THE WILLOW WEAVER
AND SEVEN OTHER TALES

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A LIST OF THE STORIES OF
MICHAEL WOOD

THE HOUSE OF PEACE

THE DOUBLE ROAD (shortly)

Published by Longmans, Green & Co.

THE SAINT AND THE OUTLAW

• 1. The Saint and the Outlaw
• 2. The Prince and the Water Gates
• 3. Lox
• 4. The Dream Garden
• 5. The Way of the Herb Gatherer
• 6. The Land of Marvellous Night
• 7. The Fool and the Folk of Peace
• 8. The Sinner’s Requiem
• 9. The Preacher
• 10. The Teller of Drolls
• 11. The Tumultuous Shadows
• 12. The Guardian of the City
• 13. The House of Hate

THE KING PREDESTINATE

• The King Predestinate
• The Alchemist
• The Worshipper
• The Builder

Published by The Theosophical Publishing
Society.

THE RIDDLE Published by Rebman Ltd.

THE FIRE OF THE ROSE

THE GARMENT OF GOD

THE SECRET OF THE CHILD

Published by The St. Mâhel Workshop.

THE
WILLOW WEAVER
AND SEVEN OTHER TALES
BY
MICHAEL WOOD

NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & CO.
MCMXVI

PREFACE

“Dost thou feel the soil of thy soul stirred by tender thoughts? Disturb it not with speech but let it work in quietness and secrecy.”

These few stories of Michael Wood are here reprinted with the consent but not at the suggestion of the author. To those who understand, the appeal is diverse but unmistakable; the delicate description of our Mother Earth, the sense of the invisible, the value of the things that count, the scorn of a good deal that is conventional, ordinary, and admitted, are here writ plain for those, who, in the French phrase, have the seeing ear and the hearing eye. At a time when much that is ingrained in us is thrown into a crucible of fire, and elemental doubts and certainties have taken its place, such attempts to pierce through veils may be welcomed, and with a little book a little appeal is made.

If justification were further needed it is twofold. First, the stories do not by any means stand alone; and half a dozen names might be quoted of writers who, to-day, in the short story, persistently turn aside to listen to the obstinate questionings which will not, for all our din, be stilled; but secondly, the Editor, to whom the privilege of collecting these stories has been entrusted, has had for some time the rare experience of trying them with the living voice on audiences large and small. The response has never in any case been doubtful, though it might be difficult or impertinent to analyse such a lifting of conventional veils. Partly in the hope of passing on an experience like this, and partly with the wish that Michael Wood’s other published work might be more widely known, the Editor commends to other story-tellers these diamonds from a mystic mine.

Thanks are given to the Manager of the Theosophical Review for permission to reprint the stories in this volume.

September 1915.

CONTENTS

THE WILLOW WEAVER

“I shall give you twenty-four hours to vanish in, Campion,” said the elder and superior to the younger and inferior. “I can’t do more for you than that. Let me tell you very few men in my position would do as much.”

He held his finger up impressively.

“It is for the sake of your father that I do this. You ought to be grateful. Twenty-four hours in which to vanish! Of course you must carefully choose the method of vanishing. Under the circumstances I know the way I should take were I in your shoes, but I hesitate to advise you to take it.”

The last sentence was in the man’s mind, not on his tongue; it produced the most effect because the whole gist of his speech was contained in it, and it was the point about which he was (half unconsciously) anxious. A respectable citizen can hardly suggest to a lad fifteen years his junior that he shall take his own life; it would be difficult, though rather easier, to say to a man of equal age, “Under your circumstances I should blow my brains out”—and Campion was so young. It might become known, too, that such advice had been given; then people would question the adviser’s motives, and what would become of that valuable business asset his respectability; he had foolishly risked it a little already, but that was not known to people whose opinion mattered. It would take wing with the soul of the young man, and his income might even suffer in consequence. Besides he would not like to remember he had advised suicide as a course of action; of course it did not matter if he only thought how conveniently it might smooth the state of affairs.

There were reasons why he did not want this young man, the only child of a very poor and respectable widow, to stand in the dock and have all the circumstances which led to his standing there sifted publicly by a painstaking gentleman intent on obtaining for his client if not acquittal at any rate as light a sentence as possible. The young sinner’s immediate superior was not his own master; his employer was uncompromising and old fashioned in his views. He was a man who practised no form of dishonesty or immorality that might not be decently practised by people of honest and moral repute. He would be hard on Ralph Campion on general business principles, but he would be much harder on one whose years and standing should be a guarantee for his good behaviour and influence over others if the conduct of such an one did not stand the test of public scrutiny. And the personal element would come in, for this man was not only the employer of Ralph Campion’s superior but also his father-in-law, and there was his wife’s attitude to be remembered besides that of her father; all this might affect his reputation, his business prospects, and his domestic life very seriously. He felt kindly to Ralph Campion. There was the whole point. The affair began with the kindly impulse of a rather coarse man of the world who had “married well” from his point of view and prospered socially and financially by so doing; prosperous himself, he saw no prosperity of any type other than that which he pursued and had pursued since he was Campion’s age. Therefore he was kindly according to his own lights. His moral code had nothing to do with his inner convictions; he had no convictions as to the nature of righteousness. His morality was to “get on,” and it was a tremendous bulwark against obvious criminality. His twelve-year-old son was “backward and delicate,” to quote the scholastic advertisements; he sent him to Ralph Campion’s father for tuition because the little vicarage stood in a bracing air. He liked and vaguely honoured his boy’s tutor—irrationally indeed, for he had certainly not “got on” from the standpoint of the financier. When the man died he obtained for his son, young Campion, that position of trust which he had betrayed. The boy was then nineteen; it was three years ago. The patron did more; still moved by kindliness he took a great deal of notice of his young subordinate. He liked the lad; he confided in him to some extent, increasingly so when he found him to be rather silent; he liked his refinement, at which he laughed—liking it despite his laughter, as coarse people sometimes do like a quality they do not possess. He gave him worldly precepts whereby he might in the future prosper in business. He chaffed him gaily concerning the young ladies of the neighbourhood, pointing out matrimonial prizes which he might have some chance of winning. He showed him a side of life he would probably have passed by unheeded; in so doing (here was the crux) he showed him a side of his own life that was not generally known. His protégé became in some respects his tool, in some his victim. He found out that betrayal of trust before others did so because he knew which man to suspect, because he knew the circumstances that might cause him to be specially tempted. The story was rather vulgar—sordid—common. From coarse kindliness to selfishness, from selfishness by way of fear to that which was in thought—murder. But yet he liked the boy, and he was sorry for him.

“You mustn’t suppose I think you a blackguard, Ralph,” he said. “In my private capacity, not as your business head, you know, we’re as good friends as ever, my boy. I know how things go, bless your life! I know how one gets let in for what one never meant to do at the start. That’s one pull a man has who isn’t always all that I suppose he ought to be. He knows from his own experience that whatever he may do he has really heaps of good points; and he applies that reasoning to other people when they don’t go quite straight, you know. But if you’re here when Mr. Warrener comes back I shall have you arrested. I must. I don’t know this now, you understand.”

