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Title:      The White PeopleAuthor:     Arthur Machen* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *eBook No.:  0601371h.htmlEdition:    1Language:   EnglishCharacter set encoding:     HTML--Latin-1(ISO-8859-1)--8 bitDate first posted:          June 2006Date most recently updated: January 2011This eBook was produced by: Malcolm FarmerProject Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editionswhich are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright noticeis included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particularpaper edition.Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check thecopyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing thisfile.This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictionswhatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the termsof the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online athttp://gutenberg.net.au/licence.htmlTo contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.au

The White People

by

Arthur Machen

PROLOGUE
THE GREEN BOOK
EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

'Sorcery and sanctity,' said Ambrose, 'these are the onlyrealities. Each is an ecstasy, a withdrawal from the commonlife.'

Cotgrave listened, interested. He had been brought by a friend tothis mouldering house in a northern suburb, through an old garden tothe room where Ambrose the recluse dozed and dreamed over hisbooks.

'Yes,' he went on, 'magic is justified of her children. There aremany, I think, who eat dry crusts and drink water, with a joyinfinitely sharper than anything within the experience of the"practical" epicure.'

'You are speaking of the saints?'

'Yes, and of the sinners, too. I think you are falling into thevery general error of confining the spiritual world to the supremelygood; but the supremely wicked, necessarily, have their portion init. The merely carnal, sensual man can no more be a great sinner thanhe can be a great saint. Most of us are just indifferent, mixed-upcreatures; we muddle through the world without realizing the meaningand the inner sense of things, and, consequently, our wickedness andour goodness are alike second-rate, unimportant.'

'And you think the great sinner, then, will be an ascetic, as wellas the great saint?'

'Great people of all kinds forsake the imperfect copies and go tothe perfect originals. I have no doubt but that many of the veryhighest among the saints have never done a "good action" (using thewords in their ordinary sense). And, on the other hand, there havebeen those who have sounded the very depths of sin, who all theirlives have never done an "ill deed."'

He went out of the room for a moment, and Cotgrave, in highdelight, turned to his friend and thanked him for theintroduction.

'He's grand,' he said. 'I never saw that kind of lunaticbefore.'

Ambrose returned with more whisky and helped the two men in aliberal manner. He abused the teetotal sect with ferocity, as hehanded the seltzer, and pouring out a glass of water for himself, wasabout to resume his monologue, when Cotgrave broke in—

'I can't stand it, you know,' he said, 'your paradoxes are toomonstrous. A man may be a great sinner and yet never do anythingsinful! Come!'

'You're quite wrong,' said Ambrose. 'I never make paradoxes; Iwish I could. I merely said that a man may have an exquisite taste inRomanée Conti, and yet never have even smelt four ale. That'sall, and it's more like a truism than a paradox, isn't it? Yoursurprise at my remark is due to the fact that you haven't realizedwhat sin is. Oh, yes, there is a sort of connexion between Sin withthe capital letter, and actions which are commonly called sinful:with murder, theft, adultery, and so forth. Much the same connexionthat there is between the A, B, C and fine literature. But I believethat the misconception—it is all but universal—arises ingreat measure from our looking at the matter through socialspectacles. We think that a man who does evil tous and to hisneighbours must be very evil. So he is, from a social standpoint; butcan't you realize that Evil in its essence is a lonely thing, apassion of the solitary, individual soul? Really, the averagemurderer,quâ murderer, is not by any means a sinner inthe true sense of the word. He is simply a wild beast that we have toget rid of to save our own necks from his knife. I should class himrather with tigers than with sinners.'

'It seems a little strange.'

'I think not. The murderer murders not from positive qualities,but from negative ones; he lacks something which non-murdererspossess. Evil, of course, is wholly positive—only it is on thewrong side. You may believe me that sin in its proper sense is veryrare; it is probable that there have been far fewer sinners thansaints. Yes, your standpoint is all very well for practical, socialpurposes; we are naturally inclined to think that a person who isvery disagreeable to us must be a very great sinner! It is verydisagreeable to have one's pocket picked, and we pronounce the thiefto be a very great sinner. In truth, he is merely an undeveloped man.He cannot be a saint, of course; but he may be, and often is, aninfinitely better creature than thousands who have never broken asingle commandment. He is a great nuisance tous, I admit, andwe very properly lock him up if we catch him; but between histroublesome and unsocial action and evil—Oh, the connexion isof the weakest.'

It was getting very late. The man who had brought Cotgrave hadprobably heard all this before, since he assisted with a bland andjudicious smile, but Cotgrave began to think that his 'lunatic' wasturning into a sage.

'Do you know,' he said, 'you interest me immensely? You think,then, that we do not understand the real nature of evil?'

'No, I don't think we do. We over-estimate it and weunder-estimate it. We take the very numerous infractions of oursocial "bye-laws"—the very necessary and very properregulations which keep the human company together—and we getfrightened at the prevalence of "sin" and "evil." But this is reallynonsense. Take theft, for example. Have you anyhorror at thethought of Robin Hood, of the Highland caterans of the seventeenthcentury, of the moss-troopers, of the company promoters of ourday?

'Then, on the other hand, we underrate evil. We attach such anenormous importance to the "sin" of meddling with our pockets (andour wives) that we have quite forgotten the awfulness of realsin.'

'And what is sin?' said Cotgrave.

'I think I must reply to your question by another. What would yourfeelings be, seriously, if your cat or your dog began to talk to you,and to dispute with you in human accents? You would be overwhelmedwith horror. I am sure of it. And if the roses in your garden sang aweird song, you would go mad. And suppose the stones in the roadbegan to swell and grow before your eyes, and if the pebble that younoticed at night had shot out stony blossoms in the morning?

'Well, these examples may give you some notion of what sin reallyis.'

'Look here,' said the third man, hitherto placid, 'you two seempretty well wound up. But I'm going home. I've missed my tram, and Ishall have to walk.'

Ambrose and Cotgrave seemed to settle down more profoundly whenthe other had gone out into the early misty morning and the palelight of the lamps.

'You astonish me,' said Cotgrave. 'I had never thought of that. Ifthat is really so, one must turn everything upside down. Then theessence of sin really is——'

'In the taking of heaven by storm, it seems to me,' said Ambrose.'It appears to me that it is simply an attempt to penetrate intoanother and higher sphere in a forbidden manner. You can understandwhy it is so rare. There are few, indeed, who wish to penetrate intoother spheres, higher or lower, in ways allowed or forbidden. Men, inthe mass, are amply content with life as they find it. Thereforethere are few saints, and sinners (in the proper sense) are fewerstill, and men of genius, who partake sometimes of each character,are rare also. Yes; on the whole, it is, perhaps, harder to be agreat sinner than a great saint.'

'There is something profoundly unnatural about Sin? Is that whatyou mean?'

'Exactly. Holiness requires as great, or almost as great, aneffort; but holiness works on lines thatwere natural once; itis an effort to recover the ecstasy that was before the Fall. But sinis an effort to gain the ecstasy and the knowledge that pertain aloneto angels and in making this effort man becomes a demon. I told youthat the mere murderer is nottherefore a sinner; that istrue, but the sinner is sometimes a murderer. Gilles de Raiz is aninstance. So you see that while the good and the evil are unnaturalto man as he now is—to man the social, civilizedbeing—evil is unnatural in a much deeper sense than good. Thesaint endeavours to recover a gift which he has lost; the sinnertries to obtain something which was never his. In brief, he repeatsthe Fall.'

'But are you a Catholic?' said Cotgrave.

'Yes; I am a member of the persecuted Anglican Church.'

'Then, how about those texts which seem to reckon as sin thatwhich you would set down as a mere trivial dereliction?'

'Yes; but in one place the word "sorcerers" comes in the samesentence, doesn't it? That seems to me to give the key-note.Consider: can you imagine for a moment that a false statement whichsaves an innocent man's life is a sin? No; very good, then, it is notthe mere liar who is excluded by those words; it is, above all, the"sorcerers" who use the material life, who use the failingsincidental to material life as instruments to obtain their infinitelywicked ends. And let me tell you this: our higher senses are soblunted, we are so drenched with materialism, that we should probablyfail to recognize real wickedness if we encountered it.'

'But shouldn't we experience a certain horror—a terror suchas you hinted we would experience if a rose tree sang—in themere presence of an evil man?'

'We should if we were natural: children and women feel this horroryou speak of, even animals experience it. But with most of usconvention and civilization and education have blinded and deafenedand obscured the natural reason. No, sometimes we may recognize evilby its hatred of the good—one doesn't need much penetration toguess at the influence which dictated, quite unconsciously, the"Blackwood" review of Keats—but this is purely incidental; and,as a rule, I suspect that the Hierarchs of Tophet pass quiteunnoticed, or, perhaps, in certain cases, as good but mistakenmen.'

'But you used the word "unconscious" just now, of Keats'reviewers. Is wickedness ever unconscious?'

