Chapter 8

"The Natural History of the Praeternatural" it should be. I make him a present of that--the only possible line for a sincere student. God go with him whosoever he be, for he will have rare qualities and rare need of them. He must be cheerful without assumption, respectful without tragic airs, as respectable as he please in the eyes of his own law, so that he finds respect in his heart also for the laws of the realm in which he is privileged to trade. Let him not stand, as the priest in the Orthodox Church, a looming hierophant. Let him avoid any rhetorical pose, any hint of the grand manner. Above all, let him not wear the smirk of the conjuror when he prepares with flourishes to whip the handkerchief away from his guinea-pig. Here is one who condescends to reader and subject alike. He would do harm all round: moreover he would be a quack, for he is just as much of a quack who makes little of much as he who makes much of little. No! Let his attitude be that of the contadino in some vast church in Italy, who walking into the cool dark gazes round-eyed at the twinkling candles ahead of him in the vague, and that he may recover himself a little leans against a pillar for a while, his hat against his heart and his lips muttering an Ave. Reassured by his prayer, or the peace of the great place, he presently espies the sacristan about to uncover a picture not often shown. Here is an occasion! The tourists are gathered, intent upon their Baedekers; he tiptoes up behind them and kneels by another pillar--for the pillars of a church are his friendly rocks, touching which he can face the unknown. The curtain is brailed up, and the blue and crimson, the mournful eyes, the wimple, the pointed chin, the long idle fingers are revealed upon their golden background. While the girls flock about papa with his book, and mamma wonders where we shall have luncheon, Annibale, assured familiar of Heaven, beatified at no expense to himself, settles down to a quiet talk with the Mother of God. His attitude is perfect, and so is hers. The firmament is not to be shaken, but Annibale is not a _farceur_, nor his Blessed One absurd. Mysteries are all about us. Some are for the eschatologist and some for the shepherd; some for Patmos and some for the _podere_. Let our historian remember, in fact, that the natures into which he invites us to pry are those of the little divinities of earth and he can't go very far wrong. Nor can we.

That, I am bold to confess, is my own attitude toward a lovely order of creation. Perhaps I may go on to give him certain hints of treatment. Nearly all of them, I think, tend to the same point--the discarding of literature. Literature, being a man's art, is at its best and also at its worst, in its dealing with women. No man, perhaps, is capable of writing of women as they really are, though every man thinks he is. A curious consequence to the history of fairies has been that literature has recognised no males in that community, and that of the females it has described it has selected only those who are enamoured of men or disinclined to them. The fact, of course, is that the fairy world is peopled very much as our own, and that, with great respect to Shakespeare, an Ariel, a Puck, a Titania, a Peas-blossom are abnormal. It is as rare to find a fairy capable of discerning man as the converse is rare. I have known a person intensely aware of the Spirits that reside, for instance, in flowers, in the wind, in rivers and hills, none the less bereft of any intercourse whatever with these interesting beings by the simple fact that they themselves were perfectly unconscious of him. It is greatly to be doubted whether Shakespeare ever saw a fairy, though his age believed in fairies, but almost certain that Shelley must have seen many, whose age did not believe. If our author is to have a poetical guide at all it had better be Shelley.

Literature will tell him that fairies are benevolent or mischievous, and tradition, borrowing from literature, will confirm it. The proposition is ridiculous. It would be as wise to say that a gnat is mischievous when it stings you, or a bee benevolent because he cannot prevent you stealing his honey. There would be less talk of benevolent bees if the gloves were off. That is the pathetic fallacy again; and that is man all over. Will nothing, I wonder, convince him that he is not the centre of the Universe? If Darwin, Newton, Galileo, Copernicus and Sir Norman Lockyer have failed, is it my turn to try? Modesty forbids. Besides, I am prejudiced. I think man, in the conduct of his business, inferior to any vegetable. I am a tainted source. But such talk is idle, and so is that which cries havoc upon fairy morality. Heaven knows that it differs from our own; but Heaven also knows that our own differs _inter nos_; and that to discuss the customs and habits of the Japanese in British parlours is a vain thing. _The Forsaken Merman_ is a beautiful poem, but not a safe guide to those who would relate the ways of the spirits of the sea. But all this is leading me too far from my present affair, which is to relate how the knowledge of these things--of these beings and of their laws--came upon me, and how their nature influenced mine. I have said enough, I think, to establish the necessity of a good book upon the subject, and I take leave to flatter myself that these pages of my own will be indispensable Prolegomena to any such work, or to any research tending to its compilation.

