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PAN’S GARDEN 
 
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limtrep 
 
 LONDON + BOMBAY + CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK « BOSTON + CHICAGO 
 DALLAS + SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lip. 
 TORONTO 
 
SARI, BSR eit Ny 
 
PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 A VOLUME OF NATURE STORIES 
 
 BY 
 
 ALGERNON BLACKWOOD 
 
 AUTHOR OF ‘THE CENTAUR,’ ‘THE EDUCATION OF UNCLE PAUL,’ 
 “THE HUMAN CHORD,’ ‘JIMBO, ETC. 
 
 WITH DRAWINGS BY #,. GRAHAM ROBERTSON 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CoO., LIMITED 
 ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON 
 
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PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 My thanks are due to the Editor of the Westminster 
 Gazette for permission to include in this volume 
 three stories, ‘The Messenger,’ ‘The Attic,’ and 
 ‘The South Wind,’ which originally appeared in 
 
 his columns. 
 AwB: 
 
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CONTENTS 
 
 Tue Man wHom THE T'REES LOVED 
 
 Tue Soutrn Winp 
 Tue Sea Fir 
 
 Tue Arric 
 
 Tue Hearn Fire. 
 Tue MeEssENGER 
 Tue GLamour oF THE SNOW 
 Tue Return 
 SaNnD 
 
 Tue ‘TRANSFER 
 CLAIRVOYANCE 
 Tue Goxpen Fry 
 
 SpeciaL DELIVERY . 
 
 Tue Desrrucrion oF SMITH. 
 
 Tue TEMPTATION OF THE CLay 
 
 xl 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES 
 LOVED 
 
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 I 
 
 HE painted trees as by some special divining instinct 
 of their essential qualities. He understood them. 
 He knew why in an oak forest, for instance, each 
 individual was utterly distinct from its fellows, and 
 why no two beeches in the whole world were alike. 
 People asked him down to paint a favourite lime or 
 silver birch, for he caught the individuality of a tree 
 as some catch the individuality of a horse. How he 
 managed it was something of a puzzle, for he never 
 had painting lessons, his drawing was often wildly 
 inaccurate, and, while his perception of a Tree Person- 
 ality was true and vivid, his rendering of it might 
 almost approach the ludicrous. Yet the character 
 and personality of that particular tree stood there 
 alive beneath his brush—shining, frowning, dreaming, 
 as the case might be, friendly or hostile, good or evil. 
 It emerged. 
 
 There was nothing else in the wide world that he 
 could paint ; flowers and landscapes he only muddled 
 away into asmudge ; with people he was helpless and 
 hopeless ; also with animals. Skies he could some- 
 times manage, or effects of wind in foliage, but as a 
 rule he left these all severely alone. He kept to 
 trees, wisely following an instinct that was guided by 
 love. It was quite arresting, this way he had of 
 making a tree look almost like a being—alive. It 
 approached the uncanny. 
 
 2 
 
4 - PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 ‘Yes, Sanderson knows what he’s doing when 
 he paints a tree!’ thought old David Bittacy, C.B., 
 late of the Woods and Forests. ‘Why, you can 
 almost hear it rustle. You can smell the thing. 
 You can hear the rain drip through its leaves. You 
 can almost see the branches move. It grows.’ For 
 in this way somewhat he expressed his satisfaction, 
 half to persuade himself that the twenty guineas were 
 well spent (since his wife thought otherwise), and half 
 to explain this uncanny reality of life that lay in the 
 fine old cedar framed above his study table. 
 
