THE WILLOW WEAVER
AND SEVEN OTHER TALES
A LIST OF THE STORIES OF
MICHAEL WOOD
THE HOUSE OF PEACE
THE DOUBLE ROAD (_shortly_)
_Published by_ LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.
THE SAINT AND THE OUTLAW
1. THE SAINT AND THE OUTLAW
2. THE PRINCE AND THE WATER GATES
3. LOX
4. THE DREAM GARDEN
5. THE WAY OF THE HERB GATHERER
6. THE LAND OF MARVELLOUS NIGHT
7. THE FOOL AND THE FOLK OF PEACE
8. THE SINNER’S REQUIEM
9. THE PREACHER
10. THE TELLER OF DROLLS
11. THE TUMULTUOUS SHADOWS
12. THE GUARDIAN OF THE CITY
13. THE HOUSE OF HATE
THE KING PREDESTINATE
THE KING PREDESTINATE
THE ALCHEMIST
THE WORSHIPPER
THE BUILDER
_Published by_ THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING
SOCIETY.
THE RIDDLE _Published by_ REBMAN LTD.
THE FIRE OF THE ROSE
THE GARMENT OF GOD
THE SECRET OF THE CHILD
_Published by_ THE ST. MÂHEL WORKSHOP.
THE
WILLOW WEAVER
AND SEVEN OTHER TALES
BY
MICHAEL WOOD
[Illustration: colophon]
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & CO.
MCMXVI
PREFACE
“Dost thou feel the soil of thy soul stirred by tender thoughts?
Disturb it not with speech but let it work in quietness and
secrecy.”
These few stories of Michael Wood are here reprinted with the consent
but not at the suggestion of the author. To those who understand, the
appeal is diverse but unmistakable; the delicate description of our
Mother Earth, the sense of the invisible, the value of the things that
count, the scorn of a good deal that is conventional, ordinary, and
admitted, are here writ plain for those, who, in the French phrase,
have the seeing ear and the hearing eye. At a time when much that is
ingrained in us is thrown into a crucible of fire, and elemental doubts
and certainties have taken its place, such attempts to pierce through
veils may be welcomed, and with a little book a little appeal is made.
If justification were further needed it is twofold. First, the stories
do not by any means stand alone; and half a dozen names might be quoted
of writers who, to-day, in the short story, persistently turn aside
to listen to the obstinate questionings which will not, for all our
din, be stilled; but secondly, the Editor, to whom the privilege of
collecting these stories has been entrusted, has had for some time the
rare experience of trying them with the living voice on audiences large
and small. The response has never in any case been doubtful, though
it might be difficult or impertinent to analyse such a lifting of
conventional veils. Partly in the hope of passing on an experience like
this, and partly with the wish that Michael Wood’s other published work
might be more widely known, the Editor commends to other story-tellers
these diamonds from a mystic mine.
Thanks are given to the Manager of the _Theosophical Review_ for
permission to reprint the stories in this volume.
_September 1915._
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE WILLOW WEAVER 1
THE BENDING OF THE TWIG 25
THE MYSTERY OF THE SON OF MAN 49
THE EXCELLENT VERSATILITY OF THE MINOR
POET 64
“THE TREE OF BEAUTY” 85
FORTY-EIGHT HOURS 102
THE BREATH UPON THE SLAIN 121
THE GLAMOUR-LAND 129
THE WILLOW WEAVER
“I shall give you twenty-four hours to vanish in, Campion,” said the
elder and superior to the younger and inferior. “I can’t do more for
you than that. Let me tell you very few men in my position would do as
much.”
He held his finger up impressively.
“It is for the sake of your father that I do this. You ought to be
grateful. Twenty-four hours in which to vanish! Of course you must
carefully choose the method of vanishing. Under the circumstances I
know the way I should take were I in your shoes, but I hesitate to
advise you to take it.”
The last sentence was in the man’s mind, not on his tongue; it produced
the most effect because the whole gist of his speech was contained
in it, and it was the point about which he was (half unconsciously)
anxious. A respectable citizen can hardly suggest to a lad fifteen
years his junior that he shall take his own life; it would be
difficult, though rather easier, to say to a man of equal age, “Under
your circumstances I should blow my brains out”――and Campion was so
young. It might become known, too, that such advice had been given;
then people would question the adviser’s motives, and what would become
of that valuable business asset his respectability; he had foolishly
risked it a little already, but that was not known to people whose
opinion mattered. It would take wing with the soul of the young man,
and his income might even suffer in consequence. Besides he would not
like to remember he had advised suicide as a course of action; of
course it did not matter if he only thought how conveniently it might
smooth the state of affairs.