In the absence of books, in the situation in which I found myself of reticence, I could do nothing but brood upon the things I had seen. Insensibly my imagination (latent while I had been occupied with observation) began to work. I did not write, but I pictured, and my waking dreams became so vivid that I was in a fair way to treat them as the only reality, and might have discarded the workaday world altogether. Luckily for me, my disposition was tractable and law-abiding. I fulfilled by habit the duties of the day; I toiled at my dreary work, ate and slept, wrote to my parents, visited them, having got those tasks as it were by heart, but I went through the rites like an automaton; my mind was elsewhere, intensely dogging the heels of that winged steed, my fancy, panting in its tracks, and perfectly content so only that it did not come up too late to witness the glories which its bold flights discovered. Thanks to it--all thanks to it--I did not become a nympholept. I did not haunt Parliament Hill o' nights. I did not spy upon the darkling motions of Mrs. Ventris. Desire, appetite, sex were not involved at all in this affair; nor yet was love. I was very prone to love, but I did not love Mrs. Ventris. In whatsoever fairy being I had seen there had been nothing which held physical attraction for me. There could be no allure when there was no lure. So far as I could tell, not one of these creatures--except Quidnunc, and possibly the Dryad, the sun-dyed nymph I had seen long ago in K---- Park--had been aware of my presence. I guessed, though I did not know (as I do now) that manifestation is not always mutual, but that a man may see a fairy without being seen, and conversely, a fairy may be fully aware of mankind or of some man or men without any suspicion of theirs. Moreover, though I saw them all extraordinarily beautiful, I had never yet seen one supremely desirable. The instinct to possess, which is an essential part of the love-passion of every man--had never stirred in me in the presence of these creatures. If it had I should have yielded to it, I doubt not, since there was no moral law to hold me back. But it never had, so far, and I was safe from the wasting misery of seeking that which could not, from its very nature (and mine) be sought.

There was really nothing I could do, therefore, but wait, and that is what I did. I waited intensely, very much as a terrier waits at the hole of the bolting rabbit. By the merest accident I got a clew to a very interesting case which added enormously to my knowledge. It was a clear case of fairy child-theft, the clearest I ever met with. I shall devote a chapter to it, having been at the pains to verify it in all particulars. I did not succeed in meeting the hero, or victim of it, because, though the events related took place in 1887, they were not recorded until 1892, when the record came into my hands. By that time the two persons concerned had left the country and were settled in Florida. I did see Mr. Walsh, the Nonconformist Minister who communicated the tale to his local society, but he was both a dull and a cautious man, and had very little to tell me. He had himself seen nothing, he only had Beckwith's word to go upon and did not feel certain that the whole affair was not an hallucination on the young man's part. That the child had disappeared was certain, that both parents were equally distressed is certain. Not a shred of suspicion attached to the unhappy Beckwith. But Mr. Walsh told me that he felt the loss so keenly and blamed himself so severely, though unreasonably, to my thinking, that it would have been impossible for him to remain in England. He said that the full statement communicated to the Field Club was considered by the young man in the light of a confession of his share in the tragedy. It would, he said, have been exorbitant to expect more of him. And I quite agree with him; and now had better give the story as I found it.