The young man drew lines in the ashes of the hearth with a small brass poker. He did not look in the least the sort of person from whom one would expect a criminal to be made; he had what some people would call a “nice face”—comely to look upon, refined, rather sensitive, grave; by no means weak nor yet unintellectual. He looked as though he could think; he looked as though he could love; and he looked as though he could be ashamed of himself and admit the fact both to himself and to other people. These are good signs. He was as white as a sheet, and for the moment he seemed to be stunned rather than repentant.

“If,” he said slowly, speaking quietly and unemotionally, “if I do not vanish, but stay here and pay the penalty—I’ve behaved very badly, and I’m willing to pay it—will you let bygones be bygones—afterwards?”

“Bless my soul, Ralph Campion, you must be a raving ass! It is the ‘penalty’ as you call it, that counts. It is not the thing in itself so much. I don’t for a moment suppose you to be much worse than most other young fellows. I should think you’re better than most.”

“I hoped when you’d paid a debt you were given a receipt, and there was an end of the matter.”

“My good fellow! You’re old enough and you’ve seen enough to know that things aren’t done that way in this world. I say I don’t think you in the least a worse, or perhaps a more dishonest man than I am myself; not the least! But—excuse my bluntness—it’s the prison that sticks, it’s not the sin.”

The young man gave a little start and shiver; the other’s bluntness had suddenly brought the whole position, and its future developments, home to him. It was the difference between theoretic and practical knowledge; his white face grew green-white, his hands became limp, and he laid the poker down. These two people sat in the superior’s country house on the outskirts of a big smoky town. Young Campion was asked there as a guest in order that his host might tell him he knew him to be a criminal. The boy—for he was little more than a boy—went there suffering qualms of conscience bred of gratitude. He knew his host had not quite the influence on his life that—let us say—Campion’s father would have wished to have, but he did not think of excusing his own behaviour on that account. He knew he had been, and was, doing wrong; it worried him, and he was ashamed of accepting the kindness which led his superior to ask him to stay with him from Saturday till Sunday evening. “My wife’s away, staying with her mother,” he said to Ralph Campion. “I’m alone. You’re looking out of sorts. You’d better come down to me this afternoon; besides, I’ve something to say to you quietly.”

So on Sunday afternoon when Campion was feeling particularly ashamed of himself and very unhappy and perplexed, he said, quietly, what he had to say, and thereby gave his unsuspecting guest a nervous shock which some people may think to be accountable for what followed. That is a matter of opinion, and “thought is free.” As aforesaid, there were reasons, serious reasons more important than the life, death, happiness, or pain of young Ralph Campion, why his ill-doing should not be found out till he was dead and incapable of speech.

It was a damp November day; the land was vivid brown and green—green fields, wet brown earth, brown stubble, brown rushes by a little bluish-brown canal, brown-green boughs with bright brown leaves clinging to them here and there. There had been much rain, the earth was sodden and reeking; there were black, purplish-grey clouds, shot with dull green in the East, and a pale silver-yellow sky in the West. It was early afternoon; the light was clear save where the smoke wreaths of the town brooded in the distance; there was no sunshine.

Ralph Campion looked at the brown-green earth; he did not see it. For the last few minutes his mind swung between two pictures; one of a little wind-swept churchyard where was the grave of an upright man whose name he bore; the other of a wee grey stone house very bleak and trim, standing on a shelterless hillside; therein lived his thin little, meek little old mother, dressed in a scanty black gown and a widow’s cap, reading her Bible at night and praying to God for her only son; she did not pray for her husband because he was dead, and she disliked Popery. At last Ralph Campion’s eyes filled with tears, and he felt it was time to go. Therefore he rose.

“Very well,” he said, “I don’t feel very grateful; but I should be so if you could hush it up when I have vanished, so that my—mother mightn’t know.”

“I shall hush it up if I can.” And no man knew better than he how sincerely he spoke the truth, and how earnestly he regretted it would be impossible to do so. There was no need to tell Ralph it was impossible. “Even if the young idiot were dead it wouldn’t be safe not to come out,” he thought. “But it would be much safer. If Carry and her father got to know what had led up to his playing the fool like this, and how far I’m responsible (though, of course, I’m not really responsible) there’d be the devil to pay.”

Carry was his wife, who was staying with her mother. Aloud he said:

“I’ve ordered the dog-cart for you. The thing to do will be to say good-bye cordially, you see. Then I shan’t know anything till this time to-morrow, when Mr. Warrener comes back.”

“If you don’t mind shaking hands,” said Ralph Campion, listlessly, “of course I don’t.”

So they shook hands, and the host shouted cheerful and jocular good-speed after the parting guest. Campion left the cart half way to the station; he told the groom to drive on and leave his portmanteau in the cloak-room to be called for. He struck straight across the sodden fields, and walked townwards. It was ten miles to the town; his boots were clogged with dank clay when he reached the first houses on the outskirts. They were hideous little brick boxes in an unmade road leading nowhere.

Beyond them lay a patch of flat, foul, betrampled, houseless, roadless, grassless ground. It was an expanse of thick sticky mud; on it stood pools of dirty water, held by the clay from sinking into the earth; old bricks (why are ancient broken bricks so peculiarly sordid and depressing in appearance?) and bent rusty tin cans. Over the whole brooded a raw, poisonous, yellow-black fog. Across the waste ground crawled the canal that started in the clean green-brown country; here it ran between a clammy grassless towing path and a brick wall. “Ran” is too jocund a word to describe its action. It crept stickily along, a slimy glaze coating its surface, whereon floated the hairless swollen body of a drowned rat.

Ralph Campion stood at the side of the black canal, and looked at the sheer drop of the brick work. This might be a place in which to vanish. Very few of the words he heard that afternoon lingered with him; but the thought fashioned by the reputable citizen who wished that he was dead, pursued him during the ten mile walk, and was with him still. It was the unspoken words which Campion remembered; he knew as well as the other the way in which he must disappear. Oddly enough, it never struck him he might have demanded protection as a price for silence; he did not realise that family and business complications might be the result of evidence elicited by cross-examination; simplicity and generosity clave to him still; perhaps this was why the powers were sorry for him and dealt with him mercifully. The place was lonely; it was growing dusk, there were no barges about; the street was but just finished, the houses were unlet. Only—he could swim. He did not want to live to face public shame, and loneliness, and bitter remorse; this was a man who wanted to live an honourable life, and leave an honourable name. But though he wished to die his body would struggle for life, and this conviction struck him with fear lest he was not this body which willed otherwise than he; if so, perhaps he could not kill himself. Well! if there was hell on the other side, at any rate there was not prison, and his friends staring at and cutting him. There could not be superior persons amongst lost souls. The thought was momentarily cheering.

His body would struggle to live; perhaps poison would be the better way; but drowning might mean accident or murder, whereas if he bought poison——. He took a silk scarf from his pocket and tried to tie his wrists, but his hands were cold and he was clumsy. He flung his watch, chain, and purse into the water—when his body was found their absence would suggest robbery and murder; he kept a little silver loose in his pocket lest poison should after all prove to be the better way.