There were reasons why he did not want this young man, the only child
of a very poor and respectable widow, to stand in the dock and have
all the circumstances which led to his standing there sifted publicly
by a painstaking gentleman intent on obtaining for his client if not
acquittal at any rate as light a sentence as possible. The young
sinner’s immediate superior was not his own master; his employer
was uncompromising and old fashioned in his views. He was a man who
practised no form of dishonesty or immorality that might not be
decently practised by people of honest and moral repute. He would be
hard on Ralph Campion on general business principles, but he would be
much harder on one whose years and standing should be a guarantee for
his good behaviour and influence over others if the conduct of such
an one did not stand the test of public scrutiny. And the personal
element would come in, for this man was not only the employer of
Ralph Campion’s superior but also his father-in-law, and there was
his wife’s attitude to be remembered besides that of her father; all
this might affect his reputation, his business prospects, and his
domestic life very seriously. He felt kindly to Ralph Campion. There
was the whole point. The affair began with the kindly impulse of a
rather coarse man of the world who had “married well” from his point
of view and prospered socially and financially by so doing; prosperous
himself, he saw no prosperity of any type other than that which he
pursued and had pursued since he was Campion’s age. Therefore he was
kindly according to his own lights. His moral code had nothing to do
with his inner convictions; he had no convictions as to the nature of
righteousness. His morality was to “get on,” and it was a tremendous
bulwark against obvious criminality. His twelve-year-old son was
“backward and delicate,” to quote the scholastic advertisements; he
sent him to Ralph Campion’s father for tuition because the little
vicarage stood in a bracing air. He liked and vaguely honoured his
boy’s tutor――irrationally indeed, for he had certainly not “got on”
from the standpoint of the financier. When the man died he obtained for
his son, young Campion, that position of trust which he had betrayed.
The boy was then nineteen; it was three years ago. The patron did
more; still moved by kindliness he took a great deal of notice of
his young subordinate. He liked the lad; he confided in him to some
extent, increasingly so when he found him to be rather silent; he liked
his refinement, at which he laughed――liking it despite his laughter,
as coarse people sometimes do like a quality they do not possess. He
gave him worldly precepts whereby he might in the future prosper in
business. He chaffed him gaily concerning the young ladies of the
neighbourhood, pointing out matrimonial prizes which he might have
some chance of winning. He showed him a side of life he would probably
have passed by unheeded; in so doing (here was the crux) he showed
him a side of his own life that was not generally known. His protégé
became in some respects his tool, in some his victim. He found out that
betrayal of trust before others did so because he knew which man to
suspect, because he knew the circumstances that might cause him to be
specially tempted. The story was rather vulgar――sordid――common. From
coarse kindliness to selfishness, from selfishness by way of fear to
that which was in thought――murder. But yet he liked the boy, and he was
sorry for him.
“You mustn’t suppose I think you a blackguard, Ralph,” he said. “In my
private capacity, not as your business head, you know, we’re as good
friends as ever, my boy. _I_ know how things go, bless your life! I
know how one gets let in for what one never meant to do at the start.
That’s one pull a man has who isn’t always all that I suppose he ought
to be. He knows from his own experience that whatever he may do he has
really heaps of good points; and he applies that reasoning to other
people when they don’t go quite straight, you know. But if you’re here
when Mr. Warrener comes back I shall have you arrested. I must. I don’t
know this now, you understand.”
The young man drew lines in the ashes of the hearth with a small brass
poker. He did not look in the least the sort of person from whom one
would expect a criminal to be made; he had what some people would call
a “nice face”――comely to look upon, refined, rather sensitive, grave;
by no means weak nor yet unintellectual. He looked as though he could
think; he looked as though he could love; and he looked as though he
could be ashamed of himself and admit the fact both to himself and to
other people. These are good signs. He was as white as a sheet, and for
the moment he seemed to be stunned rather than repentant.
“If,” he said slowly, speaking quietly and unemotionally, “if I do not
vanish, but stay here and pay the penalty――I’ve behaved very badly, and
I’m willing to pay it――will you let bygones be bygones――afterwards?”
“Bless my soul, Ralph Campion, you must be a raving ass! It is the
‘penalty’ as you call it, that counts. It is not the thing in itself so
much. I don’t for a moment suppose you to be much worse than most other
young fellows. I should think you’re better than most.”
“I hoped when you’d paid a debt you were given a receipt, and there
was an end of the matter.”
“My good fellow! You’re old enough and you’ve seen enough to know that
things aren’t done that way in this world. I say I don’t think you in
the least a worse, or perhaps a more dishonest man than I am myself;
not the least! But――excuse my bluntness――it’s the prison that sticks,
it’s not the sin.”
The young man gave a little start and shiver; the other’s bluntness
had suddenly brought the whole position, and its future developments,
home to him. It was the difference between theoretic and practical
knowledge; his white face grew green-white, his hands became limp, and
he laid the poker down. These two people sat in the superior’s country
house on the outskirts of a big smoky town. Young Campion was asked
there as a guest in order that his host might tell him he knew him to
be a criminal. The boy――for he was little more than a boy――went there
suffering qualms of conscience bred of gratitude. He knew his host
had not quite the influence on his life that――let us say――Campion’s
father would have wished to have, but he did not think of excusing his
own behaviour on that account. He knew he had been, and was, doing
wrong; it worried him, and he was ashamed of accepting the kindness
which led his superior to ask him to stay with him from Saturday till
Sunday evening. “My wife’s away, staying with her mother,” he said to
Ralph Campion. “I’m alone. You’re looking out of sorts. You’d better
come down to me this afternoon; besides, I’ve something to say to you
quietly.”
So on Sunday afternoon when Campion was feeling particularly ashamed
of himself and very unhappy and perplexed, he said, quietly, what he
had to say, and thereby gave his unsuspecting guest a nervous shock
which some people may think to be accountable for what followed. That
is a matter of opinion, and “thought is free.” As aforesaid, there
were reasons, serious reasons more important than the life, death,
happiness, or pain of young Ralph Campion, why his ill-doing should not
be found out till he was dead and incapable of speech.
