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diff --git a/old/63268-0.txt b/old/63268-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index aa1f5a8..0000000 --- a/old/63268-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,6266 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Happy-go-lucky Morgans, by Edward Thomas - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The Happy-go-lucky Morgans - -Author: Edward Thomas - -Release Date: September 22, 2020 [EBook #63268] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAPPY-GO-LUCKY MORGANS *** - - - - -Produced by Henry Flower and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) - - - - - - - - - - THE HAPPY-GO-LUCKY - MORGANS - - - - -_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ - - - LIGHT AND TWILIGHT - REST AND UNREST - ROSE ACRE PAPERS - - -_Small Octavo. 2s. 6d. net_ - - - - -[Illustration] - - - - - THE HAPPY-GO-LUCKY - MORGANS - - “But now--O never again” - - THOMAS HARDY’S _Julie-Jane_ - - BY - - EDWARD THOMAS - - [Illustration] - - LONDON - - DUCKWORTH & CO. - - 3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. - - - - - TO - - MY FATHER AND MY MOTHER - - - - -CONTENTS - - - CHAP. PAGE - - I. ABERCORRAN STREET 1 - II. THE MORGANS OF ABERCORRAN HOUSE 12 - III. THE WILD SWANS 30 - IV. HOB-Y-DERI-DANDO 38 - V. AURELIUS, THE SUPERFLUOUS MAN 44 - VI. OUR COUNTRY 63 - VII. WOOL-GATHERING AND LYDIARD CONSTANTINE 76 - VIII. ABERCORRAN AND MORGAN’S FOLLY 92 - IX. MR TORRANCE, THE CHEERFUL MAN 112 - X. THE HOUSE UNDER THE HILL 128 - XI. MR STODHAM, THE RESPECTABLE MAN, AND THE DRYAD 154 - XII. GREEN AND SCARLET 177 - XIII. NED OF GLAMORGAN 186 - XIV. THE CASTLE OF LEAVES, AND THE BEGGAR WITH THE LONG WHITE BEARD 207 - XV. MR STODHAM SPEAKS FOR ENGLAND--FOG SUPERVENES 220 - XVI. THE HOUSE OF THE DAYS OF THE YEAR 232 - XVII. PHILIP AND THE OUTLAWS OF THE ISLAND 240 - XVIII. WHAT WILL ROLAND DO? 254 - XIX. THE INTERLUDE OF HIGH BOWER 263 - XX. THE POET’S SPRING AT LYDIARD CONSTANTINE 280 - - - - -THE HAPPY-GO-LUCKY MORGANS - - - - -CHAPTER I - -ABERCORRAN STREET - - -My story is of Balham and of a family dwelling in Balham who were more -Welsh than Balhamitish. Strangers to that neighbourhood who go up -Harrington Road from the tram must often wonder why the second turning -on the right is called Abercorran Street: the few who know Abercorran -town itself, the long grey and white street, with a castle at one end, -low down by the river mouth, and an old church high up at the other, -must be delighted by the memories thus recalled, but they also must -wonder at the name. Abercorran Street is straight, flat, symmetrically -lined on both sides by four-bedroomed houses in pairs, and it runs at -right angles out of Harrington Road into another road which the pair -of four-bedroomed houses visible at the corner proclaim to be exactly -like it. The only external variety in the street is created by the -absence from two of the cast-iron gates of any notice prohibiting the -entrance of hawkers and canvassers. - -When I myself first saw the white lettering on a blue ground of -ABERCORRAN STREET I was perhaps more surprised than most others have -been who paid any attention to it. I was surprised but not puzzled. -I knew very well why it was called Abercorran Street. For I knew -Abercorran House and the Morgans, its inhabitants, and the dogs and -the pigeons thereof. Who that ever knew the house and the people could -ever forget them? I knew the Morgans, the father and mother, the five -sons, the one daughter Jessie. I knew the house down to the kitchen, -because I knew old Ann, the one permanent--I had almost written -immortal--servant, of whom it was said by one knowing the facts, that -they also rule who only serve and wait. I knew the breakfast room -where breakfast was never finished; the dark Library where they had -all the magazines which have since died of their virtues; the room -without a name which was full of fishing-rods, walking-sticks, guns, -traps, the cross-bow, boxes of skins, birds’ eggs, papers, old books, -pictures, pebbles from a hundred beaches, and human bones. I knew -the conservatory crowded with bicycles and what had been tricycles. I -knew as well as any one the pigeon-houses, the one on a pole and the -one which was originally a fowl-house, built with some idea or fancy -regarding profit. I knew that well-worn square of blackened gravel -at the foot of the back steps, where everybody had to pass to go to -the conservatory, the pigeon-houses, and the wild garden beyond, and -where the sun was always shining on men and children and dogs. This -square was railed off from the rest of the garden. That also I knew, -its four-and-twenty elms that stood about the one oak in the long -grass and buttercups and docks, like a pleasant company slowly and -unwillingly preparing to leave that three-acre field which was the -garden of Abercorran House and called by us The Wilderness--a name now -immortalised, because the christener of streets has given it to the one -beyond Abercorran Street. Under the trees lay a pond containing golden -water-lilies and carp. A pond needs nothing else except boys like us -to make the best of it. Yet we never could fish in it again after the -strange girl was drawn out of it dead one morning: nobody knew who she -was or why she had climbed over into the Wilderness to drown herself; -yet Ann seemed to know, and so perhaps did the tall Roland, but both -of them could lock up anything they wished to keep secret and throw -away the key. I knew the elms and the one oak of the Wilderness as -well as the jackdaws did. For I knew them night and day, and the birds -knew nothing of them between half-past five on an October evening and -half-past five the next morning. - -To-day the jackdaws at least, if ever they fly that way, can probably -not distinguish Abercorran Street and Wilderness Street from ordinary -streets. For the trees are every one of them gone, and with them the -jackdaws. The lilies and carp are no longer in the pond, and there is -no pond. I can understand people cutting down trees--it is a trade -and brings profit--but not draining a pond in such a garden as the -Wilderness and taking all its carp home to fry in the same fat as -bloaters, all for the sake of building a house that might just as well -have been anywhere else or nowhere at all. I think No. 23 Wilderness -Street probably has the honour and misfortune to stand in the pond’s -place, but they call it LYNDHURST. Ann shares my opinion, and she -herself is now living in the house behind, No. 21 Abercorran Street. - -Ann likes the new houses as well as the old elm-trees, and the hundreds -of men, women, and children as well as the jackdaws--which is saying -a good deal; for she loved both trees and birds, and I have heard her -assert that the birds frequently talked in Welsh as the jackdaws used -to do at the castle of Abercorran; but when I asked her why she thought -so and what they said, she grew touchy and said: “Well, they did not -speak English, whatever, and if it was Welsh, as I think, you cannot -expect me to pervert Welsh into English, for I am no scholar.” She is -keeping house now for the gentleman at 21 Abercorran Street, a Mr Henry -Jones. She would probably have been satisfied with him in any case, -since he is the means by which Ann remains alive, free to think her own -thoughts and to bake her own bread; to drink tea for breakfast, tea for -dinner, tea for tea, tea for supper, and tea in between; to eat also at -long intervals a quart of cockles from Abercorran shore, and a baked -apple dumpling to follow; and at night to read the Welsh Bible and a -Guide to the Antiquities of Abercorran. But Ann is more than satisfied -because Mr Jones is Welsh. She admits his claim in spite of her -unconcealed opinion that his Dolgelly Welsh, of which she can hardly -understand a word, she says, is not Welsh at all. Of his speech as of -the jackdaws she can retort: “He does not speak English, whatever.” - -Ann will never leave him unless he or she should die. She is untidy; -she has never decided what is truth; and she has her own affairs as -well as his to manage; but, as he says himself, he has entertained an -angel unawares and she is not to be thrust out. He covers his inability -to command her by asking what she could do at her age if she had to -leave. It is not likely that Mr Henry Jones could get the better of a -woman whom--in spite of the fact that she has never decided what is -truth--he has called an angel. For he did not use the word as a mere -compliment, as much as to say that she was all that a woman should be -when she is in domestic service. She is not; she is excellent only at -pastry, which Mr Jones believes that he ought never to touch. He has -been heard to call her “half angel and half bird”; but neither does -this furnish the real explanation, though it offers an obvious one. For -Ann is now--I mean that when we were children she seemed as old as she -seems now; she limps too; and yet it might partly be her limp that made -Mr Jones call her “half bird,” for it is brisk and quite unashamed, -almost a pretty limp; also she is pale with a shining paleness, and -often she is all eyes, because her eyes are large and round and dark, -looking always up at you and always a little sidelong--but that alone -would not justify a sensible man in calling her “half angel.” Nor would -her voice, which has a remarkable unexpectedness, wherever and whenever -it is heard. She begins abruptly in the middle of a thought without -a word or gesture of preparation, and always on an unexpectedly high -note. In this she is like the robin, who often rehearses the first -half of his song in silence and then suddenly continues aloud, as if -he were beginning in mid-song. Well, Mr Henry Jones, as I have said, -once called her “half angel and half bird,” and declared that he had -entertained an angel unawares in Ann, and I believe that he is right -and more than a sensible man. For he has grasped the prime fact that -she is not what she seems. - -For my part I can say that she is such a woman that her name, Ann -Lewis, has for those who connect it with her, and with her alone, out -of all the inhabitants of earth, a curious lightness, something at -once pretty and old with an elfish oldness, something gay and a little -weird, also a bird-like delicacy, as delicate as “linnet” and “martin.” -If these words are useless, remember at least that, though half bird, -she is not a mere human travesty or hint of a winged thing, and that -she is totally unlike any other bird, and probably unlike any other -angel. - -An ordinary bird certainly--and an ordinary angel probably--would have -pined away at 21 Abercorran Street after having lived at Abercorran -House and at Abercorran itself. But Ann is just the same as when I -last saw her in Abercorran House. She alone that day was unchanged. -The house, the Wilderness, the conservatory, the pigeon-houses, all -were changed; I was changed, but not Ann. Yet the family had then newly -gone, leaving her alone in the house. It was some years since I had -been there. They had been going on as ever in that idle, careless, busy -life which required a big country house and an illimitable playground -of moor and mountain for a full and fitting display. Gradually their -friends grew up, went to a university, to business, or abroad, and -acquired preferences which were not easily to be adapted to that -sunny, untidy house. At first these friends would be only too glad to -go round to Abercorran House of an evening after business, or a morning -or two after the beginning of the vacation. Perhaps they came again, -and after a long interval yet again. They said it was different: but -they were wrong; it was they themselves were different; the Morgans -never changed. In this way young men of the neighbourhood discovered -that they were no longer boys. They could no longer put up with that -careless hullabaloo of lazy, cheerful people, they took offence at the -laziness, or else at the cheerfulness. Also they saw that Jessie, the -girl, was as frank and untidy at seventeen as she had always been, and -it took them aback, especially if they were wanting to make love to -her. The thought of it made them feel foolish against their will. They -fancied that she would laugh. Yet it was easy to believe that Jessie -might die for love or for a lover. When somebody was pitying the girl -who drowned herself in the Wilderness pond, Jessie interrupted: “She -isn’t a _poor girl_; she is dead; it is you are poor; she has got what -she wanted, and some of you don’t know what you want, and if you did -you would be afraid of cold water.” The young men could see the power -of such words in Jessie’s eye, and they did not make love to her. Some -took their revenge by calling her a slut, which was what Ann used to -call her when she was affectionate, as she could be to Jessie only. -“Come on, there’s a slut,” she used to say. It was too familiar for -the youths, but some of them would have liked to use it, because they -felt that the phrase was somehow as amorous as it was curt, a sort of -blow that was as fond as a kiss. Even when, in their hard hats at the -age of twenty or so, they used the term, in condemnation, they would -still have given their hats for courage to speak it as Ann did, and -say: “Come on, Jessie, there’s a slut”; for they would have had to kiss -her after the word, both because they could not help it, and for fear -she should misunderstand its significance. At any rate, I believe that -nobody but Ann ever addressed that term of utmost endearment to Jessie. - -Thus was there one reason the less for boys who were growing up, -ceasing to tear the knees of their trousers and so on, to frequent -Abercorran House. I lingered on, but the death of one there had set me -painfully free. After a time I used to go chiefly to honour an old -custom, which proved an inadequate motive. Then year after year, of -course, it was easier to put off revisiting, and one day when I went, -only Ann was left. She had her kitchen and her own room; the rest of -the house had no visible inhabitants. Yet Ann would not have it that it -was sad. “It does a house good,” she said, “to have all those Morgans -in it. Now they have gone back again to Abercorran in the county of -Caermarthen, and I am sure they are all happy but the mistress, and she -was incurable; that was all; and there was an end of it at last.” Ann -herself was staying on as caretaker till Abercorran House was let or -sold. - - - - -CHAPTER II - -THE MORGANS OF ABERCORRAN HOUSE - - -In spite of old Ann and her kitchen fire I did not stay long in the -house that day. The removal which had left it deserted and silent had -made it also a little sordid: the family’s ways, for example, had not -agreed with the wall-paper, and they had been no enemies to spiders. -So I went out into the yard. There were no dogs; all had gone with the -Morgans to Abercorran. The only life was a single homeless blue pigeon -flying about in search of the home which had been sold. Ann said that -almost every one of the birds had returned in this way, and she called -the traveller into the kitchen to wait until its purchaser came in -search of it. She told me who he was, and much more about the sale, -which I forgot or never heard, because the sun shone very warmly into -the yard just then, and I could not help seeing them all again, Jack -and Roland, Lewis and Harry, and Jessie, and Philip, too, as he was at -sixteen, and the dogs,--Ladas the greyhound, Bully the bull-terrier, -Granfer the dachshund, Spot the fox-terrier, and pigeons here and there -among them, and some perched on roof and chimneys, some flying so high -that they were no bigger than larks--and Mr Morgan at the top of the -steps looking at it all and seeing that it was good. Often had I come -upon them in this pattern, not knowing at first whether to join this -group or that, the busy or the idle. - -In those days Abercorran House stood at the end of a short, quiet -street which had only six houses in it, all on the right-hand side -going up, all roomy and respectable, monuments of Albert the Good’s -age, well covered with creepers, screened by a continuous line of -lime-trees and in most cases by laurel, lilac, and balsam in compact -shrubberies. Opposite the houses a high wall ran along until, at -Abercorran House, the street was cut short by an oak fence. Behind that -fence, and occupying as much ground as all the other houses and gardens -together, lay the Abercorran garden, the Wilderness, which was bounded -and given its triangular shape by a main road--now Harrington Road--and -a farm lane. Impenetrable hedges and unscaleable fences protected the -garden from the world. - -I cannot say how it had come about that these three acres became -attached to the house which so well deserved them. From the outside -nobody would have suspected it. Abercorran House was in no practical -respect superior to its neighbours; presumably the land beyond the -fence was another property, or it would not have been allowed to cut -short the street. But so it was. You entered the carriage gate on -your right--there was no carriage--passed round the right side of the -house into the yard at the back, turned to the left across it and went -between the conservatory and the pigeon house out into the Wilderness. - -The house was distinguished, to the casual eye, by the lack of coloured -or white curtains, the never-shut gate, the flourishing, untended lilac -hiding the front door and lower windows except in winter. But for me -it is hard to admit that Abercorran House had anything in common, -except building material, with the other five--The Elms, Orchard Lea, -Brockenhurst, and Candelent Gate, and I forget the other. The street -was called Candelent Street; God knows why, but there may be someone -who knows as much about Candelent Gate as I do of Abercorran House. - -These houses showed signs of pride and affluence. Their woodwork -was frequently painted; the gravel was renewed; the knockers and -letter-boxes gleamed; their inhabitants were always either neat or -gaudy; even the servants were chosen half for their good looks, and -were therefore continually being changed. At the Elms lived several -people and a great Dane; at Orchard Lea a wire-haired terrier with a -silver collar; at Candelent Gate a sort of whippet; at the house whose -name I have forgotten, three pugs. These dogs all liked the Morgans’ -house for one reason or another: men and dogs and food were always -to be found there. The dogs’ owners never got so far up the street -as that, though they sometimes sent to ask if Bunter the wire-haired -terrier, or Lofty the Dane, or Silvermoon the whippet, were there, or -to complain about one of some score of things which they disliked, -as, for example, the conduct of the dogs (especially Bully, who was -damned at first sight for his looks), the use of the hundred yards of -roadway as a running ground, Jessie’s entering the races in a costume -which enabled her to win, the noise of boys whistling at the pigeons, -the number of the pigeons, the visits of almost verminous-looking -strangers who had forgotten the name of the house and tried The Elms, -or Candelent Gate, or Orchard Lea, or Brockenhurst, before discovering -the Morgans. In return, Mr Morgan regretted the nature of things and -the incompatibility of temperaments, and he forbade racing in the -street; but as races were always an inspiration, they recurred. As for -Jessie’s clothes, his opinion was that his neighbours, being fools, -should look the other way or pull down their blinds. He did not see why -Godiva should complain of Peeping Tom, or Peeping Tom of Godiva. As for -the difficulty in remembering the name of the house, he saw no reason -for changing it; all his friends and his children’s friends could see -instantly that neither The Elms, nor Orchard Lea, nor Brockenhurst, nor -Candelent Gate, nor the other house, was his, and he could not think of -consulting those who were not his friends. - -Abercorran House was honoured by four martins’ nests under the eaves, -placed at such regular intervals that they appeared to be corbels for -supporting the roof. Not one of the other houses in the street had a -martin’s nest. But the distinguishing feature of the Morgans’ house -was that you could see at a glance that it was the Morgans’. The -front garden was merely a way round to the yard and the Wilderness. -Altogether the front of the house, facing east, must have looked to a -stranger uninhabited. Everything was done on the other side, or in the -yard. Bounded on the east by the house, on the north or Brockenhurst -side by a high wall (built by Mr Brockenhurst, as we called him), and -on the west or lane side by a split oak fence, but separated from the -Wilderness and the south only by the conservatory and the pigeon-house -and some low railings, the yard of Abercorran House was a reservoir -of sun. The high south wall was occupied, not by fruit trees, but -by cascades of ivy and by men and boys standing or sitting in the -sun, talking, watching the jackdaws coming and going in the elms of -the Wilderness, and also by dogs gnawing bones or sleeping. There -was no cultivated garden, but several of the corners had always some -blossoms of wall-flower, sweet-rocket, or snapdragon, that looked after -themselves: in the pocket between the fence and the pigeon house half -a dozen sunflowers invariably found a way of growing eight feet high -and expanding enormous blossoms, every one of them fit to be copied and -stuck up for a sign outside the “Sun” inn. - -Nobody could mistake Abercorran House; but in case anybody did, Mr -Morgan had a brass plate with “T. Ll. Morgan” on it at the foot of -his front steps, in a position where to see it from the road was -impossible. This plate was always bright: the only time when I saw -it dim was when Ann was alone in the deserted house. A succession of -active, dirty, little maids employed in the house agreed upon this -one point, that the name-plate must be polished until it reflected -their cheeks as they reflected its never-understood glory. No -vainglorious initial letters followed the name, nor any descriptive -word. The maids--Lizz, Kate, Ellen, Polly, Hannah, Victoria, and the -rest--probably knew no more than I ever did why the name was there. -For it was perfectly clear that Mr Morgan never did or wished to do -anything. The name might just as well have been that of some famous man -born there a hundred years before: in any case it had nothing to do -with that expression the house had of frankness, mystery, untidiness, -ease, and something like rusticity. In the yard behind, the bull -terrier stood for frankness, the greyhound for rusticity, the cats for -mystery, and most things for untidiness, and all for ease. - -Indoors it was a dark house. Windows were numerous, but it was -undoubtedly dark. This was in part due to comparison with the outer -air, where people lived as much as possible, and especially with the -sunlit yard. The house had, however, a dark spirit, aided by the folds -of heavy curtains, the massive, old, blackened furniture, and the -wall-paper of some years before. You wandered as you pleased about it, -alone or with Philip, Lewis, or Harry. Most of the rooms were bedrooms, -but not conspicuous as such when strewn with cases of butterflies, -birds’ eggs and nests, stuffed animals, cages containing foreign birds, -several blackbirds, a nest of young thrushes, an adder and some ringed -snakes and lizards, a hedgehog, white and piebald rats and mice, -fishing-rods and tackle, pistols and guns and toy cannon, tools and -half-made articles of many kinds, model steam-engines, a model of the -“Victory” and a painting of the “Owen Glendower” under a flock of sail, -boxing gloves, foils, odds and ends of wood and metal, curiosities from -tree and stone, everything that can be accumulated by curious and -unruly minds; and then also the owners themselves and their friends, -plotting, arguing, examining their property, tending the living animals -or skinning the dead, boxing, fencing, firing cannon, and going to and -fro. - -The kitchen, the Library, and Mrs Morgan’s room were silent rooms. In -the kitchen Ann ruled. It smelt of an old Bible and new cakes: its -sole sound was Ann’s voice singing in Welsh, which was often stopped -abruptly by her duties coming to a head, or by something outside--as -when she heard Lewis overtaxing Granfer in teaching it a trick and -flitted out, saying: “Don’t use the dog like that. Anyone might think -he had no human feelings.” She must have been, in a sense, young in -those days, but was unlike any other young woman I have seen, and it -never occurred to me then to think of her as one; nor, as certainly, -did it seem possible that she would grow old--and she has not grown -old. When she left her kitchen it was seldom to go out. Except to do -the household shopping, and that was always after dark, she never went -beyond the yard. She did not like being laughed at for her looks and -accent, and she disliked London so much as to keep out the London air, -as far as possible, with closed windows. - -I do not remember ever to have seen Ann talking to her mistress, and -no doubt she did without her. Mrs Morgan was not to be seen about the -house, and her room was perfectly respected. She sat at the window -looking on to the yard and watched the boys as she sewed, or read, or -pretended to read. Sometimes Jessie sat with her, and then I have seen -her smiling. She had large eyes of a gloomy lustre which looked as if -they had worn their hollows in the gaunt face by much gazing and still -more musing. The boys were silent for a moment as they went past her -door. I do not know when she went out, if she ever did, but I never -saw her even in the yard. Nor did I see her with Mr Morgan, and it -was known that he was never in her sitting-room. She seemed to live -uncomplaining under a weight of gloom, looking out from under it upon -her strong sons and their busy indolence, with admiration and also a -certain dread. - -Jessie was the favourite child of father and mother, but I used to -think that it was to avoid her father that she was so often in her -mother’s room. Why else should such a child of light and liberty -stay in that quietness and dark silence which breathed out darkness -over the house? Outside that room she was her brothers’ equal in -boldness, merriment and even in strength. Yet it once struck me with -some horror, as she sat up at the window, that she was like her -mother--too much like her--the dark eyes large, the cheeks not any too -plump, the expression sobered either by some fear of her own or by the -conversation; it struck me that she might some day by unimaginable -steps reach that aspect of soft endurance and tranquilly expectant -fear. At fifteen, when I best remember her, she was a tall girl with -a very grave face when alone, which could break out with astonishing -ease into great smiles of greeting and then laughter of the whole soul -and body as she was lured to one group or another in the yard. She -mixed so roughly and carelessly with every one that, at first, I, who -had false picture-book notions of beauty and looked for it to have -something proud and ceremonious in itself and its reception, did not -see how beautiful she was. She took no care of her dress, and this -made all the more noticeable the radiant sweetness of her complexion. -But I recognised her beauty before long. One Saturday night she was -shopping with Ann, and I met her suddenly face to face amidst a pale -crowd all spattered with acute light and shadow from the shops. I did -not know who it was, though I knew Ann. She was so extraordinary that -I stared hard at her as people do at a foreigner, or a picture, or -an animal, not expecting a look in answer. Others also were staring, -some of the women were laughing. There could be no greater testimony -to beauty than this laughter of the vulgar. The vulgar always laugh -at beauty; that they did so is my only reason for calling these women -by that hateful name. Jessie did not heed them. Then she caught sight -of me, and her face lightened and blossomed with smiles. I shall not -forget it, and how I blushed to be so saluted in that vile street. -There was another reason why I should remember. Some of the big boys -and young men--boys just leaving the Grammar School or in their first -year at an office--winked at her as they passed; and one of them, a -white-faced youth with a cigarette, not only winked but grinned as if -he were certain of conquest. Jessie’s face recovered its grave look, -she gave Ann her basket, and at the fullness of his leer she struck him -in the mouth with all her force, splashing her small hand and his face -with blood. I trembled and winced with admiration. Jessie burst into -tears. The crowd was quiet and excited. Everybody seemed to be looking -for somebody else to do they could not tell what. The crush increased. -I saw Ann wiping Jessie’s hand. They were saved by a big red-faced -working woman, who had a little husband alongside of her. She pushed -very slowly but with great determination through the crowd, using her -husband rather as an addition to her weight than as a brother in arms, -until she came to the cluster of moody youths. Between us and them she -stood, and hammering in her words with a projecting chin, told them -to “Get home, you chalk-faced quill-drivers, and tell your mothers -to suckle you again on milk instead of water. Then you can ask leave -to look at girls, but not the likes of this beautiful dear, not you. -Get home....” They laughed awkwardly and with affected scorn as they -turned away from that face on fire; and it was laughing thus that they -realised that they were blocking the traffic, and therefore dispersed -muttering a sort of threats, the woman keeping up her attack until it -could not be hoped that they heard her. As we hurried home we were -hooted by similar boys and by some of the young women who matched them. - -We were proud of Jessie in this attitude, which made her father call -her “Brynhild” or “Boadicea.” When she was with her mother she was -“Cordelia:” when she nursed a cat or fed the pigeons she was “Phyllis,” -by which I suppose he meant to express her gentleness. From that -Saturday night I admired everything about her, down to her bright -teeth, which were a little uneven, and thus gave a touch of country -homeliness to her beauty. Very few girls came to Abercorran House to -see Jessie, partly because she was impatient of very girlish girls, -partly because they could not get on with her brothers. And so, with -all her sweet temper--and violence that came like a tenth wave--she was -rather alone; just as her face dropped back to gravity so completely -after laughter, so I think she returned to solitude very easily after -her romps. Was it the shadow of London upon her, or of her mother’s -room? She went back to Wales too seldom, and as for other holidays, the -charming sophisticated home-counties were nothing to the Morgans, nor -the seaside resorts. Jessie should have had a purer air, where perhaps -she would never have sung the song beginning, “O the cuckoo, she’s a -pretty bird,” and ending with the chorus: - - “Oh, the cuckoo, she’s a pretty bird, she singeth as she flies: - She bringeth good tidings, she telleth no lies.” - -Sometimes she was willing to sing all three verses and repeat the first -to make a fourth and to please herself: - - “Oh, the cuckoo, she’s a pretty bird, she singeth as she flies: - She bringeth good tidings, she telleth no lies: - She sucketh sweet flowers, for to keep her voice clear; - And the more she singeth cuckoo, the summer draweth near.” - -When she came to those last two lines I looked at her very hard, -inspired by the thought that it was she had sucked dew out of the white -flowers of April, the cuckoo-flower, the stitchwort, the blackthorn, -and the first may, to make her voice clear and her lips sweet. While -she sang it once Mr Stodham--a clerk somewhere who had seen a naked -Dryad--bent his head a little to one side, perfectly motionless, the -eyes and lips puckered to a perfect attention, at once eager and -passive, so that I think the melody ran through all his nerves and his -veins, as I am sure he was inviting it to do. I heard him telling Mr -Morgan afterwards that he wanted to cry, but could not, it was not in -his family. - -That was in Mr Morgan’s own room, the library, the largest room in the -house, where Mr Stodham had gone to escape the boys for a time. When -Mr Morgan was not at the top of the steps which led down to the yard, -smoking a cigar and watching the boys, the dogs, and the pigeons, -and looking round now and then to see if Jessie would come, he was -in the library sitting by the big fire with a cigar and a book. If -anyone entered he put the book on his knee, shifted the cigar to the -middle of his mouth, removed his spectacles, and looked at us without -a word. Then with a nod he replaced book, cigar, and spectacles, and -ignored us. We spoke in whispers or not at all as we coasted the high -book-shelves lining every part of each wall, except in one corner, -where there were several guns, an ivory-handled whip, and a pair of -skates. The books were on the whole grim and senatorial. We felt them -vaguely--the legal, the historical, and the classical tiers--to be our -accusers and judges. There were also many sporting books, many novels, -plays, poems, and romances of - - “Old loves and wars for ladies done by many a lord.” - -If we took some of these down they were not to be read in the library. -We laid one on our knees, opened a page, but glanced up more than once -the while at Mr Morgan, and then either replaced it or put it under an -arm and ran off with it on tiptoe. “Stay if you like, boys,” said Mr -Morgan as we reached the door; and immediately after, “Shut the door -quietly. Good-bye.” - -At most gatherings and conversations Mr Morgan listened in silence, -except when appealed to for a fact or a decision, or when he -laughed--we often did not know why--and dropped his cigar, but caught -it in some confusion at his waist. He was a lean man of moderate height -and very upright, a hawk’s profile, a pointed brown beard, cheeks -weathered and worn, and the heaviest-lidded eyes possible without -deformity. He stood about with one hand in his coat pocket, the other -holding a newspaper or an opened book. The dogs loved him and leaped -up at him when he appeared, though he took small notice of them. When -we met him in the street he always had a slow horseman’s stride, was -wrapped in a long overcoat and deep in thought, and never saw us or -made any sign. At home, though he was a severe-looking man of grave -speech, he accepted the irregularities and alarums without a murmur, -often with a smile, sometimes, as I have said, with laughter, but -that was a little disconcerting. It was on questions of sport and -natural history that he was most often asked for a judgment, which he -always gave with an indifferent air and voice, yet in a very exact -and unquestionable manner. But they were the frankest family alive, -and there was nothing which the elder boys would not discuss in his -presence or refer to him--except in the matter of horse-racing. Jack -and Roland, the two eldest sons, betted; and so, as we all knew, did Mr -Morgan; but the father would not say one word about a horse or a race, -unless it was a classical or curious one belonging to the past. - - - - -CHAPTER III - -THE WILD SWANS - - -One day as I was passing the library door with a pair of swan’s wings -belonging to Philip, Mr Morgan stepped out. The look which he gave to -the wings and to me compelled me to stop, and he said: - -“You have a pair of wild swans there, Arthur.” - -I said I had. - -“Swan’s wings,” he repeated. “Swan’s wings;” and as he uttered the -words his body relaxed more than ordinary, until the middle of his back -was supported against the wall, his feet and face stuck out towards me. - -“Did you know,” said he, “that some women had swan’s wings with which -to fly?” - -Now I had heard of swan maidens, but he distinctly said “women,” and -the tone of his voice made me feel that he was not referring to the -flimsy, incredible creatures of fairy tales, but to women of flesh and -blood, of human stature and nature, such women as might come into the -library and stand by Mr Morgan’s fire--only, so far as I knew, no women -ever did. So I said “No.” - -“They have,” said he, “or they had in the young days of Elias -Griffiths, who was an old man when I was a lad.” - -Here he sighed and paused, but apologised, though not exactly to me, by -saying: “But that”--meaning, I suppose, the sigh--“is neither here nor -there. Besides, I must not trespass in Mr Stodham’s province.” For Mr -Stodham was then passing, and I made way for him. - -Mr Morgan continued: - -“It was on a Thursday....” - -Now I held Mr Morgan in great respect, but the mention of Thursday at -the opening of a story about swan maidens was too much for me. - -“Why Thursday?” I asked. - -“I agree with the boy,” remarked Mr Stodham, leaving us and the talk of -swan maidens and Thursday. - -Thursday was a poor sort of a day. Saturday, Sunday, Monday, were all -noticeable days in some way, though not equally likeable. Friday, too, -as, ushering in Saturday and the end of the week, had some merit. -Wednesday, again, was a half holiday. But least of all was to be said -for Thursday. Mr Morgan’s answer was: - -“I said it was on a Thursday, because it was on a Thursday and not on -any other day. I am sorry to see that the indolent spirit of criticism -has resorted to you. Pluck it out, my boy.... Give me those wings.... -They are beautiful: I expect the ferryman shot the swans in the estuary -at Abercorran.... However, they are not large enough....” - -He was looking carefully at the wings, thinking things which he could -not say to me, and I said nothing. Then, handing me back the wings, he -went on: - -“It was on a Thursday, a very stormy one in December, that two young -men who lived with their old mothers a mile or two inland went down to -the rocks to shoot with their long, ancient guns. They shot some trash. -But the wind for the most part snatched the birds from the shot or the -shot from the birds, and they could not hold their guns still for cold. -They continued however, to walk in and out among the rocks, looking for -something to prevent them saving their gunpowder. But they saw nothing -more until they were close to a creek that runs up into the cliff and -stops you unless you have wings. So there they stopped and would have -turned back, if one of them had not gone to the very edge of the creek -wall and looked down. He levelled his gun instantly, and then dropped -it again. His companion coming up did the same. Two white swans--not -gray ones like this--were just alighting upon the sand below, and -before the eyes of the young men they proceeded to lay aside their -wings and entered the water, not as swans, but as women, upon that -stormy Thursday. They were women with long black hair, beautiful white -faces and--Have you seen the statues at the Museum, my boy? Yes, you -have; and you never thought that there was anything like them outside -of marble. But there is. These women were like them, and they were not -of marble, any more than they were of what I am made of.” His own skin -was coloured apparently by a mixture of weather and cigar smoke. “These -women were white, like the moon when it is neither green nor white. -Now those young men were poor and rough, and they were unmarried. They -watched the women swimming and diving and floating as if they had been -born in the sea. But as it began to darken and the swimmers showed -no signs of tiring, the young men made their way down to the swans’ -wings to carry them off. No sooner had they picked up the wings than -the two women hastened towards them into the shallow water, crying out -something in their own tongue which the men could not even hear for the -roar of winds and waters. As the women drew nearer, the men retreated -a little, holding the wings behind them, but keeping their eyes fixed -on the women. When the women actually left the water the men turned and -made for home, followed by the owners of the wings. They reached their -cottages in darkness, barred the doors, and put away the wings. - -But the wingless ones knocked at the doors, and cried out until the old -mothers heard them. Then the sons told their tale. Their mothers were -very wise. Fumbling to the bottom of their chests they found clothes -suitable for young women and brides, and they opened their doors. They -quieted the women with clothes for wings, and though they were very -old they could see that the creatures were beautiful as their sons had -said. They took care that the wings were not discovered. - -Those young men married their guests, and the pairs lived happily. The -sons were proud of their wives, who were as obedient as they were -beautiful. Said the old women: Anybody might think they still had -their wings by their lightsome way of walking. They made no attempt to -get away from the cottages and the smell of bacon. In fact, they were -laughed at by the neighbours for their home-keeping ways; they never -cared to stay long or far from home, or to see much of the other women. -When they began to have children they were worse than ever, hardly ever -leaving the house and never parting from their children. They got thin -as well as pale; a stranger could hardly have told that they were not -human, except for the cold, greenish light about them and their gait -which was like the swimming of swans. - -In course of time the old women died, having warned their sons not to -let their wives on any account have the wings back. The swan-women grew -paler and yet more thin. One of them, evidently in a decline, had at -length to take to her bed. Here for the first time she spoke of her -wings. She begged to be allowed to have them back, because wearing -them, she said, she would certainly not die. She cried bitterly for the -wings, but in vain. On her deathbed she still cried for them, and took -no notice of the minister’s conversation, so that he, in the hope of -gaining peace and a hearing, advised her husband to give way to her. He -consented. The wings were taken out of the chest where they had been -exchanged for a wedding garment years before; they were as white and -unruffled as when they lay upon the sand. At the sight of them the sick -woman stood up in her bed with a small, wild cry. The wings seemed to -fill the room with white waves; they swept the rush-light away as they -carried the swan out into the wind. All the village heard her flying -low above the roofs towards the sea, where a fisherman saw her already -high above the cliffs. It was the last time she was seen. - -The other swan-wife lingered for a year or two. A sister of her -husband’s kept house in her place. Whether this woman had not heard -the story or did not believe it, I do not know. One day, however, she -discovered the wings and gave them to the children to play with. As one -child came in soon afterwards crying for his mother and the wings at -the same time, it was certain that she also had taken flight to some -place more suitable for wild swans. They say that two generations of -children of these families were famous for the same beautiful walking -as their mothers, whom they never saw again....” Here Mr Morgan