LORE OF PROSERPINE

 BY

 MAURICE HEWLETT

 "Thus go the fairy kind, Whither Fate driveth; not as we Who fight with it, and deem us free Therefore, and after pine, or strain Against our prison bars in vain; For to them Fate is Lord of Life And Death, and idle is a strife With such a master ... "

 _Hypsipyle_. 

 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

 NEW YORK : : : : 1913

 COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY

 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

 * * * * *

TO

DESPOINA

FROM WHOM, TO WHOM

ALL

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PREFACE

I hope nobody will ask me whether the things in this book are true, for it will then be my humiliating duty to reply that I don't know. They seem to be so to me writing them; they seemed to be so when theyoccurred, and one of them occurred only two or three years ago. Thatsort of answer satisfies me, and is the only one I can make. As I growolder it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish one kind ofappearance from another, and to say, that is real, and again, that isillusion. Honestly, I meet in my daily walks innumerable beings, toall sensible signs male and female. Some of them I can touch, somesmell, some speak with, some see, some discern otherwise than bysight. But if you cannot trust your eyes, why should you trust yournose or your fingers? There's my difficulty in talking about reality. 

There's another way of getting at the truth after all. If a thing isnot sensibly true it may be morally so. If it is not phenomenally trueit may be so substantially. And it is possible that one may seesubstance in the idiom, so to speak, of the senses. That, I take it, is how the Greeks saw thunder-storms and other huge convulsions; thatis how they saw meadow, grove and stream--in terms of their own fairhumanity. They saw such natural phenomena as shadows of spiritualconflict or of spiritual calm, and within the appearance apprehendedthe truth. So it may be that I have done. Some such may be theexplanation of all fairy experience. Let it be so. It is a fact, Ibelieve, that there is nothing revealed in this book which will notbear a spiritual, and a moral, interpretation; and I venture to say ofsome of it that the moral implications involved are exceedinglymomentous, and timely too. I need not refer to such matters anyfurther. If they don't speak for themselves they will get no help froma preface. 

The book assumes up to a certain point an autobiographical cast. Thisis not because I deem my actual life of any interest to any one butmyself, but because things do occur to one "in time, " and thechronological sequence is as good as another, and much the most easyof any. I had intended, but my heart failed me, to pursue experienceto the end. There was to have been a section, to be called "Despoina, "dealing with my later life. But my heart failed me. The time is notyet, though it is coming. I don't deny that there are some things herewhich I learned from the being called Despoina and could have learnedfrom nobody else. There are some such things, but there is not verymuch, and won't be any more just yet. Some of it there will never befor the sorry reason that our race won't bear to be told fundamentalfacts about itself, still less about other orders of creation whichare sufficiently like our own to bring self-consciousness into play. To write of the sexes in English you must either be sentimental or asatirist. You must set the emotions to work; otherwise you must bequiet. Now the emotions have no business with knowledge; and there's areason why we have no fairy lore, because we can't keep our feelingsin hand. The Greeks had a mythology, the highest form of Art, and wehave none. Why is that? Because we can neither expound without wishingto convert the soul, nor understand without self-experiment. We don'twant to know things, we want to feel them--and are ashamed of ourneed. Mythology, therefore, we English must make for ourselves as wecan; and if we are wise we shall keep it to ourselves. It is a pity, because since we alone of created things are not self-sufficient, anything that seems to break down the walls of being behind which weagonise would be a comfort to us; but there's a worse thing than beingin prison, and that is quarrelling with our own nature. 

I shall have explained myself very badly if my reader leaves me withthe impression that I have been writing down marvels. The fact that athing occurs in nature takes it out of the portentous. There's nothingeither good or bad but thinking makes it so. With that I end. 

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CONTENTS

PREFACE

THE WINDOWS

A BOY IN THE WOOD

HARKNESS'S FANCY

THE GODS IN THE SCHOOLHOUSE

THE SOUL AT THE WINDOW

QUIDNUNC

THE SECRET COMMONWEALTH

BECKWITH'S CASE

THE FAIRY WIFE

OREADS

A SUMMARY CHAPTER

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LORE OF PROSERPINE

THE WINDOWS

You will remember that Socrates considers every soul of us to be atleast three persons. He says, in a fine figure, that we are two horsesand a charioteer. "The right-hand horse is upright and cleanly made;he has a lofty neck and an aquiline nose; his colour is white and hiseyes dark; he is a lover of honour and modesty and temperance, and thefollower of true glory; he needs no touch of the whip, but is guidedby word and admonition only. The other is a crooked lumbering animal, put together anyhow; he has a short thick neck; he is flat-faced andof a dark colour, with grey eyes of blood-red complexion; the mate ofinsolence and pride, shag-eared and deaf, hardly yielding to whip andspur. " I need not go on to examine with the philosopher the acts ofthis pair under the whip and spur of love, because I am not going totalk about love. For my present purpose I shall suggest anotherdichotomy. I will liken the soul itself of man to a house, dividedaccording to the modern fashion into three flats or apartments. Ofthese the second floor is occupied by the landlord, who wishes to bequiet, and is not, it seems, afraid of fire; the ground-floor by abusiness man who would like to marry, but doubts if he can afford it, goes to the city every day, looks in at his club of an afternoon, dines out a good deal, and spends at least a month of the year atDieppe, Harrogate, or one of the German spas. He is a pleasant-facedman, as I see him, neatly dressed, brushed, anointed, polished at theextremities--for his boots vie with his hair in this particular. If hehas a fault it is that of jingling half-crowns in his trouser-pocket;but he works hard for them, pays his rent with them, and gives oneoccasionally to a nephew. That youth, at any rate, likes the cheerfulsound. He is rather fond, too, of monopolising the front of the firein company, and thinks more of what he is going to eat, some timebefore he eats it, than a man should. But really I can't accuse him ofanything worse than such little weaknesses. The first floor isoccupied by a person of whom very little is known, who goes outchiefly at night and is hardly ever seen during the day. Tradesmen, and the crossing-sweeper at the corner, have caught a glimpse on rareoccasions of a white face at the window, the startled face of a queercreature, who blinks and wrings at his nails with his teeth; whopeers at you, jerks and grins; who seems uncertain what to do; whosometimes shoots out his hands as if he would drive them through theglass: altogether a mischancy, unaccountable apparition, probably mad. Nobody knows how long he has been here; for the landlord found him inpossession when he bought the lease, and the ground-floor, who washere also, fancies that they came together, but can't be sure. Therehe is, anyhow, and without an open scandal one doesn't like to givehim notice. A curious thing about the man is that neither landlord norground-floor will admit acquaintance with him to each other, although, if the truth were known, each of them knows something--for each ofthem has been through his door; and I will answer for one of them, atleast, that he has accompanied the Undesirable upon more than onemidnight excursion, and has enjoyed himself enormously. If you couldget either of these two alone in a confidential mood you might learnsome curious particulars of their coy neighbour; and not the leastcurious would be the effect of his changing the glass of the firstfloor windows. It seems that he had that done directly he got into hisrooms, saying that it was impossible to see out of such windows, andthat a man must have light. Where he got his glass from, by whom itwas fitted, I can't tell you, but the effect of it is mostextraordinary. The only summary account I feel able to give of it atthe moment is that it transforms the world upon which it opens. Youlook out upon a new earth, literally that. The trees are not trees atall, but slim grey persons, young men, young women, who stand therequivering with life, like a row of Caryatides--on duty, but tiptoe fora flight, as Keats says. You see life, as it were, rippling up theirlimbs; for though they appear to be clothed, their clothing is of sothin a texture, and clings so closely that they might as well not beclothed at all. They are eyed, they see intensely; they look at eachother so closely that you know what they would be doing. You can seethem love each other as you watch. As for the people in the street, the real men and real women, as we say, I hardly know how to tell youwhat they look like through the first floor's windows. They arechanged of everything but one thing. They occupy the places, fill thestanding-room of our neighbours and friends; there is a somethingabout them all by which you recognise them--a trick of the hand, amotion of the body, a set of the head (God knows what it is, howlittle and how much); but for all that--a new creature! A thing likenothing that lives by bread! Now just look at that policeman at thecorner, for instance; not only is he stark naked--everybody is likethat--but he's perfectly different from the sturdy, good-humoured, red-faced, puzzled man you and I know. He is thin, woefully thin, andhis ears are long and perpetually twitching. He pricks them up at theleast thing; or lays them suddenly back, and we see them trembling. His eyes look all ways and sometimes nothing but the white is to beseen. He has a tail, too, long and leathery, which is always curlingabout to get hold of something. Now it will be the lamp-post, now thesquare railings, now one of those breathing trees; but mostly it isone of his own legs. Yet if you consider him carefully you will agreewith me that his tail is a more expressive remnant of the man you havealways seen there than any other part of him. You may say, and truly, that it is the only recognisable thing left. What do you think of hisfeet and hands? They startled me at first; they are so long andnarrow, so bony and pointed, covered with fine short hair which shineslike satin. That way he has of arching his feet and driving his toesinto the pavement delights me. And see, too, that his hands areundistinguishable from feet: they are just as long and satiny. He isfond of smoothing his face with them; he brings them both up to hisears and works them forward like slow fans. Transformation indeed. Idefy you to recognise him for the same man--except for a faintreminiscence about his tail. 

But all's of a piece. The crossing-sweeper now has shaggy legs whichend in hoofs. His way of looking at young people is veryunpleasant;--and one had always thought him such a kindly old man. Thebutcher's boy--what a torso!--is walking with his arm round the waistof the young lady in Number seven. These are lovers, you see; but it'smostly on her side. He tilts up her chin and gives her a kiss beforehe goes; and she stands looking after him with shining eyes, hopingthat he will turn round before he gets to the corner. But he doesn't. 

Wait, now, wait, wait--who is this lovely, straining, beating creaturedarting here and there about the square, bruising herself, poorbeautiful thing, against the railings? A sylph, a caught fairy?Surely, surely, I know somebody--is it?--It can't be. That carewornlady? God in Heaven, is it she? Enough! Show me no more. I will showyou no more, my dear sir, if it agitates you; but I confess that Ihave come to regard it as one of the most interesting spectacles inLondon. The mere information--to say nothing of the amusement--which Ihave derived from it would fill a volume; but if it did, I may add, Imyself should undoubtedly fill a cell in Holloway. I will thereforespare you what I know about the Doctor's wife, and what happens toLieutenant-Colonel Storter when I see him through these windows--Icould never have believed it unless I had seen it. These things arenot done, I know; but observed in this medium they seem quiteordinary. Lastly--for I can't go through the catalogue--I will speakof the air as I see it from here. My dear sir, the air is alive, thronged with life. Spirits, forms, lovely immaterial diaphanousshapes, are weaving endless patterns over the face of the day. Theyshine like salmon at a weir, or they darken the sky as redwings in theautumn fields; they circle, shrieking as they flash, like swallows atevening; they battle and wrangle together; or they join hands andwhirl about the square in an endless chain. Of their beauty, theirgrace of form and movement, of the shifting filmy colour, hue blendingin hue, of their swiftness, their glancing eyes, their exuberant joyor grief I cannot now speak. Beside them one man may well seem rat, and another goat. Beside them, indeed, you look for nothing else. Andif I go on to hint that the owner of these windows is of them, thoughimprisoned in my house; that he does at times join them in theirstreaming flights beyond the housetops, and does at times carry withhim his half-bewildered, half-shocked and wholly delighted fellowlodgers, I have come to the end of my tether and your credulity, and, for the time at least, have flowered myself to death. The figure is asgood as Plato's though my Pegasus will never stable in his stall. 

 * * * * *

We may believe ourselves to be two persons, at least, in one, and Ifancy that one at least of them is a constant. So far as my own pairis concerned, either one of them has never grown up at all, or he wasborn whole and in a flash, as the fairies are. Such as he was, at anyrate, when I was ten years old, such he is now when I am heavily morethan ten; and the other of us, very conscious of the flight of timeand of other things with it, is free to confess that he has littlemore hold of his fellow with all this authority behind him than he hadwhen we commenced partnership. He has some, and thinks himself lucky, since the bond between the pair is of such a nature as to involve areal partnership--a partnership full of perplexity to the workingmember of it, the ordinary forensic creature of senses, passions, ambitions, and self-indulgences, the eating, sleeping, vainglorious, assertive male of common experience--and it is not to be denied thatit has been fruitful, nor again that by some freak of fate or fortunethe house has kept a decent front to the world at large. It is stillsolvent, still favourably regarded by the police. It is not, it neverwill be, a mere cage of demons; its walls have not been fretted totransparency; no passing eye can detect revelry behind its decentstucco; no passing ear thrill to cries out of the dark. No, no. Troubles we may have; but we keep up appearances. The heart knowethits own bitterness, and if it be a wise one, keepeth it to itself. Iam not going to be so foolish as to deny divergences of opinion, evenof practice, between the pair in me; but I flatter myself that I havenot allowed them to become a common nuisance, a cause of scandal, astumbling-block, a rock of offence, or anything of that kind. Uneasytenant, wayward partner as my recondite may be, he has had arelationship with my forensic which at times has touched cordiality. Influential he has not been, for his colleague has always had theupper hand and been in the public eye. He may have instigated tomischief, but has not often been allowed to complete his purpose. If Iam a respectable person it is not his fault. He seeks no man'srespect. If he has occasionally lent himself to moral ends, it hasbeen without enthusiasm, for he has no morals of his own, and neverdid have any. On the other hand, he is by nature too indifferent totemporal circumstances to go about to corrupt his partner. His maindesire has ever been to be let alone. Anything which tended to tightenthe bonds which held him to his co-tenant would have been a thing toavoid. He desires liberty, and nothing less will content him. This hewill only have by inaction, by mewing his sempiternal youth in hiscage and on his perch. 

But the tie uniting the pair of us is of such a nature that neithercan be uninfluenced by the other. It is just that you should hear bothsides of the case. My forensic, eating and arguing self has bullied myother into hypocrisy over and over again. He has starved him, deprivedhim of his holidays, ignored him, ridiculed him, snubbed himmercilessly. This is severe treatment, you'll allow, and it's worseeven than it seems. For the unconscionable fellow, owing to thiscoheirship which he pretends to disesteem, has been made privy toexperiences which must not only have been extraordinary to so plainand humdrum a person, but which have been, as I happen to know, ofgreat importance to him, and which--to put the thing at itshighest--have lifted him, dull dog as he is, into regions where thevery dogs have wings. Out upon it! But he has been in and out with hisvictim over leagues of space where not one man in ten thousand hasbeen privileged to fare. He has been familiar all his life withscenes, with folk, with deeds undreamed of by thirty-nine andthree-quarters out of forty millions of people, and by thatquarter-million only known as nursery tales. Not only so, but he hasbeen awakened to the significance of common things, having at hand aninterpreter, and been enabled to be precise where Wordsworth wasvague. He has known Zeus in the thunder, in the lightning beheld theshaking of the dread Ægis. In the river source he has seen thebreasted nymph; he has seen the Oreads stream over the bare hillside. There are men who see these things and don't believe them, others whobelieve but don't see. He has both seen and believed. The painted, figured universe has for him a new shape; whispering winds and fallingrain speak plainly to his understanding. He has seen trees as menwalking. His helot has unlocked the world behind appearance and madehim free of the Spirits of Natural Fact who abide there. If he is notthe debtor of his comrade--and he protests the debt--he should be. Butthe rascal laps it all up, as a cat porridge, without so much as a wagof the tail for Thank-you. Such are the exorbitant overlords in mortalmen, who pass for reputable persons, with a chief seat at feasts. 

Such things, you may say, read incredibly, but, _mutatis mutandis_, Ibelieve them to be common, though unrecorded, experience. I deprecatein advance questions designed to test the accuracy of my eyesight orthe ingenuous habit of my pen. I have already declared that thewindows of my first-floor lodger are of such properties that theyshow you, in Xenophon's phrase, τὰ ὄντα τε ὡϛ ὄντα, και τὰ μὴ ὄντα ὡϛοὐκ ὄνγα. Now consider it from his side. If I were to tell the ownerof those windows that I saw the policeman at the corner, a helmeted, blue-tunicked, chin-scratching, ponderous man, some six foot in hisboots, how would he take it? Would he not mock me? What, that rat?Ridiculous! And what on earth could I reply? I tell you, the wholeaffair is one of windows, or, sometimes, of personally-conductedtravel; and who is Guide and who Guided, is one of those nicequestions in psychology which perhaps we are not yet ready to handle. Of the many speculations as to the nature of the subliminal Self Ihave never found one to be that he may be a fairy prisoner, occasionally on parole. But I think that not at all unlikely. May notmetempsychosis be a scourge of two worlds? If the soul of my grandammight fitly inhabit a bird, might not a Fairy ruefully inhabit theperson of my grandam? If Fairy Godmothers, perchance, were FairyGrandmothers! I have some evidence to place before the reader whichmay induce him to consider this hypothesis. Who can doubt, at least, that Shelley's was not a case where the not-human was a prisoner inthe human? Who can doubt that of Blake's? And what was the result, forensically? Shelley was treated as a scoundrel and Blake as amadman. Shelley, it was said, broke the moral law, and Blaketranscended common sense; but the first, I reply, was in the guidanceof a being to whom the laws of this world and the accidents of itmeant nothing at all; and to the second a wisdom stood revealed whichto human eyes was foolishness. Windows! In either case there was amartyrdom, and human exasperation appeased by much broken glass. Letus not, however, condemn the wreckers of windows. Who is to judge eventhem? Who is to say even of their harsh and cruel reprisals that theywere not excusable? May not they too have been ridden by some wildspirit within them, which goaded them to their beastly work? But ifthe acceptance of the doctrine of multiple personality is going toinvolve me in the reconsideration of criminal jurisprudence, I mustclose this essay. 

I will close it with the sentence of another philosopher who hasconsidered deeply of these questions. "It is to be observed, " he says, "that the laws of human conduct are precisely made for the conduct ofthis world of Men, in which we live, breed, and pay rent. They do notaffect the Kingdom of the Dogs, nor that of the Fishes; by a parity ofreasoning they need not be supposed to obtain in the Kingdom ofHeaven, in which the schoolmen discovered the citizens dwelling innine spheres, apart from the blessed immigrants, whose privileges didnot extend so near to the Heart of the Presence. How many realms theremay be between mankind's and that ultimate object of pure desirecannot at present be known, but it may be affirmed with confidencethat any denizen of any one of them, brought into relation with humanbeings, would act, and reasonably act, in ways which to men might seemharsh and unconscionable, without sanction or convenience. Such abeing might murder one of the ratepayers of London, compound a felony, or enter into a conspiracy to depose the King himself, and, beingdetected, very properly be put under restraint, or visited withchastisement, either deterrent or vindictive, or both. But the trueinference from the premises would be that although duress orbanishment from the kingdom might be essential, yet punishment, so-called, ought not to be visited upon the offender. For he or shecould not be _nostri juris_, and that which were abominable to usmight well be reasonable to him or her, and indeed a fulfilment of thelaw of his being. Punishment, therefore, could not be exemplary, sincethe person punished exemplified nothing to Mankind; and if vindictive, then would be shocking, since that which is vindicated, in the mindof the victim either did not exist, or ought not. The Ancient Greekwho withheld from the sacrifice to Showery Zeus because a thunder-boltdestroyed his hayrick, or the Egyptian who manumitted his slavesbecause a God took the life of his eldest son, was neither a pious, nor a reasonable person. "

There is much debatable matter in this considered opinion. 

A BOY IN THE WOOD

I had many bad qualities as a child, of which I need mention onlythree. I was moody, irresolute, and hatefully reserved. Fate hadalready placed me the eldest by three years of a large family. Add tothe eminence thus attained intentions which varied from hour to hour, a will so little in accordance with desire that I had rather give up acherished plan than fight for it, and a secretive faculty equalledonly by the magpie, and you will not wonder when I affirm that I livedalone in a household of a dozen friendly persons. As a set-off andconsolation to myself I had very strongly the power of impersonation. I could be within my own little entity a dozen different people in aday, and live a life thronged with these companions or rivals; and yetthis set me more solitary than ever, for I could never appear in anyone of my characters to anybody else. But alone and apart, what worldsI inhabited! Worlds of fact and worlds of fiction. At nine years old Iknew Nelson's ardour and Wellesley's phlegm; I had Napoleon's egotism, Galahad's purity, Lancelot's passion, Tristram's melancholy. Ireasoned like Socrates and made Phædo weep; I persuaded like SaintPaul and saw the throng on Mars' Hill sway to my words. I was by turnsDon Juan and Don Quixote, Tom Jones and Mr. Allworthy, Hamlet and hisuncle, young Shandy and his. You will gather that I was a reader. Iwas, and the people of my books stepped out of their pages andinhabited me. Or, to change the figure, I found in every book an opendoor, and went in and dwelt in its world. Thus I lived a thronged andbusy life, a secret life, full of terror, triumph, wonder, franticenterprise, a noble and gallant figure among my peers, while to myparents, brothers and sisters I was an incalculable, fitful creature, often lethargic and often in the sulks. They saw me mooning inidleness and were revolted; or I walked dully the way I was bid andthey despaired of my parts. I could not explain myself to them, stillless justify, having that miserable veil of reserve close over mymouth, like a yashmak. To my father I could not speak, to my mother Idid not; the others, being my juniors all, hardly existed. Who is todeclare the motives of a child's mind? What was the nature of thisreticence? Was it that my real habit was reverie? Was it, as Isuspect, that constitutional timidity made me diffident? I was acoward, I am very sure, for I was always highly imaginative. Was it, finally, that I was dimly conscious of matters which I despaired ofputting clearly? Who can say? And who can tell me now whether I wascursed or blessed? Certainly, if it had been possible to any person mysenior to share with me my daily adventures, I might have conqueredthe cowardice from which I suffered such terrible reverses. But it wasnot. I was the eldest of a large family, and apparently the easiest todeal with of any of it. I was what they call a tractable child, being, in fact, too little interested in the world as it was to resent anyduties cast upon me. It was not so with the others. They werehigh-spirited little creatures, as often in mischief as not, anddemanded much more pains then I ever did. What they demanded they got, what I did not demand I got not: "Lo, here is alle! What shold I moreseye?"

How it was that, taking no interest in my actual surroundings, Ibecame aware of unusual things behind them I cannot understand. It isvery difficult to differentiate between what I imagined and what Iactually perceived. It was a favourite string of my poor father'splaintive lyre that I had no eyes. He was a great walker, a poet, anda student of nature. Every Sunday of his life he took me and mybrother for a long tramp over the country, the intense spiritualfatigue of which exercise I should never be able to describe. I have asinking of the heart, even now, when I recall our setting out. Intolerable labour! I saw nothing and said nothing. I did nothing butplug one dull foot after the other. I felt like some chained slavegoing to the hulks, and can well imagine that my companions must havebeen very much aware of it. My brother, whose nature was much happierthan mine, who dreamed much less and observed much more, was the lifeof these woeful excursions. Without him I don't think that my fathercould have endured them. At any rate, he never did. I amazed, irritated, and confounded him at most times, but in nothing more thanmy apathy to what enchanted him. [1] The birds, the flowers, the trees, the waters did not exist for me in my youth. The world for me wasuninhabited, a great empty cage. People passed us, or stood at theirdoorways watching us, but I never saw them. If by chance I descriedsomebody coming whom it would be necessary to salute, or to whom Imight have to speak, I turned aside to avoid them. I was not only shyto a fault, as a diffident child must be, but the world of senseeither did not exist for me or was thrust upon me to my discomfort. And yet all the while, as I moved or sat, I was surrounded by a streamof being, of infinite constituents, aware of them to this extent thatI could converse with them without sight or speech. I knew they werethere, I knew them singing, whispering, screaming. They filled myunderstanding not my senses. I did not see them but I felt them. Iknew not what they said or sang, but had always the general sense oftheir thronging neighbourhood. 

[Footnote 1: And me also when I was enabled at a later day to perceivethem. I am thankful to remember and record for my own comfort thatthat day came not too late for my enchantment to overtake his andproceed in company. ]

I enlarge upon this because I think it justifies me in adding that, observing so little, what I did observe with my bodily eyes mustalmost certainly have been observable. But now let the reader judge. 

The first time I ever saw a creature which was really outside ordinaryexperience was in the late autumn of my twelfth year. My brother, nextin age to me, was nine, my eldest sister eight. We three had been outwalking with our mother, and were now returning at dusk to our teathrough a wood which covered the top of a chalk down. I remembervividly the scene. The carpet of drenched leaves under bare branches, the thin spear-like shafts of the underwood, the grey lights between, the pale frosty sky overhead with the sickle moon low down in it. Iremember, too, various sensations, such as the sudden chill whichaffected me as the crimson globe of the sun disappeared; and againhow, when we emerged from the wood, I was enheartened by the sight ofthe village shrouded under chimney smoke and by the one or twotwinkling lights dotted here and there about the dim wolds. 

In the wood it was already twilight and very damp. Perhaps I had beentired, more likely bored--as I always was when I was not beingsomebody else. I remember that I had found the path interminable. Ihad been silent, as I mostly was, while the other two had chatteredand played about our mother; and when presently I stayed behind for apurpose I remember that I made no effort to catch them up. I knew theway perfectly, of course, and had no fear of the dark. Oddly enough Ihad no fear of that. I was far less imaginative in the night than inthe day. Besides that, by the time I was ready to go after them I hadmuch else to think of. 

I must have been looking at him for some time before I made out thathe was there. So you may peer into a thicket a hundred times and seenothing, and then a trick of the light or a flutter of the mood andyou see creatures where you had been sure was nothing. As childrenwill, I had stayed longer than I need, looking and wondering into thewood, not observing but yet absorbing the effects of the lights andshades. The trees were sapling chestnuts if I am not mistaken, Spanishchestnuts, and used for hop-poles in those parts. Their leaves decaygradually, the fleshy part, so to speak, dropping away from thearticulation till at last bleached skeleton leaves remain and flickerat every sigh of the wind. The ground was densely carpeted with otherleaves in the same state, or about to become so. The silver grey wascross-hatched by the purple lines of the serried stems, and as theview receded this dipped into blue and there lost itself. It was veryquiet--a windless fall of the light. To-day I should find it mostbeautiful; and even then, I suspect, I felt its beauty without knowingit to be so. Looking into it all without realising it, I presently andgradually did realise something else: a shape, a creature, a thing ofform and pressure--not a wraith, not, I am quite certain, a trick ofthe senses. 

It was under a clump of the chestnut stems, kneeling and sitting onits heels, and it was watching me with the bright, quick eyes of amouse. If I were to say that my first thought was of some peering andwaiting animal, I should go on to qualify the thought by reference tothe creature's eyes. They were eyes which, like all animals', couldonly express one thing at a time. They expressed now attention, theclosest: not fear, not surprise, not apprehension of anything that Imight be meditating against their peace, but simply minute attention. The absence of fear, no doubt, marked their owner off from the animalsof common acquaintance; but the fact that they did not at the sametime express the being itself showed him to be different from ourhuman breed. For whatever else the human pair of eyes may reveal, itreveals the looker. 

The eyes of this creature revealed nothing of itself except that itwas watching me narrowly. I could not even be sure of its sex, thoughI believe it to have been a male, and shall hereafter treat of it assuch. I could see that he was young; I thought about my own age. Hewas very pale, without being at all sickly--indeed, health and vigourand extreme vivacity were implicit in every line and expressed inevery act; he was clear-skinned, but almost colourless. The shadowunder his chin, I remember, was bluish. His eyes were round, when notnarrowed by that closeness of his scrutiny of me, and though probablybrown, showed to be all black, with pupil indistinguishable from iris. The effect upon me was of black, vivid black, unintelligenteyes--which see intensely but cannot translate. His hair was dense andrather long. It covered his ears and touched his shoulders. It waspushed from his forehead sideways in a thick, in a solid fold, as ifit had been the corner of a frieze cape thrown back. It was dark hair, but not black; his neck was very thin. I don't know how he wasdressed--I never noticed such things; but in colour he must have beeninconspicuous, since I had been looking at him for a good time withoutseeing him at all. A sleeveless tunic, I think, which may have beenbrown, or grey, or silver-white. I don't know. But his knees werebare--that I remember; and his arms were bare from the shoulder. 

I standing, he squatting on his heels, the pair of us looked full atone another. I was not frightened, no more was he. I was excited, andfull of interest; so, I think, was he. My heart beat double time. ThenI saw, with a curious excitement, that between his knees he held arabbit, and that with his left hand he had it by the throat. Now, whatis extraordinary to me about this discovery is that there was nothingshocking in it. 

I saw the rabbit's wild and panic-blown eye, I saw the bright whiterim of it, and recognised its little added terror of me even in themidst of its anguish. That must have been the conventional fright of abeast of chase, an instinct to fear rather than an emotion; for ofemotions the poor thing must have been having its fill. It was nottill I saw its mouth horribly open, its lips curled back to show itsshelving teeth that I could have guessed at what it was suffering. Butgradually I apprehended what was being done. Its captor was squeezingits throat. I saw what I had never seen before, and have never seensince, I saw its tongue like a pale pink petal of a flower dart out asthe pressure drove it. Revolting sight as that would have been to me, witnessed in the world, here, in this dark wood, in this outlandpresence, it was nothing but curious. Now, as I watched and wondered, the being, following my eyes' direction, looked down at the huddledthing between his thighs, and just as children squeeze a snap-dragonflower to make it open and shut its mouth, so precisely did he, pressing or releasing the windpipe, cause that poor beast to throwback its lips and dart its dry tongue. He did this many times while hewatched it; and when he looked up at me again, and while he continuedto look at me, I saw that his cruel fingers, as by habit, continuedthe torture, and that in some way he derived pleasure from theperformance--as if it gratified him to be sure that effect wasfollowing on cause inevitably. 

I have never, I believe, been cruel to an animal in my life. I hatedcruelty then as I hate it now. I have always shirked the sight ofanything in pain from my childhood onwards. Yet the fact is that notonly did I nothing to interfere in what I saw going on, but that Iwas deeply interested and absorbed in it. I can only explain that tomyself now, by supposing that I knew then, that the creature in frontof me was not of my own kind, and was not, in fact, outraging any lawof its own being. Is not that possible? May I not have collectedunawares so much out of created nature? I am unable to say: all I amclear about is that here was a thing in the semblance of a boy doingwhat I had never observed a boy do, and what if I ever had observed aboy do, would have flung me into a transport of rage and grief. Here, therefore, was a thing in the semblance of a boy who was no boy atall. So much must have been as certain to me then as it isindisputable now. 

One doesn't, at that age, reason things out; one knows them, and isdumb, though unconvinced, before powerful syllogisms to the contrary. All children are so, confronted by strange phenomena. And yet I hadfacts to go upon if, child as I was, I had been capable of inference. I need only mention one. If this creature had been human, upon seeingthat I was conscious of its behaviour to the rabbit, it would eitherhave stopped the moment it perceived that I did not approve or was notamused, or it would have continued deliberately out of bravado. But itneither stopped nor hardily continued. It watched its experiment withinterest for a little, then, finding me more interesting, did notdiscontinue it, but ceased to watch it. He went on with itmechanically, dreamingly, as if to the excitation of some other sensethan sight, that of feeling, for instance. He went on lasciviously, for the sake of the pleasure so to be had. In other words, beingwithout self-consciousness and ignorant of shame, he must have beennon-human. 

After all, too, it must be owned that I cannot have been confronted bythe appearance for more than a few minutes. Allow me three to have beenspent before I was aware of him, three more will be the outside I canhave passed gazing at him. But I speak of "minutes, " of course, referring to my ostensible self, that inert, apathetic child whofollowed its mother, that purblind creature through whose muddy lensesthe pent immortal had been forced to see his familiar in the wood, andperchance to dress in form and body what, for him, needed neither to bevisible. It was this outward self which was now driven by circumstancesto resume command--the command which for "three minutes" by hisreckoning he had relinquished. Both of us, no doubt, had been muchlonger there had we not been interrupted. A woodman, homing from hiswork, came heavily up the path, and like a guilty detected rogue Iturned to run and took my incorruptible with me. Not until I had passedthe man did I think to look back. The partner of my secret was not thento be seen. Out of sight out of mind is the way of children. Out ofmind, then, withdrew my incorruptible. I hurried on, ran, and overtookmy party half-way down the bare hillside. I still remember the feelingof relief with which I swept into the light, felt the cold air on mycheeks, and saw the intimacy of the village open out below me. I amalmost sure that my eyes held tears at the assurance of the sweet, familiar things which I knew and could love. There, literally, were myown people: that which I had left behind must be unlawful because it wasso strange. In the warmth and plenty of the lighted house, by theschoolroom table, before the cosily covered teapot, amid the high talk, the hot toast and the jam, my experience in the dusky wood seemedunreal, lawless, almost too terrible to be remembered--never, never tobe named. It haunted me for many days, and gave rise to curiouswonderings now and then. As I passed the patient, humble beasts ofcommon experience--a carter's team nodding, jingling its brasses, adonkey, patient, humble, hobbled in a paddock, dogs sniffing each other, a cat tucked into a cottage window, I mused doubtfully and often whetherwe had touched the threshold of the heart of their mystery. But for themost part, being constitutionally timid, I was resolute to put theexperience out of mind. When next I chanced to go through the wood thereis no doubt I peered askance to right and left among the trees; but Itook good care not to desert my companions. That which I had seen wasunaccountable, therefore out of bounds. But though I never saw him thereagain I have never forgotten him. 

