BEING born in a sceptical age, heirs of a world that certainly took its
Darwin too seriously, we children did not readily enlarge the circle of
our supernatural acquaintances. There was the old witch who lived in the
two-storied house beyond the hill, in whom less discriminate eyes
recognised only the very respectable widow of an officer in the India
Army. There was the ghost of the murdered shepherd-lad that haunted the
ruined hut high up on the windy downs; on gusty nights we heard him
piping shrilly to his phantom flocks, and sometimes their little bells
seemed to greet us from the chorus of the storm. There was a little
drowned kitten who mewed to us from the shadows of the rain-water
cistern, and a small boy who cried about the garden in the autumn because
he could not find his ball among the dead leaves. We had all heard the
three last, and most of us had seen them at twilight-time, when ghosts
pluck up their poor thin courage and take their walks abroad. As for the
witch, we relied on our intuitions and gave her house a wide berth.
The credentials of these four unquiet spirits having been examined and
found satisfactory, schoolroom opinion was against any addition to their
number. We would not accept my younger brother’s murderer carrying a
sack or my little sister’s procession of special tortoises, though we
acknowledged that there was merit in them, regarded merely as artistic
conceptions. Perhaps, subconsciously, we realised that to make the
supernatural commonplace is also to make it ineffective, and that there
is no dignity in a life jostled by spooks. At all events, we relied for
our periodical panics on those which had received the official sanction,
and on the terrifying monsters our imaginations had drawn from real
life—burglars, lunatics, and drunken men.
It was therefore noteworthy that as soon as we discovered the pool in
Hayward’s Wood we were all agreed that it was no ordinary sheet of water,
but one of those enchanted pools which draw their waters from magic
sources and are capable of throwing spells over mortals who approach them
unwarily. And yet, though we felt instinctively that there was something
queer about it, the pool in itself was not unattractive. Held, as it
were, in a cup in the heart of the wood, it still contrived to win its
share of sunshine through the branches above. On its surface the
water-boatmen were ferrying cheerfully to and fro, while overhead the
dragon-flies drove their gaudy monoplanes in ceaseless competition. All
about the woods were gay with wild garlic and the little purple gloves
that Nature provides for foxes, and through a natural alley we could see
a golden meadow, where cups of cool butter were spread with lavish
generosity to quench the parched tongues of bees. The mud that squelched
under our feet as we stood on the brink seemed to be good, honest mud,
and gave our boots the proper holiday finish. Nevertheless, we stared
silently at the waters, half-expecting to see them thicken and part in
brown foam, to allow some red-mouthed prehistoric monster to rise oozily
from his resting-place in the mud—some such mammoth as we had seen carved
in stone on the borders of the lake at the Crystal Palace. But no
monster appeared; only a rabbit sprang up suddenly on the far side of the
pool, and, seeing we had no gun and no dog, limped off in a leisurely
manner to the warren.
After a while we grew weary of our doubts, and, tacitly agreeing to
pretend that it was only an ordinary pond, fell to paddling in the
shallows with a good heart. The mud slid warmly through our toes, and
the water lay round our calves like a tight string, but we were not
changed, as we had half anticipated, into tadpoles or water-lilies. It
was apparent that the magic was of a subtler kind than this, and we
splashed about cheerfully until the inevitable happened and one of us
went in up to his waist. Then we sat on the bank nursing our wet feet,
and laughing at the victim as he ruefully wrung out his clothes. We were
all of a nautical turn of mind, and we agreed that the pond would serve
very well for minor naval engagements, though it was too sheltered to
provide enough wind for sailing-ships. Still, here we should at all
events be secure from such a disaster as had recently overtaken my
troopship _Dauntless_, which was cruising in calm weather on Pickhurst
Pond when all of a sudden “a land breeze shook the shrouds and she was
overset,” and four-and-twenty good soldiers sank to the bottom like lead,
which they were. Regarded merely as an attractive piece of water, the
pool could not fail to be of service in our adventurous lives.
