***
， ！
|（~~~~，~~~|-


2 * ~ * * a st
CŞ% (Q5857 S$7(9%3/
GO4%66277(9%”
Tºcoz
ibarbarb Collegſ itbrary
sº








THE LOST VALLEY
º
AND OTHER STORIES


/2Zz-e z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z -z-
~~~< A2.2×-/ 2…e. zº t C - 2.
2. 2.…” “. . .”
aw <2– 2/?
A 4-2-22 2-&a . - ~
&alf ºr y-4- %2. Ž, , ~ *~
32.2/.../; ‘2, Jr…~" (~
** Prá *z.<2**-*). 2-----
/...at, 2., 2^^*...* a zºº,
- THE OLD FRIENDS AT BÖLE
2 - 4. ~~~ 1887–191o 24-
…a…**i.
w


THE
LOST VALLEY
AND OTHER STORIES
BY
ALGERNON BLACKWOOD
“John silence,” “The listiner,” atc.
NEW YORK
ALFRED A. KNOPF
1917


HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY
BEQUEST OF
WINWARD PRESCOTT
JANUARY 27, 1933
Printed in Great Britain.


il
ill
VI
VII
Wiii
ix
CONTENTS
THE LOST WALLEY t - -
THE WENDIGO º - e -
OLD CLOTHES - º - -
PERSPECTIVE - - -
THE TERROR OF THE TWINS e º
THE MAN FROM THE ‘GoDs’ - º
THE MAN WHO PLAYED UPON THE LEAF •
THE PRICE of wiggins's ORGY . e
CARLTON's DRIVE . - - -
THE ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE
page
71
I33
I75
2OI
229
253
279
289


* * ~ * > . . * >
- CŞ% (Q%:7 S$7(9%3/
GO4%. 66277(9%’
Tºñº)ºccº,
*aruart College Library
- YHE BEQUEST OF
- ARD PRESCOTT
CLASS OF 1909


| A5.E.L.AURI :
& ...At Co.





THE LOST VALLEY
AND OTHER STORIES


/2Zz-z 2,…~~~~~~~~~...~ -z-
& A2.2×-4/ 2. c 22--~~~< −2. T
~arz–6. 2…” “... . "/2 &
4. rerº–7-4- 42 ºz. … *
32.2/.../3 2. /~" (*~
** Prá *z, *…"). <!--~
, -a-, ..., 2^*"...' *,
- THE OLD FRIENDS AT BôLE >4–
, -84. ~~~ 1887–1910 <>
- º 2.
/*a--- -
0.


THE
LOST VALLEY
AND OTHER STORIES
BY
ALGERNON BLACKWOOD
“John silence,” “The listsNER,” stc.
NEW YORK
ALFRED A. KNOPF
1917


HARWARD COLLEGE LIBRARY
BEQUEST OF
WINWARD PRESCOTI
JANUARY 27, 1933
Printed in Great Britain.


II
III
IV
Wi
Wii
Wiii
IX
CONTENTS
THE LOST WALLEY - - -
THE WENDIGO º e - -
OLD CLOTHES e e -
PERSPECTIVE - • -
THE TERROR OF THE TWINS e -
THE MAN FROM THE ‘Gods’ - º
THE MAN WHO PLAYED UPON THE LEAF ,
THE PRICE of wigGINs's ORGY .
CARLTON's DRIVE . - - -
THE ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE
race
71
I33
I75
2O I
2 II
229
253
279
289





THE LOST VALLEY
I
MARK and Stephen, twins, were remarkable even
of their kind : they were not so much one soul split
in twain, as two souls fashioned in precisely the same
mould. Their characters were almost identical—
tastes, hopes, fears, desires, everything. They even
liked the same food, wore the same kind of hats, ties,
suits; and, strongest link of all, of course disliked
the same things too. At the age of thirty-five neither
had married, for they invariably liked the same
woman; and when a certain type of girl appeared
upon their horizon they talked it over frankly, agreed
it was impossible to separate, and together turned
their backs upon her for a change of scene before she
could endanger their peace.
For their love for one another was unbounded–
irresistible as a force of nature, tender beyond words
—and their one keen terror was that they might one
day be separated.
To look at, even for twins, they were uncommonly
alike. Even their eyes were similar: that grey-green
of the sea that sometimes changes to blue, and at
night becomes charged with shadows. And both
faces were of the same strong type with aquiline
noses, stern-lipped mouths, and jaws well marked.
They possessed imagination, real imagination of the
winged kind, and at the same time the fine controll-
7


8 THE LOST WALLEY
ing will without which such a gift is apt to prove a
source of weakness. Their emotions, too, were real
and living : not the sort that merely tickle the surface
of the heart, but the sort that plough.
Both had private means, yet both had studied
medicine because it interested them, Mark specializ-
ing in diseases of eye and ear, Stephen in mental and
nervous cases; and they carried on a select, even a
distinguished, practice in the same house in Wim-
pole Street with their names on the brass plate thus:
Dr. Mark Winters, Dr. Stephen Winters.
In the summer of 1900 they went abroad together
as usual for the months of July and August. It was
their custom to explore successive ranges of moun-
tains, collecting the folklore and natural history of
the region into small volumes, neatly illustrated with
Stephen's photographs. And this particular year
they chose the Jura, that portion of it, rather, that
lies between the Lac de Joux, Baulmes and Fleurier.
For, obviously, they could not exhaust a whole range
in a single brief holiday. They explored it in
sections, year by year. And they invariably chose
for their head-quarters quiet, unfashionable places
where there was less danger of meeting attractive
people who might break in upon the happiness of
their profound brotherly devotion—the incalculable,
mystical devotion of twins.
“For abroad, you know,” Mark would say, “people
have an insinuating way with them that is often hard
to withstand. The chilly English reserve disappears.
Acquaintanceship becomes intimacy before one has
time to weigh it.”
“Exactly,” Stephen added. “The conventions that
protect one at home suddenly wear thin, don't they 2
And one becomes soft and open to attack—unex-
pected attack.”


THE LOST VALLEY * 9
They looked up and laughed, reading each other's
thoughts like trained telepathists. What each meant
was the dread that one should, after all, be taken and
the other left—by a woman.
“Though at our age, you know, one is almost
immune,” Mark observed; while Stephen smiling
agreed philosophically—
“Or ought to be.”
“Is,” quoth Mark decisively. For by common con-
sent Mark played the rôle of the elder brother. His
character, if anything, was a shade more practical.
He was slightly more critical of life, perhaps, Stephen
being ever more apt to accept without analysis, even
without reflection. But Stephen had that richer
heritage of dreams which comes from an imagination
loved for its own sake.
II
In the peasant’s châlet, where they had a sitting-
room and two bedrooms, they were very comfortable.
It stood on the edge of the forests that run along the
slopes of Chasseront, on the side of Les Rasses
farthest from Ste Croix. Marie Petavel provided
them with the simple cooking they liked; and they
spent their days walking, climbing, exploring, Mark
collecting legend and folklore, Stephen making his
natural history studies, with the little maps and
surveys he drew so cleverly. Even this was only a
division of labour, for each was equally interested in
the occupation of the other; and they shared results
in the long evenings, when expeditions brought them
back in time, smoking in the rickety wooden balcony,
comparing notes, shaping chapters, happy as two
children. They brought the enthusiasm of boys to


10 THE LOST WALLEY
all they did, and they enjoyed the days apart almost
as much as those they spent together. After separate
expeditions each invariably returned with surprises
which awakened the other's interest—even amaze-
ment.
Thus, the life of the foreign element in the hotels—
unpicturesque in the daytime, noisy and overdressed
at night—passed them by. The glimpses they caught
as they passed these caravansarais, when gaieties were
the order of the evening, made them value their
peaceful retreat among the skirts of the forest. They
brought no evening dress with them, not even “le
smoking.”
“The atmosphere of these huge hotels simply
poisons the mountains,” quoth Stephen. “All that
“haunted ' feeling goes.”
“Those people,” agreed Mark, with scorn in his
eyes, “would be far happier at Trouville or Dieppe,
gambling, flirting, and the rest.”
Feeling, thus, secure from that jealousy which lies
so terribly close to the surface of all giant devotions
where the entire life depends upon exclusive posses-
sion, the brothers regarded with indifference the
signs of this gayer world about them. In that throng
there was no one who could introduce an element of
danger into their lives—no woman, at least, either of
them could like would be found there !
For this thought must be emphasized, though not
exaggerated. Certain incidents in the past, from
which only their strength of will had made escape
possible, proved the danger to be a real one.
(Usually, too, it was some un-English woman : to
wit, the Budapesth adventure, or the incident in
London with the Greek girl who was first Mark's
patient and then Stephen's.) Neither of them made
definite reference to the danger, though undoubtedly


THE LOST WALLEY 11
it was present in their minds more or less vividly
whenever they came to a new place: this singular
dream that one day a woman would carry off one,
and leave the other lonely. It was instinctive, prob-
ably, just as the dread of the wolf is instinctive in the
deer. The curious fact, though natural enough, was
that each brother feared for the other and not for
himself. Had any one told Mark that some day he
would marry, Mark would have shrugged his
shoulders with a smile, and replied, “No; but I'm
awfully afraid Stephen may !” And vice versä.
III
Then, out of a clear sky, the bolt fell—upon
Stephen. Catching him utterly unawares, it sent him
fairly reeling. For Stephen, even more than his
brother, possessed that glorious yet fatal gift, com-
mon to poets and children, by which out of a few
insignificant details the soul builds for itself a whole
sweet heaven to dwell in.
It was at the end of their first month, a month of
unclouded happiness together. Since their explora-
tion of the Abruzzi, two years before, they had never
enjoyed anything so much. And not a soul had come
to disturb their privacy. Plans were being mooted
for moving their head-quarters some miles farther to-
wards the Val de Travers and the Creux du Van;
only the day of departure, indeed, remained to be
fixed, when Stephen, coming home from an after-
noon of photography alone, saw, with bewildering
and arresting suddenness—a Face. And with the
effect of a blow full upon the heart it literally struck
him.
How such a thing can come upon a strong man, a


/2Zz-e 2, …~~~~~~~...~ -z-
--~6 22.22%-4/ 2…e. zº C - 2.
, , ,..., 2,…, 2- 2 –
32.2/.../; ‘2, 2,22--" (~
7:6. Prá *z.<2**-*). <!--~
/...a 2. ~~".' *,
- THE OLD FRIENDS AT BóLE >4–
2 * 4. 1887–1910 <>
f "2 -
* *
ºz-º-º-º: -
V


THE
LOST VALLEY
AND OTHER STORIES
BY
ALGERNON BLACKWOOD
“John silkNce,” “The listENER,” Etc.
3.x:
NEW YORK
ALFRED A. KNOPF
1917


HARWARD COLLEGE LIBRARY
BEQUEST OF
WINWARD PRESCOTT
JANUARY 27, 1933
Printed in Great Britain.


ill
vi
wit
CONTENTS
the LOST VALLEY i - -
The Wen DiGO - - - -
OLD CLOTHES - - - -
PERSPECTIVE - - -
THE TERROR OF THE TWINS - -
THE MAN FROM THE ‘Gods' - -
the MAN WHO PLAYED UPON THE LEAF ,
THE PRICE of wiggins's ORGY . -
cARLtoN's DRIVE . - - -
vi in
the ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE
race
71
I33
175
2O I
2 II
229
253
279
289


-


THE LOST VALLEY
I
MARK and Stephen, twins, were remarkable even
of their kind : they were not so much one soul split
in twain, as two souls fashioned in precisely the same
mould. Their characters were almost identical—
tastes, hopes, fears, desires, everything. They even
liked the same food, wore the same kind of hats, ties,
suits; and, strongest link of all, of course disliked
the same things too. At the age of thirty-five neither
had married, for they invariably liked the same
woman; and when a certain type of girl appeared
upon their horizon they talked it over frankly, agreed
it was impossible to separate, and together turned
their backs upon her for a change of scene before she
could endanger their peace.
For their love for one another was unbounded—
irresistible as a force of nature, tender beyond words
—and their one keen terror was that they might one
day be separated.
To look at, even for twins, they were uncommonly
alike. Even their eyes were similar: that grey-green
of the sea that sometimes changes to blue, and at
night becomes charged with shadows. And both
faces were of the same strong type with aquiline
noses, stern-lipped mouths, and jaws well marked.
They possessed imagination, real imagination of the
winged kind, and at the same time the fine controll-
7


8 THE LOST WALLEY
ing will without which such a gift is apt to prove a
source of weakness. Their emotions, too, were real
and living : not the sort that merely tickle the surface
of the heart, but the sort that plough.
Both had private means, yet both had studied
medicine because it interested them, Mark specializ-
ing in diseases of eye and ear, Stephen in mental and
nervous cases; and they carried on a select, even a
distinguished, practice in the same house in Wim-
pole Street with their names on the brass plate thus:
Dr. Mark Winters, Dr. Stephen Winters.
In the summer of 1900 they went abroad together
as usual for the months of July and August. It was
their custom to explore successive ranges of moun-
tains, collecting the folklore and natural history of
the region into small volumes, neatly illustrated with
Stephen's photographs. And this particular year
they chose the Jura, that portion of it, rather, that
lies between the Lac de Joux, Baulmes and Fleurier.
For, obviously, they could not exhaust a whole range
in a single brief holiday. They explored it in
sections, year by year. And they invariably chose
for their head-quarters quiet, unfashionable places
where there was less danger of meeting attractive
people who might break in upon the happiness of
their profound brotherly devotion—the incalculable,
mystical devotion of twins.
“For abroad, you know,” Mark would say, “people
have an insinuating way with them that is often hard
to withstand. The chilly English reserve disappears.
Acquaintanceship becomes intimacy before one has
time to weigh it.”
“Exactly,” Stephen added. “The conventions that
protect one at home suddenly wear thin, don't they
And one becomes soft and open to attack—unex-
pected attack.”


THE LOST VALLEY * 9
They looked up and laughed, reading each other's
thoughts like trained telepathists. What each meant
was the dread that one should, after all, be taken and
the other left—by a woman.
“Though at our age, you know, one is almost
immune,” Mark observed; while Stephen smiling
agreed philosophically—
“Or ought to be.”
“Is,” quoth Mark decisively. For by common con-
sent Mark played the rôle of the elder brother. His
character, if anything, was a shade more practical.
He was slightly more critical of life, perhaps, Stephen
being ever more apt to accept without analysis, even
without reflection. But Stephen had that richer
heritage of dreams which comes from an imagination
loved for its own sake.
II
In the peasant's châlet, where they had a sitting-
room and two bedrooms, they were very comfortable.
It stood on the edge of the forests that run along the
slopes of Chasseront, on the side of Les Rasses
farthest from Ste Croix. Marie Petavel provided
them with the simple cooking they liked; and they
spent their days walking, climbing, exploring, Mark
collecting legend and folklore, Stephen making his
natural history studies, with the little maps and
surveys he drew so cleverly. Even this was only a
division of labour, for each was equally interested in
the occupation of the other; and they shared results
in the long evenings, when expeditions brought them
back in time, smoking in the rickety wooden balcony,
comparing notes, shaping chapters, happy as two
children. They brought the enthusiasm of boys to


10 THE LOST WALLEY
all they did, and they enjoyed the days apart almost
as much as those they spent together. After separate
expeditions each invariably returned with surprises
which awakened the other's interest—even amaze-
ment.
Thus, the life of the foreign element in the hotels—
unpicturesque in the daytime, noisy and overdressed
at night—passed them by. The glimpses they caught
as they passed these caravansarais, when gaieties were
the order of the evening, made them value their
peaceful retreat among the skirts of the forest. They
brought no evening dress with them, not even “le
smoking.”
“The atmosphere of these huge hotels simply
poisons the mountains,” quoth Stephen. “All that
“haunted ' feeling goes.”
“Those people,” agreed Mark, with scorn in his
eyes, “would be far happier at Trouville or Dieppe,
gambling, flirting, and the rest.”
Feeling, thus, secure from that jealousy which lies
so terribly close to the surface of all giant devotions
where the entire life depends upon exclusive posses-
sion, the brothers regarded with indifference the
signs of this gayer world about them. In that throng
there was no one who could introduce an element of
danger into their lives—no woman, at least, either of
them could like would be found there!
For this thought must be emphasized, though not
exaggerated. Certain incidents in the past, from
which only their strength of will had made escape
possible, proved the danger to be a real one.
(Usually, too, it was some un-English woman : to
wit, the Budapesth adventure, or the incident in
London with the Greek girl who was first Mark's
patient and then Stephen's.) Neither of them made
definite reference to the danger, though undoubtedly


THE LOST WALLEY 11
it was present in their minds more or less vividly
whenever they came to a new place: this singular
dream that one day a woman would carry off one,
and leave the other lonely. It was instinctive, prob-
ably, just as the dread of the wolf is instinctive in the
deer. The curious fact, though natural enough, was
that each brother feared for the other and not for
himself. Had any one told Mark that some day he
would marry, Mark would have shrugged his
shoulders with a smile, and replied, “No; but I'm
awfully afraid Stephen may !” And vice versä.
III
Then, out of a clear sky, the bolt fell—upon
Stephen. Catching him utterly unawares, it sent him
fairly reeling. For Stephen, even more than his
brother, possessed that glorious yet fatal gift, com-
mon to poets and children, by which out of a few
insignificant details the soul builds for itself a whole
sweet heaven to dwell in.
It was at the end of their first month, a month of
unclouded happiness together. Since their explora-
tion of the Abruzzi, two years before, they had never
enjoyed anything so much. And not a soul had come
to disturb their privacy. Plans were being mooted
for moving their head-quarters some miles farther to-
wards the Val de Travers and the Creux du Van;
only the day of departure, indeed, remained to be
fixed, when Stephen, coming home from an after-
noon of photography alone, saw, with bewildering
and arresting suddenness—a Face. And with the
effect of a blow full upon the heart it literally struck
him.
How such a thing can come upon a strong man, a


12 THE LOST WALLEY
man of balanced mind, healthy in nerves and spirit,
and in a single moment change his serenity into a
state of feverish and passionate desire for possession,
is a mystery that lies too deep for philosophy or
science to explain. It turned him dizzy with a sud-
den and tempestuous delight—a veritable sickness of
the soul, wondrous sweet as it was deadly. Rare
enough, of course, such instances may be, but that
they happen is undeniable.
He was making his way home in the dusk some-
what wearily. The sun had already dipped below
the horizon of France behind him. Across the open
country that stretched away to the distant mountains
of the Rhone Valley, the moonlight climbed with
wings of ghostly radiance that fanned their way into
the clefts and pine-woods of the Jura all about him.
Cool airs of night stirred and whispered; lights
twinkled through the openings among the trees, and
all was scented like a garden.
He must have strayed considerably from the right
trail—path there was none—for instead of striking
the mountain road that led straight to his châlet,
he suddenly emerged into a pool of electric light
that shone round one of the smaller wooden hotels
by the borders of the forest. He recognized it at
once, because he and his brother always avoided it
deliberately. Not so gay or crowded as the larger
caravansarais, it was nevertheless full of people of
the kind they did not care about. Stephen was a good
half-mile out of his way.
When the mind is empty and the body tired it
would seem that the system is sensitive to impressions
with an acuteness impossible when these are vigor-
ously employed. The face of this girl, framed
against the glass of the hotel verandah, rushed out
towards him with a sudden invading glory, and took


THE LOST WALLEY 13
the most complete imaginable possession of this tem-
porary unemployment of his spirit. Before he could
think or act, accept or reject, it had lodged itself
eternally at the very centre of his being. He stopped,
as before an unexpected flash of lightning, caught his
breath—and stared. -
A little apart from the throng of “dressy" folk
who sat there in the glitter of the electric light, this
face of melancholy dark splendour rose close before
his eyes, all soft and wondrous as though the beauty
of the night—of forest, stars and moon-rise—had
dropped down and focussed itself within the compass
of a single human countenance. Framed within a
corner pane of the big windows, peering sideways
into the darkness, the vision of this girl, not twenty
feet from where he stood, produced upon him a shock
of the most convincing delight he had ever known.
It was almost as though he saw some one who had
dropped down among all these hotel people from
another world. And from another world, in a sense,
she undoubtedly was; for her face held in it nothing
that belonged to the European countries he knew.
She was of the East. The magic of other suns swept
into his soul with the vision; the pageantry of other
skies flashed brilliantly and was gone. Torches
flamed in recesses of his being hitherto dark.
The incongruous surroundings unquestionably
deepened the contrast to her advantage, but what
made this first sight of her so extraordinarily arrest-
ing was the curious chance that where she sat the
glare of the electric light did not touch her. She was
in shadow from the shoulders downwards. Only, as
she leaned backwards against the window, the face
and neck turned slightly, there fell upon her exquisite
Eastern features the soft glory of the rising moon.
And comely she was in Stephen's eyes as nothing in


14 THE LOST WALLEY
his life had hitherto seemed comely. Apart from
the vulgar throng as an exotic is apart from the
weeds that choke its growth, this face seemed to swim
towards him along the pathway of the slanting moon-
beams. And, with it, came literally herself. Some
released projection of his consciousness flew forth to
meet her. The sense of nearness took his breath away
with the faintness of too great happiness. She was
in his arms, and his lips were buried in her scented
hair. The sensation was vivid with pain and joy, as
an ecstasy. And of the nature of true ecstasy, per-
haps, it was : for he stood, it seemed, outside himself.
He remained there riveted in the patch of moon-
light at the forest edge, for perhaps a whole minute,
perhaps two, before he realized what had happened.
Then came a second shock that was even more con-
quering than the first, for the girl, he saw, was not
only gazing into his very face, she was also rising,
as with an incipient gesture of recognition. As
though she knew him, the little head bent itself for-
ward gently, gracefully, and the dear eyes positively
smiled.
The impetuous yearning that leaped full-fledged
into his blood taught him in that instant the spiritual
secret that pain and pleasure are fundamentally the
same force. His attempt at self-control, made in-
stinctively, was utterly overwhelmed. Something
flashed to him from her eyes that melted the very
roots of resolve; he staggered backwards, catching
at the nearest tree for support, and in so doing left
the patch of moonlight and stood concealed from view
within the deep shadows behind.
Incredible as it must seem in these days of starved
romance, this man of strength and firm character,
who had hitherto known of such attacks only vicari.
ously from the description of others, now reeled back


THE LOST WALLEY 15
against the trunk of a pine-tree, knowing all the
sweet faintness of an overpowering love at first sight.
“For that, by God, I’d let myself waste utterly to
death ! To bring her an instant's happiness I’d
suffer torture for a century ! ”
For the words, with their clumsy, concentrated
passion, were out before he realized what he was say-
ing, what he was doing; but, once out, he knew how
pitifully inadequate they were to express a tithe of
what was in him like a rising storm. All words
dropped away from him; the breath that came and
went so quickly clothed no further speech.
With his retreat into the shadows the girl had sat
down again, but she still gazed steadily at the place
where he had stood. Stephen, who had lost the
power of further movement, also stood and stared.
The picture, meanwhile, was being traced with hot
iron upon plastic deeps in his soul of which he had
never before divined the existence. And, again, with
the magic of this master-yearning, it seemed that he
drew her out from that horde of hotel guests till she
stood close before his eyes, warm, perfumed, caress-
ing. The delicate, sharp splendour of her face,
already dear beyond all else in life, flamed there with-
in actual touch of his lips. He turned giddy with
the joy, wonder and mystery of it all. The frontiers
of his being melted—then extended to include
her.
From the words a lover fights among to describe
the face he worships one divines only a little of the
picture; these dimly-coloured symbols conceal more
beauty than they reveal. And of this dark, young
oval face, first seen sideways in the moonlight, with
drooping lids over the almond-shaped eyes, soft
cloudy hair, all enwrapped with the haunting and
penetrating mystery of love, Stephen never attempted


16 THE LOST WALLEY
to analyze the ineffable secret. He just accepted it
with a plunge of utter self-abandonment. He only
realized vaguely by way of detail that the little nose,
without being Jewish, curved singularly down towards
a chin daintily chiselled in firmness; that the mouth
held in its lips the invitation of all womankind as
expressed in another race, a race alien to his own—an
Eastern race; and that something untamed, almost
savage, in the face was corrected by the exquisite ten-
derness of the large dreamy, brown eyes. The mighty
revolution of love spread its soft tide into every corner
of his being.
Moreover, that gesture of welcome, so utterly un-
expected yet so spontaneous (so natural, it seemed to
him now !), the smile of recognition that had so
deliciously perplexed him, he accepted in the same
way. The girl had felt what he had felt, and had
betrayed herself even as he had done by a sudden,
uncontrollable movement of revelation and delight;
and to explain it otherwise by any vulgar standard of
worldly wisdom, would be to rob it of all its dear
modesty, truth and wonder. She yearned to know
him, even as he yearned to know her.
And all this in the little space, as men count time,
of two minutes, even less.
How he was able at the moment to restrain all pre-
cipitate and impulsive action, Stephen has never pro-
perly understood. There was a fight, and it was
short, painful and confused. But it ended on a note
of triumphant joy—the rapture of happiness to
COIT16. . . .
With a great effort he remembers that he found the
use of his feet and continued his journey homewards,
passing out once more into the moonlight. The girl
in the verandah followed his disappearing figure with
her turning head; she craned her neck to watch till


THE LOST WALLEY 17
he disappeared beyond the angle of vision; she even
waved her little dark hand.
“I shall be late,” ran the thought sharply through
Stephen's mind. It was cold; vivid with keen pain.
“Mark will wonder what in the world has become of
me | "
For, with swift and terrible reaction, the meaning
of it all—the possible consequences of The Face—
swept over his heart and drowned it in a flood of icy
water. In estimating his brotherly love, even the
love of the twin, he had never conceived such a thing
as this—had never reckoned with the possibility of a
force that could make all else in the world seem so
trivial. . . .
Mark, had he been there, with his more critical
attitude to life, might have analyzed something of it
away. But Mark was not there. And Stephen had
-See?!.
Those mighty strings of life upon which, as upon
an instrument, the heart of man lies stretched had
been set powerfully a-quiver. The new vibrations
poured and beat through him. Something within
him swiftly disintegrated; in its place something else
grew marvellously. The Face had established
dominion over the secret places of his soul; thence-
forward the process was automatic and inevitable.
IV
Then, spectre-like and cold, the image of his
brother rose before his inner vision. The profound
brotherly love of the twin confronted him in the path.
He stumbled among the roots and stones, search-
ing for the means of self-control, but finding them
with difficulty. Windows had opened everywhere
b


18 THE LOST WALLEY
in his soul; he looked out through them upon a new
world, immense and gloriously coloured. Behind him
in the shadows, as his vision searched and his heart
sang, reared the single thought that hitherto had
dominated his life: his love for Mark. It had
already grown indisputably dim.
For both passions were genuine and commanding,
the one built up through thirty-five years of devotion
cemented by ten thousand associations and sacrifices,
the other dropping out of heaven upon him with a
suddenness simply appalling. And from the very
first instant he understood that both could not live.
One must die to feed the other. . . .
On the staircase was the perfume of a strange
tobacco, and, to his surprise and intense relief, when
he entered the châlet he found that his brother for
the first time was not alone. A small, dark man stood
talking earnestly with him by the open window—the
window where Mark had obviously been watching
with anxiety for his arrival. Before introducing him
to the stranger, Mark at once gave expression to his
relief.
“I was beginning to be afraid something had hap-
pened to you,” he said quietly enough, but in a way
that the other understood. And after a moment's
pause, in which he searched Stephen's face keenly,
he added, “but we didn't wait supper as you see, and
old Petavel has kept yours all hot and ready for
you in the kitchen.”
“I–er—lost my way,” Stephen said quickly,
glancing from Mark to the stranger, wondering
vaguely who he was. “I got confused somehow in
the dusk 22
Mark, remembering his manners now that his
anxiety was set at rest, hastened to introduce him—a
Professor in a Russian University, interested in folk-


THE LOST WALLEY 19
lore and legend, who had read their book on the
Abruzzi and discovered quite by chance that they
were neighbours here in the forest. He was stay-
ing in a little hotel at Les Rasses, and had ventured
to come up and introduce himself. Stephen was far
too occupied trying to conceal his new battling
emotions to notice that Mark and the stranger seemed
on quite familiar terms. He was so fearful lest the
perturbations of his own heart should betray him that
he had no power to detect anything subtle or unusual
in anybody else.
“Professor Samarianz comes originally from
Tiflis,” Mark was explaining, “and has been telling
me the most fascinating things about the legends and
folklore of the Caucasus. We really must go there
another year, Stephen. . . . Mr. Samarianz most
kindly has promised me letters to helpful people. . . .
He tells me, too, of a charming and exquisite legend
of a ‘Lost Valley’ that exists hereabouts, where the
spirits of all who die by their own hands, or other-
wise suffer violent deaths, find perpetual peace—the
peace denied them by all the religions, that is. . . .”
Mark went on talking for some minutes while
Stephen took off his knapsack and exchanged a few
words with their visitor, who spoke excellent English.
He was not quite sure what he said, but hoped he
talked quietly and sensibly enough, in spite of the
passions that waged war so terrifically in his breast.
He noticed, however, that the man's face held an
unusual charm, though he could not detect wherein
its secret specifically lay. Presently, with excuses of
hunger, he went into the kitchen for his supper,
hugely relieved to find the opportunity to collect his
thoughts a little; and when he returned twenty
minutes later he found that his brother was alone.
Professor Samarianz had taken his leave. In the
B 2


20 THE LOST WALLEY
room still lingered the perfume of his peculiarly
flavoured cigarettes.
Mark, after listening with half an ear to his
brother's description of the day, began pouring out
his new interest; he was full of the Caucasus, and its
folklore, and of the fortunate chance that had brought
the stranger their way. The legend of the “Lost
Valley” in the Jura, too, particularly interested him,
and he spoke of his astonishment that he had hitherto
come across no trace anywhere of the story.
“And fancy,” he exclaimed, after a recital that
lasted half-an-hour, “the man came up from one of
those little hotels on the edge of the forest—that
noisy one we have always been so careful to avoid.
You never know where your luck hides, do you?” he
added, with a laugh.
“You never do, indeed,” replied Stephen quietly,
now wholly master of himself, or, at least, of his voice
and eyes.
And, to his secret satisfaction and delight, it was
Mark who provided the excuses for staying on in the
châlet, instead of moving further down the valley as
they had intended. Besides, it would have been
unnatural and absurd to leave without investigating
so picturesque a legend as the “Lost Valley.”
“We're uncommonly happy here,” Mark added
quietly; “why not stay on a bit?”
“Why not, indeed?” answered Stephen, trusting
that the fearful inner storm instantly roused again by
the prospect did not betray itself.
“You’re not very keen, perhaps, old fellow 7" sug-
gested Mark gently.
“On the contrary—I am, very,” was the reply.
“Good. Then we'll stay.”
The words were spoken after a pause of some
seconds. Stephen, who was down at the end of the


THE LOST WALLEY 21
room sorting his specimens by the lamp, looked up
sharply. Mark's face, where he sat on the window-
ledge in the dusk, was hardly visible. It must have
been something in his voice that had shot into
Stephen's heart with a flash of sudden warning.
A sensation of cold passed swiftly over him and
was gone. Had he already betrayed himself? Was
the subtle, almost telepathic sympathy between the
twins developed to such a point that emotions could
be thus transferred with the minimum of word or
gesture, within the very shades of their silence even 2
And another thought: Was there something different
in Mark to-something in him also that had
changed? Or was it merely his own raging, heaving
passion, though so sternly repressed, that distorted
his judgment and made him imaginative 2
What stood so darkly in the room—between them 2
A sudden and fearful pain seared him inwardly as
he realized, practically, and with cruelly acute com-
prehension, that one of these two loves in his heart
must inevitably die to feed the other; and that it
might have to be—Mark. The complete meaning of
it came home to him. And at the thought all his
deep love of thirty years rose in a tide within him,
flooding through the gates of life, seeking to over-
whelm and merge in itself all obstacles that threat-
ened to turn it aside. Unshed tears burned behind
his eyes. He ached with a degree of actual, physical
pain.
After a moment of savage self-control he turned
and crossed the room; but before he had covered half
the distance that separated him from the window
where his brother sat smoking, the rush of burning
words—were they to have been of confession, of self-
reproach, or of renewed devotion ?—swept away from
him, so that he wholly forgot them. In their place


12 THE LOST WALLEY
man of balanced mind, healthy in nerves and spirit,
and in a single moment change his serenity into a
state of feverish and passionate desire for possession,
is a mystery that lies too deep for philosophy or
science to explain. It turned him dizzy with a sud-
den and tempestuous delight—a veritable sickness of
the soul, wondrous sweet as it was deadly. Rare
enough, of course, such instances may be, but that
they happen is undeniable.
He was making his way home in the dusk some-
what wearily. The sun had already dipped below
the horizon of France behind him. Across the open
country that stretched away to the distant mountains
of the Rhone Valley, the moonlight climbed with
wings of ghostly radiance that fanned their way into
the clefts and pine-woods of the Jura all about him.
Cool airs of night stirred and whispered; lights
twinkled through the openings among the trees, and
all was scented like a garden.
He must have strayed considerably from the right
trail—path there was none—for instead of striking
the mountain road that led straight to his châlet,
he suddenly emerged into a pool of electric light
that shone round one of the smaller wooden hotels
by the borders of the forest. He recognized it at
once, because he and his brother always avoided it
deliberately. Not so gay or crowded as the larger
caravansarais, it was nevertheless full of people of
the kind they did not care about. Stephen was a good
half-mile out of his way.
When the mind is empty and the body tired it
would seem that the system is sensitive to impressions
with an acuteness impossible when these are vigor-
ously employed. The face of this girl, framed
against the glass of the hotel verandah, rushed out
towards him with a sudden invading glory, and took


THE LOST WALLEY 13
the most complete imaginable possession of this tem-
porary unemployment of his spirit. Before he could
think or act, accept or reject, it had lodged itself
eternally at the very centre of his being. He stopped,
as before an unexpected flash of lightning, caught his
breath—and stared. -
A little apart from the throng of “dressy" folk
who sat there in the glitter of the electric light, this
face of melancholy dark splendour rose close before
his eyes, all soft and wondrous as though the beauty
of the night—of forest, stars and moon-rise—had
dropped down and focussed itself within the compass
of a single human countenance. Framed within a
corner pane of the big windows, peering sideways
into the darkness, the vision of this girl, not twenty
feet from where he stood, produced upon him a shock
of the most convincing delight he had ever known.
It was almost as though he saw some one who had
dropped down among all these hotel people from
another world. And from another world, in a sense,
she undoubtedly was; for her face held in it nothing
that belonged to the European countries he knew.
She was of the East. The magic of other suns swept
into his soul with the vision; the pageantry of other
skies flashed brilliantly and was gone. Torches
flamed in recesses of his being hitherto dark.
The incongruous surroundings unquestionably
deepened the contrast to her advantage, but what
made this first sight of her so extraordinarily arrest-
ing was the curious chance that where she sat the
glare of the electric light did not touch her. She was
in shadow from the shoulders downwards. Only, as
she leaned backwards against the window, the face
and neck turned slightly, there fell upon her exquisite
Eastern features the soft glory of the rising moon.
And comely she was in Stephen's eyes as nothing in


24 THE LOST WALLEY
she was free even; for he only knew that he loved,
and that his entire life was already breaking with the
yearning to sacrifice itself for that love. That was
the naked fact. The problem bludgeoned him. Could
he do anything to hold back the flood still rising,
to arrest its terrific flow 2 Could he divert its torrent,
and take it, girl and all, to offer upon the altar of that
other love—the devotion of the twin for its twin, the
mysterious affinity that hitherto had ruled and directed
all the currents of his soul ?
There was no question of undoing what had already
been done. Even if he never saw that face again, or
heard the accents of those beloved lips; if he never
was to know the magic of touch, the perfume of close
thought, or the strange blessedness of telling her his
burning message and hearing the murmur of her
own—the fact of love was already accomplished
between them. That was ineradicable. He had
seen. The sensitive plate had received its undying
picture.
For this was no foolish passion arising from the
mere propinquity that causes so many of the world's
misfit marriages. It was a profound and mystical
union already accomplished, psychical in the utter
sense, inevitable as the marriage of wind and fire. He
almost heard his soul laugh as he thought of the
revolution effected in an instant of time by the
message of a single glance. What had science, or
his own special department of science, to say to this
tempest of force that invaded him, and swept with its
beautiful terrors of wind and lightning the furthest
recesses of his being 2 This whirlwind that so shook
him, that so deliciously wounded him, that already
made the thought of sacrificing his brother seem
sweet—what was there to say to it, or do with it, or
think of it?


THE LOST WALLEY 25
Nothing, nothing, nothing ! . . . He could only lie
in its arms and rest, with that peace, deeper than all
else in life, which the mystic knows when he is con-
scious that the everlasting arms are about him and
that his union with the greatest force of the world is
accomplished.
Yet Stephen struggled like a lion. His will rose
up and opposed itself to the whole invasion . . . and
in the end his will of steel, trained as all men of char-
acter train their wills against the difficulties of life,
did actually produce a certain, definite result. This
result was almost a tour de force, perhaps, yet it
seemed valid. By its aid Stephen forced himself into
a position he felt intuitively was an impossible one,
but in which nevertheless he determined, by a deliber-
ate act of almost incredible volition, that he would
remain fixed. He decided to conquer his obsession,
and to remain true to Mark. . . .
The distant ridges of the dim blue Jura were tipped
with the splendours of the coming dawn when at
length he rose, chilly and exhausted, to retrace his
steps to the châlet.
He realized fully the meaning of the resolve he had
come to. And the knowledge of it froze something
within him into a stiffness that was like the stiffness
of death. The pain in his heart battling against the
resolution was atrocious. He had estimated, or
thought so, at least, the meaning of his sacrifice. As
a matter of fact his decision was entirely artificial, of
course, and his resolve dictated by a moral code rather
than by the living forces that direct life and can alone
make its changes permanent. Stephen had in him the
stuff of the hero; and, having said that, one has said
all that language can say.
On the way home in the cool white dawn, as he
crossed the open spaces of meadow where the mist


16 THE LOST WALLEY
to analyze the ineffable secret. He just accepted it
with a plunge of utter self-abandonment. He only
realized vaguely by way of detail that the little nose,
without being Jewish, curved singularly down towards
a chin daintily chiselled in firmness; that the mouth
held in its lips the invitation of all womankind as
expressed in another race, a race alien to his own—an
Eastern race; and that something untamed, almost
savage, in the face was corrected by the exquisite ten-
derness of the large dreamy, brown eyes. The mighty
revolution of love spread its soft tide into every corner
of his being.
Moreover, that gesture of welcome, so utterly un-
expected yet so spontaneous (so natural, it seemed to
him now !), the smile of recognition that had so
deliciously perplexed him, he accepted in the same
way. The girl had felt what he had felt, and had
betrayed herself even as he had done by a sudden,
uncontrollable movement of revelation and delight;
and to explain it otherwise by any vulgar standard of
worldly wisdom, would be to rob it of all its dear
modesty, truth and wonder. She yearned to know
him, even as he yearned to know her.
And all this in the little space, as men count time,
of two minutes, even less.
How he was able at the moment to restrain all pre-
cipitate and impulsive action, Stephen has never pro-
perly understood. There was a fight, and it was
short, painful and confused. But it ended on a note
of triumphant joy—the rapture of happiness to
COſſle. . . .
With a great effort he remembers that he found the
use of his feet and continued his journey homewards,
passing out once more into the moonlight. The girl
in the verandah followed his disappearing figure with
her turning head; she craned her neck to watch till
Sºn -


THE LOST WALLEY 17
he disappeared beyond the angle of vision; she even
waved her little dark hand.
“I shall be late,” ran the thought sharply through
Stephen's mind. It was cold; vivid with keen pain.
“Mark will wonder what in the world has become of
Ine | "
For, with swift and terrible reaction, the meaning
of it all—the possible consequences of The Face—
swept over his heart and drowned it in a flood of icy
water. In estimating his brotherly love, even the
love of the twin, he had never conceived such a thing
as this—had never reckoned with the possibility of a
force that could make all else in the world seem so
trivial. . . .
Mark, had he been there, with his more critical
attitude to life, might have analyzed something of it
away. But Mark was not there. And Stephen had
—See?!.
Those mighty strings of life upon which, as upon
an instrument, the heart of man lies stretched had
been set powerfully a-quiver. The new vibrations
poured and beat through him. Something within
him swiftly disintegrated; in its place something else
grew marvellously. The Face had established
dominion over the secret places of his soul; thence-
forward the process was automatic and inevitable.
IV
Then, spectre-like and cold, the image of his
brother rose before his inner vision. The profound
brotherly love of the twin confronted him in the path.
He stumbled among the roots and stones, search-
ing for the means of self-control, but finding them
with difficulty. Windows had opened everywhere
b


28 THE LOST WALLEY
But he answered quietly, sustaining his purpose
artificially by a force of will that seemed to break and
twist his life at the source with extraordinary pain.
He could not have endured the strain for more than a
few seconds. His voice sounded strange and distant.
“All right; at the end of the week,” he said—the
faintness in him was dreadful, filling him with cold—
“and that'll give us just three days to make our
plans, won't it?”
Mark nodded his head. Both faces were lined and
drawn like the faces of old men; only there was no
one there to remark upon it—nor upon the fixed
sternness that had dropped so suddenly upon their
eyes and lips. -
Arm in arm they entered the châlet and went to
their bedrooms without another word. The sun, as
they went, rose close over the tree-tops and dropped
its first rays upon the spot where they had just stood.
VI
They came down in dressing-gowns to a very late
breakfast. They were quiet, grave and slightly pre-
occupied. Neither made the least reference to their
meeting at sunrise. New lines had graved themselves
upon their faces, identical lines it seemed, drawing
the mouth down at the corners with a touch of grim-
ness where hitherto had been merely firmness.
And the eyes of both saw new things, new dis-
tances, new terrors. Something, feared till now only
as a possibility, had come close, and stood at their
elbows for the first time as an actuality. Sleep, in
which changes offered to the soul during the day are
confirmed and ratified, had established this new
element in their personal equation. They had


THE LOST WALLEY 29
changed—if not towards one another, then towards
something else.
But Stephen saw the matter only from his own
point of view. For the first time in his memory he
seemed to have lost the intuitive sympathy which
enabled him to see things from his brother's point of
view as well. The change, he felt positive, was in
himself, not in Mark.
“He knows—he feels—something in me has altered
dreadfully, but he doesn't yet understand what,” his
thoughts ran. “Pray to God he need never know—
at least until I have utterly conquered it !”
For he still held with all the native tenacity of his
strong will to the course he had so heroically chosen.
The degree of self-deception his imagination brought
into the contest seemed incredible when his mind
looked back upon it all from the calmness of the end.
But at the time he genuinely hoped, wished, intended
to conquer, even believed that he would conquer.
Mark, he noticed, reacted in little ways that curi-
ously betrayed his mental perturbation, and at any
other time might have roused his brother's suspicions.
He put sugar in Stephen's coffee, for instance; he
forgot to bring him a cigarette when he went to the
cupboard to get one for himself; he said and did
numerous little things that were contrary to his habits,
or to the habits of his twin.
In all of which, however, Stephen saw only the
brotherly reaction to the change he was conscious of
in himself. Nothing happened to convince him that
anything in Mark had suffered revolution. With the
mystical devotion peculiar to the twin he was too
keenly aware of his own falling away to imagine the
falling away of the other. He, Stephen, was the
guilty one, and he suffered atrociously. Moreover,
the pain of his renunciation was heightened by the


42 THE LOST WALLEY
belonged beyond possibility of change or control—
to another; yet, secondly, that his will, tried and
tempered weapon of steel that it was, held firm.
Thus his powerful feelings flung him from one wall
of his dreadful prison to another without possible
means of escape. For his position involved a funda-
mental contradiction : the new love owned him, yet
his will cried, “I love Mark; I hold true to that; in
the end I shall conquer I " He refused, that is, to
capitulate, or rather to acknowledge that he had
capitulated. And meanwhile, even while he cried,
his inmost soul listened, watched, and laughed, well
Content to abide the issue.
But if his feelings were in too great commotion
for clear analysis, his thoughts, on the other hand,
were painfully definite—some of them, at least; and,
as the physical exercise lessened the assaults of emo-
tion, these stood forth in sharp relief against the con-
fusion of his inner world. It was now clear as the
day, for instance, that Mark had been through a battle
similar to his own. The chance meeting with the
Professor had led to the acquaintance with his
daughter. Then, swiftly and inevitably, just as it
would have happened to Stephen in his place, love
had accomplished its full magic. And Mark had
been afraid to tell him. The twins had travelled the
same path, only personal feeling having clouded their
usual intuition, neither had divined the truth.
Stephen saw it now with pitiless clarity: his
brother's frequent visits to the hotel, omitting to
mention that the notes of invitation probably also
included himself; the desire, nay, the intention to
stay on ; the delay in packing—and a dozen other
details stood out clearly. He remembered, too, with
a pang how Mark had not slept that memorable night;
he recalled their enigmatical conversation on the bal-


THE LOST WALLEY 43
cony as the sun rose . . . and all the rest of the
miserable puzzle.
And, as he realized from his own torments what
Mark must also have suffered—be suffering now—he
was conscious of a strengthening of his will to
conquer. The thought linked him fiercely again to
his twin; for nothing in their lives had yet been
separate, and the chain of their spiritual intimacy was
of incalculably vast strength. They would win—win
back to one another's side again. Mark would
conquer her. He, Stephen, would also in the end
conquer . . . her . . . ]
But with the thought of her lying thus dead to him,
and his life cold and empty without her, came the
inevitable revulsion of feeling. It was the anarchy of
love. The Face, the perfume, the rushing power of
her melancholy dear eyes, with their singular touch of
proud languor—in a word, all the amazing magic that
had swept himself and Mark from their feet, tore back
upon him with such an invasion of entreaty and com-
mand, that he sat down upon the very rocks where
he was and buried his face in his hands, literally
groaning with the pain of it. For the thought lacer-
ated within. To give her up was a sheer impossibility;
. . . to give up his brother was equally inconceivable.
The weight of thirty-five years' love and associations
thus gave battle against the telling blow of a single
moment. Behind the first lay all that life had built
into the woof of his personality hitherto, but beyond
the second lay the potent magic, the huge seductive
invitation of what he might become in the future—
with her.
The contest, in the nature of the forces engaged,
was an unequal one. Yet all that morning as he
wandered aimlessly over ridge and summit, and across
the high Jura pastures above the forests, meeting no


44 THE LOST WALLEY
single human being, he fought with himself as only
men with innate energy of soul know how to fight-
bitterly, savagely, blindly. He did not stop to realize
that he was somewhat in the position of a fly that
strives to push from its appointed course the planet
on which it rides through space. For the tides of
life itself bore him upon their crest, and at thirty-five
these tides are at the full.
Thus, gradually it was, then, as the hopelessness
of the struggle became more and more apparent, that
the door of the only alternative opened slightly and let
him peer through. Once ajar, however, it seemed
the same second wide open; he was through; and it
was closed—behind him.
For a different nature the alternative might have
taken a different form. As has been seen, he was too
strong a man to drift merely; a definite way out that
could commend itself to a man of action had to be
found; and, though the raw material of heroism may
have been in him, he made no claim to a martyrdom
that should last as long as life itself. And this alter-
native dawned upon him now as the grey light of a
last morning must dawn upon the condemned
prisoner: given Stephen, and given this particular
problem, it was the only way out.
He envisaged it thus suddenly with a kind of ulti-
mate calmness and determination that was char-
acteristic of the man. And in every way it was
characteristic of the man, for it involved the precise
combination of courage and cowardice, weakness and
strength, selfishness and sacrifice, that expressed the
true resultant of all the forces at work in his soul.
To him, at the moment of his rapid decision, however,
it seemed that the dominant motive was the sacrifice
to be offered upon the altar of his love for Mark.
The twisted notion possessed him that in this way he


THE LOST WALLEY 33
It was utterly inconsistent, of course, and he made
no pretence of argument or excuse. He hardly
knew, indeed, what he expected to see or do; his
mind, at least, framed no definite idea. But far
within him that deep heart which refused to be stifled
cried out for a drop of the living water that was now
its very life. And, chiefly, he wanted to see. If only
he could see her once again—even from a distance—
the merest glimpse ! With one more sight of
her that should charge his memory to the brim for life
he might face the future with more courage perhaps.
Ah! that perhaps! . . . For she was drawing him with
those million invisible cords of love that persuade a
man he is acting of his own volition when actually he
is but obeying the inevitable forces that bind the
planets and the suns.
And this time there was no hurry; there was a good
hour before Mark would expect him home for supper;
he could sit among the shadows of the wood, and wait.
In his pocket were the field-glasses, and he realized
with a sudden secret shame that it was not by accident
that they were there. He stumbled, even before he
got within a quarter of a mile of the place, for the idea
that perhaps he would see her again made him
ridiculously happy, and like a school-boy he positively
trembled, tripping over roots and misjudging the
distance of his steps. It was all part of a great whirl-
ing dream in which his scul sang and shouted the first
delirious nonsense that came into his head. The possi-
bility of his eyes again meeting hers produced a
sensation of triumph and exultation that only one
word describes—intoxication.
As he approached the opening in the trees whence
the hotel was so easily visible, he went more slowly,
moving even on tiptoe. It was instinctive; for he was
nearing a place made holy by his love. Picking his
C


46 THE LOST WALLEY
longed stress of emotion under which he had so long
been labouring had at last produced a condition of
mind that could only be considered—unsound.
A cool wind swept his face as he let his tired eyes
wander over the leagues of silent forest below. The
blue Jura with its myriad folded valleys lay about
him like the waves of a giant sea ready to swallow up
the little atom of his life within its deep heart of for-
getfulness. Clear away into France he saw on the one
side where, beyond the fortress of Pontarlier, white
clouds sailed the horizon before a westerly wind; and,
on the other, towards the white-robed Alps rising
mistily through the haze of the autumn sunshine.
Between these extreme distances lay all that world of
a hundred intricate valleys, curiously winding, deeply
wooded, little inhabited—a region of soft, confusing
loveliness where a traveller might well lose himself
for days together before he discovered a way out of
SO VaSt a maze.
And, as he gazed, there passed across his mind, like
the dim memory of something heard in childhood, that
legend of the “Lost Valley” in which the souls of the
unhappy dead find the deep peace that is denied to
them by all the religions—and to which hundreds,
who have not yet the sad right of entry, seek to find
the mournful forest gates. The memory was vivid,
but swiftly engulfed by others and forgotten. They
chased each other in rapid succession across his mind,
as clouds at sunset pass before a high wind, merging
on the horizon in a common mass.
Then, slowly, at length, he turned and made his
way down the mountain-side in the direction of the
French frontier for a last journey upon the sweet
surface of the world he loved. In his soul was the
one dominant feeling: this singular exaltation arising
from the knowledge that in the long run his great


THE LOST WALLEY 47
sacrifice must ensure the happiness of the two beings
he loved more than all else in life.
At the solitary farm where an hour later he had his
lunch of bread and cheese and milk, he learned that
he had wandered many miles out of the routes with
which he was more or less familiar. He had been
walking faster than he knew all these hours of battle.
A physical weariness came upon him that made him
conscious of every muscle in his body as he realized
what a long road over mountain and valley he had to
retrace. But, with the heaviness of fatigue, ran still
that sense of interior spiritual exaltation. Something
in him walked on air with springs of steel—something
that was independent of the dragging limbs and the
aching back. For the rest, his sensations seemed
numb. His great Decision stood black before him,
blocking the way. Thoughts and feelings forsook
him as rats leave a sinking ship. The time for these
was past. Two overmastering desires, however, clung
fast: one, to see Mark again, and be with him; the
other, to be once more—with her. These two desires
left no room for others. With the former, indeed,
it was almost as though Mark had called aloud to him
by name.
He stood a moment where the depth of the valley
he had to thread lay like a twisting shadow at his
feet; it ran, soft and dim, through the slanting sun-
shine. From the whole surface of the woods rose a
single murmur; like the whirring of voices heard in
a dream, he thought. The individual purring of
Separate trees was merged. Peace, most ancient and
profound, lay in it, and its hushed whisper soothed
his spirit.
He hurried his pace a little. The cool wind that
had swept his face on the heights earlier in the after-
noon followed him down, urging him forwards with


36 THE LOST WALLEY
He did not know her name, had never heard her
voice, had never even stood close enough to “feel”
her atmosphere; yet, so deeply had his love and
imagination already prepared the little paths of inti-
macy within him, that he felt he was moving towards
some one whom he had known ever since he could
remember, and who belonged to him as utterly as if
from the beginning of time his possession of her had
been absolute. Had they shared together a whole
series of previous lives, the sensation could not have
been more convincing and complete.
And out of all this whirlwind and tumult two small
actions, he remembers, were delivered : a confused
cry that was no definite word came from his lips,
and—he opened his arms to take her to his heart.
Whereupon, of course, she turned with a quick start,
and became for the first time aware of his near
presence.
“Oh, oh! But how so softly quick you return 1” she
cried falteringly, looking into his eyes with a smile
both of welcome and alarm. “You a little frightened
me, I tell you.”
It was just the voice he had known would come,
with the curiously slow, dragging tone of its broken
English, the words lingering against the lips as if loath
to leave, the soft warmth of their sound in the throat
like a caress. The next instant he held her smothered
in his arms, his face buried in the scented hair about
her neck.
There was an unbelievable time of forgetfulness in
which touch, perfume, and a healing power that
emanated from her blessed the depths of his soul with
a peace that calmed all pain, stilled all tumult—a
moment in which Time itself for once stopped its
remorseless journey, and the very processes of life
stood still to watch. Then there was a frightened


THE LOST WALLEY 37
cry, and she had pushed him from her. She stood
there, her soft eyes puzzled and surprised, looking
hard at him; panting a little, her breast heaving.
And Stephen understood then, if he had not already
understood before. The gesture of recognition in the
hotel verandah two days ago, and this glorious
realization of it that now seemed to have happened
a century ago, shared a common origin. They were
intended for another, and on both occasions the girl
had taken him for his brother Mark.
And, turning sharply, almost falling with the
abruptness of it all, as the girl's lips uttered that
sudden cry, he saw close beside them the very person
for whom they were intended. Mark had come up
the slope behind them unobserved, carrying upon his
arm the little red cloak he had been to fetch.
It was as though a wind of ice had struck him in the
face. The revulsion of feeling with which Stephen
saw the return of his brother passed rapidly into a
state of numbness where all emotion whatsoever ebbed
like the tides of death. He lost momentarily the
power of realization. He forgot who he was, what
he was doing there. He was dazed by the fact that
Mark had so completely forestalled him. His life
shook and tottered upon its foundations. . .
Then the face and figure of his brother swayed
before his eyes like the branch of a tree, as an attack
of passing dizziness seized him. It may have been
a mere hazard that led his fingers to close, moist and
clammy, upon the geological hammer at his belt.
Certainly, he let it go again almost at once. . . .
And, when the tide of emotion returned upon him
with the dreadful momentum it had gathered during
the interval, the possibility of his yielding to wild
impulse and doing something mad or criminal, was
obviated by the swift enactment of an exceedingly


38 THE LOST WALLEY
poignant little drama that made both brothers forget
themselves in their desire to save the girl.
In sweetest bewilderment, like a frightened little
child or animal, the girl looked from one brother to
the other. Her eyes shone in the dusk. Strangely
appealing her loveliness was in that moment of seek-
ing some explanation of the double vision. She made
a movement first towards Mark—turned halfway in
her steps and ran, startled, upon Stephen—then, with
a sharp scream of fear, dropped in a heap to the
ground midway between the two.
