From Tony’s house the ground slopes north, east, and south, for the
house stands upon the spur of a ridge, and away on the left the long
range of the Downs shoulder the sky, whilst on the right, miles
northward, you can see Blackdown and Hascombe and on a clear day even
Leith Hill and Newlands Corner. But due east a little steep hill road
wanders away by gorse-strewn commons and under great spreading Sussex
oaks, where you meet no one save perhaps a milch goat, trailing its long
chain amongst the wayside bushes, or a cow or two wandered from their
pasturage and “feeding their way home,” as the natives say. And this is,
perhaps, Tony’s favourite walk. I am not quite sure why he so especially
loves it, but I think, maybe, it is because that way lies the Silver
Wood. For in the Silver Wood there once befell him a great and wonderful
adventure; and the happening of it was in this wise:
* * * * *
It was early May, but the May of a backward year, and only the larches
were in “proper green” (as Tony put it), though here and there a silver
birch was shaking out her smallest crumpled leaves, and all about the
commons and in the roadside hedges white bushes of blackthorn shone, and
the old mushroom man had told Tony this was “blackthorn winter.” Then
came two blazing days of unexpected summer, and on the second night,
just as the clock in the hall struck one, Tony had wakened suddenly into
moonlight bright as day and a world become, as it seemed, half Heaven by
reason of the music with which it was filled.
“What is it? Oh, what is it?” he whispered, and for an hour lay
quivering with the wonder of it, until at last he could bear no longer
the loveliness all alone, and, slipping out of bed, crept along the dark
passage and scratched softly at his mother’s door. This scratching was
an invention of his own, because, as he once explained, “The mice
scratch and it doesn’t wake them, so if they are really asleep I won’t
disturb them, and if they aren’t, why, they’ll know it’s _me_.”
To-night, his father’s voice answered, prompt and wide awake. “That you,
Tony? Come along!” He had crouched down under an eiderdown, and all
three had listened until at last the chorus died down into silence, a
cock from the valley crew welcome to the coming dawn, and a cow in the
byre at the back of the house lowed as if in answer. Then Tony’s father
had picked him up by the scruff of his pyjamas like a kitten, gathered
him in his arms, and carried him back to bed.
“It’s the nightingales, old man,” said he, “and now to sleep and I’ll
tell you all about them in the morning.”
Accordingly, next day, seated in his father’s study, whilst outside the
sun shone and beckoned with long beams through the wafting curtains, he
heard how Philomel, the nightingale, had come back from his winter
quarters in Egypt or Syria or Northern Africa, and was last night
voicing his return; how he loves dense coverts, and how skilfully he
hides his nest; how the eggs are five in number, and of a brownish
shade; and how, as he grows busy with the feeding and rearing of his
young, his song decreases until at the end of the season, just before he
leaves our shores, so hoarse has his voice become that he cannot sing at
all, but only croak. And lastly, how he sings by day as well as night;
only, because a thousand other birds are singing too, one scarcely
recognizes him.
Tony had listened, interested and attentive; but when the instruction
was over, a book had been taken down from its shelf, and verses more
wonderful than Tony had ever heard before—as wonderful, indeed, as the
nightingale’s songs themselves—were read to him in the wonderful way and
wonderful voice which only his father had. “And that’s what John Keats
thought about ’em, Tony, my son. Some day you shall tell me what _you_
think. But, there, off with you into the sunshine, and perhaps they’ll
sing for you again to-night.” So did his father finish.
And Tony had gone, but now all the careful facts of the bird’s self and
habits had drifted from his mind, and there remained to him only
snatches of the poem John Keats had written and some dim realization of
its glory and its joy.
In the afternoon he had borrowed the volume, going through the poem
stanza by stanza, finding great portions which he in no way understood,
but fastening, nevertheless, on the lines that most fascinated him,
reading them again and again, until they were unmistakably his own.
“The same that oft-times hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.”
* * * * *
[Illustration: A black-and-white illustration of a boy standing in a
field watching a large goat graze nearby.]
It was a fortnight later when the adventure happened. After the few hot
days, the wind had swung anew into the north, and there had followed an
extraordinarily cold week, at the end of which Summer asserted herself
firmly, and upon this particular afternoon the air was quite sleepily
warm.