HARKNESS'S FANCY

I may have been a precocious child, but I cannot tell within a year ortwo how soon it was that I attained manhood. There must have been amoment of time when I clothed myself in skins, like Adam; when I knewwhat this world calls good and evil--by which this world means nothingmore nor less than men and women, and chiefly women, I think. Savagepeoples initiate their young and teach them the taboos of society bystripes. We allow our issue to gash themselves. By stripes, then, uponmy young flesh, I scored up this lesson for myself. Certain things werenever to be spoken of, certain things never to be looked at in certainways, certain things never to be done consciously, or for the pleasureto be got out of them. One stepped out of childish conventions intomannish conventions, and did so, certainly, without any instruction fromoutside. I remember, for instance, that, as children, it was a rigidpart of our belief that our father was the handsomest man in theworld--handsome was the word. In the same way our mother was byprerogative the most beautiful woman. If some hero flashed upon ourscene--Garibaldi, Lancelot of the Lake, or another--the greatest praisewe could possibly have given him for beauty, excellence, courage, ormanly worth would have put him second to our father. So also Helen ofSparta and Beatrice of Florence gave way. That was the law of thenursery, rigid and never to be questioned until unconsciously I grew outof it, and becoming a man, put upon me the panoply of manly eyes. I nowaccepted it that to kiss my sister was nothing, but that to kiss herfriend would be very wicked. I discovered that there were two ways oflooking at a young woman, and two ways of thinking about her. Idiscovered that it was lawful to have some kinds of appetite, and totake pleasure in food, exercise, sleep, warmth, cold water, hot water, the smell of flowers, and quite unlawful so much as to think of, or toadmit to myself the existence of other kinds of appetite. I discovered, in fact, that love was a shameful thing, that if one was in love oneconcealed it from the world, and, above all the world, from the objectof one's love. The conviction was probably instinctive, for one is notthe descendant of puritans for nothing; but the discovery of it isanother matter. Attendance at school and the continuous reading ofromance were partly responsible for that; physical development clinchedthe affair, I was in all respects mature at thirteen, though my courage(to use the word in Chaucer's sense) was not equal to my ability. I hadmore than usual diffidence against me, more than usual reserve; andself-consciousness, from which I have only lately escaped, grew upon mehand in hand with experience. 

But being now become a day-scholar at the Grammar School, and thrownwhether I would or not among other boys of my own age, I sank myrecondite self deeply under the folds of my quickened senses. I becameaware of a world which was not his world at all. I watched, I heard, Ijudged, I studied intently my comrades; and while in secret I sharedtheir own hardy lives, I was more than content to appear a cipheramong them. I had no friends and made none. All my comradeship with myschool-mates took place in my head, for however salient in mood orinclination I may have been I was a laggard in action. In company Iwas lower than the least of them; in my solitude, at their head Icaptured the universe. Daily, to and fro, for two or three years Ijourneyed between my home and this school, with a couple of two-milewalks and a couple of train journeys to be got through in all weathersand all conditions of light. I saw little or nothing of myschool-fellows out of hours, and lived all my play-time, if you can socall it, intensely alone with the people of my imagination--to whosenumber I could now add gleanings from the Grammar School. 

I don't claim objective reality for any of these; I am sure that theywere of my own making. Though unseen beings throng round us all, though as a child I had been conscious of them, though I had actuallyseen one, in these first school years of mine the machinery I had forseeing the usually unseen was eclipsed; my recondite self was fast inhis _cachot_--and I didn't know that he was there! But one may imaginefairies enough out of one's reading, and going beyond that, using itas a spring-board, advance in the work of creation from realising tobegetting. So it was with me. The _Faerie Queen_ was as familiar asthe Latin Primer ought to have been. I had much of Mallory by heart--abook full of magic. Forth of his pages stepped men-at-arms and damselsthe moment I was alone, and held me company for as long as I would. The persons of Homer's music came next to them. I was Hector and heldAndromache to my heart. I kissed her farewell when I went forth toschool, and hurried home at night from the station, impatient for herarms. I was never Paris, and had only awe of Helen. Even then I dimlyguessed her divinity, that godhead which the supremest beauty reallyis. But I was often Odysseus the much-enduring, and very wellacquainted with the wiles of Calypso. Next in power of enchantmentcame certainly Don Quixote, in whose lank bones I was often encased. Dulcinea's charm was very real to me. I revelled in her honeyed name. I was Don Juan too, and I was Tom Jones; but my most naturalimpersonation in those years was Tristram. The luxury of thatchampion's sorrows had a swooning sweetness of their own of which Inever tired. Iseult meant nothing. I cared nothing for her. I wasenamoured of the hero, and saw myself drenched in his passion. LikeNarcissus in the fable, I loved myself, and saw myself, in Tristram'sform, the most beautiful and the most beloved of beings. 

Chivalry and Romance chained me at that time and not the supernatural. The fairy adventures of the heroes of my love swept by me untouched. Morgan le Fay, Britomart, Vivien, Nimue, Merlin did not convince me;they were picturesque conventions whose decorative quality I felt, while so far as I was concerned they were garniture or apparatus. Andyet the fruitful meadows through which I took my daily way were asforests to me; the grass-stems spired up to my fired fancy like greattrees. Among them I used to minish myself to the size of an ant andbecome a pioneer hewing out a pathway through virgin thickets. I hadmy ears alert for the sound of a horn, of a galloping horse, of theQuesting Beast and hounds in full cry. But I never looked to encountera fairy in these most fairy solitudes. Beleaguered ladies, knights-errant, dwarfs, churls, fiends of hell, leaping like flamesout of pits in the ground: all these, but no fairies. It's very oddthat having seen the reality and devoured the fictitious, I shouldhave had zest for neither, but so it is. 

As for my school-mates, though I had very little to say to them, orthey to me, I used to watch them very closely, and, as I have said, came to weave them into my dreams. Some figured as heroes, some asmagnanimous allies, some as malignant enemies, some who struck me asbeautiful received of me the kind of idolatry, the insensateself-surrender which creatures of my sort have always offered up tobeauty of any sort. I remember T----e, a very shapely anddistinguished youth. I worshipped him as a god, and have seen himsince--alas! I remember B---- also, a tall, lean, loose-limbed youngman. He was a great cricketer, a good-natured, sleepy giant, perfectlystupid (I am sure) but with marks of breed about him which I could notpossibly mistake. Him, too, I enthroned upon my temple-frieze; hewould have figured there as Meleager had I been a few years older. Asit was, he rode a blazoned charger, all black, and feutred his lancewith the Knights of King Arthur's court. Then there was H----n, agood-looking, good-natured boy, and T----r, another. Many and many aday did they ride forth with me adventuring--that is, spiritually theydid so; physically speaking, I had no scot or lot with them. We werein plate armour, visored and beplumed. We slung our storied shieldsbehind us; we had our spears at rest; we laughed, told tales, sang aswe went through the glades of the forest, down the ruttedcharcoal-burner's track, and came to the black mere, where there lay abarge with oars among the reeds. I can see, now, H----n throw up hishead, bared to the sky and slanting sun. He had thick and dark curlyhair and a very white neck. His name of chivalry was Sagramor. T----rwas of stouter build and less salient humour. He was Bors, a brotherof Lancelot's. I, who was moody, here as in waking life, was Tristram, more often Tramtris. 

Of other more sinister figures I remember two. R----s, who bullied meuntil I was provoked at last into facing him; a greedy, pale, lecherous boy, graceless, a liar, but extremely clever. I had a horrorof him which endures now. If he, as I have, had a dweller in the deepsof him, his must have been a satyr. I cannot doubt it now. Disastrousally for mortal man! Vice sat upon his face like a grease; vice madehis fingers quick. He had a lickorous tongue and a taste for sweetthings which even then made me sick. So repulsive was he to me, soimpressed upon my fancy, that it was curious he did not haunt my innerlife. But I never met him there. No shape of his ever encountered mein the wilds and solitary places. In the manifest world he afflictedme to an extent which the rogue-fairy in the wood could never haveapproached. Perhaps it was that all my being was forearmed againsthim, and that I fought him off. At any rate he never trespassed in mypreserves. 

The other was R----d, a bleared and diseased creature, a thing of pityand terror to the wholesome, one of those outcasts of the world whichevery school has to know and reckon with. A furtive, nail-bitten, pick-nose wretch with an unholy hunger for ink, earth-worms and thelike. What terrible tenant do the likes of these carry about withthem! He, too, haunted me, but not fearfully; but he, too, I nowunderstand too well, was haunted and ridden to doom. I pitied him, tried to be kind to him, tried to treat him as the human thing whichin some sort he was. I discovered that when he was interested heforgot his loathsome cravings, and became almost lovable. I went homewith him once, to a mean house in ----. He took me into the backyardand showed me his treasury--half a dozen rabbits, as many guinea-pigs, and a raven with a bald head. He was all kindness to these prisoners, fondled them with hands and voice, spoke a kind of inarticulate babylanguage to them, and gave them pet names. He forgot his misery, hispoverty--I remember that he never had a handkerchief and always wantedone, that his jacket-sleeves were near his elbow, and that his wristbones were red and broken. But now there shone a clear light in hiseye; he could face the world as he spoke to me of the habits of hisfriends. We got upon some sort of terms by these means, and I alwayshad a kind of affection for poor R----d. In a sense we were bothoutcasts, and might have warmed the world for each other. If I had notbeen so entirely absorbed in my private life as to grudge any momentof it unnecessarily spent I should have asked him home. But boys areexorbitant in their own affairs, and I had no time to spare him. 

I was a year at ---- before I got so far with any schoolfellow of minethere; but just about the time of my visit to R----d I fell in withanother boy, called Harkness, who, for some reason of his own, desiredmy closer acquaintance and got as much of it as I was able to give toanybody, and a good deal more than he deserved or I was the better of. He, too, was a day-boy, whose people lived in a suburb of the townwhich lay upon my road. We scraped acquaintance by occasionallytravelling together so much of the way as he had to traverse; fromthis point onward all the advances were his. I had no liking for him, and, in fact, some of his customs shocked me. But he was older than I, very friendly, and very interesting. He evidently liked me; he askedme to tea with him; he used to wait for me, going and returning. I hadno means of refusing his acquaintance, and did not; but I got no goodout of him. 

As he was older, so he was much more competent. Not so much vicious ascurious and enterprising, he knew a great many things which I onlyguessed at, and could do much--or said that he could--which I onlydreamed about. He put a good deal of heart into my instruction, andleft me finally with my lesson learned. I never saw nor heard of himafter I left the school. We did not correspond, and he left no markupon me of any kind. The lesson learned, I used the knowledgecertainly; but it did not take me into the region which he knew best. His grove of philosophy was close to the school, in K---- Park, whichis a fine enclosure of forest trees, glades, brake-fern and deer. Here, in complete solitude, for we never saw a soul, my sentimentaleducation was begun by this self-appointed professor. As I remember, he was a good-looking lad enough, with a round and merry face, highcolour, bright eyes, a moist and laughing mouth. Had he known the wayin he would have been at home in the Garden of Priapus, where perhapshe is now. He was hardy in address, a ready speaker, rather eloquentupon the theme that he loved, and I dare say he may have been asfortunate as he said, or very nearly. Certainly what he had to tell meof love and women opened my understanding. I believe that I envied himhis ease of attainment more than what he said he had attained. I mighthave been stimulated by his adventures to be adventurous on my ownaccount, but I never was, neither at that time nor at any other. I amquite certain that never in my life have I gone forth conquering andto conquer in affairs of the heart. You need to be a Casanova--whichHarkness was in his little way--and I have had no aptitude for thepart. But as I said just now I absorbed his teachings and made use ofthem. So far as he gave me food for reflection I ate it, andassimilated it in my own manner. Neither by him nor by any person farmore considerable than himself has my imagination been moved in thedirection of the mover of it. Let great poet, great musician, greatpainter stir me ever so deeply, I have never been able to follow himan inch. I was excited by pictures to see new pictures of my own, bypoems to make poems--of my own, not of theirs. In these, no doubt, were elements of theirs; there was a borrowed something, a quality, anaccent, a spirit of attack. But the forms were mine, and the settingalways so. All my life I have used other men's art and wisdom as aspring-board. I suppose every poet can say the same. This was to bethe use to me of the lessons of the precocious, affectionate, andphiloprogenitive Harkness. 

I remember very well one golden summer evening when he and I laytalking under a great oak--he expounding and I plucking at the grassas I listened, or let my mind go free--how, quite suddenly, the meshhe was weaving about my groping mind parted in the midst and showed mefor an appreciable moment a possibility of something--it was nomore--which he could never have seen. 

From the dense shade in which we lay there stretched out an avenue oftimber trees, whereunder the bracken, breast high, had been cut tomake a ride. Upon this bracken, and upon this smooth channel in themidst the late sun streamed toward us, a soft wash of gold. Behind allthis the sky, pale to whiteness immediately overhead, deepened to thesplendid orange of the sunset. Each tree cast his shadow upon hisneighbour, so that only the topmost branches burned in the light. Over and above us floated the drowsy hum of the insect world; rarelywe heard the moaning of a wood-dove, more rarely still the stirring ofdeer hidden in the thicket shade. This was a magical evening, primedwith wonders, in the glamour of which Master Harkness could findnothing better for him to rehearse than the progress of his amourswith his mother's housemaid. Yet something of the evening glow, something of the opulence of summer smouldered in his words. Hepainted his mistress with the colour of the sunset, he borrowed of itburnt gold to deck her clay. He hymned the whiteness of her neck, herslender waist, her whispers, the kisses of her mouth. The scamp wasluxuriating in his own imaginings or reminiscences, much less of alover and far more of a rhapsodist than he suspected. As such his pæanof precocious love stirred my senses and fired my imagination, but notin the direction of his own. For the glow which he cast upon hisaffair was a borrowed one. He had dipped without knowing into thelanguid glory of the evening, which like a pool of wealth lay ready tomy hand also. I gave him faint attention from the first. After he hadstarted my thoughts he might sing rapture after rapture of his youngand ardent sense. For me the spirit of a world not his whispered, "_Ate convien tenere altro viaggio_, " and little as I knew it, in myvague exploration of that scene of beauty, of those scarcely stirring, stilly burning trees, of that shimmering-fronded fern, of that mistysplendour, I was hunting for the soul of it all, for the informingspirit of it all. Harkness's erotics gave ardour to my search, but noclew. I lost him, left him behind, and never found him again. He fellinto the Garden of Priapus, I doubt. As for me, I believed that I wasnow looking upon a Dryad. I was looking certainly at a spiritinformed. A being, irradiate and quivering with life and joy of life, stood dipt to the breast in the brake; stood so, bathing in the light;stood so, preening herself like a pigeon on the roof-edge, and saw meand took no heed. 

She had appeared, or had been manifest to me, quite suddenly. At onemoment I saw the avenue of lit green, at another she was dipt in it. Icould describe her now, at this distance of time--a radiant youngfemale thing, fiercely favoured, smiling with a fierce joy, with agleam of fierce light in her narrowed eyes. Upon her body and face wasthe hue of the sun's red beam; her hair, loose and fanned out behindher head, was of the colour of natural silk, but diaphanous as well asburnished, so that while the surfaces glittered like spun glass thedeeps of it were translucent and showed the fire behind. Her garmentwas thin and grey, and it clung to her like a bark, seemed to growupon her as a creeping stone-weed grows. Harkness would have admiredthe audacity of her shape, as I did; but I found nothing provocativein it. As well might a boy have enamoured himself of a slim tree as ofthat unearthly shaft of beauty. 

I said that she preened herself; the word is inexact. She rather stoodbathing in the light, motionless but for the lifting of her face intoit that she might dip, or for the bending of her head that the warmthbehind her might strike upon the nape of her neck. Those were all hermovements, slowly rehearsed, and again and again rehearsed. With eachof them she thrilled anew; she thrilled and glowed responsive to theplay of the light. I don't know whether she saw me, though it seemedto me that our looks had encountered. If her eyes had taken me in Ishould have known it, I think; and if I had known it I should havequailed and looked at her no more. So shamefaced was I, soself-conscious, that I can be positive about that; for far fromavoiding her I watched her intently, studied her in all her parts, andfound out some curious things. 

Looking at her beside the oaks, for instance, whence she must haveemanated, I could judge why it was that I had not seen her come out. Her colouring was precisely that of her background. Her garment, smockor frock or vest as you will, was grey-green like the oak stems, herwhites were those of the sky-gleams, her roses those of the sun'srays. The maze of her hair could hardly be told from the photosphere. I tested this simply and summarily. Shutting my eyes for a second, when I opened them she was gone. Shutting them again and opening, there she was, sunning herself, breathing deep and long, watching herown beauties as the light played with them. I tried this many timesand it did not fail me. I could, with her assistance, bring her uponmy retina or take her off it, as if I had worked a shutter across myeyes. But as I watched her so I got very excited. Her business was somysterious, her pleasure in it so absorbing; she was visible and yetsecret; I was visible, and yet she could be ignorant of it. I got thesame throbbing sort of interest out of her as many and many a time Ihave got since out of watching other wild creatures at their affairs, crouching hidden where they could not discern me by any of theirsenses. Few things enthral me more than that--and here I had my firsttaste of it. I remember that my heart beat, I remember that Itrembled. Nothing could have torn me from the spot but what preciselydid, an alien intervention. The besotted Harkness stopped short inhis recital and asked me what I was staring at. 

That was the end of it. I had rather have died than tell him. PerhapsI was afraid of his mockery, perhaps I dared not risk his unbelief, perhaps I felt ashamed that I had been prying, perhaps I grudged himthe sight of her moulded beauty and keen wild face. "What am I staringat? Why, nothing, " I said. I got up and put the strap of my schoolsatchel over my head. I never looked for her again before I walkedaway. Whether she left when I left, whether she was really there or aprojection of my mind, whether my inner self, my prisoner, had seenher, or my schoolboy self through his agency, whether it was a trickof the senses, a dream, or the like I can't tell you. I only know thatI have now recalled exactly what I seemed to see, and that I have seenher since--her or her co-mate--once or twice. 

I can account for her now easily enough. I can assure myself that shewas really there, that she, or the like of her, pervades, haunts, indwells all such places; but it seems that there must be a rightrelation between the seer and the object before the unseen can becomethe seen. Put it like this, that form is a necessary convention of ourbeing, a mode of consciousness just as space is, just as time, justas rhythm are; then it is clear enough that the spirits of naturalfact must take on form and sensible body before we can apprehend them. They take on such form for us or such body through our means; that iswhat I mean by a right relation between them and ourselves. Now somepersons have the faculty of discerning spirits, that is, of clothingthem in bodily form, and others have not; but of those who have it alldo not discern them in the same form, or clothe them in the same body. The form will be rhythmical to some, to other some audible, to othersyet again odorous, "aromatic pain, " or bliss. These modes are nomatter, they are accidents of our state. They cause the form to berelative, just as the conception of God is; but the substance isconstant. I have seen innumerable spirits, but always in bodily form. I have never perceived them by means of any other sense, such ashearing, though sight has occasionally been assisted by hearing. Ifduring an orchestral symphony you look steadily enough at one musicianor another you can always hear his instrument above the rest andfollow his part in the symphony. In the same way when I look at fairythrongs I can hear them sing. If I single out one of them forobservation I hear him or her sing--not words, never words; they havenone. I saw once, like a driven cloud, the spirits of the North-westwind sweep down the sky over the bare ridge of a chalk down, wingedand shrouded, eager creatures, embattled like a host. They were greyand dun-coloured, pale in the face. Their hair swept forward, notback; for it seemed as if the wind in gusts went faster thanthemselves, and was driving them faster than they could go. Anothermight well have heard these beings like a terrible, rushing music, ascries of havoc or desolation, wild peals of laughter, fury andexultation. But to me they were inaudible. I heard the volleying ofthe wind, but them I saw. So in the still ecstasy of that Dryadbathing in light I saw, beyond doubt, what the Greeks called by thatname, what some of them saw; and I saw it in their mode, although atthe time of seeing I knew nothing of them or their modes, because ithappened to be also my mode. But so far I did not more than see her, for though I haunted the place where she had been she never came thereagain, nor never showed herself. It became to me sacred ground, wherewith awed breath I could say, "Here indeed she stood and bathedherself. Here I really saw her, and she me;" and I encompassed it witha fantastic cult of my own invention. It may have been very comic, orvery foolish, but I don't myself think it was either, because it wasso sincere, and because the impulse to do it came so naturally. I usedto bare my head; I made a point of saving some of my luncheon (whichI took with me to school) that I might leave it there. It was realsacrifice that, because I had a fine appetite, and it was pureworship. In my solitary hours, which were many, I walked with her ofcourse, talked and played with her. But that was another thing, imagination, or fancy, and I don't remember anything of what we saidor did. It needs to be carefully distinguished from the firstapparition with which imagination, having nothing whatever to proceedupon, had nothing whatever to do. One thing, however, I do remember, that our relations were entirely sexless; and, as I write, anothercomes into mind. I saw no affinity between her and the creature of myfirst discovery. It never occurred to me to connect the two eitherpositively, as being inhabitants of a world of their own, ornegatively, as not being of my world. I was not a reflective boy, butmy mind proceeded upon flashes, by leaps of intuition. When I wasmoved I could conceive anything, everything; when I was unmoved I wasas dull as a clod. It was idle to tell me to think. I could only thinkwhen I was moved from within to think. That made me the despair of myfather and the vessel of my schoolmaster's wrath. So here I saw norelationship whatsoever between the two appearances. Now, of course, Ido. I see now that both were fairies, informed spirits of certaintimes or places. For time has a spirit as well as space. But more ofthis in due season. I am not synthesising now but recording. One hadbeen merely curious, the other for a time enthralled me. The first hadbeen made when I was too young to be interested. The second found memore prepared, and seeded in my brain for many a day. Gradually, however, it too faded as fancy began to develop within me. I took towriting, I began to fall in love; and at fifteen I went to aboarding-school. Farewell, then, to rewards and fairies!

THE GODS IN THE SCHOOLHOUSE

Who am I to treat of the private affairs of my betters, to evoke yourfragrant names, Félicité, Perpetua, loves of my tender youth? Shall Iforget thee, Emilia, thy slow smile and peering brown eyes of mischiefor appeal? Rosy Lauretta, or thee, whom I wooed desperately from afar, lured by thy buxom wellbeing, thy meek and schooled replies? And if Iforget you not, how shall I explore you as maladies, trace out thestages of your conquest as if you were spores? Never, never. Worshipwent up from me to you, and worship is religion, and religion issacred. So, my dears, were you, each of you in your turn, sacred inyour shrines. Before each of you in turn I fell down, suddenly, "_Comecorpo morto cadde_. " And to each of you in turn I devoted those wakinghours which fancy had hitherto claimed of me. Yet this I do feel freeto say, by leave of you ladies, that calf-love has not the educativevalue of the genuine passion. It is blind worship by instinct; it is asign of awakening sense, but it is not its awakener. It is a lovelything as all quick or burning growth is, but it has little relationto the soul, and our Northern state is the more gracious thatconsummation of it is not feasible. Apart from the very obviousdrawbacks there is one not quite so obvious: I mean the earlyexhaustion of imaginative sympathy. Love, indeed, is an affair ofmaturity. I don't believe that a man, in this country, can love beforeforty or a woman before thirty-five. They may marry before that andhave children; and they will love their children, but very rarely eachother. I am thinking now of love at its highest rating, as thatpassion which is able to lift a man to the highest flight of which thesoul is capable here on earth--a flight, mind you, which it may takewithout love, as the poet's takes it, or the musician's, but which theordinary man's can only take by means of love. Calf-love is wholly asex matter, perfectly natural, mostly harmless, and nearly always abeautiful thing, to be treated tenderly by the wise parent. 

In my own case my mother treated it so, with a tact and a reverentialhandling which only good women know, and I had it as I had mumps andmeasles, badly, with a high temperature and some delirium but with noaggravation from outside. It ran its course or its courses and left mesane. One of its effects upon me was that it diverted the mind of myforensic self from the proceedings or aptitudes of my recondite. Ineither knew nor cared what my wayward tenant might be doing; indeed, so much was my natural force concerned in the heart-affair of themoment that the other wretch within me lay as it were bound in adungeon. He never saw the light. The sun to him was dark and silentwas the moon. There, in fact, he remained for some five or six years, while sex pricked its way into me intent upon the making of a man. He, maybe, was to have something to say to that, something to do withit--but not yet. 

So much for calf-love; but now for a more important matter. I left theGrammar School at S----, at the age when boys usually go to theirHarrow and Winchester, as well equipped, I daresay, as most boys of myyears; for with the rudiments I had been fairly diligent, and withsome of them even had become expert. I was well grounded in Latin andFrench grammar, and in English literature was far ahead of boys mucholder than myself. Looking back now upon the drilling I had at S----, I consider it was well done; but I have to set against the benefits Igot from the system the fact that I had much privacy and all thechance which that gives a boy to educate himself withal. My schoolhours limited my intercourse with the school world. Before and afterthem I could develop at my own pace and in my own way--and I did. Ibelieve that when I went to my great school I had the makings of aninteresting lad in me; but I declare upon my conscience that it wasthat place only which checked the promise for ten years or more, andmight have withered it altogether. 

My father was an idealist of 1851; he showed the enthusiasm and nursedin his bosom the hopes and beliefs of the promoters of theInternational Exhibition of that year. There was a plentiful plantingof foreign stock in England after that, and one of its weedy saplingswas an International Education Company, which out of a magniloquentprospectus and some too-confident shareholders bore one fruit, theLondon International College at Spring Grove. It never came tomaturity, and is now dropped and returned to the ground of all suchschemes. I suppose it had been on the stalk some fifteen years when Iwent to feed of it. 

The scheme, in fact, sprang out of enthusiasm and had no bottom inexperience. It may be true that all men are brothers, but it is notlogical to infer from that that all brothers are the better for eachother's society. The raw Brazilians, Chilians, Nicaraguans and whatnot who were drawn from their native forests and plunged into thecompany of blockish Yorkshire lads, or sharp-faced London boys, wereonly scared into rebellion and to demonstration after their manner. They used the knife sometimes; they hardly ever assimilated; and theytaught us nothing that we were the better of knowing. Quite thecontrary. We taught them football, I think, and I remember a negrofrom Bermuda, a giant of a fellow who raged over the ground like agoaded bull when that game was being played, to the consternation ofhis opponents. He had a younger brother with inordinately long arms, like a great lax ape, a cheerful, grinning, harmless creature as Iremember him. He was a football player too; his hug was that of anoctopus which swallowed you all. As for the English, in return fortheir football lore they received the gift of tobacco. I learned tosmoke at fifteen from a Chilian called Perez, a wizened, preternaturally wise, old youth. Nobody in the world could have beenwise as he looked, and nobody else in the school as dull as he reallywas. Over this motley assembly was set as house-master a ferociousScotchman of great parts, but no discretion; and there wereassistants, too, of scholarship and refinement, who, if they had hadthe genius for education, without which these things are nothing, might have put humanity into some of us. When it was past the time Idiscovered this, and one of them became my friend and helper. I thendiscovered the tragedy of our system from the other side. For thepain is a two-edged sword, and imbrues the breast of the pedagogueeven while it bleeds the pupil to inanition. That poor man, scholar, gentleman, humourist, poet, as he was, held boys in terror. Hemisdoubted them; they made him self-conscious, betrayed him intostrange hidden acts of violence, rendered him incapable of instructionexcept of the most conventional kind. All his finer nature, hishumanism, was paralysed. We thought him a poor fool, and got a crudeentertainment out of his antics. Actually he was tormenting in aflame; and we thought his contortions ridiculous. God help us all, howare we to get at each other, caged creatures as we are! But this isindeed a tragic business, and I don't want you to tear your hair. 

I remained at Spring Grove, I think, four or five years, a barren, profitless time. I remember scarcely one gleam of interest whichpierced for more than a few moments the thick gloom of it. The cruel, dull, false gods of English convention (for thought it is not) held mefast; masters and pupils alike were jailers to me. I ate and drank oftheir provision and can recall still with nausea the sour, staletaste, and still choke with the memory of the chaff and grit of itsquality. Accursed, perverse generation! God forbid that any child ofmine should suffer as I suffered, starve as I starved, stray where Iwas driven to stray. The English boarding-school system is that of thestraw-yard where colts are broken by routine, and again of thefarmyard where pups are walked. Drill in school, _laissez-faire_ outof it. It is at once too dull and too indolent to recognise characteror even to look for it; it recks nothing of early development or late;it measures young humanity for its class-rooms like a tailor, with theyard measure. The discipline of boy over boy is, as might be expected, brutal or bestial. The school-yard is taken for the world in small, and so allowed to be. There is no thought taken, or at least betrayed, that it is nothing more than a preparation for the world at large. There is no reason, however, to suppose that the International Collegewas worse than any other large boarding-school. I fancy, indeed, thatit was in all points like the rest. There were no traces in my time ofthe Brotherhood of Man about it. A few Portuguese, a negro or two werethere, and a multitude of Jews. But I fancy I should have found thesame sort of thing at Eton. 

I was not in any sense suited to such a place as this; if I had beensent to travel it had been better for me. I was "difficult, " notbecause I was stiff but because I was lax. I resisted nothing exceptby inertia. If my parents did not know me--and how should they?--if Idid not know myself, and I did not, my masters, for their part, madeno attempt to know me nor even inquired whether there might beanything to know. I was unpopular, as might have been expected, madeno friends, did no good. My brother, on the other hand, was an idealschoolboy, diligent, brisk, lovable, abounding in friendships, good athis work and excellent at his play. His career at Spring Grove was onelong happy triumph, and he deserved it. He has a charming nature, andis one of the few naturally holy persons I know. Wholesome, thank God, we all are, or could be; pious we nearly all are; but holiness is arare quality. 

If I were to try and set down here the really happy memories which Ihave of Spring Grove they would be three. The first was the revelationof Greece which was afforded me by Homer and Plato. The surging musicand tremendous themes of the poet, the sweet persuasion of the sophistwere a wonder and delight. I remember even now the thrill with which Iheard my form-master translate for us the prayer with which the_Phædrus_ closes: "Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt thisplace.... " Beloved Pan! My knowledge of Pan was of the vaguest, andyet more than once or twice did I utter that prayer wandering alonethe playing field, or watching the evening mist roll down the ThamesValley and blot up the elm trees, thick and white, clinging to the daylike a fleece. The third Iliad again I have never forgotten, nor thetwenty-fourth; nor the picture of the two gods, like vulture birds, watching the battle from the dead tree. Nor, again, do I ever fail torecapture the beat of the heart with which I apprehended some ofHomer's phrases: "Sandy Pylos, " Argos "the pasture land of horses, " or"clear-seen" Ithaca. These things happened upon by chance in the dustyclass-room, in the close air of that terrible hour from two to three, were as the opening of shutters to the soul, revealing blue distances, dim fields, or the snowy peaks of mountains in the sun. One seemed tolift, one could forget. It lasted but an instant; but time is of noaccount to the inner soul, of no more account than it is to God. Ihave never forgotten these moments of escape; nor can I leave Homerwithout confessing that his books became my Bible. I accepted histheology implicitly; I swallowed it whole. The Godhead of theOlympians, the lesser divinity of Thetis and Alpheios and Xanthos wereindisputable. They were infinitely more real to me than the deities ofmy own land; and though I have found room for these later on in life, it has not been by displacing the others. Nor is there any need forthat, so far as I see. I say that out of Homer I took his Gods; I addthat I took them instantly. I seemed to breathe the air of theirbreath; they appealed to my reason; I knew that they had existed anddid still exist. I was not shocked or shaken in my faith, either, byanything I read about them. Young as I was and insipient, I wasprepared for what is called the burlesque Olympus of the Iliad, sogrievous to Professor Murray. I think I recognised then, what seemsperfectly plain to me now, that you might as well think meanly of aGod of Africa because the natives make him of a cocoanut on a stick, as of Zeus and Hera because Homer says that they played peccanthusband and jealous wife. If Homer halted it is rash to assume thatHephaistos did. The pathetic fallacy has crept in here. Mythology wasone of the few subjects I diligently read at school, and all I got outof it was pure profit--for I realised that the Gods' world was notours, and that when their natures came in conflict with ours some suchinterpretation must always be put upon their victory. We have a morallaw for our mutual wellbeing which they have not. We translate theirdeeds in terms of that law of ours, and it certainly appears like astanding fact of Nature that when the beings of one order come intocommerce with those of another the result will be tragic. There isonly a harmony in acquiescence, and the way to that is one of bloodand tears. 

