автордың кітабын онлайн тегін оқу  Short Fiction

Arthur Machen

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 to­night.”

“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 today 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 footrest. 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 homœo­pathic 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 W., since de­ceased, who was a year younger than the above, and Tre­vor M., 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

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 lamp­post sur­vey­ing the pass­ersby 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 passerby 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. Good­bye; 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. Every­one 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 win­dowsills. 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 to­night, 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 any­one. 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 moneylenders 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 bed­posts, 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 scrap­books 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 small­pox.”

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 today. 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 to­mor­row,” 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 lookout 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 car­riage­way, 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 any­one, 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 any­one who can show the last link in this chain of aw­ful mys­tery, I do not know, but if there be any­one 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:

DEVOMNODENTi

FLAvIVSSENILISPOSSVit

PROPTERNVPtias

quaSVIDITSVBVMBra

“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 farsee­ing 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 post­mortem. 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 any­thing 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 Han­del 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 door­steps, the fish­mon­ger 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 lunch­time, 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 every­one 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 latch­key. 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 any­one 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 someone un­known, pos­sibly of the in­di­vidual styled Q, who had been forced to visit his French friends. But what to make of “Tra­verse Han­del 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 north­w­est. 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 passerby; 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 cobble­stones, listen­ing to the queer ba­bel of French and Ger­man, and Italian and Eng­lish, glan­cing now and again at the shop­win­dows 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 lamp­post, 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 shop­win­dows 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 pock­et­book, 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, MD,

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 star­light 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 pock­et­book 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 snake­like 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.

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 over­es­tim­ate it and we un­der­es­tim­ate 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 key­note. 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 any­one 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 pock­et­book.

“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 to­night. 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 “forever and forever, 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 any­one 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 any­one 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 every­one 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 someone 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, someone began to sing in the dark­ness, and someone 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 someone 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 any­one 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 any­one else, and more than any­one 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 mar­ket­place, 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 mar­ket­place, 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 workt­able 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 sub­con­scious 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 Bowmen

It was dur­ing the Retreat of the Eighty Thou­sand, and the au­thor­ity of the Censor­ship is suf­fi­cient ex­cuse for not be­ing more ex­pli­cit. But it was on the most aw­ful day of that aw­ful time, on the day when ruin and dis­aster came so near that their shadow fell over Lon­don far away; and, without any cer­tain news, the hearts of men failed within them and grew faint; as if the agony of the army in the bat­tle­field had entered into their souls.

On this dread­ful day, then, when three hun­dred thou­sand men in arms with all their ar­til­lery swelled like a flood against the little Eng­lish com­pany, there was one point above all other points in our battle line that was for a time in aw­ful danger, not merely of de­feat, but of ut­ter an­ni­hil­a­tion. With the per­mis­sion of the Censor­ship and of the mil­it­ary ex­pert, this corner may, per­haps, be de­scribed as a sa­li­ent, and if this angle were crushed and broken, then the Eng­lish force as a whole would be shattered, the Al­lied left would be turned, and Sedan would in­ev­it­ably fol­low.

All the morn­ing the Ger­man guns had thundered and shrieked against this corner, and against the thou­sand or so of men who held it. The men joked at the shells, and found funny names for them, and had bets about them, and greeted them with scraps of mu­sic-hall songs. But the shells came on and burst, and tore good Eng­lish­men limb from limb, and tore brother from brother, and as the heat of the day in­creased so did the fury of that ter­rific can­non­ade. There was no help, it seemed. The Eng­lish ar­til­lery was good, but there was not nearly enough of it; it was be­ing stead­ily battered into scrap iron.

There comes a mo­ment in a storm at sea when people say to one an­other, “It is at its worst; it can blow no harder,” and then there is a blast ten times more fierce than any be­fore it. So it was in these Brit­ish trenches.

There were no stouter hearts in the whole world than the hearts of these men; but even they were ap­palled as this seven-times-heated hell of the Ger­man can­non­ade fell upon them and over­whelmed them and des­troyed them. And at this very mo­ment they saw from their trenches that a tre­mend­ous host was mov­ing against their lines. Five hun­dred of the thou­sand re­mained, and as far as they could see the Ger­man in­fantry was press­ing on against them, column upon column, a grey world of men, ten thou­sand of them, as it ap­peared af­ter­wards.

There was no hope at all. They shook hands, some of them. One man im­pro­vised a new ver­sion of the battle­song, “Good­bye, good­bye to Tip­per­ary,” end­ing with “And we shan’t get there.” And they all went on fir­ing stead­ily. The of­ficers poin­ted out that such an op­por­tun­ity for high-class, fancy shoot­ing might never oc­cur again; the Ger­mans dropped line after line; the Tip­per­ary hu­mor­ist asked, “What price Sid­ney Street?” And the few ma­chine guns did their best. But every­body knew it was of no use. The dead grey bod­ies lay in com­pan­ies and bat­talions, as oth­ers came on and on and on, and they swarmed and stirred and ad­vanced from bey­ond and bey­ond.

“World without end. Amen,” said one of the Brit­ish sol­diers with some ir­rel­ev­ance as he took aim and fired. And then he re­membered—he says he can­not think why or where­fore—a queer ve­get­arian res­taur­ant in Lon­don where he had once or twice eaten ec­cent­ric dishes of cut­lets made of len­tils and nuts that pre­ten­ded to be steak. On all the plates in this res­taur­ant there was prin­ted a fig­ure of St. Ge­orge in blue, with the motto, Ad­sit Ang­lis Sanc­tus Ge­or­gius—May St. Ge­orge be a present help to the Eng­lish. This sol­dier happened to know Latin and other use­less things, and now, as he fired at his man in the grey ad­van­cing mass—300 yards away—he uttered the pi­ous ve­get­arian motto. He went on fir­ing to the end, and at last Bill on his right had to clout him cheer­fully over the head to make him stop, point­ing out as he did so that the King’s am­muni­tion cost money and was not lightly to be wasted in drilling funny pat­terns into dead Ger­mans.

For as the Latin scholar uttered his in­voc­a­tion he felt some­thing between a shud­der and an elec­tric shock pass through his body. The roar of the battle died down in his ears to a gentle mur­mur; in­stead of it, he says, he heard a great voice and a shout louder than a thun­der-peal cry­ing, “Ar­ray, ar­ray, ar­ray!”

His heart grew hot as a burn­ing coal, it grew cold as ice within him, as it seemed to him that a tu­mult of voices answered to his sum­mons. He heard, or seemed to hear, thou­sands shout­ing: “St. Ge­orge! St. Ge­orge!”

“Ha! messire; ha! sweet Saint, grant us good de­liv­er­ance!”

“St. Ge­orge for merry Eng­land!”

“Harow! Harow! Mon­sei­gneur St. Ge­orge, suc­cour us.”

“Ha! St. Ge­orge! Ha! St. Ge­orge! a long bow and a strong bow.”

“Heaven’s Knight, aid us!”

And as the sol­dier heard these voices he saw be­fore him, bey­ond the trench, a long line of shapes, with a shin­ing about them. They were like men who drew the bow, and with an­other shout their cloud of ar­rows flew singing and tingling through the air to­wards the Ger­man hosts.

The other men in the trench were fir­ing all the while. They had no hope; but they aimed just as if they had been shoot­ing at Bis­ley. Sud­denly one of them lif­ted up his voice in the plain­est Eng­lish, “Gawd help us!” he bel­lowed to the man next to him, “but we’re bloom­ing mar­vels! Look at those grey … gen­tle­men, look at them! D’ye see them? They’re not go­ing down in dozens, nor in ’un­dreds; it’s thou­sands, it is. Look! look! there’s a re­gi­ment gone while I’m talk­ing to ye.”

“Shut it!” the other sol­dier bel­lowed, tak­ing aim, “what are ye gass­ing about!”

But he gulped with as­ton­ish­ment even as he spoke, for, in­deed, the grey men were fall­ing by the thou­sands. The Eng­lish could hear the gut­tural scream of the Ger­man of­ficers, the crackle of their re­volvers as they shot the re­luct­ant; and still line after line crashed to the earth.

All the while the Latin-bred sol­dier heard the cry: “Harow! Harow! Mon­sei­gneur, dear saint, quick to our aid! St. Ge­orge help us!”

“High Cheva­lier, de­fend us!”

The singing ar­rows fled so swift and thick that they darkened the air; the hea­then horde melted from be­fore them.

“More ma­chine guns!” Bill yelled to Tom.

“Don’t hear them,” Tom yelled back. “But, thank God, any­way; they’ve got it in the neck.”

In fact, there were ten thou­sand dead Ger­man sol­diers left be­fore that sa­li­ent of the Eng­lish army, and con­sequently there was no Sedan. In Ger­many, a coun­try ruled by sci­entific prin­ciples, the Great Gen­eral Staff de­cided that the con­tempt­ible Eng­lish must have em­ployed shells con­tain­ing an un­known gas of a pois­on­ous nature, as no wounds were dis­cern­ible on the bod­ies of the dead Ger­man sol­diers. But the man who knew what nuts tasted like when they called them­selves steak knew also that St. Ge­orge had brought his Agin­court Bow­men to help the Eng­lish.

The Soldiers’ Rest

The sol­dier with the ugly wound in the head opened his eyes at last, and looked about him with an air of pleas­ant sat­is­fac­tion.

He still felt drowsy and dazed with some fierce ex­per­i­ence through which he had passed, but so far he could not re­col­lect much about it. But—an agree­able glow began to steal about his heart—such a glow as comes to people who have been in a tight place and have come through it bet­ter than they had ex­pec­ted. In its mild­est form this set of emo­tions may be ob­served in pas­sen­gers who have crossed the Chan­nel on a windy day without be­ing sick. They tri­umph a little in­tern­ally, and are suf­fused with vague, kindly feel­ings.

The wounded sol­dier was some­what of this dis­pos­i­tion as he opened his eyes, pulled him­self to­gether, and looked about him. He felt a sense of de­li­cious ease and re­pose in bones that had been racked and weary, and deep in the heart that had so lately been tor­men­ted there was an as­sur­ance of com­fort—of the battle won. The thun­der­ing, roar­ing waves were passed; he had entered into the haven of calm wa­ters. After fa­tigues and ter­rors that as yet he could not re­col­lect he seemed now to be rest­ing in the easi­est of all easy chairs in a dim, low room.

In the hearth there was a glint of fire and a blue, sweet-scen­ted puff of wood smoke; a great black oak beam roughly hewn crossed the ceil­ing. Through the leaded panes of the win­dows he saw a rich glow of sun­light, green lawns, and against the deep­est and most ra­di­ant of all blue skies the won­der­ful far-lif­ted towers of a vast, Gothic cathed­ral—mys­tic, rich with im­agery.

“Good Lord!” he mur­mured to him­self. “I didn’t know they had such places in France. It’s just like Wells. And it might be the other day when I was go­ing past the Swan, just as it might be past that win­dow, and asked the ost­ler what time it was, and he says, ‘What time? Why, sum­mer­time’; and there out­side it looks like sum­mer that would last forever. If this was an inn they ought to call it the Sol­diers’ Rest.”

He dozed off again, and when he opened his eyes once more a kindly look­ing man in some sort of black robe was stand­ing by him.

“It’s all right now, isn’t it?” he said, speak­ing in good Eng­lish.

“Yes, thank you, sir, as right as can be. I hope to be back again soon.”

“Well well; but how did you come here? Where did you get that?” He poin­ted to the wound on the sol­dier’s fore­head.

The sol­dier put his hand: up to his brow and looked dazed and puzzled.

“Well, sir,” he said at last, “it was like this, to be­gin at the be­gin­ning. You know how we came over in August, and there we were in the thick of it, as you might say, in a day or two. An aw­ful time it was, and I don’t know how I got through it alive. My best friend was killed dead be­side me as we lay in the trenches. By Cam­brai, I think it was.

“Then things got a little quieter for a bit, and I was quartered in a vil­lage for the best part of a week. She was a very nice lady where I was, and she treated me proper with the best of everything. Her hus­band he was fight­ing; but she had the nicest little boy I ever knew, a little fel­low of five, or six it might be, and we got on splen­did. The amount of their lingo that kid taught me—‘We, we’ and ‘Bong swot’ and ‘Com­mong voo potty we’ and all—and I taught him Eng­lish. You should have heard that nip­per say ‘ ’Arf a mo’, old un!’ It was a treat.

“Then one day we got sur­prised. There was about a dozen of us in the vil­lage, and two or three hun­dred Ger­mans came down on us early one morn­ing. They got us; no help for it. Be­fore we could shoot.

“Well there we were. They tied our hands be­hind our backs, and smacked our faces and kicked us a bit, and we were lined up op­pos­ite the house where I’d been stay­ing.

“And then that poor little chap broke away from his mother, and he run out and saw one of the Boshes, as we call them, fetch me one over the jaw with his clenched fist. Oh dear! oh dear! he might have done it a dozen times if only that little child hadn’t seen him.

“He had a poor bit of a toy I’d bought him at the vil­lage shop; a toy gun it was. And out he came run­ning, as I say, Cry­ing out some­thing in French like ‘Bad man! bad man! don’t hurt my Ang­lish or I shoot you’; and he poin­ted that gun at the Ger­man sol­dier. The Ger­man, he took his bay­onet, and he drove it right through the poor little chap’s throat.”

The sol­dier’s face worked and twitched and twis­ted it­self into a sort of grin, and he sat grind­ing his teeth and star­ing at the man in the black robe. He was si­lent for a little. And then he found his voice, and the oaths rolled ter­rible, thun­der­ing from him, as he cursed that mur­der­ous wretch, and bade him go down and burn forever in hell. And the tears were rain­ing down his face, and they choked him at last.