Her indecision of half-a-second, however, seemed
to Stephen to have lasted many minutes. Had she
fallen finally into the arms of his brother, he felt
nothing on earth could have prevented his leaping
upon him with the hands of a murderer. As it was—
mercifully—the singular beauty of her little Eastern
face, touched as it was by the white terror of her soul,
momentarily arrested all other feeling in him. A
shudder of fearful admiration passed through him as
he saw her sway and fall. Thus might have dropped
some soft angel from the skies. . . .
It was Mark, however, with his usual decision, who
brought some possibility of focus back to his mind;
and he did it with an action and a sentence so utterly
unexpected, so incongruous amid this whirlwind of
passion, that had he seen it on the stage or read it in
a novel, he must surely have burst out laughing.
For, in that very second after the dear form swayed
and fell, while the eyes of the brothers met across her
in one swift look that held the possibilities of the
direst results, Mark, his face abruptly clearing to
calmness, stooped down beside the prostrate girl,
and, looking up at Stephen steadily, said in a gentle
voice, but with his most deliberate professional
man neſ—


THE LOST WALLEY 39
“Stephen, old fellow, this is-my patient. One of
us, perhaps, had better—go.”
He bent down to loosen the dress at the throat and
chafe the cold hands, and Stephen, uncertain exactly
what he did, and trembling like a child, turned and
disappeared among the thick trees in the direction of
their little house. For he understood only one thing
clearly in that awful moment: that he must either
kill—or not see. And his will, well-nigh breaking
beneath the pressure, was just able to take the latter
COurSe.
“Go! ” it said peremptorily.
And the little word sounded through the depths of
his soul like the tolling of a last bell.
VIII
“This is my patient!” The dreadful comedy of
the phrase, the grim mockery of the professional
manner, the contrast between the words that some
one ought to have uttered and the words Mark actually
had uttered—all this had the effect of restoring
Stephen to some measure of sanity. No one but his
brother, he felt, could have said the thing so exactly
calculated to relieve the choking passion of the situa-
tion. It was an inspiration—yet horrible in its bizarre
mingling of true and false.
“But it's all like a thing in a dream,” he heard an
inner voice murmur as he stumbled homewards with-
out once looking back; “the kind of thing people say
and do in the rooms of strange sleep-houses. We are
all surely in a dream, and presently I shall wake
up— ! --
The voice continued talking, but he did not listen.


40 THE LOST WALLEY
A web of confusion began to spin itself about his
thoughts, and there stole over him an odd sensation
of remoteness from the actual things of life. It was
surely one of those vivid, haunting dreams he some-
times had when his spirit seemed to take part in real
scenes, with real people, only far, far away, and on
quite another scale of time and values.
“I shall find myself in my bed at Wimpole Street !”
he exclaimed. He even tried to escape from the pain
closing about him like a vice—tried to escape by
waking up, only to find, of course, that the effort
drove him more closely to the reality of his position.
Yet the texture of a dream certainly ran through
the whole thing; the outlandish proportions of dream-
events showed themselves everywhere; the tiny causes
and prodigious effects: the terrific power of the Face
upon his soul; the uncanny semi-quenching of his
love for Mark; the ridiculous way he had come upon
these two in the forest, with the nightmare discovery
that they had known one another for days; and then
the sight of that dear, magical face dropping through
the dusky forest air between the two of them. More-
over—just when the dream ought to have ended with
his sudden awakening, it had taken this abrupt and
inconsequent turn, and Mark had uttered the language
of-well, the impossible and rather horrible language
of the nightmare world—
“This is my patient. . . .
Moreover, his face of ice as he said it; yet, at the
same time, the wisdom, the gentleness of the decision
that lay behind the words: the desire to relieve an
impossibly painful situation. And then—the other
words, meant kindly, even meant nobly, but charged
for all that with the naked cruelty of life—
“One of us, perhaps, had better—go.”
And he had gone—fortunately, he had gone. . . .
> *


THE LOST WALLEY 41
Yet an hour later, after lying motionless upon his
bed seeking with all his power for a course of action
his will could follow and his mind approve, it was
no dream-voice that called softly to him through the
keyhole—
“Stevie, old fellow . . . she is well . . . she is all
right now. She leaves in the morning with her
father . . . the first thing . . . very early. . . .”
And then, after a pause in which Stephen said
nothing lest he should at the same time say all—
“. . . and it is best, perhaps . . . we should not
see one another . . . you and I . . . for a bit. Let
us go our ways . . . till to-morrow night. Then we
shall be . . . alone together again . . . you and I
. . . as of old. . . .”
The voice of Mark did not tremble; but it sounded
far away and unreal, almost like wind in the keyhole,
thin, reedy, sighing; oddly broken and interrupted.
“. . . I'm yours, Stevie, old fellow, always yours,”
it added far down the corridor, more like the voice of
dream again than ever.
But, though he made no reply at the moment,
Stephen welcomed and approved both the proposal
and the spirit in which it was made; and next day,
soon after sunrise, he left the châlet very quietly and
went of alone into the mountains with his thoughts,
and with the pain that all night long had simply been
eating him alive.
IX
It is impossible to know precisely what he felt all
that morning in the mountains. His emotions charged
like wild bulls to and fro. He seemed conscious only
of two master-feelings: first, that his life now


42 THE LOST WALLEY
belonged beyond possibility of change or control-
to another; yet, secondly, that his will, tried and
tempered weapon of steel that it was, held firm.
Thus his powerful feelings flung him from one wall
of his dreadful prison to another without possible
means of escape. For his position involved a funda-
mental contradiction : the new love owned him, yet
his will cried, “I love Mark; I hold true to that; in
the end I shall conquer I " He refused, that is, to
capitulate, or rather to acknowledge that he had
capitulated. And meanwhile, even while he cried,
his inmost soul listened, watched, and laughed, well
content to abide the issue.
But if his feelings were in too great commotion
for clear analysis, his thoughts, on the other hand,
were painfully definite—some of them, at least; and,
as the physical exercise lessened the assaults of emo-
tion, these stood forth in sharp relief against the con-
fusion of his inner world. It was now clear as the
day, for instance, that Mark had been through a battle
similar to his own. The chance meeting with the
Professor had led to the acquaintance with his
daughter. Then, swiftly and inevitably, just as it
would have happened to Stephen in his place, love
had accomplished its full magic. And Mark had
been afraid to tell him. The twins had travelled the
same path, only personal feeling having clouded their
usual intuition, neither had divined the truth.
Stephen saw it now with pitiless clarity: his
brother's frequent visits to the hotel, omitting to
mention that the notes of invitation probably also
included himself; the desire, nay, the intention to
stay on ; the delay in packing—and a dozen other
details stood out clearly. He remembered, too, with
a pang how Mark had not slept that memorable night;
he recalled their enigmatical conversation on the bal-


THE LOST WALLEY 43
cony as the sun rose . . . and all the rest of the
miserable puzzle.
And, as he realized from his own torments what
Mark must also have suffered—be suffering now—he
was conscious of a strengthening of his will to
conquer. The thought linked him fiercely again to
his twin; for nothing in their lives had yet been
separate, and the chain of their spiritual intimacy was
of incalculably vast strength. They would win—win
back to one another's side again. Mark would
conquer her. He, Stephen, would also in the end
conquer . . . her . . . ]
But with the thought of her lying thus dead to him,
and his life cold and empty without her, came the
inevitable revulsion of feeling. It was the anarchy of
love. The Face, the perfume, the rushing power of
her melancholy dear eyes, with their singular touch of
proud languor—in a word, all the amazing magic that
had swept himself and Mark from their feet, tore back
upon him with such an invasion of entreaty and com-
mand, that he sat down upon the very rocks where
he was and buried his face in his hands, literally
groaning with the pain of it. For the thought lacer-
ated within. To give her up was a sheer impossibility;
. . to give up his brother was equally inconceivable.
The weight of thirty-five years' love and associations
thus gave battle against the telling blow of a single
moment. Behind the first lay all that life had built
into the woof of his personality hitherto, but beyond
the second lay the potent magic, the huge seductive
invitation of what he might become in the future—
with her.
The contest, in the nature of the forces engaged,
was an unequal one. Yet all that morning as he
wandered aimlessly over ridge and summit, and across
the high Jura pastures above the forests, meeting no


44 THE LOST WALLEY
single human being, he fought with himself as only
men with innate energy of soul know how to fight-
bitterly, savagely, blindly. He did not stop to realize
that he was somewhat in the position of a fly that
strives to push from its appointed course the planet
on which it rides through space. For the tides of
life itself bore him upon their crest, and at thirty-five
these tides are at the full.
Thus, gradually it was, then, as the hopelessness
of the struggle became more and more apparent, that
the door of the only alternative opened slightly and let
him peer through. Once ajar, however, it seemed
the same second wide open; he was through; and it
was closed—behind him.
For a different nature the alternative might have
taken a different form. As has been seen, he was too
strong a man to drift merely; a definite way out that
could commend itself to a man of action had to be
found; and, though the raw material of heroism may
have been in him, he made no claim to a martyrdom
that should last as long as life itself. And this alter-
native dawned upon him now as the grey light of a
last morning must dawn upon the condemned
prisoner: given Stephen, and given this particular
problem, it was the only way out.
He envisaged it thus suddenly with a kind of ulti-
mate calmness and determination that was char-
acteristic of the man. And in every way it was
characteristic of the man, for it involved the precise
combination of courage and cowardice, weakness and
strength, selfishness and sacrifice, that expressed the
true resultant of all the forces at work in his soul.
To him, at the moment of his rapid decision, however,
it seemed that the dominant motive was the sacrifice
to be offered upon the altar of his love for Mark.
The twisted notion possessed him that in this way he


THE LOST WALLEY 45
might atone in some measure for the waning of his
brotherly devotion. His love for the girl, her pos-
sible love for him—both were to be sacrificed to
obtain the happiness—the eventual happiness—of
these other two. Long, long ago Mark had himself
said that under such circumstances one or other of
them would have to-go. And the decision Stephen
had come to was that the one to “go" was—himself.
This day among the woods and mountains should
be his last on earth. By the evening of the following
day Mark should be free.
“I’ll give my life for him.”
His face was grey and set as he said it. He stood
on the high ridge, bathed by sun and wind. He
looked over the fair world of wooded vales and moun-
tains at his feet, but his eyes, turned inwards, saw
only his brother—and that sweet Eastern face—then
darkness.
“He will understand—and perforce accept it—and
with time, yes, with time, the new happiness shall
fill his soul utterly—and hers. It is for her, too, that
I give it. It must—under these unparalleled circum-
stances be right . . . . .”
And although there was no single cloud in the sky,
the landscape at his feet suddenly went dark and sun-
less from one horizon to the other.
X
Then, having come into the gloom of this terrible
decision, his imaginative nature at once bounded to
the opposite extreme, and a kind of exaltation pos-
sessed him. The stereotyped verdict of a coroner's
jury might in this instance have been true. The pro-


46 THE LOST WALLEY
longed stress of emotion under which he had so long
been labouring had at last produced a condition of
mind that could only be considered—unsound.
A cool wind swept his face as he let his tired eyes
wander over the leagues of silent forest below. The
blue Jura with its myriad folded valleys lay about
him like the waves of a giant sea ready to swallow up
the little atom of his life within its deep heart of for-
getfulness. Clear away into France he saw on the one
side where, beyond the fortress of Pontarlier, white
clouds sailed the horizon before a westerly wind; and,
on the other, towards the white-robed Alps rising
mistily through the haze of the autumn sunshine.
Between these extreme distances lay all that world of
a hundred intricate valleys, curiously winding, deeply
wooded, little inhabited—a region of soft, confusing
loveliness where a traveller might well lose himself
for days together before he discovered a way out of
SO VaSt a maze.
And, as he gazed, there passed across his mind, like
the dim memory of something heard in childhood, that
legend of the “Lost Valley” in which the souls of the
unhappy dead find the deep peace that is denied to
them by all the religions—and to which hundreds,
who have not yet the sad right of entry, seek to find
the mournful forest gates. The memory was vivid,
but swiftly engulfed by others and forgotten. They
chased each other in rapid succession across his mind,
as clouds at sunset pass before a high wind, merging
on the horizon in a common mass.
Then, slowly, at length, he turned and made his
way down the mountain-side in the direction of the
French frontier for a last journey upon the sweet
surface of the world he loved. In his soul was the
one dominant feeling : this singular exaltation arising
from the knowledge that in the long run his great


THE LOST WALLEY 47
sacrifice must ensure the happiness of the two beings
he loved more than all else in life.
At the solitary farm where an hour later he had his
lunch of bread and cheese and milk, he learned that
he had wandered many miles out of the routes with
which he was more or less familiar. He had been
walking faster than he knew all these hours of battle.
A physical weariness came upon him that made him
conscious of every muscle in his body as he realized
what a long road over mountain and valley he had to
retrace. But, with the heaviness of fatigue, ran still
that sense of interior spiritual exaltation. Something
in him walked on air with springs of steel—something
that was independent of the dragging limbs and the
aching back. For the rest, his sensations seemed
numb. His great Decision stood black before him,
blocking the way. Thoughts and feelings forsook
him as rats leave a sinking ship. The time for these
was past. Two overmastering desires, however, clung
fast: one, to see Mark again, and be with him; the
other, to be once more—with her. These two desires
left no room for others. With the former, indeed,
it was almost as though Mark had called aloud to him
by name.
He stood a moment where the depth of the valley
he had to thread lay like a twisting shadow at his
feet; it ran, soft and dim, through the slanting sun-
shine. From the whole surface of the woods rose a
single murmur; like the whirring of voices heard in
a dream, he thought. The individual purring of
separate trees was merged. Peace, most ancient and
profound, lay in it, and its hushed whisper soothed
his spirit.
He hurried his pace a little. The cool wind that
had swept his face on the heights earlier in the after-
noon followed him down, urging him forwards with


48 THE LOST WALLEY
deliberate pressure, as though a thousand soft hands
were laid upon his back. And there were spirits in
the wind that day. He heard their voices; and far
below he traced by the motion of the tree-tops where
they coiled upwards to him through miles of forest.
His way, meanwhile, dived down through dense
growths of spruce and pine into a region unfamiliar.
There was an aspect of the scenery that almost sug-
gested it was unknown—an undiscovered corner of the
world. The countless signs that mark the passage
of humanity were absent, or at least did not obtrude
themselves upon him. Something remote from life,
alien, at any rate, to the normal life he had hitherto
known, began to steal gently over his burdened
soul. . . .
In this way, perhaps, the effect of his dreadful
Decision already showed its influence upon his mind
and senses. So very soon now he would be—going!
The sadness of autumn lay all about him, and the
loneliness of this secluded vale spoke to him of the
melancholy of things that die—of vanished springs,
of summers unfulfilled, of things for ever incomplete
and unsatisfying. Human effort, he felt, this valley
had never known. No hoofs had ever pressed the
mossy turf of these forest clearings; no traffic of
peasants or woodsmen won echoes from these lime-
stone cliffs. All was hushed, lonely, deserted.
And yet ? The depths to which it apparently
plunged astonished him more and more. Nowhere
more than a half-mile across, each turn of the shadowy
trail revealed new distances below. With spots of a
haunting, fairy loveliness too: for here and there, on
isolated patches of lawn-like grass, stood wild lilac
bushes, rounded by the wind; willows from the
swampy banks of the stream waved pale hands; firs,
dark and erect, guarded their eternal secrets on the


THE LOST WALLEY 49
heights. In one little opening, standing all by itself,
he found a lime-tree; while beyond it, shining among
the pines, was a group of shimmering beeches. And,
although there was no wild life, there were flowers;
he saw clumps of them—tall, graceful, blue flowers
whose name he did not know, nodding in dream
across the foaming water of the little torrent.
And his thoughts ran incessantly to Mark. Never
before had he been conscious of so imperious a desire
to see him, to hear his voice, to stand at his side. At
moments it almost obliterated that other great desire.
. . . Again he increased his pace. And the path
plunged more and more deeply into the heart of the
mountains, sinking ever into deeper silence, ever into
an atmosphere of deeper peace. For no sound could
reach him here without first passing along great dis-
tances that were cushioned with soft wind, and
padded, as it were, with a million feathery pine-tops.
A sense of peace that was beyond reach of all possible
disturbance began to cover his breaking life with a
garment as of softest shadows. Never before had he
experienced anything approaching the wonder and
completeness of it. It was a peace, still as the depths
of the sea which are motionless because they cannot
move—cannot even tremble. It was a peace un-
changeable—what some have called, perhaps, the
Peace of God. . . .
“Soon the turn must come,” he thought, yet with-
out a trace of impatience or alarm, “and the road wind
upwards again to cross the last ridge ' " But he
cared little enough; for this enveloping peace drowned
him, hiding even the fear of death.
And still the road sank downwards into the sleep-
laden atmosphere of the crowding trees, and with it
his thoughts, oddly enough, sank deeper and deeper
into dim recesses of his own being. As though a
D


50 THE LOST WALLEY
secret sympathy lay between the path that dived and
the thoughts that plunged. Only, from time to time,
the thought of his brother Mark brought him back to
the surface with a violent rush. Dreadfully, in those
moments, he wanted him—to feel his warm, strong
hand within his own—to ask his forgiveness—per-
haps, too, to grant his own . . . he hardly knew.
“But is there no end to this delicious valley P”
he wondered, with something between vagueness and
confusion in his mind. “Does it never stop, and the
path climb again to the mountains beyond 2 ”
Drowsily, divorced from any positive interest, the
question passed through his thoughts. Underfoot the
grass already grew thickly enough to muffle the sound
of his footsteps. The trail even had vanished,
swallowed by moss. His feet sank in.
“I wish Mark were with me now—to see and feel
all this—”
He stopped short and looked keenly about him for
a moment, leaving the thought incomplete. A deep
sighing, instantly caught by the wind and merged in
the soughing of the trees, had sounded close beside
him. Was it perhaps himself that sighed—uncon-
sciously 2 His heart was surely charged enough ! . . .
A faint smile played over his lips—instantly frozen,
however, as another sigh, more distinct than the first,
and quite obviously external to himself, passed him
closely in the darkening air. More like deep
breathing, though, it was, than sighing. . . . It was
nothing but the wind, of course. Stephen hurried
on again, not surprised that he had been so easily
deceived, for this valley was full of sighings and
breathings—of trees and wind. It ventured upon no
louder noise. Noise of any kind, indeed, seemed im-
possible and forbidden in this muted vale. And so
deeply had he descended now, that the sunshine,


THE LOST WALLEY 51
silver rather than golden, already streamed past far
over his head along the ridges, and no gleam found
its way to where he was. The shadows, too, no
longer blue and purple, had changed to black, as
though woven of some delicate substance that had
definite thickness, like a veil. Across the opposite
slope, one of the mountain summits in the western
sky already dropped its monstrous shadow fringed
with pines. The day was rapidly drawing in.
XI
And here, very gradually, there began to dawn
upon his overwrought mind certain curious things.
They pierced clean through the mingled gloom and
exaltation that characterized his mood. And they
made the skin upon his back a little to-stir and crawl.
For he now became distinctly aware that the empti-
ness of this lonely valley was only apparent. It is
impossible to say through what sense, or combination
of senses, this singular certainty was brought to him
that the valley was not really as forsaken and deserted
as it seemed—that, on the contrary, it was the very
reverse. It came to him suddenly—as a certainty.
The valley as a matter of fact was full. Packed,
thronged and crowded it was to the very brim of its
mighty wooded walls—with life. It was now borne
in upon him, with an inner conviction that left no
room for doubt, that on all sides living things—
persons—were jostling him, rubbing elbows, watching
all his movements, and only waiting till the darkness
came to reveal themselves.
Moreover, with this eerie discovery came also the
further knowledge that a vast multitude of others,
D 2


52 THE LOST WALLEY
again, with pallid faces and yearning eyes, with arms
outstretched and groping feet, were searching every-
where for the way of entrance that he himself had
found so easily. All about him, he felt, were people
by the hundred, by the thousand, seeking with a
kind of restless fever for the narrow trail that led
down into the valley, longing with an intensity that
beat upon his soul in a million waves, for the rest,
the calm silence of the place—but most of all for its
strange, deep, and unalterable peace.
He, alone of all these, had found the Entrance; he,
and one other.
For out of this singular conviction grew another
even more singular: his brother Mark was also
somewhere in this valley with him. Mark, too, was
wandering like himself in and out among its intricate
dim turns. He had said but a short time ago, “I
wish Mark were here ! ” Mark was here. And it was
precisely then—while he stood still a moment, trying
to face these overwhelming obsessions and deal with
them—that the figure of a man, moving swiftly
through the trees, passed him with a great gliding
stride, and with averted face. Stephen started hor-
ribly, catching his breath. In an instant the man was
gone again, swallowed up by the crowding pines.
With a quick movement of pursuit and a cry that
should make the man turn, he sprang forward—but
stopped again almost the same moment, realizing that
the extraordinary speed at which the man had shot
past him rendered pursuit out of the question. He
had been going downhill into the valley; by this
time he was already far, far ahead. But in that mo-
mentary glimpse of him he had seen enough to know.
The face was turned away, and the shadows under the
trees were heavy, but the figure was beyond question
the figure of his brother Mark.
It was his brother, yet not his brother. It was


THE LOST WALLEY 53
Mark—but Mark altered. And the alteration was in
some way—awful; just as the silent speed at which
he had moved—the impossible speed in so dense a
forest—was likewise awful. Then, still shaking
inwardly with the suddenness of it all, Stephen real-
ized that when he called aloud he had uttered certain
definite words. And these words now came back to
him—
“Mark, Mark I Don't go yet ! Don't go—without
me! ”
Before, however, he could act, a most curious and
unaccountable sensation of deadly faintness and pain
came upon him, without cause, without explanation,
so that he dropped backwards in momentary collapse,
and but for the closeness of the tree stems would have
fallen full length to the ground. From the centre of
the heart it came, spreading thence throughout his
whole being like a swift and dreadful fever. All the
muscles of his body relaxed; icy perspiration burst
forth upon his skin; the pulses of life seemed suddenly
reduced to the threshold beyond which they stop.
There was a thick, rushing sound in his ears and
his mind went utterly blank.
These were the sensations of death by suffocation.
He knew this as certainly as though another doctor
stood by his side and labelled each spasm, explained
each successive sinking of the vital flame. He was
passing through the last throes of a dying man. And
then into his mind, thus deliberately left blank,
rushed at lightning speed a whole series of the
pictures of his past life. Even while his breath failed,
he saw his thirty-five years pictorially, successively,
yet in some queer fashion at once, pass through the
lighted chambers of his brain. In this way, it is said,
they pass through the brain of a drowning man
during the last seconds before death.
Childhood rose about him with its scenes, figures,


54 THE LOST WALLEY
voices; the Kentish lawns where he had played with
Mark in stained overalls; the summer-house where
they had tea, the hay-fields where they romped. The
scent of lime and walnut, of garden pinks, and roses
by the tumbled rockery came back to his nostrils. . . .
He heard the voices of grown-ups in the distance . . .
faint barking of dogs . . . the carriage wheels upon
the gravel drive . . . and then the sharp summons
from the opened window—“Time to come in now !
Time to come in 1 " . . .
Time to come in now. It all drove before him as
of yesterday on the scented winds of childhood's
summer days. . . . He heard his brother's voice—
dreadfully faint and far away—calling him by name
in the shrill accents of the boy : “Stevie—I say, you
might shut up . . . and play properly. . . .”
And then followed the panorama of the thirty
years, all the chief events drawn in steel-like lines of
white and black, vivid in sunshine, alive—right down
to the present moment with the portentous dark
shadow of his terrible Decision closing the series like
a cloud.
Yes, like a smothering black cloud that blocked the
way. There was nothing visible beyond it. There,
for him, life ceased
Only, as he gazed with inward-turned eyes that
could not close even if they would, he saw to his
amazement that the black cloud suddenly opened, and
into a space of clear light there swam the vision,
radiant as morning, of that dark young Eastern face—
the face that held for him all the beauty in the world.
The eyes instantly found his own, and smiled.
Behind her, moreover, and beyond, before the moving
vapours closed upon it, he saw a long vista of
brilliance, crowded with pictures he could but half
discern—as though, in spite of himself and his


THE LOST WALLEY 55
Decision, life continued—as though, too, it continued
with her.
And instantly, with the sight and thought of her,
the consuming faintness passed; strength returned to
his body with the glow of life; the pain went; the
pictures vanished; the cloud was no more. In his
blood the pulses of life once again beat strong, and
the blackness left his soul. The smile of those be-
loved eyes had been charged with the invitation to
live. Although his determination remained un-
shaken, there shone behind it the joy of this potent
magic: life with her. . . .
With a strong effort, at length he recovered himself
and continued on his way. More or less familiar, of
course, with the psychology of vision, he dimly under-
stood that his experiences had been in some measure
subjective—within himself. To find the line of de-
marcation, however, was beyond him. That Mark
had wandered out to fight his own battle upon the
mountains, and so come into this same valley, was
well within the bounds of coincidence. But the name-
less and dreadful alteration discerned in that swift
moment of his passing—that remained inexplicable.
Only he no longer thought about it. The glory of
that sweet vision had bewildered him beyond any
possibility of reason or analysis.
His watch told him that the hour was past five
o'clock—ten minutes past, to be exact. He still had
several hours before reaching the country he was
familiar with nearer home. Following the trail
at an increased pace, he presently saw patches of
meadow glimmering between the thinning trees, and
knew that the bottom of the valley was at last in
sight.
“And Mark, God bless him, is down there too—
somewhere !” he exclaimed aloud. “I shall surely


46 THE LOST WALLEY
longed stress of emotion under which he had so long
been labouring had at last produced a condition of
mind that could only be considered—unsound.
A cool wind swept his face as he let his tired eyes
wander over the leagues of silent forest below. The
blue Jura with its myriad folded valleys lay about
him like the waves of a giant sea ready to swallow up
the little atom of his life within its deep heart of for-
getfulness. Clear away into France he saw on the one
side where, beyond the fortress of Pontarlier, white
clouds sailed the horizon before a westerly wind; and,
on the other, towards the white-robed Alps rising
mistily through the haze of the autumn sunshine.
Between these extreme distances lay all that world of
a hundred intricate valleys, curiously winding, deeply
wooded, little inhabited—a region of soft, confusing
loveliness where a traveller might well lose himself
for days together before he discovered a way out of
SO VaSt a maze.
And, as he gazed, there passed across his mind, like
the dim memory of something heard in childhood, that
legend of the “Lost Valley” in which the souls of the
unhappy dead find the deep peace that is denied to
them by all the religions—and to which hundreds,
who have not yet the sad right of entry, seek to find
the mournful forest gates. The memory was vivid,
but swiftly engulfed by others and forgotten. They
chased each other in rapid succession across his mind,
as clouds at sunset pass before a high wind, merging
on the horizon in a common mass.
Then, slowly, at length, he turned and made his
way down the mountain-side in the direction of the
French frontier for a last journey upon the sweet
surface of the world he loved. In his soul was the
one dominant feeling : this singular exaltation arising
from the knowledge that in the long run his great


THE LOST WALLEY 47
sacrifice must ensure the happiness of the two beings
he loved more than all else in life.
At the solitary farm where an hour later he had his
lunch of bread and cheese and milk, he learned that
he had wandered many miles out of the routes with
which he was more or less familiar. He had been
walking faster than he knew all these hours of battle.
A physical weariness came upon him that made him
conscious of every muscle in his body as he realized
what a long road over mountain and valley he had to
retrace. But, with the heaviness of fatigue, ran still
that sense of interior spiritual exaltation. Something
in him walked on air with springs of steel—something
that was independent of the dragging limbs and the
aching back. For the rest, his sensations seemed
numb. His great Decision stood black before him,
blocking the way. Thoughts and feelings forsook
him as rats leave a sinking ship. The time for these
was past. Two overmastering desires, however, clung
fast: one, to see Mark again, and be with him; the
other, to be once more—with her. These two desires
left no room for others. With the former, indeed,
it was almost as though Mark had called aloud to him
by name.
He stood a moment where the depth of the valley
he had to thread lay like a twisting shadow at his
feet; it ran, soft and dim, through the slanting sun-
shine. From the whole surface of the woods rose a
single murmur; like the whirring of voices heard in
a dream, he thought. The individual purring of
separate trees was merged. Peace, most ancient and
profound, lay in it, and its hushed whisper soothed
his spirit.
He hurried his pace a little. The cool wind that
had swept his face on the heights earlier in the after-
noon followed him down, urging him forwards with


48 THE LOST WALLEY
deliberate pressure, as though a thousand soft hands
were laid upon his back. And there were spirits in
the wind that day. He heard their voices; and far
below he traced by the motion of the tree-tops where
they coiled upwards to him through miles of forest.
His way, meanwhile, dived down through dense
growths of spruce and pine into a region unfamiliar.
There was an aspect of the scenery that almost sug-
gested it was unknown—an undiscovered corner of the
world. The countless signs that mark the passage
of humanity were absent, or at least did not obtrude
themselves upon him. Something remote from life,
alien, at any rate, to the normal life he had hitherto
known, began to steal gently over his burdened
soul. . . .
In this way, perhaps, the effect of his dreadful
Decision already showed its influence upon his mind
and senses. So very soon now he would be—going!
The sadness of autumn lay all about him, and the
loneliness of this secluded vale spoke to him of the
melancholy of things that die—of vanished springs,
of summers unfulfilled, of things for ever incomplete
and unsatisfying. Human effort, he felt, this valley
had never known. No hoofs had ever pressed the
mossy turf of these forest clearings; no traffic of
peasants or woodsmen won echoes from these lime-
stone cliffs. All was hushed, lonely, deserted.
And yet—? The depths to which it apparently
plunged astonished him more and more. Nowhere
more than a half-mile across, each turn of the shadowy
trail revealed new distances below. With spots of a
haunting, fairy loveliness too : for here and there, on
isolated patches of lawn-like grass, stood wild lilac
bushes, rounded by the wind; willows from the
swampy banks of the stream waved pale hands; firs,
dark and erect, guarded their eternal secrets on the


THE LOST WALLEY 49
heights. In one little opening, standing all by itself,
he found a lime-tree; while beyond it, shining among
the pines, was a group of shimmering beeches. And,
although there was no wild life, there were flowers;
he saw clumps of them—tall, graceful, blue flowers
whose name he did not know, nodding in dream
across the foaming water of the little torrent.
And his thoughts ran incessantly to Mark. Never
before had he been conscious of so imperious a desire
to see him, to hear his voice, to stand at his side. At
moments it almost obliterated that other great desire.
. . . Again he increased his pace. And the path
plunged more and more deeply into the heart of the
mountains, sinking ever into deeper silence, ever into
an atmosphere of deeper peace. For no sound could
reach him here without first passing along great dis-
tances that were cushioned with soft wind, and
padded, as it were, with a million feathery pine-tops.
A sense of peace that was beyond reach of all possible
disturbance began to cover his breaking life with a
garment as of softest shadows. Never before had he
experienced anything approaching the wonder and
completeness of it. It was a peace, still as the depths
of the sea which are motionless because they cannot
move—cannot even tremble. It was a peace un-
changeable—what some have called, perhaps, the
Peace of God. . . .
“Soon the turn must come,” he thought, yet with-
out a trace of impatience or alarm, “and the road wind
upwards again to cross the last ridge ' " But he
cared little enough; for this enveloping peace drowned
him, hiding even the fear of death.
And still the road sank downwards into the sleep-
laden atmosphere of the crowding trees, and with it
his thoughts, oddly enough, sank deeper and deeper
into dim recesses of his own being. As though a
D


50 THE LOST WALLEY
secret sympathy lay between the path that dived and
the thoughts that plunged. Only, from time to time,
the thought of his brother Mark brought him back to
the surface with a violent rush. Dreadfully, in those
moments, he wanted him—to feel his warm, strong
hand within his own—to ask his forgiveness—per-
haps, too, to grant his own . . . he hardly knew.
“But is there no end to this delicious valley P”
he wondered, with something between vagueness and
confusion in his mind. “Does it never stop, and the
path climb again to the mountains beyond 2"
Drowsily, divorced from any positive interest, the
question passed through his thoughts. Underfoot the
grass already grew thickly enough to muffle the sound
of his footsteps. The trail even had vanished,
swallowed by moss. His feet sank in.
“I wish Mark were with me now—to see and feel
all this—”
He stopped short and looked keenly about him for
a moment, leaving the thought incomplete. A deep
sighing, instantly caught by the wind and merged in
the soughing of the trees, had sounded close beside
him. Was it perhaps himself that sighed—uncon-
sciously 2 His heart was surely charged enough ' . . .
A faint smile played over his lips—instantly frozen,
however, as another sigh, more distinct than the first,
and quite obviously external to himself, passed him
closely in the darkening air. More like deep
breathing, though, it was, than sighing. . . . It was
nothing but the wind, of course. Stephen hurried
on again, not surprised that he had been so easily
deceived, for this valley was full of sighings and
breathings—of trees and wind. It ventured upon no
louder noise. Noise of any kind, indeed, seemed im-
possible and forbidden in this muted vale. And so
deeply had he descended now, that the sunshine,


THE LOST WALLEY 51
silver rather than golden, already streamed past far
over his head along the ridges, and no gleam found
its way to where he was. The shadows, too, no
longer blue and purple, had changed to black, as
though woven of some delicate substance that had
definite thickness, like a veil. Across the opposite
slope, one of the mountain summits in the western
sky already dropped its monstrous shadow fringed
with pines. The day was rapidly drawing in.
XI
And here, very gradually, there began to dawn
upon his overwrought mind certain curious things.
They pierced clean through the mingled gloom and
exaltation that characterized his mood. And they
made the skin upon his back a little to-stir and crawl.
For he now became distinctly aware that the empti-
ness of this lonely valley was only apparent. It is
impossible to say through what sense, or combination
of senses, this singular certainty was brought to him
that the valley was not really as forsaken and deserted
as it seemed—that, on the contrary, it was the very
reverse. It came to him suddenly—as a certainty.
The valley as a matter of fact was full. Packed,
thronged and crowded it was to the very brim of its
mighty wooded walls—with life. It was now borne
in upon him, with an inner conviction that left no
room for doubt, that on all sides living things—
persons—were jostling him, rubbing elbows, watching
all his movements, and only waiting till the darkness
came to reveal themselves.
Moreover, with this eerie discovery came also the
further knowledge that a vast multitude of others,
D 2


52 THE LOST WALLEY
again, with pallid faces and yearning eyes, with arms
outstretched and groping feet, were searching every-
where for the way of entrance that he himself had
found so easily. All about him, he felt, were people
by the hundred, by the thousand, seeking with a
kind of restless fever for the narrow trail that led
down into the valley, longing with an intensity that
beat upon his soul in a million waves, for the rest,
the calm silence of the place—but most of all for its
strange, deep, and unalterable peace.
He, alone of all these, had found the Entrance; he,
and one other.
For out of this singular conviction grew another
even more singular: his brother Mark was also
somewhere in this valley with him. Mark, too, was
wandering like himself in and out among its intricate
dim turns. He had said but a short time ago, “I
wish Mark were here ! ” Mark was here. And it was
precisely then—while he stood still a moment, trying
to face these overwhelming obsessions and deal with
them—that the figure of a man, moving swiftly
through the trees, passed him with a great gliding
stride, and with averted face. Stephen started hor-
ribly, catching his breath. In an instant the man was
gone again, swallowed up by the crowding pines.
With a quick movement of pursuit and a cry that
should make the man turn, he sprang forward—but
stopped again almost the same moment, realizing that
the extraordinary speed at which the man had shot
past him rendered pursuit out of the question. He
had been going downhill into the valley; by this
time he was already far, far ahead. But in that mo-
mentary glimpse of him he had seen enough to know.
The face was turned away, and the shadows under the
trees were heavy, but the figure was beyond question
the figure of his brother Mark.
It was his brother, yet not his brother. It was


THE LOST WALLEY 53
Mark—but Mark altered. And the alteration was in
some way—awful; just as the silent speed at which
he had moved—the impossible speed in so dense a
forest—was likewise awful. Then, still shaking
inwardly with the suddenness of it all, Stephen real-
ized that when he called aloud he had uttered certain
definite words. And these words now came back to
him—
“Mark, Mark I Don't go yet ! Don't go—without
me ! ”
Before, however, he could act, a most curious and
unaccountable sensation of deadly faintness and pain
came upon him, without cause, without explanation,
so that he dropped backwards in momentary collapse,
and but for the closeness of the tree stems would have
fallen full length to the ground. From the centre of
the heart it came, spreading thence throughout his
whole being like a swift and dreadful fever. All the
muscles of his body relaxed; icy perspiration burst
forth upon his skin; the pulses of life seemed suddenly
reduced to the threshold beyond which they stop.
There was a thick, rushing Sound in his ears and
his mind went utterly blank.
These were the sensations of death by suffocation.
He knew this as certainly as though another doctor
stood by his side and labelled each spasm, explained
each successive sinking of the vital flame. He was
passing through the last throes of a dying man. And
then into his mind, thus deliberately left blank,
rushed at lightning speed a whole series of the
pictures of his past life. Even while his breath failed,
he saw his thirty-five years pictorially, successively,
yet in some queer fashion at once, pass through the
lighted chambers of his brain. In this way, it is said,
they pass through the brain of a drowning man
during the last seconds before death.
Childhood rose about him with its scenes, figures,


54 THE LOST WALLEY
voices; the Kentish lawns where he had played with
Mark in stained overalls; the summer-house where
they had tea, the hay-fields where they romped. The
scent of lime and walnut, of garden pinks, and roses
by the tumbled rockery came back to his nostrils. . . .
He heard the voices of grown-ups in the distance . . .
faint barking of dogs . . . the carriage wheels upon
the gravel drive . . . and then the sharp summons
from the opened window—“Time to come in now !
Time to come in 1 " . . .
Time to come in now. It all drove before him as
of yesterday on the scented winds of childhood's
summer days. . . . He heard his brother's voice—
dreadfully faint and far away—calling him by name
in the shrill accents of the boy: “Stevie—I say, you
might shut up . . . and play properly. . . .”
And then followed the panorama of the thirty
years, all the chief events drawn in steel-like lines of
white and black, vivid in sunshine, alive—right down
to the present moment with the portentous dark
shadow of his terrible Decision closing the series like
a cloud.
Yes, like a smothering black cloud that blocked the
way. There was nothing visible beyond it. There,
for him, life ceased
Only, as he gazed with inward-turned eyes that
could not close even if they would, he saw to his
amazement that the black cloud suddenly opened, and
into a space of clear light there swam the vision,
radiant as morning, of that dark young Eastern face—
the face that held for him all the beauty in the world.
The eyes instantly found his own, and smiled.
Behind her, moreover, and beyond, before the moving
vapours closed upon it, he saw a long vista of
brilliance, crowded with pictures he could but half
discern—as though, in spite of himself and his


THE LOST WALLEY 55
Decision, life continued—as though, too, it continued
with her.
And instantly, with the sight and thought of her,
the consuming faintness passed; strength returned to
his body with the glow of life; the pain went; the
pictures vanished; the cloud was no more. In his
blood the pulses of life once again beat strong, and
the blackness left his soul. The smile of those be-
loved eyes had been charged with the invitation to
live. Although his determination remained un-
shaken, there shone behind it the joy of this potent
magic: life with her. . . .
With a strong effort, at length he recovered himself
and continued on his way. More or less familiar, of
course, with the psychology of vision, he dimly under-
stood that his experiences had been in some measure
subjective—within himself. To find the line of de-
marcation, however, was beyond him. That Mark
had wandered out to fight his own battle upon the
mountains, and so come into this same valley, was
well within the bounds of coincidence. But the name-
less and dreadful alteration discerned in that swift
moment of his passing—that remained inexplicable.
Only he no longer thought about it. The glory of
that sweet vision had bewildered him beyond any
possibility of reason or analysis.
His watch told him that the hour was past five
o'clock—ten minutes past, to be exact. He still had
several hours before reaching the country he was
familiar with nearer home. Following the trail
at an increased pace, he presently saw patches of
meadow glimmering between the thinning trees, and
knew that the bottom of the valley was at last in
sight.
“And Mark, God bless him, is down there too—
somewhere !” he exclaimed aloud. “I shall surely


56 THE LOST WALLEY
find him.” For, strange to say, nothing could have
persuaded him that his twin was not wandering
among the shadows of this peaceful and haunted
valley with himself, and—that he would shortly find
him.
XII
And a few minutes later he passed from the forest
as through an open door and found himself before a
farmhouse standing in a patch of bright green meadow
against the mountain-side. He was in need both of
food and information.
The châlet, less lumbering and picturesque than
those found in the Alps, had, nevertheless, the appear-
ance of being exceedingly ancient. It was not toy-
like—as the Jura châlets sometimes are. Solidly built,
its balcony and overhanging roof supported by
immense beams of deeply stained wood, it stood so
that the back walls merged into the mountain slope
behind, and the arms of pine, spruce and fir seemed
stretched out to include it among their shadows. A
last ray of sunshine, dipping between two far sum-
mits overhead, touched it with pale gold, bringing
out the rich beauty of the heavily-dyed beams.
Though no one was visible at the moment, and no
smoke rose from the shingled chimney, it had the
appearance of being occupied, and Stephen ap-
proached it with the caution due to the first evidence
of humanity he had come across since he entered the
valley.
Under the shadow of the broad balcony roof he
noticed that the door, like that of a stable, was in two
parts, and, wondering rather to find it closed, he
knocked firmly upon the upper half. Under the


THE LOST WALLEY 57
pressure of a second knock this upper half yielded
slightly, though without opening. The lower half,
however, evidently barred and bolted, remained
unmoved. -
The third time he knocked with more force than he
intended, and the knock sounded loud and clamorous
as a summons. From within, as though great spaces
stretched beyond, came a murmur of voices, faint and
muffled, and then almost immediately—the footsteps
of some one coming softly up to open.
But, instead of the heavy brown door opening,
there came a voice. He heard it, petrified with amaze-
ment. For it was a voice he knew—hushed, soft,
lingering. His heart, hammering atrociously, seemed
to leave its place, and cut his breath away.
“Stephen ' " it murmured, calling him by name,
“what are you doing here so soon 2 And what is it
that you want?”
The knowledge that only this dark door separated
him from her, at first bereft him of all power of
speech or movement; and the possible significance of
her words escaped him. Through the sweet confu-
sion that turned his spirit faint he only remembered,
flash-like, that she and her father were indeed to have
left the hotel that very morning. After that his
thought stopped dead.
Then, also flash-like, swept back upon him the
memory of the figure that had passed him with averted
face—and, with it, the clear conviction that at this
moment Mark, too, was somewhere in this very
valley, even close beside him. More: Mark was in
this châlet—with her.
The torrent of speech that instantly crowded to his
lips was almost too thick for utterance.
“Open, open, open ' " was all he heard intelligibly
from the throng of words that poured out. He raised


58 THE LOST WALLEY
his hands to push and force; but her reply again
stopped him.
“Even if I open—you may not enter yet,” came the
whisper through the door. And this time he could
almost have sworn that it sounded within himself
rather than without.
“I must enter,” he cried. “Open to me, I say !”
“But you are trembling—”
“Open to me, O my life Open to me!”
“But your heart—it is shaking.”
“Because you—you are so near,” came in passion-
ate, stammering tones. “Because you stand there
beside me !” And then, before she could answer, or
his will control the words, he had added: “And be-
cause Mark—my brother—is in there—with you—”
“Hush, hush l’” came the soft, astonishing reply.
“He is in here, true; but he is not with me. And it
is for my sake that he has come—for my sake and
for yours. My soul, alas ! has led him to the
gates . . .”
But Stephen's emotions had reached the breaking-
point, and the necessity for action was upon him like
a storm. He drew back a pace so as to fling himself
better against the closed door, when to his utter
surprise, it moved. The upper half swung slowly
outwards, and he—saw.
He was aware of a vast room, with closely shut-
tered windows, that seemed to stretch beyond the walls
into the wooded mountain-side, thronged with mov-
ing figures, like forms of life gently gliding to and
fro in some huge darkened tank; and there, framed
against this opening—the girl herself. She stood,
visible to the waist, radiant in the solitary beam of
sunshine that reached the châlet, smiling down won-
drously into his face with the same exquisite beauty
in her eyes that he had seen before in the vision of


THE LOST WALLEY 59
the cloud: with, too, that supreme invitation in them
—the invitation to live.
The loveliness blinded him. He could see the down
upon her little dark cheeks where the sunlight kissed
them; there was the cloud of hair upon her neck
where his lips had lain; there, too, the dear, slight
breast that not twenty-four hours ago had known
the pressure of his arms. And, once again, driven
forward by the love that triumphed over all obstacles,
real or artificial, he advanced headlong with out-
stretched arms to take her.
“Katyal’ he cried, never thinking how passing
strange it was that he knew her name at all, much
more the endearing and shortened form of it.
“Katya 1"
But the young girl held up her little brown hand
against him with a gesture that was more strong to
restrain than any number of bolted doors.
“Not here,” she murmured, with her grave smile,
while behind the words he caught in that darkened
room the alternate hush and sighing as of a thousand
sleepers. “Not here ! You cannot see him now; for
these are the Reception Halls of Death and here I stand
in the Vestibule of the Beyond. Our way . . . your
way and mine . . . lies farther yet . . . traced there
since the beginning of the world . . . together. . . .”
In quaintly broken English it was spoken, but his
mind remembers the singular words in their more
perfect form. Even this, however, came later. At
the moment he only felt the twofold wave of love
surge through him with a tide of power that
threatened to break him asunder : he must hold her
to his heart; he must come instantly to his brother's
side, meet his eyes, have speech with him. The
desire to enter that great darkened room and force
a path through the dimly gliding forms to his brother


60 THE LOST WALLEY
became irresistible, while tearing upon its heels came
like a fever of joy the meaning of the words she had
just uttered, and especially of that last word:
“Together!”
Then, for an instant, all the forces in his being
turned negative so that his will refused to act. The
excess of feeling numbed him. A flying interval of
knowledge, calm and certain, came to him. The
exaltation of spirit which produced the pictures of all
this spiritual clairvoyance moved a stage higher, and
he realized that he witnessed an order of things per-
taining to the world of eternal causes rather than
of temporary effects. Some one had lifted the
Veil.
With a feeling that he could only wait and let
things take their extraordinary course, he stood still.
For an instant, even less, he must have hidden his
eyes in his hand, for when, a moment later, he again
looked up, he saw that the half of the swinging door
which had been open, was now closed. He stood
alone upon the balcony. And the sunshine had faded
entirely from the scene.
It was here, it seems, that the last vestige of self-
control disappeared. He flung himself against the
door; and the door met his assault like a wall of
solid rock. Crying aloud alternately the names of
his two loved ones, he turned, scarcely knowing what
he did, and ran into the meadow. Dusk was about
the châlet, drawing the encircling forests closer.
Soon the true darkness would stalk down the slopes.
The walls of the valley reared, it seemed, up to
heaven.
Still calling, he ran about the walls, searching
wildly for a way of entrance, his mind charged with
bewildering fragments of what he had heard : “The
Reception Halls of Death"—“The Vestibule of the


THE LOST WALLEY 61
Beyond”—“You cannot see him now"—“Our way
lies farther—and together 1 " . . .
And, on the far side of the châlet, by the corner
that touched the trees, he suddenly stopped, feeling
his gaze drawn upwards, and there, pressed close
against the window-pane of an upper room, saw that
some one was peering down upon him.
With a sensation of freezing terror he realized that
he was staring straight into the eyes of his brother
Mark. Bent a little forward with the effort to look
down, the face, pale and motionless, gazed into his
own, but without the least sign of recognition. Not
a feature moved : and although but a few feet
separated the brothers, the face wore the dim, misty
appearance of great distance. It was like the face
of a man called suddenly from deep sleep—dazed,
perplexed; nay, more—frightened and horribly dis-
traught.
What Stephen read upon it, however, in that first
moment of sight, was the signature of the great,
eternal question men have asked since the beginning
of time, yet never heard the answer. And into the
heart of the twin the pain of it plunged like a
sword.
“Mark 1" he stammered, in that low voice the
valley seemed to exact; “Mark Is that really you?”
Tears swam already in his eyes, and yearning in a
flood choked his utterance.
And Mark, with a dreadful, steady stare that still
held no touch of recognition, gazed down upon him
from the closed window of that upper chamber,
motionless, unblinking as an image of stone. It was
almost like an imitation figure of himself—only with
the effect of some added alteration. For alteration
certainly there was—awful and unknown alteration—
though Stephen was utterly unable to detect wherein


62 THE LOST WALLEY
it lay. And he remembered how the figure had passed
him in the woods with averted face.
He made then, it seems, some violent sign or other,
in response to which his brother at last moved—slowly
opening the window. He leaned forward, stooping
with lowered head and shoulders over the sill, while
Stephen ran up against the wall beneath and craned
up towards him. The two faces drew close; their
eyes met clean and straight. Then the lips of Mark
moved, and the distraught look half vanished within
the borders of a little smile of puzzled and affectionate
wonder.
“Stevie, old fellow,” issued a tiny, far-away voice;
“but where are you? I see you—so dimly 2”
It was like a voice crying faintly down half-a-mile
of distance. He shuddered to hear it.
“I’m here, Mark—close to you,” he whispered.
“I hear your voice, I feel your presence,” came the
reply like a man talking in his sleep, “but I see you
—as through a glass darkly. And I want to see you
all clear, and close—”
“But you! Where are you?” interrupted Stephen,
with anguish.
“Alone; quite alone—over here. And it's cold,
oh, so cold !” The words came gently, half veil-
ing a complaint. The wind caught them and ran
round the walls towards the forest, wailing as it
Went.
“But how did you come, how did you come 2"
Stephen raised himself on tiptoe to catch the answer.
But there was no answer. The face receded a little,
and as it did so the wind, passing up the walls again,
stirred the hair on the forehead. Stephen saw it
move. He thought, too, the head moved with it,
shaking slightly to and fro.
“Oh, but tell me, my dear, dear brother l Tell


THE LOST WALLEY 63
me !” he cried, sweating horribly, his limbs
shaking.
Mark made a curious gesture, withdrawing at the
same time a little farther into the room behind, so
that he now stood upright, half in shadow by the
window. The alteration in him proclaimed itself
more plainly, though still without betraying its exact
nature. There was something about him that was
terrible. And the air that came from the open window
upon Stephen was so freezing that it seemed to turn
the perspiration on his face into ice.
“I do not know; I do not remember,” he heard the
tiny voice inside the room, ever withdrawing. “Be-
sides—I may not speak with you—yet; it is so diffi-
cult—and it hurts.”
Stephen stretched out his body, the arms scraping
the wooden walls above his head, trying to climb the
smooth and slippery surface.
“For the love of God " he cried with passion,
“tell me what it all means and what you are doing
here—you and—and—oh, and all three of us?” The
words rang out through the silent valley.
But the other stood there motionless again by the
window, his face distraught and dazed as though the
effort of speech had already been too much for him.
His image had begun to fade a little. He seemed,
without moving, yet to be retreating into some sort of
interior distance. Presently, it seemed, he would dis-
appear altogether.
“I don't know,” came the voice at length, fainter
than before, half muffled. “I have been asleep, I
think. I have just waked up, and come across from
somewhere else—where we were all together, you and
I and—and --
Like his brother, he was unable to speak the name.
He ended the sentence a moment later in a whisper


64 THE LOST WALLEY
that was only just audible. “But I cannot tell you
how I came,” he said, “for I do not know the words.”
Stephen, then, with a violent leap tried to reach
the window-sill and pull himself up. The distance
was too great, however, and he fell back upon the
grass, only just keeping his feet.
“I’m coming in to you,” he cried out very loud.
“Wait there for me! For the love of heaven, wait
till I come to you. I'll break the doors in ! ”
Once again Mark made that singular gesture; again
he seemed to recede a little farther into a kind of
veiled perspective that caused his appearance to fade
still more; and, from an incredible distance—a dist-
ance that somehow conveyed an idea of appalling
height—his thin, tiny voice floated down upon his
brother from the fading lips of shadow.
“Old fellow, don't you come ! You are not ready
—and it is too cold here. I shall wait, Stevie, I shall
wait for you. Later—I mean farther from hear—we
shall one day all three be together. . . . Only you
cannot understand now. I am here for your sake,
old fellow, and for hers. She loves us both, but
. . . it is . . . you . . . she loves . . . the best. . . .”
The whispering voice rose suddenly on these last
words into a long high cry that the wind instantly
caught away and buried far in the smothering silences
of the woods. For, at the same moment, Mark had
come with a swift rush back to the window, had leaned
out and stretched both hands towards his brother
underneath. And his face had cleared and smiled.
Caught within that smile, the awful change in him
had vanished.
Stephen turned and made a mad rush round the
châlet to find the door he would batter in with his
hands and feet and body. He searched in vain,
however, for in the shadows the supporting beams


THE LOST WALLEY 65
of the building were indistinguishable from the stems
of the trees behind; the roof sank away, blotted out
by the gloom of the branches, and the darkness now
wove forest, sky and mountain into a uniform black
sheet against which no item was separately visible.
There was no châlet any longer. He was simply
battering with bruised hands and feet upon the solid
trunks of pines and spruces in his path; which he
continued to do, calling ever aloud for Mark, until
finally he grew dizzy with exhaustion and fell to the
ground in a state of semi-consciousness.
And for the best part of half-an-hour he lay there
motionless upon the moss, while the vast hands of
Night drew the cloak of her softest darkness over
valley and mountain, covering his small body with as
much care as she covered the sky, the hemisphere,
and all those leagues of velvet forest.
XIII
It was not long before he came to himself again—
shivering with cold, for the perspiration had dried
upon him where he lay. He got up and ran. The
night was now fairly down, and the keen air stung
his cheeks. But, with a sure instinct not to be
denied, he took the direction of home.
He travelled at an extraordinary pace, considering
the thickness of the trees and the darkness. How he
got out of the valley he does not remember; nor how
he found his way over the intervening ridges that lay
between him and the country he knew. At the back
of his mind crashed and tumbled the loose fragments
of all he had seen and heard, forming as yet no
coherent pattern. For himself, indeed, the details
e


66 THE LOST WALLEY
were of small interest. He was a man under sentence
of death. His determination, in spite of everything,
remained unshaken. In a few short hours he would
be gone.
Yet, with the habit of the professional mind, he
tried a little to sort out things. During that state of
singular exaltation, for instance, he understood
vaguely that his deep longings had somehow trans-
lated themselves into act and scene. For these long-
ings were life; his decision negatived them; hence,
they dramatized themselves pictorially with what
vividness his imagination allowed.
They were dramatized inventions, singularly
elaborate, of the emotions that burned so fiercely
within. All were projections of his consciousness,
maimed and incomplete, masquerading as persons
before his inner vision. It began with the singular
sensations of death by drowning he had experienced.
From that moment the other forces at work in the
problem had taken their cue and played their part
more or less convincingly, according to their
strength. . . .
He thought and argued a great deal as he hurried
homewards through the night. But all the time he
knew that it was untrue. He had no real explanation
at all !
From the high ridges, cold and bleak under the
stars, swept by the free wind of night, he ran almost
the entire way. It was downhill. And during that
violent descent of nearly an hour the details of his
“going ” shaped themselves. Until then he had
formed no definite plans. Now he settled everything.
He chose the very pool where the water coiled and
bubbled as in a cauldron just where the little torrent
made a turn above their house; he decided upon the
very terms of the letter he would leave behind. He


THE LOST VALI.EY 67
would put it on the kitchen table so that they should
know where to find him.
