THE OREAD
Fiona was out long before breakfast next morning, digging furiously in
her garden. Not many minutes passed before she was rewarded by a glint
of something yellow in a shovelful of earth, and there was the
centipede.
"You dear creature," she said, and caught it up quickly before it
could wriggle away.
"How polite we are this morning," said the centipede, swelling with
conscious pride. "I suppose we want something."
Fiona's mind was far too completely taken up with her one object to
notice or resent any insinuations.
"Yes, I do," she said. "You told me that if I could not get what I
wanted by beginning at the top I must start again at the bottom. I
can do nothing from the top this time, so I've come to you."
"Flattered, to be sure," said the centipede. "How frank we are."
"Please don't be cross," said Fiona, humbly. "I am only doing what you
told me to do."
"Bless you, child, I'm not cross," said the centipede. "I'm a
philosopher."
"Don't philosophers get cross?" asked the girl.
"Never," said the centipede. "And when they do they call it something
else. What's the matter with me is, that I've sprained my seventh
ankle on bow side, counting from the tail. Don't say you're sorry, for
you're not. Anyone can see you're not."
"You are horrid to-day," said Fiona. "And the other day you were so
nice."
"That's what makes me such a charming companion," said the centipede.
"You never know what to expect. So I never pall."
"I want to know where the Urchin is, and how I am to find him," said
Fiona.
"Is that all?" said the centipede. "Fancy interrupting my breakfast on
account of that boy. Well, one question at a time. We'll have the last
one first; I'm in that sort of mood to-day."
"How can I find the Urchin, then, please?" asked Fiona.
"Well, you've been told _that_ already," said the centipede. "Haven't
you a memory?"
Fiona thought and thought, but could make nothing of it.
"My friend the bookworm was there at the time," said the centipede,
"and heard the shore lark tell you that the last man went up a hill.
Very well. Go up a hill."
"But that was for something quite different," said Fiona. "That was
for my treasure. I am not thinking of any treasure now."
"Silly of you, then," said the centipede. "I would be. Ever studied
philosophy?"
"No," said Fiona.
"That's a pity," said the centipede. "Then you've never heard of Hegel
and the unity of opposites? Black and white are only different
aspects of the same thing, you know. And as soon as you begin to think
about it, you see at once how sensible it is. Well, a treasure-hunt
and a boy-hunt are only different aspects of a hunt, aren't they?
Therefore they are the same thing. Therefore what does for one does
for the other. Therefore you go up a hill. There's logic for you," and
once more he swelled proudly.
"Thank you very much," said Fiona. "And now will you please tell me
where the Urchin is?"
"Tell you!" exclaimed the centipede. "Why, it was you told me. You
prophesied the whole thing."
"I'm sure I don't remember it, then," said Fiona.
"What's the matter with _you_," said the centipede, "is that you
refuse to exert your intelligence, such as it is. You should take a
lesson by me. You humans are all forgetting nowadays that the spoken
word is an instrument of great power, and that once it is launched it
goes on and on, and can work magic on its own account, quite
independently of you. If you say a thing will happen, it frequently
does happen."
"But what did I say?" asked Fiona.
"You told the Urchin that if he hurt the shore lark the Little People
would take him. Well, they've taken him. That's all."
And the centipede slid down on to the ground, and with something like
a chuckle vanished. He had evidently learned from his philosophy to
bear with resignation the misfortunes of others.
But Fiona did not set off up a hill at once. After breakfast she went
to the bookroom and spoke to her father.
"I have found out where the Urchin is, daddy," she said. "He was
carried off by the fairies."
The Student showed no surprise.
"You have not been long finding out, Fiona," he said. "I thought you
had ways and means of your own."
"But, daddy," she said, "I don't _really_ believe it, you know. It
sounds so absurd nowadays. Do you believe it?"
"I believe it, yes," said the Student. "I knew yesterday. Now that you
know, I may talk to you about it, so far."
"I don't know that I do really know," she said. "Things like that
don't _really_ happen, do they? Whoever heard of it?"
"You and I have heard of it," he answered. "And that is enough. The
proposition that people are not carried off by fairies is a mere
working hypothesis, liable to be overthrown by any one case to the
contrary. Well, we've got a case to the contrary, and that's the end
of the hypothesis."
"I'm arguing against myself, daddy, you know," she said. "I want to
believe that we do know where he is."