'Always. It must be so. It is like holiness and genius in this asin other points; it is a certain rapture or ecstasy of the soul; atranscendent effort to surpass the ordinary bounds. So, surpassingthese, it surpasses also the understanding, the faculty that takesnote of that which comes before it. No, a man may be infinitely andhorribly wicked and never suspect it. But I tell you, evil in this,its certain and true sense, is rare, and I think it is growingrarer.'

'I am trying to get hold of it all,' said Cotgrave. From what yousay, I gather that the true evil differs generically from that whichwe call evil?'

'Quite so. There is, no doubt, an analogy between the two; aresemblance such as enables us to use, quite legitimately, such termsas the "foot of the mountain" and the "leg of the table." And,sometimes, of course, the two speak, as it were, in the samelanguage. The rough miner, or "puddler," the untrained, undeveloped"tiger-man," heated by a quart or two above his usual measure, comeshome and kicks his irritating and injudicious wife to death. He is amurderer. And Gilles de Raiz was a murderer. But you see the gulfthat separates the two? The "word," if I may so speak, isaccidentally the same in each case, but the "meaning" is utterlydifferent. It is flagrant "Hobson Jobson" to confuse the two, orrather, it is as if one supposed that Juggernaut and the Argonautshad something to do etymologically with one another. And no doubt thesame weak likeness, or analogy, runs between all the "social" sinsand the real spiritual sins, and in some cases, perhaps, the lessermay be "schoolmasters" to lead one on to the greater—from theshadow to the reality. If you are anything of a Theologian, you willsee the importance of all this.'

'I am sorry to say,' remarked Cotgrave, 'that I have devoted verylittle of my time to theology. Indeed, I have often wondered on whatgrounds theologians have claimed the title of Science of Sciences fortheir favourite study; since the "theological" books I have lookedinto have always seemed to me to be concerned with feeble and obviouspieties, or with the kings of Israel and Judah. I do not care to hearabout those kings.'

Ambrose grinned.

'We must try to avoid theological discussion,' he said. 'Iperceive that you would be a bitter disputant. But perhaps the "datesof the kings" have as much to do with theology as the hobnails of themurderous puddler with evil.'

'Then, to return to our main subject, you think that sin is anesoteric, occult thing?'

'Yes. It is the infernal miracle as holiness is the supernal. Nowand then it is raised to such a pitch that we entirely fail tosuspect its existence; it is like the note of the great pedal pipesof the organ, which is so deep that we cannot hear it. In other casesit may lead to the lunatic asylum, or to still stranger issues. Butyou must never confuse it with mere social misdoing. Remember how theApostle, speaking of the "other side," distinguishes between"charitable" actions and charity. And as one may give all one's goodsto the poor, and yet lack charity; so, remember, one may avoid everycrime and yet be a sinner.'

'Your psychology is very strange to me,' said Cotgrave, 'but Iconfess I like it, and I suppose that one might fairly deduce fromyour premisses the conclusion that the real sinner might verypossibly strike the observer as a harmless personage enough?'

'Certainly, because the true evil has nothing to do with sociallife or social laws, or if it has, only incidentally andaccidentally. It is a lonely passion of the soul—or a passionof the lonely soul—whichever you like. If, by chance, weunderstand it, and grasp its full significance, then, indeed, it willfill us with horror and with awe. But this emotion is widelydistinguished from the fear and the disgust with which we regard theordinary criminal, since this latter is largely or entirely foundedon the regard which we have for our own skins or purses. We hate amurder, because we know that we should hate to be murdered, or tohave any one that we like murdered. So, on the "other side," wevenerate the saints, but we don't "like" them as well as our friends.Can you persuade yourself that you would have "enjoyed" St. Paul'scompany? Do you think that you and I would have "got on" with SirGalahad?

'So with the sinners, as with the saints. If you met a very evilman, and recognized his evil; he would, no doubt, fill you withhorror and awe; but there is no reason why you should "dislike" him.On the contrary, it is quite possible that if you could succeed inputting the sin out of your mind you might find the sinner capitalcompany, and in a little while you might have to reason yourself backinto horror. Still, how awful it is. If the roses and the liliessuddenly sang on this coming morning; if the furniture began to movein procession, as in De Maupassant's tale!'

'I am glad you have come back to that comparison,' said Cotgrave,'because I wanted to ask you what it is that corresponds in humanityto these imaginary feats of inanimate things. In a word—what issin? You have given me, I know, an abstract definition, but I shouldlike a concrete example.'

'I told you it was very rare,' said Ambrose, who appeared willingto avoid the giving of a direct answer. 'The materialism of the age,which has done a good deal to suppress sanctity, has done perhapsmore to suppress evil. We find the earth so very comfortable that wehave no inclination either for ascents or descents. It would seem asif the scholar who decided to "specialize" in Tophet, would bereduced to purely antiquarian researches. No palaeontologist couldshow you alive pterodactyl.'

'And yet you, I think, have "specialized," and I believe that yourresearches have descended to our modern times.'

'You are really interested, I see. Well, I confess, that I havedabbled a little, and if you like I can show you something that bearson the very curious subject we have been discussing.'

Ambrose took a candle and went away to a far, dim corner of theroom. Cotgrave saw him open a venerable bureau that stood there, andfrom some secret recess he drew out a parcel, and came back to thewindow where they had been sitting.

Ambrose undid a wrapping of paper, and produced a greenpocket-book.

'You will take care of it?' he said. 'Don't leave it lying about.It is one of the choicer pieces in my collection, and I should bevery sorry if it were lost.'

He fondled the faded binding.

'I knew the girl who wrote this,' he said. 'When you read it, youwill see how it illustrates the talk we have had to-night. There is asequel, too, but I won't talk of that.

'There was an odd article in one of the reviews some months ago,'he began again, with the air of a man who changes the subject. 'Itwas written by a doctor—Dr. Coryn, I think, was the name. Hesays that a lady, watching her little girl playing at thedrawing-room window, suddenly saw the heavy sash give way and fall onthe child's fingers. The lady fainted, I think, but at any rate thedoctor was summoned, and when he had dressed the child's wounded andmaimed fingers he was summoned to the mother. She was groaning withpain, and it was found that three fingers of her hand, correspondingwith those that had been injured on the child's hand, were swollenand inflamed, and later, in the doctor's language, purulent sloughingset in.'

Ambrose still handled delicately the green volume.

'Well, here it is,' he said at last, parting with difficulty, itseemed, from his treasure.

'You will bring it back as soon as you have read it,' he said, asthey went out into the hall, into the old garden, faint with theodour of white lilies.

There was a broad red band in the east as Cotgrave turned to go,and from the high ground where he stood he saw that awful spectacleof London in a dream.

THE GREENBOOK

The morocco binding of the book was faded, and the colour hadgrown faint, but there were no stains nor bruises nor marks of usage.The book looked as if it had been bought 'on a visit to London' someseventy or eighty years ago, and had somehow been forgotten andsuffered to lie away out of sight. There was an old, delicate,lingering odour about it, such an odour as sometimes haunts anancient piece of furniture for a century or more. The end-papers,inside the binding, were oddly decorated with coloured patterns andfaded gold. It looked small, but the paper was fine, and there weremany leaves, closely covered with minute, painfully formedcharacters.

I found this book (the manuscript began) in a drawer in the oldbureau that stands on the landing. It was a very rainy day and Icould not go out, so in the afternoon I got a candle and rummaged inthe bureau. Nearly all the drawers were full of old dresses, but oneof the small ones looked empty, and I found this book hidden right atthe back. I wanted a book like this, so I took it to write in. It isfull of secrets. I have a great many other books of secrets I havewritten, hidden in a safe place, and I am going to write here many ofthe old secrets and some new ones; but there are some I shall not putdown at all. I must not write down the real names of the days andmonths which I found out a year ago, nor the way to make the Akloletters, or the Chian language, or the great beautiful Circles, northe Mao Games, nor the chief songs. I may write something about allthese things but not the way to do them, for peculiar reasons. And Imust not say who the Nymphs are, or the Dôls, or Jeelo, or whatvoolas mean. All these are most secret secrets, and I am glad when Iremember what they are, and how many wonderful languages I know, butthere are some things that I call the secrets of the secrets of thesecrets that I dare not think of unless I am quite alone, and then Ishut my eyes, and put my hands over them and whisper the word, andthe Alala comes. I only do this at night in my room or in certainwoods that I know, but I must not describe them, as they are secretwoods. Then there are the Ceremonies, which are all of themimportant, but some are more delightful than others—there arethe White Ceremonies, and the Green Ceremonies, and the ScarletCeremonies. The Scarlet Ceremonies are the best, but there is onlyone place where they can be performed properly, though there is avery nice imitation which I have done in other places. Besides these,I have the dances, and the Comedy, and I have done the Comedysometimes when the others were looking, and they didn't understandanything about it. I was very little when I first knew about thesethings.