BECKWITH'S CASE

The facts were as follows. Mr. Stephen Mortimer Beckwith was a young man living at Wishford in the Amesbury district of Wiltshire. He was a clerk in the Wilts and Dorset Bank at Salisbury, was married and had one child. His age at the time of the experience here related was twenty-eight. His health was excellent.

On the 30th November, 1887, at about ten o'clock at night, he was returning home from Amesbury where he had been spending the evening at a friend's house. The weather was mild, with a rain-bearing wind blowing in squalls from the south-west. It was three-quarter moon that night, and although the sky was frequently overcast it was at no time dark. Mr. Beckwith, who was riding a bicycle and accompanied by his fox-terrier Strap, states that he had no difficulty in seeing and avoiding the stones cast down at intervals by the road-menders; that flocks of sheep in the hollows were very visible, and that, passing Wilsford House, he saw a barn owl quite plainly and remarked its heavy, uneven flight.

A mile beyond Wilsford House, Strap, the dog, broke through the quick-set hedge upon his right-hand side and ran yelping up the down, which rises sharply just there. Mr. Beckwith, who imagined that he was after a hare, whistled him in, presently calling him sharply, "Strap, Strap, come out of it." The dog took no notice, but ran directly to a clump of gorse and bramble half-way up the down, and stood there in the attitude of a pointer, with uplifted paw, watching the gorse intently, and whining. Mr. Beckwith was by this time dismounted, observing the dog. He watched him for some minutes from the road. The moon was bright, the sky at the moment free from cloud.

He himself could see nothing in the gorse, though the dog was undoubtedly in a high state of excitement. It made frequent rushes forward, but stopped short of the object that it saw and trembled. It did not bark outright but rather whimpered--"a curious, shuddering, crying noise," says Mr. Beckwith. Interested by the animal's persistent and singular behaviour, he now sought a gap in the hedge, went through on to the down, and approached the clumped bushes. Strap was so much occupied that he barely noticed his master's coming; it seemed as if he dared not take his eyes for one second from what he saw in there.

Beckwith, standing behind the dog, looked into the gorse. From the distance at which he still stood he could see nothing at all. His belief then was that there was either a tramp in a drunken sleep, possibly two tramps, or a hare caught in a wire, or possibly even a fox. Having no stick with him he did not care, at first, to go any nearer, and contented himself with urging on his terrier. This was not very courageous of him, as he admits, and was quite unsuccessful. No verbal excitations would draw Strap nearer to the furze-bush. Finally the dog threw up his head, showed his master the white arcs of his eyes and fairly howled at the moon. At this dismal sound Mr. Beckwith owned himself alarmed. It was, as he describes it--though he is an Englishman--"uncanny." The time, he owns, the aspect of the night, loneliness of the spot (midway up the steep slope of a chalk down), the mysterious shroud of darkness upon shadowed and distant objects and flood of white light upon the foreground--all these circumstances worked upon his imagination.

He was indeed for retreat; but here Strap was of a different mind. Nothing would excite him to advance, but nothing either could induce him to retire. Whatever he saw in the furze-bush Strap must continue to observe. In the face of this Beckwith summoned up his courage, took it in both hands and went much nearer to the furze-bushes, much nearer, that is, than Strap the terrier could bring himself to go. Then, he tells us, he did see a pair of bright eyes far in the thicket, which seemed to be fixed upon his, and by degrees also a pale and troubled face. Here, then, was neither fox nor drunken tramp, but some human creature, man, woman, or child, fully aware of him and of the dog.

Beckwith, who now had surer command of his feelings, spoke aloud asking, "What are you doing there? What's the matter?" He had no reply. He went one pace nearer, being still on his guard, and spoke again. "I won't hurt you," he said. "Tell me what the matter is." The eyes remained unwinkingly fixed upon his own. No movement of the features could be discerned. The face, as he could now make it out, was very small--"about as big as a big wax doll's," he says, "of a longish oval, very pale." He adds, "I could see its neck now, no thicker than my wrist; and where its clothes began. I couldn't see any arms, for a good reason. I found out afterward that they had been bound behind its back. I should have said immediately, 'That's a girl in there,' if it had not been for one or two plain considerations. It had not the size of what we call a girl, nor the face of what we mean by a child. It was, in fact, neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. Strap had known that from the beginning, and now I was of Strap's opinion myself."

