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Title: The House of Souls

Author: Arthur Machen

Release Date: April 7, 2008 [EBook #25016]

Language: English

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                The
           House of Souls

          By Arthur Machen


 _Short Story Index Reprint Series_


   AYER COMPANY PUBLISHERS, INC.
     NORTH STRATFORD, NH 03590




 First Published 1922

 Reprint Edition, 1999
 AYER Company Publishers, Inc.
 Lower Mill Road
 North Stratford, NH 03590


 INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BOOK NUMBER:
 0-8369-3806-2

 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER:
 72-152947

 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




Transcriber's Note:

    Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. The
    oe ligature is shown as [oe].




Contents


 A Fragment of Life        1

 The White People        111

 The Great God Pan       167

 The Inmost Light        245




Introduction


_It was somewhere, I think, towards the autumn of the year 1889 that the
thought occurred to me that I might perhaps try to write a little in the
modern way. For, hitherto, I had been, as it were, wearing costume in
literature. The rich, figured English of the earlier part of the
seventeenth century had always had a peculiar attraction for me. I
accustomed myself to write in it, to think in it; I kept a diary in that
manner, and half-unconsciously dressed up my every day thoughts and
common experiences in the habit of the Cavalier or of the Caroline
Divine. Thus, when in 1884 I got a commission to translate the
Heptameron, I wrote quite naturally in the language of my favourite
period, and, as some critics declare, made my English version somewhat
more antique and stiff than the original. And so "The Anatomy of
Tobacco" was an exercise in the antique of a different kind; and "The
Chronicle of Clemendy" was a volume of tales that tried their hardest to
be mediæval; and the translation of the "Moyen de Parvenir" was still a
thing in the ancient mode._

_It seemed, in fine, to be settled that in literature I was to be a
hanger on of the past ages; and I don't quite know how I managed to get
away from them. I had finished translating "Casanova"--more modern, but
not thoroughly up to date--and I had nothing particular on hand, and,
somehow or other, it struck me that I might try a little writing for the
papers. I began with a "turnover" as it was called, for the old vanished
Globe, a harmless little article on old English proverbs; and I shall
never forget my pride and delight when one day, being at Dover, with a
fresh autumn wind blowing from the sea, I bought a chance copy of the
paper and saw my essay on the front page. Naturally, I was encouraged to
persevere, and I wrote more turnovers for the Globe and then tried the
St. James's Gazette and found that they paid two pounds instead of the
guinea of the Globe, and again, naturally enough, devoted most of my
attention to the St. James's Gazette. From the essay or literary paper,
I somehow got into the habit of the short story, and did a good many of
these, still for the St. James's, till in the autumn of 1890, I wrote a
tale called "The Double Return." Well, Oscar Wilde asked: "Are you the
author of that story that fluttered the dovecotes? I thought it was very
good." But: it did flutter the dovecotes, and the St. James's Gazette
and I parted._

_But I still wrote short stories, now chiefly for what were called
"society" papers, which have become extinct. And one of these appeared
in a paper, the name of which I have long forgotten. I had called the
tale "Resurrectio Mortuorum," and the editor had very sensibly rendered
the title into "The Resurrection of the Dead."_

_I do not clearly remember how the story began. I am inclined to think
something in this way:_

_"Old Mr. Llewellyn, the Welsh antiquary, threw his copy of the morning
paper on the floor and banged the breakfast-table, exclaiming: 'Good
God! Here's the last of the Caradocs of the Garth, has been married in
a Baptist Chapel by a dissenting preacher; somewhere in Peckham.'" Or,
did I take up the tale a few years after this happy event and shew the
perfectly cheerful contented young commercial clerk running somewhat too
fast to catch the bus one morning, and feeling dazed all day long over
the office work, and going home in a sort of dimness, and then at his
very doorstep, recovering as it were, his ancestral consciousness. I
think it was the sight of his wife and the tones of her voice that
suddenly announced to him with the sound of a trumpet that he had
nothing to do with this woman with the Cockney accent, or the pastor who
was coming to supper, or the red brick villa, or Peckham or the City of
London. Though the old place on the banks of the Usk had been sold fifty
years before, still, he was Caradoc of the Garth. I forget how I ended
the story: but here was one of the sources of "A Fragment of Life."_

_And somehow, though the tale was written and printed and paid for; it
stayed with me as a tale half told in the years from 1890 to 1899. I was
in love with the notion: this contrast between the raw London suburb and
its mean limited life and its daily journeys to the City; its utter
banality and lack of significance; between all this and the old, grey
mullioned house under the forest near the river, the armorial bearings
on the Jacobean porch, and noble old traditions: all this captivated me
and I thought of my mistold tale at intervals, while I was writing "The
Great God Pan," "The Red Hand," "The Three Impostors," "The Hill of
Dreams," "The White People," and "Hieroglyphics." It was at the back of
my head, I suppose, all the time, and at last in '99 I began to write
it all over again from a somewhat different standpoint._

_The fact was that one grey Sunday afternoon in the March of that year,
I went for a long walk with a friend. I was living in Gray's Inn in
those days, and we stravaged up Gray's Inn Road on one of those queer,
unscientific explorations of the odd corners of London in which I have
always delighted. I don't think that there was any definite scheme laid
down; but we resisted manifold temptations. For on the right of Gray's
Inn Road is one of the oddest quarters of London--to those, that is,
with the unsealed eyes. Here are streets of 1800-1820 that go down into
a valley--Flora in "Little Dorrit" lived in one of them--and then
crossing King's Cross Road climb very steeply up to heights which always
suggest to me that I am in the hinder and poorer quarter of some big
seaside place, and that there is a fine view of the sea from the attic
windows. This place was once called Spa Fields, and has very properly an
old meeting house of the Countess of Huntingdon's Connection as one of
its attractions. It is one of the parts of London which would attract me
if I wished to hide; not to escape arrest, perhaps, but rather to escape
the possibility of ever meeting anybody who had ever seen me before._

_But: my friend and I resisted it all. We strolled along to the parting
of many ways at King's Cross Station, and struck boldly up Pentonville.
Again: on our left was Barnsbury, which is like Africa. In Barnsbury
semper aliquid novi, but our course was laid for us by some occult
influence, and we came to Islington and chose the right hand side of the
way. So far, we were tolerably in the region of the known, since every
year there is the great Cattle Show at Islington, and many men go there.
But, trending to the right, we got into Canonbury, of which there are
only Travellers' Tales. Now and then, perhaps, as one sits about the
winter fire, while the storm howls without and the snow falls fast, the
silent man in the corner has told how he had a great aunt who lived in
Canonbury in 1860; so in the fourteenth century you might meet men who
had talked with those who had been in Cathay and had seen the splendours
of the Grand Cham. Such is Canonbury; I hardly dare speak of its dim
squares, of the deep, leafy back-gardens behind the houses, running down
into obscure alleyways with discreet, mysterious postern doors: as I
say, "Travellers' Tales"; things not much credited._

_But, he who adventures in London has a foretaste of infinity. There is
a region beyond Ultima Thule. I know not how it was, but on this famous
Sunday afternoon, my friend and I, passing through Canonbury came into
something called the Balls Pond Road--Mr. Perch, the messenger of Dombey
& Son, lived somewhere in this region--and so I think by Dalston down
into Hackney where caravans, or trams, or, as I think you say in
America, trolley cars set out at stated intervals to the limits of the
western world._

_But in the course of that walk which had become an exploration of the
unknown, I had seen two common things which had made a profound
impression upon me. One of these things was a street, the other a small
family party. The street was somewhere in that vague, uncharted, Balls
Pond-Dalston region. It was a long street and a grey street. Each house
was exactly like every other house. Each house had a basement, the sort
of story which house-agents have grown to call of late a "lower ground
floor." The front windows of these basements were half above the patch
of black, soot-smeared soil and coarse grass that named itself a garden,
and so, passing along at the hour of four o'clock or four-thirty, I
could see that in everyone of these "breakfast rooms"--their technical
name--the tea tray and the tea cups were set out in readiness. I
received from this trivial and natural circumstance an impression of a
dull life, laid out in dreadful lines of patterned uniformity, of a life
without adventure of body or soul._

_Then, the family party. It got into the tram down Hackney way. There
were father, mother and baby; and I should think that they came from a
small shop, probably from a small draper's shop. The parents were young
people of twenty-five to thirty-five. He wore a black shiny frock
coat--an "Albert" in America?--a high hat, little side whiskers and dark
moustache and a look of amiable vacuity. His wife was oddly bedizened in
black satin, with a wide spreading hat, not ill-looking, simply
unmeaning. I fancy that she had at times, not too often, "a temper of
her own." And the very small baby sat upon her knee. The party was
probably going forth to spend the Sunday evening with relations or
friends._

_And yet, I said to myself, these two have partaken together of the
great mystery, of the great sacrament of nature, of the source of all
that is magical in the wide world. But have they discerned the
mysteries? Do they know that they have been in that place which is
called Syon and Jerusalem?--I am quoting from an old book and a strange
book._

_It was thus that, remembering the old story of the "Resurrection of the
Dead," I was furnished with the source of "A Fragment of Life." I was
writing "Hieroglyphics" at the time, having just finished "The White
People"; or rather, having just decided that what now appears in print
under that heading was all that would ever be written, that the Great
Romance that should have been written--in manifestation of the
idea--would never be written at all. And so, when Hieroglyphics was
finished, somewhere about May 1899, I set about "A Fragment of Life" and
wrote the first chapter with the greatest relish and the utmost ease.
And then my own life was dashed into fragments. I ceased to write. I
travelled. I saw Syon and Bagdad and other strange places--see "Things
Near and Far" for an explanation of this obscure passage--and found
myself in the lighted world of floats and battens, entering L. U. E.,
crossing R and exiting R 3; and doing all sorts of queer things._

_But still, in spite of all these shocks and changes, the "notion" would
not leave me. I went at it again, I suppose in 1904; consumed with a
bitter determination to finish what I had begun. Everything now had
become difficult. I tried this way and that way and the other way. They
all failed and I broke down on every one of them; and I tried and tried
again. At last I cobbled up some sort of an end, an utterly bad one, as
I realized as I wrote every single line and word of it, and the story
appeared, in 1904 or 1905, in Horlick's Magazine under the editorship of
my old and dear friend, A. E. Waite._

_Still; I was not satisfied. That end was intolerable and I knew it.
Again, I sat down to the work, night after night I wrestled with it. And
I remember an odd circumstance which may or may not be of some
physiological interest. I was then living in a circumscribed "upper
part" of a house in Cosway Street, Marylebone Road. That I might
struggle by myself, I wrote in the little kitchen; and night after night
as I fought grimly, savagely, all but hopelessly for some fit close for
"A Fragment of Life," I was astonished and almost alarmed to find that
my feet developed a sensation of most deadly cold. The room was not
cold; I had lit the oven burners of the little gas cooking stove. I was
not cold; but my feet were chilled in a quite extraordinary manner, as
if they had been packed in ice. At last I took off my slippers with a
view of poking my toes into the oven of the stove, and feeling my feet
with my hand, I perceived that, in fact, they were not cold at all! But
the sensation remained; there, I suppose, you have an odd case of a
transference of something that was happening in the brain to the
extremities. My feet were quite warm to the palm of my hand, but to my
sense they were frozen. But what a testimony to the fitness of the
American idiom, "cold feet," as signifying a depressed and desponding
mood! But, somehow or other, the tale was finished and the "notion" was
at last out of my head. I have gone into all this detail about "A
Fragment of Life" because I have been assured in many quarters that it
is the best thing that I have ever done, and students of the crooked
ways of literature may be interested to hear of the abominable labours
of doing it._

_"The White People" belongs to the same year as the first chapter of "A
Fragment of Life," 1899, which was also the year of "Hieroglyphics." The
fact was I was in high literary spirits, just then. I had been harassed
and worried for a whole year in the office of Literature, a weekly paper
published by The Times, and getting free again, I felt like a prisoner
released from chains; ready to dance in letters to any extent. Forthwith
I thought of "A Great Romance," a highly elaborate and elaborated piece
of work, full of the strangest and rarest things. I have forgotten how
it was that this design broke down; but I found by experiment that the
great romance was to go on that brave shelf of the unwritten books, the
shelf where all the splendid books are to be found in their golden
bindings. "The White People" is a small piece of salvage from the wreck.
Oddly enough, as is insinuated in the Prologue, the mainspring of the
story is to be sought in a medical textbook. In the Prologue reference
is made to a review article by Dr. Coryn. But I have since found out
that Dr. Coryn was merely quoting from a scientific treatise that case
of the lady whose fingers became violently inflamed because she saw a
heavy window sash descend on the fingers of her child. With this
instance, of course, are to be considered all cases of stigmata, both
ancient and modern: and then the question is obvious enough: what limits
can we place to the powers of the imagination? Has not the imagination
the potentiality at least of performing any miracle, however marvelous,
however incredible, according to our ordinary standards? As to the
decoration of the story, that is a mingling which I venture to think
somewhat ingenious of odds and ends of folk lore and witch lore with
pure inventions of my own. Some years later I was amused to receive a
letter from a gentleman who was, if I remember, a schoolmaster somewhere
in Malaya. This gentleman, an earnest student of folklore, was writing
an article on some singular things he had observed amongst the Malayans,
and chiefly a kind of were-wolf state into which some of them were able
to conjure themselves. He had found, as he said, startling resemblances
between the magic ritual of Malaya and some of the ceremonies and
practices hinted at in "The White People." He presumed that all this was
not fancy but fact; that is that I was describing practices actually in
use among superstitious people on the Welsh border; he was going to
quote from me in the article for the Journal of the Folk Lore Society,
or whatever it was called, and he just wanted to let me know. I wrote in
a hurry to the folklore journal to bid them beware: for the instances
selected by the student were all fictions of my own brain!_

_"The Great God Pan" and "The Inmost Light" are tales of an earlier
date, going back to 1890, '91, '92. I have written a good deal about
them in "Far Off Things," and in a preface to an edition of "The Great
God Pan," published by Messrs. Simpkin, Marshall in 1916, I have
described at length the origins of the book. But I must quote anew some
extracts from the reviews which welcomed "The Great God Pan" to my
extraordinary entertainment, hilarity and refreshment. Here are a few of
the best:_

_"It is not Mr. Machen's fault but his misfortune, that one shakes with
laughter rather than with dread over the contemplation of his
psychological bogey."--Observer._

_"His horror, we regret to say, leaves us quite cold ... and our flesh
obstinately refuses to creep."--Chronicle._

_"His bogies don't scare."--Sketch._

_"We are afraid he only succeeds in being ridiculous."--Manchester
Guardian._

_"Gruesome, ghastly and dull."--Lady's Pictorial._

_"Incoherent nightmare of sex ... which would soon lead to insanity if
unrestrained ... innocuous from its absurdity."--Westminster Gazette._

_And so on, and so on. Several papers, I remember, declared that "The
Great God Pan" was simply a stupid and incompetent rehash of Huysmans'
"Là-Bas" and "À Rebours." I had not read these books so I got them both.
Thereon, I perceived that my critics had not read them either._




A Fragment of Life


I

Edward Darnell awoke from a dream of an ancient wood, and of a clear
well rising into grey film and vapour beneath a misty, glimmering heat;
and as his eyes opened he saw the sunlight bright in the room, sparkling
on the varnish of the new furniture. He turned and found his wife's
place vacant, and with some confusion and wonder of the dream still
lingering in his mind, he rose also, and began hurriedly to set about
his dressing, for he had overslept a little, and the 'bus passed the
corner at 9.15. He was a tall, thin man, dark-haired and dark-eyed, and
in spite of the routine of the City, the counting of coupons, and all
the mechanical drudgery that had lasted for ten years, there still
remained about him the curious hint of a wild grace, as if he had been
born a creature of the antique wood, and had seen the fountain rising
from the green moss and the grey rocks.

The breakfast was laid in the room on the ground floor, the back room
with the French windows looking on the garden, and before he sat down to
his fried bacon he kissed his wife seriously and dutifully. She had
brown hair and brown eyes, and though her lovely face was grave and
quiet, one would have said that she might have awaited her husband under
the old trees, and bathed in the pool hollowed out of the rocks.

They had a good deal to talk over while the coffee was poured out and
the bacon eaten, and Darnell's egg brought in by the stupid, staring
servant-girl of the dusty face. They had been married for a year, and
they had got on excellently, rarely sitting silent for more than an
hour, but for the past few weeks Aunt Marian's present had afforded a
subject for conversation which seemed inexhaustible. Mrs. Darnell had
been Miss Mary Reynolds, the daughter of an auctioneer and estate agent
in Notting Hill, and Aunt Marian was her mother's sister, who was
supposed rather to have lowered herself by marrying a coal merchant, in
a small way, at Turnham Green. Marian had felt the family attitude a
good deal, and the Reynoldses were sorry for many things that had been
said, when the coal merchant saved money and took up land on building
leases in the neighbourhood of Crouch End, greatly to his advantage, as
it appeared. Nobody had thought that Nixon could ever do very much; but
he and his wife had been living for years in a beautiful house at
Barnet, with bow-windows, shrubs, and a paddock, and the two families
saw but little of each other, for Mr. Reynolds was not very prosperous.
Of course, Aunt Marian and her husband had been asked to Mary's wedding,
but they had sent excuses with a nice little set of silver apostle
spoons, and it was feared that nothing more was to be looked for.
However, on Mary's birthday her aunt had written a most affectionate
letter, enclosing a cheque for a hundred pounds from 'Robert' and
herself, and ever since the receipt of the money the Darnells had
discussed the question of its judicious disposal. Mrs. Darnell had
wished to invest the whole sum in Government securities, but Mr. Darnell
had pointed out that the rate of interest was absurdly low, and after a
good deal of talk he had persuaded his wife to put ninety pounds of the
money in a safe mine, which was paying five per cent. This was very
well, but the remaining ten pounds, which Mrs. Darnell had insisted on
reserving, gave rise to legends and discourses as interminable as the
disputes of the schools.

At first Mr. Darnell had proposed that they should furnish the 'spare'
room. There were four bedrooms in the house: their own room, the small
one for the servant, and two others overlooking the garden, one of which
had been used for storing boxes, ends of rope, and odd numbers of 'Quiet
Days' and 'Sunday Evenings,' besides some worn suits belonging to Mr.
Darnell which had been carefully wrapped up and laid by, as he scarcely
knew what to do with them. The other room was frankly waste and vacant,
and one Saturday afternoon, as he was coming home in the 'bus, and while
he revolved that difficult question of the ten pounds, the unseemly
emptiness of the spare room suddenly came into his mind, and he glowed
with the idea that now, thanks to Aunt Marian, it could be furnished. He
was busied with this delightful thought all the way home, but when he
let himself in, he said nothing to his wife, since he felt that his idea
must be matured. He told Mrs. Darnell that, having important business,
he was obliged to go out again directly, but that he should be back
without fail for tea at half-past six; and Mary, on her side, was not
sorry to be alone, as she was a little behindhand with the household
books. The fact was, that Darnell, full of the design of furnishing the
spare bedroom, wished to consult his friend Wilson, who lived at
Fulham, and had often given him judicious advice as to the laying out of
money to the very best advantage. Wilson was connected with the Bordeaux
wine trade, and Darnell's only anxiety was lest he should not be at
home.

However, it was all right; Darnell took a tram along the Goldhawk Road,
and walked the rest of the way, and was delighted to see Wilson in the
front garden of his house, busy amongst his flower-beds.

'Haven't seen you for an age,' he said cheerily, when he heard Darnell's
hand on the gate; 'come in. Oh, I forgot,' he added, as Darnell still
fumbled with the handle, and vainly attempted to enter. 'Of course you
can't get in; I haven't shown it you.'

It was a hot day in June, and Wilson appeared in a costume which he had
put on in haste as soon as he arrived from the City. He wore a straw hat
with a neat pugaree protecting the back of his neck, and his dress was a
Norfolk jacket and knickers in heather mixture.

'See,' he said, as he let Darnell in; 'see the dodge. You don't _turn_
the handle at all. First of all push hard, and then pull. It's a trick
of my own, and I shall have it patented. You see, it keeps undesirable
characters at a distance--such a great thing in the suburbs. I feel I
can leave Mrs. Wilson alone now; and, formerly, you have no idea how she
used to be pestered.'

'But how about visitors?' said Darnell. 'How do they get in?'

'Oh, we put them up to it. Besides,' he said vaguely, 'there is sure to
be somebody looking out. Mrs. Wilson is nearly always at the window.
She's out now; gone to call on some friends. The Bennetts' At Home day,
I think it is. This is the first Saturday, isn't it? You know J. W.
Bennett, don't you? Ah, he's in the House; doing very well, I believe.
He put me on to a very good thing the other day.'

'But, I say,' said Wilson, as they turned and strolled towards the front
door, 'what do you wear those black things for? You look hot. Look at
me. Well, I've been gardening, you know, but I feel as cool as a
cucumber. I dare say you don't know where to get these things? Very few
men do. Where do you suppose I got 'em?'

'In the West End, I suppose,' said Darnell, wishing to be polite.

'Yes, that's what everybody says. And it is a good cut. Well, I'll tell
you, but you needn't pass it on to everybody. I got the tip from
Jameson--you know him, "Jim-Jams," in the China trade, 39 Eastbrook--and
he said he didn't want everybody in the City to know about it. But just
go to Jennings, in Old Wall, and mention my name, and you'll be all
right. And what d'you think they cost?'

'I haven't a notion,' said Darnell, who had never bought such a suit in
his life.

'Well, have a guess.'

Darnell regarded Wilson gravely.

The jacket hung about his body like a sack, the knickerbockers drooped
lamentably over his calves, and in prominent positions the bloom of the
heather seemed about to fade and disappear.

'Three pounds, I suppose, at least,' he said at length.

'Well, I asked Dench, in our place, the other day, and he guessed four
ten, and his father's got something to do with a big business in Conduit
Street. But I only gave thirty-five and six. To measure? Of course; look
at the cut, man.'

Darnell was astonished at so low a price.

'And, by the way,' Wilson went on, pointing to his new brown boots, 'you
know where to go for shoe-leather? Oh, I thought everybody was up to
that! There's only one place. "Mr. Bill," in Gunning Street,--nine and
six.'

They were walking round and round the garden, and Wilson pointed out the
flowers in the beds and borders. There were hardly any blossoms, but
everything was neatly arranged.

'Here are the tuberous-rooted Glasgownias,' he said, showing a rigid row
of stunted plants; 'those are Squintaceæ; this is a new introduction,
Moldavia Semperflorida Andersonii; and this is Prattsia.'

'When do they come out?' said Darnell.

'Most of them in the end of August or beginning of September,' said
Wilson briefly. He was slightly annoyed with himself for having talked
so much about his plants, since he saw that Darnell cared nothing for
flowers; and, indeed, the visitor could hardly dissemble vague
recollections that came to him; thoughts of an old, wild garden, full of
odours, beneath grey walls, of the fragrance of the meadowsweet beside
the brook.

'I wanted to consult you about some furniture,' Darnell said at last.
'You know we've got a spare room, and I'm thinking of putting a few
things into it. I haven't exactly made up my mind, but I thought you
might advise me.'

'Come into my den,' said Wilson. 'No; this way, by the back'; and he
showed Darnell another ingenious arrangement at the side door whereby a
violent high-toned bell was set pealing in the house if one did but
touch the latch. Indeed, Wilson handled it so briskly that the bell rang
a wild alarm, and the servant, who was trying on her mistress's things
in the bedroom, jumped madly to the window and then danced a hysteric
dance. There was plaster found on the drawing-room table on Sunday
afternoon, and Wilson wrote a letter to the 'Fulham Chronicle,'
ascribing the phenomenon 'to some disturbance of a seismic nature.'

For the moment he knew nothing of the great results of his contrivance,
and solemnly led the way towards the back of the house. Here there was a
patch of turf, beginning to look a little brown, with a background of
shrubs. In the middle of the turf, a boy of nine or ten was standing all
alone, with something of an air.

'The eldest,' said Wilson. 'Havelock. Well, Lockie, what are ye doing
now? And where are your brother and sister?'

The boy was not at all shy. Indeed, he seemed eager to explain the
course of events.

'I'm playing at being Gawd,' he said, with an engaging frankness. 'And
I've sent Fergus and Janet to the bad place. That's in the shrubbery.
And they're never to come out any more. And they're burning for ever and
ever.'

'What d'you think of that?' said Wilson admiringly. 'Not bad for a
youngster of nine, is it? They think a lot of him at the Sunday-school.
But come into my den.'

The den was an apartment projecting from the back of the house. It had
been designed as a back kitchen and washhouse, but Wilson had draped the
'copper' in art muslin and had boarded over the sink, so that it served
as a workman's bench.

'Snug, isn't it?' he said, as he pushed forward one of the two wicker
chairs. 'I think out things here, you know; it's quiet. And what about
this furnishing? Do you want to do the thing on a grand scale?'

'Oh, not at all. Quite the reverse. In fact, I don't know whether the
sum at our disposal will be sufficient. You see the spare room is ten
feet by twelve, with a western exposure, and I thought if we _could_
manage it, that it would seem more cheerful furnished. Besides, it's
pleasant to be able to ask a visitor; our aunt, Mrs. Nixon, for example.
But she is accustomed to have everything very nice.'

'And how much do you want to spend?'

'Well, I hardly think we should be justified in going much beyond ten
pounds. That isn't enough, eh?'

Wilson got up and shut the door of the back kitchen impressively.

'Look here,' he said, 'I'm glad you came to me in the first place. Now
you'll just tell me where you thought of going yourself.'

'Well, I had thought of the Hampstead Road,' said Darnell in a
hesitating manner.

'I just thought you'd say that. But I'll ask you, what is the good of
going to those expensive shops in the West End? You don't get a better
article for your money. You're merely paying for fashion.'

'I've seen some nice things in Samuel's, though. They get a brilliant
polish on their goods in those superior shops. We went there when we
were married.'

'Exactly, and paid ten per cent more than you need have paid. It's
throwing money away. And how much did you say you had to spend? Ten
pounds. Well, I can tell you where to get a beautiful bedroom suite, in
the very highest finish, for six pound ten. What d'you think of that?
China included, mind you; and a square of carpet, brilliant colours,
will only cost you fifteen and six. Look here, go any Saturday afternoon
to Dick's, in the Seven Sisters Road, mention my name, and ask for Mr.
Johnston. The suite's in ash, "Elizabethan" they call it. Six pound ten,
including the china, with one of their "Orient" carpets, nine by nine,
for fifteen and six. Dick's.'

Wilson spoke with some eloquence on the subject of furnishing. He
pointed out that the times were changed, and that the old heavy style
was quite out of date.

'You know,' he said, 'it isn't like it was in the old days, when people
used to buy things to last hundreds of years. Why, just before the wife
and I were married, an uncle of mine died up in the North and left me
his furniture. I was thinking of furnishing at the time, and I thought
the things might come in handy; but I assure you there wasn't a single
article that I cared to give house-room to. All dingy, old mahogany; big
bookcases and bureaus, and claw-legged chairs and tables. As I said to
the wife (as she was soon afterwards), "We don't exactly want to set up
a chamber of horrors, do we?" So I sold off the lot for what I could
get. I must confess I like a cheerful room.'

Darnell said he had heard that artists liked the old-fashioned
furniture.

'Oh, I dare say. The "unclean cult of the sunflower," eh? You saw that
piece in the "Daily Post"? I hate all that rot myself. It isn't healthy,
you know, and I don't believe the English people will stand it. But
talking of curiosities, I've got something here that's worth a bit of
money.'

He dived into some dusty receptacle in a corner of the room, and showed
Darnell a small, worm-eaten Bible, wanting the first five chapters of
Genesis and the last leaf of the Apocalypse. It bore the date of 1753.

'It's my belief that's worth a lot,' said Wilson. 'Look at the
worm-holes. And you see it's "imperfect," as they call it. You've
noticed that some of the most valuable books are "imperfect" at the
sales?'

The interview came to an end soon after, and Darnell went home to his
tea. He thought seriously of taking Wilson's advice, and after tea he
told Mary of his idea and of what Wilson had said about Dick's.

Mary was a good deal taken by the plan when she had heard all the
details. The prices struck her as very moderate. They were sitting one
on each side of the grate (which was concealed by a pretty cardboard
screen, painted with landscapes), and she rested her cheek on her hand,
and her beautiful dark eyes seemed to dream and behold strange visions.
In reality she was thinking of Darnell's plan.

'It would be very nice in some ways,' she said at last. 'But we must
talk it over. What I am afraid of is that it will come to much more than
ten pounds in the long run. There are so many things to be considered.
There's the bed. It would look shabby if we got a common bed without
brass mounts. Then the bedding, the mattress, and blankets, and sheets,
and counterpane would all cost something.'

She dreamed again, calculating the cost of all the necessaries, and
Darnell stared anxiously; reckoning with her, and wondering what her
conclusion would be. For a moment the delicate colouring of her face,
the grace of her form, and the brown hair, drooping over her ears and
clustering in little curls about her neck, seemed to hint at a language
which he had not yet learned; but she spoke again.

'The bedding would come to a great deal, I am afraid. Even if Dick's are
considerably cheaper than Boon's or Samuel's. And, my dear, we must have
some ornaments on the mantelpiece. I saw some very nice vases at
eleven-three the other day at Wilkin and Dodd's. We should want six at
least, and there ought to be a centre-piece. You see how it mounts up.'

Darnell was silent. He saw that his wife was summing up against his
scheme, and though he had set his heart on it, he could not resist her
arguments.

'It would be nearer twelve pounds than ten,' she said.

'The floor would have to be stained round the carpet (nine by nine, you
said?), and we should want a piece of linoleum to go under the
washstand. And the walls would look very bare without any pictures.'

'I thought about the pictures,' said Darnell; and he spoke quite
eagerly. He felt that here, at least, he was unassailable. 'You know
there's the "Derby Day" and the "Railway Station," ready framed,
standing in the corner of the box-room already. They're a bit
old-fashioned, perhaps, but that doesn't matter in a bedroom. And
couldn't we use some photographs? I saw a very neat frame in natural oak
in the City, to hold half a dozen, for one and six. We might put in your
father, and your brother James, and Aunt Marian, and your grandmother,
in her widow's cap--and any of the others in the album. And then there's
that old family picture in the hair-trunk--that might do over the
mantelpiece.'

'You mean your great-grandfather in the gilt frame? But that's _very_
old-fashioned, isn't it? He looks so queer in his wig. I don't think it
would quite go with the room, somehow.'

Darnell thought a moment. The portrait was a 'kitcat' of a young
gentleman, bravely dressed in the fashion of 1750, and he very faintly
remembered some old tales that his father had told him about this
ancestor--tales of the woods and fields, of the deep sunken lanes, and
the forgotten country in the west.

'No,' he said, 'I suppose it is rather out of date. But I saw some very
nice prints in the City, framed and quite cheap.'

'Yes, but everything counts. Well, we will talk it over, as you say. You
know we must be careful.'

The servant came in with the supper, a tin of biscuits, a glass of milk
for the mistress, and a modest pint of beer for the master, with a
little cheese and butter. Afterwards Edward smoked two pipes of
honeydew, and they went quietly to bed; Mary going first, and her
husband following a quarter of an hour later, according to the ritual
established from the first days of their marriage. Front and back doors
were locked, the gas was turned off at the meter, and when Darnell got
upstairs he found his wife already in bed, her face turned round on the
pillow.

She spoke softly to him as he came into the room.

'It would be impossible to buy a presentable bed at anything under one
pound eleven, and good sheets are dear, anywhere.'

He slipped off his clothes and slid gently into bed, putting out the
candle on the table. The blinds were all evenly and duly drawn, but it
was a June night, and beyond the walls, beyond that desolate world and
wilderness of grey Shepherd's Bush, a great golden moon had floated up
through magic films of cloud, above the hill, and the earth was filled
with a wonderful light between red sunset lingering over the mountain
and that marvellous glory that shone into the woods from the summit of
the hill. Darnell seemed to see some reflection of that wizard
brightness in the room; the pale walls and the white bed and his wife's
face lying amidst brown hair upon the pillow were illuminated, and
listening he could almost hear the corncrake in the fields, the fern-owl
sounding his strange note from the quiet of the rugged place where the
bracken grew, and, like the echo of a magic song, the melody of the
nightingale that sang all night in the alder by the little brook. There
was nothing that he could say, but he slowly stole his arm under his
wife's neck, and played with the ringlets of brown hair. She never
moved, she lay there gently breathing, looking up to the blank ceiling
of the room with her beautiful eyes, thinking also, no doubt, thoughts
that she could not utter, kissing her husband obediently when he asked
her to do so, and he stammered and hesitated as he spoke.

They were nearly asleep, indeed Darnell was on the very eve of dreaming,
when she said very softly--

'I am afraid, darling, that we could never afford it.' And he heard her
words through the murmur of the water, dripping from the grey rock, and
falling into the clear pool beneath.

Sunday morning was always an occasion of idleness. Indeed, they would
never have got breakfast if Mrs. Darnell, who had the instincts of the
housewife, had not awoke and seen the bright sunshine, and felt that the
house was too still. She lay quiet for five minutes, while her husband
slept beside her, and listened intently, waiting for the sound of Alice
stirring down below. A golden tube of sunlight shone through some
opening in the Venetian blinds, and it shone on the brown hair that lay
about her head on the pillow, and she looked steadily into the room at
the 'duchesse' toilet-table, the coloured ware of the washstand, and the
two photogravures in oak frames, 'The Meeting' and 'The Parting,' that
hung upon the wall. She was half dreaming as she listened for the
servant's footsteps, and the faint shadow of a shade of a thought came
over her, and she imagined dimly, for the quick moment of a dream,
another world where rapture was wine, where one wandered in a deep and
happy valley, and the moon was always rising red above the trees. She
was thinking of Hampstead, which represented to her the vision of the
world beyond the walls, and the thought of the heath led her away to
Bank Holidays, and then to Alice. There was not a sound in the house; it
might have been midnight for the stillness if the drawling cry of the
Sunday paper had not suddenly echoed round the corner of Edna Road, and
with it came the warning clank and shriek of the milkman with his pails.

Mrs. Darnell sat up, and wide awake, listened more intently. The girl
was evidently fast asleep, and must be roused, or all the work of the
day would be out of joint, and she remembered how Edward hated any fuss
or discussion about household matters, more especially on a Sunday,
after his long week's work in the City. She gave her husband an
affectionate glance as he slept on, for she was very fond of him, and so
she gently rose from the bed and went in her nightgown to call the maid.

The servant's room was small and stuffy, the night had been very hot,
and Mrs. Darnell paused for a moment at the door, wondering whether the
girl on the bed was really the dusty-faced servant who bustled day by
day about the house, or even the strangely bedizened creature, dressed
in purple, with a shiny face, who would appear on the Sunday afternoon,
bringing in an early tea, because it was her 'evening out.' Alice's hair
was black and her skin was pale, almost of the olive tinge, and she lay
asleep, her head resting on one arm, reminding Mrs. Darnell of a queer
print of a 'Tired Bacchante' that she had seen long ago in a shop window
in Upper Street, Islington. And a cracked bell was ringing; that meant
five minutes to eight, and nothing done.

She touched the girl gently on the shoulder, and only smiled when her
eyes opened, and waking with a start, she got up in sudden confusion.
Mrs. Darnell went back to her room and dressed slowly while her husband
still slept, and it was only at the last moment, as she fastened her
cherry-coloured bodice, that she roused him, telling him that the bacon
would be overdone unless he hurried over his dressing.

Over the breakfast they discussed the question of the spare room all
over again. Mrs. Darnell still admitted that the plan of furnishing it
attracted her, but she could not see how it could be done for the ten
pounds, and as they were prudent people they did not care to encroach on
their savings. Edward was highly paid, having (with allowances for extra
work in busy weeks) a hundred and forty pounds a year, and Mary had
inherited from an old uncle, her godfather, three hundred pounds, which
had been judiciously laid out in mortgage at 4-1/2 per cent. Their total
income, then, counting in Aunt Marian's present, was a hundred and
fifty-eight pounds a year, and they were clear of debt, since Darnell
had bought the furniture for the house out of money which he had saved
for five or six years before. In the first few years of his life in the
City his income had, of course, been smaller, and at first he had lived
very freely, without a thought of laying by. The theatres and
music-halls had attracted him, and scarcely a week passed without his
going (in the pit) to one or the other; and he had occasionally bought
photographs of actresses who pleased him. These he had solemnly burnt
when he became engaged to Mary; he remembered the evening well; his
heart had been so full of joy and wonder, and the landlady had
complained bitterly of the mess in the grate when he came home from the
City the next night. Still, the money was lost, as far as he could
recollect, ten or twelve shillings; and it annoyed him all the more to
reflect that if he had put it by, it would have gone far towards the
purchase of an 'Orient' carpet in brilliant colours. Then there had been
other expenses of his youth: he had purchased threepenny and even
fourpenny cigars, the latter rarely, but the former frequently,
sometimes singly, and sometimes in bundles of twelve for half-a-crown.
Once a meerschaum pipe had haunted him for six weeks; the tobacconist
had drawn it out of a drawer with some air of secrecy as he was buying a
packet of 'Lone Star.' Here was another useless expense, these
American-manufactured tobaccos; his 'Lone Star,' 'Long Judge,' 'Old
Hank,' 'Sultry Clime,' and the rest of them cost from a shilling to one
and six the two-ounce packet; whereas now he got excellent loose
honeydew for threepence halfpenny an ounce. But the crafty tradesman,
who had marked him down as a buyer of expensive fancy goods, nodded with
his air of mystery, and, snapping open the case, displayed the
meerschaum before the dazzled eyes of Darnell. The bowl was carved in
the likeness of a female figure, showing the head and _torso_, and the
mouthpiece was of the very best amber--only twelve and six, the man
said, and the amber alone, he declared, was worth more than that. He
explained that he felt some delicacy about showing the pipe to any but a
regular customer, and was willing to take a little under cost price and
'cut the loss.' Darnell resisted for the time, but the pipe troubled
him, and at last he bought it. He was pleased to show it to the younger
men in the office for a while, but it never smoked very well, and he
gave it away just before his marriage, as from the nature of the carving
it would have been impossible to use it in his wife's presence. Once,
while he was taking his holidays at Hastings, he had purchased a malacca
cane--a useless thing that had cost seven shillings--and he reflected
with sorrow on the innumerable evenings on which he had rejected his
landlady's plain fried chop, and had gone out to _flaner_ among the
Italian restaurants in Upper Street, Islington (he lodged in Holloway),
pampering himself with expensive delicacies: cutlets and green peas,
braised beef with tomato sauce, fillet steak and chipped potatoes,
ending the banquet very often with a small wedge of Gruyère, which cost
twopence. One night, after receiving a rise in his salary, he had
actually drunk a quarter-flask of Chianti and had added the enormities
of Benedictine, coffee, and cigarettes to an expenditure already
disgraceful, and sixpence to the waiter made the bill amount to four
shillings instead of the shilling that would have provided him with a
wholesome and sufficient repast at home. Oh, there were many other items
in this account of extravagance, and Darnell had often regretted his way
of life, thinking that if he had been more careful, five or six pounds a
year might have been added to their income.

And the question of the spare room brought back these regrets in an
exaggerated degree. He persuaded himself that the extra five pounds
would have given a sufficient margin for the outlay that he desired to
make; though this was, no doubt, a mistake on his part. But he saw
quite clearly that, under the present conditions, there must be no
levies made on the very small sum of money that they had saved. The rent
of the house was thirty-five, and rates and taxes added another ten
pounds--nearly a quarter of their income for house-room. Mary kept down
the housekeeping bills to the very best of her ability, but meat was
always dear, and she suspected the maid of cutting surreptitious slices
from the joint and eating them in her bedroom with bread and treacle in
the dead of night, for the girl had disordered and eccentric appetites.
Mr. Darnell thought no more of restaurants, cheap or dear; he took his
lunch with him to the City, and joined his wife in the evening at high
tea--chops, a bit of steak, or cold meat from the Sunday's dinner. Mrs.
Darnell ate bread and jam and drank a little milk in the middle of the
day; but, with the utmost economy, the effort to live within their means
and to save for future contingencies was a very hard one. They had
determined to do without change of air for at least three years, as the
honeymoon at Walton-on-the-Naze had cost a good deal; and it was on this
ground that they had, somewhat illogically, reserved the ten pounds,
declaring that as they were not to have any holiday they would spend the
money on something useful.

And it was this consideration of utility that was finally fatal to
Darnell's scheme. They had calculated and recalculated the expense of
the bed and bedding, the linoleum, and the ornaments, and by a great
deal of exertion the total expenditure had been made to assume the shape
of 'something very little over ten pounds,' when Mary said quite
suddenly--

'But, after all, Edward, we don't really _want_ to furnish the room at
all. I mean it isn't necessary. And if we did so it might lead to no end
of expense. People would hear of it and be sure to fish for invitations.
You know we have relatives in the country, and they would be almost
certain, the Mallings, at any rate, to give hints.'

Darnell saw the force of the argument and gave way. But he was bitterly
disappointed.

'It would have been very nice, wouldn't it?' he said with a sigh.

'Never mind, dear,' said Mary, who saw that he was a good deal cast
down. 'We must think of some other plan that will be nice and useful
too.'

She often spoke to him in that tone of a kind mother, though she was by
three years the younger.

'And now,' she said, 'I must get ready for church. Are you coming?'

Darnell said that he thought not. He usually accompanied his wife to
morning service, but that day he felt some bitterness in his heart, and
preferred to lounge under the shade of the big mulberry tree that stood
in the middle of their patch of garden--relic of the spacious lawns that
had once lain smooth and green and sweet, where the dismal streets now
swarmed in a hopeless labyrinth.

So Mary went quietly and alone to church. St. Paul's stood in a
neighbouring street, and its Gothic design would have interested a
curious inquirer into the history of a strange revival. Obviously,
mechanically, there was nothing amiss. The style chosen was 'geometrical
decorated,' and the tracery of the windows seemed correct. The nave, the
aisles, the spacious chancel, were reasonably proportioned; and, to be
quite serious, the only feature obviously wrong was the substitution of
a low 'chancel wall' with iron gates for the rood screen with the loft
and rood. But this, it might plausibly be contended, was merely an
adaptation of the old idea to modern requirements, and it would have
been quite difficult to explain why the whole building, from the mere
mortar setting between the stones to the Gothic gas standards, was a
mysterious and elaborate blasphemy. The canticles were sung to Joll in B
flat, the chants were 'Anglican,' and the sermon was the gospel for the
day, amplified and rendered into the more modern and graceful English of
the preacher. And Mary came away.

After their dinner (an excellent piece of Australian mutton, bought in
the 'World Wide' Stores, in Hammersmith), they sat for some time in the
garden, partly sheltered by the big mulberry tree from the observation
of their neighbours. Edward smoked his honeydew, and Mary looked at him
with placid affection.

'You never tell me about the men in your office,' she said at length.
'Some of them are nice fellows, aren't they?'

'Oh, yes, they're very decent. I must bring some of them round, one of
these days.'

He remembered with a pang that it would be necessary to provide whisky.
One couldn't ask the guest to drink table beer at tenpence the gallon.

'Who are they, though?' said Mary. 'I think they might have given you a
wedding present.'

'Well, I don't know. We never have gone in for that sort of thing. But
they're very decent chaps. Well, there's Harvey; "Sauce" they call him
behind his back. He's mad on bicycling. He went in last year for the
Two Miles Amateur Record. He'd have made it, too, if he could have got
into better training.

'Then there's James, a sporting man. You wouldn't care for him. I always
think he smells of the stable.'

'How horrid!' said Mrs. Darnell, finding her husband a little frank,
lowering her eyes as she spoke.

'Dickenson might amuse you,' Darnell went on. 'He's always got a joke. A
terrible liar, though. When he tells a tale we never know how much to
believe. He swore the other day he'd seen one of the governors buying
cockles off a barrow near London Bridge, and Jones, who's just come,
believed every word of it.'

Darnell laughed at the humorous recollection of the jest.

'And that wasn't a bad yarn about Salter's wife,' he went on. 'Salter is
the manager, you know. Dickenson lives close by, in Notting Hill, and he
said one morning that he had seen Mrs. Salter, in the Portobello Road,
in red stockings, dancing to a piano organ.'

'He's a little coarse, isn't he?' said Mrs. Darnell. 'I don't see much
fun in that.'

'Well, you know, amongst men it's different. You might like Wallis; he's
a tremendous photographer. He often shows us photos he's taken of his
children--one, a little girl of three, in her bath. I asked him how he
thought she'd like it when she was twenty-three.'

Mrs. Darnell looked down and made no answer.

There was silence for some minutes while Darnell smoked his pipe. 'I
say, Mary,' he said at length, 'what do you say to our taking a paying
guest?'

'A paying guest! I never thought of it. Where should we put him?'

'Why, I was thinking of the spare room. The plan would obviate your
objection, wouldn't it? Lots of men in the City take them, and make
money of it too. I dare say it would add ten pounds a year to our
income. Redgrave, the cashier, finds it worth his while to take a large
house on purpose. They have a regular lawn for tennis and a
billiard-room.'

Mary considered gravely, always with the dream in her eyes. 'I don't
think we could manage it, Edward,' she said; 'it would be inconvenient
in many ways.' She hesitated for a moment. 'And I don't think I should
care to have a young man in the house. It is so very small, and our
accommodation, as you know, is so limited.'

She blushed slightly, and Edward, a little disappointed as he was,
looked at her with a singular longing, as if he were a scholar
confronted with a doubtful hieroglyph, either wholly wonderful or
altogether commonplace. Next door children were playing in the garden,
playing shrilly, laughing, crying, quarrelling, racing to and fro.
Suddenly a clear, pleasant voice sounded from an upper window.

'Enid! Charles! Come up to my room at once!'

There was an instant sudden hush. The children's voices died away.

'Mrs. Parker is supposed to keep her children in great order,' said
Mary. 'Alice was telling me about it the other day. She had been talking
to Mrs. Parker's servant. I listened to her without any remark, as I
don't think it right to encourage servants' gossip; they always
exaggerate everything. And I dare say children often require to be
corrected.'

The children were struck silent as if some ghastly terror had seized
them.

Darnell fancied that he heard a queer sort of cry from the house, but
could not be quite sure. He turned to the other side, where an elderly,
ordinary man with a grey moustache was strolling up and down on the
further side of his garden. He caught Darnell's eye, and Mrs. Darnell
looking towards him at the same moment, he very politely raised his
tweed cap. Darnell was surprised to see his wife blushing fiercely.

'Sayce and I often go into the City by the same 'bus,' he said, 'and as
it happens we've sat next to each other two or three times lately. I
believe he's a traveller for a leather firm in Bermondsey. He struck me
as a pleasant man. Haven't they got rather a good-looking servant?'

'Alice has spoken to me about her--and the Sayces,' said Mrs. Darnell.
'I understand that they are not very well thought of in the
neighbourhood. But I must go in and see whether the tea is ready. Alice
will be wanting to go out directly.'