When I was very small, and mother was alive, I can rememberremembering things before that, only it has all got confused. But Iremember when I was five or six I heard them talking about me whenthey thought I was not noticing. They were saying how queer I was ayear or two before, and how nurse had called my mother to come andlisten to me talking all to myself, and I was saying words thatnobody could understand. I was speaking the Xu language, but I onlyremember a very few of the words, as it was about the little whitefaces that used to look at me when I was lying in my cradle. Theyused to talk to me, and I learnt their language and talked to them init about some great white place where they lived, where the trees andthe grass were all white, and there were white hills as high up asthe moon, and a cold wind. I have often dreamed of it afterwards, butthe faces went away when I was very little. But a wonderful thinghappened when I was about five. My nurse was carrying me on hershoulder; there was a field of yellow corn, and we went through it,it was very hot. Then we came to a path through a wood, and a tallman came after us, and went with us till we came to a place wherethere was a deep pool, and it was very dark and shady. Nurse put medown on the soft moss under a tree, and she said: 'She can't get tothe pond now.' So they left me there, and I sat quite still andwatched, and out of the water and out of the wood came two wonderfulwhite people, and they began to play and dance and sing. They were akind of creamy white like the old ivory figure in the drawing-room;one was a beautiful lady with kind dark eyes, and a grave face, andlong black hair, and she smiled such a strange sad smile at theother, who laughed and came to her. They played together, and dancedround and round the pool, and they sang a song till I fell asleep.Nurse woke me up when she came back, and she was looking somethinglike the lady had looked, so I told her all about it, and asked herwhy she looked like that. At first she cried, and then she lookedvery frightened, and turned quite pale. She put me down on the grassand stared at me, and I could see she was shaking all over. Then shesaid I had been dreaming, but I knew I hadn't. Then she made mepromise not to say a word about it to anybody, and if I did I shouldbe thrown into the black pit. I was not frightened at all, thoughnurse was, and I never forgot about it, because when I shut my eyesand it was quite quiet, and I was all alone, I could see them again,very faint and far away, but very splendid; and little bits of thesong they sang came into my head, but I couldn't sing it.

I was thirteen, nearly fourteen, when I had a very singularadventure, so strange that the day on which it happened is alwayscalled the White Day. My mother had been dead for more than a year,and in the morning I had lessons, but they let me go out for walks inthe afternoon. And this afternoon I walked a new way, and a littlebrook led me into a new country, but I tore my frock getting throughsome of the difficult places, as the way was through many bushes, andbeneath the low branches of trees, and up thorny thickets on thehills, and by dark woods full of creeping thorns. And it was a long,long way. It seemed as if I was going on for ever and ever, and I hadto creep by a place like a tunnel where a brook must have been, butall the water had dried up, and the floor was rocky, and the busheshad grown overhead till they met, so that it was quite dark. And Iwent on and on through that dark place; it was a long, long way. AndI came to a hill that I never saw before. I was in a dismal thicketfull of black twisted boughs that tore me as I went through them, andI cried out because I was smarting all over, and then I found that Iwas climbing, and I went up and up a long way, till at last thethicket stopped and I came out crying just under the top of a bigbare place, where there were ugly grey stones lying all about on thegrass, and here and there a little twisted, stunted tree came outfrom under a stone, like a snake. And I went up, right to the top, along way. I never saw such big ugly stones before; they came out ofthe earth some of them, and some looked as if they had been rolled towhere they were, and they went on and on as far as I could see, along, long way. I looked out from them and saw the country, but itwas strange. It was winter time, and there were black terrible woodshanging from the hills all round; it was like seeing a large roomhung with black curtains, and the shape of the trees seemed quitedifferent from any I had ever seen before. I was afraid. Then beyondthe woods there were other hills round in a great ring, but I hadnever seen any of them; it all looked black, and everything had avoor over it. It was all so still and silent, and the sky was heavyand grey and sad, like a wicked voorish dome in Deep Dendo. I went oninto the dreadful rocks. There were hundreds and hundreds of them.Some were like horrid-grinning men; I could see their faces as ifthey would jump at me out of the stone, and catch hold of me, anddrag me with them back into the rock, so that I should always bethere. And there were other rocks that were like animals, creeping,horrible animals, putting out their tongues, and others were likewords that I could not say, and others like dead people lying on thegrass. I went on among them, though they frightened me, and my heartwas full of wicked songs that they put into it; and I wanted to makefaces and twist myself about in the way they did, and I went on andon a long way till at last I liked the rocks, and they didn'tfrighten me any more. I sang the songs I thought of; songs full ofwords that must not be spoken or written down. Then I made faces likethe faces on the rocks, and I twisted myself about like the twistedones, and I lay down flat on the ground like the dead ones, and Iwent up to one that was grinning, and put my arms round him andhugged him. And so I went on and on through the rocks till I came toa round mound in the middle of them. It was higher than a mound, itwas nearly as high as our house, and it was like a great basin turnedupside down, all smooth and round and green, with one stone, like apost, sticking up at the top. I climbed up the sides, but they wereso steep I had to stop or I should have rolled all the way downagain, and I should have knocked against the stones at the bottom,and perhaps been killed. But I wanted to get up to the very top ofthe big round mound, so I lay down flat on my face, and took hold ofthe grass with my hands and drew myself up, bit by bit, till I was atthe top. Then I sat down on the stone in the middle, and looked allround about. I felt I had come such a long, long way, just as if Iwere a hundred miles from home, or in some other country, or in oneof the strange places I had read about in the 'Tales of the Genie'and the 'Arabian Nights,' or as if I had gone across the sea, faraway, for years and I had found another world that nobody had everseen or heard of before, or as if I had somehow flown through the skyand fallen on one of the stars I had read about where everything isdead and cold and grey, and there is no air, and the wind doesn'tblow. I sat on the stone and looked all round and down and roundabout me. It was just as if I was sitting on a tower in the middle ofa great empty town, because I could see nothing all around but thegrey rocks on the ground. I couldn't make out their shapes any more,but I could see them on and on for a long way, and I looked at them,and they seemed as if they had been arranged into patterns, andshapes, and figures. I knew they couldn't be, because I had seen alot of them coming right out of the earth, joined to the deep rocksbelow, so I looked again, but still I saw nothing but circles, andsmall circles inside big ones, and pyramids, and domes, and spires,and they seemed all to go round and round the place where I wassitting, and the more I looked, the more I saw great big rings ofrocks, getting bigger and bigger, and I stared so long that it feltas if they were all moving and turning, like a great wheel, and I wasturning, too, in the middle. I got quite dizzy and queer in the head,and everything began to be hazy and not clear, and I saw littlesparks of blue light, and the stones looked as if they were springingand dancing and twisting as they went round and round and round. Iwas frightened again, and I cried out loud, and jumped up from thestone I was sitting on, and fell down. When I got up I was so gladthey all looked still, and I sat down on the top and slid down themound, and went on again. I danced as I went in the peculiar way therocks had danced when I got giddy, and I was