 Yet in the general view the mind of Mr. Bittacy 
 was held to be austere, not to say morose. Few 
 divined in him the secretly tenacious love of nature 
 that had been fostered by years spent in the 
 forests and jungles of the eastern world. It was 
 odd for an Englishman, due possibly to that 
 Eurasian ancestor. Surreptitiously, as though half 
 ashamed of it, he had kept alive a sense of 
 beauty that hardly belonged to his type, and was 
 unusual for its vitality. Trees, in particular, 
 nourished it. He, also, understood trees, felt a 
 subtle sense of communion with them, born perhaps 
 of those years he had lived in caring for them, 
 guarding, protecting, nursing, years of solitude 
 among their great shadowy presences. He kept it 
 largely to himself, of course, because he knew the 
 world he lived in. He also kept it from his wife— 
 to some extent. He knew it came between them, 
 knew that she feared it, was opposed. But what he 
 did not know, or realise at any rate, was the extent 
 to which she grasped the power which they wielded 
 over his life. Her fear, he judged, was simply due 
 to those years in India, when for weeks at a time 
 his calling took him away from her into the jungle 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 5 
 
 forests, while she remained at home dreading all 
 manner of evils that might befall him. This, of 
 course, explained her instinctive opposition to the 
 passion for woods that still influenced and clung to 
 him. It was a natural survival of those anxious days 
 of waiting in solitude for his safe return. 
 
 For Mrs. Bittacy, daughter of an evangelical, 
 clergyman, was a self-sacrificing woman, who in- 
 most things found a happy duty in sharing her 
 husband’s joys and sorrows to the point of self- 
 obliteration. Only in this matter of the trees she 
 was less successful than in others. It remained a 
 problem difficult of compromise. 
 
 He knew, for instance, that what she objected 
 to in this portrait of the cedar on their lawn was 
 really not the price he had given for it, but the 
 unpleasant way in which the transaction emphasised 
 this breach between their common interests—the only 
 
 one they had, but deep. 
 
 Sanderson, the artist, earned little enough money 
 by his strange talent; such cheques were few and 
 far between. The owners of fine or interesting trees 
 who cared to have them painted singly were rare 
 indeed ; and the ‘studies’ that he made for his own 
 delight he also kept for his own delight. Even 
 were there buyers, he would not sell them. Only a 
 few, and these peculiarly intimate friends, might even 
 see them, for he disliked to hear the undiscerning 
 criticisms of those who did not understand. Not that 
 he minded laughter at his craftmanship—he admitted 
 it with scorn—but that remarks about the personality 
 of the tree itself could easily wound or anger him. 
 He resented slighting observations concerning them, 
 as though insults offered to personal friends who 
 
6 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 could not answer for themselves. He was instantly 
 up in arms. 
 
 ‘It really is extraordinary,’ said a Woman who 
 Understood, ‘that you can make that cypress seem an 
 individual, when in reality all cypresses are so exactly 
 alike.’ 
 
 And though the bit of calculated flattery had 
 come so near to saying the right, true thing, 
 Sanderson flushed as though she had slighted a 
 friend beneath his very nose. Abruptly he passed 
 in front of her and turned the picture to the wall. 
 
 ‘Almost as queer,’ he answered rudely, copying 
 her silly emphasis, ‘as that you should have imagined 
 individuality in your husband, Madame, when in 
 reality all men are so exactly alike!’ 
 
 Since the only thing that differentiated her 
 husband from the mob was the money for which 
 she had married him, Sanderson’s relations with that 
 particular family terminated on the spot, chance of 
 prospective ‘orders’ with it. His sensitiveness, 
 perhaps, was morbid. At any rate the way to reach 
 his heart lay through his trees. He might be said to 
 love trees. He certainly drew a splendid inspiration 
 from them, and the source of a man’s inspiration, be 
 it music, religion, or a woman, is never a safe thing 
 to criticise. 
 
 ‘I do think, perhaps, it was just a little ex- 
 travagant, dear,’ said Mrs. Bittacy, referring to the 
 cedar cheque, ‘when we want a lawn-mower so 
 badly too. But, as it gives you such pleasure 
 
 ‘It reminds me of a certain day, Sophia,’ replied 
 the old gentleman, looking first proudly at herself, 
 then fondly at the picture, ‘now long gone by. It 
 reminds me of another tree—that Kentish lawn in 
 the spring, birds singing in the lilacs, and some one 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 7 
 
 in a muslin frock waiting patiently beneath a certain 
 cedar—not the one in the picture, I know, but 
 
 ‘I was not waiting,’ she said indignantly, ‘I was 
 picking fir-cones for the schoolroom fire i 
 
 ‘Fir-cones, my dear, do not grow on cedars, and 
 schoolroom fires were not made in June in my young 
 days.’ 
 
