read a short paragraph in the _Echo_, headed "Painful Scene at
Lord's," to the effect that a lady lunching on Lord Richborough's drag
had fainted upon the receipt of a telegram, and would have fallen had
she not been caught by the messenger--"a strongly built youth," it
said, "who thus saved what might have been a serious accident." That
was all, but it gave me food for thought, and a suspicion which
Saturday confirmed in a sufficiently startling way. On that Saturday I
was at luncheon in the First Avenue Hotel in Holborn, when a man came
in--Tendring by name--whom I knew quite well. We exchanged greetings
and sat at our luncheon, talking desultorily. A clerk from his office
brought in a telegram for Tendring. He opened it and seemed
thunder-struck. "Good Lord!" I heard him say. "Good Lord, here's
trouble." I murmured sympathetically, and then he turned to me, quite
beyond the range where reticence avails. "Look here," he said, "this
is a shocking business. A man I know wires to me--from Bow Street.
He's been taken for forgery--that's the charge--and wants me to bail
him out." He got up as we finished and went to write his reply: I
turned immediately to the clerk. "Is the boy waiting?" I asked. He
was. I said "Excuse me, Tendring," and ran out of the restaurant to
the street door. There in the street, as I had suspected, stood my
inscrutable, steady-eyed, smiling Oracle of the night. I stood,
meeting his look as best I might. He showed no recognition of me
whatsoever. Then, as I stood there, Tendring came out. "Call me a
cab," he told the hall-porter; and to Quidnunc he said, "There's no
answer. I'm going at once." Quidnunc went away.
Now Tendring's friend, I learned by the evening paper, was one Captain
Maxfield of the Royal Engineers. He was committed for trial, bail
refused. I may add that he got seven years.
So much for Captain Maxfield! But much more for Lady Emily Rich, of
whose fate I have now to tell. My friend, Mrs. Shrewton Stanhope, was
very reserved, would tell me nothing, even when I roundly said that I
had fancied to see her in the park one evening. She had the hardihood
to meet my eyes with a blank denial, and very plainly there was
nothing to be learned from her. A visit, many visits to the London
parks at the hour between eleven and midnight taught me no more; but
being by now thoroughly interested in the affairs of Lady Emily Rich I
made it my business to get a glimpse of her. She was, it seemed, the
only unmarried daughter of the large Richborough family which had done
so well in that sex, and so badly in the other that there was not only
no son, but no male heir to the title. That, indeed, expired with Lady
Emily's father. I don't really know how many daughters there were, or
were not. Most of them married prosperously. One of them became a
Roman princess; one married a Mr. Walker, an American stock-jobber
(with a couple of millions of money); another was Baroness de
Grass--De Grass being a Jew; one became an Anglican nun to the
disgust (I was told) of her family. Lady Emily, whose engagement to
the wretched Maxfield was so dramatically terminated was, I think, the
youngest of them. I saw her one night toward the end of the season at
the Opera. Tendring, who was with me, pointed her out in a box. She
was dressed in black and looked very scared. She hardly moved once
throughout the evening, and when people spoke to her seemed not to
hear. She was certainly a very pretty girl. It may have been fancy, or
it may not, but I could have sworn to the corner of a pinky-brown
envelope sticking out of the bosom of her dress. I don't think I was
mistaken; I had a good look through the glasses. She touched it
shortly afterward and poked it down. At the end I saw her come out. A
tall girl, rather thin; very pretty certainly, but far from well. Her
eyes haunted me; they had what is called a hag-ridden look. And yet,
thought I, she had got her desire of Quidnunc. Ah, but had she? Hear
the end of the tale.
I say that I saw her come out, that's not quite true. I saw her come
down the staircase and stand with her party in the crowded lobby. She
stood in it, but not of it; for her vague and shadowed eyes sought
otherwhere than in those of the neat-haired young man who was
chattering in front of her. She scanned, rather, the throng of people
anxiously and guardedly at once, as if she was looking for somebody,
and must not be seen to look. As time wore on and the carriage
delayed, her nervousness increased. She seemed to get paler, she shut
her eyes once or twice as though to relieve the strain which watching
and waiting put upon them, and then, quite suddenly, I saw that she
had found what she expected; I saw that her empty eyes were now
filled, that they held something without which they had faded out. In
a word, I saw her look fixedly, fiercely and certainly at something
beyond the lobby. Following the direction she gave me, I looked also.
There, assuredly, in the portico, square, smiling and assured of his
will, I saw Quidnunc stand, and his light eyes upon hers. For quite a
space of time, such as that in which you might count fifteen
deliberately, those two looked at each other. Messages, I am sure,
sped to and fro between them. His seemed to say, "Come, I have
answered you. Now do you answer me." Hers cried her hurt, "Ah, but
what can I do?" His, with their cool mastery of time and occasion,
"You must do as I bid you. There's no other way." Hers pleaded, "Give
me time," and his told her sternly, "I am master of time--since I made
it." The throng of waiting people began to surge toward the door; out
there in the night link-boys yelled great names. I heard "Lord
Richborough's carriage," and saw Lady Emily clap her hand to her side.
I saw her reach the portico and stand there hastily covering her head
with a black scarf; I saw her sway alone there. I saw her party go
down the steps. The next moment Quidnunc flashed to her side. He said
nothing, he did not touch her. He simply looked at her--intently,
smiling, self-possessed, a master. Her face was averted; I could see
her tremble; she bowed her head. Another carriage was announced--the
Richborough coach then was gone. I saw Quidnunc now put his hand upon
her arm; she turned him her face, a faint and tender smile, very
beautiful and touching, met his own. He drew her with him out of the
press and into the burning dark. London never saw her again.
I don't attempt to explain what is to me inexplicable. Was my
policeman right when he called Quidnunc a herald angel? Is there any
substance behind the surmise that the ancient gods still sway the
souls and bodies of men? Was Quidnunc, that swift, remorseless,
smiling messenger, that god of the winged feet? The Argeiphont? Who
can answer these things? All I have to tell you by way of an epilogue
is this.
A curate of my acquaintance, a curate of St. Peter's, Eaton Square,
some few years after these events, took his holiday in Greece. He
went out as one of a tourist party, but having more time at his
disposal than was contemplated by the contracting agency, he stayed
on, chartered a dragoman and wandered far and wide. On his return he
told me that he had seen Lady Emily Rich at Pherae in Arcadia, and that
he had spoken to her. He had seen her sitting on the door-step of a
one-storied white house, spinning flax. She wore the costume of the
peasants, which he told me is very picturesque. Two or three
half-naked children tumbled about her. They were beautiful as angels,
he said, with curly golden hair and extremely light eyes. He noticed
that particularly, and recurred to it more than once. Now Lady Emily
was a dark girl, with eyes so deeply blue as to be almost black.
My friend spoke to her, he said. He had seen that she recognised him;
in fact, she bowed to him. He felt that he could not disregard her.
Mere commonplaces were exchanged. She told him that her husband was
away on a journey. She fancied that he had been in England; but she
explained half-laughingly that she knew very little about his affairs,
and was quite content to leave them to him. She had her children to
look after. My friend was surprised that she asked no question of
England or family matters; but, in the circumstances, he added, he
hardly liked to refer to them. She served him with bread and wine
before he left her. All he could say was that she appeared to be
perfectly happy.
It is odd, and perhaps it is more than odd, that there was a famous
temple of Hermes in Pherae in former times. Pindar, I believe,
acclaimed it in one of his Epinikean odes; but I have not been able to
verify the reference.
THE SECRET COMMONWEALTH
The interest of my matter has caused me to lose sight of myself and to
fail in my account of the flight of time over my head. That is,
however, comparable with the facts, which were that my attention was
then become solely objective. I had other things to think of than the
development of my own nature. I had other things to think of, indeed,
than those which surround us all, and press upon us until we become
permanently printed by their contact. Solitary as I had ever been in
mind, I now became literally so by choice. I became wholly absorbed in
that circumambient world of being which was graciously opening itself
to my perceptions--how I knew not. I was in a state of momentary
expectation of apparitions; as I went about my ostensible business I
had my ears quick and my eyes wide for signs and tokens that I was
surrounded by a seething and whirling invisible population of beings,
like ourselves, but glorified: yet unlike ourselves in this, that what
seemed entirely right, because natural, to them would have been in
ourselves horrible. The ruthlessness, for instance, of Quidnunc as he
pursued and obtained his desire, had Quidnunc been a human creature,
would have been revolting; the shamelessness of the fairy wife of
Ventris had she been capable of shame, how shameful had that been! But
I knew that these creatures were not human; I knew that they were not
under our law; and so I explained everything to myself. But to myself
only. It is not enough to explain a circumstance by negatives. If
Quidnunc and Mrs. Ventris were not under our law, neither are the sun,
moon and stars, neither are the apes and peacocks. But all these are
under some law, since law is the essence of the Kosmos. Under what law
then were Mrs. Ventris and Quidnunc? I burned to know that. For many
years of my life that knowledge was my steady desire; but I had no
means at hand of satisfying it. Reading? Well, I did read in a
fashion. I read, for example, Grimm's _Teutonic Mythology_, a stout
and exceedingly dull work in three volumes of a most unsatisfying
kind. I read other books of the same sort, chiefly German, dealing in
etymology, which I readily allow is a science of great value within
its proper sphere. But to Grimm and his colleagues etymology seemed to
me to be the contents of the casket rather than the key; for Grimm and
his colleagues started with a prejudice, that Gods, fairies and the
rest have never existed and don't exist. To them the interest of the
inquiry is not what is the nature, what are the laws of such beings,
but what is the nature of the primitive people who imagined the
existence of such beings? I very soon found out that Grimm and his
colleagues had nothing to tell me.
Then there was another class of book; that which dealt in demonology
and witchcraft, exemplified by a famous work called _Satan's Invisible
World Discovered_. Writers of these things may or may not have
believed in witches and fairies (which they classed together); but in
any event they believed them to be wicked, the abomination of
uncleanness. That made them false witnesses. My judgment revolted
against such ridiculous assumptions. Here was a case, you see, where
writers treated their subject too seriously, having the pulpit-cushion
ever below their hand, and the fear of the Ordinary before their
eyes.[3] Grimm and his friends, on the other hand, took it too
lightly, seeing in it matter for a treatise on language. I got no good
out of either school, and as time goes on I don't see a prospect of
any adequate handling of the theme. I should like to think that I
myself was to be the man to expound the fairy-kind candidly and
methodically--candidly, that is, without going to literature for my
data, and with the notion definitely out of mind that the fairy
God-mother ever existed. But I shall never be that man, for though I
am candid to the point of weakness, I am not to flatter myself that I
have method. But to whomsoever he may be that undertakes the subject I
can promise that the documents await their historian, and I will
furnish him with a title which will indicate at a glance both the
spirit of his attack and the nature of his treatise.
[Footnote 3: The Reverend Robert Kirk, author of the _Secret
Commonwealth_, was a clergyman and a believer in the beings of whom
his book professed to treat. He found them a place in his Pantheon;
but he knew very little about them. I shall have to speak of him again
I expect. He is himself an object-lesson, though his teachings are
naught.]
"The Natural History of the Praeternatural" it should be. I make him a
present of that--the only possible line for a sincere student. God go
with him whosoever he be, for he will have rare qualities and rare
need of them. He must be cheerful without assumption, respectful
without tragic airs, as respectable as he please in the eyes of his
own law, so that he finds respect in his heart also for the laws of
the realm in which he is privileged to trade. Let him not stand, as
the priest in the Orthodox Church, a looming hierophant. Let him avoid
any rhetorical pose, any hint of the grand manner. Above all, let him
not wear the smirk of the conjuror when he prepares with flourishes to
whip the handkerchief away from his guinea-pig. Here is one who
condescends to reader and subject alike. He would do harm all round:
moreover he would be a quack, for he is just as much of a quack who
makes little of much as he who makes much of little. No! Let his
attitude be that of the contadino in some vast church in Italy, who
walking into the cool dark gazes round-eyed at the twinkling candles
ahead of him in the vague, and that he may recover himself a little
leans against a pillar for a while, his hat against his heart and his
lips muttering an Ave. Reassured by his prayer, or the peace of the
great place, he presently espies the sacristan about to uncover a
picture not often shown. Here is an occasion! The tourists are
gathered, intent upon their Baedekers; he tiptoes up behind them and
kneels by another pillar--for the pillars of a church are his friendly
rocks, touching which he can face the unknown. The curtain is brailed
up, and the blue and crimson, the mournful eyes, the wimple, the
pointed chin, the long idle fingers are revealed upon their golden
background. While the girls flock about papa with his book, and mamma
wonders where we shall have luncheon, Annibale, assured familiar of
Heaven, beatified at no expense to himself, settles down to a quiet
talk with the Mother of God. His attitude is perfect, and so is hers.
The firmament is not to be shaken, but Annibale is not a _farceur_,
nor his Blessed One absurd. Mysteries are all about us. Some are for
the eschatologist and some for the shepherd; some for Patmos and some
for the _podere_. Let our historian remember, in fact, that the
natures into which he invites us to pry are those of the little
divinities of earth and he can't go very far wrong. Nor can we.
That, I am bold to confess, is my own attitude toward a lovely order
of creation. Perhaps I may go on to give him certain hints of
treatment. Nearly all of them, I think, tend to the same point--the
discarding of literature. Literature, being a man's art, is at its
best and also at its worst, in its dealing with women. No man,
perhaps, is capable of writing of women as they really are, though
every man thinks he is. A curious consequence to the history of
fairies has been that literature has recognised no males in that
community, and that of the females it has described it has selected
only those who are enamoured of men or disinclined to them. The fact,
of course, is that the fairy world is peopled very much as our own,
and that, with great respect to Shakespeare, an Ariel, a Puck, a
Titania, a Peas-blossom are abnormal. It is as rare to find a fairy
capable of discerning man as the converse is rare. I have known a
person intensely aware of the Spirits that reside, for instance, in
flowers, in the wind, in rivers and hills, none the less bereft of
any intercourse whatever with these interesting beings by the simple
fact that they themselves were perfectly unconscious of him. It is
greatly to be doubted whether Shakespeare ever saw a fairy, though his
age believed in fairies, but almost certain that Shelley must have
seen many, whose age did not believe. If our author is to have a
poetical guide at all it had better be Shelley.
Literature will tell him that fairies are benevolent or mischievous,
and tradition, borrowing from literature, will confirm it. The
proposition is ridiculous. It would be as wise to say that a gnat is
mischievous when it stings you, or a bee benevolent because he cannot
prevent you stealing his honey. There would be less talk of benevolent
bees if the gloves were off. That is the pathetic fallacy again; and
that is man all over. Will nothing, I wonder, convince him that he is
not the centre of the Universe? If Darwin, Newton, Galileo, Copernicus
and Sir Norman Lockyer have failed, is it my turn to try? Modesty
forbids. Besides, I am prejudiced. I think man, in the conduct of his
business, inferior to any vegetable. I am a tainted source. But such
talk is idle, and so is that which cries havoc upon fairy morality.
Heaven knows that it differs from our own; but Heaven also knows that
our own differs _inter nos_; and that to discuss the customs and
habits of the Japanese in British parlours is a vain thing. _The
Forsaken Merman_ is a beautiful poem, but not a safe guide to those
who would relate the ways of the spirits of the sea. But all this is
leading me too far from my present affair, which is to relate how the
knowledge of these things--of these beings and of their laws--came
upon me, and how their nature influenced mine. I have said enough, I
think, to establish the necessity of a good book upon the subject, and
I take leave to flatter myself that these pages of my own will be
indispensable Prolegomena to any such work, or to any research tending
to its compilation.
In the absence of books, in the situation in which I found myself of
reticence, I could do nothing but brood upon the things I had seen.
Insensibly my imagination (latent while I had been occupied with
observation) began to work. I did not write, but I pictured, and my
waking dreams became so vivid that I was in a fair way to treat them
as the only reality, and might have discarded the workaday world
altogether. Luckily for me, my disposition was tractable and
law-abiding. I fulfilled by habit the duties of the day; I toiled at
my dreary work, ate and slept, wrote to my parents, visited them,
having got those tasks as it were by heart, but I went through the
rites like an automaton; my mind was elsewhere, intensely dogging the
heels of that winged steed, my fancy, panting in its tracks, and
perfectly content so only that it did not come up too late to witness
the glories which its bold flights discovered. Thanks to it--all
thanks to it--I did not become a nympholept. I did not haunt
Parliament Hill o' nights. I did not spy upon the darkling motions of
Mrs. Ventris. Desire, appetite, sex were not involved at all in this
affair; nor yet was love. I was very prone to love, but I did not love
Mrs. Ventris. In whatsoever fairy being I had seen there had been
nothing which held physical attraction for me. There could be no
allure when there was no lure. So far as I could tell, not one of
these creatures--except Quidnunc, and possibly the Dryad, the sun-dyed
nymph I had seen long ago in K---- Park--had been aware of my
presence. I guessed, though I did not know (as I do now) that
manifestation is not always mutual, but that a man may see a fairy
without being seen, and conversely, a fairy may be fully aware of
mankind or of some man or men without any suspicion of theirs.
