Part 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thou mak’st thy cry to me, thou mak’st thy plea, I watch the waters of a changeless sea. Upon its breast I mark a shadow fall, Wherein a myriad shadows toss and crawl. Weep’st thou because their turmoil will not cease, O passing ripple on the Lake of Peace? I watch the toiling shadows fight and strive, I hear the murmur of a Dream-world hive. Why is their warfare more to thee than me, Thou wave that risest from a boundless sea? No shadow-battle stirs the silent breast Of the deep waters of the Lake of Rest. Where mourning shadows throng the dreary side Of the black river’s foul and sluggish tide, I see the shining of the Silver Peace, I hear its music bid their moaning cease. Thy fair is foul to me, thy foul is fair; Thy songs are cries, thy joys are pain-fraught care; Thy griefs are gladness, and thy woes are gain, Thy deaths are jewels in an age-long chain. Thy sins but shadows on the waters wide, Thy virtues gleams upon the silent tide.

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

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

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

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

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

THE BENDING OF THE TWIG

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The dark brows of the elder listener drew together.

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

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

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

“I――I don’t know, Uncle Hugh.”

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

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

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

“I did this morning.”

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

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

“Yes, sometimes.”

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

The child knelt down and stared into the pool.

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

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

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

“But――I can’t. It wasn’t a lie.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes,” faltered the quivering lips.

“Once more, are they true?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To-night he took courage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He hesitated, then he said in a whisper:

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

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

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

“Th-that I saw th-them.”

There was a pause. Then Perry said gently:

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

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

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

March shouted to the child on the cliff:

“Come here.”

Dennis obeyed him shuddering still.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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