He urged his pace tremendously, for the idea that
his brother would have left—that he would find him
gone—haunted him. It grew, doubtless, out of that
singular, detailed vision that had come upon him in
his great weakness in the valley. He was terrified
that he would not see his brother again—that he had
already gone deliberately.—after her. . . .
“I must see Mark once more. I must get home
before he leaves | " flashed the strong thought con-
tinually in his mind, making him run like a deer
down the winding trail.
It was after ten o'clock when he reached the little
clearing behind the châlet, panting with exhaus-
tion, blinded with perspiration. There was no light
visible; all the windows were dark; but presently he
made out a figure moving to and fro below the
balcony. It was not Mark—he saw that in a flash.
It moved oddly. A sound of moaning reached him
at the same time. And then he saw that it was the
figure of the peasant woman who cooked for them,
Marie Petavel.
And the instant he saw who it was, and heard her
moaning, he knew what had happened. Mark had
left a letter to explain—and gone : gone after the
girl. His heart sank into death.
The woman came forward heavily through the
darkness, the dew-drenched grass swishing audibly
against her skirts. And the words he heard were pre-
cisely what he had expected to hear, though patois
and excitement rendered them difficult—
“Your brother—oh, your poor brother, Monsieur le
Docteur—he-has gone !”
And then he saw the piece of white paper glimmer-
ing in her hands as she stood quite close. He took
E 2


68 THE LOST WALLEY
it mechanically from her. It was the letter Mark had
left behind to explain.
But before Stephen had time to read it, a man with
a lantern came out of the barn that stood behind
the house. It was her husband. He came slowly
towards them.
“We searched for you, oh, we searched,” he said in
a thick voice, “my son went as far as Buttes even,
and hasn't come back yet. You've been long, too
long away—”
He stopped short and glanced down at his wife,
telling her roughly to cease her stupid weeping.
Stephen, shaking inwardly, with an icy terror in his
blood, began to feel that things were not precisely as
he had anticipated. Something else was the matter.
The expression in the face of the peasant as the lan-
tern's glare fell upon it came to him suddenly with
the shock of a revelation.
“You have told monsieur—-all ?” the man whis-
pered, stooping to his wife. She shook her head;
and her husband led the way without another word.
The interval of a few seconds seemed endless to
Stephen; he was trembling all over like a man with
the ague. Behind them the old woman floundered
through the wet grass, moaning to herself.
“No one would have believed it could have hap-
pened—anything of that sort,” the man mumbled.
The lantern was unsteady in his hand. The next
minute the barn, like some monstrous animal, rose
against the stars, and the huge wooden doors gaped
wide before them.
The peasant, uncovering his head, went first, and
Stephen, following with stumbling footsteps, saw the
shadows of the beams and posts shift across the
boarded floor. Against the wall, whither the man
led, was a small littered heap of hay, and upon this,


THE LOST WALLEY 69
covered by a white sheet, was stretched a human
body. The peasant drew back the sheet gently with
his heavy brown hand, stooping close over it so that
the lantern threw its light full upon the act.
And Stephen, tumbling forward, scarcely knowing
what he did, without further warning or preparation,
looked down upon the face of his brother Mark.
The eyes stared fixedly into—nothing; the features
wore the distraught expression he had seen upon them
a few hours before through the window-pane of that
upper chamber.
“We found him in that deep pool just where the
stream makes the quick turn above the house,” the
peasant whispered. “He left a bit of paper on the
kitchen table to say where he would be. It was after
dark when we got there. His watch had stopped,
though, long before ” He muttered on unin-
telligibly.
Stephen looked up at the man, unable to utter a
word, and the man replied to the unspoken question—
“At ten minutes past five the watch had stopped,”
he said. “That was when the water reached it.”
By the flicker of the lantern, then, sitting beside
that still figure covered with the sheet, Stephen read
the letter Mark had left for him—
“Stevie, old fellow, one of us, you know, has
got to—go; and it is better, I think, that it should
not be you. I know all you have been through,
for I have fought and suffered every step with
you. I have been along the same path, loving
her too much for you, and you too much for her.
And I leave her to you, boy, because I am con-
vinced she now loves you even as she first be-
lieved she loved me. But all that evening she
cried incessantly for you. More I cannot explain


70 THE LOST WALLEY
to you now; she will do that. And she need
never know more than that I have withdrawn
in your favour: she need never know how. Per-
haps, one day, when there is no marriage or
giving in marriage, we may all three be together,
and happy. I have often wondered, as you
know . . .”
The remainder of the sentence was scratched out
and illegible.
“. . . And, if it be possible, old fellow, of course
I shall wait.”
Then came more words blackened out.
“. . . I am now going, within a few minutes of
writing this last word to you of blessing and
forgiveness (for I know you will want that,
although there is nothing, nothing to forgive 1)
—going down into that Lost Valley her father
told us about—the Valley hidden among these
mountains we love—the Lost Valley where even
the unhappy dead find peace. There I shall
wait for you both.-MARK.”
Several weeks later, before he took the train east-
wards, Stephen retraced his steps to the farmhouse
where he had bought milk and asked for directions.
Thence for some distance he followed the path he
well remembered. At a point, however, the confu-
sion of the woods grew strangely upon him. The
mountains, true to the map, were not true to his
recollections. The trail stopped; high, unknown
ridges intervened; and no such deep and winding
valley as he had travelled that afternoon for so many
hours was anywhere to be found. The map, the
peasants, the very configuration of the landscape even,
denied its existence.


II
THE WENDIGO
I
A CONSIDERABLE number of hunting parties were
out that year without finding so much as a fresh
trail; for the moose were uncommonly shy, and the
various Nimrods returned to the bosoms of their
respective families with the best excuses the facts
or their imaginations could suggest. Dr. Cathcart,
among others, came back without a trophy; but he
brought instead the memory of an experience which
he declares was worth all the bull-moose that had
ever been shot. But then Cathcart, of Aberdeen, was
interested in other things besides moose—amongst
them the vagaries of the human mind. This par-
ticular story, however, found no mention in his book
on Collective Hallucination for the simple reason (so
he confided once to a fellow colleague) that he him-
self played too intimate a part in it to form a com-
petent judgment of the affair as a whole. . . .
Besides himself and his guide, Hank Davis, there
was young Simpson, his nephew, a divinity student
destined for the “Wee Kirk" (then on his first visit
to Canadian backwoods), and the latter's guide,
Défago. Joseph Défago was a French “Canuck,”
who had strayed from his native Province of Quebec
years before, and had got caught in Rat Portage
when the Canadian Pacific Railway was a-building;
a man who, in addition to his unparalleled knowledge
71


72 THE WENDIGO
of woodcraft and bush-lore, could also sing the old
voyageur songs and tell a capital hunting yarn into
the bargain. He was deeply susceptible, moreover,
to that singular spell which the wilderness lays upon
certain lonely natures, and he loved the wild solitudes
with a kind of romantic passion that amounted almost
to an obsession. The life of the backwoods fascinated
him—whence, doubtless, his surpassing efficiency in
dealing with their mysteries.
On this particular expedition he was Hank's choice.
Hank knew him and swore by him. He also swore
at him, “jest as a pal might,” and since he had a
vocabulary of picturesque, if utterly meaningless,
oaths, the conversation between the two stalwart and
hardy woodsmen was often of a rather lively descrip-
tion. This river of expletives, however, Hank agreed
to dam a little out of respect for his old “hunting
boss,” Dr. Cathcart, whom of course he addressed
after the fashion of the country as “Doc”; and also
because he understood that young Simpson was
already a “bit of a parson.” He had, however, one
objection to Défago, and one only—which was, that
the French Canadian sometimes exhibited what Hank
described as “the output of a cursed and dismal
mind,” meaning apparently that he sometimes was
true to type, Latin type, and suffered fits of a kind of
silent moroseness when nothing could induce him to
utter speech. Défago, that is to say, was imaginative
and melancholy. And, as a rule, it was too long a
spell of “civilization ” that induced the attacks, for a
few days of the wilderness invariably cured them.
This, then, was the party of four that found them-
selves in camp the last week in October of that “shy
moose year " 'way up in the wilderness north of Rat
Portage—a forsaken and desolate country. There
was also Punk, an Indian, who had accompanied Dr.
Cathcart and Hank on their hunting trips in previous


THE WENDIGO 73
years, and who acted as cook. His duty was merely
to stay in camp, catch fish, and prepare venison steaks
and coffee at a few minutes' notice. He dressed in
the worn-out clothes bequeathed to him by former
patrons, and, except for his coarse black hair and
dark skin, he looked in these city garments no more
like a real redskin than a stage negro looks like a
real African. For all that, however, Punk had in
him still the instincts of his dying race; his taciturn
silence and his endurance survived; also his super-
stition.
The party round the blazing fire that night were
despondent, for a week had passed without a single
sign of recent moose discovering itself. Défago had
sung his song and plunged into a story, but Hank,
in bad humour, reminded him so often that “he kep'
mussing-up the fac's so, that it was 'most all nothin'
but a petred-out lie,” that the Frenchman had finally
subsided into a sulky silence which nothing seemed
likely to break. Dr. Cathcart and his nephew were
fairly done after an exhausting day. Punk was
washing up the dishes, grunting to himself under the
lean-to of branches, where he later also slept. No
one troubled to stir the slowly dying fire. Overhead
the stars were brilliant in a sky quite wintry, and
there was so little wind that ice was already forming
stealthily along the shores of the still lake behind
them. The silence of the vast listening forest stole
forward and enveloped them.
Hank broke in suddenly with his nasal voice.
“I’m in favour of breaking new ground to-morrow,
Doc,” he observed with energy, looking across at his
employer. “We don't stand a dead Dago's chance
about here.”
“Agreed,” said Cathcart, always a man of few
words. “Think the idea's good.”
“Sure pop, it's good,” Hank resumed with con-


74 THE WENDIGO
fidence. “S'pose, now, you and I strike west, up
Garden Lake way for a changel None of us ain’t
touched that quiet bit o' land yet—"
“I’m with you.”
“And you, Défago, take Mr. Simpson along in
the small canoe, skip across the lake, portage over
into Fifty Island Water, and take a good squint down
that thar southern shore. The moose ‘yarded ' there
like hell last year, and for all we know they may be
doin’ it agin this year jest to spite us.”
Défago, keeping his eyes on the fire, said nothing
by way of reply. He was still offended, possibly,
about his interrupted story.
“No one's been up that way this year, an' I'll lay
my bottom dollar on that l” Hank added with em-
phasis, as though he had a reason for knowing. He
looked over at his partner sharply. “Better take the
little silk tent and stay away a couple o’ nights,” he
concluded, as though the matter were definitely
settled. For Hank was recognized as general
organizer of the hunt, and in charge of the party.
It was obvious to any one that Défago did not
jump at the plan, but his silence seemed to convey
something more than ordinary disapproval, and
across his sensitive dark face there passed a curious
expression like a flash of firelight—not so quickly,
however, that the three men had not time to catch
it. “He funked for some reason, I thought,” Simp-
son said afterwards in the tent he shared with his
uncle. Dr. Cathcart made no immediate reply,
although the look had interested him enough at the
time for him to make a mental note of it. The ex-
pression had caused him a passing uneasiness he
could not quite account for at the moment.
But Hank, of course, had been the first to notice it,
and the odd thing was that instead of becoming ex-


THE WENDIGO 75
plosive or angry over the other's reluctance, he at
once began to humour him a bit.
“But there ain't no speshul reason why no one's
been up there this year,” he said, with a perceptible
hush in his tone; “not the reason you mean, any-
way I Las' year it was the fires that kep' folks out,
and this year I guess—I guess it jest happened so,
that's all !” His manner was clearly meant to be
encouraging.
Joseph Défago raised his eyes a moment, then
dropped them again. A breath of wind stole out of
the forest and stirred the embers into a passing blaze.
Dr. Cathcart again noticed the expression in the
guide's face, and again he did not like it. But this
time the nature of the look betrayed itself. In those
eyes, for an instant, he caught the gleam of a man
scared in his very soul. It disquieted him more than
he cared to admit.
“Bad Indians up that way?” he asked, with a
laugh to ease matters a little, while Simpson, too
sleepy to notice this subtle by-play, moved off to bed
with a prodigious yawn; “or—or anything wrong
with the country?” he added, when his nephew was
out of hearing.
Hank met his eye with something less than his
usual frankness.
“He’s jest skeered,” he replied good-humouredly,
“skeered stiff about some ole feery tale ! That's all,
ain't it, ole pard 2" And he gave Défago a friendly
kick on the moccasined foot that lay nearest the fire.
Défago looked up quickly, as from an interrupted
reverie, a reverie, however, that had not prevented
his seeing all that went on about him.
“Skeered—muthin'!" he answered, with a flush of
defiance. “There's nuthin' in the Bush that can
skeer Joseph Défago, and don't you forget it !”


76 THE WENDIGO
And the natural energy with which he spoke made it
impossible to know whether he told the whole truth
or only a part of it.
Hank turned towards the doctor. He was just
going to add something when he stopped abruptly
and looked round. A sound close behind them in
the darkness made all three start. It was old Punk,
who had moved up from his lean-to while they talked
and now stood there just beyond the circle of fire-
light—listening.
“’Nother time, Doc ' " Hank whispered, with a
wink, “when the gallery ain't stepped down into the
stalls ' " And, springing to his feet, he slapped the
Indian on the back and cried noisily, “Come up tº
the fire an' warm yer dirty red skin a bit.” He
dragged him towards the blaze and threw more wood
on. “That was a mighty good feed you give us an
hour or two back,” he continued heartily, as though
to set the man's thoughts on another scent, “and it
ain't Christian to let you stand out there freezin' yer
ole soul to hell while we're gettin' all good an'
toasted ' " Punk moved in and warmed his feet,
smiling darkly at the other's volubility which he only
half understood, but saying nothing. And presently
Dr. Cathcart, seeing that further conversation was
impossible, followed his nephew’s example and
moved off to the tent, leaving the three men smoking
over the now blazing fire.
It is not easy to undress in a small tent without
waking one's companion, and Cathcart, hardened
and warm-blooded as he was in spite of his fifty odd
years, did what Hank would have described as “con-
siderable of his twilight” in the open. He noticed,
during the process, that Punk had meanwhile gone
back to his lean-to, and that Hank and Défago were
at it hammer and tongs, or, rather, hammer and


THE WENDIGO 77
anvil, the little French Canadian being the anvil. It
was all very like the conventional stage picture of
Western melodrama: the fire lighting up their faces
with patches of alternate red and black; Défago, in
slouch hat and moccasins in the part of the “bad-
lands’” villain; Hank, open-faced and hatless, with
that reckless fling of his shoulders, the honest and
deceived hero; and old Punk, eavesdropping in the
background, supplying the atmosphere of mystery.
The doctor smiled as he noticed the details; but at
the same time something deep within him—he hardly
knew what—shrank a little, as though an almost im-
perceptible breath of warning had touched the surface
of his soul and was gone again before he could seize
it. Probably it was traceable to that “scared expres-
sion ” he had seen in the eyes of Défago; “probably"
—for this hint of fugitive emotion otherwise escaped
his usually so keen analysis. Défago, he was vaguely
aware, might cause trouble somehow. . . . He was
not as steady a guide as Hank, for instance. . . .
Further than that he could not get . . .
He watched the men a moment longer before diving
into the stuffy tent where Simpson already slept
soundly. Hank, he saw, was swearing like a mad
African in a New York nigger saloon; but it was the
swearing of “affection.” The ridiculous oaths flew
freely now that the cause of their obstruction was
asleep. Presently he put his arm almost tenderly
upon his comrade's shoulder, and they moved off to-
gether into the shadows where their tent stood faintly
glimmering. Punk, too, a moment later followed
their example and disappeared between his odorous
blankets in the opposite direction.
Dr. Cathcart then likewise turned in, weariness and
sleep still fighting in his mind with an obscure
curiosity to know what it was had scared Défago


78 THE WENDIGO
about the country up Fifty Island Water way,+
wondering, too, why Punk's presence had prevented
the completion of what Hank had to say. Then sleep
overtook him. He would know to-morrow. Hank
would tell him the story while they trudged after the
elusive moose.
Deep silence fell about the little camp, planted
there so audaciously in the jaws of the wilderness.
The lake gleamed like a sheet of black glass beneath
the stars. The cold air pricked. In the draughts of
night that poured their silent tide from the depths of
the forest, with messages from distant ridges and from
lakes just beginning to freeze, there lay already the
faint, bleak odours of coming winter. White men,
with their dull scent, might never have divined them;
the fragrance of the wood-fire would have concealed
from them these almost electrical hints of moss and
bark and hardening swamp a hundred miles away.
Even Hank and Défago, subtly in league with the
soul of the woods as they were, would probably have
spread their delicate nostrils in vain . . .
But an hour later, when all slept like the dead, old
Punk crept from his blankets and went down to the
shore of the lake like a shadow—silently, as only
Indian blood can move. He raised his head and
looked about him. The thick darkness rendered sight
of small avail, but, like the animals, he possessed
other senses that darkness could not mute. He
listened—then sniffed the air. Motionless as a hem-
lock-stem he stood there. After five minutes again he
lifted his head and sniffed, and yet once again. A
tingling of the wonderful nerves that betrayed itself
by no outer sign, ran through him as he tasted the
keen air. Then, merging his figure into the sur-
rounding blackness in a way that only wild men and
animals understand, he turned, still moving like a


THE WENDIGO 79
shadow, and went stealthily back to his lean-to and
his bed.
And soon after he slept, the change of wind he had
divined stirred gently the reflection of the stars within
the lake. Rising among the far ridges of the country
beyond Fifty Island Water, it came from the direction
in which he had stared, and it passed over the sleep-
ing camp with a faint and sighing murmur through
the tops of the big trees that was almost too delicate
to be audible. With it, down the desert paths of
night, though too faint, too high even for the Indian's
hair-like nerves, there passed a curious, thin odour,
strangely disquieting, an odour of something that
seemed unfamiliar—utterly unknown.
The French Canadian and the man of Indian blood
each stirred uneasily in his sleep just about this time,
though neither of them woke. Then the ghost of that
unforgettably strange odour passed away and was
lost among the leagues of tenantless forest beyond.
II
In the morning the camp was astir before the sun.
There had been a light fall of snow during the night
and the air was sharp. Punk had done his duty be-
times, for the odours of coffee and fried bacon
reached every tent. All were in good spirits.
“Wind's shifted ' " cried Hank vigorously, watch-
ing Simpson and his guide already loading the small
canoe. “It’s across the lake—dead right for you
fellers. And the snow'll make bully trails . If
there's any moose mussing around up thar, they'll
not get so much as a tail-end scent of you with the
wind as it is. Good luck, Monsieur Défago 1" he


80 THE WENDIGO
added, facetiously giving the name its French pro-
nunciation for once, “bonne chance!”
Défago returned the good wishes, apparently in
the best of spirits, the silent mood gone. Before
eight o'clock old Punk had the camp to himself,
Cathcart and Hank were far along the trail that led
westwards, while the canoe that carried Défago and
Simpson, with silk tent and grub for two days, was
already a dark speck bobbing on the bosom of the
lake, going due east.
The wintry sharpness of the air was tempered now
by a sun that topped the wooded ridges and blazed
with a luxurious warmth upon the world of lake and
forest below; loons flew skimming through the spark-
ling spray that the wind lifted; divers shook their
dripping heads to the sun and popped smartly out of
sight again; and as far as eye could reach rose the
leagues of endless, crowding Bush, desolate in its
lonely sweep and grandeur, untrodden by foot of
man, and stretching its mighty and unbroken carpet
right up to the frozen shores of Hudson Bay.
Simpson, who saw it all for the first time as he
paddled hard in the bows of the dancing canoe, was
enchanted by its austere beauty. His heart drank in
the sense of freedom and great spaces just as his
lungs drank in the cool and perfumed wind. Behind
him in the stern seat, singing fragments of his native
chanties, Défago steered the craft of birchbark like
a thing of life, . answering cheerfully all his com-
panion's questions. Both were gay and light-hearted.
On such occasions men lose the superficial, worldly
distinctions; they become human beings working to-
gether for a common end. Simpson, the employer,
and Défago the employed, among these primitive
forces, were simply—two men, the “guider” and the
“guided.” Superior knowledge, of course, assumed


THE WENDIGO 81
control, and the younger man fell without a second
thought into the quasi-subordinate position. He
never dreamed of objecting when Défago dropped
the “Mr.,” and addressed him as “Say, Simpson,”
or “Simpson, boss,” which was invariably the case
before they reached the farther shore after a stiff
paddle of twelve miles against a head wind. He
only laughed, and liked it; then ceased to notice it
at all.
For this “divinity student" was a young man of
parts and character, though as yet, of course, un-
travelled; and on this trip—the first time he had seen
any country but his own and little Switzerland—the
huge scale of things somewhat bewildered him. It
was one thing, he realized, to hear about primeval
forests, but quite another to see them. While to
dwell in them and seek acquaintance with their wild
life was, again, an initiation that no intelligent man
could undergo without a certain shifting of personal
values hitherto held for permanent and sacred.
Simpson knew the first faint indication of this
emotion when he held the new 303 rifle in his hands
and looked along its pair of faultless, gleaming
barrels. The three days’ journey to their head-
quarters, by lake and portage, had carried the pro-
cess a stage farther. And now that he was about to
plunge beyond even the fringe of wilderness where
they were camped into the virgin heart of uninhabited
regions as vast as Europe itself, the true nature of
the situation stole upon him with an effect of delight
and awe that his imagination was fully capable of
appreciating. It was himself and Défago against
a multitude—at least, against a Titan
The bleak splendours of these remote and lonely
forests rather overwhelmed him with the sense of his
own littleness. That stern quality of the tangled
F


82 THE WENDIGO
backwoods which can only be described as merciless
and terrible, rose out of these far blue woods swim-
ming upon the horizon, and revealed itself. He under-
stood the silent warning. He realized his own utter
helplessness. Only Défago, as a symbol of a distant
civilization where man was master, stood between him
and a pitiless death by exhaustion and starvation.
It was thrilling to him, therefore, to watch Défago
turn over the canoe upon the shore, pack the paddles
carefully underneath, and then proceed to “blaze" the
spruce stems for some distance on either side of an
almost invisible trail, with the careless remark thrown
in, “Say, Simpson, if anything happens to me, you’ll
find the canoe all correc’ by these marks;–then
strike doo west into the sun to hit the home camp
agin, see ?”
It was the most natural thing in the world to say,
and he said it without any noticeable inflexion of the
voice, only it happened to express the youth's
emotions at the moment with an utterance that was
symbolic of the situation and of his own helplessness
as a factor in it. He was alone with Défago in a
primitive world : that was all. The canoe, another
symbol of man's ascendancy, was now to be left
behind. Those small yellow patches, made on the
trees by the axe, were the only indications of its
hiding-place.
Meanwhile, shouldering the packs between them,
each man carrying his own rifle, they followed the
slender trail over rocks and fallen trunks and across
half-frozen swamps; skirting numerous lakes that
fairly gemmed the forest, their borders fringed with
mist; and towards five o'clock found themselves
suddenly on the edge of the woods, looking out across
a large sheet of water in front of them, dotted with
pine-clad islands of all describable shapes and sizes.


THE WENDIGO 83
“Fifty Island Water,” announced Défago wearily,
“and the sun jest goin’ to dip his bald old head into
it !” he added, with unconscious poetry; and imme-
diately they set about pitching camp for the night.
In a very few minutes, under those skilful hands
that never made a movement too much or a move-
ment too little, the silk tent stood taut and cosy, the
beds of balsam boughs ready laid, and a brisk cook-
ing-fire burned with the minimum of smoke. While
the young Scotchman cleaned the fish they had
caught trolling behind the canoe, Défago “guessed"
he would “jest as soon " take a turn through the Bush
for indications of moose. “May come across a trunk
where they bin and rubbed horns,” he said, as he
moved off, “or feedin' on the last of the maple leaves,”
—and he was gone.
His small figure melted away like a shadow in the
dusk, while Simpson noted with a kind of admiration
how easily the forest absorbed him into herself. A
few steps, it seemed, and he was no longer visible.
Yet there was little underbrush hereabouts; the
trees stood somewhat apart, well spaced; and in the
clearings grew silver-birch and maple, spear-like and
slender, against the immense stems of spruce and
hemlock. But for occasional prostrate monsters, and
the boulders of grey rock that thrust uncouth
shoulders here and there out of the ground, it might
well have been a bit of park in the Old Country.
Almost, one might have seen in it the hand of man.
A little to the right, however, began the great burnt
section, miles in extent, proclaiming its real character
–brulé, as it is called, where the fires of the previous
year had raged for weeks, and the blackened stumps
now rose gaunt and ugly, bereft of branches, like
gigantic match-heads stuck into the ground, savage
and desolate beyond words. The perfume of char-
r 2


84 THE WENDIGO
coal and rain-soaked ashes still hung faintly about
it.
The dusk rapidly deepened; the glades grew dark;
the crackling of the fire and the wash of little waves
along the rocky lake shore were the only sounds
audible. The wind had dropped with the sun, and
in all that vast world of branches nothing stirred.
Any moment, it seemed, the woodland gods, who
are to be worshipped in silence and loneliness, might
sketch their mighty and terrific outlines among the
trees. In front, through doorways pillared by huge
straight stems, lay the stretch of Fifty Island Water,
a crescent-shaped lake some fifteen miles from tip to
tip, and perhaps five miles across where they were
camped. A sky of rose and saffron, more clear than
any atmosphere Simpson had ever known, still
dropped its pale streaming fires across the waves,
where the islands—a hundred, surely, rather than fifty
—floated like the fairy barques of some enchanted
fleet. Fringed with pines, whose crests fingered most
delicately the sky, they almost seemed to move up-
wards as the light faded—about to weigh anchor
and navigate the pathways of the heavens instead of
the currents of their native and desolate lake.
And strips of coloured cloud, like flaunting pen-
nons, signalled their departure to the stars. . . .
The beauty of the scene was strangely uplifting.
Simpson smoked the fish and burnt his fingers into
the bargain in his efforts to enjoy it and at the same
time tend the frying-pan and the fire. Yet, ever at
the back of his thoughts, lay that other aspect of
the wilderness: the indifference to human life, the
merciless spirit of desolation which took no note of
man. The sense of his utter loneliness, now that
even Défago had gone, came close as he looked about
him and listened for the sound of his companion's
returning footsteps.


THE WENDIGO 85
There was pleasure in the sensation, yet with it a
perfectly comprehensible alarm. And instinctively
the thought stirred in him : “What should I–could
I, do—if anything happened and he did not come
back 2 ”
They enjoyed their well-earned supper, eating un-
told quantities of fish, and drinking unmilked tea
strong enough to kill men who had not covered thirty
miles of hard “going,” eating little on the way.
And when it was over, they smoked and told stories
round the blazing fire, laughing, stretching weary
limbs, and discussing plans for the morrow. Défago
was in excellent spirits, though disappointed at
having no signs of moose to report. But it was
dark and he had not gone far. The brulé, too, was
bad. His clothes and hands were smeared with char-
coal. Simpson, watching him, realized with renewed
vividness their position — alone together in the
wilderness.
“Défago,” he said presently, “these woods, you
know, are a bit too big to feel quite at home in—to
feel comfortable in, I mean . . . Eh 2" He merely
gave expression to the mood of the moment; he was
hardly prepared for the earnestness, the solemnity
even, with which the guide took him up.
“You’ve hit it right, Simpson, boss,” he replied,
fixing his searching brown eyes on his face, “and
that's the truth, sure. There's no end to 'em—no
end at all.” Then he added in a lowered tone as if
to himself, “There's lots found out that, and gone
plumb to pieces !”
But the man's gravity of manner was not quite to
the other's liking; it was a little too suggestive for
this scenery and setting; he was sorry he had
broached the subject. He remembered suddenly how
his uncle had told him that men were sometimes
stricken with a strange fever of the wilderness,


86 THE WENDIGO
when the seduction of the uninhabited wastes caught
them so fiercely that they went forth, half fascinated,
half deluded, to their death. And he had a shrewd
idea that his companion held something in sympathy
with that queer type. He led the conversation on to
other topics, on to Hank and the doctor, for in-
stance, and the natural rivalry as to who should get
the first sight of moose.
“If they went doo west,” observed Défago care-
lessly, “there's sixty miles between us now—with ole
Punk at halfway house eatin’ himself full to bustin'
with fish and corfee.” They laughed together over
the picture. But the casual mention of those sixty
miles again made Simpson realize the prodigious
scale of this land where they hunted; sixty miles was
a mere step; two hundred little more than a step.
Stories of lost hunters rose persistently before his
memory. The passion and mystery of homeless and
wandering men, seduced by the beauty of great
forests, swept his soul in a way too vivid to be quite
pleasant. He wondered vaguely whether it was the
mood of his companion that invited the unwelcome
suggestion with such persistence.
“Sing us a song, Défago, if you're not too tired,”
he asked; “one of those old voyageur songs you sang
the other night.” He handed his tobacco pouch to
the guide and then filled his own pipe, while the
Canadian, nothing loth, sent his light voice across
the lake in one of those plaintive, almost melancholy
chanties with which lumbermen and trappers lessen
the burden of their labour. There was an appealing
and romantic flavour about it, something that re-
called the atmosphere of the old pioneer days when
Indians and wilderness were leagued together, battles
frequent, and the Old Country farther off than it is
to-day. The sound travelled pleasantly over the


THE WENDIGO 87
water, but the forest at their backs seemed to swallow
it down with a single gulp that permitted neither
echo nor resonance.
It was in the middle of the third verse that Simpson
noticed something unusual—something that brought
his thoughts back with a rush from far-away scenes.
A curious change had come into the man's voice.
Even before he knew what it was, uneasiness caught
him, and looking up quickly, he saw that Défago,
though still singing, was peering about him into the
Bush, as though he heard or saw something. His
voice grew fainter—dropped to a hush—then ceased
altogether. The same instant, with a movement
amazingly alert, he started to his feet and stood
upright—sniffing the air. Like a dog scenting game,
he drew the air into his nostrils in short, sharp
breaths, turning quickly as he did so in all direc-
tions, and finally “pointing ” down the lake shore,
eastwards. It was a performance unpleasantly sug-
gestive and at the same time singularly dramatic.
Simpson's heart fluttered disagreeably as he watched
it.
“Lord, man How you made me jump !” he
exclaimed, on his feet beside him the same instant,
and peering over his shoulder into the sea of dark-
ness. “What's up? Are you frightened 2 ”
Even before the question was out of his mouth he
knew it was foolish, for any man with a pair of eyes
in his head could see that the Canadian had turned
white down to his very gills. Not even sunburn and
the glare of the fire could hide that.
The student felt himself trembling a little, weakish
in the knees. “What's up 2 ” he repeated quickly.
“D'you smell moose? Or anything queer, anything
—wrong?” He lowered his voice instinctively.
The forest pressed round them with its encircling


88 THE WENDIGO
wall; the nearer tree-stems gleamed like bronze in
the firelight; beyond that—blackness, and, so far as
he could tell, a silence of death. Just behind them
a passing puff of wind lifted a single leaf, looked at
it, then laid it softly down again without disturbing
the rest of the covey. It seemed as if a million in-
visible causes had combined just to produce that
single visible effect. Other life pulsed about them
—and was gone.
Défago turned abruptly; the livid hue of his face
had turned to a dirty grey.
“I never said I heered—or smelt—nuthin’,” he
said slowly and emphatically, in an oddly altered
voice that conveyed somehow a touch of defiance.
“I was only—takin' a look round—so to speak. It's
always a mistake to be too previous with yer ques-
tions.” Then he added suddenly with obvious effort,
in his more natural voice, “Have you got the matches,
Boss Simpson 2 ” and proceeded to light the pipe he
had half filled just before he began to sing.
Without speaking another word they sat down
again by the fire, Défago changing his side so that
he could face the direction the wind came from. For
even a tenderfoot could tell that. Délago changed
his position in order to hear and smell—all there was
to be heard and smelt. And, since he now faced
the lake with his back to the trees it was evidently
nothing in the forest that had sent so strange
and sudden a warning to his marvellously trained
nerves.
“Guess now I don't feel like singing any,” he ex-
plained presently of his own accord. “That song
kinder brings back memories that's troublesome to
me; I never oughter've begun it. It sets me on t”
imagining things, see ?”
Clearly the man was still fighting with some pro-


THE WENDIGO 89
foundly moving emotion. He wished to excuse him-
self in the eyes of the other. But the explanation, in
that it was only a part of the truth, was a lie, and
he knew perfectly well that Simpson was not deceived
by it. For nothing could explain away the livid
terror that had dropped over his face while he stood
there sniffing the air. And nothing—no amount of
blazing fire, or chatting on ordinary subjects—could
make that camp exactly as it had been before. The
shadow of an unknown horror, naked if unguessed,
that had flashed for an instant in the face and
gestures of the guide, had also communicated itself,
vaguely and therefore more potently, to his com-
panion. The guide's visible efforts to dissemble the
truth only made things worse. Moreover, to add to
the younger man's uneasiness, was the difficulty, nay,
the impossibility he felt of asking questions, and
also his complete ignorance as to the cause. . . .
Indians, wild animals, forest fires—all these, he knew,
were wholly out of the question. His imagination
searched vigorously, but in vain. . . .
Yet, somehow or other, after another long spell of
smoking, talking and roasting themselves before the
great fire, the shadow that had so suddenly invaded
their peaceful camp began to lift. Perhaps Défago's
efforts, or the return of his quiet and normal attitude
accomplished this; perhaps Simpson himself had
exaggerated the affair out of all proportion to the
truth; or possibly the vigorous air of the wilderness
brought its own powers of healing. Whatever the
cause, the feeling of immediate horror seemed to have
passed away as mysteriously as it had come, for
nothing occurred to feed it. Simpson began to feel
that he had permitted himself the unreasoning terror
of a child. He put it down partly to a certain sub-


90 THE WENDIGO
conscious excitement that this wild and immense
scenery generated in his blood, partly to the spell of
solitude, and partly to over fatigue. That pallor in
the guide's face was, of course, uncommonly hard to
explain, yet it might have been due in some way to
an effect of firelight, or his own imagination. . . .
He gave it the benefit of the doubt; he was Scotch.
When a somewhat unordinary emotion has dis-
appeared, the mind always finds a dozen ways of ex-
plaining away its causes. . . . Simpson lit a last pipe
and tried to laugh to himself. On getting home
to Scotland it would make quite a good story. He
did not realize that this laughter was a sign that
terror still lurked in the recesses of his soul—that,
in fact, it was merely one of the conventional signs
by which a man, seriously alarmed, tries to persuade
himself that he is not so.
Défago, however, heard that low laughter and
looked up with surprise on his face. The two men
stood, side by side, kicking the embers about before
going to bed. It was ten o'clock—a late hour for
hunters to be still awake.
“What's ticklin' yer?” he asked in his ordinary
tone, yet gravely.
“I—I was thinking of our little toy woods at home,
just at that moment,” stammered Simpson, coming
back to what really dominated his mind, and startled
by the question, “and comparing them to–to all
this,” and he swept his arm round to indicate the
Bush.
A pause followed in which neither of them said
anything.
“All the same I wouldn't laugh about it, if I was
you,” Défago added, looking over Simpson's shoulder
into the shadows. “There's places in there nobody
won't never see into—nobody knows what lives in
there either.”


THE WENDIGO 91
“Too big—too far off 2 ” The suggestion in the
guide's manner was immense and horrible.
Défago nodded. The expression on his face was
dark. He, too, felt uneasy. The younger man
understood that in a hinterland of this size there
might well be depths of wood that would never in
the life of the world be known or trodden. The
thought was not exactly the sort he welcomed. In a
loud voice, cheerfully, he suggested that it was time
for bed. But the guide lingered, tinkering with the
fire, arranging the stones needlessly, doing a dozen
things that did not really need doing. Evidently
there was something he wanted to say, yet found it
difficult to “get at.”
“Say, you, Boss Simpson,” he began suddenly, as
the last shower of sparks went up into the air, “you
don't—smell nothing, do you—nothing pertickler, I
mean 2 ” The commonplace question, Simpson
realized, veiled a dreadfully serious thought in his
mind. A shiver ran down his back.
“Nothing but this burning wood,” he replied
firmly, kicking again at the embers. The sound of
his own foot made him start.
“And all the evenin' you ain't smelt—nothing?”
persisted the guide, peering at him through the
gloom; “nothing extrordiny, and different to any-
thing else you ever smelt before ?”
“No, no, man; nothing at all !” he replied aggres-
sively, half angrily.
Défago's face cleared. “That's good l’” he ex-
claimed, with evident relief. “That's good to hear.”
“Have you?” asked Simpson sharply, and the
same instant regretted the question.
The Canadian came closer in the darkness. He
shook his head. “I guess not,” he said, though with-
out overwhelming conviction. “It must 've been jest
that song of mine that did it. It's the song they sing


92 THE WENDIGO
in lumber-camps and god-forsaken places like that,
when they’re skeered the Wendigo's somewheres
around, doin’ a bit of swift travellin’—”
“And what's the Wendigo, pray ?” Simpson asked
quickly, irritated because again he could not prevent
that sudden shiver of the nerves. He knew that he
was close upon the man's terror and the cause of it.
Yet a rushing passionate curiosity overcame his better
judgment, and his fear.
Défago turned swiftly and looked at him as though
he were suddenly about to shriek. His eyes shone,
his mouth was wide open. Yet all he said, or whis-
pered rather, for his voice sank very low, was
“It’s nuthin’—nuthin' but what those lousy fellers
believe when they’ve bin hittin' the bottle too long—
a sort of great animal that lives up yonder,” he jerked
his head northwards, “quick as lightning in its
tracks, an’ bigger’n anything else in the Bush, an’
ain't supposed to be very good to look at-that's
all !”
“A backwoods' superstition ” began Simpson,
moving hastily towards the tent in order to shake off
the hand of the guide that clutched his arm. “Come,
come, hurry up for God's sake, and get the lantern
going ! It's time we were in bed and asleep if we're
to be up with the sun to-morrow. . . .”
The guide was close on his heels. “I’m coming,”
he answered out of the darkness, “I’m coming.”
And after a slight delay he appeared with the lantern
and hung it from a nail in the front pole of the tent.
The shadows of a hundred trees shifted their places
quickly as he did so, and when he stumbled over the
rope, diving swiftly inside, the whole tent trembled
as though a gust of wind struck it.
The two men lay down, without undressing, upon
their beds of soft balsam boughs, cunningly arranged.


THE WENDIGO 93
Inside, all was warm and cosy, but outside the world
of crowding trees pressed close about them, mar-
shalling their million shadows, and smothering the
little tent that stood there like a wee white shell facing
the ocean of tremendous forest.
Between the two lonely figures within, however,
there pressed another shadow that was not a shadow
from the night. It was the Shadow cast by the
strange Fear, never wholly exorcised, that had leaped
suddenly upon Défago in the middle of his singing.
And Simpson, as he lay there, watching the darkness
through the open flap of the tent, ready to plunge
into the fragrant abyss of sleep, knew first that unique
and profound stillness of a primeval forest when no
wind stirs . . . and when the night has weight and
substance that enters into the soul to bind a veil about
it. . . . Then sleep took him. . . .
III
Thus it seemed to him, at least. Yet it was true
that the lap of the water, just beyond the tent door,
still beat time with his lessening pulses when he
realized that he was lying with his eyes open and that
another sound had recently introduced itself with
cunning softness between the splash and murmur of
the little waves.
And, long before he understood what this sound
was, it had stirred in him the centres of pity and
alarm. He listened intently, though at first in vain,
for the running blood beat all its drums too noisily
in his ears. Did it come, he wondered, from the
lake, or from the woods? . . .
Then, suddenly, with a rush and a flutter of the


94 THE WENDIGO
heart, he knew that it was close beside him in the
tent; and, when he turned over for a better hearing,
it focussed itself unmistakably not two feet away. It
was a sound of weeping : Défago upon his bed of
branches was sobbing in the darkness as though his
heart would break, the blankets evidently stuffed
against his mouth to stifle it.
And his first feeling, before he could think or reflect,
was the rush of a poignant and searching tenderness.
This intimate, human sound, heard amid the desola-
tion about them, woke pity. It was so incongruous,
so pitifully incongruous—and so vain Tears—in
this vast and cruel wilderness: of what avail? He
thought of a little child crying in mid-Atlantic. . .
Then, of course, with fuller realization, and the
memory of what had gone before, came the descent
of the terror upon him, and his blood ran cold.
“Défago,” he whispered quickly, “what's the mat-
ter?” He tried to make his voice very gentle. “Are
you in pain—unhappy ?” There was no reply,
but the sounds ceased abruptly. He stretched his
hand out and touched him. The body did not stir.
“Are you awake 2 ” for it occurred to him that the
man was crying in his sleep. “Are you cold 2 ” He
noticed that his feet, which were uncovered, projected
beyond the mouth of the tent. He spread an extra
fold of his own blankets over them. The guide had
slipped down in his bed, and the branches seemed to
have been dragged with him. He was afraid to pull
the body back again, for fear of waking him.
One or two tentative questions he ventured softly,
but though he waited for several minutes there came
no reply, nor any sign of movement. Presently he
heard his regular and quiet breathing, and putting his
hand again gently on the breast, felt the steady rise
and fall beneath.


THE WENDIGO 95
“Let me know if anything's wrong,” he whispered,
“or if I can do anything. Wake me at once if you
feel—queer.”
He hardly knew quite what to say. He lay down
again, thinking and wondering what it all meant.
Défago, of course, had been crying in his sleep.
Some dream or other had afflicted him. Yet never in
his life would he forget that pitiful sound of sobbing,
and the feeling that the whole awful wilderness of
woods listened. . . .
His own mind busied itself for a long time with the
recent events, of which this took its mysterious place
as one, and though his reason successfully argued
away all unwelcome suggestions, a sensation of un-
easiness remained, resisting ejection, very deep-seated
—peculiar beyond ordinary.
IV
But sleep, in the long run, proves greater than all
emotions. His thoughts soon wandered again; he
lay there, warm as a toast, exceedingly weary; the
night soothed and comforted, blunting the edges of
memory and alarm. Half-an-hour later he was
oblivious of everything in the outer world about him.
Yet sleep, in this case, was his great enemy, con-
cealing all approaches, smothering the warning of
his nerves.
As, sometimes, in a nightmare events crowd upon
each others' heels with a conviction of dreadfullest
reality, yet some inconsistent detail accuses the whole
display of incompleteness and disguise, so the events
that now followed, though they actually happened,
persuaded the mind somehow that the detail which


96 THE WENDIGO
could explain them had been overlooked in the con-
fusion, and that therefore they were but partly true,
the rest delusion. At the back of the sleeper's mind
something remains awake, ready to let slip the judg-
ment, “All this is not quite real; when you wake up
you'll understand.”
And thus, in a way, it was with Simpson. The
events, not wholly inexplicable or incredible in them-
selves, yet remain for the man who saw and heard
them a sequence of separate acts of cold horror, be-
cause the little piece that might have made the puzzle
clear lay concealed or overlooked.
So far as he can recall, it was a violent movement,
running downwards through the tent towards the
door, that first woke him and made him aware that
his companion was sitting bolt upright beside him—
quivering. Hours must have passed, for it was the
pale gleam of the dawn that revealed his outline
against the canvas. This time the man was not
crying; he was quaking like a leaf; the trembling
he felt plainly through the blankets down the entire
length of his own body. Défago had huddled down
against him for protection, shrinking away from some-
thing that apparently concealed itself near the door-
flaps of the little tent.
Simpson thereupon called out in a loud voice some
question or other—in the first bewilderment of waking
he does not remember exactly what—and the man
made no reply. The atmosphere and feeling of true
nightmare lay horribly about him, making movement
and speech both difficult. At first, indeed, he was
not sure where he was—whether in one of the earlier
camps, or at home in his bed at Aberdeen. The sense
of confusion was very troubling.
And next—almost simultaneous with his waking,
it seemed—the profound stillness of the dawn outside


THE WENDIGO 97
was shattered by a most uncommon sound. It came
without warning, or audible approach; and it was
unspeakably dreadful. It was a voice, Simpson
declares, possibly a human voice; hoarse yet plaintive
—a soft, roaring voice close outside the tent, over-
head rather than upon the ground, of immense
volume, while in some strange way most penetratingly
and seductively sweet. It rang out, too, in three
separate and distinct notes, or cries, that bore in some
odd fashion a resemblance, far-fetched yet recogniz-
able, to the name of the guide: “De—fa—go!”
The student admits he is unable to describe it quite
intelligently, for it was unlike any sound he had ever
heard in his life, and combined a blending of such
contrary qualities. “A sort of windy, crying voice,”
he calls it, “as of something lonely and untamed,
wild and of abominable power. . . .”
And, even before it ceased, dropping back into the
great gulfs of silence, the guide beside him had
sprung to his feet with an answering though unin-
telligible cry. He blundered against the tent-pole
with violence, shaking the whole structure, spreading
his arms out frantically for more room, and kicking
his legs impetuously free of the clinging blankets.
For a second, perhaps two, he stood upright by the
door, his outline dark against the pallor of the dawn;
then, with a furious, rushing speed, before his com-
panion could move a hand to stop him, he shot with
a plunge through the flaps of canvas-and was gone.
And as he went—so astonishingly fast that the voice
could actually be heard dying in the distance—he
called aloud in tones of anguished terror that at the
same time held something strangely like the frenzied
exultation of delight—
“Oh oh! My feet of fire My burning feet of
fire | Oh! oh! This height and fiery speed . "
G


98 º THE WENDIGO
And then the distance quickly buried it, and the
deep silence of very early morning descended upon
the forest as before.
It had all come about with such rapidity that, but
for the evidence of the empty bed beside him, Simpson
could almost have believed it to have been the memory
of a nightmare carried over from sleep. He still felt
the warm pressure of that vanished body against his
side; there lay the twisted blankets in a heap; the very
tent yet trembled with the vehemence of the impetuous
departure. The strange words rang in his ears, as
though he still heard them in the distance—wild
language of a suddenly stricken mind. Moreover, it
was not only the senses of sight and hearing that
reported uncommon things to his brain, for even
while the man cried and ran, he had become aware
that a strange perfume, faint yet pungent, pervaded
the interior of the tent. And it was at this point, it
seems, brought to himself by the consciousness that
his nostrils were taking this distressing odour down
into his throat, that he found his courage, sprang
quickly to his feet—and went out.
The grey light of dawn that dropped, cold and
glimmering, between the trees revealed the scene toler-
ably well. There stood the tent behind him, soaked
with dew; the dark ashes of the fire, still warm; the
lake, white beneath a coating of mist, the islands
rising darkly out of it like objects packed in wool; and
patches of snow beyond among the clearer spaces of
the Bush—everything cold, still, waiting for the sun.
But nowhere a sign of the vanished guide—still,
doubtless, flying at frantic speed through the frozen
woods. There was not even the Sound of disappear-
ing footsteps, nor the echoes of the dying voice. He
had gone—utterly.
There was nothing; nothing but the sense of his


THE WENDIGO 99
recent presence, so strongly left behind about the
camp; and—this penetrating, all-pervading odour.
And even this was now rapidly disappearing in
its turn. In spite of his exceeding mental perturba-
tion, Simpson struggled hard to detect its nature, and
define it, but the ascertaining of an elusive scent, not
recognized subconsciously and at once, is a very
subtle operation of the mind. And he failed. It was
gone before he could properly seize or name it. Ap-
proximate description, even, seems to have been diffi-
cult, for it was unlike any smell he knew. Acrid
rather, not unlike the odour of a lion, he thinks, yet
softer and not wholly unpleasing, with something
almost sweet in it that reminded him of the scent of
decaying garden leaves, earth, and the myriad, name-
less perfumes that make up the odour of a big forest.
Yet the “odour of lions” is the phrase with which he
usually sums it all up.
Then—it was wholly gone, and he found himself
standing by the ashes of the fire in a state of amaze-
ment and stupid terror that left him the helpless prey
of anything that chose to happen. Had a musk-rat
poked its pointed muzzle over a rock, or a squirrel
scuttled in that instant down the bark of a tree, he
would most likely have collapsed without more ado
and fainted. For he felt about the whole affair the
touch somewhere of a great Outer Horror. . . . and
his scattered powers had not as yet had time to collect
themselves into a definite attitude of fighting self-
control.
Nothing did happen, however. A great kiss of
wind ran softly through the awakening forest, and a
few maple leaves here and there rustled tremblingly
to earth. The sky, seemed to grow suddenly much
lighter. Simpson felt the cool air upon his cheek
and uncovered head; realized that he was shivering
G 2


100 THE WENDIGO
with the cold; and, making a great effort, realized
next that he was alone in the Bush—and that he was
called upon to take immediate steps to find and
succour his vanished companion.
Make an effort, accordingly, he did, though an ill-
calculated and futile one. With that wilderness of
trees about him, the sheet of water cutting him off
behind, and the horror of that wild cry in his blood,
he did what any other inexperienced man would have
done in similar bewilderment: he ran about, without
any sense of direction, like a frantic child, and called
loudly without ceasing the name of the guide—
“Défago 1 Défago 1 Défagol" he yelled, and
the trees gave him back the name as often as he
shouted, only a little softened—“Défago Défago!
Défago!”
He followed the trail that lay for a short distance
across the patches of snow, and then lost it again
where the trees grew too thickly for snow to lie. He
shouted till he was hoarse, and till the sound of his
own voice in all that unanswering and listening world
began to frighten him. His confusion increased in
direct ratio to the violence of his efforts. His distress
became formidably acute, till at length his exertions
defeated their own object, and from sheer exhaustion
he headed back to the camp again. It remains a
wonder that he ever found his way. It was with
great difficulty, and only after numberless false clues,
that he at last saw the white tent between the trees,
and so reached safety.
Exhaustion then applied its own remedy, and he
grew calmer. He made the fire and breakfasted.
Hot coffee and bacon put a little sense and judgment
into him again, and he realized that he had been
behaving like a boy. He now made another, and
more successful attempt to face the situation collect-


THE WENDIGO 101
edly, and, a nature naturally plucky coming to his
assistance, he decided that he must first make as
thorough a search as possible, failing success in
which, he must find his way to the home camp as
best he could and bring help.
And this was what he did. Taking food, matches
and rifle with him, and a small axe to blaze the trees
against his return journey, he set forth. It was eight
o'clock when he started, the sun shining over the
tops of the trees in a sky without clouds. Pinned
to a stake by the fire he left a note in case Défago
returned while he was away.
This time, according to a careful plan, he took a
new direction, intending to make a wide sweep that
must sooner or later cut into indications of the guide's
trail; and, before he had gone a quarter of a mile he
came across the tracks of a large animal in the snow,
and beside it the light and smaller tracks of what were
beyond question human feet—the feet of Défago. The
relief he at once experienced was natural, though
brief; for at first sight he saw in these tracks a simple
explanation of the whole matter: these big marks had
surely been left by a bull moose that, wind against it,
had blundered upon the camp, and uttered its singular
cry of warning and alarm the moment its mistake was
apparent. Défago, in whom the hunting instinct was
developed to the point of uncanny perfection, had
scented the brute coming down the wind hours before.
His excitement and disappearance were due, of course,
to—to his—
Then the impossible explanation at which he
grasped faded, as common sense showed him merci-
lessly that none of this was true. No guide, much
less a guide like Défago, could have acted in so
irrational a way, going off even without his rifle. . . . .
The whole affair demanded a far more complicated


102 THE WENDIGO
elucidation, when he remembered the details of it all—
the cry of terror, the amazing language, the grey face
of horror when his nostrils first caught the new odour;
that muffled sobbing in the darkness, and—for this,
too, now came back to him dimly—the man's original
aversion for this particular bit of country. . . .
Besides, now that he examined them closer, these
were not the tracks of a moose at all ! Hank had ex-
plained to him the outline of a bull's hoofs, of a cow's
or calf's, too, for that matter; he had drawn them
clearly on a strip of birch bark. And these were
wholly different. They were big, round, ample, and
with no pointed outline as of sharp hoofs. He won-
dered for a moment whether bear-tracks were like
that. There was no other animal he could think of,
for caribou did not come so far south at this season,
and, even if they did, would leave hoof-marks.
They were ominous signs—these mysterious
writings left in the snow by the unknown creature
that had lured a human being away from safety—and
when he coupled them in his imagination with that
haunting sound that broke the stillness of the dawn, a
momentary dizziness shook his mind, distressing him
again beyond belief. He felt the threatening aspect
of it all. And, stooping down to examine the marks
more closely, he caught a faint whiff of that sweet
yet pungent odour that made him instantly straighten
up again, fighting a sensation almost of nausea.
Then his memory played him another evil trick.
He suddenly recalled those uncovered feet projecting
beyond the edge of the tent, and the body's appear-
ance of having been dragged towards the opening;
the man's shrinking from something by the door when
he woke later. The details now beat against his
trembling mind with concerted attack. They seemed
to gather in those deep spaces of the silent forest about


THE WENDIGO 103
him, where the host of trees stood waiting, listening,
watching to see what he would do. The woods were
closing round him.
With the persistence of true pluck, however, Simp-
son went forward, following the tracks as best he
could, smothering these ugly emotions that sought
to weaken his will. He blazed innumerable trees as
he went, ever fearful of being unable to find the way
back, and calling aloud at intervals of a few seconds
the name of the guide. The dull tapping of the axe
upon the massive trunks, and the unnatural accents
of his own voice became at length sounds that he
even dreaded to make, dreaded to hear. For they
drew attention without ceasing to his presence and
exact whereabouts, and if it were really the case that
something was hunting himself down in the same way
that he was hunting down another
With a strong effort, he crushed the thought out
the instant it rose. It was the beginning, he realized,
of a bewilderment utterly diabolical in kind that would
speedily destroy him.
Although the snow was not continuous, lying
merely in shallow flurries over the more open spaces,
he found no difficulty in following the tracks for the
first few miles. They went straight as a ruled line
wherever the trees permitted. The stride soon began
to increase in length, till it finally assumed proportions
that seemed absolutely impossible for any ordinary
animal to have made. Like huge flying leaps they
became. One of these he measured, and though he
knew that “stretch " of eighteen feet must be somehow
wrong, he was at a complete loss to understand why
he found no signs on the snow between the extreme
points. But what perplexed him even more, making
him feel his vision had gone utterly awry, was that


104 THE WENDIGO
Défago's stride increased in the same manner, and
finally covered the same incredible distances. It
looked as if the great beast had lifted him with it and
carried him across these astonishing intervals. Simp-
son, who was much longer in the limb, found that he
could not compass even half the stretch by taking a
running jump.
And the sight of these huge tracks, running side
by side, silent evidence of a dreadful journey in which
terror or madness had urged to impossible results,
was profoundly moving. It shocked him in the secret
depths of his soul. It was the most horrible thing
his eyes had ever looked upon. He began to follow
them mechanically, absent-mindedly almost, ever
peering over his shoulder to see if he, too, were being
followed by something with a gigantic tread. . . .
And soon it came about that he no longer quite real-
ized what it was they signified—these impressions left
upon the snow by something nameless and untamed,
always accompanied by the footmarks of the little
French Canadian, his guide, his comrade, the man
who had shared his tent a few hours before, chatting,
laughing, even singing by his side. . . .
V
For a man of his years and inexperience, only a
canny Scot, perhaps, grounded in common sense and
established in logic, could have preserved even that
measure of balance that this youth somehow or other
did manage to preserve through the whole adventure.