Darnell looked after his wife as she walked quickly away. He only dimly
understood, but he could see the charm of her figure, the delight of the
brown curls clustering about her neck, and he again felt that sense of
the scholar confronted by the hieroglyphic. He could not have expressed
his emotion, but he wondered whether he would ever find the key, and
something told him that before she could speak to him his own lips must
be unclosed. She had gone into the house by the back kitchen door,
leaving it open, and he heard her speaking to the girl about the water
being 'really boiling.' He was amazed, almost indignant with himself;
but the sound of the words came to his ears as strange, heart-piercing
music, tones from another, wonderful sphere. And yet he was her husband,
and they had been married nearly a year; and yet, whenever she spoke, he
had to listen to the sense of what she said, constraining himself, lest
he should believe she was a magic creature, knowing the secrets of
immeasurable delight.

He looked out through the leaves of the mulberry tree. Mr. Sayce had
disappeared from his view, but he saw the light-blue fume of the cigar
that he was smoking floating slowly across the shadowed air. He was
wondering at his wife's manner when Sayce's name was mentioned, puzzling
his head as to what could be amiss in the household of a most
respectable personage, when his wife appeared at the dining-room window
and called him in to tea. She smiled as he looked up, and he rose
hastily and walked in, wondering whether he were not a little 'queer,'
so strange were the dim emotions and the dimmer impulses that rose
within him.

Alice was all shining purple and strong scent, as she brought in the
teapot and the jug of hot water. It seemed that a visit to the kitchen
had inspired Mrs. Darnell in her turn with a novel plan for disposing of
the famous ten pounds. The range had always been a trouble to her, and
when sometimes she went into the kitchen, and found, as she said, the
fire 'roaring halfway up the chimney,' it was in vain that she reproved
the maid on the ground of extravagance and waste of coal. Alice was
ready to admit the absurdity of making up such an enormous fire merely
to bake (they called it 'roast') a bit of beef or mutton, and to boil
the potatoes and the cabbage; but she was able to show Mrs. Darnell that
the fault lay in the defective contrivance of the range, in an oven
which 'would not get hot.' Even with a chop or a steak it was almost as
bad; the heat seemed to escape up the chimney or into the room, and Mary
had spoken several times to her husband on the shocking waste of coal,
and the cheapest coal procurable was never less than eighteen shillings
the ton. Mr. Darnell had written to the landlord, a builder, who had
replied in an illiterate but offensive communication, maintaining the
excellence of the stove and charging all the faults to the account of
'your good lady,' which really implied that the Darnells kept no
servant, and that Mrs. Darnell did everything. The range, then,
remained, a standing annoyance and expense. Every morning, Alice said,
she had the greatest difficulty in getting the fire to light at all, and
once lighted it 'seemed as if it fled right up the chimney.' Only a few
nights before Mrs. Darnell had spoken seriously to her husband about it;
she had got Alice to weigh the coals expended in cooking a cottage pie,
the dish of the evening, and deducting what remained in the scuttle
after the pie was done, it appeared that the wretched thing had consumed
nearly twice the proper quantity of fuel.

'You remember what I said the other night about the range?' said Mrs.
Darnell, as she poured out the tea and watered the leaves. She thought
the introduction a good one, for though her husband was a most amiable
man, she guessed that he had been just a little hurt by her decision
against his furnishing scheme.

'The range?' said Darnell. He paused as he helped himself to the
marmalade and considered for a moment. 'No, I don't recollect. What
night was it?'

'Tuesday. Don't you remember? You had "overtime," and didn't get home
till quite late.'

She paused for a moment, blushing slightly; and then began to
recapitulate the misdeeds of the range, and the outrageous outlay of
coal in the preparation of the cottage pie.

'Oh, I recollect now. That was the night I thought I heard the
nightingale (people say there are nightingales in Bedford Park), and the
sky was such a wonderful deep blue.'

He remembered how he had walked from Uxbridge Road Station, where the
green 'bus stopped, and in spite of the fuming kilns under Acton, a
delicate odour of the woods and summer fields was mysteriously in the
air, and he had fancied that he smelt the red wild roses, drooping from
the hedge. As he came to his gate he saw his wife standing in the
doorway, with a light in her hand, and he threw his arms violently about
her as she welcomed him, and whispered something in her ear, kissing her
scented hair. He had felt quite abashed a moment afterwards, and he was
afraid that he had frightened her by his nonsense; she seemed trembling
and confused. And then she had told him how they had weighed the coal.

'Yes, I remember now,' he said. 'It is a great nuisance, isn't it? I
hate to throw away money like that.'

'Well, what do you think? Suppose we bought a really good range with
aunt's money? It would save us a lot, and I expect the things would
taste much nicer.'

Darnell passed the marmalade, and confessed that the idea was brilliant.

'It's much better than mine, Mary,' he said quite frankly. 'I am so glad
you thought of it. But we must talk it over; it doesn't do to buy in a
hurry. There are so many makes.'

Each had seen ranges which looked miraculous inventions; he in the
neighbourhood of the City; she in Oxford Street and Regent Street, on
visits to the dentist. They discussed the matter at tea, and afterwards
they discussed it walking round and round the garden, in the sweet cool
of the evening.

'They say the "Newcastle" will burn anything, coke even,' said Mary.

'But the "Glow" got the gold medal at the Paris Exhibition,' said
Edward.

'But what about the "Eutopia" Kitchener? Have you seen it at work in
Oxford Street?' said Mary. 'They say their plan of ventilating the oven
is quite unique.'

'I was in Fleet Street the other day,' answered Edward, 'and I was
looking at the "Bliss" Patent Stoves. They burn less fuel than any in
the market--so the makers declare.'

He put his arm gently round her waist. She did not repel him; she
whispered quite softly--

'I think Mrs. Parker is at her window,' and he drew his arm back slowly.

'But we will talk it over,' he said. 'There is no hurry. I might call at
some of the places near the City, and you might do the same thing in
Oxford Street and Regent Street and Piccadilly, and we could compare
notes.'

Mary was quite pleased with her husband's good temper. It was so nice of
him not to find fault with her plan; 'He's so good to me,' she thought,
and that was what she often said to her brother, who did not care much
for Darnell. They sat down on the seat under the mulberry, close
together, and she let Darnell take her hand, and as she felt his shy,
hesitating fingers touch her in the shadow, she pressed them ever so
softly, and as he fondled her hand, his breath was on her neck, and she
heard his passionate, hesitating voice whisper, 'My dear, my dear,' as
his lips touched her cheek. She trembled a little, and waited. Darnell
kissed her gently on the cheek and drew away his hand, and when he spoke
he was almost breathless.

'We had better go in now,' he said. 'There is a heavy dew, and you might
catch cold.'

A warm, scented gale came to them from beyond the walls. He longed to
ask her to stay out with him all night beneath the tree, that they might
whisper to one another, that the scent of her hair might inebriate him,
that he might feel her dress still brushing against his ankles. But he
could not find the words, and it was absurd, and she was so gentle that
she would do whatever he asked, however foolish it might be, just
because he asked her. He was not worthy to kiss her lips; he bent down
and kissed her silk bodice, and again he felt that she trembled, and he
was ashamed, fearing that he had frightened her.

They went slowly into the house, side by side, and Darnell lit the gas
in the drawing-room, where they always sat on Sunday evenings. Mrs.
Darnell felt a little tired and lay down on the sofa, and Darnell took
the arm-chair opposite. For a while they were silent, and then Darnell
said suddenly--

'What's wrong with the Sayces? You seemed to think there was something a
little strange about them. Their maid looks quite quiet.'

'Oh, I don't know that one ought to pay any attention to servants'
gossip. They're not always very truthful.'

'It was Alice told you, wasn't it?'

'Yes. She was speaking to me the other day, when I was in the kitchen in
the afternoon.'

'But what was it?'

'Oh, I'd rather not tell you, Edward. It's not pleasant. I scolded Alice
for repeating it to me.'

Darnell got up and took a small, frail chair near the sofa.

'Tell me,' he said again, with an odd perversity. He did not really care
to hear about the household next door, but he remembered how his wife's
cheeks flushed in the afternoon, and now he was looking at her eyes.

'Oh, I really couldn't tell you, dear. I should feel ashamed.'

'But you're my wife.'

'Yes, but it doesn't make any difference. A woman doesn't like to talk
about such things.'

Darnell bent his head down. His heart was beating; he put his ear to her
mouth and said, 'Whisper.'

Mary drew his head down still lower with her gentle hand, and her cheeks
burned as she whispered--

'Alice says that--upstairs--they have only--one room furnished. The maid
told her--herself.'

With an unconscious gesture she pressed his head to her breast, and he
in turn was bending her red lips to his own, when a violent jangle
clamoured through the silent house. They sat up, and Mrs. Darnell went
hurriedly to the door.

'That's Alice,' she said. 'She is always in in time. It has only just
struck ten.'

Darnell shivered with annoyance. His lips, he knew, had almost been
opened. Mary's pretty handkerchief, delicately scented from a little
flagon that a school friend had given her, lay on the floor, and he
picked it up, and kissed it, and hid it away.

The question of the range occupied them all through June and far into
July. Mrs. Darnell took every opportunity of going to the West End and
investigating the capacity of the latest makes, gravely viewing the new
improvements and hearing what the shopmen had to say; while Darnell, as
he said, 'kept his eyes open' about the City. They accumulated quite a
literature of the subject, bringing away illustrated pamphlets, and in
the evenings it was an amusement to look at the pictures. They viewed
with reverence and interest the drawings of great ranges for hotels and
public institutions, mighty contrivances furnished with a series of
ovens each for a different use, with wonderful apparatus for grilling,
with batteries of accessories which seemed to invest the cook almost
with the dignity of a chief engineer. But when, in one of the lists,
they encountered the images of little toy 'cottage' ranges, for four
pounds, and even for three pounds ten, they grew scornful, on the
strength of the eight or ten pound article which they meant to
purchase--when the merits of the divers patents had been thoroughly
thrashed out.

The 'Raven' was for a long time Mary's favourite. It promised the utmost
economy with the highest efficiency, and many times they were on the
point of giving the order. But the 'Glow' seemed equally seductive, and
it was only £8. 5s. as compared with £9. 7s. 6d., and though the 'Raven'
was supplied to the Royal Kitchen, the 'Glow' could show more fervent
testimonials from continental potentates.

It seemed a debate without end, and it endured day after day till that
morning, when Darnell woke from the dream of the ancient wood, of the
fountains rising into grey vapour beneath the heat of the sun. As he
dressed, an idea struck him, and he brought it as a shock to the hurried
breakfast, disturbed by the thought of the City 'bus which passed the
corner of the street at 9.15.

'I've got an improvement on your plan, Mary,' he said, with triumph.
'Look at that,' and he flung a little book on the table.

He laughed. 'It beats your notion all to fits. After all, the great
expense is the coal. It's not the stove--at least that's not the real
mischief. It's the coal is so dear. And here you are. Look at those oil
stoves. They don't burn any coal, but the cheapest fuel in the
world--oil; and for two pounds ten you can get a range that will do
everything you want.'

'Give me the book,' said Mary, 'and we will talk it over in the evening,
when you come home. Must you be going?'

Darnell cast an anxious glance at the clock.

'Good-bye,' and they kissed each other seriously and dutifully, and
Mary's eyes made Darnell think of those lonely water-pools, hidden in
the shadow of the ancient woods.

So, day after day, he lived in the grey phantasmal world, akin to death,
that has, somehow, with most of us, made good its claim to be called
life. To Darnell the true life would have seemed madness, and when, now
and again, the shadows and vague images reflected from its splendour
fell across his path, he was afraid, and took refuge in what he would
have called the sane 'reality' of common and usual incidents and
interests. His absurdity was, perhaps, the more evident, inasmuch as
'reality' for him was a matter of kitchen ranges, of saving a few
shillings; but in truth the folly would have been greater if it had been
concerned with racing stables, steam yachts, and the spending of many
thousand pounds.

But so went forth Darnell, day by day, strangely mistaking death for
life, madness for sanity, and purposeless and wandering phantoms for
true beings. He was sincerely of opinion that he was a City clerk,
living in Shepherd's Bush--having forgotten the mysteries and the
far-shining glories of the kingdom which was his by legitimate
inheritance.


II

All day long a fierce and heavy heat had brooded over the City, and as
Darnell neared home he saw the mist lying on all the damp lowlands,
wreathed in coils about Bedford Park to the south, and mounting to the
west, so that the tower of Acton Church loomed out of a grey lake. The
grass in the squares and on the lawns which he overlooked as the 'bus
lumbered wearily along was burnt to the colour of dust. Shepherd's Bush
Green was a wretched desert, trampled brown, bordered with monotonous
poplars, whose leaves hung motionless in air that was still, hot smoke.
The foot passengers struggled wearily along the pavements, and the reek
of the summer's end mingled with the breath of the brickfields made
Darnell gasp, as if he were inhaling the poison of some foul sick-room.

He made but a slight inroad into the cold mutton that adorned the
tea-table, and confessed that he felt rather 'done up' by the weather
and the day's work.

'I have had a trying day, too,' said Mary. 'Alice has been very queer
and troublesome all day, and I have had to speak to her quite seriously.
You know I think her Sunday evenings out have a rather unsettling
influence on the girl. But what is one to do?'

'Has she got a young man?'

'Of course: a grocer's assistant from the Goldhawk Road--Wilkin's, you
know. I tried them when we settled here, but they were not very
satisfactory.'

'What do they do with themselves all the evening? They have from five to
ten, haven't they?'

'Yes; five, or sometimes half-past, when the water won't boil. Well, I
believe they go for walks usually. Once or twice he has taken her to the
City Temple, and the Sunday before last they walked up and down Oxford
Street, and then sat in the Park. But it seems that last Sunday they
went to tea with his mother at Putney. I should like to tell the old
woman what I really think of her.'

'Why? What happened? Was she nasty to the girl?'

'No; that's just it. Before this, she has been very unpleasant on
several occasions. When the young man first took Alice to see her--that
was in March--the girl came away crying; she told me so herself. Indeed,
she said she never wanted to see old Mrs. Murry again; and I told Alice
that, if she had not exaggerated things, I could hardly blame her for
feeling like that.'

'Why? What did she cry for?'

'Well, it seems that the old lady--she lives in quite a small cottage in
some Putney back street--was so stately that she would hardly speak. She
had borrowed a little girl from some neighbour's family, and had managed
to dress her up to imitate a servant, and Alice said nothing could be
sillier than to see that mite opening the door, with her black dress and
her white cap and apron, and she hardly able to turn the handle, as
Alice said. George (that's the young man's name) had told Alice that it
was a little bit of a house; but he said the kitchen was comfortable,
though very plain and old-fashioned. But, instead of going straight to
the back, and sitting by a big fire on the old settle that they had
brought up from the country, that child asked for their names (did you
ever hear such nonsense?) and showed them into a little poky parlour,
where old Mrs. Murry was sitting "like a duchess," by a fireplace full
of coloured paper, and the room as cold as ice. And she was so grand
that she would hardly speak to Alice.'

'That must have been very unpleasant.'

'Oh, the poor girl had a dreadful time. She began with: "Very pleased to
make your acquaintance, Miss Dill. I know so very few persons in
service." Alice imitates her mincing way of talking, but I can't do it.
And then she went on to talk about her family, how they had farmed their
own land for five hundred years--such stuff! George had told Alice all
about it: they had had an old cottage with a good strip of garden and
two fields somewhere in Essex, and that old woman talked almost as if
they had been country gentry, and boasted about the Rector, Dr.
Somebody, coming to see them so often, and of Squire Somebody Else
always looking them up, as if they didn't visit them out of kindness.
Alice told me it was as much as she could do to keep from laughing in
Mrs. Murry's face, her young man having told her all about the place,
and how small it was, and how the Squire had been so kind about buying
it when old Murry died and George was a little boy, and his mother not
able to keep things going. However, that silly old woman "laid it on
thick," as you say, and the young man got more and more uncomfortable,
especially when she went on to speak about marrying in one's own class,
and how unhappy she had known young men to be who had married beneath
them, giving some very pointed looks at Alice as she talked. And then
such an amusing thing happened: Alice had noticed George looking about
him in a puzzled sort of way, as if he couldn't make out something or
other, and at last he burst out and asked his mother if she had been
buying up the neighbours' ornaments, as he remembered the two green
cut-glass vases on the mantelpiece at Mrs. Ellis's, and the wax flowers
at Miss Turvey's. He was going on, but his mother scowled at him, and
upset some books, which he had to pick up; but Alice quite understood
she had been borrowing things from her neighbours, just as she had
borrowed the little girl, so as to look grander. And then they had
tea--water bewitched, Alice calls it--and very thin bread and butter,
and rubbishy foreign pastry from the Swiss shop in the High Street--all
sour froth and rancid fat, Alice declares. And then Mrs. Murry began
boasting again about her family, and snubbing Alice and talking at her,
till the girl came away quite furious, and very unhappy, too. I don't
wonder at it, do you?'

'It doesn't sound very enjoyable, certainly,' said Darnell, looking
dreamily at his wife. He had not been attending very carefully to the
subject-matter of her story, but he loved to hear a voice that was
incantation in his ears, tones that summoned before him the vision of a
magic world.

'And has the young man's mother always been like this?' he said after a
long pause, desiring that the music should continue.

'Always, till quite lately, till last Sunday in fact. Of course Alice
spoke to George Murry at once, and said, like a sensible girl, that she
didn't think it ever answered for a married couple to live with the
man's mother, "especially," she went on, "as I can see your mother
hasn't taken much of a fancy to me." He told her, in the usual style, it
was only his mother's way, that she didn't really mean anything, and so
on; but Alice kept away for a long time, and rather hinted, I think,
that it might come to having to choose between her and his mother. And
so affairs went on all through the spring and summer, and then, just
before the August Bank Holiday, George spoke to Alice again about it,
and told her how sorry the thought of any unpleasantness made him, and
how he wanted his mother and her to get on with each other, and how she
was only a bit old-fashioned and queer in her ways, and had spoken very
nicely to him about her when there was nobody by. So the long and the
short of it was that Alice said she might come with them on the Monday,
when they had settled to go to Hampton Court--the girl was always
talking about Hampton Court, and wanting to see it. You remember what a
beautiful day it was, don't you?'

'Let me see,' said Darnell dreamily. 'Oh yes, of course--I sat out under
the mulberry tree all day, and we had our meals there: it was quite a
picnic. The caterpillars were a nuisance, but I enjoyed the day very
much.' His ears were charmed, ravished with the grave, supernal melody,
as of antique song, rather of the first made world in which all speech
was descant, and all words were sacraments of might, speaking not to the
mind but to the soul. He lay back in his chair, and said--

'Well, what happened to them?'

'My dear, would you believe it; but that wretched old woman behaved
worse than ever. They met as had been arranged, at Kew Bridge, and got
places, with a good deal of difficulty, in one of those char-à-banc
things, and Alice thought she was going to enjoy herself tremendously.
Nothing of the kind. They had hardly said "Good morning," when old Mrs.
Murry began to talk about Kew Gardens, and how beautiful it must be
there, and how much more convenient it was than Hampton, and no expense
at all; just the trouble of walking over the bridge. Then she went on
to say, as they were waiting for the char-à-banc, that she had always
heard there was nothing to see at Hampton, except a lot of nasty, grimy
old pictures, and some of them not fit for any decent woman, let alone
girl, to look at, and she wondered why the Queen allowed such things to
be shown, putting all kinds of notions into girls' heads that were light
enough already; and as she said that she looked at Alice so
nastily--horrid old thing--that, as she told me afterwards, Alice would
have slapped her face if she hadn't been an elderly woman, and George's
mother. Then she talked about Kew again, saying how wonderful the
hot-houses were, with palms and all sorts of wonderful things, and a
lily as big as a parlour table, and the view over the river. George was
very good, Alice told me. He was quite taken aback at first, as the old
woman had promised faithfully to be as nice as ever she could be; but
then he said, gently but firmly, "Well, mother, we must go to Kew some
other day, as Alice has set her heart on Hampton for to-day, and I want
to see it myself!" All Mrs. Murry did was to snort, and look at the girl
like vinegar, and just then the char-à-banc came up, and they had to
scramble for their seats. Mrs. Murry grumbled to herself in an
indistinct sort of voice all the way to Hampton Court. Alice couldn't
very well make out what she said, but now and then she seemed to hear
bits of sentences, like: _Pity to grow old, if sons grow bold_; and
_Honour thy father and mother_; and _Lie on the shelf, said the
housewife to the old shoe, and the wicked son to his mother_; and _I
gave you milk and you give me the go-by_. Alice thought they must be
proverbs (except the Commandment, of course), as George was always
saying how old-fashioned his mother is; but she says there were so many
of them, and all pointed at her and George, that she thinks now Mrs.
Murry must have made them up as they drove along. She says it would be
just like her to do it, being old-fashioned, and ill-natured too, and
fuller of talk than a butcher on Saturday night. Well, they got to
Hampton at last, and Alice thought the place would please her, perhaps,
and they might have some enjoyment. But she did nothing but grumble, and
out loud too, so that people looked at them, and a woman said, so that
they could hear, "Ah well, they'll be old themselves some day," which
made Alice very angry, for, as she said, they weren't doing anything.
When they showed her the chestnut avenue in Bushey Park, she said it was
so long and straight that it made her quite dull to look at it, and she
thought the deer (you know how pretty they are, really) looked thin and
miserable, as if they would be all the better for a good feed of
hog-wash, with plenty of meal in it. She said she knew they weren't
happy by the look in their eyes, which seemed to tell her that their
keepers beat them. It was the same with everything; she said she
remembered market-gardens in Hammersmith and Gunnersbury that had a
better show of flowers, and when they took her to the place where the
water is, under the trees, she burst out with its being rather hard to
tramp her off her legs to show her a common canal, with not so much as a
barge on it to liven it up a bit. She went on like that the whole day,
and Alice told me she was only too thankful to get home and get rid of
her. Wasn't it wretched for the girl?'

'It must have been, indeed. But what happened last Sunday?'

'That's the most extraordinary thing of all. I noticed that Alice was
rather queer in her manner this morning; she was a longer time washing
up the breakfast things, and she answered me quite sharply when I called
to her to ask when she would be ready to help me with the wash; and when
I went into the kitchen to see about something, I noticed that she was
going about her work in a sulky sort of way. So I asked her what was the
matter, and then it all came out. I could scarcely believe my own ears
when she mumbled out something about Mrs. Murry thinking she could do
very much better for herself; but I asked her one question after another
till I had it all out of her. It just shows one how foolish and
empty-headed these girls are. I told her she was no better than a
weather-cock. If you will believe me, that horrid old woman was quite
another person when Alice went to see her the other night. Why, I can't
think, but so she was. She told the girl how pretty she was; what a neat
figure she had; how well she walked; and how she'd known many a girl not
half so clever or well-looking earning her twenty-five or thirty pounds
a year, and with good families. She seems to have gone into all sorts of
details, and made elaborate calculations as to what she would be able to
save, "with decent folks, who don't screw, and pinch, and lock up
everything in the house," and then she went off into a lot of
hypocritical nonsense about how fond she was of Alice, and how she
could go to her grave in peace, knowing how happy her dear George would
be with such a good wife, and about her savings from good wages helping
to set up a little home, ending up with "And, if you take an old woman's
advice, deary, it won't be long before you hear the marriage bells."'

'I see,' said Darnell; 'and the upshot of it all is, I suppose, that the
girl is thoroughly dissatisfied?'

'Yes, she is so young and silly. I talked to her, and reminded her of
how nasty old Mrs. Murry had been, and told her that she might change
her place and change for the worse. I think I have persuaded her to
think it over quietly, at all events. Do you know what it is, Edward? I
have an idea. I believe that wicked old woman is trying to get Alice to
leave us, that she may tell her son how changeable she is; and I suppose
she would make up some of her stupid old proverbs: "A changeable wife, a
troublesome life," or some nonsense of the kind. Horrid old thing!'

'Well, well,' said Darnell, 'I hope she won't go, for your sake. It
would be such a bother for you, hunting for a fresh servant.'

He refilled his pipe and smoked placidly, refreshed somewhat after the
emptiness and the burden of the day. The French window was wide open,
and now at last there came a breath of quickening air, distilled by the
night from such trees as still wore green in that arid valley. The song
to which Darnell had listened in rapture, and now the breeze, which even
in that dry, grim suburb still bore the word of the woodland, had
summoned the dream to his eyes, and he meditated over matters that his
lips could not express.

'She must, indeed, be a villainous old woman,' he said at length.

'Old Mrs. Murry? Of course she is; the mischievous old thing! Trying to
take the girl from a comfortable place where she is happy.'

'Yes; and not to like Hampton Court! That shows how bad she must be,
more than anything.'

'It is beautiful, isn't it?'

'I shall never forget the first time I saw it. It was soon after I went
into the City; the first year. I had my holidays in July, and I was
getting such a small salary that I couldn't think of going away to the
seaside, or anything like that. I remember one of the other men wanted
me to come with him on a walking tour in Kent. I should have liked that,
but the money wouldn't run to it. And do you know what I did? I lived in
Great College Street then, and the first day I was off, I stayed in bed
till past dinner-time, and lounged about in an arm-chair with a pipe all
the afternoon. I had got a new kind of tobacco--one and four for the
two-ounce packet--much dearer than I could afford to smoke, and I was
enjoying it immensely. It was awfully hot, and when I shut the window
and drew down the red blind it grew hotter; at five o'clock the room was
like an oven. But I was so pleased at not having to go into the City,
that I didn't mind anything, and now and again I read bits from a queer
old book that had belonged to my poor dad. I couldn't make out what a
lot of it meant, but it fitted in somehow, and I read and smoked till
tea-time. Then I went out for a walk, thinking I should be better for a
little fresh air before I went to bed; and I went wandering away, not
much noticing where I was going, turning here and there as the fancy
took me. I must have gone miles and miles, and a good many of them round
and round, as they say they do in Australia if they lose their way in
the bush; and I am sure I couldn't have gone exactly the same way all
over again for any money. Anyhow, I was still in the streets when the
twilight came on, and the lamp-lighters were trotting round from one
lamp to another. It was a wonderful night: I wish you had been there, my
dear.'

'I was quite a little girl then.'

'Yes, I suppose you were. Well, it was a wonderful night. I remember, I
was walking in a little street of little grey houses all alike, with
stucco copings and stucco door-posts; there were brass plates on a lot
of the doors, and one had "Maker of Shell Boxes" on it, and I was quite
pleased, as I had often wondered where those boxes and things that you
buy at the seaside came from. A few children were playing about in the
road with some rubbish or other, and men were singing in a small
public-house at the corner, and I happened to look up, and I noticed
what a wonderful colour the sky had turned. I have seen it since, but I
don't think it has ever been quite what it was that night, a dark blue,
glowing like a violet, just as they say the sky looks in foreign
countries. I don't know why, but the sky or something made me feel quite
queer; everything seemed changed in a way I couldn't understand. I
remember, I told an old gentleman I knew then--a friend of my poor
father's, he's been dead for five years, if not more--about how I felt,
and he looked at me and said something about fairyland; I don't know
what he meant, and I dare say I didn't explain myself properly. But, do
you know, for a moment or two I felt as if that little back street was
beautiful, and the noise of the children and the men in the public-house
seemed to fit in with the sky and become part of it. You know that old
saying about "treading on air" when one is glad! Well, I really felt
like that as I walked, not exactly like air, you know, but as if the
pavement was velvet or some very soft carpet. And then--I suppose it was
all my fancy--the air seemed to smell sweet, like the incense in
Catholic churches, and my breath came queer and catchy, as it does when
one gets very excited about anything. I felt altogether stranger than
I've ever felt before or since.'

Darnell stopped suddenly and looked up at his wife. She was watching him
with parted lips, with eager, wondering eyes.

'I hope I'm not tiring you, dear, with all this story about nothing. You
have had a worrying day with that stupid girl; hadn't you better go to
bed?'

'Oh, no, please, Edward. I'm not a bit tired now. I love to hear you
talk like that. Please go on.'

'Well, after I had walked a bit further, that queer sort of feeling
seemed to fade away. I said a bit further, and I really thought I had
been walking about five minutes, but I had looked at my watch just
before I got into that little street, and when I looked at it again it
was eleven o'clock. I must have done about eight miles. I could scarcely
believe my own eyes, and I thought my watch must have gone mad; but I
found out afterwards it was perfectly right. I couldn't make it out, and
I can't now; I assure you the time passed as if I walked up one side of
Edna Road and down the other. But there I was, right in the open
country, with a cool wind blowing on me from a wood, and the air full of
soft rustling sounds, and notes of birds from the bushes, and the
singing noise of a little brook that ran under the road. I was standing
on the bridge when I took out my watch and struck a wax light to see the
time; and it came upon me suddenly what a strange evening it had been.
It was all so different, you see, to what I had been doing all my life,
particularly for the year before, and it almost seemed as if I couldn't
be the man who had been going into the City every day in the morning and
coming back from it every evening after writing a lot of uninteresting
letters. It was like being pitched all of a sudden from one world into
another. Well, I found my way back somehow or other, and as I went along
I made up my mind how I'd spend my holiday. I said to myself, "I'll have
a walking tour as well as Ferrars, only mine is to be a tour of London
and its environs," and I had got it all settled when I let myself into
the house about four o'clock in the morning, and the sun was shining,
and the street almost as still as the wood at midnight!'

'I think that was a capital idea of yours. Did you have your tour? Did
you buy a map of London?'

'I had the tour all right. I didn't buy a map; that would have spoilt
it, somehow; to see everything plotted out, and named, and measured.
What I wanted was to feel that I was going where nobody had been before.
That's nonsense, isn't it? as if there could be any such places in
London, or England either, for the matter of that.'

'I know what you mean; you wanted to feel as if you were going on a sort
of voyage of discovery. Isn't that it?'

'Exactly, that's what I was trying to tell you. Besides, I didn't want
to buy a map. I made a map.'

'How do you mean? Did you make a map out of your head?'

'I'll tell you about it afterwards. But do you really want to hear about
my grand tour?'

'Of course I do; it must have been delightful. I call it a most original
idea.'

'Well, I was quite full of it, and what you said just now about a voyage
of discovery reminds me of how I felt then. When I was a boy I was
awfully fond of reading of great travellers--I suppose all boys are--and
of sailors who were driven out of their course and found themselves in
latitudes where no ship had ever sailed before, and of people who
discovered wonderful cities in strange countries; and all the second day
of my holidays I was feeling just as I used to when I read these books.
I didn't get up till pretty late. I was tired to death after all those
miles I had walked; but when I had finished my breakfast and filled my
pipe, I had a grand time of it. It was such nonsense, you know; as if
there could be anything strange or wonderful in London.'

'Why shouldn't there be?'

'Well, I don't know; but I have thought afterwards what a silly lad I
must have been. Anyhow, I had a great day of it, planning what I would
do, half making-believe--just like a kid--that I didn't know where I
might find myself, or what might happen to me. And I was enormously
pleased to think it was all my secret, that nobody else knew anything
about it, and that, whatever I might see, I would keep to myself. I had
always felt like that about the books. Of course, I loved reading them,
but it seemed to me that, if I had been a discoverer, I would have kept
my discoveries a secret. If I had been Columbus, and, if it could
possibly have been managed, I would have found America all by myself,
and never have said a word about it to anybody. Fancy! how beautiful it
would be to be walking about in one's own town, and talking to people,
and all the while to have the thought that one knew of a great world
beyond the seas, that nobody else dreamed of. I should have loved that!

'And that is exactly what I felt about the tour I was going to make. I
made up my mind that nobody should know; and so, from that day to this,
nobody has heard a word of it.'

'But you are going to tell me?'

'You are different. But I don't think even you will hear everything; not
because I won't, but because I can't tell many of the things I saw.'

'Things you saw? Then you really did see wonderful, strange things in
London?'

'Well, I did and I didn't. Everything, or pretty nearly everything, that
I saw is standing still, and hundreds of thousands of people have looked
at the same sights--there were many places that the fellows in the
office knew quite well, I found out afterwards. And then I read a book
called "London and its Surroundings." But (I don't know how it is)
neither the men at the office nor the writers of the book seem to have
seen the things that I did. That's why I stopped reading the book; it
seemed to take the life, the real heart, out of everything, making it as
dry and stupid as the stuffed birds in a museum.

'I thought about what I was going to do all that day, and went to bed
early, so as to be fresh. I knew wonderfully little about London,
really; though, except for an odd week now and then, I had spent all my
life in town. Of course I knew the main streets--the Strand, Regent
Street, Oxford Street, and so on--and I knew the way to the school I
used to go to when I was a boy, and the way into the City. But I had
just kept to a few tracks, as they say the sheep do on the mountains;
and that made it all the easier for me to imagine that I was going to
discover a new world.'

Darnell paused in the stream of his talk. He looked keenly at his wife
to see if he were wearying her, but her eyes gazed at him with unabated
interest--one would have almost said that they were the eyes of one who
longed and half expected to be initiated into the mysteries, who knew
not what great wonder was to be revealed. She sat with her back to the
open window, framed in the sweet dusk of the night, as if a painter had
made a curtain of heavy velvet behind her; and the work that she had
been doing had fallen to the floor. She supported her head with her two
hands placed on each side of her brow, and her eyes were as the wells in
the wood of which Darnell dreamed in the night-time and in the day.

'And all the strange tales I had ever heard were in my head that
morning,' he went on, as if continuing the thoughts that had filled his
mind while his lips were silent. 'I had gone to bed early, as I told
you, to get a thorough rest, and I had set my alarum clock to wake me
at three, so that I might set out at an hour that was quite strange for
the beginning of a journey. There was a hush in the world when I awoke,
before the clock had rung to arouse me, and then a bird began to sing
and twitter in the elm tree that grew in the next garden, and I looked
out of the window, and everything was still, and the morning air
breathed in pure and sweet, as I had never known it before. My room was
at the back of the house, and most of the gardens had trees in them, and
beyond these trees I could see the backs of the houses of the next
street rising like the wall of an old city; and as I looked the sun
rose, and the great light came in at my window, and the day began.

'And I found that when I was once out of the streets just about me that
I knew, some of the queer feeling that had come to me two days before
came back again. It was not nearly so strong, the streets no longer
smelt of incense, but still there was enough of it to show me what a
strange world I passed by. There were things that one may see again and
again in many London streets: a vine or a fig tree on a wall, a lark
singing in a cage, a curious shrub blossoming in a garden, an odd shape
of a roof, or a balcony with an uncommon-looking trellis-work in iron.
There's scarcely a street, perhaps, where you won't see one or other of
such things as these; but that morning they rose to my eyes in a new
light, as if I had on the magic spectacles in the fairy tale, and just
like the man in the fairy tale, I went on and on in the new light. I
remember going through wild land on a high place; there were pools of
water shining in the sun, and great white houses in the middle of dark,
rocking pines, and then on the turn of the height I came to a little
lane that went aside from the main road, a lane that led to a wood, and
in the lane was a little old shadowed house, with a bell turret in the
roof, and a porch of trellis-work all dim and faded into the colour of
the sea; and in the garden there were growing tall, white lilies, just
as we saw them that day we went to look at the old pictures; they were
shining like silver, and they filled the air with their sweet scent. It
was from near that house I saw the valley and high places far away in
the sun. So, as I say, I went "on and on," by woods and fields, till I
came to a little town on the top of a hill, a town full of old houses
bowing to the ground beneath their years, and the morning was so still
that the blue smoke rose up straight into the sky from all the
roof-tops, so still that I heard far down in the valley the song of a
boy who was singing an old song through the streets as he went to
school, and as I passed through the awakening town, beneath the old,
grave houses, the church bells began to ring.

'It was soon after I had left this town behind me that I found the
Strange Road. I saw it branching off from the dusty high road, and it
looked so green that I turned aside into it, and soon I felt as if I had
really come into a new country. I don't know whether it was one of the
roads the old Romans made that my father used to tell me about; but it
was covered with deep, soft turf, and the great tall hedges on each side
looked as if they had not been touched for a hundred years; they had
grown so broad and high and wild that they met overhead, and I could
only get glimpses here and there of the country through which I was
passing, as one passes in a dream. The Strange Road led me on and on,
up and down hill; sometimes the rose bushes had grown so thick that I
could scarcely make my way between them, and sometimes the road
broadened out into a green, and in one valley a brook, spanned by an old
wooden bridge, ran across it. I was tired, and I found a soft and shady
place beneath an ash tree, where I must have slept for many hours, for
when I woke up it was late in the afternoon. So I went on again, and at
last the green road came out into the highway, and I looked up and saw
another town on a high place with a great church in the middle of it,
and when I went up to it there was a great organ sounding from within,
and the choir was singing.'

There was a rapture in Darnell's voice as he spoke, that made his story
well-nigh swell into a song, and he drew a long breath as the words
ended, filled with the thought of that far-off summer day, when some
enchantment had informed all common things, transmuting them into a
great sacrament, causing earthly works to glow with the fire and the
glory of the everlasting light.

And some splendour of that light shone on the face of Mary as she sat
still against the sweet gloom of the night, her dark hair making her
face more radiant. She was silent for a little while, and then she
spoke--

'Oh, my dear, why have you waited so long to tell me these wonderful
things? I think it is beautiful. Please go on.'

'I have always been afraid it was all nonsense,' said Darnell. 'And I
don't know how to explain what I feel. I didn't think I could say so
much as I have to-night.'

'And did you find it the same day after day?'

'All through the tour? Yes, I think every journey was a success. Of
course, I didn't go so far afield every day; I was too tired. Often I
rested all day long, and went out in the evening, after the lamps were
lit, and then only for a mile or two. I would roam about old, dim
squares, and hear the wind from the hills whispering in the trees; and
when I knew I was within call of some great glittering street, I was
sunk in the silence of ways where I was almost the only passenger, and
the lamps were so few and faint that they seemed to give out shadows
instead of light. And I would walk slowly, to and fro, perhaps for an
hour at a time, in such dark streets, and all the time I felt what I
told you about its being my secret--that the shadow, and the dim lights,
and the cool of the evening, and trees that were like dark low clouds
were all mine, and mine alone, that I was living in a world that nobody
else knew of, into which no one could enter.

'I remembered one night I had gone farther. It was somewhere in the far
west, where there are orchards and gardens, and great broad lawns that
slope down to trees by the river. A great red moon rose that night
through mists of sunset, and thin, filmy clouds, and I wandered by a
road that passed through the orchards, till I came to a little hill,
with the moon showing above it glowing like a great rose. Then I saw
figures pass between me and the moon, one by one, in a long line, each
bent double, with great packs upon their shoulders. One of them was
singing, and then in the middle of the song I heard a horrible shrill
laugh, in the thin cracked voice of a very old woman, and they
disappeared into the shadow of the trees. I suppose they were people
going to work, or coming from work in the gardens; but how like it was
to a nightmare!

'I can't tell you about Hampton; I should never finish talking. I was
there one evening, not long before they closed the gates, and there were
very few people about. But the grey-red, silent, echoing courts, and the
flowers falling into dreamland as the night came on, and the dark yews
and shadowy-looking statues, and the far, still stretches of water
beneath the avenues; and all melting into a blue mist, all being hidden
from one's eyes, slowly, surely, as if veils were dropped, one by one,
on a great ceremony! Oh! my dear, what could it mean? Far away, across
the river, I heard a soft bell ring three times, and three times, and
again three times, and I turned away, and my eyes were full of tears.

'I didn't know what it was when I came to it; I only found out
afterwards that it must have been Hampton Court. One of the men in the
office told me he had taken an A. B. C. girl there, and they had great
fun. They got into the maze and couldn't get out again, and then they
went on the river and were nearly drowned. He told me there were some
spicy pictures in the galleries; his girl shrieked with laughter, so he
said.'

Mary quite disregarded this interlude.

'But you told me you had made a map. What was it like?'

'I'll show it you some day, if you want to see it. I marked down all the
places I had gone to, and made signs--things like queer letters--to
remind me of what I had seen. Nobody but myself could understand it. I
wanted to draw pictures, but I never learnt how to draw, so when I tried
nothing was like what I wanted it to be. I tried to draw a picture of
that town on the hill that I came to on the evening of the first day; I
wanted to make a steep hill with houses on top, and in the middle, but
high above them, the great church, all spires and pinnacles, and above
it, in the air, a cup with rays coming from it. But it wasn't a success.
I made a very strange sign for Hampton Court, and gave it a name that I
made up out of my head.'

The Darnells avoided one another's eyes as they sat at breakfast the
next morning. The air had lightened in the night, for rain had fallen at
dawn; and there was a bright blue sky, with vast white clouds rolling
across it from the south-west, and a fresh and joyous wind blew in at
the open window; the mists had vanished. And with the mists there seemed
to have vanished also the sense of strange things that had possessed
Mary and her husband the night before; and as they looked out into the
clear light they could scarcely believe that the one had spoken and the
other had listened a few hours before to histories very far removed from
the usual current of their thoughts and of their lives. They glanced
shyly at one another, and spoke of common things, of the question
whether Alice would be corrupted by the insidious Mrs. Murry, or whether
Mrs. Darnell would be able to persuade the girl that the old woman must
be actuated by the worst motives.

'And I think, if I were you,' said Darnell, as he went out, 'I should
step over to the stores and complain of their meat. That last piece of
beef was very far from being up to the mark--full of sinew.'


III

It might have been different in the evening, and Darnell had matured a
plan by which he hoped to gain much. He intended to ask his wife if she
would mind having only one gas, and that a good deal lowered, on the
pretext that his eyes were tired with work; he thought many things might
happen if the room were dimly lit, and the window opened, so that they
could sit and watch the night, and listen to the rustling murmur of the
tree on the lawn. But his plans were made in vain, for when he got to
the garden gate his wife, in tears, came forth to meet him.

'Oh, Edward,' she began, 'such a dreadful thing has happened! I never
liked him much, but I didn't think he would ever do such awful things.'

'What do you mean? Who are you talking about? What has happened? Is it
Alice's young man?'

'No, no. But come in, dear. I can see that woman opposite watching us:
she's always on the look out.'

'Now, what is it?' said Darnell, as they sat down to tea. 'Tell me,
quick! you've quite frightened me.'

'I don't know how to begin, or where to start. Aunt Marian has thought
that there was something queer for weeks. And then she found--oh, well,
the long and short of it is that Uncle Robert has been carrying on
dreadfully with some horrid girl, and aunt has found out everything!'

'Lord! you don't say so! The old rascal! Why, he must be nearer seventy
than sixty!'

'He's just sixty-five; and the money he has given her----'

The first shock of surprise over, Darnell turned resolutely to his
mince.

'We'll have it all out after tea,' he said; 'I am not going to have my
meals spoilt by that old fool of a Nixon. Fill up my cup, will you,
dear?'

'Excellent mince this,' he went on, calmly. 'A little lemon juice and a
bit of ham in it? I thought there was something extra. Alice all right
to-day? That's good. I expect she's getting over all that nonsense.'

He went on calmly chattering in a manner that astonished Mrs. Darnell,
who felt that by the fall of Uncle Robert the natural order had been
inverted, and had scarcely touched food since the intelligence had
arrived by the second post. She had started out to keep the appointment
her aunt had made early in the morning, and had spent most of the day in
a first-class waiting-room at Victoria Station, where she had heard all
the story.

'Now,' said Darnell, when the table had been cleared, 'tell us all about
it. How long has it been going on?'

'Aunt thinks now, from little things she remembers, that it must have
been going on for a year at least. She says there has been a horrid kind
of mystery about uncle's behaviour for a long time, and her nerves were
quite shaken, as she thought he must be involved with Anarchists, or
something dreadful of the sort.'

'What on earth made her think that?'

'Well, you see, once or twice when she was out walking with her husband,
she has been startled by whistles, which seemed to follow them
everywhere. You know there are some nice country walks at Barnet, and
one in particular, in the fields near Totteridge, that uncle and aunt
rather made a point of going to on fine Sunday evenings. Of course, this
was not the first thing she noticed, but, at the time, it made a great
impression on her mind; she could hardly get a wink of sleep for weeks
and weeks.'

'Whistling?' said Darnell. 'I don't quite understand. Why should she be
frightened by whistling?'

'I'll tell you. The first time it happened was one Sunday in last May.
Aunt had a fancy they were being followed a Sunday or two before, but
she didn't see or hear anything, except a sort of crackling noise in the
hedge. But this particular Sunday they had hardly got through the stile
into the fields, when she heard a peculiar kind of low whistle. She took
no notice, thinking it was no concern of hers or her husband's, but as
they went on she heard it again, and then again, and it followed them
the whole walk, and it made her so uncomfortable, because she didn't
know where it was coming from or who was doing it, or why. Then, just as
they got out of the fields into the lane, uncle said he felt quite
faint, and he thought he would try a little brandy at the "Turpin's
Head," a small public-house there is there. And she looked at him and
saw his face was quite purple--more like apoplexy, as she says, than
fainting fits, which make people look a sort of greenish-white. But she
said nothing, and thought perhaps uncle had a peculiar way of fainting
of his own, as he always was a man to have his own way of doing
everything. So she just waited in the road, and he went ahead and
slipped into the public, and aunt says she thought she saw a little
figure rise out of the dusk and slip in after him, but she couldn't be
sure. And when uncle came out he looked red instead of purple, and said
he felt much better; and so they went home quietly together, and nothing
more was said. You see, uncle had said nothing about the whistling, and
aunt had been so frightened that she didn't dare speak, for fear they
might be both shot.

'She wasn't thinking anything more about it, when two Sundays afterwards
the very same thing happened just as it had before. This time aunt
plucked up a spirit, and asked uncle what it could be. And what do you
think he said? "Birds, my dear, birds." Of course aunt said to him that
no bird that ever flew with wings made a noise like that: sly, and low,
with pauses in between; and then he said that many rare sorts of birds
lived in North Middlesex and Hertfordshire. "Nonsense, Robert," said
aunt, "how can you talk so, considering it has followed us all the way,
for a mile or more?" And then uncle told her that some birds were so
attached to man that they would follow one about for miles sometimes; he
said he had just been reading about a bird like that in a book of
travels. And do you know that when they got home he actually showed her
a piece in the "Hertfordshire Naturalist" which they took in to oblige a
friend of theirs, all about rare birds found in the neighbourhood, all
the most outlandish names, aunt says, that she had never heard or
thought of, and uncle had the impudence to say that it must have been a
Purple Sandpiper, which, the paper said, had "a low shrill note,
constantly repeated." And then he took down a book of Siberian Travels
from the bookcase and showed her a page which told how a man was
followed by a bird all day long through a forest. And that's what Aunt
Marian says vexes her more than anything almost; to think that he should
be so artful and ready with those books, twisting them to his own wicked
ends. But, at the time, when she was out walking, she simply couldn't
make out what he meant by talking about birds in that random, silly sort
of way, so unlike him, and they went on, that horrible whistling
following them, she looking straight ahead and walking fast, really
feeling more huffy and put out than frightened. And when they got to the
next stile, she got over and turned round, and "lo and behold," as she
says, there was no Uncle Robert to be seen! She felt herself go quite
white with alarm, thinking of that whistle, and making sure he'd been
spirited away or snatched in some way or another, and she had just
screamed out "Robert" like a mad woman, when he came quite slowly round
the corner, as cool as a cucumber, holding something in his hand. He
said there were some flowers he could never pass, and when aunt saw that
he had got a dandelion torn up by the roots, she felt as if her head
were going round.'