paused -for a moment then added: “I wonder why we never hear of swan-men?” - -I was not much impressed at the time by the story and his dry way of -telling it. What I liked most was the idea that two ordinary men went -shooting on a Thursday in mid-winter and caught swan-maidens bathing in -a pool on the Welsh coast and married them. So I said to Mr Morgan: - -“Why did you ever leave Wales, Mr Morgan?” - -He put a new cigar severely between his teeth and looked at me as if he -did not know or even see me. I ran off with the wings to Philip. - - - - -CHAPTER IV - -HOB-Y-DERI-DANDO[1] - - -[Footnote 1: i.e. _Hey-derry-down_, or _Upsa-daisy-dando_.] - -I alone was listening to the swan story, but it would have been more -in accordance with the custom of the house if it had been told in a -large company out in the yard--in one of the bedrooms--in the library -itself--or in the dining-room (where there was a vast sideboard bearing -a joint, cheese, bread, fruit, cakes, and bottles of ale, to which the -boys or the visitors resorted, for meals without a name, at all hours -of the day). Most often the yard and the steps leading down to it were -the meeting-place. The pigeons, the conservatory, with its bicycles, a -lathe and all sorts of beginnings and remains, the dogs, above all the -sun and the view of the Wilderness, attracted everyone to the yard as a -common centre for the Morgans and those who gathered round one or other -of them. Thus, for example, the pigeons did not belong to the Morgans -at all, but to one Higgs, who was unable to keep them at his home. -He was always in and out of the yard, frequently bringing friends who -might or might not become friends of the family. Everyone was free to -look at the pigeons, note which had laid and which had hatched, to use -the lathe, to take the dogs out if they were willing, to go upstairs -and see the wonders--the eggs of kites, ravens, buzzards, curlews, for -example, taken by Jack and Roland near Abercorran--and to have a meal -at the sideboard or a cup of tea from one of Ann’s brews in the kitchen. - -Jack and Roland in themselves attracted a large and mixed company. -Jack, the eldest, was a huge, brown-haired, good-natured fellow, with -his father’s eyes, or rather eyelids. He was very strong, and knew all -about dogs and horses. He was a good deal away from the house, we did -not know where, except that it was not at an office or other place -where they work. Roland was tall, black-haired, dark-eyed like his -mother, and as strong as Jack. He was handsome and proud-looking, but -though quick-tempered was not proud in speech with us lesser ones. His -learning was equal to Jack’s, and it comprised also the theatre; he -was dressed as carefully as Jack was carelessly, but like Jack would -allow the pigeons to perch anywhere upon him. Both wore knickerbockers -and looked like country gentlemen in exile. Jack smoked a clay pipe, -Roland cigarettes. They were very good friends. Though they did no -work, one or other of them was often at the lathe. They boxed together -while we stood round, admiring Jack because he could never be beaten, -and Roland because no one but his brother could have resisted him. They -were sometimes to be seen looking extremely serious over a sporting -paper. Lewis and Harry were a similar pair many years younger, Lewis, -the elder, broader, shorter, and fairer of the two, both of them stiff -and straight like their elders. They also had begun to acquire trains -of adherents from the various schools which they had irregularly and -with long intervals attended. They treated the streets like woods, and -never complained of the substitute. Once or twice a year they went to a -barber to have their black and brown manes transformed into a uniform -stubble of less than half an inch. Midway between these two pairs came -Philip, and a little after him Jessie. - -These six attracted every energetic or discontented boy in the -neighbourhood. Abercorran House was as good as a mountain or a -sea-shore for them, and was accessible at any hour of the day or -night, “except at breakfast time,” said Mr Stodham--for there was no -breakfast-time. Mr Stodham was a middle-aged refugee at Abercorran -House, one for whom breakfast had become the most austere meal of -the day, to be taken with a perfectly adjusted system of times and -ceremonies, in silence, far from children and from all innovation, -irregularity, and disorder. Therefore the house of the Morgans was -for him the house that had no breakfast-time, and unconsciously he -was seeking salvation in the anarchy which at home would have been -unendurable. Mr Stodham was not the only client who was no longer a -boy, but he and the few others were all late converts; for, as I have -mentioned, boys forsook Abercorran House as they grew up. Parents, -too, looked foul-favouredly on the house. The family was irregular, -not respectable, mysterious, in short unprofitable. It may have got -about that when Mr Morgan once received a fountain-pen as a gift, he -said he did not want any of “your damned time-saving appliances.” Of -course, said he, some people could not help saving time and money--let -them--they were never clever enough to know what to do with them, -supposing that their savings were not hidden out of their reach like -their childhood--but it had not occurred to him to do either, so he -gave the pen to the little milk-boy, advising him to give it away -before it got a hold on him. This child had delighted Mr Morgan by -coming up the street every day, singing a filthy song. It was a test of -innocence, whether the words of it did or did not make the hearer wish -that either he or the singer might sink instantaneously into the earth. -Mr Morgan did not like the song at all. The words were in no way better -than those of a bad hymn, nor was the tune. But he liked what he called -the boy’s innocence. Ophelia only sang “By Gis and by Saint Charity” -under cover of madness. At the worst this boy made no pretence. Mr -Morgan argued, probably, that one who had such thoughts would not have -the impudence to sing so except to a select audience; he had no doubt -of this when the boy sang it once on being asked to in the Library. -I do not know what happened, beyond this, that Mr Morgan looked as -if he had been crying, and the boy never sang it again. If this got -about, few could think any better of the Morgans at Abercorran House. -Moreover, the window frames and doors were never painted, and the -front gate remained upright only because it was never closed; and on -any sunny day a man passing down the lane was sure of hearing men and -boys laughing, or Jessie singing, and dogs barking or yawning, pigeons -courting, over the fence. - - - - -CHAPTER V - -AURELIUS, THE SUPERFLUOUS MAN - - -We recalled many memories, Ann and I, as we stood in the empty and -silent, but still sunlit yard, on my last visit. At one moment the past -seemed everything, the present a dream; at another, the past seemed -to have gone for ever. Trying, I suppose, to make myself believe that -there had been no break, but only a gradual change, I asked Ann if -things at Abercorran House had not been quieter for some time past. - -“Oh no,” said she, “there was always someone new dropping in, and -you know nobody came twice without coming a hundred times. We had -the little Morgans of Clare’s Castle here for more than a year, and -almost crowded us out with friends. Then Mr--whatever was his name--the -Italian--I mean the Gypsy--Mr Aurelius--stayed here three times for -months on end, and that brought quite little children.” - -“Of course it did, Ann. Aurelius.... Don’t I remember what he was--can -it be fifteen years ago? He was the first man I ever met who really -proved that man is above the other animals _as an animal_. He was -really better than any pony, or hound, or bird of prey, in their own -way.” - -“Now you are _talking_, Mr Froxfield--Arthur, I _should_ say.” - -“I suppose I am, but Aurelius makes you talk. I remember him up in -the Library reading that Arabian tale about the great king who had -a hundred thousand kings under him, and what he liked most was to -read in old books about Paradise and its wonders and loveliness. I -remember Aurelius saying: And when he came upon a certain description -of Paradise, its pavilions and lofty chambers and precious-laden trees, -and a thousand beautiful and strange things, he fell into a rapture so -that he determined to make its equal on earth.” - -“He is the first rich man I ever heard of that had so much sense,” said -Ann. “Perhaps Aurelius would have done like that if he had been as rich -as sin, instead of owing a wine-and-spirit merchant four and six and -being owed half-a-crown by me. But he does not need it now, that is, so -far as we can tell.” - -“What, Ann, is Aurelius dead?” - -“That I cannot say. But we shall never see him again.” - -“Why frighten me for nothing? Of course he will turn up: he always did.” - -“That is impossible.” - -“Why?” - -“He promised Mr Torrance he would write and wait for an answer every -Midsummer day, if not oftener, wherever he might be. He has now missed -two Midsummers, which he would not do--you know he could not do such a -thing to Mr Torrance--if he was in his right mind. He wasn’t young, and -perhaps he had to pay for keeping his young looks so long.” - -“Why? How old could he be?” I said quickly, forgetting how long ago it -was that I met him first. - -“I know he is fifty,” said Ann. - -I did not answer because it seemed ridiculous and I did not want to be -rude to Ann. I should have said a moment before, had I been asked, that -he was thirty. But Ann was right. - -“Where was he last heard of, Ann?” - -“I went myself with little Henry Morgan and Jessie to a place called -Oatham, or something like it, where he last wrote from. He had been -an under-gardener there for nearly two years, and we saw the man -and his wife who let him a room and looked after him. They said he -seemed to be well-off, and of course he would. You know he ate little, -smoked and drank nothing, and gave nothing to any known charities. -They remembered him very well because he taught them to play cards -and was very clean and very silent. ‘As clean as a lady,’ she said -to Jessie, who only said, ‘Cleaner.’ You know her way. The man did -not like him, I know. He said Aurelius used to sit as quiet as a book -and never complained of anything. ‘He never ate half he paid for, I -will say that,’ said he. ‘He was too fond of flowers, too, for an -under-gardener, and used to ask why daisies and fluellen and such-like -were called weeds. There was something wrong with him, something on his -conscience perhaps.’ The squire’s agent, a Mr Theobald, said the same -when he came in. He thought there was something wrong. He said such -people were unnecessary. Nothing could be done with them. They were no -better than wild birds compared with pheasants, even when they could -sing, which some of them could do, but not Aurelius. They caused a -great deal of trouble, said my lord the agent of my lord the squire, -yet you couldn’t put them out of the way. He remarked that Aurelius -never wrote any letters and never received any--that looked bad, too. -‘What we want,’ said he--‘is a little less Theobald,’ said Jessie, but -the man didn’t notice her. ‘What we want is efficiency. How are we -to get it with the likes of this Mr What’s-his-name in the way? They -neither produce like the poor nor consume like the rich, and it is by -production and consumption that the world goes round, I say. He was -a bit of a poacher, too. I caught him myself letting a hare out of a -snare--letting it out, so he said. I said nothing to the squire, but -the chap had to go.’ And that’s all we shall hear about Aurelius,” said -Ann. “He left there in the muck of February. They didn’t know where he -was going, and didn’t care, though he provided them with gossip for a -year to come. The woman asked me how old he was. Before I could have -answered, her husband said: ‘About thirty I should say.’ The woman -could not resist saying snappily: ‘Fifty’....” - -Aurelius was gone, then. It cannot have surprised anyone. What was -surprising was the way he used to reappear after long absences. While -he was present everyone liked him, but he had something unreal about -him or not like a man of this world. When that squire’s agent called -his under-gardener a superfluous man, he was a brute and he was wrong, -but he saw straight. If we accept his label there must always have been -some superfluous men since the beginning, men whom the extravagant -ingenuity of creation has produced out of sheer delight in variety, -by-products of its immense processes. Sometimes I think it was some of -these superfluous men who invented God and all the gods and godlets. -Some of them have been killed, some enthroned, some sainted, for -it. But in a civilisation like ours the superfluous abound and even -flourish. They are born in palace and cottage and under hedges. Often -they are fortunate in being called mad from early years; sometimes -they live a brief, charmed life without toil, envied almost as much -as the animals by drudges; sometimes they are no more than delicate -instruments on which men play melodies of agony and sweetness. - -The superfluous are those who cannot find society with which they -are in some sort of harmony. The magic circle drawn round us all at -birth surrounds these in such a way that it will never overlap, far -less become concentric with, the circles of any other in the whirling -multitudes. The circle is a high wall guarded as if it were a Paradise, -not a Hell, “with dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms”: or it is no -more than a shell border round the garden of a child, and there is no -one so feeble but he can slip over it, or shift it, or trample it down, -though powerless to remove it. Some of these weaker ones might seem to -have several circles enclosing them, which are thus upset or trampled -one by one as childhood advances. Everybody discovers that he can cross -their borders. They do not retaliate. These are the superfluous who are -kept alive to perform the most terrible or most loathsome tasks. Rarely -do their tyrants see their eyes gleaming in their dungeons, and draw -back or hurl a stone like a man who has almost trodden upon a fox. - -But the superfluous are not always unfortunate; we who knew Aurelius -would never call him unfortunate. There are some--and more than ever in -these days when even the strongest do not condemn outright, and when -deaths less unpleasant to the executioner have been discovered--some -who escape the necessity to toil and spin for others, and do not spend -their ease in manacles. Many of the women among the hunted are not -slaughtered as soon as caught. They are kept in artfully constructed -and choicely decorated cages where their captors try to force them -to sing over and over again the notes which were their allurement -at first; a few survive to wear white locks and trouble with a new -note the serenity of the palaces where their cages are suspended. The -superfluous have been known to learn the ways of their superiors, to -make little camps unmolested in the midst of the foreign land, to enjoy -a life admired of many and sometimes envied, but insincerely. - -Some of the captives enslave their masters. Aurelius was one. From my -earliest days Aurelius and rumours of him were much about me. Once he -earned his bread in a great country house by looking after the books -and writing letters. They lodged, fed, and clothed him, and gave him a -small wage--he came from no one knew where, except that it must have -been a gutter or a ditch, as he said, “between the moon and Mercury.” -But he would tell children that he was begotten out of the moonlight -by an owl’s hooting, or that he was born in a tent in the New Forest, -where there were more leaves than money. It was a sort of grievance -against him that he could always buy what he wanted, as a book for -himself or a toy for a child. - -He can have been of little use as a letter-writer, as I see now. His -writing looked as unfamiliar as Persian, and must have been laborious. -It was suited to the copying of incantations, horoscopes, receipts -for confectionery. It must often have startled the reader like a line -of trees or flight of birds writing their black legend on the dawn -silver. There was nothing in the meaning of his sentences, I think, -to correspond with the looks of them. A few of his letters survive, -and some notes on accessions to the library, etc.; but it is clear -that they were written in a language foreign to the man, a loose -journalistic English of the moment, neither classic nor colloquial, and -they have no significance. - -Some people called him a little man, but in his size as in other things -he seemed rather to be of another species than a diminutive example of -our own. He was smaller than a man, but not unpleasantly small, neither -were his hands too long and delicate, nor were they incapable of a -man’s work. In every way he was finely made and graceful, with clear -large features, curled dark-brown hair and beard almost auburn. His -clothes were part of him, of a lighter brown than his hair and of some -substance which was more like a natural fur than a made cloth. These -clothes, along with his voice, which was very deep, his hair, and his -silent movements, increased his pleasing inhumanity. He sat among many -people and said trivial things, or more often nothing, looking very far -away and very little, turning all light somehow to moonlight, his dark -eyes full of subdued gleaming; and both speech and silence drew upon -him an attention which gave the casual observer an excuse for calling -him vain. Children liked him, though he never troubled to show a liking -for children, and while we sat on his lap or displayed a book for him -he would be talking busily to others, but without offending us. He did -not often tell us tales or play games with us, but he had a swift, -gentle way of putting his hand on our heads and looking at us which -always seemed an honour. - -I recall chiefly, in connection with Aurelius, an evening near the end -of winter at the great house. There had been a week of frost, some -days silent and misty, others loud and clear with a north-east wind. -Then came the west wind, a day’s balmy sun, and at last rain. This -day I recall was the next. It was full of goings to and fro of loose -cloud, of yellow threatenings on the hills. The light was thin and -pale, falling tenderly over green fields and their fresh sprinkling -of mole-heaps. But the rain would not descend, and as we got to the -big house for tea the sky cleared, and in the twilight blackbirds -were chinking nervously before sleep and now and then hurrying across -the dim grass between the dark hedges and copses. A robin sang at -the edge of a holly, and a thrush somewhere remote, and the world -had become narrow and homely, the birds sounded secure like happily -tired boys lazily undressing, and evidently they did not expect men. -Three-quarters of a moon hung at the zenith, cold and fresh and -white like an early spring flower. We grew silent, but at tea were -particularly noisy and excited, too excited and near to tears, when -I rushed upstairs. In the library I found Aurelius reading, with his -back to the uncurtained window, by a light that only illuminated his -face and page. Running at first to the window, I pressed my face on -the pane to see the profound of deepening night, and the lake shining -dimly like a window through which the things under the earth might -be seen if you were out. The abyss of solitude below and around was -swallowing the little white moon and might swallow me also; with terror -at this feeling I turned away. “What?” said Aurelius, without even -looking round, but apparently aware of my feeling. Seated in his lap, -he took hardly more notice of me, but I was comforted. His silence was -not a mere absence of words. It was not the peevish silence of one -too cautious or too fearful to speak; nor the silence of one who has -suddenly become isolated and feels it, yet cannot escape. Up out of -the silence rose the voice of Aurelius reading out of the book before -him. Over my shoulder came the rustling of ivy, and the sighing of -trees, and the running of the brook through the coomb; the moon, close -at hand, out in the black garden, pressed her face against the window -and looked in at me. Aurelius was reading of that great king who had -under him a hundred thousand kings, and whose chief delight was in -ancient books telling of the loveliness of Paradise: “And when he met -with this description of the world to come, and of Paradise and its -pavilions, its lofty chambers, its trees and fruits, and of the other -things in Paradise, his heart enticed him to construct its like on -earth....” The world extended to a vastness that came close up to me -and enfolded me as a lake enfolds one swan. Thus at the building of -that Paradise I easily imagined doorways that would have admitted Orion -and the Pleiades together. And at last, at the cry of destruction, -though I was sorry, I was intensely satisfied with both the sadness and -the splendour. I began to dream in the following silence. I dreamed I -was lying at the edge of an immense sea, upon a rock scarcely raised -above the water of the colour of sapphires. I saw go by me a procession -of enormous seals whose backs swelled out of the wavelets like camels, -and as they passed in deep water, a few yards away, each one cast on me -his dark soft eyes, and they were the eyes of Aurelius. There were more -coming behind when I awoke. Aurelius lighted another lamp. I went over -again to the window and looked out. In a flash I saw the outer vast -world of solitude, darkness, and silence, waiting eternally for its -prey, and felt behind me the little world within that darkness like a -lighthouse. I went back to the others. Aurelius for all I knew went to -the kingdoms of the moon. - -Many times again he read to us after I had on some pretext brought him -to Abercorran House, a year or two later. - -Yet older people said that Aurelius had no perception of religion, -or beauty, or human suffering. Certainly he talked of these things, -as I see now, with a strange and callous-seeming familiarity, as a -poultry-farmer talks of chickens; but our elders did not explain it -when they called it in scorn artistic. I suspect it was in scorn, -though they said it was to humanise him, that they helped to get him -married to a “nice sensible” girl who never came near Abercorran House. -Like many other women, she had been used to petting him as if he were -an animal. He responded with quaint, elaborate speeches and gestures, -kneeling to speak, calling her by different invented names, but perhaps -with a mock-heroic humorous gleam. He married her, and all I know is -that he slipped away from the charming flat where the kindness of -friends had deposited them, and never reappeared in the neighbourhood -except at Abercorran House. He sent her money from time to time which -he earned as trainer to a troupe of dogs in a travelling circus, as a -waiter, as a commercial traveller of some sort. It was said that he -had been to sea. In any case, to hear him sing - - “Along the plains of Mexico” - -was better than sailing in any ship we had ever been in or imagined. -I am sure that he could not have improved his singing of “Along the -Plains of Mexico” by sailing from Swansea to Ilfracombe or round Cape -Horn, or by getting a heart of oak and a hand of iron. He brought -nothing back with him from his travels. He had no possessions--not a -book, not a watch, not an extra suit of clothes, not a lead pencil. -He could live on nothing, and at times, it was said, had done so. For -his hardiness was great, and habitually he ate almost nothing. Man, -God, and weather could not harm him. Of course he was sometimes put -upon, for he would not quarrel. For having treated him better than he -appeared to have expected, some people could hardly forgive themselves -until they learned to take it as creditable. One tremendous tradesman, -for instance, explained his comparative civility to Aurelius on a -trying occasion by blustering: “You never know where you are with -these Gypsies:” he came, however, to regard himself as a benefactor. -A minister of the gospel who was tricked by Aurelius’ innocence had -to fall back on accusing him of concealing his age and of being a -Welshman. Everyone thought him a foreigner. - -It was a remarkable thing that nobody except a few children and Mr -Torrance the schoolmaster--for actually one schoolmaster frequented -Abercorran House--liked to be alone with Aurelius. I never heard this -spoken of, and I believe nobody consciously avoided being alone with -him. Only, it so happened that he was welcomed by a company, but not -one member of it was likely to stay on long if at last he found himself -and Aurelius left behind by the others. Meeting him in the street, no -one ever stopped for more than a few words with him. Some awkwardness -was feared, but not in Aurelius, who was never awkward. Unsympathetic -people called him a foreigner, and there was something in it. In no -imaginable crowd could he have been one of the million “friends, -Romans, countrymen!” Perhaps even at Abercorran House he was not quite -one of us. Yet in a moment he was at home there. I can see him holding -a pigeon--in the correct manner--spreading out one of its wings and -letting it slip back again, while he was talking, as luck would have -it, to Higgs the bird-chap who cared for nothing but pigeons. Higgs -was so taken aback by the way the new-comer talked and held the bird--a -man whom he would instinctively have laughed at--that he could not say -a word, but escaped as soon as possible and blundered about saying: “I -like the little chap.... You can see he’s used to birds--who would have -thought it?--and I wondered what it was young Arthur was bringing in.” -Higgs was so pleased with his own discernment, his cleverness in seeing -good in that unlikely place, that he really exaggerated his liking for -Aurelius. However, let it be set down to Higgs’ credit that he knew a -hawk from a handsaw, and hailed Aurelius almost at first sight. - -As I have mentioned, Aurelius had asked me to take him to Abercorran -House, because I had attracted his fancy with something I had said -about the Morgans or the house. It was a lucky introduction. For all -liked him, and he was soon free to stay at the house for a night or -a month, at pleasure. It was one of his virtues to admire Jessie. He -must have felt at once that she was alone among women, since he never -knelt to her or made any of his long, lofty speeches to her as to -other fair women whom he met elsewhere, as at my home. She saw his -merit instantly. To please him she would go on and on singing for him -“The Cuckoo,” “Midsummer Maid,” “Hob-y-deri-dando,” “Crockamy Daisy -Kitty-alone.” - -When for a time he was a bookseller’s assistant in London, it was -Jessie discovered him, as she was passing with her mother at night. -She said he was standing outside like one of those young men in -“The Arabian Nights” who open a stall in a market at Bagdad because -they hope to capture someone long-lost or much-desired among their -customers. But he soon wearied of dry goods, and was not seen after -that for over a year, though Mr Torrance brought word that he had -written from Dean Prior in Devonshire, where (he said) a great poet -lived who would have been sorry to die in 1674 if he had known he -was going to miss Aurelius by doing so. Which may be absurd, but Mr -Torrance said it, and he knew both Herrick and Aurelius extremely well. -He did try to explain the likeness, but to an audience that only knew -Herrick as the author of “Bid me to live” and as an immoral clergyman, -and at this distance of time I cannot reconstruct the likeness. But it -may have been that Aurelius wrote verses which Mr Torrance, in the -kindness of his heart, believed to resemble Herrick’s. I know nothing -of that. The nearest to poetry I ever saw of his was a pack of cards -which he spent his life, off and on, in painting. Jessie was one of the -Queens, and rightly so. That this pack was found in the cottage where -he stayed before he finally disappeared, proves, to me at any rate, -that he regarded this life as at an end. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - -OUR COUNTRY - - -“It was a good day, Arthur, that first brought you to Abercorran -House,” said old Ann, as she went to the door to deliver the stray -pigeon to its owner. - -“Yes,” I said, a little pathetically for Ann’s taste and with thought -too deep for tears, at least in her company. I looked round the -kitchen, remembering the glory that was Abercorran ... Philip ... -Jessie ... Roland ... Aurelius.... It was no unselfish memory, for -I wished with all my heart that I was fifteen again, that the month -was April, the hour noon, and the scene the yard of Abercorran House -with all the family assembled, all the dogs, Aurelius, and Mr Torrance -(there being still some days left of the Easter holidays), yes, and -Higgs also, and most certainly the respectable Mr Stodham. - -“Yes, it was a good day,” continued Ann, returning, “if it had not been -for you we should never have known Aurelius.” - -This was so like the old Ann that I was delighted, with all my conceit. -I remembered that first visit well, limping into the yard the day after -the paper-chase, and seeing big Jack (aged then about twenty) and tall -Roland (less than two years younger) discussing a greyhound with a -blackguard in an orange neck-tie, Jessie (my own age) surrounded by -pigeons, Mr Morgan and Mr Torrance at the top of the steps looking on, -and away on the pond under the elms little Harry and Lewis crying for -help to release their craft from the water-lilies of that perilous sea. -When the limper was introduced as “Arthur,” Mr Torrance said: - - “Not that same Arthur, that with spear in rest - Shot through the lists at Camelot and charged - Before the eyes of ladies and of kings,” - -and Mr Morgan roared with laughter, as having no cigar he was free -to do at the moment, and everyone else joined in except the Gypsy, -who appeared to think he was the victim; such laughter was a command. -Before the roar was over Ann came up to me and said: “Will you please -to come into the kitchen. I have something for that poor leg of yours.” -Pity was worse than ever, but to escape the laughter, I followed -her. “There you are,” she said as we entered, pointing to a broad -blackberry tart uncut, “that will do your leg good. It is between you -and Philip.” And with that she left me and at another door in came -Philip, and though there was nothing wrong with his leg he enjoyed the -tart as much as I did. - -We were then friends of twenty-four hours standing, my age being -ten, his twelve, and the time of the year an October as sweet as its -name. We had been for six months together at the same school without -speaking, until yesterday, the day of the paper-chase. After running -and walking for more than two hours that sunny morning we found -ourselves together, clean out of London and also out of the chase, -because he had gone off on a false scent and because I ran badly. - -I had never before been in that lane of larches. It was, in fact, the -first time that I had got out of London into pure country on foot. -I had been by train to sea-side resorts and the country homes of -relatives, but this was different. I had no idea that London died in -this way into the wild. - -Out on the broad pasture bounded by a copse like a dark wall, rooks -cawed in the oak-trees. Moorhens hooted on a hidden water behind the -larches. At the end of a row of cottages and gardens full of the -darkest dahlias was a small, gray inn called “The George,” which my -companion entered. He came out again in a minute with bread and cheese -for two, and eating slowly but with large mouthfuls we strolled on, too -busy and too idle to talk. Instead of larches horse-chestnuts overhung -our road; in the glittering grass borders the dark fruit and the white -pods lay bright. So as we ate we stooped continually for the biggest -“conquers” to fill our pockets. Suddenly the other boy, musing and -not looking at me, asked, “What’s your name?” “Arthur Froxfield,” I -answered, pleased and not at all surprised. “It doesn’t suit you,” he -said, looking at me. “It ought to be John something-- - - ‘John, John, John, - With the big boots on.’ - -You’re tired.” - -I knew his name well enough, for at twelve he was the best runner in -the school. Philip Morgan.... I do not suppose that I concealed my -pride to be thus in his company. - -For an hour we were separated; we hit upon the trail, and off he went -without a word. At a limping trot I followed, but lost sight of Philip -and soon fell back into a walk. I had, in fact, turned homewards when -he overtook me; he had been forced to retrace his steps. I was by this -time worn out, and should have given up but for my self-satisfaction -at the long run and the pleasure of knowing that he did not mind my -hanging on his arm as on we crawled. Thus at last after an age of -sleepy fatigue I found myself at home. It had been arranged that on the -next day I was to go round to Abercorran House. - -Again and again Philip and I revisited that lane of larches, the long -water-side copse, the oak wood out in the midst of the fields, and all -the hedges, to find moorhen’s eggs, a golden-crested wren’s, and a -thousand treasures, and felicity itself. Philip had known this country -for a year or more; now we always went together. I at least, for a long -time, had a strong private belief that the place had been deserted, -overlooked, forgotten, that it was known only to us. It was not like -ordinary country. The sun there was peculiarly bright. There was -something unusual in the green of its grass, in the caw of its rooks -in April, in the singing of its missel-thrushes on the little round -islands of wood upon the ploughland. When later on I read about those -“remote and holy isles” where the three sons of Ulysses and Circe ruled -over the glorious Tyrrhenians, I thought, for some reason or another, -or perhaps for no reason, of those little round islands of ash and -hazel amidst the ploughland of Our Country, when I was ten and Philip -twelve. If we left it unvisited for some weeks it used to appear to -our imaginations extraordinary in its beauty, and though we might be -forming plans to go thither again before long, I did not fully believe -that it existed--at least for others--while I was away from it. I have -never seen thrushes’ eggs of a blue equalling those we found there. - -No wonder Our Country was supernaturally beautiful. It had London -for a foil and background; what is more, on that first day it wore -an uncommon autumnal splendour, so that I cannot hope to meet again -such heavily gilded elms smouldering in warm, windless sunshine, nor -such bright meadows as they stood in, nor such blue sky and such white -billowy cloud as rose up behind the oaks on its horizon. - -Philip knew this Our Country in and out, and though his opinion -was that it was not a patch on the country about his old home at -Abercorran, he was never tired of it. In the first place he had been -introduced to it by Mr Stodham. “Mr Stodham,” said Philip, “knows more -about England than the men who write the geography books. He knows High -Bower, where we lived for a year. He is a nice man. He has a horrible -wife. He is in an office somewhere, and she spends his money on -jewellery. But he does not mind; remember that. He has written a poem -and father does not want him to recite it. Glory be to Mr Stodham. When -he trespasses they don’t say anything, or if they do it is only, ‘Fine -day, sir,’ or ‘Where did you want to go to, sir,’ or ‘Excuse me, sir, I -don’t mind your being on my ground, but thought you mightn’t be aware -it is private.’ But if they catch you or me, especially you, being only -eleven and peagreen at that, we shall catch it.” - -Once he was caught. He was in a little copse that was all blackthorns, -and the blackthorns were all spikes. Inside was Philip looking for what -he could find; outside, and keeping watch, sat I; and it was Sunday. -Sunday was the only day when you ever saw anyone in Our Country. -Presently a man who was passing said: “The farmer’s coming along -this road, if that’s any interest to you.” It was too late. There he -was--coming round the bend a quarter of a mile off, on a white pony. -I whistled to Philip to look out. I was innocently sitting in the same -place when the farmer rode up. He asked me at once the name of the boy -in the copse, which so took me by surprise that I blabbed out at once. -“Philip Morgan,” shouted the farmer, “Philip Morgan, come out of that -copse.” But Philip was already out of it, as I guessed presently when -I saw a labourer running towards the far end, evidently in pursuit. -The farmer rode on, and thinking he had given it up I followed him. -However, five minutes later Philip ran into his arms at a gateway, -just as he was certain he had escaped, because his pursuer had been -outclassed and had given up running. In a few minutes I joined them. -Philip was recovering his breath and at the same time giving his -address. If we sent in five shillings to a certain hospital in his -name, said the farmer, he would not prosecute us--“No,” he added, -“ten shillings, as it is Sunday.” “The better the day the better the -deed,” said Philip scornfully. “Thank you, my lad,” said the giver -of charity, and so we parted. But neither did we pay the money, nor -were we prosecuted; for my father wrote a letter from his official -address. I do not know what he said. In future, naturally, we gave -some of our time and trouble to avoiding the white pony when we were -in those parts. Not that he got on our nerves. We had no nerves. No: -but we made a difference. Besides, his ground was really not in what -we called Our Country, _par excellence_. Our own country was so free -from molestation that I thought of it instantly when Aurelius read to -me about the Palace of the Mountain of Clouds. A great king had asked -his counsellors and his companions if they knew of any place that no -one could invade, no one, either man or genie. They told him of the -Palace of the Mountain of Clouds. It had been built by a genie who had -fled from Solomon in rebellion. There he had dwelt until the end of -his days. After him no one inhabited it; for it was separated by great -distances and great enchantment from the rest of the world. No one -went thither. It was surrounded by running water sweeter than honey, -colder than snow, and by fruitful trees. And there in the Palace of the -Mountain of Clouds the king might dwell in safety and solitude for ever -and ever.... - -In the middle of the oak wood we felt as safe and solitary as if we -were lords of the Palace of the Mountain of Clouds. And so we were. -For four years we lived charmed lives. For example, when we had -manufactured a gun and bought a pistol, we crawled over the ploughed -fields at twilight, and fired both at a flock of pewits. Yet neither -birds nor poachers suffered. We climbed the trees for the nests of -crows, woodpeckers, owls, wood-pigeons, and once for a kestrel’s, as -if they were all ours. We went everywhere. More than once we found -ourselves among the lawns and shrubberies of big houses which we had -never suspected. This seems generally to have happened at twilight. As -we never saw the same house twice the mysteriousness was increased. One -of the houses was a perfect type of the dark ancient house in a forest. -We came suddenly stumbling upon it among the oaks just before night. -The walls were high and craggy, and without lights anywhere. A yew tree -grew right up against it. A crow uttered a curse from the oak wood. And -that house I have never seen again save in memory. There it remains, -as English as Morland, as extravagantly wild as Salvator Rosa. That -evening Philip must needs twang his crossbow at the crow--an impossible -shot; but by the grace of God no one came out of the house, and at this -distance of time it is hard to believe that men and women were actually -living there. - -Most of these estates had a pond or two, and one had a long one like -a section of a canal. Here we fished with impunity and an untroubled -heart, hoping for a carp, now and then catching a tench. But often -we did not trouble to go so far afield. Our own neighbourhood was by -no means unproductive, and the only part of it which was sacred was -the Wilderness. None of the birds of the Wilderness ever suffered at -our hands. Without thinking about it we refrained from fishing in the -Wilderness pond, and I never saw anybody else do so except Higgs, but -though it seemed to me like robbing the offertory Higgs only grinned. -But other people’s grounds were honoured in a different way. Private -shrubberies became romantic at night to the trespasser. Danger doubled -their shadows, and creeping amongst them we missed no ecstasy of which -we were capable. The danger caused no conscious anxiety or fear, -yet contrived to heighten the colour of such expeditions. We never -had the least expectation of being caught. Otherwise we should have -had more than a little fear in the January night when we went out -after birds, armed with nets and lanterns. The scene was a region of -meadows, waiting to be built on and in the meantime occupied by a few -horses and cows, and a football and a lawn-tennis club. Up and down -the hedges we went with great hopes of four and twenty blackbirds or -so. We had attained a deep and thrilling satisfaction but not taken a -single bird when we were suddenly aware of a deep, genial voice asking, -“What’s the game?” It was a policeman. The sight acted like the pulling -of a trigger--off we sped. Having an advantage of position I was the -first to leap the boundary hedge into the road, or rather into the -ditch between hedge and road. Philip followed, but not the policeman. -We both fell at the jump, Philip landing on top of me, but without -damage to either. We reached home, covered in mud and secret glory, -which made up for the loss of a cap and two lanterns. The glory lasted -one day only, for on the next I was compelled to accompany my father to -the police-station to inquire after the cap and lanterns. However, I -had the honour of hearing the policeman say--though laughing--that we -had taken the leap like hunters and given him no chance at all. This -and the fact that our property was not recovered preserved a little of -the glory. - -In these meadows, in the grounds which their owners never used at -night, and in Our Country, Philip and I spent really a great deal of -time, fishing, birds-nesting, and trying to shoot birds with cross-bow, -pistol, or home-made gun. There were intervals of school, and of -football and cricket, but these in memory do not amount to more than -the towns of England do in comparison with the country. As on the map -the towns are but blots and spots on the country, so the school-hours -were embedded, almost buried away, in the holidays, official, -semi-official, and altogether unofficial. Philip and I were together -during most of them; even the three principal long holidays of the year -were often shared, either in Wales with some of Philip’s people, or at -Lydiard Constantine, in Wiltshire, with my aunt Rachel. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - -WOOL-GATHERING AND LYDIARD CONSTANTINE - - -One day at Abercorran House I heard Aurelius, Mr Morgan, and Mr -Torrance in the Library, talking about wool-gathering. “Since Jessie -told us about that river in Essex with the Welsh name,” said Mr Morgan, -laughing, “we have travelled from Gwithavon to Battersea Park Road and -a fishmonger’s advertisement. Such are the operations of the majestic -intellect. How did we get all that way? Do you suppose the cave-men -were very different, except that they did not trouble about philology -and would have eaten their philologers, while they did without -fishmongers because fish were caught to eat, not to sell, in those -days?” - -“Well!” said Aurelius, “we could not live if we had nothing in common -with the cave-men. A man who was a mere fishmonger or a mere philologer -could not live a day without artificial aid. Scratch a philologer -sufficiently hard and you will find a sort of a cave-man.” - -“I think,” continued Mr Morgan, “that we ought to prove our -self-respect by going soberly back on our steps to see what by-ways -took us out of Gwithavon to this point.” - -“I’m not afraid of you at that game,” said Aurelius. “I have often -played it during church services, or rather after them. A church -service needs no further defence if it can provide a number of boys -with a chance of good wool-gathering.” - -“Very true,” said Mr Torrance, who always agreed with Aurelius when it -was possible. A fancy had struck him, and instead of turning it into -a sonnet he said: “I like to think that the original wool-gatherers -were men whose taste it was to wander the mountains and be before-hand -with the nesting birds, gathering stray wool from the rocks and thorns, -a taste that took them into all sorts of wild new places without -over-loading them with wool, or with profit or applause.” - -“Very pretty, Frank,” said Aurelius, who had himself now gone -wool-gathering and gave us the benefit of it. He told us that he had -just recalled a church and a preacher whose voice used to enchant his -boyhood into a half-dream. The light was dim as with gold dust. It was -warm and sleepy, and to the boy all the other worshippers seemed to be -asleep. The text was the three verses of the first chapter of Genesis -which describe the work of creation on the fifth day. He heard the -clergyman’s voice murmuring, “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the -moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth -in the open firmament of heaven.” - -“That was enough,” said Aurelius, “for me it was all the sermon. It -summoned up before me a coast of red crags and a black sea that was -white where the waves got lost in the long corridors between the crags. -The moon, newly formed to rule the night, stood full, large, and white, -at the top of the sky, which was as black as the sea and cloudless. -And out of the water were rising, by twos and threes, but sometimes -in multitudes like a cloud, the birds who were to fly in the open -firmament of heaven. Out of the black waste emerged sea-birds, one at -a time, their long white wings spread wide out at first, but then as -they paused on the surface, uplifted like the sides of a lyre; in a -moment they were skimming this way and that, and, rising up in circles, -were presently screaming around the moon. Several had only risen a -little way when, falling back into the sea, they vanished, there, as -I supposed, destined by the divine purpose to be deprived of their -wings and to become fish. Eagles as red as the encircling crags came -up also, but always solitary; they ascended as upon a whirlwind in one -or two long spirals and, blackening the moon for a moment, towered out -of sight. The little singing birds were usually cast up in cloudlets, -white and yellow and blue and dappled, and, after hovering uncertainly -at no great height, made for the crags, where they perched above the -white foam, piping, warbling, and twittering, after their own kinds, -either singly or in concert. Ever and anon flocks of those who had -soared now floated downward across the moon and went over my head with -necks outstretched, crying towards the mountains, moors, and marshes, -or sloped still lower and alighted upon the water, where they screamed -whenever the surface yawned at a new birth of white or many-coloured -wings. Gradually the sea was chequered from shore to horizon with -birds, and the sky was throbbing continually with others, so that the -moon could either not be seen at all, or only in slits and wedges. The -crags were covered, as if with moss and leaves, by lesser birds who -mingled their voices as if it were a dawn of May....” - -In my turn I now went off wool-gathering, so that I cannot say how the -fifth day ended in the fancy of Aurelius, if you call it fancy. It -being then near the end of winter, that vision of birds set me thinking -of the nests to come. I went over in my mind the eggs taken and to be -taken by Philip and me at Lydiard Constantine. All of last year’s were -in one long box, still haunted by the cheapest scent of the village -shop. I had not troubled to arrange them; there was a confusion of -moor-hens’ and coots’ big freckled eggs with the lesser blue or white -or olive eggs, the blotted, blotched, and scrawled eggs. For a minute -they were forgotten during the recollection of a poem I had begun to -copy out, and had laid away with the eggs. It was the first poem I -had ever read and re-read for my own pleasure, and I was copying it -out in my best hand-writing, the capitals in red ink. I had got as -far as “Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest.” I tried to repeat -the verses but could not, and so I returned to the eggs. I thought -of April when we should once again butt our way through thickets of -stiff, bristling stems, through thorn and briar and bramble in the -double hedges. We should find the thrushes’ nests in a certain copse -of oak and blackthorn where the birds used hardly anything but moss, -and you could see them far off among the dark branches, which seldom -had many leaves, but were furred over with lichens. We would go to -all those little ponds shadowed by hazels close to the farms, where -there was likely to be a solitary moorhen’s home, and up into the -pollard willow which once had four starling’s eggs at the bottom of a -long narrow pocket. In all those spring days we had no conscious aim -but finding nests, and if we were not scrambling in a wood we walked -with heads lifted up to the trees, turned aside to the hedges, or bent -down to the grass or undergrowth. We were not curious about the eggs; -questions of numbers or variation in size, shape or colour, troubled -us but fitfully. Sun, rain, wind, deep mud, water over the boots and -knees, scratches to arms, legs, and face, dust in the eyes, fear of -gamekeepers and farmers, excitement, dizziness, weariness, all were -summed up by the plain or marked eggs in the scent box; they were all -that visibly remained of these things, and I valued them in the same -way and for the same reason as the athlete valued the parsley crown. -The winning of this one or that was recalled with regret, sometimes -that I had taken more than I should have done from the same nest, -sometimes that I had not taken as many as would have been excusable; -I blushed with annoyance because we had not revisited certain nests -which were unfinished or empty when we discovered them--the plough-boys -doubtless had robbed them completely, or they had merely produced young -birds. How careless the country boys were, putting eggs into their hats -and often forgetting all about them, often breaking them wantonly. I -envied them their opportunities and despised them for making so little -use of them. - -I thought of the flowers we tramped over, the smell and taste of -cowslips and primroses, and various leaves, and of the young brier -shoots which we chewed and spat out again as we walked. I do not know -what Aurelius might have been saying, but I began to count up the -Sundays that must pass before there would be any chance of finding -rooks’ eggs, not at Lydiard, but at the rookery nearest to Abercorran -House. Thus I was reminded of the rookery in the half-dozen elms of -a farm-house home field, close by the best fishing-place of all at -Lydiard. There the arrow-headed reeds grew in thick beds, and the water -looked extraordinarily mysterious on our side of them, as if it might -contain fabulous fish. Only last season I had left my baited line out -there while I slipped through the neighbouring hedge to look for a -reed-bunting’s nest; and when I returned I had to pull in an empty line -which some monster had gnawed through, escaping with hooks and bait. I -wonder Philip did not notice. It was just there, between the beds of -arrow-head and that immense water dock on the brink. I vowed to try -again. Everybody had seen the monster, or at least the swirl made as -he struck out into the deeps at a passing tread. “As long as my arm, I -daresay,” said the carter, cracking his whip emphatically with a sort -of suggestion that the fish was not to be caught by the like of us. -Well, we shall see. - -As usual the idea of fishing was connected with my aunt Rachel. There -was no fishing worth speaking of unless we stayed with her in our -holidays. The water in the ponds at Lydiard Constantine provoked -magnificent hopes. I could have enjoyed fishing by those arrow-heads -without a bait, so fishy did it look, especially on Sundays, when sport -was forbidden:--it was unbearable to see that look and lack rod and -line. The fascinating look of water is indescribable, but it enables me -to understand how - - “Simple Simon went a-fishing - For to catch a whale, - But all the water he had got - Was in his mother’s pail.” - -I have seen that look in tiny ponds, and have fished in one against -popular advice, only giving it up because I caught newts there and -nothing else. - -But to my wool-gathering. In the Library, with Aurelius talking, I -could see that shadowed water beside the reeds and the float in the -midst. In fact I always had that picture at my command. We liked the -water best when it was quite smooth; the mystery was greater, and we -used to think that we caught more fish out of it in this state. I hoped -it would be a still summer, and warm. It was nearly three quarters of -a year since last we were in that rookery meadow--eight months since -I had tasted my aunt’s doughy cake. I can see her making it, first -stoning the raisins while the dough in a pan by the fire was rising; -when she thought neither of us was looking she stoned them with her -teeth, but this did not shock me, and now I come to think of it they -were very white even teeth, not too large or too small, so that I -wonder no man ever married her for them alone. I am glad no man did -marry her--at least, I was glad then. For she would probably have given -up making doughy cakes full of raisins and spices, if she had married. -I suppose that what with making cakes and wiping the dough off her -fingers, and wondering if we had got drowned in the river, she had -no time for lovers. She existed for those good acts which are mostly -performed in the kitchen, for supplying us with lamb and mint sauce, -and rhubarb tart with cream, when we came in from birds-nesting. How -dull it must be for her, thought I, sitting alone there at Lydiard -Constantine, the fishing over, the birds not laying yet, no nephews -to be cared for, and therefore no doughy cakes, for she could not be -so greedy as to make them for herself and herself alone. Aunt Rachel -lived alone, when she was without us, in a little cottage in a row, at -the edge of the village. Hers was an end house. The rest were neat and -merely a little stained by age; hers was hidden by ivy, which thrust -itself through the walls and up between the flagstones of the floor, -flapped in at the windows, and spread itself so densely over the panes -that the mice ran up and down it, and you could see their pale, silky -bellies through the glass--often they looked in and entered. The ivy -was full of sparrows’ nests, and the neighbours were indignant that she -would not have them pulled out; even we respected them. - -To live there always, I thought, would be bliss, provided that Philip -was with me, always in a house covered with ivy and conducted by an -aunt who baked and fried for you and tied up your cuts, and would clean -half a hundred perchlings for you without a murmur, though by the end -of it her face and the adjacent windows were covered with the flying -scales. “Why don’t you catch two or three really big ones?” she would -question, sighing for weariness, but still smiling at us, and putting -on her crafty-looking spectacles. “Whew, if we could,” we said one to -another. It seemed possible for the moment; for she was a wonderful -woman, and the house wonderful too, no anger, no sorrow, no fret, such -a large fire-place, everything different from London, and better than -anything in London except Abercorran House. The ticking of her three -clocks was delicious, especially very early in the morning as you lay -awake, or when you got home tired at twilight, before lamps were lit. -Everything had been as it was in Aunt Rachel’s house for untold time; -it was natural like the trees; also it was never stale; you never came -down in the morning feeling that you had done the same yesterday and -would do the same to-morrow, as if each day was a new, badly written -line in a copy-book, with the same senseless words at the head of every -page. Why couldn’t we always live there? There was no church or chapel -for us--Philip had never in his life been to either. Sunday at Lydiard -Constantine was not the day of grim dulness when everyone was set free -from work, only to show that he or she did not know what to do or not -to do; if they had been chained slaves these people from Candelent -Street and elsewhere could not have been stiffer or more savagely -solemn. - -Those adult people were a different race. I had no thought that Philip -or I could become like that, and I laughed at them without a pang, not -knowing what was to save Philip from such an end. How different from -those people was my aunt, her face serene and kind, notwithstanding -that she was bustling about all day and had trodden her heels down and -had let her hair break out into horns and wisps. - -I thought of the race of women and girls. I thought (with a little -pity) that they were nicer than men. I would rather be a man, I mused, -yet I was sure women were better. I would not give up my right to be a -man some day; but for the present there was no comparison between the -two in my affections; and I should not have missed a single man except -Aurelius. Nevertheless, women did odd things. They always wore gloves -when they went out, for example. Now, if I put gloves on my hands, it -was almost as bad as putting a handkerchief over my eyes or cotton wool -in my ears. They picked flowers with gloved hands. Certainly they had -their weaknesses. But think of the different ways of giving an apple. A -man caused it to pass into your hands in a way that made it annoying to -give thanks; a woman gave herself with it, it was as if the apple were -part of her, and you took it away and ate it in peace, sitting alone, -thinking of nothing. A boy threw an apple at you as if he wanted to -knock your teeth out with it, and, of course, you threw it back at him -with the same intent; a girl gave it in such a way that you wanted to -give it back, if you were not somehow afraid. I began thinking of three -girls who all lived near my aunt and would do anything I wanted, as -if it was not I but they that wanted it. Perhaps it was. Perhaps they -wanted nothing except to give. Well, and that was rather stupid, too. - -Half released from the spell by one of the voices in the Library, I -turned to a dozen things at once--as what time it was, whether one of -the pigeons would have laid its second egg by now, whether Monday’s -post would bring a letter from a friend who was in Kent, going about -the woods with a gamekeeper who gave him squirrels, stoats, jays, -magpies, an owl, and once a woodcock, to skin. I recalled the sweet -smell of the squirrels; it was abominable to kill them, but I liked -skinning them.... I turned to thoughts of the increasing row of books -on my shelf. First came The Compleat Angler. That gave me a brief entry -into a thinly populated world of men rising early, using strange baits, -catching many fish, talking to milkmaids with beautiful voices and -songs fit for them. The book--in a cheap and unattractive edition--shut -up between its gilded covers a different, embalmed, enchanted life -without any care. Philip and I knew a great deal of it by heart, and -took a strong fancy to certain passages and phrases, so that we used -to repeat out of all reason “as wholesome as a pearch of Rhine,” which -gave a perfect image of actual perch swimming in clear water down the -green streets of their ponds on sunny days.... Then there were Sir -Walter Scott’s poems, containing the magic words-- - - “And, Saxon, I am Rhoderick Dhu.” - -Next, Robinson Crusoe, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, the Iliad, a mass of -almost babyish books, tattered and now never touched, and lastly The -Adventures of King Arthur and the Round Table. I heard the Lady of the -Lake say to Merlin (who had a face like Aurelius) “Inexorable man, thy -powers are resistless”: moonlit waters overhung by mountains, and crags -crowned by towers, boats with mysterious dark freight; knights taller -than Roland, trampling and glittering; sorceries, battles, dragons, -kings, and maidens, stormed or flitted through my mind, some only as -words and phrases, some as pictures. It was a shadow entertainment, -with an indefinable quality of remoteness tinged by the pale Arthurian -moonlight and its reflection in that cold lake, which finally suggested -the solid comfort of tea at my aunt’s house, and thick slices, “cut -ugly,” of the doughy cake. - -At this point Jessie came in to say that tea was ready. “So am I,” said -I, and we raced downstairs. Jessie won. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - -ABERCORRAN AND MORGAN’S FOLLY - - -Once or twice I joined Philip on a holiday in Wales, but not at -Abercorran. It was years later that I found myself by chance at -Abercorran and saw enough of it to spoil somewhat the beautiful -fantastic geography learned from a thousand references by Philip, -Jessie, and old Ann. The real place--as it may be seen by anyone who -can pay the railway fare--is excellent, but I think I should never have -gone there had I foreseen its effect on that old geography. Having -seen the place with these eyes I cannot recover perfectly the original -picture of the castle standing at the meet of two small rivers and -looking over their wide estuary, between the precipices of enormous -hills, to the sea; the tiny deserted quay, the broken cross on the open -space glistening with ever-renewed cockle shells, below the castle; the -long, stately street leading from the church down to the castle, named -Queen Street because an English queen once rode down it; the castle -owls and the inexhaustible variety and the everlasting motion of the -birds of the estuary. To see it as the Morgans once made me see it you -must be able to cover the broad waters with glistening white breasts, -at the same moment that its twin precipices abide in gloom that has -been from the beginning; you must hear an undertone of the age of -Arthur, or at least of the great Llewelyn, in the hoots of the castle -owls, and give a quality of kingliness to a street which has a wide -pavement on one side, it is true, but consists for the most part of -cottages, with a castle low down at one end, and at the other a church -high up. - -The Morgans’ old house, far above the townlet of Abercorran, had -windows commanding mountains behind as well as sea in front. Their -tales had given me, at the beginning, an idea of mountains, as distinct -from those objects resembling saw teeth by which they are sometimes -represented. They formed the foundation of my idea of mountains. Then -upon that I raised slowly a magnificent edifice by means of books of -travel and of romance. These later elements were also added unto the -Welsh mountains where Jack found the kite’s nest, where Roland saw an -eagle, where Philip had learnt the ways of raven, buzzard, and curlew, -of badger, fox, and otter. My notions of their size had been given to -me by Ann, in a story of two men who were lost on them in the mist. For -three days the men were neither seen nor heard in their wanderings; on -the fourth they were discovered by chance, one dead, the other mad. -These high solitudes, I thought, must keep men wild in their minds, and -still more I thought so after hearing of the runaway boy from Ann’s own -parish. He lived entirely out of doors--without stealing, said Ann--for -a year and a half. Every now and then someone caught sight of him, but -that was all the news. He told nothing when he was arrested on the -charge of setting fire to a rick. Ann said that if he did this it was -an accident, but they wanted to get rid of the scandal of the “wild -boy,” so they packed him off to a training ship until he was sixteen. -“He would have thought it a piece of luck,” said Ann, “to escape from -the ship, however it was, for he thought it worse than any weather -on the mountains; and before he was sixteen he did escape--he fell -overboard by some mercy, and was never seen again on sea or land, my -children.” - -But above all other tales of the mountains was the one that had David -Morgan for hero. David Morgan was the eldest brother of the Morgans -of Abercorran House. He had been to London before ever the family -thought of quitting their Welsh home; in a year’s time he had returned -with an inveterate melancholy. After remaining silent, except to his -mother, for some months, he left home to build himself a house up in -the mountains. When I was at Abercorran, Morgan’s Folly--so everybody -called it--was in ruins, but still made a black letter against the -sky when the north was clear. People imagined that he had hidden gold -somewhere among the rocks. He was said to have worshipped a god who -never entered chapel or church. He was said to speak with raven and -fox. He was said to pray for the end of man or of the world. Atheist, -blasphemer, outlaw, madman, brute, were some of the names he received -in rumour. But the last that was positively known of him was that, -one summer, he used to come down night after night, courting the girl -Angharad who became his wife. - -One of his obsessions in solitude, so said his mother when I travelled -down with her to see the last of him, was a belief in a race who had -kept themselves apart from the rest of men, though found among many -nations, perhaps all. The belief may have come from the Bible, and this -was the race that grew up alongside the family of Cain, the guiltless -“daughters of men” from whom the children of the fratricides obtained -their wives. These, untainted with the blood of Cain, knew not sin or -shame--so his belief seems to have been--but neither had they souls. -They were a careless and a godless race, knowing not good or evil. They -had never been cast out of Eden. “In fact,” said Mrs Morgan, “they must -be something like Aurelius.” Some of the branches of this race had -already been exterminated by men; for example, the Nymphs and Fauns. -David Morgan was not afraid of uttering his belief. Others of them, -he said, had adopted for safety many of men’s ways. They had become -moorland or mountain men living at peace with their neighbours, but not -recognised as equals. They were to be found even in the towns. There -the uncommon beauty of the women sometimes led to unions of violent -happiness and of calamity, and to the birth of a poet or musician who -could abide neither with the strange race nor with the children of -Adam. They were feared but more often despised, because they retained -what men had lost by civilisation, because they lived as if time was -not, yet could not be persuaded to believe in a future life. - -Up in his tower Morgan came to believe his own father one of this -people, and resolved to take a woman from amongst them for a wife. -Angharad, the shy, the bold, the fierce dark Angharad whose black eyes -radiated light and blackness together, was one of them. She became his -wife and went up with him to the tower. After that these things only -were certainly known; that she was unhappy; that when she came down to -the village for food she was silent, and would never betray him or fail -to return; and that he himself never came down, that he also was silent -and with his unshorn hair looked like a wild man. He was seen at all -hours, usually far off, on the high paths of the mountains. His hair -was as black as in boyhood. He was never known to have ailed, until one -day the wild wife knocked at a farm-house door near Abercorran, asking -for help to bring him where he might be looked after, since he would -have no one in the tower but her. The next day Mrs Morgan travelled -down to see her son. When she asked me to accompany her I did so -with some curiosity; for I had already become something of a stranger -at Abercorran House, and had often wondered what had become of David -Morgan up on his tower. His mother talked readily of his younger days -and his stay in London. Though he had great gifts, some said genius, -which he might have been expected to employ in the study, he had -applied himself to direct social work. For a year he laboured “almost -as hard,” he said, “as the women who make our shirts.” But gradually he -formed the opinion that he did not understand town life, that he never -could understand the men and women whom he saw living a town life pure -and simple. Before he came amongst them he had been thinking grandly -about men without realising that these were of a different species. His -own interference seemed to him impudent. They disgusted him, he wanted -to make them more or less in his own image to save his feelings, which, -said he, was absurd. He was trying to alter the conditions of other -men’s lives because he could not have himself endured them, because -it would have been unpleasant to him to be like them in their hideous -pleasure, hideous suffering, hideous indifference. In this attitude, -which altogether neglected the consolations and even beauty and glory -possible or incident to such a life, he saw a modern Pharisaism whose -followers did not merely desire to be unlike others, but to make others -like themselves. It was, he thought, due to lack of the imagination -and sympathy to see their lives from a higher or a more intimate point -of view, in connection with implicit ideals, not as a spectacle for -which he had an expensive seat. Did they fall farther short of their -ideals than he from his? He had not the power to see, but he thought -not; and he came to believe that, lacking as their life might be in -familiar forms of beauty and power, it possessed, nevertheless, a -profound unconsciousness and dark strength which might some day bring -forth beauty--might even now be beautiful to simple and true eyes--and -had already given them a fitness to their place which he had for no -place on earth. When it was food and warmth which were lacking he never -hesitated to use his money, but beyond satisfying these needs he could -not feel sure that he was not fancifully interfering with a force which -he did not understand and could not overestimate. Therefore, leaving -all save a little of his money to be spent in directly supplying -the needs of hungry and cold men, he escaped from the sublime, -unintelligible scene. He went up into the tower that he had built on a -rock in his own mountains, to think about life before he began to live. -Up there, said his mother, he hoped to learn why sometimes in a London -street, beneath the new and the multitudinous, could be felt a simple -and a pure beauty, beneath the turmoil a placidity, beneath the noise a -silence which he longed to reach and drink deeply and perpetuate, but -in vain. It was his desire to learn to see in human life, as we see in -the life of bees, the unity, which perhaps some higher order of beings -can see through the complexity which confuses us. He had set out to -seek at first by means of science, but he thought that science was an -end, not a means. For a hundred years, he said, men had been reading -science and investigating, as they had been reading history, with the -result that they knew some science and some history. “So he went up -into his tower, and there he has been these twelve years,” said Mrs -Morgan, “with Angharad and no comforts. You would think by his letters -that his thoughts had become giddy up there. Only five letters have I -had from him in these twelve years. This is all,” she added, showing -a small packet in her handbag. “For the last six years nobody has -heard from him except Ann. He wished he had asked Ann to go with him -to the tower. She would have gone, too. She would have preserved him -from being poetical. It is true he was only twenty-five years old at -the time, but he was too poetical. He said things which he was bound -to repent in a year, perhaps in a day. He writes quite seriously, as -actors half seriously talk, in tones quite inhumanly sublime.” She -read me scraps from these old letters, evidently admiring as well as -disapproving: - -“I am alone. From my tower I look out at the huge desolate heaves of -the grey beacons. Their magnitude and pure form give me a great calm. -Here is nothing human, gentle, disturbing, as there is in the vales. -There is nothing but the hills and the silence, which is God. The -greater heights, set free from night and the mist, look as if straight -from the hands of God, as if here He also delighted in pure form and -magnitude that are worthy of His love. The huge shadows moving slowly -over the grey spaces of winter, the olive spaces of summer, are as -God’s hand.... - -“While I watch, the dream comes, more and more often, of a Paradise -to be established upon the mountains when at last the wind shall blow -sweet over a world that knows not the taint of life any more than of -death. Then my thought sweeps rejoicing through the high Gate of the -Winds that cleaves the hills--you could see it from my bedroom at -Abercorran--far off, where a shadow miles long sleeps across the peaks, -but leaves the lower wild as yellow in the sunlight as corn.... - -“Following my thought I have walked upwards to that Gate of the Winds, -to range the high spaces, sometimes to sleep there. Or I have lain -among the gorse--I could lie on my back a thousand years, hearing -the cuckoo in the bushes and looking up at the blue sky above the -mountains. In the rain and wind I have sat against one of the rocks in -the autumn bracken until the sheep have surrounded me, shaggy and but -half visible through the mist, peering at me fearlessly, as if they had -not seen a man since that one was put to rest under the cairn above; I -sat on and on in the mystery, part of it but not divining, so that I -went disappointed away. The crags stared at me on the hill-top where -the dark spirits of the earth had crept out of their abysses into the -day, and, still clad in darkness, looked grimly at the sky, the light, -and at me.... - -“More and more now I stay in the tower, since even in the mountains as -to a greater extent in the cities of men, I am dismayed by numbers, -by variety, by the grotesque, by the thousand gods demanding idolatry -instead of the One I desire, Whose hand’s shadow I have seen far off.... - -“Looking on a May midnight at Algol rising from behind a mountain, the -awe and the glory of that first step into the broad heaven exalted me; -a sound arose as of the whole of Time making music behind me, a music -as of something passing away to leave me alone in the silence, so that -I also were about to step off into the air....” - -“Oh,” said Mrs Morgan, “it would do him good to do something--to keep -a few pigeons, now. I am afraid he will take to counting the stones in -his tower.” She continued her quotations: - -“The moon was rising. The sombre ranges eastward seemed to be the -edge of the earth, and as the orb ascended, the world was emptied and -grieved, having given birth to this mighty child. I was left alone. The -great white clouds sat round about on the horizon, judging me. For -days I lay desolate and awake, and dreamed and never stirred.” - -“You see,” said Mrs Morgan, “that London could not cure him. He says: - -“‘I have visited London. I saw the city pillared, above the shadowy -abyss of the river, on columns of light; and it was less than one of -my dreams. It was Winter and I was resolved to work again in Poplar. -I was crossing one of the bridges, full of purpose and thought, going -against the tide of the crowd. The morning had a low yellow roof of -fog. About the heads of the crowd swayed a few gulls, inter-lacing -so that they could not be counted. They swayed like falling snow and -screamed. They brought light on their long wings, as the ship below, -setting out slowly with misty masts, brought light to the green and -leaden river upon the foam at her bows. And ever about the determined, -careless faces of the men swayed the pale wings, like wraiths of evil -and good, calling and calling to ears that know not what they hear. -And they tempted my brain with the temptation of their beauty: I went -to and fro to hear and to see them until they slept and the crowd had -flowed away. I rejoiced that day, for I thought that this beauty had -made ready my brain, and that on the mountains at last I should behold -the fulness and the simplicity of beauty. So I went away without seeing -Poplar. But there, again, among the mountains was weariness, because I -also was there.’” - -“Why is he always weary?” asked Mrs Morgan plaintively, before reading -on: - -“But not always weariness. For have I not the company of planet -and star in the heavens, the same as bent over prophet, poet, and -philosopher of old? By day a scene unfolds as when the first man spread -forth his eyes and saw more than his soul knew. These things lift up my -heart sometimes for days together, so that the voices of fear and doubt -are not so much in that infinite silence as rivulets in an unbounded -plain. The sheer mountains, on some days, seem to be the creation of my -own lean terrible thoughts, and I am glad: the soft, wooded hills below -and behind seem the creation of the pampered luxurious thought which I -have left in the world of many men.... - -“Would that I could speak in the style of the mountains. But language, -except to genius and simple men, is but a paraphrase, dissipating and -dissolving the forms of passion and thought.... - -“Again Time lured me back out of Eternity, and I believed that I longed -to die as I lay and watched the sky at sunset inlaid with swart forest, -and watched it with a dull eye and a cold heart....” - -“And they think he is an atheist. They think he has buried gold on the -mountain,” exclaimed Mrs Morgan, indignantly. - -Little she guessed of the nights before her in the lone farmhouse with -her bewildered son and the wild Angharad. While he raved through his -last hours and Angharad spent herself in wailing, and Mrs Morgan tried -to steady his thoughts, I could only walk about the hills. I climbed to -the tower, but learnt nothing because Morgan or his wife had set fire -to it on leaving, and the shell of stones only remained. - -On the fourth morning, after a night of storm, all was over. That -morning once more I could hear the brook’s murmur which had been -obliterated by the storm and by thought. The air was clear and gentle -in the coomb behind the farm, and all but still after the night of -death and of great wind. High up in the drifting rose of dawn the -tall trees were swaying their tips as if stirred by memories of the -tempest. They made no sound in the coomb with the trembling of their -slender length; some were never to sound again, for they lay motionless -and prone in the underwood, or hung slanting among neighbour branches, -where they fell in the night--the rabbits could nibble at crests which -once wavered about the stars. The path was strewn with broken branches -and innumerable twigs. - -The silence was so great that I could hear, by enchantment of the ears, -the departed storm. Yet the tragic repose was unbroken. One robin -singing called up the roars and tumults that had to cease utterly -before his voice could gain this power of peculiar sweetness and awe -and make itself heard. - -The mountains and sky, beautiful as they were, were more beautiful -because a cloak of terror had been lifted from them and left them free -to the dark and silver, and now rosy, dawn. The masses of the mountains -were still heavy and sombre, but their ridges and the protruding tower -bit sharply into the sky; the uttermost peaks appeared again, dark with -shadows of clouds of a most lustrous whiteness that hung like a white -forest, very far off, in the country of the sun. Seen out of the clear -gloom of the wood this country was as a place to which a man might -wholly and vainly desire to go, knowing that he would be at rest there -and there only. - -As I listened, walking the ledge between precipice and precipice in the -coomb, the silence murmured of the departed tempest like a sea-shell. -I could hear the dark hills convulsed with a hollow roaring as of an -endless explosion. All night the trees were caught up and shaken in the -furious air like grasses; the sounds on earth were mingled with those -of the struggle in the high spaces of air. Outside the window branches -were brandished wildly, and their anger was the more terrible because -the voice of it could not be distinguished amidst the universal voice. -The sky itself seemed to aid the roar, as the stars raced over it among -floes of white cloud, and dark menacing fragments flitted on messages -of darkness across the white. I looked out from the death room, having -turned away from the helpless, tranquil bed and the still wife, and saw -the hillside trees surging under a wild moon, but they were strange -and no longer to be recognised, while the earth was heaving and -be-nightmared by the storm. It was the awe of that hour which still -hung over the coomb, making its clearness so solemn, its silence so -pregnant, its gentleness so sublime. How fresh it was after the sick -room, how calm after the vain conflict with death. - -The blue smoke rose straight up from the house of death, over there in -the white fields, where the wife sat and looked at the dead. Everyone -else was talking of the strange life just ended, but the woman who -had shared it would tell nothing; she wished only to persuade us that -in spite of his extraordinary life he was a good man and very good to -her. She had become as silent as Morgan himself, though eleven years -before, when she began to live with him on the mountain, she was a -happy, gay woman, the best dancer and singer in the village, and had -the most lovers. Upon the mountain her wholly black Silurian eyes had -turned inwards and taught her lips their mystery and Morgan’s. They -buried him, according to his wish, at the foot of the tower. Outraged -by this, some of the neighbours removed his body to the churchyard -under the cover of night. Others equally enraged at putting such a one -in consecrated ground, exhumed him again. But in the end it was in the -churchyard that his bones came to rest, with the inscription, chosen by -Ann: - - “Though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle, - I will bring thee down from thence, saith the Lord.” - -Angharad married a pious eccentric much older than herself, and in a -year inherited his money. She lives on in one of those gray houses -which make Queen Street so stately at Abercorran. She keeps no company -but that of the dead. The children call her Angharad of the Folly, or -simply Angharad Folly. - -“She ought to have gone back to the tower,” said Mr Torrance in some -anger. - -“She would have done, Mr Torrance,” said Ann, “if she had been a poet; -but you would not have done it if you had been through those eleven -years and those four nights. No, I really don’t think you would.... I -knew a poet who jumped into a girl’s grave, but he was not buried with -her. Now you are angry with him, poor fellow, because he did not insist -on being buried. Well, but it is lucky he was not, because if he had -been we should not have known he was a poet.” - -“Well said, Ann,” muttered Aurelius. - -“Ann forgets that she was young once,” protested Mr Torrance. - -“No,” she said, “I don’t think I do, but I think this, that you forget -you will some day be old. Now, as this is Shrove Tuesday and you will -be wanting pancakes I must go make them.” - -“Good old Ann,” whispered Mr Torrance. - - - - -CHAPTER IX - -MR TORRANCE THE CHEERFUL MAN - - -Mr Torrance openly objected to Ann’s epitaph for David Morgan, -preferring his own choice of one from Shelley’s “Mont Blanc”: - - “And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea, - If to the human mind’s imaginings - Silence and solitude were vacancy?” - -“But” said Mr Morgan, “Shelley was born only a hundred years ago, and -died at thirty, I think that in the matter of mountains an older man is -better.” - -“But, father,” said Roland, “how do you know that Jeremiah was not -drowned at thirty with a copy of ‘Ecclesiastes’ clasped to his bosom?” - -“You read and see, my son,” answered Mr Morgan. “Shelley could not pass -himself off as an old man, though you know he did once claim to be -eighty-nine, and Jeremiah would not have pretended to be thirty. That -is only my opinion. I prefer the prophet, like Ann.” - -Mr Torrance muttered that anyone who preferred Jeremiah to Shelley had -no right to an opinion. It was just like Mr Torrance. He was always -saying foolish things and fairly often doing them, and yet we felt, and -Mr Morgan once declared, that he had in him the imperishable fire of a -divine, mysterious wisdom. After walking the full length of the Abbey -Road, where he lived, to discover him smiling in his dark study, was -sufficient proof that he had a wisdom past understanding. - -Abbey Road was over two miles long. At its south end was a double -signboard, pointing north “To London,” south “To Forden, Field, and -Cowmore”; at its north end it ran into pure London. Every year the -horse-chestnut branches had to be shortened in May because their new -leaf smothered the signboard. As if anyone who had reached that point -could wish to be directed to London! Almost as few could wish to know -the way in order to avoid it. But the horse-chestnut had to suffer. It -was fortunate in not being cut down altogether and carried away. The -cemetery saved it. The acute angle between the Abbey Road and another -was filled by a large new cemetery, and the tree was the first of a -long line within its railings. Even had the signboard been on the -other side of the road it would have been as badly off among the tall -thorns and stunted elms of the hedges. Behind this hedge was a waste, -wet field, grazed over by a sad horse or two all through the year; -for on account partly of the cemetery, partly of the factory which -manufactured nobody quite knew what except stench, this field could -not be let or sold. Along its far side ran a river which had no sooner -begun to rejoice in