Otherwise, two things he presently noticed, while
forging pluckily ahead, must have sent him headlong
back to the comparative safety of his tent, instead of


THE WENDIGO 105
only making his hands close more tightly upon the
rifle-stock, while his heart, trained for the Wee Kirk,
sent a wordless prayer winging its way to heaven.
Both tracks, he saw, had undergone a change, and
this change, so far as it concerned the footsteps of the
man, was in some undecipherable manner—appalling.
It was in the bigger tracks he first noticed this, and
for a long time he could not quite believe his eyes.
Was it the blown leaves that produced odd effects of
light and shade, or that the dry snow, drifting like
finely-ground rice about the edges, cast shadows and
high lights? Or was it actually the fact that the great
marks had become faintly coloured 2 For round about
the deep, plunging holes of the animal there now ap-
peared a mysterious, reddish tinge that was more like
an effect of light than of anything that dyed the sub-
stance of the snow itself. Every mark had it, and had
it increasingly—this indistinct fiery tinge that painted
a new touch of ghastliness into the picture.
But when, wholly unable to explain or credit it, he
turned his attention to the other tracks to discover if
they, too, bore similar witness, he noticed that
these had meanwhile undergone a change that was
infinitely worse, and charged with far more horrible
suggestion. For, in the last hundred yards or so, he
saw that they had grown gradually into the semblance
of the parent tread. Imperceptibly the change had
come about, yet unmistakably. It was hard to see
where the change first began. The result, however,
was beyond question. Smaller, neater, more cleanly
modelled, they formed now an exact and careful dupli-
cate of the larger tracks beside them. The feet that
produced them had, therefore, also changed. And
something in his mind reared up with loathing and
with terror as he saw it.
Simpson, for the first time, hesitated; then, ashamed


106 THE WENDIGO
of his alarm and indecision, took a few hurried steps
ahead; the next instant stopped dead in his tracks.
Immediately in front of him all signs of the trail
ceased; both tracks came to an abrupt end. On all
sides, for a hundred yards and more, he searched in
vain for the least indication of their continuance.
There was—nothing.
The trees were very thick just there, big trees all
of them, spruce, cedar, hemlock; there was no under-
brush. He stood, looking about him, all distraught;
bereft of any power of judgment. Then he set to
work to search again, and again, and yet again, but
always with the same result: nothing. The feet that
printed the surface of the snow thus far had now,
apparently, left the ground !
And it was in that moment of distress and confusion
that the whip of terror laid its most nicely calculated
lash about his heart. It dropped with deadly effect
upon the sorest spot of all, completely unnerving
him. He had been secretly dreading all the time that
it would come—and come it did.
Far overhead, muted by great height and distance,
strangely thinned and wailing, he heard the crying
voice of Défago, the guide.
The sound dropped upon him out of that still,
wintry sky with an effect of dismay and terror un-
surpassed. The rifle fell to his feet. He stood
motionless an instant, listening as it were with his
whole body, then staggered back against the nearest
tree for support, disorganized hopelessly in mind and
spirit. To him, in that moment, it seemed the most
shattering and dislocating experience he had ever
known, so that his heart emptied itself of all feeling
whatsoever as by a sudden draught.
“Oh 1 oh! This fiery height ! Oh, my feet of
fire My burning feet of fire. . . . " " ran in far,


THE WENDIGO 107
beseeching accents of indescribable appeal this voice
of anguish down the sky. Once it called—then
silence through all the listening wilderness of trees.
And Simpson, scarcely knowing what he did, pre-
sently found himself running wildly to and fro, search-
ing, calling, tripping over roots and boulders, and
flinging himself in a frenzy of undirected pursuit after
the Caller. Behind the screen of memory and emotion
with which experience veils events, he plunged, dis-
tracted and half-deranged, picking up false lights like
a ship at sea, terror in his eyes and heart and soul.
For the Panic of the Wilderness had called to him
in that far voice—the Power of untamed Distance—the
Enticement of the Desolation that destroys. He knew
in that moment all the pains of some one hopelessly
and irretrievably lost, suffering the lust and travail
of a soul in the final Loneliness. A vision of Défago,
eternally hunted, driven and pursued across the skiey
vastness of those ancient forests, fled like a flame
across the dark ruin of his thoughts. . . .
It seemed ages before he could find anything in the
chaos of his disorganized sensations to which he could
anchor himself steady for a moment, and think. . . .
The cry was not repeated; his own hoarse calling
brought no response; the inscrutable forces of the
Wild had summoned their victim beyond recall—and
held him fast.
Yet he searched and called, it seems, for hours
afterwards, for it was late in the afternoon when at
length he decided to abandon a useless pursuit and
return to his camp on the shores of Fifty Island
Water. Even then he went with reluctance, that
crying voice still echoing in his ears. With difficulty
he found his rifle and the homeward trail. The con-
centration necessary to follow the badly blazed trees,


108 THE WENDIGO
and a biting hunger that gnawed, helped to keep
his mind steady. Otherwise, he admits, the tempo-
rary aberration he had suffered might have been
prolonged to the point of positive disaster. Gradually
the ballast shifted back again, and he regained some-
thing that approached his normal equilibrium.
But for all that the journey through the gathering
dusk was miserably haunted. He heard innumerable
following footsteps; voices that laughed and whis-
pered; and saw figures crouching behind trees and
boulders, making signs to one another for a concerted
attack the moment he had passed. The creeping mur-
mur of the wind made him start and listen. He went
stealthily, trying to hide where possible, and making
as little sound as he could. The shadows of the
woods, hitherto protective or covering merely, had
now become menacing, challenging; and the page-
antry in his frightened mind masked a host of possi-
bilities that were all the more ominous for being
obscure. The presentiment of a nameless doom
lurked ill-concealed behind every detail of what had
happened.
It was really admirable how he emerged victor in
the end; men of riper powers and experience might
have come through the ordeal with less success. He
had himself tolerably well in hand, all things con-
sidered, and his plan of action proves it. Sleep being
absolutely out of the question, and travelling an
unknown trail in the darkness equally impracticable,
he sat up the whole of that night, rifle in hand, before
a fire he never for a single moment allowed to die
down. The severity of the haunted vigil marked
his soul for life; but it was successfully accomplished;
and with the very first signs of dawn he set forth
upon the long return journey to the home-camp to get
help. As before, he left a written note to explain his
absence, and to indicate where he had left a plentiful


THE WENDIGO 109
cache of food and matches—though he had no expecta-
tion that any human hands would find them
How Simpson found his way alone by lake and
forest might well make a story in itself, for to hear
him tell it is to know the passionate loneliness of Soul
that a man can feel when the Wilderness holds him in
the hollow of its illimitable hand—and laughs. It is
also to admire his indomitable pluck.
He claims no skill, declaring that he followed the
almost invisible trail mechanically, and without think-
ing. And this, doubtless, is the truth. He relied
upon the guiding of the unconscious mind, which is
instinct. Perhaps, too, some sense of orientation,
known to animals and primitive men, may have helped
as well, for through all that tangled region he suc-
ceeded in reaching the exact spot where Défago had
hidden the canoe nearly three days before with the
remark, “Strike doo west across the lake into the
sun to find the camp.”
There was not much sun left to guide him, but he
used his compass to the best of his ability, embark-
ing in the frail craft for the last twelve miles of
his journey with a sensation of immense relief that
the forest was at last behind him. And, fortunately,
the water was calm ; he took his line across the centre
of the lake instead of coasting round the shores for
another twenty miles. Fortunately, too, the other
hunters were back. The light of their fires fur-
nished a steering-point without which he might have
searched all night long for the actual position of the
camp.
It was close upon midnight all the same when his
canoe grated on the sandy cove, and Hank, Punk and
his uncle, disturbed in their sleep by his cries, ran
quickly down and helped a very exhausted and broken
specimen of Scotch humanity over the rocks towards
a dying fire.


110 THE WENDIGO
VI
The sudden entrance of his prosaic uncle into this
world of wizardry and horror that had haunted him
without interruption now for two days and two nights,
had the immediate effect of giving to the affair an
entirely new aspect. The sound of that crisp “Hulloa,
my boy ' And what's up now?” and the grasp of that
dry and vigorous hand introduced another standard
of judgment. A revulsion of feeling washed through
him. He realized that he had let himself “go” rather
badly. He even felt vaguely ashamed of himself.
The native hard-headedness of his race reclaimed him.
And this doubtless explains why he found it so
hard to tell that group round the fire—everything.
He told enough, however, for the immediate decision
to be arrived at that a relief party must start at the
earliest possible moment, and that Simpson, in order
to guide it capably, must first have food and, above
all, sleep. Dr. Cathcart observing the lad's condition
more shrewdly than his patient knew, gave him a
very slight injection of morphine. For six hours he
slept like the dead.
From the description carefully written out after-
wards by this student of divinity, it appears that the
account he gave to the astonished group omitted
sundry vital and important details. He declares that,
with his uncle’s wholesome, matter-of-fact counte-
nance staring him in the face, he simply had not the
courage to mention them. Thus, all the search-party
gathered, it would seem, was that Défago had suffered
in the night an acute and inexplicable attack of mania,
had imagined himself “called ” by some one or some-
thing, and had plunged into the bush after it without
food or rifle, where he must die a horrible and linger-


THE WENDIGO 111
ing death by cold and starvation unless he could be
found and rescued in time. “In time,” moreover,
meant “at once.”
In the course of the following day, however—they
were off by seven, leaving Punk in charge with
instructions to have food and fire always ready—
Simpson found it possible to tell his uncle a good deal
more of the story's true inwardness, without divining
that it was drawn out of him as a matter of fact by a
very subtle form of cross-examination. By the time
they reached the beginning of the trail, where the
canoe was laid up against the return journey, he had
mentioned how Défago spoke vaguely of “something
he called a ‘Wendigo '"; how he cried in his sleep;
how he imagined an unusual scent about the camp;
and had betrayed other symptoms of mental excite-
ment. He also admitted the bewildering effect of
“that extraordinary odour" upon himself, “pungent
and acrid like the odour of lions.” And by the time
they were within an easy hour of Fifty Island Water
he had let slip the further fact—a foolish avowal of
his own hysterical condition, as he felt afterwards—
that he had heard the vanished guide call “for help.”
He omitted the singular phrases used, for he simply
could not bring himself to repeat the preposterous
language. Also, while describing how the man's
footsteps in the snow had gradually assumed an exact
miniature likeness of the animal’s plunging tracks, he
left out the fact that they measured a wholly incredible
distance. It seemed a question, nicely balanced be-
tween individual pride and honesty, what he should
reveal and what suppress. He mentioned the fiery
tinge in the snow, for instance, yet shrank from telling
that body and bed had been partly dragged out of the
tent. . . .
With the net result that Dr. Cathcart, adroit


112 THE WENDIGO
psychologist that he fancied himself to be, had assured
him clearly enough exactly where his mind, influenced
by loneliness, bewilderment and terror, had yielded to
the strain and invited delusion. While praising his
conduct, he managed at the same time to point out
where, when, and how his mind had gone astray. He
made his nephew think himself finer than he was by
judicious praise, yet more foolish than he was by
minimizing the value of his evidence. Like many
another materialist, that is, he lied cleverly on the
basis of insufficient knowledge, because the knowledge
supplied seemed to his own particular intelligence
inadmissible.
“The spell of these terrible solitudes,” he said,
“cannot leave any mind untouched, any mind, that is,
possessed of the higher imaginative qualities. It has
worked upon yours exactly as it worked upon my own
when I was your age. The animal that haunted your
little camp was undoubtedly a moose, for the ‘belling'
of a moose may have, sometimes, a very peculiar
quality of sound. The coloured appearance of the
big tracks was obviously a defect of vision in your
own eyes produced by excitement. The size and
stretch of the tracks we shall prove when we come to
them. But the hallucination of an audible voice, of
course, is one of the commonest forms of delusion
due to mental excitement—an excitement, my dear
boy, perfectly excusable, and, let me add, wonderfully
controlled by you under the circumstances. For the
rest, I am bound to say, you have acted with a
splendid courage, for the terror of feeling oneself lost
in this wilderness is nothing short of awful, and,
had I been in your place, I don't for a moment believe
I could have behaved with one quarter of your wisdom
and decision. The only thing I find it uncommonly
difficult to explain is—that—damned odour.”


THE WENDIGO 113
“It made me feel sick, I assure you,” declared his
nephew, “positively dizzy ” His uncle's attitude of
calm omniscience, merely because he knew more
psychological formulae, made him slightly defiant.
It was so easy to be wise in the explanation of an
experience one has not personally witnessed. “A
kind of desolate and terrible odour is the only way
I can describe it,” he concluded, glancing at the
features of the quiet, unemotional man beside him.
“I can only marvel,” was the reply, “that under the
circumstances it did not seem to you even worse.”
The dry words, Simpson knew, hovered between the
truth, and his uncle's interpretation of “the truth.”
And so at last they came to the little camp and
found the tent still standing, the remains of the fire,
and the piece of paper pinned to a stake beside it—
untouched. The cache, poorly contrived by inexperi-
enced hands, however, had been discovered and
opened—by musk rats, mink and squirrel. The
matches lay scattered about the opening, but the food
had been taken to the last crumb.
“Well, fellers, he ain't here,” exclaimed Hank
loudly after his fashion, “and that's as sartain as the
coal supply down below ! But whar he's got to by
this time is 'bout as onsartain as the trade in crowns
in tother place.” The presence of a divinity student
was no barrier to his language at such a time, though
for the reader's sake it may be severely edited. “I
propose,” he added, “that we start out at once an'
hunt for’m like hell !”
The gloom of Défago's probable fate oppressed the
whole party with a sense of dreadful gravity the
moment they saw the familiar signs of recent occu-
pancy. Especially the tent, with the bed of balsam
branches still smoothed and flattened by the pressure
H
*.*


114 THE WENDIGO
of his body, seemed to bring his presence near to
them. Simpson, feeling vaguely as if his word were
somehow at stake, went about explaining particulars
in a hushed tone. He was much calmer now, though
overwearied with the strain of his many journeys. His
uncle's method of explaining—“explaining away,”
rather—the details still fresh in his haunted memory
helped, too, to put ice upon his emotions.
“And that's the direction he ran off in,” he said to
his two companions, pointing in the direction where
the guide had vanished that morning in the grey
dawn. “Straight down there he ran like a deer, in
between the birch and the hemlock. . . .”
Hank and Dr. Cathcart exchanged glances.
“And it was about two miles down there, in a
straight line,” continued the other, speaking with
something of the former terror in his voice, “that I
followed his trail to the place where—it stopped—
dead ' "
“And where you heered him callin' an’ caught the
stench, an’ all the rest of the wicked entertainment,”
cried Hank, with a volubility that betrayed his keen
distress.
“And where your excitement overcame you to the
point of producing illusions,” added Dr. Cathcart
under his breath, yet not so low that his nephew did
not hear it.
It was early in the afternoon, for they had travelled
quickly, and there were still a good two hours of day-
light left. Dr. Cathcart and Hank lost no time in
beginning the search, but Simpson was too exhausted
to accompany them. They would follow the blazed
marks on the trees, and where possible, his footsteps.
Meanwhile the best thing he could do was to keep a
good fire going, and rest.


THE WENDIGO 115
But after something like three hours' search, the
darkness already down, the two men returned to camp
with nothing to report. Fresh snow had covered all
signs, and though they had followed the blazed trees
to the spot where Simpson had turned back, they had
not discovered the smallest indications of a human
being—or, for that matter, of an animal. There were
no fresh tracks of any kind; the snow lay undisturbed.
It was difficult to know what was best to do, though
in reality there was nothing more they could do.
They might stay and search for weeks without much
chance of success. The fresh snow destroyed their
only hope, and they gathered round the fire for supper,
a gloomy and despondent party. The facts, indeed,
were sad enough, for Défago had a wife at Rat
Portage, and his earnings were the family's sole
means of support.
Now that the whole truth in all its ugliness was
out, it seemed useless to deal in further disguise or
pretence. They talked openly of the facts and proba-
bilities. It was not the first time, even in the experi-
ence of Dr. Cathcart, that a man had yielded to the
singular seduction of the Solitudes and gone out of
his mind; Défago, moreover, was predisposed to
something of the sort, for he already had the touch
of melancholia in his blood, and his fibre was weak-
ened by bouts of drinking that often lasted for weeks
at a time. Something on this trip—one might never
know precisely what—had sufficed to push him over
the line, that was all. And he had gone, gone off
into the great wilderness of trees and lakes to die by
starvation and exhaustion. The chances against his
finding camp again were overwhelming; the delirium
that was upon him would also doubtless have in-
creased, and it was quite likely he might do violence
to himself and so hasten his cruel fate. Even while
H 2


116 THE WENDIGO
they talked, indeed, the end had probably come. On
the suggestion of Hank, his old pal, however, they
proposed to wait a little longer and devote the whole
of the following day, from dawn to darkness, to the
most systematic search they could devise. They
would divide the territory between them. They dis-
cussed their plan in great detail. All that men could
do they would do.
And, meanwhile, they talked about the particular
form in which the singular Panic of the Wilderness
had made its attack upon the mind of the unfortunate
guide. Hank, though familiar with the legend in its
general outline, obviously did not welcome the turn
the conversation had taken. He contributed little,
though that little was illuminating. For he admitted
that a story ran over all this section of country to the
effect that several Indians had “seen the Wendigo"
along the shores of Fifty Island Water in the “fall ”
of last year, and that this was the true reason of
Défago's disinclination to hunt there. Hank doubt-
less felt that he had in a sense helped his old pal to
death by over-persuading him. “When an Indian
goes crazy,” he explained, talking to himself more
than to the others, it seemed, “it’s always put that he's
‘seen the Wendigo.” An' pore old Défaygo was
superstitious down to his very heels . . . . .”
And then Simpson, feeling the atmosphere more
sympathetic, told over again the full story of his
astonishing tale; he left out no details this time; he
mentioned his own sensations and gripping fears.
He only omitted the strange language used.
“But Défago surely had already told you all these
details of the Wendigo legend, my dear fellow,”
insisted the doctor. “I mean, he had talked about it,
and thus put into your mind the ideas which your
own excitement afterwards developed 2"


THE WENDIGO 117
Whereupon Simpson again repeated the facts.
Défago, he declared, had barely mentioned the beast.
He, Simpson, knew nothing of the story, and, so far
as he remembered, had never even read about it.
Even the word was unfamiliar.
Of course he was telling the truth, and Dr. Cathcart
was reluctantly compelled to admit the singular char-
acter of the whole affair. He did not do this in words
so much as in manner, however. He kept his back
against a good, stout tree; he poked the fire into a
blaze the moment it showed signs of dying down; he
was quicker than any of them to notice the least sound
in the night about them—a fish jumping in the lake,
a twig snapping in the bush, the dropping of occa-
sional fragments of frozen snow from the branches
overhead where the heat loosened them. His voice,
too, changed a little in quality, becoming a shade less
confident, lower also in tone. Fear, to put it plainly,
hovered close about that little camp, and though all
three would have been glad to speak of other matters,
the only thing they seemed able to discuss was this—
the source of their fear. They tried other subjects in
vain; there was nothing to say about them. Hank
was the most honest of the group; he said next to
nothing. He never once, however, turned his back
to the darkness. His face was always to the forest,
and when wood was needed he didn't go farther than
was necessary to get it.
-
VII
A wall of silence wrapped them in, for the snow,
though not thick, was sufficient to deaden any noise,
and the frost held things pretty tight besides. No


118 THE WENDIGO
sound but their voices and the soft roar of the flames
made itself heard. Only, from time to time, some-
thing soft as the flutter of a pine-moth's wings went
past them through the air. No one seemed anxious
to go to bed. The hours slipped towards midnight.
“The legend is picturesque enough,” observed the
doctor after one of the longer pauses, speaking to
break it rather than because he had anything to say,
“for the Wendigo is simply the Call of the Wild
personified, which some natures hear to their own
destruction.”
“That's about it,” Hank said presently. “An’
there's no misunderstandin’ when you hear it. It
calls you by name right 'nough.”
Another pause followed. Then Dr. Cathcart came
back to the forbidden subject with a rush that made
the others jump.
“The allegory is significant,” he remarked, looking
about him into the darkness, “for the Voice, they
say, resembles all the minor sounds of the Bush—
wind, falling water, cries of animals, and so forth.
And, once the victim hears that—he's off for good,
of course ! His most vulnerable points, moreover,
are said to be the feet and the eyes; the feet, you see,
for the lust of wandering, and the eyes for the lust of
beauty. The poor beggar goes at such a dreadful
speed that he bleeds beneath the eyes, and his feet
burn.”
Dr. Cathcart, as he spoke, continued to peer un-
easily into the surrounding gloom. His voice sank
to a hushed tone.
“The Wendigo,” he added, “is said to burn his
feet—owing to the friction, apparently caused by its
tremendous velocity—till they drop off, and new ones
form exactly like its own.”
Simpson listened in horrified amazement; but it


THE WENDIGO 119
was the pallor on Hank's face that fascinated him
most. He would willingly have stopped his ears
and closed his eyes, had he dared.
“It don't always keep to the ground neither,” came
in Hank's slow, heavy drawl, “for it goes so high
that he thinks the stars have set him all a-fire. An'
it'll take great thumpin' jumps sometimes, an’ run
along the tops of the trees, carrying its partner with
it, an' then droppin’ him jest as a fish-hawk 'll drop
a pickerel to kill it before eatin’. An' its food, of all
the muck in the whole Bush is—moss " " And he
laughed a short, unnatural laugh. “It’s a moss-
eater, is the Wendigo,” he added, looking up ex-
citedly into the faces of his companions, “moss-
eater,” he repeated, with a string of the most out-
landish oaths he could invent.
But Simpson now understood the true purpose of
all this talk. What these two men, each strong and
“experienced" in his own way, dreaded more than
anything else was silence. They were talking
against time. They were also talking against dark-
ness, against the invasion of panic, against the ad-
mission reflection might bring that they were in an
enemy's country—against anything, in fact, rather
than allow their inmost thoughts to assume control.
He himself, already initiated by the awful vigil with
terror, was beyond both of them in this respect. He
had reached the stage where he was immune. But
these two, the scoffing, analytical doctor, and the
honest, dogged backwoodsman, each sat trembling
in the depths of his being.
Thus the hours passed; and thus, with lowered
voices and a kind of taut inner resistance of spirit,
this little group of humanity sat in the jaws of the
wilderness and talked foolishly of the terrible and
haunting legend. It was an unequal contest, all


120 THE WENDIGO
things considered, for the wilderness had already the
advantage of first attack—and of a hostage. The
fate of their comrade hung over them with a steadily
increasing weight of oppression that finally became
insupportable.
It was Hank, after a pause longer than the preced-
ing ones that no one seemed able to break, who first
let loose all this pent-up emotion in very unexpected
fashion, by springing suddenly to his feet and letting
out the most ear-shattering yell imaginable into the
night. He could not contain himself any longer, it
seemed. To make it carry even beyond an ordinary
cry he interrupted its rhythm by shaking the palm of
his hand before his mouth.
“That's for Défago,” he said, looking down at the
other two with a queer, defiant laugh, “for it's my
belief"—the sandwiched oaths may be omitted—
“that my ole partner's not far from us at this very
minute.”
There was a vehemence and recklessness about his
performance that made Simpson, too, start to his feet
in amazement, and betrayed even the doctor into let-
ting the pipe slip from between his lips. Hank's face
was ghastly, but Cathcart's showed a sudden weakness
—a loosening of all his faculties, as it were. Then a
momentary anger blazed into his eyes, and he too,
though with deliberation born of habitual self-control,
got upon his feet and faced the excited guide. For
this was unpermissible, foolish, dangerous, and he
meant to stop it in the bud.
What might have happened in the next minute or
two one may speculate about, yet never definitely
know, for in the instant of profound silence that
followed Hank's roaring voice, and as though in
answer to it, something went past through the dark-
ness of the sky overhead at terrific speed—something
of necessity very large, for it displaced much air,


THE WENDIGO 121
while down between the trees there fell a faint and
windy cry of a human voice, calling in tones of
indescribable anguish and appeal—
“Oh, oh! this fiery height ! Oh, oh! My feet
of fire . . My burning feet of fire ' "
White to the very edge of his shirt, Hank looked
stupidly about him like a child. Dr. Cathcart uttered
some kind of unintelligible cry, turning as he did so
with an instinctive movement of blind terror towards
the protection of the tent, then halting in the act as
though frozen. Simpson, alone of the three, retained
his presence of mind a little. His own horror was
too deep to allow of any immediate reaction. He
had heard that cry before.
Turning to his stricken companions, he said almost
calmly—
“That's exactly the cry I heard—the very words
he used '''
Then, lifting his face to the sky, he cried aloud,
“Défago, Défago | Come down here to us ! Come
down ! ”
And before there was time for anybody to take
definite action one way or another, there came the
sound of something dropping heavily between the
trees, striking the branches on the way down, and
landing with a dreadful thud upon the frozen earth
below. The crash and thunder of it was really
terrific.
“That's him, s'help me the good Gawd!” came
from Hank in a whispering cry half choked, his
hand going automatically towards the hunting-knife
in his belt. “And he's coming ! He's coming 1"
he added, with an irrational laugh of terror, as the
sounds of heavy footsteps crunching over the snow
became distinctly audible, approaching through the
blackness towards the circle of light.
And while the steps, with their stumbling motion,


122 THE WENDIGO
moved nearer and nearer upon them, the three men
stood round that fire, motionless and dumb. Dr.
Cathcart had the appearance as of a man suddenly
withered; even his eyes did not move. Hank, suffer-
ing shockingly, seemed on the verge again of violent
action; yet did nothing. He, too, was hewn of stone.
Like stricken children they seemed. The picture was
hideous. And, meanwhile, their owner still invisible,
the footsteps came closer, crunching the frozen snow.
It was endless—too prolonged to be quite real—this
measured and pitiless approach. It was accursed.
VIII
Then at length the darkness, having this labori-
ously conceived, brought forth—a figure. It drew
forward into the zone of uncertain light where fire
and shadows mingled, not ten feet away; then halted,
'staring at them fixedly. The same instant it started
forward again with the spasmodic motion as of a
thing moved by wires, and coming up closer to them,
full into the glare of the fire, they perceived then
that—it was a man; and apparently that this man was
—Défago.
Something like a skin of horror almost perceptibly
drew down in that moment over every face, and three
pairs of eyes shone through it as though they saw
across the frontiers of normal vision into the Un-
known.
Défago advanced, his tread faltering and uncer-
tain; he made his way straight up to them as a group
first, then turned sharply and peered close into the
face of Simpson. The sound of a voice issued from
his lips—


THE WENDIGO 123
“Here I am, Boss Simpson. I heered some one
calling me.” It was a faint, dried-up voice, made
wheezy and breathless as by immense exertion.
“I’m havin' a reg'lar hell-fire kind of a trip, I am.”
And he laughed, thrusting his head forward into the
other's face.
But that laugh started the machinery of the group
of wax-work figures with the wax-white skins. Hank
immediately sprang forward with a stream of oaths
so far-fetched that Simpson did not recognize them
as English at all, but thought he had lapsed into
Indian or some other lingo. He only realized that
Hank's presence, thrust thus between them, was wel-
come—uncommonly welcome. Dr. Cathcart, though
more calmly and leisurely, advanced behind him,
heavily stumbling.
Simpson seems hazy as to what was actually said
and done in those next few seconds, for the eyes of .
that detestable and blasted visage peering at such
close quarters into his own utterly bewildered his
senses at first. He merely stood still. He said no-
thing. He had not the trained will of the older men
that forced them into action in defiance of all emo-
tional stress. He watched them moving as behind
a glass, that half destroyed their reality: it was
dream-like, perverted. Yet, through the torrent of
Hank's meaningless phrases, he remembers hearing
his uncle's tone of authority—hard and forced—say-
ing several things about food and warmth, blankets,
whisky and the rest; . . . and, further, that whiffs of
that penetrating, unaccustomed odour, vile, yet
sweetly bewildering, assailed his nostrils during all
that followed.
It was no less a person than himself, however—
less experienced and adroit than the others though he
was who gave instinctive utterance to the sentence


124 THE WENDIGO
that brought a measure of relief into the ghastly
situation by expressing the doubt and thought in each
one's heart.
“It is—YOU, isn't it, Défago?” he asked under
his breath, horror breaking his speech.
And at once Cathcart burst out with the loud
answer before the other had time to move his lips.
“Of course it is Of course it is Only—can’t you
see—he's nearly dead with exhaustion, cold and
terror? Isn't that enough to change a man beyond
all recognition ?” It was said in order to convince
himself as much as to convince the others. The over-
emphasis alone proved that. And continually, while
he spoke and acted, he held a handkerchief to his
nose. That odour pervaded the whole camp.
For the “Défago” who sat huddled by the big fire,
wrapped in blankets, drinking hot whisky and hold-
ing food in wasted hands, was no more like the guide
they had last seen alive than the picture of a man of
sixty is like the daguerreotype of his early youth in
the costume of another generation. Nothing really
can describe that ghastly caricature, that parody, mas-
querading there in the firelight as Défago. From the
ruins of the dark and awful memories he still retains,
Simpson declares that the face was more animal than
human, the features drawn about into wrong propor-
tions, the skin loose and hanging, as though he had
been subjected to extraordinary pressures and ten-
sions. It made him think vaguely of those bladder-
faces blown up by the hawkers on Ludgate Hill, that
change their expression as they swell, and as they
collapse emit a faint and wailing imitation of a voice.
Both face and voice suggested some such abominable
resemblance. But Cathcart long afterwards, seeking
to describe the indescribable, asserts that thus might
have looked a face and body that had been in air so


THE WENDIGO 125
rarified that, the weight of atmosphere being re-
moved, the entire structure threatened to fly asunder
and become—incoherent. . . .
It was Hank, though all distraught and shaking
with a tearing volume of emotion he could neither
handle nor understand, who brought things to a head
without more ado. He went off to a little distance
from the fire, apparently so that the light should not
dazzle him too much, and shading his eyes for a
moment with both hands, shouted in a loud voice
that held anger and affection dreadfully mingled—
“You ain't Défaygol You ain't Défaygo at all ! I
don't give a damn, but that ain't you, my ole
pal of twenty years " He glared upon the huddled
figure as though he would destroy him with his eyes.
“An' if it is I'll swab the floor of hell with a wad of
cotton-wool on a toothpick, s'help me the good
Gawd!” he added, with a violent fling of horror and
disgust.
It was impossible to silence him. He stood there
shouting like one possessed, horrible to see, horrible
to hear—because it was the truth. He repeated him-
self in fifty different ways, each more outlandish
than the last. The woods rang with echoes. At one
time it looked as if he meant to fling himself upon
“the intruder,” for his hand continually jerked to-
wards the long hunting-knife in his belt.
But in the end he did nothing, and the whole
tempest completed itself very nearly with tears.
Hank's voice suddenly broke, he collapsed on the
ground, and Cathcart somehow or other persuaded
him at last to go into the tent and lie quiet. The
remainder of the affair, indeed, was witnessed by him
from behind the canvas, his white and terrified face
peeping through the crack of the tent door-flap.
Then Dr. Cathcart, closely followed by his nephew
º


126 THE WENDIGO
who so far had kept his courage better than all of
them, went up with a determined air and stood
opposite to the figure of Défago huddled over the
fire. He looked him squarely in the face and spoke.
At first his voice was firm.
“Défago, tell us what's happened—just a little, so
that we can know how best to help you?” he asked
in a tone of authority, almost of command. And at
that point, it was command. At once afterwards,
however, it changed in quality, for the figure turned
up to him a face so piteous, so terrible and so little
like humanity, that the doctor shrank back from him as
from something spiritually unclean. Simpson, watch-
ing close behind him, says he got the impression of
a mask that was on the verge of dropping off, and
that underneath they would discover something black
and diabolical, revealed in utter nakedness. “Out
with it, man, out with it !” Cathcart cried, terror
running neck and neck with entreaty. “None of us
can stand this much longer . . . . .” It was the cry
of instinct over reason.
And then “Défago,” smiling whitely, answered in
that thin and fading voice that already seemed passing
over into a sound of quite another character—
“I seen that great Wendigo thing,” he whispered,
sniffing the air about him exactly like an animal. “I
been with it too—”
Whether the poor devil would have said more, or
whether Dr. Cathcart would have continued the im-
possible cross-examination cannot be known, for at
that moment the voice of Hank was heard yelling
at the top of his shout from behind the canvas that
concealed all but his terrified eyes. Such a howling
was never heard.
“His feet ! Oh, Gawd, his feet ! Look at his
great changed—feet !”


THE WENDIGO 127
Défago, shuffling where he sat, had moved in such
a way that for the first time his legs were in full light
and his feet were visible. Yet Simpson had no time,
himself, to see properly what Hank had seen. And
Hank has never seen fit to tell. That same instant,
with a leap like that of a frightened tiger, Cathcart
was upon him, bundling the folds of blanket about
his legs with such speed that the young student
caught little more than a passing glimpse of some-
thing dark and oddly massed where moccasined feet
ought to have been, and saw even that but with
uncertain vision.
Then, before the doctor had time to do more, or
Simpson time to even think a question, much less
ask it, Défago was standing upright in front of them,
balancing with pain and difficulty, and upon his
shapeless and twisted visage an expression so dark
and so malicious that it was, in the true sense,
In OnStrous.
“Now you seen it too,” he wheezed, “you seen my
fiery, burning feet ! And now—that is, unless you
kin Save me an' prevent—it's 'bout time for—”
His piteous and beseeching voice was interrupted
by a sound that was like the roar of wind coming
across the lake. The trees overhead shook their
tangled branches. The blazing fire bent its flames
as before a blast. And something swept with a
terrific, rushing noise about the little camp and
seemed to surround it entirely in a single moment of
time. Défago shook the clinging blankets from his
body, turned towards the woods behind, and with
the same stumbling motion that had brought him—
was gone : gone, before any one could move muscle
to prevent him, gone with an amazing, blundering
swiftness that left no time to act. The darkness
positively swallowed him; and less than a dozen
*


128 THE WENDIGO
seconds later, above the roar of the swaying trees
and the shout of the sudden wind, all three men,
watching and listening with stricken hearts, heard a
cry that seemed to drop down upon them from a
great height of sky and distance—
“Oh, oh! This fiery height ! Oh, oh! My feet
of fire My burning feet of fire . . . . " then died
away, into untold space and silence.
Dr. Cathcart—suddenly master of himself, and
therefore of the others—was just able to seize Hank
violently by the arm as he tried to dash headlong into
the Bush.
“But I want ter know, you !” shrieked the
guide. “I want ter see 1 That ain't him at all, but
some — devil that's shunted into his place . . . . .”
Somehow or other—he admits he never quite knew
how he accomplished it—he managed to keep him in
the tent and pacify him. The doctor, apparently,
had reached the stage where reaction had set in and
allowed his own innate force to conquer. Certainly
he “managed" Hank admirably. It was his nephew,
however, hitherto so wonderfully controlled, who
gave him most cause for anxiety, for the cumulative
strain had now produced a condition of lachrymose
hysteria which made it necessary to isolate him upon
a bed of boughs and blankets as far removed from
Hank as was possible under the circumstances.
And there he lay, as the watches of that haunted
night passed over the lonely camp, crying startled
sentences, and fragments of sentences, into the folds
of his blankets. A quantity of gibberish about speed
and height and fire mingled oddly with biblical
memories of the class-room. “People with broken
faces all on fire are coming at a most awful, awful,
pace towards the camp !” he would moan one minute;
and the next would sit up and stare into the woods,


THE WENDIGO 129
intently listening, and whisper, “How terrible in the
wilderness are—are the feet of them that ” until
his uncle came across to change the direction of his
thoughts and comfort him.
The hysteria, fortunately, proved but temporary.
Sleep cured him, just as it cured Hank.
Till the first signs of daylight came, soon after
five o'clock, Dr. Cathcart kept his vigil. His face
was the colour of chalk, and there were strange
flushes beneath the eyes. An appalling terror of the
soul battled with his will all through those silent
hours. These were some of the outer signs. . . .
At dawn he lit the fire himself, made breakfast,
and woke the others, and by seven they were well on
their way back to the home camp—three perplexed
and afflicted men, but each in his own way having
reduced his inner turmoil to a condition of more or
less systematized order again.
IX
They talked little, and then only of the most whole-
some and common things, for their minds were
charged with painful thoughts that clamoured for
explanation, though no one dared refer to them.
Hank, being nearest to primitive conditions, was the
first to find himself, for he was also less complex.
In Dr. Cathcart “civilization ” championed his forces
against an attack singular enough. To this day, per-
haps, he is not quite sure of certain things. Any-
how, he took longer to “find himself.”
Simpson, the student of divinity, it was who
arranged his conclusions probably with the best,
though not most scientific, appearance of order. Out
I


130 THE WENDIGO
there, in the heart of unreclaimed wilderness, they
had surely witnessed something crudely and essen-
tially primitive. Something that had survived some-
how the advance of humanity had emerged terrifically,
betraying a scale of life still monstrous and immature.
He envisaged it rather as a glimpse into prehistoric
ages, when superstitions, gigantic and uncouth, still
oppressed the hearts of men; when the forces of
nature were still untamed, the Powers that may have
haunted a primeval universe not yet withdrawn. To
this day he thinks of what he termed years later in a
sermon “savage and formidable Potencies lurking
behind the souls of men, not evil perhaps in them-
selves, yet instinctively hostile to humanity as it
exists.”
With his uncle he never discussed the matter in
detail, for the barrier between the two types of mind
made it difficult. Only once, years later, something
led them to the frontier of the subject—of a single
detail of the subject, rather—
“Can't you even tell me what—they were like?”
he asked; and the reply, though conceived in wisdom,
was not encouraging, “It is far better you should not
try to know, or to find out.”
“Well—that odour . . . 2” persisted the nephew.
“What do you make of that?”
Dr. Cathcart looked at him and raised his eyebrows.
“Odours,” he replied, “are not so easy as sounds
and sights of telepathic communication. I make as
much, or as little, probably, as you do yourself.”
He was not quite so glib as usual with his explana-
tions. That was all.
At the fall of day, cold, exhausted, famished, the
party came to the end of the long portage and dragged
themselves into a camp that at first glimpse seemed


THE WENDIGO 131
empty. Fire there was none, and no Punk came
forward to welcome them. The emotional capacity of
all three was too over-spent to recognize either sur-
prise or annoyance; but the cry of spontaneous affec-
tion that burst from the lips of Hank, as he rushed
ahead of them towards the fire-place, came probably
as a warning that the end of the amazing affair was
not quite yet. And both Cathcart and his nephew
confessed afterwards that when they saw him kneel
down in his excitement and embrace something that
reclined, gently moving, beside the extinguished
ashes, they felt in their very bones that this “some-
thing” would prove to be Défago—the true Défago,
returned.
And so, indeed, it was.
It is soon told. Exhausted to the point of emacia-
tion, the French Canadian—what was left of him,
that is—fumbled among the ashes, trying to make a
fire. His body crouched there, the weak fingers
obeying feebly the instinctive habit of a lifetime with
twigs and matches. But there was no longer any
mind to direct the simple operation. The mind had
fled beyond recall. And with it, too, had fled
memory. Not only recent events, but all previous
life was a blank.
This time it was the real man, though incredibly
and horribly shrunken. On his face was no expres-
sion of any kind whatever—fear, welcome, or recog-
nition. He did not seem to know who it was that
embraced him, or who it was that fed, warmed and
spoke to him the words of comfort and relief. For-
lorn and broken beyond all reach of human aid, the
little man did meekly as he was bidden. The “some-
thing" that had constituted him “individual" had
vanished for ever.
In some ways it was more terribly moving than
1 2


132 THE WENDIGO
anything they had yet seen—that idiot smile as he
drew wads of coarse moss from his swollen cheeks
and told them that he was “a damned moss eater";
the continued vomiting of even the simplest food;
and, worst of all, the piteous and childish voice of
complaint in which he told them that his feet pained
him—“burn like fire”—which was natural enough
when Dr. Cathcart examined them and found that
both were dreadfully frozen. Beneath the eyes there
were faint indications of recent bleeding.
The details of how he survived the prolonged ex-
posure, of where he had been, or of how he covered
the great distance from one camp to the other, in-
cluding an immense detour of the lake on foot since
he had no canoe—all this remains unknown. His
memory had vanished completely. And before the
end of the winter whose beginning witnessed this
strange occurrence, Défago, bereft of mind, memory
and soul, had gone with it. He lingered only a few
weeks.
And what Punk was able to contribute to the story
throws no further light upon it. He was cleaning
fish by the lake shore about five o'clock in the even-
ing—an hour, that is, before the search party returned
—when he saw this shadow of the guide picking its
way weakly into camp. In advance of him, he
declares, came the faint whiff of a certain singular
odour.
That same instant old Punk started for home. He
covered the entire journey of three days as only
Indian blood could have covered it. The terror of a
whole race drove him. He knew what it all meant.
Défago had “seen the Wendigo.”


III
OLD CLOTHES
I
IMAGINATIve children with their odd questionings
of life and their delicate nervous systems must be
often a source of greater anxiety than delight to their
parents, and Aileen, the child of my widowed cousin,
impressed me from the beginning as being a strangely
vivid specimen of her class. Moreover, the way she
took to me from the first placed quasi-avuncular
responsibilities upon my shoulders (in her mother's
eyes), that I had no right, even as I had no inclina-
tion, to shirk. Indeed, I loved the queer, wayward,
mysterious little being. Only it was not always easy
to advise; and her somewhat marked peculiarities cer-
tainly called for advice of a skilled and special order.
It was not merely that her make-believe was un-
usually sincere and haunting, and that she would
talk by the hour with invisible playmates (touching
them, putting up her lips to be kissed, opening
doors for them to pass in and out, and setting chairs,
footstools and even flowers for them), for many
children in my experience have done as much and
done it with a vast sincerity; but that she also
accepted what they told her with so steady a degree
of conviction that their words influenced her life and,
accordingly, her health.
They told her stories, apparently, in which she
herself played a central part, stories, moreover, that
were neither comforting nor wise. She would sit in
133


134 OLD CLOTHES
a corner of the room, as both her mother and myself
can vouch, face to face with some make-believe Occu-
pant of the chair so carefully arranged; the footstool
had been placed with precision, and sometimes she
would move it a little this way or that; the table
whereon rested the invisible elbows was beside her
with a jar of flowers that changed according to the
particular visitor. And there she would wait motion-
less, perhaps an hour at a time, staring up into the
viewless features of the person who was talking with
her—who was telling her a story in which she played
an exceedingly poignant part. Her face altered with
the run of emotions, her eyes grew large and moist,
and sometimes frightened; rarely she laughed, and
rarely asked a whispered question, but more often
sat there, tense and eager, uncannily absorbed in the
inaudible tale falling from invisible lips—the tale of
her own adventures.
But it was the terror inspired by these singular
recitals that affected her delicate health as early as
the age of eight, and when, owing to her mother's
well-meant but ill-advised ridicule, she indulged them
with more secrecy, the effect upon her nerves and
character became so acute that I was summoned down
upon a special advisory visit I scarcely appreciated.
“Now, George, what do you think I had better do?
Dr. Hale insists upon more exercise and more com-
panionship, sea air and all the rest of it, but none of
these things seem to do any good.”
“Have you taken her into your confidence, or
rather has she taken you into hers?” I ventured
mildly.
The question seemed to give offence a little.
“Of course,” was the emphatic answer. “The child
has no secrets from her mother. She is perfectly
devoted to me.”


OLD CLOTHES 135
“But you have tried to laugh her out of it, haven't
you now 2"
“Yes. But with such success that she holds these
conversations far less than she used to-"
“Or more secretly 2” was my comment, that was
met with a superior shrug of the shoulders.
Then, after a further pause, in which my cousin's
distress and my own affectionate interest in the
whimsical imagination of my little niece combined
to move me, I tried again—
“Make-believe,” I observed, “is always a bit
puzzling to us older folk, because, though we indulge
in it all our lives, we no longer believe in it; whereas
children like Aileen ->
She interrupted me quickly—
“You know what I feel anxious about,” she said,
lowering her voice. “I think there may be cause for
serious alarm.” Then she added frankly, looking up
with grave eyes into my face, “George, I want your
help-your best help, please. You've always been
a true friend.”
I gave it her in calculated words.
“Theresa,” I said with grave emphasis, “there is no
trace of insanity on either side of the family, and my
own opinion is that Aileen is perfectly well-balanced
in spite of this too highly developed imagination.
But, above all things, you must not drive it inwards
by making fun of it. Lead it out. E–ducate it.
Guide it by intelligent sympathy. Get her to tell you
all about it, and so on. I think Aileen wants careful
observing, perhaps—but nothing more.”
For some minutes she watched my face in silence,
her eyes intent, her features slightly twitching. I
knew at once from her manner what she was driving
at. She approached the subject with awkwardness
and circumlocution, for it was something she dreaded,
ºf


136 OLD CLOTHES
not feeling sure whether it was of heaven or of
hell.
“You are very wonderful, George,” she said at
length, “and you have theories about almost every-
thing—”
“Speculations,” I admitted.
“And your hypnotic power is helpful, you know.
Now—if-if you thought it safe, and that Providence
would not be offended 25
“Theresa,” I stopped her firmly before she had
committed herself to the point where she would feel
hurt by a refusal, “let me say at once that I do not
consider a child a fit subject for hypnotic experiment,
and I feel quite sure that an intelligent person like
yourself will agree with me that it's unpermissible.”
“I was only thinking of a little ‘suggestion,’” she
murmured.
“Which would come far better from the mother.”
“If the mother had not already lost her power by
using ridicule,” she confessed meekly.
“Yes, you never should have laughed. Why did
you, I wonder 2"
An expression came into her eyes that I knew to
be invariably with hysterical temperaments the pre-
cursor of tears. She looked round to make sure no
one was listening.
“George,” she whispered, and into the dusk of that
September evening passed some shadow between us
that left behind an atmosphere of sudden and inex-
plicable chill, “George, I wish—I wish it was quite
clear to me that it really is all make-believe, I
mean—”
“What do you mean?” I said, with a severity that
was assumed to hide my own uneasiness. But the
tears came the same instant in a flood that made
any intelligent explanation out of the question.


OLD CLOTHES 137
The terror of the mother for her own blood burst
forth.
“I’m frightened—horribly frightened,” she said
between the sobs.
“I’ll go up and see the child myself," I said com-
fortingly at length when the storm had subsided.
“I’ll run up to the nursery. You mustn't be alarmed.
Aileen's all right. I think I can help you in the
matter a good deal.”
II
In the nursery as usual Aileen was alone. I found
her sitting by the open window, an empty chair
opposite to her. She was staring at it—into it, but
it is not easy to describe the certainty she managed
to convey that there was some one sitting in that
chair, talking with her. It was her manner that did
it. She rose quickly, with a start as I came in, and
made a half gesture in the direction of the empty
chair as though to shake hands, then corrected her-
self quickly, and gave a friendly little nod of farewell
or dismissal—then turned towards me. Incredible as
it must sound, that chair looked at once slightly other-
wise. It was empty.
“Aileen, what in the world are you up to ?”
“You know, uncle,” she replied, without hesitation.
“Oh, rather I know !” I said, trying to get into
her mood so as later to get her out of it, “because I
do the same thing with the people in my own stories.
I talk to them too—”
She came up to my side, as though it were a matter
of life and death.
“But do they answer?”
I realized the overwhelming sincerity, even the


138 OLD CLOTHES
seriousness, of the question to her mind. The shadow
evoked down-stairs by my cousin had followed me
up here. It touched me on the shoulder.
“Unless they answer,” I told her, “they are not
really alive, and the story hangs fire when people
read it.”
She watched me very closely a moment as we
leaned out of the open window where the rich per-
fume of the Portuguese laurels came up from the
lawns below. The proximity of the child brought a
distinct atmosphere of its own, an atmosphere charged
with suggestions, almost with faint pictures, as of
things I had once known. I had often felt this before,
and did not altogether welcome it, for the pictures
seemed framed in some emotional setting that in-
variably escaped my analysis. I understood in a
vague way what it was about the child that made her
mother afraid. There flashed across me a fugitive
sensation, utterly elusive yet painfully real, that she
knew moments of suffering by rights she ought not
to have known. Bizarre and unreasonable as the
conception was, it was convincing. And it touched a
profound sympathy in me.
Aileen undoubtedly was aware of this sympathy.
“It’s Philip that talks to me most of the time,”
she volunteered, “and he's always, always explain-
ing—but never quite finishes.”
“Explaining what, dear little Child of the Moon?”
I urged gently, giving her a name she used to love
when she was smaller.
“Why he couldn't come in time to save me, of
course,” she said. “You see, they cut off both his
hands.”
I shall never forget the sensation these words of a
child's mental adventure caused me, nor the kind of
bitter reality they forced into me that they were true,


OLD CLOTHES 139
and not merely a detail of some attempted rescue of
a “Princess in a Tower.” A vivid rush of thought
seemed to focus my consciousness upon my own two
wrists, as though I felt the pain of the operation she
mentioned, and with a swift instinct that slipped into
action before I could control it, I had hidden both
hands from her sight in my coat pockets.
“And what else does “Philip ' tell you?” I asked
gently.
Her face flushed. Tears came into her eyes, then
fled away again lest they should fall from their softly-
coloured nests.
“That he loved me so awfully,” she replied; “and
that he loved me to the very end, and that all his life
after I was gone, and after they cut his hands off, he
did nothing but pray for me—from the end of the
world where he went to hide—”
I shook myself free with an effort from the envelop-
ing atmosphere of tragedy, realizing that her imagin-
ation must be driven along brighter channels and that
my duty must precede my interest.
“But you must get Philip to tell you all his funny
and jolly adventures, too,” I said, “the ones he had,
you know, when his hands grew again—”
The expression that came into her face literally
froze my blood.
“That's only making-up stories,” she said icily.
“They never did grow again. There were no happy
or funny adventures.”
I cast about in my mind for an inspiration how to
help her mind into more wholesome ways of inven-
tion. I realized more than ever before the profundity
of my affection for this strange, fatherless child, and
how I would give my whole soul if I could help her
and teach her joy. It was a real love that swept me,
rooted in things deeper than I realized


140 OLD CLOTHES
But, before the right word was given me to speak,
I felt her nestle up against my side, and heard her
utter the very phrase that for some time I had been
dreading in the secret places of my soul she would
utter. The sentence seemed to shake me within. I
knew a hurried, passing moment of unspeakable pain
that is utterly beyond me to reason about.
“You know,” was what she said, “because it's you
who are Philip !”
And the way she said it—so quietly, the words
touched somehow with a gentle though compassion-
ate scorn, yet made golden by a burning love that
filled her little person to the brim—robbed me mo-
mentarily of all power of speech. I could only bend
down and put my arm about her and kiss her head
that came up barely to the level of my chin. I swear
I loved that child as I never loved any other human
being.
“Then Philip is going to teach you all sorts of
jolly adventures with his new hands,” I remember
saying, with blundering good intention, “because he's
no longer sad, and is full of fun, and loves you twice
as much as ever !”
And I caught her up and carried her down the long
stairs of the house out into the garden, where we
joined the dogs and romped together until the face
of the motherly Kempster at an upper window
shouted down something stupid about bed-time,
supper, or the rest of it, and Aileen, flushed yet with
brighter eyes, ran into the house and, turning at the
door, showed me her odd little face wreathed in smiles
and laughter.
For a long time I paced to and fro with a cigar
between the box hedges of the old-time garden, think-
ing of the child and her queer imaginings, and of


OLD CLOTHES 141
the profoundly moving and disquieting sensations
she stirred in me at the same time. Her face flitted
by my side through the shadows. She was not
pretty, properly speaking, but her appearance pos-
sessed an original charm that appealed to me strongly.
Her head was big and in some way old-fashioned;
her eyes, dark but not large, were placed close to-
gether, and she had a wide mouth that was certainly
not beautiful. But the look of distressed and yearn-
ing passion that sometimes swept over these features,
not otherwise prepossessing, changed her look into
sudden beauty, a beauty of the soul, a soul that knew
suffering and was acquainted with grief. This, at
least, is the way my own mind saw the child, and
therefore the only way I can hope to make others
see her. Were I a painter I might put her upon
canvas in some imaginary portrait and call it, per-
haps, “Reincarnation ”—for I have never seen any-
thing in child-life that impressed me so vividly with
that odd idea of an old soul come back to the world
in a new young body—a new Suit of Clothes.
But when I talked with my cousin after dinner,
and consoled her with the assurance that Aileen
was gifted with an unusually vivid imagination which
time and ourselves must train to some more practical
end—while I said all this, and more besides, two
sentences the child had made use of kept ringing in
my head. One—when she told me with merciless
perception that I was only “making-up" stories; and
the other, when she had informed me with that quiet
rush of certainty and conviction that “Philip" was—
myself.


142 OLD CLOTHES
III
A big-game expedition of some months put an end
temporarily to my avuncular responsibilities; at least
so far as action was concerned, for there were certain
memories that held curiously vivid among all the
absorbing turmoil of our camp life. Often, lying
awake in my tent at night, or even following the
tracks of our prey through the jungle, these pictures
would jump out upon me and claim attention.
Aileen's little face of suffering would come between
me and the sight of my rifle; or her assurance that I
was the “Philip” of her imagination would attack
me with an accent of reality that seemed queer enough
until I analyzed it away. And more than once I
found myself thinking of her dark and serious coun-
tenance when she told how “Philip " had loved her
to the end, and would have saved her if they had not
cut off his hands. My own imagination, it seemed,
was weaving the details of her child's invention into
a story, for I never could think of this latter detail
without positively experiencing a sensation of smart-
ing pain in my wrists . . . ]
When I returned to England in the spring they
had moved, I found, into a house by the sea, a
tumbled-down old rookery of a building my cousin's
father had rarely occupied during his lifetime, nor
she been able to let since it had passed into her pos-
session. An urgent letter summoned me thither, and I
travelled down the very day after my arrival to the
bleak Norfolk coast with a sense of foreboding in my
heart that increased almost to a presentiment when
the cab entered the long drive and I recognized the
grey and gloomy walls of the old mansion. The sea


OLD CLOTHES 143
air swept the gardens with its salt wash, and the moan
of the surf was audible even up to the windows.
“I wonder what possessed her to come here 2" was
the first thought in my mind. “Surely the last place
in the world to bring a morbid or too-sensitive child
to 1 '' My further dread that something had hap-
pened to the little child I loved so tenderly was partly
dispelled, however, when my cousin met me at the
door with open arms and smiling face, though the
welcome I soon found, was chiefly due to the relief
she gained from my presence. Something had hap-
pened to little Aileen, though not the final disaster
that I dreaded. She had suffered from nervous at-
tacks of so serious a character during my absence
that the doctor had insisted upon sea air, and my
cousin, not with the best judgment, had seized upon
the idea of making the old house serve the purpose.
She had made a wing habitable for a few weeks; she
hoped the entire change of scene would fill the little
girl's mind with new and happier ideas. Instead—
the result had been exactly the reverse. The child
had wept copiously and hysterically the moment she
set eyes on the old walls and smelt the odour of the
Sea.
But before we had been talking ten minutes there
was a cry and a sound of rushing footsteps, and a
scampering figure, with dark, flying hair, had dived
headlong into my arms, and Aileen was sobbing—
“Oh, you've come, you've come at last ! I am so
awfully glad. I thought it would be the same as
before, and you'd get caught.” She ran from me
next and kissed her mother, laughing with pleasure
through her tears, and was gone from the room as
quickly as she had come.
I caught my cousin's glance of frightened amaze-
ment.


144 OLD CLOTHES
“Now isn't that odd?” she exclaimed in a hushed
voice. “Isn't that odd? Those are the tears of hap-
piness, the first time I’ve seen her smile since we
came here last week.”