 ’ And anyhow it isn’t the same cedar.’ 
 
 ‘It has made me fond of all cedars for its sake,’ 
 he answered, ‘and it reminds me that you are the 
 same young girl still 
 
 She crossed the room to his side, and together 
 they looked out of the window where, upon the 
 lawn of their Hampshire cottage, a ragged Lebanon 
 stood in solitary state. 
 
 ‘You're as full of dreams as ever,’ she said 
 gently, ‘and I don’t regret the cheque a bit—really. 
 Only it would have been more real if it had been 
 the original tree, wouldn’t it ?’ 
 
 ‘That was blown down long ago. I passed the 
 place last year, and there’s not a sign of it left,’ he 
 replied tenderly. And presently, when he released 
 her from his side, she went up to the wall and 
 carefully dusted the picture Sanderson had made of 
 the cedar on their present lawn. She went all round 
 the frame with her tiny handkerchief, standing on 
 tiptoe to reach the top rim. 
 
 ‘What I like about it,’ said the old fellow to 
 himself when his wife had left the room, ‘is the way 
 he has made it live. All trees have it, of course, 
 but a cedar taught it to me first—the “something ” 
 trees possess that make them know I’m there when 
 I stand close and watch. I suppose I felt it then 
 because I was in love, and love reveals life every- 
 where. He glanced a moment at the Lebanon 
 
8 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 looming gaunt and sombre through the gathering 
 dusk. A curious wistful expression danced a 
 moment through his eyes. ‘Yes, Sanderson has 
 seen it as it 1s, he murmured, ‘solemnly dreaming 
 there its dim hidden life against the Forest edge, 
 and as different from that other tree in Kent as I am 
 from—from the vicar, say. It’s quite a stranger, 
 too. I don’t know anything about it really. That 
 other cedar I loved; this old fellow I respect. 
 Friendly. though—yes, on the whole quite friendly. 
 He’s painted the friendliness right enough. He 
 saw that. I’d like to know that man better,’ he 
 added. ‘I’d like to ask him how he saw so clearly 
 that it stands there between this cottage and the 
 Forest—yet somehow more in sympathy with us 
 than with the mass of woods behind—a sort of 
 go-between. That I never noticed before. I see 
 it now—through his eyes. It stands there like a 
 sentinel—protective rather.’ ) 
 
 He turned away abruptly to look through the 
 window. He saw the great encircling mass of gloom 
 that was the Forest, fringing their little lawn. It 
 pressed up closer in the darkness. The prim garden 
 with its formal beds of flowers seemed an imperti- 
 nence almost—some little coloured insect that sought 
 to settle on a sleeping monster—some gaudy fly that 
 danced impudently down the edge of a great river 
 that could engulf it with a toss of its smallest wave. — 
 That Forest with its thousand years of growth and 
 its deep spreading being was some such slumbering 
 monster, yes. Their cottage and garden stood too 
 near its running lip. When the winds were strong 
 and lifted its shadowy skirts of black and purple. . . . 
 He loved this feeling of the Forest Personality ; he 
 had always loved it. 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 9 
 
 ‘Queer,’ he reflected, ‘awfully queer, that trees 
 should bring me such a sense of dim, vast living! | 
 used to feel it particularly, I remember, in India; in 
 Canadian woods as well; but never in little English 
 woods till here. And Sanderson’s the only man: | 
 ever knew who felt it too. He’s never said so, but 
 there’s the proof,’ and he turned again to the picture 
 that he loved. A thrill of unaccustomed life ran 
 through him as he looked. ‘I wonder, by Jove, I 
 wonder,’ his thoughts ran on, ‘whether a tree—er— 
 in any lawful meaning of the term can be—alive. I 
 remember some writing fellow telling me long ago 
 that trees had once been moving things, animal 
 organisms of some sort, that had stood so long 
 feeding, sleeping, dreaming, or something, in the 
 same place, that they had lost the power to get 
 aways tek" 
 