Mary's story was suddenly interrupted. For ten minutes Darnell had been
writhing in his chair, suffering tortures in his anxiety to avoid
wounding his wife's feelings, but the episode of the dandelion was too
much for him, and he burst into a long, wild shriek of laughter,
aggravated by suppression into the semblance of a Red Indian's
war-whoop. Alice, who was washing-up in the scullery, dropped some three
shillings' worth of china, and the neighbours ran out into their gardens
wondering if it were murder. Mary gazed reproachfully at her husband.

'How can you be so unfeeling, Edward?' she said, at length, when
Darnell had passed into the feebleness of exhaustion. 'If you had seen
the tears rolling down poor Aunt Marian's cheeks as she told me, I don't
think you would have laughed. I didn't think you were so hard-hearted.'

'My dear Mary,' said Darnell, faintly, through sobs and catching of the
breath, 'I am awfully sorry. I know it's very sad, really, and I'm not
unfeeling; but it is such an odd tale, now, isn't it? The Sandpiper, you
know, and then the dandelion!'

His face twitched and he ground his teeth together. Mary looked gravely
at him for a moment, and then she put her hands to her face, and Darnell
could see that she also shook with merriment.

'I am as bad as you,' she said, at last. 'I never thought of it in that
way. I'm glad I didn't, or I should have laughed in Aunt Marian's face,
and I wouldn't have done that for the world. Poor old thing; she cried
as if her heart would break. I met her at Victoria, as she asked me, and
we had some soup at a confectioner's. I could scarcely touch it; her
tears kept dropping into the plate all the time; and then we went to the
waiting-room at the station, and she cried there terribly.'

'Well,' said Darnell, 'what happened next? I won't laugh any more.'

'No, we mustn't; it's much too horrible for a joke. Well, of course aunt
went home and wondered and wondered what could be the matter, and tried
to think it out, but, as she says, she could make nothing of it. She
began to be afraid that uncle's brain was giving way through overwork,
as he had stopped in the City (as he said) up to all hours lately, and
he had to go to Yorkshire (wicked old story-teller!), about some very
tiresome business connected with his leases. But then she reflected that
however queer he might be getting, even his queerness couldn't make
whistles in the air, though, as she said, he was always a wonderful man.
So she had to give that up; and then she wondered if there were anything
the matter with her, as she had read about people who heard noises when
there was really nothing at all. But that wouldn't do either, because
though it might account for the whistling, it wouldn't account for the
dandelion or the Sandpiper, or for fainting fits that turned purple, or
any of uncle's queerness. So aunt said she could think of nothing but to
read the Bible every day from the beginning, and by the time she got
into Chronicles she felt rather better, especially as nothing had
happened for three or four Sundays. She noticed uncle seemed
absent-minded, and not as nice to her as he might be, but she put that
down to too much work, as he never came home before the last train, and
had a hansom twice all the way, getting there between three and four in
the morning. Still, she felt it was no good bothering her head over what
couldn't be made out or explained anyway, and she was just settling
down, when one Sunday evening it began all over again, and worse things
happened. The whistling followed them just as it did before, and poor
aunt set her teeth and said nothing to uncle, as she knew he would only
tell her stories, and they were walking on, not saying a word, when
something made her look back, and there was a horrible boy with red
hair, peeping through the hedge just behind, and grinning. She said it
was a dreadful face, with something unnatural about it, as if it had
been a dwarf, and before she had time to have a good look, it popped
back like lightning, and aunt all but fainted away.'

'A red-headed _boy_?' said Darnell. 'I thought----What an extraordinary
story this is. I've never heard of anything so queer. Who was the boy?'

'You will know in good time,' said Mrs. Darnell. 'It _is_ very strange,
isn't it?'

'Strange!' Darnell ruminated for a while.

'I know what I think, Mary,' he said at length. 'I don't believe a word
of it. I believe your aunt is going mad, or has gone mad, and that she
has delusions. The whole thing sounds to me like the invention of a
lunatic.'

'You are quite wrong. Every word is true, and if you will let me go on,
you will understand how it all happened.'

'Very good, go ahead.'

'Let me see, where was I? Oh, I know, aunt saw the boy grinning in the
hedge. Yes, well, she was dreadfully frightened for a minute or two;
there was something so queer about the face, but then she plucked up a
spirit and said to herself, "After all, better a boy with red hair than
a big man with a gun," and she made up her mind to watch Uncle Robert
closely, as she could see by his look he knew all about it; he seemed as
if he were thinking hard and puzzling over something, as if he didn't
know what to do next, and his mouth kept opening and shutting, like a
fish's. So she kept her face straight, and didn't say a word, and when
he said something to her about the fine sunset, she took no notice.
"Don't you hear what I say, Marian?" he said, speaking quite crossly,
and bellowing as if it were to somebody in the next field. So aunt said
she was very sorry, but her cold made her so deaf, she couldn't hear
much. She noticed uncle looked quite pleased, and relieved too, and she
knew he thought she hadn't heard the whistling. Suddenly uncle pretended
to see a beautiful spray of honeysuckle high up in the hedge, and he
said he must get it for aunt, only she must go on ahead, as it made him
nervous to be watched. She said she would, but she just stepped aside
behind a bush where there was a sort of cover in the hedge, and found
she could see him quite well, though she scratched her face terribly
with poking it into a rose bush. And in a minute or two out came the boy
from behind the hedge, and she saw uncle and him talking, and she knew
it was the same boy, as it wasn't dark enough to hide his flaming red
head. And uncle put out his hand as if to catch him, but he just darted
into the bushes and vanished. Aunt never said a word at the time, but
that night when they got home she charged uncle with what she'd seen and
asked him what it all meant. He was quite taken aback at first, and
stammered and stuttered and said a spy wasn't his notion of a good wife,
but at last he made her swear secrecy, and told her that he was a very
high Freemason, and that the boy was an emissary of the order who
brought him messages of the greatest importance. But aunt didn't believe
a word of it, as an uncle of hers was a mason, and he never behaved like
that. It was then she began to be afraid that it was really Anarchists,
or something of the kind, and every time the bell rang she thought that
uncle had been found out, and the police had come for him.'

'What nonsense! As if a man with house property would be an Anarchist.'

'Well, she could see there must be some horrible secret, and she didn't
know what else to think. And then she began to have the things through
the post.'

'Things through the post! What do you mean by that?'

'All sorts of things; bits of broken bottle-glass, packed carefully as
if it were jewellery; parcels that unrolled and unrolled worse than
Chinese boxes, and then had "cat" in large letters when you came to the
middle; old artificial teeth, a cake of red paint, and at last
cockroaches.'

'Cockroaches by post! Stuff and nonsense; your aunt's mad.'

'Edward, she showed me the box; it was made to hold cigarettes, and
there were three dead cockroaches inside. And when she found a box of
exactly the same kind, half-full of cigarettes, in uncle's great-coat
pocket, then her head began to turn again.'

Darnell groaned, and stirred uneasily in his chair, feeling that the
tale of Aunt Marian's domestic troubles was putting on the semblance of
an evil dream.

'Anything else?' he asked.

'My dear, I haven't repeated half the things poor aunt told me this
afternoon. There was the night she thought she saw a ghost in the
shrubbery. She was anxious about some chickens that were just due to
hatch out, so she went out after dark with some egg and bread-crumbs, in
case they might be out. And just before her she saw a figure gliding by
the rhododendrons. It looked like a short, slim man dressed as they
used to be hundreds of years ago; she saw the sword by his side, and
the feather in his cap. She thought she should have died, she said, and
though it was gone in a minute, and she tried to make out it was all her
fancy, she fainted when she got into the house. Uncle was at home that
night, and when she came to and told him he ran out, and stayed out for
half-an-hour or more, and then came in and said he could find nothing;
and the next minute aunt heard that low whistle just outside the window,
and uncle ran out again.'

'My dear Mary, do let us come to the point. What on earth does it all
lead to?'

'Haven't you guessed? Why, of course it was that girl all the time.'

'Girl? I thought you said it was a boy with a red head?'

'Don't you see? She's an actress, and she dressed up. She won't leave
uncle alone. It wasn't enough that he was with her nearly every evening
in the week, but she must be after him on Sundays too. Aunt found a
letter the horrid thing had written, and so it has all come out. Enid
Vivian she calls herself, though I don't suppose she has any right to
one name or the other. And the question is, what is to be done?'

'Let us talk of that again. I'll have a pipe, and then we'll go to bed.'

They were almost asleep when Mary said suddenly--

'Doesn't it seem queer, Edward? Last night you were telling me such
beautiful things, and to-night I have been talking about that
disgraceful old man and his goings on.'

'I don't know,' answered Darnell, dreamily. 'On the walls of that great
church upon the hill I saw all kinds of strange grinning monsters,
carved in stone.'

The misdemeanours of Mr. Robert Nixon brought in their train
consequences strange beyond imagination. It was not that they continued
to develop on the somewhat fantastic lines of these first adventures
which Mrs. Darnell had related; indeed, when 'Aunt Marian' came over to
Shepherd's Bush, one Sunday afternoon, Darnell wondered how he had had
the heart to laugh at the misfortunes of a broken-hearted woman.

He had never seen his wife's aunt before, and he was strangely surprised
when Alice showed her into the garden where they were sitting on the
warm and misty Sunday in September. To him, save during these latter
days, she had always been associated with ideas of splendour and
success: his wife had always mentioned the Nixons with a tinge of
reverence; he had heard, many times, the epic of Mr. Nixon's struggles
and of his slow but triumphant rise. Mary had told the story as she had
received it from her parents, beginning with the flight to London from
some small, dull, and unprosperous town in the flattest of the Midlands,
long ago, when a young man from the country had great chances of
fortune. Robert Nixon's father had been a grocer in the High Street, and
in after days the successful coal merchant and builder loved to tell of
that dull provincial life, and while he glorified his own victories, he
gave his hearers to understand that he came of a race which had also
known how to achieve. That had been long ago, he would explain: in the
days when that rare citizen who desired to go to London or to York was
forced to rise in the dead of night, and make his way, somehow or other,
by ten miles of quagmirish, wandering lanes to the Great North Road,
there to meet the 'Lightning' coach, a vehicle which stood to all the
countryside as the visible and tangible embodiment of tremendous
speed--'and indeed,' as Nixon would add, 'it was always up to time,
which is more than can be said of the Dunham Branch Line nowadays!' It
was in this ancient Dunham that the Nixons had waged successful trade
for perhaps a hundred years, in a shop with bulging bay windows looking
on the market-place. There was no competition, and the townsfolk, and
well-to-do farmers, the clergy and the country families, looked upon the
house of Nixon as an institution fixed as the town hall (which stood on
Roman pillars) and the parish church. But the change came: the railway
crept nearer and nearer, the farmers and the country gentry became less
well-to-do; the tanning, which was the local industry, suffered from a
great business which had been established in a larger town, some twenty
miles away, and the profits of the Nixons grew less and less. Hence the
hegira of Robert, and he would dilate on the poorness of his beginnings,
how he saved, by little and little, from his sorry wage of City clerk,
and how he and a fellow clerk, 'who had come into a hundred pounds,' saw
an opening in the coal trade--and filled it. It was at this stage of
Robert's fortunes, still far from magnificent, that Miss Marian Reynolds
had encountered him, she being on a visit to friends in Gunnersbury.
Afterwards, victory followed victory; Nixon's wharf became a landmark to
bargemen; his power stretched abroad, his dusky fleets went outwards to
the sea, and inward by all the far reaches of canals. Lime, cement, and
bricks were added to his merchandise, and at last he hit upon the great
stroke--that extensive taking up of land in the north of London. Nixon
himself ascribed this _coup_ to native sagacity, and the possession of
capital; and there were also obscure rumours to the effect that some one
or other had been 'done' in the course of the transaction. However that
might be, the Nixons grew wealthy to excess, and Mary had often told her
husband of the state in which they dwelt, of their liveried servants, of
the glories of their drawing-room, of their broad lawn, shadowed by a
splendid and ancient cedar. And so Darnell had somehow been led into
conceiving the lady of this demesne as a personage of no small pomp. He
saw her, tall, of dignified port and presence, inclining, it might be,
to some measure of obesity, such a measure as was not unbefitting in an
elderly lady of position, who lived well and lived at ease. He even
imagined a slight ruddiness of complexion, which went very well with
hair that was beginning to turn grey, and when he heard the door-bell
ring, as he sat under the mulberry on the Sunday afternoon, he bent
forward to catch sight of this stately figure, clad, of course, in the
richest, blackest silk, girt about with heavy chains of gold.

He started with amazement when he saw the strange presence that followed
the servant into the garden. Mrs. Nixon was a little, thin old woman,
who bent as she feebly trotted after Alice; her eyes were on the ground,
and she did not lift them when the Darnells rose to greet her. She
glanced to the right, uneasily, as she shook hands with Darnell, to the
left when Mary kissed her, and when she was placed on the garden seat
with a cushion at her back, she looked away at the back of the houses in
the next street. She was dressed in black, it was true, but even Darnell
could see that her gown was old and shabby, that the fur trimming of her
cape and the fur boa which was twisted about her neck were dingy and
disconsolate, and had all the melancholy air which fur wears when it is
seen in a second-hand clothes-shop in a back street. And her
gloves--they were black kid, wrinkled with much wear, faded to a bluish
hue at the finger-tips, which showed signs of painful mending. Her hair,
plastered over her forehead, looked dull and colourless, though some
greasy matter had evidently been used with a view of producing a
becoming gloss, and on it perched an antique bonnet, adorned with black
pendants that rattled paralytically one against the other.

And there was nothing in Mrs. Nixon's face to correspond with the
imaginary picture that Darnell had made of her. She was sallow,
wrinkled, pinched; her nose ran to a sharp point, and her red-rimmed
eyes were a queer water-grey, that seemed to shrink alike from the light
and from encounter with the eyes of others. As she sat beside his wife
on the green garden-seat, Darnell, who occupied a wicker-chair brought
out from the drawing-room, could not help feeling that this shadowy and
evasive figure, muttering replies to Mary's polite questions, was almost
impossibly remote from his conceptions of the rich and powerful aunt,
who could give away a hundred pounds as a mere birthday gift. She would
say little at first; yes, she was feeling rather tired, it had been so
hot all the way, and she had been afraid to put on lighter things as
one never knew at this time of year what it might be like in the
evenings; there were apt to be cold mists when the sun went down, and
she didn't care to risk bronchitis.

'I thought I should never get here,' she went on, raising her voice to
an odd querulous pipe. 'I'd no notion it was such an out-of-the-way
place, it's so many years since I was in this neighbourhood.'

She wiped her eyes, no doubt thinking of the early days at Turnham
Green, when she married Nixon; and when the pocket-handkerchief had done
its office she replaced it in a shabby black bag which she clutched
rather than carried. Darnell noticed, as he watched her, that the bag
seemed full, almost to bursting, and he speculated idly as to the nature
of its contents: correspondence, perhaps, he thought, further proofs of
Uncle Robert's treacherous and wicked dealings. He grew quite
uncomfortable, as he sat and saw her glancing all the while furtively
away from his wife and himself, and presently he got up and strolled
away to the other end of the garden, where he lit his pipe and walked to
and fro on the gravel walk, still astounded at the gulf between the real
and the imagined woman.

Presently he heard a hissing whisper, and he saw Mrs. Nixon's head
inclining to his wife's. Mary rose and came towards him.

'Would you mind sitting in the drawing-room, Edward?' she murmured.
'Aunt says she can't bring herself to discuss such a delicate matter
before you. I dare say it's quite natural.'

'Very well, but I don't think I'll go into the drawing-room. I feel as
if a walk would do me good. You mustn't be frightened if I am a little
late,' he said; 'if I don't get back before your aunt goes, say good-bye
to her for me.'

He strolled into the main road, where the trams were humming to and fro.
He was still confused and perplexed, and he tried to account for a
certain relief he felt in removing himself from the presence of Mrs.
Nixon. He told himself that her grief at her husband's ruffianly conduct
was worthy of all pitiful respect, but at the same time, to his shame,
he had felt a certain physical aversion from her as she sat in his
garden in her dingy black, dabbing her red-rimmed eyes with a damp
pocket-handkerchief. He had been to the Zoo when he was a lad, and he
still remembered how he had shrunk with horror at the sight of certain
reptiles slowly crawling over one another in their slimy pond. But he
was enraged at the similarity between the two sensations, and he walked
briskly on that level and monotonous road, looking about him at the
unhandsome spectacle of suburban London keeping Sunday.

There was something in the tinge of antiquity which still exists in
Acton that soothed his mind and drew it away from those unpleasant
contemplations, and when at last he had penetrated rampart after rampart
of brick, and heard no more the harsh shrieks and laughter of the people
who were enjoying themselves, he found a way into a little sheltered
field, and sat down in peace beneath a tree, whence he could look out on
a pleasant valley. The sun sank down beneath the hills, the clouds
changed into the likeness of blossoming rose-gardens; and he still sat
there in the gathering darkness till a cool breeze blew upon him, and
he rose with a sigh, and turned back to the brick ramparts and the
glimmering streets, and the noisy idlers sauntering to and fro in the
procession of their dismal festival. But he was murmuring to himself
some words that seemed a magic song, and it was with uplifted heart that
he let himself into his house.

Mrs. Nixon had gone an hour and a half before his return, Mary told him.
Darnell sighed with relief, and he and his wife strolled out into the
garden and sat down side by side.

They kept silence for a time, and at last Mary spoke, not without a
nervous tremor in her voice.

'I must tell you, Edward,' she began, 'that aunt has made a proposal
which you ought to hear. I think we should consider it.'

'A proposal? But how about the whole affair? Is it still going on?'

'Oh, yes! She told me all about it. Uncle is quite unrepentant. It seems
he has taken a flat somewhere in town for that woman, and furnished it
in the most costly manner. He simply laughs at aunt's reproaches, and
says he means to have some fun at last. You saw how broken she was?'

'Yes; very sad. But won't he give her any money? Wasn't she very badly
dressed for a woman in her position?'

'Aunt has no end of beautiful things, but I fancy she likes to hoard
them; she has a horror of spoiling her dresses. It isn't for want of
money, I assure you, as uncle settled a very large sum on her two years
ago, when he was everything that could be desired as a husband. And that
brings me to what I want to say. Aunt would like to live with us. She
would pay very liberally. What do you say?'

'Would like to live with us?' exclaimed Darnell, and his pipe dropped
from his hand on to the grass. He was stupefied by the thought of Aunt
Marian as a boarder, and sat staring vacantly before him, wondering what
new monster the night would next produce.

'I knew you wouldn't much like the idea,' his wife went on. 'But I do
think, dearest, that we ought not to refuse without very serious
consideration. I am afraid you did not take to poor aunt very much.'

Darnell shook his head dumbly.

'I thought you didn't; she was so upset, poor thing, and you didn't see
her at her best. She is really so good. But listen to me, dear. Do you
think we have the right to refuse her offer? I told you she has money of
her own, and I am sure she would be dreadfully offended if we said we
wouldn't have her. And what would become of me if anything happened to
you? You know we have very little saved.'

Darnell groaned.

'It seems to me,' he said, 'that it would spoil everything. We are so
happy, Mary dear, by ourselves. Of course I am extremely sorry for your
aunt. I think she is very much to be pitied. But when it comes to having
her always here----'

'I know, dear. Don't think I am looking forward to the prospect; you
know I don't want anybody but you. Still, we ought to think of the
future, and besides we shall be able to live so very much better. I
shall be able to give you all sorts of nice things that I know you ought
to have after all that hard work in the City. Our income would be
doubled.'

'Do you mean she would pay us £150 a year?'

'Certainly. And she would pay for the spare room being furnished, and
any extra she might want. She told me, specially, that if a friend or
two came now and again to see her, she would gladly bear the cost of a
fire in the drawing-room, and give something towards the gas bill, with
a few shillings for the girl for any additional trouble. We should
certainly be more than twice as well off as we are now. You see, Edward,
dear, it's not the sort of offer we are likely to have again. Besides,
we must think of the future, as I said. Do you know aunt took a great
fancy to you?'

He shuddered and said nothing, and his wife went on with her argument.

'And, you see, it isn't as if we should see so very much of her. She
will have her breakfast in bed, and she told me she would often go up to
her room in the evening directly after dinner. I thought that very nice
and considerate. She quite understands that we shouldn't like to have a
third person always with us. Don't you think, Edward, that, considering
everything, we ought to say we will have her?'

'Oh, I suppose so,' he groaned. 'As you say, it's a very good offer,
financially, and I am afraid it would be very imprudent to refuse. But I
don't like the notion, I confess.'

'I am so glad you agree with me, dear. Depend upon it, it won't be half
so bad as you think. And putting our own advantage on one side, we shall
really be doing poor aunt a very great kindness. Poor old dear, she
cried bitterly after you were gone; she said she had made up her mind
not to stay any longer in Uncle Robert's house, and she didn't know
where to go, or what would become of her, if we refused to take her in.
She quite broke down.'

'Well, well; we will try it for a year, anyhow. It may be as you say; we
shan't find it quite so bad as it seems now. Shall we go in?'

He stooped for his pipe, which lay as it had fallen, on the grass. He
could not find it, and lit a wax match which showed him the pipe, and
close beside it, under the seat, something that looked like a page torn
from a book. He wondered what it could be, and picked it up.

The gas was lit in the drawing-room, and Mrs. Darnell, who was arranging
some notepaper, wished to write at once to Mrs. Nixon, cordially
accepting her proposal, when she was startled by an exclamation from her
husband.

'What is the matter?' she said, startled by the tone of his voice. 'You
haven't hurt yourself?'

'Look at this,' he replied, handing her a small leaflet; 'I found it
under the garden seat just now.'

Mary glanced with bewilderment at her husband and read as follows:--

    THE NEW AND CHOSEN SEED OF ABRAHAM

    PROPHECIES TO BE FULFILLED IN THE PRESENT YEAR

    1. The Sailing of a Fleet of One hundred and Forty and Four Vessels
    for Tarshish and the Isles.

    2. Destruction of the Power of the Dog, including all the
    instruments of anti-Abrahamic legislation.

    3. Return of the Fleet from Tarshish, bearing with it the gold of
    Arabia, destined to be the Foundation of the New City of Abraham.

    4. The Search for the Bride, and the bestowing of the Seals on the
    Seventy and Seven.

    5. The Countenance of FATHER to become luminous, but with a greater
    glory than the face of Moses.

    6. The Pope of Rome to be stoned with stones in the valley called
    Berek-Zittor.

    7. FATHER to be acknowledged by Three Great Rulers. Two Great Rulers
    will deny FATHER, and will immediately perish in the Effluvia of
    FATHER'S Indignation.

    8. Binding of the Beast with the Little Horn, and all Judges cast
    down.

    9. Finding of the Bride in the Land of Egypt, which has been
    revealed to FATHER as now existing in the western part of London.

    10. Bestowal of the New Tongue on the Seventy and Seven, and on the
    One Hundred and Forty and Four. FATHER proceeds to the Bridal
    Chamber.

    11. Destruction of London and rebuilding of the City called No,
    which is the New City of Abraham.

    12. FATHER united to the Bride, and the present Earth removed to the
    Sun for the space of half an hour.

Mrs. Darnell's brow cleared as she read matter which seemed to her
harmless if incoherent. From her husband's voice she had been led to
fear something more tangibly unpleasant than a vague catena of
prophecies.

'Well,' she said, 'what about it?'

'What about it? Don't you see that your aunt dropped it, and that she
must be a raging lunatic?'

'Oh, Edward! don't say that. In the first place, how do you know that
aunt dropped it at all? It might easily have blown over from any of the
other gardens. And, if it were hers, I don't think you should call her a
lunatic. I don't believe, myself, that there are any real prophets now;
but there are many good people who think quite differently. I knew an
old lady once who, I am sure, was very good, and she took in a paper
every week that was full of prophecies and things very like this. Nobody
called her mad, and I have heard father say that she had one of the
sharpest heads for business he had ever come across.'

'Very good; have it as you like. But I believe we shall both be sorry.'

They sat in silence for some time. Alice came in after her 'evening
out,' and they sat on, till Mrs. Darnell said she was tired and wanted
to go to bed.

Her husband kissed her. 'I don't think I will come up just yet,' he
said; 'you go to sleep, dearest. I want to think things over. No, no; I
am not going to change my mind: your aunt shall come, as I said. But
there are one or two things I should like to get settled in my mind.'

He meditated for a long while, pacing up and down the room. Light after
light was extinguished in Edna Road, and the people of the suburb slept
all around him, but still the gas was alight in Darnell's drawing-room,
and he walked softly up and down the floor. He was thinking that about
the life of Mary and himself, which had been so quiet, there seemed to
be gathering on all sides grotesque and fantastic shapes, omens of
confusion and disorder, threats of madness; a strange company from
another world. It was as if into the quiet, sleeping streets of some
little ancient town among the hills there had come from afar the sound
of drum and pipe, snatches of wild song, and there had burst into the
market-place the mad company of the players, strangely bedizened,
dancing a furious measure to their hurrying music, drawing forth the
citizens from their sheltered homes and peaceful lives, and alluring
them to mingle in the significant figures of their dance.

Yet afar and near (for it was hidden in his heart) he beheld the glimmer
of a sure and constant star. Beneath, darkness came on, and mists and
shadows closed about the town. The red, flickering flame of torches was
kindled in the midst of it. The song grew louder, with more insistent,
magical tones, surging and falling in unearthly modulations, the very
speech of incantation; and the drum beat madly, and the pipe shrilled to
a scream, summoning all to issue forth, to leave their peaceful hearths;
for a strange rite was preconized in their midst. The streets that were
wont to be so still, so hushed with the cool and tranquil veils of
darkness, asleep beneath the patronage of the evening star, now danced
with glimmering lanterns, resounded with the cries of those who hurried
forth, drawn as by a magistral spell; and the songs swelled and
triumphed, the reverberant beating of the drum grew louder, and in the
midst of the awakened town the players, fantastically arrayed, performed
their interlude under the red blaze of torches. He knew not whether they
were players, men that would vanish suddenly as they came, disappearing
by the track that climbed the hill; or whether they were indeed
magicians, workers of great and efficacious spells, who knew the secret
word by which the earth may be transformed into the hall of Gehenna, so
that they that gazed and listened, as at a passing spectacle, should be
entrapped by the sound and the sight presented to them, should be drawn
into the elaborated figures of that mystic dance, and so should be
whirled away into those unending mazes on the wild hills that were
abhorred, there to wander for evermore.

But Darnell was not afraid, because of the Daystar that had risen in his
heart. It had dwelt there all his life, and had slowly shone forth with
clearer and clearer light, and he began to see that though his earthly
steps might be in the ways of the ancient town that was beset by the
Enchanters, and resounded with their songs and their processions, yet he
dwelt also in that serene and secure world of brightness, and from a
great and unutterable height looked on the confusion of the mortal
pageant, beholding mysteries in which he was no true actor, hearing
magic songs that could by no means draw him down from the battlements of
the high and holy city.

His heart was filled with a great joy and a great peace as he lay down
beside his wife and fell asleep, and in the morning, when he woke up, he
was glad.


IV

In a haze as of a dream Darnell's thoughts seemed to move through the
opening days of the next week. Perhaps nature had not intended that he
should be practical or much given to that which is usually called 'sound
common sense,' but his training had made him desirous of good, plain
qualities of the mind, and he uneasily strove to account to himself for
his strange mood of the Sunday night, as he had often endeavoured to
interpret the fancies of his boyhood and early manhood. At first he was
annoyed by his want of success; the morning paper, which he always
secured as the 'bus delayed at Uxbridge Road Station, fell from his
hands unread, while he vainly reasoned, assuring himself that the
threatened incursion of a whimsical old woman, though tiresome enough,
was no rational excuse for those curious hours of meditation in which
his thoughts seemed to have dressed themselves in unfamiliar, fantastic
habits, and to parley with him in a strange speech, and yet a speech
that he had understood.

With such arguments he perplexed his mind on the long, accustomed ride
up the steep ascent of Holland Park, past the incongruous hustle of
Notting Hill Gate, where in one direction a road shows the way to the
snug, somewhat faded bowers and retreats of Bayswater, and in another
one sees the portal of the murky region of the slums. The customary
companions of his morning's journey were in the seats about him; he
heard the hum of their talk, as they disputed concerning politics, and
the man next to him, who came from Acton, asked him what he thought of
the Government now. There was a discussion, and a loud and excited one,
just in front, as to whether rhubarb was a fruit or vegetable, and in
his ear he heard Redman, who was a near neighbour, praising the economy
of 'the wife.'

'I don't know how she does it. Look here; what do you think we had
yesterday? Breakfast: fish-cakes, beautifully fried--rich, you know,
lots of herbs, it's a receipt of her aunt's; you should just taste 'em.
Coffee, bread, butter, marmalade, and, of course, all the usual
etceteras. Dinner: roast beef, Yorkshire, potatoes, greens, and
horse-radish sauce, plum tart, cheese. And where will you get a better
dinner than that? Well, I call it wonderful, I really do.'

But in spite of these distractions he fell into a dream as the 'bus
rolled and tossed on its way Citywards, and still he strove to solve the
enigma of his vigil of the night before, and as the shapes of trees and
green lawns and houses passed before his eyes, and as he saw the
procession moving on the pavement, and while the murmur of the streets
sounded in his ears, all was to him strange and unaccustomed, as if he
moved through the avenues of some city in a foreign land. It was,
perhaps, on these mornings, as he rode to his mechanical work, that
vague and floating fancies that must have long haunted his brain began
to shape themselves, and to put on the form of definite conclusions,
from which he could no longer escape, even if he had wished it. Darnell
had received what is called a sound commercial education, and would
therefore have found very great difficulty in putting into articulate
speech any thought that was worth thinking; but he grew certain on these
mornings that the 'common sense' which he had always heard exalted as
man's supremest faculty was, in all probability, the smallest and
least-considered item in the equipment of an ant of average
intelligence. And with this, as an almost necessary corollary, came a
firm belief that the whole fabric of life in which he moved was sunken,
past all thinking, in the grossest absurdity; that he and all his
friends and acquaintances and fellow-workers were interested in matters
in which men were never meant to be interested, were pursuing aims which
they were never meant to pursue, were, indeed, much like fair stones of
an altar serving as a pigsty wall. Life, it seemed to him, was a great
search for--he knew not what; and in the process of the ages one by one
the true marks upon the ways had been shattered, or buried, or the
meaning of the words had been slowly forgotten; one by one the signs had
been turned awry, the true entrances had been thickly overgrown, the
very way itself had been diverted from the heights to the depths, till
at last the race of pilgrims had become hereditary stone-breakers and
ditch-scourers on a track that led to destruction--if it led anywhere at
all. Darnell's heart thrilled with a strange and trembling joy, with a
sense that was all new, when it came to his mind that this great loss
might not be a hopeless one, that perhaps the difficulties were by no
means insuperable. It might be, he considered, that the stone-breaker
had merely to throw down his hammer and set out, and the way would be
plain before him; and a single step would free the delver in rubbish
from the foul slime of the ditch.

It was, of course, with difficulty and slowly that these things became
clear to him. He was an English City clerk, 'flourishing' towards the
end of the nineteenth century, and the rubbish heap that had been
accumulating for some centuries could not be cleared away in an instant.
Again and again the spirit of nonsense that had been implanted in him as
in his fellows assured him that the true world was the visible and
tangible world, the world in which good and faithful letter-copying was
exchangeable for a certain quantum of bread, beef, and house-room, and
that the man who copied letters well, did not beat his wife, nor lose
money foolishly, was a good man, fulfilling the end for which he had
been made. But in spite of these arguments, in spite of their acceptance
by all who were about him, he had the grace to perceive the utter
falsity and absurdity of the whole position. He was fortunate in his
entire ignorance of sixpenny 'science,' but if the whole library had
been projected into his brain it would not have moved him to 'deny in
the darkness that which he had known in the light.' Darnell knew by
experience that man is made a mystery for mysteries and visions, for the
realization in his consciousness of ineffable bliss, for a great joy
that transmutes the whole world, for a joy that surpasses all joys and
overcomes all sorrows. He knew this certainly, though he knew it dimly;
and he was apart from other men, preparing himself for a great
experiment.

With such thoughts as these for his secret and concealed treasure, he
was able to bear the threatened invasion of Mrs. Nixon with something
approaching indifference. He knew, indeed, that her presence between
his wife and himself would be unwelcome to him, and he was not without
grave doubts as to the woman's sanity; but after all, what did it
matter? Besides, already a faint glimmering light had risen within him
that showed the profit of self-negation, and in this matter he had
preferred his wife's will to his own. _Et non sua poma_; to his
astonishment he found a delight in denying himself his own wish, a
process that he had always regarded as thoroughly detestable. This was a
state of things which he could not in the least understand; but, again,
though a member of a most hopeless class, living in the most hopeless
surroundings that the world has ever seen, though he knew as much of the
_askesis_ as of Chinese metaphysics; again, he had the grace not to deny
the light that had begun to glimmer in his soul.

And he found a present reward in the eyes of Mary, when she welcomed him
home after his foolish labours in the cool of the evening. They sat
together, hand in hand, under the mulberry tree, at the coming of the
dusk, and as the ugly walls about them became obscure and vanished into
the formless world of shadows, they seemed to be freed from the bondage
of Shepherd's Bush, freed to wander in that undisfigured, undefiled
world that lies beyond the walls. Of this region Mary knew little or
nothing by experience, since her relations had always been of one mind
with the modern world, which has for the true country an instinctive and
most significant horror and dread. Mr. Reynolds had also shared in
another odd superstition of these later days--that it is necessary to
leave London at least once a year; consequently Mary had some knowledge
of various seaside resorts on the south and east coasts, where
Londoners gather in hordes, turn the sands into one vast, bad
music-hall, and derive, as they say, enormous benefit from the change.
But experiences such as these give but little knowledge of the country
in its true and occult sense; and yet Mary, as she sat in the dusk
beneath the whispering tree, knew something of the secret of the wood,
of the valley shut in by high hills, where the sound of pouring water
always echoes from the clear brook. And to Darnell these were nights of
great dreams; for it was the hour of the work, the time of
transmutation, and he who could not understand the miracle, who could
scarcely believe in it, yet knew, secretly and half consciously, that
the water was being changed into the wine of a new life. This was ever
the inner music of his dreams, and to it he added on these still and
sacred nights the far-off memory of that time long ago when, a child,
before the world had overwhelmed him, he journeyed down to the old grey
house in the west, and for a whole month heard the murmur of the forest
through his bedroom window, and when the wind was hushed, the washing of
the tides about the reeds; and sometimes awaking very early he had heard
the strange cry of a bird as it rose from its nest among the reeds, and
had looked out and had seen the valley whiten to the dawn, and the
winding river whiten as it swam down to the sea. The memory of all this
had faded and become shadowy as he grew older and the chains of common
life were riveted firmly about his soul; all the atmosphere by which he
was surrounded was well-nigh fatal to such thoughts, and only now and
again in half-conscious moments or in sleep he had revisited that valley
in the far-off west, where the breath of the wind was an incantation,
and every leaf and stream and hill spoke of great and ineffable
mysteries. But now the broken vision was in great part restored to him,
and looking with love in his wife's eyes he saw the gleam of water-pools
in the still forest, saw the mists rising in the evening, and heard the
music of the winding river.

They were sitting thus together on the Friday evening of the week that
had begun with that odd and half-forgotten visit of Mrs. Nixon, when, to
Darnell's annoyance, the door-bell gave a discordant peal, and Alice
with some disturbance of manner came out and announced that a gentleman
wished to see the master. Darnell went into the drawing-room, where
Alice had lit one gas so that it flared and burnt with a rushing sound,
and in this distorting light there waited a stout, elderly gentleman,
whose countenance was altogether unknown to him. He stared blankly, and
hesitated, about to speak, but the visitor began.

'You don't know who I am, but I expect you'll know my name. It's Nixon.'

He did not wait to be interrupted. He sat down and plunged into
narrative, and after the first few words, Darnell, whose mind was not
altogether unprepared, listened without much astonishment.

'And the long and the short of it is,' Mr. Nixon said at last, 'she's
gone stark, staring mad, and we had to put her away to-day--poor thing.'

His voice broke a little, and he wiped his eyes hastily, for though
stout and successful he was not unfeeling, and he was fond of his wife.
He had spoken quickly, and had gone lightly over many details which
might have interested specialists in certain kinds of mania, and
Darnell was sorry for his evident distress.

'I came here,' he went on after a brief pause, 'because I found out she
had been to see you last Sunday, and I knew the sort of story she must
have told.'

Darnell showed him the prophetic leaflet which Mrs. Nixon had dropped in
the garden. 'Did you know about this?' he said.

'Oh, _him_,' said the old man, with some approach to cheerfulness; 'oh
yes, I thrashed _him_ black and blue the day before yesterday.'

'Isn't he mad? Who is the man?'

'He's not mad, he's bad. He's a little Welsh skunk named Richards. He's
been running some sort of chapel over at New Barnet for the last few
years, and my poor wife--she never could find the parish church good
enough for her--had been going to his damned schism shop for the last
twelve-month. It was all that finished her off. Yes; I thrashed _him_
the day before yesterday, and I'm not afraid of a summons either. I know
him, and he knows I know him.'

Old Nixon whispered something in Darnell's ear, and chuckled faintly as
he repeated for the third time his formula--

'I thrashed _him_ black and blue the day before yesterday.'

Darnell could only murmur condolences and express his hope that Mrs.
Nixon might recover.

The old man shook his head.

'I'm afraid there's no hope of that,' he said. 'I've had the best
advice, but they couldn't do anything, and told me so.'

Presently he asked to see his niece, and Darnell went out and prepared
Mary as well as he could. She could scarcely take in the news that her
aunt was a hopeless maniac, for Mrs. Nixon, having been extremely stupid
all her days, had naturally succeeded in passing with her relations as
typically sensible. With the Reynolds family, as with the great majority
of us, want of imagination is always equated with sanity, and though
many of us have never heard of Lombroso we are his ready-made converts.
We have always believed that poets are mad, and if statistics
unfortunately show that few poets have really been inhabitants of
lunatic asylums, it is soothing to learn that nearly all poets have had
whooping-cough, which is doubtless, like intoxication, a minor madness.

'But is it really true?' she asked at length. 'Are you certain uncle is
not deceiving you? Aunt seemed so sensible always.'

She was helped at last by recollecting that Aunt Marian used to get up
very early of mornings, and then they went into the drawing-room and
talked to the old man. His evident kindliness and honesty grew upon
Mary, in spite of a lingering belief in her aunt's fables, and when he
left, it was with a promise to come to see them again.

Mrs. Darnell said she felt tired, and went to bed; and Darnell returned
to the garden and began to pace to and fro, collecting his thoughts. His
immeasurable relief at the intelligence that, after all, Mrs. Nixon was
not coming to live with them taught him that, despite his submission,
his dread of the event had been very great. The weight was removed, and
now he was free to consider his life without reference to the grotesque
intrusion that he had feared. He sighed for joy, and as he paced to and
fro he savoured the scent of the night, which, though it came faintly
to him in that brick-bound suburb, summoned to his mind across many
years the odour of the world at night as he had known it in that short
sojourn of his boyhood; the odour that rose from the earth when the
flame of the sun had gone down beyond the mountain, and the afterglow
had paled in the sky and on the fields. And as he recovered as best he
could these lost dreams of an enchanted land, there came to him other
images of his childhood, forgotten and yet not forgotten, dwelling
unheeded in dark places of the memory, but ready to be summoned forth.
He remembered one fantasy that had long haunted him. As he lay half
asleep in the forest on one hot afternoon of that memorable visit to the
country, he had 'made believe' that a little companion had come to him
out of the blue mists and the green light beneath the leaves--a white
girl with long black hair, who had played with him and whispered her
secrets in his ear, as his father lay sleeping under a tree; and from
that summer afternoon, day by day, she had been beside him; she had
visited him in the wilderness of London, and even in recent years there
had come to him now and again the sense of her presence, in the midst of
the heat and turmoil of the City. The last visit he remembered well; it
was a few weeks before he married, and from the depths of some futile
task he had looked up with puzzled eyes, wondering why the close air
suddenly grew scented with green leaves, why the murmur of the trees and
the wash of the river on the reeds came to his ears; and then that
sudden rapture to which he had given a name and an individuality
possessed him utterly. He knew then how the dull flesh of man can be
like fire; and now, looking back from a new standpoint on this and
other experiences, he realized how all that was real in his life had
been unwelcomed, uncherished by him, had come to him, perhaps, in virtue
of merely negative qualities on his part. And yet, as he reflected, he
saw that there had been a chain of witnesses all through his life: again
and again voices had whispered in his ear words in a strange language
that he now recognized as his native tongue; the common street had not
been lacking in visions of the true land of his birth; and in all the
passing and repassing of the world he saw that there had been emissaries
ready to guide his feet on the way of the great journey.

A week or two after the visit of Mr. Nixon, Darnell took his annual
holiday.

There was no question of Walton-on-the-Naze, or of anything of the kind,
as he quite agreed with his wife's longing for some substantial sum put
by against the evil day. But the weather was still fine, and he lounged
away the time in his garden beneath the tree, or he sauntered out on
long aimless walks in the western purlieus of London, not unvisited by
that old sense of some great ineffable beauty, concealed by the dim and
dingy veils of grey interminable streets. Once, on a day of heavy rain
he went to the 'box-room,' and began to turn over the papers in the old
hair trunk--scraps and odds and ends of family history, some of them in
his father's handwriting, others in faded ink, and there were a few
ancient pocket-books, filled with manuscript of a still earlier time,
and in these the ink was glossier and blacker than any writing fluids
supplied by stationers of later days. Darnell had hung up the portrait
of the ancestor in this room, and had bought a solid kitchen table and
a chair; so that Mrs. Darnell, seeing him looking over his old
documents, half thought of naming the room 'Mr. Darnell's study.' He had
not glanced at these relics of his family for many years, but from the
hour when the rainy morning sent him to them, he remained constant to
research till the end of the holidays. It was a new interest, and he
began to fashion in his mind a faint picture of his forefathers, and of
their life in that grey old house in the river valley, in the western
land of wells and streams and dark and ancient woods. And there were
stranger things than mere notes on family history amongst that odd
litter of old disregarded papers, and when he went back to his work in
the City some of the men fancied that he was in some vague manner
changed in appearance; but he only laughed when they asked him where he
had been and what he had been doing with himself. But Mary noticed that
every evening he spent at least an hour in the box-room; she was rather
sorry at the waste of time involved in reading old papers about dead
people. And one afternoon, as they were out together on a somewhat
dreary walk towards Acton, Darnell stopped at a hopeless second-hand
bookshop, and after scanning the rows of shabby books in the window,
went in and purchased two volumes. They proved to be a Latin dictionary
and grammar, and she was surprised to hear her husband declare his
intention of acquiring the Latin language.

But, indeed, all his conduct impressed her as indefinably altered; and
she began to be a little alarmed, though she could scarcely have formed
her fears in words. But she knew that in some way that was all
indefined and beyond the grasp of her thought their lives had altered
since the summer, and no single thing wore quite the same aspect as
before. If she looked out into the dull street with its rare loiterers,
it was the same and yet it had altered, and if she opened the window in
the early morning the wind that entered came with a changed breath that
spoke some message that she could not understand. And day by day passed
by in the old course, and not even the four walls were altogether
familiar, and the voices of men and women sounded with strange notes,
with the echo, rather, of a music that came over unknown hills. And day
by day as she went about her household work, passing from shop to shop
in those dull streets that were a network, a fatal labyrinth of grey
desolation on every side, there came to her sense half-seen images of
some other world, as if she walked in a dream, and every moment must
bring her to light and to awakening, when the grey should fade, and
regions long desired should appear in glory. Again and again it seemed
as if that which was hidden would be shown even to the sluggish
testimony of sense; and as she went to and fro from street to street of
that dim and weary suburb, and looked on those grey material walls, they
seemed as if a light glowed behind them, and again and again the mystic
fragrance of incense was blown to her nostrils from across the verge of
that world which is not so much impenetrable as ineffable, and to her
ears came the dream of a chant that spoke of hidden choirs about all her
ways. She struggled against these impressions, refusing her assent to
the testimony of them, since all the pressure of credited opinion for
three hundred years has been directed towards stamping out real
knowledge, and so effectually has this been accomplished that we can
only recover the truth through much anguish. And so Mary passed the days
in a strange perturbation, clinging to common things and common
thoughts, as if she feared that one morning she would wake up in an
unknown world to a changed life. And Edward Darnell went day by day to
his labour and returned in the evening, always with that shining of
light within his eyes and upon his face, with the gaze of wonder that
was greater day by day, as if for him the veil grew thin and soon would
disappear.

From these great matters both in herself and in her husband Mary shrank
back, afraid, perhaps, that if she began the question the answer might
be too wonderful. She rather taught herself to be troubled over little
things; she asked herself what attraction there could be in the old
records over which she supposed Edward to be poring night after night in
the cold room upstairs. She had glanced over the papers at Darnell's
invitation, and could see but little interest in them; there were one or
two sketches, roughly done in pen and ink, of the old house in the west:
it looked a shapeless and fantastic place, furnished with strange
pillars and stranger ornaments on the projecting porch; and on one side
a roof dipped down almost to the earth, and in the centre there was
something that might almost be a tower rising above the rest of the
building. Then there were documents that seemed all names and dates,
with here and there a coat of arms done in the margin, and she came upon
a string of uncouth Welsh names linked together by the word 'ap' in a
chain that looked endless. There was a paper covered with signs and
figures that meant nothing to her, and then there were the pocket-books,
full of old-fashioned writing, and much of it in Latin, as her husband
told her--it was a collection as void of significance as a treatise on
conic sections, so far as Mary was concerned. But night after night
Darnell shut himself up with the musty rolls, and more than ever when he
rejoined her he bore upon his face the blazonry of some great adventure.
And one night she asked him what interested him so much in the papers he
had shown her.

He was delighted with the question. Somehow they had not talked much
together for the last few weeks, and he began to tell her of the records
of the old race from which he came, of the old strange house of grey
stone between the forest and the river. The family went back and back,
he said, far into the dim past, beyond the Normans, beyond the Saxons,
far into the Roman days, and for many hundred years they had been petty
kings, with a strong fortress high up on the hill, in the heart of the
forest; and even now the great mounds remained, whence one could look
through the trees towards the mountain on one side and across the yellow
sea on the other. The real name of the family was not Darnell; that was
assumed by one Iolo ap Taliesin ap Iorwerth in the sixteenth
century--why, Darnell did not seem to understand. And then he told her
how the race had dwindled in prosperity, century by century, till at
last there was nothing left but the grey house and a few acres of land
bordering the river.