“I beg your par­don, sir, I’m sure,” he said, “es­pe­cially you be­ing a min­is­ter of some kind, I sup­pose; but I can’t help it, he was such a dear little man.”

The man in black mur­mured some­thing to him­self: “Pre­tiosa in con­spectu Domini mors in­no­cen­tium ejus”—Dear in the sight of the Lord is the death of His in­no­cents. Then he put a hand very gently on the sol­dier’s shoulder.

“Never mind,” said he; “I’ve seen some ser­vice in my time, my­self. But what about that wound?”

“Oh, that; that’s noth­ing. But I’ll tell you how I got it. It was just like this. The Ger­mans had us fair, as I tell you, and they shut us up in a barn in the vil­lage; just flung us on the ground and left us to starve seem­ingly. They barred up the big door of the barn, and put a sen­try there, and thought we were all right.

“There were sort of slits like very nar­row win­dows in one of the walls, and on the second day it was, I was look­ing out of these slits down the street, and I could see those Ger­man dev­ils were up to mis­chief. They were plant­ing their ma­chine-guns every­where handy where an or­din­ary man com­ing up the street would never see them, but I see them, and I see the in­fantry lin­ing up be­hind the garden walls. Then I had a sort of a no­tion of what was com­ing; and presently, sure enough, I could hear some of our chaps singing ‘Hullo, hullo, hullo!’ in the dis­tance; and I says to my­self, ‘Not this time.’

“So I looked about me, and I found a hole un­der the wall; a kind of a drain I should think it was, and I found I could just squeeze through. And I got out and crept, round, and away I goes run­ning down the street, yelling for all I was worth, just as our chaps were get­ting round the corner at the bot­tom. ‘Bang, bang!’ went the guns, be­hind me and in front of me, and on each side of me, and then—bash! some­thing hit me on the head and over I went; and I don’t re­mem­ber any­thing more till I woke up here just now.”

The sol­dier lay back in his chair and closed his eyes for a mo­ment. When he opened them he saw that there were other people in the room be­sides the min­is­ter in the black robes. One was a man in a big black cloak. He had a grim old face and a great beaky nose. He shook the sol­dier by the hand.

“By God! sir,” he said, “you’re a credit to the Brit­ish Army; you’re a damned fine sol­dier and a good man, and, by God! I’m proud to shake hands with you.”

And then someone came out of the shadow, someone in queer clothes such as the sol­dier had seen worn by the her­alds when he had been on duty at the open­ing of Parlia­ment by the King.

“Now, by Cor­pus Domini,” this man said, “of all knights ye be noblest and gentlest, and ye be of fairest re­port, and now ye be a brother of the noblest broth­er­hood that ever was since this world’s be­gin­ning, since ye have yiel­ded dear life for your friends’ sake.”

The sol­dier did not un­der­stand what the man was say­ing to him. There were oth­ers, too, in strange dresses, who came and spoke to him. Some spoke in what soun­ded like French. He could not make it out; but he knew that they all spoke kindly and praised him.

“What does it all mean?” he said to the min­is­ter. “What are they talk­ing about? They don’t think I’d let down my pals?”

“Drink this,” said the min­is­ter, and he handed the sol­dier a great sil­ver cup, brim­ming with wine.

The sol­dier took a deep draught, and in that mo­ment all his sor­rows passed from him.

“What is it?” he asked?

“Vin nou­veau du Roy­aume,” said the min­is­ter. “New Wine of the King­dom, you call it.” And then he bent down and mur­mured in the sol­dier’s ear.

“What,” said the wounded man, “the place they used to tell us about in Sunday school? With such drink and such joy—”

His voice was hushed. For as he looked at the min­is­ter the fash­ion of his ves­ture was changed. The black robe seemed to melt away from him. He was all in ar­mour, if ar­mour be made of star­light, of the rose of dawn, and of sun­set fires; and he lif­ted up a great sword of flame.

Full in the midst, his Cross of Red
Tri­umphant Mi­chael bran­dishèd,
And trampled the Apostate’s pride.

The Monstrance

Then it fell out in the sac­ring of the Mass that right as the priest heaved up the Host there came a beam red­der than any rose and smote upon it, and then it was changed bod­ily into the shape and fash­ion of a Child hav­ing his arms stretched forth, as he had been nailed upon the Tree.

Old Ro­mance

So far things were go­ing very well in­deed. The night was thick and black and cloudy, and the Ger­man force had come three-quar­ters of their way or more without an alarm. There was no chal­lenge from the Eng­lish lines; and in­deed the Eng­lish were be­ing kept busy by a high shell­fire on their front. This had been the Ger­man plan; and it was com­ing off ad­mir­ably. Nobody thought that there was any danger on the left; and so the Prus­si­ans, writh­ing on their stom­achs over the ploughed field, were draw­ing nearer and nearer to the wood. Once there they could es­tab­lish them­selves com­fort­ably and se­curely dur­ing what re­mained of the night; and at dawn the Eng­lish left would be hope­lessly en­fil­aded—and there would be an­other of those move­ments which people who really un­der­stand mil­it­ary mat­ters call “re­ad­just­ments of our line.”

The noise made by the men creep­ing and crawl­ing over the fields was drowned by the can­non­ade, from the Eng­lish side as well as the Ger­man. On the Eng­lish centre and right things were in­deed very brisk; the big guns were thun­der­ing and shriek­ing and roar­ing, the ma­chine-guns were keep­ing up the very devil’s racket; the flares and il­lu­min­at­ing shells were as good as the Crys­tal Palace in the old days, as the sol­diers said to one an­other. All this had been thought of and thought out on the other side. The Ger­man force was beau­ti­fully or­gan­ised. The men who crept nearer and nearer to the wood car­ried quite a num­ber of ma­chine guns in bits on their backs; oth­ers of them had small bags full of sand; yet oth­ers big bags that were empty. When the wood was reached the sand from the small bags was to be emp­tied into the big bags; the ma­chine-gun parts were to be put to­gether, the guns moun­ted be­hind the sand­bag re­doubt, and then, as Ma­jor Von und Zu pleas­antly ob­served, “the Eng­lish pigs shall to ge­henna-fire quickly come.”

The ma­jor was so well pleased with the way things had gone that he per­mit­ted him­self a very low and gut­tural chuckle; in an­other ten minutes suc­cess would be as­sured. He half turned his head round to whis­per a cau­tion about some de­tail of the sand­bag busi­ness to the big ser­geant-ma­jor, Karl Heinz, who was crawl­ing just be­hind him. At that in­stant Karl Heinz leapt into the air with a scream that rent through the night and through all the roar­ing of the ar­til­lery. He cried in a ter­rible voice, “The Glory of the Lord!” and plunged and pitched for­ward, stone dead. They said that his face as he stood up there and cried aloud was as if it had been seen through a sheet of flame.

“They” were one or two out of the few who got back to the Ger­man lines. Most of the Prus­si­ans stayed in the ploughed field. Karl Heinz’s scream had frozen the blood of the Eng­lish sol­diers, but it had also ruined the ma­jor’s plans. He and his men, caught all un­ready, clumsy with the bur­dens that they car­ried, were shot to pieces; hardly a score of them re­turned. The rest of the force were at­ten­ded to by an Eng­lish bury­ing party. Ac­cord­ing to cus­tom the dead men were searched be­fore they were bur­ied, and some sin­gu­lar re­lies of the cam­paign were found upon them, but noth­ing so sin­gu­lar as Karl Heinz’s di­ary.

He had been keep­ing it for some time. It began with entries about bread and saus­age and the or­din­ary in­cid­ents of the trenches; here and there Karl wrote about an old grand­father, and a big china pipe, and pine­woods and roast goose. Then the di­ar­ist seemed to get fid­gety about his health. Thus:

April 17.—An­noyed for some days by mur­mur­ing sounds in my head. I trust I shall not be­come deaf, like my de­par­ted uncle Chris­topher.

April 20.—The noise in my head grows worse; it is a hum­ming sound. It dis­tracts me; twice I have failed to hear the cap­tain and have been rep­rim­anded.

April 22.—So bad is my head that I go to see the doc­tor. He speaks of tin­nitus, and gives me an in­hal­ing ap­par­atus that shall reach, he says, the middle ear.

April 25.—The ap­par­atus is of no use. The sound is now be­come like the boom­ing of a great church bell. It re­minds me of the bell at St. Lam­bart on that ter­rible day of last August.

April 26.—I could swear that it is the bell of St. Lam­bart that I hear all the time. They rang it as the pro­ces­sion came out of the church.

The man’s writ­ing, at first firm enough, be­gins to straggle un­evenly over the page at this point. The entries show that he be­came con­vinced that he heard the bell of St. Lam­bart’s Church ringing, though (as he knew bet­ter than most men) there had been no bell and no church at St. Lam­bart’s since the sum­mer of 1914. There was no vil­lage either—the whole place was a rub­bish-heap.

Then the un­for­tu­nate Karl Heinz was be­set with other troubles.

May 2.—I fear I am be­com­ing ill. Today Joseph Kleist, who is next to me in the trench, asked me why I jerked my head to the right so con­stantly. I told him to hold his tongue; but this shows that I am no­ticed. I keep fancy­ing that there is some­thing white just bey­ond the range of my sight on the right hand.

May 3.—This white­ness is now quite clear, and in front of me. All this day it has slowly passed be­fore me. I asked Joseph Kleist if he saw a piece of news­pa­per just bey­ond the trench. He stared at me sol­emnly—he is a stu­pid fool—and said, “There is no pa­per.”

May 4.—It looks like a white robe. There was a strong smell of in­cense today in the trench. No one seemed to no­tice it. There is de­cidedly a white robe, and I think I can see feet, passing very slowly be­fore me at this mo­ment while I write.

There is no space here for con­tinu­ous ex­tracts from Karl Heinz’s di­ary. But to con­dense with sever­ity, it would seem that he slowly gathered about him­self a com­plete set of sens­ory hal­lu­cin­a­tions. First the aud­it­ory hal­lu­cin­a­tion of the sound of a bell, which the doc­tor called tin­nitus. Then a patch of white grow­ing into a white robe, then the smell of in­cense. At last he lived in two worlds. He saw his trench, and the level be­fore it, and the Eng­lish lines; he talked with his com­rades and obeyed or­ders, though with a cer­tain dif­fi­culty; but he also heard the deep boom of St. Lam­bart’s bell, and saw con­tinu­ally ad­van­cing to­wards him a white pro­ces­sion of little chil­dren, led by a boy who was swinging a censer. There is one ex­traordin­ary entry: “But in August those chil­dren car­ried no lilies; now they have lilies in their hands. Why should they have lilies?”

It is in­ter­est­ing to note the trans­ition over the bor­der line. After May 2 there is no ref­er­ence in the di­ary to bod­ily ill­ness, with two not­able ex­cep­tions. Up to and in­clud­ing that date the ser­geant knows that he is suf­fer­ing from il­lu­sions; after that he ac­cepts his hal­lu­cin­a­tions as ac­tu­al­it­ies. The man who can­not see what he sees and hear what he hears is a fool. So he writes: “I ask who is singing ‘Ave Maria Stella.’ That block­head Friedrich Schu­macher raises his crest and an­swers in­solently that no one sings, since singing is strictly for­bid­den for the present.”

A few days be­fore the dis­astrous night ex­ped­i­tion the last fig­ure in the pro­ces­sion ap­peared to those sick eyes.

The old priest now comes in his golden robe, the two boys hold­ing each side of it. He is look­ing just as he did when he died, save that when he walked in St. Lam­bart there was no shin­ing round his head. But this is il­lu­sion and con­trary to reason, since no one has a shin­ing about his head. I must take some medi­cine.

Note here that Karl Heinz ab­so­lutely ac­cepts the ap­pear­ance of the mar­tyred priest of St. Lam­bart as ac­tual, while he thinks that the halo must be an il­lu­sion; and so he re­verts again to his phys­ical con­di­tion.

The priest held up both his hands, the di­ary states, “as if there were some­thing between them. But there is a sort of cloud or dim­ness over this ob­ject, whatever it may be. My poor Aunt Kathie suffered much from her eyes in her old age.”

One can guess what the priest of St. Lam­bart car­ried in his hands when he and the little chil­dren went out into the hot sun­light to im­plore mercy, while the great re­sound­ing bell of St. Lam­bart boomed over the plain. Karl Heinz knew what happened then; they said that it was he who killed the old priest and helped to cru­cify the little child against the church door. The baby was only three years old. He died call­ing piteously for “mummy” and “daddy.”

And those who will may guess what Karl Heinz saw when the mist cleared from be­fore the mon­strance in the priest’s hands. Then he shrieked and died.

The Dazzling Light

The new head-cov­er­ing is made of heavy steel, which has been spe­cialty treated to in­crease its res­ist­ing power. The walls pro­tect­ing the skull are par­tic­u­larly thick, and the weight of the hel­met renders its use in open war­fare out of the ques­tion. The rim is large, like that of the head­piece of Mam­brino, and the sol­dier can at will either bring the hel­met for­ward and pro­tect his eyes or wear it so as to pro­tect the base of the skull … Mil­it­ary ex­perts ad­mit that con­tinu­ance of the present trench war­fare may lead to those en­gaged in it, es­pe­cially bomb­ing parties and barbed wire cut­ters, be­ing more heav­ily ar­moured than the knights, who fought at Bou­vines and at Agin­court.