But it rather nettled me, I think. “Why odd?”
I asked. “Aileen loves me, it's delightful to-"
“Not that, not that l” she said quickly. “It’s
odd, I meant, she should have found you out So
soon. She didn't even know you were back in Eng-
land, and I’d sent her off to play on the sands with
Kempster and the dogs so as to be sure of an oppor-
tunity of telling you everything before you saw her.”
Our eyes met squarely, yet not with complete
sympathy or comprehension.
“You see, she knew perfectly well you were here
—the instant you came.”
“But there's nothing in that,” I asserted. “Children
know things just as animals do. She scented her
favourite uncle from the shore like a dog ' " And I
laughed in her face.
That laugh perhaps was a mistake on my part.
Its well-meant cheerfulness was possibly overdone.
Even to myself it did not ring quite true.
“I do believe you are in league with her—against
me,” was the remark that greeted it, accompanied by
an increase of that expression of fear in the eyes 1
had divined the moment we met upon the doorstep.
Finding nothing genuine to say in reply, I kissed
the top of her head.
In due course, after the tea things had been re-
moved, I learned the exact state of affairs, and even
making due allowance for my cousin's excited exag-
gerations, there were things that seemed to me inex-
plicable enough on any ground of normal explana-
tion. Slight as the details may seem when set down
seriatim, their cumulative effect upon my own mind


OLD CLOTHES 145
touched an impressive and disagreeable climax that
I did my best to conceal from outward betrayal. As
I sat in the great shadowy room, listening to my
cousin's jerky description of “childish " things, it was
borne in upon me that they might well have the pro-
foundest possible significance. I watched her eager,
frightened face, lit only by the flickering flames the
sharp spring evening made necessary, and thought
of the subject of our conversation flitting about the
dreary halls and corridors of the huge old building,
a little figure of tragedy, laughing, crying and dream-
ing in a world entirely her own—and there stirred in
me an unwelcome recognition of those mutinous and
dishevelled forces that lie but thinly screened behind
the common-place details of life and that now seemed
ready to burst forth and play their mysterious rôle
before our very eyes.
“Tell me exactly what has happened,” I urged,
with decision but sympathy.
“There's so little, when it's put into words, George;
but—well, the thing that first upset me was that she
—knew the whole place, though she's never been
here before. She knew every passage and staircase,
many of them that I did not know myself; she
showed us an underground passage to the sea, that
father himself didn't know; and she actually drew a
scrawl of the house as it used to be three hundred
years ago when the other wing was standing where
the copper beeches grow now. It's accurate, too.”
It seemed impossible to explain to a person of my
cousin's temperament the theories of pre-natal memory
and the like, or the possibility of her own knowledge
being communicated telepathically to the brain of
her own daughter. I said therefore very little, but
listened with an uneasiness that grew horribly.
“She found her way about the gardens instantly,
K


OLD CLOTHES 147
was coming. It gave her time to get her further facts
into some pretence of coherence.
“I told you about the belt 2" she asked at length,
weakly, and as though unutterable things she longed
to disown forced the question to her unwilling lips.
The sentence shot into me like the thrust of a naked
sword. . . . I shook my head.
“Well, even a year or two ago she had that strange
dislike of wearing a belt with her frocks. We
thought it was a whim, and did not humour her.
Belts are necessary, you know, George,” she tried to
smile feebly. “But now it has come to such a point
that I’ve had to give in.”
“She dislikes a belt round her waist, you mean?”
I asked, fighting a sudden inexplicable spasm in
my heart.
“It makes her scream. The moment anything
encloses her waist she sets up such a hubbub, and
struggles so, and hides away, and I've been obliged
to yield.”
“But really, Theresa
“She declares it fastens her in, and she will never
get free again, and all kinds of other things. Oh,
her fear is dreadful, poor child. Her face gets that
sort of awful grey, don't you know? Even Kempster,
who if anything is too firm, had to give in.”
“And what else, pray ?” I disliked hearing these
details intensely. It made me ache with a kind of
anger that I could not at once relieve the child's pain.
“The way she spoke to me after Dr. Hale had left
—you know how awfully kind and gentle he is, and
how Aileen likes him and even plays with him and
sits on his knee ? Well, he was talking about her
diet, regulating it and so forth, teasing her that she
mustn't eat this and that, and the rest of it, when she
turned that horrid grey again and jumped off his
1 *
K 2


148 OLD CLOTHES
knee with her scream—that thin wailing scream she
has that goes through me like a knife, George—and
flew to the nursery and locked herself in with—what
do you think?—with all the bread, apples, cold meat
and other eatables she could find l "
“Eatables I " I exclaimed, aware of another spasm
of vivid pain.
“When I coaxed her out, hours later, she was
trembling like a leaf and fell into my arms utterly
exhausted, and all I could get her to tell me was this
—which she repeated again and again with a sort of
beseeching, appealing tone that made my heart
bleed 27
She hesitated an instant.
“Tell me at once.”
“‘I shall starve again, I shall starve again,’ were
the words she used. She kept repeating it over and
over between her sobs. “I shall be without anything
to eat. I shall starvel' And, would you believe it,
while she hid in that nursery cupboard she had
crammed so much cake and stuff into her little self
that she was violently sick for a couple of days.
Moreover, she now hates the sight of Dr. Hale so
much, poor man, that it's useless for him to see her.
It does more harm than good.”
I had risen and begun to walk up and down the
hall while she told me this. I said very little. In
my mind strange thoughts tore and raced, standing
erect before me out of unbelievably immense depths
of shadow. There was nothing very pregnant I
found to say, however, for theories and speculations
are of small avail as practical help—unless two minds
see eye to eye in them.
“And the rest?” I asked gently, coming behind
the chair and resting both hands upon her shoulders.
She got up at once and faced me. I was afraid to


OLD CLOTHES 149
show too much sympathy lest the tears should
COme.
“Oh, George,” she exclaimed, “I am relieved you
have come. You are really strong and comforting.
To feel your great hands on my shoulders gives me
courage. But, you know, truly and honestly I am
frightened out of my very wits by the child—”
“You won't stay here, of course ?”
“We leave at the end of this week,” she replied.
“You will not desert me till then, I know. And
Aileen will be all right as long as you are here, for
you have the most extraordinary effect on her for
good.”
“Bless her little suffering imagination,” I said.
“You can count on me. I’ll send to town to-night
for my things.”
And then she told me about the room. It was
simple enough, but it conveyed a more horrible cer-
tainty of something true than all the other details put
together. For there was a room on the ground
floor, intended to be used on wet days when the
nursery was too far for muddy boots—and into this
room Aileen could not go. Why? No one could
tell. The facts were that the first moment the child
ran in, her mother close behind, she stopped, swayed,
and nearly fell. Then, with shrieks that were even
heard outside by the gardeners sweeping the gravel
path, she flung herself headlong against the wall,
against a particular corner of it that is to say, and
beat it with her little fists until the skin broke and
left stains upon the paper. It all happened in less
than a minute. The words she cried so frantically
her mother was too shocked and flabbergasted to
remember, or even to hear properly. Aileen nearly
upset her in her bewildered efforts next to find the
door and escape. And the first thing she did when


150 OLD CLOTHES
escape was accomplished, was to drop in a dead
faint upon the stone floor of the passage outside.
“Now, is that all make-believe?” whispered
Theresa, unable to keep the shudder from her lips.
“Is that all merely part of a story she has make up
and plays a part in 2"
We looked one another straight in the eyes for a
space of some seconds. The dread in the mother's
heart leaped out to swell a terror in my own—a terror
of another kind, but greater.
“It is too late to-night,” I said at length, “for it
would only excite her unnecessarily; but to-morrow
I will talk with Aileen. And—if it seems wise—I
might—I might be able to help in other ways too,” I
added.
So I did talk to her—next day.
IV
I always had her confidence, this little dark-eyed
maid, and there was an intimacy between us that
made play and talk very delightful. Yet as a rule,
without giving myself a satisfactory reason, I pre-
ferred talking with her in the sunlight. She was
not eerie, bless her little heart of queerness and
mystery, but she had a way of suggesting other ways
of life and existence shouldering about us that made
me look round in the dark and wonder what the
shadows concealed or what waited round the next
COrtler.
We were on the lawn, where the bushy yews drop
thick shade, the soft air making tea possible out of
doors, my cousin out driving to distant calls; and
Aileen had invited herself and was messing about


OLD CLOTHES 151
with my manuscripts in a way that vexed me, for I had
been reading my fairy tales to her and she kept ask-
ing me questions that shamed my limited powers. I
remember, too, that I was glad the collie ran to and fro
past us, scampering and barking after the swallows
on the lawn.
“Only some of your stories are true, aren't they 2”
she asked abruptly.
“How do you know that, young critic?” I had
been waiting for an opening supplied by herself.
Anything forced on my part she would have sus-
pected.
“Oh, I can tell.”
Then she came up and whispered without any hint
of invitation on my part, “Uncle, it is true, isn't it,
that I've been in other places with you? And isn't
it only the things we did there that make the true
stories 2"
The opening was delivered all perfect and complete
into my hands. I cannot conceive how it was I
availed myself of it so queerly—I mean, how it was
that the words and the name slipped out of their
own accord as though I was saying something in a
dream.
“Of course, my little Lady Aileen, because in
imagination, you see, we-"
But before I had time to finish the sentence with
which I hoped to coax out the true inwardness of her
own distress, she was upon me in a heap.
“Oh,” she cried, with a sudden passionate outburst,
“then you do know my name 2 You know all the
story—our story !”
She was very excited, face flushed, eyes dancing,
all the emotions of a life charged to the brim with
experience playing through her little person.
“Of course, Miss Inventor, I know your name,” I


152 OLD CLOTHES
said quickly, puzzled, and with a sudden dismay that
was hideous, clutching at my throat.
“And all that we did in this place?” she went on,
pointing with increased excitement to the thick, ivy-
grown walls of the old house.
My own emotion grew extraordinarily, a swift,
rushing uneasiness upsetting all my calculations.
For it suddenly came back to me that in calling her
“Lady Aileen " I had not pronounced the name quite
as usual. My tongue had played a trick with the
consonants and vowels, though at the moment of
utterance I had somehow failed to notice the change.
“Aileen" and “Helen" are almost interchangeable
sounds. . . . . And it was “Lady Helen” that I
had actually said.
The discovery took my breath away for an instant
—and the way she had leaped upon the name to
claim it. -
“No one else, you see, knows me as ‘Lady
Helen,’” she continued whispering, “because that's
only in our story, isn't it? And now I’m just Aileen
Langton. But as long as you know, it's all right.
Oh, I am so awf'ly glad you knew, most awf'ly,
awfly glad.”
I was momentarily at a loss for words. Keenly
desirous to guide the child’s “pain-stories” into wiser
channels, and thus help her to relief, I hesitated a
moment for the right clue. I murmured something
soothing about “our story,” while in my mind I
searched vigorously for the best way of leading her
on to explain all her terror of the belt, the fear of
starvation, the room that made her scream, and all
the rest. All that I was most anxious to get out of
her little tortured mind and then replace it by some
brighter dream.
But the insidious experience had shaken my con-


OLD CLOTHES 153
fidence a little, and these explicable emotions de-
stroyed my elder wisdom. The little Inventor had
caught me away into the reality of her own “story”
with a sense of conviction that was even beyond
witchery. And the next sentence she almost instantly
let loose upon me completed my discomfiture—
“With you,” she said, still half whispering, “with
you I could even go into the room. I never could—
alone ! ”
The spring wind whispering in the yews behind us
brought in that moment something upon me from
vanished childhood days that made me tremble.
Some wave of lost passion—lost because I guessed not
its origin or nature—surged through the depths of
me, sending faint messages to the surface of my con-
sciousness. Aileen, little mischief-maker, changed
before my very eyes as she stood there close—changed
into a tall sad figure that beckoned to me across seas
of time and distance, with the haze of ages in her
eyes and gestures, . . . I was obliged to focus my
gaze upon her with a deliberate effort to see her again
as the tumble-haired girl I was accustomed to. . . .
Then, sitting in the creaky garden chair, I drew her
down upon my knee, determined to win the whole
story from her mind. My back was to the house; she
was perched at an angle, however, that enabled her
to command the doors and windows. I mention this
because, scarcely had I begun my attack, when I saw
that her attention wandered, and that she seemed
curiously uneasy. Once or twice, as she shifted her
position to get a view of something that was going on
over my shoulder, I was aware that a slight shiver
passed from her small person down to my knees. She
seemed to be expecting something—with dread.
“We'll make a special expedition, armed to the


154 OLD CLOTHES
teeth,” I said, with a laugh, referring to her singular
words about the room. “We’ll send Pat in first to
bark at the cobwebs, and we'll take lots of provisions
and—and water in case of a siege—and a file—”
I cannot pretend to understand why I chose those
precise words—or why it was as though other thoughts
than those I had intended rose up, clamouring for
expression. It seemed all I could manage not to say
a lot of other things about the room that could only
have frightened instead of relieving her.
“Will you talk into the wall too?” she asked,
turning her eyes down suddenly upon me with a little
rush and flame of passion. And though I had not
the faintest conception what she meant, the question
sent an agony of yearning pain through me. “Talk-
ing into the wall,” I instantly grasped, referred to
the core of her trouble, the very central idea that
frightened her and provided the suffering and terror
of all her imaginings.
But I had no time to follow up the clue thus mysteri-
ously offered to me, for almost at the same moment
her eyes fixed themselves upon something behind me
with an expression of tense horror, as though she saw
the approach of a danger that might—kill.
“Oh, oh ' " she cried under her breath, “he’s
coming ! He's coming to take me! Uncle George—
Philip—l ” -
The same impulse operated upon us simultaneously,
it seems, for I sprang up with my fists clenched at the
very instant she shot off my knee and stood with all
her muscles rigid as though to resist attack. She was
shaking dreadfully. Her face went the colour of
linen.
“Who’s coming——?” I began sharply, then
stopped as I saw the figure of a man moving towards
us from the house. It was the butler—the new butler


OLD CLOTHES 155
who had arrived only that very afternoon. It is
impossible to say what there was in his swift and
silent approach that was abominable. The man was
upon us, it seemed, almost as soon as I caught sight
of him, and the same moment Aileen, with a bursting
cry, looking wildly about her for a place to hide in,
plunged headlong into my arms and buried her face
in my coat.
Horribly perplexed, yet mortified that the servant
should see my little friend in such a state, I did my
best to pretend that it was all part of some mad game
or other, and catching her up in my arms, I ran,
calling the collie to follow with, “Come on, Pat 1
She's our prisoner 1 "-and only set her down when
we were under the limes at the far end of the
lawn. She was all white and ghostly from her terror,
still looking frantically about her, trembling in such
a way that I thought any minute she must collapse
in a dead faint. She clung to me with very tight
fingers. How I hated that man. Judging by the
sudden violence of my loathing he might have been
some monster who wanted to torture her. . . .
“Let’s go away, oh, much farther, ever so far
away !” she whispered, and I took her by the hand,
comforting her as best I could with words, while
realizing that the thing she wanted was my big arm
about her to protect. My heart ached, oh, so fiercely,
for her, but the odd thing about it was that I could
not find anything of real comfort to say that I felt
would be true. If I “made up" soothing rubbish, it
would not deceive either of us and would only shake
her confidence in me, so that I should lose any power
I had to help. Had a tiger come upon her out of
the wood I might as well have assured her it would
not bite l
I did stammer something, however—


156 OLD CLOTHES
“It's only the new butler. He startled me, too; he
came so softly, didn't he?” Oh! how eagerly I
searched for a word that might make the thing seem
as ordinary as possible—yet how vainly.
“But you know who he is—really ' " she said in
a crying whisper, running down the path and drag-
ging me after her; “and if he gets me again . . . on 1
oh 1” and she shrieked aloud in the anguish of her
fear.
That fear chased both of us down the winding path
between the bushes.
“Aileen, darling,” I cried, surrounding her with
both arms and holding her very tight, “you need not
be afraid. I'll always save you. I'll always be with
you, dear child.”
“Keep me in your big arms, always, always, won't
you, Uncle—Philip 2" She mixed both names.
The choking stress of her voice wrung me dreadfully.
“Always, always, like in our story,” she pleaded,
hiding her little face again in my coat.
I really was at a complete loss to know what best to
do; I hardly dared to bring her back to the house;
the sight of the man, I felt, might be fatal to her
already too delicately balanced reason, for I dreaded
a fit or seizure if she chanced to run across him when
I was not with her. My mind was easily made up
on one point, however.
“I’ll send him away at once, Aileen,” I told her.
“When you wake up to-morrow he'll be gone. Of
course mother won't keep him.”
This assurance seemed to bring her some measure
of comfort, and at last, without having dared to win
the whole story from her as I had first hoped, I got
her back to the house by covert ways, and saw her
myself up-stairs to her own quarters. Also I took it
upon myself to give the necessary orders. She must


OLD CLOTHES 157
set no eye upon the man. Only, why was it that in
my heart of hearts I longed for him to do something
outrageous that should make it possible for me to
break his very life at its source and kill him . . . 2
But my cousin, alarmed to the point of taking even
frantic measures, finally had a sound suggestion to
offer, namely that I should take the afflicted little child
away with me the very next day, run down to Harwich
and carry her off for a week of absolute change across
the North Sea. And I, meanwhile, had reached the
point where I had persuaded myself that the experi-
ment I had hitherto felt unable to consent to had now
become a permissible, even a necessary one. Hypno-
tism should win the story from that haunted mind
without her being aware of it, and provided I could
drive her deep enough into the trance state, I could
then further wipe the memory from her outer con-
sciousness so completely that she might know at last
some happiness of childhood.
V
It was after ten o’clock, and I was still sitting in
the big hall before the fire of logs, talking with
lowered voice. My cousin sat opposite to me in a
deep arm-chair. We had discussed the matter pretty
fully, and the deep uneasiness we felt clothed not
alone our minds but the very building with gloom.
The fact that, instinctively, neither of us referred to
the possible assistance of doctors is eloquent, I think,
of the emotion that troubled us both so profoundly,
the emotion, I mean, that sprang from the vivid sense
of the reality of it all. No child's make-believe merely


158 OLD CLOTHES
could have thus caught us away, or spread a net that
entangled our minds to such a point of confusion
and dismay. It was perfectly comprehensible to me
now that my cousin should have cried in very helpless-
ness before the convincing effects of the little girl's
calamitous distress. Aileen was living through a
Reality, not an Invention. This was the fact that
haunted the shadowy halls and corridors behind us.
Already I hated the very building. It seemed charged
to the roof with the memories of melancholy and
ancient pain that swept my heart with shivering, cold
winds.
Purposely, however, I affected some degree of cheer-
fulness, and concealed from my cousin any mention of
the attacks that certain emotions and alarms had made
upon myself: I said nothing of my replacing “Lady
Aileen" with “Lady Helen,” nothing of my passing
for “Philip,” or of my sudden dashes of quasi-
memory arising from the child's inclusion of myself
in her “story,” and my own singular acceptance
of the rôle. I did not consider it wise to mention all
that the sight of the new servant with his sinister dark
face and his method of stealthy approach had awak-
ened in my thoughts. None the less these things
started constantly to the surface of my mind and
doubtless betrayed themselves somewhere in my
“atmosphere,” sufficiently at least for a woman's
intuition to divine them. I spoke passingly of the
“room,” and of Aileen's singular aversion for it, and
of her remark about “talking to the wall.” Yet
strange thoughts pricked their way horribly into both
our minds. In the hall the stuffed heads of deer
and fox and badger stared upon us like masks of
things still alive beneath their fur and dead skin.
“But what disturbs me more than all the rest of her
delusions put together,” said my cousin, peering at


OLD CLOTHES 159
me with eyes that made no pretence of hiding dark
things, “is her extraordinary knowledge of this place.
I assure you, George, it was the most uncanny thing
I've ever known when she showed me over and
asked questions as if she had actually lived here.”
Her voice sank to a whisper, and she looked up
startled. It seemed to me for a moment that some one
was coming near to listen, moving stealthily upon us
along the dark approaches to the hall.
“I can understand you found it strange,” I began
quickly. But she interrupted me at once. Clearly
it gave her a certain relief to say the things and get
them out of her mind where they hid, breeding new
growths of abhorrence.
“George,” she cried aloud, “there's a limit to
imagination. Aileen knows. That's the awful
thing --
Something sprang into my throat. My eyes
moistened.
“The horror of the belt ” she whispered, loath-
ing her own words.
“Leave that thought alone,” I said with decision.
The detail pained me inexpressibly—beyond belief.
“I wish I could,” she answered, “but if you had
seen the look on her face when she struggled—and
the-the frenzy she got into about the food and starv-
ing—I mean when Dr. Hale spoke—oh, if you had
seen all that, you would understand that I --
She broke off with a start. Some one had entered
the hall behind us and was standing in the doorway
at the far end. The listener had moved upon us from
the dark. Theresa, though her back was turned, had
felt the presence and was instantly upon her feet.
“You need not sit up, Porter,” she said, in a tone
that only thinly veiled the fever of apprehension be-
hind, “we will put the lights out," and the man with-
-


160 OLD CLOTHES
drew like a shadow. She exchanged a quick glance
with me. A sensation of darkness that seemed to
have come with the servant's presence was gone. It
is wholly beyond me to explain why neither myself nor
my cousin found anything to say for some minutes.
But it was still more a mystery, I think, why the
muscles of my two hands should have contracted
involuntarily with a force that drove the nails into my
palms, and why the violent impulse should have
leaped into my blood to fling myself upon the man
and strangle the life out of his neck before he could
take another breath. I have never before or since
experienced this apparently causeless desire to throttle
anybody. I hope I never may again.
“He hangs about rather,” was all my cousin said
presently. “He’s always watching us—” But my
own thoughts were horribly busy, and I was mar-
velling how it was this ugly and sinister creature had
ever come to be accepted in the story that Aileen lived,
and that I was slowly coming to believe in.
It was a relief to me when, towards midnight,
Theresa rose to go to bed. We had skirted through
the horrors of the child's possessing misery without
ever quite facing it, and as we stood there lighting the
candles, our voices whispering, our minds charged
with the strain of thoughts neither of us had felt it
wise to utter, my cousin started back against the wall
and stared up into the darkness above where the stair-
case climbed the well of the house. She uttered a
cry. At first I thought she was going to collapse. I
was only just in time to catch the candle.
All the emotions of fearfulness she had repressed
during our long talk came out in that brief cry,
and when I looked up to discover the cause I saw a
small white figure come slowly down the wide stair-
-


OLD CLOTHES T61
case and just about to step into the hall. It was
Aileen, with bare feet, her dark hair tumbling down
over her nightgown, her eyes wide open, an expres-
sion in them of anguished expectancy that her tender
years could never possibly have known. She was
walking steadily, yet somehow not quite as a child
walks.
“Stop !” I whispered peremptorily to my cousin,
putting my hand quickly over her mouth, and hold-
ing her back from the first movement of rescue, “don’t
wake her. She's walking in her sleep.”
Aileen passed us like a white shadow, scarcely
audible, and went straight across the hall. She was
utterly unaware of our presence. Avoiding all
obstructions of chairs and tables, moving with decision
and purpose, the little figure dipped into the shadows
at the far end and disappeared from view in the mouth
of the corridor that had once—three hundred years
ago–led into the wing where now the copper beeches
grew upon open lawns. It was clearly a way familiar
to her. And the instant I recovered from my surprise
and moved after her to act, Theresa found her voice
and cried aloud—a voice that broke the midnight
silence with shrill discordance—
“George, oh, George ' She's going to that awful
room . . . . .”
“Bring the candle and come after me,” I replied
from halfway down the hall, “but do not interrupt
unless I call for you,” and was after the child at a
pace to which the most singular medley of emotions
I have ever known urged me imperiously. A sense
of tragic disaster gripped my very vitals. All that I
did seemed to rise out of some subconscious region
of the mind where the haunting passions of a deeply
buried past stirred in their sleep and woke.
“Helen l’” I cried, “Lady Helen " I was close
L -
-


162 OLD CLOTHES
upon the gliding figure. Aileen turned and for the
first time saw me with eyes that seemed to waver
between sleep and waking. They gazed straight at
me over the flickering candle flame, then hesitated.
In similar fashion the gesture of her little hands
towards me was arrested before it had completed itself.
She saw me, knew my presence, yet was uncertain
who I was. It was astonishing the way I actually
surprised this momentary indecision between the two
personalities in her—caught the two phases of her
consciousness at grips—discerned the Aileen of To-
day in the act of waking to know me as her “Uncle
George,” and that other Aileen of her great dark
story, the “Helen” of some far Yesterday, that drew
her in this condition of somnambulism to the scene
in the past where our two lives were linked in her
imagination. For it was quite clear to me that the
child was dreaming in her sleep the action of the story
she lived through in the vivid moments of her waking
terror.
But the choice was swift. I just had time to signal
Theresa to set the candle upon a shelf and wait, when
she came up, stretched her hands out in completion
of the original gesture, and fell into my arms with a
smothered cry of love and anguish that, coming from
those childish lips, I think is the most thrilling human
sound I have ever known. She knew and saw me,
but not as “Uncle" George of this present life.
“Oh, Philip !” she cried, “then you have come after
all—”
“Of course, dear heart,” I whispered. “Of course
I have come. Did I not give my promise that I
would P”
Her eyes searched my face, and then settled upon
my hands that held her little cold wrists so tightly.
“But—but,” she stammered in comment, “they are
*
*.


OLD CLOTHES 163
not cut ! They have made you whole again ' You
will save me and get me out, and we—we–"
The expressions of her face ran together into a queer
confusion of perplexity, and she seemed to totter on
her feet. In another instant she would probably have
wakened; again she felt the touch of uncertainty and
doubt as to my identity. Her hands resisted the
pressure of my own; she drew back half a step; into
her eyes rose the shallower consciousness of the
present. Once awake it would drive out the pro-
foundly strange passion and mystery that haunted
the corridors of thought and memory and plunged so
obscurely into the inmost recesses of her being. For,
once awake, I realized that I should lose her, lose
the opportunity of getting the complete story. The
chance was unique. I heard my cousin's footsteps
approaching behind us down the passage on tiptoe—
and I came to an immediate decision.
In the state of deep sleep, of course, the trance con-
dition is very close, and many experiments had taught
me that the human spirit can be subjected to the influ-
ence of hypnotism far more speedily when asleep than
when awake; for if hypnotism means chiefly—as I
then held it to mean—the merging of the little ineffec-
tual surface-consciousness with the deep sea of the
greater subliminal consciousness below, then the
process has already been partially begun in normal
slumber and its completion need be no very long or
difficult matter. It was Aileen's very active sub-
consciousness that “invented " or “remembered " the
dark story which haunted her life, her subconscious
region too readily within tap. . . . By deepening her
sleep state I could learn the whole story. . . .
Stopping her mother's approach with a sign that I
intended she should clearly understand, and which
accordingly she did understand, I took immediate
L 2 ".


164 OLD CLOTHES
steps to plunge the spirit of this little sleep-walking
child down again into the subconscious region that
had driven her thus far, and wherein lay the potenti-
alities of all her powers, of memory, knowledge and
belief. Only the simplest passes were necessary, for
she yielded quickly and easily; that first look came
back into her eyes; she no longer wavered or hesi-
tated, but drew close against me, with the name of
“Philip" upon her lips, and together we moved
down the long passage till we reached the door of
her horrid room of terror.
And there, whether it was that Theresa's following
with the candle disturbed the child—for the subcon-
scious tie with the mother is of such unalterable power
—or whether anxiety weakened my authority over her
fluctuating mental state, I noticed that she again
wavered and hesitated, looking up with eyes that saw
partly “Uncle George,” partly the “Philip” she
remembered.
“We'll go in,” I said firmly, “and you shall see
that there is nothing to be afraid of.” I opened the
door, and the candle from behind threw a triangle of
light into the darkness. It fell upon a bare floor,
pictureless walls, and just tipped the high white ceil-
ing overhead. I pushed the door still wider open and
we went in hand in hand, Aileen shaking like a leaf
in the wind.
How the scene lives in my mind, even as I write it
to-day so many years after it took place: the little
child in her nightgown facing me in that empty room
of the ancient building, all the passionate emotions
of a tragic history in the small young eyes, her mother
like a ghost in the passage, afraid to come in, the
tossing shadows thrown by the candle and the soft
moan of the night wind against the outside walls.
I made further passes over the small flushed face
*


OLD CLOTHES 165
and pressed my thumbs gently along the temples.
“Sleep !” I commanded; “sleep—and remember 1"
My will poured over her being to control and protect.
She passed still deeper into the trance condition in
which the somnambulistic lucidity manifests itself and
the deeper self gives up its dead. Her eyes grew
wider, rounder, charged with memories as they
fastened themselves upon my own. The present,
which a few minutes before had threatened to claim
her consciousness by waking her, faded. She saw me
no longer as her familiar Uncle George, but as the
faithful friend and lover of her great story, Philip,
the man who had come to save her. There she stood
in the atmosphere of bygone days, in the very room
where she had known great suffering—this room that
three centuries ago had led by a corridor into the wing
of the house where now the beeches grew upon the
lawns.
She came up close and put her thin bare arms about
my neck and stared with peering, searching eyes into
mine.
“Remember what happened here,” I said resolutely.
“Remember, and tell me.”
Her brows contracted slightly as with the effort,
and she whispered, glancing over her shoulder to-
wards the farther end where the corridor once began,
“It hurts a little, but I–I'm in your arms, Philip
dear, and you will get me out, I know—”
“I hold you safe and you are in no danger, little
one,” I answered. “You can remember and speak
without it hurting you. Tell me.”
The suggestion, of course, operated instantly, for
her face cleared, and she dropped a great sigh of
relief. From time to time I continued the passes that
held the trance condition firm.
Then she spoke in a low, silvery little tone that
º


166 OLD CLOTHES
cut into me like a sword and searched my inmost
parts. I seemed to bleed internally. I could have
sworn that she spoke of things I knew as though I
had lived through them.
“This was when I last saw you,” she said, “this
was the room where you were to fetch me and carry
me away into happiness and safety from—him,” and
it was the voice and words of no mere child that said
it; “and this was where you did come on that night
of snow and wind. Through that window you
entered; ” she pointed to the deep, embrasured win-
dow behind us. “Can't you hear the storm 2 How
it howls and screams | And the boom of the surf on
the beach below. . . . You left the horses outside,
the swift horses that were to carry us to the sea and
away from all his cruelties, and then—”
She hesitated and searched for words or memories;
her face darkened with pain and loathing.
“Tell me the rest,” I ordered, “but forget all your
own pain.” And she smiled up at me with an expres-
sion of unbelievable tenderness and confidence while
I drew the frail form closer.
“You remember, Philip,” she went on, “you know
just what it was, and how he and his men seized you
the moment you stepped inside, and how you
struggled and called for me, and heard me
answer—”
“Far away—outside I interrupted quickly,
helping her out of some flashing memory in my own
deep heart that seemed to burn and leave a scar.
“You answered from the lawn l’”
“You thought it was the lawn, but really, you see,
it was there—in there,” and she pointed to the side of
the room on rhy right. She shook dreadfully, and
her voice dwindled most oddly in volume, as though
coming from a distance—almost muffled.
**
*


OLD CLOTHES 167
“In there?” I asked it with a shudder that put
ice and fire mingled in my blood.
“In the wall,” she whispered. “You see, some
one had betrayed us, and he knew you were coming.
He walled me up alive in there, and only left two
little holes for my eyes so that I could see. You
heard my voice calling through those holes, but you
never knew where I was. And then—”
Her knees gave way, and I had to hold her. She
looked suddenly with torture in her eyes down the
length of the room—towards the old wing of the house.
“You won't let him come,” she pleaded beseech-
ingly, and in her voice was the agony of death. “I
thought I heard him. Isn't that his footsteps in the
corridor?” She listened fearfully, her eyes trying to
pierce the wall and see out on to the lawn.
“No one is coming, dear heart,” I said, with con-
viction and authority. “Tell it all. Tell me every-
thing.”
“I saw the whole of it because I could not close my
eyes,” she continued. “There was an iron band
round my waist fastening me in—an iron belt I never
could escape from. The dust got into my mouth—I
bit the bricks. My tongue was scraped and bleed-
ing, but before they put in the last stones to smother
me I saw them—cut both your hands off so that you
could never save me—never let me out.”
She dashed without warning from my side and flew
up to the wall, beating it with her hands and crying
aloud—
“Oh, you poor, poor thing. I know how awful
it was. I remember—when I was in you and you
wore and carried me, poor, poor body l That thunder
of the last brick as they drove it in against the mouth,
and the iron clamp that cut into the waist, and the
suffocation and hunger and thirst l”
r


168 OLD CLOTHES
“What are you talking to in there?” I asked
sternly, crushing down the tears.
“The body I was in—the one he walled up—my
body—my own body ”
She flew back to my side. But even before my
cousin had uttered that “mother-cry” that broke in
upon the child's deeper consciousness, disturbing the
memories, I had given the command with all the force
of my being to “forget” the pain. And only those
few who are familiar with the instantaneous changes
of emotion that can be produced by suggestion under
hypnosis will understand that Aileen came back to
me from that moment of “talking to the wall ” with
laughter on her lips and in her eyes.
The small white figure with the cascade of dark hair
tumbling over the nightgown ran up and jumped into
my arms.
“But I saved you,” I cried, “you were never
properly walled-up; I got you out and took you away
from him over the sea, and we were happy ever after-
wards, like the people in the fairy tales.” I drove the
words into her with my utmost force, and inevitably
she accepted them as the truth, for she clung to me
with love and laughter all over her child's face of
mystery, the horror fading out, the pain swept clean
away. With kaleidoscopic suddenness the change
Came.
“So they never really cut your poor dead hands off
at all,” she said hesitatingly.
“Look How could they 2 There they are "
And I first showed them to her and then pressed them
against her little cheeks, drawing her mouth up to
be kissed. “They're big enough still and strong
enough to carry; you off to bed and stroke you into
so deep a sleep that when you wake in the morn-
ing you will have forgotten everything about your
-


OLD CLOTHES 169
dark story, about Philip, Lady Helen, the iron belt,
the starvation, your cruel old husband, and all the
rest of it. You'll wake up happy and jolly just like
any other child—”
“If you say So, of course I shall,” she answered,
smiling into my eyes. -
And it was just then there came in that touch of
abomination that so nearly made my experiment a
failure, for it came with a black force that threatened
at first to discount all my “suggestion ” and make it
of no account. My new command that she should
forget had apparently not yet fully registered itself
in her being; the tract of deeper consciousness that
constructed the “Story” had not sunk quite below the
threshold. Thus she was still open to any detail of
her former suffering that might obtrude itself with
sufficient force. And such a detail did obtrude itself.
This touch of abomination was calculated with a really
superhuman ingenuity.
“Hark!” she cried—and it was that scream in a
whisper that only utter terror can produce—“Hark!
I hear his steps ' He's coming ! Oh, I told you he
was coming ! He's in that passage ' " pointing down
the room. And she first sprang from my arms as
though something burned her, and then almost in-
stantly again flew back to my protection. In that
interval of a few seconds she tore into the middle of
the room, put her hand to her ear to listen, and then
shaded her eyes in the act of peering down through
the wall at the far end. She stared at the very place
where in olden days the corridor had led into the
vanished wing. The window my great-uncle had
built into the wall now occupied the exact spot where
the opening had been.
Theresa then for the first time came forward with


170 OLD CLOTHES
a rush into the room, dropping the candle-grease over
the floor. She clutched me by the arm. The three
of us stood there—listening—listening apparently to
nought but the sighing of the sea-wind about the
walls, Aileen with her eyes buried in my coat. I was
standing erect trying in vain to catch the new sound.
I remember my cousin's face of chalk with the flutter-
ing eyes and the candle held aslant.
Then suddenly she raised her hand and pointed
over my shoulder. I thought her jaw would drop
from her face. And she and the child both spoke
in the same breath the two sharp phrases that brought
the climax of the vile adventure upon us in that silent
room of night.
They were like two pistol-shots.
“My God! There's a face watching us . . . . .” I
heard her voice, all choked and dry.
And at the same second, Aileen—
“Oh, oh He's seen us ! . . . He's here! Look. . . .
He'll get me . . . hide your hands, hide your poor
hands . . . . .”
And, turning to the place my cousin stared at, I
saw sure enough that a face—apparently a living
human face—was pressed against the window-pane,
framed between two hands as it tried to peer upon
us into the semi-obscurity of the room. I saw the
swift momentary rolling of the two eyes as the candle
glare fell upon them, and caught a glimpse even of
the hunched-up shoulders behind, as their owner,
standing outside upon the lawn, stooped down a little
to see better. And though the apparition instantly
withdrew, I recognized it beyond question as the dark
and evil countenance of the butler. His breath still
stained the window.
Yet the strange thing was that Aileen, struggling
violently to bury herself amid the scanty folds of my
*


OLD CLOTHES 171
coat, could not possibly have seen what we saw, for
her face was turned from the window the entire time,
and from the way I held her she could never for a
single instant have been in a position to know. It all
took place behind her back. . . . A moment later, with
her eyes still hidden against me, I was carrying her
swiftly in my arms across the hall and up the main
staircase to the night nursery.
My difficulty with her was, of course, while she
hovered between the two states of sleep and waking,
for once I got her into bed and plunged her deeply
again into the trance condition, I was easily able to
control her slightest thought or emotion. Within
ten minutes she was sleeping peacefully, her little
face smoothed of all anxiety or terror, and my im-
perious command ringing from end to end of her
consciousness that when she woke next morning all
should be forgotten. She was finally to forget . .
utterly and completely.
And, meanwhile, of course, the man, when I went
with loathing and anger in my heart to his room in
the servants’ quarters, had a perfectly plausible ex-
planation. He was in the act of getting ready for
bed, he declared, when the noise had aroused his
suspicions, and, as in duty bound, he had made a
tour of the house outside, thinking to discover
burglars. . . .
With a month's wages in his pocket, and a con-
siderable degree of wonder in his soul, probably—for
the man was guilty of nothing worse than innocently
terrifying a child's imagination l—he went back to
London the following day; and a few hours later I
myself was travelling with Aileen and old Kempster
over the blue waves of the North Sea, carrying her
off, curiously enough, to freedom and happiness in


172 OLD CLOTHES
the very way her “imagination ” had pictured her
escape in the “story” of long ago, when she was Lady
Helen, held in bondage by a cruel husband, and I
was Philip, her devoted lover.
Only this time her happiness was lasting and com-
plete. Hypnotic suggestion had wiped from her mind
the last vestige of her dreadful memories; her face
was wreathed in jolly smiles; her enjoyment of the
journey and our week in Antwerp was absolutely
unclouded; she played and laughed with all the
radiance of an unhaunted childhood, and her
imagination was purged and healed.
And when we got back her mother had again moved
her household gods to the original family mansion
where she had first lived. Thither it was I took the
restored child, and there it was my cousin and I looked
up the old family records and verified certain details
of the history of De Lorne, that wicked and semi-
fabulous ancestor whose portrait hung in the dark
corner of the stairs. That his life was evil to the
brim I had always understood, but neither myself
nor Theresa had known—at least had not consciously
remembered—that he had married twice, and that his
first wife, Lady Helen, had mysteriously disappeared,
and Sir Philip Lansing, a neighbouring knight, sup-
posed to be her lover, had soon afterwards emigrated
to France and left his lands and property to go to
tulin.
But another discovery I made, and kept to myself,
had to do with that “room of terror" in the old
Norfolk house where, on the plea of necessary renova-
tion, I had the stones removed, and in the very spot
where Aileen used to beat her hands against the
bricks and “talk to the wall,” the workmen under my
own eyes laid bare the skeleton of a woman, fastened


OLD CLOTHES 173
to the granite by means of a narrow iron band that
encircled the waist—the skeleton of some unfortunate
who had been walled-up alive and had come to her
dreadful death by the pangs of hunger, thirst and
suffocation centuries ago.





IV
PERSPECTIVE
I
THE amount of duty and pleasure combined in
Alpine summer chaplaincies of a month each just
suited the Rev. Phillip Ambleside. He was still
young enough to climb–carefully; and genuine
enough to enjoy seeing the crowd of holiday-makers,
having a good time. As a rule he was on the Enter-
tainment Committee that organized the tennis, dances,
and gymkhanas. During the week one would hardly
have guessed his calling. On Sundays he appeared
a bronzed, lean, vigorous figure in the pulpit of the
hot little wooden church, and people liked to see him.
His sermons, never over ten minutes, were the same
four every year: one for each Sunday of the month;
and when he passed on to another month's duty in
the next place he repeated them. The surroundings
suggested them obviously: Beauty, Rest, Power,
Majesty; and they were more like little confidential
talks than sermons. Moreover, incidents from the
life of the place—the escape of a tourist, the accident
to a guide, and what not, usually came ready to hand
to point a moral. One summer, however, there
occurred a singular adventure that he has never yet
been able to introduce into a sermon. Only in
private conversation with souls as full of faith as
himself does he ever mention it. And the short
recital always begins with a sentence more or less as
follows—
175


176 PERSPECTIVE
“. . . . Talking of the wondrous ways of God, and
the little understanding of the children of men, I am
always struck by the huge machinery He sometimes
adopts to accomplish such delicate and apparently
insignificant ends. I remember once when I was
doing summer “duty' in a Swiss resort high up
among the mountains of the Valais . . .”
And then follows the curious occurrence I was once
privileged to hear, and have obtained permission to
re-tell, duly disguised.
In the particular mountain village where he was
taking a month's duty at the time, his church was
full every Sunday, so full indeed that twice a week he
held afternoon services for those who cared to worship
more quietly. And to these little ceremonies, beloved
of his own heart, came two persons regularly who
attracted his attention in spite of himself. They sat
together at the back; shared the same books, although
there was no necessity to do so; courted the shadowy
corners of the pews : in a word, they came to worship
one another, not to worship God.
But the clergyman took a broad view. Courtships
fostered in the holy atmosphere of the sacred building
were more likely to be true than those fanned to flame
in the feverish surroundings of the dance-room. And
true love is ever an offering to God. He knew the
couple, too. The man, quiet, earnest, well over
forty; the girl, young, dashing, spirited, leader in
mischief, hard to believe sincere, flirting with more
than one. In spite of the careful concealment with
which she covered their proceedings, choosing the
deserted afternoon service rather than the glare of
the garden or ball-room for their talks, the couple
were marked. The difference in their ages,
characters, and appearance singled them out, as
much as the general knowledge that she was rich,


PERSPECTIVE 177
vain, flighty, while he was poor, strenuous, living a
life of practical charity in London, that precluded
gaiety or pleasure, so called.
“What can she see in that dull man twice her
age 2" the elder women said to one another—the
answer generally being that it probably amused the
girl to turn him so easily round her little finger.
“What a chance for her fortune to be well spent,”
reflected one or two. While the men, when they
said anything at all, contented themselves with :
“Pretty hard hit, isn't he? A fine fellow though 1
Hope he gets her ' "
It is always somewhat pathetic to see a man of real
value fall before the conquering beauty of an ordinary
young girl of the world. The clergyman, however,
with an eye for spiritual values, even deeply hidden,
divined that beneath her lightness and love for con-
quest's sake there lay the desire for something more
real. And he guessed, though at first the wish may
have been father to the thought only, that it was the
elder man's fine zeal and power that attracted the
butterfly in spite of herself towards a life that was
more worth living. Hers, after all, he felt, was a
soul worth “saving ”; and this middle-aged man,
perhaps, was the force God brought into her life to
provide her with the opportunity of escape—could she
but seize it.
So far Ambleside's story runs along ordinary lines
enough. One sees his man and girl without further
detail. From this point, however, it slips into a
stride where the sense of proportion seems somehow
lost, or else “man’s little understanding ” is too close
to the thing to obtain the proper perspective. If any
one but this devout and clear-headed clergyman told
the tale, one might say “Fancy,” “Delusion,” or any
other description that seemed suitable. But to hear
M


178 PERSPECTIVE
him tell it, with that air of conviction and truth, in
those short, abrupt, even jerky sentences, that left so
much to the imagination, and with that pallor of the
skin that threw into such vivid contrast the fire burn-
ing in his far-seeing blue eyes—to sit close to him
and hear the story grow in that tense low voice, was
to know beyond all question that he spoke of some-
thing real and actual, in the same sense that a train
or St. Paul's Cathedral are real and actual.
What he saw, he really saw : though the sight may
have been of a kind unfamiliar to the majority. He
was used as a real pawn in a real game. The girl's
life and soul were rescued, so to speak, by the mar-
riage brought about, and her forces of mind and spirit
lifted bodily for what they were worth into the scheme
that God had ordained for them from the beginning
of the world. Only—the machinery brought to bear
upon the end in view seemed so prodigious, so extra-
ordinary, so unnecessary. . . . One thinks of the
sentence with which Ambleside always began his
tale. One wonders. But no one who heard the tale
ever asked questions at its close. There was ab-
solutely nothing to say.
Even to the smallest details the affair seemed
thought out and planned, for that particular Tuesday
Ambleside started without the guide-porter who
usually carried his telescope, camera, and lunch. He
went off at six a.m., with merely an ice-axe and a
small knapsack containing food and Shetland vest for
the summit.
It was one of those days towards the end of August
when some quality in the atmosphere—usually sign
of approaching rain—brings the mountains uncannily
close, yet, at the same time, sets out every detail of
pinnacle, precipice, and ridge with a terror of size
and grandeur that makes one realize their true and


PERSPECTIVE 179
gigantic scale. They press up close, yet at the same
time stand away in the depths of the sky like unat-
tainable masses in some dream world. This mingling
of proximity and distance has a confusing effect upon
the eye. When Ambleside toiled up the zigzags
without actually looking beyond, he felt that the
towering massif of the Valais Alps all about him
loomed very close; but when he stopped for breath
and raised his eyes steadily into their detail, he felt
that their distance was too great to be conquered by
any little two-legged being like himself merely taking
steps. And as he rose out of the valley into the
clearer strata of air this effect increased. The whole
scale of the chain of Alps about him seemed raised
to an immeasurably higher power than he had ever
known. He felt like an insect crawling over the
craters of the moon. The prodigious splendours of
the scenery all round oppressed him more than ever
before with his own futile littleness, yet at the same
time made him conscious of the grandeur of his soul
before the God who had set him and his kind above
all this chaos of tumbled planet.
He thought of the mountains as part of the “gar-
ment of God,” and of nature as expressing some
portion of the Deity not intended to be expressed
by man—all part of His purpose, alive with His
informing will. This glory of the inanimate Alps
linked on to some stranger glory in himself that in-
terpreted for him, as in a mystical revelation, God's
thundering message and purpose known in the great
forms and moods of nature. Closely in touch with
the spirit of the mountains he was; glad to be alone.
This, in a sentence, expresses his mood : that the
mountains accepted him. Forces in his deepest
being that were akin to the life of the planet on which
he made his tiny track rose up and triumphed.
r
M 2


180 PERSPECTIVE
Over the treacherous Pas d’Iliez, where he usually
felt giddy and unsafe, he felt this morning only ex-
hilaration. The gulf yawning at his feet touched
him with its splendour, not its terror.
Thus, feeling inclined to shout and run, he event-
ually reached the desolate valley of rock and shale
that lies, unrelieved by a single blade of grass, be-
tween the glacier-covered slopes that shut it in im-
passably on three sides. The bed of this valley lies
some 7,000 feet above the sea. The peaks and ridges
that rear about it reach 12,000 feet. Here, being a
good climber, he rested for the first time at the end
of two hours' steady ascent. The air nipped. The
loneliness and desolation were very impressive. Be-
yond him hung the glaciers like immense thick
blankets of blue-white upon the steep slopes, drop-
ping from time to time lumps of ice into the shale-
strewn valley below. For the sun shining in a cloud-
less sky was fierce. The clergyman, before attacking
the long snow-field that began at his very feet, took
out his blue spectacles and disentangled the cord. He
ate some chocolate, and took the dried prunes from
his knapsack, knowing that thirst would soon be upon
him, and that ice-water was not for drinking.
“What a mite I am, to be sure, amid all this appall-
ing wilderness " he exclaimed; “and how splendid
to be able to hold my own "
And then it was, just as he stood up to arrange the
glasses on his forehead, ready to pull down at a
moment's notice, that he became aware of something
that was strange—unaccustomed. Through the giant
splendours of the scorching August day, across all
this stupendous Scenery of desolation and loneliness,
something fine as a needle, delicate as a hair, had
begun picking at his mind. The idea came to him
that he was no longer alone. Like a man who hears
-


PERSPECTIVE 181
his name called out of darkness he turned instinc-
tively to find the speaker; almost as though some
one had been calling to him for a considerable time,
and he had only just had his attention drawn to it.
He looked keenly up and down the immense, deserted
valley.
In every direction, however, he saw nothing but
miles of rock, dazzling snow-fields, dark precipices,
and endless peaks cutting the blue sky overhead with
teeth that gleamed like burnished steel. It was
desolation everywhere. The gentle wind that fanned
his cheek made no sound against the stones. There
was neither tree nor grass for it to rustle through.
No bird's wing whirred the air; and the far-off falling
of a hundred cascades was of too regular and mono-
tonous a character to have taken on the quality of a
voice or the rhythm of uttered words. He examined,
so far as he could, the enormous sides of mountain
about him, and the great soaring ridges. It was just
possible some climber in distress had spied him out,
and shouted down upon him from the heights. But
he searched in vain. There was no moving human
figure. The sound, if sound it had been, was not
repeated; only he was no longer alone, as before.
That, at least, was certain. . . . He nibbled more
chocolate, put a couple of sour prunes into his mouth
to suck, arranged the blue snow-glass over his eyes,
and started on again for a steady pull up to the next
ridge.
And as he rose the scale of the surrounding moun-
tains rose appallingly with him. The true distance
of the peaks proclaimed itself; the tremendous reaches
that from below appeared telescoped up into a little
space opened up and stretched themselves. The hour
grew into two. It was considerably after twelve be-
fore he reached the arête where he had promised


182 PERSPECTIVE
himself lunch. And all the way, without ceasing, the
idea that he was being accompanied remained insist-
ent in his mind. It troubled and perplexed him.
Perhaps it frightened him a little, too. More than
once it came close enough to make him pause and
consider whether he should continue or turn back.
For the curious part of it was that this idea ex-
ercised a direct and deliberate effect upon him. By
a hundred little details that seemed to be spontaneous
until he examined them, it kept suggesting somehow
that he should change his route. Something in his
consciousness grew that had not been there before.
He thought of a bird bringing tiny morsels of grass
and twig until a nest formed. In this way the steady
stream of thoughts from somewhere outside himself
came nesting in his brain until at length they acquired
the consistency of an impression, next of a distinct
desire, lastly, the momentum of a definite intention.
They acted upon his volition, stirring softly among
the roots of his will. Before he realized how it had
quite come about he had changed his mind.
“Instead of going on to the top as I intended,” he
said to himself, as he sat on the dizzy ledge munching
hard-boiled eggs and sugar sandwiches, “I shall
strike off to the left and find my way back into the
valley again. That, I think, would be—nicer . "
He had no real reason; he invented none.
And the moment he said it there was a sense of
pressure removed, a consciousness of relief, the know-
ledge, in a word, that he was following a route that
it was desired he should follow.
To a man, of course, whose habit it was to seek
often the will of a personal Deity he worshipped,
there was nothing very out of the way in all this,
although he never remembered to have felt any guid-
ance so distinctly and forcibly indicated before. The


PERSPECTIVE 183
feeling that he was being “guided" now became a
certainty, and in order to follow instructions as well
as possible he made his will of no account and opened
himself to receive the slightest token this other
Directing Agency might care to vouchsafe.
After lunch, therefore, he struck out a diagonal
course across a steep snow-slope that would eventually
bring him down again to the valley a little nearer its
head. And before he had gone a hundred yards he
ran into the track of another climber. The marks
were a couple of days old, perhaps, for in their hollows
lay little heaps of fine snow-dust, freshly blown.
Judging by the size there had been two men. He
noted the trace of the ice-axe and the occasional streak
of the trailing rope. The men had made straight for
the valley far below. Here and there they had glis-
saded. Here and there, too, they had also tumbled
gloriously, for the snow was tossed about by their
floundering. Yet there was no danger; no precipices
intervened; the snow sloped without a break right
down into the shale below.
“I’ll follow their example,” said the Rev. Phillip
Ambleside. He strapped on the extra leather seat he
carried for sliding and sat down. A moment later he
was rushing at high speed over the hard surface.
There were hollows of softer snow, however, which
stopped him from time to time, drifts as it were into
which he plunged, and from which he emerged, wet
and shivering. Then he stood up and leaned on his
axe, trying to glissade on his feet. For this, how-
ever, the surface was not smooth enough. The result
was he tumbled, rolled, slid, sat down, and took
immense gliding strides. It was very exhilarating.
He revelled in it.
But all the while he kept his eyes sharply about
him, for in his heart he felt that he was obeying that
y


184 PERSPECTIVE
guiding Influence so strongly impressed upon him—
the Power that had persuaded him to change his
route, and was now leading him to Some particular
point with some particular purpose. Now, too, for
the first time a vague sense of calamity touched him.
Once introduced, it grew. Soon it amounted to a
positive foreboding, a presentiment of disaster almost.
He could not avoid the idea that he was being led by
supernatural means to the scene of some catastrophe
where he was to prove of use—a rescue, an arrival in
the nick of time to save some one. He actually looked
about him already for—yes, for the body. And
through his sub-conscious mind, with the force of
habit, ran the magnificent use he could make of it all
in a future sermon.
Yet nothing came. The tracks of the other men
stretched clear and unbroken into the valley of rocks
below. He traced the wavering thin line the whole
way down.
“It’s nothing to do with these men, at any rate,” he
said to himself, as he sat down for the final slide that
should take him to the bottom of the slope. “No
accident could possibly have happened here. The
snow's too soft, and there are no rocks to fall over
or—”
The sentence, or the thought, remained unfinished,
for the mouth of the Rev. Phillip was stopped
temporarily with wet snow as he lost his balance
and rushed sideways with an undignified plunge
into a drifted hollow. His eyes were blinded, his
feet twisted, the skin of his back drenched and icy.
He rose spluttering and gasping. Luckily his axe
had a leather loop, or he would have lost it; as it was,
his slouch hat was already a hundred feet below,
sliding and turning like a top on its way to the
bottom, followed by the snow-goggles.


PERSPECTIVE 185
And in the act of brushing himself free of snow
the truth came to him. It was as though a hand had
struck him on the back and pointed—as though a
voice had uttered the five words: “This is the place.
Look '''
Swiftly, searchingly, keenly he looked, and saw—
nothing; nothing, at least, that explained the impres-
sion of disaster that had possessed him. There was
no body certainly, nor any sign of an accident; no
place, indeed, where an accident could possibly have
come about. He dug quickly in the loose snow with
his axe, but the snow was barely two feet deep in this
particular hollow, and all round it was a hard surface
of smoothly and tightly-packed stuff that was almost
ice. Nothing bigger than a cat could have lain
buried there !
“This is the place | Look well !” the words seemed
to ring in his ears.
Yet the more he looked and saw nothing, the more
strongly beat this message upon his brain. This was
the place where he was to come, where he was to fulfil
some purpose, to find something, do something,
accomplish the end intended by the Will that had so
carefully guided him all day. The feeling was
positive; not to be denied. It was, at the same
time, distressingly vast—mighty.