'And do you know, Mary,' he said, 'I suppose we shall go and live there
some day or other. My great-uncle, who has the place now, made money in
business when he was a young man, and I believe he will leave it all to
me. I know I am the only relation he has. How strange it would be. What
a change from the life here.'

'You never told me that. Don't you think your great-uncle might leave
his house and his money to somebody he knows really well? You haven't
seen him since you were a little boy, have you?'

'No; but we write once a year. And from what I have heard my father say,
I am sure the old man would never leave the house out of the family. Do
you think you would like it?'

'I don't know. Isn't it very lonely?'

'I suppose it is. I forget whether there are any other houses in sight,
but I don't think there are any at all near. But what a change! No City,
no streets, no people passing to and fro; only the sound of the wind and
the sight of the green leaves and the green hills, and the song of the
voices of the earth.'... He checked himself suddenly, as if he feared
that he was about to tell some secret that must not yet be uttered; and
indeed, as he spoke of the change from the little street in Shepherd's
Bush to that ancient house in the woods of the far west, a change seemed
already to possess himself, and his voice put on the modulation of an
antique chant. Mary looked at him steadily and touched his arm, and he
drew a long breath before he spoke again.

'It is the old blood calling to the old land,' he said. 'I was
forgetting that I am a clerk in the City.'

It was, doubtless, the old blood that had suddenly stirred in him; the
resurrection of the old spirit that for many centuries had been
faithful to secrets that are now disregarded by most of us, that now day
by day was quickened more and more in his heart, and grew so strong that
it was hard to conceal. He was indeed almost in the position of the man
in the tale, who, by a sudden electric shock, lost the vision of the
things about him in the London streets, and gazed instead upon the sea
and shore of an island in the Antipodes; for Darnell only clung with an
effort to the interests and the atmosphere which, till lately, had
seemed all the world to him; and the grey house and the wood and the
river, symbols of the other sphere, intruded as it were into the
landscape of the London suburb.

But he went on, with more restraint, telling his stories of far-off
ancestors, how one of them, the most remote of all, was called a saint,
and was supposed to possess certain mysterious secrets often alluded to
in the papers as the 'Hidden Songs of Iolo Sant.' And then with an
abrupt transition he recalled memories of his father and of the strange,
shiftless life in dingy lodgings in the backwaters of London, of the dim
stucco streets that were his first recollections, of forgotten squares
in North London, and of the figure of his father, a grave bearded man
who seemed always in a dream, as if he too sought for the vision of a
land beyond the strong walls, a land where there were deep orchards and
many shining hills, and fountains and water-pools gleaming under the
leaves of the wood.

'I believe my father earned his living,' he went on, 'such a living as
he did earn, at the Record Office and the British Museum. He used to
hunt up things for lawyers and country parsons who wanted old deeds
inspected. He never made much, and we were always moving from one
lodging to another--always to out-of-the-way places where everything
seemed to have run to seed. We never knew our neighbours--we moved too
often for that--but my father had about half a dozen friends, elderly
men like himself, who used to come to see us pretty often; and then, if
there was any money, the lodging-house servant would go out for beer,
and they would sit and smoke far into the night.

'I never knew much about these friends of his, but they all had the same
look, the look of longing for something hidden. They talked of mysteries
that I never understood, very little of their own lives, and when they
did speak of ordinary affairs one could tell that they thought such
matters as money and the want of it were unimportant trifles. When I
grew up and went into the City, and met other young fellows and heard
their way of talking, I wondered whether my father and his friends were
not a little queer in their heads; but I know better now.'

So night after night Darnell talked to his wife, seeming to wander
aimlessly from the dingy lodging-houses, where he had spent his boyhood
in the company of his father and the other seekers, to the old house
hidden in that far western valley, and the old race that had so long
looked at the setting of the sun over the mountain. But in truth there
was one end in all that he spoke, and Mary felt that beneath his words,
however indifferent they might seem, there was hidden a purpose, that
they were to embark on a great and marvellous adventure.

So day by day the world became more magical; day by day the work of
separation was being performed, the gross accidents were being refined
away. Darnell neglected no instruments that might be useful in the work;
and now he neither lounged at home on Sunday mornings, nor did he
accompany his wife to the Gothic blasphemy which pretended to be a
church. They had discovered a little church of another fashion in a back
street, and Darnell, who had found in one of the old notebooks the maxim
_Incredibilia sola Credenda_, soon perceived how high and glorious a
thing was that service at which he assisted. Our stupid ancestors taught
us that we could become wise by studying books on 'science,' by meddling
with test-tubes, geological specimens, microscopic preparations, and the
like; but they who have cast off these follies know that they must read
not 'science' books, but mass-books, and that the soul is made wise by
the contemplation of mystic ceremonies and elaborate and curious rites.
In such things Darnell found a wonderful mystery language, which spoke
at once more secretly and more directly than the formal creeds; and he
saw that, in a sense, the whole world is but a great ceremony or
sacrament, which teaches under visible forms a hidden and transcendent
doctrine. It was thus that he found in the ritual of the church a
perfect image of the world; an image purged, exalted, and illuminate, a
holy house built up of shining and translucent stones, in which the
burning torches were more significant than the wheeling stars, and the
fuming incense was a more certain token than the rising of the mist. His
soul went forth with the albed procession in its white and solemn order,
the mystic dance that signifies rapture and a joy above all joys, and
when he beheld Love slain and rise again victorious he knew that he
witnessed, in a figure, the consummation of all things, the Bridal of
all Bridals, the mystery that is beyond all mysteries, accomplished from
the foundation of the world. So day by day the house of his life became
more magical.

And at the same time he began to guess that if in the New Life there are
new and unheard-of joys, there are also new and unheard-of dangers. In
his manuscript books which professed to deliver the outer sense of those
mysterious 'Hidden Songs of Iolo Sant' there was a little chapter that
bore the heading: _Fons Sacer non in communem Vsum convertendus est_,
and by diligence, with much use of the grammar and dictionary, Darnell
was able to construe the by no means complex Latin of his ancestor. The
special book which contained the chapter in question was one of the most
singular in the collection, since it bore the title _Terra de Iolo_, and
on the surface, with an ingenious concealment of its real symbolism, it
affected to give an account of the orchards, fields, woods, roads,
tenements, and waterways in the possession of Darnell's ancestors. Here,
then, he read of the Holy Well, hidden in the Wistman's Wood--_Sylva
Sapientum_--'a fountain of abundant water, which no heats of summer can
ever dry, which no flood can ever defile, which is as a water of life,
to them that thirst for life, a stream of cleansing to them that would
be pure, and a medicine of such healing virtue that by it, through the
might of God and the intercession of His saints, the most grievous
wounds are made whole.' But the water of this well was to be kept
sacred perpetually, it was not to be used for any common purpose, nor to
satisfy any bodily thirst; but ever to be esteemed as holy, 'even as the
water which the priest hath hallowed.' And in the margin a comment in a
later hand taught Darnell something of the meaning of these
prohibitions. He was warned not to use the Well of Life as a mere luxury
of mortal life, as a new sensation, as a means of making the insipid cup
of everyday existence more palatable. 'For,' said the commentator, 'we
are not called to sit as the spectators in a theatre, there to watch the
play performed before us, but we are rather summoned to stand in the
very scene itself, and there fervently to enact our parts in a great and
wonderful mystery.'

Darnell could quite understand the temptation that was thus indicated.
Though he had gone but a little way on the path, and had barely tested
the over-runnings of that mystic well, he was already aware of the
enchantment that was transmuting all the world about him, informing his
life with a strange significance and romance. London seemed a city of
the Arabian Nights, and its labyrinths of streets an enchanted maze; its
long avenues of lighted lamps were as starry systems, and its immensity
became for him an image of the endless universe. He could well imagine
how pleasant it might be to linger in such a world as this, to sit apart
and dream, beholding the strange pageant played before him; but the
Sacred Well was not for common use, it was for the cleansing of the
soul, and the healing of the grievous wounds of the spirit. There must
be yet another transformation: London had become Bagdad; it must at
last be transmuted to Syon, or in the phrase of one of his old
documents, the City of the Cup.

And there were yet darker perils which the Iolo MSS. (as his father had
named the collection) hinted at more or less obscurely. There were
suggestions of an awful region which the soul might enter, of a
transmutation that was unto death, of evocations which could summon the
utmost forces of evil from their dark places--in a word, of that sphere
which is represented to most of us under the crude and somewhat childish
symbolism of Black Magic. And here again he was not altogether without a
dim comprehension of what was meant. He found himself recalling an odd
incident that had happened long ago, which had remained all the years in
his mind unheeded, amongst the many insignificant recollections of his
childhood, and now rose before him, clear and distinct and full of
meaning. It was on that memorable visit to the old house in the west,
and the whole scene returned, with its smallest events, and the voices
seemed to sound in his ears. It was a grey, still day of heavy heat that
he remembered: he had stood on the lawn after breakfast, and wondered at
the great peace and silence of the world. Not a leaf stirred in the
trees on the lawn, not a whisper came from the myriad leaves of the
wood; the flowers gave out sweet and heavy odours as if they breathed
the dreams of the summer night; and far down the valley, the winding
river was like dim silver under that dim and silvery sky, and the far
hills and woods and fields vanished in the mist. The stillness of the
air held him as with a charm; he leant all the morning against the rails
that parted the lawn from the meadow, breathing the mystic breath of
summer, and watching the fields brighten as with a sudden blossoming of
shining flowers as the high mist grew thin for a moment before the
hidden sun. As he watched thus, a man weary with heat, with some glance
of horror in his eyes, passed him on his way to the house; but he stayed
at his post till the old bell in the turret rang, and they dined all
together, masters and servants, in the dark cool room that looked
towards the still leaves of the wood. He could see that his uncle was
upset about something, and when they had finished dinner he heard him
tell his father that there was trouble at a farm; and it was settled
that they should all drive over in the afternoon to some place with a
strange name. But when the time came Mr. Darnell was too deep in old
books and tobacco smoke to be stirred from his corner, and Edward and
his uncle went alone in the dog-cart. They drove swiftly down the narrow
lane, into the road that followed the winding river, and crossed the
bridge at Caermaen by the mouldering Roman walls, and then, skirting the
deserted, echoing village, they came out on a broad white turnpike road,
and the limestone dust followed them like a cloud. Then, suddenly, they
turned to the north by such a road as Edward had never seen before. It
was so narrow that there was barely room for the cart to pass, and the
footway was of rock, and the banks rose high above them as they slowly
climbed the long, steep way, and the untrimmed hedges on either side
shut out the light. And the ferns grew thick and green upon the banks,
and hidden wells dripped down upon them; and the old man told him how
the lane in winter was a torrent of swirling water, so that no one
could pass by it. On they went, ascending and then again descending,
always in that deep hollow under the wild woven boughs, and the boy
wondered vainly what the country was like on either side. And now the
air grew darker, and the hedge on one bank was but the verge of a dark
and rustling wood, and the grey limestone rocks had changed to dark-red
earth flecked with green patches and veins of marl, and suddenly in the
stillness from the depths of the wood a bird began to sing a melody that
charmed the heart into another world, that sang to the child's soul of
the blessed faery realm beyond the woods of the earth, where the wounds
of man are healed. And so at last, after many turnings and windings,
they came to a high bare land where the lane broadened out into a kind
of common, and along the edge of this place there were scattered three
or four old cottages, and one of them was a little tavern. Here they
stopped, and a man came out and tethered the tired horse to a post and
gave him water; and old Mr. Darnell took the child's hand and led him by
a path across the fields. The boy could see the country now, but it was
all a strange, undiscovered land; they were in the heart of a wilderness
of hills and valleys that he had never looked upon, and they were going
down a wild, steep hillside, where the narrow path wound in and out
amidst gorse and towering bracken, and the sun gleaming out for a
moment, there was a gleam of white water far below in a narrow valley,
where a little brook poured and rippled from stone to stone. They went
down the hill, and through a brake, and then, hidden in dark-green
orchards, they came upon a long, low whitewashed house, with a stone
roof strangely coloured by the growth of moss and lichens. Mr. Darnell
knocked at a heavy oaken door, and they came into a dim room where but
little light entered through the thick glass in the deep-set window.
There were heavy beams in the ceiling, and a great fireplace sent out an
odour of burning wood that Darnell never forgot, and the room seemed to
him full of women who talked all together in frightened tones. Mr.
Darnell beckoned to a tall, grey old man, who wore corduroy
knee-breeches, and the boy, sitting on a high straight-backed chair,
could see the old man and his uncle passing to and fro across the
window-panes, as they walked together on the garden path. The women
stopped their talk for a moment, and one of them brought him a glass of
milk and an apple from some cold inner chamber; and then, suddenly, from
a room above there rang out a shrill and terrible shriek, and then, in a
young girl's voice, a more terrible song. It was not like anything the
child had ever heard, but as the man recalled it to his memory, he knew
to what song it might be compared--to a certain chant indeed that
summons the angels and archangels to assist in the great Sacrifice. But
as this song chants of the heavenly army, so did that seem to summon all
the hierarchy of evil, the hosts of Lilith and Samael; and the words
that rang out with such awful modulations--_neumata inferorum_--were in
some unknown tongue that few men have ever heard on earth.

The women glared at one another with horror in their eyes, and he saw
one or two of the oldest of them clumsily making an old sign upon their
breasts. Then they began to speak again, and he remembered fragments of
their talk.

'She has been up there,' said one, pointing vaguely over her shoulder.

'She'd never know the way,' answered another. 'They be all gone that
went there.'

'There be nought there in these days.'

'How can you tell that, Gwenllian? 'Tis not for us to say that.'

'My great-grandmother did know some that had been there,' said a very
old woman. 'She told me how they was taken afterwards.'

And then his uncle appeared at the door, and they went their way as they
had come. Edward Darnell never heard any more of it, nor whether the
girl died or recovered from her strange attack; but the scene had
haunted his mind in boyhood, and now the recollection of it came to him
with a certain note of warning, as a symbol of dangers that might be in
the way.

       *       *       *       *       *

It would be impossible to carry on the history of Edward Darnell and of
Mary his wife to a greater length, since from this point their legend is
full of impossible events, and seems to put on the semblance of the
stories of the Graal. It is certain, indeed, that in this world they
changed their lives, like King Arthur, but this is a work which no
chronicler has cared to describe with any amplitude of detail. Darnell,
it is true, made a little book, partly consisting of queer verse which
might have been written by an inspired infant, and partly made up of
'notes and exclamations' in an odd dog-Latin which he had picked up
from the 'Iolo MSS.', but it is to be feared that this work, even if
published in its entirety, would cast but little light on a perplexing
story. He called this piece of literature 'In Exitu Israel,' and wrote
on the title page the motto, doubtless of his own composition, '_Nunc
certe scio quod omnia legenda; omnes historiæ, omnes fabulæ, omnis
Scriptura sint de ME narrata_.' It is only too evident that his Latin
was not learnt at the feet of Cicero; but in this dialect he relates the
great history of the 'New Life' as it was manifested to him. The 'poems'
are even stranger. One, headed (with an odd reminiscence of
old-fashioned books) 'Lines written on looking down from a Height in
London on a Board School suddenly lit up by the Sun' begins thus:--

    One day when I was all alone
    I found a wondrous little stone,
    It lay forgotten on the road
    Far from the ways of man's abode.
    When on this stone mine eyes I cast
    I saw my Treasure found at last.
    I pressed it hard against my face,
    I covered it with my embrace,
    I hid it in a secret place.
    And every day I went to see
    This stone that was my ecstasy;
    And worshipped it with flowers rare,
    And secret words and sayings fair.
    O stone, so rare and red and wise
    O fragment of far Paradise,
    O Star, whose light is life! O Sea,
    Whose ocean is infinity!
    Thou art a fire that ever burns,
    And all the world to wonder turns;
    And all the dust of the dull day
    By thee is changed and purged away,
    So that, where'er I look, I see
    A world of a Great Majesty.
    The sullen river rolls all gold,
    The desert park's a faery wold,
    When on the trees the wind is borne
    I hear the sound of Arthur's horn
    I see no town of grim grey ways,
    But a great city all ablaze
    With burning torches, to light up
    The pinnacles that shrine the Cup.
    Ever the magic wine is poured,
    Ever the Feast shines on the board,
    Ever the song is borne on high
    That chants the holy Magistry--
      Etc. etc. etc.

From such documents as these it is clearly impossible to gather any very
definite information. But on the last page Darnell has written--

'So I awoke from a dream of a London suburb, of daily labour, of weary,
useless little things; and as my eyes were opened I saw that I was in an
ancient wood, where a clear well rose into grey film and vapour beneath
a misty, glimmering heat. And a form came towards me from the hidden
places of the wood, and my love and I were united by the well.'




The White People


PROLOGUE

'Sorcery and sanctity,' said Ambrose, 'these are the only realities.
Each is an ecstasy, a withdrawal from the common life.'

Cotgrave listened, interested. He had been brought by a friend to this
mouldering house in a northern suburb, through an old garden to the room
where Ambrose the recluse dozed and dreamed over his books.

'Yes,' he went on, 'magic is justified of her children. There are many,
I think, who eat dry crusts and drink water, with a joy infinitely
sharper than anything within the experience of the "practical" epicure.'

'You are speaking of the saints?'

'Yes, and of the sinners, too. I think you are falling into the very
general error of confining the spiritual world to the supremely good;
but the supremely wicked, necessarily, have their portion in it. The
merely carnal, sensual man can no more be a great sinner than he can be
a great saint. Most of us are just indifferent, mixed-up creatures; we
muddle through the world without realizing the meaning and the inner
sense of things, and, consequently, our wickedness and our goodness are
alike second-rate, unimportant.'

'And you think the great sinner, then, will be an ascetic, as well as
the great saint?'

'Great people of all kinds forsake the imperfect copies and go to the
perfect originals. I have no doubt but that many of the very highest
among the saints have never done a "good action" (using the words in
their ordinary sense). And, on the other hand, there have been those who
have sounded the very depths of sin, who all their lives have never done
an "ill deed."'

He went out of the room for a moment, and Cotgrave, in high delight,
turned to his friend and thanked him for the introduction.

'He's grand,' he said. 'I never saw that kind of lunatic before.'

Ambrose returned with more whisky and helped the two men in a liberal
manner. He abused the teetotal sect with ferocity, as he handed the
seltzer, and pouring out a glass of water for himself, was about to
resume his monologue, when Cotgrave broke in--

'I can't stand it, you know,' he said, 'your paradoxes are too
monstrous. A man may be a great sinner and yet never do anything sinful!
Come!'

'You're quite wrong,' said Ambrose. 'I never make paradoxes; I wish I
could. I merely said that a man may have an exquisite taste in Romanée
Conti, and yet never have even smelt four ale. That's all, and it's more
like a truism than a paradox, isn't it? Your surprise at my remark is
due to the fact that you haven't realized what sin is. Oh, yes, there is
a sort of connexion between Sin with the capital letter, and actions
which are commonly called sinful: with murder, theft, adultery, and so
forth. Much the same connexion that there is between the A, B, C and
fine literature. But I believe that the misconception--it is all but
universal--arises in great measure from our looking at the matter
through social spectacles. We think that a man who does evil to _us_ and
to his neighbours must be very evil. So he is, from a social standpoint;
but can't you realize that Evil in its essence is a lonely thing, a
passion of the solitary, individual soul? Really, the average murderer,
_quâ_ murderer, is not by any means a sinner in the true sense of the
word. He is simply a wild beast that we have to get rid of to save our
own necks from his knife. I should class him rather with tigers than
with sinners.'

'It seems a little strange.'

'I think not. The murderer murders not from positive qualities, but from
negative ones; he lacks something which non-murderers possess. Evil, of
course, is wholly positive--only it is on the wrong side. You may
believe me that sin in its proper sense is very rare; it is probable
that there have been far fewer sinners than saints. Yes, your standpoint
is all very well for practical, social purposes; we are naturally
inclined to think that a person who is very disagreeable to us must be a
very great sinner! It is very disagreeable to have one's pocket picked,
and we pronounce the thief to be a very great sinner. In truth, he is
merely an undeveloped man. He cannot be a saint, of course; but he may
be, and often is, an infinitely better creature than thousands who have
never broken a single commandment. He is a great nuisance to _us_, I
admit, and we very properly lock him up if we catch him; but between his
troublesome and unsocial action and evil--Oh, the connexion is of the
weakest.'

It was getting very late. The man who had brought Cotgrave had probably
heard all this before, since he assisted with a bland and judicious
smile, but Cotgrave began to think that his 'lunatic' was turning into a
sage.

'Do you know,' he said, 'you interest me immensely? You think, then,
that we do not understand the real nature of evil?'

'No, I don't think we do. We over-estimate it and we under-estimate it.
We take the very numerous infractions of our social "bye-laws"--the very
necessary and very proper regulations which keep the human company
together--and we get frightened at the prevalence of "sin" and "evil."
But this is really nonsense. Take theft, for example. Have you any
_horror_ at the thought of Robin Hood, of the Highland caterans of the
seventeenth century, of the moss-troopers, of the company promoters of
our day?

'Then, on the other hand, we underrate evil. We attach such an enormous
importance to the "sin" of meddling with our pockets (and our wives)
that we have quite forgotten the awfulness of real sin.'

'And what is sin?' said Cotgrave.

'I think I must reply to your question by another. What would your
feelings be, seriously, if your cat or your dog began to talk to you,
and to dispute with you in human accents? You would be overwhelmed with
horror. I am sure of it. And if the roses in your garden sang a weird
song, you would go mad. And suppose the stones in the road began to
swell and grow before your eyes, and if the pebble that you noticed at
night had shot out stony blossoms in the morning?

'Well, these examples may give you some notion of what sin really is.'

'Look here,' said the third man, hitherto placid, 'you two seem pretty
well wound up. But I'm going home. I've missed my tram, and I shall have
to walk.'

Ambrose and Cotgrave seemed to settle down more profoundly when the
other had gone out into the early misty morning and the pale light of
the lamps.

'You astonish me,' said Cotgrave. 'I had never thought of that. If that
is really so, one must turn everything upside down. Then the essence of
sin really is----'

'In the taking of heaven by storm, it seems to me,' said Ambrose. 'It
appears to me that it is simply an attempt to penetrate into another and
higher sphere in a forbidden manner. You can understand why it is so
rare. There are few, indeed, who wish to penetrate into other spheres,
higher or lower, in ways allowed or forbidden. Men, in the mass, are
amply content with life as they find it. Therefore there are few saints,
and sinners (in the proper sense) are fewer still, and men of genius,
who partake sometimes of each character, are rare also. Yes; on the
whole, it is, perhaps, harder to be a great sinner than a great saint.'

'There is something profoundly unnatural about sin? Is that what you
mean?'

'Exactly. Holiness requires as great, or almost as great, an effort; but
holiness works on lines that _were_ natural once; it is an effort to
recover the ecstasy that was before the Fall. But sin is an effort to
gain the ecstasy and the knowledge that pertain alone to angels, and in
making this effort man becomes a demon. I told you that the mere
murderer is not _therefore_ a sinner; that is true, but the sinner is
sometimes a murderer. Gilles de Raiz is an instance. So you see that
while the good and the evil are unnatural to man as he now is--to man
the social, civilized being--evil is unnatural in a much deeper sense
than good. The saint endeavours to recover a gift which he has lost; the
sinner tries to obtain something which was never his. In brief, he
repeats the Fall.'

'But are you a Catholic?' said Cotgrave.

'Yes; I am a member of the persecuted Anglican Church.'

'Then, how about those texts which seem to reckon as sin that which you
would set down as a mere trivial dereliction?'

'Yes; but in one place the word "sorcerers" comes in the same sentence,
doesn't it? That seems to me to give the key-note. Consider: can you
imagine for a moment that a false statement which saves an innocent
man's life is a sin? No; very good, then, it is not the mere liar who is
excluded by those words; it is, above all, the "sorcerers" who use the
material life, who use the failings incidental to material life as
instruments to obtain their infinitely wicked ends. And let me tell you
this: our higher senses are so blunted, we are so drenched with
materialism, that we should probably fail to recognize real wickedness
if we encountered it.'

'But shouldn't we experience a certain horror--a terror such as you
hinted we would experience if a rose tree sang--in the mere presence of
an evil man?'

'We should if we were natural: children and women feel this horror you
speak of, even animals experience it. But with most of us convention and
civilization and education have blinded and deafened and obscured the
natural reason. No, sometimes we may recognize evil by its hatred of the
good--one doesn't need much penetration to guess at the influence which
dictated, quite unconsciously, the "Blackwood" review of Keats--but this
is purely incidental; and, as a rule, I suspect that the Hierarchs of
Tophet pass quite unnoticed, or, perhaps, in certain cases, as good but
mistaken men.'

'But you used the word "unconscious" just now, of Keats' reviewers. Is
wickedness ever unconscious?'

'Always. It must be so. It is like holiness and genius in this as in
other points; it is a certain rapture or ecstasy of the soul; a
transcendent effort to surpass the ordinary bounds. So, surpassing
these, it surpasses also the understanding, the faculty that takes note
of that which comes before it. No, a man may be infinitely and horribly
wicked and never suspect it. But I tell you, evil in this, its certain
and true sense, is rare, and I think it is growing rarer.'

'I am trying to get hold of it all,' said Cotgrave. 'From what you say,
I gather that the true evil differs generically from that which we call
evil?'

'Quite so. There is, no doubt, an analogy between the two; a resemblance
such as enables us to use, quite legitimately, such terms as the "foot
of the mountain" and the "leg of the table." And, sometimes, of course,
the two speak, as it were, in the same language. The rough miner, or
"puddler," the untrained, undeveloped "tiger-man," heated by a quart or
two above his usual measure, comes home and kicks his irritating and
injudicious wife to death. He is a murderer. And Gilles de Raiz was a
murderer. But you see the gulf that separates the two? The "word," if I
may so speak, is accidentally the same in each case, but the "meaning"
is utterly different. It is flagrant "Hobson Jobson" to confuse the two,
or rather, it is as if one supposed that Juggernaut and the Argonauts
had something to do etymologically with one another. And no doubt the
same weak likeness, or analogy, runs between all the "social" sins and
the real spiritual sins, and in some cases, perhaps, the lesser may be
"schoolmasters" to lead one on to the greater--from the shadow to the
reality. If you are anything of a Theologian, you will see the
importance of all this.'

'I am sorry to say,' remarked Cotgrave, 'that I have devoted very little
of my time to theology. Indeed, I have often wondered on what grounds
theologians have claimed the title of Science of Sciences for their
favourite study; since the "theological" books I have looked into have
always seemed to me to be concerned with feeble and obvious pieties, or
with the kings of Israel and Judah. I do not care to hear about those
kings.'

Ambrose grinned.

'We must try to avoid theological discussion,' he said. 'I perceive that
you would be a bitter disputant. But perhaps the "dates of the kings"
have as much to do with theology as the hobnails of the murderous
puddler with evil.'

'Then, to return to our main subject, you think that sin is an esoteric,
occult thing?'

'Yes. It is the infernal miracle as holiness is the supernal. Now and
then it is raised to such a pitch that we entirely fail to suspect its
existence; it is like the note of the great pedal pipes of the organ,
which is so deep that we cannot hear it. In other cases it may lead to
the lunatic asylum, or to still stranger issues. But you must never
confuse it with mere social misdoing. Remember how the Apostle, speaking
of the "other side," distinguishes between "charitable" actions and
charity. And as one may give all one's goods to the poor, and yet lack
charity; so, remember, one may avoid every crime and yet be a sinner.'

'Your psychology is very strange to me,' said Cotgrave, 'but I confess I
like it, and I suppose that one might fairly deduce from your premisses
the conclusion that the real sinner might very possibly strike the
observer as a harmless personage enough?'

'Certainly; because the true evil has nothing to do with social life or
social laws, or if it has, only incidentally and accidentally. It is a
lonely passion of the soul--or a passion of the lonely soul--whichever
you like. If, by chance, we understand it, and grasp its full
significance, then, indeed, it will fill us with horror and with awe.
But this emotion is widely distinguished from the fear and the disgust
with which we regard the ordinary criminal, since this latter is largely
or entirely founded on the regard which we have for our own skins or
purses. We hate a murderer, because we know that we should hate to be
murdered, or to have any one that we like murdered. So, on the "other
side," we venerate the saints, but we don't "like" them as we like our
friends. Can you persuade yourself that you would have "enjoyed" St.
Paul's company? Do you think that you and I would have "got on" with Sir
Galahad?

'So with the sinners, as with the saints. If you met a very evil man,
and recognized his evil; he would, no doubt, fill you with horror and
awe; but there is no reason why you should "dislike" him. On the
contrary, it is quite possible that if you could succeed in putting the
sin out of your mind you might find the sinner capital company, and in a
little while you might have to reason yourself back into horror. Still,
how awful it is. If the roses and the lilies suddenly sang on this
coming morning; if the furniture began to move in procession, as in De
Maupassant's tale!'

'I am glad you have come back to that comparison,' said Cotgrave,
'because I wanted to ask you what it is that corresponds in humanity to
these imaginary feats of inanimate things. In a word--what is sin? You
have given me, I know, an abstract definition, but I should like a
concrete example.'

'I told you it was very rare,' said Ambrose, who appeared willing to
avoid the giving of a direct answer. 'The materialism of the age, which
has done a good deal to suppress sanctity, has done perhaps more to
suppress evil. We find the earth so very comfortable that we have no
inclination either for ascents or descents. It would seem as if the
scholar who decided to "specialize" in Tophet, would be reduced to
purely antiquarian researches. No palæontologist could show you a _live_
pterodactyl.'

'And yet you, I think, have "specialized," and I believe that your
researches have descended to our modern times.'

'You are really interested, I see. Well, I confess, that I have dabbled
a little, and if you like I can show you something that bears on the
very curious subject we have been discussing.'

Ambrose took a candle and went away to a far, dim corner of the room.
Cotgrave saw him open a venerable bureau that stood there, and from some
secret recess he drew out a parcel, and came back to the window where
they had been sitting.

Ambrose undid a wrapping of paper, and produced a green pocket-book.

'You will take care of it?' he said. 'Don't leave it lying about. It is
one of the choicer pieces in my collection, and I should be very sorry
if it were lost.'

He fondled the faded binding.

'I knew the girl who wrote this,' he said. 'When you read it, you will
see how it illustrates the talk we have had to-night. There is a sequel,
too, but I won't talk of that.'

'There was an odd article in one of the reviews some months ago,' he
began again, with the air of a man who changes the subject. 'It was
written by a doctor--Dr. Coryn, I think, was the name. He says that a
lady, watching her little girl playing at the drawing-room window,
suddenly saw the heavy sash give way and fall on the child's fingers.
The lady fainted, I think, but at any rate the doctor was summoned, and
when he had dressed the child's wounded and maimed fingers he was
summoned to the mother. She was groaning with pain, and it was found
that three fingers of her hand, corresponding with those that had been
injured on the child's hand, were swollen and inflamed, and later, in
the doctor's language, purulent sloughing set in.'

Ambrose still handled delicately the green volume.

'Well, here it is,' he said at last, parting with difficulty, it seemed,
from his treasure.

'You will bring it back as soon as you have read it,' he said, as they
went out into the hall, into the old garden, faint with the odour of
white lilies.

There was a broad red band in the east as Cotgrave turned to go, and
from the high ground where he stood he saw that awful spectacle of
London in a dream.


THE GREEN BOOK

The morocco binding of the book was faded, and the colour had grown
faint, but there were no stains nor bruises nor marks of usage. The book
looked as if it had been bought 'on a visit to London' some seventy or
eighty years ago, and had somehow been forgotten and suffered to lie
away out of sight. There was an old, delicate, lingering odour about it,
such an odour as sometimes haunts an ancient piece of furniture for a
century or more. The end-papers, inside the binding, were oddly
decorated with coloured patterns and faded gold. It looked small, but
the paper was fine, and there were many leaves, closely covered with
minute, painfully formed characters.

I found this book (the manuscript began) in a drawer in the old bureau
that stands on the landing. It was a very rainy day and I could not go
out, so in the afternoon I got a candle and rummaged in the bureau.
Nearly all the drawers were full of old dresses, but one of the small
ones looked empty, and I found this book hidden right at the back. I
wanted a book like this, so I took it to write in. It is full of
secrets. I have a great many other books of secrets I have written,
hidden in a safe place, and I am going to write here many of the old
secrets and some new ones; but there are some I shall not put down at
all. I must not write down the real names of the days and months which I
found out a year ago, nor the way to make the Aklo letters, or the Chian
language, or the great beautiful Circles, nor the Mao Games, nor the
chief songs. I may write something about all these things but not the
way to do them, for peculiar reasons. And I must not say who the Nymphs
are, or the Dôls, or Jeelo, or what voolas mean. All these are most
secret secrets, and I am glad when I remember what they are, and how
many wonderful languages I know, but there are some things that I call
the secrets of the secrets of the secrets that I dare not think of
unless I am quite alone, and then I shut my eyes, and put my hands over
them and whisper the word, and the Alala comes. I only do this at night
in my room or in certain woods that I know, but I must not describe
them, as they are secret woods. Then there are the Ceremonies, which are
all of them important, but some are more delightful than others--there
are the White Ceremonies, and the Green Ceremonies, and the Scarlet
Ceremonies. The Scarlet Ceremonies are the best, but there is only one
place where they can be performed properly, though there is a very nice
imitation which I have done in other places. Besides these, I have the
dances, and the Comedy, and I have done the Comedy sometimes when the
others were looking, and they didn't understand anything about it. I
was very little when I first knew about these things.

When I was very small, and mother was alive, I can remember remembering
things before that, only it has all got confused. But I remember when I
was five or six I heard them talking about me when they thought I was
not noticing. They were saying how queer I was a year or two before, and
how nurse had called my mother to come and listen to me talking all to
myself, and I was saying words that nobody could understand. I was
speaking the Xu language, but I only remember a very few of the words,
as it was about the little white faces that used to look at me when I
was lying in my cradle. They used to talk to me, and I learnt their
language and talked to them in it about some great white place where
they lived, where the trees and the grass were all white, and there were
white hills as high up as the moon, and a cold wind. I have often
dreamed of it afterwards, but the faces went away when I was very
little. But a wonderful thing happened when I was about five. My nurse
was carrying me on her shoulder; there was a field of yellow corn, and
we went through it, it was very hot. Then we came to a path through a
wood, and a tall man came after us, and went with us till we came to a
place where there was a deep pool, and it was very dark and shady. Nurse
put me down on the soft moss under a tree, and she said: 'She can't get
to the pond now.' So they left me there, and I sat quite still and
watched, and out of the water and out of the wood came two wonderful
white people, and they began to play and dance and sing. They were a
kind of creamy white like the old ivory figure in the drawing-room; one
was a beautiful lady with kind dark eyes, and a grave face, and long
black hair, and she smiled such a strange sad smile at the other, who
laughed and came to her. They played together, and danced round and
round the pool, and they sang a song till I fell asleep. Nurse woke me
up when she came back, and she was looking something like the lady had
looked, so I told her all about it, and asked her why she looked like
that. At first she cried, and then she looked very frightened, and
turned quite pale. She put me down on the grass and stared at me, and I
could see she was shaking all over. Then she said I had been dreaming,
but I knew I hadn't. Then she made me promise not to say a word about it
to anybody, and if I did I should be thrown into the black pit. I was
not frightened at all, though nurse was, and I never forgot about it,
because when I shut my eyes and it was quite quiet, and I was all alone,
I could see them again, very faint and far away, but very splendid; and
little bits of the song they sang came into my head, but I couldn't sing
it.

I was thirteen, nearly fourteen, when I had a very singular adventure,
so strange that the day on which it happened is always called the White
Day. My mother had been dead for more than a year, and in the morning I
had lessons, but they let me go out for walks in the afternoon. And this
afternoon I walked a new way, and a little brook led me into a new
country, but I tore my frock getting through some of the difficult
places, as the way was through many bushes, and beneath the low branches
of trees, and up thorny thickets on the hills, and by dark woods full of
creeping thorns. And it was a long, long way. It seemed as if I was
going on for ever and ever, and I had to creep by a place like a tunnel
where a brook must have been, but all the water had dried up, and the
floor was rocky, and the bushes had grown overhead till they met, so
that it was quite dark. And I went on and on through that dark place; it
was a long, long way. And I came to a hill that I never saw before. I
was in a dismal thicket full of black twisted boughs that tore me as I
went through them, and I cried out because I was smarting all over, and
then I found that I was climbing, and I went up and up a long way, till
at last the thicket stopped and I came out crying just under the top of
a big bare place, where there were ugly grey stones lying all about on
the grass, and here and there a little twisted, stunted tree came out
from under a stone, like a snake. And I went up, right to the top, a
long way. I never saw such big ugly stones before; they came out of the
earth some of them, and some looked as if they had been rolled to where
they were, and they went on and on as far as I could see, a long, long
way. I looked out from them and saw the country, but it was strange. It
was winter time, and there were black terrible woods hanging from the
hills all round; it was like seeing a large room hung with black
curtains, and the shape of the trees seemed quite different from any I
had ever seen before. I was afraid. Then beyond the woods there were
other hills round in a great ring, but I had never seen any of them; it
all looked black, and everything had a voor over it. It was all so still
and silent, and the sky was heavy and grey and sad, like a wicked
voorish dome in Deep Dendo. I went on into the dreadful rocks. There
were hundreds and hundreds of them. Some were like horrid-grinning men;
I could see their faces as if they would jump at me out of the stone,
and catch hold of me, and drag me with them back into the rock, so that
I should always be there. And there were other rocks that were like
animals, creeping, horrible animals, putting out their tongues, and
others were like words that I could not say, and others like dead people
lying on the grass. I went on among them, though they frightened me, and
my heart was full of wicked songs that they put into it; and I wanted to
make faces and twist myself about in the way they did, and I went on and
on a long way till at last I liked the rocks, and they didn't frighten
me any more. I sang the songs I thought of; songs full of words that
must not be spoken or written down. Then I made faces like the faces on
the rocks, and I twisted myself about like the twisted ones, and I lay
down flat on the ground like the dead ones, and I went up to one that
was grinning, and put my arms round him and hugged him. And so I went on
and on through the rocks till I came to a round mound in the middle of
them. It was higher than a mound, it was nearly as high as our house,
and it was like a great basin turned upside down, all smooth and round
and green, with one stone, like a post, sticking up at the top. I
climbed up the sides, but they were so steep I had to stop or I should
have rolled all the way down again, and I should have knocked against
the stones at the bottom, and perhaps been killed. But I wanted to get
up to the very top of the big round mound, so I lay down flat on my
face, and took hold of the grass with my hands and drew myself up, bit
by bit, till I was at the top. Then I sat down on the stone in the
middle, and looked all round about. I felt I had come such a long, long
way, just as if I were a hundred miles from home, or in some other
country, or in one of the strange places I had read about in the 'Tales
of the Genie' and the 'Arabian Nights,' or as if I had gone across the
sea, far away, for years and I had found another world that nobody had
ever seen or heard of before, or as if I had somehow flown through the
sky and fallen on one of the stars I had read about where everything is
dead and cold and grey, and there is no air, and the wind doesn't blow.
I sat on the stone and looked all round and down and round about me. It
was just as if I was sitting on a tower in the middle of a great empty
town, because I could see nothing all around but the grey rocks on the
ground. I couldn't make out their shapes any more, but I could see them
on and on for a long way, and I looked at them, and they seemed as if
they had been arranged into patterns, and shapes, and figures. I knew
they couldn't be, because I had seen a lot of them coming right out of
the earth, joined to the deep rocks below, so I looked again, but still
I saw nothing but circles, and small circles inside big ones, and
pyramids, and domes, and spires, and they seemed all to go round and
round the place where I was sitting, and the more I looked, the more I
saw great big rings of rocks, getting bigger and bigger, and I stared so
long that it felt as if they were all moving and turning, like a great
wheel, and I was turning, too, in the middle. I got quite dizzy and
queer in the head, and everything began to be hazy and not clear, and I
saw little sparks of blue light, and the stones looked as if they were
springing and dancing and twisting as they went round and round and
round. I was frightened again, and I cried out loud, and jumped up from
the stone I was sitting on, and fell down. When I got up I was so glad
they all looked still, and I sat down on the top and slid down the
mound, and went on again. I danced as I went in the peculiar way the
rocks had danced when I got giddy, and I was so glad I could do it quite
well, and I danced and danced along, and sang extraordinary songs that
came into my head. At last I came to the edge of that great flat hill,
and there were no more rocks, and the way went again through a dark
thicket in a hollow. It was just as bad as the other one I went through
climbing up, but I didn't mind this one, because I was so glad I had
seen those singular dances and could imitate them. I went down, creeping
through the bushes, and a tall nettle stung me on my leg, and made me
burn, but I didn't mind it, and I tingled with the boughs and the
thorns, but I only laughed and sang. Then I got out of the thicket into
a close valley, a little secret place like a dark passage that nobody
ever knows of, because it was so narrow and deep and the woods were so
thick round it. There is a steep bank with trees hanging over it, and
there the ferns keep green all through the winter, when they are dead
and brown upon the hill, and the ferns there have a sweet, rich smell
like what oozes out of fir trees. There was a little stream of water
running down this valley, so small that I could easily step across it. I
drank the water with my hand, and it tasted like bright, yellow wine,
and it sparkled and bubbled as it ran down over beautiful red and yellow
and green stones, so that it seemed alive and all colours at once. I
drank it, and I drank more with my hand, but I couldn't drink enough,
so I lay down and bent my head and sucked the water up with my lips. It
tasted much better, drinking it that way, and a ripple would come up to
my mouth and give me a kiss, and I laughed, and drank again, and
pretended there was a nymph, like the one in the old picture at home,
who lived in the water and was kissing me. So I bent low down to the
water, and put my lips softly to it, and whispered to the nymph that I
would come again. I felt sure it could not be common water, I was so
glad when I got up and went on; and I danced again and went up and up
the valley, under hanging hills. And when I came to the top, the ground
rose up in front of me, tall and steep as a wall, and there was nothing
but the green wall and the sky. I thought of 'for ever and for ever,
world without end, Amen'; and I thought I must have really found the end
of the world, because it was like the end of everything, as if there
could be nothing at all beyond, except the kingdom of Voor, where the
light goes when it is put out, and the water goes when the sun takes it
away. I began to think of all the long, long way I had journeyed, how I
had found a brook and followed it, and followed it on, and gone through
bushes and thorny thickets, and dark woods full of creeping thorns. Then
I had crept up a tunnel under trees, and climbed a thicket, and seen all
the grey rocks, and sat in the middle of them when they turned round,
and then I had gone on through the grey rocks and come down the hill
through the stinging thicket and up the dark valley, all a long, long
way. I wondered how I should get home again, if I could ever find the
way, and if my home was there any more, or if it were turned and
everybody in it into grey rocks, as in the 'Arabian Nights.' So I sat
down on the grass and thought what I should do next. I was tired, and my
feet were hot with walking, and as I looked about I saw there was a
wonderful well just under the high, steep wall of grass. All the ground
round it was covered with bright, green, dripping moss; there was every
kind of moss there, moss like beautiful little ferns, and like palms and
fir trees, and it was all green as jewellery, and drops of water hung on
it like diamonds. And in the middle was the great well, deep and shining
and beautiful, so clear that it looked as if I could touch the red sand
at the bottom, but it was far below. I stood by it and looked in, as if
I were looking in a glass. At the bottom of the well, in the middle of
it, the red grains of sand were moving and stirring all the time, and I
saw how the water bubbled up, but at the top it was quite smooth, and
full and brimming. It was a great well, large like a bath, and with the
shining, glittering green moss about it, it looked like a great white
jewel, with green jewels all round. My feet were so hot and tired that I
took off my boots and stockings, and let my feet down into the water,
and the water was soft and cold, and when I got up I wasn't tired any
more, and I felt I must go on, farther and farther, and see what was on
the other side of the wall. I climbed up it very slowly, going sideways
all the time, and when I got to the top and looked over, I was in the
queerest country I had seen, stranger even than the hill of the grey
rocks. It looked as if earth-children had been playing there with their
spades, as it was all hills and hollows, and castles and walls made of
earth and covered with grass. There were two mounds like big beehives,
round and great and solemn, and then hollow basins, and then a steep
mounting wall like the ones I saw once by the seaside where the big guns
and the soldiers were. I nearly fell into one of the round hollows, it
went away from under my feet so suddenly, and I ran fast down the side
and stood at the bottom and looked up. It was strange and solemn to look
up. There was nothing but the grey, heavy sky and the sides of the
hollow; everything else had gone away, and the hollow was the whole
world, and I thought that at night it must be full of ghosts and moving
shadows and pale things when the moon shone down to the bottom at the
dead of the night, and the wind wailed up above. It was so strange and
solemn and lonely, like a hollow temple of dead heathen gods. It
reminded me of a tale my nurse had told me when I was quite little; it
was the same nurse that took me into the wood where I saw the beautiful
white people. And I remembered how nurse had told me the story one
winter night, when the wind was beating the trees against the wall, and
crying and moaning in the nursery chimney. She said there was, somewhere
or other, a hollow pit, just like the one I was standing in, everybody
was afraid to go into it or near it, it was such a bad place. But once
upon a time there was a poor girl who said she would go into the hollow
pit, and everybody tried to stop her, but she would go. And she went
down into the pit and came back laughing, and said there was nothing
there at all, except green grass and red stones, and white stones and
yellow flowers. And soon after people saw she had most beautiful emerald
earrings, and they asked how she got them, as she and her mother were
quite poor. But she laughed, and said her earrings were not made of
emeralds at all, but only of green grass. Then, one day, she wore on her
breast the reddest ruby that any one had ever seen, and it was as big as
a hen's egg, and glowed and sparkled like a hot burning coal of fire.
And they asked how she got it, as she and her mother were quite poor.
But she laughed, and said it was not a ruby at all, but only a red
stone. Then one day she wore round her neck the loveliest necklace that
any one had ever seen, much finer than the queen's finest, and it was
made of great bright diamonds, hundreds of them, and they shone like all
the stars on a night in June. So they asked her how she got it, as she
and her mother were quite poor. But she laughed, and said they were not
diamonds at all, but only white stones. And one day she went to the
Court, and she wore on her head a crown of pure angel-gold, so nurse
said, and it shone like the sun, and it was much more splendid than the
crown the king was wearing himself, and in her ears she wore the
emeralds, and the big ruby was the brooch on her breast, and the great
diamond necklace was sparkling on her neck. And the king and queen
thought she was some great princess from a long way off, and got down
from their thrones and went to meet her, but somebody told the king and
queen who she was, and that she was quite poor. So the king asked why
she wore a gold crown, and how she got it, as she and her mother were so
poor. And she laughed, and said it wasn't a gold crown at all, but only
some yellow flowers she had put in her hair. And the king thought it was
very strange, and said she should stay at the Court, and they would see
what would happen next. And she was so lovely that everybody said that
her eyes were greener than the emeralds, that her lips were redder than
the ruby, that her skin was whiter than the diamonds, and that her hair
was brighter than the golden crown. So the king's son said he would
marry her, and the king said he might. And the bishop married them, and
there was a great supper, and afterwards the king's son went to his
wife's room. But just when he had his hand on the door, he saw a tall,
black man, with a dreadful face, standing in front of the door, and a
voice said--

    Venture not upon your life,
    This is mine own wedded wife.

