The Human Chord

The Human Chord

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Human Chord, by Algernon
Blackwood This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost
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Title: The Human Chord
Author: Algernon Blackwood
Release Date: April 11, 2004 [EBook #11988]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE HUMAN CHORD
BY ALGERNON BLACKWOOD
1910

_To those who hear._

Chapter I
I

As a boy he constructed so vividly in imagination that he came to
believe in the living reality of his creations: for everybody and
everything he found names--real names. Inside him somewhere
stretched immense playgrounds, compared to which the hay-fields and
lawns of his father's estate seemed trivial: plains without horizon, seas
deep enough to float the planets like corks, and "such tremendous
forests" with "trees like tall pointed hilltops." He had only to close his
eyes, drop his thoughts inwards, sink after them himself, call aloud
and--see.
His imagination conceived and bore--worlds; but nothing in these
worlds became alive until he discovered its true and living name. The
name was the breath of life; and, sooner or later, he invariably found it.
Once, having terrified his sister by affirming that a little man he had
created would come through her window at night and weave a peaked
cap for himself by pulling out all her hairs "that hadn't gone to sleep
with the rest of her body," he took characteristic measures to protect
her from the said depredations. He sat up the entire night on the lawn
beneath her window to watch, believing firmly that what his
imagination had made alive would come to pass.
She did not know this. On the contrary, he told her that the little man
had died suddenly; only, he sat up to make sure. And, for a boy of eight,
those cold and haunted hours must have seemed endless from ten
o'clock to four in the morning, when he crept back to his own corner of
the night nursery. He possessed, you see, courage as well as faith and
imagination.
Yet the name of the little man was nothing more formidable than
"Winky!"
"You might have known he wouldn't hurt you, Teresa," he said. "Any
one with that name would be light as a fly and awf'ly gentle--a regular
dicky sort of chap!"
"But he'd have pincers," she protested, "or he couldn't pull the hairs out.
Like an earwig he'd be. Ugh!"

"Not Winky! Never!" he explained scornfully, jealous of his offspring's
reputation. "He'd do it with his rummy little fingers."
"Then his fingers would have claws at the ends!" she insisted; for no
amount of explanation could persuade her that a person named Winky
could be nice and gentle, even though he were "quicker than a second."
She added that his death rejoiced her.
"But I can easily make another--such a nippy little beggar, and twice as
hoppy as the first. Only I won't do it," he added magnanimously,
"because it frightens you."
For to name with him was to create. He had only to run out some
distance into his big mental prairie, call aloud a name in a certain
commanding way, and instantly its owner would run up to claim it.
Names described souls. To learn the name of a thing or person was to
know all about them and make them subservient to his will; and
"Winky" could only have been a very soft and furry little person, swift
as a shadow, nimble as a mouse--just the sort of fellow who would
make a conical cap out of a girl's fluffy hair ... and love the mischief of
doing it.
And so with all things: names were vital and important. To address
beings by their intimate first names, beings of the opposite sex
especially, was a miniature sacrament; and the story of that premature
audacity of Elsa with Lohengrin never failed to touch his sense of awe.
"What's in a name?" for him, was a significant question--a question of
life or death. For to mispronounce a name was a bad blunder, but to
name it wrongly was to miss it altogether. Such a thing had no real life,
or at best a vitality that would soon fade. Adam knew that! And he
pondered much in his childhood over the difficulty Adam must have
had "discovering" the correct appellations for some of the queerer
animals....
As he grew older, of course, all this faded a good deal, but he never
quite lost