The Times, July 22, 1915

The war is already a fruit­ful mother of le­gends. Some people think that there are too many war le­gends, and a Croy­don gen­tle­man—or lady, I am not sure which—wrote to me quite re­cently telling me that a cer­tain par­tic­u­lar le­gend, which I will not spe­cify, had be­come the “chief hor­ror of the war.” There may be some­thing to be said for this point of view, but it strikes me as in­ter­est­ing that the old myth-mak­ing fac­ulty has sur­vived into these days, a relic of noble, far-off Ho­meric battles. And after all, what do we know? It does not do to be too sure that this, that, or the other hasn’t happened and couldn’t have happened.

What fol­lows, at any rate, has no claim to be con­sidered either as le­gend or as myth. It is merely one of the odd cir­cum­stances of these times, and I have no doubt it can eas­ily be “ex­plained away.” In fact, the ra­tion­al­istic ex­plan­a­tion of the whole thing is pat­ent and on the sur­face. There is only one little dif­fi­culty, and that, I fancy, is by no means in­su­per­able. In any case this one knot or tangle may be put down as a queer co­in­cid­ence and noth­ing more.

Here, then, is the curi­os­ity or oddity in ques­tion. A young fel­low, whom we will call for avoid­ance of all iden­ti­fic­a­tion Delamere Smith—he is now Lieu­ten­ant Delamere Smith—was spend­ing his hol­i­days on the coast of west South Wales at the be­gin­ning of the war. He was some­thing or other not very im­port­ant in the City, and in his leis­ure hours he smattered lightly and agree­ably a little lit­er­at­ure, a little art, a little an­ti­quar­i­an­ism. He liked the Italian prim­it­ives, he knew the dif­fer­ence between first, second, and third poin­ted, he had looked through Boutell’s En­graved Brasses. He had been heard in­deed to speak with en­thu­si­asm of the brasses of Sir Robert de Septvans and Sir Ro­ger de Trump­ing­ton.

One morn­ing—he thinks it must have been the morn­ing of August 16, 1914—the sun shone so brightly into his room that he woke early, and the fancy took him that it would be fine to sit on the cliffs in the pure sun­light. So he dressed and went out, and climbed up Gil­tar Point, and sat there en­joy­ing the sweet air and the ra­di­ance of the sea, and the sight of the fringe of cream­ing foam about the grey found­a­tions of St. Mar­garet’s Is­land. Then he looked bey­ond and gazed at the new white mon­as­tery on Caldy, and wondered who the ar­chi­tect was, and how he had con­trived to make the group of build­ings look ex­actly like the back­ground of a mediæval pic­ture.

After about an hour of this and a couple of pipes, Smith con­fesses that he began to feel ex­tremely drowsy. He was just won­der­ing whether it would be pleas­ant to stretch him­self out on the wild thyme that scen­ted the high place and go to sleep till break­fast, when the mount­ing sun caught one of the mon­as­tery win­dows, and Smith stared sleepily at the dart­ing flash­ing light till it dazzled him. Then he felt “queer.” There was an odd sen­sa­tion as if the top of his head were dilat­ing and con­tract­ing, and then he says he had a sort of shock, some­thing between a mild cur­rent of elec­tri­city and the sen­sa­tion of put­ting one’s hand into the ripple of a swift brook.

Now, what happened next Smith can­not de­scribe at all clearly. He knew he was on Gil­tar, look­ing across the waves to Caldy; he heard all the while the hol­low, boom­ing tide in the cav­erns of the rocks far be­low him, And yet he saw, as if in a glass, a very dif­fer­ent coun­try—a level fen­land cut by slow streams, by long av­en­ues of trimmed trees.

“It looked,” he says, “as if it ought to have been a lonely coun­try, but it was swarm­ing with men; they were thick as ants in an ant­hill. And they were all dressed in ar­mour; that was the strange thing about it.

“I thought I was stand­ing by what looked as if it had been a farm­house; but it was all battered to bits, just a heap of ru­ins and rub­bish. All that was left was one tall round chim­ney, shaped very much like the fif­teenth-cen­tury chim­neys in Pem­broke­shire. And thou­sands and tens of thou­sands went march­ing by.

“They were all in ar­mour, and in all sorts of ar­mour. Some of them had over­lap­ping tongues of bright metal fastened on their clothes, oth­ers were in chain mail from head to foot, oth­ers were in heavy plate ar­mour.

“They wore hel­mets of all shapes and sorts and sizes. One re­gi­ment had steel caps with wide trims, some­thing like the old barbers’ basins. Another lot had knights’ tilt­ing hel­mets on, closed up so that you couldn’t see their faces. Most of them wore metal gaunt­lets, either of steel rings or plates, and they had steel over their boots. A great many had things like battle-maces swinging by their sides, and all these fel­lows car­ried a sort of string of big metal balls round their waist. Then a dozen re­gi­ments went by, every man with a steel shield slung over his shoulder. The last to go by were cross-bow­men.”

In fact, it ap­peared to Delamere Smith that he watched the passing of a host of men in mediæval ar­mour be­fore him, and yet he knew—by the po­s­i­tion of the sun and of a rosy cloud that was passing over the Worm’s Head—that this vis­ion, or whatever it was, only las­ted a second or two. Then that slight sense of shock re­turned, and Smith re­turned to the con­tem­pla­tion of the phys­ical phe­nom­ena of the Pem­broke­shire coast—blue waves, grey St. Mar­garet’s, and Caldy Ab­bey white in the sun­light.

It will be said, no doubt, and very likely with truth, that Smith fell asleep on Gil­tar, and mingled in a dream the thought of the great war just be­gun with his smat­ter­ings of mediæval battle and arms and ar­mour. The ex­plan­a­tion seems tol­er­able enough.

But there is the one little dif­fi­culty. It has been said that Smith is now Lieu­ten­ant Smith. He got his com­mis­sion last au­tumn, and went out in May. He hap­pens to speak French rather well, and so he has be­come what is called, I be­lieve, an of­ficer of li­aison, or some such term. Anyhow, he is of­ten be­hind the French lines.

He was home on short leave last week, and said:

“Ten days ago I was ordered to ———. I got there early in the morn­ing, and had to wait a bit be­fore I could see the Gen­eral. I looked about me, and there on the left of us was a farm shelled into a heap of ru­ins, with one round chim­ney stand­ing, shaped like the ‘Flem­ish’ chim­neys in Pem­broke­shire. And then the men in ar­mour marched by, just as I had seen them—French re­gi­ments. The things like battle-maces were bomb-throw­ers, and the metal balls round the men’s waists were the bombs. They told me that the cross­bows were used for bomb-shoot­ing.

“The march I saw was part of a big move­ment; you will hear more of it be­fore long.”

The Great Return

I The Rumour of the Marvellous

There are strange things lost and for­got­ten in ob­scure corners of the news­pa­per. I of­ten think that the most ex­traordin­ary item of in­tel­li­gence that I have read in print ap­peared a few years ago in the Lon­don Press. It came from a well known and most re­spec­ted news agency; I ima­gine it was in all the pa­pers. It was astound­ing.

The cir­cum­stances ne­ces­sary—not to the un­der­stand­ing of this para­graph, for that is out of the ques­tion—but, we will say, to the un­der­stand­ing of the events which made it pos­sible, are these. We had in­vaded Thibet, and there had been trouble in the hier­archy of that coun­try, and a per­son­age known as the Tashai Lama had taken refuge with us in In­dia. He went on pil­grim­age from one Buddhist shrine to an­other, and came at last to a holy moun­tain of Buddhism, the name of which I have for­got­ten. And thus the morn­ing pa­per.

His Holi­ness the Tashai Lama then as­cen­ded the Moun­tain and was trans­figured.

—Reu­ter

That was all. And from that day to this I have never heard a word of ex­plan­a­tion or com­ment on this amaz­ing state­ment.

There was no more, it seemed, to be said. “Reu­ter,” ap­par­ently, thought he had made his simple state­ment of the facts of the case, had thereby done his duty, and so it all ended. Nobody, so far as I know, ever wrote to any pa­per ask­ing what Reu­ter meant by it, or what the Tashai Lama meant by it. I sup­pose the fact was that nobody cared two­pence about the mat­ter; and so this strange event—if there were any such event—was ex­hib­ited to us for a mo­ment, and the lan­tern show re­volved to other spec­tacles.

This is an ex­treme in­stance of the man­ner in which the mar­vel­lous is flashed out to us and then with­drawn be­hind its black veils and con­ceal­ments; but I have known of other cases. Now and again, at in­ter­vals of a few years, there ap­pear in the news­pa­pers strange stor­ies of the strange do­ings of what are tech­nic­ally called pol­tergeists. Some house, of­ten a lonely farm, is sud­denly sub­jec­ted to an in­fernal bom­bard­ment. Great stones crash through the win­dows, thun­der down the chim­neys, im­pelled by no vis­ible hand. The plates and cups and sau­cers are whirled from the dresser into the middle of the kit­chen, no one can say how or by what agency. Up­stairs the big bed­stead and an old chest or two are heard bound­ing on the floor as if in a mad bal­let. Now and then such do­ings as these ex­cite a whole neigh­bour­hood; some­times a Lon­don pa­per sends a man down to make an in­vest­ig­a­tion. He writes half a column of de­scrip­tion on the Monday, a couple of para­graphs on the Tues­day, and then re­turns to town. Noth­ing has been ex­plained, the mat­ter van­ishes away; and nobody cares. The tale trickles for a day or two through the Press, and then in­stantly dis­ap­pears, like an Aus­tralian stream, into the bowels of dark­ness. It is pos­sible, I sup­pose, that this sin­gu­lar in­curi­ous­ness as to mar­vel­lous events and re­ports is not wholly un­ac­count­able. It may be that the events in ques­tion are, as it were, psychic ac­ci­dents and mis­ad­ven­tures. They are not meant to hap­pen, or, rather, to be mani­fes­ted. They be­long to the world on the other side of the dark cur­tain; and it is only by some queer mis­chance that a corner of that cur­tain is twitched aside for an in­stant. Then—for an in­stant—we see; but the per­son­ages whom Mr. Kip­ling calls the Lords of Life and Death take care that we do not see too much. Our busi­ness is with things higher and things lower, with things dif­fer­ent, any­how; and on the whole we are not suffered to dis­tract ourselves with that which does not really con­cern us. The Trans­fig­ur­a­tion of the Lama and the tricks of the pol­tergeist are evid­ently no af­fairs of ours; we raise an un­in­ter­ested eye­brow and pass on—to po­etry or to stat­ist­ics.

Be it noted; I am not pro­fess­ing any fer­vent per­sonal be­lief in the re­ports to which I have al­luded. For all I know, the Lama, in spite of Reu­ter, was not trans­figured, and the pol­tergeist, in spite of the late Mr. Andrew Lang, may in real­ity be only mis­chiev­ous Polly, the ser­vant girl at the farm. And to go farther: I do not know that I should be jus­ti­fied in put­ting either of these cases of the mar­vel­lous in line with a chance para­graph that caught my eye last sum­mer; for this had not, on the face of it at all events, any­thing wildly out of the com­mon. Indeed, I dare say that I should not have read it, should not have seen it, if it had not con­tained the name of a place which I had once vis­ited, which had then moved me in an odd man­ner that I could not un­der­stand. Indeed, I am sure that this par­tic­u­lar para­graph de­serves to stand alone, for even if the pol­tergeist be a real pol­tergeist, it merely re­veals the psychic whim­sic­al­ity of some re­gion that is not our re­gion. There were bet­ter things and more rel­ev­ant things be­hind the few lines deal­ing with Llantris­ant, the little town by the sea in Ar­fon­shire.

Not on the sur­face, I must say, for the cut­ting I have pre­served it—reads as fol­lows:—

Llantris­ant.—The sea­son prom­ises very fa­vour­ably: tem­per­at­ure of the sea yes­ter­day at noon, 65 deg. Re­mark­able oc­cur­rences are sup­posed to have taken place dur­ing the re­cent Revival. The lights have not been ob­served lately. The Crown. The Fish­er­man’s Rest.

The style was odd cer­tainly; know­ing a little of news­pa­pers. I could see that the fig­ure called, I think, tmesis, or cut­ting, had been gen­er­ously em­ployed; the ex­uber­ances of the local cor­res­pond­ent had been pruned by a Fleet Street ex­pert. And these poor men are of­ten hur­ried; but what did those “lights” mean? What strange mat­ters had the vehe­ment blue pen­cil blot­ted out and brought to naught?

That was my first thought, and then, think­ing still of Llantris­ant and how I had first dis­covered it and found it strange, I read the para­graph again, and was saddened al­most to see, as I thought, the ob­vi­ous ex­plan­a­tion. I had for­got­ten for the mo­ment that it was war­time, that scares and ru­mours and ter­rors about trait­or­ous sig­nals and flash­ing lights were cur­rent every­where by land and sea; someone, no doubt, had been watch­ing in­no­cent farm­house win­dows and thought­less fan­lights of lodging houses; these were the “lights” that had not been ob­served lately.

I found out af­ter­wards that the Llantris­ant cor­res­pond­ent had no such treas­on­ous lights in his mind, but some­thing very dif­fer­ent. Still; what do we know? He may have been mis­taken, “the great rose of fire” that came over the deep may have been the port light of a coast­ing-ship. Did it shine at last from the old chapel on the head­land? Poss­ibly; or pos­sibly it was the doc­tor’s lamp at Sarnau, some miles away. I have had won­der­ful op­por­tun­it­ies lately of ana­lys­ing the mar­vels of ly­ing, con­scious and un­con­scious; and in­deed al­most in­cred­ible feats in this way can be per­formed. If I in­cline to the less likely ex­plan­a­tion of the “lights” at Llantris­ant, it is merely be­cause this ex­plan­a­tion seems to me to be al­to­gether con­gru­ous with the “re­mark­able oc­cur­rences” of the news­pa­per para­graph.