so glad I could do itquite well, and I danced and danced along, and sang extraordinarysongs that came into my head. At last I came to the edge of thatgreat flat hill, and there were no more rocks, and the way went againthrough a dark thicket in a hollow. It was just as bad as the otherone I went through climbing up, but I didn't mind this one, because Iwas so glad I had seen those singular dances and could imitate them.I went down, creeping through the bushes, and a tall nettle stung meon my leg, and made me burn, but I didn't mind it, and I tingled withthe boughs and the thorns, but I only laughed and sang. Then I gotout of the thicket into a close valley, a little secret place like adark passage that nobody ever knows of, because it was so narrow anddeep and the woods were so thick round it. There is a steep bank withtrees hanging over it, and there the ferns keep green all through thewinter, when they are dead and brown upon the hill, and the fernsthere have a sweet, rich smell like what oozes out of fir trees.There was a little stream of water running down this valley, so smallthat I could easily step across it. I drank the water with my hand,and it tasted like bright, yellow wine, and it sparkled and bubbledas it ran down over beautiful red and yellow and green stones, sothat it seemed alive and all colours at once. I drank it, and I drankmore with my hand, but I couldn't drink enough, so I lay down andbent my head and sucked the water up with my lips. It tasted muchbetter, drinking it that way, and a ripple would come up to my mouthand give me a kiss, and I laughed, and drank again, and pretendedthere was a nymph, like the one in the old picture at home, who livedin the water and was kissing me. So I bent low down to the water, andput my lips softly to it, and whispered to the nymph that I wouldcome again. I felt sure it could not be common water, I was so gladwhen I got up and went on; and I danced again and went up and up thevalley, under hanging hills. And when I came to the top, the groundrose up in front of me, tall and steep as a wall, and there wasnothing but the green wall and the sky. I thought of 'for ever andfor ever, world without end, Amen'; and I thought I must have reallyfound the end of the world, because it was like the end ofeverything, as if there could be nothing at all beyond, except thekingdom of Voor, where the light goes when it is put out, and thewater goes when the sun takes it away. I began to think of all thelong, long way I had journeyed, how I had found a brook and followedit, and followed it on, and gone through bushes and thorny thickets,and dark woods full of creeping thorns. Then I had crept up a tunnelunder trees, and climbed a thicket, and seen all the grey rocks, andsat in the middle of them when they turned round, and then I had goneon through the grey rocks and come down the hill through the stingingthicket and up the dark valley, all a long, long way. I wondered howI should get home again, if I could ever find the way, and if my homewas there any more, or if it were turned and everybody in it intogrey rocks, as in theArabian Nights. So I sat down on thegrass and thought what I should do next. I was tired, and my feetwere hot with walking, and as I looked about I saw there was awonderful well just under the high, steep wall of grass. All theground round it was covered with bright, green, dripping moss; therewas every kind of moss there, moss like beautiful little ferns, andlike palms and fir trees, and it was all green as jewellery, anddrops of water hung on it like diamonds. And in the middle was thegreat well, deep and shining and beautiful, so clear that it lookedas if I could touch the red sand at the bottom, but it was far below.I stood by it and looked in, as if I were looking in a glass. At thebottom of the well, in the middle of it, the red grains of sand weremoving and stirring all the time, and I saw how the water bubbled up,but at the top it was quite smooth, and full and brimming. It was agreat well, large like a bath, and with the shining, glittering greenmoss about it, it looked like a great white jewel, with green jewelsall round. My feet were so hot and tired that I took off my boots andstockings, and let my feet down into the water, and the water wassoft and cold, and when I got up I wasn't tired any more, and I feltI must go on, farther and farther, and see what was on the other sideof the wall. I climbed up it very slowly, going sideways all thetime, and when I got to the top and looked over, I was in thequeerest country I had seen, stranger even than the hill of the greyrocks. It looked as if earth-children had been playing there withtheir spades, as it was all hills and hollows, and castles and wallsmade of earth and covered with grass. There were two mounds like bigbeehives, round and great and solemn, and then hollow basins, andthen a steep mounting wall like the ones I saw once by the seasidewhere the big guns and the soldiers were. I nearly fell into one ofthe round hollows, it went away from under my feet so suddenly, and Iran fast down the side and stood at the bottom and looked up. It wasstrange and solemn to look up. There was nothing but the grey, heavysky and the sides of the hollow; everything else had gone away, andthe hollow was the whole world, and I thought that at night it mustbe full of ghosts and moving shadows and pale things when the moonshone down to the bottom at the dead of the night, and the windwailed up above. It was so strange and solemn and lonely, like ahollow temple of dead heathen gods. It reminded me of a tale my nursehad told me when I was quite little; it was the same nurse that tookme into the wood where I saw the beautiful white people. And Iremembered how nurse had told me the story one winter night, when thewind was beating the trees against the wall, and crying and moaningin the nursery chimney. She said there was, somewhere or other, ahollow pit, just like the one I was standing in, everybody was afraidto go into it or near it, it was such a bad place. But once upon atime there was a poor girl who said she would go into the hollow pit,and everybody tried to stop her, but she would go. And she went downinto the pit and came back laughing, and said there was nothing thereat all, except green grass and red stones, and white stones andyellow flowers. And soon after people saw she had most beautifulemerald earrings, and they asked how she got them, as she and hermother were quite poor. But she laughed, and said her earrings werenot made of emeralds at all, but only of green grass. Then, one day,she wore on her breast the reddest ruby that any one had ever seen,and it was as big as a hen's egg, and glowed and sparkled like a hotburning coal of fire. And they asked how she got it, as she and hermother were quite poor. But she laughed, and said it was not a rubyat all, but only a red stone. Then one day she wore round her neckthe loveliest necklace that any one had ever seen, much finer thanthe queen's finest, and it was made of great bright diamonds,hundreds of them, and they shone like all the stars on a night inJune. So they asked her how she got it, as she and her mother werequite poor. But she laughed, and said they were not diamonds at all,but only white stones. And one day she went to the Court, and shewore on her head a crown of pure angel-gold, so nurse said, and itshone like the sun, and it was much more splendid than the crown theking was wearing himself, and in her ears she wore the emeralds, andthe big ruby was the brooch on her breast, and the great diamondnecklace was sparkling on her neck. And the king and queen thoughtshe was some great princess from a long way off, and got down fromtheir thrones and went to meet her, but somebody told the king andqueen who she was, and that she was quite poor. So the king asked whyshe wore a gold crown, and how she got it, as she and her mother wereso poor. And she laughed, and said it wasn't a gold crown at all, butonly some yellow flowers she had put in her hair. And the kingthought it was very strange, and said she should stay at the Court,and they would see what would happen next. And she was so lovely thateverybody said that her eyes were greener than the emeralds, that herlips were redder than the ruby, that her skin was whiter than thediamonds, and that her hair was brighter than the golden crown. Sothe king's son said he would marry her, and the king said he might.And the bishop married them, and there was a great supper, andafterwards the king's son went to his wife's room. But just when hehad his hand on the door, he saw a tall, black man, with a dreadfulface, standing in front of the door, and a voice said—