Brooding over all this I discerned dimly, even in that dusty, brawlingplace, and time showed me more and more clearly, that I had alwaysbeen aware of the Gods and conscious of their omnipresence. It seemedplain to me that Zeus, whose haunt is dark Dodona, lorded it over theEnglish skies and was to be heard in the thunder crashing over theelms of Middlesex. I knew Athené in the shrill wind which battledthrough the vanes and chimneys of our schoolhouse. Artemis was Lady ofmy country. By Apollo's light might I too come to be led. Poseidon ofthe dark locks girdled my native seas. I had had good reason to knowthe awfulness of Pan, and guessed that some day I should couch withKoré the pale Queen. I called them by these names, since these namesexpressed to me their essence: you may call them what you will, and somight I, for I had not then reasoned with myself about names. By theirnames I knew them. The Gods were there, indeed, ignorantly worshippedby all and sundry. Then the Dryad of my earlier experience came upagain, and I saw that she stood in such a relation to the Gods as Idid, perhaps, to the Queen of England; that she, no less than they, was part of a wonderful order, and the visible expression of thespirit of some Natural Fact. But whether above all the Gods andnations of men and beasts there were one God and Father of us all, whether all Nature were one vast synthesis of Spirit havinginnumerable appearance but one soul, I did not then stay to inquire, and am not now prepared to say. I don't mean by that at all that Idon't believe it. I do believe it, but by an act of religion; forthere are states of the individual mind, states of impersonal soul inwhich this belief is a positive truth, in the which one exults madly, or by it is humbled to the dust. Religion, to my mind, is the resultof this consciousness of kinship with the principle of Life; all theemotion and moral uplifting involved in this tremendous certainty, andall the lore gathered and massed about it--this is Religion. Young asI was at the time I now speak of, ignorant and dumb as I was, I had mymoments of exultation and humility, --moments so wild that I wastransported out of myself. I left my body supine in its narrow bed andsoared above the stars. At such times, in an æther so deep that theblue of it looked like water, I seemed to see the Gods themselves, ashining row of them, upon the battlements of Heaven. I called HeavenOlympus, and conceived of Olympus as a towered city upon a white hill. Looming up out of the deep blue arch, it was vast and covered thewhole plateau: I saw the walls of it run up and down the ridges, inand out of the gorges which cut into the mass. It had gates, but Inever saw forms of any who entered or left it. It was full of light, and had the look of habitancy about it; but I saw no folk. Only atrare moments of time while I hovered afar off looking at the wonderand radiance of it, the Gods appeared above the battlements in ashining row--still and awful, each of them ten feet high. 

These were fine dreams for a boy of sixteen in a schoolhousedormitory. They were mine, though: but I dreamed them awake. I awokebefore they began, always, and used to sit up trembling and wait forthem. 

An apologue, if you please. On the sacred road from Athens to Eleusis, about midway of its course, and just beyond the pass, there is a forkin it, and a stony path branches off and leads up into the hills. There, in the rock, is a shallow cave, and before that, where once wasan altar of Aphrodite, the ruins of her shrine and precinct may beseen. As I was going to Eleusis the other day, I stopped the carriageto visit the place. Now, beside the cave is a niche, cut square in theface of the rock, for offerings; and in that niche I found a freshbunch of field flowers, put there by I know not what dusty-footwayfarer. That was no longer ago than last May, and the man who didthe piety was a Christian, I suppose. So do I avow myself, withoutderogation, I hope, to the profession; for no more than Mr. RobertKirk, a minister of religion in Scotland in the seventeenth century, do I consider that a knowledge of the Gods is incompatible with beliefin God. There is a fine distinction for you: I believe that Godexists; I infer him by reason stimulated by desire. But I know thatthe Gods exist by other means than those. If I could be as sure of Godas I am of the Gods, I might perhaps be a better Christian, but Ishould not believe any less in the Gods. 

 * * * * *

I found religion through Homer: I found poetry through Milton, whose_Comus_ we had to read for examination by some learned Board. If anyone thing definitely committed me to poesy it was that poem; and ashas nearly always happened to me, the crisis of discovery came in aflash. We were all there ranked at our inky desks on some drowsyafternoon. The books lay open before us, the lesson, I suppose, prepared. But what followed had not been prepared--that some one beganto read:

 "The star that bids the shepherd fold Now the top of Heav'n doth hold; And the gilded car of day His glowing axle doth allay In the steep Atlantic stream"--

and immediately, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, it waschanged--for me--from verse to poetry; that is, from a jingle to asignificant fact. It was more than it appeared; it was transfigured;its implication was manifest. That's all I can say--except this, that, untried as I was, I jumped into the poetic skin of the thing, and feltas if I had written it. I knew all about it, "_e'l chi, e'l quale_"; Iwas privy to its intricacy; I caught without instruction thealternating beat in the second line, and savoured all the good words, _gilded car_, _glowing axle_, _Star that bids the shepherd fold_. _Allay_ ravished me, young as I was. I knew why he had called theAtlantic stream _steep_, and remembered Homer's "Στυγὸς ὔδατος αἰπὰῥέεθρα. " Good soul, our pedagogue suggested _deep_! I remember to thishour the sinking of the heart with which I heard him. But the flashpassed and darkness again gathered about me, the normal darkness ofthose hateful days. "Sabrina fair" lifted it; my sky showed me anamber shaft. I am recording moments, the reader will remember, the fewgleams which visited me in youth. I was far from the time when I couldconnect them, see that poetry was the vesture of religion, the wovengarment whereby we see God. Love had to teach me that. I was not bornuntil I loved. 

My third happy memory is of a brief and idyllic attachment, veryfervent, very romantic, entirely my own, and as I remember it, now, entirely beautiful. Nothing remains but the fragrance of it, and itsdream-like quality, the sense I have of straying with the belovedthrough a fair country. Such things assure me that I was not whollydead during those crushing years of servitude. 

But those are, as I say, gleams out of the dark. They comfort me withthe thought that the better part of me was not dead, but buried herewith the worse. They point also to the truth, as I take it to be, thatthe lack of privacy is one of the most serious detriments ofpublic-school life. I don't say that privacy is good for all boys, orthat it is good for any unless they are provided with a pursuit. It istrue that many boys seek to be private that they may be vicious, andthat the having the opportunity for privacy leads to vice. But that isnearly always the fault of the masters. Vice is due to the need formental or material excitement; it is a crude substitute for romance. If a boy is debarred from good romance, because he doesn't feel it orhasn't been taught to feel it, he will take to bad. It is nothing elseat all: he is bored. And remembering that a boy can only think of onething at a time, the single aim of the master should be to give everyboy in his charge some sane interest which he can pursue to the death, as a terrier chases a smell, in and out, up and down, every nerve bentand quivering. There is a problem of the teaching art which theCollege at Spring Grove made no attempt to solve while I was there. You either played football and cricket or you were negligible. I wasbad at both, was negligible, and neglected. 

I suspect that my experiences are very much those of other people, andthat is why I have taken the trouble to articulate them, and perhapsto make them out more coherent than they were. We don't feel in imagesor think in words. The images are about us, the words may be at hand;but it may well be that we are better without them. This world is atight fit, and life in it, as the Duke said of one day of his ownlife, is "a devilish close-run thing. " If the blessed Gods and thelegions of the half-gods in their habit as they live, were to be asclear to us as our neighbour Tom or our chief at the office, whatmight be the lot of Tom's wife, or what the security of our high stoolat the desk? As things are, our blank misgivings are put down tonerves, our yearning for wings to original sin. The policeman at thestreet corner sees to it, for our good, that we put out of sight thesethings, and so we grow rich and make a good appearance. It is onlywhen we are well on in years that we can afford to be precise and, looking back, to remember the celestial light, the glory and thefreshness of the dream in which we walked and bathed ourselves. 

THE SOUL AT THE WINDOW

When I had been in London a year or two, and the place with its hordeswas become less strange and less formidable to me, I began to discoverit for myself. Gradually the towering cliffs resolved themselves intohouses, and the houses into shrouded holds, each with character andeach hiding a mystery. They now stood solitary which had before beenan agglutinated mass. Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.... I knewone from the other by sight, and had for each a specific sensation ofattraction or repulsion, of affection or terror. I read through theshut doors, I saw through the blank windows; not a house upon my dailyroad but held a drama or promised a tragedy. I had no sense for comedyin those days; life to me, waking life, was always a dreadful thing. And sometimes my bodily eyes had glimpses which confirmed myfancy--unexpected, sudden and vivid flashes behind curtained windows. I once saw two men fighting, shadowed black upon a white blind. I oncelooked out of a window at the Army and Navy Stores into a meanbedroom across the way. There was a maidservant in there, making beds, emptying slops, tidying this and that. Quite suddenly she threw herhead up with a real despair, and next moment she was on her knees bythe bed. Praying! I never saw prayer like that in this country. Thesoul went streaming from her mouth like blown smoke. And again, onenight, very late, I was going to bed, and leaned out of my window forair. Before me, across back yards, leafless trees, and a litter ofpacking-cases and straw, rose up a dark rampart of houses, in themidst of it a lit window. I saw a poorly furnished sitting-room--atable with a sewing machine, a paraffin lamp, a chair with anantimacassar. A man in his shirt sleeves sat there by the table, smoking a pipe. Then the door opened and a tall, slim woman came in, all in white, with loose dark hair floating about her shoulders. Shestood between door and table and rested her hand upon the edge of thetable. The man, after a while of continuing to read, quite suddenlylooked up and saw her. They looked at each other motionless. He castdown his paper, sprang up and went to her. He fell to his knees beforeher and clasped hers. She looked across, gravely considering, thenlaid her hand upon his head. That was all. I saw no more. Husband andwife? Mother and son? Sinner and Saviour? What do I know?

As with the houses, homes of mystery, so with the men and women onepassed; homes, they too, of things hidden yet more deep. The noise ofthe streets, at first paralysing, died down to a familiar rumble, andthe ear began to distinguish voices in the tide. Sounds of crying, calls for help, hailings, laughter, tears, separated themselves andappealed. You heard them, like the cries of the drowning, drifting byyou upon a dark tide-way. You could do nothing; a word would havebroken the spell. The mask which is always over the face would havecovered the tongue or throttled the larynx. You could do nothing buthear. 

Finally, the passing faces became sometimes penetrable, betrayed bysome chance gleam of the eyes, some flicker of the lips, a secret tobe shared, or conveyed by a hint some stabbing message out of the deepinto the deep. That is what I mean by the soul at the window. Everyone of us lives in a guarded house; door shut, windows curtained. Nowand then, however, you look up above the street level and catch aglimpse of the scared prisoner inside. He may be a satyr, a fairy, anape or an angel; he's a prisoner anyhow, who sometimes comes to thewindow and looks strangely out. You may see him there by chance, saying to himself like Chaucer's Creseyde in the temple, "Ascaunces, What! May I not stonden here?" And I found out for myself that thereis scarcely a man or woman alive who does not hold such a tenant moreor less deeply within his house. 

Sometimes the walls of the house are transparent, like a frog's foot, and you see the prisoner throbbing and quivering inside. This is rare. Shelley's house must have been a filmy tenement of the kind. Withchildren--if you catch them young enough--it is more common. Iremember one whom I used to see nearly every day, the child of poorparents, who kept a green-grocer's shop in Judd Street, Saint Pancras, a still little creature moving about in worlds not recognised. She wasslim and small, fair-haired, honey-coloured, her eyes wells of blue. Iused to see her standing at the door of the shop, amid baskets ofgreen stuff, crimsoned rhubarb, pyramided dates, and what not. I neversaw her dirty or untidy, nor heard her speak, nor saw her laugh. Shestood or leaned at the lintel, watching I know not what, but certainlynot anything really there, as we say. She appeared to be lookingthrough objects rather than at them. I can describe it no otherwisethan that I, or another, crossed her field of vision and was consciousthat her eyes met mine and yet did not see me. To me she was instantlyremarkable, not for this and not for any beauty she had--for she wasnot at all extraordinary in that quality--but for this, that she wasnot of our kind. Surrounded by other children, playing gaily, circlingabout her, she was _sui generis_. She carried her own atmosphere, whereby in the company of others she seemed unaccountable, by herselfonly, normal. Nature she fitted perfectly, but us she did not fit. Now, it is a curious thing, accepted by all visionaries, that asupernatural being, a spirit, fairy, not-human creature, if you see itamong animals, beasts and birds, on hills or in the folds of hills, among trees, by waters, in fields of flowers, _looks at home_ andevidently is so. The beasts are conscious of it, know it and have nofear of it; the hills and valleys are its familiar places in a waywhich they will never be to the likes of us. But put a man beside itand it becomes at once supernatural. I have seen spirits, beings, whatever they may be, in empty space, and have observed them as partof the landscape, no more extraordinary than grazing cattle orwheeling plover. Again I have seen a place thick with them, as thickas a London square in a snow-storm, and a man walk clean through themunaware of their existence, and make them, by that act, a mockery ofthe senses. So precisely it was with this strange child, unreal to mewhen she was real to everybody else. 

She had a name, a niche in the waking world. Marks, Greengrocer, wasthe inscription of the shop. She was Elsie Marks. Her father was astout, florid man of maybe fifty years, with a chin-beard andlight-blue eyes. Good-humoured he seemed, and prosperous, something ofa ready wit, a respected and respectable man, who stamped his wayabout the solid ground in a way which defied dreams. 

If I had been experienced, I should have remarked the mother, but infact I barely remember her, though I spoke with her one day. She wassomewhat heavy and grave, I think, downcast and yet watchful. She didher business efficiently, without enthusiasm, and did not enter intogeneral conversation with her customers. Her husband did that part ofthe business. Marks was a merry Jew. I bought oranges of her once forthe sake of hearing her speak, and while she was serving me the childcame into the shop and stood by her. She leaned against her ratherthan stood, took the woman's disengaged arm and put it round her neck. Looks passed between them; the mother's sharply down, the child'ssearchingly up. On either side there was pain, as if each tried toread the other. 

I was very shy with strangers. The more I wanted to get on terms withthem the less I was able to do it. I asked the child whether she likedoranges. 

I asked the child, but the mother answered me, measuring her words. 

"She likes nothing of ours. It's we that like and she that takes. "That was her reply. 

"I am sure that she likes you at any rate, " I said. Her hold on thechild tightened, as if to prevent an escape. 

"She should, since I bore her. But she has much to forgive me. "

Such a word left me dumb. I was not then able to meet women on suchterms. Nor did I then understand her as I do now. 

Here is another case. There was a slatternly young woman whom Icaught, or who caught me, unawares; who suddenly threw open thewindows and showed me things I had never dreamed. 

Opposite the chambers in R---- Buildings where I worked, or wasintended to work, and across a wall, there was a row of tenementscalled, if I remember, Gaylord's Rents. Part mews, part warehouses, and all disreputable, the upper story of it, as it showed itself to meover the wall, held some of the frowsiest of London's horde. Exactlybefore my eyes was one of the lowest of these hovels, the upper partof a stable, I imagine, since it had, instead of a window, a door, ofwhich half was always shut and half always open, so that light mightget in or the tenants lean out to take the air. 

Here, and so leaning her bare elbows, I saw on most days of the week aslim young woman airing herself--a pale-faced, curling-papered, half-bodiced, unwashed drab of a girl, who would have had shamewritten across her for any one to read if she had not seemed of allwomen I have ever seen the least shamefaced. Her brows were asunwritten as a child's, her smile as pure as a seraph's, and her eyesblue, unfaltering and candid. She laughed a greeting, exchangedgossip, did her sewing, watched events, as the case might be, was notconscious of her servitude or anxious to market it. Sometimes sheshared her outlook with an old woman--a horrible, greasy go-between, with straggling grey hair and a gin-inflamed face. She chatted withthis beldame happily, she cupped her vile old dewlap, or stroked herdishonourable head; sometimes a man in shirt sleeves was with her, treated her familiarly, with rude embraces, with kisses, nudges andleers. She accepted all with good-humour and, really, complete goodbreeding. She invited nothing, provoked nothing, but resented nothing. It seemed to me as if all these things were indeed nothing to her;that she hardly knew that they were done; as if her soul could renderthem at their proper worth, transmute them, sherd them off, discardthem. It was, then, her surface which took them; what her soulreceived was a distillation, an essence. 

Then one night I had all made plain. She entranced me on a summernight of stillness, under a full yellow moon. I was working late, tillpast ten, past eleven o'clock, and looking out of my open windowsuddenly was aware of her at hers. The shutter was down, both wings ofit, and she stood hovering, seen at full length, above the street. She! Could this be she? It was so indeed--but she was transfigured, illuminated from within; she rayed forth light. The moon shone fullupon her, and revealed her pure form from head to foot swathed infilmy blue--a pale green-blue, the colour of ocean water seen frombelow. Translucent webbery, whatever it was, it showed her beneath itas bare as Venus was when she fared forth unblemished from the sea. Her pale yellow hair was coiled above her head; her face looked mildand radiant with a health few Londoners know. Her head was bent in aconsidering way; she stood as one who is about to plunge into deepwater, and stands hesitating at the shock. Once or twice she turnedher face up, to bathe it in the light. I saw that in it which in humanfaces I had never seen--communion with things hidden from men, secretknowledge shared with secret beings, assurance of power above ourhopes. 

Breathless I watched her, the drab of my daily observation, radiantnow; then as I watched she stretched out her arms and bent themtogether like a shield so that her burning face was hidden from me, and without falter or fury launched herself into the air, and droptslowly down out of my sight. 

Exactly so she did it. As we may see a pigeon or chough high on theverge of a sea-cliff float out into the blue leagues of the air, anddrift motionless and light--or descend to the sea less by gravity thanat will--so did she. There was nothing premeditated, there was nothingdetermined on: mood was immediately translated into ability--she wasat will lighter or heavier than the air. It was so done that here wasno shock at all--she in herself foreshadowed the power she had. Rather, it would have been strange to me if, irradiated, transplendentas she was, she had not considered her freedom and on the instantindulged it. I accepted her upon her face value without question--Idid not run out to spy upon her. _Ecce unus fortior me!_

In this case, being still new to the life into which I was graduallybeing drawn, it did not for one moment occur to me to start anadventure of my own. I might have accosted the woman, who was, as thesaying goes, anybody's familiar; or I might have spied for anotherexcursion of her spirit, and, with all preparation made, have followedher. But I did neither of these things at the time. I saw her nextday leaning bare-elbowed on the ledge of her half-door, her hair incurl-papers, her face the pale unwholesome pinched oval of most Londonwomen of her class. Her bodice was pinned across her chest; she wascoarse-aproned, new from the wash-tub or the grate. Not a sign uponher but told of her frowsy round. The stale air of foul lodgment wasupon her. I found out indeed this much about her ostensible state, that she was the wife of a cab-driver whose name was Ventris. He wasan ill-conditioned, sottish fellow who treated her badly, but hadgiven her a child. But he was chiefly on night-work at Euston, and theman whom I had seen familiar with her in the daytime was not he. Herreputation among her neighbours was not good. She was, in fact, nobetter than she should be--or, as I prefer to put it, no better thanshe could be. 

Yet I knew her, withal, as of the fairy-kind, bound to thisearth-bondage by some law of the Universe not yet explored; notpitiable because not self-pitying, and (what is more important) notreprehensible because impossible to be bound, as we are, soul to body. I know that now, but did not know it then; and yet--extraordinarything--I was never shocked by the contrast between her two states ofbeing. This is to me a clear and certain evidence of theirreality--just as it is evidence to me that when, at ten years old, Iseemed to see the boy in the wood, I really did see him. Anhallucination or a dream upsets your moral balance. The thingsimpressed upon you are abnormal; and the abnormal disturbs you. Nowthese apparitions did not seem abnormal. I saw nothing wonderful inMrs. Ventris's act. I was impressed by it, I was excited by it, as Istill am by a convulsion of nature--a thunder-storm in the Alps, forinstance, a water-spout at sea. Such things hold beauty and terror;they entrance, they appal; but they never shock. They happen, and theyare right. I have not seen what people call a ghost, and I have oftenbeen afraid lest I should see one. But I know very well that if ever Idid I should have no fear. I know very well that a natural factimpresses its conformity with law upon you first and last. It becomes, on the moment of its appearance, a part of the landscape. If it doesnot, it is an hallucination, or a freak of the imagination, and willshock you. I have much more extraordinary experiences than this torelate, but there will be nothing shocking in these pages--at leastnothing which gave me the least sensation of shock. One of them--athing extraordinary to all--must occupy a chapter by itself. I cannotprecisely fit a date to it, though I shall try. And as it forms awhole, having a beginning, a middle and an end, I shall want todepart from my autobiographical plan and put it in as a whole. Thereader will please to recollect that it did not work itself out in myconsciousness by a flash. The first stages of it came so, in flashesof revelation; but the conclusion was of some years later, when I wasolder and more established in the world. 

 * * * * *

But before I embark upon it I should like to make a large jump forwardand finish with the young woman of Gaylord's Rents. It was by accidentthat I happened upon her at her mysteries, at a later day when I wasliving in London, in Camden Town. 

By that time I had developed from a lad of inarticulate mind andunexpressed desires into a sentient and self-conscious being. I wasmore or less of a man, not only adventurous but bold in the pursuit ofadventure. I lived for some two or three years in that sorry quarterof London in complete solitude--"in poverty, total idleness and thepride of literature, " like Doctor Johnson, for though I wrote little Iread much, and though I wrote little I was most conscious that I wasabout to write much. It was a period of brooding, of mewing my youth, and whatever facility of imagination and expression I have sinceattained I owe very much to my hermitage in Albert Street. 

If I walked in those days it was by night. London at night is a verydifferent place from the town of business and pleasure of ordinaryacquaintance. During the day I fulfilled my allotted hours at thedesk; but immediately they were over I returned to my lodgings, gotout my books, and sat enthralled until somewhere near midnight. Butthen, instead of going to bed, I was called by the night, and forth Isallied all agog. I walked the city, the embankment, skirted theparks, unless I were so fortunate as to slip in before gate-shutting. Often I was able to remain in Kensington Gardens till the openinghour. Highgate and its woods, Parliament Hill with its splendidpanorama of twinkling beacons and its noble tent of stars, were greatfields for me. Hampstead Heath, Wimbledon, even Richmond and Busheyhave known me at their most secret hour. Such experiences as I havehad of the preternatural will find their place in this book, but nottheir chronological place, for the simple reason that, as I kept nodiary, I cannot remember in what order of time they befell me. But itwas on the southern slope of Parliament Hill that I came again uponthe fairy-woman of Gaylord's Rents. 

I was there at midnight, a mild radiant night of late April. Therewere sheep at graze there, for though it was darkish under thethree-quarter moon, I was used to the dark, and could see them, awoolly mass, quietly feeding close together. I saw no shepherdanywhere; but I remember that his dog sat on his haunches apart, watching them. He was prick-eared, bright-eyed; he grinned and pantedintensely. I didn't then know why he was so excited, but very soon Idid. 

I became aware, gradually, that a woman stood among the sheep. She hadnot been there when I first saw them, I am sure; nor did I see herapproach them or enter their school. Yet there she was in the midst ofthem, seen now by me as she had evidently been seen for some time bythe dog, seen, I suppose, by the sheep--at any rate she stood in themidst of them, as I say, with her hand actually upon the shoulder ofone of them--but not feared or doubted by any soul of us. The dog wasvividly interested, but did not budge; the sheep went on feeding; Istood bolt upright, watching. 

I knew her the moment I saw her. She was the exquisitely formed, slimand glowing creature I had seen before, when she launched herself intothe night as a God of Homer--Hermes or Thetis--launched out fromOlympus' top into the sea--"ἐξ αἰθέρος ἔμπεσε πόντῳ, " and words failme to describe the perfection of her being, a radiant simulacrum ofour own, the inconscient self-sufficiency, the buoyancy and freedomwhich she showed me. You may sometimes see boys at their maddest tipof expectation stand waiting as she now stood, quivering on theextreme edge of adventure; yet even in their case there is aconsciousness of well being, a kind of rolling of anticipation uponthe palate, a getting of the flavours beforehand. That involves acertain dissipation of activity; but here all was concentrated. Thewhole nature of the creature was strung to one issue only, to thatpoint when she could fling headlong into activity--an activity inwhich every fibre and faculty would be used. A comparison of thefairy-kind with human beings is never successful, because into ourimages of human beings we always import self-consciousness. They knowwhat they are doing. Fairies do not. But wait a moment; there is areason. Human creatures, I think, know what they are doing only toowell, because performance never agrees with desire. They know whatthey are doing because it is never exactly what they meant to do, orwhat they wanted to do. Now, with fairies, desire to do andperformance are instinctive and simultaneous. If they think, theythink in action. In this they are far more like animals than humancreatures, although the form in which they appear to us, their shapeand colouring are like ours, enhanced and refined. Here now stood thiscreature in the semblance of a woman glorified, quivering; and so, perched high on his haunches, sat the shepherd's dog, and no one couldlook at the two and not see their kinship. _Arrière-pensée_ they hadnone--and all's said in that. They were shameless, and we are full ofshame. There's the difference; and it is a gulf. 

After a while of this quivering suspense she gave a low call, a longmellow and tremulous cry which, gentle as it was, startled by itssuddenness, as the unexpected call of a water-fowl out of the reeds ofa pond makes the heart jump toward the throat. It was like some bird'scall, but I know of no bird's with which to get a close comparison. Ithad the soft quality, soft yet piercing, of a redshank's, but itshuddered like an owl's. And she held it on as an owl does. But it wasvery musical, soft and open-throated, and carried far. It was answeredfrom a distance, first by a single voice; but then another took it up, and another; and then another. Slowly so the soft night was filledwith musical cries which quavered about me as fitfully as fire-fliesgleam and glance in all quarters of a garden of olive-trees. It wasenchantment to the ear, a ravishing sound; but it was my eyes whichclaimed me now, for soon I saw them coming from all quarters. Orrather, I saw them there, for I can't say definitely that I saw anyone of them on the way. It is truer to say that I looked and they werethere. Where had been one were now two. Now two were five; now fivewere a company; now the company was a host. I have no idea how manythere were of them at any time; but when they joined hands and set towhirling in a ring they seemed to me to stretch round Parliament Hillin an endless chain. 

How can I be particular about them? They were of both sexes--that wasput beyond doubt; they were garbed as the first of them in somethingtranslucent and grey. It had been quite easy in the lamplight to seethe bare form of the woman whom I first saw in Gaylord's Rents. It wasplain to me that her companions were in the same kind of dress. Idon't think they had girdles; I think their arms and legs were bare. Ishould describe the garment as a sleeveless smock to the knees, orperhaps, more justly, as a sack of silky gauze with a hole for thehead and two for the arms. That was the effect of it. It hung straightand took the folds natural to it. It was so light that it clungclosely to the body where it met the air. What it was made of I haveno notion; but it was transparent or nearly so. I am pretty sure thatits own colour was grey. 

They greeted each other; they flitted about from group to groupgreeting; and they greeted by touching, sometimes with their hands, sometimes with their cheeks. They neither kissed nor spoke. I neversaw them kiss even when they loved--which they rarely did. I saw onegreeting between two females. They ran together and stopped shortwithin touching distance. They looked brightly and intently at eachother, and leaning forward approached their cheeks till theytouched. [2] They touched by the right, they touched by the left. Thenthey took hands and drew together. By a charming movement ofconfidence one nestled to the side of the other and resting her headlooked up and laughed. The taller embraced her with her arm and heldher for a moment. The swiftness of the act and its grace werebeautiful to see. Then hand in hand they ran to others who were alittle further off. The elder and taller had a wild dark face withstern lips, like a man's; the younger was a beautiful little creaturewith quick, squirrel's motions. I remember her hair, which lookedwhite in that light, but was no doubt lint colour. It was extremelylong, and so fine that it clung to her shoulders and back like a webof thin silk. 

[Footnote 2: I argue from this peculiar manner of greeting, which Ihave observed several times, that these beings converse by contact, asdogs, cats, mice, and other creatures certainly do. I don't say thatthey have no other means of converse; but I am sure I am exact insaying that they have no articulate speech. ]

They began to play very soon with a zest for mere irresponsiblemovement which I have never seen in my own kind. I have seen youngfoxes playing, and it was something like that, only incomparably moregraceful. Greyhounds give a better comparison where the rippling ofthe body is more expressive of their speed than the flying of theirfeet. These creatures must have touched the earth, but their bodiesalso ran. And just as young dogs play for the sake of activity, without method or purpose, so did these; and just as with younganimals the sexes mingle without any hint of sexuality, so did these. If there was love-making I saw nothing of it there. They met on exactequality so far as I could judge, the male not desirous, the femalenot conscious of being desired. 

But it was a mad business under the cloudy moon. It had a dream-likeelement of riot and wild triumph. I suppose I must have been there fortwo or three hours, during all which time their swift play was neveraltogether stopped. There were interludes to be seen, when some threeor four grew suddenly tired and fell out. They threw themselves downon the sward and lay panting, beaming, watching the others, or theydisappeared into the dark and were lost in the thickets which dot theground. Then finally I saw the great whirling ring of them form--underwhat common impulse to frenzy I cannot divine. There was no signal, no preparation, but as if fired in unison they joined hands, andspreading out to a circumference so wide that I could distinguishnothing but a ring of light, they whirled faster and faster till thespeed of them sang in my ears like harps, and whirling so, meltedaway. 

Later on and in wilder surroundings than this I saw, and shall relatein its place, a dance of Oreads. It differed in detail from this one, but not, I think, in any essential. This was my first experience ofthe kind. 

QUIDNUNC

I was so fired by that extraordinary adventure, that I think I couldhave overcome my constitutional timidity and made myself acquaintedwith the only actor in it who was accessible if I had not becomeinvolved in another matter of the sort. But I don't know that I shouldhave helped myself thereby. To the night the things of the nightpertain. If I could have had speech with Mrs. Ventris in that seasonof her radiancy there would have been no harm; but by day she wasanother creature. Thereby contact was impossible because it would havebeen horrible. It is true that a certain candour of conductdistinguished her from the frowsy drabs with whom she must havejostled in public-house bars or rubbed elbows at lodging-house doors, a sort of unconsciousness of evil, which I take to have been due to anentire absence of a moral sense. It is probable that she was not amiserable sinner because she did not know what was miserable sin. Heatand cold she knew, hunger and thirst, rage and kindness. She could notbe unwomanly because she was not woman, nor good because she couldnot be bad. But I could have been very bad; and to me she was, luckily, horrible. I could not divorce her two apparent natures, stillless my own. We are bound--all of us--by our natures, bound by themand bounded. I could not have touched the pitch she lived with, thepitch of which she was, without defilement. Let me hope that Irealised that much. I shall not say how my feet burned to enter thatslum of squalor where hovered this bird of the night, unless I add, asI can do with truth, that I did not slake them there. I saw her on andoff afterward for a year, perhaps; but tenancies are short in London. There was a flitting during one autumn when I was away on vacation, and I came back to see new faces in the half-doorway and other elbowson the familiar ledge. 

But as I have said above, a new affair engrossed me shortly after mynight pageant on Parliament Hill. This was concerned with a famouspersonage whom all knowing London (though I for one had not known it)called Quidnunc. 

But before I present to the curious reader the facts of a case whichcaused so much commotion in distinguished bosoms of the late"eighties, " I think I should say that, while I have a strongconviction as to the identity of the person himself, I shall notexpress it. I accept the doctrine that there are some names not to beuttered. Similarly I shall neither defend nor extenuate; if I throw itout at all it will be as a hint to the judicious, or a clew, if youlike, to those who are groping a way in or out of the labyrinth ofBeing. To me two things are especially absurd: one is that thetrousered, or skirted, forms we eat with, walk with, or pass unheeded, are all the population of our world; the other, that these creatures, ostensibly men or women with fancies, hopes, fears, appetites like ourown, are necessarily of the same nature as ourselves. If beings fromanother sphere should, by intention or chance, meet and mingle withus, I don't see how we could apprehend them at all except in our ownmode, or unless they were, so to speak, translated into our idiom. Butenough of that. The year in which I first met Quidnunc, so far as mymemory serves me, was 1886. 

 * * * * *

I was in those days a student of the law, with chambers in Gray's Innwhich I daily attended; but being more interested in palæography thanin modern practice, and intending to make that my particular branch ofeffort, I spent much of my time at the Public Record Office; indeed, aportion of every working day. The track between R---- Buildings andRolls Yard must have been sensibly thinned by my foot-soles; therecan have been few of the frequenters of Chancery Lane, Bedford Row andthe squares of Gray's Inn who were not known to me by sight orconcerning whom I had not imagined (or discerned) circumstancesinvisible to their friends or themselves to account for their acts orappearances. Among these innumerable personages--portly solicitors, dashing clerks, scriveners, racing tipsters, match-sellers, postmen, young ladies of business, young ladies of pleasure, clients descendingout of broughams, clients keeping rendezvous in public-houses, andwhat not--Quidnunc's may well have been one; but I believe that it wasin Warwick Court (that passage from Holborn into the Inn) that, quitesuddenly, I first saw him, or became aware that I saw him; for being, as he was, to all appearance an ordinary telegraphic messenger, I mayhave passed him daily for a year without any kind of notice. But on aday in the early spring of 1886--mid-April at a guess--I came upon himin such a way as to remark him incurably. I saw before me on thatmorning of tender leafage, of pale sunlight and blue mist contendingfor the day, a strangely assorted pair proceeding slowly toward theInn. A telegraph boy was one; by his side walked, vehementlyexplaining, a tall, elderly solicitor--white-whiskered, drab-spatted, frock-coated, eye-glassed, silk-hatted--in every detail the trustedfamily lawyer. I knew the man by sight, and I knew him by name andrepute. He was, let me say--for I withhold his real name--GeorgeLumley Fowkes, of Fowkes, Vizard and Fowkes, respectable head of amore than respectable firm; and here he was, with his hat pushed backfrom his dewy forehead, tip-toeing, protesting, extenuating to a slipof a lad in uniform. The positions of the odd pair were unaccountablyreversed; Jack was better than his master, the deference was from theelder to the brat. The stoop of Fowkes's shoulder, the anxious angleof his head, his care to listen to the little he got--and how littlethat was I could not but observe--his frequent ejaculations of "Godbless my soul!" his deep concern--and the boy's unconcern, curtlyexpressed, if expressed at all--all this was singular. So much morethan singular was it to myself that it enthralled me. 