The blackthorn had all blown away, and on the wayside banks only here
and there a last primrose peeped out lonelily from its clump of green
leaves, a little sorrowful it seemed, for the many brothers and sisters
drooped and faded on their stalks at its side. The gorse was blazing
though, all the oak-trees were green, and down in the woods there would
be bluebells. Five or six larks carolled noisily overhead and Tony, too,
was singing as he walked. He had his bow-and-arrow in case he saw
buffalo, and over his back was slung a scout’s bag. For after tea the
prairie nights got chilly, and he needed wood-chips for a fire in his
wigwam at the bottom of the garden. He strode with large strides, but
silently as befitted an Apache brave (though, for that matter, he cared
little that over by Blackdown the Sioux were encamped. Were not the
young men of his own tribe within call, should he need them, which was
unlikely? Trust an Apache to keep or at any rate extricate himself from
danger).
[Illustration: A black-and-white illustration depicting a man falling
backward in a forest as a boy watches, with an axe lying on the ground
nearby.]
At the bottom of the hill he left the road and struck across the common.
A large white goat was cropping grass down in the dip, and he paused to
watch it critically.
“A strayed broncho!” said he. “And a fine one, too. I wish I had my
lariat.” Then he slid his head through his bow, dropped the arrow in its
quiver, climbed the stile of the Silver Wood, and promptly forgetting
all about Indians, became himself again. For in the woods the flowers,
shut out somewhat from the sun, are often weeks later than those of the
hedgerows and open fields, and here everywhere was carpeted with
primroses and dog violets, and the white stars of the wood anemone.
Tony gave a little crow of delight.
“Oh, I _do_ like it!” he said aloud.
Then he threw back his head and stared up into the trees, for somewhere
above him he thought he heard a voice say, “So do I.” Nor was he
mistaken. Astride a big branch that spread out half-way up the oak-trunk
sat a small grey man, and Tony recognized him at once. It was the
Woodcutter.
“Hello,” said Tony.
“Hello,” said the Woodcutter, and went on with his work, chopping away
with his axe at the bough on which he was perched. But as he chopped at
wood _between_ the tree-stem and himself, Tony felt a little anxious.
“You mustn’t do that, Woodcutter,” he said. “When the bough breaks——”
“The cradle will fall,” finished the Woodcutter; and even as he spoke
the branch cracked loudly. “’Ware heads!” he shouted; and down it came,
he with it, almost at Tony’s feet.
Tony sprang back in some alarm. He stepped forward again, however,
almost immediately, to help the little man to his feet; but the
Woodcutter, rather pettishly, motioned him away and proceeded leisurely
to brush from his clothes the dirt, grass ends, and dried leaves which
clung to them.
“Did it hurt you?” Tony asked, with much feeling.
The little man snorted.
“Try it yourself,” he said tartly.
“Well, I did warn you not to cut between the trunk and you,” Tony said
presently, a little nettled by the other’s ungraciousness.
“It makes no difference where I cut,” the Woodcutter returned rather
dolefully. “I fall just the same. Look at my head.” He turned sideways,
and Tony saw that the back of it bulged in two enormous bumps.
“That’s why I can’t wear a hat. You see, they never quite go down before
the next bump bumps them.”
“I’m so sorry,” Tony said gently. “But I can’t help thinking that if
only you didn’t cut——”
“Oh, don’t say it all over again,” the Woodcutter cried irritably. “If
you’re behind, you fall after; if you’re before you fall with. And after
all, it’s soonest over if you fall with.”
Tony looked a little bewildered.
“I don’t see why you _should_ fall after,” he said at last.
“You must if you haven’t fallen before,” retorted the other.
Tony considered awhile.
“But that’s a joke,” he remarked at last.
“Oh, is it!” said the Woodcutter indignantly. “Try it. You’ll soon see.”
Tony shook his head. “No, thank you,” he said, and then, “I didn’t mean
_that_ kind of joke.”
The little man grunted.
“I don’t think it’s any kind of joke,” he said huffily, and Tony,
hopeless of explaining, changed the subject.