Venture not upon your life,
This is mine own wedded wife.

Then the king's son fell down on the ground in a fit. And theycame and tried to get into the room, but they couldn't, and theyhacked at the door with hatchets, but the wood had turned hard asiron, and at last everybody ran away, they were so frightened at thescreaming and laughing and shrieking and crying that came out of theroom. But next day they went in, and found there was nothing in theroom but thick black smoke, because the black man had come and takenher away. And on the bed there were two knots of faded grass and ared stone, and some white stones, and some faded yellow flowers. Iremembered this tale of nurse's while I was standing at the bottom ofthe deep hollow; it was so strange and solitary there, and I feltafraid. I could not see any stones or flowers, but I was afraid ofbringing them away without knowing, and I thought I would do a charmthat came into my head to keep the black man away. So I stood rightin the very middle of the hollow, and I made sure that I had none ofthose things on me, and then I walked round the place, and touched myeyes, and my lips, and my hair in a peculiar manner, and whisperedsome queer words that nurse taught me to keep bad things away. Then Ifelt safe and climbed up out of the hollow, and went on through allthose mounds and hollows and walls, till I came to the end, which washigh above all the rest, and I could see that all the differentshapes of the earth were arranged in patterns, something like thegrey rocks, only the pattern was different. It was getting late, andthe air was indistinct, but it looked from where I was standingsomething like two great figures of people lying on the grass. And Iwent on, and at last I found a certain wood, which is too secret tobe described, and nobody knows of the passage into it, which I foundout in a very curious manner, by seeing some little animal run intothe wood through it. So I went after the animal by a very narrow darkway, under thorns and bushes, and it was almost dark when I came to akind of open place in the middle. And there I saw the most wonderfulsight I have ever seen, but it was only for a minute, as I ran awaydirectly, and crept out of the wood by the passage I had come by, andran and ran as fast as ever I could, because I was afraid, what I hadseen was so wonderful and so strange and beautiful. But I wanted toget home and think of it, and I did not know what might not happen ifI stayed by the wood. I was hot all over and trembling, and my heartwas beating, and strange cries that I could not help came from me asI ran from the wood. I was glad that a great white moon came up fromover a round hill and showed me the way, so I went back through themounds and hollows and down the close valley, and up through thethicket over the place of the grey rocks, and so at last I got homeagain. My father was busy in his study, and the servants had not toldabout my not coming home, though they were frightened, and wonderedwhat they ought to do, so I told them I had lost my way, but I didnot let them find out the real way I had been. I went to bed and layawake all through the night, thinking of what I had seen. When I cameout of the narrow way, and it looked all shining, though the air wasdark, it seemed so certain, and all the way home I was quite surethat I had seen it, and I wanted to be alone in my room, and be gladover it all to myself, and shut my eyes and pretend it was there, anddo all the things I would have done if I had not been so afraid. Butwhen I shut my eyes the sight would not come, and I began to thinkabout my adventures all over again, and I remembered how dusky andqueer it was at the end, and I was afraid it must be all a mistake,because it seemed impossible it could happen. It seemed like one ofnurse's tales, which I didn't really believe in, though I wasfrightened at the bottom of the hollow; and the stories she told mewhen I was little came back into my head, and I wondered whether itwas really there what I thought I had seen, or whether any of hertales could have happened a long time ago. It was so queer; I layawake there in my room at the back of the house, and the moon wasshining on the other side towards the river, so the bright light didnot fall upon the wall. And the house was quite still. I had heard myfather come upstairs, and just after the clock struck twelve, andafter the house was still and empty, as if there was nobody alive init. And though it was all dark and indistinct in my room, a paleglimmering kind of light shone in through the white blind, and once Igot up and looked out, and there was a great black shadow of thehouse covering the garden, looking like a prison where men arehanged; and then beyond it was all white; and the wood shone whitewith black gulfs between the trees. It was still and clear, and therewere no clouds on the sky. I wanted to think of what I had seen but Icouldn't, and I began to think of all the tales that nurse had toldme so long ago that I thought I had forgotten, but they all cameback, and mixed up with the thickets and the grey rocks and thehollows in the earth and the secret wood, till I hardly knew what wasnew and what was old, or whether it was not all dreaming. And then Iremembered that hot summer afternoon, so long ago, when nurse left meby myself in the shade, and the white people came out of the waterand out of the wood, and played, and danced, and sang, and I began tofancy that nurse told me about something like it before I saw them,only I couldn't recollect exactly what she told me. Then I wonderedwhether she had been the white lady, as I remembered she was just aswhite and beautiful, and had the same dark eyes and black hair; andsometimes she smiled and looked like the lady had looked, when shewas telling me some of her stories, beginning with 'Once on a time,'or 'In the time of the fairies.' But I thought she couldn't be thelady, as she seemed to have gone a different way into the wood, and Ididn't think the man who came after us could be the other, or Icouldn't have seen that wonderful secret in the secret wood. Ithought of the moon: but it was afterwards when I was in the middleof the wild land, where the earth was made into the shape of greatfigures, and it was all walls, and mysterious hollows, and smoothround mounds, that I saw the great white moon come up over a roundhill. I was wondering about all these things, till at last I gotquite frightened, because I was afraid something had happened to me,and I remembered nurse's tale of the poor girl who went into thehollow pit, and was carried away at last by the black man. I knew Ihad gone into a hollow pit too, and perhaps it was the same, and Ihad done something dreadful. So I did the charm over again, andtouched my eyes and my lips and my hair in a peculiar manner, andsaid the old words from the fairy language, so that I might be sure Ihad not been carried away. I tried again to see the secret wood, andto creep up the passage and see what I had seen there, but somehow Icouldn't, and I kept on thinking of nurse's stories. There was one Iremembered about a young man who once upon a time went hunting, andall the day he and his hounds hunted everywhere, and they crossed therivers and went into all the woods, and went round the marshes, butthey couldn't find anything at all, and they hunted all day till thesun sank down and began to set behind the mountain. And the young manwas angry because he couldn't find anything, and he was going to turnback, when just as the sun touched the mountain, he saw come out of abrake in front of him a beautiful white stag. And he cheered to hishounds, but they whined and would not follow, and he cheered to hishorse, but it shivered and stood stock still, and the young manjumped off the horse and left the hounds and began to follow thewhite stag all alone. And soon it was quite dark, and the sky wasblack, without a single star shining in it, and the stag went awayinto the darkness. And though the man had brought his gun with him henever shot at the stag, because he wanted to catch it, and he wasafraid he would lose it in the night. But he never lost it once,though the sky was so black and the air was so dark, and the stagwent on and on till the young man didn't know a bit where he was. Andthey went through enormous woods where the air was full of whispersand a pale, dead light came out from the rotten trunks that werelying on the ground, and just as the man thought he had lost thestag, he would see it all white and shining in front of him, and hewould run fast to catch it, but the stag always ran faster, so he didnot catch it. And they went through the enormous woods, and they swamacross rivers, and they waded through black marshes where the groundbubbled, and the air was full of will-o'-the-wisps, and the stag fledaway down into rocky narrow valleys, where the air was like the smellof a vault, and the man went after it. And they went over the greatmountains and the man heard the wind come down from the sky, and thestag went on and the man went after. At last the sun rose and theyoung man found he was in a country that he had never seen before; itwas a beautiful valley with a bright stream running through it, and agreat, big round hill in the middle. And the stag went down thevalley, towards the hill, and it seemed to be getting tired and wentslower and slower, and though the man was tired, too, he began to runfaster, and he was sure he would catch the stag at last. But just asthey got to the bottom of the hill, and the man stretched out hishand to catch the stag, it vanished into the earth, and the man beganto cry; he was so sorry that he had lost it after all his longhunting. But as he was crying he saw there was a door in the hill,just in front of him, and he went in, and it was quite dark, but hewent on, as he thought he would find the white stag. And all of asudden it got light, and there was the sky, and the sun shining, andbirds singing in the trees, and there was a beautiful fountain. Andby the fountain a lovely lady was sitting, who was the queen of thefairies, and she told the man that she had changed herself into astag to bring him there because she loved him so much. Then shebrought out a great gold cup, covered with jewels, from her fairypalace, and she offered him wine in the cup to drink. And he drank,and the more he drank the more he longed to drink, because the winewas enchanted. So he kissed the lovely lady, and she became his wife,and he stayed all that day and all that night in the hill where shelived, and when he woke he found he was lying on the ground, close towhere he had seen the stag first, and his horse was there and hishounds were there waiting, and he looked up, and the sun sank behindthe mountain. And he went home and lived a long time, but he wouldnever kiss any other lady because he had kissed the queen of thefairies, and he would never drink common wine any more, because hehad drunk enchanted wine. And sometimes nurse told me tales that shehad heard from her great-grandmother, who was very old, and lived ina cottage on the mountain all alone, and most of these tales wereabout a hill where people used to meet at night long ago, and theyused to play all sorts of strange games and do queer things thatnurse told me of, but I couldn't understand, and now, she said,everybody but her great-grandmother had forgotten all about it, andnobody knew where the hill was, not even her great-grandmother. Butshe told me one very strange story about the hill, and I trembledwhen I remembered it. She said that people always went there insummer, when it was very hot, and they had to dance a good deal. Itwould be all dark at first, and there were trees there, which made itmuch darker, and people would come, one by one, from all directions,by a secret path which nobody else knew, and two persons would keepthe gate, and every one as they came up had to give a very curioussign, which nurse showed me as well as she could, but she said shecouldn't show me properly. And all kinds of people would come; therewould be gentle folks and village folks, and some old people and boysand girls, and quite small children, who sat and watched. And itwould all be dark as they came in, except in one corner where someone was burning something that smelt strong and sweet, and made themlaugh, and there one would see a glaring of coals, and the smokemounting up red. So they would all come in, and when the last hadcome there was no door any more, so that no one else could get in,even if they knew there was anything beyond. And once a gentleman whowas a stranger and had ridden a long way, lost his path at night, andhis horse took him into the very middle of the wild country, whereeverything was upside down, and there were dreadful marshes and greatstones everywhere, and holes underfoot, and the trees looked likegibbet-posts, because they had great black arms that stretched outacross the way. And this strange gentleman was very frightened, andhis horse began to shiver all over, and at last it stopped andwouldn't go any farther, and the gentleman got down and tried to leadthe horse, but it wouldn't move, and it was all covered with a sweat,like death. So the gentleman went on all alone, going farther andfarther into the wild country, till at last he came to a dark place,where he heard shouting and singing and crying, like nothing he hadever heard before. It all sounded quite close to him, but he couldn'tget in, and so he began to call, and while he was calling, somethingcame behind him, and in a minute his mouth and arms and legs were allbound up, and he fell into a swoon. And when he came to himself, hewas lying by the roadside, just where he