They stopped at the gateway which admits you to Bedford Row to finishtheir colloquy. The halt was made by Fowkes, barely acquiesced in byhis companion. Poor old Fowkes, what with his asthma, the mopping ofhis head, the flacking of his long fingers, exhibited signals of thehighest distress. "I need hardly assure you, sir ... " I heard; andthen, "Believe me, sir, when I say.... " He was marking time, unhappygentleman, for with such phrases does the orator eke out his waningsubstance. The lad listened in a critical, staring mood, and once ortwice nodded. While I was wondering how long he was going to put upwith it, presently he jerked his head back and showed Fowkes, by thelook he gave him, that he had had enough of him. The old lawyer knewit for final, for he straightened his back, then his hat, touched thebrim and made a formal bow. "I leave it so, sir, " he said; "I amcontent to leave it so;" and then, with every mark of respect, he wenthis way into Bedford Row. I noticed that he walked on tiptoe for someyards, and then more quickly, flapping his arms to his sides. 

The boy stood thoughtful where he was, communing by the looks of himquite otherwhere, and I had the opportunity to consider him. Heappeared to be a handsome, well-built lad of fifteen or so, big forhis age, and precocious. By that I mean that his scrutiny of life wasmature; that he looked capable, far beyond the warrant of his years. He was ruddy of complexion, freckled, and had a square chin. His eyeswere light grey, with dark lashes to them; they were startlingly lightand bright for such a sunburnt face, and seemed to glow in it likesteady fires. It was in them that resided, that sat, as it were, enthroned, that mature, masterful expression which I never saw beforeor since in one so young. I have seen the eyes of children look as ifthey were searching through our world into another; that is almosthabitual in children. But here was one, apparently a boy, who seemedto read into our circumstances (as you or I into a well-studied book)as though they held nothing inexplicable, nothing unaccounted for. Beyond these singular two eyes of his, his smiling mouth, with itsreminder of archaic statuary, was perhaps his only noticeable feature. He wore the ordinary uniform of a telegraphic messenger, which inthose days was grey, with a red line down the trousers and a belt forthe tunic. His boots were of the service pattern, so were hisankle-jacks. His hands were not cleaner than they ought to have been, his nails well bitten back. Such was he. 

Studying him closely over the top of my newspaper, by-and-by he fixedme with his intent, bright eyes. My heart beat quicker; but when hesmiled--like the Pallas of Ægina--I smiled too. Then, without varyinghis expression, even while he smiled upon me, he vanished. 

Vanished! There's no other word for it: he vanished; I did not see himgo; I don't know whether he went or where he went. At one moment hewas there, smiling at me, looking into my eyes; at the next moment hewas not there. That's all there is to say about it. I flashed aglance through the gate into Bedford Row, another up to R----Buildings, and even ran to the corner which showed me the length andbreadth of Field Place. He was not gone any of these ways. Thesethings are certain. 

Now for the sequel. Mere fortune led me at four that afternoon intoBedford Row. A note had been put into my hands at the Record Officeinviting me to call upon a client whose chambers were in that quarter, and I complied with it directly my work was over. Now as I walkedalong the Row, the boy of that morning's encounter was going into theentry of the house in which Fowkes and Vizards have their offices. Ihad just time to recognise him when the double knock announced hiserrand. I stopped immediately; he delivered in a telegram and cameout. I was on the step. Whether he knew me or not he did not look hisknowledge. His eyes went through me, his smiling mouth did not smileat me. My heart beat, I didn't know why; but I laughed and nodded. Hewent his leisurely way and I watched him, this time, almost out ofsight. But while I stood so, watching, old Fowkes came bursting out ofhis office, tears streaming down his face, the telegram in his hand. "Where is he? Where is he?" This was addressed to me. I pointed theway. Old Fowkes saw his benefactor (as I suppose him to have been)and began to run. The lad turned round, saw him coming, waved himaway, and then--disappeared. Again he had done it; but old Fowkes, inno way surprised, stood rooted to the pavement with his hands extendedso far toward the mystery that I could see two or three inches of bonyold wrist beyond his shirt-cuffs. After a while he turned and slowlycame back to his chambers. He seemed now not to see me; or he wascareless whether I saw him or not. As he entered the doorway he heldup the telegram, bent his head and laid a kiss upon the pink paper. 

But that is by no means all. Now I come, to the Richborough story, which all London that is as old as I am remembers. That part ofLondon, it may be, will not read this book; or if it does, will notobject to the recall of a case which absorbed it in 1886-87. I am notgoing to be indiscreet. The lady married, and the lady left England. Moreover, naturally, I give no names; but if I did I don't see thatthere is anything to be ashamed of in what she was pleased to do withher hand and person. It was startling to us of those days, it might bestartling in these; what was more than startling was the manner inwhich the thing was done. That is known to very few persons indeed. 

I had seen enough upon that April day, whose events form my prelude, to give me remembrance of the handsome telegraph boy. The next time Isaw him, which was near midnight in July--the place Hyde Park--I knewhim at once. 

I had been sharing in Prince's Gate, with a dull company, aninterminable dinner, one of those at which you eat twice as much asyou intend, or desire, because there is really nothing else to do. Onone side of me I had had a dowager whom I entirely failed to interest, on the other, a young person who only cared to talk with her left-handneighbour. There was a reception afterward to which I had to stop, sothat I could not make my escape till eleven or more. The night wasvery hot and it had been raining; but such air as there was was balmafter the still furnace of the rooms. I decided immediately to walk tomy lodging in Camden Town, entered by Prince's Gate, crossed theSerpentine Bridge and took a bee-line for the Marble Arch. It wascloudy, but not at all dark. I could see all the ankle-high railingswhich beset the unwary passenger and may at any moment break his legsand his nose, imperil his dignity and ruin his hat. Dimly ahead of me, upon a broad stretch of grass, I presently became aware of aconcourse. There was no sound to go by, and the light afforded me nodefinite forms; the luminous haze was blurred; but certainly peoplewere there, a multitude of people. I was surprised, but not alarmed. Save for an occasional wastrel of civilisation, incapable ofdegradation and concerned only for sleep, the park is wont to be adesert at that hour; but the hum of the traffic, the flashing cablamps, never quite out of sight, prevent fear. Far from being afraid Iwas highly interested, and hastening my steps was soon on theoutskirts of a throng. 

A throng it certainly was, a large body of persons, male and female, scattered yet held together by a common interest, loitering andexpectant, strangely silent, not concerned with each other, rarely incouples, with all their faces turned one way--namely, to thesouth-east, or (if you want precision) precisely to Hyde Park Corner. I have remarked upon the silence: that was really surprising; so alsowas the order observed, and what you may call decorum. There was noribaldry, no skylarking, no shrill discord of laughter without mirthin it to break the solemnity of the gracious night. These people juststood or squatted about; if any talked together it was in secretwhispers. It is true that they were under the watch of a tallpoliceman; yet he too, I noticed, watched nobody, but looked steadilyto the south-east, with his lantern harmless at his belt. As my eyesgrew used to the gloom I observed that all ranks composed thecompany. I made out the shell jacket, the waist and elongated limbs ofa life-guardsman, the open bosom of an able seaman. I happened upon ayoung gentleman in the crush hat and Inverness of the current fashion;I made certain of a woman of the pavement and of ladies of theboudoir, of a hospital nurse, of a Greenwich pensioner, of twoflower-girls sitting on the edge of one basket, of a shoeblack (Ithink), of a costermonger, and a nun. Others there were, and more thanone or two of most categories: in a word, there was an assembly. 

I accosted the policeman, who heard me civilly but without committinghimself. To my first question, what was going to happen? he carefullyanswered that he couldn't say, but to my second, with theirrepressible scorn of one who knows for one who wants to know, heanswered more frankly, "Who are they waiting for? Why, Quidnunc. Mister Quidnunc. That's who it is. Him they call Quidnunc. So now youknow. " In fact, I did not know. He had told me nothing, would tell meno more, and while I stood pondering the oracle I was sensible of somecommon movement run through the company with a thrill, unite them, intensify them, draw them together to be one people with one faith, one hope, one assurance. And then the nun, who stood near me, fell toher knees, crossed herself and began to pray; and not far off her aslim girl in black turned aside and covered her face with her hands. Aperceptible shiver of emotion, a fluttering sigh such as steals over apine-wood toward dawn ran through all ranks. Far to the south-east aspeck of light now showed, which grew in intensity as it came swiftlynearer, and seemed presently to be a ball of vivid fire surrounded bya shroud of lit vapour. Again, as by a common consent, the crowdparted, stood ranked, with an open lane between. The on-coming flare, grown intolerably bright, now seemed to fade out as it resolved itselfinto a human figure. A human figure at the entry of the lane of peoplethere undoubtedly was, a figure with so much light about him, raying(I thought) from him, that it was easy to observe his form andfeatures. Out of the flame and radiant mist he grew, and showedhimself to me in the trim shape and semblance, with the small head andalert air of a youth; and such as he was, in the belted tunic andpeaked cap of a telegraph messenger, he came smoothly down the laneformed by the obsequious throng, and stood in the midst of it andlooked keenly, with his cold, clear eyes and fixed and inscrutablesmile, from one expectant face to another. There was no mistaking himwhom all those people so eagerly awaited; he was my former wonder ofGray's Inn, the saviour of old Mr. Fowkes. 

But all my former wonder paled before this my latter. For he stoodhere like some young Eastern king among his slaves, one hand on hiship, the other at his chin, his face expressionless, his eyes fixedbut unblinking. Meantime, the crowd, which had stretched out arms tohim as he came, was now seated quietly on the grass, intently waiting, watching for a sign. They sat, all those people, in a wide ring abouthim; he was in the midst, a hand to his chin. 

Whether sign was made or not, I saw none; but after some moments ofpause a figure rose erect out of the ring and hobbled toward the boy. I made out an old woman, an old wreck of womanhood, a scant-haired, blue-lipped ruin of what had once been woman. I heard her snivel andsniff and wheeze her "Lord ha' mercy" as she went by, slipperingforward on her miserable feet, hugging to her wasted sides whatremnant of gown she had, fawning before the boy, within the sphere oflight that came from him. If he loathed, or scorned, or pitied her, heshowed no sign; if he saw her at all his fixed eyes looked beyond her;if he abhorred her, his nostrils did not betray him. He stood likemarble and suffered what followed. It was strange. 

Enacting what seemed to be a proper rite, she put her shaking lefthand upon his right shoulder, her right hand under his chin, as if tocup it; and then, with sniffs and wailings interspersed, came herpetition to his merciful ears. 

What she precisely asked of him, muttering, wheezing, whining, snivelling, as she did, repeating herself--with her burthen of "Odear, O dear, O dear!"--I don't know. Her lost girl, her fineup-standing girl, her Nance, her only one, figured in it as needingmercy. Her "Oh, sir, I ask you kindly!" and "Oh, sir, for this once ... !"made me sick: yet he bore with her as she ran on, dribblingtears and gin in a mingled flood; he bore with her, heard her insilence, and in the end, by a look which I was not able to discover, quieted and sent her shuffling back to her place. So soon as she wasdown, the life-guardsman was on his feet, a fine figure of a man. Hemarched unfalteringly up, stiffened, saluted, and then, observing theritual of hand to shoulder, hand to chin, spoke out his piece like thehonest fellow he was; spoke it aloud and without fear, evenly andplainly. I thought that he had got it by heart, as I thought also ofanother person I was to hear by-and-by. He wanted, badly it seemed, news of his sweetheart, whom he was careful to call Miss Dixon. Shehad last been heard of outside the Brixton Bon Marché, where she hadbeen seen with a lady friend, talking to "two young chaps" inVolunteer uniform. They went up the Brixton Road toward Acre Lane, andMiss Dixon, at any rate, was never heard of again. It was wearing himout; he wasn't the man he had been, and had no zest for his meals. Shehad never written; his letters to her had come back through the "DeadOffice. " He thought he should go out of his mind sometimes; was afraidto shave, not knowing what he might be after with "them things. " Ifanything could be done for him he should be thankful. Miss Dixon wasvery well connected, and sang in a choir. Here he stopped, saluted, turned and marched away into the night. I heard him pass a word or twoto the policeman, who turned aside and blew his nose. The hospitalnurse, who spoke in a feverish whisper, then a young woman from thePiccadilly gas-lamps, who cried and rocked herself about, followed;and then, to my extreme amazement, two ladies with cloaks and hoodsover evening gowns--one of them a Mrs. Stanhope, who was known to me. The taller and younger lady, chaperoned by my friend, I did notrecognise. Her face was hidden by her hood. 

I was now more than interested, it seemed to me that I was, in asense, implicated. At any rate I felt very delicate about overhearingwhat was to come. It is one thing to become absorbed in a ritual thelike of which, in mid-London, you can never have experienced before, but quite another thing to listen to the secret desires of a friend inwhose house you may have dined within the month. However--by whatevercasuistries I might have compassed it--I did remain. Let me hope, nay, let me believe of myself that if the postulant had proved to be myfriend, Mrs. Shrewton Stanhope, herself, I should either have stoppedmy ears or immediately retired. 

But Mrs. Stanhope, I saw at once, was no more than _dame decompagnie_. She stood in mid-ring with bent head and hands claspedbefore her while the graceful, hooded girl approached nearer to themysterious oracle and fulfilled the formal rites demanded of all whosought his help. Her ringed left hand was laid upon his rightshoulder, her fair right hand upheld his chin. When she began tospeak, which she did immediately and without a tremor, again I had thesensation of hearing one who had words by heart. This was her burden, more or less. "I am very unhappy about a certain person. It is CaptainMaxfield. I am engaged to him, and want to break it off. I must dothat--I must indeed. If I don't I shall do a more dreadful thing. I dohope you will help me. Mrs. ----, my friend, was sure that you would. Ido hope so. I am very unhappy. " She had commanded her voice until thevery end; but as she pitied herself there came a break in it. I heardher catch her breath; I thought she would fall, --and so did Mrs. Stanhope, it was clear, for she went hurriedly forward and put an armround her waist. The younger lady drooped to her shoulder; Mrs. Stanhope inclined her head to the person--not a sign from him, mindyou--and gently withdrew her charge from the ring. The pair thenhurried across the park in the direction of Knightsbridge, and leftme, I may admit, consuming in the fire of curiosity and excitementwhich they had lit. 

Petitions succeeded, of various interest, but they seemed pale andineffectual to me. Before all or nearly all of the waiting throng hadbeen heard I saw uneasiness spread about it. Face turned to face, headto head; subtle but unmistakable movements indicated unrest. Then, ofthe suddenest, amid lifted hands and sighed-forth prayers the youthfulobject of so much entreaty, receiver of so many secret sorrows, seemedto fade and, without effort, to recede. I know not how else todescribe his departure. He backed away, as it were, into the dark. Thepeople were on their feet ere this. Sighs, wailing, appeals, sobs, adjurations broke the quietness of the night. Some ran stumbling afterhim with extended arms; most of them stayed where they were, watchinghim fade, hoping against hope. He emptied himself, so to speak, oflight; he faded backward, diminishing himself to a luminous glow, to ablur, to a point of light. Thus he was gone. The disappointed creptsilently away, each into silence, solitude and the night, and I foundmyself alone with the policeman. 

Now, what in the name of God was all this? I asked him, and must haveit. He gave me some particulars, admitting at the outset that it was a"go. " "They seem to think, " he said, "that they will get what theywant out of him--by wire. Let him bring them a wire in the morning;that's the way of it. Anything in life, from sudden death to apenn'orth of bird-seed. Death! Ah, I've heard 'em cringe to him fordeath, times and again. They crawl for it--they must have it. Can't doit theirselves, d'ye see? No, no. Let him do it--somehow. Once a week, during the season--his season, I should say, because he ain't herealways, by no means--they gets about like this; and how they knowwhere to spot him is more than I can tell you. If I knew it, Iwould--but I don't. Nobody knows that--and yet they know it. Sometimeshe's to be found here two weeks running; then it'll be the Regent'sPark, or the Knoll in the Green Park. He's had 'em all the way toHampstead before now, and Primrose Hill's a likely place, they tellme. Telegrams: that's what he gives 'em--if he's got the mind. Butthey don't get all they want, not by no means. And some of 'em getsmore than they want, by a lot. " He thought, then chuckled at a rathergrim instance. 

"Why, there was old Jack Withers, 'blue-nosed Jack' they calls him, who works a Hammersmith 'bus! Did you ever hear of that? That was agood one, if you like. Now you listen. This Jack was coming up theBrompton Road on his 'bus--and I was on duty by the Boltons and seehim coming. There was that young feller there too--him we've just hadhere--standing quiet by a pillar-box, reading a letter. One foot hehad in the roadway, and his back to the 'bus. Up comes old Jack, pushing his horses, and sees the boy. Gives a great howl like atom-cat. 'Hi! you young frog-spawn, ' he says, 'out of my road, ' andstartled the lad. I see him look up at Jack very steady, and keep hiseye on him. I thought to myself, 'There's something to pay ondelivery, my boy, for this here. ' Jack owned up to it afterwards thathe felt queer, but he forgot about it. Now, if you'll believe me, sir, the very next morning Jack was at London Bridge after his secondjourney, when up comes this boy, sauntering into the yard. Comes up toJack and nods. 'Name of Withers?' he says. 'That's me, ' says old Jack. 'Thought so, ' he says. 'Telegram for you. ' Jack takes it, opens it, goes all white. 'Good God!' he says; 'good God Almighty! My wife'sdead!' She'd been knocked down by a Pickford that morning, sure as agun. What do you think of that for a start?

"He served Spotty Smith the fried-eel man just the very same, and lotsmore I could tell you about. They call him Quidnunc--Mister Quidnunc, too, and don't you forget it. There's that about him I--well, sir, ifit was to come to it that I had to lay a hand on him for something outof Queer Street I shouldn't know how to do it. Now I'm telling you afact. I shouldn't--know--how--to--do it. "

He was not, obviously, telling me a fact, but certainly he was much inearnest. I commented upon the diversity of the company, and so learnedthe name of my friend Mrs. Stanhope's friend. He clacked his tongue. "Bless you, " he said, "I've seen better than to-night, though we didhave a slap-up ladyship and all. That was Lady Emily Rich, that youngthing was, Earl of Richborough's family--Grosvenor Place. But we had aDuchess or something here one night--ah, and a Bishop another, a LordBishop. You'd never believe the tales we hear. He's known to everynight-constable from Woolwich to Putney Bridge--and the company hegets about him you'd never believe. High and low, and all huddledtogether like so many babes in a nursing-home. No distinction. You sawold Mother Misery get first look-in to-night? My lady waited her turn, like a good girl!" His voice sank to a whisper. "They tell me he's theonly living soul--if he _is_ a living soul--that's ever been insidethe Stock Exchange and come out tidy. He goes and comes in as helikes--quite the Little Stranger. They all know him in ThrogmortonStreet. No, no. There's more in this than meets the eye, sir. He's notlike you and me. But it's no business of mine. He don't go down in mypocket-book, I can tell you. I keep out of his way--and with reason. He never did no harm to me, nor shan't if I can help it. Quidnunc!Mister Quidnunc! He might be a herald angel for all I know. "

I went my way home and to bed, but was not done with Quidnunc. 

The next day, which was the first day of the Eton and Harrow Match, Iread a short paragraph in the _Echo_, headed "Painful Scene atLord's, " to the effect that a lady lunching on Lord Richborough's draghad fainted upon the receipt of a telegram, and would have fallen hadshe not been caught by the messenger--"a strongly built youth, " itsaid, "who thus saved what might have been a serious accident. " Thatwas all, but it gave me food for thought, and a suspicion whichSaturday confirmed in a sufficiently startling way. On that Saturday Iwas at luncheon in the First Avenue Hotel in Holborn, when a man camein--Tendring by name--whom I knew quite well. We exchanged greetingsand sat at our luncheon, talking desultorily. A clerk from his officebrought in a telegram for Tendring. He opened it and seemedthunder-struck. "Good Lord!" I heard him say. "Good Lord, here'strouble. " I murmured sympathetically, and then he turned to me, quitebeyond the range where reticence avails. "Look here, " he said, "thisis a shocking business. A man I know wires to me--from Bow Street. He's been taken for forgery--that's the charge--and wants me to bailhim out. " He got up as we finished and went to write his reply: Iturned immediately to the clerk. "Is the boy waiting?" I asked. Hewas. I said "Excuse me, Tendring, " and ran out of the restaurant tothe street door. There in the street, as I had suspected, stood myinscrutable, steady-eyed, smiling Oracle of the night. I stood, meeting his look as best I might. He showed no recognition of mewhatsoever. Then, as I stood there, Tendring came out. "Call me acab, " he told the hall-porter; and to Quidnunc he said, "There's noanswer. I'm going at once. " Quidnunc went away. 

Now Tendring's friend, I learned by the evening paper, was one CaptainMaxfield of the Royal Engineers. He was committed for trial, bailrefused. I may add that he got seven years. 

So much for Captain Maxfield! But much more for Lady Emily Rich, ofwhose fate I have now to tell. My friend, Mrs. Shrewton Stanhope, wasvery reserved, would tell me nothing, even when I roundly said that Ihad fancied to see her in the park one evening. She had the hardihoodto meet my eyes with a blank denial, and very plainly there wasnothing to be learned from her. A visit, many visits to the Londonparks at the hour between eleven and midnight taught me no more; butbeing by now thoroughly interested in the affairs of Lady Emily Rich Imade it my business to get a glimpse of her. She was, it seemed, theonly unmarried daughter of the large Richborough family which had doneso well in that sex, and so badly in the other that there was not onlyno son, but no male heir to the title. That, indeed, expired with LadyEmily's father. I don't really know how many daughters there were, orwere not. Most of them married prosperously. One of them became aRoman princess; one married a Mr. Walker, an American stock-jobber(with a couple of millions of money); another was Baroness deGrass--De Grass being a Jew; one became an Anglican nun to thedisgust (I was told) of her family. Lady Emily, whose engagement tothe wretched Maxfield was so dramatically terminated was, I think, theyoungest of them. I saw her one night toward the end of the season atthe Opera. Tendring, who was with me, pointed her out in a box. Shewas dressed in black and looked very scared. She hardly moved oncethroughout the evening, and when people spoke to her seemed not tohear. She was certainly a very pretty girl. It may have been fancy, orit may not, but I could have sworn to the corner of a pinky-brownenvelope sticking out of the bosom of her dress. I don't think I wasmistaken; I had a good look through the glasses. She touched itshortly afterward and poked it down. At the end I saw her come out. Atall girl, rather thin; very pretty certainly, but far from well. Hereyes haunted me; they had what is called a hag-ridden look. And yet, thought I, she had got her desire of Quidnunc. Ah, but had she? Hearthe end of the tale. 

I say that I saw her come out, that's not quite true. I saw her comedown the staircase and stand with her party in the crowded lobby. Shestood in it, but not of it; for her vague and shadowed eyes soughtotherwhere than in those of the neat-haired young man who waschattering in front of her. She scanned, rather, the throng of peopleanxiously and guardedly at once, as if she was looking for somebody, and must not be seen to look. As time wore on and the carriagedelayed, her nervousness increased. She seemed to get paler, she shuther eyes once or twice as though to relieve the strain which watchingand waiting put upon them, and then, quite suddenly, I saw that shehad found what she expected; I saw that her empty eyes were nowfilled, that they held something without which they had faded out. Ina word, I saw her look fixedly, fiercely and certainly at somethingbeyond the lobby. Following the direction she gave me, I looked also. There, assuredly, in the portico, square, smiling and assured of hiswill, I saw Quidnunc stand, and his light eyes upon hers. For quite aspace of time, such as that in which you might count fifteendeliberately, those two looked at each other. Messages, I am sure, sped to and fro between them. His seemed to say, "Come, I haveanswered you. Now do you answer me. " Hers cried her hurt, "Ah, butwhat can I do?" His, with their cool mastery of time and occasion, "You must do as I bid you. There's no other way. " Hers pleaded, "Giveme time, " and his told her sternly, "I am master of time--since I madeit. " The throng of waiting people began to surge toward the door; outthere in the night link-boys yelled great names. I heard "LordRichborough's carriage, " and saw Lady Emily clap her hand to her side. I saw her reach the portico and stand there hastily covering her headwith a black scarf; I saw her sway alone there. I saw her party godown the steps. The next moment Quidnunc flashed to her side. He saidnothing, he did not touch her. He simply looked at her--intently, smiling, self-possessed, a master. Her face was averted; I could seeher tremble; she bowed her head. Another carriage was announced--theRichborough coach then was gone. I saw Quidnunc now put his hand uponher arm; she turned him her face, a faint and tender smile, verybeautiful and touching, met his own. He drew her with him out of thepress and into the burning dark. London never saw her again. 

I don't attempt to explain what is to me inexplicable. Was mypoliceman right when he called Quidnunc a herald angel? Is there anysubstance behind the surmise that the ancient gods still sway thesouls and bodies of men? Was Quidnunc, that swift, remorseless, smiling messenger, that god of the winged feet? The Argeïphont? Whocan answer these things? All I have to tell you by way of an epilogueis this. 

A curate of my acquaintance, a curate of St. Peter's, Eaton Square, some few years after these events, took his holiday in Greece. Hewent out as one of a tourist party, but having more time at hisdisposal than was contemplated by the contracting agency, he stayedon, chartered a dragoman and wandered far and wide. On his return hetold me that he had seen Lady Emily Rich at Pheræ in Arcadia, and thathe had spoken to her. He had seen her sitting on the door-step of aone-storied white house, spinning flax. She wore the costume of thepeasants, which he told me is very picturesque. Two or threehalf-naked children tumbled about her. They were beautiful as angels, he said, with curly golden hair and extremely light eyes. He noticedthat particularly, and recurred to it more than once. Now Lady Emilywas a dark girl, with eyes so deeply blue as to be almost black. 

My friend spoke to her, he said. He had seen that she recognised him;in fact, she bowed to him. He felt that he could not disregard her. Mere commonplaces were exchanged. She told him that her husband wasaway on a journey. She fancied that he had been in England; but sheexplained half-laughingly that she knew very little about his affairs, and was quite content to leave them to him. She had her children tolook after. My friend was surprised that she asked no question ofEngland or family matters; but, in the circumstances, he added, hehardly liked to refer to them. She served him with bread and winebefore he left her. All he could say was that she appeared to beperfectly happy. 

It is odd, and perhaps it is more than odd, that there was a famoustemple of Hermes in Pheræ in former times. Pindar, I believe, acclaimed it in one of his Epinikean odes; but I have not been able toverify the reference. 

THE SECRET COMMONWEALTH

The interest of my matter has caused me to lose sight of myself and tofail in my account of the flight of time over my head. That is, however, comparable with the facts, which were that my attention wasthen become solely objective. I had other things to think of than thedevelopment of my own nature. I had other things to think of, indeed, than those which surround us all, and press upon us until we becomepermanently printed by their contact. Solitary as I had ever been inmind, I now became literally so by choice. I became wholly absorbed inthat circumambient world of being which was graciously opening itselfto my perceptions--how I knew not. I was in a state of momentaryexpectation of apparitions; as I went about my ostensible business Ihad my ears quick and my eyes wide for signs and tokens that I wassurrounded by a seething and whirling invisible population of beings, like ourselves, but glorified: yet unlike ourselves in this, that whatseemed entirely right, because natural, to them would have been inourselves horrible. The ruthlessness, for instance, of Quidnunc as hepursued and obtained his desire, had Quidnunc been a human creature, would have been revolting; the shamelessness of the fairy wife ofVentris had she been capable of shame, how shameful had that been! ButI knew that these creatures were not human; I knew that they were notunder our law; and so I explained everything to myself. But to myselfonly. It is not enough to explain a circumstance by negatives. IfQuidnunc and Mrs. Ventris were not under our law, neither are the sun, moon and stars, neither are the apes and peacocks. But all these areunder some law, since law is the essence of the Kosmos. Under what lawthen were Mrs. Ventris and Quidnunc? I burned to know that. For manyyears of my life that knowledge was my steady desire; but I had nomeans at hand of satisfying it. Reading? Well, I did read in afashion. I read, for example, Grimm's _Teutonic Mythology_, a stoutand exceedingly dull work in three volumes of a most unsatisfyingkind. I read other books of the same sort, chiefly German, dealing inetymology, which I readily allow is a science of great value withinits proper sphere. But to Grimm and his colleagues etymology seemed tome to be the contents of the casket rather than the key; for Grimm andhis colleagues started with a prejudice, that Gods, fairies and therest have never existed and don't exist. To them the interest of theinquiry is not what is the nature, what are the laws of such beings, but what is the nature of the primitive people who imagined theexistence of such beings? I very soon found out that Grimm and hiscolleagues had nothing to tell me. 

Then there was another class of book; that which dealt in demonologyand witchcraft, exemplified by a famous work called _Satan's InvisibleWorld Discovered_. Writers of these things may or may not havebelieved in witches and fairies (which they classed together); but inany event they believed them to be wicked, the abomination ofuncleanness. That made them false witnesses. My judgment revoltedagainst such ridiculous assumptions. Here was a case, you see, wherewriters treated their subject too seriously, having the pulpit-cushionever below their hand, and the fear of the Ordinary before theireyes. [3] Grimm and his friends, on the other hand, took it toolightly, seeing in it matter for a treatise on language. I got no goodout of either school, and as time goes on I don't see a prospect ofany adequate handling of the theme. I should like to think that Imyself was to be the man to expound the fairy-kind candidly andmethodically--candidly, that is, without going to literature for mydata, and with the notion definitely out of mind that the fairyGod-mother ever existed. But I shall never be that man, for though Iam candid to the point of weakness, I am not to flatter myself that Ihave method. But to whomsoever he may be that undertakes the subject Ican promise that the documents await their historian, and I willfurnish him with a title which will indicate at a glance both thespirit of his attack and the nature of his treatise. 

[Footnote 3: The Reverend Robert Kirk, author of the _SecretCommonwealth_, was a clergyman and a believer in the beings of whomhis book professed to treat. He found them a place in his Pantheon;but he knew very little about them. I shall have to speak of him againI expect. He is himself an object-lesson, though his teachings arenaught. ]

"The Natural History of the Præternatural" it should be. I make him apresent of that--the only possible line for a sincere student. God gowith him whosoever he be, for he will have rare qualities and rareneed of them. He must be cheerful without assumption, respectfulwithout tragic airs, as respectable as he please in the eyes of hisown law, so that he finds respect in his heart also for the laws ofthe realm in which he is privileged to trade. Let him not stand, asthe priest in the Orthodox Church, a looming hierophant. Let him avoidany rhetorical pose, any hint of the grand manner. Above all, let himnot wear the smirk of the conjuror when he prepares with flourishes towhip the handkerchief away from his guinea-pig. Here is one whocondescends to reader and subject alike. He would do harm all round:moreover he would be a quack, for he is just as much of a quack whomakes little of much as he who makes much of little. No! Let hisattitude be that of the contadino in some vast church in Italy, whowalking into the cool dark gazes round-eyed at the twinkling candlesahead of him in the vague, and that he may recover himself a littleleans against a pillar for a while, his hat against his heart and hislips muttering an Ave. Reassured by his prayer, or the peace of thegreat place, he presently espies the sacristan about to uncover apicture not often shown. Here is an occasion! The tourists aregathered, intent upon their Baedekers; he tiptoes up behind them andkneels by another pillar--for the pillars of a church are his friendlyrocks, touching which he can face the unknown. The curtain is brailedup, and the blue and crimson, the mournful eyes, the wimple, thepointed chin, the long idle fingers are revealed upon their goldenbackground. While the girls flock about papa with his book, and mammawonders where we shall have luncheon, Annibale, assured familiar ofHeaven, beatified at no expense to himself, settles down to a quiettalk with the Mother of God. His attitude is perfect, and so is hers. The firmament is not to be shaken, but Annibale is not a _farceur_, nor his Blessed One absurd. Mysteries are all about us. Some are forthe eschatologist and some for the shepherd; some for Patmos and somefor the _podere_. Let our historian remember, in fact, that thenatures into which he invites us to pry are those of the littledivinities of earth and he can't go very far wrong. Nor can we. 