After all, if ru­mour and gos­sip and hearsay are crazy things to be ut­terly neg­lected and laid aside: on the other hand, evid­ence is evid­ence, and when a couple of reput­able sur­geons as­sert, as they do as­sert in the case of Ol­wen Phil­lips, Croeswen, Llantris­ant, that there has been a “kind of re­sur­rec­tion of the body,” it is merely fool­ish to say that these things don’t hap­pen. The girl was a mass of tuber­cu­losis, she was within a few hours of death; she is now full of life. And so, I do not be­lieve that the rose of fire was merely a ship’s light, mag­ni­fied and trans­formed by dream­ing Welsh sail­ors.

But now I am go­ing for­ward too fast. I have not dated the para­graph, so I can­not give the ex­act day of its ap­pear­ance, but I think it was some­where between the second and third week of June. I cut it out partly be­cause it was about Llantris­ant, partly be­cause of the “re­mark­able oc­cur­rences.” I have an ap­pet­ite for these mat­ters, though I also have this mis­for­tune, that I re­quire evid­ence be­fore I am ready to credit them, and I have a sort of linger­ing hope that some day I shall be able to elab­or­ate some scheme or the­ory of such things.

But in the mean­time, as a tem­por­ary meas­ure, I hold what I call the doc­trine of the jig­saw puzzle. That is: this re­mark­able oc­cur­rence, and that, and the other may be, and usu­ally are, of no sig­ni­fic­ance. Coin­cid­ence and chance and un­search­able causes will now and again make clouds that are un­deni­able fiery dragons, and pota­toes that re­semble Emin­ent States­men ex­actly and minutely in every fea­ture, and rocks that are like eagles and lions. All this is noth­ing; it is when you get your set of odd shapes and find that they fit into one an­other, and at last that they are but parts of a large design; it is then that re­search grows in­ter­est­ing and in­deed amaz­ing, it is then that one queer form con­firms the other, that the whole plan dis­played jus­ti­fies, cor­rob­or­ates, ex­plains each sep­ar­ate piece.

So, it was within a week or ten days after I had read the para­graph about Llantris­ant and had cut it out that I got a let­ter from a friend who was tak­ing an early hol­i­day in those re­gions.

“You will be in­ter­ested,” he wrote, “to hear that they have taken to ritu­al­istic prac­tices at Llantris­ant. I went into the church the other day, and in­stead of smelling like a damp vault as usual, it was pos­it­ively reek­ing with in­cense.”

I knew bet­ter than that. The old par­son was a firm Evan­gel­ical; he would rather have burnt sul­phur in his church than in­cense any day. So I could not make out this re­port at all; and went down to Ar­fon a few weeks later de­term­ined to in­vest­ig­ate this and any other re­mark­able oc­cur­rence at Llantris­ant.

II Odours of Paradise

I went down to Ar­fon in the very heat and bloom and fra­grance of the won­der­ful sum­mer that they were en­joy­ing there. In Lon­don there was no such weather; it rather seemed as if the hor­ror and fury of the war had moun­ted to the very skies and were there reign­ing. In the morn­ings the sun burnt down upon the city with a heat that scorched and con­sumed; but then clouds heavy and hor­rible would roll to­gether from all quar­ters of the heav­ens, and early in the af­ter­noon the air would darken, and a storm of thun­der and light­ning, and furi­ous, hiss­ing rain would fall upon the streets. Indeed, the tor­ment of the world was in the Lon­don weather. The city wore a ter­rible ves­ture; within our hearts was dread; without we were clothed in black clouds and angry fire.

It is cer­tain that I can­not show in any words the ut­ter peace of that Welsh coast to which I came; one sees, I think, in such a change a fig­ure of the pas­sage from the dis­quiets and the fears of earth to the peace of para­dise. A land that seemed to be in a holy, happy dream, a sea that changed all the while from oliv­ine to em­er­ald, from em­er­ald to sap­phire, from sap­phire to amethyst, that washed in white foam at the bases of the firm, grey rocks, and about the huge crim­son bas­tions that hid the west­ern bays and in­lets of the wa­ters; to this land I came, and to hol­lows that were purple and odor­ous with wild thyme, won­der­ful with many tiny, ex­quis­ite flowers. There was be­ne­dic­tion in cen­taury, par­don in eye-bright, joy in lady’s slip­per; and so the weary eyes were re­freshed, look­ing now at the little flowers and the happy bees about them, now on the ma­gic mir­ror of the deep, chan­ging from mar­vel to mar­vel with the passing of the great white clouds, with the bright­en­ing of the sun. And the ears, torn with jangle and racket and idle, empty noise, were soothed and com­for­ted by the in­ef­fable, un­ut­ter­able, un­ceas­ing mur­mur, as the tides swam to and fro, ut­ter­ing mighty, hol­low voices in the cav­erns of the rocks.

For three or four days I res­ted in the sun and smelt the sa­vour of the blos­soms and of the salt wa­ter, and then, re­freshed, I re­membered that there was some­thing queer about Llantris­ant that I might as well in­vest­ig­ate. It was no great thing that I thought to find, for, it will be re­membered, I had ruled out the ap­par­ent oddity of the re­porter’s-or com­mis­sioner’s?—ref­er­ence to lights, on the ground that he must have been re­fer­ring to some local panic about sig­nalling to the en­emy; who had cer­tainly tor­pedoed a ship or two off Lundy in the Bris­tol Chan­nel. All that I had to go upon was the ref­er­ence to the “re­mark­able oc­cur­rences” at some re­vival, and then that let­ter of Jack­son’s, which spoke of Llantris­ant church as “reek­ing” with in­cense, a wholly in­cred­ible and im­possible state of things. Why, old Mr. Evans, the rector, looked upon col­oured stoles as the very robe of Satan and his an­gels, as things dear to the heart of the Pope of Rome. But as to in­cense! As I have already fa­mil­iarly ob­served, I knew bet­ter.

But as a hard mat­ter of fact, this may be worth not­ing: when I went over to Llantris­ant on Monday, August 9th, I vis­ited the church, and it was still fra­grant and ex­quis­ite with the odour of rare gums that had fumed there.

Now I happened to have a slight ac­quaint­ance with the rector. He was a most cour­teous and de­light­ful old man, and on my last visit he had come across me in the church­yard, as I was ad­mir­ing the very fine Celtic cross that stands there. Besides the beauty of the in­ter­laced or­na­ment there is an in­scrip­tion in Ogham on one of the edges, con­cern­ing which the learned dis­pute; it is al­to­gether one of the more fam­ous crosses of Celt­dom. Mr. Evans, I say, see­ing me look­ing at the cross, came up and began to give me, the stranger, a re­sume—some­what of a shaky and un­cer­tain re­sume, I found af­ter­wards—of the vari­ous de­bates and ques­tions that had arisen as to the ex­act mean­ing of the in­scrip­tion, and I was amused to de­tect an evid­ent but un­der­ly­ing be­lief of his own: that the sup­posed Ogham char­ac­ters were, in fact, due to boys’ mis­chief and weather and the passing of the ages. But then I happened to put a ques­tion as to the sort of stone of which the cross was made, and the rector brightened amaz­ingly. He began to talk geo­logy, and, I think, demon­strated that the cross or the ma­ter­ial for it must have been brought to Llantris­ant from the south­w­est coast of Ire­land. This struck me as in­ter­est­ing, be­cause it was curi­ous evid­ence of the mi­gra­tions of the Celtic saints, whom the rector, I was de­lighted to find, looked upon as good Prot­est­ants, though shaky on the sub­ject of crosses; and so, with con­ces­sions on my part, we got on very well. Thus, with all this to the good, I was em­boldened to call upon him.

I found him altered. Not that he was aged; in­deed, he was rather made young, with a sin­gu­lar bright­en­ing upon his face, and some­thing of joy upon it that I had not seen be­fore, that I have seen on very few faces of men. We talked of the war, of course, since that is not to be avoided; of the farm­ing pro­spects of the county; of gen­eral things, till I ven­tured to re­mark that I had been in the church, and had been sur­prised, to find it per­fumed with in­cense.

“You have made some al­ter­a­tions in the ser­vice since I was here last? You use in­cense now?”

The old man looked at me strangely, and hes­it­ated.

“No,” he said, “there has been no change. I use no in­cense in the church. I should not ven­ture to do so.”

“But,” I was be­gin­ning, “the whole church is as if High Mass had just been sung there, and—”

He cut me short, and there was a cer­tain grave solem­nity in his man­ner that struck me al­most with awe.

“I know you are a railer,” he said, and the phrase com­ing from this mild old gen­tle­man as­ton­ished, me un­ut­ter­ably. “You are a railer and a bit­ter railer; I have read art­icles that you have writ­ten, and I know your con­tempt and your hatred for those you call Prot­est­ants in your de­ri­sion; though your grand­father, the vicar of Caer­leon-on-Usk, called him­self Prot­est­ant and was proud of it, and your great-grand-uncle Hezekiah, ffeiriad coch yr Castletown—the Red Pri­est of Castletown—was a great man with the Meth­od­ists in his day, and the people flocked by their thou­sands when he ad­min­istered the Sac­ra­ment. I was born and brought up in Glam­or­gan­shire, and old men have wept as they told me of the weep­ing and con­tri­tion that there was when the Red Pri­est broke the Bread and raised the Cup. But you are a railer, and see noth­ing but the out­side and the show. You are not worthy of this mys­tery that has been done here.”

I went out from his pres­ence re­buked in­deed, and justly re­buked; but rather amazed. It is curi­ously true that the Welsh are still one people, one fam­ily al­most, in a man­ner that the Eng­lish can­not un­der­stand, but I had never thought that this old cler­gy­man would have known any­thing of my an­ces­try or their do­ings. And as for my art­icles and such­like, I knew that the coun­try clergy some­times read, but I had fan­cied my pro­nounce­ments suf­fi­ciently ob­scure, even in Lon­don, much more in Ar­fon.

But so it happened, and so I had no ex­plan­a­tion from the rector of Llantris­ant of the strange cir­cum­stance, that his church was full of in­cense and odours of para­dise.

I went up and down the ways of Llantris­ant won­der­ing, and came to the har­bour, which is a little place, with little quays where some small coast­ing trade still lingers. A brig­antine was at an­chor here, and very lazily in the sun­shine they were load­ing it with an­thra­cite; for it is one of the oddit­ies of Llantris­ant that there is a small col­li­ery in the heart of the wood on the hill­side. I crossed a cause­way which parts the outer har­bour from the in­ner har­bour, and settled down on a rocky beach hid­den un­der a leafy hill. The tide was go­ing out, and some chil­dren were play­ing on the wet sand, while two ladies—their moth­ers, I sup­pose—talked to­gether as they sat com­fort­ably on their rugs at a little dis­tance from me.

At first they talked of the war, and I made my­self deaf, for of that talk one gets enough, and more than enough, in Lon­don. Then there was a period of si­lence, and the con­ver­sa­tion had passed to quite a dif­fer­ent topic when I caught the thread of it again. I was sit­ting on the fur­ther side of a big rock, and I do not think that the two ladies had no­ticed my ap­proach. However, though they spoke of strange things, they spoke of noth­ing which made it ne­ces­sary for me to an­nounce my pres­ence.

“And, after all,” one of them was say­ing, “what is it all about? I can’t make out what is come to the people.”

This speaker was a Welsh­wo­man; I re­cog­nised the clear, over­em­phas­ised con­son­ants, and a faint sug­ges­tion of an ac­cent. Her friend came from the Mid­lands, and it turned out that they had only known each other for a few days. Theirs was a friend­ship of the beach and of bathing; such friend­ships are com­mon, at small sea­side places.

“There is cer­tainly some­thing odd about the people here. I have never been to Llantris­ant be­fore, you know; in­deed, this is the first time we’ve been in Wales for our hol­i­days, and know­ing noth­ing about the ways of the people and not be­ing ac­cus­tomed to hear Welsh spoken, I thought, per­haps, it must be my ima­gin­a­tion. But you think there really is some­thing a little queer?”

“I can tell you this: that I have been in two minds whether I should not write to my hus­band and ask him to take me and the chil­dren away. You know where I am at Mrs. Mor­gan’s, and the Mor­gans’ sit­ting-room is just the other side of the pas­sage, and some­times they leave the door open, so that I can hear what they say quite plainly. And you see I un­der­stand the Welsh, though they don’t know it. And I hear them say­ing the most alarm­ing things!”

“What sort of things?

“Well, in­deed, it sounds like some kind of a re­li­gious ser­vice, but it’s not Church of Eng­land, I know that. Old Mor­gan be­gins it, and the wife and chil­dren an­swer. So­mething like; ‘Blessed be God for the mes­sen­gers of Paradise.’ ‘Blessed be His Name for Paradise in the meat and in the drink.’ ‘Thanks­giv­ing for the old of­fer­ing.’ ‘Thanks­giv­ing for the ap­pear­ance of the old al­tar,’ ‘Praise for the joy of the an­cient garden.’ ‘Praise for the re­turn of those that have been long ab­sent.’ And all that sort of thing. It is noth­ing but mad­ness.”

“Depend upon it,” said the lady from the Mid­lands, “there’s no real harm in it. They’re Dis­sent­ers; some new sect, I dare say. You know some Dis­sent­ers are very queer in their ways.”

“All that is like no Dis­sent­ers that I have ever known in all my life whatever,” replied the Welsh lady some­what vehe­mently, with a very dis­tinct in­ton­a­tion of the land. “And have you heard them speak of the bright light that shone at mid­night from the church?”

III A Secret in a Secret Place

Now here was I al­to­gether at a loss and quite be­wildered. The chil­dren broke into the con­ver­sa­tion of the two ladies and cut it all short, just as the mid­night lights from the church came on the field, and when the little girls and boys went back again to the sands whoop­ing, the tide of talk had turned, and Mrs. Har­land and Mrs. Wil­li­ams were quite safe and at home with Janey’s measles, and a won­der­ful treat­ment for in­fant­ile ear­ache, as ex­em­pli­fied in the case of Tre­vor. There was no more to be got out of them, evid­ently, so I left the beach, crossed the har­bour cause­way, and drank beer at the Fish­er­men’s Rest till it was time to climb up two miles of deep lane and catch the train for Pen­vro, where I was stay­ing. And I went up the lane, as I say, in a kind of amazement; and not so much, I think, be­cause of evid­ences and hints of things strange to the senses, such as the sa­vour of in­cense where no in­cense had smoked for three hun­dred and fifty years and more, or the story of bright light shin­ing from the dark, closed church at dead of night, as be­cause of that sen­tence of thanks­giv­ing “for para­dise in meat and in drink.”

For the sun went down and the even­ing fell as I climbed the long hill through the deep woods and the high mead­ows, and the scent of all the green things rose from the earth and from the heart of the wood, and at a turn of the lane far be­low was the misty glim­mer of the still sea, and from far be­low its deep mur­mur soun­ded as it washed on the little hid­den, en­closed bay where Llantris­ant stands. And I thought, if there be para­dise in meat and in drink, so much the more is there para­dise in the scent of the green leaves at even­ing and in the ap­pear­ance of the sea and in the red­ness of the sky; and there came to me a cer­tain vis­ion of a real world about us all the while, of a lan­guage that was only secret be­cause we would not take the trouble to listen to it and dis­cern it.

It was al­most dark when I got to the sta­tion, and here were the few feeble oil lamps lit, glim­mer­ing in that lonely land, where the way is long from farm to farm. The train came on its way, and I got into it; and just as we moved from the sta­tion I no­ticed a group un­der one of those dim lamps. A wo­man and her child had got out, and they were be­ing wel­comed by a man who had been wait­ing for them. I had not no­ticed his face as I stood on the plat­form, but now I saw it as he poin­ted down the hill to­wards Llantris­ant, and I think I was al­most frightened.

He was a young man, a farmer’s son, I would say, dressed in rough brown clothes, and as dif­fer­ent from old Mr. Evans, the rector, as one man might be from an­other. But on his face, as I saw it in the lamp­light, there was the like bright­en­ing that I had seen on the face of the rector. It was an il­lu­min­ated face, glow­ing with an in­ef­fable joy, and I thought it rather gave light to the plat­form lamp than re­ceived light from it. The wo­man and her child, I in­ferred, were strangers to the place, and had come to pay a visit to the young man’s fam­ily. They had looked about them in be­wil­der­ment, half alarmed, be­fore they saw him; and then his face was ra­di­ant in their sight, and it was easy to see that all their troubles were ended and over. A way­side sta­tion and a dark­en­ing coun­try, and it was as if they were wel­comed by shin­ing, im­mor­tal glad­ness—even into para­dise.

But though there seemed in a sense light all about my ways, I was my­self still quite be­wildered. I could see, in­deed, that some­thing strange had happened or was hap­pen­ing in the little town hid­den un­der the hill, but there was so far no clue to the mys­tery, or rather, the clue had been offered to me, and I had not taken it, I had not even known that it was there; since we do not so much as see what we have de­term­ined, without judging, to be in­cred­ible, even though it be held up be­fore our eyes. The dia­logue that the Welsh Mrs. Wil­li­ams had re­por­ted to her Eng­lish friend might have set me on the right way; but the right way was out­side all my lim­its of pos­sib­il­ity, out­side the circle of my thought. The pa­le­on­to­lo­gist might see mon­strous, sig­ni­fic­ant marks in the slime of a river bank, but he would never draw the con­clu­sions that his own pe­cu­liar sci­ence would seem to sug­gest to him; he would choose any ex­plan­a­tion rather than the ob­vi­ous, since the ob­vi­ous would also be the out­rageous—ac­cord­ing to our es­tab­lished habit of thought, which we deem fi­nal.

The next day I took all these strange things with me for con­sid­er­a­tion to a cer­tain place that I knew of not far from Pen­vro. I was now in the early stages of the jig­saw pro­cess, or rather I had only a few pieces be­fore me, and—to con­tinue the fig­ure my dif­fi­culty was this: that though the mark­ings on each piece seemed to have design and sig­ni­fic­ance, yet I could not make the wild­est guess as to the nature of the whole pic­ture, of which these were the parts. I had clearly seen that there was a great secret; I had seen that on the face of the young farmer on the plat­form of Llantris­ant sta­tion; and in my mind there was all the while the pic­ture of him go­ing down the dark, steep, wind­ing lane that led to the town and the sea, go­ing down through the heart of the wood, with light about him.

But there was be­wil­der­ment in the thought of this, and in the en­deav­our to match it with the per­fumed church and the scraps of talk that I had heard and the ru­mour of mid­night bright­ness; and though Pen­vro is by no means pop­u­lous, I thought I would go to a cer­tain sol­it­ary place called the Old Camp Head, which looks to­wards Corn­wall and to the great deeps that roll bey­ond Corn­wall to the far ends of the world; a place where frag­ments of dreams—they seemed such then—might, per­haps, be gathered into the clear­ness of vis­ion.

It was some years since I had been to the Head, and I had gone on that last time and on a former visit by the cliffs, a rough and dif­fi­cult path. Now I chose a land­ward way, which the county map seemed to jus­tify, though doubt­fully, as re­garded the last part of the jour­ney. So I went in­land and climbed the hot sum­mer byroads, till I came at last to a lane which gradu­ally turned turfy and grass-grown, and then on high ground, ceased to be. It left me at a gate in a hedge of old thorns; and across the field bey­ond there seemed to be some faint in­dic­a­tions of a track. One would judge that some­times men did pass by that way, but not of­ten.

It was high ground but not within sight of the sea. But the breath of the sea blew about the hedge of thorns, and came with a keen sa­vour to the nos­trils. The ground sloped gently from the gate and then rose again to a ridge, where a white farm­house stood all alone. I passed by this farm­house, thread­ing an un­cer­tain way, fol­lowed a hedgerow doubt­fully; and saw sud­denly be­fore me the Old Camp, and bey­ond it the sap­phire plain of wa­ters and the mist where sea and sky met. Steep from my feet the hill fell away, a land of gorse-blos­som, red-gold and mel­low, of glor­i­ous purple heather. It fell into a hol­low that went down, shin­ing with rich green bracken, to the glim­mer­ing sea; and be­fore me and bey­ond the hol­low rose a height of turf, bas­tioned at the sum­mit with the aw­ful, age-old walls of the Old Camp; green, roun­ded cir­cum­val­la­tions, wall within wall, tre­mend­ous, with their myriad years upon them.

Within these smoothed, green mounds, look­ing across the shin­ing and chan­ging of the wa­ters in the happy sun­light, I took out the bread and cheese and beer that I had car­ried in a bag, and ate and drank, and lit my pipe, and set my­self to think over the en­ig­mas of Llantris­ant. And I had scarcely done so when, a good deal to my an­noy­ance, a man came climb­ing up over the green ridges, and took up his stand close by, and stared out to sea. He nod­ded to me, and began with “Fine weather for the har­vest” in the ap­proved man­ner, and so sat down and en­gaged me in a net of talk. He was of Wales, it seemed, but from a dif­fer­ent part of the coun­try, and was stay­ing for a few days with re­la­tions—at the white farm­house which I had passed on my way. His tale of noth­ing flowed on to his pleas­ure and my pain, till he fell sud­denly on Llantris­ant and its do­ings. I listened then with won­der, and here is his tale con­densed. Though it must be clearly un­der­stood that the man’s evid­ence was only second­hand; he had heard it from his cousin, the farmer.

So, to be brief, it ap­peared that there had been a long feud at Llantris­ant between a local so­li­citor, Lewis Prothero (we will say), and a farmer named James. There had been a quar­rel about some trifle, which had grown more and more bit­ter as the two parties for­got the mer­its of the ori­ginal dis­pute, and by some means or other, which I could not well un­der­stand, the law­yer had got the small free­holder “un­der his thumb.” James, I think, had given a bill of sale in a bad sea­son, and Prothero had bought it up; and the end was that the farmer was turned out of the old house, and was lodging in a cot­tage. People said he would have to take a place on his own farm as a la­bourer; he went about in dread­ful misery, piteous to see. It was thought by some that he might very well murder the law­yer, if he met him.

They did meet, in the middle of the mar­ket­place at Llantris­ant one Saturday in June. The farmer was a little black man, and he gave a shout of rage, and the people were rush­ing at him to keep him off Prothero.

“And then,” said my in­form­ant, “I will tell you what happened. This law­yer, as they tell me, he is a great big brawny fel­low, with a big jaw and a wide mouth, and a red face and red whiskers. And there he was in his black coat and his high hard hat, and all his money at his back, as you may say. And, in­deed, he did fall down on his knees in the dust there in the street in front of Philip James, and every­one could see that ter­ror was upon him. And he did beg Philip James’s par­don, and beg of him to have mercy, and he did im­plore him by God and man and the saints of para­dise. And my cousin, John Jen­kins, Pen­mawr, he do tell me that the tears were fall­ing from Lewis Prothero’s eyes like the rain. And he put his hand into his pocket and drew out the deed of Panty­reos, Philip James’s old farm that was, and did give him the farm back and a hun­dred pounds for the stock that was on it, and two hun­dred pounds, all in notes of the bank, for amend­ment and con­sol­a­tion.

“And then, from what they do tell me, all the people did go mad, cry­ing and weep­ing and call­ing out all man­ner of things at the top of their voices. And at last noth­ing would do but they must all go up to the church­yard, and there Philip James and Lewis Prothero they swear friend­ship to one an­other for a long age be­fore the old cross, and every­one sings praises. And my cousin he do de­clare to me that there were men stand­ing in that crowd that he did never see be­fore in Llantris­ant in all his life, and his heart was shaken within him as if it had been in a whirl­wind.”

I had listened to all this in si­lence. I said then:

“What does your cousin mean by that? Men that he had never seen in Llantris­ant? What men?”

“The people,” he said very slowly, “call them the Fish­er­men.”

And sud­denly there came into my mind the “Rich Fish­er­man” who in the old le­gend guards the holy mys­tery of the Graal.

IV The Ringing of the Bell

So far I have not told the story of the things of Llantris­ant, but rather the story of how I stumbled upon them and among them, per­plexed and wholly astray, seek­ing, but yet not know­ing at all what I sought; be­wildered now and again by cir­cum­stances which seemed to me wholly in­ex­plic­able; devoid, not so much of the key to the en­igma, but of the key to the nature of the en­igma. You can­not be­gin to solve a puzzle till you know what the puzzle is about. “Yards di­vided by minutes,” said the math­em­at­ical mas­ter to me long ago, “will give neither pigs, sheep, nor oxen.” He was right; though his man­ner on this and on all other oc­ca­sions was highly of­fens­ive. This is enough of the per­sonal pro­cess, as I may call it; and here fol­lows the story of what happened at Llantris­ant last sum­mer, the story as I pieced it to­gether at last.

It all began, it ap­pears, on a hot day, early in last June; so far as I can make out, on the first Saturday in the month. There was a deaf old wo­man, a Mrs. Parry, who lived by her­self in a lonely cot­tage a mile or so from the town. She came into the mar­ket­place early on the Saturday morn­ing in a state of some ex­cite­ment, and as soon as she had taken up her usual place on the pave­ment by the church­yard, with her ducks and eggs and a few very early pota­toes, she began to tell her neigh­bours about her hav­ing heard the sound of a great bell. The good wo­men on each side smiled at one an­other be­hind Mrs. Parry’s back, for one had to bawl into her ear be­fore she could make out what one meant; and Mrs. Wil­li­ams, Pe­ny­coed, bent over and yelled: “What bell should that be, Mrs. Parry? There’s no church near you up at Pen­rhiw. Do you hear what non­sense she talks?” said Mrs. Wil­li­ams in a low voice to Mrs. Mor­gan. “As if she could hear any bell, whatever.”

“What makes you talk non­sense your self?” said Mrs. Parry, to the amazement of the two wo­men. “I can hear a bell as well as you, Mrs. Wil­li­ams, and as well as your whis­pers either.”

And there is the fact, which is not to be dis­puted; though the de­duc­tions from it may be open to end­less dis­pu­ta­tions; this old wo­man who had been all but stone deaf for twenty years—the de­fect had al­ways been in her fam­ily—could sud­denly hear on this June morn­ing as well as any­body else. And her two old friends stared at her, and it was some time be­fore they had ap­peased her in­dig­na­tion, and in­duced her to talk about the bell.

It had happened in the early morn­ing, which was very misty. She had been gath­er­ing sage in her garden, high on a round hill look­ing over the sea. And there came in her ears a sort of throb­bing and singing and trem­bling, “as if there were mu­sic com­ing out of the earth,” and then some­thing seemed to break in her head, and all the birds began to sing and make melody to­gether, and the leaves of the pop­lars round the garden fluttered in the breeze that rose from the sea, and the cock crowed far off at Twyn, and the dog barked down in Ke­meys Val­ley. But above all these sounds, un­heard for so many years, there thrilled the deep and chant­ing note of the bell, “like a bell and a man’s voice singing at once.”

They stared again at her and at one an­other. “Where did it sound from?” asked one. “It came sail­ing across the sea,” answered Mrs. Parry quite com­posedly, “and I did hear it com­ing nearer and nearer to the land.”

“Well, in­deed,” said Mrs. Mor­gan, “it was a ship’s bell then, though I can’t make out why they would be ringing like that.”

“It was not ringing on any ship, Mrs. Mor­gan,” said Mrs. Parry.

“Then where do you think it was ringing?”

“Ym Mharad­wys,” replied Mrs. Parry. Now that means “in Paradise,” and the two oth­ers changed the con­ver­sa­tion quickly. They thought that Mrs. Parry had got back her hear­ing sud­denly—such things did hap­pen now and then—and that the shock had made her “a bit queer.” And this ex­plan­a­tion would no doubt have stood its ground, if it had not been for other ex­per­i­ences. Indeed, the local doc­tor who had treated Mrs. Parry for a dozen years, not for her deaf­ness, which he took to be hope­less and bey­ond cure, but for a tire­some and re­cur­rent winter cough, sent an ac­count of the case to a col­league at Bris­tol, sup­press­ing, nat­ur­ally enough, the ref­er­ence to Paradise. The Bris­tol phys­i­cian gave it as his opin­ion that the symp­toms were ab­so­lutely what mighty have been ex­pec­ted.

“You have here, in all prob­ab­il­ity,” he wrote, “the sud­den break­ing down of an old ob­struc­tion in the aural pas­sage, and I should quite ex­pect this pro­cess to be ac­com­pan­ied by tin­nitus of a pro­nounced and even vi­ol­ent char­ac­ter.”

But for the other ex­per­i­ences? As the morn­ing wore on and drew to noon, high mar­ket, and to the ut­most bright­ness of that sum­mer day, all the stalls and the streets were full of ru­mours and of awed faces. Now from one lonely farm, now from an­other, men and wo­men came and told the story of how they had listened in the early morn­ing with thrill­ing hearts to the thrill­ing mu­sic of a bell that was like no bell ever heard be­fore. And it seemed that many people in the town had been roused, they knew not how, from sleep; wak­ing up, as one of them said, as if bells were ringing and the or­gan play­ing, and a choir of sweet voices singing all to­gether: “There were such melod­ies and songs that my heart was full of joy.”

And a little past noon some fish­er­men who had been out all night re­turned, and brought a won­der­ful story into the town of what they had heard in the mist and one of them said he had seen some­thing go by at a little dis­tance from his boat. “It was all golden and bright,” he said, “and there was glory about it.” Another fish­er­man de­clared, “there was a song upon the wa­ter that was like heaven.”

And here I would say in par­en­thesis that on re­turn­ing to town I sought out a very old friend of mine, a man who has de­voted a life­time to strange and eso­teric stud­ies. I thought that I had a tale that would in­terest him pro­foundly, but I found that he heard me with a good deal of in­dif­fer­ence. And at this very point of the sail­ors’ stor­ies I re­mem­ber say­ing: “Now what do you make of that? Don’t you think it’s ex­tremely curi­ous?” He replied: “I hardly think so. Poss­ibly the sail­ors were ly­ing; pos­sibly it happened as they say. Well; that sort of thing has al­ways been hap­pen­ing.” I give my friend’s opin­ion; I make no com­ment on it.

Let it be noted that there was some­thing re­mark­able as to the man­ner in which the sound of the bell was heard—or sup­posed to be heard. There are, no doubt, mys­ter­ies in sound as in all else; in­deed, I am in­formed that dur­ing one of the hor­rible out­rages that have been per­pet­rated on Lon­don dur­ing this au­tumn there was an in­stance of a great block of work­men’s dwell­ings in which the only per­son who heard the crash of a par­tic­u­lar bomb fall­ing was an old deaf wo­man, who had been fast asleep till the mo­ment of the ex­plo­sion. This is strange enough of a sound that was en­tirely in the nat­ural (and hor­rible) or­der; and so it was at Llantris­ant, where the sound was either a col­lect­ive aud­it­ory hal­lu­cin­a­tion or a mani­fest­a­tion of what is con­veni­ently, if in­ac­cur­ately, called the su­per­nat­ural or­der.

For the thrill of the bell did not reach to all ears—or hearts. Deaf Mrs. Parry heard it in her lonely cot­tage garden, high above the misty sea; but then, in a farm on the other or west­ern side of Llantris­ant, a little child, scarcely three years old, was the only one out of a house­hold of ten people who heard any­thing. He called out in stam­mer­ing baby Welsh some­thing that soun­ded like “Clychau fawr, clychau fawr”—the great bells, the great bells—and his mother wondered what he was talk­ing about. Of the crews of half a dozen trawl­ers that were swinging from side to side in the mist, not more than four men had any tale to tell. And so it was that for an hour or two the man who had heard noth­ing sus­pec­ted his neigh­bour who had heard mar­vels of ly­ing; and it was some time be­fore the mass of evid­ence com­ing from all man­ner of di­verse and re­mote quar­ters con­vinced the people that there was a true story here. A might sus­pect B, his neigh­bour, of mak­ing up a tale; but when C, from some place on the hills five miles away, and D, the fish­er­man on the wa­ters, each had a like re­port, then it was clear that some­thing had happened.

And even then, as they told me, the signs to be seen upon the people were stranger than the tales told by them and among them. It has struck me that many people in read­ing some of the phrases that I have re­por­ted, will dis­miss them with laughter as very poor and fant­astic in­ven­tions; fish­er­men, they will say, do not speak of “a song like heaven” or of “a glory about it.” And I dare say this would be a just enough cri­ti­cism if I were re­port­ing Eng­lish fish­er­men; but, odd though it may be, Wales has not yet lost the last shreds of the grand man­ner. And let it be re­membered also that in most cases such phrases are trans­lated from an­other lan­guage, that is, from the Welsh.

So, they come trail­ing, let us say, frag­ments of the cloud of glory in their com­mon speech; and so, on this Saturday, they began to dis­play, un­eas­ily enough in many cases, their con­scious­ness that the things that were re­por­ted were of their an­cient right and former cus­tom. The com­par­ison is not quite fair; but con­ceive Hardy’s old Durbey­field sud­denly wak­ing from long slum­ber to find him­self in a noble thir­teenth-cen­tury hall, waited on by kneel­ing pages, smiled on by sweet ladies in silken côte­har­dies.

So by even­ing time there had come to the old people the re­col­lec­tion of stor­ies that their fath­ers had told them as they sat round the hearth of winter nights, fifty, sixty, sev­enty years; ago; stor­ies of the won­der­ful bell of Teilo Sant, that had sailed across the glassy seas from Syon, that was called a por­tion of Paradise, “and the sound of its ringing was like the per­petual choir of the an­gels.”

Such things were re­membered by the old and told to the young that even­ing, in the streets of the town and in the deep lanes that climbed far hills. The sun went down to the moun­tain red with fire like a burnt of­fer­ing, the sky turned vi­olet, the sea was purple, as one told an­other of the won­der that had re­turned to the land after long ages.

V The Rose of the Fire

It was dur­ing the next nine days, count­ing from that Saturday early in June the first Saturday in June, as I be­lieve—that Llantris­ant and all the re­gions about be­came pos­sessed either by an ex­traordin­ary set of hal­lu­cin­a­tions or by a vis­it­a­tion of great mar­vels.

This is not the place to strike the bal­ance between the two pos­sib­il­it­ies. The evid­ence is, no doubt, read­ily avail­able; the mat­ter is open to sys­tem­atic in­vest­ig­a­tion.

But this may be said: The or­din­ary man, in the or­din­ary pas­sages of his life, ac­cepts in the main the evid­ence of his senses, and is en­tirely right in do­ing so. He says that he sees a cow, that he sees a stone wall, and that the cow and the stone wall are “there.”

This is very well for all the prac­tical pur­poses of life, but I be­lieve that the meta­phys­i­cians are by no means so eas­ily sat­is­fied as to the real­ity of the stone wall and the cow. Per­haps they might al­low that both ob­jects are “there” in the sense that one’s re­flec­tion is in a glass; there is an ac­tu­al­ity, but is there a real­ity ex­ternal to one­self? In any event, it is solidly agreed that, sup­pos­ing a real ex­ist­ence, this much is cer­tain—it is not in the least like our con­cep­tion of it. The ant and the mi­cro­scope will quickly con­vince us that we do not see things as they really are, even sup­pos­ing that we see them at all. If we could “see” the real cow she would ap­pear ut­terly in­cred­ible, as in­cred­ible as the things I am to re­late.

Now, there is noth­ing that I know much more un­con­vin­cing than the stor­ies of the red light on the sea. Several sail­ors, men on small coast­ing ships, who were work­ing up or down the Chan­nel on that Saturday night, spoke of “see­ing” the red light, and it must be said that there is a very tol­er­able agree­ment in their tales. All make the time as between mid­night of the Saturday and one o’clock on the Sunday morn­ing. Two of those sail­or­men are pre­cise as to the time of the ap­par­i­tion; they fix it by elab­or­ate cal­cu­la­tions of their own as oc­cur­ring at 12:20 a.m. And the story?

A red light, a burn­ing spark seen far away in the dark­ness, taken at the first mo­ment of see­ing for a sig­nal, and prob­ably an en­emy sig­nal. Then it ap­proached at a tre­mend­ous speed, and one man said he took it to be the port light of some new kind of navy mo­tor­boat which was de­vel­op­ing a rate hitherto un­heard of, a hun­dred or a hun­dred and fifty knots an hour. And then, in the third in­stant of the sight, it was clear that this was no earthly speed. At first a red spark in the farthest dis­tance; then a rush­ing lamp; and then, as if in an in­cred­ible point of time, it swelled into a vast rose of fire that filled all the sea and all the sky and hid the stars and pos­sessed the land. “I thought the end of the world had come,” one of the sail­ors said.

And then, an in­stant more, and it was gone from them, and four of them say that there was a red spark on Chapel Head, where the old grey chapel of St. Teilo stands, high above the wa­ter, in a cleft of the lime­stone rocks.

And thus the sail­ors; and thus their tales are in­cred­ible; but they are not in­cred­ible. I be­lieve that men of the highest em­in­ence in phys­ical sci­ence have test­i­fied to the oc­cur­rence of phe­nom­ena every whit as mar­vel­lous, to things as ab­so­lutely op­posed to all nat­ural or­der, as we con­ceive it; and it may be said that nobody minds them. “That sort of thing has al­ways been hap­pen­ing,” as my friend re­marked to me. But the men, whether or no the fire had ever been without them, there was no doubt that it was now within them, for it burned in their eyes. They were purged as if they had passed through the Fur­nace of the Sages, gov­erned with Wis­dom that the al­chem­ists know. They spoke without much dif­fi­culty of what they had seen, or had seemed to see, with their eyes, but hardly at all of what their hearts had known when for a mo­ment the glory of the fiery rose had been about them.

For some weeks af­ter­wards they were still, as it were, amazed; al­most, I would say, in­cred­u­lous. If there had been noth­ing more than the splen­did and fiery ap­pear­ance, show­ing and van­ish­ing, I do be­lieve that they them­selves would have dis­cred­ited their own senses and denied the truth of their own tales. And one does not dare to say whether they would not have been right. Men like Sir Wil­liam Crookes and Sir Oliver Lodge are cer­tainly to be heard with re­spect, and they bear wit­ness to all man­ner of ap­par­ent ever­sions of laws which we, or most of us, con­sider far more deeply foun­ded than the an­cient hills. They may be jus­ti­fied; but in our hearts we doubt. We can­not wholly be­lieve in in­ner sin­cer­ity that the solid table did rise, without mech­an­ical reason or cause, into the air, and so defy that which we name the “law of grav­it­a­tion.” I know what may be said on the other side; I know that there is no true ques­tion of “law” in the case; that the law of grav­it­a­tion really means just this: that I have never seen a table rising without mech­an­ical aid, or an apple, de­tached from the bough, soar­ing to the skies in­stead of fall­ing to the ground. The so-called law is just the sum of com­mon ob­ser­va­tion and noth­ing more; yet I say, in our hearts we do not be­lieve that the tables rise; much less do we be­lieve in the rose of fire that for a mo­ment swal­lowed up the skies and seas and shores of the Welsh coast last June.

And the men who saw it would have in­ven­ted fairy tales to ac­count for it, I say again, if it had not been for that which was within them.

They said, all of them, and it was cer­tain now that they spoke the truth, that in the mo­ment of the vis­ion, every pain and ache and mal­ady in their bod­ies had passed away. One man had been vilely drunk on venom­ous spirit, pro­cured at Job­son’s Hole down by the Cardiff Docks. He was hor­ribly ill; he had crawled up from his bunk for a little fresh air; and in an in­stant his hor­rors and his deadly nausea had left him. Another man was al­most des­per­ate with the ra­ging ham­mer­ing pain of an abs­cess on a tooth; he says that when the red flame came near he felt as if a dull, heavy blow had fallen on his jaw, and then the pain was quite gone; he could scarcely be­lieve that there had been any pain there.

And they all bear wit­ness to an ex­traordin­ary ex­al­ta­tion of the senses. It is in­des­crib­able, this; for they can­not de­scribe it. They are amazed, again; they do not in the least pro­fess to know what happened; but there is no more pos­sib­il­ity of shak­ing their evid­ence than there is a pos­sib­il­ity of shak­ing the evid­ence of a man who says that wa­ter is wet and fire hot.

“I felt a bit queer af­ter­wards,” said one of them, “and I stead­ied my­self by the mast, and I can’t tell how I felt as I touched it. I didn’t know that touch­ing a thing like a mast could be bet­ter than a big drink when you’re thirsty, or a soft pil­low when you’re sleepy.”

I heard other in­stances of this state of things, as I must vaguely call it, since I do not know what else to call it. But I sup­pose we can all agree that to the man in av­er­age health, the av­er­age im­pact of the ex­ternal world on his senses is a mat­ter of in­dif­fer­ence. The av­er­age im­pact; a harsh scream, the burst­ing of a mo­tor tyre, any vi­ol­ent as­sault on the aural nerves will an­noy him, and he may say “damn.” Then, on the other hand, the man who is not “fit” will eas­ily be an­noyed and ir­rit­ated by someone push­ing past him in a crowd, by the ringing of a bell, by the sharp clos­ing of a book.

But so far as I could judge from the talk of these sail­ors, the av­er­age im­pact of the ex­ternal world had be­come to them a foun­tain of pleas­ure. Their nerves were on edge, but an edge to re­ceive ex­quis­ite sen­su­ous im­pres­sions. The touch of the rough mast, for ex­ample; that was a joy far greater than is the joy of fine silk to some lux­uri­ous skins; they drank wa­ter and stared as if they had been fins gour­mets tast­ing an amaz­ing wine; the creak and whine of their ship on its slow way were as ex­quis­ite as the rhythm and song of a Bach fugue to an am­a­teur of mu­sic.

And then, within; these rough fel­lows have their quar­rels and strifes and vari­ances and envy­ings like the rest of us; but that was all over between them that had seen the rosy light; old en­emies shook hands heart­ily, and roared with laughter as they con­fessed one to an­other what fools they had been.

“I can’t ex­actly say how it has happened or what has happened at all,” said one, “but if you have all the world and the glory of it, how can you fight for five­pence?”

The church of Llantris­ant is a typ­ical ex­ample of a Welsh par­ish church, be­fore the evil and hor­rible period of “res­tor­a­tion.”

This lower world is a palace of lies, and of all fool­ish lies there is none more in­sane than a cer­tain vague fable about the me­di­eval free­ma­sons, a fable which some­how im­posed it­self upon the cold in­tel­lect of Hal­lam the his­tor­ian. The story is, in brief, that through­out the Gothic period, at any rate, the art and craft of church build­ing were ex­ecuted by wan­der­ing guilds of “free­ma­sons,” pos­sessed of vari­ous secrets of build­ing and ad­orn­ment, which they em­ployed wherever they went. If this non­sense were true, the Gothic of Co­logne would be as the Gothic of Colne, and the Gothic of Arles like to the Gothic of Abing­don. It is so grot­esquely un­true that al­most every county, let alone every coun­try, has its dis­tinct­ive style in Gothic ar­chi­tec­ture. Ar­fon is in the west of Wales; its churches have marks and fea­tures which dis­tin­guish them from the churches in the east of Wales.

The Llantris­ant church has that prim­it­ive di­vi­sion between nave and chancel which only very fool­ish people de­cline to re­cog­nise as equi­val­ent to the Ori­ental icono­stasis and as the ori­gin of the Western rood-screen. A solid wall di­vided the church into two por­tions; in the centre was a nar­row open­ing with a roun­ded arch, through which those who sat to­wards the middle of the church could see the small, red-car­peted al­tar and the three roughly shaped lan­cet win­dows above it.

The “read­ing pew” was on the outer side of this wall of par­ti­tion, and here the rector did his ser­vice, the choir be­ing grouped in seats about him. On the in­ner side were the pews of cer­tain priv­ileged houses of the town and dis­trict.

On the Sunday morn­ing the people were all in their ac­cus­tomed places, not without a cer­tain ex­ulta­tion in their eyes, not without a cer­tain ex­pect­a­tion of they knew not what. The bells stopped ringing, the rector, in his old-fash­ioned, ample sur­plice, entered the read­ing-desk, and gave out the hymn: “My God, and is Thy Table spread.”

And, as the singing began, all the people who were in the pews within the wall came out of them and streamed through the arch­way into the nave. They took what places they could find up and down the church, and the rest of the con­greg­a­tion looked at them in amazement.

Nobody knew what had happened. Those whose seats were next to the aisle tried to peer into the chancel, to see what had happened or what was go­ing on there. But some­how the light flamed so brightly from the win­dows above the al­tar, those be­ing the only win­dows in the chancel, one small lan­cet in the south wall ex­cep­ted, that no one could see any­thing at all.

“It was as if a veil of gold ad­orned with jew­els was hanging there,” one man said; and in­deed there are a few odds and scraps of old painted glass left in the east­ern lan­cets.

But there were few in the church who did not hear now and again voices speak­ing bey­ond the veil.

VI Olwen’s Dream

The well-to-do and dig­ni­fied per­son­ages who left their pews in the chancel of Llantris­ant Church and came hur­ry­ing into the nave could give no ex­plan­a­tion of what they had done. They felt, they said, that they had to go, and to go quickly; they were driven out, as it were, by a secret, ir­res­ist­ible com­mand. But all who were present in the church that morn­ing were amazed, though all ex­ul­ted in their hearts; for they, like the sail­ors who saw the rose of fire on the wa­ters, were filled with a joy that was lit­er­ally in­ef­fable, since they could not ut­ter it or in­ter­pret it to them­selves.

And they too, like the sail­ors, were trans­muted, or the world was trans­muted for them. They ex­per­i­enced what the doc­tors call a sense of bien être but a bien être raised, to the highest power. Old men felt young again, eyes that had been grow­ing dim now saw clearly, and saw a world that was like Paradise, the same world, it is true, but a world rec­ti­fied and glow­ing, as if an in­ner flame shone in all things, and be­hind all things.

And the dif­fi­culty in re­cord­ing this state is this, that it is so rare an ex­per­i­ence that no set lan­guage to ex­press it is in ex­ist­ence. A shadow of its rap­tures and ec­stas­ies is found in the highest po­etry; there are phrases in an­cient books telling of the Celtic saints that dimly hint at it; some of the old Italian mas­ters of paint­ing had known it, for the light of it shines in their skies and about the bat­tle­ments of their cit­ies that are foun­ded on ma­gic hills. But these are but broken hints.

It is not po­etic to go to Apothecar­ies’ Hall for similes. But for many years I kept by me an art­icle from the Lan­cet or the Brit­ish Med­ical Journal—I for­get which—in which a doc­tor gave an ac­count of cer­tain ex­per­i­ments he had con­duc­ted with a drug called the Mes­cal But­ton, or An­h­el­onium lewinii. He said that while un­der the in­flu­ence of the drug he had but to shut his eyes, and im­me­di­ately be­fore him there would rise in­cred­ible Gothic cathed­rals, of such majesty and splend­our and glory that no heart had ever con­ceived. They seemed to surge from the depths to the very heights of heaven, their spires swayed amongst the clouds and the stars, they were fret­ted with ad­mir­able im­agery. And as he gazed, he would presently be­come aware that all the stones were liv­ing stones, that they were quick­en­ing and pal­pit­at­ing, and then that they were glow­ing jew­els, say, em­er­alds, sap­phires, ru­bies, opals, but of hues that the mor­tal eye had never seen.

That de­scrip­tion gives, I think, some faint no­tion of the nature of the trans­muted world into which these people by the sea had entered, a world quickened and glor­i­fied and full of pleas­ures. Joy and won­der were on all faces; but the deep­est joy and the greatest won­der were on the face of the rector. For he had heard through the veil the Greek word for “holy,” three times re­peated. And he, who had once been a hor­ri­fied as­sist­ant at High Mass in a for­eign church, re­cog­nised the per­fume of in­cense that filled the place from end to end.

It was on that Sunday night that Ol­wen Phil­lips of Croeswen dreamed her won­der­ful dream. She was a girl of six­teen, the daugh­ter of small farm­ing people, and for many months she had been doomed to cer­tain death. Con­sump­tion, which flour­ishes in that damp, warm cli­mate, had laid hold of her; not only her lungs but her whole sys­tem was a mass of tuber­cu­losis. As is com­mon enough, she had en­joyed many fal­la­cious brief re­cov­er­ies in the early stages of the dis­ease, but all hope had long been over, and now for the last few weeks she had seemed to rush vehe­mently to death. The doc­tor had come on the Saturday morn­ing, bring­ing with him a col­league. They had both agreed that the girl’s case was in its last stages. “She can­not pos­sibly last more than a day or two,” said the local doc­tor to her mother. He came again on the Sunday morn­ing and found his pa­tient per­cept­ibly worse, and soon af­ter­wards she sank into a heavy sleep, and her mother thought that she would never wake from it.

The girl slept in an in­ner room com­mu­nic­at­ing with the room oc­cu­pied by her father and mother. The door between was kept open, so that Mrs. Phil­lips could hear her daugh­ter if she called to her in the night. And Ol­wen called to her mother that night, just as the dawn was break­ing. It was no faint sum­mons from a dy­ing bed that came to the mother’s ears, but a loud cry that rang through the house, a cry of great glad­ness. Mrs. Phil­lips star­ted up from sleep in wild amazement, won­der­ing what could have happened. And then she saw Ol­wen, who had not been able to rise from her bed for many weeks past, stand­ing in the door­way in the faint light of the grow­ing day. The girl called to her mother: “Mam! mam! It is all over. I am quite well again.”

Mrs. Phil­lips roused her hus­band, and they sat up in bed star­ing, not know­ing on earth, as they said af­ter­wards, what had been done with the world. Here was their poor girl wasted to a shadow, ly­ing on her deathbed, and the life sigh­ing from her with every breath, and her voice, when she last uttered it, so weak that one had to put one’s ear to her mouth. And here in a few hours she stood up be­fore them; and even in that faint light they could see that she was changed al­most bey­ond know­ing. And, in­deed, Mrs. Phil­lips said that for a mo­ment or two she fan­cied that the Ger­mans must have come and killed them in their sleep, and so they were all dead to­gether. But Ol­wen called, out again, so the mother lit a candle and got up and went tot­ter­ing across the room, and there was Ol­wen all gay and plump again, smil­ing with shin­ing eyes. Her mother led her into her own room, and set down the candle there, and felt her daugh­ter’s flesh, and burst into pray­ers and tears of won­der and de­light, and thanks­giv­ings, and held the girl again to be sure that she was not de­ceived. And then Ol­wen told her dream, though she thought it was not a dream.

She said she woke up in the deep dark­ness, and she knew the life was fast go­ing from her. She could not move so much as a fin­ger, she tried to cry out, but no sound came from her lips. She felt that in an­other in­stant the whole world would fall from her—her heart was full of agony. And as the last breath was passing her lips, she heard a very faint, sweet sound, like the tink­ling of a sil­ver bell. It came from far away, from over by Ty-newydd. She for­got her agony and listened, and even then, she says, she felt the swirl of the world as it came back to her. And the sound of the bell swelled and grew louder, and it thrilled all through her body, and the life was in it. And as the bell rang and trembled in her ears, a faint light touched the wall of her room and reddened, till the whole room was full of rosy fire. And then she saw stand­ing be­fore her bed three men in blood-col­oured robes with shin­ing faces. And one man held a golden bell in his hand. And the second man held up some­thing shaped like the top of a table. It was like a great jewel, and it was of a blue col­our, and there were rivers of sil­ver and of gold run­ning through it and flow­ing as quick streams flow, and there were pools in it as if vi­ol­ets had been poured out into wa­ter, and then it was green as the sea near the shore, and then it was the sky at night with all the stars shin­ing, and then the sun and the moon came down and washed in it. And the third man held up high above this a cup that was like a rose on fire; “there was a great burn­ing in it, and a drop­ping of blood in it, and a red cloud above it, and I saw a great secret. And I heard a voice that sang nine times, ‘Glory and praise to the Con­queror of Death, to the Foun­tain of Life im­mor­tal.’ Then the red light went from the wall, and it was all dark­ness, and the bell rang faint again by Capel Teilo, and then I got up and called to you.”

The doc­tor came on the Monday morn­ing with the death cer­ti­fic­ate in his pock­et­book, and Ol­wen ran out to meet him. I have quoted his phrase in the first chapter of this re­cord: “A kind of re­sur­rec­tion of the body.” He made a most care­ful ex­am­in­a­tion of the girl; he has stated that he found that every trace of dis­ease had dis­ap­peared. He left on the Sunday morn­ing a pa­tient en­ter­ing into the coma that pre­cedes death, a body con­demned ut­terly and ready for the grave. He met at the garden gate on the Monday morn­ing a young wo­man in whom life sprang up like a foun­tain, in whose body life laughed and re­joiced as if it had been a river flow­ing from an un­end­ing well.

Now this is the place to ask one of those ques­tions—there are many such—which can­not be answered. The ques­tion is as to the con­tinu­ance of tra­di­tion; more es­pe­cially as to the con­tinu­ance of tra­di­tion among the Welsh Celts of today. On the one hand, such waves and storms have gone over them. The wave of the hea­then Sax­ons went over them, then the wave of Latin me­di­ev­al­ism, then the wa­ters of Anglic­an­ism; last of all the flood of their queer Calvin­istic Meth­od­ism, half Pur­itan, half pa­gan. It may well be asked whether any memory can pos­sibly have sur­vived such a series of de­luges. I have said that the old people of Llantris­ant had their tales of the Bell of Teilo Sant; but these were but vague and broken re­col­lec­tions. And then there is the name by which the “strangers” who were seen in the mar­ket­place were known; that is more pre­cise. Stu­dents of the Graal le­gend know that the keeper of the Graal in the ro­mances is the “King Fish­er­man,” or the “Rich Fish­er­man”; stu­dents of Celtic ha­gi­ology know that it was proph­esied be­fore the birth of Dewi (or David) that he should be “a man of aquatic life,” that an­other le­gend tells how a little child, destined to be a saint, was dis­covered on a stone in the river, how through his child­hood a fish for his nour­ish­ment was found on that stone every day, while an­other saint, Ilar, if I re­mem­ber, was ex­pressly known as “The Fish­er­man.” But has the memory of all this per­sisted in the churchgo­ing and chapel-go­ing people of Wales at the present day? It is dif­fi­cult to say. There is the af­fair of the Heal­ing Cup of Nant Eos, or Tregaron Heal­ing Cup, as it is also called. It is only a few years ago since it was shown to a wan­der­ing harper, who treated it lightly, and then spent a wretched night, as he said, and came back pen­it­ently and was left alone with the sac­red ves­sel to pray over it, till “his mind was at rest.” That was in 1887.