had first lost his way,under a blasted oak with a black trunk, and his horse was tied besidehim. So he rode on to the town and told the people there what hadhappened, and some of them were amazed; but others knew. So when onceeverybody had come, there was no door at all for anybody else to passin by. And when they were all inside, round in a ring, touching eachother, some one began to sing in the darkness, and some one elsewould make a noise like thunder with a thing they had on purpose, andon still nights people would hear the thundering noise far, far awaybeyond the wild land, and some of them, who thought they knew what itwas, used to make a sign on their breasts when they woke up in theirbeds at dead of night and heard that terrible deep noise, likethunder on the mountains. And the noise and the singing would go onand on for a long time, and the people who were in a ring swayed alittle to and fro; and the song was in an old, old language thatnobody knows now, and the tune was queer. Nurse said hergreat-grandmother had known some one who remembered a little of it,when she was quite a little girl, and nurse tried to sing some of itto me, and it was so strange a tune that I turned all cold and myflesh crept as if I had put my hand on something dead. Sometimes itwas a man that sang and sometimes it was a woman, and sometimes theone who sang it did it so well that two or three of the people whowere there fell to the ground shrieking and tearing with their hands.The singing went on, and the people in the ring kept swaying to andfro for a long time, and at last the moon would rise over a placethey called the Tole Deol, and came up and showed them swinging andswaying from side to side, with the sweet thick smoke curling up fromthe burning coals, and floating in circles all around them. Then theyhad their supper. A boy and a girl brought it to them; the boycarried a great cup of wine, and the girl carried a cake of bread,and they passed the bread and the wine round and round, but theytasted quite different from common bread and common wine, and changedeverybody that tasted them. Then they all rose up and danced, andsecret things were brought out of some hiding place, and they playedextraordinary games, and danced round and round and round in themoonlight, and sometimes people would suddenly disappear and never beheard of afterwards, and nobody knew what had happened to them. Andthey drank more of that curious wine, and they made images andworshipped them, and nurse showed me how the images were made one daywhen we were out for a walk, and we passed by a place where there wasa lot of wet clay. So nurse asked me if I would like to know whatthose things were like that they made on the hill, and I said yes.Then she asked me if I would promise never to tell a living soul aword about it, and if I did I was to be thrown into the black pitwith the dead people, and I said I wouldn't tell anybody, and shesaid the same thing again and again, and I promised. So she took mywooden spade and dug a big lump of clay and put it in my tin bucket,and told me to say if any one met us that I was going to make pieswhen I went home. Then we went on a little way till we came to alittle brake growing right down into the road, and nurse stopped, andlooked up the road and down it, and then peeped through the hedgeinto the field on the other side, and then she said, "Quick!" and weran into the brake, and crept in and out among the bushes till we hadgone a good way from the road. Then we sat down under a bush, and Iwanted so much to know what nurse was going to make with the clay,but before she would begin she made me promise again not to say aword about it, and she went again and peeped through the bushes onevery side, though the lane was so small and deep that hardly anybodyever went there. So we sat down, and nurse took the clay out of thebucket, and began to knead it with her hands, and do queer thingswith it, and turn it about. And she hid it under a big dock-leaf fora minute or two and then she brought it out again, and then she stoodup and sat down, and walked round the clay in a peculiar manner, andall the time she was softly singing a sort of rhyme, and her face gotvery red. Then she sat down again, and took the clay in her hands andbegan to shape it into a doll, but not like the dolls I have at home,and she made the queerest doll I had ever seen, all out of the wetclay, and hid it under a bush to get dry and hard, and all the timeshe was making it she was singing these rhymes to herself, and herface got redder and redder. So we left the doll there, hidden away inthe bushes where nobody would ever find it. And a few days later wewent the same walk, and when we came to that narrow, dark part of thelane where the brake runs down to the bank, nurse made me promise allover again, and she looked about, just as she had done before, and wecrept into the bushes till we got to the green place where the littleclay man was hidden. I remember it all so well, though I was onlyeight, and it is eight years ago now as I am writing it down, but thesky was a deep violet blue, and in the middle of the brake where wewere sitting there was a great elder tree covered with blossoms, andon the other side there was a clump of meadowsweet, and when I thinkof that day the smell of the meadowsweet and elder blossom seems tofill the room, and if I shut my eyes I can see the glaring blue sky,with little clouds very white floating across it, and nurse who wentaway long ago sitting opposite me and looking like the beautifulwhite lady in the wood. So we sat down and nurse took out the claydoll from the secret place where she had hidden it, and she said wemust 'pay our respects,' and she would show me what to do, and I mustwatch her all the time. So she did all sorts of queer things with thelittle clay man, and I noticed she was all streaming withperspiration, though we had walked so slowly, and then she told me to'pay my respects,' and I did everything she did because I liked her,and it was such an odd game. And she said that if one loved verymuch, the clay man was very good, if one did certain things with it,and if one hated very much, it was just as good, only one had to dodifferent things, and we played with it a long time, and pretendedall sorts of things. Nurse said her great-grandmother had told herall about these images, but what we did was no harm at all, only agame. But she told me a story about these images that frightened mevery much, and that was what I remembered that night when I was lyingawake in my room in the pale, empty darkness, thinking of what I hadseen and the secret wood. Nurse said there was once a young lady ofthe high gentry, who lived in a great castle. And she was sobeautiful that all the gentlemen wanted to marry her, because she wasthe loveliest lady that anybody had ever seen, and she was kind toeverybody, and everybody thought she was very good. But though shewas polite to all the gentlemen who wished to marry her, she put themoff, and said she couldn't make up her mind, and she wasn't sure shewanted to marry anybody at all. And her father, who was a very greatlord, was angry, though he was so fond of her, and he asked her whyshe wouldn't choose a bachelor out of all the handsome young men whocame to the castle. But she only said she didn't love any of themvery much, and she must wait, and if they pestered her, she said shewould go and be a nun in a nunnery. So all the gentlemen said theywould go away and wait for a year and a day, and when a year and aday were gone, they would come back again and ask her to say whichone she would marry. So the day was appointed and they all went away;and the lady had promised that in a year and a day it would be herwedding day with one of them. But the truth was, that she was thequeen of the people who danced on the hill on summer nights, and onthe proper nights she would lock the door of her room, and she andher maid would steal out of the castle by a secret passage that onlythey knew of, and go away up to the hill in the wild land. And sheknew more of the secret things than any one else, and more than anyone knew before or after, because she would not tell anybody the mostsecret secrets. She knew how to do all the awful things, how todestroy young men, and how to put a curse on people, and other thingsthat I could not understand. And her real name was the Lady Avelin,but the dancing people called her Cassap, which meant somebody verywise, in the old language. And she was whiter than any of them andtaller, and her eyes shone in the dark like burning rubies; and shecould sing songs that none of the others could sing, and when shesang they all fell down on their faces and worshipped her. And shecould do what they called shib-show, which was a very wonderfulenchantment. She would tell the great lord, her father, that shewanted to go into the woods to gather flowers, so he let her go, andshe and her maid went into the woods where nobody came, and the maidwould keep watch. Then the lady would lie down under the trees andbegin to sing a particular song, and she stretched out her arms, andfrom every part of the wood great serpents would come, hissing andgliding in and out among the trees, and shooting out their forkedtongues as they crawled up to the lady. And they all came to her, andtwisted round her, round her body, and her arms, and her neck, tillshe was covered with writhing serpents, and there was only her headto be seen. And she whispered to them, and she sang to them, and theywrithed round and round, faster and faster, till she told them to go.And they all went away directly, back to their holes, and on thelady's breast there would be a most curious, beautiful stone, shapedsomething like an egg, and coloured dark blue and yellow, and red,and green, marked like a serpent's scales. It was called a glamestone, and with it one could do all sorts of wonderful things, andnurse said her great-grandmother had seen a glame stone with her owneyes, and it was for all the world shiny and scaly like a snake. Andthe lady could do a lot of other things as well, but she was quitefixed that she would not be married. And there were a great manygentlemen who wanted to marry her, but there were five of them whowere chief, and their names were Sir Simon, Sir John, Sir Oliver, SirRichard, and Sir Rowland. All the others believed she spoke thetruth, and that she would choose one of them to be her man when ayear and a day was done; it was only Sir Simon, who was very crafty,who thought she was deceiving them all, and he vowed he would watchand try if he could find out anything. And though he was very wise hewas very young, and he had a smooth, soft face like a girl's, and hepretended, as the rest did, that he would not come to the castle fora year and a day, and he said he was going away beyond the sea toforeign parts. But he really only went a very little way, and cameback dressed like a servant girl, and so he got a place in the castleto wash the dishes. And he waited and watched, and he listened andsaid nothing, and he hid in dark places, and woke up at night andlooked out, and he heard things and he saw things that he thoughtwere very strange. And he was so sly that he told the girl thatwaited on the lady that he was really a young man, and that he haddressed up as a girl because he loved her so very much and wanted tobe in the same house with her, and the girl was so pleased that shetold him many things, and he was more than ever certain that the LadyAvelin was deceiving him and the others. And he was so clever, andtold the servant so many lies, that one night he managed to hide inthe Lady Avelin's room behind the curtains. And he stayed quite stilland never moved, and at last the lady came. And she bent down underthe bed, and raised up a stone, and there was a hollow placeunderneath, and out of it she took a waxen image, just like the clayone that I and nurse had made in the brake. And all the time her eyeswere burning like rubies. And she took the little wax doll up in herarms and held it to her breast, and she whispered and she murmured,and she took it up and she laid it down again, and she held it high,and she held it low, and she laid it down again. And she said, "Happyis he that begat the bishop, that ordered the clerk, that married theman, that had the wife, that fashioned the hive, that harboured thebee, that gathered the wax that my own true love was made of.' Andshe brought out of an aumbry a great golden bowl, and she brought outof a closet a great jar of wine, and she poured some of the wine intothe bowl, and she laid her mannikin very gently in the wine, andwashed it in the wine all over. Then she went to a cupboard and tooka small round cake and laid it on the image's mouth, and then shebore it softly and covered it up. And Sir Simon, who was watching allthe time, though he was terribly frightened, saw the lady bend downand stretch out her arms and whisper and sing, and then Sir Simon sawbeside her a handsome young man, who kissed her on the lips. And theydrank wine out of the golden bowl together, and they ate the caketogether. But when the sun rose there was only the little wax doll,and the lady hid it again under the bed in the hollow place. So SirSimon knew quite well what the lady was, and he waited and hewatched, till the time she had said was nearly over, and in a weekthe year and a day would be done. And one night, when he was watchingbehind the curtains in her room, he saw her making more wax dolls.And she made five, and hid them away. And the next night she took oneout, and held it up, and filled the golden bowl with water, and tookthe doll by the neck and held it under the water. Then shesaid—