Fixing himself securely against his axe, he stood
and stared. The sun beat back into his face from the
glittering snow on all sides. Tremendous black preci-
pices towered not far behind him; to his left rolled
the frozen mass of the huge glacier, its pinnacles of
tottering ice catching the afternoon sun; to his right
stretched into bewildering distance the interminable
and desolate reaches of shale and moraine till the eye
rested upon summits of a dozen peaks that literally
swam in the sky where white clouds streamed west-


186 PERSPECTIVE
wards. There was no sound but falling water, no
sign of humanity except the single track of those
other climbers, no indication of any disturbance upon
the vast face of nature that spread all about him,
immense, still, terrific.
Then, piercing the monotony of the falling water, a
faint sound of fluttering, heard for the first time,
reached his ear. He turned as at the sound of a
pistol-shot in the direction whence it came—but
again saw nothing. The sound ceased. From the
slope below came a breath of icy wind that made him
shiver, and with it, he fancied, came the faint hissing
noise of his sliding hat and spectacles. This, perhaps,
was the sound he had heard as “fluttering.”
At length after prolonged and vain searching, the
clergyman decided there was nothing for him to do
but continue his journey, for the sun was getting low,
and he had a long way to go before dusk could
be regarded with equanimity. He felt exhausted,
wearied, impatient too if the truth were told, yet
ashamed of his impatience.
“If this is all real,” he argued under his breath,
“why isn't it made clear what I'm to do?”
And immediately upon the heels of the thought
came again that faint and curious sound of something
fluttering.
Now, there can be no question that he understood
perfectly well that this sound of fluttering had a direct
connection with the whole purpose of the day—that
it was the clue to his presence in this particular spot,
and that he had been forced to halt here by means of
his fall in order that he might investigate something
or other on this very spot. He knew it; he felt it.
But he was too impatient, too cold, too weary to spend
any further time over it all. Alarm, too, was pluck-
ing uneasily at his reins.


PERSPECTIVE 187
So this time he affected to ignore the sound. Lean-
ing back on his axe he threw his body into position
for sliding down to the bottom of the slope. In
another second he would have started—when some-
thing that froze him into the immobility of a terror
worse than death arrested him with a power beyond
anything he had ever known before in his life—a
Power that seemed to carry behind it the pressure of
the entire universe.
There, close beside him in this mountain wilder-
ness, had risen up suddenly a Face—close as the
handle of the ice-axe he so tightly grasped, yet at
the same time so far away, so immense, so stupendous
in scale that he has never understood to this day how
it was he could have perceived that it was a Face.
Yet a face it undoubtedly was, a living face; and its
eyes—its regard, at any rate, for eyes he divined
rather than saw—were focussed upon some object that
lay at his very feet.
Clammy with fear, his heart thumping dreadfully,
he dropped back upon the snow. Without looking
at any particular detail he became aware that the
entire world of giant scenery about him was involved
in the building up of this appalling Countenance,
whose gaze was directed upon a tiny point immedi-
ately before him—the point, he now perceived, whence
proceeded that familiar little sound of fluttering.
Words obviously fail him when he attempts to
describe the terror of this Visage that rose about him
through the day. Pallid and immense, it seemed to
stretch itself against the wastes of grey rock, with
entire slopes of snow upon the cheeks, ridged and
furrowed by precipice and cliff, with torn clouds of
flying hair that streaked the blue, and the expanse of
glaciers for the splendid brows. Across it the dark
line of two moraines tilted for eyebrows, and the


188 PERSPECTIVE
massive columns of compressed strata embedded in
the whole structure of the mountain chain bulged
for the muscles of the awful neck. . . . Moreover, the
shoulders upon which it all rested—the vast frame-
work of body that he divined below—the dizzy drop
in space where such fearful limbs must seek their
resting-place !
His mind went reeling. The titanic proportions
of this Countenance of splendour threatened in some
horrible way to overwhelm his life. Its calmness, its
iron immobility, its remorseless fixity of mien petrified
him. The thought that he had dared to question it,
to put himself in opposition to its purpose, even to
be impatient with it—this turned all his soul within
him soft and dead with a kind of ultimate terror that
bereft him of any clear memory, perhaps momentarily,
too, of consciousness.
The clergyman thinks he fainted. Exactly what
happened, probably, he never knew nor realized. All
that he can say in attempting to describe it is that he
found his own eyes caught up and carried away in
the gigantic stream of vision that this Face of Moun-
tains poured upon the ground—caught up and
directed upon a tiny little white object that fluttered
in the wind at his very feet.
He saw what the Face was looking at and wished
him to look at. It made him see what it saw.
For there, in front of him, unnoticed hitherto, lay
a scrap of paper half embedded in the snow. Auto-
matically he stooped and picked it up. It was an
envelope bearing the printed inscription of an hotel in
the village. It was sealed. On the outside in a fine
handwriting, he read the Christian name of a man.
Opening the corner he saw inside a small lock of
dark-coloured hair. And this was all . . . .
Then it was just at this moment that the snow where


PERSPECTIVE 189
his feet rested gave way, and he started off at full
speed to slide to the bottom of the slope, where he
only just stopped himself in time to prevent shooting
with a violent collision into a mass of shale and loose
StolleS.
In less than thirty seconds it had all happened . . .
and the swift descent and tumble had shaken him
back as it were into a normal state of mind. But the
oppression that had burdened him all day was gone.
The mountains looked as usual. An indescribable
sense of relief came over him. He felt a free agent
once more—no longer guided, pushed, directed. He
had fulfilled the purpose.
Putting the little envelope in his inside pocket he
picked up his slouch hat and snow-goggles, ate some
chocolate and dried prunes, and started off at a brisk
pace for his return journey of three hours to the
village and—dinner. And the whole way home the
grandeur of that face, with its splendid pallor, and
its expression of majesty, haunted him with indescrib-
able sensations. With it, however, all the time ran
the accompanying thought : “What a tremendous
business for so small a result | All that vast
manoeuvring, all that terror of the imagination, and
all that complex pressure upon my insignificant
spirit merely in the end to find a wisp of girl's hair
in an envelope evidently fallen from the pocket of
some careless climber 1 "
The more the Rev. Phillip Ambleside thought about
it, the more bewildered he felt. He was uncommonly
glad, however, to get in before dark. The memory
of that Mountain Countenance was no agreeable com-
panion for the forest paths and lonely slopes through
which his way led in the dusk.


190 PERSPECTIVE
II
That same night it so happened, before he was able
to take any steps to trace the owner of the little
envelope, there was a Bal de Têtes at the principal
hotel. Although the clergyman was on the Enter-
tainment Committee which organized the simple
gaieties of the place, he held that honorary position
only as a personal compliment to himself; he did not
at a rule take an active part in the detail, nor did he
as a general rule attend the balls.
This particular night, however, he strolled down
to the hotel, and after a little conversation with one or
two friends in the hall he made his way to a secluded
corner of the glass gallery where the dancers sat out
between times, and lit his pipe for a quiet smoke.
From behind the shelter of a large sham palm he
was able to see all he wanted of the ball-room, to hear
the music, and to take in the pleasant sight of all the
people enjoying themselves. And the sight did him
good. He liked to see it. A number were in cos-
tume, which added to the picturesqueness of the scene.
Perhaps he sat more in the shadows than he knew, or
perhaps the dancers who came to “sit out” near him
in the gallery did not realize how their voices carried.
Several couples, as the evening advanced, came so
close to him that, had he wished, he could have over-
heard easily every word they uttered. He did not
wish, however. His mind was busy with thoughts of
its own. That haunting scene of desolation in the
mountains obsessed him still; and about ten o'clock,
his pipe being finished, he was on the point of getting
up to leave, when two dancers came and sat down
immediately behind him and began to talk in such


PERSPECTIVE 191
very distinct tones that it was impossible to avoid
hearing every single word they uttered.
The clergyman pushed his chair aside to make
room to go, when, in doing so, he threw a passing
glance at the couple—and instantly recognized them.
The girl, a Carmen, and a very becoming Carmen,
was the one who frequented his afternoon services,
and the man, who wore simple evening dress and
was not in costume at all, was the middle-aged
Englishman who had been at her heels like a slave
all the summer. They were absorbed in one another,
and evidently unaware of his presence.
To say that he hesitated would not be true. Some
force beyond himself simply took him by the shoul-
ders and pushed him back into the chair. Against
his own will—for Mr. Ambleside was no eavesdropper
—he remained there deliberately to listen.
In telling the story he tells it just like this, making
no excuses for conduct that was certainly dishonour-
able. He declares he could not help himself; the
instinct was too imperious to be disobeyed. Again, as
in the afternoon, he understood that he was merely
being used as a pawn in the game, a game of great
importance to some Intelligence that saw through
to the distant end.
The man was quiet, but tremendously in earnest,
with the kind of steady manner that no woman likes
unless she finds it in her to respond with a similar
sincerity. Under the bronze his skin showed pale a
little. He began to speak the instant they sat down;
and in his voice was passion.
“I want you, and I want your money, and I want
your life and soul—everything,” he said, evidently
continuing a conversation; “your youth and energy,
your talents, your will, all that is you and yours—all.”
His voice was pitched very low, yet without tremor.


192 PERSPECTIVE
He was playing the whole stake, as a strong man of
middle age plays it when he is utterly in earnest.
“For my scheme, for our scheme, for God's scheme
I want you; and no one else but you will do. I want
you to awake, and change your life, and be your true,
fine self. We can make a success, you and I, a
success for ourselves and for others. I shall never
give you up until—until you give yourself to the
world, or "→his voice dropped very low—“to
another.”
The clergyman waited breathlessly for the answer.
The man's words vibrated with such suppressed fire
that only a serious reply could be forthcoming. But
for a space Carmen merely toyed with her fan, the
little red spangled fan that swung from a single
finger. Behind the black domino her eyes sparkled,
but the expression of her face was hidden.
“The difference in age is nothing,” he continued
almost sternly. “For me, you are the woman, and
for you I will prove that I am the man. I see clean
through to the great soul hidden in you. I can bring
it out. I can make you real—a soul of value in the
big order of God's purposes. What can these boys
ever be, or do, for you? I’ve got a big, useful,
practical scheme that can use you, just as it can use
me. And my great unselfish love has picked you out
of the whole world as the one woman necessary. Will
you come to me?”
Still the girl was silent. She tapped him on the
knee two or three times, would-be playfully, with the
tip of her fan. Her head was bent down a little.
“And I'm strong,” he went on earnestly; “I’m a
man. The power in me recognizes and calls to the
power in you. Let me hold you and mould you, and
let's take the fine, high life together. Drop this life
of child's play you’ve been leading. Come to me;


PERSPECTIVE 193
my arms are hungry for you ! But I want you for a
higher purpose than my own happiness—though I
swear I can make you happy as no woman in this
world has ever before been happy. And without
you,” he added more softly after a slight pause, “this
splendid scheme of mine, of ours, can come to
nothing. For I cannot do it alone—and there is only
one You in the world. Answer me now. It was
to-night, remember, you promised. I leave to-
morrow, and London days lie far ahead. Give me
your answer to go back with.”
It was a curious way to make love. The reverend
gentleman thought he had never heard anything quite
like it. An ordinarily frivolous girl, of course, would
have been impatient long ago. But the fine passion
of the man broke everywhere through his rather lame
words, and set something in the air about them
aflame. The violins sounded thin and trashy com-
pared to the rhythm of this earnest voice; all the
glitter of the ball-room seemed cheap—the costume of
Carmen absurdly incongruous. Mr. Ambleside
slipped back somehow into the key of the afternoon
when Cosmic Powers had held direct communion
with his soul. He understood that he was meant to
listen. Something big was in progress, something
important in a high sense. He did listen—to every
word. It was Carmen speaking now; but her voice
marred the picture. It was thin, trifling, even
affected.
“It's very flattering,” she simpered, “but—don't
you see—it means the end of all my fun and enjoy-
ment in life. You're so fearfully in earnest. You'd
exhaust me in the first week 1 " She cocked her pretty
head on one side, holding the fan against her cheek.
Something, nevertheless, belied the lightness of her
words, the listener felt.
n


194 PERSPECTIVE
“But I'll teach you a different kind of happiness,”
replied the man eagerly, “so that you'll never again
want this passing excitement, this ‘unrest which men
miscall delight.' Give me your answer—now. I see
it in your eyes. Let me go away to-morrow with this
great new happiness in my heart.” He leaned for-
ward. “Let your real self speak out once for all !”
He took her fan away and she made no resistance.
She clasped her hands in her lap, still looking at him
mischievously through her mask.
“Let’s wait till we meet later in town,” she sighed
at length prettily, coaxingly. “I shall be able to
enjoy myself here then for the rest of the summer
first—I feel so young for such a programme.”
But the man cut her short.
“Now,” he said, holding her steadily with his eyes.
“You said that to me a year ago, remember. I have
waited ever since. It is your youth I want.”
The girl played with him for another ten minutes,
while the clergyman listened, wondering greatly at
the other's patience. Clearly, she delighted to feel his
great love beating up against the citadel she meant in
the end to yield. The lighter side of her was vastly
interested and amused by it; but all the time the
deeper part was ready with its answer. It was only
that the “child” in her wanted to enjoy itself a little
longer before it capitulated for ever to the strength
that should take her captive, and lead her by sharp
ways of sacrifice to the high rôle she was meant
to fill.
It would all have vexed and wearied Mr. Ambleside
exceedingly, but for this singular feeling that it was
part of some much larger scheme of which he might
never know the whole perhaps, but in which he was
playing his little part with a secret thrill. Through
the tawdry glitter of that scented ball-room he saw


PERSPECTIVE 195
again that terrible white-lipped Face, and felt the
measure of this great purpose rolling past him—
immense, remorseless—which, for all its splendour,
could include even so small a thing as this vain and
silly girl. The tide of it rose about him with a flood
of power. He glanced at the small black domino of
the Carmen opposite him . . . he saw the little flashing
eyes, the pert lips and mouth—thinking with some-
thing like a shudder of that other Countenance in the
hollow of whose eyes hid tempests, yet which could
look down upon a tiny fluttering paper, because that
paper was an item of importance in its great scheme
of which both beginning and end were nevertheless
veiled. . . .
His thoughts must have wandered for a time. The
conversation, at any rate, had meanwhile taken a
singular turn. The girl was on her feet, the man
facing her.
“Then what is this test of yours?” he was saying,
half serious, half laughing—“this test which you say
will prove how much I care 2 ”
The girl put back between her lips the small red
rose that was part of the Carmen costume. Either it
was that the stalk made her lisp a little, or else that a
sudden rush of the violins in the waltz drowned her
words. The Reverend Phillip, standing there
trembling—he never quite understood why he should
have awaited her answer so nervously—only caught
the second half of her phrase.
“. . . that I gave you in this very room six weeks
ago, and that you promised to carry about with you
always 2 " he heard the end of her sentence, in a voice
that for the first time that evening was serious; “be-
cause, if you've kept your word in a small thing like
that I can trust you to keep it in bigger things. It
was a part of myself, you know, that little bit of
n 2 -


PERSPECTIVE 197
enough, of course, and utterly out of proportion. But
how silly and childish real life is apt to be at such
moments, only those who have reached middle age
and have observed closely can know. At the time, to
the clergyman who stood there listening and observ-
ing, it seemed genuinely poignant, even tragic.
“Until the day before yesterday it had never left
me for a single instant,” he said at length. “I was
in the mountains—glissading with your brother.
It fell out of my pocket with a lot of other papers.
I lost it on the upper snow slopes of the Dents
Blenches—”
The rest of his words were drowned by an inrush of
people, for the band was beginning a two-step and
couples were sorting themselves and seeking their
partners. A Frenchman, dressed as Napoleon, came
up to claim his dance. Carmen was swept away.
Scornfully, angrily, with concentrated resentment in
her voice and manner, she turned upon her heel and
from the lips that bit the stalk of the small red rose
came the significant words—
“And with it you have also lost—me!”
She was gone. Perhaps the Reverend Phillip
Ambleside only imagined the tears in her voice. He
never knew, and had no time to think, for he found
himself looking straight into the eyes of the lover,
thus absurdly rejected, and who now became aware
of his close presence for the first time. Even then the
absurdity of the whole situation did not wholly reveal
itself. It came later with reflection. At the moment
he felt that it was all like a vivid and singular dream
in which the values and proportions were oddly
exaggerated, yet in which the sense of tragedy was
distressingly real. His heart went out to the faithful
and patient man who was being so trifled with, yet
who might be in danger of losing by virtue of his


198 PERSPECTIVE
very simplicity what was to be of real value in his
life—and scheme.
“It's my move now,” was the thought in his mind
as he took a step forward.
The other, embarrassed and annoyed to discover
that the whole scene had probably been overheard,
made an awkward movement to withdraw, but before
he could do so, the clergyman approached him. Only
one step was necessary. He moved up from behind
a palm, and drawing his hand from an inner pocket,
he handed across to him a white envelope bearing the
printed name of the hotel and a neat inscription in
feminine writing just below it.
“I found this on the snow slopes of the Dents
Blanches this afternoon,” he said courteously. The
other stared him steadily in the face—his colour
coming and going quickly. “Take it to her and say
that after all it was you—you, who were applying the
test—that you wished to see if for so small a thing she
was ready to reject so true a love. And, pray,
pardon this interference which—er—chance has placed
in my power. The matter, I need hardly say, is
entirely between yourself and me.”
The man took the paper awkwardly, a soft smile
of gratitude and comprehension dawning in his eyes.
He began to stammer a few words, but the clergyman
did not stay to listen. He bowed politely and left
him.
He went out of the hotel into the night, and a wind
from the surrounding snow slopes brushed his face
with its touch of great spaces. He looked up and saw
the crowding stars, brilliant as in winter. The moun-
tains in this faint light seemed incredibly close.
Slowly he walked up the village street to his rooms
in the châlet by the church.
And suddenly the true proportion of normal things


PERSPECTIVE 199
in this little life returned to him, and with it a sharp
realization of the triviality of the scene he had been
forced to witness—and of the horrible grandeur of the
means by which he had been dragged, by the scruff
of his priestly neck as it were, so awkwardly into the
middle of it all : merely to provide a scrap of evidence
the loss of which threatened to bring about a foolish
estrangement, and might conceivably have prevented
a marriage of apparently insignificant importance.
He felt as though the machinery of the entire solar
system had been employed to help a pair of ants carry
a pine-needle too heavy for them to the top of the
neSt.
And then a moment's reflection brought to him
another thought. For who could say what the result
of this marriage might be 2 Who could say that from
just the exact combination of those two forces—the
earnest man, and the lighter girl—a son might not
be born who should shake the world and lead some
cherished purpose of Deity to completion ? For,
truly, of the threads which weave into the pattern of
life and out again, men see but the tiny section imme-
diately beneath their eyes. The majority focus their
gaze upon some detail—thus losing the view of the
whole. The beginning and the end are for ever
hidden; and what appears insignificant and out of
proportion when caught alone at close quarters, may
reveal all the splendour of the Eternal Purpose when
surveyed with the proper perspective—of the Infinite.
The Reverend Phillip Ambleside felt as if for a
moment he had been lifted to a height whence he had
caught perhaps a glimpse of these larger horizons.
With his faith vastly strengthened, but his nerves
considerably shaken, the clergyman went to bed and
slept the sleep of a just man who has done his duty
by chance as it were. He had helped forward a


200 PERSPECTIVE
purpose of which he really understood nothing, but
which, he somehow felt, was bigger than anything
with which he had so far been connected in his life.
Some day—his faith whispered it next morning while
he was preparing his sermon—he would see the matter
with proper perspective, and would understand.


V
THE TERROR OF THE TWINS
THAT the man's hopes had built upon a son to
inherit his name and estates—a single son, that is—
was to be expected; but no one could have foreseen
the depth and bitterness of his disappointment, the
cold, implacable fury, when there arrived instead—
twins. For, though the elder legally must inherit,
that other ran him so deadly close. A daughter
would have been a more reasonable defeat. But
twins—l To miss his dream by so feeble a
device !
The complete frustration of a hope deeply cherished
for years may easily result in strange fevers of the
soul, but the violence of the father's hatred, existing
as it did side by side with a love he could not deny,
was something to set psychologists thinking. More
than unnatural, it was positively uncanny. Being a
man of rigid self-control, however, it operated in-
wardly, and doubtless along some morbid line of
weakness little suspected even by those nearest to
him, preying upon his thought to such dreadful ex-
tent that finally the mind gave way. The suppressed
rage and bitterness deprived him, so the family de-
cided, of his reason, and he spent the last years of
his life under restraint. He was possessed naturally
of immense forces—of will, feeling, desire; his
dynamic value truly tremendous, driving through life
like a great engine; and the intensity of this concen-
201


202 THE TERROR OF THE TWINS
trated and buried hatred was guessed by few. The
twins themselves, however, knew it. They divined
it, at least, for it operated ceaselessly against them
side by side with the genuine soft love that occasion-
ally sweetened it, to their great perplexity. They
spoke of it only to each other, though.
“At twenty-one,” Edward, the elder, would re-
mark sometimes, unhappily, “we shall know more.”
“Too much,” Ernest would reply, with a rush of un-
reasoning terror the thought never failed to evoke—
in him. “Things father said always happened—in
life.” And they paled perceptibly. For the hatred, thus
compressed into a veritable bomb of psychic energy,
had found at the last a singular expression in the cry
of the father's distraught mind. On the occasion of
their final visit to the asylum, preceding his death by
a few hours only, very calmly, but with an intensity
that drove the words into their hearts like points of
burning metal, he had spoken. In the presence of
the attendant, at the door of the dreadful padded cell,
he said it : “You are not two, but one. I still regard
you as one. And at the coming of age, by h
you shall find it out !”
The lads perhaps had never fully divined that icy
hatred which lay so well concealed against them,
but that this final sentence was a curse, backed by all
the man's terrific force, they quite well realized; and
accordingly, almost unknown to each other, they had
come to dread the day inexpressibly. On the morn-
ing of that twenty-first birthday—their father gone
these five years into the Unknown, yet still some-
times so strangely close to them—they shared the
same biting, inner terror, just as they shared all other
emotions of their life—intimately, without speech.
During the daytime they managed to keep it at a
distance, but when the dusk fell about the old house
-


THE TERROR OF THE TWINS 203
they knew the stealthy approach of a kind of panic
sense. Their self-respect weakened swiftly . . . and
they persuaded their old friend, and once tutor, the
vicar, to sit up with them till midnight. . . . He had
humoured them to that extent, willing to forgo his
sleep, and at the same time more than a little inter-
ested in their singular belief—that before the day was
out, before midnight struck, that is, the curse of that
terrible man would somehow come into operation
against them.
Festivities over and the guests departed, they sat
up in the library, the room usually occupied by their
father, and little used since. Mr. Curtice, a robust
man of fifty-five, and a firm believer in spiritual princi-
palities and powers, dark as well as good, affected (for
their own good) to regard the youths' obsession with
a kindly cynicism. “I do not think it likely for
one moment,” he said gravely, “that such a thing
would be permitted. All spirits are in the hands of
God, and the violent ones more especially.” To
which Edward made the extraordinary reply: “Even
if father does not come himself he will—send ?" And
Ernest agreed: “All this time he's been making pre-
parations for this very day. We've both known it
for a long time—by odd things that have happened,
by our dreams, by nasty little dark hints of various
kinds, and by these persistent attacks of terror that
come from nowhere, especially of late. Haven't we,
Edward?” Edward assenting with a shudder:
“Father has been at us of late with renewed violence.
To-night it will be a regular assault upon our lives,
or minds, or souls ' "
“Strong personalities may possibly leave behind
them forces that continue to act,” observed Mr.
Curtice with caution, while the brothers replied
almost in the same breath : “That's exactly what we


204 THE TERROR OF THE TWINS
feel so curiously. Though—nothing has actually
happened yet, you know, and it's a good many years
now since ->
This was the way the twins spoke of it all. And it
was their profound conviction that had touched their
old friend's sense of duty. The experiment should
justify itself—and cure them. Meanwhile none of the
family knew. Everything was planned secretly.
The library was the quietest room in the house. It
had shuttered bow-windows, thick carpets, heavy
doors. Books lined the walls, and there was a capa-
cious open fireplace of brick in which the wood-logs
blazed and roared, for the autumn night was chilly.
Round this the three of them were grouped, the
clergyman reading aloud from the Book of Job in
low tones; Edward and Ernest, in dinner-jackets,
occupying deep leather arm-chairs, listening. They
looked exactly what they were—Cambridge “under-
grads,” their faces pale against their dark hair, and
alike as two peas. A shaded lamp behind the clergy-
man threw the rest of the room into shadow. The
reading voice was steady, even monotonous, but
something in it betrayed an underlying anxiety, and
although the eyes rarely left the printed page, they
took in every movement of the young men opposite,
and noted every change upon their faces. It was his
aim to produce an unexciting atmosphere, yet to miss
nothing; if anything did occur to see it from the very
beginning. Not to be taken by surprise was his main
idea. . . . And thus, upon this falsely peaceful scene,
the minutes passed the hour of eleven and slipped
rapidly along towards midnight.
The novel element in his account of this distressing
and dreadful occurrence seems to be that what hap-
pened—happened without the slightest warning or
preparation. There was no gradual presentment of


THE TERROR OF THE TWINS 205
any horror; no strange blast of cold air; no dwindling
of heat or light; no shaking of windows or mysterious
tapping upon furniture. Without preliminaries it fell
with its black trappings of terror upon the scene.
The clergyman had been reading aloud for some
considerable time, one or other of the twins—Ernest
usually—making occasional remarks, which proved
that his sense of dread was disappearing. As the
time grew short and nothing happened they grew
more at their ease. Edward, indeed, actually nodded,
dozed, and finally fell asleep. It was a few minutes
before midnight. Ernest, slightly yawning, was
stretching himself in the big chair. “Nothing's go-
ing to happen,” he said aloud, in a pause. “Your
good influence has prevented it.” He even laughed
now. “What superstitious asses we've been, sir;
haven't we 2 ”
Curtice, then, dropping his Bible, looked hard at
him under the lamp. For in that second, even while
the words sounded, there had come about a most
abrupt and dreadful change; and so swiftly that the
clergyman, in spite of himself, was taken utterly by
surprise and had no time to think. There had
swooped down upon the quiet library—so he puts it
—an immense hushing silence, so profound that the
peace already reigning there seemed clamour by com-
parison; and out of this enveloping stillness there
rose through the space about them a living and
abominable Invasion—soft, motionless, terrific. It
was as though vast engines, working at full speed
and pressure, yet too swift and delicate to be appreci-
able to any definite sense, had suddenly dropped
down upon them—from nowhere. “It made me
think,” the vicar used to say afterwards, “of the
Mauretania machinery compressed into a nutshell,
yet losing none of its awful power.”


206 THE TERROR OF THE TWINS
“. . . . haven't we?” repeated Ernest, still laugh-
ing. And Curtice, making no audible reply, heard
the true answer in his heart: “Because everything
has already happened—even as you feared.”
Yet, to the vicar's supreme astonishment, Ernest
still noticed—nothing !
“Look,” the boy added, “Eddy's sound asleep—
sleeping like a pig. Doesn't say much for your read-
ing, you know, sir!” And he laughed again—
lightly, even foolishly. But that laughter jarred, for
the clergyman understood now that the sleep of the
elder twin was either feigned—or unnatural.
And while the easy words fell so lightly from his
lips, the monstrous engines worked and pulsed
against him and against his sleeping brother, all their
huge energy concentrated down into points fine as
Suggestion, delicate as Thought. The Invasion
affected everything. The very objects in the room
altered incredibly, revealing suddenly behind their
normal exteriors horrid little hearts of darkness. It
was truly amazing, this vile metamorphosis. Books,
chairs, pictures, all yielded up their pleasant aspect,
and betrayed, as with silent mocking laughter, their
inner soul of blackness—their decay. This is how
Curtice tries to body forth in words what he actually
witnessed. . . . And Ernest, yawning, talking lightly,
half foolishly—still noticed nothing !
For all this, as described, came about in something
like ten seconds; and with it swept into the clergy-
man's mind, like a blow, the memory of that sinister
phrase used more than once by Edward: “If father
doesn't come, he will certainly—send.” And Curtice
understood that he had done both—both sent and
come himself. . . . That violent mind, released from
its spell of madness in the body, yet still retaining
the old implacable hatred, was now directing the


THE TERROR OF THE TWINS 207
terrible, unseen assault. This silent room, so hushed
and still, was charged to the brim. The horror of it,
as he said later, “seemed to peel the very skin from
my back.” . . . And, while Ernest noticed nothing,
Edward slept! . . . The soul of the clergyman,
strong with the desire to help or save, yet realizing
that he was alone against a Legion, poured out in
wordless prayer to his Deity. The clock just then,
whirring before it struck, made itself audible.
“By Jovel It's all right, you see : " exclaimed
Ernest, his voice oddly fainter and lower than before.
“There's midnight—and nothing's happened. Bally
nonsense, all of it !” His voice had dwindled
curiously in volume. “I’ll get the whisky and soda
from the hall.” His relief was great and his manner
showed it. But in him somewhere was a singular
change. His voice, manner, gestures, his very tread
as he moved over the thick carpet towards the door,
all showed it. He seemed less real, less alive, re-
duced somehow to littleness, the voice without timbre
or quality, the appearance of him diminished in some
fashion quite ghastly. His presence, if not actually
shrivelled, was at least impaired. Ernest had suffered
a singular and horrible decrease. . . .
The clock was still whirring before the strike. One
heard the chain running up softly. Then the hammer
fell upon the first stroke of midnight.
“I’m off,” he laughed faintly from the door; “it’s
all been pure funk–on my part, at least . . . .' "
He passed out of sight into the hall. The Power that
throbbed so mightily about the room followed him
out. Almost at the same moment Edward woke up.
But he woke with a tearing and indescribable cry of
pain and anguish on his lips : “Oh, oh, oh But it
hurts It hurts I can't hold you; leave me. It's
breaking me asunder --


208 THE TERROR OF THE TWINS
The clergyman had sprung to his feet, but in the
same instant everything had become normal once
more—the room as it was before, the horror gone.
There was nothing he could do or say, for there was
no longer anything to put right, to defend, or to
attack. Edward was speaking; his voice, deep and
full as it never had been before : “By Jove, how that
sleep has refreshed me ! I feel twice the chap I was
before—twice the chap. I feel quite splendid. Your
voice, sir, must have hypnotized me to sleep. . . .”
He crossed the room with great vigour. “Where's—
er—where's—Ernie, by the bye?” he asked casually,
hesitating—almost searching—for the name. And a
shadow as of a vanished memory crossed his face and
was gone. The tone conveyed the most complete in-
difference where once the least word or movement of
his twin had wakened solicitude, love. “Gone away,
I suppose—gone to bed, I mean, of course.”
Curtice has never been able to describe the dreadful
conviction that overwhelmed him as he stood there
staring, his heart in his mouth—the conviction, the
positive certainty, that Edward had changed interiorly,
had suffered an incredible accession to his existing
personality. But he knew it as he watched. His
mind, spirit, soul , had most wonderfully increased.
Something that hitherto the lad had known from the
outside only, or by the magic of loving sympathy, had
now passed, to be incorporated with his own being.
And, being himself, it required no expression. Yet
this visible increase was somehow terrible. Curtice
shrank back from him. The instinct—he has never
grasped the profound psychology of that, nor why it
turned his soul dizzy with a kind of nausea—the in-
stinct to strike him where he stood, passed, and a
plaintive sound from the hall, stealing softly into the
room between them, sent all that was left to him of


THE TERROR OF THE TWINS 209
self-possession into his feet. He turned and ran.
Edward followed him—very leisurely.
They found Ernest, or what had been Ernest,
crouching behind the table in the hall, weeping fool-
ishly to himself. On his face lay blackness. The
mouth was open, the jaw dropped; he dribbled hope-
lessly; and from the face had passed all signs of intel-
ligence—of spirit.
For a few weeks he lingered on, regaining no sign
of spiritual or mental life before the poor body, hope-
lessly disorganized, released what was left of him,
from pure inertia—from complete and utter loss of
vitality.
And the horrible thing—so the distressed family
thought, at least—was that all those weeks Edward
showed an indifference that was singularly brutal and
complete. He rarely even went to visit him. I be-
lieve, too, it is true that he only once spoke of him by
name; and that was when he said—
“Ernie 2 Oh, but Ernie is much better and happier
where he is—l ”





VI
THE MAN FROM THE • GoDs'
THAT there was something wrong with all his work
Le Maistre well knew. Words and music, as the
critics never failed to remind him, “just missed" that
nameless “something ” which would have made them
good—perhaps great. Moreover, he was sane enough
to realize that the blame lay not with an uncompre-
hending public, but simply with himself. The spark
of inspiration that was beyond question in all his work
never gathered to the flame stage. Thus his produc-
tions warmed people, but did not light them. He
understood well enough what was lacking—and that
no amount of mere painstaking “work” could put it
right.
But on one occasion Le Maistre achieved a singular
and startling success. As a sober record of fact, con-
cealed by initials, it was reported in the Proceedings
of the French Psychological Society for that year;
and people who believed in the Subliminal Self, the
Higher Ego, and all that consoling teaching about
an attainable God within, made great havoc with the
facts.
The way it came about, moreover, probably has a
profound psychical significance. In any case, the
result remains as the very best kind of tangible proof;
for it was the only great thing he ever really achieved
—this Fairy Play (so called); and its beauty was
absolutely arresting.
O 2 2i i


212 THE MAN FROM THE • GODS”
He was something over fifty when he wrote it in its
original form. The central idea came to him with the
quick flash of a genuine inspiration; so did most of
the music; but, in the working out of both, the fire
had become smothered. The spark had never
gathered into flame. The result was mediocrity. Yet,
like so many artists, he confused what was in his
mind and imagination with what he had actually set
down upon paper; for, when he went over the score
to himself, he heard the original beauty in his
thoughts and believed he had transferred into his
work his own memory of that beauty. The music and
words themselves, however, had not caught it. Thus,
those who heard the preliminary recital in his rooms
were more or less bored according to their powers of
divination.
“It's fine; it's original,” they remarked, shaking
their heads as they went home after the performance;
“but just misses it !”
The transformation that changed the common lead
into gold as by some mysterious process of spiritual
alchemy came about as follows:—
The little play was finished, and Le Maistre, having
his eye upon a certain manager, went to that particular
theatre one night in order to study the “feel” of it—
to catch the flavour of the house, the size of the stage,
and any other details he could. The management
had given him a dress circle box, and he saw
admirably. It was characteristic of the man, rather,
that he put himself to this far-fetched kind of trouble.
During the performance his mind was keenly at work.
Yet he saw nothing of what was going on before his
eyes; he had come with a definite purpose; he saw
his own play all the time, heard his own music;
watched his own creatures come on and go off among
his own scenery.


THE MAN FROM THE • GODS." 213
At the same time the music, light and colour provided
a stimulus that acted upon his own imagination,
and set all the finer machinery of his own creative
genius working. Sub-consciously he revised his own
work, with the illuminating result that a white light
shone through his mind and showed up all the flaws,
all the places where he had “missed it"; all the pas-
sages where he had trailed off into banality. And a
tremendous desire went crashing through his being
to revise his work in the light of this knowledge. “I
felt,” he said, “as though a great prayer had gone out
of me—a cry, as it were, to my higher self to come
to my assistance. Never in my life have I wished
anything so intensely before.”
Then, in that curious fashion with which many
artists must be familiar, it all faded again, and the
reaction set in. The effort had no doubt exhausted
him. He turned his attention to the actual perform-
ances on the stage before him, and lost the power to
visualize his own piece. But the play—trivial, vulgar
and untrue to life—wearied him; and he withdrew
into the back of the box, and incontinently—fell asleep
upon the little plush sofa
When a considerable time later he woke up, the
entire theatre was dark and empty; the piece was
over; the audience had gone home to a man; and
the building was deserted.
Le Maistre at once realized what had happened,
though he could not understand why the final
applause had not waked him, and hurried into his
overcoat. A faint glimmer pervaded the vast audi-
torium, for as he leaned over the edge he could just
make out the rows of empty stalls, the scattered white
patches where the discarded programmes lay, the
music-stands of the orchestra, and the exit doors of
glass where the pit began. The air still smelt un-


214 THE MAN FROM THE • GODS”
pleasantly of a crowd—wraps, furs, stale scent and
cigarettes.
Then he struck a match and saw by his watch that
it was two o'clock in the morning. He had slept
three hours l
He pushed open the door and passed out into the
passage, his one idea being how he could get out
into the street, or how he would spend the time if he
did not get out. He felt hungry, stiff and a trifle
chilly. Feeling his way along by the backs of the
upper circle seats, he advanced slowly and carefully,
his footsteps making no sound upon the soft carpet,
and so came at last to the first exit door. It was
locked and barred. He tried the next door with the
same result. There was no other exit—nothing but
that narrow semi-circular gangway between the wall
and the seats, a box at either end, and pillars at
intervals to mark the distance. “Like the exercise-
walk in a prison-yard,” he thought to himself, laugh-
ing. No single light was left burning anywhere in
the building. Even the hall was in darkness. He
saw the gilt-framed pictures of actors and actresses
on the walls; a faint rumble from the streets reached
him too—voices, traffic, footsteps, wind. Then he
turned back into the theatre and carefully made his
way down the aisle to the front, feeling the steps first
with his toe, and peered over into the body of the
house. A sea of shadows swam to and fro below
him. Here and there certain stalls picked themselves
out of the general gloom almost as though they were
occupied; he could easily imagine he saw figures still
sitting in them. . . .
And it was here, just at this point, he said, that
he began for the first time to feel a little uneasy. A
slight tremor of the nerves passed over him, and
sitting down in one of the front-row seats he con-


THE MAN FROM THE • GODS." 215
sidered the situation carefully and deliberately. There
was not much to consider. He was shut in for the
rest of the night; the dress circle seemed to be the
limits of his prison; he could get neither up nor
down; there was no escape till the morning. The
prospect was not pleasant; still, it was not very
terrible, and his sense of humour would easily have
carried him through with credit, but for one thing—
this curiously disturbing sense of something he could
not quite define : of something that was going to
happen, it seemed. . . .
It was too vague, too remote for him to deal with
squarely. His mind, always keenly imaginative and
pictorial, preferred to see it in the terms of a picture.
He thought of the Thames as he had sometimes seen
it from the Chelsea Embankment in the dusk when
dark barges, too far for their outline to be defined,
come looming up through the mist. In this way
thoughts lie in the depths of the mind; in this way
they rise gradually before the consciousness; in this
way the cause of his present discomfort would
presently reach the point where he would recognize
it and understand. In similar fashion, he felt this
“something” that moved at the back of his mind,
coming slowly forward.
A sudden idea came to him—
“If I could climb down to the auditorium floor I
might find a door open somewhere, or escape by way
of the orchestra, perhaps ' "
And the idea of action was pleasant; though how
he climbed over the edge of the box in the dark and
swarmed down the slippery pillar, landing with a crash
upon the rim of the stage box below, he never quite
understood. With a plunge he dropped backwards
into the dark space, kicking over as he did so a couple
of chairs, which fell with a loud clatter and woke


216 THE MAN FROM THE • GODS”
resounding echoes all through the empty building.
That clatter seemed prodigious. He held his breath
for several seconds to listen, standing motionless
against the wall with the distinct idea that all this
noise would attract attention to himself, and that if,
after all, there was any one watching him—that if
among those shadows some one
“Ah !” he exclaimed quickly. “Now I've got it!
There is some one watching me in another part of
the building. That’s why I felt uneasy—”
That tumble into the box had shaken the thought
up to the surface of his mind. The picture had
emerged from the mist, and he recognized the cause
of his uneasiness. All this time, though none of his
senses had yet proved it to him, the mind of another
person, perhaps the eyes too, had been focused upon
him. He was not alone.
Le Maistre felt no alarm, he said, but rather a
definite thrill of exhilaration, as though the idea of
this other person came to him with a sense of pleasur-
able excitement. His first instinct to sit concealed in
the corner of the box and await events he dismissed
almost at once in favour of some kind of prompt
action. Stumbling in the gloom, he made his way
down to the orchestra, and while groping cautiously
among the crowded easels, his hand touched a tiny
knob, and a dozen lights that bent over the music
folios, like little heads screened under black bonnets,
sprang into brilliance. The first thing he noticed was
that the fire curtain was down, closing the cavernous
mouth of the stage.
The shaded lights, however, were so carefully
arranged that they fell only upon the music, and the
main body of the theatre still yawned in comparative
darkness behind him. Vast and unfriendly it seemed;
charged to the brim with faint shufflings and whispers


THE MAN FROM THE • GODS” 217
as though an audience sat there stealthily turning over
programmes. The stalls faced him like fixed but
living beings; the balconies frowned down upon him;
the boxes—especially the upper ones—had an air of
concealing people behind their curtains. Far over-
head, glimmered a huge skylight; he heard the wind
sighing across it like wind in the rigging of a ship.
And, more than once, he fancied he caught the faint
tread of footsteps moving about among the stalls and
gangways.
Regretting that he had turned the lights up (they
made himself so conspicuous, so easily visible !), he
made an instinctive movement to turn them out again;
but he touched the wrong knob, so that a row of
lights flashed out up under the roof. In that top-
most gallery of all, known as “the gods,” a little line
of starry lights leaped into being, and the first
thing he noticed as he looked up was the figure of
a man leaning over the edge of the railing—watching
him.
The same moment he saw that this figure was mak-
ing a movement of some kind—a gesture. It
beckoned to him. So his feeling that some one was
in the theatre with him was justified. There had been
a man in the gods all the time.
Le Maistre admitted frankly that, in his first sur-
prise, he collapsed backwards upon the stool usually
occupied by the second 'cello. But his alarm passed
with a strange swiftness, and gave place almost
immediately to a peculiar and deep-seated thrill. The
instant he perceived this dim figure of a man up
there under the roof his heart leaped with an emotion
that was partly delight, partly pleasurable anticipa-
tion, and partly—most curious of all—awe. And in
a voice that was unlike his own, and that carried
across the intervening space, for all its faintness, with


218 THE MAN FROM THE • GODS"
perfect ease, he heard the words driven out of him
as if by command of some deeper instinct than he
understood—yet the very last words that he could
have imagined as appropriate—
“You’re up there in the gods !” he called out.
“Won't you come down to me here 2 ”
And then the figure withdrew, and he heard the
sound of the footsteps descending the winding pas-
sages and stairs behind, as their owner obeyed him
and came.
Alarmed, yet curiously exultant, Le Maistre stood
up among the music-easels to await his coming. He
was extraordinarily alert, prepared. He fumbled
again with the little switch-board under the con-
ductor's desk, for he wished to see the man face to
face in full light—not to be gradually approached in
darkness. But the only thing that came of the button
he pressed was a creaking noise behind him, and
when he turned quickly to examine, lo and behold,
he saw the huge fire-curtain rising slowly and
majestically into the air. And, as it rose, revealing
the stage beyond, he got the distinct impression that
this very stage, now empty, had a moment before
been crowded with a throng of living people, and that
even now they were there concealed among the wings
within a few feet of where he stood, waiting the
summons to appear.
Moreover, this discovery, far from causing him the
kind of amazement that might have been expected,
only communicated, for the second time within the
space of a few minutes, another thrill of delight.
Again this lightning sense of exhilaration swept him
from head to foot.
The footsteps, meanwhile, came nearer; sometimes
disappearing behind a thickness of walls that rendered
them inaudible, and at other times starting suddenly


THE MAN FROM THE • GODS” 219
into greater clearness as they came down from floor
to floor. Le Maistre, unable to endure the suspense
any longer, felt impelled to go forward and meet
them half-way. An intense desire to see this stranger
face to face came upon him. He climbed awkwardly
over the orchestra railing and made his way past the
first rows of the stalls. Already the steps sounded
upon the same floor as himself. Hardly a dozen
yards, to judge by the fall of these oddly cushioned
footsteps, could now separate them. He moved more
slowly, and the stranger moved more slowly too—
entering at last the gangway in which he stood.
“And it is from this point,” to use the words of
the report he afterwards wrote for the society, “that
my memory begins to fade somewhat, or rather, that
the sense of bewilderment grew so astonishingly dis-
turbing that I find it difficult to look back and recall
with accuracy the true sequence of what followed.
My normal measurement of the passage of time
changed too, I think; all went so swiftly, almost as
in a dream, though at the time it did not appear to
me to be short or hurried. But—describe the sense of
glory, wonder and happiness that enveloped me as in
a cloud, I simply cannot. As well might a hashish-
eater attempt during the dulness of next morning to
reconstruct the phantasmal wonder of all he experi-
enced the night before. Only, this was no phantasy;
it was real and actual, and more palpitatingly vivid
than any other experience of my life.
“I stood waiting in the gangway while this other
person—the stranger—came towards me along the
narrow space between the wall and the main body of
seats. The footsteps were unhurried and regular. It
was very dark; all I could see were two faint patches
of light where the exit doors of the pit glimmered
beyond. First one patch of light, then the other, was


220 THE MAN FROM THE • GODS”
temporarily obscured as he passed in front of these
doors. Down he moved steadily towards me through
the gloom, and at the barrier of velvet rope that
separated the stalls from the pit, he stopped—just
near enough for me to distinguish the head and
shoulders of a man about my own height and about
my own size. He stood facing me there, some ten
or twelve feet away.
“For a few seconds there was complete silence—
like the silence in a mine, I remember thinking—and
I instinctively clenched my fists, almost expecting
something violent to happen. But the next instant
the man spoke; and the moment I heard his voice all
traces of fear left me, and I felt nothing but this
peculiarly delightful sense of exhilaration I have
already mentioned. It ran through me like the flush
of a generous wine, rousing all my faculties, critical
and imaginative, to their highest possible power, yet
at the same time so bewildering me for the moment
that I scarcely realized what I was saying, doing, or
thinking. From this point I went through the whole
scene without hesitation or dismay—certainly without
a thought of disobeying. I mean, it was a pleasure
to me to help it all forward, rather than to seek to
prevent.
“‘Here I am,” said the man in a voice wholly
wonderful. “You called me down, and I have come !’
“You have come from up there—from the gods,”
I heard myself reply. -
“I have come from up there—from the gods,”
he answered; and his sentence seemed to mean so
much more than mine did, although we used identical
words.
“I held on to the back of the stall nearest to me.
I could think for the moment of nothing further to
say. The idea of what was coming thrilled me in-


THE MAN FROM THE • GODS" 221
expressibly, though I could only hazard wild guesses
as to its character.
“‘Are you ready then 2' he asked.
“Ready | Ready for what?'
“‘For the rehearsal,” he said, ‘the secret rehearsal.'
“‘The secret rehearsal ?' I stammered, pre-
tending, as a child pretends in order to heighten its
joy, that I did not understand.
“‘—of your play, you know; your fairy play,' he
finished the sentence.
“Then he moved towards me a few steps, and,
hardly knowing why, I retreated. It was still im-
possible to see his face. The curious idea came to me
that there was something odd about the man that
prevented, and that would always prevent, me getting
closer to him, and that perhaps I should never see
his face completely at all. I cannot point to anything
definite that caused this impression; I can merely
report that it was so.
“Look " " he went on, “every one is ready and
waiting. The moment the music starts we can begin.
You will find a violin down there; the rehearsal can
go on at once.’
“And although it struck me at the time as most
curious he should be aware of the fact, it seemed quite
natural, because I do play the violin, and in fact
compose all my melodies first on that instrument
before I put a pen to paper. At the same time I can
remember faintly protesting—
“I 2' I remember asking; “I’m to play ?'
“‘Certainly,” replied this soft-spoken figure among
the shadows. “You’re to play. Who else, pray
And see 1 Every one is ready and waiting.’
“I was far too happily bewildered to object further;
there seemed, indeed, no time for reflection at all;
I felt impelled, driven forward as it were, to go


222 THE MAN FROM THE • GODS”
through with the adventure and to ask no questions.
Besides, I wanted to go through with it. I felt the
old power of the first inspiration upon me—only
heightened; I felt in me the supreme and splendid
confidence that I could do it all better than I had
ever dreamed—do it perfectly as it should be done.
I was borne forwards upon a wave of inspiration that
nothing in the whole world could interfere with.
“And, as I turned to obey, I saw for the first time
that the stage was brilliantly lighted; that the scenery
was the scenery already chosen by my mind; that the
performers thronged the wings, and the opening
characters were actually standing in their places wait-
ing for the signal of the music to begin. The per-
formers, moreover, I perceived, were identical in
figure, feature and bearing with those ideal per-
formers who had already enacted the play upon the
inner stage of my imagination. It was all, in fact,
precisely as the original inspiration had come to me
weeks ago before the fires of beauty had faded during
the wearisome toil of working it all out in limited
terms upon the paper.
“The power that drove me forward, and at the
same time filled me with this splendour of untram-
melled creation, refused me, however, the least
moment for consideration. I could only make my
way into the orchestra and pick up the first violin-
case that came to hand, belonging, doubtless, to some
member of the band I had listened to earlier in the
evening; and all eyes were fixed upon me from the
stage as I clambered into the conductor's seat and
drew the bow across the strings to tune the instru-
ment. At the first sound I realized that my fingers,
accustomed to the harsh tones of my own cheaper
fiddle, were now feeling their way over the exquisite
nervous system of a genuine Guarnierius that re-


THE MAN FROM THE • GODS ’ 225
artist's only adequate reward; and it reminded me
of nothing so much as the whirring of innumerable
soft wings all rising through the air at the same
moment. Pictorially, in this fashion, it came before
my mind.
“Violin in hand, I rose too, and turned to face
the auditorium, for I realized that they were calling
for the author—for him who had ministered so
adequately to their pleasure—and that I must be pre-
pared to say something in reply. I had, indeed, made
my first bow, and was already casting about in my
mind for suitable words, when, for the first time
during the whole adventure—something in me
hesitated. Either it was that the sea of glimmering
faces frightened me, or that I was obeying instinc-
tively some faint warning that it was not myself, but
some other, who was the true author of the play,
and that it was for him these thousands before me
clamoured and called.
“But when, still hesitating in confusion, I turned
again towards the stage, I saw that the great fire
curtain had meanwhile descended and that a footstep,
regular and unhurried, was at that very moment com-
ing forward towards the footlights. I heard the tread.
I knew at once who it was. The stranger from the
shadows behind me who had directed the entire per-
formance was now moving to the front. It was he
for whom the audience clamoured; it was he who was
the true author of the play !
“And instantly I clamoured with them, forgetting
my own small pain in a kind of delightful exultation
that I, too, owed this man everything, and that I
should at last see him face to face and join my thanks
and gratitude to theirs.
“Almost that same instant he appeared and stood
before the centre of the curtains, the glare of the
P


226 THE MAN FROM THE • GODS”
footlights casting upwards into his face. And he
looked, not at the great throng behind and beyond
me, but down into my own face, into my own eyes,
smiling, approving, his expression radiant with a
glory I have never seen before or since upon any
human countenance.
“And the stranger, I then realized—was myself!
“What happened next is so difficult to describe—
though I scarcely know why it should be so—that I
cannot hope to convey the reality of it properly, or
paint the instantaneous manner in which he vanished
and was gone. He neither faded nor moved. But
in a second that seemed to have no perceptible dura-
tion he was beside me—with me—in me; and this
swift way he became suddenly merged into myself has
always seemed to me the most amazing thing I have
ever witnessed. The wave of delight and exultation
swept into me anew. I felt for one brief moment that
I was as a god—with a god's power of perfect
expression.
“But for one second only; for, at once, a new
sound, terrible and overwhelming, rose in a flood and
tore me away from all that I had ever known. And
the sound was ugly and distressing . . . and dark-
ness followed it. . .
“It was real clapping this time, the clapping of
human hands . . . and an indifferent orchestra was
playing a noisy march just below me with a great
blare of brass out of tune. The lights were up all
over the theatre; the audience, busy with wraps and
overcoats and applause, were hurrying out. I saw
the actors and actresses of the play bowing and scrap-
ing before the curtain; and the sight of the perspira-
tion trickling down over the grease-paint of the
leading man directly beneath my box struck me
like a blow in the face. Then came the frantic


THE MAN FROM THE • GODS ’ 227
whistling for broughams and taxicabs and the hoarse
shouting from the street where men cried the evening
papers in the roar of the outer world. I picked up my
opera-hat, which had rolled into the middle of the
floor while I had slept upon the sofa, scrambled into
my overcoat, rushed out into the street, and told the
driver of the first taxicab I found to drive for his life
at double rates. . . .
“And all that night, before the memory of the
wonder and the glory faded, I worked upon my score
of words and music, striving to get down on the
paper something at least of what had been shown to
me. How much, or how little I succeeded it is now
impossible to say. As I have already explained in
this report, the memory faded with distressing swift-
ness. But I did my best. I hope—I believe—I am
told, at least—that there is something in the work
that people like. . . .”





VII
THE MAN WHO PLAYED UPON THE LEAF
WHERE the Jura pine-woods push the fringe of their
purple cloak down the slopes till the vineyards stop
them lest they should troop into the lake of Neuchâtel,
you may find the village where lived the Man Who
Played upon the Leaf.
My first sight of him was genuinely prophetic—
that spring evening in the garden café of the little
mountain auberge. But before I saw him I heard
him, and ever afterwards the sound and the sight
have remained inseparable in my mind.
Jean Grospierre and Louis Favre were giving me
confused instructions—the vin rouge of Neuchâtel is
heady, you know—as to the best route up the Tête-
de-Rang, when a thin, wailing music, that at first
I took to be rising wind, made itself heard suddenly
among the apple trees at the end of the garden, and
riveted my attention with a thrill of I know not what.
Favre's description of the bridle path over Mont
Racine died away; then Grospierre's eyes wandered
as he, too, stopped to listen; and at the same moment
a mongrel dog of indescribably forlorn appearance
came whining about our table under the walnut tree.
“It’s Perret ‘Comment-va,’ the man who plays on
the leaf,” said Favre.
“And his cursed dog,” added Grospierre, with a
shrug of disgust. And, after a pause, they fell again
to quarrelling about my complicated path up the
Tête-de-Rang.
229


230 MAN WHO PLAYED UPON THE LEAF
I turned from them in the direction of the sound.
The dusk was falling. Through the trees I saw
the vineyards sloping down a mile or two to the dark
blue lake with its distant-shadowed shore and the
white line of misty Alps in the sky beyond. Behind
us the forests rose in folded purple ridges to the
heights of Boudry and La Tourne, soft and thick
like carpets of cloud. There was no one about in the
cabaret. I heard a horse's hoofs in the village street,
a rattle of pans from the kitchen, and the soft roar of
a train climbing the mountain railway through gather-
ing darkness towards France—and, singing through
it all, like a thread of silver through a dream, this
sweet and windy music.
But at first there was nothing to be seen. The Man
Who Played on the Leaf was not visible, though I
stared hard at the place whence the sound apparently
proceeded. The effect, for a moment, was almost
ghostly.
Then, down there among the shadows of fruit trees
and small pines, something moved, and I became
aware with a start that the little supin I had been
looking at all the time was really not a tree, but a
man—hatless, with dark face, loose hair, and wear-
ing a pelerine over his shoulders. How he had pro-
duced this singularly vivid impression and taken upon
himself the outline and image of a tree is utterly
beyond me to describe. It was, doubtless, some swift
suggestion in my own imagination that deceived
me. . . . Yet he was thin, small, straight, and his
flying hair and spreading pèlerine somehow pictured
themselves in the network of dusk and background
into the semblance, I suppose, of branches.
I merely record my impression with the truest avail-
able words—also my instant persuasion that this first
view of the man was, after all, significant and pro-


MAN WHO PLAYED UPON THE LEAF 231
phetic: his dominant characteristics presented them-
selves to me symbolically. I saw the man first as a
tree; I heard his music first as wind.