 Fancies flew pell-mell about his mind, and, 
 lighting a cheroot, he dropped into an armchair 
 beside the open window and let them play. Outside 
 the blackbirds whistled in the shrubberies across 
 the lawn. He smelt the earth and trees and flowers, 
 the perfume of mown grass, and the bits of open 
 heath-land far away in the heart of the woods. ‘The 
 summer wind stirred very faintly through the leaves. 
 But the great New Forest hardly raised her sweeping 
 skirts of black and purple shadow. 
 
 Mr. Bittacy, however, knew intimately every 
 detail of that wilderness of trees within. He knew 
 all the purple coombs splashed with yellow waves of 
 gorse ; sweet with juniper and myrtle, and gleaming 
 with clear and dark-eyed pools that watched the 
 sky. There hawks hovered, circling hour by hour, 
 and the flicker of the peewit’s flight with its melan- 
 choly, petulant cry, deepened the sense of stillness. 
 
10 PAN’S GARDEN . 
 
 He knew the solitary pines, dwarfed, tufted, vigorous, 
 that sang to every lost wind, travellers like the 
 gipsies who pitched their bush-like tents beneath 
 them; he knew the shaggy ponies, with foals like 
 baby centaurs ; the chattering jays, the milky call of 
 cuckoos in the spring, and the boom of the bittern 
 from the lonely marshes. The undergrowth of 
 watching hollies, he knew too, strange and mysterious, 
 with their dark, suggestive beauty, and the yellow 
 shimmer of their pale dropped leaves. 
 
 Here all the Forest lived and breathed in safety, 
 secure from mutilation. No terror of the axe could 
 haunt the peace of its vast subconscious life, no terror 
 of devastating Man afflict it with the dread of 
 premature death. It knew itself supreme ; it spread 
 and preened itself without concealment. It set no 
 spires to carry warnings, for no wind brought 
 messages of alarm as it bulged outwards to the sun 
 and stars. 
 
 But, once its leafy portals left behind, the trees 
 of the countryside were otherwise. The houses 
 threatened them ; they knew themselves in danger. 
 The roads were no longer glades of silent turf, but 
 noisy, cruel ways by which men came to attack 
 them. They were civilised, cared for—but cared 
 for in order that some day they might be put to 
 death. Even in the villages, where the solemn and 
 immemorial repose of giant chestnuts aped security, 
 the tossing of a silver birch against their mass, 
 impatient in the littlest wind, brought warning. 
 Dust clogged their leaves. The inner humming of 
 their quiet life became inaudible beneath the scream 
 and shriek of clattering traffic. They longed and 
 prayed to enter the great Peace of the Forest yonder, 
 but they could not move. They knew, moreover, 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 11 
 
 that the Forest with its august, deep splendour 
 despised and pitied them. They were a thing of 
 artificial gardens, and ee to beds of flowers 
 all forced to grow one way. . 
 
 ‘Td like to know that artist fellow better,’ was 
 the thought upon which he returned at length to 
 the things of practical life. ‘I wonder if Sophia 
 would mind him here for a bit—?’ He rose with 
 the sound of the gong, brushing the ashes from his 
 speckled waistcoat. He pulled the waistcoat down. 
 He was slim and spare in figure, active in his 
 movements. In the dim light, but for that silvery 
 moustache, he might easily have passed for a man of 
 forty. ‘I'll suggest it to her anyhow,’ he decided 
 on his way upstairs to dress. His thought really 
 was that Sanderson could probably explain this 
 world of things he had always felt about—trees. A 
 man who could paint the soul of a cedar in that 
 way must know it all. 
 