Sir Dickon, Sir Dickon, your day is done,
You shall be drowned in the water wan.

And the next day news came to the castle that Sir Richard had beendrowned at the ford. And at night she took another doll and tied aviolet cord round its neck and hung it up on a nail. Then shesaid—

Sir Rowland, your life has ended its span,
High on a tree I see you hang.

And the next day news came to the castle that Sir Rowland had beenhanged by robbers in the wood. And at night she took another doll,and drove her bodkin right into its heart. Then she said—

Sir Noll, Sir Noll, so cease your life,
Your heart is piercèd with the knife.

And the next day news came to the castle that Sir Oliver hadfought in a tavern, and a stranger had stabbed him to the heart. Andat night she took another doll, and held it to a fire of charcoaltill it was melted. Then she said—

Sir John, return, and turn to clay,
In fire of fever you waste away.

And the next day news came to the castle that Sir John had died ina burning fever. So then Sir Simon went out of the castle and mountedhis horse and rode away to the bishop and told him everything. Andthe bishop sent his men, and they took the Lady Avelin, andeverything she had done was found out. So on the day after the yearand a day, when she was to have been married, they carried herthrough the town in her smock, and they tied her to a great stake inthe market-place, and burned her alive before the bishop with her waximage hung round her neck. And people said the wax man screamed inthe burning of the flames. And I thought of this story again andagain as I was lying awake in my bed, and I seemed to see the LadyAvelin in the market-place, with the yellow flames eating up herbeautiful white body. And I thought of it so much that I seemed toget into the story myself, and I fancied I was the lady, and thatthey were coming to take me to be burnt with fire, with all thepeople in the town looking at me. And I wondered whether she cared,after all the strange things she had done, and whether it hurt verymuch to be burned at the stake. I tried again and again to forgetnurse's stories, and to remember the secret I had seen thatafternoon, and what was in the secret wood, but I could only see thedark and a glimmering in the dark, and then it went away, and I onlysaw myself running, and then a great moon came up white over a darkround hill. Then all the old stories came back again, and the queerrhymes that nurse used to sing to me; and there was one beginning'Halsy cumsy Helen musty,' that she used to sing very softly when shewanted me to go to sleep. And I began to sing it to myself inside ofmy head, and I went to sleep.

The next morning I was very tired and sleepy, and could hardly domy lessons, and I was very glad when they were over and I had had mydinner, as I wanted to go out and be alone. It was a warm day, and Iwent to a nice turfy hill by the river, and sat down on my mother'sold shawl that I had brought with me on purpose. The sky was grey,like the day before, but there was a kind of white gleam behind it,and from where I was sitting I could look down on the town, and itwas all still and quiet and white, like a picture. I remembered thatit was on that hill that nurse taught me to play an old game called'Troy Town,' in which one had to dance, and wind in and out on apattern in the grass, and then when one had danced and turned longenough the other person asks you questions, and you can't helpanswering whether you want to or not, and whatever you are told to doyou feel you have to do it. Nurse said there used to be a lot ofgames like that that some people knew of, and there was one by whichpeople could be turned into anything you liked and an old man hergreat-grandmother had seen had known a girl who had been turned intoa large snake. And there was another very ancient game of dancing andwinding and turning, by which you could take a person out of himselfand hide him away as long as you liked, and his body went walkingabout quite empty, without any sense in it. But I came to that hillbecause I wanted to think of what had happened the day before, and ofthe secret of the wood. From the place where I was sitting I couldsee beyond the town, into the opening I had found, where a littlebrook had led me into an unknown country. And I pretended I wasfollowing the brook over again, and I went all the way in my mind,and at last I found the wood, and crept into it under the bushes, andthen in the dusk I saw something that made me feel as if I werefilled with fire, as if I wanted to dance and sing and fly up intothe air, because I was changed and wonderful. But what I saw was notchanged at all, and had not grown old, and I wondered again and againhow such things could happen, and whether nurse's stories were reallytrue, because in the daytime in the open air everything seemed quitedifferent from what it was at night, when I was frightened, andthought I was to be burned alive. I once told my father one of herlittle tales, which was about a ghost, and asked him if it was true,and he told me it was not true at all, and that only common, ignorantpeople believed in such rubbish. He was very angry with nurse fortelling me the story, and scolded her, and after that I promised herI would never whisper a word of what she told me, and if I did Ishould be bitten by the great black snake that lived in the pool inthe wood. And all alone on the hill I wondered what was true. I hadseen something very amazing and very lovely, and I knew a story, andif I had really seen it, and not made it up out of the dark, and theblack bough, and the bright shining that was mounting up to the skyfrom over the great round hill, but had really seen it in truth, thenthere were all kinds of wonderful and lovely and terrible things tothink of, so I longed and trembled, and I burned and got cold. And Ilooked down on the town, so quiet and still, like a little whitepicture, and I thought over and over if it could be true. I was along time before I could make up my mind to anything; there was sucha strange fluttering at my heart that seemed to whisper to me all thetime that I had not made it up out of my head, and yet it seemedquite impossible, and I knew my father and everybody would say it wasdreadful rubbish. I never dreamed of telling him or anybody else aword about it, because I knew it would be of no use, and I shouldonly get laughed at or scolded, so for a long time I was very quiet,and went about thinking and wondering; and at night I used to dreamof amazing things, and sometimes I woke up in the early morning andheld out my arms with a cry. And I was frightened, too, because therewere dangers, and some awful thing would happen to me, unless I tookgreat care, if the story were true. These old tales were always in myhead, night and morning, and I went over them and told them to myselfover and over again, and went for walks in the places where nurse hadtold them to me; and when I sat in the nursery by the fire in theevenings I used to fancy nurse was sitting in the other chair, andtelling me some wonderful story in a low voice, for fear anybodyshould be listening. But she used to like best to tell me aboutthings when we were right out in the country, far from the house,because she said she was telling me such secrets, and walls haveears. And if it was something more than ever secret, we had to hidein brakes or woods; and I used to think it was such fun creepingalong a hedge, and going very softly, and then we would get behindthe bushes or run into the wood all of a sudden, when we were surethat none was watching us; so we knew that we had our secrets quiteall to ourselves, and nobody else at all knew anything about them.Now and then, when we had hidden ourselves as I have described, sheused to show me all sorts of odd things. One day, I remember, we werein a hazel brake, overlooking the brook, and we were so snug andwarm, as though it was April; the sun was quite hot, and the leaveswere just coming out. Nurse said she would show me something funnythat would make me laugh, and then she showed me, as she said, howone could turn a whole house upside down, without anybody being ableto find out, and the pots and pans would jump about, and the chinawould be broken, and the chairs would tumble over of themselves. Itried it one day in the kitchen, and I found I could do it quitewell, and a whole row of plates on the dresser fell off it, andcook's little work-table tilted up and turned right over 'before hereyes,' as she said, but she was so frightened and turned so whitethat I didn't do it again, as I liked her. And afterwards, in thehazel copse, when she had shown me how to make things tumble about,she showed me how to make rapping noises, and I learnt how to dothat, too. Then she taught me rhymes to say on certain occasions, andpeculiar marks to make on other occasions, and other things that hergreat-grandmother had taught her when she was a little girl herself.And these were all the things I was thinking about in those daysafter the strange walk when I thought I had seen a great secret, andI wished nurse were there for me to ask her about it, but she hadgone away more than two years before, and nobody seemed to know whathad become of her, or where she had gone. But I shall always rememberthose days if I live to be quite old, because all the time I felt sostrange, wondering and doubting, and feeling quite sure at one time,and making up my mind, and then I would feel quite sure that suchthings couldn't happen really, and it began all over again. But Itook great care not to do certain things that might be verydangerous. So I waited and wondered for a long time, and though I wasnot sure at all, I never dared to try to find out. But one day Ibecame sure that all that nurse said was quite true, and I was allalone when I found it out. I trembled all over with joy and terror,and as fast as I could I ran into one of the old brakes where we usedto go—it was the one by the lane, where nurse made the littleclay man—and I ran into it, and I crept into it; and when Icame to the place where the elder was, I covered up my face with myhands and lay down flat on the grass, and I stayed there for twohours without moving, whispering to myself delicious, terriblethings, and saying some words over and over again. It was all trueand wonderful and splendid, and when I remembered the story I knewand thought of what I had really seen, I got hot and I got cold, andthe air seemed full of scent, and flowers, and singing. And first Iwanted to make a little clay man, like the one nurse had made so longago, and I had to invent plans and stratagems, and to look about, andto think of things beforehand, because nobody must dream of anythingthat I was doing or going to do, and I was too old to carry clayabout in a tin bucket. At last I thought of a plan, and I brought thewet clay to the brake, and did everything that nurse had done, only Imade a much finer image than the one she had made; and when it wasfinished I did everything that I could imagine and much more than shedid, because it was the likeness of something far better. And a fewdays later, when I had done my lessons early, I went for the secondtime by the way of the little brook that had led me into a strangecountry. And I followed the brook, and went through the bushes, andbeneath the low branches of trees, and up thorny thickets on thehill, and by dark woods full of creeping thorns, a long, long way.Then I crept through the dark tunnel where the brook had been and theground was stony, till at last I came to the thicket that climbed upthe hill, and though the leaves were coming out upon the trees,everything looked almost as black as it was on the first day that Iwent there. And the thicket was just the same, and I went up slowlytill I came out on the big bare hill, and began to walk among thewonderful rocks. I saw the terrible voor again on everything, forthough the sky was brighter, the ring of wild hills all around wasstill dark, and the hanging woods looked dark and dreadful, and thestrange rocks were as grey as ever; and when I looked down on themfrom the great mound, sitting on the stone, I saw all their amazingcircles and rounds within rounds, and I had to sit quite still andwatch them as they began to turn about me, and each stone danced inits place, and they seemed to go round and round in a great whirl, asif one were in the middle of all the stars and heard them rushingthrough the air. So I went down among the rocks to dance with themand to sing extraordinary songs; and I went down through the otherthicket, and drank from the bright stream in the close and secretvalley, putting my lips down to the bubbling water; and then I wenton till I came to the deep, brimming well among the glittering moss,and I sat down. I looked before me into the secret darkness of thevalley, and behind me was the great high wall of grass, and allaround me there were the hanging woods that made the valley such asecret place. I knew there was nobody here at all besides myself, andthat no one could see me. So I took off my boots and stockings, andlet my feet down into the water, saying the words that I knew. And itwas not cold at all, as I expected, but warm and very pleasant, andwhen my feet were in it I felt as if they were in silk, or as if thenymph were kissing them. So when I had done, I said the other wordsand made the signs, and then I dried my feet with a towel I hadbrought on purpose, and put on my stockings and boots. Then I climbedup the steep wall, and went into the place where there are thehollows, and the two beautiful mounds, and the round ridges of land,and all the strange shapes. I did not go down into the hollow thistime, but I turned at the end, and made out the figures quiteplainly, as it was lighter, and I had remembered the story I hadquite forgotten before, and in the story the two figures are calledAdam and Eve, and only those who know the story understand what theymean. So I went on and on till I came to the secret wood which mustnot be described, and I crept into it by the way I had found. Andwhen I had gone about halfway I stopped, and turned round, and gotready, and I bound the handkerchief tightly round my eyes, and madequite sure that I could not see at all, not a twig, nor the end of aleaf, nor the light of the sky, as it was an old red silkhandkerchief with large yellow spots, that went round twice andcovered my eyes, so that I could see nothing. Then I began to go on,step by step, very slowly. My heart beat faster and faster, andsomething rose in my throat that choked me and made me want to cryout, but I shut my lips, and went on. Boughs caught in my hair as Iwent, and great thorns tore me; but I went on to the end of the path.Then I stopped, and held out my arms and bowed, and I went round thefirst time, feeling with my hands, and there was nothing. I wentround the second time, feeling with my hands, and there was nothing.Then I went round the third time, feeling with my hands, and thestory was all true, and I wished that the years were gone by, andthat I had not so long a time to wait before I was happy for ever andever.