It was a damp November day; the land was vivid brown and green――green
fields, wet brown earth, brown stubble, brown rushes by a little
bluish-brown canal, brown-green boughs with bright brown leaves
clinging to them here and there. There had been much rain, the earth
was sodden and reeking; there were black, purplish-grey clouds, shot
with dull green in the East, and a pale silver-yellow sky in the West.
It was early afternoon; the light was clear save where the smoke
wreaths of the town brooded in the distance; there was no sunshine.
Ralph Campion looked at the brown-green earth; he did not see it. For
the last few minutes his mind swung between two pictures; one of a
little wind-swept churchyard where was the grave of an upright man
whose name he bore; the other of a wee grey stone house very bleak
and trim, standing on a shelterless hillside; therein lived his thin
little, meek little old mother, dressed in a scanty black gown and a
widow’s cap, reading her Bible at night and praying to God for her only
son; she did not pray for her husband because he was dead, and she
disliked Popery. At last Ralph Campion’s eyes filled with tears, and he
felt it was time to go. Therefore he rose.
“Very well,” he said, “I don’t feel very grateful; but I should be
so if you could hush it up when I have vanished, so that my――mother
mightn’t know.”
“I shall hush it up if I can.” And no man knew better than he how
sincerely he spoke the truth, and how earnestly he regretted it
would be impossible to do so. There was no need to tell Ralph it was
impossible. “Even if the young idiot were dead it wouldn’t be safe not
to come out,” he thought. “But it would be much safer. If Carry and
her father got to know what had led up to his playing the fool like
this, and how far I’m responsible (though, of course, I’m not really
responsible) there’d be the devil to pay.”
Carry was his wife, who was staying with her mother. Aloud he said:
“I’ve ordered the dog-cart for you. The thing to do will be to say
good-bye cordially, you see. Then I shan’t know anything till this time
to-morrow, when Mr. Warrener comes back.”
“If you don’t mind shaking hands,” said Ralph Campion, listlessly, “of
course I don’t.”
So they shook hands, and the host shouted cheerful and jocular
good-speed after the parting guest. Campion left the cart half way to
the station; he told the groom to drive on and leave his portmanteau
in the cloak-room to be called for. He struck straight across the
sodden fields, and walked townwards. It was ten miles to the town; his
boots were clogged with dank clay when he reached the first houses on
the outskirts. They were hideous little brick boxes in an unmade road
leading nowhere.
Beyond them lay a patch of flat, foul, betrampled, houseless, roadless,
grassless ground. It was an expanse of thick sticky mud; on it stood
pools of dirty water, held by the clay from sinking into the earth;
old bricks (why are ancient broken bricks so peculiarly sordid and
depressing in appearance?) and bent rusty tin cans. Over the whole
brooded a raw, poisonous, yellow-black fog. Across the waste ground
crawled the canal that started in the clean green-brown country; here
it ran between a clammy grassless towing path and a brick wall. “Ran”
is too jocund a word to describe its action. It crept stickily along, a
slimy glaze coating its surface, whereon floated the hairless swollen
body of a drowned rat.
Ralph Campion stood at the side of the black canal, and looked at the
sheer drop of the brick work. This might be a place in which to vanish.
Very few of the words he heard that afternoon lingered with him; but
the thought fashioned by the reputable citizen who wished that he was
dead, pursued him during the ten mile walk, and was with him still. It
was the unspoken words which Campion remembered; he knew as well as
the other the way in which he must disappear. Oddly enough, it never
struck him he might have demanded protection as a price for silence;
he did not realise that family and business complications might be
the result of evidence elicited by cross-examination; simplicity and
generosity clave to him still; perhaps this was why the powers were
sorry for him and dealt with him mercifully. The place was lonely;
it was growing dusk, there were no barges about; the street was but
just finished, the houses were unlet. Only――he could swim. He did not
want to live to face public shame, and loneliness, and bitter remorse;
this was a man who wanted to live an honourable life, and leave an
honourable name. But though he wished to die his body would struggle
for life, and this conviction struck him with fear lest he was not this
body which willed otherwise than he; if so, perhaps he could not kill
himself. Well! if there was hell on the other side, at any rate there
was not prison, and his friends staring at and cutting him. There could
not be superior persons amongst lost souls. The thought was momentarily
cheering.
His body would struggle to live; perhaps poison would be the better
way; but drowning might mean accident or murder, whereas if he bought
poison――――. He took a silk scarf from his pocket and tried to tie his
wrists, but his hands were cold and he was clumsy. He flung his watch,
chain, and purse into the water――when his body was found their absence
would suggest robbery and murder; he kept a little silver loose in his
pocket lest poison should after all prove to be the better way.
Suddenly he noticed what, till now, he had not seen. There was a
tumble-down hut within a few paces of where he stood; coming towards
it was a woman with a huge bundle on her bowed shoulders. As she drew
near he saw she carried willow withies; she was a tall old woman, very
poorly clad; her feet were naked, and in spite of her burden she walked
with a stately step, as lightly as a girl.
This young man was poor, and a criminal to boot, but he was also a
gentleman; when he saw this woman, he, though he was thinking of
his sins, his despair, and his coming death, showed to her, half
mechanically, what all should show at all times, especially to a woman
very old and poor, namely, courtesy and helpfulness.
“Let me carry those to the hut,” he said. “They are surely much too
heavy for you.”
“Take them,” she said briefly. He took them; they were indeed very
heavy. He threw them on the ground by her door.
“You had better enter my hut,” she said gravely.