“Why did you cut such a beautiful branch?” He fingered the bright green
leaves regretfully.
“It’s for my windows—wood-windows you know. Every wood has windows.”
“Windows?” Tony spoke doubtfully, but he pricked his ears as the little
man went on.
“Yes. Windows. Magic casements.”
Tony’s heart began to beat faster.
[Illustration: A black-and-white illustration of a boy and an older,
bearded man working together to carry a long, fallen tree branch across
a field.]
“For the nightingale? _Their_ magic casements, I mean?”
The Woodcutter stared at him.
“Yes, of course,” he said. “Whose else?”
“I didn’t understand ... that you make them for yourself, I mean,” Tony
said slowly. “Can I come and watch?”
The Woodcutter motioned him to shoulder one end of the bough, and
raising the other himself, started off down the slope.
“You don’t altogether,” he said.
“Don’t altogether what?”
“Make them yourself. The material is there. You only need to use it.”
“Yes,” returned Tony after a pause, “I think I see that.”
“And that’s why it had to be specially beautiful,” he went on; “to fit
in with the music, I suppose.”
The Woodcutter grunted assent and then plodded on in silence.
* * * * *
Now when you have climbed the stile of the Silver Wood, the path, all
grass and primroses and violets, runs steeply down for 100 yards or so,
and crosses in the dip a little brushwood bridge that spans the boggy
bed of a small stream. On the other side you rise again, and almost at
once on the left a lane turns at right angles, leading straightly
through a plantation of silver birches. If you follow this, you come
shortly into meadows, for the wood is narrow here. Fifty yards farther
is another lane, cut through great oaks, and one trunk, topped and
lonely, lies right across the way. Both these the Woodcutter passed by.
The third lane is narrower, and the branches of the trees on either hand
spread and so intermingle that, when they are in full summer foliage,
the path beneath is dim and cool like the tunnels through the corn and
bracken that the rabbits use. To-day, however, since the oak-buds had
only just uncurled their crinkly leaves, the sun lay all along it,
flecking and dappling it in a pattern of light and shade. And above was
the same pattern, but fashioned of the leaves themselves against the
sky. The Woodcutter halted for a moment. “Listen!” he said, and far away
ahead, very faint and muffled, Tony heard a whistle, thin and sweet and
repeated several times. Then came a little burst of gurgling song that
set his shoulders wriggling with delight. And then all was still again.
“It’s a nightingale!” he cried.
The Woodcutter nodded.
“They love the quiet and lonely places, where no one goes. But _we’ll_
go, you and I, Tony o’ Dreams, and we’ll build a window there for them
to charm.”
Tony stared, for it seemed to him odd that a little rough-clothed,
rough-handed Woodcutter should be speaking in the language of a poet.
“Do you know Keats, then?” he asked, and paused, ashamed of his
astonishment.
The Woodcutter smiled.
“That’s not just John Keats,” he said, “it’s everyone, boy—everyone,
that is, who looks and feels.”
“But John Keats _wrote_ it,” Tony persisted.
“Yes, but Keats only gathered what grows for all of us; gathered and
thought on it and put it into words. It’s _ours_ as well as his. That’s
why we love it so.”
[Illustration: A black-and-white illustration of a boy dragging a log
while an older man stands nearby with his arms raised, as if gesturing
or exclaiming.]
Tony pondered this very seriously.
“Suppose”—he said—“suppose I gathered something and thought on it; could
_I_ ever put it into words—into words, I mean, like those?”
The Woodcutter did not answer at once, and Tony waited patiently,
listening as he walked to the soft pad of their feet on the grass, the
pipe of an occasional chaffinch, the coo of a wood-pigeon, the quiet
stir of the trees and the rustle of a rabbit here and there amongst the
undergrowth.
[Illustration: A black-and-white illustration of a boy standing in a
forest watching an older, bearded man who is dragging a log along the
ground.]
“I dare say,” the little man said at last. “Maybe, they’d come to you
somewhere, somehow, as they came to him. I cannot tell.” He lowered his
end of the branch and suddenly flung his arms wide.
“Listen!” he cried. “Can you hear?”
Tony regarded the strange little figure wonderingly.