That, I am bold to confess, is my own attitude toward a lovely orderof creation. Perhaps I may go on to give him certain hints oftreatment. Nearly all of them, I think, tend to the same point--thediscarding of literature. Literature, being a man's art, is at itsbest and also at its worst, in its dealing with women. No man, perhaps, is capable of writing of women as they really are, thoughevery man thinks he is. A curious consequence to the history offairies has been that literature has recognised no males in thatcommunity, and that of the females it has described it has selectedonly those who are enamoured of men or disinclined to them. The fact, of course, is that the fairy world is peopled very much as our own, and that, with great respect to Shakespeare, an Ariel, a Puck, aTitania, a Peas-blossom are abnormal. It is as rare to find a fairycapable of discerning man as the converse is rare. I have known aperson intensely aware of the Spirits that reside, for instance, inflowers, in the wind, in rivers and hills, none the less bereft ofany intercourse whatever with these interesting beings by the simplefact that they themselves were perfectly unconscious of him. It isgreatly to be doubted whether Shakespeare ever saw a fairy, though hisage believed in fairies, but almost certain that Shelley must haveseen many, whose age did not believe. If our author is to have apoetical guide at all it had better be Shelley. 

Literature will tell him that fairies are benevolent or mischievous, and tradition, borrowing from literature, will confirm it. Theproposition is ridiculous. It would be as wise to say that a gnat ismischievous when it stings you, or a bee benevolent because he cannotprevent you stealing his honey. There would be less talk of benevolentbees if the gloves were off. That is the pathetic fallacy again; andthat is man all over. Will nothing, I wonder, convince him that he isnot the centre of the Universe? If Darwin, Newton, Galileo, Copernicusand Sir Norman Lockyer have failed, is it my turn to try? Modestyforbids. Besides, I am prejudiced. I think man, in the conduct of hisbusiness, inferior to any vegetable. I am a tainted source. But suchtalk is idle, and so is that which cries havoc upon fairy morality. Heaven knows that it differs from our own; but Heaven also knows thatour own differs _inter nos_; and that to discuss the customs andhabits of the Japanese in British parlours is a vain thing. _TheForsaken Merman_ is a beautiful poem, but not a safe guide to thosewho would relate the ways of the spirits of the sea. But all this isleading me too far from my present affair, which is to relate how theknowledge of these things--of these beings and of their laws--cameupon me, and how their nature influenced mine. I have said enough, Ithink, to establish the necessity of a good book upon the subject, andI take leave to flatter myself that these pages of my own will beindispensable Prolegomena to any such work, or to any research tendingto its compilation. 

In the absence of books, in the situation in which I found myself ofreticence, I could do nothing but brood upon the things I had seen. Insensibly my imagination (latent while I had been occupied withobservation) began to work. I did not write, but I pictured, and mywaking dreams became so vivid that I was in a fair way to treat themas the only reality, and might have discarded the workaday worldaltogether. Luckily for me, my disposition was tractable andlaw-abiding. I fulfilled by habit the duties of the day; I toiled atmy dreary work, ate and slept, wrote to my parents, visited them, having got those tasks as it were by heart, but I went through therites like an automaton; my mind was elsewhere, intensely dogging theheels of that winged steed, my fancy, panting in its tracks, andperfectly content so only that it did not come up too late to witnessthe glories which its bold flights discovered. Thanks to it--allthanks to it--I did not become a nympholept. I did not hauntParliament Hill o' nights. I did not spy upon the darkling motions ofMrs. Ventris. Desire, appetite, sex were not involved at all in thisaffair; nor yet was love. I was very prone to love, but I did not loveMrs. Ventris. In whatsoever fairy being I had seen there had beennothing which held physical attraction for me. There could be noallure when there was no lure. So far as I could tell, not one ofthese creatures--except Quidnunc, and possibly the Dryad, the sun-dyednymph I had seen long ago in K---- Park--had been aware of mypresence. I guessed, though I did not know (as I do now) thatmanifestation is not always mutual, but that a man may see a fairywithout being seen, and conversely, a fairy may be fully aware ofmankind or of some man or men without any suspicion of theirs. Moreover, though I saw them all extraordinarily beautiful, I had neveryet seen one supremely desirable. The instinct to possess, which is anessential part of the love-passion of every man--had never stirred inme in the presence of these creatures. If it had I should haveyielded to it, I doubt not, since there was no moral law to hold meback. But it never had, so far, and I was safe from the wasting miseryof seeking that which could not, from its very nature (and mine) besought. 

There was really nothing I could do, therefore, but wait, and that iswhat I did. I waited intensely, very much as a terrier waits at thehole of the bolting rabbit. By the merest accident I got a clew to avery interesting case which added enormously to my knowledge. It was aclear case of fairy child-theft, the clearest I ever met with. I shalldevote a chapter to it, having been at the pains to verify it in allparticulars. I did not succeed in meeting the hero, or victim of it, because, though the events related took place in 1887, they were notrecorded until 1892, when the record came into my hands. By that timethe two persons concerned had left the country and were settled inFlorida. I did see Mr. Walsh, the Nonconformist Minister whocommunicated the tale to his local society, but he was both a dull anda cautious man, and had very little to tell me. He had himself seennothing, he only had Beckwith's word to go upon and did not feelcertain that the whole affair was not an hallucination on the youngman's part. That the child had disappeared was certain, that bothparents were equally distressed is certain. Not a shred of suspicionattached to the unhappy Beckwith. But Mr. Walsh told me that he feltthe loss so keenly and blamed himself so severely, thoughunreasonably, to my thinking, that it would have been impossible forhim to remain in England. He said that the full statement communicatedto the Field Club was considered by the young man in the light of aconfession of his share in the tragedy. It would, he said, have beenexorbitant to expect more of him. And I quite agree with him; and nowhad better give the story as I found it. 

BECKWITH'S CASE

The facts were as follows. Mr. Stephen Mortimer Beckwith was a youngman living at Wishford in the Amesbury district of Wiltshire. He was aclerk in the Wilts and Dorset Bank at Salisbury, was married and hadone child. His age at the time of the experience here related wastwenty-eight. His health was excellent. 

On the 30th November, 1887, at about ten o'clock at night, he wasreturning home from Amesbury where he had been spending the evening ata friend's house. The weather was mild, with a rain-bearing windblowing in squalls from the south-west. It was three-quarter moon thatnight, and although the sky was frequently overcast it was at no timedark. Mr. Beckwith, who was riding a bicycle and accompanied by hisfox-terrier Strap, states that he had no difficulty in seeing andavoiding the stones cast down at intervals by the road-menders; thatflocks of sheep in the hollows were very visible, and that, passingWilsford House, he saw a barn owl quite plainly and remarked itsheavy, uneven flight. 

A mile beyond Wilsford House, Strap, the dog, broke through thequick-set hedge upon his right-hand side and ran yelping up the down, which rises sharply just there. Mr. Beckwith, who imagined that he wasafter a hare, whistled him in, presently calling him sharply, "Strap, Strap, come out of it. " The dog took no notice, but ran directly to aclump of gorse and bramble half-way up the down, and stood there inthe attitude of a pointer, with uplifted paw, watching the gorseintently, and whining. Mr. Beckwith was by this time dismounted, observing the dog. He watched him for some minutes from the road. Themoon was bright, the sky at the moment free from cloud. 

He himself could see nothing in the gorse, though the dog wasundoubtedly in a high state of excitement. It made frequent rushesforward, but stopped short of the object that it saw and trembled. Itdid not bark outright but rather whimpered--"a curious, shuddering, crying noise, " says Mr. Beckwith. Interested by the animal'spersistent and singular behaviour, he now sought a gap in the hedge, went through on to the down, and approached the clumped bushes. Strapwas so much occupied that he barely noticed his master's coming; itseemed as if he dared not take his eyes for one second from what hesaw in there. 

Beckwith, standing behind the dog, looked into the gorse. From thedistance at which he still stood he could see nothing at all. Hisbelief then was that there was either a tramp in a drunken sleep, possibly two tramps, or a hare caught in a wire, or possibly even afox. Having no stick with him he did not care, at first, to go anynearer, and contented himself with urging on his terrier. This was notvery courageous of him, as he admits, and was quite unsuccessful. Noverbal excitations would draw Strap nearer to the furze-bush. Finallythe dog threw up his head, showed his master the white arcs of hiseyes and fairly howled at the moon. At this dismal sound Mr. Beckwithowned himself alarmed. It was, as he describes it--though he is anEnglishman--"uncanny. " The time, he owns, the aspect of the night, loneliness of the spot (midway up the steep slope of a chalk down), the mysterious shroud of darkness upon shadowed and distant objectsand flood of white light upon the foreground--all these circumstancesworked upon his imagination. 

He was indeed for retreat; but here Strap was of a different mind. Nothing would excite him to advance, but nothing either could inducehim to retire. Whatever he saw in the furze-bush Strap must continueto observe. In the face of this Beckwith summoned up his courage, tookit in both hands and went much nearer to the furze-bushes, muchnearer, that is, than Strap the terrier could bring himself to go. Then, he tells us, he did see a pair of bright eyes far in thethicket, which seemed to be fixed upon his, and by degrees also a paleand troubled face. Here, then, was neither fox nor drunken tramp, butsome human creature, man, woman, or child, fully aware of him and ofthe dog. 

Beckwith, who now had surer command of his feelings, spoke aloudasking, "What are you doing there? What's the matter?" He had noreply. He went one pace nearer, being still on his guard, and spokeagain. "I won't hurt you, " he said. "Tell me what the matter is. " Theeyes remained unwinkingly fixed upon his own. No movement of thefeatures could be discerned. The face, as he could now make it out, was very small--"about as big as a big wax doll's, " he says, "of alongish oval, very pale. " He adds, "I could see its neck now, nothicker than my wrist; and where its clothes began. I couldn't see anyarms, for a good reason. I found out afterward that they had beenbound behind its back. I should have said immediately, 'That's a girlin there, ' if it had not been for one or two plain considerations. Ithad not the size of what we call a girl, nor the face of what we meanby a child. It was, in fact, neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. Strap hadknown that from the beginning, and now I was of Strap's opinionmyself. "

Advancing with care, a step at a time, Beckwith presently foundhimself within touching distance of the creature. He was now standingwith furze half-way up his calves, right above it, stooping to lookclosely at it; and as he stooped and moved, now this way, now that, toget a clearer view, so the crouching thing's eyes gazed up to meethis, and followed them about, as if safety lay only in thatnever-shifting, fixed regard. He had noticed, and states in hisnarrative, that Strap had seemed quite unable, in the same way, totake his eyes off the creature for a single second. 

He could now see that, of whatever nature it might be, it was, in formand features, most exactly a young woman. The features, for instance, were regular and fine. He remarks in particular upon the chin. Allabout its face, narrowing the oval of it, fell dark glossy curtains ofhair, very straight and glistening with wet. Its garment was cut in aplain circle round the neck, and short off at the shoulders, leavingthe arms entirely bare. This garment, shift, smock or gown, as heindifferently calls it, appeared thin, and was found afterward to beof a grey colour, soft and clinging to the shape. It was made loose, however, and gathered in at the waist. He could not see thecreature's legs, as they were tucked under her. Her arms, it has beenrelated, were behind her back. The only other things to be remarkedupon were the strange stillness of one who was plainly suffering, andmight well be alarmed, and appearance of expectancy, a dumb appeal;what he himself calls rather well "an ignorant sort of impatience, like that of a sick animal. "

"Come, " Beckwith now said, "let me help you up. You will get cold ifyou sit here. Give me your hand, will you?" She neither spoke normoved; simply continued to search his eyes. Strap, meantime, was stilltrembling and whining. But now, when he stooped yet lower to take herforcibly by the arms, she shrank back a little way and turned herhead, and he saw to his horror that she had a great open wound in theside of her neck--from which, however, no blood was issuing. Yet itwas clearly a fresh wound, recently made. 

He was greatly shocked. "Good God, " he said, "there's been foul playhere, " and whipped out his handkerchief. Kneeling, he wound it severaltimes round her slender throat and knotted it as tightly as he could;then, without more ado, he took her up in his arms, under the kneesand round the middle, and carried her down the slope to the road. Hedescribes her as of no weight at all. He says it was "exactly likecarrying an armful of feathers about. " "I took her down the hill andthrough the hedge at the bottom as if she had been a pillow. "

Here it was that he discovered that her wrists were bound togetherbehind her back with a kind of plait of thongs so intricate that hewas quite unable to release them. He felt his pockets for his knife, but could not find it, and then recollected suddenly that he shouldhave a new one with him, the third prize in a whist tournament inwhich he had taken part that evening. He found it wrapped in paper inhis overcoat pocket, with it cut the thongs and set the littlecreature free. She immediately responded--the first sign of animationwhich she had displayed--by throwing both her arms about his body andclinging to him in an ecstasy. Holding him so that, as he says, hefelt the shuddering go all through her, she suddenly lowered her headand touched his wrist with her cheek. He says that instead of beingcold to the touch, "like a fish, " as she had seemed to be when hefirst took her out of the furze, she was now "as warm as a toast, likea child. "

So far he had put her down for "a foreigner, " convenient term fordefining something which you do not quite understand. She had none ofhis language, evidently; she was undersized, some three feet sixinches by the look of her, [4] and yet perfectly proportioned. She wasmost curiously dressed in a frock cut to the knee, and actually innothing else at all. It left her bare-legged and bare-armed, and wasmade, as he puts it himself, of stuff like cobweb: "those dusty, drooping kind which you put on your finger to stop bleeding. " He couldnot recognise the web, but was sure that it was neither linen norcotton. It seemed to stick to her body wherever it touched a prominentpart: "you could see very well, to say nothing of feeling, that shewas well made and well nourished. " She ought, as he judged, to be achild of five years old, "and a feather-weight at that"; but he feltcertain that she must be "much more like sixteen. " It was that, Igather, which made him suspect her of being something outsideexperience. So far, then, it was safe to call her a foreigner: but hewas not yet at the end of his discoveries. 

[Footnote 4: Her exact measurements are stated to have been asfollows: height from crown to sole, 3 feet 5 inches. Round waist, 15inches; round bust, 21 inches; round wrist, 3-1/2 inches; round neck, 7-1/2 inches. ]

Heavy footsteps, coming from the direction of Wishford, in due timeproved to be those of Police Constable Gulliver, a neighbour ofBeckwith's and guardian of the peace in his own village. He lifted hislantern to flash it into the traveller's eyes, and dropped it againwith a pleasant "good evening. "

He added that it was inclined to be showery, which was more thantrue, as it was at the moment raining hard. With that, it seems, hewould have passed on. 

But Beckwith, whether smitten by self-consciousness of having beenseen with a young woman in his arms at a suspicious hour of the nightby the village policeman, or bursting perhaps with the importance ofhis affair, detained Gulliver. "Just look at this, " he said boldly. "Here's a pretty thing to have found on a lonely road. Foul playsomewhere, I'm afraid, " he then exhibited his burden to the lanternlight. 

To his extreme surprise, however, the constable, after exploring thebeam of light and all that it contained for some time in silence, reached out his hand for the knife which Beckwith still held open. Helooked at it on both sides, examined the handle and gave it back. "Foul play, Mr. Beckwith?" he said laughing. "Bless you, they usebigger tools than that. That's just a toy, the like of that. Cut yourhand with it, though, already, I see. " He must have noticed thehandkerchief, for as he spoke the light from his lantern shone fullupon the face and neck of the child, or creature, in the young man'sarms, so clearly that, looking down at it, Beckwith himself could seethe clear grey of its intensely watchful eyes, and the very pupils ofthem, diminished to specks of black. It was now, therefore, plain tohim that what he held was a foreigner indeed, since the parishconstable was unable to see it. Strap had smelt it, then seen it, andhe, Beckwith, had seen it; but it was invisible to Gulliver. "I feltnow, " he says in his narrative, "that something was wrong. I did notlike the idea of taking it into the house; but I intended to make onemore trial before I made up my mind about that. I said good night toGulliver, put her on my bicycle and pushed her home. But first of allI took the handkerchief from her neck and put it in my pocket. Therewas no blood upon it, that I could see. "

His wife, as he had expected, was waiting at the gate for him. Sheexclaimed, as he had expected, upon the lateness of the hour. Beckwithstood for a little in the roadway before the house, explaining thatStrap had bolted up the hill and had had to be looked for and fetchedback. While speaking he noticed that Mrs. Beckwith was as insensibleto the creature on the bicycle as Gulliver the constable had been. Indeed, she went much further to prove herself so than he, for sheactually put her hand upon the handle-bar of the machine, and in orderto do that drove it right through the centre of the girl crouchingthere. Beckwith saw that done. "I declare solemnly upon my honour, " hewrites, "that it was as if Mary had drilled a hole clean through themiddle of her back. Through gown and skin and bone and all her armwent; and how it went I don't know. To me it seemed that her hand wason the handle-bar, while her upper arm, to the elbow, was in betweenthe girl's shoulders. There was a gap from the elbow downwards whereMary's arm was inside the body; then from the creature's diaphragm herlower arm, wrist and hand came out. And all the time we were speakingthe girl's eyes were on my face. I was now quite determined that Iwouldn't have her in the house for a mint of money. "

He put her, finally, in the dog-kennel. Strap, as a favourite, livedin the house; but he kept a greyhound in the garden, in a kennelsurrounded by a sort of run made of iron poles and galvanised wire. Itwas roofed in with wire also, for the convenience of stretching atarpaulin in wet weather. Here it was that he bestowed the strangebeing rescued from the down. 

It was clever, I think, of Beckwith to infer that what Strap had shownrespect for would be respected by the greyhound, and certainly bold ofhim to act upon his inference. However, events proved that he had beenperfectly right. Bran, the greyhound, was interested, highlyinterested in his guest. The moment he saw his master he saw what hewas carrying. "Quiet, Bran, quiet there, " was a very unnecessaryadjuration. Bran stretched up his head and sniffed, but went nofurther; and when Beckwith had placed his burden on the straw insidethe kennel, Bran lay down, as if on guard, outside the opening and puthis muzzle on his forepaws. Again Beckwith noticed that curiousappearance of the eyes which the fox-terrier's had made already. Bran's eyes were turned upward to show the narrow arcs of white. 

Before he went to bed, he tells us, but not before Mrs. Beckwith hadgone there, he took out a bowl of bread and milk to his patient. Branhe found to be still stretched out before the entry; the girl wasnestled down in the straw, as if asleep or prepared to be so, with herface upon her hand. Upon an after-thought he went back for a cleanpocket handkerchief, warm water and a sponge. With these, by the lightof a candle, he washed the wound, dipped the rag in hazeline, andapplied it. This done, he touched the creature's head, nodded a goodnight and retired. "She smiled at me very prettily, " he says. "Thatwas the first time she did it. "

There was no blood on the handkerchief which he had removed. 

Early in the morning following upon the adventure Beckwith was out andabout. He wished to verify the overnight experiences in the light ofrefreshed intelligence. On approaching the kennel he saw at once thatit had been no dream. There, in fact, was the creature of hisdiscovery playing with Bran the greyhound, circling sedately abouthim, weaving her arms, pointing her toes, arching her graceful neck, stooping to him, as if inviting him to sport, darting away--"like afairy, " says Beckwith, "at her magic, dancing in a ring. " Bran, heobserved, made no effort to catch her, but crouched rather than sat, as if ready to spring. He followed her about with his eyes as far ashe could; but when the course of her dance took her immediately behindhim he did not turn his head, but kept his eye fixed as far backwardas he could, against the moment when she should come again into thescope of his vision. "It seemed as important to him as it had the daybefore to Strap to keep her always in his eye. It seemed--and alwaysseemed so long as I could study them together--intensely important. "Bran's mouth was stretched to "a sort of grin"; occasionally hepanted. When Beckwith entered the kennel and touched the dog (whichtook little notice of him) he found him trembling with excitement. Hisheart was beating at a great rate. He also drank quantities of water. 

Beckwith, whose narrative, hitherto summarised, I may now quote, tellsus that the creature was indescribably graceful and light-footed. "You couldn't hear the fall of her foot: you never could. Her dancingand circling about the cage seemed to be the most important businessof her life; she was always at it, especially in bright weather. Ishouldn't have called it restlessness so much as busyness. It reallyseemed to mean more to her than exercise or irritation at confinement. It was evident also that she was happy when so engaged. She used tosing. She sang also when she was sitting still with Bran; but not withsuch exhilaration. 

"Her eyes were bright--when she was dancing about--with mischief anddevilry. I cannot avoid that word, though it does not describe what Ireally mean. She looked wild and outlandish and full of fun, as if sheknew that she was teasing the dog, and yet couldn't help herself. Whenyou say of a child that he looks wicked, you don't mean it literally;it is rather a compliment than not. So it was with her and herwickedness. She did look wicked, there's no mistake--able and willingto do wickedly; but I am sure she never meant to hurt Bran. They werealways firm friends, though the dog knew very well who was master. 

"When you looked at her you did not think of her height. She was socomplete; as well made as a statuette. I could have spanned her waistwith my two thumbs and middle fingers, and her neck (very nearly)with one hand. She was pale and inclined to be dusky in complexion, but not so dark as a gipsy; she had grey eyes, and dark-brown hair, which she could sit upon if she chose. Her gown you could have swornwas made of cobweb; I don't know how else to describe it. As I hadsuspected, she wore nothing else, for while I was there that firstmorning, so soon as the sun came up over the hill she slipped it offher and stood up dressed in nothing at all. She was a regular littleVenus--that's all I can say. I never could get accustomed to thatweakness of hers for slipping off her frock, though no doubt it wasvery absurd. She had no sort of shame in it, so why on earth should I?

"The food, I ought to mention, had disappeared: the bowl was empty. But I know now that Bran must have had it. So long as she remained inthe kennel or about my place she never ate anything, nor drank either. If she had I must have known it, as I used to clean the run out everymorning. I was always particular about that. I used to say that youcouldn't keep dogs too clean. But I tried her, unsuccessfully, withall sorts of things: flowers, honey, dew--for I had read somewherethat fairies drink dew and suck honey out of flowers. She used to lookat the little messes I made for her, and when she knew me betterwould grimace at them, and look up in my face and laugh at me. 

"I have said that she used to sing sometimes. It was like nothing thatI can describe. Perhaps the wind in the telegraph wire comes nearestto it, and yet that is an absurd comparison. I could never catch anywords; indeed I did not succeed in learning a single word of herlanguage. I doubt very much whether they have what we call alanguage--I mean the people who are like her, her own people. Theycommunicate with each other, I fancy, as she did with my dogs, inarticulately, but with perfect communication and understanding oneither side. When I began to teach her English I noticed that she hada kind of pity for me, a kind of contempt perhaps is nearer the mark, that I should be compelled to express myself in so clumsy a way. I amno philosopher, but I imagine that our need of putting one word afteranother may be due to our habit of thinking in sequence. If there isno such thing as Time in the other world it should not be necessarythere to frame speech in sentences at all. I am sure that Thumbeline(which was my name for her--I never learned her real name) spoke withBran and Strap in flashes which revealed her whole thought at once. Soalso they answered her, there's no doubt. So also she contrived totalk with my little girl, who, although she was four years old and agreat chatterbox, never attempted to say a single word of her ownlanguage to Thumbeline, yet communicated with her by the hourtogether. But I did not know anything of this for a month or more, though it must have begun almost at once. 

"I blame myself for it, myself only. I ought, of course, to haveremembered that children are more likely to see fairies thangrown-ups; but then--why did Florrie keep it all secret? Why did shenot tell her mother, or me, that she had seen a fairy in Bran'skennel? The child was as open as the day, yet she concealed herknowledge from both of us without the least difficulty. She seemed thesame careless, laughing child she had always been; one could not havesupposed her to have a care in the world, and yet, for nearly sixmonths she must have been full of care, having daily secretintercourse with Thumbeline and keeping her eyes open all the timelest her mother or I should find her out. Certainly she could havetaught me something in the way of keeping secrets. I know that I keptmine very badly, and blame myself more than enough for keeping it atall. God knows what we might have been spared if, on the night Ibrought her home, I had told Mary the whole truth! And yet--how couldI have convinced her that she was impaling some one with her armwhile her hand rested on the bar of the bicycle? Is not that anabsurdity on the face of it? Yes, indeed; but the sequel is noabsurdity. That's the terrible fact. 

"I kept Thumbeline in the kennel for the whole winter. She seemedhappy enough there with the dogs, and, of course, she had had Florrie, too, though I did not find that out until the spring. I don't doubt, now, that if I had kept her in there altogether she would have beenperfectly contented. 

"The first time I saw Florrie with her I was amazed. It was a Sundaymorning. There was our four-year-old child standing at the wire, pressing herself against it, and Thumbeline close to her. Their facesalmost touched; their fingers were interlaced; I am certain that theywere speaking to each other in their own fashion, by flashes, withoutwords. I watched them for a bit; I saw Bran come and sit up on hishaunches and join in. He looked from one to another, and all about;and then he saw me. 

"Now that is how I know that they were all three in communication;because, the very next moment, Florrie turned round and ran to me, andsaid in her pretty baby-talk, 'Talking to Bran. Florrie talking toBran. ' If this was wilful deceit it was most accomplished. It couldnot have been better done. 'And who else were you talking to, Florrie?' I said. She fixed her round blue eyes upon me, as if inwonder, then looked away and said shortly, 'No one else. ' And I couldnot get her to confess or admit then or at any time afterward that shehad any cognisance at all of the fairy in Bran's kennel, althoughtheir communications were daily, and often lasted for hours at a time. I don't know that it makes things any better, but I have thoughtsometimes that the child believed me to be as insensible to Thumbelineas her mother was. She can only have believed it at first, of course, but that may have prompted her to a concealment which she did notafterwards care to confess to. 

"Be this as it may, Florrie, in fact, behaved with Thumbeline exactlyas the two dogs did. She made no attempt to catch her at her circlingsand wheelings about the kennel, nor to follow her wonderful dances, nor (in her presence) to imitate them. But she was (like the dogs)aware of nobody else when under the spell of Thumbeline's personality;and when she had got to know her she seemed to care for nobody else atall. I ought, no doubt, to have foreseen that and guarded against it. 

"Thumbeline was extremely attractive. I never saw such eyes as hers, such mysterious fascination. She was nearly always good-tempered, nearly always happy; but sometimes she had fits of temper and keptherself to herself. Nothing then would get her out of the kennel, where she would lie curled up like an animal with her knees to herchin and one arm thrown over her face. Bran was always wretched atthese times, and did all he knew to coax her out. He ceased to carefor me or my wife after she came to us, and instead of being wild atthe prospect of his Saturday and Sunday runs, it was hard to get himalong. I had to take him on a lead until we had turned to go home;then he would set off by himself, in spite of hallooing and scolding, at a long steady gallop and one would find him waiting crouched at thegate of his run, and Thumbeline on the ground inside it, with her legscrossed like a tailor, mocking and teasing him with her wonderfulshining eyes. Only once or twice did I see her worse than sick orsorry; then she was transported with rage and another personaltogether. She never touched me--and why or how I had offended her Ihave no notion[5]--but she buzzed and hovered about me like an angrybee. She appeared to have wings, which hummed in their furiousmovement; she was red in the face, her eyes burned; she grinned at meand ground her little teeth together. A curious shrill noise camefrom her, like the screaming of a gnat or hoverfly; but no words, never any words. Bran showed me his teeth too, and would not look atme. It was very odd. 

[Footnote 5: "I have sometimes thought, " he adds in a note, "that itmay have been jealousy. My wife had been with me in the garden and hadstuck a daffodil in my coat. "]

"When I looked in, on my return home, she was as merry as usual, andas affectionate. I think she had no memory. 

"I am trying to give all the particulars I was able to gather fromobservation. In some things she was difficult, in others very easy toteach. For instance, I got her to learn in no time that she ought towear her clothes, such as they were, when I was with her. Shecertainly preferred to go without them, especially in the sunshine;but by leaving her the moment she slipped her frock off I soon madeher understand that if she wanted me she must behave herself accordingto my notions of behaviour. She got that fixed in her little head, buteven so she used to do her best to hoodwink me. She would slip out oneshoulder when she thought I wasn't looking, and before I knew where Iwas half of her would be gleaming in the sun like satin. Directly Inoticed it I used to frown, and then she would pretend to be ashamedof herself, hang her head, and wriggle her frock up to its placeagain. However, I never could teach her to keep her skirts about herknees. She was as innocent as a baby about that sort of thing. 

"I taught her some English words, and a sentence or two. That wastoward the end of her confinement to the kennel, about March. I usedto touch parts of her, or of myself, or Bran, and peg away at thenames of them. Mouth, eyes, ears, hands, chest, tail, back, front: shelearned all those and more. Eat, drink, laugh, cry, love, kiss, thosealso. As for kissing (apart from the word) she proved herself to be anexpert. She kissed me, Florrie, Bran, Strap indifferently, one as soonas another, and any rather than none, and all four for choice. 

"I learned some things myself, more than a thing or two. I don't mindowning that one thing was to value my wife's steady and triedaffection far above the wild love of this unbalanced, unearthly littlecreature, who seemed to be like nothing so much as a woman with theconscience left out. The conscience, we believe, is the still smallvoice of the Deity crying to us in the dark recesses of the body;pointing out the path of duty; teaching respect for the opinion of theworld, for tradition, decency and order. It is thanks to consciencethat a man is true and a woman modest. Not that Thumbeline could becalled immodest, unless a baby can be so described, or an animal. Butcould I be called 'true'? I greatly fear that I could not--in fact, Iknow it too well. I meant no harm; I was greatly interested; andthere was always before me the real difficulty of making Maryunderstand that something was in the kennel which she couldn't see. Itwould have led to great complications, even if I had persuaded her ofthe fact. No doubt she would have insisted on my getting rid ofThumbeline--but how on earth could I have done that if Thumbeline hadnot chosen to go? But for all that I know very well that I ought tohave told her, cost what it might. If I had done it I should havespared myself lifelong regret, and should only have gone without a fewweeks of extraordinary interest which I now see clearly could not havebeen good for me, as not being founded upon any revealed Christianprinciple, and most certainly were not worth the price I had to payfor them. 

"I learned one more curious fact which I must not forget. Nothingwould induce Thumbeline to touch or pass over anything made ofzinc. [6] I don't know the reason of it; but gardeners will tell youthat the way to keep a plant from slugs is to put a zinc collar roundit. It is due to that I was able to keep her in Bran's run withoutdifficulty. To have got out she would have had to pass zinc. The wirewas all galvanised. 

[Footnote 6: This is a curious thing, unsupported by any otherevidence known to me. I asked Despoina about it, but she would not, orshe did not, answer. She appeared not to understand what zinc was, andI had none handy. ]

"She showed her dislike of it in numerous ways: one was her care toavoid touching the sides or top of the enclosure when she was at hergambols. At such times, when she was at her wildest, she was all overthe place, skipping high like a lamb, twisting like a leveret, wheeling round and round in circles like a young dog, or skimming, like a swallow on the wing, above ground. But she never made amistake; she turned in a moment or flung herself backward if there wasthe least risk of contact. When Florrie used to converse with her fromoutside, in that curious silent way the two had, it would always bethe child that put its hands through the wire, never Thumbeline. Ionce tried to put her against the roof when I was playing with her. She screamed like a shot hare and would not come out of the kennel allday. There was no doubt at all about her feelings for zinc. All othermetals seemed indifferent to her. 

"With the advent of spring weather Thumbeline became not only morebeautiful, but wilder, and exceedingly restless. She now coaxed me tolet her out, and against my judgment I did it; she had to be carriedover the entry; for when I had set the gate wide open and pointed herthe way into the garden she squatted down in her usual attitude ofattention, with her legs crossed, and watched me, waiting. I wanted tosee how she would get through the hateful wire, so went away and hidmyself, leaving her alone with Bran. I saw her creep to the entry andpeer at the wire. What followed was curious. Bran came up wagging histail and stood close to her, his side against her head; he lookeddown, inviting her to go out with him. Long looks passed between them, and then Bran stooped his head, she put her arms around his neck, twined her feet about his foreleg, and was carried out. Then shebecame a mad thing, now bird, now moth; high and low, round and round, flashing about the place for all the world like a humming-bird moth, perfectly beautiful in her motions (whose ease always surprised me), and equally so in her colouring of soft grey and dusky-rose flesh. Bran grew a puppy again and whipped about after her in great circlesround the meadow. But though he was famous at coursing, and has killedhis hares single-handed, he was never once near Thumbeline. It was awonderful sight and made me late for business. 

"By degrees she got to be very bold, and taught me boldness too, and(I am ashamed to say) greater degrees of deceit. She came freely intothe house and played with Florrie up and down stairs; she got on myknee at meal-times, or evenings when my wife and I were together. Finetricks she played me, I must own. She spilled my tea for me, brokecups and saucers, scattered my Patience cards, caught poor Mary'sknitting wool and rolled it about the room. The cunning littlecreature knew that I dared not scold her or make any kind of fuss. Sheused to beseech me for forgiveness occasionally when I looked veryglum, and would touch my cheek to make me look at her imploring eyes, and keep me looking at her till I smiled. Then she would put her armsround my neck and pull herself up to my level and kiss me, and thennestle down in my arms and pretend to sleep. By-and-by, when myattention was called off her, she would pinch me, or tweak my necktie, and make me look again at her wicked eye peeping out from under myarm. I had to kiss her again, of course, and at last she might go tosleep in earnest. She seemed able to sleep at any hour or in anyplace, just like an animal. 