its freedom to make rush and reed at pleasure -on the border of the field than it found itself at the walls of the -factory. Northward, past the cemetery and the factory, began the houses -of Abbey Road, first a new house, occupied but with a deserted though -not wild garden, and next to it a twin house, left empty. Then followed -a sluttery of a few pairs or blocks of small houses, also new, on both -sides of the road--new and yet old, with the faces of children who are -smeared, soiled, and doomed, at two. They bordered on the old inn, -“The Woodman’s Arms,” formerly the first house, having a large kitchen -garden, and masses of dahlias and sunflowers behind. It lay back a good -space from the road, and this space was gravel up to the porch, and in -the middle of it stood a stone drinking trough. Often a Gypsy’s cart -and a couple of long dogs panting in the sun were to be seen outside, -helping the inn to a country look, a little dingy and decidedly -private and homely, so that what with the distance between the road -and the front door, and the Gypsy’s cart, the passer-by was apt to go -on until he came to an ordinary building erected for the sale of beer -and spirits, and for nothing else. Such a one lay not much further -on, beyond a row of cottages contemporary with “The Woodman’s Arms.” -These had long narrow gardens behind wooden posts and rails--gardens -where everything tall, old-fashioned, and thick grew at their own -sweet will, almost hiding the cottages of wood covered in creeper. You -could just see that some were empty, their windows smashed or roughly -boarded up, and that others were waiting for some old woman to die -before they also had their windows smashed or boarded up. The dahlias, -the rose-of-Sharon, the sweet rocket, the snow-on-the-mountains, the -nasturtiums, the sunflowers, flourished too thick for weeds to make -headway, and so probably with small help from the inhabitants, the -gardens earned many a wave of the whip from passing drivers. The row of -cottages meant “the first bit of country,” with a sweep at one end, a -rat-catcher at the other, announced in modest lettering. Between the -last of them and the new public-house a puddled lane ran up along old -and thick, but much broken, hedges to the horse-slaughterer’s. “The -Victoria Hotel” was built in the Jubilee year of that sovereign, and -was a broad-faced edifice of brick with too conspicuous stone work -round the windows and doorways and at the corners. The doors were many -and mostly of glass. The landlord of “The Victoria” had no time to -stand on his doorstep--whichever was his--like the landlord of “The -Woodman”; moreover, all his doorsteps were right on the road, and he -could have seen only the long row of cottages, by the same builder, -which looked as if cut off from a longer, perhaps an endless row, with -a pair of shears; while from the old inn could be seen grass sloping -to the willows of the river, and a clump of elms hiding the factory -chimneys. All the glass and brass of the “Victoria” shone spotless as -if each customer out of the regiments in the crowded straight streets -gave it a rub on entering and leaving. - -Beyond the “Victoria” the road straightened itself after a twist, and -was now lined by a hundred houses of one pattern but broken by several -branch streets. These were older houses of gray stucco, possessing -porches, short flights of steps up to the doors, basements, and the -smallest of front gardens packed with neglected laurel, privet, -marigold, and chickweed. At the end of the hundred--at No. 367--a man -walking “To London” would begin to feel tired, and would turn off the -pavement into the road, or else cross to the other side where the -scattered new shops and half-built houses had as yet no footway except -uneven bare earth. On this side the turnings were full of new houses -and pavements, and admitted the eye to views of the welter of slate -roofs crowding about the artificial banks of the river which ran as -in a pit. Of the branch streets interrupting the stucco hundred, one -showed a wide, desolate, untouched field of more and more thistles in -the middle, more and more nettles at the edge, and, facing it, a paltry -miracle of brand-new villas newly risen out of a similar field; the -second was the straight line of a new street, with kerb-stones neat -and new, but not a house yet among the nettles; another, an old lane, -was still bordered by tender-leafed lime trees, preserved to deck the -gardens of houses to come. The lane now and then had a Gypsy’s fire in -it for a few hours, and somebody had told the story that Aurelius was -born under one of the trees; to which Aurelius answered, “The trees and -I were born about the same time, but a hundred miles apart.” - -The stucco line gave way to a short row of brick houses, low and as -plain as possible, lying well back from the road behind their split-oak -fences, thorn hedges, laburnums and other fancy trees. Ivy climbed -over all; each was neat and cheerful, but the group had an exclusive -expression. Yet they had to look upon half-built shops and houses, -varied by a stretch of tarred and barbed fence protecting the playing -ground of some football club, whose notice board stood side by side -with an advertisement of the land for building on leasehold; over the -fence leaned an old cart-horse with his hair between his eyes. - -There followed repetitions and variations of these things--inhabited -houses, empty houses, houses being erected, fields threatened by -houses--and finally a long, gloomy unbroken cliff of stained stucco. -The tall houses, each with a basement and a long flight of steps up to -a pillared porch, curved away to the number 593, and the celebrated -“Horse-shoe Hotel” next door, which looked with dignity and still more -ostentation, above its potted bay-trees, on the junction of Abbey Road -and two busy thoroughfares. Opposite the tall stucco cliff a continuous -but uneven line of newish mean shops of every kind and not more than -half the height of the private houses, curved to a public-house as -large as the “Horse-shoe” which it faced. - -As each rook knows its nest among the scores on the straight uniform -beeches, so doubtless each inhabitant could after a time distinguish -his own house in this monotonous series, even without looking at the -number, provided that there was light and that he was not drunk. Each -house had three storeys, the first of them bay-windowed, above the -basement. Probably each was divided between two, or, like No. 497, -between three, families. Who had the upper storeys I never knew, except -that there was an old woman who groaned on the stairs, a crying baby -and its mother, and some men. I heard them speak, or cry, or tread -the stairs lightly or heavily, but never happened to see any of them, -unless that woman was one who was going to enter the gate at the same -time as I one evening, but at the sight of me went past with a jug of -something half hid under her black jacket. The basement, the floor -above, and the garden, were rented to one family, viz., Mr Torrance, -his wife and four children. - -The garden was a square containing one permanent living thing, and one -only, an apple tree which bore large fluted apples of palest yellow on -the one bough remaining green among the grey barkless ones. All round -the tree the muddy gravel had been trodden, by children playing, so -hard that not a weed or blade of grass ever pierced it. Up to it and -down to it led two narrow and steep flights of steps, the lower for the -children and the mother ascending from the kitchen or living room, the -upper for Mr Torrance who used to sit in the back room writing books, -except in the mornings when he taught drawing at several schools. -He wrote at an aged and time-worn black bureau, from which he could -sometimes see the sunlight embracing the apple tree. But into that room -the sunlight could not enter without a miracle, or by what so seldom -happened as to seem one--the standing open of an opposite window just -so that it threw a reflection of the late sun for about three minutes. -Even supposing that the sunlight came that way, little could have -penetrated that study; for the French windows were ponderously draped -by tapestry of dark green with a black pattern, and on one side the -bureau, on the other a bookcase, stood partly before the panes. No -natural light could reach the ceiling or the corners. Instead of light, -books covered the walls, books in a number of black-stained bookcases -of various widths, all equal in height with the room, except one that -was cut short by a grate in which I never saw a fire. The other few -interspaces held small old pictures or prints in dark frames, and -a dismal canvas darkened, probably, by some friendly hand. Most of -the books were old, many were very old. The huge, blackened slabs of -theology and drama emitted nothing but gloom. The red bindings which -make some libraries tolerable had been exorcised from his shelves by -the spirits of black and of darkest brown. - -The sullen host of books left little room for furniture. Nevertheless, -there was a massive table of ancient oak, always laden with books, -and apparently supported by still other books. Six chairs of similar -character had long succeeded in retaining places in front of the books, -justifying themselves by bearing each a pile or a chaos of books. Dark -as wintry heather were the visible portions of the carpet. The door was -hung with the same black and green tapestry as the windows; if opened, -it disclosed the mere blackness of a passage crowded with more books -and ancestral furniture. - -Yet Mr Torrance smiled whenever a visitor, or his wife, or one or -all of his children, but, above all, when Aurelius entered the room. -No doubt he did not always smile when he was alone writing; for he -wrote what he was both reluctant and incompetent to write, at the -request of a firm of publishers whose ambition was to have a bad, -but nice-looking, book on everything and everybody, written by some -young university man with private means, by some vegetarian spinster, -or a doomed hack like Mr Torrance. Had he owned copies of all these -works they would have made a long row of greens and reds decorated by -patterns and lettering in gold. He did not speak of his work, or of -himself, but listened, smiled, or--with the children--laughed, and -allowed himself at worst the remark that things were not so bad as -they seemed. He was full of laughter, but all clever people thought -him devoid of humour. In his turn, he admired all clever people, but -was uninfluenced by them, except that he read the books which they -praised and at once forgot them--he had read Sir Thomas Browne’s -“Quincunx,” but could not say what a Quincunx was. Aurelius used to -tease him sometimes, I think, in order to prove that the smile was -invincible. Mr Torrance was one of the slowest and ungainliest of men, -but he was never out of love or even out of patience with Aurelius, -the most lightsome of men, or of the superfluous race. He had fine -wavy hair like silk fresh from the cocoon, and blue eyes of perfect -innocence and fearlessness placed well apart in a square, bony, and -big-nosed face that was always colourless. As he wrote, one or all of -the children were likely to cry until they were brought into his study, -where he had frequently to leave them to avoid being submerged in the -chaos set moving by their play. He smiled at it, or if he could not -smile, he laughed. If the children were silent for more than a little -time he would go out into the passage and call downstairs to make sure -that all was well, whereupon at least one must cry, and his wife must -shriek to him in that high, sour voice which was always at the edge of -tears. Often she came before he called, to stand at his door, talking, -complaining, despairing, weeping; and though very sorry, Mr Torrance -smiled, and as soon as she had slammed the door he went on with his -exquisite small handwriting, or, at most, he went out and counted -the apples again. One or more of the children was always ill, nor was -any ever well. They were untidy, graceless, and querulous, in looks -resembling their mother, whose face seemed to have grown and shaped -itself to music--a music that would set the teeth of a corpse on edge. -She was never at the end of her work, but often of her strength. She -was cruel to all in her impatience, and in her swift, giddy remorse -cruel to herself also. She seemed to love and enjoy nothing, yet she -would not leave the house on any account, and seldom her work. Whatever -she did she could not ruffle her husband or wring from him anything but -a smile and a slow, kind sentence. Not that he was content, or dull, -or made of lead or wood. He would have liked to dress his wife and -children as prettily as they could choose, to ride easily everywhere, -anywhere, all over the world if it pleased them, seeing, hearing, -tasting nothing but what they thought best on earth. But save in verse -he never did so. It was one of his pains that seldom more than once or -twice a year came the mood for doing what seemed to him the highest -he could, namely, write verses. Also he had bad health; his pipe, of -the smallest size, half filled with the most harmless and tasteless -tobacco, lay cold on the bureau, just tasted and then allowed to go -out. Ale he loved, partly for its own sake, partly to please Aurelius, -but it did not love him. It was one of the jokes concerning him, that -he could not stand the cold of his morning bath unless he repeated the -words, - - “Up with me, up with me, into the sky, - For thy song, lark, is strong.” - -He said them rapidly, and in an agony of solemnity, as he squeezed the -sponge, and though this fact had become very widely known indeed, he -did not give up the habit. Had he given up every kind of food condemned -by himself or his doctors, he would have lived solely on love in that -dark, that cold, that dead room. He was fond of company, but he knew -nobody in all those thronged streets, unless it was an old woman or -two, and their decrepit, needy husbands. He was a farmer’s son, and -knew little more of London than Ann, since he had moved into Abbey -Road shortly after his first child was born, and had not been able to -extricate himself from the books and furniture. - -I see him, as soon as I have sat down by the window, swing round in his -chair and look grim as he lights his tobacco with difficulty--then -smile and let the smoke pour out of his mouth before beginning to -talk, which means that in a few minutes he has laid down the pipe -unconsciously, and that it will remain untouched. The children come -in; he opens the French windows, and goes down the steps to the apple -tree, carrying half the children, followed by the other half. Up he -climbs, awkwardly in his black clothes, and getting that grim look -under the strain, but smiling at last. He picks all of the seven apples -and descends with them. The children are perfectly silent. “This one,” -he begins, “is for Annie because she is so small. And this for Jack -because he is a good boy. And this for Claude because he is bad and we -are all sorry for him. And this for Dorothy because she is so big.” He -gives me one, and Dorothy another to take down to her mother, and the -last he stows away. - -Mr Torrance was often fanciful, and as most people said, affected, -in speech. He was full of what appeared to be slight fancies that -made others blush uncomfortably. He had rash admirations for more -conspicuously fanciful persons, who wore extraordinary clothes or -ate or drank in some extraordinary manner. He never said an unkind -thing. By what aid, in addition to the various brown breads to which he -condemned himself, did he live, and move, and have his being with such -gladness? - -His books are not the man. They are known only to students at the -British Museum who get them out once and no more, for they discover -hasty compilations, ill-arranged, inaccurate, and incomplete, and -swollen to a ridiculous size for the sake of gain. They contain not one -mention of the house under the hill where he was born. - - - - -CHAPTER X - -THE HOUSE UNDER THE HILL - - -Though he did not write of it, Mr Torrance would gladly talk of the -house under the hill where he was born, of the surrounding country -and its people. “I can only hope,” he would say, “I can only hope -that when I am old, ‘in this our pinching cave,’ I shall remember -chiefly the valley of the river Uther where I was born, and the small -old house half encircled and half-shadowed by an enormous crescent of -beech-covered hills. That is my world in spite of everything. Those -fifteen or twenty square miles make the one real thing that I know and -cannot forget, in spite of a hundred English scenes wantonly visited -and forgotten, in spite of London unforgotten and unintelligible. - -“A brook ran out of the hills where they were nearest to us, about half -a mile away. Dark trees darkened the two springs of crystal, and the -lightest wind made a sad sound in the leaves above them. Before it had -travelled a quarter of a mile the brook had gathered about itself a -brotherhood of huge trees that always seemed to belong to it, and gave -it pomp and mystery together, if the combination is possible. These -were sunny trees, a line of towering tall black poplars that led out -from the hills to the open agricultural land, a group of the mightiest -wych-elms I have ever seen, and one ash-tree standing alone at the -water’s edge, the only one of its kind in the neighbourhood. Three -miles from its source the brook ran into the main stream of the river -Uther, and beyond that I knew nothing except by rumour and guessing. -A line drawn between the two ends of the crescent of hills would pass -through the junction of brook and river and enclose the country which -was mine entirely. The long line of hills far off on the other side of -the valley--bare, rounded, and cloud-like hills, whose curving ridges -seemed to have growth and change like clouds--was the boundary of the -real world, beyond which lay the phantasmal--London, the ocean, China, -the Hesperides, Wineland, and all the islands and all the lands that -were in books and dreams. - -“The farm-houses of my country, and also the manor-house, stood on -either side of the brook, low down. There was a mill and a chain of -ponds, hardly a mile from the source. Both the ponds and the running -water were bordered thickly with sedge, which was the home of birds far -more often heard than seen. - -“The brook wound among little hills which were also intersected by -rough roads, green lanes, footpaths, and deserted trackways, watery, -and hollow and dark. As the roads never went on level ground all were -more or less deeply worn, and the overhanging beeches above and the -descending naked roots made them like groves in a forest. When a road -ran into another or crossed it there was a farm. The house itself was -of grey-white stone, roofed with tiles; the barn and sheds, apparently -tumbling but never tumbledown, were of dark boards and thatch, and -surrounded by a disorderly region of nettles, remains of old buildings -and walls, small ponds either black in the shadow of quince bushes, -or emerald with duck-weed, and a few big oaks or walnuts where the -cart-horses and their foals and a young bull or two used to stand. A -moorhen was sure to be swimming across the dark pond with a track of -ripples like a peacock’s tail shining behind it. Fowls scuttered about -or lay dusting themselves in the middle of the road, while a big -black-tailed cock perched crowing on a plough handle or a ruined shed. -A cock without a head or a running fox stood up or drooped on the roof -for a weather-vane, but recorded only the wind of some long past year -which had finally disabled it. The walls of outhouses facing the road -were garrulous with notices of sales and fairs to be held shortly or -held years ago. - -“At a point where one lane ran into another, as it were on an island, -the inn with red blinds on its four windows looked down the road. The -inn-keeper was a farmer by profession, but every day drank as much as -he sold, except on a market or fair day. On an ordinary day I think -he was always either looking down the road for someone to come and -drink with him, or else consoling himself inside for lack of company. -He seemed to me a nice man, but enormous; I always wondered how his -clothes contained him; yet he could sit on the mower or tosser all day -long in the June sun when he felt inclined. On a market or fair day -there would be a flock of sheep or a lot of bullocks waiting outside -while the drover smoked half a pipe and drank by the open door. And -then the landlord was nowhere to be seen: I suppose he was at the -market or up in the orchard. For it was the duty of his wife, a little -mousy woman with mousy eyes, to draw the beer when a customer came to -sit or stand among the empty barrels that filled the place. It was -Called ‘The Crown.’ They said it had once been ‘The Crown and Cushion,’ -but the cushion was so hard to paint, and no one knew why a crown -should be cushioned or a cushion crowned, and it was such a big name -for the shanty, that it was diminished to ‘The Crown.’ But it had those -four windows with crimson blinds, and the landlady was said to be a -Gypsy and was followed wherever she went by a white-footed black cat -that looked as if it was really a lady from a far country enchanted -into a cat. The Gypsy was a most Christian body. She used to treat with -unmistakeable kindness, whenever he called at the inn, a gentleman who -was notoriously an atheist and teetotaler. When asked upbraidingly why, -she said: ‘He seems a nice gentleman, and as he is going to a place -where there won’t be many comforts, I think we ought to do our best to -make this world as happy as possible for him.’ - -“Opposite to the inn was a carpenter’s shop, full of windows, and I -remember seeing the carpenter once at midnight there, working at a -coffin all alone in the glare in the middle of the blackness. He was -a mysterious man. He never touched ale. He had a soft face with silky -grizzled hair and beard, large eyes, kind and yet unfriendly, and -strange gentle lips as rosy as a pretty girl’s. I had an extraordinary -reverence for him due to his likeness to a picture at home of the -greatest of the sons of carpenters. He was tall and thin, and walked -like an over-grown boy. Words were rare with him. I do not think -he ever spoke to me, and this silence and his ceaseless work--and -especially that one midnight task--fascinated me. So I would stare for -an hour at a time at him and his work, my face against the window, -without his ever seeming to notice me at all. He had two dogs, a -majestic retriever named Ruskin who was eighteen years old, and a -little black and white mongrel named Jimmy; and the two accompanied -him and ignored one another. One day as I was idling along towards the -shop, smelling one of those clusters of wild carrot seeds, like tiny -birds’ nests, which are scented like a ripe pear sweeter and juicier -than ever grew on pear-tree, the carpenter came out with a gun under -one arm and a spade under the other and went a short distance down the -road and then into a field which belonged to him. I followed. No sooner -had I begun to look over the gate than the carpenter lifted his gun and -pointed it at the retriever who had his back turned and was burying a -bone in a corner of the field. The carpenter fired, the old dog fell -in a heap with blood running out of his mouth, and Jimmy burst out of -the hedge, snatched the bone, and disappeared. If it had been anyone -but the carpenter I should have thought this murder a presumptuous and -cruel act; his face and its likeness taught me that it was a just act; -and that, more than anything else, made justice inseparable in my mind -from pain and intolerable mystery. I was overawed, and watched him from -the moment when he began to dig until all that was mortal of the old -dog was covered up. It seems he had been ill and a burden to himself -for a long time. I thought it unjust that he should have been shot when -his back was turned, and this question even drowned my indignation at -the mongrel’s insolence. - -“I knew most of the farmers and labourers, and they were and are as -distinct in my mind as the kings of England. They were local men with -names so common in the churchyard that for some time I supposed it was -a storehouse, rather than a resting-place, of farmers and labourers. -They took small notice of me, and I was never tired of following them -about the fields, ploughing, mowing, reaping, and in the milking sheds, -in the orchards and the copses. Nothing is more attractive to children -than a man going about his work with a kindly but complete indifference -to themselves. It is a mistake to be always troubling to show interest -in them, whether you feel it or not. I remember best a short, thick, -dark man, with a face like a bulldog’s, broader than it was long, the -under-lip sticking out and up and suggesting great power and fortitude. -Yet it was also a kind face, and when he was talking I could not take -my eyes off it, smiling as it was kneaded up into an enormous smile, -and watching the stages of the process by which it was smoothed again. -When he was on his deathbed his son, who was a tailor, used to walk -over every evening from the town for a gossip. The son had a wonderful -skill in mimicry, and a store of tales to employ it, but at last the -old man, shedding tears of laughter, had to beg him not to tell his -best stories because laughing hurt so much. He died of cancer. No man -could leave that neighbourhood and not be missed in a hundred ways; -I missed chiefly this man’s smile, which I could not help trying to -reproduce on my own face long afterwards. But nobody could forget him, -even had there been no better reasons, because after he died his house -was never again occupied. A labourer cultivated the garden, but the -house was left, and the vine leaves crawled in at the broken windows -and spread wanly into the dark rooms. A storm tumbled the chimney -through the roof. No ghost was talked of. The house was part of his -mortal remains decaying more slowly than the rest. The labourer in -the garden never pruned the vine or the apple-trees, or touched the -flower borders. He was a wandering, three-quarter-witted fellow who -came from nowhere and had no name but Tom. His devotion to the old man -had been like a dog’s. Friends or relatives or home of his own he had -none, or could remember none. In fact, he had scarce any memory; when -anything out of his past life came by chance into his head, he rushed -to tell his master and would repeat it for days with pride and for -fear of losing it, as he invariably did. One of these memories was a -nonsensical rigmarole of a song which he tried to sing, but it was no -more singing than talking, and resembled rather the whimper of a dog in -its sleep; it had to do with a squire and a Welshman, whose accent and -mistaken English might alone have made the performance black mystery. -They tried to get his ‘real’ name out of him, but he knew only Tom. -Asked who gave it to him, he said it was Mr Road, a former employer, -a very cruel man whom he did not like telling about. They asked him -if he was ever confirmed. ‘No,’ he said, ‘they tried, but I could not -confirm.’ He would do anything for his master, rise at any hour of -the night though he loved his bed, and go anywhere. Summer or Winter, -he would not sleep in a house, but in a barn. Except his master’s in -the last illness, he would not enter any house. He was fond of beer -in large quantities, but if he got drunk with it he was ashamed of -himself, and might go off and not return for months: then one day he -would emerge from the barn, shaking himself and smiling an awkward -twisted smile and as bashful as a baby. What a place this modern world -is for a man like that, now. I do not like to think he is still alive -in it. All the people who could understand him are in the workhouse -or the churchyard. The churchyard is the only place where he would be -likely to stay long. No prison, asylum, or workhouse, could have kept -him alive for many days. - -“The church was like a barn except that it was nearly always empty, -and only mice ever played in it. Though I went to it every Sunday I -never really got over my dislike of the parson, which began in terror. -He was the only man in the country who invariably wore black from top -to toe. One hot, shining day I was playing in a barn, and the doors -were open, so that I saw a field of poppies making the earth look as -if it had caught fire in the sun; the swallows were coming in and out, -and I was alone, when suddenly a black man stood in the sunny doorway. -The swallows dashed and screamed at him angrily, and I thought that -they would destroy themselves, for they returned again and again to -within an inch of him. I could not move. He stood still, then with a -smile and a cough he went away without having said a word. The next -time I saw him was in the churchyard, when I was about five, and had -not yet begun to attend the Church; in fact I had never entered it to -my knowledge. The nurse-girl wheeled me up to the churchyard wall and -stopped at the moment when the black man appeared out of the church. -Behind him several men were carrying a long box between them on their -shoulders, and they also were in complete black, and after them walked -men, women, and children, in black; one of the older women was clinging -convulsively to a stiff young man. When they had all stopped, the -parson coughed and muttered something, which was followed by a rustling -and a silence; the woman clinging to the young man sobbed aloud, and -her hair fell all over her cheeks like rain. The nurse-girl had been -chatting with a few passers-by who were watching outside the wall, but -as I saw the woman’s hair fall I began to cry and I was hurried away. -Through the lych-gate I saw a hole in the ground and everyone looking -down into it as if they had lost something. At this I stopped crying -and asked the girl what they were looking for; but she only boxed my -ears and I cried again. When at last she told me that there was a man -‘dead’ in the box, and that they had put him into the ground, I felt -sure that the black man was in some way the cause of the trouble. I -remembered the look he had given me at the barn door, and the cough. I -was filled with wonder that no one had attempted to rescue the ‘dead,’ -and then with fear and awe at the power of the black man. Whenever I -saw him in the lane I ran away, he was so very black. Nor was the white -surplice ever more than a subterfuge to make him like the boys in the -choir, while his unnatural voice, praying or preaching, sounded as if -it came up out of the hole in the ground where the ‘dead’ had been put -away. - -“How glad I was always, to be back home from the church; though dinner -was ready I walked round the garden, touching the fruit-trees one by -one, stopping a minute in a corner where I could be unseen and yet look -at the house and the thick smoke pouring out of the kitchen chimney. -Then I rushed in and kissed my mother. The rest of the day was very -still, no horses or carts going by, no sound of hoes, only the cows -passing to the milkers. My father and my mother were both very silent -on that day, and I felt alone and never wanted to stray far; if it was -fine I kept to the garden and orchard; if wet, to the barn. The day -seems in my memory to have always been either sunny or else raining -with roars of wind in the woods on the hills; and I can hear the sound, -as if it had been inaudible on other days, of wind and rain in the -garden trees. If I climbed up into the old cherry-tree that forked -close to the ground I could be entirely hidden, and I used to fancy -myself alone in the world, and kept very still and silent lest I should -be found out. But I gave up climbing the tree after the day when I -found Mrs Partridge there before me. I never made out why she was up -there, so quiet. - -“Mrs Partridge was a labourer’s wife who came in two or three days a -week to do the rough work. I did not like her because she was always -bustling about with a great noise and stir, and she did not like me -because I was a spoilt, quiet child. She was deferential to all of -us, and called me ‘Sir’; but if I dared to touch the peel when she -was baking, or the bees-wax that she rubbed her irons on when she was -ironing, she talked as if she were queen or I were naught. While she -worked she sang in a coarse, high-pitched voice or tried to carry on -a conversation with my mother, though she might be up in the orchard. -She was a little woman with a brown face and alarming glittering eyes. -She was thickly covered with clothes, and when her skirts were hoisted -up to her knees, as they usually were, she resembled a partridge. She -was as quick and plump as a partridge. She ran instead of walking, -her head forward, her hands full of clothes and clothes-pegs, and her -voice resounding. No boy scrambled over gates or fences more nimbly. -She feared nothing and nobody. She was harsh to her children, but when -her one-eyed cat ate the Sunday dinner she could not bear to strike it, -telling my mother, ‘I’ve had the poor creature more than seven years.’ -She was full of idioms and proverbs, and talked better than any man has -written since Cobbett. One of her proverbs has stayed fantastically in -my mind, though I have forgotten the connection--‘As one door shuts -another opens.’ It impressed me with great mystery, and as she said -it the house seemed very dark, and, though it was broad daylight and -summer, I heard the wind howling in the roof just as it often did at -night and on winter afternoons. - -“Mrs Partridge had a husband of her own size, but with hollowed cheeks -the colour of leather. Though a slight man he had broad shoulders and -arms that hung down well away from his body, and this, with his bowed -stiff legs, gave him a look of immense strength and stability: to this -day it is hard to imagine that such a man could die. When I heard his -horses going by on a summer morning I knew that it was six o’clock; -when I saw them returning I knew that it was four. He was the carter, -and he did nothing but work, except that once a week he went into -the town with his wife, drank a pint of ale with her, and helped her -to carry back the week’s provisions. He needed nothing but work, out -of doors, and in the stables, and physical rest indoors; and he was -equally happy in both. He never said anything to disturb his clay pipe, -though that was usually out. What he thought about I do not know, and I -doubt if he did; but he could always break off to address his horses by -name, every minute or two, in mild rebuke or cheerful congratulation, -as much for his own benefit as for theirs, to remind himself that he -had their company. He had full responsibility for four cart-horses, -a plough, a waggon, and a dung-cart. He cared for the animals as if -they had been his own: if they were restless at night he also lost his -sleep. Although so busy he was never in haste, and he had time for -everything save discontent. His wife did all the talking, and he had -his way without taking the pipe out of his mouth. She also had her -own way, in all matters but one. She was fond of dancing; he was not, -and did not like to see her dance. When she did so on one tempting -occasion, and confessed it, he slept the night in the barn and she did -not dance again. There was a wonderful sympathy between them, and I -remember hearing that when she knew that she was going to have a baby, -it was he and not she that was indisposed. - -“Our house was a square one of stone and tiles, having a porch and a -room over it, and all covered up in ivy, convolvulus, honeysuckle, -and roses, that mounted in a cloud far over the roof and projected in -masses, threatening some day to pull down all with their weight, but -never trimmed. The cherry-tree stretched out a long horizontal branch -to the eaves at one side. In front stood two pear-trees, on a piece of -lawn which was as neat as the porch was wild, and around their roots -clustered a thicket of lilac and syringa, hiding the vegetable-garden -beyond. These trees darkened and cooled the house, but that did not -matter. In no other house did winter fires ever burn so brightly or -voices sound so sweet; and outside, the sun was more brilliant than -anywhere else, and the vegetable-garden was always bordered by crimson -or yellow flowers. The road went close by, but it was a hollow lane, -and the heads of the passers-by did not reach up to the bottom of our -hedge, whose roots hung down before caves that were continually being -deepened by frost. This hedge, thickened by traveller’s joy, bramble, -and ivy, entirely surrounded us; and as it was high as well as thick -you could not look out of it except at the sky and the hills--the -road, the neighbouring fields, and all houses being invisible. The -gate, which was reached by a flight of steps up from the road, was -half-barricaded and all but hidden by brambles and traveller’s joy, and -the unkempt yew-tree saluted and drenched the stranger--in one branch a -golden-crested wren had a nest year after year. - -“Two trees reigned at the bottom of the garden--at one side an apple; -at the other, just above the road, a cypress twice as high as the -house, ending in a loose plume like a black cock’s tail. The apple-tree -was old, and wore as much green in winter as in summer, because it -was wrapped in ivy, every branch was furry with lichen and moss, and -the main boughs bushy with mistletoe. Each autumn a dozen little red -apples hung on one of its branches like a line of poetry in a foreign -language, quoted in a book. The thrush used to sing there first in -winter, and usually sang his last evening song there, if it was a -fine evening. Yet the cypress was my favourite. I thought there was -something about it sinister to all but myself. I liked the smell of -it, and when at last I went to the sea its bitterness reminded me -of the cypress. Birds were continually going in and out of it, but -never built in it. Only one bird sang in it, and that was a small, -sad bird which I do not know the name of. It sang there every month -of the year, it might be early or it might be late, on the topmost -point of the plume. It never sang for long, but frequently, and always -suddenly. It was black against the sky, and I saw it nowhere else. The -song was monotonous and dispirited, so that I fancied it wanted us -to go, because it did not like the cheerful garden, and my father’s -loud laugh, and my mother’s tripping step: I fancied it was up there -watching the clouds and very distant things in hope of a change; but -nothing came, and it sang again, and waited, ever in vain. I laughed -at it, and was not at all sorry to see it there, for it had stood on -that perch in all the happy days before, and so long as it remained -the days would be happy. My father did not like the bird, but he was -often looking at it, and noted its absence as I did. The day after my -sister died he threw a stone at it--the one time I saw him angry--and -killed it. But a week later came another, and when he heard it he -burst into tears, and after that he never spoke of it but just looked -up to see if it was there when he went in or out of the porch. We -had taller trees in the neighbourhood, such as the wych-elms and the -poplars by the brook, but this was a solitary stranger and could be -seen several miles away like a black pillar, as the old cherry could in -blossom-time, like a white dome. You were seldom out of sight of it. -It was a station for any bird flying to or from the hills. A starling -stopped a minute, piped and flew off. The kestrel was not afraid to -alight and look around. The nightjar used it. At twilight it was -encircled by midges, and the bats attended them for half an hour. Even -by day it had the sinister look which was not sinister to me: some of -the night played truant and hid in it throughout the sunshine. Often -I could see nothing, when I looked out of my window, but the tree and -the stars that set round it, or the mist from the hills. What with -this tree, and the fruit-trees, and the maples in the hedge, and the -embowering of the house, I think the birds sometimes forgot the house. -In the mornings, in bed, I saw every colour on the woodpigeon, and the -ring on his neck, as he flew close by without swerving. At breakfast my -father would say, ‘There’s a kestrel.’ We looked up and saw nothing, -but on going to the window, there was the bird hovering almost above -us. I suppose its shadow or its blackening of the sky made him aware of -it before he actually saw it. - -“Next to us--on still days we heard the soft bell rung in the yard -there at noon--was the manor-house, large, but unnoticeable among its -trees. I knew nothing about the inside of it, but I went all over the -grounds, filled my pockets with chestnuts, got a peach now and then -from the gardener, picked up a peacock’s feather. Wonderfully beautiful -ladies went in and out of that old house with the squire. A century -back he would have been a pillar of the commonwealth: he was pure -rustic English, and his white hair and beard had an honourable look as -if it had been granted to him for some rare service; no such beards are -to be found now in country-houses. I do not know what he did: I doubt -if there is anything for such a man to do to-day except sit for his -portrait to an astonished modern painter. I think he knew men as well -as horses; at least he knew everyone in that country, had known them -all when he and they were boys. He was a man as English, as true to the -soil, as a Ribston pippin. - -“The woods on the hills were his, or at least such rights as anybody -had in them were his. As for me, I got on very well in them with no -right at all. Now, home and the garden were so well known, so safe, and -so filled with us, that they seemed parts of us, and I only crept a -little deeper into the core when I went to bed at night, like a worm in -a big sweet apple. But the woods on the hills were utterly different, -and within them you could forget that there was anything in the world -but trees and yourself, an insignificant self, so wide and solitary -were they. The trees were mostly beeches and yews, massed closely -together. Nothing could grow under them. Except for certain natural -sunny terraces not easily found, they covered the whole hills from -top to bottom, even in the steepest parts where you could slide, run, -and jump the whole distance down--about half a mile--in two minutes. -The soil was dead branches and dead leaves of beech and yew. Many -of the trees were dead: the stumps stood upright until they were so -rotten that I could overturn them with a touch. Others hung slanting -among the boughs of their companions, or were upheld by huge cables -of honeysuckle or traveller’s joy which had once climbed up them and -flowered over their crests. Many had mysterious caverns at their roots, -and as it were attic windows high up where the owls nested. The earth -was a honeycomb of rabbits’ burrows and foxes’ earths among the bony -roots of the trees, some of them stuffed with a century of dead leaves. - -“Where the slope was least precipitous or had a natural ledge, two or -three tracks for timber-carriages had once been made. But these had not -been kept up, and were not infallible even as footpaths. They were, -however, most useful guides to the terraces, where the sun shone and -I could see the cypress and my mother among the sunflowers, and the -far-away hills. - -“On my ninth birthday they gave me an old horn that had been a -huntsman’s, and when I was bold and the sun was bright, I sometimes -blew it in the woods, trembling while the echoes roamed among the gulfs -which were hollowed in the hillsides, and my mother came out into -the little garden far off. During the autumn and winter the huntsman -blew his horn in the woods often for a whole day together. The root -caves and old earths gave the fox more than a chance. The horses were -useless. The hounds had to swim rather than run in perpetual dead -leaves. If I saw the fox I tried hard not to shout and betray him, but -the temptation was very strong to make the echo, for I was proud of my -halloo, and I liked to see the scarlet coats, the lordly riders and the -pretty ladies, and to hear the questing hound and horn, and the whips -calling Ajax, Bravery, Bannister, Fury Nell, and the rest. Then at last -I was glad to see the pack go by at the day’s end, with sleepy heads, -taking no notice of me and waving tails that looked clever as if they -had eyes and ears in them, and to hear the clatter of horses dying -round the end of the crescent into the outer world. - -“Nobody took heed of the woods except the hunters. The timber was -felled if at all by the west wind. The last keeper had long ago left -his thatched cottage under the hill, where the sun shone so hot at -midday on the reed-thatched shed and the green mummy of a stoat hanging -on the wall. So I met nobody in the woods. I took an axe there day -after day for a week and chopped a tree half through, unmolested except -by the silence, which, however, wore me out with its protest. - -“The woods ended at the top in a tangle of thorns, and it was there -I saw my first fox. I was crawling among some brambles, amusing -myself with biting off the blackberries, when a fox jumped up out of -a tuft and faced me, his eyes on the level with mine. I was pleased -as well as startled, never took my eyes off him, and presently began -to crawl forward again. But at this the fox flashed his teeth at me -with a snap, and was off before I could think of anything to say. High -above these thorns stood four Scotch firs, forming a sort of gateway -by which I usually re-entered the woods. Gazing up their tall stems -that moved slowly and softly like a grasshopper’s horns, as if they -were breathing, I took my last look at the sky before plunging under -beech and yew. There were always squirrels in one of them, chasing one -another clattering up and down the bark, or chattering at me, close at -hand, as if their nerves were shattered with surprise and indignation. -When they had gone out of sight I began to run--faster and faster, -running and sliding down with a force that carried me over the meadow -at the foot, and across the road to the steps and home. I had ten years -in that home and in those woods. Then my father died; I went to school; -I entered an office. Those ten years were reality. Everything since -has been scarcely more real than the world was when it was still cut -off by the hills across the valley, and I looked lazily towards it -from under the cypress where the little bird sang. There is nothing to -rest on, nothing to make a man last like the old men I used to see in -cottage gardens or at gateways in the valley of the Uther.” - -“Well,” said Mr Morgan once, “I don’t often agree with Mr Torrance, but -I am very glad he exists.” - - - - -CHAPTER XI - -MR STODHAM, THE RESPECTABLE MAN, AND THE DRYAD - - -To Mr Stodham, I think, Mr Torrance’s books were the man. He--perhaps -he alone in England--possessed a full set of the thirty-three volumes -produced by Mr Torrance under his own name in thirteen years. “It is -wonderful,” said Ann once, “that the dancing of a pen over a sheet of -paper can pay the rent and the baker’s bill, and it hardly seems right. -But, still, it appears there are people born that can do nothing else, -and they must live like the rest of us.... And I will say that Mr -Torrance is one of the best of us, though he has that peculiarity.” - -Mr Stodham could not trust himself to speak. He really liked Ann: -furthermore, he knew that she was wiser than he: finally, everyone at -that moment had something better to think of, because Jack and Roland -had put on the gloves. Mr Stodham, consequently, quoted George Borrow: - -“There’s the wind on the heath, brother; if I could only feel that, I -would gladly live for ever. Dosta, we’ll now go to the tents and put on -the gloves; and I’ll try to make you feel what a sweet thing it is to -be alive, brother.” - -Jack overheard him, and at the end of the round said, “What was that, -Mr Stodham? say it again.” When the words of Jasper had been repeated, -“Jolly good,” said Jack, “but what puzzles me is how a man who knew -that could bother to write a book. There must have been something the -matter with him. Perhaps he didn’t really believe what he wrote.” And -so they had another round. - -Mr Stodham liked everything at Abercorran House. Liking was his chief -faculty, and there it had unstinted exercise. Probably he liked -the very wife whom he escaped by going either to the country or to -Abercorran House. An accident had first brought him among the Morgans. -One day as he happened to be passing down the farm lane a child threw -a ball unintentionally over into the Wilderness. After it went Mr -Stodham in an instant, not quite missing the nails at the top of the -fence. The long grass of the Wilderness and his own bad sight kept -the ball hidden until the child went away in despair, unknown to -him, for he continued the search. There perhaps he would have been -searching still, if the Wilderness had not been built over, and if -Roland had not come along and found man and ball almost in the same -moment. Here the matter could not end. For Mr Stodham, unawares, had -been reduced by a nail in the fence to a condition which the public -does not tolerate. It seems that he offered to wait for nightfall when -Roland had pointed out his misfortune. He was stubborn, to the verge -of being abject, in apologising for his presence, and, by implication, -for his existence, and in not wishing to cause any trouble to Roland -or the family. Gently but firmly Roland lured him upstairs and gave -him a pair of trousers beyond reproach. On the following day when he -reappeared, bearing the trousers and renewed apologies, the family, -out in the yard, was in full parliament assembled. He made a little -speech, cheered by everyone but Higgs. Presumably he was so fascinated -by the scene that the cheering did not disconcert him. He could not get -away, especially as his stick had been seized by Spot the fox-terrier, -who was now with apparently no inconvenience to himself, being whirled -round and round on the end of it by Jack. Ann came out with his own -trousers thoroughly reformed, and she had to be thanked. Lastly, Mr -Morgan carried him off before the stick had been recovered. Next day, -therefore, he had to come again in search of the stick, a priceless -favourite before Spot had eaten it. Mr Morgan consoled him and cemented -the acquaintance by giving him an ash stick with a handle formed by -Nature in the likeness of a camel’s head. Mr Morgan said that the stick -had been cut on Craig-y-Dinas--the very place where the ash stick was -cut, which a certain Welshman was carrying on London Bridge when he was -espied by a magician, who asked to be taken to the mother tree, which -in as long as it takes to walk three hundred miles was done, with the -result that a cave was found on Craig-y-Dinas, full of treasure which -was guarded by King Arthur and his knights, who were, however, sleeping -a sleep only to be disturbed by a certain bell, which the Welshman by -ill luck did ring, with the predicted result, that the king and his -knights rose up in their armour and so terrified him that he forgot the -word which would have sent them to sleep again, and he dropped all his -treasure, ran for his life, and could never more find cave, stick, or -magician for all his seeking. Mr Stodham responded in a sententious -pretty speech, saying in effect that with such a stick he needed no -other kind of treasure than those it would inevitably conduct him -to--the hills, rivers, woods, and meadows of the home-counties, and -some day, he hoped, to Craig-y-Dinas itself. - -Thus Mr Stodham came again and again, to love, honour, and obey the -ways of Abercorran House, just as he did the entirely different ways of -Mrs Stodham’s house. He, and no other, taught Philip the way to that -piece of country which became ours. Harry and Lewis, still under ten, -awakened in him a faculty for spinning yarns. What they were nobody but -those three knew; for the performance was so special and select that -the two boys formed the sole audience. They revealed nothing of what -enchanted them. Or was there anything more than at first appeared in -Harry’s musing remark on being questioned about Mr Stodham’s stories: -“Mr Stodham’s face is like a rat,” a remark which was accompanied by a -nibbling grimace which caused smiles of recognition and some laughter? -“Yes,” added Lewis, penitent at the laughter he had provoked, “a _very -good_ rat!” Perhaps the shy, sandy man’s shrunken face was worked up -to an unwonted--and therefore comical--freedom of expression in the -excitement of these tales, and this fascinated the boys and made them -his firm supporters. He was a tall, thin, sandy-haired, sandy-bearded -man with spectacles. As if tobacco smoke had mummified him, his face -was of a dried yellow. He stooped slightly and walked rapidly with long -strides. Nobody had professed to find anything great or good in him, -yet several different kinds of men spoke of him with liking as well as -pity. If there was something exceptional about this most ordinary man, -it was his youthfulness. It had been said that he was too dull to grow -old. But youthful he was, though it is hard to say how, since he truly -was dull, and if he had not been indolent must have been a bore--but -he was too modest for anyone to allow him to bore. As you walked -behind him you had little doubt of his youthfulness. Something in the -loose-jointed lightness and irresponsibility of his gait suggested a -boy, and if you had been following him with this thought, and he turned -round to greet you, the wrinkled, smoky face was a great surprise. -There was something in his nature corresponding to this loose-jointed -walk. The dogs, I think, knew it: they could do what they liked with -him, and for them he carried sugar as a regular cargo. - -Thus, Mr Stodham began to be interwoven with that fellowship. I was -perhaps too old for his romantic tales, but I have heard him telling Mr -Morgan what he considered interesting in his own life. Whatever it was, -it revealed his shyness, or his excitability, or his innocence. Once -he gave a long explanation of how he came to set an uncommon value on -a certain book which he was lending to Mr Morgan. Some winters before, -something caused him to wake at midnight and sit up to listen, in spite -of the usual powerful inclination to sleep again. At a sharp noise -on the pane he threw up the window. All the flints of the road were -clear in an unusual light. The white face of a policeman was looking -up at him, and he heard the words “Fire!... Come down.” Rapidly half -dressing as if executing an order which he did not understand, he was -outside on the pavement in a minute. It was next door. The building -was losing all resemblance to a barber’s shop; like mad birds the -flames flew across it and out at the shuttered windows. The policeman -was hammering at the door, to waken those who were in their beds above -the fire. Heavily they slept, and some minutes passed before a man -came down carrying an umbrella, a woman arranging her hair. The shriek -of a cat followed them out of the door, but so also did the flames. -Soon the shop was an oblong box containing one great upright body of -fire, through which could be seen the twisted skeleton remains of iron -bedsteads. Quietly the street had become packed with onlookers--curious -neighbours, passers-by, and a few night-wanderers who had souls above -merely keeping warm by standing against the walls of bakeries. There -were three fire engines. With a low hum the jets of water yielded -themselves to the fire and were part of it. Suddenly a fireman noticed -that Mr Stodham’s own window was lit from within, thought that the -flames had penetrated so far, and was about to direct the hose on it -when Mr Stodham shook off the charm of the tumultuous glare to explain -that he had left a lamp burning. The man went with him into the house, -but could find no fire. Left alone in his room Mr Stodham noticed -that it was hot, pleasantly hot for a January midnight. The wall that -he leaned against was pleasant until he remembered the fire on the -other side. He made haste to save his papers. Instead of sorting them -roughly there, he proposed to remove, not the separate drawers, but -the whole desk. He forgot that it had only entered the house, in the -first place, after having the castors detached, and omitting to do -this now, he wedged it firmly between the walls and so barricaded the -main passage of the house. He took out all the contents of all the -drawers, deposited them with a neighbour whom he had never before seen. -Then he returned to his room. He was alone with his books, and had to -choose among them, which he should take and save. They numbered several -hundred, including a shelf of the very first books he had read to -himself. A large proportion consisted of the books of his youth. Having -been lived through by the eager, docile Stodham, these poems, romances, -essays, autobiographies, had each a genuine personality, however -slight the difference of its cover from its neighbour’s. Another class -represented aspirations, regrets, oblivions: half cut, dustier than -the rest, these wore strange, sullen, ironical, or actually hostile -looks. Some had been bought because it was inevitable that a young man -should have a copy. Others, chiefly volumes in quarto or folio, played -something like the parts of family portraits in a house of one of the -new-rich. An unsuspecting ostentation had gone with some affection to -their purchase. They gave a hint of “the dark backward and abysm of -time” to that small room, dingy but new.... He leaned against the hot -wall, receiving their various looks, returning them. Several times he -bent forward to clutch this one or that, but saw another which he could -not forsake for it, and so left both. He moved up close to the rows: he -stood on tip-toe, he knelt. Some books he touched, others he opened. He -put each one back. The room was silent with memory. He might have put -them all in safety by this time. The most unexpected claims were made. -For example, there was a black-letter “Morte d’Arthur” in olive calf. -He had paid so much for it that he had to keep its existence secret: -brown paper both concealed and protected it. He did, in fact, put this -with a few others, chosen from time to time, on a chair. Only a very -few were without any claims--histories and the like, of which there -are thousands of copies, all the same. The unread and never-to-be-read -volumes put in claims unexpectedly. No refusal could be made without a -qualm. He looked at the select pile on the chair dissatisfied. Rather -than take them only he would go away empty. “You had better look sharp, -sir,” said a fireman, vaulting over the desk. Mr Stodham looked at -the mute multitude of books and saw all in a flash. Nevertheless not -one could he make up his mind to rescue. But on the mantelpiece lay a -single book until now unnoticed--a small eighteenth century book in -worn contemporary binding, an illustrated book of travels in Africa by -a Frenchman--which he had long ago paid twopence for and discontinued -his relations with it. He swiftly picked up this book and was, -therefore, able to lend it to Mr Morgan for the sake of the plates. But -after all he saved all his other books also. The fire did not reach his -house, and the one thing damaged was the desk which the firemen had to -leap on to and over in passing through to the back of the house. - -Mr Stodham, in spite of professing a poor opinion of the subject, was -delighted in his quiet way to speak of himself. He was at this time -a nearly middle-aged clerk, disappointed in a tranquil style, and -beginning to regard it as something to his credit that when he had -been four years married he had talked a good deal of going to the -colonies. If only he had gone--his imagination was unequal to the task -of seeing what might have happened if only he had gone. The regret or -pretence of it gave him a sort of shadowy grandeur by suggesting that -it was from a great height he had fallen to his present position in a -suburban maisonette. Here by some means he had secured to himself the -exclusive rights to a little room known as “The Study.” This room was -narrower than it was high, and allowed no more than space for his table -between the two walls of books, when he sat facing the French window, -with the door behind. He looked out on a pink almond-tree, and while -this flowered he could see nothing else but the tree and the south-east -sky above it; at other seasons the hind parts of many houses like his -own were unmistakeable. At night a green blind was let down over the -window before the lamp was lit. In this room, and in no other place but -Abercorran House, he was at home. Seated at that table, smoking, he -felt equal to anything with which his wife or the world could afflict -him. He desired no change in the room, beyond a slowly increasing -length to accommodate his increasing books. He would have liked to open -the windows more often than, being of the French pattern, was deemed -safe. The room was completely and unquestionably his own. For his wife -it was too shabby and too much out of her influence; she would not take -her fingers from the door-handle when she had to enter it. His children -were stiff and awed in it, because in earlier days he had been strict -in demanding silence in its neighbourhood. Much as he wished that they -would forget the old rule they could not; he liked to see them standing -at the door looking towards him and the window, but they made haste to -be off. As to the servant, she dreaded being caught in the room since -the mistress had commanded her to dust it daily, and the master to -leave it to him. - -Mr Morgan, Mr Torrance, and in later years myself, he admitted to -the Study. Acquaintances he received with his wife in their clean -and expensive drawing-room. Husband and wife were in harmony when -entertaining a few of those whom Mrs Stodham called their friends. On -these rare occasions the defensive combination of her slightly defiant -pride and his kindly resignation was a model of unconscious tact. If -there was a man--which seldom came about--Mr Stodham would ask him into -the Study. The gas was slowly lighted, the gas-stove more slowly or -not at all. The intruder would remark what a lot of books there were, -and how he never had any time for reading. There was only one chair, -and he was compelled to sit in it and to light a cigarette. Mr Stodham -himself was loth to smoke there in profane company, but dallied with -an unaccustomed cigarette, or, if he took a pipe, soon rapped out on -the stove with it some variation upon the theme of discontent. In -either case his gentle but disturbed presence hung oppressively on the -visitor, who very soon took the hint from that helpless but determined -face, to propose a return to the drawing-room. There Mrs Stodham -frequently made the remark: “What a lot of books John has,” nodding -complacently and with the implication partly that she despised them, -partly that she saw their worth as a family distinction. At the end of -such an evening or after any unpleasantness Mr Stodham would go into -the Study, stick an unlit pipe between his teeth, open a book and read -very slowly, stretching his legs out, for five minutes, then sigh, -stand up and look along the rows of books without seeing them, and go -up to bed before he had defined his dissatisfaction. - -The Study was the scene of the most extraordinary thing he had to -relate. Once when he had been lying for several days in bed, weak and -fevered, he had a strong desire to go downstairs to the Study. Darkness -and tea-time were near, his wife and children were out, doubtless the -servant was reading something by the light of the red-hot kitchen -grate. The house was silent. Slowly the invalid went down and laid -his fingers on the handle of his door, which was opposite the foot -of the stairs. An unusual feeling of quiet expectancy had stolen on -him; nothing, he said, could have astonished him at that moment. He -had, however, no idea of what he was expecting until he had opened the -door to its full extent. Thus was disclosed, between his table and the -window, a beautiful female figure, half sitting, half reclining, as if -asleep, among a number of books which had remained on the floor during -his illness. Though he had not put on his spectacles before coming down -he saw perfectly, so clearly, as he said, that she seemed to gleam, as -if it was still full day with her. Her beautiful long black hair was -confined by a narrow fillet of gold, which made clear the loveliness of -her head. He said that only Mr Torrance could describe her properly. -No, he affirmed, if people smiled, it did not occur to him that the -nude looked awkward near a gas-stove. Nor had she any more need of its -warmth than the Elgin Marbles or the Bacchus in Titian’s “Bacchus and -Ariadne.” Yet she was not of marble or paint, but of flesh, though he -had seen nothing of the kind in his life. Her shoulders moved with -her breathing, and this as well as her attitude proclaimed that she -was mourning, some seconds before he heard her sob. He thought that -the figure and posture were the same as those in a Greek statue which -he had seen long before, in London or Paris. They had the remoteness -and austerity of marble along with something delicate, transient, and -alive. But if there could have been a doubt whether she was flesh or -stone, there was none that she was divine. In what way she was divine -he could not tell, but certainly she was, though in no visible way was -she different from the women of pictures and statues. He did not feel -that she would notice him. He was not shocked, or curious, but calm and -still expectant. He drew a deep breath and tried to make his trembling -body stand quite still by leaning against the wall to watch. He did -not suppose that she had come into his room in the ordinary way. He -had, on the other hand, a conviction that she had something to do with -his books, that she had emerged from them or one of them. A gap in the -bottom shelf, where stood the largest books, caught his eye and thrust -itself forward as a cave whence she had come. Yet she was as white as -Aphrodite newly risen from the unsailed ocean, and she diffused a sense -of open air, of space, of the wild pure air, about her, as if she lay -upon a rock at the sea edge or among mountain flowers instead of in -this narrow room. He concluded in a reasonable way that she was one of -the poets’ nymphs whom he had so often read of with lazy credulity. -Actually the words ran into his mind: - - “Arethusa arose - From her couch of snows - In the Acroceraunian mountains-- - From cloud and from crag, - With many a jag, - Shepherding her bright fountains.” - -But he did not accept her as the Sicilian river. Other words crept -through his mind, as of “lorn Urania ... most musical of mourners,” and -of “lost Echo” seated “amid the voiceless mountains.” Still his brain -flew on, next causing him to see in her an incarnation of the morning -star, for from brow to foot she was very bright. But he came back again -to the idea of some goddess, or muse, or grace, or nymph, or Dryad--the -word Dryad recurring several times as if by inspiration; and thereafter -he referred to her as the Dryad. - -It seemed to be the sound of the door-handle released some time after -the door was closed that caused her suddenly to become silent and -to raise her sea-gray glittering eyes towards him. She was gasping -for breath. “Air,” she cried, “Air--the wide air and light--air and -light.” Mr Stodham rushed forward past her and threw open one of the -French windows. She turned towards the air, drinking it with her lips -and also with her hands which opened and closed with motions like -leaves under water. Mr Stodham could not open the second window. -“Air,” cried the Dryad. So he thrust steadily and then violently at -the frame with his whole body until the window gave way, splintering -and crashing. Still moving as if drowning and vainly trying to rise, -the Dryad cried out for more of the air which now streamed into the -Study. By stretching out her hands now up and now on either side she -implored to be surrounded by an ocean of air. To Mr Stodham this was -a command. Sideways with head lowered he leaned heavily against both -walls in turn, struggling to overthrow them. He strode backwards and -forwards along the bookshelves, striking fiercely here and there in -the hope that the wall would yield and let in the heavenly air for the -Dryad. When he thought this vain he ran from room to room throwing -open or smashing each window until all had been done. “More air,” he -shouted. The last room was the drawing-room. Its windows having been -smashed, he set about doing what he had run out of his study to do. In -the middle of the drawing-room he began to make a fire. From floor to -ceiling the eager flames leapt at a bound; a widening circle of carpet -smouldered; and Mr Stodham, crouching low, shivering, holding his hands -to the heat, muttered “More air,” like an incantation. “The Dryad must -have more air. We must all have more air. Let the clean fire burn down -these walls and all the walls of London. So there will be more air, and -she will be free, all will be free.” As the carpet began to smoulder -under him he hopped from one foot to another, not muttering now, but -shrieking, “More air,” and at last leaping high as the flames, he ran -straight out into the street. He ran as if he were trying to escape -himself--which he was; for his nightgown and dressing-gown flared out -in sparks behind him, and from these he was running. He twisted and -leapt in his race, as if he had a hope of twisting or leaping out of -the flames.... - -This scene was regarded by us as humorous--I suppose because we knew -that Mr Stodham had survived it--but by Ann as terrible. She had a -great kindness for Mr Stodham; she even proposed to deliver him from -his wife by providing him with a room at Abercorran House: but if -he was not content with his servitude he could not imagine another -state.... - -Probably he fell down unconscious from his burns and exhaustion: he -remembered no more when many days later the delirium left him. That he -had attempted to set his house on fire was noted as an extraordinary -frenzy of influenza: Mrs Stodham, suspecting a malicious motive for -starting the fire in her drawing-room, particularly resented it. Such -portions of the story as he betrayed in his delirium drove her to -accuse him of having a shameful and disgusting mind. - -On coming down to the Study from the sick room again he saw no Dryad. -He opened wide the new French windows, and stood looking at the dark -bole of the almond-tree, slender and straight, and all its blossom -suspended in one feathery pile against the sky. The airy marble of the -white clouds, the incorporeal sweetness of the flowers, the space and -majesty of the blue sky, the freshness of the air, each in turn and all -together recalled the Dryad. He shed tears in an intense emotion which -was neither pleasure nor pain. - -Aurelius had a great admiration for Mr Stodham on the ground that he -did not write a poem about the Dryad. The story appealed also to Ann. -She referred in awe to “Mr Stodham’s statue.” She said: “There was a -statue in that condition in the church at home. Some renowned artist -carved it for a memorial to the Earl’s only daughter. But I could not -abide it in the cold, dark, old place. It wanted to be out under the -ash-trees, or in among the red roses and ferns. I did think it would -have looked best of all by the waterfall. These statues are a sort of -angels, and they don’t seem natural under a roof with ordinary people. -Out of doors it is different, or it would be, though I haven’t seen -angels or statues out of doors. But I have seen bathers, and they look -as natural as birds.” - -“You are right, Ann,” said Mr Morgan, “and prettier than birds. The -other Sunday when I was out walking early I found a path that took me -for some way alongside a stream. There was a Gypsy caravan close to the -path, three or four horses scattered about, an old woman at the fire, -and several of the party in the water. I hurried on because I saw that -the swimmers were girls. But there was no need to hurry. Two of them, -girls of about fifteen with coal-black hair, caught sight of me, and -climbed out on to the bank before my eyes to beg. I walked on quickly -to give them a chance of reconsidering the matter, but it was no use. -Sixpence was the only thing that would turn them back. I wish now I had -not been so hasty in giving it. The girl put it in her mouth, after -the usual blessing, and ran back with her companion to the water. They -wanted money as well as air, Stodham. Your visitor was less alive.” - -“For shame, sir,” interjected Ann, “she was not a Gypsy. She was an -honourable statue, and there is no laugh in the case at all.” - -“Oh, but there is, Ann, and there always will be a laugh for some one -in these matters so long as some one else chooses to be as solemn as a -judge in public about them, and touchy, too, Ann. Don’t let us pretend -or even try to be angels. We have not the figure for it. I think there -is still a long future for men and women, if they have more and more -air, and enough sixpences to let them bathe, for example, in peace.” - -“Very good,” concluded Ann, “but a bit parsonified, too.” She would -have added something, but could no longer ignore the fact that close -by stood the tall old watercress-man, Jack Horseman, patiently waiting -for the right moment to touch his hat. His Indian complexion had come -back to the old soldier, he was slightly tipsy, and he had a bunch -of cowslips in his hat. Mr Morgan disappeared. Ann went in with the -watercress for change. Philip and I took possession of Jack, to ask if -he had found that blackthorn stick he had often promised us. - - - - -CHAPTER XII - -GREEN AND SCARLET - - -One evening Aurelius was telling Mr Stodham about the “battle of the -green and scarlet.” “It took place in your country,” said he to the -good man, too timid to be incredulous. - -“No,” answered Mr Stodham, “I never heard of it.” - -“You shall,” said Aurelius, and told the tale. - -“The first thing that I can remember is that a tall, gaunt man in green -broke out of a dark forest, leaping extravagantly, superhumanly, but -rhythmically, and wildly singing; and that he was leading an army to -victory. As he carved and painted himself on my mind I knew without -effort what had gone before this supreme moment. - -“It was late afternoon in winter. No light came from the misted, -invisible sky, but the turf of the bare hill-top seemed of itself to -breathe up a soft illumination. Where this hill-top may be I know not, -but at the time of which I am speaking I was on foot in broad daylight -and on a good road in the county of Hampshire. - -“The green man, the extravagant leaper and wild singer, broke out of -the hillside forest at the head of a green army. His leaping and his -dancing were so magnificent that his followers might at first have been -mistaken for idle spectators. The enemy came, clad in scarlet, out of -the forest at the opposite side of the hill-top. The two were advancing -to meet upon a level plateau of smooth, almost olive turf.... - -“For days and nights the steep hillside forest had covered the -manœuvres of the forces. Except one or two on each side they had seen -and heard nothing of one another, so dark were the trees, the mists -so dense and of such confusing motion; and that those few had seen or -heard their enemies could only be guessed, for they were found dead. -Day and night the warriors saw pale mist, dark trees, darker earth, and -the pale faces of their companions, alive or dead. What they heard was -chiefly the panting of breathless men on the steeps, but sometimes also -the drip of the sombre crystal mist-beads, the drenched flight of great -birds and their shrieks of alarm or of resentment at the invaders, -the chickadeedee of little birds flitting about them without fear, the -singing of thrushes in thorns at the edges of the glades. - -“In the eventless silence of the unknown forest each army, and the -scarlet men more than the green, had begun to long for the conflict, -if only because it might prove that they were not lost, forgotten, -marooned, in the heart of the mist, cut off from time and from all -humanity save the ancient dead whose bones lay in the barrows under the -beeches. Therefore it was with joy that they heard the tread of their -enemies approaching across the plain. When they could see one another -it was to the scarlet men as if they had sighted home; to the green -men it was as if a mistress was beckoning. They forgot the endless -strange hills, the dark trees, the curst wizard mist. It no longer -seemed to them that the sheep-bells, bubbling somewhere out of sight, -came from flocks who were in that world which they had unwillingly and -unwittingly left for ever. - -“The scarlet men were very silent; if there were songs in the heads of -two or three, none sang. They looked neither to left nor to right; they -saw not their fellows, but only the enemy. The breadth of the plain was -very great to them. With all their solidity they could hardly endure -the barren interval--it had been planned that they should wait for the -charge, but it was felt now that such a pause might be too much for -them. Ponderous and stiff, not in a straight line, nor in a curve, nor -with quite natural irregularity, but in half a dozen straight lines -that never made one, they came on, like rocks moving out against the -tide. I noticed that they were modern red-coats armed with rifles, -their bayonets fixed. - -“The green men made a curved irregular front like the incoming sea. -They rejoiced separately and together in these minutes of approach. -And they sang. Their song was one which the enemy took to be mournful -because it had in it the spirit of the mountain mists as well as of the -mountains. It saddened the hearts of the enemy mysteriously; the green -men themselves it filled, as a cup with wine, with the certainty of -immortality. They turned their eyes frequently towards their nearest -companions, or they held their heads high, so that their gaze did not -take in the earth or anything upon it. The enemy they scarcely saw. -They saw chiefly their leaping leader and his mighty twelve. - -“The first love of the scarlet men for the enemy had either died, or -had turned into hate, fear, indignation, or contempt. There may have -been joy among them, but all the passions of the individuals were -blended into one passion--if such it could be called--of the mass, part -contempt for the others, part confidence in themselves. But among the -green men first love had grown swiftly to a wild passion of joy. - -“The broad scarlet men pushed forward steadily. - -“The tall green hero danced singing towards them. His men leaped after -him--first a company of twelve, who might have been his brethren; then -the whole green host, lightly and extravagantly. The leader towered -like a fountain of living flame. Had he stood still he must have been -gaunt and straight like a beech-tree that stands alone on the crest -of a sea-beholding hill. He was neither young nor old--or was he both -young and old like the gods? In his blue eyes burnt a holy and joyous -fire. He bore no weapon save a dagger in his right hand, so small that -to the enemy he appeared unarmed as he leaped towards them. First he -hopped, then he leaped with one leg stretched forward and very high, -and curved somewhat in front of the other, while at the same time the -arm on the opposite side swung across his body. But, in fact, whenever -I looked at him--and I saw chiefly him--he was high in the air, with -his head uplifted and thrown back, his knee almost at the height of his -chin. He also sang that seeming sorrowful melody of the mountain joy, -accented to an extravagant exultation by his leaping and the flashing -of his eyes. - -“If he had not been there doubtless the twelve would have astonished -the scarlet men and myself just as much, for they too were tall, danced -the same leaping dance, sang the mountain song with the same wild and -violent joy, and were likewise armed only with short daggers. - -“Suddenly the leader stopped; the twelve stopped; the green army -stopped; all were silent. The scarlet men continued to advance, not -without glancing at one another for the first time, with inquiry in -their looks, followed by scorn; they expected the enemy to turn and -fly. They had no sooner formed this opinion than the tall green leader -leaped forward again singing, the twelve leaped after him, the sea-like -edge of the green army swayed onward. Almost a smile of satisfaction -spread over the stiff faces of their opponents, for there was now but a -little distance between the armies; how easily they would push through -that frivolous prancing multitude--if indeed it ever dared to meet -their onset. This was the one fear of the scarlet men, that the next -minute was not to see the clash and the victory, that they would have -to plunge once more into the forest, the mist, the silence, after a foe -that seemed to them as inhuman as those things and perhaps related to -them. - -“Suddenly again the green leader was rigid, his song ceased. The -twelve, the whole green army, were as statues. A smile grew along the -line of the scarlet men when they had conquered their surprise, a smile -of furious pity for such a dancing-master and his dancing-school--a -smile presently of uneasiness as the seconds passed and they could -hear only the sound of their own tread. The silence of all those men -unnerved them. Now ... would the green men turn? Some of the scarlet -men, eager to make sure of grappling with the enemy, quickened their -step, but not all. The green men did not turn. Once again the dance -and the song leaped up, this time as if at a signal from the low sun -which smote across the green leader’s breast, like a shield, and like a -banner. Wilder than ever the dance and the song of the green men. The -scarlet men could see their eyes now, and even the small daggers like -jewels in the hands of the leaders. Some were still full of indignant -hate and already held the dancers firm on the points of their bayonets. -Some thought that there was a trick, they knew not how it might end. -Some wished to wait kneeling, thus to receive the dancers on their -steadfast points. Some were afraid, looking to left and right for a -sign. One tripped intentionally and fell. The line became as jagged as -if it were a delicate thing blown by the wind. The green leader cut -the line in two without stopping his dance, leaving his dagger in the -throat of a rifleman. Not one of the twelve but penetrated the breaking -line in the course of the dance. The whole green army surged through -the scarlet without ceasing their song, which seemed to hover above -them like spray over waves. Then they turned. - -“The scarlet men did not turn. They ran swiftly now, and it was their -backs that met the spears of the green men as they crowded into the -forest. The tall, weaponless, leaping singer seemed everywhere, above -and round about, turning the charge and thrust of the green men into a -lovely and a joyous thing like the arrival of Spring in March, making -the very trees ghastly to the scarlet fugitives running hither and -thither silently to their deaths. Not one of the defeated survived, -for the few that eluded their pursuers could not escape the mist, nor -yet the song of the green leader, except by death, which they gave to -themselves in sadness. - -“I cannot wonder that the hero’s dancing and singing were not to be -withstood by his enemies, since to me it was divine and so moving that -I could not help trying to imitate both song and dance while I was -walking and dreaming.” - -“Nothing like that ever happened to me,” said Mr Stodham. “But I -thought you meant a real battle. It was lucky you weren’t run over if -you were dreaming like that along the road.” - -“I suppose I was not born to be run over,” said Aurelius. - - - - -CHAPTER XIII - -NED OF GLAMORGAN - - -Long after his celebrated introduction to Abercorran House, and soon -after Philip and I had been asking old Jack again about the blackthorn -stick, Mr Stodham was reminded of the story of the Welshman on London -Bridge who was carrying a hazel stick cut on Craig-y-Dinas. “Do you -remember it?” asked Mr Morgan. - -“Certainly I do,” replied Mr Stodham, “and some day the stick you gave -me from that same Craig-y-Dinas shall carry me thither.” - -“I hope it will. It is a fine country for a man to walk in with a light -heart, or, the next best thing, with a heavy heart. They will treat you -well, because they will take you for a red-haired Welshman and you like -pastry. But what I wanted to say was that the man who first told that -story of Craig-y-Dinas was one of the prime walkers of the world. Look -at this portrait of him....” - -Here Mr Morgan opened a small book of our grandfather’s time which had -for a frontispiece a full-length portrait of a short, old, spectacled -man in knee breeches and buckled shoes, grasping a book in one hand, a -very long staff in the other. - -“Look at him. He was worthy to be immortalised in stained glass. He -walked into London from Oxford one day and mentioned the fact to some -acquaintances in a bookshop. They were rather hard of believing, but -up spoke a stranger who had been observing the pedestrian, his way of -walking, the shape of his legs, and the relative position of his knees -and ankles whilst standing erect. This man declared that the Welshman -could certainly have done the walk without fatigue; and he ought to -have known, for he was the philosopher, Walking Stewart. - -“It was as natural for this man in the picture to walk as for the -sun to shine. You would like to know England, Mr Stodham, as he knew -Wales, especially Glamorgan. Rightly was he entitled ‘Iolo Morganwg,’ -or Edward of Glamorgan, or, rather, Ned of Glamorgan. The name will -outlive most stained glass, for one of the finest collections of -Welsh history, genealogies, fables, tales, poetry, etc., all in old -manuscripts, was made by him, and was named after him in its published -form--‘Iolo Manuscripts.’ He was born in Glamorgan, namely at Penon, in -1746, and when he was eighty he died at Flimstone in the same county. - -“As you may suppose, he was not a rich man, and nobody would trouble to -call him a gentleman. But he was an Ancient Briton, and not the last -one: he said once that he always possessed the freedom of his thoughts -and the independence of his mind ‘with an Ancient Briton’s warm pride.’ - -“His father was a stonemason, working here, there, and everywhere, in -England and Wales, in town and country. When the boy first learnt his -alphabet, it was from the letters cut by his father on tombstones. -His mother--the daughter of a gentleman--undoubtedly a gentleman, for -he had ‘wasted a pretty fortune’--taught him to read from the songs -in a ‘Vocal Miscellany.’ She read Milton, Pope, ‘The Spectator,’ ‘The -Whole Duty of Man,’ and ‘Religio Medici,’ and sang as well. But the boy -had to begin working for his father at the age of nine. Having such -a mother, he did not mix with other children, but returned nightly -to read or talk with her, or, if he did not, he walked by himself in -solitary places. Later on, he would always read by himself in the -dinner-hour instead of going with his fellow-workmen to the inn. Once -he was left, during the dinner-hour, in charge of a parsonage that was -being repaired, and, having his own affairs to mind, he let all the -fowls and pigs in. His father scolded him, and he went off, as the -old man supposed, to pout for a week or two with his mother’s people -at Aberpergwm, near Pont Neath Vaughan. It was, however, some months -before he reappeared--from London, not Aberpergwm. Thus, in his own -opinion, he became ‘very pensive, very melancholy, and very stupid,’ -but had fits of ‘wild extravagance.’ And thus, at the time of his -mother’s death, though he was twenty-three, he was ‘as ignorant of the -world as a new-born child.’ Without his mother he could not stay in the -house, so he set off on a long wandering. He went hither and thither -over a large part of England and Wales, ‘studying chiefly architecture -and other sciences that his trade required.’” - -“There was a mason,” said Mr Stodham, “such as Ruskin wanted to set -carving evangelists and kings.” - -“No. He knew too much, or half-knew too much. Besides, he hated -kings.... Those travels confirmed him in the habit of walking. He was -too busy and enthusiastic ever to have become an eater, and he found -that walking saved him still more from eating. He could start early in -the morning and walk the forty-three miles into Bristol without any -food on the way; and then, after walking about the town on business, -and breaking his fast with bread and butter and tea, and sleeping in a -friend’s chair, could walk back again with no more food; and, moreover, -did so of choice, not from any beastly principle or necessity. He -travelled thus with ‘more alacrity and comfort,’ than at other times -when he had taken food more frequently. He always was indifferent to -animal food and wine. Tea was his vice, tempered by sugar and plenty of -milk and cream. Three or four distinct brews of an evening suited him. -Once a lady assured him that she was handing him his sixteenth cup. He -was not a teetotaller, though his verses for a society of journeymen -masons ‘that met weekly to spend a cheerful hour at the moderate and -restricted expense of fourpence,’ are no better than if he had been a -teetotaller from his cradle: - - “‘Whilst Mirth and good ale our warm spirits recruit, - We’ll drunk’ness avoid, that delight of a brute: - Of matters of State we’ll have nothing to say, - Wise Reason shall rule and keep Discord away. - Whilst tuning our voices Jocundity sings, - Good fellows we toast, and know nothing of kings: - But to those who have brightened the gloom of our lives, - Give the song and full bumper--our sweethearts and wives.’ - -At one time he made a fixed resolve not to _sit_ in the public room of -an ale-house, because he feared the conviviality to which his talent -for song-writing conduced. But it is a fact that a man who lives out of -doors can eat and drink anything, everything, or almost nothing, and -thrive beyond the understanding of quacks. - -“Iolo walked night and day, and would see a timid gentleman home at any -hour if only he could have a chair by his fireside to sleep. He got to -prefer sleeping in a chair partly because his asthma forbade him to lie -down, partly because it was so convenient to be able to read and write -up to the last moment and during any wakeful hours. With a table, and -pen, ink, paper, and books beside him, he read, wrote, and slept, at -intervals, and at dawn usually let himself out of the house for a walk. -During a visit to the Bishop of St David’s at Abergwili he was to be -seen in the small hours pacing the hall of the episcopal palace, in -his nightcap, a book in one hand, a candle in the other. Probably he -read enormously, but too much alone, and with too little intercourse -with other readers. Besides his native Welsh he taught himself English, -French, Latin and Greek. His memory was wonderful, but he had no power -of arrangement; when he came to write he could not find his papers -without formidable searches, and when found could not put them in an -available form. I imagine he did not treat what he read, like most of -us, as if it were removed several degrees from what we choose to call -reality. Everything that interested him at all he accepted eagerly -unless it was one of the few things he was able to condemn outright as -a lie. I suppose it was the example of Nebuchadnezzar that made him try -one day ‘in a thinly populated part of North Wales’ eating nothing but -grass, until the very end, when he gave way to bread and cheese. - -“He had a passion for antiquities.” - -“What an extraordinary thing,” ejaculated Mr Stodham. - -“Not very,” said Mr Morgan. “He was acquisitive and had little -curiosity. He was a collector of every sort and quality of old -manuscript. Being an imperfectly self-educated man he probably got an -innocent conceit from his learned occupation....” - -“But how could he be an old curiosity man, and such an out-door man as -well?” - -“His asthma and pulmonary trouble, whatever it was, probably drove him -out of doors. Borrow, who was a similar man of a different class, was -driven out in the same way as a lad. Iolo’s passion for poetry was not -destroyed, but heightened, by his travels. God knows what poetry meant -to him. But when he was in London, thinking of Wales and the white cots -of Glamorgan, he wrote several stanzas of English verse. Sometimes he -wrote about nymphs and swains, called Celia, Damon, Colin, and the -like. He wrote a poem to Laudanum: - - “‘O still exert thy soothing power, - Till Fate leads on the welcom’d hour, - To bear me hence away; - To where pursues no ruthless foe, - No feeling keen awakens woe, - No faithless friends betray.’” - -“I could do no worse than that,” murmured Mr Stodham confidently. - -“He wrote a sonnet to a haycock, and another to Hope on an intention of -emigrating to America: - - “‘Th’ American wilds, where Simplicity’s reign - Will cherish the Muse and her pupil defend ... - I’ll dwell with Content in the desert alone.’ - -They were blessed days when Content still walked the earth with a -capital C, and probably a female form in light classic drapery. There -was Felicity also. Iolo wrote ‘Felicity, a pastoral.’ He composed a -poem to the cuckoo, and translated the famous Latin couplet which says -that two pilgrimages to St David’s are equivalent to one to Rome itself: - - “‘Would haughty Popes your senses bubble, - And once to Rome your steps entice; - ’Tis quite as well, and saves some trouble, - Go visit old Saint Taffy twice.’ - -He wrote quantities of hymns. Once, to get some girls out of a -scrape--one having played ‘The Voice of Her I Love’ on the organ after -service--he wrote a hymn to the tune, ‘The Voice of the Beloved,’ and -fathered it on an imaginary collection of Moravian hymns. One other -virtue he had, as a bard: he never repeated his own verses. God rest -his soul. He was a walker, not a writer. The best of him--in fact, the -real man altogether--refused to go into verse at all. - -“Yet he had peculiarities which might have adorned a poet. Once, when -he was on a job in a churchyard at Dartford, his master told him to go -next morning to take certain measurements. He went, and, having taken -the measurements, _woke_. It was pitch dark, but soon afterwards a -clock struck two. In spite of the darkness he had not only done what he -had to do, but he said that on his way to the churchyard every object -appeared to him as clear as by day. The measurements were correct. - -“One night, asleep in his chair, three women appeared to him, one -with a mantle over her head. There was a sound like a gun, and one of -the others fell, covered in blood. Next day, chance took him--was it -chance?--into a farm near Cowbridge where he was welcomed by three -women, one hooded in a shawl. Presently a young man entered with a -gun, and laid it on the table, pointing at one of the women. At Iolo’s -warning it was discovered that the gun was primed and at full cock. - -“Another time, between Cowbridge and Flimstone, he hesitated thrice at -a stile, and then, going over, was just not too late to save a drunken -man from a farmer galloping down the path. - -“In spite of his love of Light and Liberty, he was not above turning -necromancer with wand and magic circle to convert a sceptic inn-keeper. -He undertook to call up the man’s grandfather, and after some -gesticulations and muttering unknown words, he whispered, ‘I feel the -approaching spirit. Shall it appear?’ The man whom he was intending -to benefit became alarmed, and begged to be allowed to hear the ghost -speak, first of all. In a moment a deep, sepulchral voice pronounced -the name of the grandfather. The man had had enough. He bolted from the -place, leaving Iolo and his confederates triumphant. - -“Iolo should have been content to leave it unproved that he was no -poet. But he had not an easy life, and I suppose he had to have frills -of some sort. - -“Well, he walked home to Glamorgan. There he took a Glamorgan wife, -Margaret Roberts of Marychurch, and he had to read less and work more -to provide for a family. By the nature of his handiwork he was able to -make more out of his verses than he would have done by printing better -poetry. The vile doggerel which he inscribed on tombstones gained him a -living and a sort of an immortality. He was one of the masons employed -on the monument to the Man of Ross. - -“Though a bad poet he was a Welsh bard. It was not the first or the -last occasion on which the two parts were combined. Bard, for him, -was a noble name. He was a ‘Christian Briton and Bard’--a ‘Bard -according to the rights and institutes of the Bards of the Island of -Britain’--and he never forgot the bardic triad, ‘Man, Liberty, and -Light.’ Once, at the prison levee of a dissenting minister, he signed -himself, ‘Bard of Liberty.’ To Southey, whom he helped with much -out-of-the-way bardic mythology for his ‘Madoc,’ he was ‘Bard Williams.’ - -“Bardism brought him into strange company, which I dare say he did -not think strange, and certainly not absurd. Anna Seward, who mistook -herself for a poet, and was one of the worst poets ever denominated -‘Swan,’ was kind to him in London. He in return initiated her into -the bardic order at a meeting of ‘Ancient British Bards resident in -London,’ which was convened on Primrose Hill at the Autumnal equinox, -1793. At an earlier meeting, also on Primrose Hill, he had recited an -‘Ode on the Mythology of the British Bards in the manner of Taliesin,’ -and, since this poem was subsequently approved at the equinoctial, and -ratified at the solstitial, convention, it was, according to ancient -usage, fit for publication. It was not a reason. Nevertheless, a bard -is a bard, whatever else he may or may not be. - -“Iolo was proud to declare that the old Welsh bards had kept up a -perpetual war with the church of Rome, and had suffered persecution. -‘Man, Liberty, and Light.’ You and I, Mr Stodham, perhaps don’t know -what he meant. But if Iolo did not know, he was too happy to allow the -fact to emerge and trouble him. - -“Of course, he connected the bards with Druidism, which he said they -had kept alive. A good many sectarians would have said that he himself -was as much a Druid as a Christian. He accepted the resurrection of -the dead. He did not reject the Druid belief in transmigration of -souls. He identified Druidism with the patriarchal religion of the Old -Testament, but saw in it also a pacific and virtually Christian spirit. -He affirmed that Ancient British Christianity was strongly tinctured by -Druidism, and it was his opinion that the ‘Dark Ages’ were only dark -through our lack of light. He hated the stories of Cæsar and others -about human sacrifices, and would say to opponents, ‘You are talking -of what you don’t understand--of what none but a Welshman and a British -bard _can possibly_ understand.’ He compared the British mythology -favourably with the ‘barbarous’ Scandinavian mythology of Thor and -Odin. He studied whatever he could come at concerning Druidism, -with the ‘peculiar bias and firm persuasion’ that ‘more wisdom and -beneficence than is popularly attributed to them’ would be revealed. - -“In the French Revolution he recognised the spirit of ‘Man, Liberty, -and Light.’ His friends deserted him. He in turn was willing to -leave them for America, ‘to fly from the numerous injuries he had -received from the laws of this land.’ He had, furthermore, the hope of -discovering the colony settled in America, as some believed, by the -mediæval Welsh prince Madoc.” - -“That was like Borrow, too,” suggested Mr Stodham. - -“It was, and the likeness is even closer; for, like Borrow, Iolo did -not go to America. Nevertheless, to prepare himself for the adventure, -he lived out of doors for a time, sleeping in trees and on the ground, -and incurring rheumatism. - -“But though he did not go to America for love of Liberty, he had -his papers seized, and is said to have been summoned by Pitt for -disaffection to the State. Nothing worse was proved against him than -the authorship of several songs in favour of Liberty, ‘perhaps,’ -said his biographer, ‘a little more extravagant than was quite -commendable at that inflammatory period.’ They expected him to remove -his papers himself, but he refused, and had them formally restored -by an official. When he was fifty he gave up his trade because the -dust of the stone was injuring his lungs. He now earned a living by -means of a shop at Cowbridge where books, stationery, and grocery were -sold. His speciality was ‘East India Sweets uncontaminated by human -gore.’ Brothers of his who had made money in Jamaica offered to allow -him £50 a year, but in vain. ‘It was a land of slaves,’ he said. He -would not even administer their property when it was left to him, -though a small part was rescued later on by friends, for his son and -daughter. The sound of the bells at Bristol celebrating the rejection -of Wilberforce’s Anti-Slavery Bill drove him straight out of the city. -Believing that he was spied upon at Cowbridge he offered a book for -sale in his window, labelled ‘The Rights of Man.’ He was successful. -The spies descended on him, seized the book, and discovered that it was -the Bible, not the work of Paine. - -“He was personally acquainted with Paine and with a number of other -celebrities, such as Benjamin Franklin, Bishop Percy, Horne Tooke, and -Mrs Barbauld. Once in a bookshop he asked Dr Johnson to choose for -him among three English grammars. Johnson was turning over the leaves -of a book, ‘rapidly and as the bard thought petulantly’: ‘Either of -them will do for you, young man,’ said he. ‘Then, sir,’ said Iolo, -thinking Johnson was insulting his poverty, ‘to make sure of having -the best I will buy all’; and he used always to refer to them as ‘Dr -Johnson’s Grammars.’ It was once arranged that he should meet Cowper, -but the poet sat, through the evening, silent, unable to encounter the -introduction. - -“The excesses of the Revolution, it is said, drove Iolo to abandon -the idea of a Republic, except as a ‘theoretic model for a free -government.’ He even composed an ode to the Cowbridge Volunteers. Above -all, he wrote an epithalamium on the marriage of George the Fourth, -which he himself presented, dressed in a new apron of white leather -and carrying a bright trowel. His ‘English Poems’ were dedicated to the -Prince of Wales.” - -“What a fearful fall,” exclaimed Mr Stodham, who may himself have been -a Bard of Liberty. - -“But his business, apart from his trade, was antiquities, and -especially the quest of them up and down Wales.” - -“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said Mr Stodham, “if the old man hoped -for some grand result from meddling with those mysterious old books -and papers--perhaps nothing definite, health, wealth, wisdom, beauty, -everlasting life, or the philosopher’s stone,--but some old secret of -Bardism or Druidism, which would glorify Wales, or Cowbridge, or Old -Iolo himself.” - -“Very likely. He was to a scientific antiquary what a witch is to an -alchemist, and many a witch got a reputation with less to her credit -than he had. - -“As a boy he remembered hearing an old shoemaker of Llanmaes (near -Lantwit) speak of the shaft of an ancient cross, in Lantwit churchyard, -falling into a grave that had been dug too near it for Will the Giant -of Lantwit. As a middle-aged man he dug up the stone. It was less -love of antiquity than of mystery, buried treasure, and the like. -He was unweariable in his search for the remains of Ancient British -literature. At the age of seventy, when the Bishop of St David’s -had mislaid some of his manuscripts and they had thus been sold, -Iolo walked over Caermarthenshire, Pembrokeshire, and Cardiganshire, -and recovered the greater part. He took a pony with him as far as -Caermarthen, but would not allow it to carry his wallets until at last -it was arranged that his son should walk on one side and himself on the -other, which made him remark that ‘nothing was more fatiguing than a -horse.’ The horse appears in a triad of his own composition: - -“There are three things I do not want. A Horse, for I have a good pair -of legs: a Cellar, for I drink no beer: a Purse, for I have no money. - -“He would not ride in Lord Dunraven’s carriage, but preferred to walk. -That he did not dislike the animal personally is pretty clear. For at -one time he kept a horse which followed him, of its own free will, upon -his walks. - -“Iolo was a sight worth seeing on the highways and byways of -Glamorgan, and once had the honour of being taken for a conjuror. -His biographer--a man named Elijah Waring, who was proud to have -once carried his wallets--describes him ‘wearing his long grey hair -flowing over his high coat collar, which, by constant antagonism, had -pushed up his hat-brim into a quaint angle of elevation behind. His -countenance was marked by a combination of quiet intelligence and quick -sensitiveness; the features regular, the lines deep, and the grey eye -benevolent but highly excitable. He was clad, when he went to see a -bishop, in a new coat fit for an admiral, with gilt buttons and buff -waistcoat, but, as a rule, in rustic garb: the coat blue, with goodly -brass buttons, and the nether integuments, good homely corduroy. He -wore buckles in his shoes, and a pair of remarkably stout well-set -legs were vouchers for the great peripatetic powers he was well known -to possess. A pair of canvas wallets were slung over his shoulders, -one depending in front, the other behind. These contained a change -of linen, and a few books and papers connected with his favourite -pursuits. He generally read as he walked....’” - -“Tut, tut,” remarked Mr Stodham, “that spoils all.” - -“He generally read as he walked, ‘with spectacles on nose,’ and a -pencil in his hand, serving him to make notes as they suggested -themselves. Yet he found time also, Mr Stodham, to sow the tea-plant -on the hills of Glamorgan. ‘A tall staff which he grasped at about the -level of his ear completed his equipment; and he was accustomed to -assign as a reason for this mode of using it, that it tended to expand -the pectoral muscles, and thus, in some degree, relieve a pulmonary -malady inherent in his constitution.’ - -“He did not become a rich man. Late one evening he entered a -Cardiganshire public-house and found the landlord refusing to let a -pedlar pay for his lodging in kind, though he was penniless. Iolo -paid the necessary shilling for a bed and rated the landlord, but -had to walk on to a distant friend because it was his last shilling. -Yet he wrote for the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ and corresponded with -the _Monthly_ and others, so that towards the end he was entitled to -advances from the Literary Fund. An annual subscription was also raised -for him in Neath and the neighbourhood. His last three years he spent -at Flimstone, where he is buried. He was a cripple and confined to the -house, until one day he rested his head on the side of his easy chair -and told his daughter that he was free from pain and could sleep, and -so he died.” - -“I will certainly go to Craig-y-Dinas,” said Mr Stodham solemnly, “and -to Penon, and to Cowbridge, and to Flimstone.” - -“You will do well,” said Mr Morgan, shutting up Elijah Waring’s little -book and getting out the map of Glamorgan. - - - - -CHAPTER XIV - -THE CASTLE OF LEAVES AND THE BEGGAR WITH THE LONG WHITE BEARD - - -Ann was good to all beggars as well as to old Jack, the watercress man, -and when I asked her about it once she told the story of the Castle of -Leaves. This castle was a ruin above the sea near where she was born. -So fragmentary and fallen was it that every November the oak leaves -covered it up. As a little child, Ann was taken up there on a May day -because the hawthorn growing there always blossomed in time, however -backward the season. Sitting among the ruins was an old white-haired -man playing on a harp, and for ever after she loved beggars, said -Aurelius, as if they were all going to have harps and long white beards -in due course. A white-haired beggar, according to tradition, was -infallibly to be found by anyone who went up to the Castle of Leaves on -May day, and the story which connects a beggar with the early days of -the castle might of itself explain why Ann never denied a beggar. Both -Mr Morgan and Ann knew the story, but Mr Morgan had found it written -in a book, with the date 1399, while Ann told it without a date as she -remembered it from the dark ages of her own childhood. - -In those old days, if Ann was to be believed, there was nothing but -war. The young men went out to battle and never came back except as -spirits, or as old men, or as worse than either--some of them having -no more legs or arms than a fish, some crawling on their bellies with -their beards in the mud, or flapping along in the wind like a kind -of bird, or as lean and scattered as crickets--so that the children -laughed at them first and then ran away crying to their mothers because -they had such fathers. The mothers did not laugh save those that went -mad, and perhaps they were not the worst off. The women knew that these -strange idols and images crawling and jiggering home were the same that -had marched out to the war as if their sweethearts were in the far -countries before them, instead of behind them at the turnings of the -roads. They would not have loved them so much if they had not gone out -like that. The glorious young men departed; the young women were no -longer beautiful without them; the little children were blossoms of the -grave. The world was full of old men, maimed men, and young men going -to the wars, and of women crying because the soldiers had not come -back, and children crying because they had. And many and many a one had -no more tears left to cry with. - -Beggars appeared and disappeared who looked like men, but spoke all -manner of tongues and knew not where their fathers or mothers or -children were, if they had any left, or if ever they had any, which -was doubtful, for they were not as other men, but as if they had come -thus into the astonished world, resembling carrion walking, or rotten -trees by the roadside. Few could till the fields, and it was always a -good summer for thistles, never for corn. The cattle died and there -was nothing to eat the grass. Some said it was a judgment. But what -had the poor cows and sheep done? What had the young men and women -done? They were but mankind. Nor were the great ones the worse for it. -They used to come back from the wars with gold and unicorns and black -slaves carrying elephants’ tusks and monkeys. Whether or not it was a -judgment, it was misery. - -But one day there was a white ship in the harbour of Abercorran. A -man named Ivor ap Cadogan had come back who had been away in Arabia, -Cathay, and India, in Ophir and all the East, since he was a boy. No -man knew his family. He was a tall man with yellow hair and a long -beard of gold, and he was always singing to himself, and he was like -a king who has thrown away his crown, nor had he soldiers with him, -but only the dark foreign men who followed him from the ships. All day -long, day after day, they were unlading and carrying up beautiful white -stone from the ship to build a great shining castle above the sea. In -a little while came another ship out of the east, and another, and -another, like swans, coming in silent to the harbour. All were heavy -laden with the white stone, and with precious woods, which men carried -up into the hills above the shore. The sea forgot everything but calm -all through that summer while they were unlading the ships and building. - -The finished castle was as huge and white, but not as terrible, as a -mountain peak when the snow has been chiselled by the north wind for -many midnights, and the wood of it smelt round about as sweet as a -flower, summer and winter. And Ivor ap Cadogan dwelt in the castle, -which was at that time called the Castle of Ophir. It had no gates, -no moat or portcullis, for no one was refused or sent away. Its fires -never went out. Day and night in winter the sky over the castle was -bright with the many fires and many lights. Round the walls grew trees -bearing golden fruit, and among them fountains of rustling crystal -stood up glittering for ever like another sort of trees. - -People dreamed about the shining, white castle, and its gold, its -music, its everlasting festivals of youths and maidens. - -Upon the roads now there were no more incomplete or withered men, or -if they were they were making for the Castle of Ophir among the hills. -It was better, said all men, to be a foreigner, or a monkey, or any -one of the wondrous beasts that wandered in the castle, or any of the -birds that flew round the towers, or any of the fish in the ponds under -the fountains, than to be a man upon the roads or in the villages. No -man now walked up and down until he had to sit, or sat until he had to -lie, or lay until he could rise no more and so died. They went up to -the Castle of Ophir and were healed, and dwelt there happily for ever -after. Those that came back said that in the castle they were just as -happy whether they were working hard or doing nothing: stiff, labouring -men whose chief pleasure used to be in resting from toil, could be -idle and happy in the castle long after their toil had been forgotten. -The charcoal-burners slept until they were clean, and the millers -until they were swarthy, and it seemed to them that the lives of their -fathers had been a huddle of wretchedness between birth and death. Even -the young men ceased going to the wars, but went instead to the castle -and the music and the feasting. All men praised Ivor ap Cadogan. Once -a lord from beyond the mountains sent men against the castle to carry -off gold, but they remained with Ivor and threw their weapons into the -ponds. - -From time to time the white ships put out again from Abercorran, and -again returned. When their sails appeared in the bay, it was known that -calm had settled upon the sea as in the first year, and men and women -went down to welcome them. Those summers were good both for man and -beast. The earth brought forth tall, heavy corn which no winds beat -down. Granaries were full: at the castle a granary, as large as a -cathedral, was so full that the rats and mice had no room and so threw -themselves into the sea. And Ivor ap Cadogan grew old. His beard was as -white as the sails of his ships. A great beard it was, not like those -of our day, and you could see it blowing over his shoulder a mile away -as he walked the hills. So some men began to wonder whether one day he -would die, and who would be master then, and whether it would still be -calm when the ships sailed. But Summer came, and with it the ships, and -Autumn and the cramming of granaries and the songs of harvest, and men -forgot. - -The next Summer was more glorious than any before. Only, the ships -never came. The sea was quiet as the earth, as blue as the sky. The -white clouds rose up out of the sea, but never one sail. Ivor went -to the high places to watch, and lifted a child upon his shoulders -to watch for him. No ship came. Ivor went no more to the cliffs, but -stayed always on the topmost towers of the castle, walking to and fro, -watching, while down below men were bringing in the harvest and the -songs had begun. - -When at last the west wind blew, and one ship arrived, it was not in -the harbour but on the rocks, and it was full of dead men. Ivor and -all the people of the castle went down to see the ship and the dead -men. When they returned at nightfall the wind had blown the leaves from -the castle trees into the rooms so that they were almost filled. The -strange birds of the castle were thronging the air, in readiness to fly -over the sea. The strange animals of the castle had left their comfort -and were roaming in the villages, where they were afterwards killed. -The old men prophesied terrible things. The women were afraid. The -children stood, pale and silent, watching the dead leaves swim by like -fishes, crimson and emerald and gold, and they pretended that they were -mermen and mermaids sitting in a palace under the sea. But the women -took the children away along the road where the old men had already -gone. Led by Ivor, the young men descended to the shore to repair the -ship. - -It was a winter of storm: men could not hear themselves speak for -the roaring of sea, wind, and rain, and the invisible armies of the -air. With every tide bodies of men and of the strange birds that had -set out over the sea were washed up. Men were not glad to see Ivor -and his dark companions at last departing in the mended ship. The -granaries were full, and no one starved, but time passed and no more -ships arrived. No man could work. The castle stood empty of anything -but leaves, and in their old cottages men did not love life. The Spring -was an ill one; nothing was at work in the world save wind and rain; -now the uproar of the wind drowned that of the rain, now the rain -drowned the wind, and often the crying of women and children drowned -both. Men marked the differences, and hoped for an end which they -were powerless to pursue. When the one ship returned, its cargo was -of birds and beasts such as had escaped in the falling of the leaves. -Ivor alone was glad of them. He had few followers--young men all of -them--up to the castle. Others came later, but went down again with -loads of corn. It was now seen that the granaries would some day be -emptied. People began to talk without respect of Ivor. They questioned -whence his wealth had come, by what right he had built the castle, why -he had concealed his birth. The young men living with him quarrelled -among themselves, then agreed in reproaching the master. At last they -left the castle in twos and threes, accusing him of magic, of causing -them to forget their gratitude to God. In the villages everyone was -quarrelling except when the talk turned to blaming Ivor. He made no -reply, nor ever came down amongst them, but stayed in the inmost -apartment with his remaining birds. One of the complaints against him -was that he fed the birds on good grain. Yet the people continued to go -up to the granaries at need. The beggars and robbers of the mountains -were beginning to contest their right to it, and blood was shed in many -of the rooms and corridors. No one saw the master. They said that they -did not care, or they said that he was dead and buried up in leaves; -but in truth they were afraid of his white hair, his quiet eye, and -the strange birds and beasts. Between them, the robbers and the young -men who had served him plundered the house. Some even attempted to -carry off the masonry, but left most of it along the roadside where -it lies to this day. At length, nothing worth a strong man’s time had -been overlooked. A few beggars were the latest visitors, cursing the -empty granary, trembling at the footsteps of leaves treading upon -leaves in all the rooms. They did not see Ivor, sitting among leaves -and spiders’ webs. A pack of hounds, hunting that way, chased the -stag throughout the castle but lost it; for it entered the room where -Ivor was sitting, and when the horn was blown under the new moon the -hounds slunk out bloodless yet assuaged, and the hunter thrashed them -for their lack of spirit, and cursed the old man for his magic, yet -ventured not in search of him along those muffled corridors. The very -road up to the castle was disappearing. The master, it was believed, -had died. The old men who had known him were dead; the young men were -at the wars. When a white-haired beggar stumbled into Abercorran from -the hills few admitted, though all knew in their hearts, that it was -Ivor ap Cadogan. For a year or two he was fed from door to door, but -he wearied his benefactors by talking continually about his birds that -he had lost. Some of the rich remembered against him his modesty, -others his ostentation. The poor accused him of pride; such was the -name they gave to his independent tranquillity. Perhaps, some thought, -it was a judgment--the inhabitants of the Castle of Ophir had been -too idle and too happy to think of the shortness of this life and the -glory to come. So he disappeared. Probably he went to some part where -he was not known from any other wandering beggar. “Wonderful long -white beards,” said Ann, “men had in those days--longer than that old -harper’s, and to-day there are none even like him. Men to-day can do a -number of things which the old ages never dreamed of, but their beards -are nothing in comparison to those unhappy old days when men with those -long white beards used to sit by the roadsides, looking as if they had -come from the ends of the earth, like wise men from the East, although -they were so old that they sat still with their beards reaching to the -ground like roots. Ivor ap Cadogan was one of these.” - -Mr Morgan once, overhearing Ann telling me this tale, said, “What -the book says is much better. It says that in 1399 a Welshman, named -Llewelyn ab Cadwgan, who would never speak of his family, came from -the Turkish war to reside at Cardiff; and so great was his wealth that -he gave to everyone that asked or could be seen to be in need of it. -He built a large mansion near the old white tower, for the support -of the sick and infirm. He continued to give all that was asked of -him until his wealth was all gone. He then sold his house, which was -called the New Place, and gave away the money until that also was at -an end. After this he died of want, for no one gave to him, and many -accused him of extravagant waste.” With that Mr Morgan went gladly -and, for him, rapidly to his books. Nobody seeing him then was likely -to disturb him for that evening. At his door he turned and said “Good -night” to us in a perfectly kind voice which nevertheless conveyed, in -an unquestionable manner, that he was not to be disturbed. - -“Good night, Mr Morgan,” said all of us. “Good night, Ann,” said I, and -slipped out into a night full of stars and of quietly falling leaves, -which almost immediately silenced my attempt to sing “O the cuckoo is a -pretty bird” on the way home. - - - - -CHAPTER XV - -MR STODHAM SPEAKS FOR ENGLAND--FOG SUPERVENES - - -Some time after the story of the Castle of Leaves, Mr Morgan took -occasion to point out the difference between Ann speaking of the -“beautiful long white beards” that men grew in those “unhappy old -days,” and Mr Torrance praising the “merry” or “good old” England of -his imagination. He said that from what he could gather they were merry -in the old days with little cause, while to-day, whatever cause there -might be, few persons possessed the ability. He concluded, I think, -that after all there was probably nothing to be merry about at any time -if you looked round carefully: that, in fact, what was really important -was to be capable of more merriment and less ado about nothing. Someone -with a precocious sneer, asked if England was now anything more than -a geographical expression, and Mr Stodham preached a sermon straight -away: - -“A great poet said once upon a time that this earth is ‘where we have -our happiness or not at all.’ For most of those who speak his language -he might have said that this England is where we have our happiness or -not at all. He meant to say that we are limited creatures, not angels, -and that our immediate surroundings are enough to exercise all our -faculties of mind and body: there is no need to flatter ourselves with -the belief that we could do better in a bigger or another world. Only -the bad workman complains of his tools. - -“There was another poet who hailed England, his native land, and asked -how could it but be dear and holy to him, because he declared himself -one who (here Mr Stodham grew very red and his voice rose, and Lewis -thought he was going to sing as he recited): - - “‘From thy lakes and mountain-hills, - Thy clouds, thy quiet dales, thy rocks and seas, - Have drunk in all my intellectual life, - All sweet sensations, all ennobling thoughts, - All adoration of the God in nature, - All lovely and all honourable things, - Whatever makes this mortal spirit feel - The joy and greatness of its future being? - There lives nor form nor feeling in my soul - Unborrowed from my country. O divine - And beauteous island! thou hast been my sole - And most magnificent temple, in the which - I walk with awe, and sing my stately songs, - Loving the God that made me!’ - -“Of course, I do not know what it _all_ means,” he muttered, but went -on: “and that other poet who was his friend called the lark:” - - “‘Type of the wise who soar but never roam, - True to the kindred points of heaven and home.’ - -Well, England is home and heaven too. England made you, and of you -is England made. Deny England--wise men have done so--and you may -find yourself some day denying your father and mother--and this also -wise men have done. Having denied England and your father and mother, -you may have to deny your own self, and treat it as nothing, a mere -conventional boundary, an artifice, by which you are separated from -the universe and its creator. To unite yourself with the universe and -the creator, you may be tempted to destroy that boundary of your own -body and brain, and die. He is a bold man who hopes to do without -earth, England, family, and self. Many a man dies, having made little -of these things, and if he says at the end of a long life that he has -had enough, he means only that he has no capacity for more--_he_ is -exhausted, not the earth, not England. - -“I do not think that a man who knows many languages, many histories, -many lands, would ask if England was more than a geographical -expression. Nor would he be the first to attempt an answer to one that -did ask. - -“I do not want you to praise England. She can do without receiving -better than you can without giving. I do not want to shout that our -great soldiers and poets are greater than those of other nations, but -they are ours, they are great, and in proportion as we are good and -intelligent, we can respond to them and understand them as those who -are not Englishmen cannot. They cannot long do without us or we without -them. Think of it. We have each of us some of the blood and spirit of -Sir Thomas More, and Sir Philip Sidney, and the man who wrote ‘Tom -Jones,’ and Horatio Nelson, and the man who wrote ‘Love in the Valley.’ -Think what we owe to them of joy, courage, and mere security. Try to -think what they owe to us, since they depend on us for keeping alive -their spirits, and a spirit that can value them. They are England: we -are England. Deny England, and we deny them and ourselves. Do you -love the Wilderness? Do you love Wales? If you do, you love what I -understand by ‘England.’ The more you love and know England, the more -deeply you can love the Wilderness and Wales. I am sure of it....” - -At this point Mr Stodham ran away. Nobody thought how like a _very -good_ rat he was during this speech, or, rather, this series of short -speeches interrupted by moments of excitement when all that he could -do was to light a pipe and let it out. Higgs, perhaps, came nearest to -laughing; for he struck up “Rule Britannia” with evident pride that he -was the first to think of it. This raised my gorge; I could not help -shouting “Home Rule for Ireland.” Whereupon Higgs swore abominably, and -I do not know what would have happened if Ann had not said: “Jessie, my -love, sing _Land of my Fathers_,” which is the Welsh national anthem; -but when Jessie sang it--in English, for our sakes--everyone but Higgs -joined in the chorus and felt that it breathed the spirit of patriotism -which Mr Stodham had been trying to express. It was exulting without -self-glorification or any other form of brutality. It might well be -the national anthem of any nation that knows, and would not rashly -destroy, the bonds distinguishing it from the rest of the world without -isolating it. - -Aurelius, who had been brooding for some time, said: - -“I should never have thought it. Mr Stodham has made me a present of a -country. I really did not know before that England was not a shocking -fiction of the journalists and politicians. I am the richer, and, -according to Mr Stodham, so is England. But what about London fog? -what is the correct attitude of a patriot towards London fog and the -manufacturers who make it what it is?” - -Aurelius got up to look out at the fog, the many dim trees, the single -gas lamp in the lane beyond the yard. Pointing to the trees, he asked-- - - “‘What are these, - So withered and so wild in their attire, - That look not like th’ inhabitants o’ the earth - And yet are on’t?’ - -Even so must Mr Stodham’s patriotism, or that of _Land of our Fathers_, -appear to Higgs. His patriotism is more like the ‘Elephant and Castle’ -on a Saturday night than those trees. Both are good, as they say at -Cambridge.” And he went out, muttering towards the trees in the fog: - - “‘Live you? or are you aught - That man may question? You seem to understand me, - By each at once her choppy fingers laying - Upon her skinny lips: you should be women, - And yet your beards forbid me to interpret - That you are so.’” - -For some time we were all silent, until Ann said: “Hark.” “What is it? -another Ripper murder?” said Higgs. “Oh, shut up, Higgs,” said Philip -looking at Ann. “Hark,” said Ann again. It was horrible. Somewhere far -off I could hear an angry murmur broken by frantic metallic clashings. -No one sound out of the devilish babble could I disentangle, still -less, explain. A myriad noises were violently mixed in one muddy, -struggling mass of rumbling and jangling. The worst gramophones are -infinitely nearer to the cooing of doves than this, but it had in it -something strained, reckless, drunken-mad, horror-stricken, like the -voice of the gramophone. Above all, the babble was angry and it was -inhuman. I had never heard it before, and my first thought was that it -was an armed and furious multitude, perhaps a foreign invader, a mile -or so distant. - -“Didn’t you know it was Saturday night?” said Higgs. “It is always -worse on Saturdays.” - -“What is?” said I. - -“That noise,” said Higgs. - -“Hark,” said Philip anxiously, and we all held our breath to catch it -again. There.... It was no nearer. It was not advancing. It was always -the same. As I realised that it was the mutter of London, I sighed, -being a child, with relief, but could not help listening still for -every moment of that roar as of interlaced immortal dragons fighting -eternally in a pit. It was surprising that such a tone could endure. -The sea sounds everlastingly, but this was more appropriate to a dying -curse, and should have lasted no more than a few minutes. As I listened -it seemed rather to be a brutish yell of agony during the infliction -of some unspeakable pain, and though pain of that degree would kill or -stupefy in a few minutes, this did not. - -“If you like the ‘Elephant and Castle,’” said Mr Morgan, “you like -that. But if you live in London all your lives, perhaps you may never -hear it again. - -“For the sound does not cease. We help to make it as we do to make -England. Even those weird sisters of Aurelius out in the Wilderness -help to make it by rattling branches and dropping leaves in the fog. -You will hear the leaves falling, the clock ticking, the fog-signals -exploding, but not London.” - -I was, in fact, twenty-one before I heard the roar again. Never since -have I noticed it. But Ann, it seems, used to hear it continually, -perhaps because she went out so seldom and could not become one of -the mob of unquestionable “inhabitants o’ the earth.” But when the -window had been shut, we, at any rate, forgot all about London in -that warm room in Abercorran House, amidst the gleam of china and the -glitter of brass and silver. Lewis and Harry sat on the floor, in a -corner, playing with lead soldiers. The English army--that is to say, -Lewis--was beaten, and refused to accept its fate. On being told, -“But it is all over now,” he burst out crying. Harry looked on in -sympathetic awe. But before his tears had quite come to their natural -end, a brilliant idea caused him to uncover his face suddenly and say: -“I know what I shall do. I shall build a tower like David--a real -one--in the Wilderness.” - -“Oh, yes, let’s,” exclaimed Harry. - -“Us,” said Lewis, “I like that. It is I that shall build a tower. But I -will _employ_ you.” - -“That,” mused Harry slowly, “means that I build a tower and let you -live in it. That isn’t right. Mr Gladstone would never allow it.” - -“What has Mr Gladstone got to do with the Wilderness, I should like -to know? We _employ_ him. I should like to see him getting over the -fence into the Wilderness. He does not know where it is. Besides, -if he did, he could _never_, _never_, get into my tower. If he did -I would immediately fling myself down from the top. Then I should -be safe,” shrieked Lewis, before entering another of those vales or -abysses of tears which were so black for him, and so brief. It was not -so agreeable as silence would have been, or as Ann’s sewing was, or -the continuous bagpipe music of a kettle always just on the boil. But -Philip had gone upstairs, and the book on my knee held me more than -Lewis’s tears. This book placed me in a mountain solitude such as that -where David Morgan had built his tower, and, like that, haunted by -curlews: - - “The rugged mountain’s scanty cloak - Was dwarfish shrubs of birch and oak, - With shingles bare, and cliffs between, - And patches bright of bracken green, - And heather black that waved so high - It held the copse in rivalry.” - -Out of the ambush of copse and heather and bracken had started up at -a chieftain’s whistle--“wild as the scream of the curlew”--a host of -mountaineers, while the Chieftain revealed himself to the enemy who had -imagined him alone: - - “And, Saxon, I am Roderick Dhu.” - -“What is the matter, Arthur?” asked Harry when I came to this line. -I answered him with a look of trembling contempt. The whole scene so -fascinated me--I so thrilled with admiration at everything done by -the Highland chieftain--that his magic whistle at last pierced me to -the marrow with exquisite joy. In my excitement I said the words, -“And, Saxon, I am Roderick Dhu,” aloud, yet not loud enough to make -anything but a husky muttering audible. I was choking and blushing with -pleasant pains and with a desire to pass them on to another, myself not -lacking glory as the discoverer. Hence my muttering those words aloud: -hence the contempt of my answer to Harry, upon not being instantly -and enthusiastically understood. The contempt, however, was not -satisfying.... I, too, wished that I possessed a tower upon a mountain -where I could live for ever in a state of poetic pain. Therefore I went -out silently, saying no good night, not seeing Philip again. - -Fog and cold cured me rapidly. On that wretched night I could no more -go on thinking of a tower on a mountain than I could jump into a pond. -I had to run to get warm. Then I thought of the book once more: I -recovered my pleasure and my pride. The fog, pierced by some feeble -sparkles of lamps, and dim glows of windows from invisible houses, the -silence, broken by the dead leaf that rustled after me, made the world -a shadowy vast stage on which I was the one real thing. The solitary -grandeur was better than any tower, and at the end of my run, on -entering again among people and bright lights, I could flit out of it -as easily as possible, which was more than Morgan could do, since to -escape from his tower he had to die. - - - - -CHAPTER XVI - -THE HOUSE OF THE DAYS OF THE YEAR - - -Lewis never did raise a tower in the Wilderness. His towers were in -the air. A wish, with him, was seldom father to any deed. I think he -expected the wish of itself to create; or if not, he was at least -always angered when the nature of things proved to be against him. -He would not have been unduly astonished, and would have been wildly -grateful, if he had seen looming through the fog next morning a tower -such as he desired. But except on paper he never did. As he drew it, -the tower was tall and slender as the tallest and slenderest factory -chimney, more like a pillar for St Simeon Stylites than a castle in -Spain. It would have been several times the height of the elms in the -Wilderness which he had furiously refused to take into his service. It -was to be climbed within by a spiral staircase, each step apparently -having its own little window. Thus it was riddled by windows. - -Now, if this idea had come to Philip he would have executed it. As it -was, Lewis’s drawing delighted him. He liked all those windows that -made it look as if it were a dead stem rotting away. “But,” said he, “I -know a house better than that, with a window for every day of the year. -It would be just the thing for you, Lewis, because it is built without -hands, without bricks, stones, cement, or any expense whatever.... It -was only a dream,” he continued, one day as he and I were going down -the long street which took us almost straight out into Our Country. But -he did not really think it no more than a dream. He had seen it many -times, a large, shadowy house, with windows which he had never counted, -but knew to be as many as the days of the year, no more, no less. The -house itself was always dark, with lights in some of the windows, -never, perhaps, in all. - -The strange thing was that Philip believed this house must actually -exist. Perhaps, I suggested, it was hidden among the trees of our -woods, like several other houses. No: he dismissed this as fancy. -His house was not a fancy. It lay somewhere in a great city, or at -the verge of one. On his first visit he had approached it by long -wanderings through innumerable, unknown and deserted streets, following -a trail of white pebbles like the children in the fairy tale. In -all those streets he passed nobody and heard no sound; nor did this -surprise him, in spite of the fact that he felt the houses to be -thronged with people. Suddenly out of the last narrow street he came -as it were on a wall of darkness, like night itself. Into this he was -stepping forward when he saw just beneath and before him a broad, -black river, crossed by a low bridge leading over to where, high up, -a light beamed in the window of an invisible building. When he began -to cross the bridge he could see that it was the greatest house he had -ever beheld. It was a house that might be supposed to contain “many -mansions.” “You could not make a house like that one out of this whole -street,” said Philip. “It stretched across the world, but it was a -house.” On the other side of the river it seemed still equally far off. -Birds flying to and fro before it never rose up over it, nor did any -come from the other side. Philip hastened forward to reach the house. -But the one light went out and he awoke. - -Philip used to look out for this house when he was crossing the -bridges in London. He scanned carefully the warehouses and factories -rising out of the water, in long rows with uncounted windows, that -made him wonder what went on behind them. With this material, he said, -a magician could make a house like the one he was in search of. Once, -when he got home in the evening from London, he was confident that his -house lay between Waterloo Bridge and Hungerford Bridge, but next time -he was there he was dead against any such suggestion. A factory on the -edge of a tract of suburb waste fulfilled his conditions for an hour at -another time. He had been thrilled, too, by a photograph shown to him -by Mr Stodham--of an ancient palace standing at the foot of a desolate -mountain in the remote South. - -When we were walking together towards the country Philip used to look, -as a matter of course, down every side street to right or left, as he -always looked up dark alleys in London. Nor was he content to look -once down any one street, lest he should miss some transformation or -transfiguration. As we began to get clear of London, and houses were -fewer and all had long front gardens, and shops ceased, Philip looked -ahead now and then as well as from side to side. Beyond the wide, -level fields and the tall Lombardy poplars bounding them, there was -nothing, but there was room for the house. Fog thickened early in the -afternoon over our vacant territories, but we saw only the trees and a -Gypsy tent under a hedge. - -Next day Philip came home feverish from school, and was put to bed in -the middle of the pale sunny afternoon. He lay happily stretched out -with his eyes fixed on a glass of water near the window. It flickered -in the light.... He saw the black river gleaming as when a candle for -the first time illuminates a lake in the bowels of a mountain. There -was the house beyond the river. Six or seven of its windows were lit -up, one large one low down, the rest small, high up, and, except two of -them, wide apart. Now and then, at other windows here and there, lights -appeared momentarily, like stars uncovered by rapid clouds.... A lofty -central door slowly swung open. A tiny figure, as solitary as the first -star in the sky, paused at the threshold, to be swallowed up a moment -later in darkness. At the same moment Philip awoke with a cry, knowing -that the figure was himself. - -After this Philip was not so confident of discovering the house. Yet -he was more than ever certain that it existed, that all the time of -the intervals between his visits it was somewhere. I told him the story -about Irem Dhat El’Imad, the Terrestrial Paradise of Sheddad the son -of Ad, King of the World, which Aurelius had read to me. Philip was -pleased with the part where the geometricians and sages, labourers -and artificers of the King search over all the earth, until they come -to rivers and an illimitable plain, and choose it for the site of the -palace which was three hundred years building. But he said that this -story was not true. His own great house never disappeared, he said; -it was he that disappeared. By this time he had become so familiar -with the house that he probably passed hardly a day without a sight -of it, sleeping or waking. He was familiar with its monotonous front, -the many storeys of not quite regular diminishing windows. It always -seemed to lie out beyond a tract of solitude, silence, and blackness; -it was beyond the black river; it was at the edge of the earth. In -none of his visits could he get round to the other side. Several times -again, as on that feverish afternoon, he saw himself entering through -the lofty doorway, never emerging. What _this_ self (for so he called -it, touching his breast) saw inside the door he never knew. That self -which looked on could never reach the door, could not cross the space -between it and the river, though it seemed of no formidable immensity. -Many times he set out to cross and go in at the other door after the -other self, but could not. Finally he used to imagine that if once he -penetrated to the other side he would see another world. - -Once or twice Philip and I found ourselves in streets which he thought -were connected with his first journey, but he vainly tried to remember -how. He even used to say that at a certain number--once it was -197--lived some one who could help. When another dream took him along -the original route of streets he told me that they were now thronged -with people going with or against him. They were still all about him as -he emerged from the streets in sight of the house, where every window -was blazing with lights as he had never seen it before. The crowd was -making towards the light across the hitherto always desolate bridge. -Nevertheless, beyond the river, in the space before the house, he -was alone as before. He resolved to cross the space. The great door -ahead was empty; no other self at least had the privilege denied to -him. He stood still, looking not at the door, but at the windows and -at the multitudes passing behind them. His eyes were fixed on the -upper windows and on each face in turn that appeared. Some faces he -recognised without being able to give a name to one. They must have -been people whom he had encountered in the street, and forgotten and -never seen again until now. Apparently not one of them saw him standing -out there, in the darkness, looking up at them. He was separated from -them as from the dead, or as a dead man might be from the living. The -moment he lowered his head to look towards the door, the dream was over. - -More than once afterwards, when Lewis had ceased to think of his tower, -Philip saw the hundreds of windows burning in the night above the -black river, and saw the stream of faces at the windows; but he gave -up expecting to see the house by the light of our sun or moon. He had -even a feeling that he would rather not discover it, that if he were to -enter it and join those faces at the windows he might not return, never -stand out in the dark again and look up at the house. - - - - -CHAPTER XVII - -PHILIP AND THE OUTLAWS OF THE ISLAND - - -That winter when Philip was ill, for the first time, I used to spend -every evening at Abercorran House, chiefly upstairs, reading aloud -or talking. I was supposed to entertain him, but he did most of the -entertaining. Out of his own head or out of books he told me hundreds -of tales; in either case they were very much his own. I cannot imitate -him. For example, he would always bring his characters before himself -and his listener by comparing them to persons known to both. When he -was well and out of doors he would pick out a man or woman passing -us, or at a window, for a comparison. “This Palomides,” he would say, -“was like that butcher, but dressed differently: you could see what -good legs he had.” Another was “like my brother Roland, and if he had -been alive now he could have jumped over spiked railings up to his own -shoulder, though he was not a little man.” The Icelandic Thorbeorg was -“like our Jessie: only she would use a knife, and she had fair hair.” -A certain villain was “a scoundrel, _but_ he had a face like Higgs.” -The man who resembled Roland was an Icelander, Haurd by name, whom -Philip called Roland throughout the tale. Thorbeorg was his sister. -This was the tale: - -Haurd was a head taller than most men, and he had grand hair. He was -clever, strong, and bold. He swam better than all others, and his -eyesight was wonderful. But he was a touchy man. Not being asked in -the proper manner to his sister Thurid’s wedding feast, he refused -to go when the bridegroom, Illuge, came on purpose to fetch him. Yet -a little after, when Geir, his own foster-brother, asked him to go -just to please him, he went. However, at the feast he treated Illuge -lightly; refused the present of a shield--accepted a ring, but with -the remark that in his opinion being a brother-in-law would not mean -much to Illuge. Hearing Haurd say such things in a lazy way for no -apparent reason and taken aback by it, he did not answer. As soon as -he got home, Haurd gave the ring to his sister, Thorbeorg, bidding her -remember him when he was dead. Soon afterwards, with Geir and his other -foster-brother, Helge, who was a tramp’s son, he left home. - -Twenty years before that, when Thorbeorg’s mother Signy was married to -Grimkel, her brother Torfe took offence in the same way, because he was -not consulted. Signy was very fond of him, and it was at his house that -she gave birth to Thorbeorg and died the same day. Grief for his sister -made him hate the child; he cast it out of the house, and chance alone -saved its life. Thus Grimkel had a quarrel with Torfe over Signy’s -marriage portion and the injury to his child, Thorbeorg. - -Fifteen years Haurd stayed away from home. He got renown as a fighter. -He won honour, wealth, and an earl’s daughter, Helga, for a wife. This -Helga was as noble a lady as Thorbeorg. - -Geir was the first of the exiles to return. He went to take possession -of the farm at Netherbottom, on the death of Grim, his father. Here -now, with Geir, were living his old mother and Thorbeorg, Haurd’s -sister. Perhaps Geir wished to marry Thorbeorg, but he was not the -king of men she wanted, though he was honest and feared nothing; so he -did not win her. She preferred one named Eindride, who came wooing her -once in Geir’s absence. She was not in love with him, but her father, -Grimkel, liked the match, and maybe she expected to be freer. When the -wedding was over Grimkel consulted a witch about the future. Whatever -she answered, it was bad, and the old man died that evening. Until his -son, Haurd, came back, Grimkel’s property fell into the care of the two -sons-in-law, Illuge and Eindride. - -Haurd came back with Helge, with Sigrod his uncle, Torfe’s foster-son, -and thirty followers. The quarrel with Torfe and Illuge soon had an -opportunity of growing. In a fit of anger Helge killed a boy for -injuring a horse which belonged to Haurd. Haurd offered to atone for -the crime to Ead, the boy’s father, but too late. Torfe, replied the -man, had already listened to his complaint and was taking up the case. -At this, Haurd drew his sword in fury and hewed the man in two and a -servant with him. He burnt Ead’s homestead, his stores, and two women -who were afraid to come out of hiding. - -Haurd would have liked to win over to his part his sister Thorbeorg’s -husband, Eindride, but instead of going himself he sent Helge. If a -good man had come, said Thorbeorg afterwards, things might have turned -out differently. Eindride excused himself on account of an engagement -with Illuge; not content to let this end the matter, he suggested that -Haurd should come over himself. Helge turned upon him and taunted him -with being a craven if he would not break that engagement with Illuge, -but Eindride had nothing to add. All that Helge brought back to Haurd -was that Eindride offered no help. - -Everyone being against them, Haurd and Helge were outlawed. They had to -quit the homestead, and rather than leave it for Torfe, they burnt it -and all the hay with it. They and the household took refuge at Geir’s -house, Netherbottom. From here they raided the country on every side, -carrying off whatever they wanted. Before long men gathered together -to subdue them. Geir was for making a fort against the attack. Haurd, -fearing that they would be starved out, proposed retreating to an -impregnable islet which lay not far from land by a river’s mouth. Haurd -prevailed and they took possession. The islet consisted of precipices -surmounted by a single level platform, “not half the size of the -Wilderness,” from which one steep pathway led to the sea. With timber -from Netherbottom, the outlaws built a hall on this platform; and it -had underground passages. The islet was called Geir’s Holm, and they -raided from it as they had done before, both craftily and boldly. Once -on the islet they were safe from any attack. “It was the very place for -Lewis,” said Philip; “only there was no water in it, and no food unless -there were sea-gulls’ eggs.” - -Many of the landless and outlawed men of Iceland attached themselves -to Haurd and Geir, swearing to be faithful to these two and to one -another, and to share in all labours. It was a law of Geir’s Holm that -if a man was ill more than three nights he was to be thrown over the -cliffs. The most that were on the island at one time was two hundred, -the least eighty. Haurd, Geir, Sigrod, Helge, Thord Colt, and Thorgar -Girdlebeard, were the chief men. The cruellest of all was Thorgar, and -the readiest for every kind of wrongdoing. - -At last men met together to consider how they might stop the raiding. -Thorbeorg would not be left behind by Eindride, though he warned her -that she would hear nothing pleasant at the meeting. The crowd became -silent as she entered, and she spoke immediately to some of the chief -men.... Here, Philip got up out of bed looking very grim while he -uttered the words of Thorbeorg: “I know what you want to do. Very -good. I cannot stop you by myself. But this I can do, and will--I will -be the death of the man who kills Haurd....” Philip stood entranced and -still as a statue at the window, as if he could see her so long as he -remained still. His weakness, however, made him totter, and he got into -bed, saying: “She was magnificent. I would have done anything for her. -She said nothing else. She rode away without waiting for an answer.” -Torfe advised swift and violent measures against the Islanders, but -when Ref suggested that someone should put them off their guard by -pretending that they were free to go where they wished and be at peace -with all men, he thought well of the plan: in fact he said they should -ride that very night to a place out of sight of the Islanders. Next day -they saw Thorgar and Sigrod with twelve other outlaws coming for water. -Twice their number were sent against them. Thorgar and seven others -ran away. He formed a band of his own and was only killed after a long -freedom. Sigrod and those who were left made a hard fight, but all were -killed. - -It was not easy to get a man to go next day and play the traitor on -the Holm, although Torfe declared that whoever went would have great -honour. In the end, Ref’s brother, Kiartan, offered to go, if he could -have Haurd’s ring for a reward. He took the boat of Thorstan Goldknop, -both because he disliked that man and because, being his, it would -not excite suspicion. The story he told the outlaws was that, chiefly -through Illuge and his friends, it had been decided that they should be -free to go where they wished and have peace. If they agreed, he himself -would row them ashore. Geir believed Kiartan, especially as he came in -the boat of one who was sworn never to betray them. Many others also -were eager to leave. But Haurd thought that Kiartan did not look like -a man who was bringing good, and he said so. Kiartan offered to swear -that he was speaking truth, and still Haurd told him that he had the -eyes of a man whose word was not worth much. Haurd did not hide his -doubts. Nevertheless, a full boat-load went off with Kiartan, talking -cheerfully. They were landed out of sight of the Holm, and every one of -them was penned in and killed on the spot. - -Kiartan returned for a second load. In spite of Haurd’s advice, Geir -now entered the boat. So many followed him that only six were left with -Haurd and Helga and their two sons, and Helge, Haurd’s foster-brother. -Haurd was sad to see the boat going, and Geir and his companions were -silent. When they rounded the spit, out of sight of those on the Holm, -they saw the enemy waiting. Close to land Geir sprang overboard and -swam out along the rocks. A man of Eindride’s company struck him with a -javelin between the shoulders, and he died. This Helga saw sitting on -the Holm; but Haurd, who was with her, saw differently. The rest were -penned in and butchered. - -A third time Kiartan rowed out. Haurd bantered him for a ferryman who -was doing a good trade, but still stuck to the opinion that he was not -a true man. If Kiartan had not taunted him with being afraid to follow -his men, Haurd would never have gone in that boat. Helga would not -go, nor let her sons go. She wept over her husband as a doomed man. -Once the boat had put out he was angry with himself. When they came -alongside the rocks and saw the dead body of Geir, Huard stood up in -the boat and clove Kiartan down as far as the girdle with his sword. -The men on shore made friendly signs to the last, but as soon as the -boat touched land all were made prisoners except Haurd, who refused to -be taken until he had slain four men. Eindride, who first laid hands -on him, remembering what Thorbeorg had promised her brother’s murderer, -held out the axe for someone else to slaughter him; but no one would; -and it was Haurd himself that seized the axe, for he burst his bonds. -Helge followed, and they got away, though the ring of enemies was -three deep. Haurd would never have been overtaken, though Ref was on -horseback, if a spell had not been cast on him: moreover, Helge began -to limp with a fearful wound. Even so, Haurd again broke through them, -killing three more. Ref again caught him, yet dared not meddle with -him, though he now had Helge on his back, until the others made a ring -about him with the aid of a spell. There was nothing for it but to drop -Helge and save him from his enemies by killing him. Haurd was enraged -because he knew that a spell was being used on him; he was so fearful -to look at that no one would go for him until Torfe had promised -Haurd’s ring to the man who did. Almost a dozen set on him together to -earn the ring. Six of them had fallen before him when the head flew -off his axe; nor did any one venture even then to close with him. From -behind, however, Thorstan Goldknop, a big red-headed man, but mean, -swung at his neck with an axe, so that he died. He had killed sixteen -men altogether. Even his enemies said now that Haurd--Philip, in tears, -said Roland, not Haurd--had been the bravest man of his time. If he had -not had rogues among his followers he would have been living yet; but -he never had been a lucky man. Thorstan got his ring. At that time he -had not heard of Thorbeorg’s vow; when he did hear he took no pleasure -in the ring. - -Sixty of the Islanders had been slain. All the rest had escaped, -except Helga, and the two sons of Helga and Haurd, who had stayed on -the island. It was too late to fetch away those three that evening, -and before the sunrise next day they also had escaped. Under cover of -darkness the mother swam over first with Beorn, who was four, and next -with Grimkel, who was eight. Then carrying Beorn and leading Grimkel by -the hand, Helga climbed over the hills until they came to Eindride’s -house. Under the fence of the yard, Helga sank down with Beorn. Grimkel -she sent up to Thorbeorg to ask her to save them. Haurd’s sister was -sitting alone at the end of the hall, looking so grand and stern that -the child stopped still without a word. “She was like a great queen of -sorrows,” said Philip, “but she had to come down to him.” She led him -outside to the light, she picked him up to take a good look at him, she -asked who he was. He told her that he was Haurd’s son. She asked him -where his mother was, and what had happened. He told her what he could -while they were walking down to the fence. The sister and the wife of -Haurd looked at one another. Thorbeorg gave the three a hiding place in -an out-house, and herself took the key. Not long afterwards Eindride -came home with a number of men. Thorbeorg served a meal for them, and -they related all that had happened; but she said nothing until one -of them told how Thorstan Goldknop had struck Haurd from behind when -he was unarmed. “He was no better than a hangman or a butcher,” said -Philip. Thorbeorg cried that she knew a spell had been cast on her -brother, or they would never have overcome him. That night as they were -going to bed Thorbeorg made a thrust at Eindride with a knife, but -wounded him in the hand only. He asked her if anything he could do now -would satisfy her. “The head of Thorstan Goldknop,” she replied. Next -morning Eindride slew Thorstan and brought back the head. “He deserved -it,” said Philip, “and Thorbeorg kept her vow.” Still she was not -satisfied. She refused to make peace with her husband unless he would -befriend Helga and her sons, should they need it. Eindride, supposing -that they had been drowned, readily promised to do what she asked. -Thorbeorg showed him his mistake. She went out, and came back, leading -Helga and the two boys. Eindride was sorry, because he had sworn -already not to do anything for Haurd’s family, but he had to keep his -oath to Thorbeorg. Nor did men blame him, and they praised Thorbeorg. -Still she was not satisfied. Twenty-four men died in the next months -because of Haurd, and most of them at her instigation. She and Eindride -lived on after that in peace to a great age, leaving behind them good -children and grandchildren, who in their turn had many brave and -honourable descendants. “I am sorry,” said Philip, “that Haurd got that -blow from behind. But he was a man who had to make a story before he -died. And if this had not happened Thorstan might have gone on living, -and have missed his due. Also perhaps Thorbeorg would not have had a -chance of showing what she was good for. Now it is all over. They are -put in a tale. I don’t know what happened to Torfe and Illuge, but -everyone who hears the story either hates them or forgets them: so they -have _their_ reward. If Grimkel and Beorn lived to be men, I am sure -Torfe and Illuge did not die in their beds.” - -With a deep sigh Philip stopped. For some minutes he said nothing. -When he broke his silence it was to say: “Perhaps Roland will really -do something like Haurd. He looks like it. He could. Don’t you think -he is one of those people who look as if men would some day have to -tell stories of them to one another? _He_ would not build a tower up -on a mountain for nothing, and live there no better than a man could -live at Clapham Junction.” Here Philip cried, which I never saw him do -before or after that day. It was the beginning of the worst part of -his illness. Not for many weeks was he out of bed, and once more my -companion in the house, in the yard, in Our Country, or at school on -those rare days when he attended. - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII - -WHAT WILL ROLAND DO? - - -Roland and Jack were too much my seniors, and yet still too young, to -take notice of me. But I could admire them from afar for their gifts -and opportunities, their good looks, their bodily prowess, liberty, -and apparent lack of all care. Their activities were mostly away from -home, and rumours, probably, were incomplete. Roland ran and jumped at -sports, rode a horse, sometimes into the yard, sometimes out to where -the fox was hunted (a little beyond _our_ range)--bicycled hither -and thither--possessed a gun and used it, doubtless in a magnificent -manner--dressed as he should be dressed--was more than once in trouble -of some kind, I think in debt, and had once been observed by me in -London walking with a dark lady of his own splendid breed, whom I -never heard anything of, or saw again. What I first knew of Roland -was--shortly after I began to frequent Abercorran House--a voice -singing mightily in the bathroom: - - “Foul fall the hand that bends the steel - Around the courser’s thundering heel, - That e’er shall print a sable wound - On fair Glamorgan’s velvet ground.” - -Never afterwards did he do anything that fell short of the name Roland, -to which the noble war-song, at that moment, fixed its character for -ever. Jack and he had been to a famous school until they were sixteen, -and did no good there. Indoors they learnt very little more than a -manner extremely well suited to hours of idleness. Out of doors they -excelled at the more selfish sports, at athletics, boxing, sculling, -shooting. So they had come home and, as Mr Morgan had nothing to -suggest, they had done what suggested itself. - -You could see Mr Morgan thinking as he watched the two, undecided -whether it was best to think with or without the cigar, which he -might remove for a few seconds, perhaps without advantage, for it -was replaced with evident satisfaction. But he was thinking as he -stood there, pale, rigid, and abstracted. Then perhaps Roland would -do or say something accompanied by a characteristic free, bold, easy -gesture, turning on his heel; and the father gave up thinking, to laugh -heartily, and as likely as not step forward to enter the conversation, -or ask Roland about the dogs, or what he had been doing in the past -week. “Had a good time? ... suits you?... Ha, ha, ... Well, this will -never do, I must be going. Good-bye, good-bye. Don’t forget to look in -and see how mother is.” - -He had only gone upstairs to the Library to open one of the new reviews -which, except where they caught the sunshine, remained so new. He and -his two elder sons always parted with a laugh. Either he manœuvred for -it, or as soon as the good laugh arrived he slipped away lest worse -might befall. He saw clearly enough that “they had no more place in -London than Bengal tigers,” as he said one day to Mr Stodham: “They -ought to have been in the cavalry. But they aren’t--curse it--what is -to be done? Why could I not breed clerks?” The immediate thing to be -done was to light the suspended cigar. It was lucky if the weather just -at that time took a fine turn; if Harry and Lewis, for a wonder, were -persuaded to spend all day and every day at school; if Mrs Morgan was -away in Wales; if Jessie’s voice was perfect, singing - - “The cuckoo is a merry bird ...” - -I recall such a time. The wall-flower had turned out to be just the -mixture of blood colour and lemon that Mr Morgan liked best. The -water-lilies were out on the pond. The pigeons lay all along under -the roof ridge, too idle to coo except by mistake or in a dream. Jack -and Roland were working hard at some machinery in the yard. The right -horse, it seems, had won the Derby. - -On the evenings in such a season Philip and I had to bring to light the -fishing-tackle, bind hooks on gut and gimp, varnish the binding, mix -new varnish, fit the rods together, practise casting in the Wilderness, -with a view to our next visit, which would be in August, to my aunt -Rachel’s at Lydiard Constantine. There would be no eggs to be found so -late, except a few woodpigeons’, linnets’, and swallows’, but these -late finds in the intervals of fishing--when it was too hot, for -example--had a special charm. The nuts would be ripe before we left.... -On these evenings we saw only the fishing things, the Wilderness, and -Lydiard Constantine. - -This weather was but a temporary cure for Mr Morgan’s curiosity as to -what Jack and Roland were to do. You could tell that he was glad to -see Roland’s face again, home from Canada with some wolf skins after a -six months’ absence; but it was not enough. The fellow had been in an -office once for a much shorter period. The one thing to draw him early -from bed was hunting. Well, but he was a fine fellow. How should all -the good in him be employed? It could not be left to the gods; and yet -assuredly the gods would have their way. - -Everybody else did something. Aurelius earned a living, though his -hands proclaimed him one who was born neither to toil nor spin. Higgs, -too, did no one knew what, but something that kept him in tobacco and -bowler hats, in the times when he was not fishing in the Wilderness or -looking after his pigeons in the yard. For it so happened--and caused -nobody surprise--that all the pigeons at Abercorran House were his. Mr -Morgan looked with puzzled disapproval from Higgs to Roland and Jack, -and back again to Higgs. Higgs had arrived and stayed under their -shadow. It was a little mysterious, but so it was, and Mr Morgan could -not help seeing and wondering why the two should afflict themselves -with patronising one like fat Higgs. Once when Roland struck him, half -in play, he bellowed distractedly, not for pain but for pure rabid -terror. He went about whistling; for he had a little, hard mouth made -on purpose. I thought him cruel, because one day when he saw that, -owing to some misapprehension, I was expecting two young pigeons for -the price of one, he put the head of one into his mouth and closed his -teeth.... Whilst I was still silly with disgust and horror he gave -me the other bird. But he understood dogs. I have seen Roland listen -seriously while Higgs was giving an opinion on some matter concerning -Ladas, Bully, Spot, or Granfer; yet Roland was reputed to know all -about dogs, and almost all about bitches. - -That did not console Mr Morgan. Wherever he looked he saw someone who -was perfectly content with Roland and everything else, just as they -were, at Abercorran House. Mr Stodham, for example, was all admiration, -with a little surprise. Aurelius, again, said that if such a family, -house, and backyard, had not existed, they would have to be invented, -as other things less pleasant and necessary had been. When rumours -were afloat that perhaps Mr Morgan would be compelled to give up the -house Aurelius exclaimed: “It is impossible, it is disgraceful. Let -the National Gallery go, let the British Museum go, but preserve the -Morgans and Abercorran House.” Mr Torrance, of course, agreed with -Aurelius. He wrote a poem about the house, but, said Aurelius, “It was -written with tears for ink, which is barbarous. He has not enough gall -to translate tears into good ink.” Higgs naturally favoured things as -they were, since the yard at Abercorran House was the best possible -place for his birds. As for me, I was too young, but Abercorran House -made London tolerable and often faultless. - -Ann’s opinion was expressed in one word: “Wales.” She thought that -the family ought to go back to Wales, that all would be well there. -In fact, she regarded Abercorran House as only a halt, though she -admitted that there were unfriendly circumstances. The return to Wales -was for her the foundation or the coping stone always. She would not -have been greatly put out if there had been a public subscription or -grant from the Civil list to make Abercorran House and Mr Morgan, -Jessie, Ann herself, Jack, Roland, Philip, Harry, Lewis, Ladas, Bully, -Spot, Granfer, the pigeons, the yard, the Wilderness and the jackdaws, -the pond and the water-lilies, as far as possible immortal, and a -possession for ever, without interference from Board of Works, School -Board inspectors, Rate Collectors, surveyors of taxes, bailiffs and -recoverers of debts, moreover without any right on the part of the -public to touch this possession except by invitation, with explicit -approval by Roland and the rest. It should have been done. A branch of -the British Museum might have been especially created to protect this -stronghold, as doubtless it would have been protected had it included a -dolmen, tumulus, or British camp, or other relic of familiar type. As -it was not done, a bailiff did once share the kitchen with Ann, a short -man completely enveloped in what had been, at about the time of Albert -the Good, a fur-lined overcoat, and a silk hat suitable for a red -Indian. Most of his face was nose, and his eyes and nose both together -looked everlastingly over the edge of the turned-up coat-collar at the -ground. His hands must have been in his coat-pockets. I speak of his -appearance when he took the air; for I did not see him at Abercorran -House. There he may have produced his hands and removed his hat from -his head and lifted up his eyes from the ground--a thing impossible to -his nose. He may even have spoken--in a voice of ashes. But at least on -the day after his visit all was well at Abercorran House with man and -bird and beast. The jackdaws riding a south-west wind in the sun said -“Jack” over and over again, both singly and in volley. Only Higgs was -disturbed. He, it seems, knew the visitor, and from that day dated his -belief in the perishableness of mortal things, and a moderated opinion -of everything about the Morgans except the pigeon-house and Roland. Mr -Morgan perhaps did not, but everybody else soon forgot the bailiff. On -the day after his visit, nevertheless, Philip was still indignant. He -was telling me about the battle of Hastings. All I knew and had cared -to know was summed up in the four figures--1066. But Philip, armed with -a long-handled mallet, had constituted himself the English host on the -hill brow, battering the Normans downhill with yells of “Out, out,” -and “God Almighty,” and also “Out Jew.” For his enemy was William of -Normandy and the Jew bailiff in one. With growls of “Out, out” through -foaming set lips, he swung the mallet repeatedly, broke a Windsor chair -all to pieces, and made the past live again. - - - - -CHAPTER XIX - -THE INTERLUDE OF HIGH BOWER - - -Ann must have had the bailiff’s visit in mind when she said, not long -after: - -“Philip, what would you give to be back, all of you, at Abercorran?” - -“Silly,” he answered, “I haven’t got anything good enough to give, you -know.... But I would give up going to Our Country for a whole year. I -would do anything.... But this isn’t bad, is it, Arthur?” - -Depth of feeling was (to me) so well conveyed by those two mean words -that for the life of me I could only corroborate them with a fervent -repetition: - -“Not bad.” - -The words expressed, too, a sense of loyalty to the remote idea of -Abercorran town itself. - -“But High Bower was better, wasn’t it,” said Ann, to tease him, and to -remind him of his duty to the old Abercorran. - -“Come on, Arthur,” was his reply, “I have got a squirrel to skin.” - -High Bower was the place in Wiltshire where the Morgan family had -paused between Abercorran and London. It was not quite a satisfactory -memory to some of them, because there seemed no reason why they should -have left Wales if they were going to live in the country; and, -then, in a year’s time they went to London, after all. Philip never -mentioned High Bower, but Mr Stodham knew it--what did he not know in -Wiltshire?