Now there was no reason why Ralph Campion should enter her hut; in
fact there was every reason why he should not do so. Nevertheless, he
went in. It was not very dark there; by no means so dark as the waning
light warranted it should be. There were willow withies on the floor;
the woman sat on the ground, leaned against the door-post, and began to
weave them.
“Do you weave baskets?” said Ralph Campion.
“I do,” she answered. “By some I am called the Willow-weaver.”
“You weave fast.”
“Naturally. I have had much practice.”
She twisted a bent twig as she spoke.
“That twig is crooked,” said Ralph. His behaviour was irrational, but a
sudden need of hearing human speech had come upon him; and, besides, he
liked her voice, which was soothing, soft and deep, like organ notes in
the distance.
“It is so,” she replied.
“Why don’t you throw it away?”
“I throw nothing away. I suffer no waste. I put all my willow twigs to
use――crooked or straight.”
“But the crooked ones spoil the shape of your basket.”
“It is true. They spoil the shape of the basket. I shall put a straight
one by the side of the crooked. That balances it a little.”
“Still the whole basket is awry.”
“It is so.”
“It is a pity.”
“It is a pity. But it cannot be helped. It will be so till I find
nothing and pluck nothing save straight fair-growing withies.”
“Where do you pick them?”
“From the floating island in the lake.”
“I don’t know it. Where is the lake?”
“There,” she answered. She waved her hand towards the waste ground with
its slimy clay and broken bricks.
“There! Where?”
“There――there――there――my child!” she answered, smiling gravely, and
waving her hand again at the immediate foreground. Campion saw she was
subject to hallucinations. She was probably much alone, and certainly
very poor. He felt impelled to do what was obviously the very last
thing he should have done. He drew out the silk scarf, and his loose
silver.
“I will give you these shillings,” he said, “if you will tie this
tightly round my wrists, and promise, whatever happens, never to tell a
soul you have done it. Indeed, it will probably be the worse for you if
you do tell.”
“I will not take your money,” she replied. “To tell you the truth I
have no use for it. But I will tie the knot you bid me tie. It is thus
with me; the knots with which men charge me to bind them, I can by no
means refuse to fasten, but I cannot undo them.”
“Tie this knot,” he said, with a faint piteous laugh. “And let it
remain tied till I ask you to undo it. But first, since you do not want
it――――”
He flung the silver into the canal.
“Now take my thanks for what you are going to do for me, since you’ll
take nothing else. Here’s the scarf.”
She took it. He crossed his wrists, and held them out. She tied the
scarf loosely, once.
“I am pleased to do you this service,” she said kindly, in her solemn
perfect speech, that seemed unsuited to her poverty and her humble
trade. “Chiefly I am pleased because of the honour which is mine, that
I should take the place of the dweller in that grey small house on the
hill yonder. For, I suppose, were she here, you would beg her, rather
than me, to tie this knot.”
His crossed wrists fell apart; the silk scarf fluttered to the ground.
“My God! No!” he said, shuddering. “What do you mean? Who are you?”
“The Willow-weaver.”
“Do you know her?”
“Of whom do you ask me, my child?”
“My――my mother,” he faltered; and now the tears were in his eyes, his
throat was choking, and he turned his face from her.
“Surely,” she made answer, “I know her well. And because such a mother
as this makes my weaving easier, I, the Willow-weaver, shall be mother
to her son to-night.”
“I do not deserve it,” he muttered.
She did not heed him; she wove apace, seated as before, leaning on the
door-post of the hut. He fell beside her kneeling, and holding out his
hands to her pleadingly:
“Willow-weaver,” he cried. “If you know about her, do you know about
me too? Or must I tell you?”
“Surely,” she said, “I know about you. Child of so many prayers, of
such vain hopes, of so many innocent womanly ambitions never now to be
fulfilled, is it not an evil thing that the loving unwise heart in that
hill cottage should break through you? Is it not an evil thing in the
eyes of a Willow-weaver that one crooked twig should make the whole
weaving awry? Yet these things are so, and may not now be changed.”
She spoke with sober and stern tenderness. He flung himself on the heap
of willow withies, and hid his face from her.
“I know it,” he sobbed. “Do you think you need to tell me that? I was
going to kill myself when you talked to me of my mother. And what more
can I do? What more can I do?”
“You can turn the tide by the waving of your hand,” said she. “You can
stay the flight of the earth through space; or you can kill yourself.
Behold! the one is as possible as either of the others. Will you mend
the broken heart in the hill cottage by the way of the black canal?
Will you wipe out the shame of a soul by the death of a body?”
He moaned, and thrust his fingers through his hair, clutching and
twisting it.
“Be wiser, child,” she said. “My words are harsh, my thought is
gentle towards you. I said I, the Willow-weaver, would be your mother
to-night. What do you see from my hut door, child?”
He raised himself obediently from the withies and told her what he saw.
“And yet there is more to be seen here,” she said. “Because there is
more I spoke to you harshly, pointing out the ill you had wrought.
For I knew that here, even here in this very spot, there is another
country whereof you are native born, and wherein you live. Therefore,
son of that good mother of whom you and I know, lie at peace upon these
withies, cut from the floating island in this lake whereon we look;
I shall sing you a cradle song that you may sleep. When you wake the
Child’s Song shall never wholly leave your ears on this side of that
death you sought but now, and you shall break your heart and brain with
longing after it in vain. This, for the sake of that good mother, is
the Willow-weaver’s mercy to you; and you shall find that men, too,
have mercy on those who hear in broken snatches the Child’s Song.”