Nurse must have been a prophet like those we read of in the Bible.Everything that she said began to come true, and since then otherthings that she told me of have happened. That was how I came to knowthat her stories were true and that I had not made up the secretmyself out of my own head. But there was another thing that happenedthat day. I went a second time to the secret place. It was at thedeep brimming well, and when I was standing on the moss I bent overand looked in, and then I knew who the white lady was that I had seencome out of the water in the wood long ago when I was quite little.And I trembled all over, because that told me other things. Then Iremembered how sometime after I had seen the white people in thewood, nurse asked me more about them, and I told her all over again,and she listened, and said nothing for a long, long time, and at lastshe said, 'You will see her again.' So I understood what had happenedand what was to happen. And I understood about the nymphs; how Imight meet them in all kinds of places, and they would always helpme, and I must always look for them, and find them in all sorts ofstrange shapes and appearances. And without the nymphs I could neverhave found the secret, and without them none of the other thingscould happen. Nurse had told me all about them long ago, but shecalled them by another name, and I did not know what she meant, orwhat her tales of them were about, only that they were very queer.And there were two kinds, the bright and the dark, and both were verylovely and very wonderful, and some people saw only one kind, andsome only the other, but some saw them both. But usually the darkappeared first, and the bright ones came afterwards, and there wereextraordinary tales about them. It was a day or two after I had comehome from the secret place that I first really knew the nymphs. Nursehad shown me how to call them, and I had tried, but I did not knowwhat she meant, and so I thought it was all nonsense. But I made upmy mind I would try again, so I went to the wood where the pool was,where I saw the white people, and I tried again. The dark nymph,Alanna, came, and she turned the pool of water into a pool of fire. .. .

EPILOGUE

'That's a very queer story,' said Cotgrave, handing back the greenbook to the recluse, Ambrose. 'I see the drift of a good deal, butthere are many things that I do not grasp at all. On the last page,for example, what does she mean by "nymphs"?'

'Well, I think there are references throughout the manuscript tocertain "processes" which have been handed down by tradition from ageto age. Some of these processes are just beginning to come within thepurview of science, which has arrived at them—or rather at thesteps which lead to them—by quite different paths. I haveinterpreted the reference to "nymphs" as a reference to one of theseprocesses.'

'And you believe that there are such things?'

'Oh, I think so. Yes, I believe I could give you convincingevidence on that point. I am afraid you have neglected the study ofalchemy? It is a pity, for the symbolism, at all events, is verybeautiful, and moreover if you were acquainted with certain books onthe subject, I could recall to your mind phrases which might explaina good deal in the manuscript that you have been reading.'

'Yes; but I want to know whether you seriously think that there isany foundation of fact beneath these fancies. Is it not all adepartment of poetry; a curious dream with which man has indulgedhimself?'

'I can only say that it is no doubt better for the great mass ofpeople to dismiss it all as a dream. But if you ask my veritablebelief—that goes quite the other way. No; I should not saybelief, but rather knowledge. I may tell you that I have known casesin which men have stumbled quite by accident on certain of these"processes," and have been astonished by wholly unexpected results.In the cases I am thinking of there could have been no possibility of"suggestion" or sub-conscious action of any kind. One might as wellsuppose a schoolboy "suggesting" the existence of Æschylus tohimself, while he plods mechanically through the declensions.

'But you have noticed the obscurity,' Ambrose went on, 'and inthis particular case it must have been dictated by instinct, sincethe writer never thought that her manuscripts would fall into otherhands. But the practice is universal, and for most excellent reasons.Powerful and sovereign medicines, which are, of necessity, virulentpoisons also, are kept in a locked cabinet. The child may find thekey by chance, and drink herself dead; but in most cases the searchis educational, and the phials contain precious elixirs for him whohas patiently fashioned the key for himself.'

'You do not care to go into details?'

'No, frankly, I do not. No, you must remain unconvinced. But yousaw how the manuscript illustrates the talk we had last week?'

'Is this girl still alive?'

'No. I was one of those who found her. I knew the father well; hewas a lawyer, and had always left her very much to herself. Hethought of nothing but deeds and leases, and the news came to him asan awful surprise. She was missing one morning; I suppose it wasabout a year after she had written what you have read. The servantswere called, and they told things, and put the only naturalinterpretation on them—a perfectly erroneous one.

'They discovered that green book somewhere in her room, and Ifound her in the place that she described with so much dread, lyingon the ground before the image.'

'It was an image?'

'Yes, it was hidden by the thorns and the thick undergrowth thathad surrounded it. It was a wild, lonely country; but you know whatit was like by her description, though of course you will understandthat the colours have been heightened. A child's imagination alwaysmakes the heights higher and the depths deeper than they really are;and she had, unfortunately for herself, something more thanimagination. One might say, perhaps, that the picture in her mindwhich she succeeded in a measure in putting into words, was the sceneas it would have appeared to an imaginative artist. But it is astrange, desolate land.'

'And she was dead?'

'Yes. She had poisoned herself—in time. No; there was not aword to be said against her in the ordinary sense. You may recollecta story I told you the other night about a lady who saw her child'sfingers crushed by a window?'

'And what was this statue?'

'Well, it was of Roman workmanship, of a stone that with thecenturies had not blackened, but had become white and luminous. Thethicket had grown up about it and concealed it, and in the MiddleAges the followers of a very old tradition had known how to use itfor their own purposes. In fact it had been incorporated into themonstrous mythology of the Sabbath. You will have noted that those towhom a sight of that shining whiteness had been vouchsafed by chance,or rather, perhaps, by apparent chance, were required to blindfoldthemselves on their second approach. That is very significant.'

'And is it there still?'

'I sent for tools, and we hammered it into dust andfragments.'

'The persistence of tradition never surprises me,' Ambrose went onafter a pause. 'I could name many an English parish where suchtraditions as that girl had listened to in her childhood are stillexistent in occult but unabated vigour. No, for me, it is the "story"not the "sequel", which is strange and awful, for I have alwaysbelieved that wonder is of the soul.'

THE END

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