But all the time we felt in our hearts that it was something more, though
we would have found it hard to give reasons for our conviction, for the
pool seemed very well able to keep the secret of its enchantment. We did
not even know whether it was the instrument of black magic or of white,
whether its influence on human beings was amiable or malevolent. We only
knew that it was under a spell, that beneath its reticent surface, that
showed nothing more than the reflection of our own inquiring faces, lay
hidden some part of that especial magic that makes the dreams of young
people as real as life, and contradicts the unlovely generalisations of
disillusioned adults. All that was necessary was to find the key that
would unlock the golden gates.
The brother who was nearest to me in terms of years found it two days
later, and came to me breathlessly with the news. He had been reading a
book of fairy stories, and had come upon the description of just such a
magic pool as ours, even to the rabbit—who was, it seemed, a kind of
advance-agent to the spirit of the pool. The rules were very clear. All
you had to do was to go to the pool at midnight and wish aloud, and your
wish would be granted. If you were greedy enough to wish more than once,
you would be changed into a goldfish. My brother thought it would be
rather jolly to be a goldfish, and so for a while did I; but on
reflection we decided that if the one wish were carefully expended it
might be more amusing to remain a boy.
It says something for our spirit of adventure that we did not even
discuss the advisability of undertaking this lawless expedition. We were
more engaged in rejoicing in anticipation over the discomfiture of our
elder brothers and settling the difficult problem of what we should wish.
My brother was all for seven-league boots and invisible caps and other
conjuring tricks of a faëry character; I had set my heart on money, more
sovereigns than we could carry, and I finally brought my brother round to
my point of view. After all, he could always buy the other things if he
had enough money. It was agreed that he should wind up his birthday
watch and that we should only pretend to go to bed, as we should have to
start at half-past eleven. When planned by daylight the whole thing
seemed absurdly easy.
We had no difficulty in getting out of the house when the time came,
simply because this was not the sort of thing that the grown-up people
expected us to do, but we found the world strangely altered. The
familiar lanes had become rivers of changing shadows, the hedgerows were
ambuscades of robbers, the tall trees were affronted giants.
Fortunately, we were on very good terms with the moon at the time, so
when she made her periodical appearances from behind the scudding clouds
she came as a friend. Nevertheless, when my hand accidentally touched my
brother’s in the dark it stayed there, and we were glad to walk along
hand in hand, a situation which we would have thought deplorable for two
fellows of our years by day. It seemed to me that my brother was
breathing shortly and noisily as if he were excited, but presently the
surprising thought came to me that it might be my own breathing that I
heard. As we drew near to Hayward’s Wood the moon retired behind a
cloud, and stayed there. This was hardly friendly of her, for the wood
was terribly dark, and the noise of our own stumblings made us pause in
alarm again and again. When we stood still and listened all the trees
seemed to be saying “Hush!”
Somehow we reached the pool at last, and stayed our steps on the bank
expectantly. At first we could see nothing but shadows, but, after a
while, we discovered that it was full of drowned stars, a little pale as
though the water had extinguished some of their fire. And then, as we
wondered at this, the moon shone through the branches overhead and lit
the wood with a cool and mysterious radiance that reminded me oddly of
the transformation scene in our last pantomime. My brother pulled his
watch out of his pocket, but his hand shook so that he could hardly tell
the time. “Five minutes more,” he whispered hoarsely. I tried to answer
him, and found that I could not speak.
And then, as we waited breathlessly, we heard a noise among the
undergrowth on the other side of the pool—a noise, it seemed, of
footsteps, that grew louder and louder in our excited ears, till it was
as if all the armies of the world were tramping through the wood. And
then . . . and then . . .
When we stopped to get our breath halfway home we first discovered that
neither of us had had presence of mind enough to wish. But we knew that
there was no going back. We had had our chance, and missed it. But,
even now, I do not doubt that it was a magic pool.