Then the king's son fell down on the ground in a fit. And they came and
tried to get into the room, but they couldn't, and they hacked at the
door with hatchets, but the wood had turned hard as iron, and at last
everybody ran away, they were so frightened at the screaming and
laughing and shrieking and crying that came out of the room. But next
day they went in, and found there was nothing in the room but thick
black smoke, because the black man had come and taken her away. And on
the bed there were two knots of faded grass and a red stone, and some
white stones, and some faded yellow flowers. I remembered this tale of
nurse's while I was standing at the bottom of the deep hollow; it was so
strange and solitary there, and I felt afraid. I could not see any
stones or flowers, but I was afraid of bringing them away without
knowing, and I thought I would do a charm that came into my head to
keep the black man away. So I stood right in the very middle of the
hollow, and I made sure that I had none of those things on me, and then
I walked round the place, and touched my eyes, and my lips, and my hair
in a peculiar manner, and whispered some queer words that nurse taught
me to keep bad things away. Then I felt safe and climbed up out of the
hollow, and went on through all those mounds and hollows and walls, till
I came to the end, which was high above all the rest, and I could see
that all the different shapes of the earth were arranged in patterns,
something like the grey rocks, only the pattern was different. It was
getting late, and the air was indistinct, but it looked from where I was
standing something like two great figures of people lying on the grass.
And I went on, and at last I found a certain wood, which is too secret
to be described, and nobody knows of the passage into it, which I found
out in a very curious manner, by seeing some little animal run into the
wood through it. So I went after the animal by a very narrow dark way,
under thorns and bushes, and it was almost dark when I came to a kind of
open place in the middle. And there I saw the most wonderful sight I
have ever seen, but it was only for a minute, as I ran away directly,
and crept out of the wood by the passage I had come by, and ran and ran
as fast as ever I could, because I was afraid, what I had seen was so
wonderful and so strange and beautiful. But I wanted to get home and
think of it, and I did not know what might not happen if I stayed by the
wood. I was hot all over and trembling, and my heart was beating, and
strange cries that I could not help came from me as I ran from the
wood. I was glad that a great white moon came up from over a round hill
and showed me the way, so I went back through the mounds and hollows and
down the close valley, and up through the thicket over the place of the
grey rocks, and so at last I got home again. My father was busy in his
study, and the servants had not told about my not coming home, though
they were frightened, and wondered what they ought to do, so I told them
I had lost my way, but I did not let them find out the real way I had
been. I went to bed and lay awake all through the night, thinking of
what I had seen. When I came out of the narrow way, and it looked all
shining, though the air was dark, it seemed so certain, and all the way
home I was quite sure that I had seen it, and I wanted to be alone in my
room, and be glad over it all to myself, and shut my eyes and pretend it
was there, and do all the things I would have done if I had not been so
afraid. But when I shut my eyes the sight would not come, and I began to
think about my adventures all over again, and I remembered how dusky and
queer it was at the end, and I was afraid it must be all a mistake,
because it seemed impossible it could happen. It seemed like one of
nurse's tales, which I didn't really believe in, though I was frightened
at the bottom of the hollow; and the stories she told me when I was
little came back into my head, and I wondered whether it was really
there what I thought I had seen, or whether any of her tales could have
happened a long time ago. It was so queer; I lay awake there in my room
at the back of the house, and the moon was shining on the other side
towards the river, so the bright light did not fall upon the wall. And
the house was quite still. I had heard my father come upstairs, and just
after the clock struck twelve, and after the house was still and empty,
as if there was nobody alive in it. And though it was all dark and
indistinct in my room, a pale glimmering kind of light shone in through
the white blind, and once I got up and looked out, and there was a great
black shadow of the house covering the garden, looking like a prison
where men are hanged; and then beyond it was all white; and the wood
shone white with black gulfs between the trees. It was still and clear,
and there were no clouds on the sky. I wanted to think of what I had
seen but I couldn't, and I began to think of all the tales that nurse
had told me so long ago that I thought I had forgotten, but they all
came back, and mixed up with the thickets and the grey rocks and the
hollows in the earth and the secret wood, till I hardly knew what was
new and what was old, or whether it was not all dreaming. And then I
remembered that hot summer afternoon, so long ago, when nurse left me by
myself in the shade, and the white people came out of the water and out
of the wood, and played, and danced, and sang, and I began to fancy that
nurse told me about something like it before I saw them, only I couldn't
recollect exactly what she told me. Then I wondered whether she had been
the white lady, as I remembered she was just as white and beautiful, and
had the same dark eyes and black hair; and sometimes she smiled and
looked like the lady had looked, when she was telling me some of her
stories, beginning with 'Once on a time,' or 'In the time of the
fairies.' But I thought she couldn't be the lady, as she seemed to have
gone a different way into the wood, and I didn't think the man who came
after us could be the other, or I couldn't have seen that wonderful
secret in the secret wood. I thought of the moon: but it was afterwards
when I was in the middle of the wild land, where the earth was made into
the shape of great figures, and it was all walls, and mysterious
hollows, and smooth round mounds, that I saw the great white moon come
up over a round hill. I was wondering about all these things, till at
last I got quite frightened, because I was afraid something had happened
to me, and I remembered nurse's tale of the poor girl who went into the
hollow pit, and was carried away at last by the black man. I knew I had
gone into a hollow pit too, and perhaps it was the same, and I had done
something dreadful. So I did the charm over again, and touched my eyes
and my lips and my hair in a peculiar manner, and said the old words
from the fairy language, so that I might be sure I had not been carried
away. I tried again to see the secret wood, and to creep up the passage
and see what I had seen there, but somehow I couldn't, and I kept on
thinking of nurse's stories. There was one I remembered about a young
man who once upon a time went hunting, and all the day he and his hounds
hunted everywhere, and they crossed the rivers and went into all the
woods, and went round the marshes, but they couldn't find anything at
all, and they hunted all day till the sun sank down and began to set
behind the mountain. And the young man was angry because he couldn't
find anything, and he was going to turn back, when just as the sun
touched the mountain, he saw come out of a brake in front of him a
beautiful white stag. And he cheered to his hounds, but they whined and
would not follow, and he cheered to his horse, but it shivered and stood
stock still, and the young man jumped off the horse and left the hounds
and began to follow the white stag all alone. And soon it was quite
dark, and the sky was black, without a single star shining in it, and
the stag went away into the darkness. And though the man had brought his
gun with him he never shot at the stag, because he wanted to catch it,
and he was afraid he would lose it in the night. But he never lost it
once, though the sky was so black and the air was so dark, and the stag
went on and on till the young man didn't know a bit where he was. And
they went through enormous woods where the air was full of whispers and
a pale, dead light came out from the rotten trunks that were lying on
the ground, and just as the man thought he had lost the stag, he would
see it all white and shining in front of him, and he would run fast to
catch it, but the stag always ran faster, so he did not catch it. And
they went through the enormous woods, and they swam across rivers, and
they waded through black marshes where the ground bubbled, and the air
was full of will-o'-the-wisps, and the stag fled away down into rocky
narrow valleys, where the air was like the smell of a vault, and the man
went after it. And they went over the great mountains and the man heard
the wind come down from the sky, and the stag went on and the man went
after. At last the sun rose and the young man found he was in a country
that he had never seen before; it was a beautiful valley with a bright
stream running through it, and a great, big round hill in the middle.
And the stag went down the valley, towards the hill, and it seemed to
be getting tired and went slower and slower, and though the man was
tired, too, he began to run faster, and he was sure he would catch the
stag at last. But just as they got to the bottom of the hill, and the
man stretched out his hand to catch the stag, it vanished into the
earth, and the man began to cry; he was so sorry that he had lost it
after all his long hunting. But as he was crying he saw there was a door
in the hill, just in front of him, and he went in, and it was quite
dark, but he went on, as he thought he would find the white stag. And
all of a sudden it got light, and there was the sky, and the sun
shining, and birds singing in the trees, and there was a beautiful
fountain. And by the fountain a lovely lady was sitting, who was the
queen of the fairies, and she told the man that she had changed herself
into a stag to bring him there because she loved him so much. Then she
brought out a great gold cup, covered with jewels, from her fairy
palace, and she offered him wine in the cup to drink. And he drank, and
the more he drank the more he longed to drink, because the wine was
enchanted. So he kissed the lovely lady, and she became his wife, and he
stayed all that day and all that night in the hill where she lived, and
when he woke he found he was lying on the ground, close to where he had
seen the stag first, and his horse was there and his hounds were there
waiting, and he looked up, and the sun sank behind the mountain. And he
went home and lived a long time, but he would never kiss any other lady
because he had kissed the queen of the fairies, and he would never drink
common wine any more, because he had drunk enchanted wine. And sometimes
nurse told me tales that she had heard from her great-grandmother, who
was very old, and lived in a cottage on the mountain all alone, and most
of these tales were about a hill where people used to meet at night long
ago, and they used to play all sorts of strange games and do queer
things that nurse told me of, but I couldn't understand, and now, she
said, everybody but her great-grandmother had forgotten all about it,
and nobody knew where the hill was, not even her great-grandmother. But
she told me one very strange story about the hill, and I trembled when I
remembered it. She said that people always went there in summer, when it
was very hot, and they had to dance a good deal. It would be all dark at
first, and there were trees there, which made it much darker, and people
would come, one by one, from all directions, by a secret path which
nobody else knew, and two persons would keep the gate, and every one as
they came up had to give a very curious sign, which nurse showed me as
well as she could, but she said she couldn't show me properly. And all
kinds of people would come; there would be gentle folks and village
folks, and some old people and boys and girls, and quite small children,
who sat and watched. And it would all be dark as they came in, except in
one corner where some one was burning something that smelt strong and
sweet, and made them laugh, and there one would see a glaring of coals,
and the smoke mounting up red. So they would all come in, and when the
last had come there was no door any more, so that no one else could get
in, even if they knew there was anything beyond. And once a gentleman
who was a stranger and had ridden a long way, lost his path at night,
and his horse took him into the very middle of the wild country, where
everything was upside down, and there were dreadful marshes and great
stones everywhere, and holes underfoot, and the trees looked like
gibbet-posts, because they had great black arms that stretched out
across the way. And this strange gentleman was very frightened, and his
horse began to shiver all over, and at last it stopped and wouldn't go
any farther, and the gentleman got down and tried to lead the horse, but
it wouldn't move, and it was all covered with a sweat, like death. So
the gentleman went on all alone, going farther and farther into the wild
country, till at last he came to a dark place, where he heard shouting
and singing and crying, like nothing he had ever heard before. It all
sounded quite close to him, but he couldn't get in, and so he began to
call, and while he was calling, something came behind him, and in a
minute his mouth and arms and legs were all bound up, and he fell into a
swoon. And when he came to himself, he was lying by the roadside, just
where he had first lost his way, under a blasted oak with a black trunk,
and his horse was tied beside him. So he rode on to the town and told
the people there what had happened, and some of them were amazed; but
others knew. So when once everybody had come, there was no door at all
for anybody else to pass in by. And when they were all inside, round in
a ring, touching each other, some one began to sing in the darkness, and
some one else would make a noise like thunder with a thing they had on
purpose, and on still nights people would hear the thundering noise far,
far away beyond the wild land, and some of them, who thought they knew
what it was, used to make a sign on their breasts when they woke up in
their beds at dead of night and heard that terrible deep noise, like
thunder on the mountains. And the noise and the singing would go on and
on for a long time, and the people who were in a ring swayed a little to
and fro; and the song was in an old, old language that nobody knows now,
and the tune was queer. Nurse said her great-grandmother had known some
one who remembered a little of it, when she was quite a little girl, and
nurse tried to sing some of it to me, and it was so strange a tune that
I turned all cold and my flesh crept as if I had put my hand on
something dead. Sometimes it was a man that sang and sometimes it was a
woman, and sometimes the one who sang it did it so well that two or
three of the people who were there fell to the ground shrieking and
tearing with their hands. The singing went on, and the people in the
ring kept swaying to and fro for a long time, and at last the moon would
rise over a place they called the Tole Deol, and came up and showed them
swinging and swaying from side to side, with the sweet thick smoke
curling up from the burning coals, and floating in circles all around
them. Then they had their supper. A boy and a girl brought it to them;
the boy carried a great cup of wine, and the girl carried a cake of
bread, and they passed the bread and the wine round and round, but they
tasted quite different from common bread and common wine, and changed
everybody that tasted them. Then they all rose up and danced, and secret
things were brought out of some hiding place, and they played
extraordinary games, and danced round and round and round in the
moonlight, and sometimes people would suddenly disappear and never be
heard of afterwards, and nobody knew what had happened to them. And
they drank more of that curious wine, and they made images and
worshipped them, and nurse showed me how the images were made one day
when we were out for a walk, and we passed by a place where there was a
lot of wet clay. So nurse asked me if I would like to know what those
things were like that they made on the hill, and I said yes. Then she
asked me if I would promise never to tell a living soul a word about it,
and if I did I was to be thrown into the black pit with the dead people,
and I said I wouldn't tell anybody, and she said the same thing again
and again, and I promised. So she took my wooden spade and dug a big
lump of clay and put it in my tin bucket, and told me to say if any one
met us that I was going to make pies when I went home. Then we went on a
little way till we came to a little brake growing right down into the
road, and nurse stopped, and looked up the road and down it, and then
peeped through the hedge into the field on the other side, and then she
said, 'Quick!' and we ran into the brake, and crept in and out among the
bushes till we had gone a good way from the road. Then we sat down under
a bush, and I wanted so much to know what nurse was going to make with
the clay, but before she would begin she made me promise again not to
say a word about it, and she went again and peeped through the bushes on
every side, though the lane was so small and deep that hardly anybody
ever went there. So we sat down, and nurse took the clay out of the
bucket, and began to knead it with her hands, and do queer things with
it, and turn it about. And she hid it under a big dock-leaf for a minute
or two and then she brought it out again, and then she stood up and sat
down, and walked round the clay in a peculiar manner, and all the time
she was softly singing a sort of rhyme, and her face got very red. Then
she sat down again, and took the clay in her hands and began to shape it
into a doll, but not like the dolls I have at home, and she made the
queerest doll I had ever seen, all out of the wet clay, and hid it under
a bush to get dry and hard, and all the time she was making it she was
singing these rhymes to herself, and her face got redder and redder. So
we left the doll there, hidden away in the bushes where nobody would
ever find it. And a few days later we went the same walk, and when we
came to that narrow, dark part of the lane where the brake runs down to
the bank, nurse made me promise all over again, and she looked about,
just as she had done before, and we crept into the bushes till we got to
the green place where the little clay man was hidden. I remember it all
so well, though I was only eight, and it is eight years ago now as I am
writing it down, but the sky was a deep violet blue, and in the middle
of the brake where we were sitting there was a great elder tree covered
with blossoms, and on the other side there was a clump of meadowsweet,
and when I think of that day the smell of the meadowsweet and elder
blossom seems to fill the room, and if I shut my eyes I can see the
glaring blue sky, with little clouds very white floating across it, and
nurse who went away long ago sitting opposite me and looking like the
beautiful white lady in the wood. So we sat down and nurse took out the
clay doll from the secret place where she had hidden it, and she said we
must 'pay our respects,' and she would show me what to do, and I must
watch her all the time. So she did all sorts of queer things with the
little clay man, and I noticed she was all streaming with perspiration,
though we had walked so slowly, and then she told me to 'pay my
respects,' and I did everything she did because I liked her, and it was
such an odd game. And she said that if one loved very much, the clay man
was very good, if one did certain things with it, and if one hated very
much, it was just as good, only one had to do different things, and we
played with it a long time, and pretended all sorts of things. Nurse
said her great-grandmother had told her all about these images, but what
we did was no harm at all, only a game. But she told me a story about
these images that frightened me very much, and that was what I
remembered that night when I was lying awake in my room in the pale,
empty darkness, thinking of what I had seen and the secret wood. Nurse
said there was once a young lady of the high gentry, who lived in a
great castle. And she was so beautiful that all the gentlemen wanted to
marry her, because she was the loveliest lady that anybody had ever
seen, and she was kind to everybody, and everybody thought she was very
good. But though she was polite to all the gentlemen who wished to marry
her, she put them off, and said she couldn't make up her mind, and she
wasn't sure she wanted to marry anybody at all. And her father, who was
a very great lord, was angry, though he was so fond of her, and he asked
her why she wouldn't choose a bachelor out of all the handsome young men
who came to the castle. But she only said she didn't love any of them
very much, and she must wait, and if they pestered her, she said she
would go and be a nun in a nunnery. So all the gentlemen said they
would go away and wait for a year and a day, and when a year and a day
were gone, they would come back again and ask her to say which one she
would marry. So the day was appointed and they all went away; and the
lady had promised that in a year and a day it would be her wedding day
with one of them. But the truth was, that she was the queen of the
people who danced on the hill on summer nights, and on the proper nights
she would lock the door of her room, and she and her maid would steal
out of the castle by a secret passage that only they knew of, and go
away up to the hill in the wild land. And she knew more of the secret
things than any one else, and more than any one knew before or after,
because she would not tell anybody the most secret secrets. She knew how
to do all the awful things, how to destroy young men, and how to put a
curse on people, and other things that I could not understand. And her
real name was the Lady Avelin, but the dancing people called her Cassap,
which meant somebody very wise, in the old language. And she was whiter
than any of them and taller, and her eyes shone in the dark like burning
rubies; and she could sing songs that none of the others could sing, and
when she sang they all fell down on their faces and worshipped her. And
she could do what they called shib-show, which was a very wonderful
enchantment. She would tell the great lord, her father, that she wanted
to go into the woods to gather flowers, so he let her go, and she and
her maid went into the woods where nobody came, and the maid would keep
watch. Then the lady would lie down under the trees and begin to sing a
particular song, and she stretched out her arms, and from every part of
the wood great serpents would come, hissing and gliding in and out among
the trees, and shooting out their forked tongues as they crawled up to
the lady. And they all came to her, and twisted round her, round her
body, and her arms, and her neck, till she was covered with writhing
serpents, and there was only her head to be seen. And she whispered to
them, and she sang to them, and they writhed round and round, faster and
faster, till she told them to go. And they all went away directly, back
to their holes, and on the lady's breast there would be a most curious,
beautiful stone, shaped something like an egg, and coloured dark blue
and yellow, and red, and green, marked like a serpent's scales. It was
called a glame stone, and with it one could do all sorts of wonderful
things, and nurse said her great-grandmother had seen a glame stone with
her own eyes, and it was for all the world shiny and scaly like a snake.
And the lady could do a lot of other things as well, but she was quite
fixed that she would not be married. And there were a great many
gentlemen who wanted to marry her, but there were five of them who were
chief, and their names were Sir Simon, Sir John, Sir Oliver, Sir
Richard, and Sir Rowland. All the others believed she spoke the truth,
and that she would choose one of them to be her man when a year and a
day was done; it was only Sir Simon, who was very crafty, who thought
she was deceiving them all, and he vowed he would watch and try if he
could find out anything. And though he was very wise he was very young,
and he had a smooth, soft face like a girl's, and he pretended, as the
rest did, that he would not come to the castle for a year and a day, and
he said he was going away beyond the sea to foreign parts. But he
really only went a very little way, and came back dressed like a servant
girl, and so he got a place in the castle to wash the dishes. And he
waited and watched, and he listened and said nothing, and he hid in dark
places, and woke up at night and looked out, and he heard things and he
saw things that he thought were very strange. And he was so sly that he
told the girl that waited on the lady that he was really a young man,
and that he had dressed up as a girl because he loved her so very much
and wanted to be in the same house with her, and the girl was so pleased
that she told him many things, and he was more than ever certain that
the Lady Avelin was deceiving him and the others. And he was so clever,
and told the servant so many lies, that one night he managed to hide in
the Lady Avelin's room behind the curtains. And he stayed quite still
and never moved, and at last the lady came. And she bent down under the
bed, and raised up a stone, and there was a hollow place underneath, and
out of it she took a waxen image, just like the clay one that I and
nurse had made in the brake. And all the time her eyes were burning like
rubies. And she took the little wax doll up in her arms and held it to
her breast, and she whispered and she murmured, and she took it up and
she laid it down again, and she held it high, and she held it low, and
she laid it down again. And she said, 'Happy is he that begat the
bishop, that ordered the clerk, that married the man, that had the wife,
that fashioned the hive, that harboured the bee, that gathered the wax
that my own true love was made of.' And she brought out of an aumbry a
great golden bowl, and she brought out of a closet a great jar of wine,
and she poured some of the wine into the bowl, and she laid her mannikin
very gently in the wine, and washed it in the wine all over. Then she
went to a cupboard and took a small round cake and laid it on the
image's mouth, and then she bore it softly and covered it up. And Sir
Simon, who was watching all the time, though he was terribly frightened,
saw the lady bend down and stretch out her arms and whisper and sing,
and then Sir Simon saw beside her a handsome young man, who kissed her
on the lips. And they drank wine out of the golden bowl together, and
they ate the cake together. But when the sun rose there was only the
little wax doll, and the lady hid it again under the bed in the hollow
place. So Sir Simon knew quite well what the lady was, and he waited and
he watched, till the time she had said was nearly over, and in a week
the year and a day would be done. And one night, when he was watching
behind the curtains in her room, he saw her making more wax dolls. And
she made five, and hid them away. And the next night she took one out,
and held it up, and filled the golden bowl with water, and took the doll
by the neck and held it under the water. Then she said--

    Sir Dickon, Sir Dickon, your day is done,
    You shall be drowned in the water wan.

And the next day news came to the castle that Sir Richard had been
drowned at the ford. And at night she took another doll and tied a
violet cord round its neck and hung it up on a nail. Then she said--

    Sir Rowland, your life has ended its span,
    High on a tree I see you hang.

And the next day news came to the castle that Sir Rowland had been
hanged by robbers in the wood. And at night she took another doll, and
drove her bodkin right into its heart. Then she said--

    Sir Noll, Sir Noll, so cease your life,
    Your heart piercèd with the knife.

And the next day news came to the castle that Sir Oliver had fought in a
tavern, and a stranger had stabbed him to the heart. And at night she
took another doll, and held it to a fire of charcoal till it was melted.
Then she said--

    Sir John, return, and turn to clay,
    In fire of fever you waste away.

And the next day news came to the castle that Sir John had died in a
burning fever. So then Sir Simon went out of the castle and mounted his
horse and rode away to the bishop and told him everything. And the
bishop sent his men, and they took the Lady Avelin, and everything she
had done was found out. So on the day after the year and a day, when she
was to have been married, they carried her through the town in her
smock, and they tied her to a great stake in the market-place, and
burned her alive before the bishop with her wax image hung round her
neck. And people said the wax man screamed in the burning of the flames.
And I thought of this story again and again as I was lying awake in my
bed, and I seemed to see the Lady Avelin in the market-place, with the
yellow flames eating up her beautiful white body. And I thought of it so
much that I seemed to get into the story myself, and I fancied I was the
lady, and that they were coming to take me to be burnt with fire, with
all the people in the town looking at me. And I wondered whether she
cared, after all the strange things she had done, and whether it hurt
very much to be burned at the stake. I tried again and again to forget
nurse's stories, and to remember the secret I had seen that afternoon,
and what was in the secret wood, but I could only see the dark and a
glimmering in the dark, and then it went away, and I only saw myself
running, and then a great moon came up white over a dark round hill.
Then all the old stories came back again, and the queer rhymes that
nurse used to sing to me; and there was one beginning 'Halsy cumsy Helen
musty,' that she used to sing very softly when she wanted me to go to
sleep. And I began to sing it to myself inside of my head, and I went to
sleep.

The next morning I was very tired and sleepy, and could hardly do my
lessons, and I was very glad when they were over and I had had my
dinner, as I wanted to go out and be alone. It was a warm day, and I
went to a nice turfy hill by the river, and sat down on my mother's old
shawl that I had brought with me on purpose. The sky was grey, like the
day before, but there was a kind of white gleam behind it, and from
where I was sitting I could look down on the town, and it was all still
and quiet and white, like a picture. I remembered that it was on that
hill that nurse taught me to play an old game called 'Troy Town,' in
which one had to dance, and wind in and out on a pattern in the grass,
and then when one had danced and turned long enough the other person
asks you questions, and you can't help answering whether you want to or
not, and whatever you are told to do you feel you have to do it. Nurse
said there used to be a lot of games like that that some people knew of,
and there was one by which people could be turned into anything you
liked, and an old man her great-grandmother had seen had known a girl
who had been turned into a large snake. And there was another very
ancient game of dancing and winding and turning, by which you could take
a person out of himself and hide him away as long as you liked, and his
body went walking about quite empty, without any sense in it. But I came
to that hill because I wanted to think of what had happened the day
before, and of the secret of the wood. From the place where I was
sitting I could see beyond the town, into the opening I had found, where
a little brook had led me into an unknown country. And I pretended I was
following the brook over again, and I went all the way in my mind, and
at last I found the wood, and crept into it under the bushes, and then
in the dusk I saw something that made me feel as if I were filled with
fire, as if I wanted to dance and sing and fly up into the air, because
I was changed and wonderful. But what I saw was not changed at all, and
had not grown old, and I wondered again and again how such things could
happen, and whether nurse's stories were really true, because in the
daytime in the open air everything seemed quite different from what it
was at night, when I was frightened, and thought I was to be burned
alive. I once told my father one of her little tales, which was about a
ghost, and asked him if it was true, and he told me it was not true at
all, and that only common, ignorant people believed in such rubbish. He
was very angry with nurse for telling me the story, and scolded her,
and after that I promised her I would never whisper a word of what she
told me, and if I did I should be bitten by the great black snake that
lived in the pool in the wood. And all alone on the hill I wondered what
was true. I had seen something very amazing and very lovely, and I knew
a story, and if I had really seen it, and not made it up out of the
dark, and the black bough, and the bright shining that was mounting up
to the sky from over the great round hill, but had really seen it in
truth, then there were all kinds of wonderful and lovely and terrible
things to think of, so I longed and trembled, and I burned and got cold.
And I looked down on the town, so quiet and still, like a little white
picture, and I thought over and over if it could be true. I was a long
time before I could make up my mind to anything; there was such a
strange fluttering at my heart that seemed to whisper to me all the time
that I had not made it up out of my head, and yet it seemed quite
impossible, and I knew my father and everybody would say it was dreadful
rubbish. I never dreamed of telling him or anybody else a word about it,
because I knew it would be of no use, and I should only get laughed at
or scolded, so for a long time I was very quiet, and went about thinking
and wondering; and at night I used to dream of amazing things, and
sometimes I woke up in the early morning and held out my arms with a
cry. And I was frightened, too, because there were dangers, and some
awful thing would happen to me, unless I took great care, if the story
were true. These old tales were always in my head, night and morning,
and I went over them and told them to myself over and over again, and
went for walks in the places where nurse had told them to me; and when
I sat in the nursery by the fire in the evenings I used to fancy nurse
was sitting in the other chair, and telling me some wonderful story in a
low voice, for fear anybody should be listening. But she used to like
best to tell me about things when we were right out in the country, far
from the house, because she said she was telling me such secrets, and
walls have ears. And if it was something more than ever secret, we had
to hide in brakes or woods; and I used to think it was such fun creeping
along a hedge, and going very softly, and then we would get behind the
bushes or run into the wood all of a sudden, when we were sure that none
was watching us; so we knew that we had our secrets quite all to
ourselves, and nobody else at all knew anything about them. Now and
then, when we had hidden ourselves as I have described, she used to show
me all sorts of odd things. One day, I remember, we were in a hazel
brake, overlooking the brook, and we were so snug and warm, as though it
was April; the sun was quite hot, and the leaves were just coming out.
Nurse said she would show me something funny that would make me laugh,
and then she showed me, as she said, how one could turn a whole house
upside down, without anybody being able to find out, and the pots and
pans would jump about, and the china would be broken, and the chairs
would tumble over of themselves. I tried it one day in the kitchen, and
I found I could do it quite well, and a whole row of plates on the
dresser fell off it, and cook's little work-table tilted up and turned
right over 'before her eyes,' as she said, but she was so frightened and
turned so white that I didn't do it again, as I liked her. And
afterwards, in the hazel copse, when she had shown me how to make
things tumble about, she showed me how to make rapping noises, and I
learnt how to do that, too. Then she taught me rhymes to say on certain
occasions, and peculiar marks to make on other occasions, and other
things that her great-grandmother had taught her when she was a little
girl herself. And these were all the things I was thinking about in
those days after the strange walk when I thought I had seen a great
secret, and I wished nurse were there for me to ask her about it, but
she had gone away more than two years before, and nobody seemed to know
what had become of her, or where she had gone. But I shall always
remember those days if I live to be quite old, because all the time I
felt so strange, wondering and doubting, and feeling quite sure at one
time, and making up my mind, and then I would feel quite sure that such
things couldn't happen really, and it began all over again. But I took
great care not to do certain things that might be very dangerous. So I
waited and wondered for a long time, and though I was not sure at all, I
never dared to try to find out. But one day I became sure that all that
nurse said was quite true, and I was all alone when I found it out. I
trembled all over with joy and terror, and as fast as I could I ran into
one of the old brakes where we used to go--it was the one by the lane,
where nurse made the little clay man--and I ran into it, and I crept
into it; and when I came to the place where the elder was, I covered up
my face with my hands and lay down flat on the grass, and I stayed there
for two hours without moving, whispering to myself delicious, terrible
things, and saying some words over and over again. It was all true and
wonderful and splendid, and when I remembered the story I knew and
thought of what I had really seen, I got hot and I got cold, and the air
seemed full of scent, and flowers, and singing. And first I wanted to
make a little clay man, like the one nurse had made so long ago, and I
had to invent plans and stratagems, and to look about, and to think of
things beforehand, because nobody must dream of anything that I was
doing or going to do, and I was too old to carry clay about in a tin
bucket. At last I thought of a plan, and I brought the wet clay to the
brake, and did everything that nurse had done, only I made a much finer
image than the one she had made; and when it was finished I did
everything that I could imagine and much more than she did, because it
was the likeness of something far better. And a few days later, when I
had done my lessons early, I went for the second time by the way of the
little brook that had led me into a strange country. And I followed the
brook, and went through the bushes, and beneath the low branches of
trees, and up thorny thickets on the hill, and by dark woods full of
creeping thorns, a long, long way. Then I crept through the dark tunnel
where the brook had been and the ground was stony, till at last I came
to the thicket that climbed up the hill, and though the leaves were
coming out upon the trees, everything looked almost as black as it was
on the first day that I went there. And the thicket was just the same,
and I went up slowly till I came out on the big bare hill, and began to
walk among the wonderful rocks. I saw the terrible voor again on
everything, for though the sky was brighter, the ring of wild hills all
around was still dark, and the hanging woods looked dark and dreadful,
and the strange rocks were as grey as ever; and when I looked down on
them from the great mound, sitting on the stone, I saw all their amazing
circles and rounds within rounds, and I had to sit quite still and watch
them as they began to turn about me, and each stone danced in its place,
and they seemed to go round and round in a great whirl, as if one were
in the middle of all the stars and heard them rushing through the air.
So I went down among the rocks to dance with them and to sing
extraordinary songs; and I went down through the other thicket, and
drank from the bright stream in the close and secret valley, putting my
lips down to the bubbling water; and then I went on till I came to the
deep, brimming well among the glittering moss, and I sat down. I looked
before me into the secret darkness of the valley, and behind me was the
great high wall of grass, and all around me there were the hanging woods
that made the valley such a secret place. I knew there was nobody here
at all besides myself, and that no one could see me. So I took off my
boots and stockings, and let my feet down into the water, saying the
words that I knew. And it was not cold at all, as I expected, but warm
and very pleasant, and when my feet were in it I felt as if they were in
silk, or as if the nymph were kissing them. So when I had done, I said
the other words and made the signs, and then I dried my feet with a
towel I had brought on purpose, and put on my stockings and boots. Then
I climbed up the steep wall, and went into the place where there are the
hollows, and the two beautiful mounds, and the round ridges of land, and
all the strange shapes. I did not go down into the hollow this time,
but I turned at the end, and made out the figures quite plainly, as it
was lighter, and I had remembered the story I had quite forgotten
before, and in the story the two figures are called Adam and Eve, and
only those who know the story understand what they mean. So I went on
and on till I came to the secret wood which must not be described, and I
crept into it by the way I had found. And when I had gone about halfway
I stopped, and turned round, and got ready, and I bound the handkerchief
tightly round my eyes, and made quite sure that I could not see at all,
not a twig, nor the end of a leaf, nor the light of the sky, as it was
an old red silk handkerchief with large yellow spots, that went round
twice and covered my eyes, so that I could see nothing. Then I began to
go on, step by step, very slowly. My heart beat faster and faster, and
something rose in my throat that choked me and made me want to cry out,
but I shut my lips, and went on. Boughs caught in my hair as I went, and
great thorns tore me; but I went on to the end of the path. Then I
stopped, and held out my arms and bowed, and I went round the first
time, feeling with my hands, and there was nothing. I went round the
second time, feeling with my hands, and there was nothing. Then I went
round the third time, feeling with my hands, and the story was all true,
and I wished that the years were gone by, and that I had not so long a
time to wait before I was happy for ever and ever.

Nurse must have been a prophet like those we read of in the Bible.
Everything that she said began to come true, and since then other things
that she told me of have happened. That was how I came to know that her
stories were true and that I had not made up the secret myself out of my
own head. But there was another thing that happened that day. I went a
second time to the secret place. It was at the deep brimming well, and
when I was standing on the moss I bent over and looked in, and then I
knew who the white lady was that I had seen come out of the water in the
wood long ago when I was quite little. And I trembled all over, because
that told me other things. Then I remembered how sometime after I had
seen the white people in the wood, nurse asked me more about them, and I
told her all over again, and she listened, and said nothing for a long,
long time, and at last she said, 'You will see her again.' So I
understood what had happened and what was to happen. And I understood
about the nymphs; how I might meet them in all kinds of places, and they
would always help me, and I must always look for them, and find them in
all sorts of strange shapes and appearances. And without the nymphs I
could never have found the secret, and without them none of the other
things could happen. Nurse had told me all about them long ago, but she
called them by another name, and I did not know what she meant, or what
her tales of them were about, only that they were very queer. And there
were two kinds, the bright and the dark, and both were very lovely and
very wonderful, and some people saw only one kind, and some only the
other, but some saw them both. But usually the dark appeared first, and
the bright ones came afterwards, and there were extraordinary tales
about them. It was a day or two after I had come home from the secret
place that I first really knew the nymphs. Nurse had shown me how to
call them, and I had tried, but I did not know what she meant, and so I
thought it was all nonsense. But I made up my mind I would try again, so
I went to the wood where the pool was, where I saw the white people, and
I tried again. The dark nymph, Alanna, came, and she turned the pool of
water into a pool of fire....


EPILOGUE

'That's a very queer story,' said Cotgrave, handing back the green book
to the recluse, Ambrose. 'I see the drift of a good deal, but there are
many things that I do not grasp at all. On the last page, for example,
what does she mean by "nymphs"?'

'Well, I think there are references throughout the manuscript to certain
"processes" which have been handed down by tradition from age to age.
Some of these processes are just beginning to come within the purview of
science, which has arrived at them--or rather at the steps which lead to
them--by quite different paths. I have interpreted the reference to
"nymphs" as a reference to one of these processes.'

'And you believe that there are such things?'

'Oh, I think so. Yes, I believe I could give you convincing evidence on
that point. I am afraid you have neglected the study of alchemy? It is a
pity, for the symbolism, at all events, is very beautiful, and moreover
if you were acquainted with certain books on the subject, I could recall
to your mind phrases which might explain a good deal in the manuscript
that you have been reading.'

'Yes; but I want to know whether you seriously think that there is any
foundation of fact beneath these fancies. Is it not all a department of
poetry; a curious dream with which man has indulged himself?'

'I can only say that it is no doubt better for the great mass of people
to dismiss it all as a dream. But if you ask my veritable belief--that
goes quite the other way. No; I should not say belief, but rather
knowledge. I may tell you that I have known cases in which men have
stumbled quite by accident on certain of these "processes," and have
been astonished by wholly unexpected results. In the cases I am thinking
of there could have been no possibility of "suggestion" or sub-conscious
action of any kind. One might as well suppose a schoolboy "suggesting"
the existence of Æschylus to himself, while he plods mechanically
through the declensions.

'But you have noticed the obscurity,' Ambrose went on, 'and in this
particular case it must have been dictated by instinct, since the writer
never thought that her manuscripts would fall into other hands. But the
practice is universal, and for most excellent reasons. Powerful and
sovereign medicines, which are, of necessity, virulent poisons also, are
kept in a locked cabinet. The child may find the key by chance, and
drink herself dead; but in most cases the search is educational, and the
phials contain precious elixirs for him who has patiently fashioned the
key for himself.'

'You do not care to go into details?'

'No, frankly, I do not. No, you must remain unconvinced. But you saw how
the manuscript illustrates the talk we had last week?'

'Is this girl still alive?'

'No. I was one of those who found her. I knew the father well; he was a
lawyer, and had always left her very much to herself. He thought of
nothing but deeds and leases, and the news came to him as an awful
surprise. She was missing one morning; I suppose it was about a year
after she had written what you have read. The servants were called, and
they told things, and put the only natural interpretation on them--a
perfectly erroneous one.

'They discovered that green book somewhere in her room, and I found her
in the place that she described with so much dread, lying on the ground
before the image.'

'It was an image?'

'Yes, it was hidden by the thorns and the thick undergrowth that had
surrounded it. It was a wild, lonely country; but you know what it was
like by her description, though of course you will understand that the
colours have been heightened. A child's imagination always makes the
heights higher and the depths deeper than they really are; and she had,
unfortunately for herself, something more than imagination. One might
say, perhaps, that the picture in her mind which she succeeded in a
measure in putting into words, was the scene as it would have appeared
to an imaginative artist. But it is a strange, desolate land.'

'And she was dead?'

'Yes. She had poisoned herself--in time. No; there was not a word to be
said against her in the ordinary sense. You may recollect a story I told
you the other night about a lady who saw her child's fingers crushed by
a window?'

'And what was this statue?'

'Well, it was of Roman workmanship, of a stone that with the centuries
had not blackened, but had become white and luminous. The thicket had
grown up about it and concealed it, and in the Middle Ages the followers
of a very old tradition had known how to use it for their own purposes.
In fact it had been incorporated into the monstrous mythology of the
Sabbath. You will have noted that those to whom a sight of that shining
whiteness had been vouchsafed by chance, or rather, perhaps, by apparent
chance, were required to blindfold themselves on their second approach.
That is very significant.'

'And is it there still?'

'I sent for tools, and we hammered it into dust and fragments.'

'The persistence of tradition never surprises me,' Ambrose went on after
a pause. 'I could name many an English parish where such traditions as
that girl had listened to in her childhood are still existent in occult
but unabated vigour. No, for me, it is the "story" not the "sequel,"
which is strange and awful, for I have always believed that wonder is of
the soul.'




The Great God Pan


I

THE EXPERIMENT

'I am glad you came, Clarke; very glad indeed. I was not sure you could
spare the time.'

'I was able to make arrangements for a few days; things are not very
lively just now. But have you no misgivings, Raymond? Is it absolutely
safe?'

The two men were slowly pacing the terrace in front of Dr. Raymond's
house. The sun still hung above the western mountain-line, but it shone
with a dull red glow that cast no shadows, and all the air was quiet; a
sweet breath came from the great wood on the hillside above, and with
it, at intervals, the soft murmuring call of the wild doves. Below, in
the long lovely valley, the river wound in and out between the lonely
hills, and, as the sun hovered and vanished into the west, a faint mist,
pure white, began to rise from the banks. Dr. Raymond turned sharply to
his friend.

'Safe? Of course it is. In itself the operation is a perfectly simple
one; any surgeon could do it.'

'And there is no danger at any other stage?'

'None; absolutely no physical danger whatever, I give you my word. You
are always timid, Clarke, always; but you know my history. I have
devoted myself to transcendental medicine for the last twenty years. I
have heard myself called quack and charlatan and impostor, but all the
while I knew I was on the right path. Five years ago I reached the goal,
and since then every day has been a preparation for what we shall do
to-night.'

'I should like to believe it is all true.' Clarke knit his brows, and
looked doubtfully at Dr. Raymond. 'Are you perfectly sure, Raymond, that
your theory is not a phantasmagoria--a splendid vision, certainly, but a
mere vision after all?'

Dr. Raymond stopped in his walk and turned sharply. He was a middle-aged
man, gaunt and thin, of a pale yellow complexion, but as he answered
Clarke and faced him, there was a flush on his cheek.

'Look about you, Clarke. You see the mountain, and hill following after
hill, as wave on wave, you see the woods and orchards, the fields of
ripe corn, and the meadows reaching to the reed-beds by the river. You
see me standing here beside you, and hear my voice; but I tell you that
all these things--yes, from that star that has just shone out in the sky
to the solid ground beneath our feet--I say that all these are but
dreams and shadows: the shadows that hide the real world from our eyes.
There _is_ a real world, but it is beyond this glamour and this vision,
beyond these "chases in Arras, dreams in a career," beyond them all as
beyond a veil. I do not know whether any human being has ever lifted
that veil; but I do know, Clarke, that you and I shall see it lifted
this very night from before another's eyes. You may think all this
strange nonsense; it may be strange, but it is true, and the ancients
knew what lifting the veil means. They called it seeing the god Pan.'

Clarke shivered; the white mist gathering over the river was chilly.

'It is wonderful indeed,' he said. 'We are standing on the brink of a
strange world, Raymond, if what you say is true. I suppose the knife is
absolutely necessary?'

'Yes; a slight lesion in the grey matter, that is all; a trifling
rearrangement of certain cells, a microscopical alteration that would
escape the attention of ninety-nine brain specialists out of a hundred.
I don't want to bother you with "shop," Clarke; I might give you a mass
of technical detail which would sound very imposing, and would leave you
as enlightened as you are now. But I suppose you have read, casually, in
out-of-the-way corners of your paper, that immense strides have been
made recently in the physiology of the brain. I saw a paragraph the
other day about Digby's theory, and Browne Faber's discoveries. Theories
and discoveries! Where they are standing now, I stood fifteen years ago,
and I need not tell you that I have not been standing still for the last
fifteen years. It will be enough if I say that five years ago I made the
discovery to which I alluded when I said that then I reached the goal.
After years of labour, after years of toiling and groping in the dark,
after days and nights of disappointment and sometimes of despair, in
which I used now and then to tremble and grow cold with the thought that
perhaps there were others seeking for what I sought, at last, after so
long, a pang of sudden joy thrilled my soul, and I knew the long journey
was at an end. By what seemed then and still seems a chance, the
suggestion of a moment's idle thought followed up upon familiar lines
and paths that I had tracked a hundred times already, the great truth
burst upon me, and I saw, mapped out in lines of light, a whole world, a
sphere unknown; continents and islands, and great oceans in which no
ship has sailed (to my belief) since a Man first lifted up his eyes and
beheld the sun, and the stars of heaven, and the quiet earth beneath.
You will think all this high-flown language, Clarke, but it is hard to
be literal. And yet; I do not know whether what I am hinting at cannot
be set forth in plain and homely terms. For instance, this world of ours
is pretty well girded now with the telegraph wires and cables; thought,
with something less than the speed of thought, flashes from sunrise to
sunset, from north to south, across the floods and the desert places.
Suppose that an electrician of to-day were suddenly to perceive that he
and his friends have merely been playing with pebbles and mistaking them
for the foundations of the world; suppose that such a man saw uttermost
space lie open before the current, and words of men flash forth to the
sun and beyond the sun into the systems beyond, and the voices of
articulate-speaking men echo in the waste void that bounds our thought.
As analogies go, that is a pretty good analogy of what I have done; you
can understand now a little of what I felt as I stood here one evening;
it was a summer evening, and the valley looked much as it does now; I
stood here, and saw before me the unutterable, the unthinkable gulf that
yawns profound between two worlds, the world of matter and the world of
spirit; I saw the great empty deep stretch dim before me, and in that
instant a bridge of light leapt from the earth to the unknown shore,
and the abyss was spanned. You may look in Browne Faber's book, if you
like, and you will find that to the present day men of science are
unable to account for the presence, or to specify the functions of a
certain group of nerve-cells in the brain. That group is, as it were,
land to let, a mere waste place for fanciful theories. I am not in the
position of Browne Faber and the specialists, I am perfectly instructed
as to the possible functions of those nerve-centers in the scheme of
things. With a touch I can bring them into play, with a touch, I say, I
can set free the current, with a touch I can complete the communication
between this world of sense and----we shall be able to finish the
sentence later on. Yes, the knife is necessary; but think what that
knife will effect. It will level utterly the solid wall of sense, and
probably, for the first time since man was made, a spirit will gaze on a
spirit-world. Clarke, Mary will see the god Pan!'

'But you remember what you wrote to me? I thought it would be requisite
that she----'

He whispered the rest into the doctor's ear.

'Not at all, not at all. That is nonsense, I assure you. Indeed, it is
better as it is; I am quite certain of that.'

'Consider the matter well, Raymond. It's a great responsibility.
Something might go wrong; you would be a miserable man for the rest of
your days.'

'No, I think not, even if the worst happened. As you know, I rescued
Mary from the gutter, and from almost certain starvation, when she was a
child; I think her life is mine, to use as I see fit. Come, it is
getting late; we had better go in.'

Dr. Raymond led the way into the house, through the hall, and down a
long dark passage. He took a key from his pocket and opened a heavy
door, and motioned Clarke into his laboratory. It had once been a
billiard-room, and was lighted by a glass dome in the centre of the
ceiling, whence there still shone a sad grey light on the figure of the
doctor as he lit a lamp with a heavy shade and placed it on a table in
the middle of the room.

Clarke looked about him. Scarcely a foot of wall remained bare; there
were shelves all around laden with bottles and phials of all shapes and
colours, and at one end stood a little Chippendale bookcase. Raymond
pointed to this.

'You see that parchment Oswald Crollius? He was one of the first to show
me the way, though I don't think he ever found it himself. That is a
strange saying of his: "In every grain of wheat there lies hidden the
soul of a star."'

There was not much of furniture in the laboratory. The table in the
centre, a stone slab with a drain in one corner, the two armchairs on
which Raymond and Clarke were sitting; that was all, except an
odd-looking chair at the furthest end of the room. Clarke looked at it,
and raised his eyebrows.

'Yes, that is the chair,' said Raymond. 'We may as well place it in
position,' He got up and wheeled the chair to the light, and began
raising and lowering it, letting down the seat, setting the back at
various angles, and adjusting the foot-rest. It looked comfortable
enough, and Clarke passed his hand over the soft green velvet, as the
doctor manipulated the levers.

'Now, Clarke, make yourself quite comfortable. I have a couple of
hours' work before me; I was obliged to leave certain matters to the
last.'