"I had some difficulty in arranging for the night when once she hadmade herself free of the house. She saw no reason whatever for ourbeing separated; but I circumvented her by nailing a strip of zinc allround the door; and I put one round Florrie's too. I pretended to mywife that it was to keep out draughts. Thumbeline was furious when shefound out how she had been tricked. I think she never quite forgave mefor it. Where she hid herself at night I am not sure. I think on thesitting-room sofa; but on mild mornings I used to find her out-doors, playing round Bran's kennel. 

"Strap, our fox-terrier, picked up some rat poison towards the end ofApril and died in the night. Thumbeline's way of taking that was verycurious. It shocked me a good deal. She had never been so friendlywith him as with Bran, though certainly more at ease in his companythan in mine. The night before he died I remember that she and Branand he had been having high games in the meadow, which had ended bytheir all lying down together in a heap, Thumbeline's head on Bran'sflank, and her legs between his. Her arm had been round Strap's neckin a most loving way. They made quite a picture for a RoyalAcademician; 'Tired of Play, ' or 'The End of a Romp, ' I can fancy hewould call it. Next morning I found poor old Strap stiff and staring, and Thumbeline and Bran at their games just the same. She actuallyjumped over him and all about him as if he had been a lump of earth ora stone. Just some such thing he was to her; she did not seem able torealise that there was the cold body of her friend. Bran just sniffedhim over and left him, but Thumbeline showed no consciousness that hewas there at all. I wondered, was this heartlessness or obliquity? ButI have never found the answer to my question. [7]

[Footnote 7: I have observed this frequently for myself, and cananswer Beckwith's question for him. I would refer the reader in thefirst place to my early experience of the boy (to call him so) withthe rabbit in the wood. There was an act of shocking cruelty, doneidly, almost unconsciously. I was not shocked at all, child as I was, and quickly moved to pity and terror, because I knew that the creaturewas not to be judged by our standards. From this and other things ofthe sort which I have observed, and from this tale of Beckwith's, Ijudge, that, to the fairy kind, directly life ceases to be lived atthe full, the object, be it fairy, or animal, or vegetable, is notperceived by the other to exist. Thus, if a fairy should die, theothers would not know that its accidents were there; if a rabbit (asin the case cited) should be caught it would therefore cease to berabbit. We ourselves have very much the same habit of regard towardplant life. Our attitude to a tree or a growing plant ceases themoment that plant is out of the ground. It is then, as we say, _dead_--that is, it ceases to be a plant. So also we never scruple topluck the flowers, or the whole flower-scape from a plant, to put itin our buttonhole or in the bosom of our friend, and thereafter tocease our interest in the plant as such. It now becomes a memory, a_gage d'amour_, a token or a sudden glory--what you will. This is thehabit of mankind; but I know of rare ones, both men and women, whonever allow dead flowers to be thrown into the draught, but alwaysgive them decent burial, either cremation or earth to earth. I findthat admirable, yet don't condemn their neighbours, nor considerfairies cruel who torture the living and disregard the maimed or thedead. ]

"Now I come to the tragical part of my story, and wish with all myheart that I could leave it out. But beyond the full confession I havemade to my wife, the County Police and the newspapers, I feel that Ishould not shrink from any admission that may be called for of howmuch I have been to blame. In May, on the 13th of May, Thumbeline, Bran, and our only child, Florrie, disappeared. 

"It was a day, I remember well, of wonderful beauty. I had left themall three together in the water meadow, little thinking of what was instore for us before many hours. Thumbeline had been crowning Florriewith a wreath of flowers. She had gathered cuckoo-pint and marshmarigolds and woven them together, far more deftly than any of uscould have done, into a chaplet. I remember the curious winding, wandering air she had been singing (without any words, as usual) overher business, and how she touched each flower first with her lips, andthen brushed it lightly across her bosom before she wove it in. Shehad kept her eyes on me as she did it, looking up from under herbrows, as if to see whether I knew what she was about. 

"I don't doubt now but that she was bewitching Florrie by this curiousperformance, which every flower had to undergo separately; but, foolthat I was, I thought nothing of it at the time, and bicycled off toSalisbury leaving them there. 

"At noon my poor wife came to me at the Bank distracted with anxietyand fatigue. She had run most of the way, she gave me to understand. Her news was that Florrie and Bran could not be found anywhere. Shesaid that she had gone to the gate of the meadow to call the child in, and not seeing her, or getting any answer, she had gone down to theriver at the bottom. Here she had found a few picked wild flowers, butno other traces. There were no footprints in the mud, either of childor dog. Having spent the morning with some of the neighbours in afruitless search, she had now come to me. 

"My heart was like lead, and shame prevented me from telling her thetruth as I was sure it must be. But my own conviction of it cloggedall my efforts. Of what avail could it be to inform the police ororganise search-parties, knowing what I knew only too well? However, Idid put Gulliver in communication with the head-office in Sarum, andeverything possible was done. We explored a circuit of six miles aboutWishford; every fold of the hills, every spinney, every hedgerow wasthoroughly examined. But that first night of grief had broken down myshame: I told my wife the whole truth in the presence of ReverendRichard Walsh, the Congregational minister, and in spite of herabsolute incredulity, and, I may add, scorn, next morning I repeatedit to Chief Inspector Notcutt of Salisbury. Particulars got into thelocal papers by the following Saturday; and next I had to face theordeal of the _Daily Chronicle_, _Daily News_, _Daily Graphic_, _Star_, and other London journals. Most of these newspapers sentrepresentatives to lodge in the village, many of them withphotographic cameras. All this hateful notoriety I had brought uponmyself, and did my best to bear like the humble, contrite Christianwhich I hope I may say I have become. We found no trace of our dearone, and never have to this day. Bran, too, had completely vanished. Ihave not cared to keep a dog since. 

"Whether my dear wife ever believed my account I cannot be sure. Shehas never reproached me for wicked thoughtlessness, that's certain. Mr. Walsh, our respected pastor, who has been so kind as to read thispaper, told me more than once that he could hardly doubt it. TheSalisbury police made no comments upon it one way or another. Mycolleagues at the Bank, out of respect for my grief and sincererepentance, treated me with a forbearance for which I can never be toograteful. I need not add that every word of this is absolutely true. Imade notes of the most remarkable characteristics of the being Icalled Thumbeline _at the time of remarking them_, and those notes arestill in my possession. "

 * * * * *

Here, with the exception of a few general reflections which are oflittle value, Mr. Beckwith's paper ends. It was read, I ought to say, by the Rev. Richard Walsh at the meeting of the South Wilts Folk-loreSociety and Field Club held at Amesbury in June 1892, and is to befound in the published transactions of that body (Vol. IV. New Series, pp. 305 _seq. _). 

THE FAIRY WIFE

There is nothing surprising in that story, to my mind, but thereprobation with which Beckwith visits himself. What could he havedone that he did not? How could he have refrained from doing what hedid? Yet there are curious things about it, and one of those is thepartiality of the manifestation. The fairy was visible to him, hischild and his dogs but to no one else. So, in my own experience, hadshe been whom I saw in K---- Park, whom Harkness, my companion, didnot see. My explanation of it does not carry me over all thedifficulties. I say, or will repeat if I have said it before, that thefairy kind are really the spirit, essence, substance (what you will)of certain sensible things, such as trees, flowers, wind, water, hills, woods, marshes and the like, that their normal appearance to usis that of these natural phenomena; but that in certain states ofmind, perhaps in certain conditions of body, there is a relationestablished by which we are able to see them on our own terms, as itwere, or in our own idiom, and they also to treat with us to someextent, to a large extent, on the same plane or standing-ground. Thatthere are limitations to this relationship is plain already; forinstance, Beckwith was not able to get his fairy prisoner to speak, and I myself have never had speech with more than one in my life. Butas to that I shall have a very curious case to report shortly, where aman taught his fairy-wife to speak. 

The mentioning of that undoubted marriage brings me to the question ofsex. There is, of course, not the slightest doubt about it. Mrs. Ventris was a fairy wife. Mrs. Ventris was a puzzle to me for a goodmany years--in fact until Despoina explained to me many things. ForMrs. Ventris had a permanent human shape, and spoke as freely as youor I. I thought at one time that she might be the offspring of a mixedmarriage, like Elsie Marks (whose mother, by the way, was another caseof the sort); but in fact Mrs. Ventris and Mrs. Marks were both fairywives, and the wood-girl, Mabilla King, whose case I am going to dealwith was another. But this particular relationship is one which myexplanation of fairy apparitions does not really cover: for marriageimplies a permanent accessibility (to put it so) of two normallyinaccessible natures; and parentage implies very much more. That, indeed, implies what the Christians call Miracle; but it is quitebeyond dispute. I have a great number of cases ready to my hand, andshall deal at large with all of them in the course of this essay, inwhich fairies have had intercourse with mortals. It is by no means thefact that the wife is always of the fairy-kind. My own experience atC---- shall prove that. But I must content myself with mentioning thewell-known case of Mary Wellwood who was wife to a carpenter nearAshby de la Zouche, and was twice taken by a fairy and twicerecovered. She had children in each of her states of being, and on onerecorded occasion her two families met. It appears to be a law thatthe wife takes the nature of the husband, or as much of it as she can, and it is important to remark that _in all cases_ the children are ofthe husband's nature, fairy or mortal as he may happen to be. "Nature, " Despoina told me, "follows the male. " So far as fairies areconcerned it seems certain that union with mortals runs in families orclans, if one may so describe their curious relationships to eachother. There were five sisters of the wood in one of the Westerndepartments of France (Lot-et-Garonne, I think), who all married men:two of them married two brothers. Apart they led the decorous lives ofthe French middle class, but when they were together it was a sight tosee! A curious one, and to us, with our strong associations of ideas, that tremendous hand which memory has upon our heart-strings, apoignant one. For they had lost their powers, but not their impulses. It was a case of _si vieillesse pouvait_. I suppose they may haveappeared to some chance wayfarer, getting a glimpse of them at theirgambols between the poplar stems of the road, or in the vistas of thehazel-brakes, as a company of sprightly matrons on a frolic. To theGreeks foolishness! And be sure that such an observer would shrug themout of mind. My own impression is that these ladies were perfectlyhappy, that they had nothing of that _maggior' dolore_ which wemortals know, and for which our joys have so often to pay. Let us hopeso at any rate, for about a fairy or a growing boy conscious of theprison-shades could Poe have spun his horrors. 

"To the Greeks foolishness, " I said in my haste; but in very truth itwas far from being so. To the Greeks there was nothing extraordinaryin the parentage of a river or the love of a God for a mortal. Norshould there be to a Christian who accepts the orthodox account of thefoundation of his faith. So far as we know, the generative process ofevery created thing is the same; it is, therefore, an allowableinference that the same process obtains with the created things whichare not sensible to ourselves. If flowers mate and beget as we do, whynot winds and waters, why not gods and nymphs, fauns and fairies? Itis the creative urgency that imports more than the creative matter. Tomy mind, _magna componere parvis_, it is my fixed belief that allcreated nature known to us is the issue of the mighty love of God forhis first-made creature the Earth. I accept the Greek mythology as thenearest account of the truth we are likely to get. I have never hadthe least difficulty in accepting it; and all I have since found outof the relations of men with their fellow-creatures of other generaconfirms me in the belief that the urgency is the paramount necessity. 

If I am to deal with a case of a mixed marriage, where the wife was afairy, the spirit of a tree, I shall ask leave to set down first aplain proposition, which is that all Natural Facts (as wind, hills, lakes, trees, animals, rain, rivers, flowers) have an underlying Ideaor Soul whereby they really are what they appear, to which they owethe beauty, majesty, pity, terror, love, which they excite in us; andthat this Idea, or Soul, having a real existence of its own incommunity with its companions of the same nature, can be discerned bymortal men in forms which best explain to human intelligence thepassions which they excite in human breasts. This is how I explain thefact, for instance, that the austerity of a lonely rock at sea willtake the form and semblance, and much more than that, assume theprerogatives of a brooding man, or that the swift freedom of a riverwill pass by, as in a flash, in the coursing limbs of a youth, or thatat dusk, out of a reed-encircled mountain-tarn, silvery under the hushof the grey hour, there will rise, and gleam, and sink again, the paleface, the shoulders and breast of the Spirit of the Pool; that, finally, the grace of a tree, and its panic of fury when lashed bystorm, very capable in either case of inspiring love or horror, willbe revealed rarely in the form of a nymph. There may be a morerational explanation of these curious things, but I don't know of one:

 _Fortunatus et ille, Deos qui novit agrestes!_

Happy may one be in the fairies of our own country. Happy, even yet, are they who can find the Oreads of the hill, Dryads of the wood, nymphs of river, marsh, plough-land, pasture, and heath. Now, leavingto Greece the things that are Greek, here for an apologue follows aplain recital of facts within the knowledge of every man of theCheviots. 

I

There is in that country, not far from Otterburn--between Otterburnand the Scottish border--a remote hamlet consisting of a few whitecottages, farm buildings and a shingle-spired church. It is calledDryhope, and lies in a close valley, which is watered by a beck orburn, known as the Dryhope Burn. It is deeply buried in the hills. Spurs of the Cheviots as these are, they rise to a considerableelevation, but are pasturable nearly to the top. There, however, wherethe heather begins, peat-hags and morasses make dangerous provision, from which the flocks are carefully guarded. It is the practice of thecountry for the shepherds to be within touch of them all night, lestsome, feeding upward (as sheep always do) should reach the summits andbe lost or mired inextricably. These upland stretches, consequently, are among the most desolate spots to be found in our islands. I havewalked over them myself within recent years and met not a human soul, nor beast of man's taming. Ravens, curlews, peewits, a lagging fox orlimping hare; such, with the unsensed Spirits of the Earth, will beyour company. In particular I traversed (in 1902) the great uplandcalled Limmer Fell, and saw the tarn--Silent Water--and the treescalled The Seven Sisters. They are silver birches of remarkable sizeand beauty. One of them is fallen. Standing there, looking north-west, the Knapp may be seen easily, some five miles away; and the extent ofthe forest with which it is covered can be estimated. A great andsolemn wood that is, which no borderer will ever enter if he can helpit. 

There was--and may be still--a family of shepherds living in Dryhopeof the name of King. When these things occurred there were aliveGeorge King, a patriarch of seventy-five years, Miranda King, hisdaughter-in-law, widow of his son, who was supposed to be amiddle-aged woman, and a young man, Andrew King, her only son. Thatwas the family; and there was a girl, Bessie Prawle, daughter of aneighbour, very much in and out of the house, and held by commonreport to be betrothed to Andrew. She used to help the widow indomestic matters, see to the poultry, milk the cow, churn the butter, press the cheeses. The Kings were independent people, like thedalesmen of Cumberland, and stood, as the saying is, upon their ownfoot-soles. Old King had a tenant-right upon the fell, and owed no mananything. 

There was said to be a mystery connected with Miranda the widow, whowas a broad-browed, deep-breasted, handsome woman, very dark andsilent. She was not a native of Redesdale, not known to be ofNorthumberland. Her husband, who had been a sailor, had brought herback with him one day, saying that she was his wife and her nameMiranda. He had said no more about her, would say no more, and hadbeen drowned at sea before his son was born. She, for her part, hadbeen as uncommunicative as he. Such reticence breeds wonderment in theminds of such a people as they of Dryhope, and out of wonderment arisewonders. It was told that until Miranda King was brought in sea-birdshad never been seen in Dryhopedale. It was said that they came on thatvery night when George King the younger came home, and she with him, carrying his bundle and her own. It was said that they had never sinceleft the hamlet, and that when Miranda went out of doors, which wasseldom, she was followed by clouds of them whichever way she turned. Ihave no means of testing the truth of these rumours, but, however itmay be, no scandal was ever brought against her. She was respectableand respected. Old King, the grandfather, relied strongly upon herjudgment. She brought up her son in decent living and the fear of God. 

In the year when Andrew was nineteen he was a tall, handsome lad, anda shepherd, following the profession, as he was to inherit the estate, of his forebears. One April night in that year he and his grandfather, the pair of them with a collie, lay out on the fell-side together. Lambing is late in Redesdale, the spring comes late; April is often amonth of snow. 

They had a fire and their cloaks; the ground was dry, and they layupon it under a clear sky strewn with stars. At midnight George King, the grandfather, was asleep, but Andrew was broad awake. He heard theflock (which he could not see) sweep by him like a storm, thebell-wether leading, and as they went up the hill the wind began toblow, a long, steady, following blast. The collie on his feet, earsset flat on his head, shuddering with excitement, whined for orders. Andrew, after waking with difficulty his grandfather, was told to goup and head them off. He sent the dog one way--off in a flash, henever returned that night--and himself went another. He was not seenagain for two days. To be exact, he set out at midnight on Thursdaythe 12th April, and did not return to Dryhope until eleven o'clock ofthe morning of Saturday the 14th. The sheep, I may say here, came backby themselves on the 13th, the intervening day. 

That night of the 12th April is still commemorated in Dryhope as oneof unexampled spring storm, just as a certain October night of thenext year stands yet as the standard of comparison for all equinoctialgales. The April storm, we hear, was very short and had severalpeculiar features. It arose out of a clear sky, blew up a snow-cloudwhich did no more than powder the hills, and then continued to blowfuriously out of a clear sky. It was steady but inconceivably strongwhile it lasted; the force and pressure of the wind did not vary untiljust the end. It came from the south-east, which is the rainy quarterin Northumberland, but without rain. It blew hard from midnight, untilthree o'clock in the morning, and then, for half an hour, a hurricane. The valley and hamlet escaped as by a miracle. Mr. Robson, the vicar, awakened by it, heard the wind like thunder overhead and went out ofdoors to observe it. He went out into a still, mild air coming fromthe north-west, and still heard it roaring like a mad thing high abovehim. Its direction, as he judged by sound, was the precise contrary ofthe ground current. In the morning, wreckage of all kinds, branches oftrees, roots, and whole clumps of heather strewn about the village andmeadows, while showing that a furious battle had been fought out onthe fells, confirmed this suspicion. A limb of a tree, draped in ivy, was recognised as part of an old favourite of his walks. The ash fromwhich it had been torn stood to the south-east of the village. In thecourse of the day (the 13th) news was brought in that one of the SevenSisters was fallen, and that a clean drive could be seen through theforest on the top of Knapp. Coupled with these dreadful testimoniesyou have the disappearance of Andrew King to help you form yourvision of a village in consternation. 

Hear now what befell young Andrew King when he swiftly climbed thefell, driven forward by the storm. The facts are that he was agog foradventure, since, all unknown to any but himself, he had ventured tothe summits before, had stood by Silent Water, touched the SevenSisters one by one, and had even entered the dreadful, haunted, forestof Knapp. He had had a fright, had been smitten by that sudden gripeof fear which palsies limbs and freezes blood, which the ancientscalled the Stroke of Pan, and we still call Panic after them. He hadnever forgotten what he had seen, though he had lost the edge of thefear he had. He was older now by some two years, and only waiting theopportunity for renewed experience. He hoped to have it--and he hadit. 

The streaming gale drove him forward as a ship at sea. He ran lightly, without fatigue or troubled breath. Dimly above him he presently sawthe seven trees, dipping and louting to the weather; but as he nearedthem they had no meaning for him, did not, indeed, exist. For now hesaw more than they, and otherwise than men see trees. 

II

In a mild and steady light, which came from no illumination of moon orstars, but seemed to be interfused with the air, in the strong warmwind which wrapped the fell-top; upon a sward of bent-grass which rantoward the tarn and ended in swept reeds he saw six young womendancing in a ring. Not to any music that he could hear did they move, nor was the rhythm of their movement either ordered or wild. It wasnot formal dancing, and it was not at all a Bacchic rout: rather theyflitted hither and thither on the turf, now touching hands, nowstraining heads to one another, crossing, meeting, parting, windingabout and about with the purposeless and untirable frivolity of moths. They seemed neither happy nor unhappy, they made no sound; it lookedto the lad as if they had been so drifting from the beginning, andwould so drift to the end of things temporal. Their loose hairstreamed out in the wind, their light gossamer gowns streamed the sameway, whipped about their limbs as close as wet muslin. They werebare-footed, bare-armed, and bare-headed. They all had beauty, but itwas not of earthly cast. He saw one with hair like pale silk, and one, ruddy and fierce in the face, with snaky black hair which, he thought, flew out beyond her for a full yard's measure. Another hadhazel-brown hair and a sharp little peering face; another's was colourof ripe corn, and another's like a thunder-cloud, copper-tinged. Aboutand about they went, skimming the tops of the grasses, and AndrewKing, his heart hammering at his ribs, watched them at their play. Soby chance one saw him, and screamed shrilly, and pointed at him. 

Then they came about him like a swarm of bees, angry at first, humminga note like that of the telegraph wire on a mountain road, but, as hestood his ground, curiosity prevailed among them and they priedclosely at him. They touched him, felt his arms, his knees, handledhis clothing, peered into his eyes. All this he endured, though he wasin a horrible fright. Then one, the black-haired girl with a bold, proud face, came and stood closely before him and looked him full intohis eyes. He gave her look for look. She put a hand on each shoulderand kissed him. After that there was a tussle among them, for eachmust do what her sister had done. They took a kiss apiece, or maybemore; then, circling round him, they swept him forward on the wind, past Silent Water, over the Edge, out on the fells, on and on and on, and never stopped till they reached Knapp Forest, that dreadful place. 

There in the hushed aisles and glades they played with this new-foundcreature, played with him, fought for him, and would have loved him ifhe had been minded for such adventuring. Two in particular he markedas desiring his closer company--the black-haired and bold was one, andthe other was the sharp-faced and slim with eyes of a mouse andhazel-brown hair. He called her the laughing girl and thought her thekindest of them all. But they were all his friends at this time. Andrew King, like young Tamlane, might have sojourned with them forever and a day, but for one thing. He saw by chance a seventhmaiden--a white-faced, woe-begone, horror-struck Seventh Sister, blenched and frozen under a great beech. She may have been therethroughout his commerce with the rest, or she may have been revealedto him in a flash then and there. So as it was he saw her suddenly, and thereafter saw no other at all. She held his eyes waking; he lefthis playmates and went to her where she crouched. He stooped and tookher hand. It was as cold as a dead girl's and very heavy. Amid thescreaming of the others, undeterred by their whirling and battling, helifted up the frozen one. He lifted her bodily and carried her in hisarms. They swept all about him like infuriated birds. The sound oftheir rage was like that of gulls about a fish in the tide-way; butthey laid no hands on him, and said nothing that he could understand, and by this time his awe was gone, and his heart was on fire. Holdingfast to what he had and wanted, he pushed out of Knapp Forest and tookthe lee-side of the Edge on his way to Dryhope. This must have beenabout the time of the gale at its worst. The Seventh Sister by SilentWater may have fallen at this time; for had not Andrew King theSeventh Sister in his arms?

Anxiety as to the fate of Andrew King was spread over the village andthe greatest sympathy felt for the bereaved family. To have lost aflock of sheep, a dog, and an only child at one blow is a terriblemisfortune. Old King, I am told, was prostrated, and the girl, BessiePrawle, violent in her lamentations over her "lad. " The only personunmoved was the youth's mother, Miranda King the widow. She, it seems, had no doubts of his safety, and declared that he "would come in histime, like his father before him"--a saying which, instead ofcomforting the mourners, appears to have exasperated them. Probablythey did not at all understand it. Such consolations as Mr. Robson theminister had to offer she received respectfully, but without comment. All she had to say was that she could trust her son; and when he urgedthat she had better by far trust in God, her reply, finally andshortly, was that God was bound by His own laws and had not given usheads and hearts for nothing. I am free to admit that her theologyupon this point seems to me remarkably sound. 

In the course of the 13th, anxious day as it promised to be, oldGeorge King, returning from a fruitless quest over the fells, cameupon his sheep within a few hundred yards of his own house, collectedtogether in a flock and under the watch of his dog. They were, infact, as nearly as possible where he had understood them to be beforetheir stampede of the previous night. He was greatly heartened by thediscovery, though unable to account for the facts of it. The dog wasexcessively tired, and ate greedily. Next morning, when the family andsome neighbours were standing together on the fell-side looking up thevalley where the Dryhope burn comes down from the hills, they saw twofigures on the rough road which follows it. Mrs. King, the widow, Ibelieve, had seen them first, but she had said nothing. It was BessiePrawle who raised the first cry that "Andrew was coming, and his wifewith him. " All looked in the direction she showed them and recognisedthe young man. Behind him walked the figure of a woman. This is theaccustomed manner of a man and wife to walk in that country. It isalmost a proof of their relationship. Being satisfied of the identityof their child the whole party returned to the homestead to await himand what he was bringing with him. Speculation was rife and volublyexpressed, especially by Bessie Prawle. Miranda King, however, wassilent; but it was noticed that she kept her eyes fixed upon the womanbehind her son, and that her lips moved as if she was muttering toherself. 

The facts were as the expectations. Andrew King brought forward ayoung, timid and unknown girl as his wife. By that name he led her upto his grandfather, then to his mother; as such he explained her tohis neighbours, including (though not by name) Bessie Prawle, who hadundoubtedly hoped to occupy that position herself. 

Old King, overcome with joy at seeing his boy alive and well, anddazed, probably, by events, put his hands upon the girl's head andblessed her after the patriarchal fashion there persisting. He seemsto have taken canonical marriage for granted, though nobody else did, and though a moment's reflection, had he been capable of so much, would have shown him that that could not be. The neighbours were toowell disposed to the family to raise any doubts or objections; BessiePrawle was sullen and quiet; only Miranda King seems to have beenequal to the occasion. She, as if in complete possession of factswhich satisfied every question, received the girl as an equal. She didnot kiss her or touch her, but looked deeply into her eyes for a longspace of time, and took from her again an equally searching regard;then, turning to her father-in-law and the company at large, she said, "This is begun, and will be done. He is like his father before him. "To that oracular utterance old King, catching probably but the lastsentence, replied, "And he couldn't do better, my child. " He meant nomore than a testimony to his daughter-in-law. Mrs. King'sobservations, coupled with that, nevertheless, went far to give creditto the alleged marriage. 

The girl, so far, had said nothing whatever, though she had beenaddressed with more than one rough but kindly compliment on her youthand good looks. And now Andrew King explained that she was dumb. Consternation took the strange form of jocular approval of hisdiscretion in selecting a wife who could never nag him--but it wasconsternation none the less. The mystery was felt to be deeper; therewas nothing for it now but to call in the aid of the parishpriest--"the minister, " as they called him--and this was done. By thetime he had arrived, Miranda King had taken the girl into the cottage, and the young husband and his grandfather had got the neighbours todisperse. Bessie Prawle, breathing threatenings and slaughter, hadwithdrawn herself. 

Mr. Robson, a quiet sensible man of nearer sixty than fifty years, sat in the cottage, hearing all that his parishioners could tell himand using his eyes. He saw the centre-piece of all surmise, ashrinking, pale slip of a girl, by the look of her not more thanfifteen or sixteen years old. She was not emaciated by any means, seemed to be well nourished, and was quite as vigorous as any child ofthat age who could have been pitted against her. Her surroundingscowed her, he judged. To Dryhope she was a stranger, a foreigner; toher Dryhope and the Dryhopedale folk were perilous matter. Her generalappearance was that of a child who had never had anything butill-usage; she flinched at every sudden movement, and followed oneabout with her great unintelligent eyes, as if she was trying tocomprehend what they showed her. Her features were regular anddelicate; her brows broad and eyebrows finely arched, her chin full, her neck slim, her hands and feet narrow and full of what fancierscall "breed. " Her hair was very long and fine, dark brown with gleamsof gold; her eyes were large, grey in colour, but, as I have said, unintelligent, like an animal's, which to us always seemunintelligent. I should have mentioned, for Mr. Robson noticed it atonce, that her hair was unconfined, and that, so far as he could makeout, she wore but a single garment--a sleeveless frock, confined atthe waist and reaching to her knees. It was of the colour ofunbleached flax and of a coarse web. Her form showed through, and thefaint flush of her skin. She was a finely made girl. Her legs and feetwere bare. Immodest as such an appearance would have been in one ofthe village maids, he did not feel it to be so with her. Her look wasso entirely foreign to his experience that there was no standard ofcomparison. Everything about her seemed to him to be quite what onewould have expected, until one came, so to speak, in touch with hersoul. That, if it lay behind her inscrutable, sightless and dumb eyes, betrayed her. There was no hint of it. Human in form, visibly andtangibly human, no soul sat in her great eyes that a man coulddiscern. That, however, is not now the point. Rather it is that, toall appearance a modest and beautiful girl, she was remarkablyundressed. It was inconceivable that a modest and beautiful girl couldso present herself, and yet a modest and beautiful girl she was. 

Mr. Robson put it to himself this way. There are birds--for instance, jays, kingfishers, goldfinches--which are, taken absolutely, extremelybrilliant in colouring. Yet they do not jar, are not obtrusive. So itwas with her. Her dress was, perhaps, taken absolutely, indecorous. Upon her it looked at once seemly and beautiful. Upon Bessie Prawle itwould have been glaring; but one had to dissect it before one coulddiscover any fault with it upon its wearer. She was very pale, even tothe lips, which were full and parted, as if she must breathe throughher mouth. He noticed immediately the shortness of her breath. It wasvery distressing, and after a little while induced the same thing inhimself. And not in him only, but I can fancy that the whole group ofthem sitting round her where she was crouched against Miranda King'sknees, were panting away like steam-engines before they had done withher. While Mr. Robson was there Miranda never took her arm off hershoulder for a moment; but the girl's eyes were always fixed uponAndrew, who called himself her husband, unless her apprehensions weredirectly called elsewhere. In that case she would look in the requireddirection for the fraction of a second, terrified and ready, as youmay say, to die at a movement, and then, her fears at rest, back toher husband's face. 

Mr. Robson's first business was to examine Andrew King, a perfectlyhonest, well-behaved lad, whom he had known from his cradle. He wascandid--up to a point. He had found her on the top of Knapp Fell, hesaid; she had been with others, who ill-treated her. What others?Others of her sort. Fairies, he said, who lived up there. He pressedhim about this. Fairies? Did he really believe in such beings? Likeall country people he spoke about these things with the utmostdifficulty, and when confronted by worldly wisdom, became dogged. Hesaid how could he help it when here was one? Mr. Robson told him thathe was begging the question, but he looked very blank. To the surpriseof the minister, old King--old George King, the grandfather--had noobjections to make to the suggestion of fairies on Knapp Fell. Hecould not say, there was no telling; Knapp was a known place; strangethings were recorded of the forest. Miranda, his daughter-in-law, wasalways a self-contained woman, with an air about her of beingforewarned. He instanced her, and the minister asked her severalquestions. Being pressed, she finally said, "Sir, my son is as likelyright as wrong. We must all make up our own minds. " There that matterhad to be left. 

Andrew said that he had followed the fairies from the tarn on LammerFell into Knapp Forest. They had run away from him, taking this girlof his, as he supposed, with them. He had followed them because hemeant to have her. They knew that, so had run. Why did he want her? Hesaid that he had seen her before. When? Oh, long ago--when he had beenup there alone. He had seen her face among the trees for a moment. They had been hurting her; she looked at him, she was frightened, butcouldn't cry out--only look and ask. He had never forgotten her; herlooks had called him often, and he had kept his eyes wide open. Now, when he had found her again, he determined to have her. And at last, he said, he had got her. He had had to fight for her, for they hadbeen about him like hell-cats and had jumped at him as if they wouldtear him to pieces, and screamed and hissed like cats. But when he hadgot her in his arms they had all screamed together, once--like ahowling wind--and had flown away. 

What next? Here he became obstinate, as if foreseeing what was to be. What next? He had married her. Married her! How could he marry a fairyon the top of Knapp Fell? Was there a church there, by chance? Had alicence been handy? "Let me see her lines, Andrew, " Mr. Robson hadsaid somewhat sternly in conclusion. His answer had been to lift upher left hand and show the thin third finger. It carried a ring, madeof plaited rush. "I put that on her, " he said, "and said all the wordsover her out of the book. " "And you think you have married her, Andrew?" It was put to him _ex cathedrâ_. He grew very red and wassilent; presently he said, "Well, sir, I do think so. But she's not mywife yet, if that's what you mean. " The good gentleman felt very muchrelieved. It was satisfactory to him that he could still trust hisworthy young parishioner. 

Entirely under the influence of Miranda King, he found the familyunanimous for a real wedding. To that there were two objections tomake. He could not put up the banns of a person without a name, andwould not marry a person unbaptised. Now, to baptise an adultsomething more than sponsors are requisite; there must be voluntaryassent to the doctrines of religion by the postulant. In this case, how to be obtained? He saw no way, since it was by no means plain tohim that the girl could understand a word that was said. He left thefamily to talk it over among themselves, saying, as he went out of thedoor, that his confidence in their principles was so strong that hewas sure they would sanction no step which would lead the two youngpeople away from the church door. 