Suddenly he noticed what, till now, he had not seen. There was a tumble-down hut within a few paces of where he stood; coming towards it was a woman with a huge bundle on her bowed shoulders. As she drew near he saw she carried willow withies; she was a tall old woman, very poorly clad; her feet were naked, and in spite of her burden she walked with a stately step, as lightly as a girl.

This young man was poor, and a criminal to boot, but he was also a gentleman; when he saw this woman, he, though he was thinking of his sins, his despair, and his coming death, showed to her, half mechanically, what all should show at all times, especially to a woman very old and poor, namely, courtesy and helpfulness.

“Let me carry those to the hut,” he said. “They are surely much too heavy for you.”

“Take them,” she said briefly. He took them; they were indeed very heavy. He threw them on the ground by her door.

“You had better enter my hut,” she said gravely.

Now there was no reason why Ralph Campion should enter her hut; in fact there was every reason why he should not do so. Nevertheless, he went in. It was not very dark there; by no means so dark as the waning light warranted it should be. There were willow withies on the floor; the woman sat on the ground, leaned against the door-post, and began to weave them.

“Do you weave baskets?” said Ralph Campion.

“I do,” she answered. “By some I am called the Willow-weaver.”

“You weave fast.”

“Naturally. I have had much practice.”

She twisted a bent twig as she spoke.

“That twig is crooked,” said Ralph. His behaviour was irrational, but a sudden need of hearing human speech had come upon him; and, besides, he liked her voice, which was soothing, soft and deep, like organ notes in the distance.

“It is so,” she replied.

“Why don’t you throw it away?”

“I throw nothing away. I suffer no waste. I put all my willow twigs to use—crooked or straight.”

“But the crooked ones spoil the shape of your basket.”

“It is true. They spoil the shape of the basket. I shall put a straight one by the side of the crooked. That balances it a little.”

“Still the whole basket is awry.”

“It is so.”

“It is a pity.”

“It is a pity. But it cannot be helped. It will be so till I find nothing and pluck nothing save straight fair-growing withies.”

“Where do you pick them?”

“From the floating island in the lake.”

“I don’t know it. Where is the lake?”

“There,” she answered. She waved her hand towards the waste ground with its slimy clay and broken bricks.

“There! Where?”

“There—there—there—my child!” she answered, smiling gravely, and waving her hand again at the immediate foreground. Campion saw she was subject to hallucinations. She was probably much alone, and certainly very poor. He felt impelled to do what was obviously the very last thing he should have done. He drew out the silk scarf, and his loose silver.

“I will give you these shillings,” he said, “if you will tie this tightly round my wrists, and promise, whatever happens, never to tell a soul you have done it. Indeed, it will probably be the worse for you if you do tell.”

“I will not take your money,” she replied. “To tell you the truth I have no use for it. But I will tie the knot you bid me tie. It is thus with me; the knots with which men charge me to bind them, I can by no means refuse to fasten, but I cannot undo them.”

“Tie this knot,” he said, with a faint piteous laugh. “And let it remain tied till I ask you to undo it. But first, since you do not want it——”

He flung the silver into the canal.

“Now take my thanks for what you are going to do for me, since you’ll take nothing else. Here’s the scarf.”

She took it. He crossed his wrists, and held them out. She tied the scarf loosely, once.

“I am pleased to do you this service,” she said kindly, in her solemn perfect speech, that seemed unsuited to her poverty and her humble trade. “Chiefly I am pleased because of the honour which is mine, that I should take the place of the dweller in that grey small house on the hill yonder. For, I suppose, were she here, you would beg her, rather than me, to tie this knot.”

His crossed wrists fell apart; the silk scarf fluttered to the ground.

“My God! No!” he said, shuddering. “What do you mean? Who are you?”

“The Willow-weaver.”

“Do you know her?”

“Of whom do you ask me, my child?”

“My—my mother,” he faltered; and now the tears were in his eyes, his throat was choking, and he turned his face from her.

“Surely,” she made answer, “I know her well. And because such a mother as this makes my weaving easier, I, the Willow-weaver, shall be mother to her son to-night.”

“I do not deserve it,” he muttered.

She did not heed him; she wove apace, seated as before, leaning on the door-post of the hut. He fell beside her kneeling, and holding out his hands to her pleadingly:

“Willow-weaver,” he cried. “If you know about her, do you know about me too? Or must I tell you?”

“Surely,” she said, “I know about you. Child of so many prayers, of such vain hopes, of so many innocent womanly ambitions never now to be fulfilled, is it not an evil thing that the loving unwise heart in that hill cottage should break through you? Is it not an evil thing in the eyes of a Willow-weaver that one crooked twig should make the whole weaving awry? Yet these things are so, and may not now be changed.”

She spoke with sober and stern tenderness. He flung himself on the heap of willow withies, and hid his face from her.

“I know it,” he sobbed. “Do you think you need to tell me that? I was going to kill myself when you talked to me of my mother. And what more can I do? What more can I do?”

“You can turn the tide by the waving of your hand,” said she. “You can stay the flight of the earth through space; or you can kill yourself. Behold! the one is as possible as either of the others. Will you mend the broken heart in the hill cottage by the way of the black canal? Will you wipe out the shame of a soul by the death of a body?”

He moaned, and thrust his fingers through his hair, clutching and twisting it.

“Be wiser, child,” she said. “My words are harsh, my thought is gentle towards you. I said I, the Willow-weaver, would be your mother to-night. What do you see from my hut door, child?”

He raised himself obediently from the withies and told her what he saw.

“And yet there is more to be seen here,” she said. “Because there is more I spoke to you harshly, pointing out the ill you had wrought. For I knew that here, even here in this very spot, there is another country whereof you are native born, and wherein you live. Therefore, son of that good mother of whom you and I know, lie at peace upon these withies, cut from the floating island in this lake whereon we look; I shall sing you a cradle song that you may sleep. When you wake the Child’s Song shall never wholly leave your ears on this side of that death you sought but now, and you shall break your heart and brain with longing after it in vain. This, for the sake of that good mother, is the Willow-weaver’s mercy to you; and you shall find that men, too, have mercy on those who hear in broken snatches the Child’s Song.”

The power of the woman was upon him; meek and dazed as a tired babe he lay upon the twisted withies; he heard the sound of the twigs as she twisted them in and out in her weaving. He could neither move nor speak; he wondered dreamily whether he lay in a trance or swoon, or whether this was death, and thus the problem of his vanishing was solved without effort of his own. He felt either the light cold touch of her finger tip or the touch of a willow withy between his brows. Suddenly, how and when he did not know, he saw that other country of which the Willow-weaver spake; he had not moved from the spot; he felt sure his body lay on the willow withies in the hut by the canal. He knew it lay there with a burden of sin and folly, of ignorance, shame, and remorse; but they belonged to the place of their brooding, and he, reaching forth in order that he might know, knew them as apart from himself, like a school task learned well or ill, with praise or the rod for its reward. He saw the other country, and this was the fashion of that which he thought he saw. Whether he saw it as it was is another matter.