 ‘Why not?’ she gave her verdict later over the 
 bread-and-butter pudding ; ‘unless you,think he'd 
 find it dull without companions.’ 
 
 ‘He would paint all day in the Forest, dear. 
 I'd like to pick his brains a bit, too, if I could 
 manage it.’ 
 
 ‘You can manage anything, David,’ was what 
 she answered, for this elderly childless couple used 
 an affectionate politeness long since deemed old- 
 fashioned. The remark, however, displeased her, 
 making her feel uneasy, and she did not notice his 
 rejoinder, smiling his pleasure and content— Except 
 yourself and our bank account, my dear.’ This 
 passion of his for trees was of old a bone of contention, 
 though very mild contention. It frightened her. 
 That was the truth. The Bible, her Baedeker for 
 
12 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 earth and heaven, did not mention it. Her husband, 
 while humouring her, could never alter that 
 instinctive dread she had. He soothed, but never 
 changed her. She liked the woods, perhaps as spots 
 for shade and picnics, but she could not, as he did, 
 love them. | 
 
 And after dinner, with a lamp beside the open 
 window, he read aloud from The Times the evening 
 post had brought, such fragments as he thought 
 might interest her. The custom was invariable, 
 except on Sundays, when, to please his wife, he 
 dozed over Tennyson or Farrar as their mood might 
 be. She knitted while he read, asked gentle 
 questions, told him his voice was a ‘lovely reading 
 voice, and enjoyed the little discussions that 
 occasions prompted because he always let her win 
 them with ‘Ah, Sophia, I had never thought of it 
 quite in ‘hat way before ; but now you mention it | 
 must say I think there’s something in it. . . .’ 
 
 For David Bittacy was wise. It was long after 
 marriage, during his months of loneliness spent with 
 trees and forests in India, his wife waiting at home 
 in the Bungalow, that his other, deeper side had 
 developed the strange passion that she could not 
 understand. And after one or two serious attempts 
 to let her share it with him, he had given up and 
 learned to hide it from her. He learned, that is, 
 to speak of it only casually ; for since she knew it 
 was there, to keep silence altogether would only 
 increase her pain. So from time to time he skimmed 
 the surface just to let her show him where he was 
 wrong and think she won the day. It remained a 
 debatable land of compromise. He listened with 
 patience to her criticisms, her excursions and alarms, 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 13 
 
 knowing that while it gave her satisfaction, it could 
 not change himself. The thing lay in him too 
 deep and true for change. But, for peace’ sake, some 
 meeting-place was desirable, and he found it thus. 
 
 It was her one fault in his eyes, this religious mania 
 carried over from her up-bringing, and it did no 
 serious harm. Great emotion could shake 1t some- 
 times out of her. She clung to it because her father 
 taught it her and not because she had thought it 
 out for herself. Indeed, like many women, she 
 never really shought at all, but merely reflected the 
 images of others’ thinking which she had learned 
 to see. So, wise in his knowledge of human nature, 
 old David Bittacy accepted the pain of being obliged 
 to keep a portion of his inner life shut off from the 
 woman he deeply loved. He regarded her little 
 biblical phrases as oddities that still clung to a rather 
 fine, big soul—like horns and little useless things some 
 animals have not yet lost in the course of evolution 
 while they have outgrown their use. 
 
 ‘My dear, what is it? You frightened me!’ 
 She asked it suddenly, sitting up so abruptly that 
 her cap dropped sideways almost to her ear. For 
 David Bittacy behind his crackling paper had uttered 
 a sharp exclamation of surprise. He had lowered 
 the sheet and was staring at her over the tops of his 
 gold glasses. 
 
 ‘Listen to this, if you please,’ he said, a note of 
 eagerness in his voice, ‘listen to this, my dear 
 Sophia. It’s from an address by Francis Darwin 
 before the Royal Society. He is president, you 
 know, and son of the great Darwin. Listen care- 
 fully, I beg you. It is most significant.’ 
 