Then, as he came slowly towards us, it was clear
that he produced the sound by blowing upon a leaf
held to his lips between tightly closed hands. And
at his heel followed the mongrel dog.
“The inseparables " sneered Grospierre, who did
not appreciate the interruption. He glanced con-
temptuously at the man and the dog, his face and
manner, it seemed to me, conveying a merest trace,
however, of superstitious fear. “The tune your father
taught you, hein 2" he added, with a cruel allusion I
did not at the moment understand.
“Hush ' " Favre said; “he plays thunderingly well
all the same !” His glass had not been emptied
quite so often, and in his eyes as he listened there was
a touch of something that was between respect and
wonder.
“The music of the devil,” Grospierre muttered as
he turned with the gesture of surly impatience to the
wine and the rye bread. “It makes me dream at
night. Ooual"
The man, paying no attention to the gibes, came
closer, continuing his leaf-music, and as I watched
and listened the thrill that had first stirred in me grew
curiously. To look at, he was perhaps forty, per-
haps fifty; worn, thin, broken; and something seiz-
ingly pathetic in his appearance told its little wordless
story into the air. The stamp of the outcast was
mercilessly upon him. But the eyes were dark and
fine. They proclaimed the possession of something
that was neither worn nor broken, something that was
proud to be outcast, and welcomed it.
“He's cracky, you know,” explained Favre, “and
half blind. He lives in that hut on the edge of the


232 MAN WHO PLAYED UPON THE LEAF
forest”—pointing with his thumb toward Côtendard—
“and plays on the leaf for what he can earn.”
We listened for five minutes perhaps while this
singular being stood there in the dusk and piped his
weird tunes; and if imagination had influenced my
first sight of him it certainly had nothing to do with
what I now heard. For it was unmistakable; the man
played, not mere tunes and melodies, but the clean,
strong, elemental sounds of Nature—especially the
crying voices of wind. It was the raw material, if
you like, of what the masters have used here and there
—Wagner, and so forth—but by him heard closely
and wonderfully, and produced with marvellous
accuracy. It was now the notes of birds or the tinkle
and rustle of sounds heard in groves and copses, and
now the murmur of those airs that lose their way on
summer noons among the tree tops; and then, quite
incredibly, just as the man came closer and the volume
increased, it grew to the crying of bigger winds
and the whispering rush of rain among tossed
branches. . .
How he produced it passed my comprehension, but
I think he somehow mingled his own voice with the
actual notes of the vibrating edge of the leaf; per-
haps, too, that the strange passion shaking behind
it all in the depths of the bewildered spirit poured
out and reached my mind by ways unknown and
incalculable.
I must have momentarily lost myself in the soft
magic of it, for I remember coming back with a start
to notice that the man had stopped, and that his
melancholy face was turned to me with a smile of
comprehension and sympathy that passed again
almost before I had time to recognize it, and certainly
before I had time to reply. And this time I am ready
to admit that it was my own imagination, singularly


MAN WHO PLAYED UPON THE LEAF 233
stirred, that translated his smile into the words that
no one else heard—
“I was playing for you—because you understand.”
Favre was standing up and I saw him give the man
the half loaf of coarse bread that was on the table,
offering also his own partly-emptied wine-glass. “I
haven't the sou to-day,” he was saying, “but if you're
hungry, mon brave ” And the man, refusing the
wine, took the bread with an air of dignity that pre-
cluded all suggestion of patronage or favour, and
ought to have made Favre feel proud that he had
offered it.
“And that for his son | " laughed the stupid Gros-
pierre, tossing a cheese-rind to the dog, “or for his
forest godl"
The music was about me like a net that still held
my words and thoughts in a delicate bondage—which
is my only explanation for not silencing the coarse
guide in the way he deserved; but a few minutes later,
when the men had gone into the inn, I crossed to
the end of the garden, and there, where the perfumes
of orchard and forest deliciously mingled, I came
upon the man sitting on the grass beneath an apple-
tree. The dog, wagging its tail, was at his feet, as
he fed it with the best and largest portions of the
bread. For himself, it seemed, he kept nothing but
the crust, and—what I could hardly believe, had I
not actually witnessed it—the cur, though clearly
hungry, had to be coaxed with smiles and kind words
to eat what it realized in some dear dog-fashion was
needed even more by its master. A pair of outcasts
they looked indeed, sharing dry bread in the back
garden of the village inn; but in the soft, discerning
eyes of that mangy creature there was an expression
that raised it, for me at least, far beyond the ranks
of common curdom; and in the eyes of the man, half-


234. MAN WHO PLAYED UPON THE LEAF
witted and pariah as he undoubtedly was, a look that
set him somewhere in a lonely place where he heard
the still, small voices of the world and moved with the
elemental tides of life that are never outcast and that
include the farthest suns.
He took the franc I offered; and, closer, I perceived
that his eyes, for all their moments of fugitive brilli-
ance, were indeed half sightless, and that perhaps he
saw only well enough to know men as trees walking.
In the village some said he saw better than most, that
he saw in the dark, possibly even into the peopled
regions beyond this world, and there were reasons—
uncanny reasons—to explain the belief. I only know,
at any rate, that from this first moment of our meeting
he never failed to recognize me at a considerable
distance, and to be aware of my whereabouts even in
the woods at night; and the best explanation I ever
heard, though of course unscientific, was Louis
Favre's whispered communication that “he sees with
the whole surface of his skin | "
He took the franc with the same air of grandeur
that he took the bread, as though he conferred a
favour, yet was grateful. The beauty of that gesture
has often come back to me since with a sense of
wonder for the sweet nobility that I afterwards under-
stood inspired it. At the time, however, he merely
looked up at me with the remark, “C'est pour le Dieu
merci! ”
He did not say “le bon Dieu,'
did.
And though I had meant to get into conversation
with him, I found no words quickly enough, for he
at once stood up and began to play again on his leaf;
and while he played his thanks and gratitude, or the
thanks and gratitude of his God, that shaggy mongrel
dog stopped eating and sat up beside him to listen.
as every one else


MAN WHO PLAYED UPON THE LEAF 235
Both fixed their eyes upon me as the sounds of wind
and birds and forest poured softly and wonderfully
about my ears . . . So that, when it was over and I
went down the quiet street to my pension, I was aware
that some tiny sense of bewilderment had crept into
the profounder regions of my consciousness and
faintly disturbed my normal conviction that I belonged
to the common world of men as of old. Some aspect
of the village, especially of the human occupants in
it, had secretly changed for me.
Those pearly spaces of sky, where the bats flew over
the red roofs, seemed more alive, more exquisite than
before; the smells of the open stables where the cows
stood munching, more fragrant than usual of sweet
animal life that included myself delightfully, keenly;
the last chatterings of the sparrows under the eaves
of my own pension more intimate and personal. . . .
Almost as if those strands of elemental music the
man played on his leaf had for the moment made
me free of the life of the earth, as distinct from the
life of men. . . .
I can only suggest this, and leave the rest to the
care of the imaginative reader; for it is impossible to
say along what inner byways of fancy I reached the
conclusion that when the man spoke of “the God,”
and not “the good God,” he intended to convey his
sense of some great woodland personality—some
Spirit of the Forests whom he knew and loved and
worshipped, and whom, he was intuitively aware, I
also knew and loved and worshipped.
During the next few weeks I came to learn more
about this poor, half-witted man. In the village he
was known as Perret “Comment-va,” the Man Who
Plays on the Leaf; but when the people wished to be
more explicit they described him as the man “without


236 MAN WHO PLAYED UPON THE IEAF
parents and without God.” The origin of “Com-
ment-va’’ I never discovered, but the other titles were
easily explained—he was illegitimate and outcast.
The mother had been a wandering Italian girl and
the father a loose-living bacheron, who was, it seems,
a standing disgrace to the community. I think the
villagers were not conscious of their severity; the
older generation of farmers and vignerons had pity,
but the younger ones and those of his own age were
certainly guilty, if not of deliberate cruelty, at least
of a harsh neglect and the utter withholding of
sympathy. It was like the thoughtless cruelty of
children, due to small unwisdom, and to that absence
of charity which is based on ignorance. They could
not in the least understand this crazy, picturesque
being who wandered day and night in the forests and
spoke openly, though never quite intelligibly, of wor-
shipping another God than their own anthropo-
morphic deity. People looked askance at him be-
cause he was queer; a few feared him; one or two I
found later—all women—felt vaguely that there was
something in him rather wonderful, they hardly knew
what, that lifted him beyond the reach of village
taunts and sneers. But from all he was remote, alien,
solitary—an outcast and a pariah.
It so happened that I was very busy at the time,
seeking the seclusion of the place for my work, and
rarely going out until the day was failing; and so it
was, I suppose, that my sight of the man was always
associated with a gentle dusk, long shadows and
slanting rays of sunlight. Every time I saw that thin,
straight, yet broken figure, every time the music of
the leaf reached me, there came too, the inexplicable
thrill of secret wonder and delight that had first
accompanied his presence, and with it the subtle
suggestion of a haunted woodland life, beautiful with


MAN WHO PLAYED UPON THE LEAF 237
new values. To this day I see that sad, dark face
moving about the street, touched with melancholy,
yet with the singular light of an inner glory that
sometimes lit flames in the poor eyes. Perhaps—the
fancy entered my thoughts sometimes when I passed
him—those who are half out of their minds, as the
saying goes, are at the same time half in another
region whose penetrating loveliness has so bewildered
and amazed them that they no longer can play their
dull part in our commonplace world; and certainly
for me this man's presence never failed to convey
an awareness of some hidden and secret beauty that
he knew apart from the ordinary haunts and pursuits
of men.
Often I followed him up into the woods—in spite
of the menacing growls of the dog, who invariably
showed his teeth lest I should approach too close—
with a great longing to know what he did there and
how he spent his time wandering in the great forests,
sometimes, I was assured, staying out entire nights
or remaining away for days together. For in these
Jura forests that cover the mountains from Neuchâtel
to Yverdon, and stretch thickly up to the very fron-
tiers of France, you may walk for days without find-
ing a farm or meeting more than an occasional
bûcheron. And at length, after weeks of failure, and
by some process of sympathy he apparently com-
municated in turn to the dog, it came about that I
was–accepted. I was allowed to follow at a distance,
to listen and, if I could, to watch.
I make use of the conditional, because once in the
forest this man had the power of concealing himself
in the same way that certain animals and insects
conceal themselves by choosing places instinctively
where the colour of their surroundings merge into
their outlines and obliterate them. So long as he


238 MAN WHO PLAYED UPON THE LEAF
moved all was well; but the moment he stopped and
a chance dell or cluster of trees intervened I lost
sight of him, and more than once passed within a
foot of his presence without knowing it, though the
dog was plainly there at his feet. And the instant
I turned at the sound of the leaf, there he was, lean-
ing against some dark tree-stem, part of a shadow
perhaps, growing like a forest-thing out of the thick
moss that hid his feet, or merging with extraordinary
intimacy into the fronds of some drooping pine
bough ! Moreover, this concealment was never in-
tentional, it seems, but instinctive. The life to which
he belonged took him close to its heart, draping about
the starved and wasted shoulders the cloak of kindly
sympathy which the world of men denied him.
- And, while I took my place some little way off upon
a fallen stem, and the dog sat looking up into his face
with its eyes of yearning and affection, Perret “Com-
ment-va" would take a leaf from the nearest ivy,
raise it between tightly pressed palms to his lips and
begin that magic sound that seemed to rise out of
the forest-voices themselves rather than to be a thing
apart.
It was a late evening towards the end of May when
I first secured this privilege at close quarters, and the
memory of it lives in me still with the fragrance and
wonder of some incredible dream. The forest just
there was scented with wild lilies of the valley which
carpeted the more open spaces with their white bells
and big, green leaves; patches of violets and pale
anemone twinkled down the mossy stairways of every
glade; and through slim openings among the pine-
stems I saw the shadowed blues of the lake beyond
and the far line of the high Alps, soft and cloud-like
in the sky. Already the woods were drawing the


MAN WHO PLAYED UPON THE LEAF 239
dusk out of the earth to cloak themselves for sleep,
and in the east a rising moon stared close over the
ground between the big trees, dropping trails of
faint and yellowish silver along the moss. Distant
cow-bells, and an occasional murmur of village voices,
reached the ear. But a deep hush lay over all that
mighty slope of mountain forest, and even the foot-
steps of ourselves and the dog had come to rest.
Then, as sounds heard in a dream, a breeze stirred
the topmost branches of the pines, filtering down to
us as from the wings of birds. It brought new odours
of sky and sun-kissed branches with it. A moment
later it lost itself in the darkening aisles of forest
beyond; and out of the stillness that followed, I
heard the strange music of the leaf rising about us
with its extraordinary power of suggestion. *-
And, turning to see the face of the player more
closely, I saw that it had marvellously changed, had
become young, unlined, soft with joy. The spirit of
the immense woods possessed him, and he was at
peace. . . .
While he played, too, he swayed a little to and fro,
just as a slender sapin sways in wind, and a revelation
came to me of that strange beauty of combined sound
and movement—trees bending while they sing,
branches trembling and a-whisper, children that laugh
while they dance. And, oh, the crying, plaintive
notes of that leaf, and the profound sense of elemental
primitive sound that they woke in the penetralia of
the imagination, subtly linking simplicity to grandeur !
Terribly yet sweetly penetrating, how they searched
the heart through, and troubled the very sources of
life Often and often since have I wondered what it
was in that singular music that made me know the
distant Alps listened in their sky-spaces, and that the
purple slopes of Boudry and Mont Racine bore it


240 MAN who PLAYED UPON THE LEAF
along the spires of their woods as though giant harp-
strings stretched to the far summits of Chasseral and
the arid wastes of Tête de Rang.
In the music this outcast played upon the leaf there
was something of a wild, mad beauty that plunged
like a knife to the home of tears, and at the same time
sang out beyond them—something coldly elemental,
close to the naked heart of life. The truth, doubtless,
was that his strains, making articulate the sounds of
Nature, touched deep, primitive yearnings that for
many are buried beyond recall. And between the
airs, even between the bars, there fell deep weeping
silences when the sounds merged themselves into the
sigh of wind or the murmur of falling water, just as
the strange player merged his body into the form and
colour of the trees about him.
And when at last he ceased, I went close to him,
hardly knowing what it was I wanted so much to ask
or say. He straightened up at my approach. The
melancholy dropped its veil upon his face instantly.
“But that was beautiful—unearthly 1 " I faltered.
“You never have played like that in the village—”
And for a second his eyes lit up as he pointed to the
dark spaces of forest behind us:
“In there,” he said softly, “there is light !”
“You hear true music in these woods,” I ventured,
hoping to draw him out; “this music you play—this
exquisite singing of winds and trees 2 ”
He looked at me with a puzzled expression and I
knew, of course, that I had blundered with my banal
words. Then, before I could explain or alter, there
floated to us through the trees a sound of church bells
from villages far away; and instantly, as he heard,
his face grew dark, as though he understood in some
vague fashion that it was a symbol of the faith of those
parents who had wronged him, and of the people who


MAN WHO PLAYED UPON THE LEAF 241
continually made him suffer. Something of this, I
feel sure, passed through his tortured mind, for he
looked menacingly about him, and the dog, who
caught the shadow of all his moods, began to growl
angrily.
“My music,” he said, with a sudden abruptness that
was almost fierce, “is for my God.”
“Your God of the Forests 2 " I said, with a real
sympathy that I believe reached him.
“Pour sir! Pour sir! I play it all over the world”
—he looked about him down the slopes of villages and
vineyards—“and for those who understand—those
who belong—to come.”
He was, I felt sure, going to say more, perhaps to
unbosom himself to me a little; and I might have
learned something of the ritual this self-appointed
priest of Pan followed in his forest temples—when,
the sound of the bells swelled suddenly on the wind,
and he turned with an angry gesture and made to go.
Their insolence, penetrating even to the privacy of his
secret woods, was too much for him.
“And you find many ?” I asked.
Perret “Comment-va” shrugged his shoulders and
smiled pityingly.
“Moi. Puis le chien—puis maintenant—vous !”
He was gone the same minute, as if the branches
stretched out dark arms to draw him away among
them, . . . and on my way back to the village, by
the growing light of the moon, I heard far away
in that deep world of a million trees the echoes of a
weird, sweet music, as this unwitting votary of Pan
piped and fluted to his mighty God upon an ivy
leaf.
And the last thing I actually saw was the mongrel
cur turning back from the edge of the forest to look
at me for a moment of hesitation. He thought it was
Q


242 MAN WHO PLAYED UPON THE LEAF
time now that I should join the little band of wor-
shippers and follow them to the haunted spots of
worship.
“Moi—puis le chien—puis maintenant—vous !”
From that moment of speech a kind of unexpressed
intimacy between us came into being, and whenever
we passed one another in the street he would give me
a swift, happy look, and jerk his head significantly
towards the forests. The feeling that, perhaps, in his
curious lonely existence I counted for something im-
portant made me very careful with him. From time to
time I gave him a few francs, and regularly twice a
week when I knew he was away, I used to steal un-
observed to his hut on the edge of the forest and put
parcels of food inside the door—salamé, cheese, bread;
and on one or two occasions when I had been extrava-
gant with my own tea, pieces of plum-cake—what the
Colombier baker called plume-cak'ſ
He never acknowledged these little gifts, and I
sometimes wondered to what use he put them, for
though the dog remained well favoured, so far as any
cur can be so, he himself seemed to waste away more
rapidly than ever. I found, too, that he did receive
help from the village—official help-but that after the
night when he was caught on the church steps with
an oil can, kindling-wood and a box of matches, this
help was reduced by half, and the threat made to dis-
continue it altogether. Yet I feel sure there was no
inherent maliciousness in the Man who Played upon
the Leaf, and that his hatred of an “alien " faith was
akin to the mistaken zeal that in other days could send
poor sinners to the stake for the ultimate safety of their
souls.
Two things, moreover, helped to foster the tender
belief I had in his innate goodness: first, that all the


MAN WHO PLAYED UPON THE LEAF 243
children of the village loved him and were unafraid,
to the point of playing with him and pulling him
about as though he were a big dog; and, secondly,
that his devotion for the mongrel hound, his equal
and fellow-worshipper, went to the length of genuine
self-sacrifice. I could never forget how he fed it with
the best of the bread, when his own face was pinched
and drawn with hunger; and on other occasions I saw
many similar proofs of his unselfish affection. His
love for that mongrel, never uttered, in my presence
at least, perhaps unrecognized as love even by him-
self, must surely have risen in some form of music or
incense to sweeten the very halls of heaven.
In the woods I came across him anywhere and
everywhere, sometimes so unexpectedly that it
occurred to me he must have followed me stealthily
for long distances. And once, in that very lonely
stretch above the mountain railway, towards Mont-
mollin, where the trees are spaced apart with an effect
of cathedral aisles and Gothic arches, he caught me
suddenly and did something that for a moment caused
me a thrill of genuine alarm.
Wild lilies of the valley grow very thickly there-
abouts, and the ground falls into a natural hollow that
shuts it off from the rest of the forest with a peculiar
and delightful sense of privacy; and when I came
across it for the first time I stopped with a sudden
feeling of quite bewildering enchantment—with a kind
of childish awe that caught my breath as though I
had slipped through some fairy door or blundered out
of the ordinary world into a place of holy ground
where solemn and beautiful things were the order of
the day.
I waited a moment and looked about me. It was
utterly still. The haze of the day had given place
to an evening clarity of atmosphere that gave the
Q 2.


244. MAN WHO PLAYED UPON THE LEAF
world an appearance of having just received its finish-
ing touches of pristine beauty. The scent of the lilies
was overpoweringly sweet. But the whole first im-
pression—before I had time to argue it away—was
that I stood before some mighty chancel steps on the
eve of a secret festival of importance, and that all was
prepared and decorated with a view to the coming
ceremony. The hush was the most delicate and
profound imaginable—almost forbidding. I was a
rude disturber.
Then, without any sound of approaching footsteps,
my hat was lifted from my head, and when I turned
with a sudden start of alarm, there before me stood
Perret “Comment-va,” the Man Who Played upon
the Leaf.
An extraordinary air of dignity hung about him.
His face was stern, yet rapt; something in his eyes
genuinely impressive; and his whole appearance pro-
duced the instant impression—it touched me with a
fleeting sense of awe-that here I had come upon him
in the very act—had surprised this poor, broken being
in some dramatic moment when his soul sought to
find its own peculiar region, and to transform itself
into loveliness through some process of outward
worship.
He handed the hat back to me without a word, and
I understood that I had unwittingly blundered into
the secret place of his strange cult, some shrine, as
it were, haunted doubly by his faith and imagina-
tion, perhaps even into his very Holy of Holies.
His own head, as usual, was bared. I could no
more have covered myself again than I could have
put my hat on in Communion service of my own
church.
“But—this wonderful place—this peace, this
silence I " I murmured, with the best manner of


MAN WHO PLAYED UPON THE LEAF 245
apology for the intrusion I could muster on the
instant. “May I stay a little with you, perhaps—
and see ?”
And his face passed almost immediately, when he
realized that I understood, into that soft and happy
expression the woods invariably drew out upon it—
the look of the soul, complete and healed.
“Hush | " he whispered, his face solemn with the
mystery of the listening trees; “Vous étes un peu en
retard—mais pourtant. . . .”
And lifting the leaf to his lips he played a soft and
whirring music that had for its undercurrent the
sounds of running water and singing wind mingled
exquisitely together. It was half chant, half song,
solemn enough for the dead, yet with a strain of
soaring joy in it that made me think of children and
a perfect faith. The music blessed me, and the
leagues of forest, listening, poured about us all their
healing forces.
I swear it would not have greatly surprised me to
see the shaggy flanks of Pan himself disappearing
behind the moss-grown boulders that lay about the
hollows, or to have caught the flutter of white limbs
as the nymphs stepped to the measure of his tune
through the mosaic of slanting sunshine and shadow
beyond.
Instead, I saw only that picturesque madman play-
ing upon his ivy leaf, and at his feet the faithful dog
staring up without blinking into his face, from time to
time turning to make sure that I listened and under-
stood.
But the desolate places drew him most, and no
distance seemed too great either for himself or his
dog.
In this part of the Jura there is scenery of a sombre


246 MAN WHO PLAYED UPON THE LEAF
and impressive grandeur that, in its way, is quite as
majestic as the revelation of far bigger mountains.
The general appearance of soft blue pine woods is
deceptive. The Boudry cliffs, slashed here and there
with inaccessible couloirs, are undeniably grand, and
in the sweep of the Creux du Van precipices there is
a splendid terror quite as solemn as that of the Matter-
horn itself. The shadows of its smooth, circular walls
deny the sun all day, and the winds, caught within
the 7ooft. sides of its huge amphitheatre, as in the
hollow of some awful cup, boom and roar with the
crying of lost thunders.
I often met him in these lonely fastnesses, wearing
that half-bewildered, half-happy look of the wandering
child; and one day in particular, when I risked my
neck scrambling up the most easterly of the Boudry
couloirs, I learned afterwards that he had spent the
whole time—four hours and more—on the little Champ
de Trémont at the bottom, watching me with his dog
till I arrived in safety at the top. His fellow-wor-
shippers were few, he explained, and worth keeping;
though it was ever inexplicable to me how his poor
damaged eyes performed the marvels of sight they
did.
And another time, at night, when, I admit, no sane
man should have been abroad, and I had lost my way
coming home from a climb along the torn and pre-
cipitous ledges of La Tourne, I heard his leaf thinly
piercing the storm, always in front of me yet never
overtaken, a sure though invisible guide. The cliffs
on that descent are sudden and treacherous. The
torrent of the Areuse, swollen with the melting snows,
thundered ominously far below; and the forests swung
their vast wet cloaks about them with torrents of blind-
ing rain and clouds of darkness—yet all fragrant with
warm wind as a virgin world answering to its first


MAN who PLAYED UPON THE LEAF 247
spring tempest. There he was, the outcast with his
leaf, playing to his God amid all these crashings and
bellowings. . . .
In the night, too, when skies were quiet and stars
a-gleam, or in the still watches before the dawn, I
would sometimes wake with the sound of clustered
branches combing faint music from the gently-rising
wind, and figure to myself that strange, lost creature
wandering with his dog and leaf, his pelerine, his
flying hair, his sweet, rapt expression of an inner
glory, out there among the world of swaying trees he
loved so well. And then my first soft view of the
man would come back to me when I had seen him
in the dusk as a tree; as though by some queer optical
freak my outer and my inner vision had mingled so
that I perceived both his broken body and his soul of
magic.
For the mysterious singing of the leaf, heard in
such moments from my window while the world
slept, expressed absolutely the inmost cry of that
lonely and singular spirit, damaged in the eyes of
the village beyond repair, but in the sight of the
wood-gods he so devoutly worshipped, made whole
with their own peculiar loveliness and fashioned after
the image of elemental things.
The spring wonder was melting into the peace of
the long summer days when the end came. The vine-
yards had begun to dress themselves in green, and
the forest in those soft blues when individual trees
lose their outline in the general body of the moun-
tain. The lake was indistinguishable from the sky;
the Jura peaks and ridges gone a-soaring into misty
distances; the white Alps withdrawn into inaccessible
and remote solitudes of heaven. I was making


248 MAN WHO PLAYED UPON THE LEAF
reluctant preparations for leaving — dark London
already in my thoughts—when the news came. I
forget who first put it into actual words. It had been
about the village all the morning, and something of it
was in every face as I went down the street. But the
moment I came out and saw the dog on my doorstep,
looking up at me with puzzled and beseeching eyes, I
knew that something untoward had happened; and
when he bit at my boots and caught my trousers in
his teeth, pulling me in the direction of the forest, a
sudden sense of poignant bereavement shot through
my heart that I found it hard to explain, and that
must seem incredible to those who have never known
how potent may be the conviction of a sudden
intuition.
I followed the forlorn creature whither it led, but
before a hundred yards lay behind us I had learned
the facts from half-a-dozen mouths. That morning,
very early, before the countryside was awake, the first
mountain train, swiftly descending the steep incline
below Chambrelien, had caught Perret “Comment-va”
just where the Mont Racine sentier crosses the line
on the way to his best-beloved woods, and in one
swift second had swept him into eternity. The spot
was in the direct line he always took to that special
woodland shrine—his Holy Place.
And the manner of his death was characteristic of
what I had divined in the man from the beginning;
for he had given up his life to save his dog—this
mongrel and faithful creature that now tugged so
piteously at my trousers. Details, too, were not
lacking; the engine-driver had not failed to tell the
story at the next station, and the news had travelled up
the mountain-side in the way that all such news travels
—swiftly. Moreover, the woman who lived at the hut


MAN WHO PLAYED UPON THE LEAF 249
beside the crossing, and lowered the wooden barriers
at the approach of all trains, had witnessed the whole
sad scene from the beginning.
And it is soon told. Neither she nor the engine-
driver knew exactly how the dog got caught in the
rails, but both saw that it was caught, and both saw
plainly how the figure of the half-witted wanderer,
hatless as usual and with cape flying, moved deliber-
ately across the line to release it. It all happened in
a moment. The man could only have saved himself
by leaving the dog to its fate. The shrieking whistle
had as little effect upon him as the powerful breaks
had upon the engine in those few available moments.
Yet, in the fraction of a second before the engine
caught them, the dog somehow leapt free, and the
soul of the Man Who Played upon the Leaf passed
into the presence of his God—singing.
As soon as it realized that I followed willingly, the
beastie left me and trotted on ahead, turning every
few minutes to make sure that I was coming. But
I guessed our destination without difficulty. We
passed the Pontarlier railway first, then climbed for
half-an-hour and crossed the mountain line about a
mile above the scene of the disaster, and so eventually
entered the region of the forest, still quivering with
innumerable flowers, where in the shaded heart of trees
we approached the spot of lilies that I knew—the place
where a few weeks before the devout worshipper had
lifted the hat from my head because the earth whereon
I stood was holy ground. We stood in the pillared
gateway of his Holy of Holies. The cool airs, per-
fumed beyond belief, stole out of the forest to meet
us on the very threshold, for the trees here grew so
thickly that only patches of the summer blaze found
an entrance. And this time I did not wait on the out-


250 MAN WHO PLAYED UPON THE LEAF
skirts, but followed my four-footed guide to a group
of mossy boulders that stood in the very centre of the
hollow.
And there, as the dog raised its eyes to mine, soft
with the pain of its great unanswerable question, I
saw in a cleft of the grey rock the ashes of many
hundred fires; and, placed about them in careful array,
an assortment of the sacrifices he had offered, doubt.
less in sharp personal deprivation, to his deity :—bits
of mouldy bread, half-loaves, untouched portions of
cheese, salamé with the skin uncut—most of it exactly
as I had left it in his hut; and last of all, wrapped in
the original white paper, the piece of Colombier
plume-cak', and a row of ten silver francs round the
edge. . . .
I learned afterwards, too, that among the almost
unrecognizable remains on the railway, untouched
by the devouring terror of the iron, they had found
a hand—tightly clasping in its dead fingers a crumpled
ivy leaf. . . .
My efforts to find a home for the dog delayed my
departure, I remember, several days; but in the
autumn when I returned it was only to hear that the
creature had refused to stay with any one, and finally
had escaped into the forest and deliberately starved
itself to death. They found its skeleton, Louis Favre
told me, in a rocky hollow on the lower slopes of
Mont Racine in the direction of Montmollin. But
Louis Favre did not know, as I knew, that this hollow
had received other sacrifices as well, and was conse-
crated ground.
And somewhere, if you search well the Jura slopes
between Champ du Moulin, where Jean-Jacques
Rousseau had his temporary house, and Côtendard
where he visited Lord Wemyss when “Milord


MAN WHO PLAYED UPON THE LEAF 251
Maréchal Keith ” was Governor of the Principality
of Neuchâtel under Frederic II, King of Prussia—
if you look well these haunted slopes, somewhere
between the vineyards and the gleaming limestone
heights, you shall find the forest glade where lie the
bleached bones of the mongrel dog, and the little
village cemetery that holds the remains of the Man
Who Played upon the Leaf to the honour of the
Great God Pan.


<！-- - - - - ~~~~


VIII
THE PRICE OF WIGGINS'S ORGY
I
It happened to be a Saturday when Samuel
Wiggins drew the first cash sum on account of his
small legacy—some twenty pounds, ten in gold and
ten in notes. It felt in his pocket like a bottled-up
prolongation of life. Never before had he seen so
'many dreams within practical reach. It produced in
him a kind of high and elusive exaltation of the
spirit. From time to time he put his hand down to
make the notes crackle and let his fingers play
through the running sovereigns as children play
through sand.
For twenty years he had been secretary to a philan-
thropist interested in feeding—feeding the poor. Soup
kitchens had been the keynote of those twenty years,
the distribution of victuals his sole objective. And
now he had his reward—a legacy of 4, 100 a year for
the balance of his days.
To him it was riches. He wore a shortish frock-
coat, a low, spreading collar, a black made-up tie, and
boots with elastic sides. On this particular day he
wore also a new pair of rather bright yellow leather
gloves. He was unmarried, over forty, bald, plump
in the body, and possessed of a simple and emotional
heart almost childlike. His brown eyes shone in a
face that was wrinkled and dusty—all his dreams
253


THE PRICE OF WIGGINS'S ORGY 255
gentlemen in evening dress—the kind that came to
the philanthropist's table. The roar of voices, eating,
knives and forks, rose about him and filled him with
a certain dismay. It was all rather overwhelming.
“I should have liked a smaller place better,” he
murmured, “but still—” And again he fingered
his money to gain confidence.
The choice of a table was intimidating, for he was
absurdly retiring, was Wiggins; more at home with
papers and the reports of philanthropic societies; his
holidays spent in a boarding-house at Worthing with
his sister and her invalid husband. Then relief came
in the form of a sub-head waiter who, spying his
helplessness, inquired with a bland grandeur of
manner if he “looked perhaps for some one 2"
“Oh, a table, thanks, only a table—”
The man, washing his hands in mid-air, swept
down the crowded aisles and found one without the
least difficulty. It emerged from nowhere so easily
that Wiggins felt he had been a fool not to discover it
alone. He wondered if he ought to tip the man half-
a-crown now or later, but, before he could decide,
another occupied his place, bland and smiling, with
black eyes and plush-like hair, bending low before
him and holding out a large pink programme.
He examined it, feeling that he ought to order
dishes with outlandish names just to show that he
knew his way about. Before he could steady his eye
upon a single line, however, a third waiter, very
youthful, suggested in broken English that Wiggins
should leave his hat, coat and umbrella elsewhere.
This he did willingly, though without grace or dis-
patch, for the yellow gloves stuck ridiculously to his
hands. Then he sat down and turned to the menu
again.
It was a very ordinary restaurant really, in spite


THE PRICE OF WIGGINSS ORGY 257
drink, knowing nothing of wines and vintages. At
luncheon with the philanthropist he sometimes had
a glass of sherry; at Worthing with his sister he
drank beer. But now he wanted something really
good, something generous that would help him to
celebrate. He would have ordered champagne as a
conciliation to the waiter, now positively obsequious,
but some one had told him once that there was not
enough champagne in the world to go round, and that
hotels and restaurants were supplied with “something
rather bad.” Burgundy, he felt, would be more the
thing—rich, sunny, full-bodied.
He studied the wine-card till his head swam. A
waiter, while he was thus engaged, sidled up and
watched him from an angle. Wiggins, looking up
distractedly at the same moment, caught his eye.
Whew It was the Head Waiter himself, a man of
quite infinite presence, who at once bowed himself
forward, and with a gentle but commanding manner
drew his attention to the wines he could “especially
recommend.” Something in the man's face struck
him momentarily as familiar—vaguely familiar—then
passed.
Now Wiggins, as has been said, did not know one
wine from another; but the spirit of his foolish pose
fairly had him by the throat at last, and each time
this condescending individual indicated a new vintage
he shook his head knowingly and shrugged his
shoulders with the air of a connoisseur. This panto-
mime continued for several minutes.
“Something really good, you know,” he mumbled
after a while, determined to justify himself in the
eyes of this high official who was taking such
pains. “A rare wine—er—with body in it.” Then
he added, with a sudden impulse of confidence, “It's
Saturday night, remember 1" And he smiled know-
R


THE PRICE OF WIGGINS'S ORGY 259
Waiter added softly. “A new—a recent member,
then 2 ”
A little non-plussed, a little puzzled, Wiggins
agreed with a nod of the head. He did not know that
head waiters referred to customers as “members.”
For an instant it occurred to him that possibly he
was being mistaken for somebody else. It was really
—but at that moment the oysters arrived. The Head
Waiter said something in rapid Italian to his subordi-
nate—something that obviously increased that plush-
headed person's desire to please—bent over with his
best manner to murmur, “And I will get monsieur
the wine he will like, the right kind of wine !"—and
was gone.
It was a new and delightful sensation. Wiggins,
feeling proud, pleased and important under the effect
of this excellent service and attention, turned to his
oysters. The wine would come presently. And,
meanwhile, the music had begun. . . .
II
He began to enjoy himself thoroughly, and the
wine—still, fragrant, soft—soon ran in his veins and
drove out the last vestige of his absurd shyness.
Behind the palm trees, somewhere out of sight, the
orchestra played soothingly, and if the selections were
somewhat bizarre it made no difference to him. He
drank in the sound just as he drank in the wine—
eagerly. Both fed the consciousness that he was
enjoying himself, and the Danse Macabre gave him
as much pleasure as did the Bohème, the Strauss
Waltz, or Donizetti. Everything—wine, music, food,
people–served to intensify his interest in himself.
R 2


260 THE PRICE OF WIGGINS'S ORGY
He examined his face in the big mirrors and realized
what a dog he was and what a good time he was
having. He watched the other customers, finding
them splendid and distinguished. The whole place
was really fine—he would come again and again,
always ordering the same wine, for it was certainly an
unusual wine, as the Head Waiter had called it, “the
right kind.” The price of it he never asked, for in
his pocket lay the price of a whole case. His hand
slipped down to finger the sovereigns—hot and
slippery now—and the notes, somewhat moist and
crumpled. . . . The needles of the big staring clock
meanwhile swung onwards. . . .
Thus, aided by the tactful and occasional super-
intendence of the Head Waiter from a distance, the
evening passed along in a happy rush of pleasurable
emotion. The half-partridge had vanished, and Wig-
gins toyed now with a wonderful-looking “sweet”—
the most expensive he could find. He did not eat much
of it, but liked to see it on his plate. The wine helped
things enormously. He had ordered another half-
bottle some time ago, delighted to find that it exhilar-
ated without confusing him. And every one else in
the place was enjoying himself in the same way. He
was thrilled to discover this.
Only one thing jarred a little. A very big man,
with a round, clean-shaven face inclined to fatness,
stared at him more than he cared about from a table
in the corner diagonally across the room. He had
only come in half-an-hour ago. His face was some-
how or other dog-like—something between a boar-
hound and a pup, Wiggins thought. Each time he
looked up the fellow's large and rather fierce eyes were
fixed upon him, then lingeringly withdrawn. It was
unpleasant to be stared at in this way by an offensive
physiognomy.


THE PRICE OF WIGGINSS ORGY 261
But most of the time he was too full of personal
visions conjured up by the wine to trouble long about
external matters. His head was simply brimming
over with thoughts and ideas—about himself, about
soup-kitchens, feeding the poor, the change of life
effected by the legacy, and a thousand other details.
Once or twice, however, in sharp, clear moments when
the tide of alcohol ebbed a little, other questions
assailed him : Why should the Head Waiter have
become so obsequious and attentive 2 What was it
in his face that seemed familiar 2 What was there
about the remark “It's Saturday evening" to change
his manner 2 And—what was it about the dinner,
the restaurant and the music that seemed just a little
out of the ordinary 2
Or was he merely thinking nonsense? And was it
his imagination that this man stared so oddly 2 The
alcohol rushed deliciously in his veins.
The vague uneasiness, however, was a passing
matter, for the orchestra was tearing madly through
a Csardas, and his thoughts and feelings were swept
away in the wild rhythm. He drank his bottle out
and ordered another. Was it the second or the third 2
He could not remember. Counting always made his
head ache. He did not care anyhow. “Let 'er go!
I'm enjoying myself I've got a fat legacy—money
lying in the bank—money I haven't earned ' " The
carefulness of years was destroyed in as many minutes.
“That music's simply spiffing !”
Then he glanced up and caught the clean-shaven
face bearing down upon him across the shimmering
room like the muzzle of a moving gun. He tried to
meet it, but found he could not focus it properly.
The same moment he saw that he was mistaken; the
man was merely staring at him. Two faces swam
and wobbled into one. This movement, and the ap-


262 THE PRICE OF WIGGINSS ORGY
pearance of coming towards him, were both illusions
produced by the alcohol. He drank another glass
quickly to steady his vision—and then another. .
“I’ll call for my bill. Itshtime to go. . . . . .” he
murmured aloud later, with a very deep sigh. He
looked about him for the waiter, who instantly
appeared—with coffee and liqueurs, however.
“Dear me, yes. Qui' forgot I or'ered those,” he
observed offhand, smiling in the man's face, willing
and anxious to say a lot of things, but not quite
certain what.
“My bill,” was what he said finally, “mush
b'off "
The waiter laughed pleasantly, but very politely,
in reply. Wiggins, repeated his remark about his
bill.
“Oh, that will be all right, sir,” returned the man,
as though no such thing as payment was ever heard
of in this restaurant. It was rather confusing. Wig-
gins laughed to himself, drank his liqueur and forgot
about everything except the ballet music of Délibes
the strings were sprinkling in a silver shower about
the hall. His mind ran after them through the
glittering air.
“Just fancy if I could catch 'em and take 'em home
in a bunch,” he said to himself, immensely pleased.
He was enjoying himself hugely by now.
And then, suddenly, he became aware that the place
was rapidly thinning, lights being lowered, good-
nights being said, and that everybody seemed—
drunk.
“P'rapsh they've all got legacies ' " he thought,
flushing with excitement.
He rose unsteadily to his feet and was delighted
to find that he was not in the least—drunk. He at
once respected himself.


THE PRICE OF WIGGINS'S ORGY 263
“Itsh really 'spusting that fellows can't stop when
they've had 'nough ' " he murmured, making his way
with steps that required great determination towards
the door, and remembering before he got halfway
that he had not paid his bill. Turning in a half-circle
that brought an unnecessary quantity of the room
round with him, he made his way back, lost his way,
fumbled about in the increasing gloom, and found
himself face to face with the-Head Waiter. The
unexpected meeting braced him astonishingly. The
dignity of the man had curiously increased.
“I'm looking for my bill,” observed Wiggins
thickly, wondering for the twentieth time of whom the
man's face reminded him; “you haven't seen it about
anywhere, I shuppose ?” He sat down with more
dignity than he could have supposed possible and
produced a £5 note from his pocket, the lining of the
pocket coming out with it like a dirty glove.
Most of the guests had gone out by this time, and
the big hall was very dark. Two lights only re-
mained, and these, reflected from mirror to mirror,
made its proportions seem vast and unreal. They flew
from place to place, too, distressingly—these lights.
“Half-a-crown will settle that, sir,” replied the man,
with a respectful bow.
“Nonshense !” replied the other. “Why, I ordered
Lancashire hotch-potch, grilled shole, a-a bird or
something of the kind, and the wine—”
“I beg your pardon, sir, but—if you will permit
me to say so—the others will soon be here now, and—
as there will be a specially large attendance, perhaps
you would like to make sure of your place.” He
pocketed the half-crown with a bow, pointed to the
far, dim corner of the room, and stepped aside a
little to make space for Wiggins to pass.
And Wiggins did pass—though it is not quite clear


264 THE PRICE OF WIGGINS'S ORGY
how he managed to dodge the flying tables. With
deep sighs, hot, confused and puzzled, but too obfus-
cated to understand what it was all about, he obeyed
the directions, at the same time wondering uneasily
how it was he had forgotten what was a-foot. He
wandered towards the end of the hall with the un-
certainty of a butterfly that makes many feints before
it settles. . . . At a vast distance off the Head Waiter
was moving to close the main doors, utterly oblivious
now of his existence. He felt glad of that. Some-
thing about that fellow was disagreeable—downright
nasty. This suddenly came over him with a flood of
conviction. The man was more than peculiar: he
was sinister. . . . The air smelt horribly of cooked
food, tobacco smoke, breathing crowds, scented
women and the rest. Whiffs of it, hot and foetid,
brought him a little to his senses. . . . Then sud-
denly he noticed that the big man with the face that
was dark and smooth like the muzzle of a cannon,
was watching him keenly from a table on the other
side where an electric light still burned.
“By George ' There he is again, that feller
Wonder whatsh he's smiling at me for. Looking
for’sh bill too, p'raps— Now, in a Soup Kishen
nothing of the kind 22
He bowed in return, smiling insolently, holding
. steady by a chair to do so. He shoved and
tumbled his way on into the shadows, half-mingling
with the throng passing out into the street. Then,
making a sharp turn back into the rôom unobserved,
he took a few uncertain steps and collapsed silently
and helplessly upon a chair that was hidden behind
a big palm-tree in a dark corner.
And the last thing he remembered as he sank, bone-
less, like soft hay, into that corner was that the sham
palm-tree bowed towards him, then ran off into the


THE PRICE OF WIGGINS'S ORGY 265
ceiling, and from that elevation, which in no way
diminished its size, bowed to him yet again. . . .
It was just after his eyes closed that the door in the
gilt panelling at the end of the room softly opened
and a woman entered on tiptoe. She was followed
by other women and several girls; these, again, from
time to time, by men, all dressed in black, all silent,
and all ushered by the majestic Head Waiter to their
places. The big man with the face like a gun-muzzle
superintended. And each individual, on entering,
was held there at the secret doorway until a certain
sentence had passed his lips. Evidently a password:
“It is Saturday night,” said the one being admitted,
“and we close early,” replied the Head Waiter and the
big man. And then the door was closed until the
next soft tapping came.
But Wiggins, plunged in the stupor of the first
sleep, knew none of all this. His frock-coat was
bunched about his neck, his black tie under his ear,
his feet resting higher than his head. He looked
like a collapsed air-ship in a hedge, and he snored
heavily.
III
It was about an hour later when he opened his eyes,
climbed painfully and heavily to his feet, staggered
back against the wall utterly bewildered—and stared.
At the far end of the great hall, its loftiness now dim,
was a group of people. The big mirrors on all sides
reflected them with the effect of increasing their
numbers indefinitely. They stood and sat upon an
improvised platform. The electric lights, shaded
with black, dropped a pale glitter upon their faces.
They were systematically grouped, the big man in the


266 THE PRICE OF WIGGINSS ORGY
centre, the Head Waiter at a small table just behind
him. The former was speaking in low, measured
toneS.
In his dark and distant corner Wiggins first of all
seized the carafe and quenched his feverish thirst.
Next he advanced slowly and with the utmost caution
to a point nearer the group where he could hear what
was being said. He was still a good deal confused
in mind, and had no idea what the hour was or what
he had been doing in the meantime. There were
some twenty or thirty people, he saw, of both sexes,
well dressed, many of them distinguished in appear-
ance, and all wearing black; even their gloves were
black; some of the women, too, wore black veils—
very thick. But in all the faces without exception
there was something—was it about the lips and
mouths?—that was peculiar and—repellent.
Obviously this was a meeting of some kind. Some
society had hired the hall for a private gathering.
Wiggins, understanding this, began to feel awkward.
He did not wish to intrude; he had no right to listen;
yet to make himself known was to betray that he was
still very considerably intoxicated. The problem
presented itself in these simple terms to his dazed
intelligence. He was also aware of another fact :
about these black-robed people there was something
which made him secretly and horribly—afraid.
The big man with the smooth face like a gun-muzzle
sat down after a softly-uttered speech, and the group,
instead of applauding with their hands, waved black
handkerchiefs. The fluttering sound of them trickled
along the wastes of hall towards the concealed eaves-
dropper. Then the Head Waiter rose to introduce
the next speaker, and the instant Wiggins saw him
he understood what it was in his face that was familiar.
For the false beard no longer adorned his lips, the


THE PRICE OF WIGGINSS ORGY 267
wig that altered the shape of his forehead and the
appearance of his eyes had been removed, and the
likeness he bore to the philanthropist, Wiggins's late
employer, was too remarkable to be ignored. Wig-
gins just repressed a cry, but a low gasp apparently
did escape him, for several members of the group
turned their heads in his direction and stared.
The Head Waiter, meanwhile, saved him from im-
mediate discovery by beginning to speak. The words
were plainly audible, and the resemblance of the voice
to that other voice he knew now to be stopped with
dust, was one of the most dreadful experiences he
had ever known. Each word, each trick of expression
came as a new and separate shock.
-- ... and the learned Doctor will say a few
words upon the rationale of our subject,” he con-
cluded, turning with a graceful bow to make room
for a distinguished-looking old gentleman who ad-
vanced shambling from the back of the improvised
platform.
What Wiggins then heard—in somewhat disjointed
sentences owing to the buzzing in his ears—was at
first apparently meaningless. Yet it was freighted,
he knew, with a creeping and sensational horror that
would fully reveal itself the instant he discovered the
clue. The old clever-faced scoundrel was saying vile
things. He knew it. But the key to the puzzle being
missing, he could not quite guess what it was all
about. The Doctor, gravely and with balanced
phrases, seemed to be speaking of the fads of the day
with regard to food and feeding. He ridiculed
vegetarianism, and all the other is ms. He said that
one and all were based upon ignorance and fallacy,
declaring that the time had at last come in the history
of the race when a rational system of feeding was a
paramount necessity. The physical and psychical


268 THE PRICE OF WIGGINS'S ORGY
conditions of the times demanded it, and the Soul of
man could never be emancipated until it was adopted.
He himself was proud to be one of the founders of
their audacious and secret Society, revolutionary
and pioneer in the best sense, to which so many of
the medical fraternity now belonged, and so many of
the brave women too, who were in the van of the
feminist movements of the times. He said a great
deal in this vein. Wiggins, listening in growing
amazement and uneasiness, waited for the clue to it
all.
In conclusion, the speaker referred solemnly to the
fact that there was a stream of force in their Society
which laid them open to the melancholy charge of
being called “hysterical.” “But after all,” he cried,
with rising enthusiasm and in accents that rang down
the hall, “a Society without hysteria is a dull Society,
just as a woman without hysteria is a dull woman.
Neither the Society nor the woman need yield to the
tendency; but that it is present potentially infers the
faculty, so delicious in the eyes of all sane men—the
faculty of running to extremes. It is a sign of life,
and of very vivid life. It is not for nothing, dear
friends, that we are named the –” But the buzzing
in Wiggins's ears was so loud at this moment that
he missed the name. It sounded to him something
between “Can-I-believes" and “Camels,” but for the
life of him he could not overtake the actual word.
The Doctor had uttered it, moreover, in a lowered
voice—a suddenly lowered voice. . . . When the
noise in his ears had passed he heard the speaker
bring his address to an end in these words: “. . . and
I will now ask the secretaries to make their reports
from their various sections, after which, I understand"
—his tone grew suddenly thick and clouded—“we are
to be regaled with a collation—a sacramental colla-
-


THE PRICE OF WIGGINSS ORGY 269
tion—of the usual kind. . . .” His voice hushed
away to nothing. His mouth was working most
curiously. A wave of excitement unquestionably ran
over the faces of the others. Their mouths also
worked oddly. Dark and sombre things were afoot
in that hall.
Wiggins crouched a little lower behind the edge of
the overhanging table-cloth and listened. He was
perspiring now, but there were touches of icy horror
fingering about in the neighbourhood of his heart.
His mental and physical discomfort were very great,
for the conviction that he was about to witness some
dreadful scene—black as the garments of the partici-
pants in it—grew rapidly within him. He devised
endless plans for escape, only to reject them the
instant they were formed. There was no escape
possible. He had to wait till the end.
A charming young woman was on her feet, ad-
dressing the audience in silvery tones; sweet and
comely she was, her beauty only marred by that
singular leer that visited the lips and mouths of all
of them. The flesh of his back began to crawl as
he listened. He would have given his whole year's
legacy to be out of it, for behind that voice of silver
and sweetness there crowded even to her lips the rush
of something that was unutterable—loathsome. Wig-
gins felt it. The uncertainty as to its exact nature
only added to his horror and distress.
“. . . . so this question of supply, my friends,” she
was saying, “is becoming more and more difficult.
It resolves itself into a question of ways and means.”
She looked round upon her audience with a touch of
nervous apprehension before she continued. “In my
particular sphere of operations—West Kensington—
I have regretfully to report that the suspicions and
activity of the police, the foolish, old-fashioned police,


270 THE PRICE OF WIGGINS'S ORGY
have now rendered my monthly contributions no
longer possible. There have been too many disap-
pearances of late—” She paused, casting her
eyes down. Wiggins felt his hair rise, drawn by a
shivery wind. The words “contributions” and “dis-
appearances" brought with them something quite
freezing.
“. . . . As you know,” the girl resumed, “it is to
the doctors that we must look chiefly for our steadier
supplies, and unfortunately in my sphere of opera-
tions we have but one doctor who is a member. . . .
I do not like to—to resign my position, but I must
ask for lenient consideration of my failure”—her voice
sank lower still—“. . . my failure to furnish to-night
the materials—” She began to stammer and hesi-
tate dreadfully; her voice shook; an ashen pallor
spread to her very lips. “. . . the elements for our
customary feast—”
A movement of disapproval ran over the audience
like a wave; murmurs of dissent and resentment were
heard. As the girl paled more perceptibly the sin-
gular beauty of her face stood out with an effect
of almost shining against that dark background of
shadows and black garments. In spite of himself, and
forgetting caution for the moment, Wiggins peeped
over the edge of the table to see her better. She was
a lady, he saw, high-bred and spirited. That pallor,
and the timidity it bespoke, was but evidence of a
highly sensitive nature facing a situation of peculiar
difficulty—and danger. He read in her attitude, in
the poise of that slim figure standing there before
disapproval and possible disaster, the bearing and
proud courage of a type that would face execution
with calmness and dignity. Wiggins was amazed
that this thought should flash through him so vividly
—from nowhere. Born of the feverish aftermath of


THE PRICE OF WIGGINS'S ORGY 271
alcohol, perhaps—yet born inevitably, too, of this
situation before his eyes.
With a thrill he realized that the girl was speaking
again, her voice steady, but faint with the gravity of
her awful position.
“. ... and I ask for that justice in consideration
of my failure which—the difficulties of the position
demand. I have had to choose between that bold and
ill-considered action which might have betrayed us
all to the authorities, and—the risk of providing
nothing for to-night.”
She sat down. Wiggins understood that it was a
question of life and death. The air about him turned
icy. He felt the perspiration trickling on several
different parts of his body at once.
An old lady rose instantly to reply; her face was
stern and dreadful, although the signature of breeding
and culture was plainly there in the delicate lines
about the nostrils and forehead. Her mien held
something implacable. She was dressed in black silk
that rustled, and she was certainly well over sixty;
but what made Wiggins squirm there in his narrow
hiding-place was the extraordinary resemblance she
bore to Mrs. Sturgis, the superintendent of one of his
late employer's soup kitchens. It was all diabolically
grotesque. She glanced round upon the group of
members, who clearly regarded her as a leader. The
machinery of the whole dreadful scene then moved
quicker.
“Then are we to understand from the West Ken-
sington secretary,” she began in firm, even tones,
“that for to-night there is—nothing?" The young
girl bowed her head without rising from her chair.
“I beg to move, then, Mr. Chairman,” continued
the terrible old lady in iron accents, “that the cus-
tomary procedure be followed, and that a Committee


272 THE PRICE OF WIGGINSS ORGY
of Three be appointed to carry it into immediate
effect.” The words fell like bomb-shells into the
deserted spaces of the hall.
“I second the motion,” was heard in a man's voice.
“Those in favour of the motion will show their
hands,” announced the big chairman with the clean-
shaven face.
Several score of black-gloved hands waved in the
air, with the effect of plumes upon a jolting hearse.
“And those who oppose it?”
No single hand was raised. An appalling hush fell
upon the group.
“I appoint Signor Carnamorte as chairman of the
sub-committee, with power to choose his associates,"
said the big man. And the “Head Waiter” bowed
his acceptance of the duty imposed upon him. There
was at once then a sign of hurried movement, and
the figure of the young girl was lost momentarily to
view as several members surged round her. The next
instant they fell away and she stood clear, her hands
bound. Her voice, soft as before but very faint, was
audible through the hush.
“I claim the privilege belonging to the female mem-
bers of the Society,” she said calmly; “the right to
find, if possible, a substitute.”
“Granted,” answered the chairman gravely. “The
customary ten minutes will be allowed you in which
to do so Meanwhile, the preparations must proceed
in the usual way.”
With a dread that ate all other emotions, Wiggins
watched keenly from his concealment, and the pre-
parations that he saw in progress, though simple
enough in themselves, filled him with a sense of ulti-
mate horror that was freezing. The Committee of
Three were very busy with something at the back of
the improvised platform, something that was heavy
~


THE PRICE OF WIGGINSS ORGY 273
and, on being touched, emitted a metallic and sonorous
ring. As in the strangling terror and heat of night-
mare the full meaning of events is often kept concealed
until the climax, so Wiggins knew that this simple
sound portended something that would only be re-
vealed to him later—something appalling as Satan—
sinister as the grave. That ring of metal was the Gong
of Death. He heard it in his own heart, and the
shock was so great that he could not prevent an actual
physical movement. His jerking leg drove sharply
against a chair. The chair—squeaked.
The sound pierced the deep silence of the big hall
with so shrill a note that of course everybody heard it.