On every side lay the broad shining levels of a lake of silver, he did not know whether it was water, or silver fire that had no heat, but was still and cool as the hour before a summer sunrise. He saw no shores nor any boundary set to it; as far as his eyes, or some other sense than sight, would suffer him to perceive, the waters lay. From the lake rose a many-petalled pink blossom; about each petal quivered a delicate fringe of many-coloured flame, and at the heart of the fiery flower that sprang from the water’s breast was music. As he saw these things his life passed into them; or else they were the body of his life. Thereupon a certain knowledge came to him, but it was knowledge the man was never able to tell to any one, not even to himself. He heard a high clear voice singing, so he afterwards remembered, but whether it was the Cradle Song of the Willow-weaver, or the speech of the wordless music at the blossom’s heart, he could not tell.

It is my belief (I who tell these things) that the words, and indeed the whole matter, were by no manner of means such as are here recorded. He told me the words he heard were something like to these, but he admitted they were not really like them either in sound or sense. This is what he crooned in the day that came after, when men said his mother-wit had been stolen by the Folk of Peace:

Thou mak’st thy cry to me, thou mak’st thy plea,

I watch the waters of a changeless sea.

Upon its breast I mark a shadow fall,

Wherein a myriad shadows toss and crawl.

Weep’st thou because their turmoil will not cease,

O passing ripple on the Lake of Peace?

I watch the toiling shadows fight and strive,

I hear the murmur of a Dream-world hive.

Why is their warfare more to thee than me,

Thou wave that risest from a boundless sea?

No shadow-battle stirs the silent breast

Of the deep waters of the Lake of Rest.

Where mourning shadows throng the dreary side

Of the black river’s foul and sluggish tide,

I see the shining of the Silver Peace,

I hear its music bid their moaning cease.

Thy fair is foul to me, thy foul is fair;

Thy songs are cries, thy joys are pain-fraught care;

Thy griefs are gladness, and thy woes are gain,

Thy deaths are jewels in an age-long chain.

Thy sins but shadows on the waters wide,

Thy virtues gleams upon the silent tide.

When those twenty-four hours in which Ralph Campion was to vanish were ended, he came wandering, hatless, over the green-brown fields in the drenching rain; he was soaked to the skin, but he did not seem to know this. He asked to see his superior and elder, who was even then in serious consultation with his father-in-law and employer. When this man, Mr. Warrener, heard Ralph Campion was there he was glad. He was a plain dealing person, and he thought when people did wrong and were found out it was good for them to be punished. His son-in-law on the other hand was sorry and alarmed.

“Show Mr. Campion in,” said the older of the two men who were discussing Ralph Campion’s sins. Mr. Campion came in, dripping. He smiled, greeted his hosts, and tried to explain what had happened and why he had not vanished. The two listeners looked at each other silently; to do the younger of the twain justice he seemed to be shocked and dismayed. There was a pause. The elder laid his hand on Ralph Campion’s shoulder: “Sit down, Campion,” he said gently. “Sit down and keep quiet. You’re dripping wet, you know; you’ll be ill, you must see the doctor. I’ll send for him at once. There’s no need for you to worry about anything.” Then he drew his son-in-law out of earshot.

“This must be hushed up,” he whispered. “You see what’s happened to him. He’s off his head. Didn’t you see it yesterday? Where are his people? They must be sent for, and the doctor too. I’ll telephone to him at once. Whether this is a cause or an effect I don’t know. Be charitable and assume the first. Anyway we will say nothing; he’s not responsible for what he did.”

It was more of a truth than he knew. The other man, white as a sheet, assented eagerly.

Certain superstitious folk of Celtic blood said that the son of the sorrowful, patient little old widow who lived with his mother in the small grey house on the windswept hill above the churchyard, had wandered in the “gentle places” whence no man ever returns to the human habitations; only the bodily seeming of such a man comes back; he is away with the “good people”; at night he dances in their mystic rings and makes merry with them in the heart of the hills. This, they said, was the case with Ralph Campion, for he had the look of eternal childhood on his face and the fairy fire was in his eyes. But they were wrong; it was with him, as the Willow-weaver said; the Cradle Song of the Children of the Lake of Peace would not wholly leave his ears, and because he could not recall nor sing it perfectly he wandered bewildered, trying vainly to interpret its broken snatches, with labouring brain and longing, breaking heart.

THE BENDING OF THE TWIG

Early in the morning of the hot July day there had been a sea-mist, and the fog lay on the horizon like a rolled banner gleaming with ineffable tints of opalescent purple. The glassy sea was purest blue, save where the shimmering paths of the currents shone silver-white or where the lap and fret of waves at the cliff foot made the water pink with Devon earth. The weed on the rocks glowed orange-brown in the dazzling light, and the dark line of the low-flying shag gave the only sombre touch to the brilliant hues of land, sea, and sky. The turf sweet with the breath of wild thyme, and studded with pale yellow rock rose, crept well-nigh to the water’s edge. Here a hundred years ago the sea had claimed tribute of the earth, and a big landslip rent the bosom of the patient mother. Half a mile of cliff had fallen, and in the chasm thus made, now filled full with greenery and prodigal growth of fern, bramble, and berry, a long white house stood sun-bathed and creeper-clad.

A little spring sprang seawards from the cliff, tinkling in a baby waterfall down grey rocks splashed with orange lichen, and forming in a small crystal pool ere it ran on to lose itself in the greyish-white sand of the shore.

By this little pool sat three children: two flaxen-haired girls and a small dark-haired grey-eyed boy. The girls lay on the ground; their chins resting on their clasped hands, their eyes round, blue, and awestruck. The boy knelt stiffly on the verge of the pool, his eyes looking straight out over the sea, his hands linked behind his head. He was a slim little child with a small pale face, delicate irregular features, and long-lashed grey eyes.

“They came up,” he was saying, “up the little path that comes from the shore. They left their boats on the beach. They broke down our doors, making a great noise. The doors fell down; I heard them fall; I could hear the others shrieking as the men killed them. I was painting, you know; I painted coloured letters round a face which was in the middle. I drew the face myself; it was a white face with gold all round it. The men broke into my room and killed an old man who was there with me. I stood with my back against the wall. I put out my hands, so; I had no sword, and—and—then they killed me....”

The child broke off abruptly; he gasped, threw himself face downwards on the turf sobbing either with grief or excitement. The audience drew a long breath. Never—never—never—in all the annals of the nursery had even the most gifted grown-up person told them such tales as did this, their small orphan cousin.

“What’s the matter now,” said a man’s voice. “Quarrelling? Dennis, why are you crying?”

Three people had unheard approached the little group; a man, a young girl, and a boy. The man and boy were sufficiently alike to be easily recognisable as father and son. The boy was seventeen or eighteen years old; handsome, vigorous, and graceful. He carried a gun; he had been shooting rabbits on the cliffs, and two little helpless brown bodies dangled from his left hand. The man was past middle age, but time alone had not carved the straight, severe lines about his mouth, nor made his eyes so cold. That was the work of temperament; the comely lad beside him would never have such lips and eyes, though the tinting and moulding of the two faces were very much the same.

The crying child scrambled to his feet blushing and half laughing; his grief had not been very deeply rooted. The youngest girl clinging to her father’s hand cried out eagerly in praise of the tale; “Dennis tells us such lovely stories, daddy.”

