A Prisoner in Fairyland (The Book That 'Uncle Paul' Wrote)Blackwood, Algernon
Science
A Prisoner in Fairyland (The Book That 'Uncle Paul' Wrote)
Blackwood, Algernon
Magic -- Fiction; Voyages and travels -- Fiction
He lay down upon the moss and flung his hat away. He felt that Life
stood still within him, watching, waiting, asking beautiful, deep,
searching questions. It made him slightly uncomfortable. Henry Rogers,
late of Threadneedle Street, took stock of himself, not of set
intention, yet somehow deliberately. He reviewed another Henry Rogers
who had been unable to leap that wall. The two peered at one another
gravely.
The review, however, took no definite form; precise language hardly
came to help with definite orders. A vague procession of feelings,
half sad, half pleasurable, floated past his closing eyes. ... Perhaps
he slept a moment in the sunshine upon that bed of moss and pine
needles. ...
Such curious thoughts flowed up and out and round about, dancing like
the brimstone butterflies out of reach before he could seize them,
calling with voices like the cuckoos, themselves all the time just out
of sight. Who ever saw a cuckoo when it's talking? Who ever foretold
the instant when a butterfly would shoot upwards and away? Such
darting, fragile thoughts they were, like hints, suggestions. Still,
they _were_ thoughts.
Minks, dragging behind him an enormous Scheme, emerged from the dark
vaults of a Bank where gold lay piled in heaps. Minks was looking for
him, yet smiling a little, almost pityingly, as he strained beneath
the load. It was like a comic opera. Minks was going down the noisy,
crowded Strand. Then, suddenly, he paused, uncertain of the way. From
an upper window a shining face popped out and issued clear directions
--as from a pulpit. 'That way--towards the river,' sang the voice--and
far down the narrow side street flashed a gleam of flowing water with
orchards on the farther bank. Minks instantly turned and went down it
with his load so fast that the scenery changed before the heavy
traffic could get out of the way. Everything got muddled up with
fields and fruit-trees; the Scheme changed into a mass of wild-
flowers; a lame boy knocked it over with his crutch; gold fell in a
brilliant, singing shower, and where each sovereign fell there sprang
up a buttercup or dandelion. Rogers rubbed his eyes ... and realised
that the sun was rather hot upon his face. A dragon fly was perched
upon his hat three feet away. ...
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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