Raymond went to the stone slab, and Clarke watched him drearily as he
bent over a row of phials and lit the flame under the crucible. The
doctor had a small hand-lamp, shaded as the larger one, on a ledge above
his apparatus, and Clarke, who sat in the shadows, looked down the great
dreary room, wondering at the bizarre effects of brilliant light and
undefined darkness contrasting with one another. Soon he became
conscious of an odd odour, at first the merest suggestion of odour, in
the room; and as it grew more decided he felt surprised that he was not
reminded of the chemist's shop or the surgery. Clarke found himself idly
endeavouring to analyse the sensation, and, half conscious, he began to
think of a day, fifteen years ago, that he had spent in roaming through
the woods and meadows near his old home. It was a burning day at the
beginning of August, the heat had dimmed the outlines of all things and
all distances with a faint mist, and people who observed the thermometer
spoke of an abnormal register, of a temperature that was almost
tropical. Strangely that wonderful hot day of the 'fifties rose up in
Clarke's imagination; the sense of dazzling all-pervading sunlight
seemed to blot out the shadows and the lights of the laboratory, and he
felt again the heated air beating in gusts about his face, saw the
shimmer rising from the turf, and heard the myriad murmur of the summer.

'I hope the smell doesn't annoy you, Clarke; there's nothing unwholesome
about it. It may make you a bit sleepy, that's all.'

Clarke heard the words quite distinctly, and knew that Raymond was
speaking to him, but for the life of him he could not rouse himself from
his lethargy. He could only think of the lonely walk he had taken
fifteen years ago; it was his last look at the fields and woods he had
known since he was a child, and now it all stood out in brilliant light,
as a picture, before him. Above all there came to his nostrils the scent
of summer, the smell of flowers mingled, and the odour of the woods, of
cool shaded places, deep in the green depths, drawn forth by the sun's
heat; and the scent of the good earth, lying as it were with arms
stretched forth, and smiling lips, overpowered all. His fancies made him
wander, as he had wandered long ago, from the fields into the wood,
tracking a little path between the shining undergrowth of beech-trees;
and the trickle of water dropping from the limestone rock sounded as a
clear melody in the dream. Thoughts began to go astray and to mingle
with other recollections; the beech alley was transformed to a path
beneath ilex-trees, and here and there a vine climbed from bough to
bough, and sent up waving tendrils and drooped with purple grapes, and
the sparse grey-green leaves of a wild olive-tree stood out against the
dark shadows of the ilex. Clarke, in the deep folds of dream, was
conscious that the path from his father's house had led him into an
undiscovered country, and he was wondering at the strangeness of it all,
when suddenly, in place of the hum and murmur of the summer, an infinite
silence seemed to fall on all things, and the wood was hushed, and for a
moment of time he stood face to face there with a presence, that was
neither man nor beast, neither the living nor the dead, but all things
mingled, the form of all things but devoid of all form. And in that
moment, the sacrament of body and soul was dissolved, and a voice seemed
to cry 'Let us go hence,' and then the darkness of darkness beyond the
stars, the darkness of everlasting.

When Clarke woke up with a start he saw Raymond pouring a few drops of
some oily fluid into a green phial, which he stoppered tightly.

'You have been dozing,' he said; 'the journey must have tired you out.
It is done now. I am going to fetch Mary; I shall be back in ten
minutes.'

Clarke lay back in his chair and wondered. It seemed as if he had but
passed from one dream into another. He half expected to see the walls of
the laboratory melt and disappear, and to awake in London, shuddering at
his own sleeping fancies. But at last the door opened, and the doctor
returned, and behind him came a girl of about seventeen, dressed all in
white. She was so beautiful that Clarke did not wonder at what the
doctor had written to him. She was blushing now over face and neck and
arms, but Raymond seemed unmoved.

'Mary,' he said, 'the time has come. You are quite free. Are you willing
to trust yourself to me entirely?'

'Yes, dear.'

'You hear that, Clarke? You are my witness. Here is the chair, Mary. It
is quite easy. Just sit in it and lean back. Are you ready?'

'Yes, dear, quite ready. Give me a kiss before you begin.'

The doctor stooped and kissed her mouth, kindly enough. 'Now shut your
eyes,' he said. The girl closed her eyelids, as if she were tired, and
longed for sleep, and Raymond held the green phial to her nostrils. Her
face grew white, whiter than her dress; she struggled faintly, and then
with the feeling of submission strong within her, crossed her arms upon
her breast as a little child about to say her prayers. The bright light
of the lamp beat full upon her, and Clarke watched changes fleeting over
that face as the changes of the hills when the summer clouds float
across the sun. And then she lay all white and still, and the doctor
turned up one of her eyelids. She was quite unconscious. Raymond pressed
hard on one of the levers and the chair instantly sank back. Clarke saw
him cutting away a circle, like a tonsure, from her hair, and the lamp
was moved nearer. Raymond took a small glittering instrument from a
little case, and Clarke turned away shuddering. When he looked again the
doctor was binding up the wound he had made.

'She will awake in five minutes.' Raymond was still perfectly cool.
'There is nothing more to be done; we can only wait.'

The minutes passed slowly; they could hear a slow, heavy ticking. There
was an old clock in the passage. Clarke felt sick and faint; his knees
shook beneath him, he could hardly stand.

Suddenly, as they watched, they heard a long-drawn sigh, and suddenly
did the colour that had vanished return to the girl's cheeks, and
suddenly her eyes opened. Clarke quailed before them. They shone with an
awful light, looking far away, and a great wonder fell upon her face,
and her hands stretched out as if to touch what was invisible; but in an
instant the wonder faded, and gave place to the most awful terror. The
muscles of her face were hideously convulsed, she shook from head to
foot; the soul seemed struggling and shuddering within the house of
flesh. It was a horrible sight, and Clarke rushed forward, as she fell
shrieking to the floor.

Three days later Raymond took Clarke to Mary's bedside. She was lying
wide-awake, rolling her head from side to side, and grinning vacantly.

'Yes,' said the doctor, still quite cool, 'it is a great pity; she is a
hopeless idiot. However, it could not be helped; and, after all, she has
seen the Great God Pan.'


II

MR. CLARKE'S MEMOIRS

Mr. Clarke, the gentleman chosen by Dr. Raymond to witness the strange
experiment of the god Pan, was a person in whose character caution and
curiosity were oddly mingled; in his sober moments he thought of the
unusual and the eccentric with undisguised aversion, and yet, deep in
his heart, there was a wide-eyed inquisitiveness with respect to all the
more recondite and esoteric elements in the nature of men. The latter
tendency had prevailed when he accepted Raymond's invitation, for though
his considered judgment had always repudiated the doctor's theories as
the wildest nonsense, yet he secretly hugged a belief in fantasy, and
would have rejoiced to see that belief confirmed. The horrors that he
witnessed in the dreary laboratory were to a certain extent salutary; he
was conscious of being involved in an affair not altogether reputable,
and for many years afterwards he clung bravely to the commonplace, and
rejected all occasions of occult investigation. Indeed, on some
hom[oe]opathic principle, he for some time attended the seances of
distinguished mediums, hoping that the clumsy tricks of these gentlemen
would make him altogether disgusted with mysticism of every kind, but
the remedy, though caustic, was not efficacious. Clarke knew that he
still pined for the unseen, and little by little, the old passion began
to reassert itself, as the face of Mary, shuddering and convulsed with
an unknowable terror, faded slowly from his memory. Occupied all day in
pursuits both serious and lucrative, the temptation to relax in the
evening was too great, especially in the winter months, when the fire
cast a warm glow over his snug bachelor apartment, and a bottle of some
choice claret stood ready by his elbow. His dinner digested, he would
make a brief pretence of reading the evening paper, but the mere
catalogue of news soon palled upon him, and Clarke would find himself
casting glances of warm desire in the direction of an old Japanese
bureau, which stood at a pleasant distance from the hearth. Like a boy
before a jam-closet, for a few minutes he would hover indecisive, but
lust always prevailed, and Clarke ended by drawing up his chair,
lighting a candle, and sitting down before the bureau. Its pigeonholes
and drawers teemed with documents on the most morbid subjects, and in
the well reposed a large manuscript volume, in which he had painfully
entered the gems of his collection. Clarke had a fine contempt for
published literature; the most ghostly story ceased to interest him if
it happened to be printed; his sole pleasure was in the reading,
compiling, and rearranging what he called his 'Memoirs to prove the
Existence of the Devil,' and engaged in this pursuit the evening seemed
to fly and the night appeared too short.

On one particular evening, an ugly December night, black with fog, and
raw with frost, Clarke hurried over his dinner, and scarcely deigned to
observe his customary ritual of taking up the paper and laying it down
again. He paced two or three times up and down the room, and opened the
bureau, stood still a moment, and sat down. He leant back, absorbed in
one of those dreams to which he was subject, and at length drew out his
book, and opened it at the last entry. There were three or four pages
densely covered with Clarke's round, set penmanship, and at the
beginning he had written in a somewhat larger hand:

    Singular Narrative told me by my Friend, Dr. Phillips. He assures me
    that all the facts related therein are strictly and wholly True, but
    refuses to give either the Surnames of the Persons concerned, or the
    Place where these Extraordinary Events occurred.

Mr. Clarke began to read over the account for the tenth time, glancing
now and then at the pencil notes he had made when it was told him by his
friend. It was one of his humours to pride himself on a certain literary
ability; he thought well of his style, and took pains in arranging the
circumstances in dramatic order. He read the following story:--

The persons concerned in this statement are Helen V., who, if she is
still alive, must now be a woman of twenty-three, Rachel M., since
deceased, who was a year younger than the above, and Trevor W., an
imbecile, aged eighteen. These persons were at the period of the story
inhabitants of a village on the borders of Wales, a place of some
importance in the time of the Roman occupation, but now a scattered
hamlet, of not more than five hundred souls. It is situated on rising
ground, about six miles from the sea, and is sheltered by a large and
picturesque forest.

Some eleven years ago, Helen V. came to the village under rather
peculiar circumstances. It is understood that she, being an orphan, was
adopted in her infancy by a distant relative, who brought her up in his
own house till she was twelve years old. Thinking, however, that it
would be better for the child to have playmates of her own age, he
advertised in several local papers for a good home in a comfortable
farmhouse for a girl of twelve, and this advertisement was answered by
Mr. R., a well-to-do farmer in the above-mentioned village. His
references proving satisfactory, the gentleman sent his adopted daughter
to Mr. R., with a letter, in which he stipulated that the girl should
have a room to herself, and stated that her guardians need be at no
trouble in the matter of education, as she was already sufficiently
educated for the position in life which she would occupy. In fact, Mr.
R. was given to understand that the girl was to be allowed to find her
own occupations, and to spend her time almost as she liked. Mr. R. duly
met her at the nearest station, a town some seven miles away from his
house, and seems to have remarked nothing extraordinary about the
child, except that she was reticent as to her former life and her
adopted father. She was, however, of a very different type from the
inhabitants of the village; her skin was a pale, clear olive, and her
features were strongly marked, and of a somewhat foreign character. She
appears to have settled down easily enough into farmhouse life, and
became a favourite with the children, who sometimes went with her on her
rambles in the forest, for this was her amusement. Mr. R. states that he
has known her go out by herself directly after their early breakfast,
and not return till after dusk, and that, feeling uneasy at a young girl
being out alone for so many hours, he communicated with her adopted
father, who replied in a brief note that Helen must do as she chose. In
the winter, when the forest paths are impassable, she spent most of her
time in her bedroom, where she slept alone, according to the
instructions of her relative. It was on one of these expeditions to the
forest that the first of the singular incidents with which this girl is
connected occurred, the date being about a year after her arrival at the
village. The preceding winter had been remarkably severe, the snow
drifting to a great depth, and the frost continuing for an unexampled
period, and the summer following was as noteworthy for its extreme heat.
On one of the very hottest days in this summer, Helen V. left the
farmhouse for one of her long rambles in the forest, taking with her, as
usual, some bread and meat for lunch. She was seen by some men in the
fields making for the old Roman Road, a green causeway which traverses
the highest part of the wood, and they were astonished to observe that
the girl had taken off her hat, though the heat of the sun was already
almost tropical. As it happened, a labourer, Joseph W. by name, was
working in the forest near the Roman Road, and at twelve o'clock his
little son, Trevor, brought the man his dinner of bread and cheese.
After the meal, the boy, who was about seven years old at the time, left
his father at work, and, as he said, went to look for flowers in the
wood, and the man, who could hear him shouting with delight over his
discoveries, felt no uneasiness. Suddenly, however, he was horrified at
hearing the most dreadful screams, evidently the result of great terror,
proceeding from the direction in which his son had gone, and he hastily
threw down his tools and ran to see what had happened. Tracing his path
by the sound, he met the little boy, who was running headlong, and was
evidently terribly frightened, and on questioning him the man at last
elicited that after picking a posy of flowers he felt tired, and lay
down on the grass and fell asleep. He was suddenly awakened, as he
stated, by a peculiar noise, a sort of singing he called it, and on
peeping through the branches he saw Helen V. playing on the grass with a
'strange naked man,' whom he seemed unable to describe more fully. He
said he felt dreadfully frightened, and ran away crying for his father.
Joseph W. proceeded in the direction indicated by his son, and found
Helen V. sitting on the grass in the middle of a glade or open space
left by charcoal burners. He angrily charged her with frightening his
little boy, but she entirely denied the accusation and laughed at the
child's story of a 'strange man,' to which he himself did not attach
much credence. Joseph W. came to the conclusion that the boy had woke up
with a sudden fright, as children sometimes do, but Trevor persisted in
his story, and continued in such evident distress that at last his
father took him home, hoping that his mother would be able to soothe
him. For many weeks, however, the boy gave his parents much anxiety; he
became nervous and strange in his manner, refusing to leave the cottage
by himself, and constantly alarming the household by waking in the night
with cries of 'The man in the wood! father! father!'

In course of time, however, the impression seemed to have worn off, and
about three months later he accompanied his father to the house of a
gentleman in the neighbourhood, for whom Joseph W. occasionally did
work. The man was shown into the study, and the little boy was left
sitting in the hall, and a few minutes later, while the gentleman was
giving W. his instructions, they were both horrified by a piercing
shriek and the sound of a fall, and rushing out they found the child
lying senseless on the floor, his face contorted with terror. The doctor
was immediately summoned, and after some examination he pronounced the
child to be suffering from a kind of fit, apparently produced by a
sudden shock. The boy was taken to one of the bedrooms, and after some
time recovered consciousness, but only to pass into a condition
described by the medical man as one of violent hysteria. The doctor
exhibited a strong sedative, and in the course of two hours pronounced
him fit to walk home, but in passing through the hall the paroxysms of
fright returned and with additional violence. The father perceived that
the child was pointing at some object, and heard the old cry, 'The man
in the wood,' and looking in the direction indicated saw a stone head of
grotesque appearance, which had been built into the wall above one of
the doors. It seems that the owner of the house had recently made
alterations in his premises, and on digging the foundation for some
offices, the men had found a curious head, evidently of the Roman
period, which had been placed in the hall in the manner described. The
head is pronounced by the most experienced archaeologists of the
district to be that of a faun or satyr.[1]

[1] Dr. Phillips tells me that he has seen the head in question, and
assures me that he has never received such a vivid presentment of
intense evil.

From whatever cause arising, this second shock seemed too severe for the
boy Trevor, and at the present date he suffers from a weakness of
intellect, which gives but little promise of amending. The matter caused
a good deal of sensation at the time, and the girl Helen was closely
questioned by Mr. R., but to no purpose, she steadfastly denying that
she had frightened or in any way molested Trevor.

The second event with which this girl's name is connected took place
about six years ago, and is of a still more extraordinary character.

At the beginning of the summer of 1882 Helen contracted a friendship of
a peculiarly intimate character with Rachel M., the daughter of a
prosperous farmer in the neighbourhood. This girl, who was a year
younger than Helen, was considered by most people to be the prettier of
the two, though Helen's features had to a great extent softened as she
became older. The two girls, who were together on every available
opportunity, presented a singular contrast, the one with her clear,
olive skin and almost Italian appearance, and the other of the
proverbial red and white of our rural districts. It must be stated that
the payments made to Mr. R. for the maintenance of Helen were known in
the village for their excessive liberality, and the impression was
general that she would one day inherit a large sum of money from her
relative. The parents of Rachel were therefore not averse from their
daughter's friendship with the girl, and even encouraged the intimacy,
though they now bitterly regret having done so. Helen still retained her
extraordinary fondness for the forest, and on several occasions Rachel
accompanied her, the two friends setting out early in the morning, and
remaining in the wood till dusk. Once or twice after these excursions
Mrs. M. thought her daughter's manner rather peculiar; she seemed
languid and dreamy, and as it has been expressed, 'different from
herself,' but these peculiarities seem to have been thought too trifling
for remark. One evening, however, after Rachel had come home, her mother
heard a noise which sounded like suppressed weeping in the girl's room,
and on going in found her lying, half undressed, upon the bed, evidently
in the greatest distress. As soon as she saw her mother, she exclaimed,
'Ah, mother, mother, why did you let me go to the forest with Helen?'
Mrs. M. was astonished at so strange a question, and proceeded to make
inquiries. Rachel told her a wild story. She said--

Clarke closed the book with a snap, and turned his chair towards the
fire. When his friend sat one evening in that very chair, and told his
story, Clarke had interrupted him at a point a little subsequent to
this, had cut short his words in a paroxysm of horror. 'My God!' he had
exclaimed, 'think, think what you are saying. It is too incredible, too
monstrous; such things can never be in this quiet world, where men and
women live and die, and struggle, and conquer, or maybe fail, and fall
down under sorrow, and grieve and suffer strange fortunes for many a
year; but not this, Phillips, not such things as this. There must be
some explanation, some way out of the terror. Why, man, if such a case
were possible, our earth would be a nightmare.'

But Phillips had told his story to the end, concluding:

'Her flight remains a mystery to this day; she vanished in broad
sunlight; they saw her walking in a meadow, and a few moments later she
was not there.'

Clarke tried to conceive the thing again, as he sat by the fire, and
again his mind shuddered and shrank back, appalled before the sight of
such awful, unspeakable elements enthroned as it were, and triumphant in
human flesh. Before him stretched the long dim vista of the green
causeway in the forest, as his friend had described it; he saw the
swaying leaves and the quivering shadows on the grass, he saw the
sunlight and the flowers, and far away, far in the long distance, the
two figures moved toward him. One was Rachel, but the other?

Clarke had tried his best to disbelieve it all, but at the end of the
account, as he had written it in his book, he had placed the
inscription:

    ET DIABOLUS INCARNATUS EST. ET HOMO FACTUS EST.


III

THE CITY OF RESURRECTIONS

'Herbert! Good God! Is it possible?'

'Yes, my name's Herbert. I think I know your face too, but I don't
remember your name. My memory is very queer.'

'Don't you recollect Villiers of Wadham?'

'So it is, so it is. I beg your pardon, Villiers, I didn't think I was
begging of an old college friend. Good-night.'

'My dear fellow, this haste is unnecessary. My rooms are close by, but
we won't go there just yet. Suppose we walk up Shaftesbury Avenue a
little way? But how in heaven's name have you come to this pass,
Herbert?'

'It's a long story, Villiers, and a strange one too, but you can hear it
if you like.'

'Come on, then. Take my arm, you don't seem very strong.'

The ill-assorted pair moved slowly up Rupert Street; the one in dirty,
evil-looking rags, and the other attired in the regulation uniform of a
man about town, trim, glossy, and eminently well-to-do. Villiers had
emerged from his restaurant after an excellent dinner of many courses,
assisted by an ingratiating little flask of Chianti, and, in that frame
of mind which was with him almost chronic, had delayed a moment by the
door, peering round in the dimly-lighted street in search of those
mysterious incidents and persons with which the streets of London teem
in every quarter and at every hour. Villiers prided himself as a
practised explorer of such obscure mazes and byways of London life, and
in this unprofitable pursuit he displayed an assiduity which was worthy
of more serious employment. Thus he stood beside the lamp-post surveying
the passers-by with undisguised curiosity, and with that gravity only
known to the systematic diner, had just enunciated in his mind the
formula: 'London has been called the city of encounters; it is more than
that, it is the city of Resurrections,' when these reflections were
suddenly interrupted by a piteous whine at his elbow, and a deplorable
appeal for alms. He looked around in some irritation, and with a sudden
shock found himself confronted with the embodied proof of his somewhat
stilted fancies. There, close beside him, his face altered and
disfigured by poverty and disgrace, his body barely covered by greasy
ill-fitting rags, stood his old friend Charles Herbert, who had
matriculated on the same day as himself, with whom he had been merry and
wise for twelve revolving terms. Different occupations and varying
interests had interrupted the friendship, and it was six years since
Villiers had seen Herbert; and now he looked upon this wreck of a man
with grief and dismay, mingled with a certain inquisitiveness as to what
dreary chain of circumstance had dragged him down to such a doleful
pass. Villiers felt together with compassion all the relish of the
amateur in mysteries, and congratulated himself on his leisurely
speculations outside the restaurant.

They walked on in silence for some time, and more than one passer-by
stared in astonishment at the unaccustomed spectacle of a well-dressed
man with an unmistakable beggar hanging on to his arm, and, observing
this, Villiers led the way to an obscure street in Soho. Here he
repeated his question.

'How on earth has it happened, Herbert? I always understood you would
succeed to an excellent position in Dorsetshire. Did your father
disinherit you? Surely not?'

'No, Villiers; I came into all the property at my poor father's death;
he died a year after I left Oxford. He was a very good father to me, and
I mourned his death sincerely enough. But you know what young men are; a
few months later I came up to town and went a good deal into society. Of
course I had excellent introductions, and I managed to enjoy myself very
much in a harmless sort of way. I played a little, certainly, but never
for heavy stakes, and the few bets I made on races brought me in
money--only a few pounds, you know, but enough to pay for cigars and
such petty pleasures. It was in my second season that the tide turned.
Of course you have heard of my marriage?'

'No, I never heard anything about it.'

'Yes, I married, Villiers. I met a girl, a girl of the most wonderful
and most strange beauty, at the house of some people whom I knew. I
cannot tell you her age; I never knew it, but, so far as I can guess, I
should think she must have been about nineteen when I made her
acquaintance. My friends had come to know her at Florence; she told
them she was an orphan, the child of an English father and an Italian
mother, and she charmed them as she charmed me. The first time I saw her
was at an evening party. I was standing by the door talking to a friend,
when suddenly above the hum and babble of conversation I heard a voice
which seemed to thrill to my heart. She was singing an Italian song. I
was introduced to her that evening, and in three months I married Helen.
Villiers, that woman, if I can call her woman, corrupted my soul. The
night of the wedding I found myself sitting in her bedroom in the hotel,
listening to her talk. She was sitting up in bed, and I listened to her
as she spoke in her beautiful voice, spoke of things which even now I
would not dare whisper in blackest night, though I stood in the midst of
a wilderness. You, Villiers, you may think you know life, and London,
and what goes on day and night in this dreadful city; for all I can say
you may have heard the talk of the vilest, but I tell you you can have
no conception of what I know, not in your most fantastic, hideous dreams
can you have imaged forth the faintest shadow of what I have heard--and
seen. Yes, seen. I have seen the incredible, such horrors that even I
myself sometimes stop in the middle of the street, and ask whether it is
possible for a man to behold such things and live. In a year, Villiers,
I was a ruined man, in body and soul--in body and soul.'

'But your property, Herbert? You had land in Dorset.'

'I sold it all; the fields and woods, the dear old house--everything.'

'And the money?'

'She took it all from me.'

'And then left you?'

'Yes; she disappeared one night. I don't know where she went, but I am
sure if I saw her again it would kill me. The rest of my story is of no
interest; sordid misery, that is all. You may think, Villiers, that I
have exaggerated and talked for effect; but I have not told you half. I
could tell you certain things which would convince you, but you would
never know a happy day again. You would pass the rest of your life, as I
pass mine, a haunted man, a man who has seen hell.'

Villiers took the unfortunate man to his rooms, and gave him a meal.
Herbert could eat little, and scarcely touched the glass of wine set
before him. He sat moody and silent by the fire, and seemed relieved
when Villiers sent him away with a small present of money.

'By the way, Herbert,' said Villiers, as they parted at the door, 'what
was your wife's name? You said Helen, I think? Helen what?'

'The name she passed under when I met her was Helen Vaughan, but what
her real name was I can't say. I don't think she had a name. No, no, not
in that sense. Only human beings have names, Villiers; I can't say any
more. Good-bye; yes, I will not fail to call if I see any way in which
you can help me. Good-night.'

The man went out into the bitter night, and Villiers returned to his
fireside. There was something about Herbert which shocked him
inexpressibly; not his poor rags nor the marks which poverty had set
upon his face, but rather an indefinite terror which hung about him
like a mist. He had acknowledged that he himself was not devoid of
blame; the woman, he had avowed, had corrupted him body and soul, and
Villiers felt that this man, once his friend, had been an actor in
scenes evil beyond the power of words. His story needed no confirmation:
he himself was the embodied proof of it. Villiers mused curiously over
the story he had heard, and wondered whether he had heard both the first
and the last of it. 'No,' he thought, 'certainly not the last, probably
only the beginning. A case like this is like a nest of Chinese boxes;
you open one after another and find a quainter workmanship in every box.
Most likely poor Herbert is merely one of the outside boxes; there are
stranger ones to follow.'

Villiers could not take his mind away from Herbert and his story, which
seemed to grow wilder as the night wore on. The fire began to burn low,
and the chilly air of the morning crept into the room; Villiers got up
with a glance over his shoulder, and shivering slightly, went to bed.

A few days later he saw at his club a gentleman of his acquaintance,
named Austin, who was famous for his intimate knowledge of London life,
both in its tenebrous and luminous phases. Villiers, still full of his
encounter in Soho and its consequences, thought Austin might possibly be
able to shed some light on Herbert's history, and so after some casual
talk he suddenly put the question:

'Do you happen to know anything of a man named Herbert--Charles
Herbert?'

Austin turned round sharply and stared at Villiers with some
astonishment.

'Charles Herbert? Weren't you in town three years ago? No; then you have
not heard of the Paul Street case? It caused a good deal of sensation at
the time.'

'What was the case?'

'Well, a gentleman, a man of very good position, was found dead, stark
dead, in the area of a certain house in Paul Street, off Tottenham Court
Road. Of course the police did not make the discovery; if you happen to
be sitting up all night and have a light in your window, the constable
will ring the bell, but if you happen to be lying dead in somebody's
area, you will be left alone. In this instance as in many others the
alarm was raised by some kind of vagabond; I don't mean a common tramp,
or a public-house loafer, but a gentleman, whose business or pleasure,
or both, made him a spectator of the London streets at five o'clock in
the morning. This individual was, as he said, "going home," it did not
appear whence or whither, and had occasion to pass through Paul Street
between four and five a. m. Something or other caught his eye at Number
20; he said, absurdly enough, that the house had the most unpleasant
physiognomy he had ever observed, but, at any rate, he glanced down the
area, and was a good deal astonished to see a man lying on the stones,
his limbs all huddled together, and his face turned up. Our gentleman
thought his face looked peculiarly ghastly, and so set off at a run in
search of the nearest policeman. The constable was at first inclined to
treat the matter lightly, suspecting common drunkenness; however, he
came, and after looking at the man's face, changed his tone, quickly
enough. The early bird, who had picked up this fine worm, was sent off
for a doctor, and the policeman rang and knocked at the door till a
slatternly servant girl came down looking more than half asleep. The
constable pointed out the contents of the area to the maid, who screamed
loudly enough to wake up the street, but she knew nothing of the man;
had never seen him at the house, and so forth. Meanwhile the original
discoverer had come back with a medical man, and the next thing was to
get into the area. The gate was open, so the whole quartet stumped down
the steps. The doctor hardly needed a moment's examination; he said the
poor fellow had been dead for several hours, and it was then the case
began to get interesting. The dead man had not been robbed, and in one
of his pockets were papers identifying him as--well, as a man of good
family and means, a favourite in society, and nobody's enemy, so far as
could be known. I don't give his name, Villiers, because it has nothing
to do with the story, and because it's no good raking up these affairs
about the dead when there are no relations living. The next curious
point was that the medical men couldn't agree as to how he met his
death. There were some slight bruises on his shoulders, but they were so
slight that it looked as if he had been pushed roughly out of the
kitchen door, and not thrown over the railings from the street or even
dragged down the steps. But there were positively no other marks of
violence about him, certainly none that would account for his death; and
when they came to the autopsy there wasn't a trace of poison of any
kind. Of course the police wanted to know all about the people at Number
20, and here again, so I have heard from private sources, one or two
other very curious points came out. It appears that the occupants of the
house were a Mr. and Mrs. Charles Herbert; he was said to be a landed
proprietor, though it struck most people that Paul Street was not
exactly the place to look for county gentry. As for Mrs. Herbert, nobody
seemed to know who or what she was, and, between ourselves, I fancy the
divers after her history found themselves in rather strange waters. Of
course they both denied knowing anything about the deceased, and in
default of any evidence against them they were discharged. But some very
odd things came out about them. Though it was between five and six in
the morning when the dead man was removed, a large crowd had collected,
and several of the neighbours ran to see what was going on. They were
pretty free with their comments, by all accounts, and from these it
appeared that Number 20 was in very bad odour in Paul Street. The
detectives tried to trace down these rumours to some solid foundation of
fact, but could not get hold of anything. People shook their heads and
raised their eyebrows and thought the Herberts rather "queer," "would
rather not be seen going into their house," and so on, but there was
nothing tangible. The authorities were morally certain that the man met
his death in some way or another in the house and was thrown out by the
kitchen door, but they couldn't prove it, and the absence of any
indications of violence or poisoning left them helpless. An odd case,
wasn't it? But curiously enough, there's something more that I haven't
told you. I happened to know one of the doctors who was consulted as to
the cause of death, and some time after the inquest I met him, and asked
him about it. "Do you really mean to tell me," I said, "that you were
baffled by the case, that you actually don't know what the man died of?"
"Pardon me," he replied, "I know perfectly well what caused death. Blank
died of fright, of sheer, awful terror; I never saw features so
hideously contorted in the entire course of my practice, and I have seen
the faces of a whole host of dead." The doctor was usually a cool
customer enough, and a certain vehemence in his manner struck me, but I
couldn't get anything more out of him. I suppose the Treasury didn't see
their way to prosecuting the Herberts for frightening a man to death; at
any rate, nothing was done, and the case dropped out of men's minds. Do
you happen to know anything of Herbert?'

'Well,' replied Villiers, 'he was an old college friend of mine.'

'You don't say so? Have you ever seen his wife?'

'No, I haven't. I have lost sight of Herbert for many years.'

'It's queer, isn't it, parting with a man at the college gate or at
Paddington, seeing nothing of him for years, and then finding him pop up
his head in such an odd place. But I should like to have seen Mrs.
Herbert; people said extraordinary things about her.'

'What sort of things?'

'Well, I hardly know how to tell you. Every one who saw her at the
police court said she was at once the most beautiful woman and the most
repulsive they had ever set eyes on. I have spoken to a man who saw her,
and I assure you he positively shuddered as he tried to describe the
woman, but he couldn't tell why. She seems to have been a sort of
enigma; and I expect if that one dead man could have told tales, he
would have told some uncommonly queer ones. And there you are again in
another puzzle; what could a respectable country gentleman like Mr.
Blank (we'll call him that if you don't mind) want in such a very queer
house as Number 20? It's altogether a very odd case, isn't it?'

'It is indeed, Austin; an extraordinary case. I didn't think, when I
asked you about my old friend, I should strike on such strange metal.
Well, I must be off; good-day.'

Villiers went away, thinking of his own conceit of the Chinese boxes;
here was quaint workmanship indeed.


IV

THE DISCOVERY IN PAUL STREET

A few months after Villiers's meeting with Herbert, Mr. Clarke was
sitting, as usual, by his after-dinner hearth, resolutely guarding his
fancies from wandering in the direction of the bureau. For more than a
week he had succeeded in keeping away from the 'Memoirs,' and he
cherished hopes of a complete self-reformation; but, in spite of his
endeavours, he could not hush the wonder and the strange curiosity that
that last case he had written down had excited within him. He had put
the case, or rather the outline of it, conjecturally to a scientific
friend, who shook his head, and thought Clarke getting queer, and on
this particular evening Clarke was making an effort to rationalize the
story, when a sudden knock at his door roused him from his meditations.

'Mr. Villiers to see you, sir.'

'Dear me, Villiers, it is very kind of you to look me up; I have not
seen you for many months; I should think nearly a year. Come in, come
in. And how are you, Villiers? Want any advice about investments?'

'No, thanks, I fancy everything I have in that way is pretty safe. No,
Clarke, I have really come to consult you about a rather curious matter
that has been brought under my notice of late. I am afraid you will
think it all rather absurd when I tell my tale. I sometimes think so
myself, and that's just why I made up my mind to come to you, as I know
you're a practical man.'

Mr. Villiers was ignorant of the 'Memoirs to prove the Existence of the
Devil.'

'Well, Villiers, I shall be happy to give you my advice, to the best of
my ability. What is the nature of the case?'

'It's an extraordinary thing altogether. You know my ways; I always keep
my eyes open in the streets, and in my time I have chanced upon some
queer customers, and queer cases too, but this, I think, beats all. I
was coming out of a restaurant one nasty winter night about three months
ago; I had had a capital dinner and a good bottle of Chianti, and I
stood for a moment on the pavement, thinking what a mystery there is
about London streets and the companies that pass along them. A bottle of
red wine encourages these fancies, Clarke, and I dare say I should have
thought a page of small type, but I was cut short by a beggar who had
come behind me, and was making the usual appeals. Of course I looked
round, and this beggar turned out to be what was left of an old friend
of mine, a man named Herbert. I asked him how he had come to such a
wretched pass, and he told me. We walked up and down one of those long
dark Soho streets, and there I listened to his story. He said he had
married a beautiful girl, some years younger than himself, and, as he
put it, she had corrupted him body and soul. He wouldn't go into
details; he said he dare not, that what he had seen and heard haunted
him by night and day, and when I looked in his face I knew he was
speaking the truth. There was something about the man that made me
shiver. I don't know why, but it was there. I gave him a little money
and sent him away, and I assure you that when he was gone I gasped for
breath. His presence seemed to chill one's blood.'

'Isn't all this just a little fanciful, Villiers? I suppose the poor
fellow had made an imprudent marriage, and, in plain English, gone to
the bad.'

'Well, listen to this.' Villiers told Clarke the story he had heard from
Austin.

'You see,' he concluded, 'there can be but little doubt that this Mr.
Blank, whoever he was, died of sheer terror; he saw something so awful,
so terrible, that it cut short his life. And what he saw, he most
certainly saw in that house, which, somehow or other, had got a bad name
in the neighbourhood. I had the curiosity to go and look at the place
for myself. It's a saddening kind of street; the houses are old enough
to be mean and dreary, but not old enough to be quaint. As far as I
could see most of them are let in lodgings, furnished and unfurnished,
and almost every door has three bells to it. Here and there the ground
floors have been made into shops of the commonest kind; it's a dismal
street in every way. I found Number 20 was to let, and I went to the
agent's and got the key. Of course I should have heard nothing of the
Herberts in that quarter, but I asked the man, fair and square, how long
they had left the house, and whether there had been other tenants in the
meanwhile. He looked at me queerly for a minute, and told me the
Herberts had left immediately after the unpleasantness, as he called it,
and since then the house had been empty.'

Mr. Villiers paused for a moment.

'I have always been rather fond of going over empty houses; there's a
sort of fascination about the desolate empty rooms, with the nails
sticking in the walls, and the dust thick upon the window-sills. But I
didn't enjoy going over Number 20, Paul Street. I had hardly put my foot
inside the passage before I noticed a queer, heavy feeling about the air
of the house. Of course all empty houses are stuffy, and so forth, but
this was something quite different; I can't describe it to you, but it
seemed to stop the breath. I went into the front room and the back room,
and the kitchens downstairs; they were all dirty and dusty enough, as
you would expect, but there was something strange about them all. I
couldn't define it to you, I only know I felt queer. It was one of the
rooms on the first floor, though, that was the worst. It was a largish
room, and once on a time the paper must have been cheerful enough, but
when I saw it, paint, paper, and everything were most doleful. But the
room was full of horror; I felt my teeth grinding as I put my hand on
the door, and when I went in, I thought I should have fallen fainting to
the floor. However, I pulled myself together, and stood against the end
wall, wondering what on earth there could be about the room to make my
limbs tremble, and my heart beat as if I were at the hour of death. In
one corner there was a pile of newspapers littered about on the floor,
and I began looking at them; they were papers of three or four years
ago, some of them half torn, and some crumpled as if they had been used
for packing. I turned the whole pile over, and amongst them I found a
curious drawing; I will show it you presently. But I couldn't stay in
the room; I felt it was overpowering me. I was thankful to come out,
safe and sound, into the open air. People stared at me as I walked along
the street, and one man said I was drunk. I was staggering about from
one side of the pavement to the other, and it was as much as I could do
to take the key back to the agent and get home. I was in bed for a week,
suffering from what my doctor called nervous shock and exhaustion. One
of those days I was reading the evening paper, and happened to notice a
paragraph headed: "Starved to Death." It was the usual style of thing; a
model lodging-house in Marylebone, a door locked for several days, and a
dead man in his chair when they broke in. "The deceased," said the
paragraph, "was known as Charles Herbert, and is believed to have been
once a prosperous country gentleman. His name was familiar to the public
three years ago in connection with the mysterious death in Paul Street,
Tottenham Court Road, the deceased being the tenant of the house Number
20, in the area of which a gentleman of good position was found dead
under circumstances not devoid of suspicion." A tragic ending, wasn't
it? But after all, if what he told me were true, which I am sure it
was, the man's life was all a tragedy, and a tragedy of a stranger sort
than they put on the boards.'

'And that is the story, is it?' said Clarke musingly.

'Yes, that is the story.'

'Well, really, Villiers, I scarcely know what to say about it. There
are, no doubt, circumstances in the case which seem peculiar, the
finding of the dead man in the area of Herbert's house, for instance,
and the extraordinary opinion of the physician as to the cause of death;
but, after all, it is conceivable that the facts may be explained in a
straightforward manner. As to your own sensations, when you went to see
the house, I would suggest that they were due to a vivid imagination;
you must have been brooding, in a semiconscious way, over what you had
heard. I don't exactly see what more can be said or done in the matter;
you evidently think there is a mystery of some kind, but Herbert is
dead; where then do you propose to look?'

'I propose to look for the woman; the woman whom he married. _She_ is
the mystery.'

The two men sat silent by the fireside; Clarke secretly congratulating
himself on having successfully kept up the character of advocate of the
commonplace, and Villiers wrapt in his gloomy fancies.

'I think I will have a cigarette,' he said at last, and put his hand in
his pocket to feel for the cigarette-case.

'Ah!' he said, starting slightly, 'I forgot I had something to show you.
You remember my saying that I had found a rather curious sketch amongst
the pile of old newspapers at the house in Paul Street? Here it is.'

Villiers drew out a small thin parcel from his pocket. It was covered
with brown paper, and secured with string, and the knots were
troublesome. In spite of himself Clarke felt inquisitive; he bent
forward on his chair as Villiers painfully undid the string, and
unfolded the outer covering. Inside was a second wrapping of tissue, and
Villiers took it off and handed the small piece of paper to Clarke
without a word.

There was dead silence in the room for five minutes or more; the two men
sat so still that they could hear the ticking of the tall old-fashioned
clock that stood outside in the hall, and in the mind of one of them the
slow monotony of sound woke up a far, far memory. He was looking
intently at the small pen-and-ink sketch of the woman's head; it had
evidently been drawn with great care, and by a true artist, for the
woman's soul looked out of the eyes, and the lips were parted with a
strange smile. Clarke gazed still at the face; it brought to his memory
one summer evening long ago; he saw again the long lovely valley, the
river winding between the hills, the meadows and the cornfields, the
dull red sun, and the cold white mist rising from the water. He heard a
voice speaking to him across the waves of many years, and saying,
'Clarke, Mary will see the God Pan!' and then he was standing in the
grim room beside the doctor, listening to the heavy ticking of the
clock, waiting and watching, watching the figure lying on the green
chair beneath the lamplight. Mary rose up, and he looked into her eyes,
and his heart grew cold within him.

'Who is this woman?' he said at last. His voice was dry and hoarse.

'That is the woman whom Herbert married.'

Clarke looked again at the sketch; it was not Mary after all. There
certainly was Mary's face, but there was something else, something he
had not seen on Mary's features when the white-clad girl entered the
laboratory with the doctor, nor at her terrible awakening, nor when she
lay grinning on the bed. Whatever it was, the glance that came from
those eyes, the smile on the full lips, or the expression of the whole
face, Clarke shuddered before it in his inmost soul, and thought,
unconsciously, of Dr. Phillips's words, 'the most vivid presentment of
evil I have ever seen.' He turned the paper over mechanically in his
hand and glanced at the back.

'Good God! Clarke, what is the matter? You are as white as death.'

Villiers had started wildly from his chair, as Clarke fell back with a
groan, and let the paper drop from his hands.

'I don't feel very well, Villiers, I am subject to these attacks. Pour
me out a little wine; thanks, that will do. I shall feel better in a few
minutes.'

Villiers picked up the fallen sketch and turned it over as Clarke had
done.

'You saw that?' he said. 'That's how I identified it as being a portrait
of Herbert's wife, or I should say his widow. How do you feel now?'

'Better, thanks, it was only a passing faintness. I don't think I quite
catch your meaning. What did you say enabled you to identify the
picture?'

'This word--"Helen"--written on the back. Didn't I tell you her name was
Helen? Yes; Helen Vaughan.'

Clarke groaned; there could be no shadow of doubt.

'Now, don't you agree with me,' said Villiers, 'that in the story I have
told you to-night, and in the part this woman plays in it, there are
some very strange points?'

'Yes, Villiers,' Clarke muttered, 'it is a strange story indeed; a
strange story indeed. You must give me time to think it over; I may be
able to help you or I may not. Must you be going now? Well, good-night,
Villiers, good-night. Come and see me in the course of a week.'


V

THE LETTER OF ADVICE

'Do you know, Austin,' said Villiers, as the two friends were pacing
sedately along Piccadilly one pleasant morning in May, 'do you know I am
convinced that what you told me about Paul Street and the Herberts is a
mere episode in an extraordinary history? I may as well confess to you
that when I asked you about Herbert a few months ago I had just seen
him.'

'You had seen him? Where?'

'He begged of me in the street one night. He was in the most pitiable
plight, but I recognized the man, and I got him to tell me his history,
or at least the outline of it. In brief, it amounted to this--he had
been ruined by his wife.'

'In what manner?'

'He would not tell me; he would only say that she had destroyed him,
body and soul. The man is dead now.'

'And what has become of his wife?'

'Ah, that's what I should like to know, and I mean to find her sooner or
later. I know a man named Clarke, a dry fellow, in fact a man of
business, but shrewd enough. You understand my meaning; not shrewd in
the mere business sense of the word, but a man who really knows
something about men and life. Well, I laid the case before him, and he
was evidently impressed. He said it needed consideration, and asked me
to come again in the course of a week. A few days later I received this
extraordinary letter.'

Austin took the envelope, drew out the letter, and read it curiously. It
ran as follows:--

    'MY DEAR VILLIERS,--I have thought over the matter on which you
    consulted me the other night, and my advice to you is this. Throw
    the portrait into the fire, blot out the story from your mind. Never
    give it another thought, Villiers, or you will be sorry. You will
    think, no doubt, that I am in possession of some secret information,
    and to a certain extent that is the case. But I only know a little;
    I am like a traveller who has peered over an abyss, and has drawn
    back in terror. What I know is strange enough and horrible enough,
    but beyond my knowledge there are depths and horrors more frightful
    still, more incredible than any tale told of winter nights about the
    fire. I have resolved, and nothing shall shake that resolve, to
    explore no whit farther, and if you value your happiness you will
    make the same determination.

    'Come and see me by all means; but we will talk on more cheerful
    topics than this.'

Austin folded the letter methodically, and returned it to Villiers.

'It is certainly an extraordinary letter,' he said; 'what does he mean
by the portrait?'

'Ah! I forgot to tell you I have been to Paul Street and have made a
discovery.'

Villiers told his story as he had told it to Clarke, and Austin listened
in silence. He seemed puzzled.

'How very curious that you should experience such an unpleasant
sensation in that room!' he said at length. 'I hardly gather that it was
a mere matter of the imagination; a feeling of repulsion, in short.'

'No, it was more physical than mental. It was as if I were inhaling at
every breath some deadly fume, which seemed to penetrate to every nerve
and bone and sinew of my body. I felt racked from head to foot, my eyes
began to grow dim; it was like the entrance of death.'

'Yes, yes, very strange, certainly. You see, your friend confesses that
there is some very black story connected with this woman. Did you notice
any particular emotion in him when you were telling your tale?'

'Yes, I did. He became very faint, but he assured me that it was a mere
passing attack to which he was subject.'

'Did you believe him?'

'I did at the time, but I don't now. He heard what I had to say with a
good deal of indifference, till I showed him the portrait. It was then
he was seized with the attack of which I spoke. He looked ghastly, I
assure you.'

'Then he must have seen the woman before. But there might be another
explanation; it might have been the name, and not the face, which was
familiar to him. What do you think?'

'I couldn't say. To the best of my belief it was after turning the
portrait in his hands that he nearly dropped from his chair. The name,
you know, was written on the back.'

'Quite so. After all, it is impossible to come to any resolution in a
case like this. I hate melodrama, and nothing strikes me as more
commonplace and tedious than the ordinary ghost story of commerce; but
really, Villiers, it looks as if there were something very queer at the
bottom of all this.'

The two men had, without noticing it, turned up Ashley Street, leading
northward from Piccadilly. It was a long street, and rather a gloomy
one, but here and there a brighter taste had illuminated the dark houses
with flowers, and gay curtains, and a cheerful paint on the doors.
Villiers glanced up as Austin stopped speaking, and looked at one of
these houses; geraniums, red and white, drooped from every sill, and
daffodil-coloured curtains were draped back from each window.

'It looks cheerful, doesn't it?' he said.

'Yes, and the inside is still more cheery. One of the pleasantest houses
of the season, so I have heard. I haven't been there myself, but I've
met several men who have, and they tell me it's uncommonly jovial.'

'Whose house is it?'

'A Mrs. Beaumont's.'

'And who is she?'

'I couldn't tell you. I have heard she comes from South America, but,
after all, who she is is of little consequence. She is a very wealthy
woman, there's no doubt of that, and some of the best people have taken
her up. I hear she has some wonderful claret, really marvellous wine,
which must have cost a fabulous sum. Lord Argentine was telling me about
it; he was there last Sunday evening. He assures me he has never tasted
such a wine, and Argentine, as you know, is an expert. By the way, that
reminds me, she must be an oddish sort of woman, this Mrs. Beaumont.
Argentine asked her how old the wine was, and what do you think she
said? "About a thousand years, I believe." Lord Argentine thought she
was chaffing him, you know, but when he laughed she said she was
speaking quite seriously, and offered to show him the jar. Of course, he
couldn't say anything more after that; but it seems rather antiquated
for a beverage, doesn't it? Why, here we are at my rooms. Come in, won't
you?'