The boy with the gun threw the rabbits on the grass. “Kitty’s quite right,” he said. “They’re ripping. I can’t think how he gets hold of them. He says they’re true.” “He says they happened to him,” broke in the enthusiastic auditor. “And he tells us what he sees too. O Dennis, tell them about the little men you saw in the mist this morning.”

The dark brows of the elder listener drew together.

“Look here, Dennis,” he said shortly, “if you prefer to tell stories to the girls rather than go rabbiting with the boys”—there was a little touch of contempt in the voice—“of course there’s no harm in that; but you must not say what is untrue.”

“But it is true,” said the child eagerly. “It is true, Uncle Hugh. That did happen to me; it did really. It was a grey house by the sea, and they killed me in the room where I was painting.”

“Take care, Dennis. When did this happen, may I ask?”

“I—I don’t know, Uncle Hugh.”

“Nor any one else. Did you tell the girls it was true?”

“It is true,” said Dennis, beginning to pant and rock from heel to toe and back again. “It is quite true.”

“It is, is it? And you see little men in the mist, eh?”

“I did this morning.”

“And he sees pictures in the water,” broke in one of the listening children.

“Do you see pictures in the water, Dennis?”

“Yes, sometimes.”

“In that water for instance? Look and see.”

The child knelt down and stared into the pool.

“I don’t”—he began after a pause. “Yes. I do, yes I do, I see a little house and a cornfield and a—O, there it’s gone!”

The man laid his finger-tips lightly on the child’s shoulder. “Get up and listen to me,” he said gravely. Dennis rose; the touch had not been at all rough; on the contrary it was very gentle, and the voice was quiet, but there was a sense of danger in the air; an ominous thrill; and the child’s eyes, why he knew not, grew slightly frightened.

“What you have just said is a lie,” said his elder very distinctly, “and you know that just as well as I do; you are very young yet, and I don’t want to be hard on you. If you confess that you told a lie, I won’t say any more about it, unless you do it again. Come.”

“But—I can’t. It wasn’t a lie.”

“Take care now. Tell me you said what wasn’t true and are sorry; and then run into tea and forget about it.”

The child began to tremble. “But I can’t—it wasn’t—indeed—it—O dear, O dear!”

“I tell you I don’t want to be hard upon you. I mean to be, and I hope I always am, perfectly just. I shall ask you three times whether your stories are true. If you say no—well and good. If you persist in saying yes, you’ll—take the consequences, that’s all. I shall ask you this question every day till I make you speak the truth.”

Things were now looking very serious. The little girls were struck with awe. The young girl and the lad exchanged glances and strove to extenuate the crime of Dennis.

“O please, Mr. March,” said the girl softly, “he’s so very little and he’s imaginative, you know.”

“He’s dotty, poor little chap,” said the boy cheerily. “He means no harm, dad. He’ll be all right when he goes to school. Let him off this once.”

“He has the matter in his own hands. Now then, Dennis, are these tales of yours true?”

“Yes,” faltered the quivering lips.

“Once more, are they true?”

“They are true! they are true! What shall I do? If you kill me, they’re true.”

“I’m not at all likely to kill you, but I mean to cure you of lying. It’s obstinacy; for you must know you’ve told lies. Are these things true?”

“Y—ye—I mean—I think so,” hedged poor Dennis desperately.

“Go into the house,” said the man with a push. “You’ve brought it on yourself, and it serves you right.”

Consolatory reflection. The child slunk into the house crying bitterly. The girl attempted further intercession.

“It’s no good, Kate,” said the man angrily. “I’m shocked at the child’s obstinacy. He has told a gratuitous falsehood, and he must, as I said, take the consequences.”

So Dennis took the consequences, and woke up at night shrieking with nightmare as their direct result. Daily the same question was put to him, and received the same answer which produced the same pains and penalties, save that they grew a little more grievous daily because of the increasing blackness of his sin. Dennis went about with a white face and silent tongue; his eyes were red and swollen, and there were purple rings under them. At last on the fifth day the child breaking down confessed himself to be a wilful and egregious perverter of the truth.

“Why couldn’t you have said that before?” said Hugh March. “Now speak the truth in future, there’s a good boy.”

Dennis promised that he certainly would do so, and went away to cry over his first lie. He knew that lying was a grievous sin; and the preacher under whom the March family “sat” predicted a fiery doom for sinners. Dennis cried over his probable damnation; but the undying worm and quenchless fire of a vengeful God were far away, whereas Hugh March’s birch was horribly near; so Dennis risked eternity for the sake of comparative well-being in time.

It must not be supposed that March was the typical wicked uncle of nursery tales; he was sincerely anxious to be kind to his dead brother’s little boy. The “queerness” of Dennis was a source of concerned perplexity to his guardian. Perry, his own son, whom he idolised, was an athlete rather than a scholar, and March was glad of the fact; nevertheless he would have been satisfied with his fragile non-athletic nephew if he had shown signs of studiousness; but the child was not clever; he was backward, lazy, and dreamy; his only talents were a gift for drawing and an eye for colour effects, which were “mere accomplishments” in the eyes of his uncle. Dennis had no other gifts unless his stories presaged a future novelist.

Dennis, on his side, was stunned and terrified by his uncle’s treatment of his powers of vision. His Irish mother, like her son, possessed “the sight,” and she had treated his visions as simple facts, which were by no means extraordinary; hence the child was not vain of the gift, nor did he dream of boasting of or colouring his visions. When his mother died and he came to live with his uncle and cousins, he came simply and confidingly as to friends; unsuspicious of the possibility of harshness, inexperienced in aught save tenderness. To be suddenly denounced as an obstinate liar, to be flogged because he saw things which his cousins did not see, not only terrified but stupefied him. He relapsed into bewildered silence, and bent all his small powers of deception to conceal his power of vision.

Hitherto “the sight” had been spasmodic; but either from some influence of climate or because of his nervous tension it now became almost unintermittent; he saw very often, and the strain of concealment troubled him. The visions were in a measure consolatory; that which he saw did not frighten him, and he lived in a world of sound, colour, and light, which was unshared by his companions. The child was very lonely, for he feared to talk much lest he should betray himself; nevertheless he became gradually aware of the fact that he had one staunch and kindly friend. This was his cousin Perry.

Perry was a good humoured, genial and sympathetic soul; his very superabundant vigour and strength gave him a chivalrous sense of pitiful protection towards the poor little frightened nervous child.

Once at a picnic on the Head, Dennis began to watch some little folk who were unseen by the others. Suddenly he became aware that Perry was watching him with puzzled eyes and knitted brows. Dennis started, his vision vanished, and he lay quivering with fear lest Perry should ask him what he had been looking at with such interest. But Perry did not ask; he smiled at his little cousin, and turned his eyes away.

After the picnic that night a party sat on the verandah and told ghost stories of a grisly nature. Dennis grew frightened, the “other world” was real to him; this grim aspect of it was terrible. He did not understand the things he saw, and the dread of seeing the horrors described in the tales fell upon him. The nervous system of a sensitive child is a delicate instrument, though it is sometimes the custom to treat it as though it were constructed of equal parts of whalebone, steel, and cast-iron. The stream of tales ran dry.