The power of the woman was upon him; meek and dazed as a tired babe
he lay upon the twisted withies; he heard the sound of the twigs as
she twisted them in and out in her weaving. He could neither move
nor speak; he wondered dreamily whether he lay in a trance or swoon,
or whether this was death, and thus the problem of his vanishing was
solved without effort of his own. He felt either the light cold touch
of her finger tip or the touch of a willow withy between his brows.
Suddenly, how and when he did not know, he saw that other country of
which the Willow-weaver spake; he had not moved from the spot; he felt
sure his body lay on the willow withies in the hut by the canal. He
knew it lay there with a burden of sin and folly, of ignorance, shame,
and remorse; but they belonged to the place of their brooding, and he,
reaching forth in order that he might know, knew them as apart from
himself, like a school task learned well or ill, with praise or the rod
for its reward. He saw the other country, and this was the fashion of
that which he thought he saw. Whether he saw it as it was is another
matter.
On every side lay the broad shining levels of a lake of silver, he
did not know whether it was water, or silver fire that had no heat,
but was still and cool as the hour before a summer sunrise. He saw no
shores nor any boundary set to it; as far as his eyes, or some other
sense than sight, would suffer him to perceive, the waters lay. From
the lake rose a many-petalled pink blossom; about each petal quivered a
delicate fringe of many-coloured flame, and at the heart of the fiery
flower that sprang from the water’s breast was music. As he saw these
things his life passed into them; or else they were the body of his
life. Thereupon a certain knowledge came to him, but it was knowledge
the man was never able to tell to any one, not even to himself. He
heard a high clear voice singing, so he afterwards remembered, but
whether it was the Cradle Song of the Willow-weaver, or the speech of
the wordless music at the blossom’s heart, he could not tell.
It is my belief (I who tell these things) that the words, and indeed
the whole matter, were by no manner of means such as are here recorded.
He told me the words he heard were something like to these, but he
admitted they were not really like them either in sound or sense. This
is what he crooned in the day that came after, when men said his
mother-wit had been stolen by the Folk of Peace:
Thou mak’st thy cry to me, thou mak’st thy plea,
I watch the waters of a changeless sea.
Upon its breast I mark a shadow fall,
Wherein a myriad shadows toss and crawl.
Weep’st thou because their turmoil will not cease,
O passing ripple on the Lake of Peace?
I watch the toiling shadows fight and strive,
I hear the murmur of a Dream-world hive.
Why is their warfare more to thee than me,
Thou wave that risest from a boundless sea?
No shadow-battle stirs the silent breast
Of the deep waters of the Lake of Rest.
Where mourning shadows throng the dreary side
Of the black river’s foul and sluggish tide,
I see the shining of the Silver Peace,
I hear its music bid their moaning cease.
Thy fair is foul to me, thy foul is fair;
Thy songs are cries, thy joys are pain-fraught care;
Thy griefs are gladness, and thy woes are gain,
Thy deaths are jewels in an age-long chain.
Thy sins but shadows on the waters wide,
Thy virtues gleams upon the silent tide.
When those twenty-four hours in which Ralph Campion was to vanish were
ended, he came wandering, hatless, over the green-brown fields in the
drenching rain; he was soaked to the skin, but he did not seem to know
this. He asked to see his superior and elder, who was even then in
serious consultation with his father-in-law and employer. When this
man, Mr. Warrener, heard Ralph Campion was there he was glad. He was
a plain dealing person, and he thought when people did wrong and were
found out it was good for them to be punished. His son-in-law on the
other hand was sorry and alarmed.
“Show Mr. Campion in,” said the older of the two men who were
discussing Ralph Campion’s sins. Mr. Campion came in, dripping. He
smiled, greeted his hosts, and tried to explain what had happened
and why he had not vanished. The two listeners looked at each other
silently; to do the younger of the twain justice he seemed to be
shocked and dismayed. There was a pause. The elder laid his hand on
Ralph Campion’s shoulder: “Sit down, Campion,” he said gently. “Sit
down and keep quiet. You’re dripping wet, you know; you’ll be ill, you
must see the doctor. I’ll send for him at once. There’s no need for you
to worry about anything.” Then he drew his son-in-law out of earshot.
“This must be hushed up,” he whispered. “You see what’s happened to
him. He’s off his head. Didn’t you see it yesterday? Where are his
people? They must be sent for, and the doctor too. I’ll telephone to
him at once. Whether this is a cause or an effect I don’t know. Be
charitable and assume the first. Anyway we will say nothing; he’s not
responsible for what he did.”
It was more of a truth than he knew. The other man, white as a sheet,
assented eagerly.
Certain superstitious folk of Celtic blood said that the son of the
sorrowful, patient little old widow who lived with his mother in the
small grey house on the windswept hill above the churchyard, had
wandered in the “gentle places” whence no man ever returns to the
human habitations; only the bodily seeming of such a man comes back;
he is away with the “good people”; at night he dances in their mystic
rings and makes merry with them in the heart of the hills. This, they
said, was the case with Ralph Campion, for he had the look of eternal
childhood on his face and the fairy fire was in his eyes. But they
were wrong; it was with him, as the Willow-weaver said; the Cradle
Song of the Children of the Lake of Peace would not wholly leave his
ears, and because he could not recall nor sing it perfectly he wandered
bewildered, trying vainly to interpret its broken snatches, with
labouring brain and longing, breaking heart.