'Thanks, I think I will. I haven't seen the curiosity-shop for some
time.'

It was a room furnished richly, yet oddly, where every chair and
bookcase and table, and every rug and jar and ornament seemed to be a
thing apart, preserving each its own individuality.

'Anything fresh lately?' said Villiers after a while.

'No; I think not; you saw those queer jugs, didn't you? I thought so. I
don't think I have come across anything for the last few weeks.'

Austin glanced round the room from cupboard to cupboard, from shelf to
shelf, in search of some new oddity. His eyes fell at last on an old
chest, pleasantly and quaintly carved, which stood in a dark corner of
the room.

'Ah,' he said, 'I was forgetting, I have got something to show you.'
Austin unlocked the chest, drew out a thick quarto volume, laid it on
the table, and resumed the cigar he had put down.

'Did you know Arthur Meyrick the painter, Villiers?'

'A little; I met him two or three times at the house of a friend of
mine. What has become of him? I haven't heard his name mentioned for
some time.'

'He's dead.'

'You don't say so! Quite young, wasn't he?'

'Yes; only thirty when he died.'

'What did he die of?'

'I don't know. He was an intimate friend of mine, and a thoroughly good
fellow. He used to come here and talk to me for hours, and he was one of
the best talkers I have met. He could even talk about painting, and
that's more than can be said of most painters. About eighteen months ago
he was feeling rather overworked, and partly at my suggestion he went
off on a sort of roving expedition, with no very definite end or aim
about it. I believe New York was to be his first port, but I never heard
from him. Three months ago I got this book, with a very civil letter
from an English doctor practising at Buenos Ayres, stating that he had
attended the late Mr. Meyrick during his illness, and that the deceased
had expressed an earnest wish that the enclosed packet should be sent to
me after his death. That was all.'

'And haven't you written for further particulars?'

'I have been thinking of doing so. You would advise me to write to the
doctor?'

'Certainly. And what about the book?'

'It was sealed up when I got it. I don't think the doctor had seen it.'

'It is something very rare? Meyrick was a collector, perhaps?'

'No, I think not, hardly a collector. Now, what do you think of those
Ainu jugs?'

'They are peculiar, but I like them. But aren't you going to show me
poor Meyrick's legacy?'

'Yes, yes, to be sure. The fact is, it's rather a peculiar sort of
thing, and I haven't shown it to any one. I wouldn't say anything about
it if I were you. There it is.'

Villiers took the book, and opened it at haphazard.

'It isn't a printed volume then?' he said.

'No. It is a collection of drawings in black and white by my poor friend
Meyrick.'

Villiers turned to the first page, it was blank; the second bore a brief
inscription, which he read:

    _Silet per diem universus, nec sine horrore secretus est; lucet
    nocturnis ignibus, chorus Ægipanum undique personatur: audiuntur et
    cantus tibiarum, et tinnitus cymbalorum per oram maritimam._

On the third page was a design which made Villiers start and look up at
Austin; he was gazing abstractedly out of the window. Villiers turned
page after page, absorbed, in spite of himself, in the frightful
Walpurgis Night of evil, strange monstrous evil, that the dead artist
had set forth in hard black and white. The figures of Fauns and Satyrs
and Ægipans danced before his eyes, the darkness of the thicket, the
dance on the mountain-top, the scenes by lonely shores, in green
vineyards, by rocks and desert places, passed before him: a world before
which the human soul seemed to shrink back and shudder. Villiers whirled
over the remaining pages; he had seen enough, but the picture on the
last leaf caught his eye, as he almost closed the book.

'Austin!'

'Well, what is it?'

'Do you know who that is?'

It was a woman's face, alone on the white page.

'Know who it is? No, of course not.'

'I do.'

'Who is it?'

'It is Mrs. Herbert.'

'Are you sure?'

'I am perfectly certain of it. Poor Meyrick! He is one more chapter in
her history.'

'But what do you think of the designs?'

'They are frightful. Lock the book up again, Austin. If I were you I
would burn it; it must be a terrible companion even though it be in a
chest.'

'Yes, they are singular drawings. But I wonder what connection there
could be between Meyrick and Mrs. Herbert, or what link between her and
these designs?'

'Ah, who can say? It is possible that the matter may end here, and we
shall never know, but in my own opinion this Helen Vaughan, or Mrs.
Herbert, is only the beginning. She will come back to London, Austin;
depend upon it, she will come back, and we shall hear more about her
then. I don't think it will be very pleasant news.'


VI

THE SUICIDES

Lord Argentine was a great favourite in London Society. At twenty he had
been a poor man, decked with the surname of an illustrious family, but
forced to earn a livelihood as best he could, and the most speculative
of money-lenders would not have entrusted him with fifty pounds on the
chance of his ever changing his name for a title, and his poverty for a
great fortune. His father had been near enough to the fountain of good
things to secure one of the family livings, but the son, even if he had
taken orders, would scarcely have obtained so much as this, and moreover
felt no vocation for the ecclesiastical estate. Thus he fronted the
world with no better armour than the bachelor's gown and the wits of a
younger son's grandson, with which equipment he contrived in some way to
make a very tolerable fight of it. At twenty-five Mr. Charles Aubernoun
saw himself still a man of struggles and of warfare with the world, but
out of the seven who stood between him and the high places of his family
three only remained. These three, however, were 'good lives,' but yet
not proof against the Zulu assegais and typhoid fever, and so one
morning Aubernoun woke up and found himself Lord Argentine, a man of
thirty who had faced the difficulties of existence, and had conquered.
The situation amused him immensely, and he resolved that riches should
be as pleasant to him as poverty had always been. Argentine, after some
little consideration, came to the conclusion that dining, regarded as a
fine art, was perhaps the most amusing pursuit open to fallen humanity,
and thus his dinners became famous in London, and an invitation to his
table a thing covetously desired. After ten years of lordship and
dinners Argentine still declined to be jaded, still persisted in
enjoying life, and by a kind of infection had become recognized as the
cause of joy in others, in short, as the best of company. His sudden and
tragical death therefore caused a wide and deep sensation. People could
scarce believe it, even though the newspaper was before their eyes, and
the cry of 'Mysterious Death of a Nobleman' came ringing up from the
street. But there stood the brief paragraph: 'Lord Argentine was found
dead this morning by his valet under distressing circumstances. It is
stated that there can be no doubt that his lordship committed suicide,
though no motive can be assigned for the act. The deceased nobleman was
widely known in society, and much liked for his genial manner and
sumptuous hospitality. He is succeeded by,' etc., etc.

By slow degrees the details came to light, but the case still remained a
mystery. The chief witness at the inquest was the dead nobleman's valet,
who said that the night before his death Lord Argentine had dined with a
lady of good position, whose name was suppressed in the newspaper
reports. At about eleven o'clock Lord Argentine had returned, and
informed his man that he should not require his services till the next
morning. A little later the valet had occasion to cross the hall and was
somewhat astonished to see his master quietly letting himself out at the
front door. He had taken off his evening clothes, and was dressed in a
Norfolk coat and knickerbockers, and wore a low brown hat. The valet had
no reason to suppose that Lord Argentine had seen him, and though his
master rarely kept late hours, thought little of the occurrence till the
next morning, when he knocked at the bedroom door at a quarter to nine
as usual. He received no answer, and, after knocking two or three
times, entered the room, and saw Lord Argentine's body leaning forward
at an angle from the bottom of the bed. He found that his master had
tied a cord securely to one of the short bed-posts, and, after making a
running noose and slipping it round his neck, the unfortunate man must
have resolutely fallen forward, to die by slow strangulation. He was
dressed in the light suit in which the valet had seen him go out, and
the doctor who was summoned pronounced that life had been extinct for
more than four hours. All papers, letters, and so forth seemed in
perfect order, and nothing was discovered which pointed in the most
remote way to any scandal either great or small. Here the evidence
ended; nothing more could be discovered. Several persons had been
present at the dinner-party at which Lord Argentine had assisted, and to
all these he seemed in his usual genial spirits. The valet, indeed, said
he thought his master appeared a little excited when he came home, but
he confessed that the alteration in his manner was very slight, hardly
noticeable, indeed. It seemed hopeless to seek for any clue, and the
suggestion that Lord Argentine had been suddenly attacked by acute
suicidal mania was generally accepted.

It was otherwise, however, when within three weeks, three more
gentlemen, one of them a nobleman, and the two others men of good
position and ample means, perished miserably in almost precisely the
same manner. Lord Swanleigh was found one morning in his dressing-room,
hanging from a peg affixed to the wall, and Mr. Collier-Stuart and Mr.
Herries had chosen to die as Lord Argentine. There was no explanation
in either case; a few bald facts; a living man in the evening, and a
dead body with a black swollen face in the morning. The police had been
forced to confess themselves powerless to arrest or to explain the
sordid murders of Whitechapel; but before the horrible suicides of
Piccadilly and Mayfair they were dumb-foundered, for not even the mere
ferocity which did duty as an explanation of the crimes of the East End,
could be of service in the West. Each of these men who had resolved to
die a tortured shameful death was rich, prosperous, and to all
appearances in love with the world, and not the acutest research could
ferret out any shadow of a lurking motive in either case. There was a
horror in the air, and men looked at one another's faces when they met,
each wondering whether the other was to be the victim of the fifth
nameless tragedy. Journalists sought in vain in their scrap-books for
materials whereof to concoct reminiscent articles; and the morning paper
was unfolded in many a house with a feeling of awe; no man knew when or
where the blow would next light.

A short while after the last of these terrible events, Austin came to
see Mr. Villiers. He was curious to know whether Villiers had succeeded
in discovering any fresh traces of Mrs. Herbert, either through Clarke
or by other sources, and he asked the question soon after he had sat
down.

'No,' said Villiers, 'I wrote to Clarke, but he remains obdurate, and I
have tried other channels, but without any result. I can't find out what
became of Helen Vaughan after she left Paul Street, but I think she must
have gone abroad. But to tell the truth, Austin, I haven't paid very
much attention to the matter for the last few weeks; I knew poor
Herries intimately, and his terrible death has been a great shock to me,
a great shock.'

'I can well believe it,' answered Austin gravely; 'you know Argentine
was a friend of mine. If I remember rightly, we were speaking of him
that day you came to my rooms.'

'Yes; it was in connection with that house in Ashley Street, Mrs.
Beaumont's house. You said something about Argentine's dining there.'

'Quite so. Of course you know it was there Argentine dined the night
before--before his death.'

'No, I haven't heard that.'

'Oh, yes; the name was kept out of the papers to spare Mrs. Beaumont.
Argentine was a great favourite of hers, and it is said she was in a
terrible state for some time after.'

A curious look came over Villiers's face; he seemed undecided whether to
speak or not. Austin began again.

'I never experienced such a feeling of horror as when I read the account
of Argentine's death. I didn't understand it at the time, and I don't
now. I knew him well, and it completely passes my understanding for what
possible cause he--or any of the others for the matter of that--could
have resolved in cold blood to die in such an awful manner. You know how
men babble away each other's characters in London, you may be sure any
buried scandal or hidden skeleton would have been brought to light in
such a case as this; but nothing of the sort has taken place. As for the
theory of mania, that is very well, of course, for the coroner's jury,
but everybody knows that it's all nonsense. Suicidal mania is not
small-pox.'

Austin relapsed into gloomy silence. Villiers sat silent also, watching
his friend. The expression of indecision still fleeted across his face;
he seemed as if weighing his thoughts in the balance, and the
considerations he was revolving left him still silent. Austin tried to
shake off the remembrance of tragedies as hopeless and perplexed as the
labyrinth of Dædalus, and began to talk in an indifferent voice of the
more pleasant incidents and adventures of the season.

'That Mrs. Beaumont,' he said, 'of whom we were speaking, is a great
success; she has taken London almost by storm. I met her the other night
at Fulham's; she is really a remarkable woman.'

'You have met Mrs. Beaumont?'

'Yes; she had quite a court around her. She would be called very
handsome, I suppose, and yet there is something about her face which I
didn't like. The features are exquisite, but the expression is strange.
And all the time I was looking at her, and afterwards, when I was going
home, I had a curious feeling that that very expression was in some way
or other familiar to me.'

'You must have seen her in the Row.'

'No, I am sure I never set eyes on the woman before; it is that which
makes it puzzling. And to the best of my belief I have never seen
anybody like her; what I felt was a kind of dim far-off memory, vague
but persistent. The only sensation I can compare it to, is that odd
feeling one sometimes has in a dream, when fantastic cities and wondrous
lands and phantom personages appear familiar and accustomed.'

Villiers nodded and glanced aimlessly round the room, possibly in search
of something on which to turn the conversation. His eyes fell on an old
chest somewhat like that in which the artist's strange legacy lay hid
beneath a Gothic scutcheon.

'Have you written to the doctor about poor Meyrick?' he asked.

'Yes; I wrote asking for full particulars as to his illness and death. I
don't expect to have an answer for another three weeks or a month. I
thought I might as well inquire whether Meyrick knew an Englishwoman
named Herbert, and if so, whether the doctor could give me any
information about her. But it's very possible that Meyrick fell in with
her at New York, or Mexico, or San Francisco; I have no idea as to the
extent or direction of his travels.'

'Yes, and it's very possible that the woman may have more than one
name.'

'Exactly. I wish I had thought of asking you to lend me the portrait of
her which you possess. I might have enclosed it in my letter to Dr.
Matthews.'

'So you might; that never occurred to me. We might send it now. Hark!
What are those boys calling?'

While the two men had been talking together a confused noise of shouting
had been gradually growing louder. The noise rose from the eastward and
swelled down Piccadilly, drawing nearer and nearer, a very torrent of
sound; surging up streets usually quiet, and making every window a frame
for a face, curious or excited. The cries and voices came echoing up
the silent street where Villiers lived, growing more distinct as they
advanced, and, as Villiers spoke, an answer rang up from the pavement:

'The West End Horrors; Another Awful Suicide; Full Details!'

Austin rushed down the stairs and bought a paper and read out the
paragraph to Villiers as the uproar in the street rose and fell. The
window was open and the air seemed full of noise and terror.

'Another gentleman has fallen a victim to the terrible epidemic of
suicide which for the last month has prevailed in the West End. Mr.
Sidney Crashaw, of Stoke House, Fulham, and King's Pomeroy, Devon, was
found, after a prolonged search, hanging from the branch of a tree in
his garden at one o'clock to-day. The deceased gentleman dined last
night at the Carlton Club and seemed in his usual health and spirits. He
left the Club at about ten o'clock, and was seen walking leisurely up
St. James's Street a little later. Subsequent to this his movements
cannot be traced. On the discovery of the body medical aid was at once
summoned, but life had evidently been long extinct. So far as is known,
Mr. Crashaw had no trouble or anxiety of any kind. This painful suicide,
it will be remembered, is the fifth of the kind in the last month. The
authorities at Scotland Yard are unable to suggest any explanation of
these terrible occurrences.'

Austin put down the paper in mute horror.

'I shall leave London to-morrow,' he said, 'it is a city of nightmares.
How awful this is, Villiers!'

Mr. Villiers was sitting by the window quietly looking out into the
street. He had listened to the newspaper report attentively, and the
hint of indecision was no longer on his face.

'Wait a moment, Austin,' he replied, 'I have made up my mind to mention
a little matter that occurred last night. It is stated, I think, that
Crashaw was last seen alive in St. James's Street shortly after ten?'

'Yes, I think so. I will look again. Yes, you are quite right.'

'Quite so. Well, I am in a position to contradict that statement at all
events. Crashaw was seen after that; considerably later indeed.'

'How do you know?'

'Because I happened to see Crashaw myself at about two o'clock this
morning.'

'You saw Crashaw? You, Villiers?'

'Yes, I saw him quite distinctly; indeed, there were but a few feet
between us.'

'Where, in Heaven's name, did you see him?'

'Not far from here. I saw him in Ashley Street. He was just leaving a
house.'

'Did you notice what house it was?'

'Yes. It was Mrs. Beaumont's.'

'Villiers! Think what you are saying; there must be some mistake. How
could Crashaw be in Mrs. Beaumont's house at two o'clock in the morning?
Surely, surely, you must have been dreaming, Villiers, you were always
rather fanciful.'

'No; I was wide awake enough. Even if I had been dreaming as you say,
what I saw would have roused me effectually.'

'What you saw? What did you see? Was there anything strange about
Crashaw? But I can't believe it; it is impossible.'

'Well, if you like I will tell you what I saw, or if you please, what I
think I saw, and you can judge for yourself.'

'Very good, Villiers.'

The noise and clamour of the street had died away, though now and then
the sound of shouting still came from the distance, and the dull, leaden
silence seemed like the quiet after an earthquake or a storm. Villiers
turned from the window and began speaking.

'I was at a house near Regent's Park last night, and when I came away
the fancy took me to walk home instead of taking a hansom. It was a
clear pleasant night enough, and after a few minutes I had the streets
pretty much to myself. It's a curious thing, Austin, to be alone in
London at night, the gas-lamps stretching away in perspective, and the
dead silence, and then perhaps the rush and clatter of a hansom on the
stones, and the fire starting up under the horse's hoofs. I walked along
pretty briskly, for I was feeling a little tired of being out in the
night, and as the clocks were striking two I turned down Ashley Street,
which, you know, is on my way. It was quieter than ever there, and the
lamps were fewer; altogether, it looked as dark and gloomy as a forest
in winter. I had done about half the length of the street when I heard a
door closed very softly, and naturally I looked up to see who was abroad
like myself at such an hour. As it happens, there is a street lamp close
to the house in question, and I saw a man standing on the step. He had
just shut the door and his face was towards me, and I recognized Crashaw
directly. I never knew him to speak to, but I had often seen him, and I
am positive that I was not mistaken in my man. I looked into his face
for a moment, and then--I will confess the truth--I set off at a good
run, and kept it up till I was within my own door.'

'Why?'

'Why? Because it made my blood run cold to see that man's face. I could
never have supposed that such an infernal medley of passions could have
glared out of any human eyes; I almost fainted as I looked. I knew I had
looked into the eyes of a lost soul, Austin, the man's outward form
remained, but all hell was within it. Furious lust, and hate that was
like fire, and the loss of all hope and horror that seemed to shriek
aloud to the night, though his teeth were shut; and the utter blackness
of despair. I am sure he did not see me; he saw nothing that you or I
can see, but he saw what I hope we never shall. I do not know when he
died; I suppose in an hour, or perhaps two, but when I passed down
Ashley Street and heard the closing door, that man no longer belonged to
this world; it was a devil's face I looked upon.'

There was an interval of silence in the room when Villiers ceased
speaking. The light was failing, and all the tumult of an hour ago was
quite hushed. Austin had bent his head at the close of the story, and
his hand covered his eyes.

'What can it mean?' he said at length.

'Who knows, Austin, who knows? It's a black business, but I think we had
better keep it to ourselves, for the present at any rate. I will see if
I cannot learn anything about that house through private channels of
information, and if I do light upon anything I will let you know.'


VII

THE ENCOUNTER IN SOHO

Three weeks later Austin received a note from Villiers, asking him to
call either that afternoon or the next. He chose the nearer date, and
found Villiers sitting as usual by the window, apparently lost in
meditation on the drowsy traffic of the street. There was a bamboo table
by his side, a fantastic thing, enriched with gilding and queer painted
scenes, and on it lay a little pile of papers arranged and docketed as
neatly as anything in Mr. Clarke's office.

'Well, Villiers, have you made any discoveries in the last three weeks?'

'I think so; I have here one or two memoranda which struck me as
singular, and there is a statement to which I shall call your
attention.'

'And these documents relate to Mrs. Beaumont? It was really Crashaw whom
you saw that night standing on the doorstep of the house in Ashley
Street?'

'As to that matter my belief remains unchanged, but neither my inquiries
nor their results have any special relation to Crashaw. But my
investigations have had a strange issue. I have found out who Mrs.
Beaumont is!'

'Who she is? In what way do you mean?'

'I mean that you and I know her better under another name.'

'What name is that?'

'Herbert.'

'Herbert!' Austin repeated the word, dazed with astonishment.

'Yes, Mrs. Herbert of Paul Street, Helen Vaughan of earlier adventures
unknown to me. You had reason to recognize the expression of her face;
when you go home look at the face in Meyrick's book of horrors, and you
will know the sources of your recollection.'

'And you have proof of this?'

'Yes, the best of proof; I have seen Mrs. Beaumont, or shall we say Mrs.
Herbert?'

'Where did you see her?'

'Hardly in a place where you would expect to see a lady who lives in
Ashley Street, Piccadilly. I saw her entering a house in one of the
meanest and most disreputable streets in Soho. In fact, I had made an
appointment, though not with her, and she was precise both to time and
place.'

'All this seems very wonderful, but I cannot call it incredible. You
must remember, Villiers, that I have seen this woman, in the ordinary
adventure of London society, talking and laughing, and sipping her
coffee in a commonplace drawing-room with commonplace people. But you
know what you are saying.'

'I do; I have not allowed myself to be led by surmises or fancies. It
was with no thought of finding Helen Vaughan that I searched for Mrs.
Beaumont in the dark waters of the life of London, but such has been the
issue.'

'You must have been in strange places, Villiers.'

'Yes, I have been in very strange places. It would have been useless,
you know, to go to Ashley Street, and ask Mrs. Beaumont to give me a
short sketch of her previous history. No; assuming, as I had to assume,
that her record was not of the cleanest, it would be pretty certain that
at some previous time she must have moved in circles not quite so
refined as her present ones. If you see mud on the top of a stream, you
may be sure that it was once at the bottom. I went to the bottom. I have
always been fond of diving into Queer Street for my amusement, and I
found my knowledge of that locality and its inhabitants very useful. It
is, perhaps, needless to say that my friends had never heard the name of
Beaumont, and as I had never seen the lady, and was quite unable to
describe her, I had to set to work in an indirect way. The people there
know me; I have been able to do some of them a service now and again, so
they made no difficulty about giving their information; they were aware
I had no communication direct or indirect with Scotland Yard. I had to
cast out a good many lines, though, before I got what I wanted, and when
I landed the fish I did not for a moment suppose it was my fish. But I
listened to what I was told out of a constitutional liking for useless
information, and I found myself in possession of a very curious story,
though, as I imagined, not the story I was looking for. It was to this
effect. Some five or six years ago, a woman named Raymond suddenly made
her appearance in the neighbourhood to which I am referring. She was
described to me as being quite young, probably not more than seventeen
or eighteen, very handsome, and looking as if she came from the country.
I should be wrong in saying that she found her level in going to this
particular quarter, or associating with these people, for from what I
was told, I should think the worst den in London far too good for her.
The person from whom I got my information, as you may suppose, no great
Puritan, shuddered and grew sick in telling me of the nameless infamies
which were laid to her charge. After living there for a year, or perhaps
a little more, she disappeared as suddenly as she came, and they saw
nothing of her till about the time of the Paul Street case. At first she
came to her old haunts only occasionally, then more frequently, and
finally took up her abode there as before, and remained for six or eight
months. It's of no use my going into details as to the life that woman
led; if you want particulars you can look at Meyrick's legacy. Those
designs were not drawn from his imagination. She again disappeared, and
the people of the place saw nothing of her till a few months ago. My
informant told me that she had taken some rooms in a house which he
pointed out, and these rooms she was in the habit of visiting two or
three times a week and always at ten in the morning. I was led to expect
that one of these visits would be paid on a certain day about a week
ago, and I accordingly managed to be on the look-out in company with my
cicerone at a quarter to ten, and the hour and the lady came with equal
punctuality. My friend and I were standing under an archway, a little
way back from the street, but she saw us, and gave me a glance that I
shall be long in forgetting. That look was quite enough for me; I knew
Miss Raymond to be Mrs. Herbert; as for Mrs. Beaumont she had quite gone
out of my head. She went into the house, and I watched it till four
o'clock, when she came out, and then I followed her. It was a long
chase, and I had to be very careful to keep a long way in the
background, and yet not lose sight of the woman. She took me down to
the Strand, and then to Westminster, and then up St. James's Street, and
along Piccadilly. I felt queerish when I saw her turn up Ashley Street;
the thought that Mrs. Herbert was Mrs. Beaumont came into my mind, but
it seemed too improbable to be true. I waited at the corner, keeping my
eye on her all the time, and I took particular care to note the house at
which she stopped. It was the house with the gay curtains, the house of
flowers, the house out of which Crashaw came the night he hanged himself
in his garden. I was just going away with my discovery, when I saw an
empty carriage come round and draw up in front of the house, and I came
to the conclusion that Mrs. Herbert was going out for a drive, and I was
right. I took a hansom and followed the carriage into the Park. There,
as it happened, I met a man I know, and we stood talking together a
little distance from the carriage-way, to which I had my back. We had
not been there for ten minutes when my friend took off his hat, and I
glanced round and saw the lady I had been following all day. "Who is
that?" I said, and his answer was, "Mrs. Beaumont; lives in Ashley
Street." Of course there could be no doubt after that. I don't know
whether she saw me, but I don't think she did. I went home at once, and,
on consideration, I thought that I had a sufficiently good case with
which to go to Clarke.'

'Why to Clarke?'

'Because I am sure that Clarke is in possession of facts about this
woman, facts of which I know nothing.'

'Well, what then?'

Mr. Villiers leaned back in his chair and looked reflectively at Austin
for a moment before he answered:

'My idea was that Clarke and I should call on Mrs. Beaumont.'

'You would never go into such a house as that? No, no, Villiers, you
cannot do it. Besides, consider; what result ...'

'I will tell you soon. But I was going to say that my information does
not end here; it has been completed in an extraordinary manner.

'Look at this neat little packet of manuscript; it is paginated, you
see, and I have indulged in the civil coquetry of a ribbon of red tape.
It has almost a legal air, hasn't it? Run your eye over it, Austin. It
is an account of the entertainment Mrs. Beaumont provided for her
choicer guests. The man who wrote this escaped with his life, but I do
not think he will live many years. The doctors tell him he must have
sustained some severe shock to the nerves.'

Austin took the manuscript, but never read it. Opening the neat pages at
haphazard his eye was caught by a word and a phrase that followed it;
and, sick at heart, with white lips and a cold sweat pouring like water
from his temples, he flung the paper down.

'Take it away, Villiers, never speak of this again. Are you made of
stone, man? Why, the dread and horror of death itself, the thoughts of
the man who stands in the keen morning air on the black platform, bound,
the bell tolling in his ears, and waits for the harsh rattle of the
bolt, are as nothing compared to this. I will not read it; I should
never sleep again.'

'Very good. I can fancy what you saw. Yes; it is horrible enough; but
after all, it is an old story, an old mystery played in our day, and in
dim London streets instead of amidst the vineyards and the olive
gardens. We know what happened to those who chanced to meet the Great
God Pan, and those who are wise know that all symbols are symbols of
something, not of nothing. It was, indeed, an exquisite symbol beneath
which men long ago veiled their knowledge of the most awful, most secret
forces which lie at the heart of all things; forces before which the
souls of men must wither and die and blacken, as their bodies blacken
under the electric current. Such forces cannot be named, cannot be
spoken, cannot be imagined except under a veil and a symbol, a symbol to
the most of us appearing a quaint, poetic fancy, to some a foolish tale.
But you and I, at all events, have known something of the terror that
may dwell in the secret place of life, manifested under human flesh;
that which is without form taking to itself a form. Oh, Austin, how can
it be? How is it that the very sunlight does not turn to blackness
before this thing, the hard earth melt and boil beneath such a burden?'

Villiers was pacing up and down the room, and the beads of sweat stood
out on his forehead. Austin sat silent for a while, but Villiers saw him
make a sign upon his breast.

'I say again, Villiers, you will surely never enter such a house as
that? You would never pass out alive.'

'Yes, Austin, I shall go out alive--I, and Clarke with me.'

'What do you mean? You cannot, you would not dare ...'

'Wait a moment. The air was very pleasant and fresh this morning; there
was a breeze blowing, even through this dull street, and I thought I
would take a walk. Piccadilly stretched before me a clear, bright vista,
and the sun flashed on the carriages and on the quivering leaves in the
park. It was a joyous morning, and men and women looked at the sky and
smiled as they went about their work or their pleasure, and the wind
blew as blithely as upon the meadows and the scented gorse. But somehow
or other I got out of the bustle and the gaiety, and found myself
walking slowly along a quiet, dull street, where there seemed to be no
sunshine and no air, and where the few foot-passengers loitered as they
walked, and hung indecisively about corners and archways. I walked
along, hardly knowing where I was going or what I did there, but feeling
impelled, as one sometimes is, to explore still further, with a vague
idea of reaching some unknown goal. Thus I forged up the street, noting
the small traffic of the milk-shop, and wondering at the incongruous
medley of penny pipes, black tobacco, sweets, newspapers, and comic
songs which here and there jostled one another in the short compass of a
single window. I think it was a cold shudder that suddenly passed
through me that first told me that I had found what I wanted. I looked
up from the pavement and stopped before a dusty shop, above which the
lettering had faded, where the red bricks of two hundred years ago had
grimed to black; where the windows had gathered to themselves the fog
and the dirt of winters innumerable. I saw what I required; but I think
it was five minutes before I had steadied myself and could walk in and
ask for it in a cool voice and with a calm face. I think there must
even then have been a tremor in my words, for the old man who came out
from his back parlour, and fumbled slowly amongst his goods, looked
oddly at me as he tied the parcel. I paid what he asked, and stood
leaning by the counter, with a strange reluctance to take up my goods
and go. I asked about the business, and learnt that trade was bad and
the profits cut down sadly; but then the street was not what it was
before traffic had been diverted, but that was done forty years ago,
"just before my father died," he said. I got away at last, and walked
along sharply; it was a dismal street indeed, and I was glad to return
to the bustle and the noise. Would you like to see my purchase?'

Austin said nothing, but nodded his head slightly; he still looked white
and sick. Villiers pulled out a drawer in the bamboo table, and showed
Austin a long coil of cord, hard and new; and at one end was a running
noose.

'It is the best hempen cord,' said Villiers, 'just as it used to be made
for the old trade, the man told me. Not an inch of jute from end to
end.'

Austin set his teeth hard, and stared at Villiers, growing whiter as he
looked.

'You would not do it,' he murmured at last. 'You would not have blood on
your hands. My God!' he exclaimed, with sudden vehemence, 'you cannot
mean this, Villiers, that you will make yourself a hangman?'

'No. I shall offer a choice, and leave Helen Vaughan alone with this
cord in a locked room for fifteen minutes. If when we go in it is not
done, I shall call the nearest policeman. That is all.'

'I must go now. I cannot stay here any longer; I cannot bear this.
Good-night.'

'Good-night, Austin.'

The door shut, but in a moment it was opened again, and Austin stood,
white and ghastly, in the entrance.

'I was forgetting,' he said, 'that I too have something to tell. I have
received a letter from Dr. Harding of Buenos Ayres. He says that he
attended Meyrick for three weeks before his death.'

'And does he say what carried him off in the prime of life? It was not
fever?'

'No, it was not fever. According to the doctor, it was an utter collapse
of the whole system, probably caused by some severe shock. But he states
that the patient would tell him nothing, and that he was consequently at
some disadvantage in treating the case.'

'Is there anything more?'

'Yes. Dr. Harding ends his letter by saying: "I think this is all the
information I can give you about your poor friend. He had not been long
in Buenos Ayres, and knew scarcely any one, with the exception of a
person who did not bear the best of characters, and has since left--a
Mrs. Vaughan."'


VIII

THE FRAGMENTS

    [Amongst the papers of the well-known physician, Dr. Robert
    Matheson, of Ashley Street, Piccadilly, who died suddenly, of
    apoplectic seizure, at the beginning of 1892, a leaf of manuscript
    paper was found, covered with pencil jottings. These notes were in
    Latin, much abbreviated, and had evidently been made in great haste.
    The MS. was only deciphered with great difficulty, and some words
    have up to the present time evaded all the efforts of the expert
    employed. The date, 'XXV Jul. 1888,' is written on the right-hand
    corner of the MS. The following is a translation of Dr. Matheson's
    manuscript.]

'Whether science would benefit by these brief notes if they could be
published, I do not know, but rather doubt. But certainly I shall never
take the responsibility of publishing or divulging one word of what is
here written, not only on account of my oath freely given to those two
persons who were present, but also because the details are too
abominable. It is probably that, upon mature consideration, and after
weighing the good and evil, I shall one day destroy this paper, or at
least leave it under seal to my friend D., trusting in his discretion,
to use it or to burn it, as he may think fit.

'As was befitting, I did all that my knowledge suggested to make sure
that I was suffering under no delusion. At first astounded, I could
hardly think, but in a minute's time I was sure that my pulse was steady
and regular, and that I was in my real and true senses. I then fixed my
eyes quietly on what was before me.

'Though horror and revolting nausea rose up within me, and an odour of
corruption choked my breath, I remained firm. I was then privileged or
accursed, I dare not say which, to see that which was on the bed, lying
there black like ink, transformed before my eyes. The skin, and the
flesh, and the muscles, and the bones, and the firm structure of the
human body that I had thought to be unchangeable, and permanent as
adamant, began to melt and dissolve.

'I knew that the body may be separated into its elements by external
agencies, but I should have refused to believe what I saw. For here
there was some internal force, of which I knew nothing, that caused
dissolution and change.

'Here too was all the work by which man had been made repeated before my
eyes. I saw the form waver from sex to sex, dividing itself from itself,
and then again reunited. Then I saw the body descend to the beasts
whence it ascended, and that which was on the heights go down to the
depths, even to the abyss of all being. The principle of life, which
makes organism, always remained, while the outward form changed.

'The light within the room had turned to blackness, not the darkness of
night, in which objects are seen dimly, for I could see clearly and
without difficulty. But it was the negation of light; objects were
presented to my eyes, if I may say so, without any medium, in such a
manner that if there had been a prism in the room I should have seen no
colours represented in it.

'I watched, and at last I saw nothing but a substance as jelly. Then the
ladder was ascended again ... [_here the MS. is illegible_] ... for one
instant I saw a Form, shaped in dimness before me, which I will not
farther describe. But the symbol of this form may be seen in ancient
sculptures, and in paintings which survived beneath the lava, too foul
to be spoken of ... as a horrible and unspeakable shape, neither man nor
beast, was changed into human form, there came finally death.

'I who saw all this, not without great horror and loathing of soul, here
write my name, declaring all that I have set on this paper to be true.

                                           'ROBERT MATHESON, Med. Dr.'

       *       *       *       *       *

... Such, Raymond, is the story of what I know and what I have seen. The
burden of it was too heavy for me to bear alone, and yet I could tell it
to none but you. Villiers, who was with me at the last, knows nothing of
that awful secret of the wood, of how what we both saw die, lay upon the
smooth, sweet turf amidst the summer flowers, half in sun and half in
shadow, and holding the girl Rachel's hand, called and summoned those
companions, and shaped in solid form, upon the earth we tread on, the
horror which we can but hint at, which we can only name under a figure.
I would not tell Villiers of this, nor of that resemblance, which struck
me as with a blow upon my heart, when I saw the portrait, which filled
the cup of terror at the end. What this can mean I dare not guess. I
know that what I saw perish was not Mary, and yet in the last agony
Mary's eyes looked into mine. Whether there be any one who can show the
last link in this chain of awful mystery, I do not know, but if there be
any one who can do this, you, Raymond, are the man. And if you know the
secret, it rests with you to tell it or not, as you please.

I am writing this letter to you immediately on my getting back to town.
I have been in the country for the last few days; perhaps you may be
able to guess in what part. While the horror and wonder of London was at
its height--for 'Mrs. Beaumont,' as I have told you, was well known in
society--I wrote to my friend Dr. Phillips, giving some brief outline,
or rather hint, of what had happened, and asking him to tell me the name
of the village where the events he had related to me occurred. He gave
me the name, as he said with the less hesitation, because Rachel's
father and mother were dead, and the rest of the family had gone to a
relative in the State of Washington six months before. The parents, he
said, had undoubtedly died of grief and horror caused by the terrible
death of their daughter, and by what had gone before that death. On the
evening of the day on which I received Phillips's letter I was at
Caermaen, and standing beneath the mouldering Roman walls, white with
the winters of seventeen hundred years, I looked over the meadow where
once had stood the older temple of the 'God of the Deeps,' and saw a
house gleaming in the sunlight. It was the house where Helen had lived.
I stayed at Caermaen for several days. The people of the place, I found,
knew little and had guessed less. Those whom I spoke to on the matter
seemed surprised that an antiquarian (as I professed myself to be)
should trouble about a village tragedy, of which they gave a very
commonplace version, and, as you may imagine, I told nothing of what I
knew. Most of my time was spent in the great wood that rises just above
the village and climbs the hillside, and goes down to the river in the
valley; such another long lovely valley, Raymond, as that on which we
looked one summer night, walking to and fro before your house. For many
an hour I strayed through the maze of the forest, turning now to right
and now to left, pacing slowly down long alleys of undergrowth, shadowy
and chill, even under the midday sun, and halting beneath great oaks;
lying on the short turf of a clearing where the faint sweet scent of
wild roses came to me on the wind and mixed with the heavy perfume of
the elder, whose mingled odour is like the odour of the room of the
dead, a vapour of incense and corruption. I stood at the edges of the
wood, gazing at all the pomp and procession of the foxgloves towering
amidst the bracken and shining red in the broad sunshine, and beyond
them into deep thickets of close undergrowth where springs boil up from
the rock and nourish the water-weeds, dank and evil. But in all my
wanderings I avoided one part of the wood; it was not till yesterday
that I climbed to the summit of the hill, and stood upon the ancient
Roman road that threads the highest ridge of the wood. Here they had
walked, Helen and Rachel, along this quiet causeway, upon the pavement
of green turf, shut in on either side by high banks of red earth, and
tall hedges of shining beech, and here I followed in their steps,
looking out, now and again, through partings in the boughs, and seeing
on one side the sweep of the wood stretching far to right and left, and
sinking into the broad level, and beyond, the yellow sea, and the land
over the sea. On the other side was the valley and the river and hill
following hill as wave on wave, and wood and meadow, and cornfield, and
white houses gleaming, and a great wall of mountain, and far blue peaks
in the north. And so at last I came to the place. The track went up a
gentle slope, and widened out into an open space with a wall of thick
undergrowth around it, and then, narrowing again, passed on into the
distance and the faint blue mist of summer heat. And into this pleasant
summer glade Rachel passed a girl, and left it, who shall say what? I
did not stay long there.

In a small town near Caermaen there is a museum, containing for the most
part Roman remains which have been found in the neighbourhood at various
times. On the day after my arrival at Caermaen I walked over to the
town in question, and took the opportunity of inspecting this museum.
After I had seen most of the sculptured stones, the coffins, rings,
coins, and fragments of tessellated pavement which the place contains, I
was shown a small square pillar of white stone, which had been recently
discovered in the wood of which I have been speaking, and, as I found on
inquiry, in that open space where the Roman road broadens out. On one
side of the pillar was an inscription, of which I took a note. Some of
the letters have been defaced, but I do not think there can be any doubt
as to those which I supply. The inscription is as follows:

    DEVOMNODENT_i_
    FLA_v_IVSSENILISPOSSV_it_
    PROPTERNVP_tias_
    _qua_SVIDITSVBVMB_ra_

'To the great god Nodens (the god of the Great Deep or Abyss) Flavius
Senilis has erected this pillar on account of the marriage which he saw
beneath the shade.'

The custodian of the museum informed me that local antiquaries were much
puzzled, not by the inscription, or by any difficulty in translating it,
but as to the circumstance or rite to which allusion is made.

       *       *       *       *       *

... And now, my dear Clarke, as to what you tell me about Helen Vaughan,
whom you say you saw die under circumstances of the utmost and almost
incredible horror. I was interested in your account, but a good deal,
nay all, of what you told me I knew already. I can understand the
strange likeness you remarked both in the portrait and in the actual
face; you have seen Helen's mother. You remember that still summer night
so many years ago, when I talked to you of the world beyond the shadows,
and of the god Pan. You remember Mary. She was the mother of Helen
Vaughan, who was born nine months after that night.

Mary never recovered her reason. She lay, as you saw her, all the while
upon her bed, and a few days after the child was born she died. I fancy
that just at the last she knew me; I was standing by the bed, and the
old look came into her eyes for a second, and then she shuddered and
groaned and died. It was an ill work I did that night when you were
present; I broke open the door of the house of life, without knowing or
caring what might pass forth or enter in. I recollect your telling me at
the time, sharply enough, and rightly enough too, in one sense, that I
had ruined the reason of a human being by a foolish experiment, based on
an absurd theory. You did well to blame me, but my theory was not all
absurdity. What I said Mary would see, she saw, but I forgot that no
human eyes could look on such a vision with impunity. And I forgot, as I
have just said, that when the house of life is thus thrown open, there
may enter in that for which we have no name, and human flesh may become
the veil of a horror one dare not express. I played with energies which
I did not understand, and you have seen the ending of it. Helen Vaughan
did well to bind the cord about her neck and die, though the death was
horrible. The blackened face, the hideous form upon the bed, changing
and melting before your eyes from woman to man, from man to beast, and
from beast to worse than beast, all the strange horror that you
witnessed, surprises me but little. What you say the doctor whom you
sent for saw and shuddered at I noticed long ago; I knew what I had done
the moment the child was born, and when it was scarcely five years old I
surprised it, not once or twice but several times with a playmate, you
may guess of what kind. It was for me a constant, an incarnate horror,
and after a few years I felt I could bear it no longer, and I sent Helen
Vaughan away. You know now what frightened the boy in the wood. The rest
of the strange story, and all else that you tell me, as discovered by
your friend, I have contrived to learn from time to time, almost to the
last chapter. And now Helen is with her companions....




The Inmost Light


I

One evening in autumn, when the deformities of London were veiled in
faint blue mist, and its vistas and far-reaching streets seemed
splendid, Mr. Charles Salisbury was slowly pacing down Rupert Street,
drawing nearer to his favourite restaurant by slow degrees. His eyes
were downcast in study of the pavement, and thus it was that as he
passed in at the narrow door a man who had come up from the lower end of
the street jostled against him.

'I beg your pardon--wasn't looking where I was going. Why, it's Dyson!'

'Yes, quite so. How are you, Salisbury?'

'Quite well. But where have you been, Dyson? I don't think I can have
seen you for the last five years?'

'No; I dare say not. You remember I was getting rather hard up when you
came to my place at Charlotte Street?'

'Perfectly. I think I remember your telling me that you owed five weeks'
rent, and that you had parted with your watch for a comparatively small
sum.'

'My dear Salisbury, your memory is admirable. Yes, I was hard up. But
the curious thing is that soon after you saw me I became harder up. My
financial state was described by a friend as "stone broke." I don't
approve of slang, mind you, but such was my condition. But suppose we go
in; there might be other people who would like to dine--it's a human
weakness, Salisbury.'

'Certainly; come along. I was wondering as I walked down whether the
corner table were taken. It has a velvet back, you know.'

'I know the spot; it's vacant. Yes, as I was saying, I became even
harder up.'

'What did you do then?' asked Salisbury, disposing of his hat, and
settling down in the corner of the seat, with a glance of fond
anticipation at the _menu_.

'What did I do? Why, I sat down and reflected. I had a good classical
education, and a positive distaste for business of any kind: that was
the capital with which I faced the world. Do you know, I have heard
people describe olives as nasty! What lamentable Philistinism! I have
often thought, Salisbury, that I could write genuine poetry under the
influence of olives and red wine. Let us have Chianti; it may not be
very good, but the flasks are simply charming.'

'It is pretty good here. We may as well have a big flask.'

'Very good. I reflected, then, on my want of prospects, and I determined
to embark in literature.'

'Really; that was strange. You seem in pretty comfortable circumstances,
though.'

'Though! What a satire upon a noble profession. I am afraid, Salisbury,
you haven't a proper idea of the dignity of an artist. You see me
sitting at my desk--or at least you can see me if you care to call--with
pen and ink, and simple nothingness before me, and if you come again in
a few hours you will (in all probability) find a creation!'

'Yes, quite so. I had an idea that literature was not remunerative.'

'You are mistaken; its rewards are great. I may mention, by the way,
that shortly after you saw me I succeeded to a small income. An uncle
died, and proved unexpectedly generous.'

'Ah, I see. That must have been convenient.'

'It was pleasant--undeniably pleasant. I have always considered it in
the light of an endowment of my researches. I told you I was a man of
letters; it would, perhaps, be more correct to describe myself as a man
of science.'

'Dear me, Dyson, you have really changed very much in the last few
years. I had a notion, don't you know, that you were a sort of idler
about town, the kind of man one might meet on the north side of
Piccadilly every day from May to July.'

'Exactly. I was even then forming myself, though all unconsciously. You
know my poor father could not afford to send me to the University. I
used to grumble in my ignorance at not having completed my education.
That was the folly of youth, Salisbury; my University was Piccadilly.
There I began to study the great science which still occupies me.'

'What science do you mean?'

'The science of the great city; the physiology of London; literally and
metaphysically the greatest subject that the mind of man can conceive.
What an admirable _salmi_ this is; undoubtedly the final end of the
pheasant. Yet I feel sometimes positively overwhelmed with the thought
of the vastness and complexity of London. Paris a man may get to
understand thoroughly with a reasonable amount of study; but London is
always a mystery. In Paris you may say: "Here live the actresses, here
the Bohemians, and the _Ratés_"; but it is different in London. You may
point out a street, correctly enough, as the abode of washerwomen; but,
in that second floor, a man may be studying Chaldee roots, and in the
garret over the way a forgotten artist is dying by inches.'

'I see you are Dyson, unchanged and unchangeable,' said Salisbury,
slowly sipping his Chianti. 'I think you are misled by a too fervid
imagination; the mystery of London exists only in your fancy. It seems
to me a dull place enough. We seldom hear of a really artistic crime in
London, whereas I believe Paris abounds in that sort of thing.'

'Give me some more wine. Thanks. You are mistaken, my dear fellow, you
are really mistaken. London has nothing to be ashamed of in the way of
crime. Where we fail is for want of Homers, not Agamemnons. _Carent quia
vate sacro_, you know.'

'I recall the quotation. But I don't think I quite follow you.'

'Well, in plain language, we have no good writers in London who make a
speciality of that kind of thing. Our common reporter is a dull dog;
every story that he has to tell is spoilt in the telling. His idea of
horror and of what excites horror is so lamentably deficient. Nothing
will content the fellow but blood, vulgar red blood, and when he can get
it he lays it on thick, and considers that he has produced a telling
article. It's a poor notion. And, by some curious fatality, it is the
most commonplace and brutal murders which always attract the most
attention and get written up the most. For instance, I dare say that
you never heard of the Harlesden case?'

'No; no, I don't remember anything about it.'