“What’s become of all your fine stories, Dennis?” said one of the circle mockingly; one who knew of the little tragedy enacted a month ago. “I’m afraid I’ve spoilt the flow of Dennis’s genius,” said March, and the laugh rippled round the circle at the expense of the young seer. Is this world so purely joyous that we should forget our heavenly heritage if our brethren did not try now and then to give us a little pain, even though it be a tongue stab to make us less contented with our earthly bliss? It would seem that there be many who think so. Perry put forth an arm in the darkness and laid it round the child’s neck.

“That’s a beastly shame,” he said to the first speaker.

They were only four homely schoolboy words; it was only the touch of a strong kindly young arm, but they drew forth a disproportionate flood of adoring gratitude from the child’s sensitive heart. Therefore when he went to bed that night he ventured to ask a favour of Perry. In Dennis’s room there was an unpleasant-looking green and yellow curtain, which had a reprehensible habit of swaying when there was not any wind. Ghost stories had made that curtain a thing of horror to Dennis; he feared it would draw back very slowly one of these days, and he should see some hideous object gibbering behind it—a class of vision of which he had formerly never dreamed. He once asked whether the curtain might be taken away: but as he could assign no reason for his request he was told “not to be silly,” and the curtain, like the poor, remained with him always. Alas! for the dumb terrors, the helpless inarticulateness of the soul of a young misunderstood child.

To-night he took courage.

“Perry,” he said, “won’t you come and stay with me till I’m asleep?”

Since the five days’ holy war which March had waged with Dennis the child had stammered slightly; it was a pathetic little falter of the tongue and Perry felt vaguely touched by it. He looked at him questioningly. At last he said:

“Why? Well, never mind. Right you are.”

He entered the room whistling, and by some instinct drew the green and yellow curtain back. Dennis undressed and slipped into bed. Perry knelt down, put his arm over the child and spoke kindly:

“You’re not very happy here, Den,” he said; “what’s the matter with you?”

Dennis bit his lip and closed his eyes; at last by dint of coaxing Perry arrived at the fact that Dennis was mourning over the sin of deceit.

“That wasn’t much,” said Perry immorally but cheerfully.

He hesitated, then he said in a whisper:

“I say, Denny, which was the lie, eh?”

He felt the slender body beneath his arm start, quiver, and grow unnaturally still.

“Was it a lie that you saw those things or that you didn’t see them, which?”

“Th-that I saw th-them.”

There was a pause. Then Perry said gently:

“Poor little chap; it’s a shame. All right old man. Go to sleep; I’ll stay with you.”

To himself he said: “Who’s to blame for that lie, Den or the dad?”

The holidays were nearly over; Perry was about to return for his last term to Harrow and Dennis was going for his first term to a preparatory school. Before his final departure Perry was going to walk fifteen miles in order to stay for a couple of days with some friends. A week before this visit there was a farewell picnic at the Head. It was a lovely day and the sea was blue and calm. Perry was on the cliff building the fire for the picnic tea; Dennis was on the rocks below. Then he turned and ran; he rushed up the cliff path sobbing out that there was a drowned man in the water below. Of course March, Perry, and three or four young men ran to the shore only to see the water rippling peacefully in and the brown weed swaying with the lazy tide.

March shouted to the child on the cliff:

“Come here.”

Dennis obeyed him shuddering still.

“There’s no drowned man here,” said March sternly. “Why did you say there was?”

The child caught his breath with a jerk and his face grew white as ashes. The thing he so dreaded had come; he had betrayed himself. He glanced imploringly at his only hope—Perry, and his lip quivered.

“It was the weed he saw,” said Perry. “He’s always fanciful and nervous you know.”

“Nonsense,” said March. “These are his old tricks. I thought I’d cured you of this, Dennis.”

He left the shore with an angry glance at the child.

Dennis began to cry, and Perry laid a hand on his shoulder. Dennis clutched his arm.

“O Perry,” he wailed, “do go to him. Do speak to him. Do tell him I’m sorry. I’d n-never have said what I saw if I hadn’t thought everyb-body could see it t-too.”

“I thought so,” said Perry under his breath; “you do see these things and you pretend you don’t for fear of a licking.”

“Don’t tell. Please don’t tell; dear Perry, d-don’t tell.”

“All right, don’t cry. I’ll speak to the governor.”

But Perry spoke in vain. March was an obstinate thick-headed man, and he was very angry indeed. The vials of his righteous wrath descended on the luckless seer, who was utterly broken and unnerved in consequence. Perry also was very angry though not with the helpless little victim of March’s dull wits. When three days after the child’s punishment a drowned sailor was actually washed up at the Head, Perry boldly avowed his belief in the visions of Dennis. March was as angry with Perry as it was possible for him to be with his idolised only son. He made many acute and scathing remarks about ignorance, superstition, and naughty, lying, hysterical children whose imagination and hysteria must be crushed with the strong hand of authority.

Perry went away in a very bad temper, and Dennis remained behind in such a state of abject terror that he hardly dared to grasp his coffee cup when it was offered to him at the breakfast table lest it should prove to be an elusive and unshared vision.

On the evening of Perry’s departure Dennis stood at the door of his uncle’s study trying to make up his mind to go in. Like many men who never read anything save the daily paper March had a “study.” At last Dennis went in. March who was writing a letter looked up:

“Well, Dennis, what is it?”

“H-have you heard from Perry, Uncle?” stammered the child.

“Heard from Perry! The boy’s daft. He only left this morning.”

“O,” said Dennis nervously, “y-yes, so he did; I f-forgot.”

And he crept out again like a frightened mouse.

The next morning a telegram arrived for Perry which his father opened; it was from the friends with whom he was supposed to be staying asking the reason of his non-arrival; Perry was going over to play in a cricket match; hence their agitation. March rode over to them at once. Perry had not arrived; inquiries on the road gained no tidings of him. Search was made for him throughout that day and through the night and through the next day and still there was no news of Perry.

For the first time in his life March was shaken to the finest fibre of his soul. His son was the apple of his eye, the best beloved of all his children. He felt a tremor of the nerves which he would have called weakness and affectation in another. When on the third night the searchers returned with no tidings of the young man, March went to his room with a grey-hued face and eyes that were glazed with agony and suspense. He sat at his table and bowed his head upon it. He tried to pray—March was a somewhat conventionally religious man—but he could only groan. In the room above where was the green and yellow curtain the child knelt by the side of the bed shaking from head to foot, the drops of agony standing on his forehead. The soul which was so much older than the little body was wrestling in the throes of a complex passion of love and personal cowardly dread; the poor little ten-year old body could scarcely support the strain.

In the afternoon, two hours after Perry had left, Dennis knelt by the little pool and chanced to look therein. Before his eyes a picture grew. It was Perry stunned and lifeless lying in a hollow, the mouth of which was hidden by elder bushes with their luscious black berries. It was a narrow rocky crevasse formed by the rending slipping land. Everything about the picture was very clear; on the hill above the hollow was an old pine tree twisted into a strange shape; there was a bent bough on it on which a human form dangled—a dead man hanged by the neck to the bent tree. This was the vision that had driven Dennis to his uncle’s room; since then the picture appeared to him again and yet again. Sometimes the hanged man was not there, but the scene was always the same point for point. Even now as he knelt it formed itself between him and the green and yellow curtain.