 ‘I am listening, David,’ she said with some 
 astonishment, looking up. She stopped her knitting. 
 
14 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 For a second she glanced behind her. Something 
 had suddenly changed in the room, and it made her 
 feel wide awake, though before she had been almost 
 dozing. Her husband’s voice and manner had 
 introduced this new thing. Her instincts rose in 
 warning. ‘Do read it, dear.” He took a deep 
 breath, looking first again over the rims of his 
 glasses to make quite sure of her attention. He 
 had evidently: come across something of genuine 
 interest, although herself she often found the 
 passages from these ‘ Addresses ’ somewhat heavy. 
 
 In a deep, emphatic voice he read aloud : 
 
 ‘<< It is impossible to know whether or not plants 
 are conscious ; but it is consistent with the doctrine of 
 continuity that in all living things there is something 
 psychic, and if we accept this point of view a 
 
 ‘ Jf, she interrupted, scenting danger. 
 
 He ignored the interruption as a thing of slight 
 value he was accustomed to. 
 
 ‘<< Tf we accept this point of view,” ’ he continued, 
 ‘«we must believe that in plants there exists a faint 
 copy of what we know as consciousness in ourselves.” ’ 
 
 He laid the paper down and steadily stared at 
 her. Their eyes met. He had italicised the last 
 phrase. 
 
 For a minute or two his wife made no reply or 
 comment. They stared at one another in silence. 
 He waited for the meaning of the words to reach her 
 understanding with full import. Then he turned 
 and read them again in part, while she, released from 
 that curious driving look in his eyes, instinctively 
 again glanced over her shoulder round the room. 
 It was almost.as if she felt some one had come in to 
 them unnoticed. 
 
 ‘We must believe that in plants there exists a 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 15 
 
 faint copy of what we know as consciousness in our- 
 selves.’ 
 
 ‘ Tf,” she repeated lamely, feeling before the stare 
 of those questioning eyes she must say something, but 
 not yet having gathered her wits together quite. 
 
 ‘ Consciousness, he rejoined. And then he added 
 gravely: ‘That, my dear, is the statement of a scientific 
 man of the Twentieth Century.’ 
 
 Mrs. Bittacy sat forward in her chair so that her 
 silk flounces crackled louder than the newspaper. 
 She made a characteristic little sound between 
 snifing and snorting. She put her shoes closely 
 together, with her hands upon her knees. 
 
 ‘David,’ she said quietly, ‘I think these scientific 
 men are simply losing their heads. There is nothing 
 in the Bible that I can remember about any such 
 thing whatsoever.’ ; 
 
 ‘Nothing, Sophia, that I can remember either,’ 
 he answered patiently. Then, after a pause, he added, 
 half to himself perhaps more than to her: ‘And, 
 now that I come to think about it, it seems that 
 Sanderson once said something to me that was 
 similar.’ 
 
 ‘Then Mr. Sanderson is a wise and thoughtful 
 man, and a safe man,’ she quickly took him up, ‘if 
 he said that.’ 
 
 For she thought her husband referred to her re- 
 mark about the Bible, and not to her judgment of the 
 scientific men. And he did not correct her mistake. 
 
 ‘And plants, you see, dear, are not the same thing 
 as trees, she drove her advantage home, ‘not quite, 
 that is.’ | 
 
 ‘I agree,’ said David quietly ; ‘but both belong 
 to the great vegetable kingdom.’ 
 
 There was a moment’s pause before she answered. 
 
16 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 ‘Pah! the vegetable kingdom, indeed!’ She 
 tossed her pretty old head. And into the words she 
 put a degree of contempt that, could the vegetable 
 kingdom have heard it, might have made it feel 
 ashamed for covering a third of the world with its 
 wonderful tangled network of roots and branches, 
 delicate shaking leaves, and its millions of spires that 
 caught the sun and wind and rain. Its very right 
 to existence seemed in question. 
 