"No difficulty at all," said the Student, "to anyone with a properly
trained mind, like yours and mine. Take it this way. No one has ever
crossed the South Arabian desert or explored the snow ranges of New
Guinea, have they? Well, for all anyone can say to the contrary,
people may be carried off by fairies every day of the week in New
Guinea or South Arabia, mayn't they? It may even be the rule there. It
may be a working hypothesis among the pygmies of New Guinea that such
a thing _always_ happens--at death, for instance. It would be just as
good a working hypothesis as it is that it _never_ happens."
"But, daddy, it would be so extraordinary, wouldn't it?"
"Not a bit more extraordinary," he said, "than the inside of a bit of
radium, or the inside of an egg, for that matter. It is probably
simpler for the Urchin to become a fairy than for an egg to become a
bird, or a caterpillar a butterfly. It would not be nearly as strange
as it is that there is a water beast which can shed its gills and
become a land beast, or that Uranus moons go round the wrong way. You
can't knock it out by any reasoning of that kind, Fiona. It's merely a
matter of fact; and if we have found a case we _have_ found a case."
"Then you knew yesterday, daddy?" she said.
"I had a very fair idea," he answered. "That is why I was tapping in
the cave with a hammer. Can you guess why?"
Fiona saw.
"To find the rest of the cave," she said. "That is where he would be."
"Just so," said the Student. "These caves cannot end in a wall, as
that one seems to. I thought the wall must ring hollow somewhere, and
the hollow is in the recess where the stone nearly fell on me. The
apparent end of the cave is not in the line of the true cave at all."
"It is the same place where the stones fell on Mr. Johnson," said
Fiona.
"That is strange," said the Student.
And then Fiona told about the hand she had seen.
"Of course, of course," said the Student. "That explains the whole
thing. They threw the stone down on me too. They did not wish me to
know that the wall was hollow just there. They must use it as a
doorway. They will have carried the boy through at the moment that you
turned your back, of course. I suppose he invited them in some way;
they could have no power otherwise."
"He said he would go _anywhere_ to find his treasure," said Fiona.
"That would be quite sufficient for them to act on," said the Student.
"Then the stories about the cruelty of the Little People are true,"
asked Fiona.
"Only in part," said the Student. "I take it that they are all sorts,
like ourselves. They are, as you know, the vanished debris of all the
peoples that have helped to make this planet what it is. Good people,
many of them. But they cannot altogether love those who have driven
them under the ground."
"And who is the old hawker, daddy," she asked, "and what has he to do
with it all?"
"I can't talk about anything except what you already know," said the
Student. "Have you found out yet how to start?"
"I am to go up a hill," said Fiona. "And I am going up Heleval now.
And I came to see if you would come with me."
"I wish I could; I wish very much I could," said the Student. "I do
not know what you may find; but I know well that if I went with you,
you would find nothing but grass and rock. I am too old to see the
things you can see, you know. You have to do it alone, little
daughter."
So Fiona filled her pocket with bread and cheese, and started; and the
Student, after a useless attempt to settle down to his inscriptions,
set up a little three-inch telescope with which he sometimes
entertained Fiona on fine nights, gazing at Jupiter's moons or
Saturn's rings, and followed her across the moor as far as he could.
It was the only way he could go with her.
* * * * *
There are many worse things in the world than setting out to climb
Heleval on a beautiful morning on the first of October, when the grass
in unsunned corners is still pearly with the frost of the night, and
the whole earth is touched with the wonderful caress of the cool
autumn sunshine. Fiona's way lay along the shore road, past the bank
of heather and fern which in August had been gay with flowers, napperd
and potentilla, blue milkwort and starry eye-bright, and alive with
butterflies, blues and small heaths and pearl-bordered fritillaries;
but the flowers were faded now, and in their place, in the little burn
where the hazelnuts grew, was a tapestry of purple burrs and scarlet
hips. The shore road ended at a little burn; here an old stone bridge,
grown over with grass, crossed the pool which in times of spate would
hold a fat, white sea-trout, and here Fiona and the Urchin had used
to come in summer to gather globe flowers. From this point a sheep
track led up the valley beside the burn, through great spaces of
yellowing bracken, by little swampy springs where late forget-me-nots
still lingered and an early snipe might rise with a skeep, and across
low-lying wastes of bog-myrtle, perfuming all the air with its dying
leaves; then the ground began to rise, and fern and bog-myrtle gave
place to short, hard grass tufted with bulrushes, and beds of matted
unburnt heather, seamed with rabbit tracks.