The child sobbed and twisted his fingers in his hair. In his ears rang the stern words: “If I hear a whisper of this again I shall write very strongly to Mr. Brownlow and warn him of your untruthfulness.”

Mr. Brownlow was Dennis’s future schoolmaster and poor Dennis pictured himself as being pilloried and held up for execration before a whole community of youthful devotees of truth. But then there was Perry. Perry had been kind to him; Perry had banished the terrors of the green and yellow curtain; had tried to screen him from wrath. If only some one else could see! His Highland nurse had told him “the sight” was God’s gift. If only He would give that gift to some one else; to some one who would not be punished and scolded because of his possession. Dennis had prayed on this subject with a child’s unreasoning and sometimes unreasonable faith, and now he once more extended his clasped hands and sobbed into the darkness:

“O do-do-do make some one else see instead of me.”

But no one else saw, and the burden, responsibility, and terror of a gift, whatsoever be its nature, lay heavily on the slender shoulders of Dennis. Therefore the end was inevitable. All strong powers lie upon the men who possess them like mighty compelling forces unless the man be stronger than the gift. To Dennis and to no other was the vision; as he closed his streaming eyes it slowly formed itself once more. He staggered to his feet and made for the room below; the force was stronger than he, or else he was stronger than his weak nerves and trembling body. Though March should beat him within an inch of his fragile life he must tell that which he saw. He did not hesitate now; he opened the door and went straight in. March raised his head, started, and stood up.

“Dennis! Bless my soul, child, what are you doing at this hour? Not undressed. Are you ill.”

“Uncle Hugh,” said Dennis, steadying himself by the table edge, “I—I know where Perry is. At least I think so.”

“You know where Perry is. What do you mean?”

The child began to describe the place of his vision and March listened with growing interest and excitement; when Dennis spoke of the pine and the dangling figure he sprang up:

“It’s the highwayman’s pine,” he almost shouted; “they say a man was hanged there a hundred years ago. But I’ll take my oath you’ve never been there. How do you know the place?”

“I s-saw it,” faltered Dennis, and having thus betrayed his evil-doing he swung forward and fainted. When he recovered he was lying on a sofa and March was pouring water on his face.

“Lie still,” he said kindly. “Don’t be frightened. You must have been dreaming, you know. I—I think I’ll go to this place you dreamed of. It is superstition, of course, but er—er——”

March called a maid to tend the child; then he summoned the men who had been searching through the day and led them on another quest. This time they found the missing lad. He was insensible and his leg was broken.

The next day the doctor spoke gravely of the condition of his patient. “I am very much afraid his condition is serious,” he said. “If he had been cared for at once recovery would have been quite certain; but he has been lying there half-stunned and without food, drink, or care four days and nights.”

March did not speak; possessed by a sudden thought he sought his nephew.

“Dennis, child,” he said, “when did you first see the place where we found Perry?”

“The day he left.”

“Why didn’t you tell me at once what you saw? Perry’s very ill from lying there four days.”

“I’m sorry,” murmured Dennis, “I—I thought you’d, you’d——”

“You thought I should be angry?”

“Y-yes, I was afraid.”

He did not know how innocently he avenged himself and paid off old scores. March was silent for a minute, then he said in a low voice: “It’s just. It’s my own fault.”

He stooped and took the child’s face gently between his hands, kissed his forehead and went out alone to wrestle with his pain and anxiety.

As this tale began so it ends at the pool in the landslip. Perry lay beside the stream apparently none the worse for his fall of the year before. Dennis sitting cross-legged beside the little rock basin watched the water. March was talking with his son; following the direction of Perry’s smiling eyes he saw Dennis. Dennis’s pictures were less frequent now and his “stories” were less marvellous. The press of outer interest which crowded in was doing its work. March looked at the boy as he rose and stood beside him and laid his hand on his head:

“Seeing pictures?” he asked with a half-mocking laugh. March’s position was a very illogical one and he was semi-conscious of the fact. The child looked up and nodded.

“What nonsense,” said March, “it’s all fancy. If there was anything to see why shouldn’t I see it?”

“Come, father,” said Perry laughing, “why can’t I tell ‘Rule Britannia’ from ‘God save the King?’”

“Nonsense! I tell you it’s a rampant medieval superstition that’s got hold of you. As for Denny he’s a little donkey.”

But he laughed and pulled the boy’s hair with a gentle hand; which seems to prove that one is not necessarily incapable of learning even after one has “come to forty years.”

Note.—This story is founded on fact. That is to say, although it is mine as regards characters and incidents, the motif, the clairvoyance of the child, is true. The drastic methods which were employed for the repression of the gifts of the luckless little seer are also facts, and that is the reason I wrote the story.

THE MYSTERY OF THE SON
OF MAN

Lord God of Glory, Pow’r of Perfect Light,

Look on Thy little children of the wild,

In whose frail souls the Son of Man is born

Thine is the pow’r of pain and anguish, Lord,

Thine is the chrysm of the agony,

The bitter wisdom born within the soul

That knows the sorrow of sin’s piteous load.

Father in Heaven, blessed be the hour

When in the beast-soul rises the sad voice

Of human shame, crying: “I will arise,

And seek my Father’s feet, and mourn my sin.”

Blessed the hour when the dread scourge of pain

Is gladly borne by some poor tortur’d soul,

Because it sees its foulness before Thee

By the white light of Christ, Who dwells within

The outrag’d temple of humanity.

There was wrath and distress in the House of the Cold Strand by reason of the sin of Brother Gorlois. He was the child of the Holy House, taken into the pious nurture of the brethren, from the dead breast of his murdered mother, a heathen woman, found by Brother Pacificus lying dead in the undergrowth of the great forest nigh the House of the Cold Strand. The pious company of Christian monks, who had built their house of prayer in that land, baptised the babe, and reared him by the precepts of Solomon, by the rule of their House, and by the wisdom which flowed from their hearts. And when the Brother Gorlois was twelve years old he entered his noviciate, and when he was fifteen he took upon him the vows of a monk, namely, the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. He had little wit, and was not studious; nor was he called to the way of contemplation, but he was strong, and waxed mighty of muscle. As he grew to manhood the good gift of comeliness was bestowed upon him by the Hand of God, and the thick crisp waves of his curly yellow hair rose up like billows around his head.

He liked to trap and fish for the Holy House, but when the glee of sport was passed he was lazy and loved to sleep. He gave the first occasion for scandal during a fast of twice forty days, wherein the brethren ate no flesh. This Brother Gorlois, stealing forth on the eighth day, slew a coney, and was taken in the wood, having built a fire in order that he might cook and devour it to the gratification of his body, and the peril of his soul; moreover, he lied concerning his sin, scandalously, and indeed foolishly, for it was manifest to the simplest, and denial was vain.

The second scandal was when the Brother Gorlois was found in the refectory drunk with wine; for this offence he did penance, being scourged, and sorely rebuked by the brethren. But the third and most grievous scandal was when he was taken in the forest with the swineherd’s daughter; whereupon the brethren placed him in ward, whilst they debated whether or no a monk who had broken his vows to the shame of his House, should not lie within a narrow cell, the entrance whereof should be securely barred by mortised stones, that soul and body might part slowly in the terrors of a death by hunger and by thirst. Such was the fate adjudged to Brother Gorlois, who was then but a young man of twenty years, and he was brought forth, bound, to hear the same.