“I can hear. Yes. Lots of things,” he answered after a while. “The trees
and the wind, and the birds and the rabbits; and ... sometimes I think I
can hear the clouds and the flowers and the sunshine. But I can’t quite
tell what they say.”
“_Listen_ then,” said the Woodcutter again; “listen to them, and one day
perhaps you _will_ understand the language, so that their words shall
come to be your own.”
He raised the bough again and trudged off, and Tony, absorbed in his own
thoughts, followed in silence until the whistle of another nightingale,
quite near at hand, roused him.
The lane now had dwindled to a narrow path, and on either hand all
tangled round the grey lichened trunks of the trees was so dense an
undergrowth of bramble, honeysuckle, and little springing birches that
he and his companion seemed shut out from all the world. But far ahead,
at the path’s end, a little patch of white gleamed like a pool in a
green field.
[Illustration: A black-and-white illustration of an older, bearded man
leaning against a tree while a young boy stands nearby, watching him.]
The Woodcutter pointed to it.
“See!” he cried. “A magic casement! I must frame the sky.”
In a moment he had his branch flat upon the ground and was chopping
vigorously, measuring, tenoning, fitting, until—so swiftly as to seem
indeed magical—the magic casement was complete. Tony laid hands upon one
side of its square frame to help bear it to its destination, but the
Woodcutter shook his head.
“The nightingales know _me_,” he said, “but I must go alone. When it is
fixed, perhaps for you also the charm will charm. Wait.”
[Illustration: A high-contrast illustration of a small boy standing at
the edge of a dark, expansive body of water, looking out into the
distance.]
And so Tony waited, sitting by the side of the path on a mat of new
white wood-chips with his back against a tree.
Then quite suddenly the nightingales called him. Springing to his feet,
and flinging away his bow and quiver because they hindered him, he raced
down the path as fast as his legs could carry him.
At the end of it, round the little patch of sky, was the magic casement
exactly as the Woodcutter had made it; but the Woodcutter was gone.
There was no one here now but himself and the nightingales; and the
nightingales, as they had sung that night when he heard them first, were
singing all together, so that the very air was quivering with music. For
fully a minute Tony stood quiet, quivering too, his hand on the
window-sill, almost afraid to look. And then he looked, and knew that it
was all right. For him also the charm had charmed. For in front of him
stretched long, shining sands and beyond them a great sea. And the sea
was all spangled with wave crests that the moonlight caught. And across
both sands and sea a silver way ran, broad and straight, to the horizon
and then onward endlessly into the beyond. But sometimes as he looked
the bright silver of it blurred for a moment as the spray-scud drove
across it like a cloud. Some of the spray drove inland too, for Tony’s
face grew moist with it, and when he touched his lips and fingers with
his tongue the taste of them was like salt.
“The same that oft-times hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.”
he chanted softly.
Then he clambered upon the sill, balanced for a moment or two with his
legs dangling, dropped through, and set off slowly across the lonely
sands. Far ahead he could see, in the moonlight, line after line of
breakers and, a little nearer, the ebbing, flowing ripple of their
fringe. Here and there about the shore were strewn great rocks, which,
as he approached, towered jet black against the violet sky and threw
shadows as black as themselves upon the sands below. Some had little
pools around their base, and at one of them he stopped, doffed shoes and
stockings, and, standing with his tired feet cool in the soft water,
stared thoughtfully across this new and wonderful sea that he had found.
“Perilous?” he said at last. “The billows don’t roar very angrily, and
it’s too beautiful to be perilous, I think.”
“Ah, but you’re thinking backwards way, Master Tony; it’s perilous just
because it _is_ so beautiful.”
Tony jumped. He had felt himself so utterly alone, and yet the voice
sounded at his very elbow. Then he stared in amazement, for at his side
stood a little old woman in a mob cap and a long grey cloak, half dusty,
half sheeny, as cobwebs are. In her hand she carried a kind of wand with
a bright end to it which shone just like a star.
[Illustration: A dark, atmospheric illustration of a young boy standing
in a rocky, water-filled area with a figure dressed in a pointed hat and
cloak who is holding a staff tipped with a glowing light.]
“Are you the Queen Moon?” he asked her, remembering his Keats; but she
burst into a laugh and began to dance with most astonishing agility,
wetting him all over as she splashed the water with her long, sharp-toed
shoes.
“Queen Moon, indeed!” cried she, and pointed to the sky. “Not I! Don’t
you see? The Queen Moon is on her throne, clustered about with all her
starry fays.” She shook her wand in his face. “As for this! Did you
think it was a star? Look! It’s an elf-stone! Turn your coat, Tony, turn
your coat! I’m a fairy.”
Tony had often heard of elf-stones, and once his father had seen one. A
cow had been found dead in the pasture, and the old cowman had brought
up to the house a little bright piece of flint, triangular and barbed on
each side like an arrow head. “’Tis elf-shot she be, surely, and never a
mark on her to show,” he had said. “But there ’twas, alongside—the
fairies’ arrow-point.” And the old fellow had begged that he might keep
it, hanging it round his neck as an amulet against a like fate falling
on himself. Here, sure enough, was the flint just as Tony had pictured
it. He took the wand rather gingerly and examined it, giving it back to
her at last, with a little laugh. “I’m not afraid of fairies,” he said
stoutly. “So I won’t need to turn my coat. But who _are_ you, then?
Queen _Mab_?”
“No, nor yet Queen _Mab_,” she retorted, mimicking his accent; “just
_Mistress_ Mab, an it please you.”
She dropped a little curtsey and her grey cloak spread out all about the
water and dripped a hundred tiny silver rivulets as she rose again to
her small height.
“But everyone _says_ Queen,” he persisted.
“Everyone is wrong, then,” she answered, and paused and heaved a sigh.
“And yet,” she went on, “Queen Mab it _is_, perhaps—Queen by courtesy.
But Queen only of men’s dreams.”
Tony made a low bow, stepped out of his pool and dropped upon one knee.
“Then,” said he, “at least you are _my_ Queen.”
“And why?”
“Because,” he said, rather red and shy, “because of my name, you see.
Tony o’ Dreams, they call me. So I must be _your_ knight, mustn’t I?”
“I see,” she said gently, and both were silent, she as well as he,
gazing seaward to the fringe of foam. Suddenly she laid her hand upon
his shoulder.
“Well then, small knight,” she cried, “and what of the perilous seas?”
Tony shivered. “I’m not afraid,” he said, “only ... they are so
beautiful. _Must_ all that’s beautiful be perilous too?”
“But of course! Perilous—to be adventured—to be tried and made your
own!”
“Oh but perilous? Does perilous mean that?” he asked quickly.
“Why, yes—what else?”
Tony pondered.
“I thought quite differently,” he said at last. “I thought it meant
dangerous.”
She caught him up almost before the words were out of his mouth. “Ah,
no! Not dangerous. Beauty—real beauty is safer, surer than all other
things in all the world. Remember that, Tony, now and always. Come, will
you sail these perilous seas with me for faery lands, so lost, so
lost—for faery lands forlorn?”
He looked at her without speaking, and suddenly she began to sing:
“Away, away and away we go,
Away by ourselves, away!
For it’s somewhere hid ’twixt the sea and sky
That the long-lost lands of faery lie,
And I know if we sail there, you and I,
We shall find them one fine day.”
As she ended, the moon slid behind a cloud, and in the sudden darkness
she tugged his hand.
“Fly, Tony! Spread your wings and fly!” she cried, “lest we grow old and
tired before we come there.”
Eagerly he stretched out his arms, straining up on tiptoe. In a moment
the ground was gone from beneath his feet and, lightly as a bird, he was
gliding onward through the air, the scud wet upon his face again and the
sweet salt smell of the sea growing stronger and stronger as he
breathed.
He shut his eyes the better to enjoy the delight of it, and it seemed
quite a long time later when Queen Mab pulled his arm again to rouse
him.
“Now you can hear the billows,” she said.
Listening, he caught the rhythmic roar of them deep down below, and
clutched her hand more tightly for the thoughts they raised.
“You’re frightened!” she jeered.
“No,” he answered simply. “I love it. That’s all.”
“Come, then, and we’ll sail.”
They began to drop rapidly, and just as Tony’s feet touched ground the
moon came out again and showed him the foam-fringe of the sea curling
and glistening round his ankles. A yard or so away, quivering in water
almost deep enough to float her, lay a little boat in which Queen Mab
already sat.
“Push off, Sir Tony Knight,” she said, “and spring aboard.”
He pushed and clambered, falling perhaps rather clumsily over the
gunwale, but picking himself up without so much as a rub of his bruised
elbows and settling the oars in the rowlocks neatly, as a Cornishman’s
son should.
“That’s right, Tony! Pull! Pull hard!” his companion whispered. “For on
these faery seas, most often whilst we strive it is that the winds blow
us where we will.”
Tony looked back at her over his shoulder.
“I _am_ pulling,” he said. “But only a very little, I think. The boat
moves of itself.”
She leaned forward and pinched his cheek.
“And what is the wind but your spirit,” she demanded, “decked in a
lovelier name?”
He shook his head.
“I don’t understand, Queen Mab,” he said, but went on pulling long even
strokes as his father had taught him, until the soft creak-creak of the
rowlocks and the drip of the water from the blades made a sleepy music,
and he fell to humming softly to keep himself awake. Even this, it
seemed, began to fail, and shipping his oars, he turned at last to his
companion to tell her how tired he was and to ask whether it would be
unknightly if for two minutes he should curl up at the bottom of the
boat and sleep his sleepiness away.
And then he rubbed his eyes in amazement and all his sleepiness passed
as completely as the spray scud passed across the moonshine, for her
seat was empty and he was all alone.
“Queen Mab!” he shouted. “Queen Mab! Ahoy!” But there was no answer
except the roar of the surf far behind him, and the lap of the water
against the sides of the boat. A little tremor took him, and clambering
to the bows he knelt there, staring ahead. Then he stretched out both
his hands and spoke:
“Oh, faery lands—faery lands forlorn. It wasn’t I that lost you, was it?
If it was, I’m sorry, but I’ve come to find you now. Don’t hide
yourselves away from me too long.”
And all in a moment it was day again and the sun was shining. And when
he stared—out of the horizon, it seemed—rose a long low bank of green.
At first he thought it was faery land itself coming towards him in
answer to his call. Then he realized it was a great wave, and with a
rush came back the memory of a certain day last year. He was in his
uncle’s yacht. A storm had overtaken them and, huddled behind a hatch,
he had sat with his father, listening to the shrieks of the wind and the
deafening rattle of every stay and rope the little vessel carried, and
wondering whether it was really he who sat there, or some boy in a book.
And how, poking his head round the hatch, he had seen just such a wall
of green water rushing down upon him then. The yacht had buried _her_
nose in it and the green had sluiced along the deck on either side,
churning as it went, and poured over the stern. In just such a way did
his own little boat now bury her nose, only not her nose merely, but the
boat and he and all went in. And the water parted itself into a square
opening, and as he tumbled through—lo and behold, it was the magic
casement; and here was the wood again, and it wasn’t the bottom of the
sea at all, but just his heap of wood-chips from which he picked himself
up, a little dazed and confused. And the magic casement slid away from
him along its “verdurous glooms and winding mossy way,” until it was
once more only a pale patch of light where the path’s end touched the
sky.
His bow and quiver hung in a bramble just where he had flung them when
he raced away, and he gazed at them a long while before he gathered and
slung them on his back.
A nightingale whistled somewhere to the left. He waited for its burst of
song, standing listening with his head flung back. Up the path the magic
casement seemed to beckon him, but as the music ended he knew suddenly
that he was tired and hungry.
“Oh, nightingales!” he cried, “I know! I know! And beyond, the seas
_are_ very perilous. I shall come again. But, you see, I’m not a very
valiant knight. Even as it was, I failed. I was so tired, I stopped
rowing and almost fell asleep. And now I’m tireder than ever. And
perhaps I was nearly there.”
He blinked furiously because his tiredness made his eyes blur a little,
and he was afraid he might think he was crying.
“I—I shall shoot buffalo on my way home,” he said. Then he filled his
scout’s bag with the white wood-chips and set off.
[Illustration: A high-contrast illustration of a dark boat on water
under a bright yellow moon.]