II 
 
 SANDERSON accordingly came down, and on the 
 whole his short visit was a success. Why he came 
 at all was a mystery to those who heard of it, for he 
 never paid visits and was certainly not the kind of 
 man to court a customer. There must have been 
 something in Bittacy he liked. 
 
 Mrs, Bittacy was glad when he left. He brought 
 no dress-suit for one thing, not even a dinner-jacket, 
 and he wore very low collars with big balloon ties 
 like a Frenchman, and let his hair grow longer than 
 was nice, she felt. Not that these things were 
 important, but that she considered them, symptoms 
 of something a little disordered. The ties were 
 unnecessarily flowing. 
 
 For all that he was an interesting man, and, in 
 spite of his eccentricities of dress and so forth, a 
 gentleman. ‘Perhaps,’ she reflected in her genuinely 
 charitable heart, ‘he had other uses for the twenty 
 guineas, an invalid sister or an old mother to support!’ 
 She had no notion of the cost of brushes, frames, paints, 
 and canvases. Also she forgave him much for the 
 sake of his beautiful eyes and:his eager enthusiasm of 
 manner. So many men of thirty were already blasé. 
 
 Still, when the visit was over, she felt relieved. 
 She said nothing about his coming a second time, 
 and her husband, she was glad to notice, had likewise 
 
 17 Cc 
 
18 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 made no suggestion. For, truth to tell, the way the 
 younger man engrossed the older, keeping him out 
 for hours in the Forest, talking on the lawn in the 
 blazing sun, and in the evenings when the damp of 
 dusk came creeping out from the surrounding woods, 
 all regardless of his age and usual habits, was not 
 quite to her taste. Of course, Mr. Sanderson did 
 not know how easily those attacks of Indian fever 
 came back, but David surely might have told him. — 
 
 They talked trees from morning till night. - It 
 stirred in her the old subconscious trail of dread, a 
 trail that led ever into the darkness of big woods ; 
 and such feelings, as her early evangelical training 
 taught her, were temptings. To regard them in 
 any other way was to play with danger. 
 
 Her mind, as she watched these two, was charged 
 with curious thoughts of dread she could not under- 
 stand, yet feared the more on that account. The 
 way they studied that old mangy cedar was a trifle 
 unnecessary, unwise, she felt. It was disregarding 
 the sense of proportion which deity had set upon the 
 world for men’s safe guidance. 
 
 Even after dinner they smoked their cigars upon 
 the low branches that swept down and touched the 
 lawn, until at length she insisted on their coming in. 
 Cedars, she had somewhere heard, were not safe after 
 sundown ; it was not wholesome to be'too near them ; 
 to sleep beneath them was even dangerous, though 
 what the precise danger was she had forgotten. ‘The 
 upas was the tree she really meant. 
 
 At any rate she summoned David in, and Sanderson 
 came presently after him. 
 
 For a long time, before deciding on this peremp- 
 tory step, she had watched them surreptitiously from 
 
 the drawing-room window—her husband and her 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 19 
 
 guest. The dusk enveloped them with its damp 
 veil of gauze. She saw the glowing tips of their 
 cigars, and heard the drone of voices. Bats flitted 
 overhead, and big, silent moths whirred softly over 
 the rhododendron blossoms. And it came suddenly 
 to her, while she watched, that her husband had some- 
 how altered these last few days—since Mr. Sanderson’s 
 arrival in fact. A change had come over him, though 
 what it was she could not say. She hesitated, indeed, 
 to search. That was the instinctive dread operating 
 in her. Provided it passed she would rather not 
 know. Small things, of course, she noticed ; small 
 outward signs. He had neglected The Times for 
 one thing, left off his speckled waistcoats for another. 
 He was absent-minded sometimes ; showed vagueness 
 in practical details where hitherto he showed decision. 
 And—he had begun to talk in his sleep again. 
 
