fact I barely remember her, though I spoke with her one day. She was
somewhat heavy and grave, I think, downcast and yet watchful. She did
her business efficiently, without enthusiasm, and did not enter into
general conversation with her customers. Her husband did that part of
the business. Marks was a merry Jew. I bought oranges of her once for
the sake of hearing her speak, and while she was serving me the child
came into the shop and stood by her. She leaned against her rather
than stood, took the woman's disengaged arm and put it round her neck.
Looks passed between them; the mother's sharply down, the child's
searchingly up. On either side there was pain, as if each tried to
read the other.
I was very shy with strangers. The more I wanted to get on terms with
them the less I was able to do it. I asked the child whether she liked
oranges.
I asked the child, but the mother answered me, measuring her words.
"She likes nothing of ours. It's we that like and she that takes."
That was her reply.
"I am sure that she likes you at any rate," I said. Her hold on the
child tightened, as if to prevent an escape.
"She should, since I bore her. But she has much to forgive me."
Such a word left me dumb. I was not then able to meet women on such
terms. Nor did I then understand her as I do now.
Here is another case. There was a slatternly young woman whom I
caught, or who caught me, unawares; who suddenly threw open the
windows and showed me things I had never dreamed.
Opposite the chambers in R---- Buildings where I worked, or was
intended to work, and across a wall, there was a row of tenements
called, if I remember, Gaylord's Rents. Part mews, part warehouses,
and all disreputable, the upper story of it, as it showed itself to me
over the wall, held some of the frowsiest of London's horde. Exactly
before my eyes was one of the lowest of these hovels, the upper part
of a stable, I imagine, since it had, instead of a window, a door, of
which half was always shut and half always open, so that light might
get in or the tenants lean out to take the air.
Here, and so leaning her bare elbows, I saw on most days of the week a
slim young woman airing herself--a pale-faced, curling-papered,
half-bodiced, unwashed drab of a girl, who would have had shame
written across her for any one to read if she had not seemed of all
women I have ever seen the least shamefaced. Her brows were as
unwritten as a child's, her smile as pure as a seraph's, and her eyes
blue, unfaltering and candid. She laughed a greeting, exchanged
gossip, did her sewing, watched events, as the case might be, was not
conscious of her servitude or anxious to market it. Sometimes she
shared her outlook with an old woman--a horrible, greasy go-between,
with straggling grey hair and a gin-inflamed face. She chatted with
this beldame happily, she cupped her vile old dewlap, or stroked her
dishonourable head; sometimes a man in shirt sleeves was with her,
treated her familiarly, with rude embraces, with kisses, nudges and
leers. She accepted all with good-humour and, really, complete good
breeding. She invited nothing, provoked nothing, but resented nothing.
It seemed to me as if all these things were indeed nothing to her;
that she hardly knew that they were done; as if her soul could render
them at their proper worth, transmute them, sherd them off, discard
them. It was, then, her surface which took them; what her soul
received was a distillation, an essence.
Then one night I had all made plain. She entranced me on a summer
night of stillness, under a full yellow moon. I was working late, till
past ten, past eleven o'clock, and looking out of my open window
suddenly was aware of her at hers. The shutter was down, both wings of
it, and she stood hovering, seen at full length, above the street.
She! Could this be she? It was so indeed--but she was transfigured,
illuminated from within; she rayed forth light. The moon shone full
upon her, and revealed her pure form from head to foot swathed in
filmy blue--a pale green-blue, the colour of ocean water seen from
below. Translucent webbery, whatever it was, it showed her beneath it
as bare as Venus was when she fared forth unblemished from the sea.
Her pale yellow hair was coiled above her head; her face looked mild
and radiant with a health few Londoners know. Her head was bent in a
considering way; she stood as one who is about to plunge into deep
water, and stands hesitating at the shock. Once or twice she turned
her face up, to bathe it in the light. I saw that in it which in human
faces I had never seen--communion with things hidden from men, secret
knowledge shared with secret beings, assurance of power above our
hopes.