The Brother Gorlois was, as aforesaid, young and lusty, comely and of great stature; he looked sullen, but he was less fearful and less ashamed than might have been expected. God had granted to him vigorous youth, health, and a person as goodly to behold as those He had given to the great stags on the moor, and the mighty milk-white bulls which crashed through the forest, leading a drove of their kind; but He in His Wisdom had not yet given to Brother Gorlois the blessing (or curse) of a lively power of imagery, and a sensitive memory.

Still he had been taken, as he knew, in what the brethren denounced as sin, and he knew they were so made that they visited sin by fasting, and by the scourge, to the Brother Gorlois’ great dis-ease; for he loved food, and he esteemed the scourge to be a needless discomfort. Therefore he looked very sulky, and stood gazing upon his feet, and wishing vaguely that his arms were free.

Then he who was Head of the lonely little House of the Cold Strand rose to pronounce the doom of Brother Gorlois, when the aged Brother Pacificus uplifted his voice. It was the Brother Pacificus who had found Brother Gorlois a young babe upon the dead breast of the half-savage heathen woman, his mother.

Brother Pacificus was very old, and a reputed seer; esteemed as a saint was he; twenty years had he travelled over Europe carrying the Gospel of the Christ among heathen people; founding many a Holy House, but never taking the Headship of any; thirty years lived he as a hermit, supplicating God for the world; ten years he had dwelt at the House of the Cold Strand, speaking little and praying much; but during the last year he spoke more frequently and more freely, and the Head of the House of the Cold Strand consulted him reverently as his soul-friend, what though in that House he was his superior in religion.

“It is in my mind, holy father,” said Brother Pacificus, “that we have sinned greatly against our Brother Gorlois, and owe him amends.”

“Speak thy mind, my brother, therefore,” said he who was the Head of the House. “Make plain to us wherein we have sinned, and he shall live.”

“My father,” said the Brother Pacificus, “this, our young brother, so lusty in his youth, is not bound by his vows, seeing that in truth he took them not upon him.”

“Who then took them, venerable brother?”

“Verily, that did we,” said Brother Pacificus; “for we knew their meaning, our Brother Gorlois did not so. He, obeying babe-like those who nurtured him, uttered words of which his heart knew not the meaning. For it is written that once a man of God made a religious house in the wilderness and bound by vows Brother Fox, binding him to a religious life, and to eat no flesh; the which vow he broke, adding to this offence the sin of theft, for so mightily desired he to eat flesh that he ate the leathern shoe-straps of his superior in religion, namely, the holy saint; whereupon the holy man rebuked him for conduct unbefitting a monk, when it was revealed to him that no vow can make a religious of a beast of the field; the blame is his who bindeth a little brother by a harsh rule against which the nature which God hath given constraineth him. Wherefore let our Brother Gorlois abide with us in peace, doing such tasks as his youth and great thews and sinews make very fitting for him; but do not bind him to eat no flesh, nor drink wine, nor even forbid him to seek the love of a maid, for to these things the youth’s nature mightily constraineth him; nor doth he perceive in any measure the beauty of holiness, nor desireth he to enter into the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven. Behold! he is no monk; though his lips spake vow on vow, God would not register them in Heaven as we foolish men do on earth; this Brother Gorlois is but a lad, and in his heart a heathen, like the woman who bore him. Nevertheless he is the child of our House. His hour is not yet. Spare him, my father, and let us not—we who follow Him who bade the woman go unhurt and sin no more—give our child to a cruel death. For we took him in God’s name, and in the Power of that Name shall he dwell amongst us unhurt and forgiven.”

Now no other voice in the Holy House would have been heard on behalf of Brother Gorlois save only that of Brother Pacificus. But to his voice the brethren listened with heed, and now his counsel prevailed, and they spared the Brother Gorlois, and absolved him from his vows, bidding him remain in the House of the Cold Strand, doing such work as his youth and strength rendered fitting for him. Thus then Brother Gorlois was pardoned by the holy father who ruled the brethren. This holy father was a man of great zeal, and jealous for the fair repute of the House, and often he mourned to Brother Pacificus because the soul of the House was barren, and he knew not by what means the brethren could make thereof a mightier power in the Hand of the Lord. But Brother Pacificus said:

“The soul of a Holy House, my father, is like unto the Kingdom of God; it cometh not with observation. It is from the beginning, and to hold this diligently in our minds in all that is possible for us to do in this matter. Let us then act as our nature constraineth us, under the guidance of the Lord, remembering all natures are rooted in Him, and it may ofttimes be our duty to suffer gladly, as His servant, one who sorely opposes us; now this is hard for the natural man, but the Lord from Heaven useth the one and the other for His service according to the measure of their gifts, asking not wit from him who lacketh, nor clerkly lore from the simple, nor the power of the spirit from him who is yet a babe in Christ. Nor can we expect to know the subtle workings of our brethren’s souls, and though it be our duty to dwell in sympathy with them when we may, yet ofttimes it is our duty sweetly to resign ourselves to dwell in ignorance of them. But the soul of a House of Prayer is born from above, not from below, and this, meseemeth, is the meaning of that Scripture which saith a man by taking thought can add not a cubit to his stature.”

It was summer time when the sin of Brother Gorlois was judged by the brethren; the following winter was very cold, and the Brother Pacificus grew feebler. When the spring came he was very infirm; he slept little, and it grew a custom that a brother should watch beside him to minister to him in the night. On a moonlit night of May Brother Gorlois was bidden to keep vigil by the old man’s side. Brother Pacificus slept lightly during the first watch of the night. Brother Gorlois rose up gently and looked from the little unglazed casement upon the forest. It was a warm night, the glamour of the moon lay on the great silent glades. Brother Gorlois felt restless, and upon him was a desire to rove the forest. The oaks were in leaf, the smell of bluebells filled the air, the fierce life of night and springtide was pulsing apace through the dim sweet land; it was a night when all the beasts of the forest did roam, seeking their bread from God.

Brother Gorlois leaned out, and smelled the night air and the earth; then he drew back and sat by the old monk.

Something flew through the casement and hit Brother Gorlois on his broad chest; it was a bunch of bluebells. Brother Gorlois looked out once more. Below the window was the swineherd’s daughter; the night was sultry, and her smock was open by reason of the heat; her skirt was made of the stitched skins of beasts; about her neck was a garland of blue flowers of the wood, swaying rope-like about her throat. When she saw Brother Gorlois she laughed loudly and fled, but as she fled she looked back. Then Brother Gorlois leaped from the window. When she heard the beat of his feet behind her she ran faster; nevertheless, as she ran she dragged the bluebells from about her throat and flung them earth-wards to mark the way by which she went. Soon the thicket hid her, and Brother Gorlois, flying in pursuit, was hidden too.

A little while after the flight of Brother Gorlois, the Brother Pacificus stirred.

“My son,” he said faintly, “give me to drink, I pray thee.”

No one answered, and the old man murmured: