The north wind was blowing, and red and golden the last days of Autumn
were streaming hence. Solemn and cold over the marshes arose the
evening.
It became very still.
Then the last pigeon went home to the trees on the dry land in the
distance, whose shapes already had taken upon themselves a mystery in
the haze.
Then all was still again.
As the light faded and the haze deepened, mystery crept nearer from
every side.
Then the green plover came in crying, and all alighted.
And again it became still, save when one of the plover arose and flew a
little way uttering the cry of the waste. And hushed and silent became
the earth, expecting the first star. Then the duck came in, and the
widgeon, company by company: and all the light of day faded out of the
sky saving one red band of light. Across the light appeared, black and
huge, the wings of a flock of geese beating up wind to the marshes.
These, too, went down among the rushes.
Then the stars appeared and shone in the stillness, and there was
silence in the great spaces of the night.
Suddenly the bells of the cathedral in the marshes broke out, calling
to evensong.
Eight centuries ago on the edge of the marsh men had built the huge
cathedral, or it may have been seven centuries ago, or perhaps nine—it
was all one to the Wild Things.
So evensong was held, and candles lighted, and the lights through the
windows shone red and green in the water, and the sound of the organ
went roaring over the marshes. But from the deep and perilous places,
edged with bright mosses, the Wild Things came leaping up to dance on
the reflection of the stars, and over their heads as they danced the
marsh-lights rose and fell.
The Wild Things are somewhat human in appearance, only all brown
of skin and barely two feet high. Their ears are pointed like the
squirrel’s, only far larger, and they leap to prodigious heights.
They live all day under deep pools in the loneliest marshes, but at
night they come up and dance. Each Wild Thing has over its head a
marsh-light, which moves as the Wild Thing moves; they have no souls,
and cannot die, and are of the kith of the Elf-folk.
All night they dance over the marshes, treading upon the reflection
of the stars (for the bare surface of the water will not hold them by
itself); but when the stars begin to pale, they sink down one by one
into the pools of their home. Or if they tarry longer, sitting upon
the rushes, their bodies fade from view as the marsh-fires pale in the
light, and by daylight none may see the Wild Things of the kith of the
Elf-folk. Neither may any see them even at night unless they were born,
as I was, in the hour of dusk, just at the moment when the first star
appears.
Now, on the night that I tell of, a little Wild Thing had gone drifting
over the waste, till it came right up to the walls of the cathedral
and danced upon the images of the coloured saints as they lay in the
water among the reflection of the stars. And as it leaped in its
fantastic dance, it saw through the painted windows to where the people
prayed, and heard the organ roaring over the marshes. The sound of the
organ roared over the marshes, but the song and prayers of the people
streamed up from the cathedral’s highest tower like thin gold chains,
and reached to Paradise, and up and down them went the angels from
Paradise to the people, and from the people to Paradise again.
Then something akin to discontent troubled the Wild Thing for the first
time since the making of the marshes; and the soft grey ooze and the
chill of the deep water seemed to be not enough, nor the first arrival
from northwards of the tumultuous geese, nor the wild rejoicing of the
wings of the wildfowl when every feather sings, nor the wonder of the
calm ice that comes when the snipe depart and beards the rushes with
frost and clothes the hushed waste with a mysterious haze where the
sun goes red and low, nor even the dance of the Wild Things in the
marvellous night; and the little Wild Thing longed to have a soul, and
to go and worship God.
And when evensong was over and the lights were out, it went back crying
to its kith.
But on the next night, as soon as the images of the stars appeared in
the water, it went leaping away from star to star to the farthest edge
of the marshlands, where a great wood grew where dwelt the Oldest of
the Wild Things.
And it found the Oldest of Wild Things sitting under a tree, sheltering
itself from the moon.
And the little Wild Thing said: ‘I want to have a soul to worship God,
and to know the meaning of music, and to see the inner beauty of the
marshlands and to imagine Paradise.’
And the Oldest of the Wild Things said to it: ‘What have we to do with
God? We are only Wild Things, and of the kith of the Elf-folk.’
But it only answered, ‘I want to have a soul.’
Then the Oldest of the Wild Things said: ‘I have no soul to give you;
but if you got a soul, one day you would have to die, and if you knew
the meaning of music you would learn the meaning of sorrow, and it is
better to be a Wild Thing and not to die.’
So it went weeping away.
But they that were kin to the Elf-folk were sorry for the little Wild
Thing; and though the Wild Things cannot sorrow long, having no souls
to sorrow with, yet they felt for awhile a soreness where their souls
should be, when they saw the grief of their comrade.
So the kith of the Elf-folk went abroad by night to make a soul for the
little Wild Thing. And they went over the marshes till they came to the
high fields among the flowers and grasses. And there they gathered a
large piece of gossamer that the spider had laid by twilight; and the
dew was on it.
Into this dew had shone all the lights of the long banks of the ribbed
sky, as all the colours changed in the restful spaces of evening. And
over it the marvellous night had gleamed with all its stars.
Then the Wild Things went with their dew-bespangled gossamer down to
the edge of their home. And there they gathered a piece of the grey
mist that lies by night over the marshlands. And into it they put
the melody of the waste that is borne up and down the marshes in the
evening on the wings of the golden plover. And they put into it, too,
the mournful song that the reeds are compelled to sing before the
presence of the arrogant North Wind. Then each of the Wild Things gave
some treasured memory of the old marshes, ‘For we can spare it,’ they
said. And to all this they added a few images of the stars that they
gathered out of the water. Still the soul that the kith of the Elf-folk
were making had no life.
Then they put into it the low voices of two lovers that went walking
in the night, wandering late alone. And after that they waited for the
dawn. And the queenly dawn appeared, and the marsh-lights of the Wild
Things paled in the glare, and their bodies faded from view; and still
they waited by the marsh’s edge. And to them waiting came over field
and marsh, from the ground and out of the sky, the myriad song of the
birds.
This, too, the Wild Things put into the piece of haze that they
had gathered in the marshlands, and wrapped it all up in their
dew-bespangled gossamer. Then the soul lived.
And there it lay in the hands of the Wild Things no larger than a
hedgehog; and wonderful lights were in it, green and blue; and they
changed ceaselessly, going round and round, and in the grey midst of it
was a purple flare.
And the next night they came to the little Wild Thing and showed her
the gleaming soul. And they said to her: ‘If you must have a soul and
go and worship God, and become a mortal and die, place this to your
left breast a little above the heart, and it will enter and you will
become a human. But if you take it you can never be rid of it to become
immortal again unless you pluck it out and give it to another; and we
will not take it, and most of the humans have a soul already. And if
you cannot find a human without a soul you will one day die, and your
soul cannot go to Paradise, because it was only made in the marshes.’
Far away the little Wild Thing saw the cathedral windows alight for
evensong, and the song of the people mounting up to Paradise, and all
the angels going up and down. So it bid farewell with tears and thanks
to the Wild Things of the kith of Elf-folk, and went leaping away
towards the green dry land, holding the soul in its hands.
And the Wild Things were sorry that it had gone, but could not be sorry
long, because they had no souls.
At the marsh’s edge the little Wild Thing gazed for some moments over
the water to where the marsh-fires were leaping up and down, and then
pressed the soul against its left breast a little above the heart.
Instantly it became a young and beautiful woman, who was cold and
frightened. She clad herself somehow with bundles of reeds, and went
towards the lights of a house that stood close by. And she pushed open
the door and entered, and found a farmer and a farmer’s wife sitting
over their supper.
And the farmer’s wife took the little Wild Thing with the soul of the
marshes up to her room, and clothed her and braided her hair, and
brought her down again, and gave her the first food that she had ever
eaten. Then the farmer’s wife asked many questions.
‘Where have you come from?’ she said.
‘Over the marshes.’
‘From what direction?’ said the farmer’s wife.
‘South,’ said the little Wild Thing with the new soul.
‘But none can come over the marshes from the south,’ said the farmer’s
wife.
‘No, they can’t do that,’ said the farmer.
‘I lived in the marshes.’
‘Who are you?’ asked the farmer’s wife.
‘I am a Wild Thing, and have found a soul in the marshes, and we are
kin to the Elf-folk.’
Talking it over afterwards, the farmer and his wife agreed that she
must be a gipsy who had been lost, and that she was queer with hunger
and exposure.
So that night the little Wild Thing slept in the farmer’s house, but
her new soul stayed awake the whole night long dreaming of the beauty
of the marshes.
As soon as dawn came over the waste and shone on the farmer’s house,
she looked from the window towards the glittering waters, and saw the
inner beauty of the marsh. For the Wild Things only love the marsh and
know its haunts, but now she perceived the mystery of its distances
and the glamour of its perilous pools, with their fair and deadly
mosses, and felt the marvel of the North Wind who comes dominant out of
unknown icy lands, and the wonder of that ebb and flow of life when the
wildfowl whirl in at evening to the marshlands and at dawn pass out to
sea. And she knew that over her head above the farmer’s house stretched
wide Paradise, where perhaps God was now imagining a sunrise while
angels played low on lutes, and the sun came rising up on the world
below to gladden fields and marsh.
And all that heaven thought, the marsh thought too; for the blue of the
marsh was as the blue of heaven, and the great cloud shapes in heaven
became the shapes in the marsh, and through each ran momentary rivers
of purple, errant between banks of gold. And the stalwart army of reeds
appeared out of the gloom with all their pennons waving as far as the
eye could see. And from another window she saw the vast cathedral
gathering its ponderous strength together, and lifting it up in towers
out of the marshlands.
She said, ‘I will never, never leave the marsh.’
An hour later she dressed with great difficulty and went down to eat
the second meal of her life. The farmer and his wife were kindly folk,
and taught her how to eat.
‘I suppose the gipsies don’t have knives and forks,’ one said to the
other afterwards.
After breakfast the farmer went and saw the Dean, who lived near his
cathedral, and presently returned and brought back to the Dean’s house
the little Wild Thing with the new soul.
‘This is the lady,’ said the farmer. ‘This is Dean Murnith.’ Then he
went away.
‘Ah,’ said the Dean, ‘I understand you were lost the other night in the
marshes. It was a terrible night to be lost in the marshes.’
‘I love the marshes,’ said the little Wild Thing with the new soul.
‘Indeed! How old are you?’ said the Dean.
‘I don’t know,’ she answered.
‘You must know about how old you are,’ he said.
‘Oh, about ninety,’ she said, ‘or more.’
‘Ninety years!’ exclaimed the Dean.
‘No, ninety centuries,’ she said; ‘I am as old as the marshes.’
Then she told her story—how she had longed to be a human and go and
worship God, and have a soul and see the beauty of the world, and how
all the Wild Things had made her a soul of gossamer and mist and music
and strange memories.
‘But if this is true,’ said Dean Murnith, ‘this is very wrong. God
cannot have intended you to have a soul.
‘What is your name?’
‘I have no name,’ she answered.
‘We must find a Christian name and a surname for you. What would you
like to be called?’
‘Song of the Rushes,’ she said.
‘That won’t do at all,’ said the Dean.
‘Then I would like to be called Terrible North Wind, or Star in the
Waters,’ she said.
‘No, no, no,’ said Dean Murnith; ‘that is quite impossible. We could
call you Miss Rush if you like. How would Mary Rush do? Perhaps you had
better have another name—say Mary Jane Rush.’
So the little Wild Thing with the soul of the marshes took the names
that were offered her, and became Mary Jane Rush.
‘And we must find something for you to do,’ said Dean Murnith.
‘Meanwhile we can give you a room here.’
‘I don’t want to do anything,’ replied Mary Jane; ‘I want to worship
God in the cathedral and live beside the marshes.’
Then Mrs. Murnith came in, and for the rest of that day Mary Jane
stayed at the house of the Dean.
And there with her new soul she perceived the beauty of the world; for
it came grey and level out of misty distances, and widened into grassy
fields and ploughlands right up to the edge of an old gabled town;
and solitary in the fields far off an ancient windmill stood, and his
honest hand-made sails went round and round in the free East Anglian
winds. Close by, the gabled houses leaned out over the streets, planted
fair upon sturdy timbers that grew in the olden time, all glorying
among themselves upon their beauty. And out of them, buttress by
buttress, growing and going upwards, aspiring tower by tower, rose the
cathedral.
And she saw the people moving in the streets all leisurely and slow,
and unseen among them, whispering to each other, unheard by living men
and concerned only with bygone things, drifted the ghosts of very long
ago. And wherever the streets ran eastwards, wherever were gaps in the
houses, always there broke into view the sight of the great marshes,
like to some bar of music weird and strange that haunts a melody,
arising again and again, played on the violin by one musician only, who
plays no other bar, and he is swart and lank about the hair and bearded
about the lips, and his moustache droops long and low, and no one knows
the land from which he comes.
All these were good things for a new soul to see.
Then the sun set over green fields and ploughland and the night came
up. One by one the merry lights of cheery lamp-lit windows took their
stations in the solemn night.
Then the bells rang, far up in a cathedral tower, and their melody fell
on the roofs of the old houses and poured over their eaves until the
streets were full, and then flooded away over green fields and plough,
till it came to the sturdy mill and brought the miller trudging to
evensong, and far away eastwards and seawards the sound rang out over
the remoter marshes. And it was all as yesterday to the old ghosts in
the streets.
Then the Dean’s wife took Mary Jane to evening service, and she saw
three hundred candles filling all the aisle with light. But sturdy
pillars stood there in unlit vastnesses; great colonnades going away
into the gloom, where evening and morning, year in year out, they did
their work in the dark, holding the cathedral roof aloft. And it was
stiller than the marshes are still when the ice has come and the wind
that brought it has fallen.
Suddenly into this stillness rushed the sound of the organ, roaring,
and presently the people prayed and sang.
No longer could Mary Jane see their prayers ascending like thin gold
chains, for that was but an elfin fancy, but she imagined clear in her
new soul the seraphs passing in the ways of Paradise, and the angels
changing guard to watch the World by night.
When the Dean had finished service, a young curate, Mr. Millings, went
up into the pulpit.
He spoke of Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus: and Mary Jane was
glad that there were rivers having such names, and heard with wonder of
Nineveh, that great city, and many things strange and new.
And the light of the candles shone on the curate’s fair hair, and his
voice went ringing down the aisle, and Mary Jane rejoiced that he was
there.
But when his voice stopped she felt a sudden loneliness, such as she
had not felt since the making of the marshes; for the Wild Things never
are lonely and never unhappy, but dance all night on the reflection of
the stars, and having no souls, desire nothing more.
After the collection was made, before anyone moved to go, Mary Jane
walked up the aisle to Mr. Millings.
‘I love you,’ she said.