Moreover, though I saw them all extraordinarily beautiful, I had never
yet seen one supremely desirable. The instinct to possess, which is an
essential part of the love-passion of every man--had never stirred in
me in the presence of these creatures. If it had I should have
yielded to it, I doubt not, since there was no moral law to hold me
back. But it never had, so far, and I was safe from the wasting misery
of seeking that which could not, from its very nature (and mine) be
sought.
There was really nothing I could do, therefore, but wait, and that is
what I did. I waited intensely, very much as a terrier waits at the
hole of the bolting rabbit. By the merest accident I got a clew to a
very interesting case which added enormously to my knowledge. It was a
clear case of fairy child-theft, the clearest I ever met with. I shall
devote a chapter to it, having been at the pains to verify it in all
particulars. I did not succeed in meeting the hero, or victim of it,
because, though the events related took place in 1887, they were not
recorded until 1892, when the record came into my hands. By that time
the two persons concerned had left the country and were settled in
Florida. I did see Mr. Walsh, the Nonconformist Minister who
communicated the tale to his local society, but he was both a dull and
a cautious man, and had very little to tell me. He had himself seen
nothing, he only had Beckwith's word to go upon and did not feel
certain that the whole affair was not an hallucination on the young
man's part. That the child had disappeared was certain, that both
parents were equally distressed is certain. Not a shred of suspicion
attached to the unhappy Beckwith. But Mr. Walsh told me that he felt
the loss so keenly and blamed himself so severely, though
unreasonably, to my thinking, that it would have been impossible for
him to remain in England. He said that the full statement communicated
to the Field Club was considered by the young man in the light of a
confession of his share in the tragedy. It would, he said, have been
exorbitant to expect more of him. And I quite agree with him; and now
had better give the story as I found it.
BECKWITH'S CASE
The facts were as follows. Mr. Stephen Mortimer Beckwith was a young
man living at Wishford in the Amesbury district of Wiltshire. He was a
clerk in the Wilts and Dorset Bank at Salisbury, was married and had
one child. His age at the time of the experience here related was
twenty-eight. His health was excellent.
On the 30th November, 1887, at about ten o'clock at night, he was
returning home from Amesbury where he had been spending the evening at
a friend's house. The weather was mild, with a rain-bearing wind
blowing in squalls from the south-west. It was three-quarter moon that
night, and although the sky was frequently overcast it was at no time
dark. Mr. Beckwith, who was riding a bicycle and accompanied by his
fox-terrier Strap, states that he had no difficulty in seeing and
avoiding the stones cast down at intervals by the road-menders; that
flocks of sheep in the hollows were very visible, and that, passing
Wilsford House, he saw a barn owl quite plainly and remarked its
heavy, uneven flight.
A mile beyond Wilsford House, Strap, the dog, broke through the
quick-set hedge upon his right-hand side and ran yelping up the down,
which rises sharply just there. Mr. Beckwith, who imagined that he was
after a hare, whistled him in, presently calling him sharply, "Strap,
Strap, come out of it." The dog took no notice, but ran directly to a
clump of gorse and bramble half-way up the down, and stood there in
the attitude of a pointer, with uplifted paw, watching the gorse
intently, and whining. Mr. Beckwith was by this time dismounted,
observing the dog. He watched him for some minutes from the road. The
moon was bright, the sky at the moment free from cloud.
He himself could see nothing in the gorse, though the dog was
undoubtedly in a high state of excitement. It made frequent rushes
forward, but stopped short of the object that it saw and trembled. It
did not bark outright but rather whimpered--"a curious, shuddering,
crying noise," says Mr. Beckwith. Interested by the animal's
persistent and singular behaviour, he now sought a gap in the hedge,
went through on to the down, and approached the clumped bushes. Strap
was so much occupied that he barely noticed his master's coming; it
seemed as if he dared not take his eyes for one second from what he
saw in there.