After a time Fiona left the valley and began to climb the hillside,
rising steeply through heather and red grass and heather again, most
of it dying by now, but with patches still in full flower, worked by
the wild bees and making the moorland smell like a honey-pot. Then
more grass, and limestone ridges, and she stood on the crest of the
moor, which billowed away on her right, wave after wave, till it ran
down to the low ground and the sea, and rose up on her left till it
ended in the great mass of Heleval, standing up into the cloudless
sky. The ground before her was scarred with deep peat-hags, their gray
banks touched with the tiny scarlet blossoms of the trumpet-moss,
while from their crumbling sides projected bits of the whitened trunks
of trees long since dead, last vestiges of the forests that had
clothed the island ere ever the Gael first fought his way in. Walking
became impossible, and she jumped from gray bank to gray bank,
occasionally floundering across a little lake of soft peat, where the
wild cotton grass still bloomed, and the mountain hares had left
telltale tracks. Now and again a hare itself would scurry away before
her up one of the peat ditches, rising to the moor level as soon as he
thought he was out of gunshot and sitting up on his haunches to watch;
now and again an old grouse, his head and hackles red as a berry in
the sunlight, would rise, crow, and swing away over the brow of the
moor. And presently from behind Heleval came drifting a gray bird
with a long bill who on hovering wings wheeled three times in the air
above her and gave his full spring call, the most wonderful sound that
the hills ever hear; then he stooped close over her head and with
wings spread sickle-wise shot away for the sea. One may see a curlew
on the moor in October, but he will not give his spring call; and
Fiona felt of good courage, for she knew that the bird had called for
her, to tell her she was in the right way.
So she came to the foot of Heleval itself, and started to climb the
steep slope of short grass, slippery as polished board, which led up
to the rock pinnacle above; the hillside twinkled with the white scuts
of rabbits racing up before her to their holes, as round the side of
the mountain came their enemy, perhaps the last kite in the island,
glittering in the sun as only a glede can, till the beautiful cowardly
creature caught sight of Fiona and swept away across the valley. She
passed the great cairn where the hill foxes live, and began the last
climb to the pinnacle of rock that fronts the flat crest of the
mountain. And now something white on the rock, which she had noticed
from below without taking account of, began to become insistent. It
could not possibly be a patch of snow yet, she thought. Perhaps the
shepherd had hung a sheepskin there. But no sheepskin was ever so
white.
Then she came up near the pinnacle, and saw. Standing upright against
it was a girl, not much older than herself. Her long dark hair blew
back over the rock; her white body was half hidden in a trembling veil
of white light, which shimmered and played all about her, waving with
every breath of the wind. Her face was beautiful and cold, like a
frosty moonrise; her eyes shone like the drip of phosphorescent water
under the stars.
"You have come at last," said the girl. "Every day for many days I
have watched for you."
"Who are you, you beautiful girl?" asked Fiona.
"I am an Oread," said the girl. "I am the spirit of Heleval."
"I have heard," said Fiona, "that long ago people used to believe that
everything had a spirit of its own, mountains and rivers and trees. Is
it true then?"
"It _was_ true," said the girl. "The world was full of my sisters,
once. There were the Naiads in the streams, and the Hamadryads in the
woods, and we, the Oreads, in the mountains. Men were wiser and
simpler in those days. But now my sisters are nearly all gone. When a
tree has become so many cubic feet of timber, how can it shelter a
Dryad? When a stream is merely so many units of waterpower, how can a
Naiad dwell there? Only the barren mountains, if they contain neither
gold nor iron, have been left unappraised and unexploited; and a few
Oreads still linger here and there. Once in a while a man fancies that
he sees one of us; then he must climb and climb till the day he dies,
hoping to see her indeed; down in your world people call him mountain
mad."
"How is it then that I have seen you?" asked Fiona.
The Oread touched her bracelet.
"Partly because of this," she said. "But chiefly because you are a
child, and can still see. What is it you have come to ask me?"
"How to find the Urchin," said Fiona.
"You know of course where he is?" the girl asked; and Fiona said,
"Yes, he is in Fairyland; but I do not know the way to go."
"That is easily told," said the Oread. "The King of the Woodcock will
let you in, and any of his people can tell you where to find him. But
do you know the danger? If you do arrive, which is very doubtful, the
fairies will make you wish a wish; and if your wish be one that does
not find favor with them, they will keep you there forever, till you
lose your memory and yourself and become even as one of them."
