Algernon Blackwood

“ Frances stammered badly. She knew I did not encourage her wild theories.
"Something she feels--yes," I helped her, more than curious.
"Oh, you know what I mean, Bill," she said desperately. "That the place is saturated with some influence that she is herself too positive or too stupid to interpret. She's trying to make herself negative and receptive, as she calls it, but can't, of course, succeed. Haven't you noticed how dull and impersonal and insipid she seems, as though she had no personality? She thinks impressions will come to her that way. ”

“ That queer symbolism in her paintings, pagan and yet not innocent, was, I understood, the result of mixture. I did not pretend to understand, but at least I could be patient. I consequently held my peace. We did talk on a little longer, but it was more general talk that avoided successfully our hostess, the paintings, wild theories, and him--until at length the emotion Frances had hitherto so successfully kept under burst vehemently forth again. ”

“ All I understood really was that Mabel's mind was as sweet and pure as my sister's, and that she had some good reason for what she did. She destroyed the sketches, but first made notes! It was an interpretation of the place she sought. Brother-like, I felt resentment, though, that Frances should waste her time and talent, when she might be doing work that she could sell. Naturally, I felt other things as well....
"Mabel pays me five guineas for each one," I heard. "Absolutely insists." ”

“ If his were the only one, something would happen. But nothing ever does happen. The others hinder and prevent--as though each were struggling to predominate."
I had felt it already myself. The idea was rather horrible. I shivered.
"That's what is so ugly about it--that nothing ever happens," she said. "There is this endless anticipation--always on the dry edge of a result that never materializes. It is torture. Mabel is at her wits' end, you see. And when she begged me--what I felt about my sketches--I mean--"
She stammered badly as before. ”

“ I went into the house laughing--at myself a little. "Perhaps after all the artist's outlook, with no hard and fast dogmas, is as narrow as the others! How small humanity is! And why is there no possible and true combination of all outlooks?"
The feeling of "unsettling" was very strong in me just then, in spite of my big discovery which was to clear everything up. And at the moment I ran into Frances on the stairs, with a portfolio of sketches under her arm. ”

“ And as I looked out of the window and watched the vulgar blackbirds, with toes turned in, boring out their worms, I realized sharply that even they, as indeed everything large and small in the house and grounds, shared this strangeness, and were twisted out of normal appearance because of it. Life, as expressed in the entire place, was crumpled, dwarfed, emasculated. ”

“ I became more and more aware of its very real existence. And, if I have made little mention of Frances and my hostess in this connection, it is because they contributed at first little or nothing towards the discovery of what this story tries to tell. Our life was wholly external, normal, quiet, and uneventful; conversation banal--Mrs. Franklyn's conversation in particular. They said nothing that suggested revelation.
Both were in this Shadow, and both knew that they were in it, but neither betrayed by word or act a hint of interpretation. ”

“ There was a scene the third day I was here--when I showed her my first result. I wanted to write to you, but hesitated--"
"It's unintentional, then, on your part--forgive my asking it, Frances, dear?" I blundered, hardly knowing what to think or say. "Between the lines" of her letter came back to me. "I mean, you make the sketches in your ordinary way and--the result comes out of itself, so to speak?"
She nodded, throwing her hands out like a Frenchman. "We needn't keep the money for ourselves, Bill. ”

“ Frances, however, did not take the way of escape I offered. She changed her mind. She drew the portfolio from beneath her arm instead. "You can see them if you really want to, Bill," she said quietly, and her tone reminded me of a nurse who says to a boy just grown out of childhood, "you are old enough now to look upon horror and ugliness--only I don't advise it." ”

“ Mabel says exactly the same. He is in it--but it's something more than that alone, something far bigger and more complicated." Her sentence seemed to indicate the sketches, and though I caught the inference I did not take it up, having no desire to discuss them with her just them indeed, if ever.
I merely stared at her and listened. Questions, I felt sure, would be of little use. It was better she should say her thought in her own way.
"He is one influence, the most recent," she went on slowly, and always very calmly, "but there are others--deeper layers, as it were-- underneath. ”