THE BENDING OF THE TWIG
Early in the morning of the hot July day there had been a sea-mist,
and the fog lay on the horizon like a rolled banner gleaming with
ineffable tints of opalescent purple. The glassy sea was purest blue,
save where the shimmering paths of the currents shone silver-white or
where the lap and fret of waves at the cliff foot made the water pink
with Devon earth. The weed on the rocks glowed orange-brown in the
dazzling light, and the dark line of the low-flying shag gave the only
sombre touch to the brilliant hues of land, sea, and sky. The turf
sweet with the breath of wild thyme, and studded with pale yellow rock
rose, crept well-nigh to the water’s edge. Here a hundred years ago
the sea had claimed tribute of the earth, and a big landslip rent the
bosom of the patient mother. Half a mile of cliff had fallen, and in
the chasm thus made, now filled full with greenery and prodigal growth
of fern, bramble, and berry, a long white house stood sun-bathed and
creeper-clad.
A little spring sprang seawards from the cliff, tinkling in a baby
waterfall down grey rocks splashed with orange lichen, and forming in
a small crystal pool ere it ran on to lose itself in the greyish-white
sand of the shore.
By this little pool sat three children: two flaxen-haired girls and a
small dark-haired grey-eyed boy. The girls lay on the ground; their
chins resting on their clasped hands, their eyes round, blue, and
awestruck. The boy knelt stiffly on the verge of the pool, his eyes
looking straight out over the sea, his hands linked behind his head.
He was a slim little child with a small pale face, delicate irregular
features, and long-lashed grey eyes.
“They came up,” he was saying, “up the little path that comes from the
shore. They left their boats on the beach. They broke down our doors,
making a great noise. The doors fell down; I heard them fall; I could
hear the others shrieking as the men killed them. I was painting, you
know; I painted coloured letters round a face which was in the middle.
I drew the face myself; it was a white face with gold all round it. The
men broke into my room and killed an old man who was there with me. I
stood with my back against the wall. I put out my hands, so; I had no
sword, and――and――then they killed me....”
The child broke off abruptly; he gasped, threw himself face downwards
on the turf sobbing either with grief or excitement. The audience drew
a long breath. Never――never――never――in all the annals of the nursery
had even the most gifted grown-up person told them such tales as did
this, their small orphan cousin.
“What’s the matter now,” said a man’s voice. “Quarrelling? Dennis, why
are you crying?”
Three people had unheard approached the little group; a man, a young
girl, and a boy. The man and boy were sufficiently alike to be easily
recognisable as father and son. The boy was seventeen or eighteen years
old; handsome, vigorous, and graceful. He carried a gun; he had been
shooting rabbits on the cliffs, and two little helpless brown bodies
dangled from his left hand. The man was past middle age, but time alone
had not carved the straight, severe lines about his mouth, nor made
his eyes so cold. That was the work of temperament; the comely lad
beside him would never have such lips and eyes, though the tinting and
moulding of the two faces were very much the same.
The crying child scrambled to his feet blushing and half laughing;
his grief had not been very deeply rooted. The youngest girl clinging
to her father’s hand cried out eagerly in praise of the tale; “Dennis
tells us such lovely stories, daddy.”
The boy with the gun threw the rabbits on the grass. “Kitty’s quite
right,” he said. “They’re ripping. I can’t think how he gets hold of
them. He says they’re true.” “He says they happened to him,” broke in
the enthusiastic auditor. “And he tells us what he sees too. O Dennis,
tell them about the little men you saw in the mist this morning.”
The dark brows of the elder listener drew together.
“Look here, Dennis,” he said shortly, “if you prefer to tell stories to
the girls rather than go rabbiting with the boys”――there was a little
touch of contempt in the voice――“of course there’s no harm in that; but
you must not say what is untrue.”
“But it is true,” said the child eagerly. “It is true, Uncle Hugh. That
did happen to me; it did really. It was a grey house by the sea, and
they killed me in the room where I was painting.”
“Take care, Dennis. When did this happen, may I ask?”
“I――I don’t know, Uncle Hugh.”
“Nor any one else. Did you tell the girls it was true?”
“It is true,” said Dennis, beginning to pant and rock from heel to toe
and back again. “It is quite true.”
“It is, is it? And you see little men in the mist, eh?”
“I did this morning.”
“And he sees pictures in the water,” broke in one of the listening
children.
“Do you see pictures in the water, Dennis?”
“Yes, sometimes.”
“In that water for instance? Look and see.”
The child knelt down and stared into the pool.
“I don’t”――he began after a pause. “Yes. I do, yes I do, I see a little
house and a cornfield and a――O, there it’s gone!”
The man laid his finger-tips lightly on the child’s shoulder. “Get up
and listen to me,” he said gravely. Dennis rose; the touch had not been
at all rough; on the contrary it was very gentle, and the voice was
quiet, but there was a sense of danger in the air; an ominous thrill;
and the child’s eyes, why he knew not, grew slightly frightened.
“What you have just said is a lie,” said his elder very distinctly,
“and you know that just as well as I do; you are very young yet, and
I don’t want to be hard on you. If you confess that you told a lie, I
won’t say any more about it, unless you do it again. Come.”
“But――I can’t. It wasn’t a lie.”
“Take care now. Tell me you said what wasn’t true and are sorry; and
then run into tea and forget about it.”
The child began to tremble. “But I can’t――it wasn’t――indeed――it――O
dear, O dear!”