 These and a dozen other small peculiarities came 
 suddenly upon her with the rush of a combined attack. 
 They brought with them a faint distress that made 
 her shiver. Momentarily her mind was startled, 
 then confused, as her eyes picked out the shadowy 
 figures in the dusk, the cedar covering them, the 
 Forest close at their backs. And then, before she 
 could think, or seek internal guidance as her habit 
 was, this whisper, muffled and very hurried, ran across 
 her brain: ‘It’s Mr. Sanderson. Call David in at 
 once!’ | 
 
 And.she had done so. Her shrill voice crossed 
 the lawn and died away into the Forest, quickly 
 smothered. No echo followed it. The sound fell 
 dead against the rampart of a thousand listening 
 trees. 
 
 ‘The damp is so very penetrating, even in summer,’ 
 she murmured when they came obediently. She was 
 
20 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 half surprised at her own audacity, half repentant. 
 They came so meekly at her call. ‘And my husband 
 is sensitive to fever from the East. No, please do 
 -not throw away your cigars. Wecan sit by the open 
 window and enjoy the evening while you smoke.’ 
 
 She was very talkative for a moment ; subconscious 
 excitement was the cause. 
 
 ‘It is so still—so wonderfully still,’ she went on, 
 as no one spoke, ‘so peaceful, and the air so very 
 sweet . . . and God is always near to those who 
 need His aid.’ The words slipped out before she 
 realised quite what she was saying, yet fortunately, 
 in time to lower her voice, for no one heard them. 
 They were, perhaps, an instinctive expression of 
 relief. It flustered her that she could have said the 
 thing at all. _ 
 
 Sanderson brought her shaw] and helped to arrange 
 the chairs; she thanked him in her old-fashioned, 
 gentle way, declining the lamps which he had offered 
 to light. ‘They attract the moths and insects so, 
 I think !’ 
 
 The three of them sat there in the gloaming, 
 Mr. Bittacy’s white moustache and his wife’s yellow 
 shawl gleaming at either end of the little horseshoe, 
 Sanderson with his wild black hair and shining eyes 
 midway between them. The painter went on talking 
 softly, continuing evidently the conversation begun 
 with his host beneath the cedar. Mrs. Bittacy, on 
 her guard, listened—uneasily. 
 
 ‘For trees, you see, rather conceal themselves in 
 daylight. They reveal themselves fully only after 
 sunset. I never know a tree, he bowed here slightly 
 towards the lady as though to apologise for some- 
 thing he felt she would not quite understand or 
 like, ‘until I’ve seen it inthe night. Your cedar, for 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 21 
 
 instance,’ looking towards her husband again so that 
 Mrs. Bittacy caught the gleaming of his turned 
 eyes, ‘I failed with badly at first, because I did it in 
 the morning. You shall see to-morrow what I: 
 mean—that first sketch is upstairs in my portfolio ; 
 it’s quite another tree to the one you bought. That 
 view ’—he leaned forward, lowering his voice—‘ I 
 caught one morning about two o'clock in very faint 
 moonlight and the stars. 1 saw the naked being of 
 the thing ——’ 
 
 ‘You mean that you went out, Mr. Sanderson, 
 at that hour ?’ the old lady asked with astonishment 
 and mild rebuke. She did not care particularly for 
 his choice of adjectives either. 
 
 ‘] fear it was rather a liberty to take in another’s 
 house, perhaps, he answered courteously. ‘But, 
 having chanced to wake, I saw the tree from my 
 window, and made my way downstairs.’ 
 
 ‘It’s a wonder Boxer didn’t bite you; he sleeps 
 loose in the hall,’ she said. 
 
 ‘On the contrary. The dog came out with me. 
 I hope,’ he added, ‘the noise didn’t disturb you, 
 though it’s rather late to say so. I feel quite guilty.’ 
 His white teeth showed in the dusk as he smiled. 
 A smell of earth and flowers stole in through the 
 window on a breath of wandering air. 
 
 Mrs. Bittacy said nothing at the moment. ‘We 
 both sleep like tops,’ put in her husband, laughing. 
 ‘You're a courageous man, though, