Three More John Silence Stories

Three More John Silence Stories

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Title: Three More John Silence Stories
Author: Algernon Blackwood
Release Date: January 9, 2004 [EBook #10659]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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Three More John Silence Stories
BY ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

To M.L.W. The Original of John Silence
and
My Companion in Many Adventures

Contents
Case I: Secret Worship
Case II: The Camp of the Dog
Case III: A Victim of Higher Space

CASE I: SECRET WORSHIP
Harris, the silk merchant, was in South Germany on his way home from
a business trip when the idea came to him suddenly that he would take
the mountain railway from Strassbourg and run down to revisit his old
school after an interval of something more than thirty years. And it was
to this chance impulse of the junior partner in Harris Brothers of St.
Paul's Churchyard that John Silence owed one of the most curious
cases of his whole experience, for at that very moment he happened to
be tramping these same mountains with a holiday knapsack, and from
different points of the compass the two men were actually converging
towards the same inn.
Now, deep down in the heart that for thirty years had been concerned
chiefly with the profitable buying and selling of silk, this school had
left the imprint of its peculiar influence, and, though perhaps unknown
to Harris, had strongly coloured the whole of his subsequent existence.
It belonged to the deeply religious life of a small Protestant community
(which it is unnecessary to specify), and his father had sent him there at
the age of fifteen, partly because he would learn the German requisite
for the conduct of the silk business, and partly because the discipline

was strict, and discipline was what his soul and body needed just then
more than anything else.
The life, indeed, had proved exceedingly severe, and young Harris
benefited accordingly; for though corporal punishment was unknown,
there was a system of mental and spiritual correction which somehow
made the soul stand proudly erect to receive it, while it struck at the
very root of the fault and taught the boy that his character was being
cleaned and strengthened, and that he was not merely being tortured in
a kind of personal revenge.
That was over thirty years ago, when he was a dreamy and
impressionable youth of fifteen; and now, as the train climbed slowly
up the winding mountain gorges, his mind travelled back somewhat
lovingly over the intervening period, and forgotten details rose vividly
again before him out of the shadows. The life there had been very
wonderful, it seemed to him, in that remote mountain village, protected
from the tumults of the world by the love and worship of the devout
Brotherhood that ministered to the needs of some hundred boys from
every country in Europe. Sharply the scenes came back to him. He
smelt again the long stone corridors, the hot pinewood rooms, where
the sultry hours of summer study were passed with bees droning
through open windows in the sunshine, and German characters
struggling in the mind with dreams of English lawns--and then the
sudden awful cry of the master in German--
"Harris, stand up! You sleep!"
And he recalled the dreadful standing motionless for an hour, book in
hand, while the knees felt like wax and the head grew heavier than a
cannon-ball.
The very smell of the cooking came back to him--the daily Sauerkraut,
the watery chocolate on Sundays, the flavour of the stringy meat served
twice a week at Mittagessen; and he smiled to think again of the
half-rations that was the punishment for speaking English. The very
odour of the milk-bowls,--the hot sweet aroma that rose from the
soaking peasant-bread at the six-o'clock breakfast,--came back to him

pungently, and he saw the huge Speisesaal with the hundred boys in
their school uniform, all eating sleepily in silence, gulping down the
coarse bread and scalding milk in terror of the bell that would presently
cut them short--and, at the far end where the masters sat, he saw the
narrow slit windows with the vistas of enticing field and forest beyond.
And this, in turn, made him think of the great barnlike room on the top
floor where all slept together in wooden cots, and he heard in memory
the clamour of the