Wiggins, expecting to have the whole crew of these
black-robed people about his ears, held his breath in
an agony of suspense. All those pairs of eyes, he
felt, were searching the spot where he lay so thinly
hidden by the table-cloth. But no steps came towards
him. A voice, however, spoke : the voice of the girl :
she had heard the sound and had divined its cause.
“Loosen my bonds,” she cried, “for there is some
one yonder among the shadows. I have found a sub-
stitute 1 And—I swear to Heaven—he is plump!”
The sentence was so extraordinary, that Wiggins
felt a spring of secret merriment touched somewhere
deep within him, and a gush of uncontrollable
laughter came up in his throat so suddenly that before
he could get his hand to his mouth, it rang down the
long dim hall and betrayed him beyond all question
of escape. Behind it lay the strange need of violent
expression. He had to do something. The life of
this slender and exquisite girl was in danger. And
the nightmare strain of the whole scene, the hints and
innuendoes of a dark purpose, the implacable nature
of the decree that threatened so fair a life—all resulted
in a pressure that was too much for him. Had he not
s
-


THE PRICE OF WIGGINS'S ORGY 275
stealthily down the empty aisles between the tables.
He saw their forms advance and shift by the gleam
of the lamps beneath the awful cauldron. With the
advance came, too, the sound of rushing, eager
breathing. He imagined, though he could not see,
those evil mouths a-working. And at this moment the
subconscious part of him that had kept the secret all
this time, suddenly revealed in letters of flame the
name of the Society which fifteen minutes before he
had failed to catch. The subconscious self, that
supreme stage manager, that arch conspirator, rose
and struck him in the face as it were out of the dark-
ness, so that he understood, with a shock of nauseous
terror, the terrible nature of the net in which he was
caught.
For this Secret Society, meeting for their awful
rites in a great public restaurant of mid-London, were
maniacs of a rare and singular description—vilely mad
on one point but sane on all the rest. They were
Cannibals l
Never before had he run with such speed, agility
and recklessness; never before had he guessed that
he could leap tables, clear chairs with the flying man-
ner of a hurdle race, and dodge palms and flower-pots
as an athlete of twenty dodges collisions in the football
field. But in each dark corner where he sought a
temporary refuge, the electric light on the wall above
immediately sprang into brilliance, one of the crew
having remained by the switchboard to control this
diabolically ingenious method of keeping him ever
in sight.
For a long time, however, he evaded his crowding
and clumsy pursuers. It was a vile and ghastly
chase. His flying frock-coat streamed out behind
him, and he felt the elastic side of his worn boots split
S 2


276 THE PRICE OF WIGGINSS ORGY
under the unusual strain of the twisting, turning
ankles as he leaped and ran. His pursuers, it
seemed, sought to prolong the hunt on purpose. The
passion of the chase was in their blood. Round and
round that hall, up and down, over tables and under
chairs, behind screens, shaking the handles of doors
—all immovable, past gleaming dish-covers on the
wheeled joint-tables, taking cover by swing doors,
curtains, palms, everything and anything, Wiggins
flew for his life from the pursuing forces of a horrible
death.
And at last they caught him. Breathless and ex-
hausted, he collapsed backwards against the wall in
a dark corner. But the light instantly flashed out
above him. He lay in full view, and in another
second the advancing horde—he saw their eyes and
mouths so close—would be upon him, when some-
thing utterly unexpected happened : his head in fall-
ing struck against a hard projecting substance and—
a bell rang sharply out. It was a telephone !
How he ever managed to get the receiver to his lips,
or why the answering exchange came so swiftly he
does not pretend to know. He had just time to shout,
“Help! help ! Send police X. . . Restaurant
Murder I Cannibals | " when he was seized violently
by the collar, his arms and legs grasped by a dozen
pairs of hands, and a struggle began that he knew
from the start must prove hopeless.
The fact that help might be on the way, however,
gave him courage. Wiggins smashed right and left,
screamed, kicked, bit and butted. His frock coat was
ripped from his back with a whistling tear of cloth
and lining, and he found himself free at the edge of
a group that clawed and beat everywhere about him.
The dim light was now in his favour. He shot down
the hall again like a hare, leaping tables on the way,


THE PRICE OF WIGGINSS ORGY 277
and flinging dish-covers, carafes, menus at the pur-
suing crowd as fast as he could lay hands upon them.
Then came a veritable pandemonium of smashed
glass and crockery, while a grip of iron caught his
arms behind and pinioned them beyond all possibility
of moving. Turning quickly, he found himself look-
ing straight into the eyes of a big blue policeman,
the door into the street open beside him. The crowd
became at once inextricably mixed up and jumbled
together. The chairman, and the girl who was to
have been eaten, melted into a single person. The
philanthropist and the old lady slid into each other.
It was a horrible bit of confusion. He felt deadly
sick and dizzy. Everything dropped away from his
sight then, and darkness tore up round him from the
carpet. He remembered nothing more for a long
tline.
Perhaps the most vivid recollection of what occurred
afterwards—he remembers it to this day, and his
memory may be trusted, for he never touched wine
again—was the weary smile of the magistrate, and
the still more weary voice as he said in the court two
days later—
“Forty shillings, and be bound over to keep the
peace in two sureties for six months. And 4.5 to the
proprietor of the restaurant to pay damages for the
broken windows and crockery. Next case. . . . . "





280 CARLTON'S DRIVE
He was somewhere about thirty, his nerves shat-
tered by the savagery of concentrated fast living, his
system too exhausted to respond even to unusual
stimulant, when he found himself one early spring
morning on the pavement beside St. George's Hos-
pital. He had been up all night, and was making
his way homewards on foot, his pockets stuffed with
the proceeds of lucky gambling; and how he hap-
pened to be standing at that particular spot, watching
the traffic, at eight in the morning, is not clear.
Probably, seduced by the sweetness of the air, he
had wandered, driven by gusts of mood as by gusts
of wind. Though he had drunk steadily since mid-
night he was not so much intoxicated as fuddled—
stupid. He was on the south corner, where the 'buses
stop in their journey westwards. The sun poured
a flood of light down Piccadilly; the street was brisk
with pedestrians going to work; the hospital side-
entrance behind him already astir. Across the road
the trees in the park shimmered in a wave of fluttering
green. The pride of life was in the June air. In his
own heart, however, was a loathsome satiety—sign of
the first death.
In a line with the trees opposite stood a solitary
hansom. A faint surprise that it should be there
at such an hour jostled in his sodden brain with the
idea that he might as well drive home—when, sud-
denly, he became aware that the man perched on
the box was looking at him across the street with a
fixity of manner that was both singular and offensive.
Carlton felt his own gaze, blear-eyed and troubled,
somehow caught and held — uncomfortably. The
other's eyes were fastened upon his own—had been
fastened for some time—sinisterly, and with a pur-
pose. Just at this moment, however, a sharp spasm
of pain and faintness, due to exhaustion and debauch,


CARLTON'S DRIVE 281
shot through him, so that he reeled, half stagger-
ing, and, before he quite knew what he was doing,
he had nodded to the driver, and saw that the horse
was already turning with clattering hoofs to cross the
slippery street. A minute later he had climbed heavily
in, noticing vaguely that the driver wore all black,
the horse was black, and on the whip was a strip
of crêpe that fluttered in the breeze. As he got in,
too, the effort strained him. But, more than that,
something that was cold and terrible—“like a hand
of ragged steel,” he described it afterwards—clutched
at his heart. It puzzled him; but he was too “done"
to think; and he lurched back wearily on the cushions
as the horse started forward with the jerkiness of long
habit.
“Same address, sir?” the man called down through
the trap. His voice was harsh “like iron"; and
Carlton, supposing that he recognized a fare, replied
testily, “Of course, you fool! And let her rip—to
the devil " The spasm of strange pain had passed.
He only felt tired to brokenness, sick with his corrupt
and unsatisfying life, a dull, incomprehensible anger
burning in him against the world, the driver—and
himself.
The hansom swung forwards over the smooth, un-
crowded streets like a ship with a breeze behind her,
for the horse was fresh, and the man drove well. He
took off his opera hat and let the cool wind fan his face.
That drive of a mile to his rooms was the most
..soothing and restful he had ever known. But, after
a while, braced, perhaps, by the morning wind, he
began to notice that they were following a strange
route through streets he did not recognize. He had
been lolling in the corner with half-closed eyes; now
he sat up and looked about him. Time had passed.
He ought to have reached home long ago. They


282 CARLTON'S DEIVE
were going at a tremendous and unholy pace, too.
He poked open the trap sharply.
“Hi, hil" he called out angrily; “are you drunk?
Where, in the name of are you driving to?”
“It's all right, sir; it's the shortest way. The
usual roads are closed.”
The man's voice—deep, with a curious rumbling
note—had such conviction and authority in it that
Carlton accepted the explanation with a growl and
flung himself back into his soft corner. Again,
however, for a single second, that cold thing of steel
moved horribly in his heart. He felt as if the
“ragged hand” had given it another twist. Then it
passed, and he gave himself up to the swinging
motion of the drive. The hansom tore along now;
it was delightful. Curious, though, that all the
known streets should be “up" | Positively the
houses were getting less, as though he was driving
out into the country. Perhaps, too, the feeling of
laisser aller that came over him was caused by some
inhibition of the will due to prolonged excesses.
Carlton admits it was unlike his normal self not to
force the man to drive where he wanted; but he felt
lulled, lazy, indifferent. “Let the fool take his own
way ! ” his thought ran; “I shan’t pay him any
more for it !” . . .
Somebody was waving to him from the pavement
with a coloured parasol—a girl he knew, one of his
sort; gay and smiling, tripping along quickly. With
a momentary surprise that she should be thus early
astir, he smiled through the window and waved his
hand. It gave him pleasure to see she was going in
the same direction as himself. The instant he passed
her the horse leaped forward with increased speed, so
that the hansom rattled, shaking him a little as it
lurched from side to side.


CARLTON'S DRIVE 283
“Steady on, idiot!” he shouted, “or you'll smash
me up before I get to the end ' " And he was just
going to bang open the trap and swear, when his
attention was caught by another salutation from the
pavement. It was a man this time—running hard;
a man who played, drank, and the rest of it even
harder than himself, a man who shared his trips to
Paris. He was radiant and gesticulating. “Good
journey, old man " he heard him cry as the hansom
shot past; “Hurry up ! We're coming, too ! We
shall be there together " Carlton did not quite like
this greeting. It reminded him for a second that he
was a bit uncertain where the mad driver was heading
for. It gave him a passing uneasiness—almost im-
mediately forgotten, however. The pace was too
delicious to bring to an end just yet. Presently he
would call the fellow to order with a vengeance, but
meanwhile—“let her rip!" His friends were all
going the same way; it must be all right. His
thoughts, he admits, were somewhat mixed; for great
speed destroys calm judgment; it exhilarated, but it
also bewildered. The pace, assuredly, had something
to do with his mental confusion, for it was terrific.
Yet he saw on the pavement, from time to time, more
friends and acquaintances, and somehow at the
moment it did not strike him as too peculiar that they
should be there, all moving hurriedly in the same
direction. He had an odd feeling that they all knew
of some destination agreed upon ; that he, too, knew
it; but that it was not “playing the game" to admit
that he knew. Yet about some of them—their hurried
steps, their gay faces, their waving hands—there was
a queer fugitive suggestion of sadness, even of fear.
One or two touched the source of horror in him even.
It hardly surprised him that the horse, steaming and
sweating, should start forward with a frightened leap


284 CARLTON'S DRIVE
as each figure in turn was sighted and left behind.
Probably he was himself too much a part of the wild,
exhilarating rush to realize how singular it was.
Certainly, it seemed as though some faculty of his
mind was supended during that drive.
But at last, after passing another friend, the horse
gave a leap that really frightened him, flinging him
against the boards. It was a man, twice his own age,
who more than any other had helped him in his evil
living, not by doing likewise, but by smothering his
first remorse with a smile and a sentence: “Of course,
my boy, sow your wild oats | You'll settle down
later. No man is worth his salt who hasn't sown his
wild oats | " He was sliding along—a kind of crawl,
with something loathsome in his motion that sug-
gested the reptile. Carlton nodded to him. The same
second the horse gave its terrible bound. The whip
for the first time slashed down across its flanks. He
saw the strip of crêpe, black against the green and
sunny landscape. For by now all houses were left
behind, and they were rushing at a mad pace along
a broad country road, growing momentarily steeper,
and—downhill.
At the same moment he caught his own face in the
glass. To his utter horror he saw that a black veil,
crêpe-like, hung over the upper part, already hiding
the eyes, and that it was moving downwards, slowly
creeping. The hand of steel turned again within
him. He knew that it was Death.
Yet, most singular of all, he instantly found in
himself the power to believe it was not there. His
hand brushed it off. His face was young, clean, and
smiling once more. . . . And now the hansom flew.
The horse was running away; he heard the driver
shouting to it, and the shouting sounded like a song.
The man was drunk after all. Mingled with his song,


CARLTON'S DRIVE 285
too, came a confused murmur of voices behind—far
away. What in the world did it all mean 2 Dashing
aside the little curtain he looked back out of the win-
dow, and the first thing he saw was a face pressed close
against the glass, staring straight into his eyes with
a beseeching, pitiful expression. Good God It was
the face of his mother. He swore; the face melted
away—and he then saw that the whole country behind
him was black, and through it, down the darkened
road, ran the figures he had passed. But how
changed The girl was no longer gay and smiling;
her face was old, streaked with evil, and with one
hand she clutched her heart as she ran—trying in vain
to stop. Behind her were the others—worn and
broken, with bloodshot eyes and toothless gums, all
grinning dreadfully, all racing down the ever-steep-
ening descent, yet all trying frantically to stop. One
or two, however, still ran with a brave show as if
they wished to; debonair, holding themselves with a
certain appearance of dignity and pleasure. And
some—the old man of the “wild oats” sentence at
their head—were close upon the hansom, pushing it.
. . . The face of his mother slid once again upon the
glass, between their evil, outstretched hands and him-
self, but less close, less visible than before. .
Carlton knew a spasm of pain that was terrible. He
sat up. He flung open the doors, and his eyes
measured the leap. But the faculty of mind that had
all the time been in suspension returned a little, and
he saw that to jump was impossible. He smashed
the trap open with his fist and cried out, “Stop ! I
tell you, stop !”
“Can't stop here, sir,” the driver answered, peering
down at him out of the square opening that let
in—darkness. “It’s not allowed. It's not usual,
either.”


286 CARLTON'S DRIVE
“Stop, I say,” thundered Carlton, trying to rise and
strike him.
But the driver laughed through that square of black-
neSS.
“Can't be done, sir. You told me “same address.”
There's no stopping now !”
Carlton's clenched fist was close to the man's eyes
when the fingers grew limp and opened. He sank
back upon the seat again. The face peering down
upon him was—his own.
And in this supreme moment it was that some secret
reserve of soul, hitherto untainted—stirred into life,
he declares, by the sight of his mother's face at the
window—rose and offered itself to him. He accepted
it. His will moved in its sleep and woke.
“But I say you shall stop 1" he cried, catching the
reins in both hands, and, when they snapped, seizing
the rims, and even the spokes, of the wheels. His
great strength acted like a brake. The hansom reeled,
shook, then slackened. It was a most curious thing,
but the force that twisted his heart with its hand of
“ragged steel ” seemed to lend him its power. His
will moved and gripped; the machinery groaned, but
worked. Carlton did nothing by halves; he put his
life into his efforts; the skin was torn like paper from
his hands. The hansom stopped with a trembling
jerk and flung him out upon his face in the mud. And
the same second he saw the horse and driver, both
torn from their fastenings, whirled past him over-
head to disappear into a gulf that yawned dreadfully
under his very eyes, blacker than night, deeper than
all things. . . .
And when, at length, he rose to his feet, he found
that he was tied with bands of iron to the shafts.
Slowly, with vast efforts, groaning and sweating, he
turned and began painfully to reclimb the huge and


CARLTON'S DRIVE 287
toilsome ascent, dragging the awful weight behind
him . . . towards the Light.
For the glare that suddenly broke through the sky
was the sunshine coming through the windows of
the hospital room—St. George's Hospital—where they
had carried him when he fainted on the pavement
half-an-hour before.





X
THE ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON
PARNACUTE
I
It was one of those mornings in early spring when
even the London streets run beauty. The day, pass-
ing through the sky with clouds of flying hair,
touched every one with the magic of its own irre-
sponsible gaiety, as it alternated between laughter
and the tears of sudden showers.
In the parks the trees, faintly clothed with gauze,
were busying themselves shyly with the thoughts of
coming leaves. The air held a certain sharpness,
but the sun swam through the dazzling blue spaces
with bursts of almost summer heat; and a wind,
straight from the haunted south, laid its soft per-
suasion upon all, bringing visions too fair to last—
long thoughts of youth, of cowslip-meadows, white
sails, waves on yellow sand, and other pictures in-
numerable and enchanting.
So potent, indeed, was this spell of awakening
spring that even Simon Parnacute, retired Professor
of Political Economy—elderly, thin-faced, and rumin-
ating in his big skull those large questions that
concern the polity of nations—formed no exception
to the general rule. For, as he slowly made his way
down the street that led from his apartment to the
Little Park, he was fully aware that this magic of the
spring was in his own blood too, and that the dust
T 289


ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE 291
a whole minute and listened. Then, slowly turning,
he found himself staring straight into the small be-
seeching eyes of a-thrush; a thrush in a cage that
hung upon the outside wall of a bird-fancier's shop
behind him.
Perhaps he would not have lingered more than
these few seconds, however, had not the crowd held
him momentarily prisoner in a spot immediately
opposite the shop, where his head, too, was exactly
on a level with the hanging cage. Thus he was per-
force obliged to stand, and watch, and listen; and,
as he did so, the bird's rapturous and appealing song
played upon the feelings already awakened by the
spring, urging them upwards and outwards to a point
that grew perilously moving.
Both sound and sight caught and held him spell-
bound.
The bird, once well-favoured perhaps, he perceived
was now thin and bedraggled, its feathers disarrayed
by continual flitting along its perch, and by endless
fluttering of wings and body against the bars of its
narrow cage. There was not room to open both
wings properly; it frequently dashed itself against
the sides of its wooden prison; and all the force of
its vain and passionate desire for freedom shone in
the two small and glittering eyes which gazed be-
seechingly through the bars at the passers-by. It
looked broken and worn with the ceaseless renewal of
the futile struggle. Hopping along the bar, cocking
its dainty little head on one side, and looking straight
into the Professor's eyes, it managed (by some in-
articulate magic known only to the eyes of creatures
in prison) to spell out the message of its pain—the
poignant longing for the freedom of the open sky,
the lift of the great winds, the glory of the sun upon
its lustreless feathers.
T 2


292 ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE
Now it so chanced that this combined onslaught of
sight and sound caught the elderly Professor along
the line of least resistance—the line of an untried,
and therefore unexhausted, sensation. Here, appar-
ently, was an emotion hitherto unrealized, and so not
yet regulated away into atrophy.
For, with an intuition as singular as it was search-
ing, he suddenly understood something of the passion
of the wild Caged Things of the world, and realized
in a flash of passing vision something of their
unutterable pain.
In one swift moment of genuine mystical sympathy
he felt with their peculiar quality of unsatisfied long-
ing exactly as though it were his own; the longing,
not only of captive birds and animals, but of
anguished men and women, trapped by circumstance,
confined by weakness, cabined by character and
temperament, all yearning for a freedom they knew
not how to reach—caged by the smallness of their
desires, by the impotence of their wills, by the petti-
ness of their souls—caged in bodies from which death
alone could finally bring release.
Something of all this found its way into the elderly
Professor's heart as he stood watching the pantomime
of the captive thrush—the Caged Thing;-and, after
a moment's hesitation that represented a vast amount
of condensed feeling, he deliberately entered the low
doorway of the shop and inquired the price of the
bird.
“The thrush—er—singing in the small cage,” he
stammered.
“One and six only, sir,” replied the coarse, red-
faced man who owned the shop, looking up from a
rabbit that he was pushing with clumsy fingers into
a box; “only one shilling and sixpence,”—and then
went on with copious remarks upon thrushes in


ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE 293
general and the superior qualities of this one in par-
ticular. “Been 'ere four months and sings just
lovely,” he added, by way of climax.
“Thank you,” said Parnacute quietly, trying to
persuade himself that he did not feel mortified by his
impulsive and eccentric action; “then I will purchase
the bird—at once—er—if you please.”
“Couldn't go far wrong, sir,” said the man, shoving
the rabbit to one side, and going outside to fetch the
thrush.
“No, I shall not require the cage, but—er—you
may put him in a cardboard box perhaps, so that I
can carry him easily.”
He referred to the bird as “him,” though at any
other time he would have said “it,” and the change,
noted surreptitiously as it were, added to his general
sense of confusion. It was too late, however, to alter
his mind, and after watching the man force the bird
with gross hands into a cardboard box, he gathered
up the noose of string with which it was tied and
walked with as much dignity and self-respect as he
could muster out of the shop.
But the moment he got into the street with this
living parcel under his arm—he both heard and felt
the scuttling of the bird's feet—the realization that
he had been guilty of what he considered an out-
rageous act of eccentricity almost overwhelmed him.
For he had succumbed in most regrettable fashion
to a momentary impulse, and had bought the bird in
order to release it !
“Dear me!” he thought, “how ever could I have
allowed myself to do so eccentric and impulsive a
thing !”
And, but for the fact that it would merely have
accentuated his eccentricity, he would then and there
have returned to the shop and given back the bird.


294 ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE
That, however, being now clearly impossible, he
crossed the road and entered the Little Park by the
first iron gateway he could find. He walked down
the gravel path, fumbling with the string. In another
minute the bird would have been out, when he
chanced to glance round in order to make sure he
was unobserved and saw against the shrubbery on
his left—a policeman.
This, he felt, was most vexatious, for he had hoped
to complete the transaction unseen. Straightening
himself up, he nervously fastened the string again,
and walked on slowly as though nothing had hap-
pened, searching for a more secluded spot where he
should be entirely free from observation.
Professor Parnacute now became aware that his
vexation—primarily caused by his act of impulse, and
increased by the fact that he was observed—had be-
come somewhat acute. It was extraordinary, he
reflected, how policemen had this way of suddenly
outlining themselves in the least appropriate—the
least necessary—places. There was no reason why
a policeman should have been standing against that
innocent shrubbery, where there was nothing to do,
no one to watch. At almost any other point in the
Little Park he might have served some possibly useful
purpose, and yet, forsooth, he must select the one
spot where he was not wanted—where his presence,
indeed, was positively objectionable.
The policeman, meanwhile, watched him steadily as
he retreated with the obnoxious parcel. He carried
it upside down now without knowing it. He felt
as though he had been detected in a crime. He
watched the policeman, too, out of the corner of his
eye, longing to be done with the whole business.
“That policeman is a tremendous fellow,” he
thought to himself. “I have never seen a constable


ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE 295
so large, so stalwart. He must be the policeman of
the district”—whatever that might mean—“a verit-
able wall and tower of defence.” The helmet made
him think of a battering ram, and the buttons on his
overcoat of the muzzles of guns.
He moved away round the corner with as much
innocence as he could assume, as though he were
carrying a package of books or some new article of
apparel.
It is, no doubt, the duty of every alert constable
to observe as acutely as possible the course of events
passing before his eyes, yet this particular Bobby
seemed far more interested than the circumstances
warranted in Parnacute's cardboard box. He kept
his gaze remorselessly upon it. Perhaps, thought
the Professor, he heard the scutterings of the fright-
ened bird within. Perhaps he thought it was a cat
going to be drowned in the ornamental water. Per-
haps—oh, dreadful ideal—he thought it was a
baby |
The suspicions of an intelligent policeman, how-
ever, being past finding out, Simon Parnacute wisely
ignored them, and just then passed round a corner
where he was screened from this persistent observer
by a dense growth of rhododendron bushes.
Seizing the opportune moment, and acting with a
prompt decision born of the dread of the reappearing
policeman, he cut the string, opened the lid of the
box, and an instant later had the intense satisfaction
of seeing the imprisoned thrush hop upon the card-
board edge and then fly with a beautiful curving dip
and a whirr of wings off into the open sky. It turned
once as it flew, and its bright brown eye looked at
him. Then it was gone, lost in the sunshine that
blazed over the shrubberies and beckoned it out over
their waving tops across the river.


296 ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE
The prisoner was free. For the space of a whole
minute, the Professor stood still, conscious of a sense
of genuine relief. That sound of wings, that racing
sweep of the little quivering body escaping into limit-
less freedom, that penetrating look of gratitude from
the wee brown eyes—these stirred in him again the
same prodigious emotion he had experienced for the
first time that afternoon outside the bird-fancier's
shop. The release of the “caged creature” provided
him with a kind of vicarious experience of freedom
and delight such as he had never before known in his
whole life. It almost seemed as though he had
escaped himself—out of his “circle.”
Then, as he faced about, with the empty box
dangling in his hand, the first thing he saw, coming
slowly down the path towards him with measured
tread, was—the big policeman.
Something very stern, something very forbidding,
hung like an atmosphere of warning about this
guardian of the law in a blue uniform. It brought
him back sharply to the rigid facts of life, and the soft
beauty of the spring day vanished and left him un-
touched. He accepted the reminder that life is
earnest, and that eccentricities are invitations to
disaster. Sooner or later the Policeman is bound to
make his appearance.
However, this particular constable, of course,
passed him without word or gesture, and as soon as
he came to one of the little wire baskets provided
for the purpose, the Professor dropped his box into
it, and then made his way slowly and thoughtfully
back to his apartment and his luncheon.
But the eccentricity of which he had been guilty
circled and circled in his mind, reminding him with
merciless insistence of a foolish act he should not
have committed, and plaguing him with remorseless


ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE 297
little stabs for having indulged in an impulsive and
irregular proceeding.
For, to him, the inevitableness of life came as a
fact to which he was resigned, rather than as a forée
to be appropriated for the ends of his own soul; and
the sight of the happy bird escaping into sky and
sunshine, with the figure of the inflexible and stern-
lipped policeman in the background, made a deep
impression upon him that would sooner or later be
certain to bear fruit.
“Dear me,” thought the Professor of Political
Economy, giving mental expression to this sentiment,
“I shall pay for this in the long run l Without ques-
tion I shall pay for it !”
II
If it may be taken that there is no Chance, playing
tricksy-wise behind the scenes of existence, but that
all events falling into the lives of men are the calcu-
lated results of adequate causes, then Mr. Simon
Parnacute, late Professor of Political Economy in
C— College, certainly did pay for his spring
aberration, in the sense that he caught a violent chill
which brought him to bed and speedily developed into
pneumonia. -
It was the evening of the sixth day, and he lay
weary and feverish in his bedroom on the top floor
of the building which held his little self-contained
apartment. The nurse was down-stairs having her
tea. A shaded lamp stood beside the bed, and
through the window—the blinds being not yet drawn
—he saw the sea of roofs and chimney-pots, and the
stream of wires, sharply outlined against a sunset sky


298 ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE
of gold and pink. High and thin above the dusk
floated long strips of coloured cloud, and the first
stars twinkled through the April vapours that
gathered with the approach of night.
Presently the door opened and some one came in
softly half-way across the room, and then stopped.
The Professor turned wearily and saw that the maid
stood there and was trying to speak. She seemed
flustered, he noticed, and her face was rather white.
“What's the matter now, Emily P" he asked feebly,
yet irritably.
“Please, Professor—there's a gentleman—
there she stuck.
“Some one to see me? The doctor again already?”
queried the patient, wondering in a vague, absent
way why the girl should seem so startled.
As he spoke there was a sound of footsteps on the
landing outside—heavy footsteps.
“But please, Professor, sir, it's not the doctor,”
the maid faltered, “only I couldn't get his name, and
I couldn't stop him, an' he said you expected him—
and I think he looks like—”
The approaching footsteps frightened the girl so
much that she could not find words to complete her
description. They were just outside the door now.
“—like a perliceman l’” she finished with a rush,
backing towards the door as though she feared the
Professor would leap from his bed to demolish her.
“A policeman l’” gasped Mr. Parnacute, unable to
believe his ears. “A policeman, Emily In my
apartment?”
And before the sick man could find words to
express his particular annoyance that any stranger
(above all a constable) should intrude at such a time,
the door was pushed wide open, the girl had vanished
with a flutter of skirts, and the tall figure of a man
**
and


ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE 299
stood in full view upon the threshold, and stared
steadily across the room at the occupant of the bed
on the other side.
It was indeed a policeman, and a very large police-
man. Moreover, it was the policeman.
The instant the Professor recognized the familiar
form of the man from the park his anger, for some
quite unaccountable reason, vanished almost entirely;
the sharp vexation he had felt a moment before died
away; and, sinking back exhausted among the
pillows, he only found breath to ask him to close the
door and come in. The fact was, astonishment had
used up the small store of energy at his disposal, and
for the moment he could think of nothing else to do.
The policeman closed the door quietly and moved
forward towards the centre of the room, so that the
circle of light from the shaded lamp at the head of the
bed reached his figure but fell just short of his face.
The invalid sat up in bed again and stared. As
nothing seemed to happen he recovered his scattered
wits a little.
“You are the policeman from the park, unless I
mistake 2 " he asked feebly, with mingled pomposity
and resentment.
The big man bowed in acknowledgment and
removed his helmet, holding it before him in his
hand. His face was peculiarly bright, almost as
though it reflected the glow of a bull's-eye lantern
concealed somewhere about his huge person.
“I thought I recognized you,” went on the Pro-
fessor, exasperated a little by the other's self-posses-
sicn. “Are you perhaps aware that I am ill—too
ill to see strangers, and that to force your way up in
this fashion !" He left the sentence unfinished
for lack of suitable expletives.
“You are certainly ill,” replied the constable, speak-


300 ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE
ing for the first time; “but then—I am not a
stranger.” His voice was wonderfully pitched and
modulated for a policeman.
“Then, by what right, pray, do you dare to intrude
upon me at such a time?” snapped the other,
ignoring the latter statement.
“My duty, sir,” the man replied, with a rather
wonderful dignity, “knows nothing of time or place.”
Professor Parnacute looked at him a little more
closely as he stood there helmet in hand. He was
something more, he gathered, than an ordinary
constable; an inspector perhaps. He examined him
carefully; but he understood nothing about differ-
ences in uniform, of bands or stars upon sleeve and
collar.
“If you are here in the prosecution of your duty,
then,” exclaimed the man of careful mind, searching
feverishly for some possible delinquency on the part
of his small staff of servants, “pray be seated and
state your business; but as briefly as possible. My
throat pains me, and my strength is low.” He spoke
with less acerbity. The dignity of the visitor began
to impress him in some vague fashion he did not
understand.
The big figure in blue bowed again, but made no
sign of advance.
“You come from X Station, I presume?” Par-
nacute added, mentioning the police station round the
corner. He sank deeper into his pillows, conscious
that his strength was becoming exhausted.
“From Headquarters—I come,” replied the colossus
in a deep voice.
The Professor had only the vaguest idea what
Headquarters meant, yet the phrase conveyed an
importance that somehow was not lost upon him.
Meanwhile his impatience grew with his exhaustion.


ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE 301
“I must request you, officer, to state your business
with dispatch,” he said tartly, “or to come again
when I am better able to attend to you. Next week,
no doubt—”
“There is no time but the present,” returned the
other, with an odd choice of words that escaped the
notice of his perplexed hearer, as he produced from
a capacious pocket in the tail of his overcoat a note-
book bound with some shining metal like gold.
“Your name is Parnacute 2" he asked, consulting
the book.
“Yes,” answered the other, with the resignation
of exhaustion.
“Simon Parnacute 2"
“Of course, yes.”
“And on the third of April last,” he went on, look-
ing keenly over the top of the note-book at the sick
man, “you, Simon Parnacute, entered the shop of
Theodore Spinks in the Lower P Road, and pur-
chased from him a certain living creature ?”
“Yes,” answered the Professor, beginning to feel
hot at the discovery of his folly.
“A bird P’’
“A bird.”
“A thrush 2 ''
“A thrush.”
“A singing thrush 2"
“Oh yes, it was a singing thrush, if you must
know.”
“In money you paid for this thrush the sum of one
shilling and six pennies?” He emphasized the “and"
just as the bird-fancier had done.
“One and six, yes.”
“But in true value,” said the policeman, speaking
with grave emphasis, “it cost you a great deal more?"
“Perhaps.” He winced internally at the memory.


302 ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE
He was so astonished, too, that the visit had to do
with himself and not with some of his servants.
“You paid for it with your heart?” insisted the
other. -
The Professor made no reply. He started. He
almost writhed under the sheets.
“Am I right?” asked the policeman.
“That is the fact, I suppose,” he said in a low voice,
sorely puzzled by the catechism.
“You carried this bird away in a cardboard box to
E— Gardens by the river, and there you gave it
freedom and watched it fly away?”
“Your statement is correct, I think, in every par-
ticular. But really—this absurd cross-examination,
my good man ! ”
“And your motive in so doing,” continued the
policeman, his voice quite drowning the invalid's
feeble tones, “was the unselfish one of releasing an
imprisoned and tortured creature?”
Simon Parnacute looked up with the greatest pos-
sible surprise.
“I think—well, well l—perhaps it was,” he mur-
mured apologetically. “The extraordinary singing—
it was extraordinary, you know, and the sight of the
little thing beating its wings pained me.”
The big policeman put away his note-book sud-
denly, and moved closer to the bed so that his face
entered the circle of lamplight.
“In that case,” he cried, “you are my man!”
“I am your man 1" exclaimed the Professor, with
an uncontrollable start.
“The man I want,” repeated the other, smiling.
His voice had suddenly grown soft and wonderful,
like the ringing of a silver gong, and into his face had
come an expression of wistful tenderness that made
it positively beautiful. It shone. Never before, out


ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE 303
of a picture, had he seen such a look upon a human
countenance, or heard such tones issue from the lips
of a human being. He thought, swiftly and con-
fusedly, of a woman, of the woman he had never
found—of a dream, an enchantment as of music or
vision upon the senses.
“Wants me !” he thought with alarm. “What
have I done now 2 What new eccentricity have I
been guilty of 2"
Strange, bewildering ideas crowded into his mind,
blurred in outline, preposterous in character. A sensa-
tion of cold caught at his fever and overmastered it,
bathing him in perspiration, making him tremble, yet
not with fear. A new and curious delight had begun
to pluck at his heart-strings.
Then an extravagant suspicion crossed his brain,
yet a suspicion not wholly unwarranted. -
“Who are you?" he asked sharply, looking up.
“Are you really only a policeman 2 ”
The man drew himself up so that he appeared, if
possible, even huger than before.
“I am a World-Policeman,” he answered, “a
guardian, perhaps, rather than a detective.”
“Heavens above . " cried the Professor, thinking
of madness and the crimes committed in madness.
“Yes,” he went on in those calm, musical tones that
before long began to have a reassuring effect upon
his listener, “and it is my duty, among many others,
to keep an eye upon eccentric people; to lock them
up when necessary, and when their sentences have
expired, to release them. Also,” he added impres-
sively, “as in your case, to let them out of their cages
without pain—when they've earned it.”
“Gracious goodness me !” exclaimed Parnacute,
unaccustomed to the use of expletives, but unable to
think of anything else to say.


304 ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE
“And sometimes to see that their cages do not
destroy them—and that they do not beat themselves
to death against the bars,” he went on, smiling quite
wonderfully. “Our duties are varied and numerous.
I am one of a large force.”
The man learned in political economy felt as
though his head were spinning. He thought of call-
ing for help. Indeed, he had already made a motion
with his hand towards the bell when a gesture on
the part of his strange visitor restrained him.
“Then why do you want me, if I may ask?” he
faltered instead.
“To mark you down; and when the time comes to let
you out of your cage easily, comfortably, without
pain. That's one reward for your kindness to the
bird.”
The Professor's fears had now quite disappeared.
The policeman seemed perfectly harmless after all.
“It's very kind of you,” he said feebly, drawing his
arm back beneath the bed-clothes. “Only—er—I
was not aware, exactly, that I lived in a cage.”
He looked up resignedly into the man's face.
“You only realize that when you get out,” he
replied. “They're all like that. The bird didn't
quite understand what was wrong; it only knew that
it felt miserable. Same with you. You feel unhappy
in that body of yours, and in that little careful mind
you regulate so nicely; but, for the life of you, you
don't quite know what it is that's wrong. You want
space, freedom, a taste of liberty. You want to fly,
that's what you want l” he cried, raising his
voice.
“I—want—to-fly P" gasped the invalid.
“Oh,” smiling again, “we World-Policemen have
thousands of cases just like yours. Our field is a
large one, a very large one indeed.”


306 ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE
World-Policeman 2 ” He was conscious that his
words were peculiar yet he could not help it. They
seemed to slip out of their own accord.
“There's nothing more you can do for me, sir,
thank you,” answered the man in his most silvery
tones. “But there's something more I can do for
you! And that is to give you a preliminary taste of
freedom, so that you may realize you do live in a
cage, and be less confused and puzzled when you
come to make the final Escape.”
Parnacute caught his breath sharply—staring open-
mouthed.
With a single stride the policeman covered the
space between himself and the bed. Before the
withered, fever-stricken little Professor could utter a
word or a cry, he had caught up the wasted body out
of the bed, shaken the bed-clothes off him like paper
from a parcel, and slung him without ceremony across
his gigantic shoulders. Then he crossed the room,
and producing the key from his coat-tail pocket, he
put it straight into the solid wall of the room. He
turned it, and the entire side of the house opened like
a door.
For one second Simon Parnacute looked back and
saw the lamp, and the fire, and the bed. And in the
bed he saw his own body lying motionless in pro-
found slumber.
Then, as the policeman balanced, hovering upon
the giddy edge, he looked outward and saw the net-
work of street-lamps far below, and heard the deep
roar of the city smite upon his ears like the thunder
of a Sea.
The next moment the man stepped out into space,
and he saw that they were rising up swiftly towards
the dark vault of sky, where stars twinkled down upon
them between streaks of thin flying clouds.


ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE 307
III
Once outside, floating in the night, the policeman
gave his shoulder a mighty jerk and tossed his small
burden into free space.
“Jump away !” he cried. “You’re quite safe " "
The Professor dropped like a bullet towards the
pavement; then suddenly began to rise again, like a
balloon. All traces of fever or bodily discomfort had
left him utterly. He felt light as air, and strong
as lightning.
“Now, where shall we go to ?” The voice sounded
above him.
Simon Parnacute was no flyer. He had never in-
dulged in those strange flying-dreams that form a
weird pleasure in the sleep-lives of many people. He
was terrified beyond belief until he found that he did
not crash against the earth, and that he had within
him the power to regulate his movements, to rise or
sink at will. Then, of course, the wildest fury of
delight and freedom he had ever known flashed all
over him and burned in his brain like an intoxication.
“The big cities, or the stars?” asked the World-
Policeman.
“No, no,” he cried, “the country—the open
country ! And other lands !”
For Simon Parnacute had never travelled. In-
credible as it may seem, the Professor had never in
his life been farther out of England than in a sailing-
boat at Southend. His body had travelled even less
than his imagination. With this suddenly increased
capacity for motion, the desire to race about and see
became a passion.
“Woods ! Mountains ! Seas Deserts Anything
U 2


ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE 309
Side by side they shot up with a wild rush, and
the lights of London, town and suburbs, flashed away
beneath them in streaming lines and patches. In a
second darkness filled the huge gap, pouring behind
them like a mighty wave. Other streams and patches
of light succeeded quickly, blurred and faint, like
lamps of railway stations from a night express, as
other towns dropped past them in a series and were
swallowed up in the gulf behind.
A cool salt air smote their faces, and Parnacute
heard the soft crashing of waves as they crossed the
Channel, and swept on over the fields and forests of
France, glimmering below like the squares of a
mighty chess-board. Like toys, village after village
shot by, smelling of peat-smoke, cattle, and the faint
windiness of coming spring.
Sometimes they passed below the clouds and lost
the stars, sometimes above them and lost the world;
sometimes over forests roaring like the sea, some-
times above vast plains still and silent as the grave;
but always Parnacute saw the constellations of Orion
and Pleiades shining on the coat-collar of the soaring
policeman, their little patterns picked out as with
tiny electric lamps.
Below them lay the huge map of the earth, raised,
scarred, darkly coloured, and breathing—a map
alive.
Then came the Jura, soft and purple, carpeted with
forests, rolling below them like a dream, and they
looked down into slumbering valleys and heard far
below the tumbling of water and the singing of count-
less streams.
“Glory, glory !” cried the Professor. “And do
the birds know this?”
“Not the imprisoned ones,” was the reply. And
presently they whipped across large gleaming bodies


312 ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE
Seas all lay within reach All could be visited in
turn. The interstellar spaces, the far planets, and
the white moon were yet to know !
“We must be thinking of turning soon,” he heard
the voice of his companion, and then remembered how
his own body, hot and feverish, lay in that stuffy
little room at the other end of Europe. It was indeed
caged—the withered body in the room, and himself in
the withered body—doubly caged. He laughed and
shuddered. The wind swept through him, licking
him clean. He rose again in the ecstasy of free flight,
following the lead of the policeman on the homeward
journey, and the mountains below became a purple
line on the map. In a series of great sweeps they
rested on the top of the Pyramid, and then upon the
forehead of the Sphinx, and so onwards, touching
the earth at intervals, till they heard once more the
waves upon the coast-line, and soared aloft again
across the sea, racing through Spain and over the
Pyrenees. The thin blue outline of the policeman
kept ever at his side.
“From all the far blue hills of heaven these winds
of freedom blow !” he shouted into space, following
it with a peal of laughter that made his guide circle
round and round him, chuckling as he flew. A
curious, silvery chuckle it was—yet it sounded as
though it came to him through a much greater dis-
tance than before. It came, as it were, through
barriers. . . .
The picture of the bird-fancier's shop came again
vividly before him. He saw the beseeching and
frightened little eyes; heard the ceaseless pattering
of the imprisoned feet, wings beating against the bars,
and soft furry bodies pushing vainly to get out. He
saw the red face of Theodore Spinks, the proprietor,
gloating over the scene of captive life that gave him


314 ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE
he got. And it did not seem the right answer, or the
right voice either. A terror of being permanently
lost came over him, and he cried out again louder
than before.
“And the medicine first,” dropped the thin, shrill
voice out of endless space.
It was not the policeman's voice at all. He knew
now, and understood. A sensation of weariness, of
sickening disgust and boredom came over him. He
looked up. The sky had turned white; he saw cur-
tains and walls and a bright lamp with a red shade.
This was the star that had nearly blinded him—a
lamp merely, in a sick-room -
And, standing at the farther end of the room, he
saw the figure of the nurse in cap and apron. Below
him lay his body in the bed. His sensation of dis-
gust and boredom became a positive horror. But he
sank down exhausted into it—into his cage.
“Take this soup, sir, after the medicine, and then
perhaps you'll get another bit of sleep,” the nurse
was saying with gentle authority, bending over him.
IV
The progress of Professor Parnacute towards
recovery was slow and tedious, for the illness had been
severe and it left him with a dangerously weak heart.
And at night he still had the delights of the flying
dreams. Only, by this time, he had learned to fly
alone. His phantom friend, the big World-Police-
man, no longer accompanied him.
And his chief occupation during these weary hours
of convalescence was curious and, the nurse con-
sidered, not very suitable for an invalid: for he spent


ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE 315
the time with endless calculations, poring over the
list of his few investments, and adding up times with-
out number the total of his savings of nearly forty
years. The bed was strewn with papers and docu-
ments; pencils were always getting lost among the
clothes; and each time the nurse collected the para-
phernalia and put them aside, he would wait till she
was out of the room, and then crawl over to the
table and carry them all back into bed with him.
Then, finally, she gave up fighting with him, and
acquiesced, for his restlessness increased and he could
not sleep unless his beloved half-sheets and pencils lay
strewn upon the counterpane within instant reach.
Even to the least observant it was clear that the
Professor was hatching the preliminary details of a
profound plot.
And his very first visitor, as soon as he was per-
mitted to see anybody, was a gentleman with parch-
ment skin and hard, dry, peeping eyes who came by
special request—a solicitor, from the firm of Messrs.
Costa & Delay.
“I will ascertain the price of the shop and stock-
in-trade and inform you of the result at the earliest
opportunity, Professor Parnacute,” said the man of
law in his gritty, professional voice, as he at length
took his departure and left the sick-room with the
expressionless face of one to whom the eccentricities
of human nature could never be new or surprising.
“Thank you; I shall be most anxious to hear,”
replied the other, turning in his long easy-chair to
save his papers, and at the same time to defend him-
self against the chiding of the good-natured nurse.
“I knew I should have to pay for it,” he murmured,
thinking of his original sin; “but I hope,”—here he
again consulted his pencilled figures—“I think I can
manage it—just. Though with Consols so low--”


3.18 ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE
the last page when his eye fell suddenly upon an item
that described a lot of-
“8 Linnets caged four months; raving with
song.”
He dropped the list, rose with difficulty from his
chair and paced the room, muttering to himself
“raving with song, raving with song, raving with
song.” His hollow cheeks were flushed, his eyes
aglow.
“Caged, caged, caged,” he repeated under his
breath, while his thoughts travelled to that racing
flight across Europe, over seas and mountains.
“Sings his wild note!” He heard again the whist-
ling wind about his ears as he flew through the zones
of heated air above the desert sands.
“Raving with song!” He remembered the pas-
sion of his own cry—that strange lyrical outburst of
his heart when the magic of freedom caught him, and
he had soared at will through the unchartered regions
of the night.
And then he saw once more the blinking owl, its
eyes blinded by the dust of the London street, its
feathery ears twitching as it heard the wind sighing
past the open doorway of the dingy shop. And again
the thrush looked into his face and poured out the
rapture of its spring song.
And half-an-hour later he was so exhausted by the
unwonted emotion and exercise that the nurse herself
was obliged to write at his dictation the letter he sent
in reply to the solicitors, Messrs. Costa & Delay in
Southampton Row.
But the letter was posted that night and the Pro-
fessor, still mumbling to himself about “having to
pay for it,” went to bed with the first hour of the
darkness, and plunged straight into another of his


ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE 319
delightful flying dreams almost the very moment his
eyes had closed.
V
“. . . Thus, all the animals have been disposed
of according to your instructions,” ran the final letter
from the solicitors, “and we beg to append list of
items so allotted, together with country addresses to
which they have been sent. We think you may feel
assured that they are now in homes where they will
be well cared for.
“We still retain the following animals against your
further instructions—
2 Zonure Lizards,
1 Angulated Tortoise,
2 Mealy Rosellas,
2 Scaly-breasted Lorikeets.
“With regard to these we should advise. . . .
“The caged birds, meanwhile, which you intend the
children shall release, are being cared for satisfac-
torily; and the premises will be ready for taking over
as from June 1. . . .”
And, with the assistance of the nurse, he then began
to issue a steady stream of letters to the parents of
children he knew in the country, carefully noting and
tabulating the replies, and making out little white
labels inscribed in plain lettering with the words
“Lot 1,” “Lot 2,” and so on, precisely as though he
were in the animal business himself, and were getting
ready for a sale.
But the sale which took place a fortnight later on
June 1 was no ordinary sale.


PARNACUTE 321
igit-i- his ear and listened
sº-------- inging reached him
house.
p breath, and colour
Now I hear them.”
arer, as on a passing
to the top floor, and
-...- ambled up a ladder
gº - - - n to the roof. The
f --- face above the tiles a
* † * - leted him with a sound
*- - spring.
as-- - tº policeman, could see
be wº == - - delighted chuckle, “and
** = arious resting-place upon
i-º-º: mopping his forehead.
London roofs and chim-
sea, but here, like an oasis
- imited extent, and not very
- converted into a perfect
- by describe them, when he
- the names? It was enough
*-
ºn carried out to his entire
is little roof was a world of
tº- in the wind, scenting the air,
--
*- - the pots and boxes of flowers
*- - in the cages the thrushes and
-
*- and linnets, poured their hearts
- ong that was more exquisite, he
- - ing he had ever heard. And
- by the big chimney, carefully
- re, stood the large cage containing
-
- eye they have guessed my purpose
- - d the Professor.


322 ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE
For a long time he sat there, leaning against the
chimney, oblivious of a blackened collar, listening to
the singing, and feasting his eyes upon the garden
of flowers all about him. Then the sound of a bell
ringing down-stairs roused him suddenly into action,
and he climbed with difficulty down again to the hall
door.
“Here they come,” he thought, greatly excited.
“Dear me, I do trust I shall not make any mistakes.”
He felt in his pocket for his note-book, and then
opened the door into the street.
“Oh, it's only you !” he exclaimed, as his nurse
came in with her arms full of parcels.
“Only me,” she laughed, “but I've brought the
lemonade and the biscuits. The others will be here
now any minute. It's after three. There's just time
to arrange the glasses and plates. We must expect
about fifty according to the letters you got. And
mind you don't get over-tired.”
“Oh, I’m all right !” he answered.
She ran up-stairs. Before her steps had sounded
once on the floor above, a carriage-and-pair stopped
at the door, and a footman came up smartly and asked
if Professor Parnacute was at home.
“Indeed I am,” answered the old man, blushing and
laughing at the same time, and then going down
himself to the carriage to welcome the little girl and
boy who got out. He bowed stiffly and awkwardly
to the pretty lady in the victoria, who thanked him
for his kindness with a speech he did not hear
properly, and then led his callers into the house.
They were very shy at first, and hardly knew what to
make of it all, but once inside, the boy's sense of
adventure was stirred by the sight of the empty shop,
and the counter, and the strange array of flowers upon
the floor.


ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE 823
He remembered the letter his father had read out
from Professor Parnacute a week ago.
“My Lot is No. 7, isn't it, Mr. Professor?” he
cried. “I let out a cage of linnets, and get a guinea-
pig and a mealy-something-or-other as a present,
don't I?’”
Mr. Parnacute, shaky and beaming, consulted his
note-book hurriedly, and replied that this was “per-
fectly correct.”
“Master Edwin Burton,” he read out; “to release—
Lot 7. To take away—one guinea-pig, and one mealy
rosella.”
“I'm Lot 8, please,” piped the voice of the little
girl, standing with wide-open eyes beside him.
“Oh, are you, my dear?” said he: “yes, yes, I
believe you are.” He fumbled anew with the note-
book. “Here it is,” he added, reading aloud again—
“Miss Angelina Burton;" he peered closely in the
gloom to decipher the writing; “To release—Lot 8–
that's woodlarks, my dear, you know. To take away
—one angulated tortoise. Quite correct, yes; quite
correct.”
He called to the nurse up-stairs to show the children
their presents hidden away in boxes among the flowers
—their rosella and tortoise—and then went again to
the door to receive his other guests, who now began
to arrive in a steady stream. To the number of twenty
or thirty they came, and not one of them appeared
to be much over twelve. And the majority of them
left their elders at the door and came in unattended.
The marshalling of this array of youngsters among
the birds and flowers was a matter of some difficulty,
but here the nurse came to the Professor's assistance
with energy and experience, so that his strength was
economized and the children were arranged without
danger to any one.
X 2


324 ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE
And upon that little roof the sight was certainly a
unique one. There they all stood, an extraordinary
patchwork of colour for the tiles of South-west Lon-
don—the bright frocks of the girls, the plumage of
the birds, the blues and yellows and scarlets of the
flowers; while the singing and voices sent up a chorus
that brought numerous surprised faces to the windows
of the higher buildings about them, and made people
stop in the street below and ask themselves with
startled faces where in the world these sounds came
from this still June afternoon I
“Now !” cried Simon Parnacute, when all lots and
owners had been placed carefully side by side. “The
moment I give the word of command, open your cages
and let the prisoners escape l And point in the direc-
tion of the park.”
The children stooped and picked up their cages.
The voices and the singing in a hundred busy little
throats ceased. A hush fell upon the roof and upon
the strange gathering. The sun poured blazingly
down over everything, and the Professor's face
streamed.
“One,” he cried, his voice tremulous with excite-
ment, “two, three—and away !”
There was a rattling sound of opening doors and
wire bars—and then a sudden burst of half-suppressed,
long-drawn “Ahhhhs.” At once there followed a
rush of fluttering feathers, a rapid vibration of the
air, and the small host of prisoners shot out like a
cloud into the air, and a moment later with a great
whirring of wings had disappeared over the walls
beyond the forest of chimneys and were lost to view.
Blackbirds, thrushes, linnets and finches were gone in
a twinkling, so that the eye could hardly follow them.
Only the sea-gulls, puzzled by their sudden freedom,
with wings still stiff after their cramped quarters,


326 ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE
lorikeet and lizard down-stairs from the nurse on pre-
senting their ticket.
“And remember,” added Parnacute slyly, address-
ing the child, “to comb their feathered trousers with
a very fine comb "
The clergyman turned a moment at the skylight as
he helped the owls and children to squeeze through.
“I shall have something to say about this in my
sermon next Sunday,” he said. He smiled as his
head disappeared.
“Oh, but, my dear sir—” cried the Professor,
tripping over a flower-pot in his pleasure and em-
barrassment, and just reaching the skylight in time to
add, “And, remember, there are cakes and lemonade
on the floor below !”
The animals had all been provided with happy
homes; the last cab had driven away, and the nurse
had gone to find the flower-man. Parnacute had
strewn the roof with food, and with moss and hair-
material for nesting, in case any of the birds returned.
He stood alone and watched the sunset pour its gold
over the myriad houses—the cages of the men and
women of London town. He felt exhausted; the sky
was soothing and pleasant to behold. . . .
He sat down to rest, conscious of a great weakness
now that the excitement was over and the reaction had
begun to set in. Probably he had exerted himself
unduly.
His mind reverted to his first impulsive eccentricity
of two months before.
“I knew I should pay for it,” he murmured, with a
smile, “and I have. But it was worth it.”
He stopped abruptly and caught his breath a mo-
ment. He was thoroughly over-tired; the excitement
of it all had been too much for him. He must get


ECCENTRICITY OF SIMON PARNACUTE 327
home as quickly as possible to rest. The nurse would
be back any minute now.
A sound of wings rapidly beating the air passed
overhead, and he looked up and saw a flight of
pigeons wheeling by. He fancied, too, that he just
caught the notes of a thrush singing far away in the
park at the end of the street. He recalled the phrases
of that dreadfully haunting list. “Wild singing
note,” “Can be heard two hundred yards off,”
“Raving with song.” A momentary spasm passed
through his frame. Far up in the air the sea-gulls
still circled, making their way with all the splendour
of real freedom to the sea.
“To-night,” he thought, “they will roost on the
marshes, or perched upon the lonely cliffs. Good,
good, very good l’”
He got up, stiffly and with difficulty, to watch the
pigeons better, and to hear the thrush, and, as he did
so, the bell rang down-stairs to admit the nurse and
the flower-man.
“Odd,” he thought; “I gave her the key !”
He made his way towards the skylight, picking his
way with uncertain tread between the flower-boxes;
but before he could reach it a head and shoulders
suddenly appeared above the opening.
“Odd,” he thought again, “that she should have
come up so quickly 3 y
But he did not complete the thought. It was not
the nurse at all. A very different figure followed the
emerging head and shoulders, and there in front of
him on the roof stood—a policeman.
It was the policeman.
“Oh,” said Parnacute quietly, “it’s you!” A wild
tumult of yearning and happiness caught at his heart
and made it impossible to think of anything else to
Say.


*** **
*， ** **
· ***
|×
* *
*ae.
º





_* º e- -, 2, --
** * 7 - - -
I. * 9 3 C ...] -
94. 2. –
a- 3 -
- 6 -_
a * * —
*- / O –
* “ , 3 –
*-
EXA/MSºlº,
t
-