“I tell you I don’t want to be hard upon you. I mean to be, and I hope
I always am, perfectly just. I shall ask you three times whether your
stories are true. If you say no――well and good. If you persist in
saying yes, you’ll――take the consequences, that’s all. I shall ask you
this question every day till I make you speak the truth.”
Things were now looking very serious. The little girls were struck
with awe. The young girl and the lad exchanged glances and strove to
extenuate the crime of Dennis.
“O please, Mr. March,” said the girl softly, “he’s so very little and
he’s imaginative, you know.”
“He’s dotty, poor little chap,” said the boy cheerily. “He means no
harm, dad. He’ll be all right when he goes to school. Let him off this
once.”
“He has the matter in his own hands. Now then, Dennis, are these tales
of yours true?”
“Yes,” faltered the quivering lips.
“Once more, are they true?”
“They are true! they are true! What shall I do? If you kill me, they’re
true.”
“I’m not at all likely to kill you, but I mean to cure you of lying.
It’s obstinacy; for you must know you’ve told lies. Are these things
true?”
“Y――ye――I mean――I think so,” hedged poor Dennis desperately.
“Go into the house,” said the man with a push. “You’ve brought it on
yourself, and it serves you right.”
Consolatory reflection. The child slunk into the house crying bitterly.
The girl attempted further intercession.
“It’s no good, Kate,” said the man angrily. “I’m shocked at the
child’s obstinacy. He has told a gratuitous falsehood, and he must, as
I said, take the consequences.”
So Dennis took the consequences, and woke up at night shrieking with
nightmare as their direct result. Daily the same question was put to
him, and received the same answer which produced the same pains and
penalties, save that they grew a little more grievous daily because of
the increasing blackness of his sin. Dennis went about with a white
face and silent tongue; his eyes were red and swollen, and there were
purple rings under them. At last on the fifth day the child breaking
down confessed himself to be a wilful and egregious perverter of the
truth.
“Why couldn’t you have said that before?” said Hugh March. “Now speak
the truth in future, there’s a good boy.”
Dennis promised that he certainly would do so, and went away to cry
over his first lie. He knew that lying was a grievous sin; and the
preacher under whom the March family “sat” predicted a fiery doom for
sinners. Dennis cried over his probable damnation; but the undying
worm and quenchless fire of a vengeful God were far away, whereas Hugh
March’s birch was horribly near; so Dennis risked eternity for the
sake of comparative well-being in time.
It must not be supposed that March was the typical wicked uncle
of nursery tales; he was sincerely anxious to be kind to his dead
brother’s little boy. The “queerness” of Dennis was a source of
concerned perplexity to his guardian. Perry, his own son, whom he
idolised, was an athlete rather than a scholar, and March was glad of
the fact; nevertheless he would have been satisfied with his fragile
non-athletic nephew if he had shown signs of studiousness; but the
child was not clever; he was backward, lazy, and dreamy; his only
talents were a gift for drawing and an eye for colour effects, which
were “mere accomplishments” in the eyes of his uncle. Dennis had no
other gifts unless his stories presaged a future novelist.
Dennis, on his side, was stunned and terrified by his uncle’s treatment
of his powers of vision. His Irish mother, like her son, possessed “the
sight,” and she had treated his visions as simple facts, which were
by no means extraordinary; hence the child was not vain of the gift,
nor did he dream of boasting of or colouring his visions. When his
mother died and he came to live with his uncle and cousins, he came
simply and confidingly as to friends; unsuspicious of the possibility
of harshness, inexperienced in aught save tenderness. To be suddenly
denounced as an obstinate liar, to be flogged because he saw things
which his cousins did not see, not only terrified but stupefied him.
He relapsed into bewildered silence, and bent all his small powers of
deception to conceal his power of vision.
Hitherto “the sight” had been spasmodic; but either from some influence
of climate or because of his nervous tension it now became almost
unintermittent; he saw very often, and the strain of concealment
troubled him. The visions were in a measure consolatory; that which he
saw did not frighten him, and he lived in a world of sound, colour, and
light, which was unshared by his companions. The child was very lonely,
for he feared to talk much lest he should betray himself; nevertheless
he became gradually aware of the fact that he had one staunch and
kindly friend. This was his cousin Perry.
Perry was a good humoured, genial and sympathetic soul; his very
superabundant vigour and strength gave him a chivalrous sense of
pitiful protection towards the poor little frightened nervous child.
Once at a picnic on the Head, Dennis began to watch some little folk
who were unseen by the others. Suddenly he became aware that Perry was
watching him with puzzled eyes and knitted brows. Dennis started, his
vision vanished, and he lay quivering with fear lest Perry should ask
him what he had been looking at with such interest. But Perry did not
ask; he smiled at his little cousin, and turned his eyes away.
After the picnic that night a party sat on the verandah and told
ghost stories of a grisly nature. Dennis grew frightened, the “other
world” was real to him; this grim aspect of it was terrible. He did
not understand the things he saw, and the dread of seeing the horrors
described in the tales fell upon him. The nervous system of a sensitive
child is a delicate instrument, though it is sometimes the custom to
treat it as though it were constructed of equal parts of whalebone,
steel, and cast-iron. The stream of tales ran dry.
“What’s become of all your fine stories, Dennis?” said one of the
circle mockingly; one who knew of the little tragedy enacted a month
ago. “I’m afraid I’ve spoilt the flow of Dennis’s genius,” said March,
and the laugh rippled round the circle at the expense of the young
seer. Is this world so purely joyous that we should forget our heavenly
heritage if our brethren did not try now and then to give us a little
pain, even though it be a tongue stab to make us less contented with
our earthly bliss? It would seem that there be many who think so. Perry
put forth an arm in the darkness and laid it round the child’s neck.