Breathless I watched her, the drab of my daily observation, radiant
now; then as I watched she stretched out her arms and bent them
together like a shield so that her burning face was hidden from me,
and without falter or fury launched herself into the air, and dropt
slowly down out of my sight.
Exactly so she did it. As we may see a pigeon or chough high on the
verge of a sea-cliff float out into the blue leagues of the air, and
drift motionless and light--or descend to the sea less by gravity than
at will--so did she. There was nothing premeditated, there was nothing
determined on: mood was immediately translated into ability--she was
at will lighter or heavier than the air. It was so done that here was
no shock at all--she in herself foreshadowed the power she had.
Rather, it would have been strange to me if, irradiated, transplendent
as she was, she had not considered her freedom and on the instant
indulged it. I accepted her upon her face value without question--I
did not run out to spy upon her. _Ecce unus fortior me!_
In this case, being still new to the life into which I was gradually
being drawn, it did not for one moment occur to me to start an
adventure of my own. I might have accosted the woman, who was, as the
saying goes, anybody's familiar; or I might have spied for another
excursion of her spirit, and, with all preparation made, have followed
her. But I did neither of these things at the time. I saw her next
day leaning bare-elbowed on the ledge of her half-door, her hair in
curl-papers, her face the pale unwholesome pinched oval of most London
women of her class. Her bodice was pinned across her chest; she was
coarse-aproned, new from the wash-tub or the grate. Not a sign upon
her but told of her frowsy round. The stale air of foul lodgment was
upon her. I found out indeed this much about her ostensible state,
that she was the wife of a cab-driver whose name was Ventris. He was
an ill-conditioned, sottish fellow who treated her badly, but had
given her a child. But he was chiefly on night-work at Euston, and the
man whom I had seen familiar with her in the daytime was not he. Her
reputation among her neighbours was not good. She was, in fact, no
better than she should be--or, as I prefer to put it, no better than
she could be.
Yet I knew her, withal, as of the fairy-kind, bound to this
earth-bondage by some law of the Universe not yet explored; not
pitiable because not self-pitying, and (what is more important) not
reprehensible because impossible to be bound, as we are, soul to body.
I know that now, but did not know it then; and yet--extraordinary
thing--I was never shocked by the contrast between her two states of
being. This is to me a clear and certain evidence of their
reality--just as it is evidence to me that when, at ten years old, I
seemed to see the boy in the wood, I really did see him. An
hallucination or a dream upsets your moral balance. The things
impressed upon you are abnormal; and the abnormal disturbs you. Now
these apparitions did not seem abnormal. I saw nothing wonderful in
Mrs. Ventris's act. I was impressed by it, I was excited by it, as I
still am by a convulsion of nature--a thunder-storm in the Alps, for
instance, a water-spout at sea. Such things hold beauty and terror;
they entrance, they appal; but they never shock. They happen, and they
are right. I have not seen what people call a ghost, and I have often
been afraid lest I should see one. But I know very well that if ever I
did I should have no fear. I know very well that a natural fact
impresses its conformity with law upon you first and last. It becomes,
on the moment of its appearance, a part of the landscape. If it does
not, it is an hallucination, or a freak of the imagination, and will
shock you. I have much more extraordinary experiences than this to
relate, but there will be nothing shocking in these pages--at least
nothing which gave me the least sensation of shock. One of them--a
thing extraordinary to all--must occupy a chapter by itself. I cannot
precisely fit a date to it, though I shall try. And as it forms a
whole, having a beginning, a middle and an end, I shall want to
depart from my autobiographical plan and put it in as a whole. The
reader will please to recollect that it did not work itself out in my
consciousness by a flash. The first stages of it came so, in flashes
of revelation; but the conclusion was of some years later, when I was
older and more established in the world.