--and one day he asked me to accompany him on a visit. He had -promised to look over the house for a friend. - -The village was an archipelago of thatched cottages, sprinkled here -and there, and facing all ways, alongside an almost equal number of -roads, lanes, tracks, footpaths, and little streams, so numerous and -interlaced that they seemed rather to cut it off from the world than -to connect it. With much the same materials to use--thatch and brick, -thatch and half-timber, or tiles for both roof and walls--the builders -of it had made each house different, because thus it had to be, or the -man would have it so, or he could not help it, or thus time had decided -with the help of alterations and additions. All were on one side of -the shallow, flashing river, though it so twined that it appeared -to divide some and to surround others, and no bridges were visible. -Some of the houses were out in the midst of the mown fields with -their troops of tossers, rakers, and pitchforkers, and the high-laden -waggons like houses moving. Others were isolated in the sappy, unfooted -water-meadows full of tall sedge and iris that hid the hooting moorhen. -Remains of the old mill and mill-house, of red, zig-zagged bricks and -black timber in stripes, stood apparently on an island, unapproached -by road or path, the walls bathed and half-buried in dark humid weeds -and the foaming bloom of meadow-sweet. The village had two sounds, the -clucking of fowls disturbed from a bath in the road dust, and the gush -of the river over an invisible leafy weir, and this was no sound at -all, but a variety of silence. - -At length I realised that the village was at an end, and before us -was a steep, flowery bank, along which at oblivious intervals a train -crawled out of beeches, looked a little at the world and entered -beeches again, then a tunnel. The train left the quiet quieter, nor -did it stop within five miles of High Bower. The railway, which had -concentrated upon itself at certain points the dwellings and business -of the countryside, left this place, which had resolved to remain where -it was, more remote than before. - -As we went under the bridge of the embankment I thought we must have -missed the Morgans’ old house. I wondered if it could have been that -last and best farmhouse, heavy and square, that stood back, beyond a -green field as level as a pool and three chestnut-trees. Horses were -sheltering from the sun under the trees, their heads to the trunks. The -cows had gone to the shade of the house, and were all gazing motionless -towards the impenetrable gloom of the windows. The barns, sheds, -and lodges, were in themselves a village. The last outhouse almost -touched the road, a cart-lodge shadowy and empty but for a waggon with -low sides curving up forward like the bows of a boat, and itself as -delicate as a boat, standing well up on four stout, not ponderous, -wheels, and bearing a builder’s name from East Stour in Dorset. Now -this house and its appurtenances I thought entirely suitable to the -Morgans, and my thoughts returned to them as we went under the bridge. -Well, and there was the house we were making for, at the foot of the -embankment on the other side. It solved a small mystery at once. Our -road, before coming to the railway, had cut through a double avenue -of limes, which appeared to start at the embankment and terminate a -quarter of a mile away at the top of a gentle rise. They were fine -trees, many of them clouded with bunches of mistletoe as big as herons’ -nests. What was the meaning of the avenue? At neither end was a house -to be seen. But, there, at the foot of the embankment, separated from -it by two pairs of limes, was the house belonging to the avenue--the -Morgans’ house, New House by name. The railway had cut through its -avenue; a traveller passing could easily have thrown a stone into any -one of the chimneys of New House. - -A weedy track led out of the road on the right, along under the -embankment, up to the house. No smoke rose up from it, not a sound -came from the big square windows, or the door between its two pairs of -plain stone columns, or the stable on one hand or the garden on the -other. The sun poured down on it; it did not respond. It looked almost -ugly, a biggish, awkward house, neither native nor old, its walls -bare and weathered without being mellowed. In a window, facing anyone -who approached it from the road, it announced that it was “To be let -or sold” through a firm of solicitors in London. The flower borders -were basely neglected, yet not wild. Cows had broken in.... It was an -obvious stranger, and could only have seemed at home on the main road a -little way out of some mean town. It was going to the dogs unlamented. - -As we were opening the door a cottage woman attached herself to us, -eager, as it proved, to be the first villager to enter since the -Morgans, “the foreigners,” had departed. The railway embankment, as -she explained, had driven them out, cut off the sun, and kept away new -tenants. She left no corner unexplored, sometimes alleging some kind -of service to us, but as a rule out of unashamed pure delight, talking -continually either in comment on what was there, or to complete the -picture of the Morgans, as seen or invented during those twelve months -of their residence. - -They were foreigners, she said, who talked and sang in a foreign -language, but could speak English when they wanted to. They were not -rich, never entertained. Such ill-behaved children.... No, there was -nothing against them; they didn’t owe a penny.... She admired the big -rooms downstairs, with pillared doorways and mantelpieces--they had -a dingy palatial air. In the same rooms with the shiny columns were -broad, blackened, open fire-places, numerous small irregular cupboards, -cracked and split. Walls and doors were undoubtedly marked by arrows -and pistol-shot; someone had drawn a target in a corner--“Master -Roland,” said the woman. “He was a nice lad, too; or would have been if -he had been English.” The spider-webs from wall and ceiling might have -been as old as the house. “The maids had too much to do, playing with -all those children, to keep the place clean. Ignorant those children -were, too. I asked one of the little ones who was the Queen, and he -said ‘Gwenny....’ I don’t know ... some Jerusalem name that isn’t in -the history books.... I asked an older one what was the greatest city -in the world, and he said ‘Rome.’ They were real gentry, too. But -there was something funny about them. One of them came running into my -shop once and said to me, ‘I’ve found the dragon, Mrs Smith. Come and -see--I’ll protect you. He has four horns of ebony, two long and two not -so long, and two big diamond eyes a long way from his horns. He has a -neck as thick as his body, but smooth; his body is like crape. He has -no legs, but he swims over the world like a fish. He is as quiet as an -egg.’ And he took me down the road and showed me a black slug such as -you tread on by the hundred without so much as knowing it. They had no -more regard for the truth than if they were lying.... - -“You never saw the like of them for happiness. When I used to stop at -the gate and see them in the grass, perhaps soaking wet, tumbling about -and laughing as if they weren’t Christians at all, I said to myself: -‘Oh, dear, dear me, what trouble there must be in store for those -beautiful children, that they should be so happy now. God preserve -them, if it be his will.’ I whispered: ‘Hush, children, be a bit -more secret-like about it.’ It don’t do to boast about anything, let -alone happiness. I remember one of them dying sudden. She was little -more than a baby; such a child for laughing, as if she was possessed; -pretty, too, a regular little moorhen, as you might say, for darkness -and prettiness, and fond of the water. I saw one of the maids after -the funeral, and took occasion to remark that it was a blessing the -child was taken to a better world so soon, before she had known a -minute’s sorrow. She fired up--she was outlandish, too, as the maids -always were, and talked their tongue, and stood up for them as if they -were paid for it--and she says, looking that wicked, ‘Master says he -will never forgive it, and I never will. If she had been a peevish -child, I don’t say we shouldn’t have been wild because she had missed -everything, but to take away a child like that before she could defend -herself is a most unchristian act’ ... and that sort of thing. Oh, -there was wickedness in them, though they never wronged anybody.” - -She pointed to the shot marks in a door, and pronounced that no good -could come to a family where the children did such things. At each -room she made guesses, amounting often to positive asseveration, as to -whose it had been. Few enough were the marks of ownership to untutored -eyes--chiefly the outlines, like shadows, of furniture and of books -that once had leaned against the wall. One door was marked by a series -of horizontal lines like those on a thermometer, where children’s -height had been registered at irregular intervals, the hand or stick -pressing down the curls for truth’s sake. - -Upstairs the passages rambled about as in an old house, and when doors -were shut they were dark and cavernous. The rooms themselves were -light almost to dazzling after the passages. The light added to their -monotony, or what would have been monotony if we had known nothing of -their inhabitants. Even so, there were Megan and Ivor whom we had never -known. Ivor came between Roland and Philip, “He was the blackest of the -black,” said Mrs Smith, “brown in the face and black in the hair like a -bay horse. He was one for the water; made a vow he would swim from here -to the sea, or leastways keep to the water all the way. He got over the -second mill-wheel. He swam through the parson’s lawn when there was a -garden-party. But he had to give up because he kept tasting the water -to see how soon it got salt, and so half drowned himself. He came into -my shop just as he was born to remind me about the fireworks I had -promised to stock for Guy Fawkes day, and that was in September. But he -fell out of a tree and was dead before the day came, and, if you will -believe me, his brother bought up the fireworks there and then and let -them off on the grave.” - -A wall in one room had on it a map of the neighbourhood, not with the -real names, but those of the early kingdoms of England and Wales. The -river was the Severn. Their own fields were the land of Gwent. Beyond -them lay Mercia and the Hwiccas. The men of Gwent could raid across the -Severn, and (in my opinion) were pleased with the obstacle. Later, the -projected embankment had been added to the map. This was Offa’s Dyke, -grimly shutting them out of the kingdoms of the Saxons. I recognised -Philip’s hand in the work. For his later Saxon fervour was due simply -to hate of the Normans: before they came he would have swung his axe as -lustily against the Saxons. From this room I could just see the tips of -some of the avenue trees beyond the embankment. - -We had seen far more of the house than was necessary to decide Mr -Stodham against it, when Mrs Smith begged me to stay upstairs a moment -while she ran out; she wished me to mark for her a window which she -was to point out to me from below. “That’s it,” she said, after some -hesitation, as I appeared at last at the window of a small room -looking away from the railway. Nothing in the room distinguished it -from the rest save one small black disc with an auburn rim to it on -the dark ceiling--one disc only, not, as in the other rooms, several, -overlapping, and mingled with traces of the flames of ill-lighted -lamps. “Mrs Morgan,” I thought at once. Some one evidently had sat -long there at a table by night. “I never could make out who it was had -this room,” said Mrs Smith, coming up breathless: “It used to have -a red blind and a lamp always burning. My husband said it did look -so cosy; he thought it must be Mr Morgan studying at his books. The -milkers saw it in the early morning in winter; they said it was like -the big red bottles in a chemist’s window. The keeper said you might -see it any hour of night. I didn’t like it myself. It didn’t look to me -quite right, like a red eye. You couldn’t tell what might be going on -behind it, any more than behind a madman’s eye. I’ve thought about it -often, trying to picture the inside of that room. My husband would say -to me: ‘Bessy, the red window at New House did look nice to-night as I -came home from market. I’m sure they’re reading and studying something -learned, astrology or such, behind that red blind.’ ‘Don’t you believe -it, James’ says I, ‘learned it may be, but not _according_. If they -want to burn a light all night they could have a black blind. Who else -has got a red blind? It isn’t fit. I can’t think how you bear that -naughty red light on a night like this, when there are as many stars in -the sky as there are letters in the Bible.’ Now, which of them used to -sit here? Somebody sat all alone, you may depend upon it, never making -a sound nor a stir.” - -Another room made her think of “Miss Jessie, the one that picked up the -fox when he was creeping as slow as slow through their garden, and hid -him till the hounds found another fox.... Oh, dear, to think what a -house this used to be, and so nice and quiet now ... dreadful quiet.... -I really must be going, if there is nothing more I can do for you.” - -Downstairs again the sight of the shot marks in the door set Mrs Smith -off again, but in a sobered tone: - -“You won’t take the house, I’m thinking, sir? No. I wouldn’t myself, -not for anything.... It would be like wearing clothes a person had died -in. They never meant us to see these things all in their disabill. ’Tis -bad enough to be haunted by the dead, but preserve me from the ghosts -of the living. It is more fit for a Hospital, now, or a Home.... Those -people were like a kind of spirits, like they used to see in olden -time. They did not know the sorrow and wickedness of the world as it -really is. ‘Can the rush grow up without noise? Can the flag grow -without water? Whilst it is yet in his greenness, and not cut down, -it withereth before any other herb.’ Yet you would think they meant -to live for ever by the way they went about, young and old.... One -night I was coming home late and I saw all these windows lit up, every -one, and there were people in them all. It was as if the place was a -hollow cloud with fire in it and people dancing. Only the red blind -was down, and as bright as ever. It called to my mind a story the old -Ann used to tell, about a fellow going home from a fair and seeing a -grand, gorgeous house close by the road, and lovely people dancing -and musicking in it, where there hadn’t been a house before of any -kind. He went in and joined them and slept in a soft warm bed, but in -the morning he woke up under a hedge. I sort of expected to see there -wasn’t any house there next morning, it looked _that strange_.” - -While we were having tea in her parlour Mrs Smith showed us a -photograph of “Miss Megan,” an elder sister of Jack and Roland, whom -I had never heard of, nor I think had Mr Stodham. I shall not forget -the face. She was past twenty, but clearly a fairy child, one who, -like the flying Nicolete, would be taken for a fay by the wood-folk -(and they should know). Her dark face was thin and shaped like a -wedge, with large eyes generous and passionate under eyebrows that -gave them an apprehensive expression, though the fine clear lips could -not have known fear or any other sort of control except pity. The face -was peering through chestnut leaves, looking as soft as a hare, but -with a wildness like the hare’s which, when it is in peril, is almost -terrible. I think it was a face destined to be loved often, but never -to love, or but once. It could draw men’s lips and pens, and would fly -from them and refuse to be entangled in any net of words or kisses. It -would fly to the high, solitary places, and its lovers would cry out: -“Oh, delicate bird, singing in the prickly furze, you are foolish, too, -or why will you not come down to me where the valleys are pleasant, -where the towns are, and everything can be made according to your -desire?” Assuredly, those eyes were for a liberty not to be found among -men, but only among the leaves, in the clouds, or on the waves, though -fate might confine them in the labyrinth of a city. But not a word of -her could I learn except once when I asked Ann straight out. All she -said was: “God have mercy on Megan.” - -Two years after our visit the New House was taken by a charitable lady -as a school and home for orphans. In less than a year she abandoned it, -and within a year after that, it was burnt to the ground. The fields -of Gwent and the lime avenue may still be seen by railway travellers. -Gypsies have broken the hedges and pitched their tents unforbidden. -All kinds of people come in December for the mistletoe. The place is -utterly neglected, at least by the living. - -On the whole, I think, Mr Stodham and I were both sorry for our day at -High Bower. It created a suspicion--not a lasting one with me--that -Abercorran House would not endure for ever. Mr Stodham’s account made -Mr Torrance look grave, and I understood that he wrote a poem about New -House. Higgs remarked that if the Morgans had stayed at High Bower he -could not imagine what he should have done with his pigeons. Aurelius -enjoyed every detail, from the map to Megan’s photograph. Aurelius -had no acquaintance with regret or envy. He was glad of Mr Stodham’s -account of New House, and glad of Abercorran House in reality. He was -one that sat in the sunniest places (unless he was keeping Jessie out) -all day, and though he did not despise the moon he held the fire at -Abercorran House a more stable benefactor. Neither sun nor moon made -him think of the day after to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow. -“Aurelius,” said Mr Morgan, “is the wisest man out of Christendom -and therefore the wisest of all men. He knows that England in the -nineteenth century does not allow any but a working man to die of -starvation unless he wants to. Aurelius is not a working man, nor does -he desire to starve. He is not for an age, but for to-day.” - - - - -CHAPTER XX - -THE POET’S SPRING AT LYDIARD CONSTANTINE - - -The perfume of the fur of the squirrel we skinned on that January -evening--when Ann teased Philip about High Bower--I well remember. I -liked it then; now I like it the more for every year which has since -gone by. It was one of the years when I kept a diary, and day by day -I can trace its seasons. The old year ended in frost and snow. The -new year began with thaw, and with a postal order from my aunt at -Lydiard Constantine, and the purchase of three yards of cotton wool -in readiness for the nesting season and our toll of eggs. On the next -day snow fell again, in the evening the streets were ice, and at -Abercorran House Philip and I made another drawer of a cabinet for -birds’ eggs. Frost and snow continued on the morrow, compelling us to -make a sledge instead of a drawer for the cabinet. The sledge carried -Philip and me alternately throughout the following day, over frozen -roads and footpaths. The fifth day was marked by a letter from Lydiard -Constantine, eighteen degrees of frost, and more sledging with Philip, -and some kind of attention (that has left not a wrack behind) to -Sallust’s “Catiline”.... - -Within a fortnight the pigeons were beginning to lay, and as one of -the nests contained the four useless eggs of an imbecile pair of hens, -we tasted thus early the pleasure of blowing one egg in the orthodox -manner and sucking three. This being Septuagesima Sunday, nothing would -satisfy us but an immediate visit to Our Country, where the jays’ -nests and others we had robbed seven months before were found with a -thrill all but equal to that of May, and always strictly examined in -case of accidents or miracles. For there had now been a whole week -of spring sun shining on our hearts, and on the plumage of the cock -pheasant we stalked in vain. The thrush sang. The blackbird sang. With -the Conversion of St Paul came rain, and moreover school, Thucydides, -Shakespeare’s “Richard the Second,” and other unrealities and -afflictions, wherein I had to prove again how vain it is “to cloy the -hungry edge of appetite by bare imagination of a feast” at old Gaunt’s -command. But Quinquagesima Sunday meant rising in the dark and going -out with Philip, to watch the jays, always ten yards ahead of our most -stealthy stepping--to climb after old woodpigeons’ nests, to cut hazel -sticks, to the tune of many skylarks. Alas, a sprained foot could not -save me from school on Monday. But now the wild pigeons dwelling about -the school began to coo all day long and to carry sticks for their -nests. Out on the football field, in the bright pale light and the -south-west wind the black rooks courted--and more; the jackdaws who -generally accompanied them were absent somewhere. What then mattered it -whether Henri Quatre or Louis Quatorze were the greatest of the Bourbon -kings, as some of my school-fellows debated? Besides, when February -was only half through, Aunt Rachel formally invited Philip and me to -Lydiard Constantine for Easter. This broke the winter’s back. Frost -and fog and Bright’s “History of England” were impotent. We began to -write letters to the chosen three or four boys at Lydiard Constantine. -We made, in the gas jets at Abercorran House, tubes of glass for the -sucking of bird’s eggs. We bought egg drills. We made egg-drills for -ourselves.... The cat had kittens. One pair of Higgs’ pigeons hatched -out their eggs. The house-sparrows were building. The almond-trees -blossomed in the gardens of “Brockenhurst” and the other houses. The -rooks now stayed in the football field until five. The larks sang -all day, invisible in the strong sun and burning sky. The gorse was -a bonfire of bloom. Then, at last, on St David’s day, the rooks were -building, the woodpigeons cooing on every hand, the first lambs were -heard. - -Day after day left us indignant that, in spite of all temptations, -no thrush or blackbird had laid an egg, so far as we knew. But all -things seemed possible. One day, in a mere afternoon walk, we found, -not far beyond a muddle of new streets, a district “very beautiful and -quiet,” says the diary. Losing our way, we had to hire a punt to take -us across the stream--I suppose, the Wandle. Beautiful and quiet, too, -was the night when Philip scaled the high railings into the grounds -of a neighbouring institution, climbed one of the tall elms of its -rookery--I could see him up against the sky, bigger than any of the -nests, in the topmost boughs--and brought down the first egg. It was -the Tuesday before an early Easter, a clear blue, soft day which drove -clean out of our minds all thought of fog, frost, and rain, past or -to come. Mr Stodham had come into the yard of Abercorran House on the -way to his office, as I had on my way to school. Finding Aurelius -sitting in the sun with Ladas, he said in his genial, nervous way: -“That’s right. You are making the best of a fine day. Goodness knows -what it will be like to-morrow.” “And Goodness cares,” said Aurelius, -almost angrily, “I don’t.” “Sorry, sorry,” said Mr Stodham, hastily -lighting his pipe. “All right,” said Aurelius, “but if you care about -to-morrow, I don’t believe you really care about to-day. You are one of -those people, who say that if it is not always fine, or fine when they -want it, they don’t care if it is never fine, and be damned to it, say -they. And yet they don’t like bad weather so well as I do, or as Jessie -does. Now, rain, when it ought not to be raining, makes Jessie angry, -and if the day were a man or woman she would come to terms with it, but -it isn’t, and what is more, Jessie rapidly gets sick of being angry, -and as likely as not she sings ‘Blow away the morning dew,’ and finds -that she likes the rain. She has been listening to the talk about rain -by persons who want to save Day and Martin. I prefer Betty Martin.... -Do you know, Arthur tells me the house martins will soon be here?” -We looked up together to see if it was a martin that both of us had -heard, or seemed to hear, overhead, but, if it was, it was invisible. - -Every year such days came--any time in Lent, or even before. I take it -for granted that, as an historical fact, they were followed, as they -have been in the twentieth century, by fog, frost, mists, drizzle, -rain, sleet, snow, east wind, and north wind, and I know very well -that we resented these things. But we loved the sun. We strove to it -in imagination through the bad weather, believing in every kind of -illusory hint that the rain was going to stop, and so on. Moreover rain -had its merits. For example, on a Sunday, it kept the roads nearly as -quiet as on a week day, and we could have Our Country, or Richmond -Park, or Wimbledon Common, all to ourselves. Then, again, what a thing -it was to return wet, with a rainy brightness in your eyes, to change -rapidly, to run round to Abercorran House, and find Philip and Ann -expecting you in the kitchen, with a gooseberry tart, currant tart, -raspberry tart, plum tart, blackberry tart, cranberry and apple tart, -apple tart, according to season; and mere jam or syrup tart in the -blank periods. My love of mud also I trace to that age, because Philip -and I could escape all company by turning out of a first class road -into the black mash of a lane. If we met anyone there, it was a carter -contending with the mud, a tramp sitting between the bank and a fire, -or a filthy bird-catcher beyond the hedge. - -If the lane was both muddy and new to us, and we two, Philip and I, -turned into it, there was nothing which we should have thought out -of its power to present in half a mile or so, nothing which it would -have overmuch astonished us by presenting. It might have been a Gypsy -camp, it might have been the terrestrial Paradise of Sheddad the son -of Ad--we should have fitted either into our scheme of the universe. -Not that we were _blasé_; for every new thrush’s egg in the season -had a new charm for us. Not that we had been flightily corrupted by -fairy tales and marvels. No: the reason was that we only regarded as -impossible such things as a score of 2000 in first class cricket, an -air ship, or the like; and the class of improbabilities did not exist -for us. Nor was this all. We were not merely ready to welcome strange -things when we had walked half a mile up a lane and met no man, but -we were in a gracious condition for receiving whatever might fall to -us. We did not go in search of miracles, we invited them to come to -us. What was familiar to others was never, on that account, tedious or -contemptible to us. I remember that when Philip and I first made our -way through London to a shop which was depicted in an advertisement, -in spite of the crowds on either hand all along our route, in spite -of the full directions of our elders, we were as much elated by our -achievement as if it had been an arduous discovery made after a -journey in a desert. In our elation there was some suspicion that our -experience had been secret, adventurous, and unique. As to the crowd, -we glided through it as angels might. This building, expected by us and -known to all, astonished us as much as the walls of Sheddad the son of -Ad unexpectedly towering would have done. - -Sometimes in our rare London travels we had a glimpse of a side street, -a row of silent houses all combined as it were into one gray palace, -a dark doorway, a gorgeous window, a surprising man disappearing.... -We looked, and though we never said so, we believed that we alone had -seen these things, that they had never been seen before. We should not -have expected to see them there if we went again. Many and many a time -have we looked, have I alone in more recent years looked, for certain -things thus revealed to us in passing. Either it happened that the -thing was different from what it had once been, or it had disappeared -altogether. - -Now and then venturing down a few side streets where the system was -rectangular and incapable of deceiving, we came on a church full of -sound or gloomily silent--I do not know how to describe the mingled -calm and pride in the minds of the discoverers. Some of the very quiet, -apparently uninhabited courts, for example, made us feel that corners -of London had been deserted and forgotten, that anyone could hide away -there, living in secrecy as in a grave. Knowing how we ourselves, -walking or talking together, grew oblivious of all things that were not -within our brains, or vividly and desirably before our eyes, feeling -ourselves isolated in proud delight, deserted and forgotten of the -multitude who were not us, we imagined, I suppose, that houses and -other things could have a similar experience, or could share it with -us, were we to seek refuge there like Morgan in his mountain tower. -The crowd passing and surrounding us consisted of beings unlike us, -incapable of our isolation or delight: the retired houses whispering -in quiet alleys must be the haunt of spirits unlike the crowd and more -like us, or, if not, at least they must be waiting in readiness for -such. I recognised in them something that linked them to Abercorran -House and distinguished them from Brockenhurst. - -Had these favoured houses been outwardly as remarkable as they were in -spirit they might have pleased us more, but I am not certain. Philip -had his house with the windows that were as the days of the year. But -I came only once near to seeing, with outward eyes, such a house as -perhaps we desired without knowing it. Suddenly, over the tops of the -third or fourth and final ridge of roofs, visible a quarter of a mile -away from one of the windows at Abercorran House, much taller than any -of the throng of houses and clear in the sky over them, I saw a castle -on a high rock. It resembled St Michael’s Mount, only the rock was -giddier and had a narrower summit, and the castle’s three clustered -round towers of unequal height stood up above it like three fingers -above a hand. When I pointed it out to Philip he gave one dark, rapid -glance as of mysterious understanding, and looked at me, saying slowly: - - “‘A portal as of shadowy adamant - Stands yawning on the highway of the life - Which we all tread, a cavern huge and gaunt; - Around it rages an unceasing strife - Of shadows, like the restless clouds that haunt - The gap of some cleft mountain, lifted high - Into the whirlwind of the upper sky. - And many pass it by with careless tread, - Not knowing that a shadowy....’ - -A shadowy _what_, Arthur? At any rate that is the place.” - -In those days, Philip was beginning to love Shelley more than he loved -Aurelius or me. - -I had not seen that pile before. With little trouble I could have -located it almost exactly: I might have known that the particular -street had no room for a sublimer St Michael’s Mount. If we passed the -spot during the next few days we made no use of the evidence against -the tower, which satisfied us in varying degrees until in process of -time it took its place among the other chimney clusters of our horizon. -I was not disillusioned as to this piece of fancy’s architecture, nor -was I thereafter any more inclined to take a surveyor’s view of the -surface of the earth. Stranger things, probably, than St Michael’s -Mount have been thought and done in that street: we did not know it, -but our eyes accepted this symbol of them with gladness, as in the -course of nature. Not much less fantastic was our world than the one -called up by lights seen far off before a traveller in a foreign and a -dark, wild land. - -Therefore Spring at Lydiard Constantine was to Philip and me more than -a portion of a regular renascence of Nature. It was not an old country -marvellously at length arraying itself after an old custom, but an -invasion of the old as violent as our suburban St Michael’s Mount. It -was as if the black, old, silent earth had begun to sing as sweet as -when Jessie sang unexpectedly “Blow away the morning dew.” It was not -a laborious, orderly transformation, but a wild, divine caprice. We -supposed that it would endure for ever, though it might (as I see now) -have turned in one night to Winter. But it did not. - -That Spring was a poet’s Spring. “Remember this Spring,” wrote -Aurelius in a letter, “then you will know what a poet means when -he says _Spring_.” Mr Stodham, who was not a poet, but wrote verse -passionately, was bewildered by it, and could no longer be kept from -exposing his lines. He called the Spring both fiercely joyous, and -melancholy. He addressed it as a girl, and sometimes as a thousand -gods. He said that it was as young as the dew-drop freshly globed on -the grass tip, and also as old as the wind. He proclaimed that it had -conquered the earth, and that it was as fleeting as a poppy. He praised -it as golden, as azure, as green, as snow-white, as chill and balmy, -as bright and dim, as swift and languid, as kindly and cruel, as true -and fickle. Yet he certainly told an infinitely small part of the truth -concerning that Spring. It is memorable to me chiefly on account of a -great poet. - -For a day or two, at Lydiard Constantine, Philip roamed with me up and -down hedgerows, through copses, around pools, as he had done in other -Aprils, but though he found many nests he took not one egg, not even -a thrush’s egg that was pure white and would have been unique in his -collection, or in mine; neither was I allowed to take it. Moreover, -after the first two or three days he only came reluctantly--found -hardly any nests--quarrelled furiously with the most faithful of the -Lydiard boys for killing a thrush (though it was a good shot) with a -catapult. He now went about muttering unintelligible things in a voice -like a clergyman. He pushed through a copse saying magnificently: - - “Unfathomable sea whose waves are years.” - -He answered an ordinary question by Aunt Rachel with: - - “Away, away, from men and towns, - To the wild wood and the downs.” - -Tears stood in his eyes while he exclaimed: - - “Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down - Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were, - Or they dead leaves.” - -Like a somnambulist he paced along, chanting: - - “Earth, Ocean, Air, beloved brotherhood....” - -The sight of a solitary cottage would draw from him those lines -beginning: - - “A portal as of shadowy adamant....” - -Over and over again, in a voice somewhere between that of Irving and a -sheep, he repeated: - - “From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill, - Or piny promontory of the Arctic main, - Or utmost islet inaccessible....” - -With a frenzy as of one who suffered wounds, insults, hunger and thirst -and pecuniary loss, for Liberty’s sweet sake, he cried out to the -myriad emerald leaves: - - “Oh, that the wise from their bright minds would kindle - Such lamps within the dome of this dim world, - That the pale name of _Priest_ might shrink and dwindle - Into the _Hell_ from which it first was hurled....” - -He used to say to me, falling from the heights of recitation: - -“Shelley lived in the time of the Duke of Wellington. He was the son of -a rich old baronet in Sussex, but he had nothing to do with his parents -as soon as he could escape from them. He wrote the greatest lyrics that -ever were--that is, songs not meant to be sung, and no musician could -write good enough music for them, either. He was tall, and brave, and -gentle. He feared no man, and he almost loved death. He was beautiful. -His hair was long, and curled, and had been nearly black, but it was -going grey when he died. He was drowned in the Mediterranean at thirty. -The other poets burnt his body on the sea-shore, but one of them saved -the heart and buried it at Rome with the words on the stone above it, -_Cor cordium_, Heart of hearts. It is not right, it is not right....” - -He would mutter, “It is not right,” but what he meant I could not tell, -unless he was thus--seventy years late--impatiently indignant at the -passing of Shelley out of this earth. As likely as not he would forget -his indignation, if such it was, by whispering--but not to me--with -honied milky accents, as of one whose feet would refuse to crush a toad -or bruise a flower: - - “Thou Friend, whose presence on my wintry heart - Fell like bright Spring upon some herbless plain, - How beautiful and calm and free thou wert - In thy young wisdom, when the mortal chain - Of custom thou didst burst and rend in twain, - And walk as free as light the clouds among, - Which many an envious slave then breath’d in vain - From his dim dungeon, and my spirit sprung - To meet thee from the woes which had begirt it long....” - -From Philip’s tone as he continued the poem, it might have been -supposed that he, too, had a young and unloved wife, a rebellious -father, a sweet-heart ready to fly with him in the manner suggested by -some other lines which he uttered with conviction: - - “A ship is floating in the harbour now, - A wind is hovering o’er the mountain’s brow; - There is a path on the sea’s azure floor, - No keel has ever ploughed the path before; - The halcyons brood around the foamless isles; - The treacherous ocean has forsworn its wiles; - The merry mariners are bold and free: - Say, my heart’s sister, wilt thou sail with me?” - -I have beside me the book which taught Philip this sad bliss, this -wild wisdom. The fly-leaves are entirely covered by copies in his -hand-writing of the best-loved poems and passages. Between some pages -are still the scentless skeletons of flowers and leaves--still more -pages bear the stains left by other flowers and leaves--plucked in that -spring at Lydiard Constantine. The gilding of the covers for the most -part is worn smoothly out; the edges are frayed, the corners broken. -Thus the book seems less the work of Shelley than of Philip. It embalms -that Spring. Yet why do I say embalmed? It is not dead. It lives while -I live and can respond to the incantation of one of the poems in this -little book, beginning: - - “Life of Life, thy lips enkindle, - With their love the breath between them....” - -When I first heard them from Philip, Spring was thronging the land with -delicious odours, colours, and sounds. I knew how nothing came, yet -it was a sweet and natural coming rather than magic--a term then of -too narrow application. As nearly as possible I step back those twenty -years, and see the beech leaves under the white clouds in the blue and -hear the wood wren amongst them, whenever by some chance or necessity -I meet that incantation: “Life of Life, thy lips enkindle,” and I do -not understand them any more than I do the Spring. Both have the power -of magic.... - -Not magical, but enchanted away from solidity, seems now that life at -Abercorran House, where Jessie, Ann, Aurelius, and the rest, and the -dogs, and the pigeons, sat or played in the sun, I suppose, without us -and Shelley, throughout that April. There never was again such another -Spring, because those that followed lacked Philip. He fell ill and -stayed on at Lydiard Constantine to be nursed by my Aunt Rachel, while -I went back to read about the Hanseatic League, Clodia (the Lesbia -of Catullus), and other phantoms that had for me no existence except -in certain printed pages which I would gladly have abolished. With -Philip I might have come to care about the Hansa, and undoubtedly about -Clodia; but before I had done with them, before the cuckoos of that -poet’s Spring were silent, he was buried at Lydiard Constantine. - -At this point the people at Abercorran House--even Jessie and -Aurelius--and the dogs that stretched out in deathlike blessedness -under the sun, and the pigeons that courted and were courted in the -yard and on the roof, all suddenly retreat from me when I come to -that Spring in memory; a haze of ghostly, shimmering silver veils -them; without Philip they are as people in a story whose existence -I cannot prove. The very house has gone. The elms of the Wilderness -have made coffins, if they were not too old. Where is the pond and -its lilies? They are no dimmer than the spirits of men and children. -But there is always Ann. When “Life of Life” is eclipsed and Spring -forgotten, Ann is still in Abercorran Street. I do not think she sees -those dim hazed spirits of men and children, dogs and pigeons. Jessie, -she tells me, is now a great lady, but rides like the wind. Roland -never leaves Caermarthenshire except after a fox. Jack has gone to -Canada and will stay. Lewis is something on a ship. Harry owns sheep -by thousands, and rents a mighty mountain, and has as many sons as -brothers, and the same number of daughters, who have come to the point -of resembling Jessie: so says Ann, who has a hundred photographs. Mr -Morgan is back at Abercorran. When good fortune returned to the Morgans -the whole family went there for a time, leaving Ann behind until the -house should be let. She stayed a year. The family began to recover -in the country, and to scatter. Jessie married and Jack left England -within the year. Ann became a housekeeper first to the new tenant -of Abercorran House, afterwards to Mr Jones at Abercorran Street. -Otherwise I should not have written down these memories of the Morgans -and their friends, men, dogs, and pigeons, and of the sunshine caught -by the yard of Abercorran House in those days, and of Our Country, and -of that Spring and the “Life of Life” which live, and can only perish, -together. Ann says there is another world. “Not a better,” she adds -firmly. “It would be blasphemous to suppose that God ever made any but -the best of worlds--not a better, but a different one, suitable for -different people than we are now, you understand, not better, for that -is impossible, say I, who have lived in Abercorran--town, house, and -street--these sixty years--there is not a better world.” - - - PRINTED BY - TURNBULL AND SPEARS, - EDINBURGH - - - - -Transcriber's Note - -The following apparent errors have been corrected: - -p. 25 "fed the pigons she" changed to "fed the pigeons she" - -p. 56 "they pased in deep water" changed to "they passed in deep water" - -p. 68 "rounds islands of ash" changed to "round islands of ash" - -p. 120 "time-worm black bureau" changed to "time-worn black bureau" - -p. 155 "chief faculty. and there" changed to "chief faculty, and there" - -p. 172 "“More air,” he shouted," changed to "“More air,” he shouted." - -p. 283 "quiet, says the diary." changed to "quiet, says the diary.”" - - -Archaic or inconsistent language has otherwise been kept as printed. - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Happy-go-lucky Morgans, by Edward Thomas - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAPPY-GO-LUCKY MORGANS *** - -***** This file should be named 63268-0.txt or 63268-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/3/2/6/63268/ - -Produced by Henry Flower and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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