"I will take the risk," said Fiona, "for I must go and try to bring
him back."
"Why do you want to bring him back?" asked the Oread. "He is much
better where he is. Will he thank you for bringing him back? Not a
bit. You will have the labor and the danger, and he will take it all
for granted. And then he will become a man, and what use is that? He
may be a financier, and cheat somebody; or a politician, and slander
somebody; or a learned man, and hinder wisdom. He is much better in
Fairyland. Why are you going?"
"I can't help it," said Fiona. "You can't leave people in the lurch,
you know."
"Of course you can," said the Oread. "Be sensible and go home; eat,
drink, and be merry."
"O, don't you understand?" said Fiona. "Don't you see that there are
some things you _can't_ do, whatever anybody says? It's not the reason
of the thing; it's only just because I am I, and he is lost. You are
so beautiful; haven't you any heart?"
"Neither heart nor soul," said the Oread. "So I ought to be perfectly
happy. You have a heart and a soul, and you are not. Which of us is
the better off?"
"I wouldn't change, anyhow," said Fiona.
The Oread laughed.
"Of course you wouldn't. It is I who would change if I could. But as I
have no soul, and cannot get one, and do not know what it would mean
to get one, it is no use worrying; it is best to be happy as I am. In
any case, I would not care to be like men and women. I would not mind
having a child's heart, like you. I had a heart once, but it is so
long ago that I have almost forgotten what it was like. How old do you
think I am?"
"You _look_ about seventeen," said Fiona.
"I am exactly as old as Heleval," said the girl. "And that is more
hundreds of thousands of years than you or I could ever count. I am
older than any of the fishes or birds or beasts; far older than men or
fairies. Look at that," and the Oread swept her arm over the glorious
prospect around her; the two great wings of the Isle of Mist stretched
far out into the sea, the Atlantic throbbing and sparkling under the
blue sky, and across the loch the jagged gray range of the Cuchullins,
peak upon peak. "Isn't it all beautiful? We came into being together.
Heleval was a giant in those days, a king among other kings; and there
was no sea there, and the Cuchullin Hills stood right up into the sky,
and twisted and bubbled while the Earth cooled and cracked, and my
sisters of the Fire came out of the cracks and taught us mountain
spirits the fire dance, and we danced it all night on the great peaks
till the stars reeled to watch us. And then the fiery summits cooled
and sank down, and my sisters of the Fire sank with them, and a mighty
river went foaming out down the valley yonder to a distant sea; and
every evening my sisters the Naiads came floating up in a circle with
garlands of green on their hair, and they taught us mountain spirits
the water dance, and we danced it all night on the moonlit water,
while the Ocean crept nearer and nearer to gaze. And then the sea
came up, and the river carved Heleval out as you see it, and shrank
away, and my sisters the Naiads shrank away with it; and the island
was covered with great forests, and my sisters the Hamadryads came out
of the tree-trunks and taught us mountain spirits the tree dance, and
we danced it all night in the forest glades, till one night men saw;
and men felled the forests to capture my sisters of the trees and
enslave them, but they vanished as the trees vanished. And to-day only
the hills are left, and we, the Oreads, a people few and fading away;
and we no longer dance, for we have lost all our sisters, and we no
longer have hearts."
The girl's face had filled with color as she spoke, and her eyes had
become soft, and her voice sounded like the music of waters far away.
Fiona looked at her in wonder.
"Indeed, indeed, you have your heart still," she said. "And you are
far more beautiful even than I thought you were. Come home with me,
and I will love you as you loved your sisters."
"It is not possible," said the Oread. "It is not free to me to leave
Heleval. I _am_ Heleval. And I shall be here till one day men find
iron or copper in my mountain, and come up with great engines to carve
it and tear its flanks and carry it away; and then I shall go too, as
my sisters have gone."
"Will you die?" asked Fiona.
"I do not know what death means," said the girl. "I shall just go
back, like a drop of water when it falls into the sea. But do you know
what you have done to-day? For a few moments, because you are brave
and loyal, you have given me back my heart, which was lost thousands
of years ago. It will all fade away again; but before it fades, will
you kiss me?"
So Fiona took her in her arms and kissed her, and then turned and went
down the hill. Once she faced round, and saw the Oread standing,
frosty and white, against the pinnacle of rock, holding out her arms;
and she started to go back to her. And even as she moved the whiteness
vanished, and there was nothing there but the rocky pinnacle, shining
in the slanting sunlight. Rather sadly she went home.