Advancing with care, a step at a time, Beckwith presently found himself within touching distance of the creature. He was now standing with furze half-way up his calves, right above it, stooping to look closely at it; and as he stooped and moved, now this way, now that, to get a clearer view, so the crouching thing's eyes gazed up to meet his, and followed them about, as if safety lay only in that never-shifting, fixed regard. He had noticed, and states in his narrative, that Strap had seemed quite unable, in the same way, to take his eyes off the creature for a single second.

He could now see that, of whatever nature it might be, it was, in form and features, most exactly a young woman. The features, for instance, were regular and fine. He remarks in particular upon the chin. All about its face, narrowing the oval of it, fell dark glossy curtains of hair, very straight and glistening with wet. Its garment was cut in a plain circle round the neck, and short off at the shoulders, leaving the arms entirely bare. This garment, shift, smock or gown, as he indifferently calls it, appeared thin, and was found afterward to be of a grey colour, soft and clinging to the shape. It was made loose, however, and gathered in at the waist. He could not see the creature's legs, as they were tucked under her. Her arms, it has been related, were behind her back. The only other things to be remarked upon were the strange stillness of one who was plainly suffering, and might well be alarmed, and appearance of expectancy, a dumb appeal; what he himself calls rather well "an ignorant sort of impatience, like that of a sick animal."

"Come," Beckwith now said, "let me help you up. You will get cold if you sit here. Give me your hand, will you?" She neither spoke nor moved; simply continued to search his eyes. Strap, meantime, was still trembling and whining. But now, when he stooped yet lower to take her forcibly by the arms, she shrank back a little way and turned her head, and he saw to his horror that she had a great open wound in the side of her neck--from which, however, no blood was issuing. Yet it was clearly a fresh wound, recently made.

He was greatly shocked. "Good God," he said, "there's been foul play here," and whipped out his handkerchief. Kneeling, he wound it several times round her slender throat and knotted it as tightly as he could; then, without more ado, he took her up in his arms, under the knees and round the middle, and carried her down the slope to the road. He describes her as of no weight at all. He says it was "exactly like carrying an armful of feathers about." "I took her down the hill and through the hedge at the bottom as if she had been a pillow."

Here it was that he discovered that her wrists were bound together behind her back with a kind of plait of thongs so intricate that he was quite unable to release them. He felt his pockets for his knife, but could not find it, and then recollected suddenly that he should have a new one with him, the third prize in a whist tournament in which he had taken part that evening. He found it wrapped in paper in his overcoat pocket, with it cut the thongs and set the little creature free. She immediately responded--the first sign of animation which she had displayed--by throwing both her arms about his body and clinging to him in an ecstasy. Holding him so that, as he says, he felt the shuddering go all through her, she suddenly lowered her head and touched his wrist with her cheek. He says that instead of being cold to the touch, "like a fish," as she had seemed to be when he first took her out of the furze, she was now "as warm as a toast, like a child."

So far he had put her down for "a foreigner," convenient term for defining something which you do not quite understand. She had none of his language, evidently; she was undersized, some three feet six inches by the look of her,[4] and yet perfectly proportioned. She was most curiously dressed in a frock cut to the knee, and actually in nothing else at all. It left her bare-legged and bare-armed, and was made, as he puts it himself, of stuff like cobweb: "those dusty, drooping kind which you put on your finger to stop bleeding." He could not recognise the web, but was sure that it was neither linen nor cotton. It seemed to stick to her body wherever it touched a prominent part: "you could see very well, to say nothing of feeling, that she was well made and well nourished." She ought, as he judged, to be a child of five years old, "and a feather-weight at that"; but he felt certain that she must be "much more like sixteen." It was that, I gather, which made him suspect her of being something outside experience. So far, then, it was safe to call her a foreigner: but he was not yet at the end of his discoveries.