* * * * *
But before I embark upon it I should like to make a large jump forward
and finish with the young woman of Gaylord's Rents. It was by accident
that I happened upon her at her mysteries, at a later day when I was
living in London, in Camden Town.
By that time I had developed from a lad of inarticulate mind and
unexpressed desires into a sentient and self-conscious being. I was
more or less of a man, not only adventurous but bold in the pursuit of
adventure. I lived for some two or three years in that sorry quarter
of London in complete solitude--"in poverty, total idleness and the
pride of literature," like Doctor Johnson, for though I wrote little I
read much, and though I wrote little I was most conscious that I was
about to write much. It was a period of brooding, of mewing my youth,
and whatever facility of imagination and expression I have since
attained I owe very much to my hermitage in Albert Street.
If I walked in those days it was by night. London at night is a very
different place from the town of business and pleasure of ordinary
acquaintance. During the day I fulfilled my allotted hours at the
desk; but immediately they were over I returned to my lodgings, got
out my books, and sat enthralled until somewhere near midnight. But
then, instead of going to bed, I was called by the night, and forth I
sallied all agog. I walked the city, the embankment, skirted the
parks, unless I were so fortunate as to slip in before gate-shutting.
Often I was able to remain in Kensington Gardens till the opening
hour. Highgate and its woods, Parliament Hill with its splendid
panorama of twinkling beacons and its noble tent of stars, were great
fields for me. Hampstead Heath, Wimbledon, even Richmond and Bushey
have known me at their most secret hour. Such experiences as I have
had of the preternatural will find their place in this book, but not
their chronological place, for the simple reason that, as I kept no
diary, I cannot remember in what order of time they befell me. But it
was on the southern slope of Parliament Hill that I came again upon
the fairy-woman of Gaylord's Rents.
I was there at midnight, a mild radiant night of late April. There
were sheep at graze there, for though it was darkish under the
three-quarter moon, I was used to the dark, and could see them, a
woolly mass, quietly feeding close together. I saw no shepherd
anywhere; but I remember that his dog sat on his haunches apart,
watching them. He was prick-eared, bright-eyed; he grinned and panted
intensely. I didn't then know why he was so excited, but very soon I
did.
I became aware, gradually, that a woman stood among the sheep. She had
not been there when I first saw them, I am sure; nor did I see her
approach them or enter their school. Yet there she was in the midst of
them, seen now by me as she had evidently been seen for some time by
the dog, seen, I suppose, by the sheep--at any rate she stood in the
midst of them, as I say, with her hand actually upon the shoulder of
one of them--but not feared or doubted by any soul of us. The dog was
vividly interested, but did not budge; the sheep went on feeding; I
stood bolt upright, watching.
I knew her the moment I saw her. She was the exquisitely formed, slim
and glowing creature I had seen before, when she launched herself into
the night as a God of Homer--Hermes or Thetis--launched out from
Olympus' top into the sea--"[Greek: ex aitheros empese ponto]," and
words fail me to describe the perfection of her being, a radiant
simulacrum of our own, the inconscient self-sufficiency, the buoyancy
and freedom which she showed me. You may sometimes see boys at their
maddest tip of expectation stand waiting as she now stood, quivering
on the extreme edge of adventure; yet even in their case there is a
consciousness of well being, a kind of rolling of anticipation upon
the palate, a getting of the flavours beforehand. That involves a
certain dissipation of activity; but here all was concentrated. The
whole nature of the creature was strung to one issue only, to that
point when she could fling headlong into activity--an activity in
which every fibre and faculty would be used. A comparison of the
fairy-kind with human beings is never successful, because into our
images of human beings we always import self-consciousness. They know
what they are doing. Fairies do not. But wait a moment; there is a
reason. Human creatures, I think, know what they are doing only too
well, because performance never agrees with desire. They know what
they are doing because it is never exactly what they meant to do, or
what they wanted to do. Now, with fairies, desire to do and
performance are instinctive and simultaneous. If they think, they
think in action. In this they are far more like animals than human
creatures, although the form in which they appear to us, their shape
and colouring are like ours, enhanced and refined. Here now stood this
creature in the semblance of a woman glorified, quivering; and so,
perched high on his haunches, sat the shepherd's dog, and no one could
look at the two and not see their kinship. _Arriere-pensee_ they had
none--and all's said in that. They were shameless, and we are full of
shame. There's the difference; and it is a gulf.