Then for my part—I only know mod­ern Wales on the sur­face, I am sorry to say—I re­mem­ber three or four years ago speak­ing to my tem­por­ary land­lord of cer­tain rel­ics of Saint Teilo, which are sup­posed to be in the keep­ing of a par­tic­u­lar fam­ily in that coun­try. The land­lord is a very jovial, merry fel­low, and I ob­served with some as­ton­ish­ment that his or­din­ary, easy man­ner was com­pletely altered as he said, gravely, “That will be over there, up by the moun­tain,” point­ing vaguely to the north. And he changed the sub­ject, as a Free­ma­son changes the sub­ject.

There the mat­ter lies, and its ap­pos­ite­ness to the story of Llantris­ant is this: that the dream of Ol­wen Phil­lips was, in fact, the Vi­sion of the Holy Graal.

VII The Mass of the Sangraal

“Ffeiri­ad­wyr Mel­cisidec! Ffeiri­ad­wyr Mel­cisidec!” shouted the old Calvin­istic Meth­od­ist dea­con with the grey beard. “Priest­hood of Melch­izedek! Priest­hood of Melch­izedek!”

And he went on:

“The Bell that is like y gl­wys yr an­gel ym mharad­wys—the joy of the an­gels in Paradise—is re­turned; the Al­tar that is of a col­our that no men can dis­cern is re­turned, the Cup that came from Syon is re­turned, the an­cient Of­fer­ing is re­stored, the Three Saints have come back to the church of the tri sant, the Three Holy Fish­er­men are amongst us, and their net is full. Go­go­niant, go­go­niant—glory, glory!”

Then an­other Meth­od­ist began to re­cite in Welsh a verse from Wes­ley’s hymn.

God still re­spects Thy sac­ri­fice,
Its sa­vour sweet doth al­ways please;
The Of­fer­ing smokes through earth and skies,
Dif­fus­ing life and joy and peace;
To these Thy lower courts it comes
And fills them with Div­ine per­fumes.

The whole church was full, as the old books tell, of the odour of the rarest spicer­ies. There were lights shin­ing within the sanc­tu­ary, through the nar­row arch­way.

This was the be­gin­ning of the end of what be­fell at Llantris­ant. For it was the Sunday after that night on which Ol­wen Phil­lips had been re­stored from death to life. There was not a single chapel of the Dis­sent­ers open in the town that day. The Meth­od­ists with their min­is­ter and their dea­cons and all the Non­con­form­ists had re­turned on this Sunday morn­ing to “the old hive.” One would have said, a church of the Middle Ages, a church in Ire­land today. Every seat—save those in the chancel—was full, all the aisles were full, the church­yard was full; every­one on his knees, and the old rector kneel­ing be­fore the door into the holy place.

Yet they can say but very little of what was done bey­ond the veil. There was no at­tempt to per­form the usual ser­vice; when the bells had stopped the old dea­con raised his cry, and priest and people fell down on their knees as they thought they heard a choir within singing “Al­le­luya, al­le­luya, al­le­luya.” And as the bells in the tower ceased ringing, there soun­ded the thrill of the bell from Syon, and the golden veil of sun­light fell across the door into the al­tar, and the heav­enly voices began their melod­ies.

A voice like a trum­pet cried from within the bright­ness.

Agyos, Agyos, Agyos.

And the people, as if an age-old memory stirred in them, replied:

Agyos yr Tâd, agyos yr Mab, agyos yr Yspryd Glan. Sant, sant, sant, Drin­dod sant vendi­geid. Sanc­tus Argl­wydd Dduw Sabaoth, Dominus Deus.

There was a voice that cried and sang from within the al­tar; most of the people had heard some faint echo of it in the chapels; a voice rising and fall­ing and soar­ing in aw­ful mod­u­la­tions that rang like the trum­pet of the Last An­gel. The people beat upon their breasts, the tears were like rain of the moun­tains on their cheeks; those that were able fell down flat on their faces be­fore the glory of the veil. They said af­ter­wards that men of the hills, twenty miles away, heard that cry and that singing, roar­ing upon them on the wind, and they fell down on their faces, and cried, “The of­fer­ing is ac­com­plished,” know­ing noth­ing of what they said.

There were a few who saw three come out of the door of the sanc­tu­ary, and stand for a mo­ment on the pace be­fore the door. These three were in dyed ves­ture, red as blood. One stood be­fore two, look­ing to the west, and he rang the bell. And they say that all the birds of the wood, and all the wa­ters of the sea, and all the leaves of the trees, and all the winds of the high rocks uttered their voices with the ringing of the bell. And the second and the third; they turned their faces one to an­other. The second held up the lost al­tar that they once called Sap­phirus, which was like the chan­ging of the sea and of the sky, and like the im­mix­ture of gold and sil­ver. And the third heaved up high over the al­tar a cup that was red with burn­ing and the blood of the of­fer­ing.

And the old rector cried aloud then be­fore the en­trance:

Bendi­geid yr Of­feren yn oes oe­soedd—blessed be the Of­fer­ing unto the age of ages.

And then the Mass of the San­graal was ended, and then began the passing out of that land of the holy per­sons and holy things that had re­turned to it after the long years. It seemed, in­deed, to many that the thrill­ing sound of the bell was in their ears for days, even for weeks after that Sunday morn­ing. But thence­forth neither bell nor al­tar nor cup was seen by any­one; not openly, that is, but only in dreams by day and by night. Nor did the people see Strangers again in the mar­ket of Llantris­ant, nor in the lonely places where cer­tain per­sons op­pressed by great af­flic­tion and sor­row had once or twice en­countered them.

But that time of vis­it­a­tion will never be for­got­ten by the people. Many things happened in the nine days that have not been set down in this re­cord—or le­gend. Some of them were tri­fling mat­ters, though strange enough in other times. Thus a man in the town who had a fierce dog that was al­ways kept chained up found one day that the beast had be­come mild and gentle.

And this is odder: Ed­ward Davies, of Lana­fon, a farmer, was roused from sleep one night by a queer yelp­ing and bark­ing in his yard. He looked out of the win­dow and saw his sheep­dog play­ing with a big fox; they were chas­ing each other by turns, rolling over and over one an­other, “cut­ting such capers as I did never see the like,” as the as­ton­ished farmer put it. And some of the people said that dur­ing this sea­son of won­der the corn shot up, and the grass thickened, and the fruit was mul­ti­plied on the trees in a very mar­vel­lous man­ner.

More im­port­ant, it seemed, was the case of Wil­li­ams, the gro­cer; though this may have been a purely nat­ural de­liv­er­ance. Mr. Wil­li­ams was to marry his daugh­ter Mary to a smart young fel­low from Car­marthen, and he was in great dis­tress over it. Not over the mar­riage it­self, but be­cause things had been go­ing very badly with him for some time, and he could not see his way to giv­ing any­thing like the wed­ding en­ter­tain­ment that would be ex­pec­ted of him. The wed­ding was to be on the Saturday—that was the day on which the law­yer, Lewis Prothero, and the farmer, Philip James, were re­con­ciled—and this John Wil­li­ams, without money or credit, could not think how shame would not be on him for the mea­gre­ness and poverty of the wed­ding feast. And then on the Tues­day came a let­ter from his brother, David Wil­li­ams, Aus­tralia, from whom he had not heard for fif­teen years. And David, it seemed, had been mak­ing a great deal of money, and was a bach­elor, and here was with his let­ter a pa­per good for a thou­sand pounds: “You may as well en­joy it now as wait till I am dead.” This was enough, in­deed, one might say; but hardly an hour after the let­ter had come the lady from the big house (Plas Mawr) drove up in all her grandeur, and went into the shop and said, “Mr. Wil­li­ams, your daugh­ter Mary has al­ways been a very good girl, and my hus­band and I feel that we must give her some little thing on her wed­ding, and we hope she’ll be very happy.” It was a gold watch worth fif­teen pounds. And after Lady Watcyn, ad­vances the old doc­tor with a dozen of port, forty years upon it, and a long ser­mon on how to de­cant it. And the old rector’s old wife brings to the beau­ti­ful dark girl two yards of creamy lace, like an en­chant­ment, for her wed­ding veil, and tells Mary how she wore it for her own wed­ding fifty years ago; and the squire, Sir Watcyn, as if his wife had not been already with a fine gift, calls from his horse, and brings out Wil­li­ams and barks like a dog at him, “Goin’ to have a wed­din’, eh, Wil­li­ams? Can’t have a wed­din’ without cham­pagne, y’ know; wouldn’t be legal, don’t y’ know. So look out for a couple of cases.” So Wil­li­ams tells the story of the gifts; and cer­tainly there was never so fam­ous a wed­ding in Llantris­ant be­fore.

All this, of course, may have been al­to­gether in the nat­ural or­der; the “glow,” as they call it, seems more dif­fi­cult to ex­plain. For they say that all through the nine days, and in­deed after the time had ended, there never was a man weary or sick at heart in Llantris­ant, or in the coun­try round it. For if a man felt that his work of the body or the mind was go­ing to be too much for his strength, then there would come to him of a sud­den a warm glow and a thrill­ing all over him and he felt as strong as a gi­ant, and hap­pier than he had ever been in his life be­fore, so that law­yer and hedger each re­joiced in the task that was be­fore him, as if it were sport and play.

And much more won­der­ful than this or any other won­ders was for­give­ness, with love to fol­low it. There were meet­ings of old en­emies in the mar­ket­place and in the street that made the people lift up their hands and de­clare that it was as if one walked the mi­ra­cu­lous streets of Syon.

But as to the “phe­nom­ena,” the oc­cur­rences for which, in or­din­ary talk, we should re­serve the word “mi­ra­cu­lous”? Well, what do we know? The ques­tion that I have already stated comes up again, as to the pos­sible sur­vival of old tra­di­tion in a kind of dormant, or tor­pid, semi­con­scious state. In other words, did the people “see” and “hear” what they ex­pec­ted to see and hear? This point, or one sim­ilar to it, oc­curred in a de­bate between Andrew Lang and Anatole France as to the vis­ions of Joan of Arc. M. France stated that when Joan saw St. Mi­chael, she saw the tra­di­tional archangel of the re­li­gious art of her day, but to the best of my be­lief Andrew Lang proved that the vis­ion­ary fig­ure Joan de­scribed was not in the least like the fif­teenth-cen­tury con­cep­tion of St. Mi­chael. So, in the case of Llantris­ant, I have stated that there was a sort of tra­di­tion about the Holy Bell of Teilo Sant; and it is, of course, barely pos­sible that some vague no­tion of the Graal Cup may have reached even Welsh coun­try folks through Tennyson’s Idylls. But so far I see no reason to sup­pose that these people had ever heard of the port­able al­tar (called Sap­phirus in Wil­liam of Malmes­bury) or of its chan­ging col­ours “that no man could dis­cern.”

And then there are the other ques­tions of the dis­tinc­tion between hal­lu­cin­a­tion and vis­ion, of the av­er­age dur­a­tion of one and the other, and of the pos­sib­il­ity of col­lect­ive hal­lu­cin­a­tion. If a num­ber of people all see (or think they see) the same ap­pear­ances, can this be merely hal­lu­cin­a­tion? I be­lieve there is a lead­ing case on the mat­ter, which con­cerns a num­ber of people see­ing the same ap­pear­ance on a church wall in Ire­land; but there is, of course, this dif­fi­culty, that one may be hal­lu­cin­ated and com­mu­nic­ate his im­pres­sion to the oth­ers, tele­path­ic­ally.

But at the last, what do we know?

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 per­cent. 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 flower­beds.

“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 per­cent 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 house­room 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 worm­holes. 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 centrepiece. 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 4½ per­cent. 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 house­room. 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 arm­chair 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.

“Good­bye,” 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 sick­room.

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 hot­houses 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 today, 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 hog­wash, 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 weath­er­cock. 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 din­ner­time, and lounged about in an arm­chair 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 teatime. 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 lamp­light­ers 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 door­posts; 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 night­time 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 rooftops, 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 to­night.”

“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 ABC 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 south­w­est, 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 today? 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 hard­hearted.”

“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 storyteller!), 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 ab­sent­minded, 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 red­headed 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 great­coat 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 bread­crumbs, 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 to­night 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 broken­hearted 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 mar­ket­place. 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 door­bell 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 second­hand clothes-shop in a back street. And her gloves—they were black kid, wrinkled with much wear, faded to a blu­ish hue at the fin­ger­tips, 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 good­bye 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 mar­ket­place 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 horseradish 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 house­room, 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 door­bell 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 today—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 twelve­month. 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 pock­et­books, 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 second­hand 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 pock­et­books, 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 Usum 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 dog­cart. 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 win­dowpanes, 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.”