“That’s a beastly shame,” he said to the first speaker.
They were only four homely schoolboy words; it was only the touch of a
strong kindly young arm, but they drew forth a disproportionate flood
of adoring gratitude from the child’s sensitive heart. Therefore when
he went to bed that night he ventured to ask a favour of Perry. In
Dennis’s room there was an unpleasant-looking green and yellow curtain,
which had a reprehensible habit of swaying when there was not any wind.
Ghost stories had made that curtain a thing of horror to Dennis; he
feared it would draw back very slowly one of these days, and he should
see some hideous object gibbering behind it――a class of vision of which
he had formerly never dreamed. He once asked whether the curtain might
be taken away: but as he could assign no reason for his request he was
told “not to be silly,” and the curtain, like the poor, remained with
him always. Alas! for the dumb terrors, the helpless inarticulateness
of the soul of a young misunderstood child.
To-night he took courage.
“Perry,” he said, “won’t you come and stay with me till I’m asleep?”
Since the five days’ holy war which March had waged with Dennis the
child had stammered slightly; it was a pathetic little falter of
the tongue and Perry felt vaguely touched by it. He looked at him
questioningly. At last he said:
“Why? Well, never mind. Right you are.”
He entered the room whistling, and by some instinct drew the green and
yellow curtain back. Dennis undressed and slipped into bed. Perry knelt
down, put his arm over the child and spoke kindly:
“You’re not very happy here, Den,” he said; “what’s the matter with
you?”
Dennis bit his lip and closed his eyes; at last by dint of coaxing
Perry arrived at the fact that Dennis was mourning over the sin of
deceit.
“That wasn’t much,” said Perry immorally but cheerfully.
He hesitated, then he said in a whisper:
“I say, Denny, which was the lie, eh?”
He felt the slender body beneath his arm start, quiver, and grow
unnaturally still.
“Was it a lie that you saw those things or that you didn’t see them,
which?”
“Th-that I saw th-them.”
There was a pause. Then Perry said gently:
“Poor little chap; it’s a shame. All right old man. Go to sleep; I’ll
stay with you.”
To himself he said: “Who’s to blame for that lie, Den or the dad?”
The holidays were nearly over; Perry was about to return for his last
term to Harrow and Dennis was going for his first term to a preparatory
school. Before his final departure Perry was going to walk fifteen
miles in order to stay for a couple of days with some friends. A week
before this visit there was a farewell picnic at the Head. It was
a lovely day and the sea was blue and calm. Perry was on the cliff
building the fire for the picnic tea; Dennis was on the rocks below.
Then he turned and ran; he rushed up the cliff path sobbing out that
there was a drowned man in the water below. Of course March, Perry,
and three or four young men ran to the shore only to see the water
rippling peacefully in and the brown weed swaying with the lazy tide.
March shouted to the child on the cliff:
“Come here.”
Dennis obeyed him shuddering still.
“There’s no drowned man here,” said March sternly. “Why did you say
there was?”
The child caught his breath with a jerk and his face grew white as
ashes. The thing he so dreaded had come; he had betrayed himself. He
glanced imploringly at his only hope――Perry, and his lip quivered.
“It was the weed he saw,” said Perry. “He’s always fanciful and nervous
you know.”
“Nonsense,” said March. “These are his old tricks. I thought I’d cured
you of this, Dennis.”
He left the shore with an angry glance at the child.
Dennis began to cry, and Perry laid a hand on his shoulder. Dennis
clutched his arm.
“O Perry,” he wailed, “do go to him. Do speak to him. Do tell him I’m
sorry. I’d n-never have said what I saw if I hadn’t thought everyb-body
could see it t-too.”
“I thought so,” said Perry under his breath; “you do see these things
and you pretend you don’t for fear of a licking.”
“Don’t tell. Please don’t tell; dear Perry, d-don’t tell.”
“All right, don’t cry. I’ll speak to the governor.”
But Perry spoke in vain. March was an obstinate thick-headed man, and
he was very angry indeed. The vials of his righteous wrath descended on
the luckless seer, who was utterly broken and unnerved in consequence.
Perry also was very angry though not with the helpless little victim
of March’s dull wits. When three days after the child’s punishment a
drowned sailor was actually washed up at the Head, Perry boldly avowed
his belief in the visions of Dennis. March was as angry with Perry as
it was possible for him to be with his idolised only son. He made many
acute and scathing remarks about ignorance, superstition, and naughty,
lying, hysterical children whose imagination and hysteria must be
crushed with the strong hand of authority.
Perry went away in a very bad temper, and Dennis remained behind in
such a state of abject terror that he hardly dared to grasp his coffee
cup when it was offered to him at the breakfast table lest it should
prove to be an elusive and unshared vision.
On the evening of Perry’s departure Dennis stood at the door of his
uncle’s study trying to make up his mind to go in. Like many men who
never read anything save the daily paper March had a “study.” At last
Dennis went in. March who was writing a letter looked up:
“Well, Dennis, what is it?”
“H-have you heard from Perry, Uncle?” stammered the child.
“Heard from Perry! The boy’s daft. He only left this morning.”
“O,” said Dennis nervously, “y-yes, so he did; I f-forgot.”
And he crept out again like a frightened mouse.