *       *

Fifteen years, thick with various incident, had passed between them
since that moment. His life had risen, fallen, crashed, then risen
again. He had come back at last, fortune won by a lucky coup--at
thirty-five; had come back to find her, come back, above all, to keep
his word. Once every three months they had exchanged the brief letter
agreed upon: "I am well; I am waiting; I am happy; I am unmarried. Yours----." For his youthful wisdom had insisted that no "man" had the
right to keep "any woman" too long waiting; and she, thinking that
letter brave and splendid, had insisted likewise that he was free--if
freedom called him. They had laughed over this last phrase in their
agreement. They put five years as the possible limit of separation. By then he would have won success, and obstinate parents would have
nothing more to say. But when the five years ended he was "on his uppers" in a western
mining town, and with the end of ten in sight those uppers, though
changed, were little better, apparently, than patched and mended. And
it was just then, too, that the change which had been stealing over
him betrayed itself. He realised it abruptly, a sense of shame and
horror in him. The discovery was made unconsciously--it disclosed
itself. He was reading her letter as a labourer on a Californian fruit
farm: "Funny she doesn't marry--some one else!" he heard himself say. The words were out before he knew it, and certainly before he could
suppress them. They just slipped out, startling him into the truth;
and he knew instantly that the thought was fathered in him by a hidden
wish.... He was older. He had lived. It was a memory he loved. Despising himself in a contradictory fashion--both vaguely and
fiercely--he yet held true to his boyhood's promise. He did not
write and offer to release her, as he knew they did in stories. He
persuaded himself that he meant to keep his word. There was this fine,
stupid, selfish obstinacy in his character. In any case, she would
misunderstand and think he wanted to set free--himself. "Besides--I'm
still--awfully fond of her," he asserted. And it was true; only the
love, it seemed, had gone its way. Not that another woman took it; he
kept himself clean, held firm as steel. The love, apparently, just
faded of its own accord; her image dimmed, her letters ceased to
thrill, then ceased to interest him. Subsequent reflection made him realise other details about himself. In the interval he had suffered hardships, had learned the uncertainty
of life that depends for its continuance on a little food, but that
food often hard to come by, and had seen so many others go under that
he held it more cheaply than of old. The wandering instinct, too, had
caught him, slowly killing the domestic impulse; he lost his desire for
a settled place of abode, the desire for children of his own, lost the
desire to marry at all. Also--he reminded himself with a smile--he had
lost other things: the expression of youth _she_ was accustomed to and
held always in her thoughts of him, two fingers of one hand, his hair! He wore glasses, too. The gentlemen-adventurers of life get scarred
in those wild places where he lived. He saw himself a rather battered
specimen well on the way to middle age. There was confusion in his mind, however, _and_ in his heart: a
struggling complex of emotions that made it difficult to know exactly
what he did feel. The dominant clue concealed itself. Feelings shifted. A single, clear determinant did not offer. He was an honest fellow. "I can't quite make it out," he said. "What is it I really feel? And
why?" His motive seemed confused.