After a while of this quivering suspense she gave a low call, a long
mellow and tremulous cry which, gentle as it was, startled by its
suddenness, as the unexpected call of a water-fowl out of the reeds of
a pond makes the heart jump toward the throat. It was like some bird's
call, but I know of no bird's with which to get a close comparison. It
had the soft quality, soft yet piercing, of a redshank's, but it
shuddered like an owl's. And she held it on as an owl does. But it was
very musical, soft and open-throated, and carried far. It was answered
from a distance, first by a single voice; but then another took it up,
and another; and then another. Slowly so the soft night was filled
with musical cries which quavered about me as fitfully as fire-flies
gleam and glance in all quarters of a garden of olive-trees. It was
enchantment to the ear, a ravishing sound; but it was my eyes which
claimed me now, for soon I saw them coming from all quarters. Or
rather, I saw them there, for I can't say definitely that I saw any
one of them on the way. It is truer to say that I looked and they were
there. Where had been one were now two. Now two were five; now five
were a company; now the company was a host. I have no idea how many
there were of them at any time; but when they joined hands and set to
whirling in a ring they seemed to me to stretch round Parliament Hill
in an endless chain.
How can I be particular about them? They were of both sexes--that was
put beyond doubt; they were garbed as the first of them in something
translucent and grey. It had been quite easy in the lamplight to see
the bare form of the woman whom I first saw in Gaylord's Rents. It was
plain to me that her companions were in the same kind of dress. I
don't think they had girdles; I think their arms and legs were bare. I
should describe the garment as a sleeveless smock to the knees, or
perhaps, more justly, as a sack of silky gauze with a hole for the
head and two for the arms. That was the effect of it. It hung straight
and took the folds natural to it. It was so light that it clung
closely to the body where it met the air. What it was made of I have
no notion; but it was transparent or nearly so. I am pretty sure that
its own colour was grey.
They greeted each other; they flitted about from group to group
greeting; and they greeted by touching, sometimes with their hands,
sometimes with their cheeks. They neither kissed nor spoke. I never
saw them kiss even when they loved--which they rarely did. I saw one
greeting between two females. They ran together and stopped short
within touching distance. They looked brightly and intently at each
other, and leaning forward approached their cheeks till they
touched.[2] They touched by the right, they touched by the left. Then
they took hands and drew together. By a charming movement of
confidence one nestled to the side of the other and resting her head
looked up and laughed. The taller embraced her with her arm and held
her for a moment. The swiftness of the act and its grace were
beautiful to see. Then hand in hand they ran to others who were a
little further off. The elder and taller had a wild dark face with
stern lips, like a man's; the younger was a beautiful little creature
with quick, squirrel's motions. I remember her hair, which looked
white in that light, but was no doubt lint colour. It was extremely
long, and so fine that it clung to her shoulders and back like a web
of thin silk.
[Footnote 2: I argue from this peculiar manner of greeting, which I
have observed several times, that these beings converse by contact, as
dogs, cats, mice, and other creatures certainly do. I don't say that
they have no other means of converse; but I am sure I am exact in
saying that they have no articulate speech.]
They began to play very soon with a zest for mere irresponsible
movement which I have never seen in my own kind. I have seen young
foxes playing, and it was something like that, only incomparably more
graceful. Greyhounds give a better comparison where the rippling of
the body is more expressive of their speed than the flying of their
feet. These creatures must have touched the earth, but their bodies
also ran. And just as young dogs play for the sake of activity,
without method or purpose, so did these; and just as with young
animals the sexes mingle without any hint of sexuality, so did these.