'Of course not. And yet the story is a curious one. I will tell it you
over our coffee. Harlesden, you know, or I expect you don't know, is
quite on the out-quarters of London; something curiously different from
your fine old crusted suburb like Norwood or Hampstead, different as
each of these is from the other. Hampstead, I mean, is where you look
for the head of your great China house with his three acres of land and
pine-houses, though of late there is the artistic substratum; while
Norwood is the home of the prosperous middle-class family who took the
house "because it was near the Palace," and sickened of the Palace six
months afterwards; but Harlesden is a place of no character. It's too
new to have any character as yet. There are the rows of red houses and
the rows of white houses and the bright green Venetians, and the
blistering doorways, and the little backyards they call gardens, and a
few feeble shops, and then, just as you think you're going to grasp the
physiognomy of the settlement, it all melts away.'

'How the dickens is that? the houses don't tumble down before one's
eyes, I suppose!'

'Well, no, not exactly that. But Harlesden as an entity disappears. Your
street turns into a quiet lane, and your staring houses into elm trees,
and the back-gardens into green meadows. You pass instantly from town to
country; there is no transition as in a small country town, no soft
gradations of wider lawns and orchards, with houses gradually becoming
less dense, but a dead stop. I believe the people who live there mostly
go into the City. I have seen once or twice a laden 'bus bound
thitherwards. But however that may be, I can't conceive a greater
loneliness in a desert at midnight than there is there at midday. It is
like a city of the dead; the streets are glaring and desolate, and as
you pass it suddenly strikes you that this too is part of London. Well,
a year or two ago there was a doctor living there; he had set up his
brass plate and his red lamp at the very end of one of those shining
streets, and from the back of the house, the fields stretched away to
the north. I don't know what his reason was in settling down in such an
out-of-the-way place, perhaps Dr. Black, as we will call him, was a
far-seeing man and looked ahead. His relations, so it appeared
afterwards, had lost sight of him for many years and didn't even know he
was a doctor, much less where he lived. However, there he was settled in
Harlesden, with some fragments of a practice, and an uncommonly pretty
wife. People used to see them walking out together in the summer
evenings soon after they came to Harlesden, and, so far as could be
observed, they seemed a very affectionate couple. These walks went on
through the autumn, and then ceased; but, of course, as the days grew
dark and the weather cold, the lanes near Harlesden might be expected to
lose many of their attractions. All through the winter nobody saw
anything of Mrs. Black; the doctor used to reply to his patients'
inquiries that she was a "little out of sorts, would be better, no
doubt, in the spring." But the spring came, and the summer, and no Mrs.
Black appeared, and at last people began to rumour and talk amongst
themselves, and all sorts of queer things were said at "high teas,"
which you may possibly have heard are the only form of entertainment
known in such suburbs. Dr. Black began to surprise some very odd looks
cast in his direction, and the practice, such as it was, fell off before
his eyes. In short, when the neighbours whispered about the matter, they
whispered that Mrs. Black was dead, and that the doctor had made away
with her. But this wasn't the case; Mrs. Black was seen alive in June.
It was a Sunday afternoon, one of those few exquisite days that an
English climate offers, and half London had strayed out into the fields,
north, south, east, and west to smell the scent of the white May, and to
see if the wild roses were yet in blossom in the hedges. I had gone out
myself early in the morning, and had had a long ramble, and somehow or
other as I was steering homeward I found myself in this very Harlesden
we have been talking about. To be exact, I had a glass of beer in the
"General Gordon," the most flourishing house in the neighbourhood, and
as I was wandering rather aimlessly about, I saw an uncommonly tempting
gap in a hedgerow, and resolved to explore the meadow beyond. Soft grass
is very grateful to the feet after the infernal grit strewn on suburban
sidewalks, and after walking about for some time I thought I should like
to sit down on a bank and have a smoke. While I was getting out my
pouch, I looked up in the direction of the houses, and as I looked I
felt my breath caught back, and my teeth began to chatter, and the stick
I had in one hand snapped in two with the grip I gave it. It was as if I
had had an electric current down my spine, and yet for some moment of
time which seemed long, but which must have been very short, I caught
myself wondering what on earth was the matter. Then I knew what had
made my very heart shudder and my bones grind together in an agony. As I
glanced up I had looked straight towards the last house in the row
before me, and in an upper window of that house I had seen for some
short fraction of a second a face. It was the face of a woman, and yet
it was not human. You and I, Salisbury, have heard in our time, as we
sat in our seats in church in sober English fashion, of a lust that
cannot be satiated and of a fire that is unquenchable, but few of us
have any notion what these words mean. I hope you never may, for as I
saw that face at the window, with the blue sky above me and the warm air
playing in gusts about me, I knew I had looked into another
world--looked through the window of a commonplace, brand-new house, and
seen hell open before me. When the first shock was over, I thought once
or twice that I should have fainted; my face streamed with a cold sweat,
and my breath came and went in sobs, as if I had been half drowned. I
managed to get up at last, and walked round to the street, and there I
saw the name "Dr. Black" on the post by the front gate. As fate or my
luck would have it, the door opened and a man came down the steps as I
passed by. I had no doubt it was the doctor himself. He was of a type
rather common in London; long and thin, with a pasty face and a dull
black moustache. He gave me a look as we passed each other on the
pavement, and though it was merely the casual glance which one
foot-passenger bestows on another, I felt convinced in my mind that here
was an ugly customer to deal with. As you may imagine, I went my way a
good deal puzzled and horrified too by what I had seen; for I had paid
another visit to the "General Gordon," and had got together a good deal
of the common gossip of the place about the Blacks. I didn't mention the
fact that I had seen a woman's face in the window; but I heard that Mrs.
Black had been much admired for her beautiful golden hair, and round
what had struck me with such a nameless terror, there was a mist of
flowing yellow hair, as it were an aureole of glory round the visage of
a satyr. The whole thing bothered me in an indescribable manner; and
when I got home I tried my best to think of the impression I had
received as an illusion, but it was no use. I knew very well I had seen
what I have tried to describe to you, and I was morally certain that I
had seen Mrs. Black. And then there was the gossip of the place, the
suspicion of foul play, which I knew to be false, and my own conviction
that there was some deadly mischief or other going on in that bright red
house at the corner of Devon Road: how to construct a theory of a
reasonable kind out of these two elements. In short, I found myself in a
world of mystery; I puzzled my head over it and filled up my leisure
moments by gathering together odd threads of speculation, but I never
moved a step towards any real solution, and as the summer days went on
the matter seemed to grow misty and indistinct, shadowing some vague
terror, like a nightmare of last month. I suppose it would before long
have faded into the background of my brain--I should not have forgotten
it, for such a thing could never be forgotten--but one morning as I was
looking over the paper my eye was caught by a heading over some two
dozen lines of small type. The words I had seen were simply, "The
Harlesden Case," and I knew what I was going to read. Mrs. Black was
dead. Black had called in another medical man to certify as to cause of
death, and something or other had aroused the strange doctor's
suspicions and there had been an inquest and _post-mortem_. And the
result? That, I will confess, did astonish me considerably; it was the
triumph of the unexpected. The two doctors who made the autopsy were
obliged to confess that they could not discover the faintest trace of
any kind of foul play; their most exquisite tests and reagents failed to
detect the presence of poison in the most infinitesimal quantity. Death,
they found, had been caused by a somewhat obscure and scientifically
interesting form of brain disease. The tissue of the brain and the
molecules of the grey matter had undergone a most extraordinary series
of changes; and the younger of the two doctors, who has some reputation,
I believe, as a specialist in brain trouble, made some remarks in giving
his evidence which struck me deeply at the time, though I did not then
grasp their full significance. He said: "At the commencement of the
examination I was astonished to find appearances of a character entirely
new to me, notwithstanding my somewhat large experience. I need not
specify these appearances at present, it will be sufficient for me to
state that as I proceeded in my task I could scarcely believe that the
brain before me was that of a human being at all." There was some
surprise at this statement, as you may imagine, and the coroner asked
the doctor if he meant to say that the brain resembled that of an
animal. "No," he replied, "I should not put it in that way. Some of the
appearances I noticed seemed to point in that direction, but others, and
these were the more surprising, indicated a nervous organization of a
wholly different character from that either of man or the lower
animals." It was a curious thing to say, but of course the jury brought
in a verdict of death from natural causes, and, so far as the public was
concerned, the case came to an end. But after I had read what the doctor
said I made up my mind that I should like to know a good deal more, and
I set to work on what seemed likely to prove an interesting
investigation. I had really a good deal of trouble, but I was successful
in a measure. Though why--my dear fellow, I had no notion at the time.
Are you aware that we have been here nearly four hours? The waiters are
staring at us. Let's have the bill and be gone.'

The two men went out in silence, and stood a moment in the cool air,
watching the hurrying traffic of Coventry Street pass before them to the
accompaniment of the ringing bells of hansoms and the cries of the
newsboys; the deep far murmur of London surging up ever and again from
beneath these louder noises.

'It is a strange case, isn't it?' said Dyson at length. 'What do you
think of it?'

'My dear fellow, I haven't heard the end, so I will reserve my opinion.
When will you give me the sequel?'

'Come to my rooms some evening; say next Thursday. Here's the address.
Good-night; I want to get down to the Strand.' Dyson hailed a passing
hansom, and Salisbury turned northward to walk home to his lodgings.


II

Mr. Salisbury, as may have been gathered from the few remarks which he
had found it possible to introduce in the course of the evening, was a
young gentleman of a peculiarly solid form of intellect, coy and
retiring before the mysterious and the uncommon, with a constitutional
dislike of paradox. During the restaurant dinner he had been forced to
listen in almost absolute silence to a strange tissue of improbabilities
strung together with the ingenuity of a born meddler in plots and
mysteries, and it was with a feeling of weariness that he crossed
Shaftesbury Avenue, and dived into the recesses of Soho, for his
lodgings were in a modest neighbourhood to the north of Oxford Street.
As he walked he speculated on the probable fate of Dyson, relying on
literature, unbefriended by a thoughtful relative, and could not help
concluding that so much subtlety united to a too vivid imagination would
in all likelihood have been rewarded with a pair of sandwich-boards or a
super's banner. Absorbed in this train of thought, and admiring the
perverse dexterity which could transmute the face of a sickly woman and
a case of brain disease into the crude elements of romance, Salisbury
strayed on through the dimly-lighted streets, not noticing the gusty
wind which drove sharply round corners and whirled the stray rubbish of
the pavement into the air in eddies, while black clouds gathered over
the sickly yellow moon. Even a stray drop or two of rain blown into his
face did not rouse him from his meditations, and it was only when with
a sudden rush the storm tore down upon the street that he began to
consider the expediency of finding some shelter. The rain, driven by the
wind, pelted down with the violence of a thunderstorm, dashing up from
the stones and hissing through the air, and soon a perfect torrent of
water coursed along the kennels and accumulated in pools over the
choked-up drains. The few stray passengers who had been loafing rather
than walking about the street had scuttered away, like frightened
rabbits, to some invisible places of refuge, and though Salisbury
whistled loud and long for a hansom, no hansom appeared. He looked about
him, as if to discover how far he might be from the haven of Oxford
Street, but strolling carelessly along, he had turned out of his way,
and found himself in an unknown region, and one to all appearance devoid
even of a public-house where shelter could be bought for the modest sum
of twopence. The street lamps were few and at long intervals, and burned
behind grimy glasses with the sickly light of oil, and by this wavering
glimmer Salisbury could make out the shadowy and vast old houses of
which the street was composed. As he passed along, hurrying, and
shrinking from the full sweep of the rain, he noticed the innumerable
bell-handles, with names that seemed about to vanish of old age graven
on brass plates beneath them, and here and there a richly carved
penthouse overhung the door, blackening with the grime of fifty years.
The storm seemed to grow more and more furious; he was wet through, and
a new hat had become a ruin, and still Oxford Street seemed as far off
as ever; it was with deep relief that the dripping man caught sight of a
dark archway which seemed to promise shelter from the rain if not from
the wind. Salisbury took up his position in the driest corner and looked
about him; he was standing in a kind of passage contrived under part of
a house, and behind him stretched a narrow footway leading between blank
walls to regions unknown. He had stood there for some time, vainly
endeavouring to rid himself of some of his superfluous moisture, and
listening for the passing wheel of a hansom, when his attention was
aroused by a loud noise coming from the direction of the passage behind,
and growing louder as it drew nearer. In a couple of minutes he could
make out the shrill, raucous voice of a woman, threatening and
renouncing, and making the very stones echo with her accents, while now
and then a man grumbled and expostulated. Though to all appearance
devoid of romance, Salisbury had some relish for street rows, and was,
indeed, somewhat of an amateur in the more amusing phases of
drunkenness; he therefore composed himself to listen and observe with
something of the air of a subscriber to grand opera. To his annoyance,
however, the tempest seemed suddenly to be composed, and he could hear
nothing but the impatient steps of the woman and the slow lurch of the
man as they came towards him. Keeping back in the shadow of the wall, he
could see the two drawing nearer; the man was evidently drunk, and had
much ado to avoid frequent collision with the wall as he tacked across
from one side to the other, like some bark beating up against a wind.
The woman was looking straight in front of her, with tears streaming
from her eyes, but suddenly as they went by the flame blazed up again,
and she burst forth into a torrent of abuse, facing round upon her
companion.

'You low rascal, you mean, contemptible cur,' she went on, after an
incoherent storm of curses, 'you think I'm to work and slave for you
always, I suppose, while you're after that Green Street girl and
drinking every penny you've got? But you're mistaken, Sam--indeed, I'll
bear it no longer. Damn you, you dirty thief, I've done with you and
your master too, so you can go your own errands, and I only hope they'll
get you into trouble.'

The woman tore at the bosom of her dress, and taking something out that
looked like paper, crumpled it up and flung it away. It fell at
Salisbury's feet. She ran out and disappeared in the darkness, while the
man lurched slowly into the street, grumbling indistinctly to himself in
a perplexed tone of voice. Salisbury looked out after him and saw him
maundering along the pavement, halting now and then and swaying
indecisively, and then starting off at some fresh tangent. The sky had
cleared, and white fleecy clouds were fleeting across the moon, high in
the heaven. The light came and went by turns, as the clouds passed by,
and, turning round as the clear, white rays shone into the passage,
Salisbury saw the little ball of crumpled paper which the woman had cast
down. Oddly curious to know what it might contain, he picked it up and
put it in his pocket, and set out afresh on his journey.


III

Salisbury was a man of habit. When he got home, drenched to the skin,
his clothes hanging lank about him, and a ghastly dew besmearing his
hat, his only thought was of his health, of which he took studious care.
So, after changing his clothes and encasing himself in a warm
dressing-gown, he proceeded to prepare a sudorific in the shape of a hot
gin and water, warming the latter over one of those spirit-lamps which
mitigate the austerities of the modern hermit's life. By the time this
preparation had been exhibited, and Salisbury's disturbed feelings had
been soothed by a pipe of tobacco, he was able to get into bed in a
happy state of vacancy, without a thought of his adventure in the dark
archway, or of the weird fancies with which Dyson had seasoned his
dinner. It was the same at breakfast the next morning, for Salisbury
made a point of not thinking of any thing until that meal was over; but
when the cup and saucer were cleared away, and the morning pipe was lit,
he remembered the little ball of paper, and began fumbling in the
pockets of his wet coat. He did not remember into which pocket he had
put it, and as he dived now into one and now into another, he
experienced a strange feeling of apprehension lest it should not be
there at all, though he could not for the life of him have explained the
importance he attached to what was in all probability mere rubbish. But
he sighed with relief when his fingers touched the crumpled surface in
an inside pocket, and he drew it out gently and laid it on the little
desk by his easy-chair with as much care as if it had been some rare
jewel. Salisbury sat smoking and staring at his find for a few minutes,
an odd temptation to throw the thing in the fire and have done with it
struggling with as odd a speculation as to its possible contents, and as
to the reason why the infuriated woman should have flung a bit of paper
from her with such vehemence. As might be expected, it was the latter
feeling that conquered in the end, and yet it was with something like
repugnance that he at last took the paper and unrolled it, and laid it
out before him. It was a piece of common dirty paper, to all appearance
torn out of a cheap exercise-book, and in the middle were a few lines
written in a queer cramped hand. Salisbury bent his head and stared
eagerly at it for a moment, drawing a long breath, and then fell back in
his chair gazing blankly before him, till at last with a sudden
revulsion he burst into a peal of laughter, so long and loud and
uproarious that the landlady's baby on the floor below awoke from sleep
and echoed his mirth with hideous yells. But he laughed again and again,
and took the paper up to read a second time what seemed such meaningless
nonsense.

    'Q. has had to go and see his friends in Paris,' it began. 'Traverse
    Handle S. "Once around the grass, and twice around the lass, and
    thrice around the maple tree."'

Salisbury took up the paper and crumpled it as the angry woman had done,
and aimed it at the fire. He did not throw it there, however, but
tossed it carelessly into the well of the desk, and laughed again. The
sheer folly of the thing offended him, and he was ashamed of his own
eager speculation, as one who pores over the high-sounding announcements
in the agony column of the daily paper, and finds nothing but
advertisement and triviality. He walked to the window, and stared out at
the languid morning life of his quarter; the maids in slatternly print
dresses washing door-steps, the fish-monger and the butcher on their
rounds, and the tradesmen standing at the doors of their small shops,
drooping for lack of trade and excitement. In the distance a blue haze
gave some grandeur to the prospect, but the view as a whole was
depressing, and would only have interested a student of the life of
London, who finds something rare and choice in its very aspect.
Salisbury turned away in disgust, and settled himself in the easy-chair,
upholstered in a bright shade of green, and decked with yellow gimp,
which was the pride and attraction of the apartments. Here he composed
himself to his morning's occupation--the perusal of a novel that dealt
with sport and love in a manner that suggested the collaboration of a
stud-groom and a ladies' college. In an ordinary way, however, Salisbury
would have been carried on by the interest of the story up to
lunch-time, but this morning he fidgeted in and out of his chair, took
the book up and laid it down again, and swore at last to himself and at
himself in mere irritation. In point of fact the jingle of the paper
found in the archway had 'got into his head,' and do what he would he
could not help muttering over and over, 'Once around the grass, and
twice around the lass, and thrice around the maple tree.' It became a
positive pain, like the foolish burden of a music-hall song,
everlastingly quoted, and sung at all hours of the day and night, and
treasured by the street-boys as an unfailing resource for six months
together. He went out into the streets, and tried to forget his enemy in
the jostling of the crowds and the roar and clatter of the traffic, but
presently he would find himself stealing quietly aside, and pacing some
deserted byway, vainly puzzling his brains, and trying to fix some
meaning to phrases that were meaningless. It was a positive relief when
Thursday came, and he remembered that he had made an appointment to go
and see Dyson; the flimsy reveries of the self-styled man of letters
appeared entertaining when compared with this ceaseless iteration, this
maze of thought from which there seemed no possibility of escape.
Dyson's abode was in one of the quietest of the quiet streets that led
down from the Strand to the river, and when Salisbury passed from the
narrow stairway into his friend's room, he saw that the uncle had been
beneficent indeed. The floor glowed and flamed with all the colours of
the East; it was, as Dyson pompously remarked, 'a sunset in a dream,'
and the lamplight, the twilight of London streets, was shut out with
strangely worked curtains, glittering here and there with threads of
gold. In the shelves of an oak _armoire_ stood jars and plates of old
French china, and the black and white of etchings not to be found in the
Haymarket or in Bond Street, stood out against the splendour of a
Japanese paper. Salisbury sat down on the settle by the hearth, and
sniffed the mingled fumes of incense and tobacco, wondering and dumb
before all this splendour after the green rep and the oleographs, the
gilt-framed mirror, and the lustres of his own apartment.

'I am glad you have come,' said Dyson. 'Comfortable little room, isn't
it? But you don't look very well, Salisbury. Nothing disagreed with you,
has it?'

'No; but I have been a good deal bothered for the last few days. The
fact is I had an odd kind of--of--adventure, I suppose I may call it,
that night I saw you, and it has worried me a good deal. And the
provoking part of it is that it's the merest nonsense--but, however, I
will tell you all about it, by and by. You were going to let me have the
rest of that odd story you began at the restaurant.'

'Yes. But I am afraid, Salisbury, you are incorrigible. You are a slave
to what you call matter of fact. You know perfectly well that in your
heart you think the oddness in that case is of my making, and that it is
all really as plain as the police reports. However, as I have begun, I
will go on. But first we will have something to drink, and you may as
well light your pipe.'

Dyson went up to the oak cupboard, and drew from its depths a rotund
bottle and two little glasses, quaintly gilded.

'It's Benedictine,' he said. 'You'll have some, won't you?'

Salisbury assented, and the two men sat sipping and smoking reflectively
for some minutes before Dyson began.

'Let me see,' he said at last, 'we were at the inquest, weren't we? No,
we had done with that. Ah, I remember. I was telling you that on the
whole I had been successful in my inquiries, investigation, or whatever
you like to call it, into the matter. Wasn't that where I left off?'

'Yes, that was it. To be precise, I think "though" was the last word you
said on the matter.'

'Exactly. I have been thinking it all over since the other night, and I
have come to the conclusion that that "though" is a very big "though"
indeed. Not to put too fine a point on it, I have had to confess that
what I found out, or thought I found out, amounts in reality to nothing.
I am as far away from the heart of the case as ever. However, I may as
well tell you what I do know. You may remember my saying that I was
impressed a good deal by some remarks of one of the doctors who gave
evidence at the inquest. Well, I determined that my first step must be
to try if I could get something more definite and intelligible out of
that doctor. Somehow or other I managed to get an introduction to the
man, and he gave me an appointment to come and see him. He turned out to
be a pleasant, genial fellow; rather young and not in the least like the
typical medical man, and he began the conference by offering me whisky
and cigars. I didn't think it worth while to beat about the bush, so I
began by saying that part of his evidence at the Harlesden Inquest
struck me as very peculiar, and I gave him the printed report, with the
sentences in question underlined. He just glanced at the slip, and gave
me a queer look. "It struck you as peculiar, did it?" said he. "Well,
you must remember that the Harlesden case was very peculiar. In fact, I
think I may safely say that in some features it was unique--quite
unique." "Quite so," I replied, "and that's exactly why it interests me,
and why I want to know more about it. And I thought that if anybody
could give me any information it would be you. What is your opinion of
the matter?"

'It was a pretty downright sort of question, and my doctor looked rather
taken aback.

'"Well," he said, "as I fancy your motive in inquiring into the question
must be mere curiosity, I think I may tell you my opinion with tolerable
freedom. So, Mr., Mr. Dyson? if you want to know my theory, it is this:
I believe that Dr. Black killed his wife."

'"But the verdict," I answered, "the verdict was given from your own
evidence."

'"Quite so; the verdict was given in accordance with the evidence of my
colleague and myself, and, under the circumstances, I think the jury
acted very sensibly. In fact, I don't see what else they could have
done. But I stick to my opinion, mind you, and I say this also. I don't
wonder at Black's doing what I firmly believe he did. I think he was
justified."

'"Justified! How could that be?" I asked. I was astonished, as you may
imagine, at the answer I had got. The doctor wheeled round his chair and
looked steadily at me for a moment before he answered.

'"I suppose you are not a man of science yourself? No; then it would be
of no use my going into detail. I have always been firmly opposed myself
to any partnership between physiology and psychology. I believe that
both are bound to suffer. No one recognizes more decidedly than I do the
impassable gulf, the fathomless abyss that separates the world of
consciousness from the sphere of matter. We know that every change of
consciousness is accompanied by a rearrangement of the molecules in the
grey matter; and that is all. What the link between them is, or why
they occur together, we do not know, and most authorities believe that
we never can know. Yet, I will tell you that as I did my work, the knife
in my hand, I felt convinced, in spite of all theories, that what lay
before me was not the brain of a dead woman--not the brain of a human
being at all. Of course I saw the face; but it was quite placid, devoid
of all expression. It must have been a beautiful face, no doubt, but I
can honestly say that I would not have looked in that face when there
was life behind it for a thousand guineas, no, nor for twice that sum."

'"My dear sir," I said, "you surprise me extremely. You say that it was
not the brain of a human being. What was it then?"

'"The brain of a devil." He spoke quite coolly, and never moved a
muscle. "The brain of a devil," he repeated, "and I have no doubt that
Black found some way of putting an end to it. I don't blame him if he
did. Whatever Mrs. Black was, she was not fit to stay in this world.
Will you have anything more? No? Good-night, good-night."

'It was a queer sort of opinion to get from a man of science, wasn't it?
When he was saying that he would not have looked on that face when alive
for a thousand guineas, or two thousand guineas, I was thinking of the
face I had seen, but I said nothing. I went again to Harlesden, and
passed from one shop to another, making small purchases, and trying to
find out whether there was anything about the Blacks which was not
already common property, but there was very little to hear. One of the
tradesmen to whom I spoke said he had known the dead woman well; she
used to buy of him such quantities of grocery as were required for
their small household, for they never kept a servant, but had a
charwoman in occasionally, and she had not seen Mrs. Black for months
before she died. According to this man Mrs. Black was "a nice lady,"
always kind and considerate, and so fond of her husband and he of her,
as every one thought. And yet, to put the doctor's opinion on one side,
I knew what I had seen. And then after thinking it all over, and putting
one thing with another, it seemed to me that the only person likely to
give me much assistance would be Black himself, and I made up my mind to
find him. Of course he wasn't to be found in Harlesden; he had left, I
was told, directly after the funeral. Everything in the house had been
sold, and one fine day Black got into the train with a small
portmanteau, and went, nobody knew where. It was a chance if he were
ever heard of again, and it was by a mere chance that I came across him
at last. I was walking one day along Gray's Inn Road, not bound for
anywhere in particular, but looking about me, as usual, and holding on
to my hat, for it was a gusty day in early March, and the wind was
making the treetops in the Inn rock and quiver. I had come up from the
Holborn end, and I had almost got to Theobald's Road when I noticed a
man walking in front of me, leaning on a stick, and to all appearance
very feeble. There was something about his look that made me curious, I
don't know why, and I began to walk briskly with the idea of overtaking
him, when of a sudden his hat blew off and came bounding along the
pavement to my feet. Of course I rescued the hat, and gave it a glance
as I went towards its owner. It was a biography in itself; a Piccadilly
maker's name in the inside, but I don't think a beggar would have picked
it out of the gutter. Then I looked up and saw Dr. Black of Harlesden
waiting for me. A queer thing, wasn't it? But, Salisbury, what a change!
When I saw Dr. Black come down the steps of his house at Harlesden he
was an upright man, walking firmly with well-built limbs; a man, I
should say, in the prime of his life. And now before me there crouched
this wretched creature, bent and feeble, with shrunken cheeks, and hair
that was whitening fast, and limbs that trembled and shook together, and
misery in his eyes. He thanked me for bringing him his hat, saying, "I
don't think I should ever have got it, I can't run much now. A gusty
day, sir, isn't it?" and with this he was turning away, but by little
and little I contrived to draw him into the current of conversation, and
we walked together eastward. I think the man would have been glad to get
rid of me; but I didn't intend to let him go, and he stopped at last in
front of a miserable house in a miserable street. It was, I verily
believe, one of the most wretched quarters I have ever seen: houses that
must have been sordid and hideous enough when new, that had gathered
foulness with every year, and now seemed to lean and totter to their
fall. "I live up there," said Black, pointing to the tiles, "not in the
front--in the back. I am very quiet there. I won't ask you to come in
now, but perhaps some other day----" I caught him up at that, and told
him I should be only too glad to come and see him. He gave me an odd
sort of glance, as if he were wondering what on earth I or anybody else
could care about him, and I left him fumbling with his latch-key. I
think you will say I did pretty well when I tell you that within a few
weeks I had made myself an intimate friend of Black's. I shall never
forget the first time I went to his room; I hope I shall never see such
abject, squalid misery again. The foul paper, from which all pattern or
trace of a pattern had long vanished, subdued and penetrated with the
grime of the evil street, was hanging in mouldering pennons from the
wall. Only at the end of the room was it possible to stand upright, and
the sight of the wretched bed and the odour of corruption that pervaded
the place made me turn faint and sick. Here I found him munching a piece
of bread; he seemed surprised to find that I had kept my promise, but he
gave me his chair and sat on the bed while we talked. I used to go to
see him often, and we had long conversations together, but he never
mentioned Harlesden or his wife. I fancy that he supposed me ignorant of
the matter, or thought that if I had heard of it, I should never connect
the respectable Dr. Black of Harlesden with a poor garreteer in the
backwoods of London. He was a strange man, and as we sat together
smoking, I often wondered whether he were mad or sane, for I think the
wildest dreams of Paracelsus and the Rosicrucians would appear plain and
sober fact compared with the theories I have heard him earnestly advance
in that grimy den of his. I once ventured to hint something of the sort
to him. I suggested that something he had said was in flat contradiction
to all science and all experience. "No," he answered, "not all
experience, for mine counts for something. I am no dealer in unproved
theories; what I say I have proved for myself, and at a terrible cost.
There is a region of knowledge which you will never know, which wise men
seeing from afar off shun like the plague, as well they may, but into
that region I have gone. If you knew, if you could even dream of what
may be done, of what one or two men have done in this quiet world of
ours, your very soul would shudder and faint within you. What you have
heard from me has been but the merest husk and outer covering of true
science--that science which means death, and that which is more awful
than death, to those who gain it. No, when men say that there are
strange things in the world, they little know the awe and the terror
that dwell always with them and about them." There was a sort of
fascination about the man that drew me to him, and I was quite sorry to
have to leave London for a month or two; I missed his odd talk. A few
days after I came back to town I thought I would look him up, but when I
gave the two rings at the bell that used to summon him, there was no
answer. I rang and rang again, and was just turning to go away, when the
door opened and a dirty woman asked me what I wanted. From her look I
fancy she took me for a plain-clothes officer after one of her lodgers,
but when I inquired if Mr. Black were in, she gave me a stare of another
kind. "There's no Mr. Black lives here," she said. "He's gone. He's dead
this six weeks. I always thought he was a bit queer in his head, or else
had been and got into some trouble or other. He used to go out every
morning from ten till one, and one Monday morning we heard him come in,
and go into his room and shut the door, and a few minutes after, just as
we was a-sitting down to our dinner, there was such a scream that I
thought I should have gone right off. And then we heard a stamping, and
down he came, raging and cursing most dreadful, swearing he had been
robbed of something that was worth millions. And then he just dropped
down in the passage, and we thought he was dead. We got him up to his
room, and put him on his bed, and I just sat there and waited, while my
'usband he went for the doctor. And there was the winder wide open, and
a little tin box he had lying on the floor open and empty, but of course
nobody could possible have got in at the winder, and as for him having
anything that was worth anything, it's nonsense, for he was often weeks
and weeks behind with his rent, and my 'usband he threatened often and
often to turn him into the street, for, as he said, we've got a living
to myke like other people--and, of course, that's true; but, somehow, I
didn't like to do it, though he was an odd kind of a man, and I fancy
had been better off. And then the doctor came and looked at him, and
said as he couldn't do nothing, and that night he died as I was
a-sitting by his bed; and I can tell you that, with one thing and
another, we lost money by him, for the few bits of clothes as he had
were worth next to nothing when they came to be sold." I gave the woman
half a sovereign for her trouble, and went home thinking of Dr. Black
and the epitaph she had made him, and wondering at his strange fancy
that he had been robbed. I take it that he had very little to fear on
that score, poor fellow; but I suppose that he was really mad, and died
in a sudden access of his mania. His landlady said that once or twice
when she had had occasion to go into his room (to dun the poor wretch
for his rent, most likely), he would keep her at the door for about a
minute, and that when she came in she would find him putting away his
tin box in the corner by the window; I suppose he had become possessed
with the idea of some great treasure, and fancied himself a wealthy man
in the midst of all his misery. _Explicit_, my tale is ended, and you
see that though I knew Black, I know nothing of his wife or of the
history of her death.--That's the Harlesden case, Salisbury, and I think
it interests me all the more deeply because there does not seem the
shadow of a possibility that I or any one else will ever know more about
it. What do you think of it?'

'Well, Dyson, I must say that I think you have contrived to surround the
whole thing with a mystery of your own making. I go for the doctor's
solution: Black murdered his wife, being himself in all probability an
undeveloped lunatic.'

'What? Do you believe, then, that this woman was something too awful,
too terrible to be allowed to remain on the earth? You will remember
that the doctor said it was the brain of a devil?'

'Yes, yes, but he was speaking, of course, metaphorically. It's really
quite a simple matter if you only look at it like that.'

'Ah, well, you may be right; but yet I am sure you are not. Well, well,
it's no good discussing it any more. A little more Benedictine? That's
right; try some of this tobacco. Didn't you say that you had been
bothered by something--something which happened that night we dined
together?'

'Yes, I have been worried, Dyson, worried a great deal. I----But it's
such a trivial matter--indeed, such an absurdity--that I feel ashamed to
trouble you with it.'

'Never mind, let's have it, absurd or not.'

With many hesitations, and with much inward resentment of the folly of
the thing, Salisbury told his tale, and repeated reluctantly the absurd
intelligence and the absurder doggerel of the scrap of paper, expecting
to hear Dyson burst out into a roar of laughter.

'Isn't it too bad that I should let myself be bothered by such stuff as
that?' he asked, when he had stuttered out the jingle of once, and
twice, and thrice.

Dyson listened to it all gravely, even to the end, and meditated for a
few minutes in silence.

'Yes,' he said at length, 'it was a curious chance, your taking shelter
in that archway just as those two went by. But I don't know that I
should call what was written on the paper nonsense; it is bizarre
certainly, but I expect it has a meaning for somebody. Just repeat it
again, will you, and I will write it down. Perhaps we might find a
cipher of some sort, though I hardly think we shall.'

Again had the reluctant lips of Salisbury slowly to stammer out the
rubbish that he abhorred, while Dyson jotted it down on a slip of paper.

'Look over it, will you?' he said, when it was done; 'it may be
important that I should have every word in its place. Is that all
right?'

'Yes; that is an accurate copy. But I don't think you will get much out
of it. Depend upon it, it is mere nonsense, a wanton scribble. I must be
going now, Dyson. No, no more; that stuff of yours is pretty strong.
Good-night.'

'I suppose you would like to hear from me, if I did find out anything?'

'No, not I; I don't want to hear about the thing again. You may regard
the discovery, if it is one, as your own.'

'Very well. Good-night.'


IV

A good many hours after Salisbury had returned to the company of the
green rep chairs, Dyson still sat at his desk, itself a Japanese
romance, smoking many pipes, and meditating over his friend's story. The
bizarre quality of the inscription which had annoyed Salisbury was to
him an attraction, and now and again he took it up and scanned
thoughtfully what he had written, especially the quaint jingle at the
end. It was a token, a symbol, he decided, and not a cipher, and the
woman who had flung it away was in all probability entirely ignorant of
its meaning; she was but the agent of the 'Sam' she had abused and
discarded, and he too was again the agent of some one unknown, possibly
of the individual styled Q, who had been forced to visit his French
friends. But what to make of 'Traverse Handle S.' Here was the root and
source of the enigma, and not all the tobacco of Virginia seemed likely
to suggest any clue here. It seemed almost hopeless, but Dyson regarded
himself as the Wellington of mysteries, and went to bed feeling assured
that sooner or later he would hit upon the right track For the next few
days he was deeply engaged in his literary labours, labours which were a
profound mystery even to the most intimate of his friends, who searched
the railway bookstalls in vain for the result of so many hours spent at
the Japanese bureau in company with strong tobacco and black tea. On
this occasion Dyson confined himself to his room for four days, and it
was with genuine relief that he laid down his pen and went out into the
streets in quest of relaxation and fresh air. The gas-lamps were being
lighted, and the fifth edition of the evening papers was being howled
through the streets, and Dyson, feeling that he wanted quiet, turned
away from the clamorous Strand, and began to trend away to the
north-west. Soon he found himself in streets that echoed to his
footsteps, and crossing a broad new thoroughfare, and verging still to
the west, Dyson discovered that he had penetrated to the depths of Soho.
Here again was life; rare vintages of France and Italy, at prices which
seemed contemptibly small, allured the passer-by; here were cheeses,
vast and rich, here olive oil, and here a grove of Rabelaisian sausages;
while in a neighbouring shop the whole Press of Paris appeared to be on
sale. In the middle of the roadway a strange miscellany of nations
sauntered to and fro, for there cab and hansom rarely ventured; and from
window over window the inhabitants looked forth in pleased contemplation
of the scene. Dyson made his way slowly along, mingling with the crowd
on the cobble-stones, listening to the queer babel of French and German,
and Italian and English, glancing now and again at the shop-windows with
their levelled batteries of bottles, and had almost gained the end of
the street, when his attention was arrested by a small shop at the
corner, a vivid contrast to its neighbours. It was the typical shop of
the poor quarter; a shop entirely English. Here were vended tobacco and
sweets, cheap pipes of clay and cherry-wood; penny exercise-books and
penholders jostled for precedence with comic songs, and story papers
with appalling cuts showed that romance claimed its place beside the
actualities of the evening paper, the bills of which fluttered at the
doorway. Dyson glanced up at the name above the door, and stood by the
kennel trembling, for a sharp pang, the pang of one who has made a
discovery, had for a moment left him incapable of motion. The name over
the shop was Travers. Dyson looked up again, this time at the corner of
the wall above the lamp-post, and read in white letters on a blue ground
the words 'Handel Street, W. C.,' and the legend was repeated in fainter
letters just below. He gave a little sigh of satisfaction, and without
more ado walked boldly into the shop, and stared full in the face the
fat man who was sitting behind the counter. The fellow rose to his feet,
and returned the stare a little curiously, and then began in stereotyped
phrase--

'What can I do for you, sir?'

Dyson enjoyed the situation and a dawning perplexity on the man's face.
He propped his stick carefully against the counter and leaning over it,
said slowly and impressively--

'Once around the grass, and twice around the lass, and thrice around the
maple-tree.'

Dyson had calculated on his words producing an effect, and he was not
disappointed. The vendor of miscellanies gasped, open-mouthed like a
fish, and steadied himself against the counter. When he spoke, after a
short interval, it was in a hoarse mutter, tremulous and unsteady.

'Would you mind saying that again, sir? I didn't quite catch it.'

'My good man, I shall most certainly do nothing of the kind. You heard
what I said perfectly well. You have got a clock in your shop, I see; an
admirable timekeeper, I have no doubt. Well, I give you a minute by your
own clock.'

The man looked about him in a perplexed indecision, and Dyson felt that
it was time to be bold.

'Look here, Travers, the time is nearly up. You have heard of Q, I
think. Remember, I hold your life in my hands. Now!'

Dyson was shocked at the result of his own audacity. The man shrank and
shrivelled in terror, the sweat poured down a face of ashy white, and he
held up his hands before him.

'Mr. Davies, Mr. Davies, don't say that--don't for Heaven's sake. I
didn't know you at first, I didn't indeed. Good God! Mr. Davies, you
wouldn't ruin me? I'll get it in a moment.'

'You had better not lose any more time.'

The man slunk piteously out of his own shop, and went into a back
parlour. Dyson heard his trembling fingers fumbling with a bunch of
keys, and the creak of an opening box. He came back presently with a
small package neatly tied up in brown paper in his hands, and, still
full of terror, handed it to Dyson.

'I'm glad to be rid of it,' he said. 'I'll take no more jobs of this
sort.'

Dyson took the parcel and his stick, and walked out of the shop with a
nod, turning round as he passed the door. Travers had sunk into his
seat, his face still white with terror, with one hand over his eyes,
and Dyson speculated a good deal as he walked rapidly away as to what
queer chords those could be on which he had played so roughly. He hailed
the first hansom he could see and drove home, and when he had lit his
hanging lamp, and laid his parcel on the table, he paused for a moment,
wondering on what strange thing the lamplight would soon shine. He
locked his door, and cut the strings, and unfolded the paper layer after
layer, and came at last to a small wooden box, simply but solidly made.
There was no lock, and Dyson had simply to raise the lid, and as he did
so he drew a long breath and started back. The lamp seemed to glimmer
feebly like a single candle, but the whole room blazed with light--and
not with light alone, but with a thousand colours, with all the glories
of some painted window; and upon the walls of his room and on the
familiar furniture, the glow flamed back and seemed to flow again to its
source, the little wooden box. For there upon a bed of soft wool lay the
most splendid jewel, a jewel such as Dyson had never dreamed of, and
within it shone the blue of far skies, and the green of the sea by the
shore, and the red of the ruby, and deep violet rays, and in the middle
of all it seemed aflame as if a fountain of fire rose up, and fell, and
rose again with sparks like stars for drops. Dyson gave a long deep
sigh, and dropped into his chair, and put his hands over his eyes to
think. The jewel was like an opal, but from a long experience of the
shop-windows he knew there was no such thing as an opal one-quarter or
one-eighth of its size. He looked at the stone again, with a feeling
that was almost awe, and placed it gently on the table under the lamp,
and watched the wonderful flame that shone and sparkled in its centre,
and then turned to the box, curious to know whether it might contain
other marvels. He lifted the bed of wool on which the opal had reclined,
and saw beneath, no more jewels, but a little old pocket-book, worn and
shabby with use. Dyson opened it at the first leaf, and dropped the book
again appalled. He had read the name of the owner, neatly written in
blue ink:

    STEVEN BLACK, M. D.,
      Oranmore,
        Devon Road,
          Harlesden.

It was several minutes before Dyson could bring himself to open the book
a second time; he remembered the wretched exile in his garret; and his
strange talk, and the memory too of the face he had seen at the window,
and of what the specialist had said, surged up in his mind, and as he
held his finger on the cover, he shivered, dreading what might be
written within. When at last he held it in his hand, and turned the
pages, he found that the first two leaves were blank, but the third was
covered with clear, minute writing, and Dyson began to read with the
light of the opal flaming in his eyes.


V

'Ever since I was a young man'--the record began--'I devoted all my
leisure and a good deal of time that ought to have been given to other
studies to the investigation of curious and obscure branches of
knowledge. What are commonly called the pleasures of life had never any
attractions for me, and I lived alone in London, avoiding my
fellow-students, and in my turn avoided by them as a man self-absorbed
and unsympathetic. So long as I could gratify my desire of knowledge of
a peculiar kind, knowledge of which the very existence is a profound
secret to most men, I was intensely happy, and I have often spent whole
nights sitting in the darkness of my room, and thinking of the strange
world on the brink of which I trod. My professional studies, however,
and the necessity of obtaining a degree, for some time forced my more
obscure employment into the background, and soon after I had qualified I
met Agnes, who became my wife. We took a new house in this remote
suburb, and I began the regular routine of a sober practice, and for
some months lived happily enough, sharing in the life about me, and only
thinking at odd intervals of that occult science which had once
fascinated my whole being. I had learnt enough of the paths I had begun
to tread to know that they were beyond all expression difficult and
dangerous, that to persevere meant in all probability the wreck of a
life, and that they led to regions so terrible, that the mind of man
shrinks appalled at the very thought. Moreover, the quiet and the peace
I had enjoyed since my marriage had wiled me away to a great extent from
places where I knew no peace could dwell. But suddenly--I think indeed
it was the work of a single night, as I lay awake on my bed gazing into
the darkness--suddenly, I say, the old desire, the former longing,
returned, and returned with a force that had been intensified ten times
by its absence; and when the day dawned and I looked out of the window,
and saw with haggard eyes the sunrise in the east, I knew that my doom
had been pronounced; that as I had gone far, so now I must go farther
with unfaltering steps. I turned to the bed where my wife was sleeping
peacefully, and lay down again, weeping bitter tears, for the sun had
set on our happy life and had risen with a dawn of terror to us both. I
will not set down here in minute detail what followed; outwardly I went
about the day's labour as before, saying nothing to my wife. But she
soon saw that I had changed; I spent my spare time in a room which I had
fitted up as a laboratory, and often I crept upstairs in the grey dawn
of the morning, when the light of many lamps still glowed over London;
and each night I had stolen a step nearer to that great abyss which I
was to bridge over, the gulf between the world of consciousness and the
world of matter. My experiments were many and complicated in their
nature, and it was some months before I realized whither they all
pointed, and when this was borne in upon me in a moment's time, I felt
my face whiten and my heart still within me. But the power to draw back,
the power to stand before the doors that now opened wide before me and
not to enter in, had long ago been absent; the way was closed, and I
could only pass onward. My position was as utterly hopeless as that of
the prisoner in an utter dungeon, whose only light is that of the
dungeon above him; the doors were shut and escape was impossible.
Experiment after experiment gave the same result, and I knew, and shrank
even as the thought passed through my mind, that in the work I had to do
there must be elements which no laboratory could furnish, which no
scales could ever measure. In that work, from which even I doubted to
escape with life, life itself must enter; from some human being there
must be drawn that essence which men call the soul, and in its place
(for in the scheme of the world there is no vacant chamber)--in its
place would enter in what the lips can hardly utter, what the mind
cannot conceive without a horror more awful than the horror of death
itself. And when I knew this, I knew also on whom this fate would fall;
I looked into my wife's eyes. Even at that hour, if I had gone out and
taken a rope and hanged myself, I might have escaped, and she also, but
in no other way. At last I told her all. She shuddered, and wept, and
called on her dead mother for help, and asked me if I had no mercy, and
I could only sigh. I concealed nothing from her; I told her what she
would become, and what would enter in where her life had been; I told
her of all the shame and of all the horror. You who will read this when
I am dead--if indeed I allow this record to survive,--you who have
opened the box and have seen what lies there, if you could understand
what lies hidden in that opal! For one night my wife consented to what I
asked of her, consented with the tears running down her beautiful face,
and hot shame flushing red over her neck and breast, consented to
undergo this for me. I threw open the window, and we looked together at
the sky and the dark earth for the last time; it was a fine star-light
night, and there was a pleasant breeze blowing, and I kissed her on her
lips, and her tears ran down upon my face. That night she came down to
my laboratory, and there, with shutters bolted and barred down, with
curtains drawn thick and close, so that the very stars might be shut out
from the sight of that room, while the crucible hissed and boiled over
the lamp, I did what had to be done, and led out what was no longer a
woman. But on the table the opal flamed and sparkled with such light as
no eyes of man have ever gazed on, and the rays of the flame that was
within it flashed and glittered, and shone even to my heart. My wife had
only asked one thing of me; that when there came at last what I had told
her, I would kill her. I have kept that promise.'

       *       *       *       *       *

There was nothing more. Dyson let the little pocket-book fall, and
turned and looked again at the opal with its flaming inmost light, and
then with unutterable irresistible horror surging up in his heart,
grasped the jewel, and flung it on the ground, and trampled it beneath
his heel. His face was white with terror as he turned away, and for a
moment stood sick and trembling, and then with a start he leapt across
the room and steadied himself against the door. There was an angry hiss,
as of steam escaping under great pressure, and as he gazed, motionless,
a volume of heavy yellow smoke was slowly issuing from the very centre
of the jewel, and wreathing itself in snake-like coils above it. And
then a thin white flame burst forth from the smoke, and shot up into the
air and vanished; and on the ground there lay a thing like a cinder,
black and crumbling to the touch.






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