[Footnote 4: Her exact measurements are stated to have been as follows: height from crown to sole, 3 feet 5 inches. Round waist, 15 inches; round bust, 21 inches; round wrist, 3-1/2 inches; round neck, 7-1/2 inches.]

Heavy footsteps, coming from the direction of Wishford, in due time proved to be those of Police Constable Gulliver, a neighbour of Beckwith's and guardian of the peace in his own village. He lifted his lantern to flash it into the traveller's eyes, and dropped it again with a pleasant "good evening."

He added that it was inclined to be showery, which was more than true, as it was at the moment raining hard. With that, it seems, he would have passed on.

But Beckwith, whether smitten by self-consciousness of having been seen with a young woman in his arms at a suspicious hour of the night by the village policeman, or bursting perhaps with the importance of his affair, detained Gulliver. "Just look at this," he said boldly. "Here's a pretty thing to have found on a lonely road. Foul play somewhere, I'm afraid," he then exhibited his burden to the lantern light.

To his extreme surprise, however, the constable, after exploring the beam of light and all that it contained for some time in silence, reached out his hand for the knife which Beckwith still held open. He looked at it on both sides, examined the handle and gave it back. "Foul play, Mr. Beckwith?" he said laughing. "Bless you, they use bigger tools than that. That's just a toy, the like of that. Cut your hand with it, though, already, I see." He must have noticed the handkerchief, for as he spoke the light from his lantern shone full upon the face and neck of the child, or creature, in the young man's arms, so clearly that, looking down at it, Beckwith himself could see the clear grey of its intensely watchful eyes, and the very pupils of them, diminished to specks of black. It was now, therefore, plain to him that what he held was a foreigner indeed, since the parish constable was unable to see it. Strap had smelt it, then seen it, and he, Beckwith, had seen it; but it was invisible to Gulliver. "I felt now," he says in his narrative, "that something was wrong. I did not like the idea of taking it into the house; but I intended to make one more trial before I made up my mind about that. I said good night to Gulliver, put her on my bicycle and pushed her home. But first of all I took the handkerchief from her neck and put it in my pocket. There was no blood upon it, that I could see."

His wife, as he had expected, was waiting at the gate for him. She exclaimed, as he had expected, upon the lateness of the hour. Beckwith stood for a little in the roadway before the house, explaining that Strap had bolted up the hill and had had to be looked for and fetched back. While speaking he noticed that Mrs. Beckwith was as insensible to the creature on the bicycle as Gulliver the constable had been. Indeed, she went much further to prove herself so than he, for she actually put her hand upon the handle-bar of the machine, and in order to do that drove it right through the centre of the girl crouching there. Beckwith saw that done. "I declare solemnly upon my honour," he writes, "that it was as if Mary had drilled a hole clean through the middle of her back. Through gown and skin and bone and all her arm went; and how it went I don't know. To me it seemed that her hand was on the handle-bar, while her upper arm, to the elbow, was in between the girl's shoulders. There was a gap from the elbow downwards where Mary's arm was inside the body; then from the creature's diaphragm her lower arm, wrist and hand came out. And all the time we were speaking the girl's eyes were on my face. I was now quite determined that I wouldn't have her in the house for a mint of money."

He put her, finally, in the dog-kennel. Strap, as a favourite, lived in the house; but he kept a greyhound in the garden, in a kennel surrounded by a sort of run made of iron poles and galvanised wire. It was roofed in with wire also, for the convenience of stretching a tarpaulin in wet weather. Here it was that he bestowed the strange being rescued from the down.