If there was love-making I saw nothing of it there. They met on exact
equality so far as I could judge, the male not desirous, the female
not conscious of being desired.
But it was a mad business under the cloudy moon. It had a dream-like
element of riot and wild triumph. I suppose I must have been there for
two or three hours, during all which time their swift play was never
altogether stopped. There were interludes to be seen, when some three
or four grew suddenly tired and fell out. They threw themselves down
on the sward and lay panting, beaming, watching the others, or they
disappeared into the dark and were lost in the thickets which dot the
ground. Then finally I saw the great whirling ring of them form--under
what common impulse to frenzy I cannot divine. There was no signal,
no preparation, but as if fired in unison they joined hands, and
spreading out to a circumference so wide that I could distinguish
nothing but a ring of light, they whirled faster and faster till the
speed of them sang in my ears like harps, and whirling so, melted
away.
Later on and in wilder surroundings than this I saw, and shall relate
in its place, a dance of Oreads. It differed in detail from this one,
but not, I think, in any essential. This was my first experience of
the kind.
QUIDNUNC
I was so fired by that extraordinary adventure, that I think I could
have overcome my constitutional timidity and made myself acquainted
with the only actor in it who was accessible if I had not become
involved in another matter of the sort. But I don't know that I should
have helped myself thereby. To the night the things of the night
pertain. If I could have had speech with Mrs. Ventris in that season
of her radiancy there would have been no harm; but by day she was
another creature. Thereby contact was impossible because it would have
been horrible. It is true that a certain candour of conduct
distinguished her from the frowsy drabs with whom she must have
jostled in public-house bars or rubbed elbows at lodging-house doors,
a sort of unconsciousness of evil, which I take to have been due to an
entire absence of a moral sense. It is probable that she was not a
miserable sinner because she did not know what was miserable sin. Heat
and cold she knew, hunger and thirst, rage and kindness. She could not
be unwomanly because she was not woman, nor good because she could
not be bad. But I could have been very bad; and to me she was,
luckily, horrible. I could not divorce her two apparent natures, still
less my own. We are bound--all of us--by our natures, bound by them
and bounded. I could not have touched the pitch she lived with, the
pitch of which she was, without defilement. Let me hope that I
realised that much. I shall not say how my feet burned to enter that
slum of squalor where hovered this bird of the night, unless I add, as
I can do with truth, that I did not slake them there. I saw her on and
off afterward for a year, perhaps; but tenancies are short in London.
There was a flitting during one autumn when I was away on vacation,
and I came back to see new faces in the half-doorway and other elbows
on the familiar ledge.
But as I have said above, a new affair engrossed me shortly after my
night pageant on Parliament Hill. This was concerned with a famous
personage whom all knowing London (though I for one had not known it)
called Quidnunc.
But before I present to the curious reader the facts of a case which
caused so much commotion in distinguished bosoms of the late
"eighties," I think I should say that, while I have a strong
conviction as to the identity of the person himself, I shall not
express it. I accept the doctrine that there are some names not to be
uttered. Similarly I shall neither defend nor extenuate; if I throw it
out at all it will be as a hint to the judicious, or a clew, if you
like, to those who are groping a way in or out of the labyrinth of
Being. To me two things are especially absurd: one is that the
trousered, or skirted, forms we eat with, walk with, or pass unheeded,
are all the population of our world; the other, that these creatures,
ostensibly men or women with fancies, hopes, fears, appetites like our
own, are necessarily of the same nature as ourselves. If beings from
another sphere should, by intention or chance, meet and mingle with
us, I don't see how we could apprehend them at all except in our own
mode, or unless they were, so to speak, translated into our idiom. But
enough of that. The year in which I first met Quidnunc, so far as my
memory serves me, was 1886.
* * * * *