In the morning Miranda King came to him with a report that matters hadbeen arranged and only needed his sanction. "I can trust my son, andsee him take her with a good conscience, " she told him. "She's not oneof his people, but she's one of mine; and what I have done she can do, and is willing to do. "

The clergyman was puzzled. "What do you mean by that, Mrs. King?" heasked her. "What are _your people_? How do they differ from mine, oryour husband's?"

She hesitated. "Well, sir, in this way. She hasn't got your tongue, nor my son's tongue. "

"She has none at all, " said the minister; but Miranda replied, "Shecan talk without her tongue. "

"Yes, my dear, " he said, "but I cannot. "

"But I can, " was her answer; "she can talk to me--and will talk toyou; but not yet. She's dumb for a season, she's struck so. My sonwill give her back her tongue--by-and-by. "

He was much interested. He asked Miranda to tell him who had struckher dumb. For a long time she would not answer. "We don't namehim--it's not lawful. He that has the power--the Master--I can go nonearer. " He urged her to openness, got her at last to mention "TheKing of the Wood. " The King of the Wood! There she stuck, and nothinghe could say could move her from that name, The King of the Wood. 

He left it so, knowing his people, and having other things to askabout. What tongue or speech had the respectable, the staid MirandaKing in common with the scared waif? To that she answered that shecould not tell him; but that it was certain they could understand eachother. How? "By looks, " she said, and added scornfully, "she's notthe kind that has to clatter with her tongue to have speech with herkindred. "

Miranda, then, was a kinswoman! He showed his incredulity, and thewoman flushed. "See here, Mr. Robson, " she said, "I am of the sea, andshe of the fell, but we are the same nation. We are not of yours, butyou can make us so. Directly I saw her I knew what she was; and so didshe know me. How? By the eyes and understanding. I felt who she was. As she is now so was I once. As I am now so will she be. I'll answerfor her; I'm here to do it. When once I'd followed my man I neverlooked back; no more will she. The woman obeys the man--that's thelaw. If a girl of your people was taken with a man of mine she'd loseher speech and forsake her home and ways. That's the law all the worldover. God Almighty's self, if He were a woman, would do the same. Hecouldn't help it. The law is His; but He made it so sure that notHimself could break it. "

"What law do you mean?" she was asked. She said, "The law of life. Thewoman follows the man. "

This proposition he was not prepared to deny, and the end of it wasthat Mr. Robson baptised the girl, taking Miranda for godmother. Mabilla they called her by her sponsor's desire, "MabillaBy-the-Wood, " and as such she was published and married. You may bedisposed to blame him for lightness of conscience, but I take leave totell you that he had had the cure of souls in Dryhope forfive-and-thirty years. He claimed on that score to know his people. The more he knew of them, the less he was able to question the lore ofsuch an one as Miranda King. And he might remind you that Mabilla Kingis alive to this hour, a wife and mother of children. That is a fact, and it is also a fact, as I am about to tell you, that she had a hardfight to win such peace. 

Married, made a woman, she lost her haunted look and gained somecolour in her cheeks. She lost her mortal chill. Her clothing, theputting up of her hair made some difference, but loving entreaty allthe difference in the world. To a casual glance there was nothing butrefinement to distinguish her from her neighbours, to a closer onethere was more than that. Her eyes, they said, had the far, intent, rapt gaze of a wild animal. They seemed to search minutely, reachingbeyond our power of vision, to find there things beyond our human ken. But whereas the things which she looked at, invisible to us, causedher no dismay, those within our range, the most ordinary andcommonplace, filled her with alarm. Her eyes, you may say, communedwith the unseen, and her soul followed their direction and dweltremote from her body. She was easily startled, not only by what shesaw but by what she heard. Nobody was ever more sensitive to sound. They say that a piano-tuner goes not by sound, but by the vibrationsof the wire, which he is able to test without counting. It was so withher. She seemed to feel the trembling of the circumambient air, and toknow by its greater or less intensity that something--and very oftenwhat thing in particular--was affecting it. All her senses werepreternaturally acute--she could see incredible distances, hear, smell, in a way that only wild nature can. Added to these, she hadanother sense, whereby she could see what was hidden from us andunderstand what we could not even perceive. One could guess as much, on occasions, by the absorbed intensity of her gaze. But when she waswith her husband (which was whenever he would allow it) she had noeyes, ears, senses or thoughts for any other living thing, seen orunseen. She followed him about like a dog, and when that might not beher eyes followed him. Sometimes, when he was afield with his sheep, they saw her come out of the cottage and slink up the hedgerow to thefell's foot. She would climb the brae, search him out, and then crouchdown and sit watching him, never taking her eyes off him. When he wasat home her favourite place was at his feet. She would sit huddledthere for hours, and his hand would fall upon her hair or rest on hershoulder; and you could see the pleasure thrilling her, raying outfrom her--just as you can see, as well as hear, a cat purring by thefire. He used to whisper in her ear as if she was a child: like achild she used to listen and wonder. Whether she understood him or noit was sometimes the only way of soothing her. Her trembling stoppedat the sound of his voice, and her eyes left off staring and showedthe glow of peace. For whole long evenings they sat close together, his hand upon her hair and his low voice murmuring in her ear. 

This much the neighbours report and the clergyman confirms, as alsothat all went well with the young couple for the better part of twoyears. The girl grew swiftly towards womanhood, became sleek andwell-liking; had a glow and a promise of ripeness which bid fair to beredeemed. A few omens, however, remained, disquieting when those wholoved her thought of them. One was that she got no human speech, though she understood everything that was said to her; another thatshe showed no signs of motherhood; a third that Bessie Prawle couldnot abide her. She alone of all the little community avoided the Kinghousehold, and scowled whensoever she happened to cross the path ofthis gentle outland girl. Jealousy was presumed the cause; but Ithink there was more in it than that. I think that Bessie Prawlebelieved her to be a witch. 

III

To eyes prepared for coming disaster things small in themselves loomout of a clear sky portentous. Such eyes had not young Andrew King thebride-groom, a youth made man by love, secure in his treasure andconfident in his power of keeping what his confidence had won. Sucheyes may or may not have had Mabilla, though hers seemed to be centredin her husband, where he was or where he might be. George King was oldand looked on nothing but his sheep, or the weather as it might affecthis sheep. Miranda King, the self-contained, stoic woman, had schooledher eyes to see her common duties. Whatever else she may have seen shekept within the door of her shut lips. She may have known what wascoming, she must have known that whatever came had to come. BessiePrawle, however, with hatred, bitter fear and jealousy to sharpen her, saw much. 

Bessie Prawle was a handsome, red-haired girl, deep in the breast, full-eyed and of great colour. Her strength was remarkable. She couldlift a heifer into a cart, and had once, being dared to it, carriedAndrew King up the brae in her arms. The young man, she supposed, owed her a grudge for that; she believed herself unforgiven, and sawin this sudden marriage of his a long-meditated act of revenge. Bythat in her eyes (and as she thought, in the eyes of all Dryhope) hehad ill-requited her, put her to unthinkable shame. She saw herselfwith her favours of person and power passed over for a nameless, haunted, dumb thing, a stray from some other world into a world ofmen, women, and the children they rear to follow them. She scornedMabilla for flinching so much, she scorned her for not flinching more. That Mabilla could be desirable to Andrew King made her scoff; thatAndrew King should not know her dangerous kept her awake at night. 

For the world seemed to her a fearful place since Mabilla had beenbrought into it. There were signs everywhere. That summer it thunderedout of a clear sky. Once in the early morning she had seen a brightlight above the sun--a mock sun which shone more fiercely than a firein daylight. She heard wild voices singing; on still days she saw thetrees in Knapp Forest bent to a furious wind. When Mabilla crept upthe fell on noiseless feet to spy for Andrew King, Bessie Prawle heardthe bents hiss and crackle under her, as if she set them afire. 

Next summer, too, there were portents. There was a great drought, sogreat that Dryhope burn ran dry, and water had to be fetched from adistance for the sheep. There were heather fires in many places; smutgot into the oats, and a plague of caterpillars attacked the trees sothat in July they were leafless, and there was no shade. There was nopasture for the kine, which grew lean and languid. Their bones stuckout through their skin; they moaned as they lay on the parched earth, and had not strength enough to swish at the clouds of flies. They hadsores upon them, which festered and spread. If Mabilla, the namelesswife, was not responsible for this, who could be? Perhaps Heaven wasoffended with Dryhope on account of Andrew King's impiety. Bessiebelieved that Mabilla was a witch. 

She followed the girl about, spying on everything she did. Once, atleast, she came upon her lying in the heather. She was plaiting rushestogether into a belt, and Bessie thought she was weaving a spell andsprang upon her. The girl cowered, very white, and Bessie Prawle, herheart on fire, gave tongue to all her bitter thoughts. The witch-wife, fairy-wife, child or whatever she was seemed to wither as a flower ina hot wind. Bessie Prawle towered above her in her strength, andgained invective with every fierce breath she took. Her blue eyesburned, her bosom heaved like the sea; her arm bared to the shouldercould have struck a man down. Yet in the midst of her frenzied speech, in full flow, she faltered. Her fists unclenched themselves, her armdropped nerveless, her eyes sought the ground. Andrew King, pale withrage, sterner than she had ever seen him, stood before her. 

He looked at her with deadly calm. 

"Be out of this, " he said; "you degrade yourself. Never let me see youagain. " Before she had shrunk away he had stooped to the huddledcreature at his feet, had covered her with his arms and was whisperingurgent comfort in her ear, caressing her with voice and hands. BessiePrawle could not show herself to the neighbours for the rest of thesummer and early autumn. She became a solitary; the neighbours saidthat she was in a decline. 

The drought, with all the troubles it entailed of plague, pestilenceand famine, continued through August and September. It did not reallybreak till All-Hallow's, and then, indeed, it did. 

The day had been overcast, with a sky of a coppery tinge, andintensely dry heat; a chance puff of wind smote one in the face, hotas the breath of a man in fever. The sheep panted on the ground, theirdry tongues far out of their mouths; the beasts lay as if dead, andflies settled upon them in clouds. All the land was of one glaringbrown, where the bents were dry straw, and the heather first burntand then bleached pallid by the sun. The distance was blurred in areddish lurid haze; Knapp Fell and its forest were hidden. 

Mabilla, the dumb girl, had been restless all day, following Andrewabout like a shadow. The heat had made him irritable; more than oncehe had told her to go home and she had obeyed him for the time, buthad always come back. Her looks roamed wide; she seemed alwayslistening; sometimes it was clear that she heard something--for shepanted and moved her lips. There was deep trouble in her eyes too; sheseemed full of fear. At almost any other time her husband would havenoticed it and comforted her. But his nerves, fretted by the longscorching summer, were on this day of fire stretched to the crackingpoint. He saw nothing, and felt nothing, but his own discomfort. 

Out on the parched fell-side Bessie Prawle sat like a bird of omen andgloomed at the wrath to come. 

Toward dusk a wind came moaning down the valley, raising little spiresof dust. It came now down, now up. Sometimes two currents met eachother and made momentary riot. But farm-work has to get itself donethrough fair or foul. It grew dark, the sheep were folded and fed, thecattle were got in, and the family sat together in the kitchen, silent, preoccupied, the men oppressed and anxious over they knew notwhat. As for those two aliens, Miranda King and Mabilla By-the-Wood, whatever they knew, one of them made no sign at all, and the other, though she was white, though she shivered and peered about, had nomeans of voicing her thought. 

They had their tea and settled to their evening tasks. The oldshepherd dozed over his pipe, Miranda knitted fast, Mabilla stared outof the window into the dark, twisting her hands, and Andrew, with oneof his hands upon her shoulder, patted her gently, as if to sootheher. She gave him a grateful look more than once, but did not cease toshiver. Nobody spoke, and suddenly in the silence Mabilla gasped andbegan to tremble. Then the dog growled under the table. All looked upand about them. 

A scattering, pattering sound lashed at the window. Andrew thenstarted up. "Rain!" he said; "that's what we're waiting for, " and madeto go to the door. Miranda his mother, and Mabilla his young wife, caught him by the frock and held him back. The dog, staring into thewindow-pane, bristling and glaring, continued to growl. They waited insilence, but with beating hearts. 

A loud knock sounded suddenly on the door--a dull, heavy blow, as ifone had pounded it with a tree-stump. The dog burst into a panic ofbarking, flew to the door and sniffed at the threshold. He whined andscratched frantically with his forepaws. The wind began to blow, coming quite suddenly down, solid upon the wall of the house, shakingit upon its foundations. George King was now upon his feet. "Good GodAlmighty!" he said, "this is the end of the world!"

The blast was not long-lived. It fell to a murmur. Andrew King, now atthe window, could see nothing of the rain. There were no drops uponthe glass, nor sound upon the sycamores outside. But even while helooked, and his grandfather, all his senses alert, waited for what wasto come, and the two pale women clung together, knowing what was tocome, there grew gradually another sound which, because it wasfamiliar, brought their terrors sharply to a point. 

It was the sound of sheep in a flock running. It came from afar andgrew in volume and distinctness; the innumerable small thudding ofsharp hoofs, the rustling of woolly bodies, the volleying of shortbreath, and that indefinable sense of bustle which massed thingsproduce, passing swiftly. 

The sheep came on, panic-driven, voiceless in their fear, but speakingaloud in the wildly clanging bells; they swept by the door of thehouse with a sound like the rush of water; they disappeared in thatflash of sound. Old King cried, "Man, 'tis the sheep!" and flew forhis staff and shoes. Miranda followed to fetch them; but Andrew wentto the door as he was, shaking off his clinging wife, unlatched it andlet in a gale of wind. The dog shot out like a flame of fire and wasgone. 

It was as if the wind which was driving the sheep was going to scourthe house. It came madly, with indescribable force; it rushed into thehouse, blew the window-curtains toward the middle of the room, drovethe fire outward and set the ashes whirling like snow all about. Andrew King staggered before it a moment, then put his head down andbeat his way out. Mabilla shuddering shrank backward to the fireplaceand crouched there, waiting. Old King came out booted and cloaked, hisstaff in his hand, battled to the door and was swept up the brae uponthe gale. Miranda did not appear; so Mabilla, white and rigid, wasalone in the whirling room. 

Creeping to her through the open door, holding to whatever solid thingshe could come by, entered Bessie Prawle. In all that turmoil andchill terror she alone was hot. Her grudge was burning in her. Shecould have killed Mabilla with her eyes. 

But she did not, for Mabilla was in the hands of greater and strongerpowers. Before Bessie Prawle's shocked eyes she was seen rigid andawake. She was seen to cower as to some threatening shape, then tostiffen, to mutter with her dry lips, and to grow still, to stare withher wide eyes, and then to see nothing. A glaze swam over her eyes;they were open, but as the eyes of the dead. 

Bessie Prawle, horror-struck, stretched out her arms to give hershelter. All her honest humanity was reborn in her in this dreadfulhour. "My poor lass, I'll not harm ye, " she was saying; but Mabillahad begun to move. She moved as a sleep-walker, seeing but not seeingher way; she moved as one who must, not as one who would. She wentslowly as if drawn to the open door. Bessie never tried to stop her;she could not though she would. Slowly as if drawn she went to thedoor, staring before her, pale as a cloth, rigid as a frozen thing. Atthe threshold she swayed for a moment in the power of the storm; thenshe was sucked out like a dried leaf and was no more seen. Overhead, all about the eaves of the house the great wind shrilled mockery anddespairing mirth. The fire leapt toward the middle of the room andfell back so much white ash. Bessie Prawle plumped down to her knees, huddled, and prayed. 

Andrew King, coming back, found her there at it, alone. His eyes sweptthe room. "Mabilla! Bessie Prawle, where is Mabilla?" The girl huddledand prayed on. He took her by the shoulder and shook her to and fro. "You foul wench, you piece, this is your doing. " Bessie sobbed herdenials, but he would not hear her. Snatching up a staff, he turned, threw her down in his fury. He left the house and followed the wind. 

The wind caught him the moment he was outside, and swept him onwardwhether he would or not. He ran down the bank of the beck which seemedto be racing him for a prize, leaping and thundering level with itsbanks; before he had time to wonder whether the bridge still stood hewas up with it, over it and on the edge of the brae. Up the moorlandroad he went, carried rather than running, and where it loses itselfin the first enclosure, being hard up against the wall, over hevaulted, across the field and over the further wall. Out then upon theopen fell, where the heather makes great cushions, and between all ofthem are bogs or stones, he was swept by the wind. It shrieked abouthim and carried him up and over as if he were a leaf of autumn. Beyondthat was dangerous ground, but there was no stopping; he was caught inthe flood of the gale. He knew very well, however, whither it wascarrying him: to Knapp, that place of dread, whither he was now sureMabilla had been carried, resumed by her own people. There was nodrawing back, there was no time for prayer. All he could do was tokeep his feet. 

He was carried down the Dryhope fell, he said, into the next valley, swept somehow over the roaring beck in the bottom, and up the ruggedside of Knapp, where the peat-hags are as high as rocks, and presentlyknew without the help of his eyes that he was nearing the forest. Heheard the swishing of the trees, the cracking of the boughs, the sharpcrack and crash which told of some limb torn off and sent to ruin; andhe knew also by some hush not far off that the wind, great and furiousas it was, was to be quieted within that awful place. It was so. Hestood panting upon the edge of the wood, out of the wind, which roaredaway overhead. He twittered with his foolish lips, not knowing what onearth to do, nor daring to do anything had he known it; but all theprayers he had ever learned were driven clean out of his head. 

He could dimly make out the tree-trunks immediately before him, lowbushes, shelves of bracken-fern; he could pierce somewhat into thegloom beyond and see the solemn trees ranked in their order, and abovethem a great soft blackness rent here and there to show the sky. Thevolleying of the storm sounded like the sea heard afar off: it was soremote and steady a noise that lesser sounds were discernible--therustlings, squeakings, and snappings of small creatures moving oversmall undergrowth. Every one of these sent his heart leaping to hismouth; but all his fears were to be swallowed up in amazement, for ashe stood there distracted, without warning, without shock, there stoodone by him, within touching distance, a child, as he judged it, withloose hair and bright eyes, prying into his face, smiling at him andinviting him to come on. 

"Who in God's name--?" cried Andrew King; but the child plucked himby the coat and tried to draw him into the wood. 

I understand that he did not hesitate. If he had forgotten his gods hehad not forgotten his fairy-wife. I suppose, too, that he knew whereto look for her; he may have supposed that she had been resumed intoher first state. At any rate, he made his way into the forest byguess-work, aided by reminiscence. I believe he was accustomed to averthat he "knew where she was very well, " and that he took a straightline to her. I have seen Knapp Forest and doubt it. He did, however, find himself in the dark spaces of the wood and there, sure enough, hedid also see the women with whom his Mabilla had once been co-mate. They came about him, he said, like angry cats, hissing and shootingout their lips. They did not touch him; but if eyes and white hatefulfaces could have killed him, dead he had been then and there. 

He called upon God and Christ and made a way through them. His senseshad told him where Mabilla was. He found her pale and trembling in anaisle of the trees. She leaned against a tall tree, perfectly rigid, "as cold as a stone, " staring across him with frozen eyes, her mouthopen like a round O. He took her in his arms and holding her closeturned and defied the "witches"--so he called them in his wrath. Hedared them in the name of God to touch him or his wife, and as he didso he says that he felt the chill grow upon him. It took him, he said, in the legs and ran up his body. It stiffened his arms till they feltas if they must snap under the strain; it caught him in the neck andfixed it. He felt his eyes grow stiff and hard; he felt himself sway. "Then, " he said, "the dark swam over me, the dark and the bitter cold, and I knew nothing more. " Questioned as he was by Mr. Robson and hisfriends, he declared that it was at the name of God the cold got himfirst. He saw the women hushed and scared, and at the same time one ofthem looked over her shoulder, as if somebody was coming. Had hecalled in the King of the Wood? That is what he himself thought. Itwas the King of the Wood who had come in quest of Mabilla, had pulledher out of the cottage in Dryhope and frozen her in the forest. It washe, no doubt, said Andrew King, who had come to defy the Christianand his God. I detect here the inspiration of his mother Miranda, thestrange sea-woman who knew Mabilla without mortal knowledge and spoketo her in no mortal speech. But the sequel to the tale is a strangeone. 

Andrew King awoke to find himself in Mabilla's arms, to hear for thefirst time in his life Mabilla call him softly by his name. "Andrew, my husband, " she called him, and when he opened his eyes in wonder tohear her she said, "Andrew, take me home now. It is all over, " orwords to that effect. They went along the forest and up and down thefells together. The wind had dropped, the stars shone. And togetherthey took up their life where they had dropped it, with onesignificant omission in its circumstance. Bessie Prawle haddisappeared from Dryhope. She had followed him up the fell on thenight of the storm, but she came not back. And they say that she neverdid. Nothing was found of her body, though search was made; but a combshe used to wear was picked up, they say, by the tarn on Limmer Fell, an imitation tortoise-shell comb which used to hold up her hair. Miranda King, who knew more than she would ever tell, had a shrewdsuspicion of the truth of the case. But Andrew King knew nothing, andI daresay cared very little. He had his wood-wife, and she had hervoice; and between them, I believe, they had a child within the year. 

I ought to add that I have, with these eyes, seen Mabilla By-the-Woodwho became Mabilla King. When I went from Dryhopedale to Knapp Forestshe stood at the farmhouse door with a child in her arms. Two otherswere tumbling about in the croft. She was a pretty, serious girl--forshe looked quite a girl--with a round face and large greyish-blueeyes. She had a pink cotton dress on, and a good figure beneath it. She was pale, but looked healthy and strong. Not a tall girl. I askedher the best way to Knapp Forest and she came out to the gate to pointit to me. She talked simply, with a northern accent, and might havebeen the child of generations of borderers. She pointed me the verytrack by which Andrew King must have brought her home, by which theKing of the Wood swept her out on the wings of his wrath; she namedthe tarn where once she dwelt as the spirit of a tree. All thiswithout a flush, a tremor or a sign in her blue eyes that she had everknown the place. But these people are close, and seldom betray allthat they know or think. 

OREADS

I end this little book with an experience of my own, or rather aseries of experiences, and will leave conclusions to a final chapter. I don't say that I have no others which could have found aplace--indeed, there are many others. But they were fitful, momentarythings, unaccountable and unrelated to each other, without the mainclue which in itself is too intimate a thing to be revealed just yet, and I am afraid of compiling a catalogue. I have travelled far andwide across Europe in my day, not without spiritual experiences. If atsome future time these co-ordinate into a body of doctrine I will takecare to clothe that body in the vesture of print and paper. Here, meantime, is something of recent years. 

My house at Broad Chalke stands in a narrow valley, which a littlestream waters more than enough. This valley is barely a mile broadthroughout its length, and in my village scarcely half so much. I canbe in the hills in a quarter of an hour, and in five-and-twentyminutes find myself deeply involved, out of sight of man or hiscontrivances. The downs in South Wilts are nowhere lofty, and havenone of the abrupt grandeur of those which guard the Sussex coast andweald; but they are of much larger extent, broader, longer, moreuntrodden, made much more intricate by the numberless creeks andfriths which, through some dim cycle of antiquity, the sea, ebbinggradually to the great Avon delta, must have graved. Beautiful, withquiet and a solemn peacefulness of their own, they always are. Theyendure enormously, _in sæcula sæculorum_. Storms drive over them, mists and rains blot them out; rarely they are shrouded in a fleece ofsnow. In spring the clouds and the light hold races up their flanks;in summer they seem to drowse like weary monsters in the still andfervent heat. They are never profoundly affected by such changes ofNature's face; grow not awful, sharing her wrath, nor dangerously fairwhen she woos them with kisses to love. They are the quiet and soberspokesmen of earth, clad in Quaker greys and drabs. They show nocrimson at sunset, no gilded livery at dawn. The grey deepens to coolpurple, the brown glows to russet at such festal times. Early in thespring they may drape themselves in tender green, or show their sidesdappled with the white of sheep. Flowers they bear, but secretly;little curious orchids, bodied like bees, eyed like spiders, fleckedwith the blood-drops of Attis or Adonis or some murderedshepherd-boy; pale scabious, pale cowslip, thyme that breathes sharpfragrance, "aromatic pain, " as you crush it, potentilla, lady'sslipper, cloudy blue milkwort, toad-flax that shows silver to thewind. Such as these they flaunt not, but wear for choiceness. Youwould not see them unless you knew them there. For denizens they havethe hare, the fox, and the badger. Redwings, wheatears, peewits, andairy kestrels are the people of their skies. 

I love above all the solitude they keep, and to feel the pulsing ofthe untenanted air. The shepherd and his sheep, the limping hare, lagging fox, wheeling, wailing plover; such will be your company: youmay dip deeply into valleys where no others will be by, hear the soundof your own heart, or the shrilling of the wind in the upland bents. Ihave heard, indeed, half a mile above me, the singing of the greatharps of wire which stretch from Sarum to Shaftesbury along thehighest ridge; but such a music is no disturbance of the peace;rather, it assures you of solitude, for you wouldn't hear it were younot ensphered with it alone. There's a valley in particular, lyingjust under Chesilbury, where I choose most to be. Chesilbury, a hugegrass encampment, three hundred yards square, with fosse and rampartstill sharp, with a dozen gateways and three mist-pools within itsambit, which stands upon the ancient road and dominates two valleys. Below that, coming up from the south, is my charmed valley. There, Iknow, the beings whom I call Oreads, for want of a homelier word, haunt and are to be seen now and then. I know, because I myself haveseen them. 

I must describe this Oread-Valley more particularly, I believe. Eastand west, above it, runs the old road we call the Race-Plain--thehighest ground hereabouts, rising from Harnham by Salisbury to end atShaftesbury in Dorset. North of this ridge is Chesilbury Camp;immediately south of that is the valley. Here the falling flood as itdrained away must have sucked the soil out sharply at two neighbouringpoints, for this valley has two heads, and between them stands agrass-grown bluff. The western vale-head is quite round but verysteep. It faces due south and has been found grateful by thorns, elders, bracken and even heather. But the eastern head is sharper, begins almost in a point. From that it sweeps out in a huge demi-luneof cliff, the outer cord being the east, the inner hugging the bluff. Facing north from the valley, facing these two heads, you see theeastern of them like a great amphitheatre, its steep embayed side sosmooth as to seem the work of men's hands. It is too steep for turf;it is grey with marl, and patchy where scree of flint and chalk hasrun and found a lodgment. Ice-worn it may be, man-wrought it is not. No red-deer picks have been at work there, no bright-eyed, scramblinghordes have toiled their shifts or left traces through the centuriesas at the Devil's Dyke. This noble arena is Nature's. Here I saw herpeople more than once. And the first sign I had of them was this. 

I

I was here alone one summer's night; a night of stars, but without amoon. I lay within the scrub of the western valley-head and lookedsouth. I could just see the profile of the enfolding hills, but onlyjust; could guess that in the soft blackness below me, filling up theforeground like a lake, the valley was there indeed; realise that if Istepped down, perhaps thirty yards or so, my feet would sink into thepile of the turf-carpet, and feel the sharp benediction of the dew. About me surged and beat an enormous silence. The only sound atall--and that was fitful--came from a fern-owl which, from athorn-bush above me, churred softly and at intervals his content withthe night. 

The stars were myriad, but sky-marks shone out; the Bear, the Belt, the Chair, the dancing sister Pleiades. The Galaxy was like asnow-cloud; startlingly, by one, by two, meteors flared a shortcourse and died. You never feel lonely when you have the stars; yetthey do not pry upon you. You can hide nothing from them, and need notseek to hide. If they have foreknowledge, they nurse no after-thought. 

Now, to-night, as I looked and wondered at their beauty, I becameaware of a phenomenon untold before. Yet so quietly did it come, andso naturally, that it gave me no disturbance, nor forced itself uponme. A luminous ring, a ring of pale fire, in shape a long, narrow, andfluctuating oval, became discernible in the sky south of mystand-point, midway (I thought) between me and the south. 

It was diaphanous, or diaphanous to strong light behind it. At onetime I saw the great beacon of the south-west (Saturn, I think)burning through it; not within the ring, but from behind the littenvapour of which the ring was made. Lesser fires than his were put outby it. It varied very much in shape as it spread or drew out, as asmoker's blue rings are varied by puffs of wind. Now it was a perfectround, now so long as to be less a hoop than a fine oblong. Sometimesit was pear-shaped, sometimes amorphous; bulbous here, hollow there. And there seemed movement; I thought now and again that it was spiralas well as circular, that it might, under some stress of speed, writhe upward like dust in a whirlwind. It wavered, certainly, inelevation, lifting, sinking, wafted one way or another with the easeof a cloud of gnats. It was extraordinarily beautiful and exciting. Iwatched it for an hour. 

At times I seemed to be conscious of more than appearance. I cannotspeak more definitely than that. Music was assuredly in my head, veryshrill, piercing, continuous music. No air, no melody, but theexpectancy of an air, preparation for it, a prelude to melodiousissues. You may say the overture to some vast aerial symphony; I knownot what else to call it. I was never more than alive to it, nevercertain of it. It was as furtive, secret, and tremulous as the dawnitself. Now, just as under that shivering and tentative opening ofgreat music you are conscious of the fierce energy of violins, so wasI aware, in this surmise of music, of wild forces which made it. Ithought not of voices but of wings. I was sure that this ring of flamewhirled as well as floated in the air; the motion and the sound, alikeindecipherable, were one and the same to me. 

I watched it, I say, for an hour: it may have been for two hours. By-and-by it came nearer, gradually very near. It was now dazzling, not to be looked at full; but its rate of approach was inappreciable, and as it came on I was able to peer into it and see nothing but itsbeauty. There was a core of intensity, intolerably bright; about that, lambency but no flame, in which I saw leaves and straws and fronds offern flickering, spiring, heeling over and over. That it whirled aswell as floated was now clear, for a strong wind blew before and afterit as it rushed by. This happened as I sat there. Blinding but notburning, heralded by a keen wind, it came by me and passed; a swiftwind followed it as it went. It swept out toward the hollow of theeastern valley-head, seemed to strike upon that and glance upward;thence it swept gladly up, streaming to the zenith, grew thin, fineand filmy, and seemed to melt into the utmost stars. I had seenwonders and went home full of thought. 

II

I first saw an Oread in this place in a snow-storm which, driven by anorth-westerly gale, did havoc to the lowlands, but not to the foldedhills. I had pushed up the valley in the teeth of the storm to see itunder the white stress. It was hard work for me and my dog; I had towade knee-deep, and he to jump, like a cat in long grass, through thedrifts. But we reached our haven and found shelter from the weather. High above us where we stood the snow-flakes tossed and rioted, butbefore they fell upon us being out of the wind, they drifted idlydown, _come ... In Alpe senza vento_. The whole valley was purelywhite, its outlines blurred by the slant-driving snow. There was not aliving creature to be seen, and my dog, a little sharp-nosed blackbeast, shivered as he looked about, with wide eyes and quick-set ears, for a friendly sight, and held one paw tentatively in the air, as ifhe feared the cold. 

Suddenly he yelped once, and ran, limping on three legs or scuttlingon all four, over the snow toward the great eastern escarpment, butmidway stopped and looked with all his might into its smoothed hollow. His jet-black ears stood sharp as a hare's; through the white scud Iwas conscious that he trembled. He gazed into the sweep of the curvinghill, and following the direction he gave me, all my senses quick, Igazed also, but for a while saw nothing. 

Very gradually, without alarm on my part, a blur of colour seemed toform itself and centre in one spot, half-way up the concave of thedown; very pale yellow, a soft, lemon colour. At first scarcely morethan a warm tinge to the snow, it took shape as I watched it, and thenbody also. It was now opaque within semi-transparency; one could tracean outline, a form. Then I made out of it a woman dressed in yellow; aslim woman, tawny-haired, in a thin smock of lemon-yellow whichflacked and bellied in the gale. Her hair blew out to it in snakystreamers, sideways. Her head was bent to meet the cold, her barewhite arms were crossed, and hugged her shoulders, as if to keep herbosom warm. From mid-thigh downward she was bare and very white, yetdistinct upon the snow. That was the white of chilled flesh I couldsee. Though she wore but a single garment, and that of the thinnestand shortest, though she suffered cold, hugged herself and shivered, she was not of our nature, to die of such exposure. Her eyes, as Icould guess, were long-enduring and steadfast. Her lips were not blue, though her teeth seemed to chatter; she was not rigid with thestiffening that precedes frozen death. Drawing near her by degrees, coming within fifteen yards of where she stood and passioned, thoughshe saw me, waited for me, in a way expected me, she showed neitherfear nor embarrassment, nor appealed by looks for shelter. She was, rather, like a bird made tame by winter, that finds the lesser fearswallowed up in a greater. For myself, as when one finds one's selfbefore a new thing, one stands and gazes, so was I before this beingof the wild. I would go no nearer, speak I could not. But I had nofear. She was new to me not strange. I felt that she and I belonged toworlds apart; that as soon might I hope to be familiar with fox ormarten as with her. My little black dog was of the same mind. He wasglad when I joined him, and wagged his little body--tail he hasnone--to say so. But he had no eyes for me, nor I for him. We stoodtogether for company, and filled our eyes with the tenant of thewaste. How long we watched her I have no notion, but the day fellswiftly in and found us there. 

She was, I take it, quite young, she was slim and of ordinaryproportions. When I say that I mean that she had nothing inhuman abouther stature, was neither giant nor pygmy. Whether she was what we callgood-looking or not I find it impossible to determine, for whenstrangeness is so added to beauty as to absorb and transform it, ourstandards are upset and balances thrown out. She was pale to the lips, had large, fixed and patient eyes. Her arms and legs showed greyish inthe white storm, but where the smock was cut off the shadows it madeupon her were faintly warm. One of her knees was bent, the footsupported only by the toes. The other was firm upon the ground: shelooked, to the casual eye, to be standing on one leg. Her eyes in astare covered me, but were not concerned to see me so near. They hadthe undiscerning look of one whose mind is numbed, as hers might wellbe. Shelter--a barn, a hayrick--lay within a mile of her; and yet shechose to suffer the cold, and was able to endure it. She knew it, Isupposed, for a thing not to be avoided; she took it as it came--asshe would have taken the warmth and pleasure of the sun. We humankindwith our wits for ever turned inward to ourselves, grieve or exult aswe bid ourselves: she, like all other creatures else, was not in thatself-relation; her parts were closer-knit, and could not separate toenvisage each other. So, at least, I read her--that she lived as shecould and as she must, neither looked back with regret nor forwardwith longing. Time present, the flashing moment, was all her being. That state will never be ours again. 

I discovered before nightfall what she waited for there alone in thecruel weather. A moving thing emerged from the heart of the whitefury, came up the valley along the shelving down: a shape like hers, free-moving, thinly clad, suffering yet not paralysed by the storm. Itshaped as a man, a young man, and her mate. Taller, darker, stoutliermade, his hardy legs were browner, and so were his arms--crossed likehers over his breast and clasping his shoulders. His head was bare, dark and crisply covered with short hair. His smock whipped about himbefore, as the wind drove it; behind him it flacked and fluttered likea flag. Patiently forging his way, bowing his head to the gale, hecame into range; and she, aware of him, waited. 

He came directly to her. They greeted by touchings. He stretched outhis hands to her, touched her shoulders and sides. He touched both hercheeks, her chin, the top of her head, all with the flat of the palm. He stroked her wet and streaming hair. He held her by the shouldersand peered into her face, then put both arms about her and drew her tohim. She, who had so far made no motions of her own, now uncrossed herarms and daintily touched him in turn. She put both her palms flatupon his breast; next on his thighs, next, being within the circle ofhis arms, she put up her hands and cupped his face. Then, with agesture like a sigh, she let them fall to his waist, fastened themabout him and let her head lie on his bosom. She shut her eyes, seemedcontented and appeased. He clasped her, with a fine, protecting airupon him, looking down tenderly at her resting head. So they stoodtogether in the dusk, while the wind tore at their thin covering, andthe snow, lying, made a broad patch of white upon his shoulder. 

Breathless I looked at them, and my dog forgot to be cold. High on hishaunches, with lifted forepaw and sharp-cocked ears, he watched, trembled and whined. 

After a while, impatient as it appeared of the ravaging storm, themale drew the female to the ground. They used no language, as weunderstand it, and made no sign that I could see, but rather sanktogether to get the shelter of the drift. He lay upon the snow, uponthe weather side, she close beside him. They crouched like two birdsin a storm, and hid their heads under their interlacing arms. He gavethe weather his back, and raised himself on his elbow, the better toshield her. Within his arm she lay and cuddled to him snugly. I candescribe his action no more closely than by saying that he covered heras a hen her chick. As a partridge grouts with her wings in a dustyfurrow, so he worked in the powdered snow to make her a nest. When thenight fell upon them, with its promise of bitter frost in theunrelenting wind, she lay screened against its rigours by the shelterof him. They were very still. Their heads were together, their cheekstouched. I believe that they slept. 

III

In the autumn, in harvest-time, I saw her with a little one. She waslying now, deeply at ease, in the copse wood of the valley-head, within a nest of brake-fern, and her colouring was richer, more intune with the glory of the hour. She had a burnt glow in her cheeks;her hair showed the hue of the corn which, not a mile away, our peoplewere reaping afield. From where we were, she and I, one could hear therattle of the machine as it swept down the tall and serried wheat. Itwas the top of noon when I found her; the sun high in heaven, but sofierce in his power that you saw him through a mist of his own making, and the sky all about him white as a sea-fog. The Oread's body wassanguine brown, only her breast, which I saw half-revealed through aslit in her smock, was snowy white. It was the breast of a maiden, notof a mother with a young child. 

She leaned over it and watched it asleep. Once or twice she touchedits head in affection; then presently looked up and saw me. If I hadhad no surprise coming upon her, neither now had she. Her eyes took mein, as mine might take in a tree not noticed before, or a floweringbush, or a finger-post. Such things might well be there, and mightwell not be; I had no particular interest for her, and gave her noalarm. Nothing assures me so certainly of her remoteness from myself, and of my kinship with her too, as this absence of shock. 

She allowed me to come nearer, and nearer still, to stand close overher and examine the child. She did not lift her head, but I knew thatshe was aware of me; for her eyelids lifted and fell quickly, andshowed me once or twice her watchful eyes. She was indeed a beautifulcreature, exquisite in make and finish. Her skin shone like the petalsof certain flowers. There is one especially, called _Sisyrinchium_, whose common name of Satin-flower describes a surface almost metallicin its lustre. I thought of that immediately: her skin drank in andexhaled light. I could not hit upon the stuff of which her shift wasmade. It looked like coarse silk, had a web, had fibres or threads. Itmay have been flax, but that it was much too sinuous. It seemed tostick to the body where it touched, even to seek the flesh where itdid not touch, that it might cling like gossamer with invisibletentacles. In colour it was very pale yellow, not worn nor stained. Itwas perfectly simple, sleeveless, and stopped half-way between the hipand the knee. I looked for, but could not discover, either hem orseam. Her feet and hands were very lovely, the toes and fingers longand narrow, rosy-brown. I had full sight of her eyes for one throbbingmoment. Extraordinarily bright, quick and pulsing, waxing and waningin intensity (as if an inner light beat in them), of the grey colourof a chipped flint stone. The lashes were long, curving and very dark;they were what you might call smut-colour and gave a blurred effect tothe eyes which was strange. This, among other things, was what set herapart from us, this and the patient yet palpitating stare of herregard. She looked at me suddenly, widely and full, taking in muchmore than me, yet making me the centre of her vision. It gave me theidea that she was surprised at my nearness and ready for any attack, but did not seek to avoid it. There I was overstanding her and heroffspring; and what was must be. 

Of the little one I could not see much. It was on its side in thefern, fast asleep. Its arms were stretched up the slope, its face wasbetween them. Its knees were bent and a little foot tucked up to touchits body. Quite naked, brown all over, it was as plump and smooth andtender as a little pig. But it was not pink; it was very brown. 

All nature seemed at the top of perfection that wonderful day. A hawksoared high in the blue, bees murmured all about, the distancequivered. I could see under the leaves of a great mullein the brighteyes, then the round body of a mouse. Afar off the corn-cutter rattledand whirred, and above us on the ridgeway some workmen sat at theirdinner under the telegraph wires. Men were all about us at theiraffairs with Nature's face; and here stood I, a man of themselves, andat my feet the Oread lay at ease and watched her young. There was foodfor wonder in all this, but none for doubt. Who knows what hisneighbour sees? Who knows what his dog? Every species of us walkssecret from the others; every species of us the centre of hisuniverse, its staple of measure, and its final cause. And if at timesone is granted a peep into new heavens and a new earth, and can get nomore, perhaps the best thing we win from that is the conviction thatwe must doubt nothing and wonder at everything. Here, now, was I, common, blundering, trampling, make-shift man, peering upon myOread--fairy of the hill, whatever she was--and tempted to gauge herby my man-taught balances of right and wrong, and use and wont. Wasthat young male who had sheltered her in the snow her mate in truth, the father of her young one? Or what sort of mating had been hers?What wild love? What mysteries of the night? And where was he now? Andwas he one, or were they many, who companioned this beautiful thing?And would he come if I waited for him? And would he share her watch, her quiet content, her still rapture?

Idle, man-made questions, custom-taught! I did wait. I sat by herwaiting. But he did not come. 

IV

A month later, in October, I saw a great assembling of Oreads, bywhich I was able to connect more than one experience. I could nowunderstand the phenomenon of the luminous ring. 

I reached the valley by about six o'clock in the evening. It wastwilight, not yet dusk. The sun was off the hollow, which lay in bluemist, but above the level of the surrounding hills the air was bathedin the sunset glow. The hush of evening was over all, the great cup ofthe down absolutely desert; there were no birds, nor voices of birds;not a twig snapped, not a leaf rustled. Imperceptibly the shadowslengthened, faded with the light; and again behind the silence Iguessed at, rather than discerned, a preparatory, gathering music. Sofinally, by twos and threes, they came to their assembling. 

Once more I never saw them come. Out of the mist they driftedtogether. There had been a moment when they were not there; there wasa moment when I saw them. I saw three of them together, two femalesand a male. They formed a circle, facing inwards, their armsintertwined. The pale colour of their garments, the grey tones intheir flesh were so perfectly in tune with the hazy light, that itwould have been impossible, I am certain, to have seen them at all ata hundred yards' distance. I could not determine whether they wereconversing or not: if they were, it was without speech. I have neverheard an articulate sound from any one of them, and have no provablereason for connecting the unvoiced music I have sometimes discernedwith any act of theirs. It has accompanied them, and may haveproceeded from them--but I don't know that. Of these three linkedtogether I remember that one of them threw back her head till shefaced the sky. She did not laugh, or seem to be laughing: there was nosound. It was rather as if she was bathing her face in the light. Shethrew her head back so far that I could see the gleam in her wildeyes; her hair streamed downward, straight as a fall of water. Theother two regarded her, and the male presently withdrew one of hisarms from the circle and laid his hand upon her. She let it be so;seemed not to notice. 

Imperceptibly others had come about these three. If I took my eyes offa group for a moment they were attracted to other groups or singleshapes. Some lay at ease on the sward, resting on elbow; some prone, on both elbows; some seemed asleep, their heads on molehill pillows;some sat huddling together, with their chins upon their knees; someknelt face to face and held each other fondly; some were teasing, somechasing others, winding in and out of the scattered groups. Buteverything was doing in complete silence. 

Now and again one, flying from another, would rise in the air, thepursuer following. They skimmed, soared, glided like swallows, in longsweeping curves--there was no noise in their flight. They were quitewithout reticence in their intercourse; desired or avoided, loved orhated as the moment urged them; strove to win, struggled to escape, achieved or surrendered without remark from their companions. Theywere like children or animals. Desire was reason good; and if love wassoon over, hate lasted no longer. One passion or the other set themscuffling: when it was spent they had no after-thought. 

One pretty sight I saw. A hare came lolloping over the valley bottom, quite at his ease. In the midst of the assembly he stopped to nibble, then reared himself up and cleaned his face. He saw them and they himwithout concern on either side. 

The valley filled up; I could not count the shifting, crossing, restless shapes I saw down there. Presently, without call or signal, as if by one consent, the Oreads joined hands and enclosed the wholecircuit in their ring. The effect in the dusk was of a pale glow, asof the softest fire, defining the contour of the valley; and soon theywere moving, circling round and round. Shriller and louder swelled thehidden music, and faster span the ring. It whirled and wavered, liftedand fell, but so smoothly, with such inherent power of motion, that itwas less like motion visible than motion heard. Nothing wasdistinguishable but the belt of pale fire. That which I had seenbefore they had now become--a ring of flame intensely swift. As ifsucked upward by a centripetal force it rose in the air. Wheelingstill with a sound incredibly shrill it rose to my level, swept by meheralded by a keen wind, and was followed by a draught which caughtleaves and straws of grass and took them swirling along. Round and up, and ever up it went, narrowing and spiring to the zenith. There, looking long after it, I saw it diminish in size and brightness tillit became filmy as a cloud, then melted into the company of thestars. 

A SUMMARY CHAPTER

Now, it is the recent publication by Mr. Evans Wentz of a careful andenthusiastic work upon _The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries_ which hasinspired me to put these pages before the public. Some of them haveappeared in the magazines as curious recitals and may have affordedpastime to the idle-minded, but without the courageous initiative ofMr. Wentz I don't know that I should have attempted to give them suchcoherence as they may claim to possess. And that, I fear, will be verylittle without this chapter in which I shall, if I can, clear theground for a systematic study of the whole subject. No candid readercan, I hope, rise from the perusal of the book without the convictionthat behind the world of appearance lies another and a vaster with athronging population of its own--with many populations, indeed, eachabsorbed in uttering its being according to its own laws. If I haveafforded nothing else I have afforded glimpses into that world; andthe question now is, What do we precisely gather, what can we be saidto know of the laws of that world in which these swift, beautiful andapparently ruthless creatures live and move and utter themselves? Ishall have to draw upon more than I have recorded here: cases which Ihave heard of, which I have read of in other men's books, as well asthose which are related here as personal revelation. If I speakpragmatically, _ex cathedrâ_, it is not intentional. If I failsometimes to give chapter and verse it will be because I have nevertaken any notes of what has gone into my memory, and have no documentsto hand. But I don't invent; I remember. 

 * * * * *

There is a chain of Being of whose top alike and bottom we knownothing at all. What we do know is that our own is a link in it, andcannot generally, can only fitfully and rarely, have intercourse withany other. I am not prepared with any modern instances of intercoursewith the animal and vegetable world, even to such a limited extent, for instance, as that of Balaam with his ass, or that of Achilles withhis horses; but I suspect that there are an enormous numberunrecorded. Speech, of course, is not necessary to such anintercourse. Speech is a vehicle of human intercourse, but not of thatof any other created order so far as we know. [8] Birds and beasts donot converse in speech, smell or touch seems to be the senseemployed; and though the vehicles of smell and touch are unknown tous, in moments of high emotion we ourselves converse otherwise than byspeech. Indeed, seeing that all created things possess a spiritwhereby they are what they are, it does not seem necessary to supposeintercourse impossible without speech, and I myself have never had anydifficulty in accepting the stories of much more vital mixedintercourse which we read of in the Greek and other mythologies. If weread, for instance, that such and such a man or woman was theoffspring of a woman and the spirit of a river, or of a man and thespirit of a hill or oak-tree, it does not seem to me at allextraordinary. The story of the wife who suffered a fairy union andbore a fairy child which disappeared with her is a case in point. Thefairy father was, so far as I can make out, the indwelling spirit of arose, and the story is too painful and the detail in my possession tooexact for me to put it down here. I was myself actually present, andin the house, when the child was born. I witnessed the anguish of theunfortunate husband, who is now dead. Mr. Wentz has many instances ofthe kind from Ireland and other Celtic countries; but fairies are byno means confined to Celtic countries, though they are more easilydiscerned by Celtic races. 

[Footnote 8: The speech of Balaam's ass or of Balaam, of Achilles andhis horses are, of course, necessary conventions of the poet's and donot imply that words passed between the parties. ]

Of this chain of Being, then, of which our order is a member, thefairy world is another and more subtle member, subtler in the rightsense of the word because it is not burdened with a material envelope. Like man, like the wind, like the rose, it has spirit; but unlike anyof the lower orders, of which man is one, it has no sensible wrappingunless deliberately it consents to inhabit one. This, as we know, itfrequently does. I have mentioned several cases of the kind; Mrs. Ventris was one, Mabilla By-the-Wood was another. I have notpersonally come across any other cases where a male fairy took uponhim the burden of a man than that of Quidnunc. Even there I have neverbeen satisfied that Quidnunc became man to the extent that Mrs. Ventris did. Quidnunc, no doubt, was the father of Lady Emily'schildren; but were those children human? There are some grounds forthinking so, and in that case, if "the nature follows the male, "Quidnunc must have doffed his immateriality and suffered realincarnation. If they were fairy children the case is altered. Quidnuncneed not have had a body at all. Now since it is clear that the fairyworld is a real order of creation, with laws of its own every whit asfixed and immutable as those of any other order known to naturalists, it is very reasonable to inquire into the nature and scope of thoselaws. I am not at all prepared at present to attempt anything like adigest of them. That would require a lifetime; and no small part ofthe task, after marshalling the evidence, would be to agree upon termswhich would be intelligible to ourselves and yet not misleading. Totake polity alone, are we to understand that any kind of Governmentresembling that of human societies obtains among them? When we talk ofQueens or Kings of the Fairies, of Oberon and Titania, for example, are we using a rough translation of a real something, or are wetelling the mere truth? Is there a fairy king? The King of the Wood, for instance, who was he? Is there a fairy queen? Who is Queen Mab?Who is Despoina? Who is the Lady of the Lake? Who is the "_Βασίλισσατὣν βουνὣν_, " or "_Μεγάλη Κυρά_" of whom Mr. Lawson tells us suchsuggestive things in his _Modern Greek Folk-lore?_ Who is Despoina, with whom I myself have conversed, "a dread goddess, not of humanspeech?" The truth, I suspect, is this. There are, as we know, countless tribes, clans, or orders of fairies, just as there arenations of men. They confess the power of some greater Spirit amongthemselves, bow to it instantly and submit to its decrees; but they donot, so far as I can understand, acknowledge a monarchy in any senseof ours. If there is a Supreme Power over the fairy creation it isProserpine; but hers is too remote an empire to be comparable to anyof ours. Not even Cæsar, not even the Great King, could hope to rulesuch myriads as she. She may stand for the invisible creation nodoubt, but she would never have commerce with it. No fairy hath seenher at any time; no sovereignty such as we are now discussing would beapplicable to her dominion. That of Artemis, or that of Pan, is morecomparable. Artemis is certainly ruler of the spirits of the air andwater, of the hills and shores of the sea, and to some extent herpower overlaps that of Pan who is potent in nearly all land solitudes. But really the two lord-ships can be exactly discriminated. They neverconflict. The legions of Artemis are all female, though on earth menas well as women worship her; the legions of Pan are all male, thoughon earth he can chasten women as well as men. [9] But Pan can donothing against Artemis, nor she anything against him or any of his. The decree or swift deed of either is respected by the other. They arenot, then, as earthly kings, leaders of their hosts to battle againsttheir neighbours. Fairies fight and marshal themselves for war; Mr. Wentz has several cases of the kind. But Pan and Artemis have no sharein these warfares. Queen Mab is one of the many names, and points toone of the many manifestations of Artemis; the Lady of the Lake isanother. Both of these have died out, and in the country she isgenerally hinted at under the veil of "Mistress of the Wood" or "Ladyof the Hill. " I heard the latter from a Wiltshire shepherd; the formeris used in Sussex, in the Cheviots, and in Lincolnshire, and wasintroduced, I believe, by the Gipsies. Titania was a name of romance, and so was Oberon, that of her husband in romance. Queen Mab has nohusband, nor will she ever have. 

[Footnote 9: But if this is true, who is the King of the Wood? Thestatement is too sweeping. ]

But she is, of course, a goddess, and not a queen in our sense of theword. The fairies, who partake of her nature just so far as we partakeof theirs, pray to her, invoke her, and make her offerings every day. But a vital difference between their kind and ours is that they cansee her and live; and we never see the Gods until we die. 

They have no other leaders, I believe, and certainly no royal houses. Faculty is free in the fairy world to its utmost limit. A fairy'spower within his own order is limited only by the extent of hispersonal faculty, and subject only to the Gods. There is no civil lawto restrain him, and no moral law; no law at all except the law ofbeing. [10]

[Footnote 10: Apparent eccentricities of this law, such as theobedience to iron, or zinc (if we may believe Beckwith), should benoted. I can't explain them. They seem arbitrary at first sight, butnothing in Nature is arbitrary. ]

We are contemplating, then, a realm, nay, a world, where anarchy isthe rule, and anarchy in the widest sense. The fairies are of a worldwhere Right and Wrong don't obtain, where Possible and Impossible arethe only finger-posts at cross-roads; for the Gods themselves give nomoral sanction to desire and hold up no moral check. The fairies loveand hate intensely; they crave and enjoy; they satisfy by kindness orcruelty; they serve or enslave each other; they give life or take itas their instinct, appetite or whim may be. But there is thisremarkable thing to be noted, that when a thing is dead they cannot beaware of its existence. For them it is not, it is as if it had neverbeen. Ruth, therefore, is unknown, their emotions are maimed to thatserious extent that they cannot regret, cannot pity, cannot weep forsorrow. They weep through rage, but sorrow they know not. Similarly, they cannot laugh for joy. Laughing with them is an expression ofpleasure, but not of joy. Here then, at least, we have the better ofthem. I for one would not exchange my privilege of pity or myconsolation of pure sorrow for all their transcendent faculty. 

It is often said that fairies of both sexes seek our kind because weknow more of the pleasure of love than they do. Since we know more ofthe griefs of it that is likely to be true; but it is a great mistaketo suppose that they are unsusceptible to the great heights and deepsof the holy passion. It is to make the vulgar confusion between thepassion and the expression of it. They are capable of the greatestdevotion to the beloved, of the greatest sacrifice of all--thesacrifice of their own nature. These fairy-wives of whom I have beenspeaking--Miranda King, Mabilla By-the-Wood--when they took upon themour nature, and with it our power of backward-looking andforward-peering, was what they could remember, was what they mustdread, no sacrifice? They could have escaped at any moment, mind you, and been free. [11] Resuming their first nature they would have lostregret. But they did not. Love was their master. There are many casesof the kind. With men it is otherwise. I have mentioned Mary Wellwood, the carpenter's wife, twice taken by a fairy and twice recaptured. Thelast time she was brought back to Ashby-de-la-Zouche she died there. But there is reason for this. A woman marrying a male fairy getssome, but not all, of the fairy attributes, while her children havethem in full at birth. She bears them with all the signs of humanmotherhood, and directly they are born her earthly rights and dutiescease. She does not nurse them and she can only rise in the air whenthey are with her. That means that she cannot go after them if theyare long away from her, unless she can get another fairy to keep hercompany. By the same mysterious law she can only conceal herself, ordoff her appearance, with the aid of a fairy. For some time after herabduction or surrender her husband has to nourish her by breathinginto her mouth; but with the birth of her first child she can supportherself in the fairy manner. It was owing to this imperfect state ofbeing that Mary Wellwood was resumed by her friends the first time. The second time she went back of her own accord. 

[Footnote 11: When a fairy marries a man she gradually loses herfairy-power and her children have none of it or only vestiges--so muchas the children of a genius may perhaps exhibit. I am not able to sayhow long the fairy-wife's ability to resume her own nature lasts. _TheForsaken Merman_ occurs to one; but I doubt if Miranda King, at thetime, say, of her son's marriage with Mabilla, could have gone back tothe sea. Sometimes, as in Mrs. Ventris's case, fairy-wives play truantfor a night or for a season. I have reason to believe that notuncommon. The number of fairy-wives in England alone is veryconsiderable--over a quarter of a million, I am told. ]

But with regard to their love-business among themselves it is a verydifferent matter, so far as I can understand it. The fairy child isinitiated at the age of puberty and is then competent to pair. He isnot long in selecting his companion; nor does she often seem to refusehim, though mating is done by liking in all cases and has nothingwhatever to do with the parents. It must be remembered, of course, that they are subject to the primitive law from which man only hasfreed himself. They frequently fight for the possession of the female, or measure their powers against each other; and she goes with thevictor or the better man. [12] I don't know any case where the advancehas been made by the female. Pairing may be for a season or for aperiod or for life. I don't think there is any rule; but in all casesof separation the children are invariably divided--the males to thefather, the females to the mother. After initiation the children oweno allegiance to their parents. Love with them is a wild and wonderfulrapture in all its manifestations, and without regard necessarily tosex. I never, in my life, saw a more beautiful expression of it thanin the two females whom I saw greet and embrace on Parliament Hill. Their motions to each other, their looks and their clinging werebeyond expression tender and swift. Nor shall I ever forget the pairof Oreads in the snow, of whose meeting I have said as much as ispossible in a previous chapter. It must be remembered that I amdealing with an order of Nature which knows nothing of our shames andqualms, which is not only unconscious of itself but unconscious ofanything but its immediate desire; but I am dealing with it to theunderstanding of a very different order, to whom it is not enough todo a thing which seems good in its own eyes, but requisite also to besure of the approbation of its fellow-men. I should create a wrongimpression were I to enlarge upon this branch of my subject; I shouldmake my readers call fairies shameful when as a fact they know not themeaning of shame, or reprove them for shamelessness when, indeed, theyare luckily without it. I shall make bold to say once for all that asit is absurd to call the lightning cruel, so it is absurd to callshameful those who know nothing about the deformity. No one can knowwhat love means who has not seen the fairies at their loving--and somuch for that. 

[Footnote 12: I saw an extraordinary case of that, where a male camesuddenly before a mated pair, asserted himself and took her to himselfincontinent. There was no fighting. He stood and looked. The period ofsuspense was breathless but not long. ]

The laws which govern the appearance of fairies to mankind or theircommerce with men and women seem to be conditioned by the ability ofmen to perceive them. The senses of men are figuratively speakinglenses coloured or shaped by personality. How are we to know the formand pressure of the great river Enipeus, whose shape, for the love ofTyro, Poseidon took? And so the accounts of fairy appearance, of fairyshape, size, vesture, will vary in the measure of the faculty of thepercipient. To me, personally, the fairies seem to go in gowns ofyellow, grey, russet or green, but mostly in yellow or grey. TheOreads or Spirits of the hills vary. In winter their vesture isyellow, in summer it is ash-green. The Dryad whom I saw was in grey, the colour of the lichened oak-tree out of which she gleamed. Thefairies in a Norman forest had long brown garments, very close andclinging, to the ankles. They were belted, and their hair was loose. But that is invariable. I never saw a fairy with snooded or tied uphair. They are always bare-footed. Despoina is the only fairy I eversaw in any other colour than those I have named. She always wearsblue, of the colour of the shadows on a moonlight night, verybeautiful. She, too, wears sandals, which they say the Satyrs weavefor her as a tribute. They lay them down where she has been or islikely to be; for they never see her. 

But this matter of vesture is really a digression: I have moreimportant matter in hand, and that is to consider the intercoursebetween fairy and mortal, as it is governed by appearance. How does aman, for instance, gain a fairy-wife? How does a woman give herself toa fairy-lover? I have given a careful account of a case of each sortin answer. Young King gained his wife by capture; Lady Emily Richfollowed her lover at a look. 

But this does not really touch the point, which is, rather, how wasLady Emily Rich brought or put into such a relation with Quidnuncthat she could receive a look from him? How was King put into such arelation with Mabilla that he could take her away from her own people?There must have been an incarnation, you would say; and I should agreewith you. Now in Andrew King's case there was belief to go upon, thebelief common to all the Cheviot side, handed down to it from untoldgenerations and never lost; coupled with that, there was an intenseand probably long-standing desire in the young man himself to realiseand substantiate his belief. He had brooded over it, his fancy hadgone to work upon it; he loved his Mabilla before ever he saw her; hislove, it was, which evoked her. And I take it as proved--at any rateit is proved to my own satisfaction--that faith coupled with desirehas power--the power of suggestion it is called--over Spirit as itcertainly has over Matter. If I say, then, that Andrew King evokedMabilla By-the-Wood, called her out of her own world into his, Iassert two things: the first, that she was really at one time in herown world, the second, that she was afterward really in his. Thesecond my own senses can vouch for. That she was fetched back by theKing of the Wood and recaptured by Andrew are minor points. Grant thefirst taking and there is no difficulty about them. 

Mr. Lawson gives cases from Greece which point to certain ritualperformances on the part of the lover; the snatching, for instance, ofa handkerchief from the beloved, of which the preservation istantamount to the permanence of the subsequent union. He has a curiouscase, too, of a peasant who married a nymph and gave her a child butcould not make her speak to him. He consulted a wise woman who advisedhim to threaten her with the fire for the baby if she would not talk. He did it and the charm worked. The Nymph spoke fiercely to him, "Youdog, leave my child alone, " she said, and seized it from him, and withit disappeared. That is parallel to my case where love made Mabillaspeak. It was love for her husband, to be sure; but she had then nochildren. 

Mr. Wentz gets no evidence of fairy-wives from Ireland, but a greatnumber out of Wales. One of them is the beautiful tale of Einion andOlwen (p. 161) which has many points of resemblance with mine from theBorder. Einion also seems to have met the King of the Wood. LikeAndrew King he was kissed by the nymphs, but only by one of them; butunlike him he stayed in their country for a year and a day, then wentback to his own people, and finally returned for his fairy-wife. Taliesin was their son. No conditions seem to have been made. 

So much for fairy brides, but now for fairy grooms. I have two casesto add to that of Quidnunc, but before giving them, let me say of hisaffair that since the suggestion there seems to have come from him tothe woman, the incarnation, if such there were, must have beenvoluntary. Evocation was not instrumental in it. He appeared beforeher, as she had appeared before others, many others, including myself, and his subsequent commerce with her was achieved by his own personalforce. You may say that she had been prepared to see him by belief anddesire, by belief and desire acting upon a mind greatly distressed andprobably overwrought. You may say that she saw what she ardentlydesired to see. It is quite true, I cannot deny it; but I point to hisprevious manifestations, and leave it there. 

Here is a tale to the purpose which I got out of Worcestershire. Twogirls, daughter and niece of a farmer, bosom friends and bed-fellows, became involved in a love-affair and, desperate of a happy issue, attempted a charm to win their lovers back. On All Hallow Eve, twohours before the sun, they went into the garden, barefoot, in theirnightgowns and circled about a stone which was believed to bebewitched. [13] They used certain words, the Lord's prayer backward orwhat not, and had an apparition. A brown man came out of the bushesand looked at them for some time. Then he came to them, paralysed asthey may have been, and peering closely into the face of one of themgave her a flower and disappeared. That same evening they kept theHallow E'en with the usual play, half-earnest, half-game, and, amongother things which they did, "peascodded" the girls. The game is avery old one, and consists in setting the victim in a chair with herback to the door while her companions rub her down with handfuls ofpea-shucks. During this ceremony if any man enter the room he is herlover, and she is handed over to him. This was done, then, to one ofthe girls who had dared the dawn magic; and in the midst of it a brownman, dressed in a smock-frock tied up with green ribbons, appeared, standing in the door. He took the girl by the hand and led her out ofthe house. She was seen no more that night, nor for many daysafterward, though her parents and neighbours hunted her far and wide. By-and-by she was reported at a village some ten or twelve miles offon the Shropshire border, where some shepherds had found her wanderingthe hill. She was brought home but could give no good account ofherself, or would not. She said that she had followed her lover, married him, and lost him. Nothing would comfort her, nothing couldkeep her in the house. She was locked in, but made her way out; shewas presently sent to the lunatic asylum, but escaped from that. Thenshe got away for good and all and never came back again. No trace ofher body could be found. What are you to make of a thing of the sort?I give it for what it is worth, with this note only, that theapparition was manifest to several persons, though not, I fancy, toany but the girls concerned in the peascodding. 

[Footnote 13: It is said to have been the base of a Roman terminalstatue, but I have not seen it. ]

The Willow-lad's is another tale of the same kind. It was described in1787 by the Reverend Samuel Jordan in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, if Iam not mistaken. 

The Willow-lad was an apparition which was believed to appear in awithy-bed on the banks of the Ouse near Huntingdon. He could only beseen at dusk, and only by women. He had a sinister reputation, and tosay of a girl that she had been to the withy-bed was a broad hint thatshe was no better than she should be. Yet, according to Mr. Jordan, the girls did go there in numbers, and to such effect that by an orderof the Town Council the place was stubbed up. You had to go alone tothe withy-bed between sunset and sunrise of a moonless night, to layyour hand upon a certain stump and say, and in a loud voice:--

 Willow-boy, Willow-boy, come to me soon, After the sun and before the moon. Hide the stars and cover my head; Let no man see me when I be wed. 

One would like to know whether the Willow-lad's powers perished withthe withy-bed. They should not, but should have been turned tomalicious uses. There are many cases in Mr. Lawson's book of themalefical effect upon the Dryads of cutting down the trees whosespirit they are. And most people know Landor's idyll, or if theydon't, they should. 

 * * * * *

There are queer doings under the sun as well as under the moon. A manmay travel far without leaving his arm-chair by the fire, in countrieswhere no tourist-tickets obtain, and see stranger things than arerecorded by Herr Baedeker. 

 The waies through which my weary steps I guide In this delightful land of Faery Are so exceeding spacious and wyde, And sprinckled with such sweet variety Of all that pleasant is to eare or eye, That I, nigh ravisht with rare thoughts' delight, My tedious travele doe forget thereby; And when I gin to feele decay of might, It strength to me supplies, and chears my dulléd spright. 

THE END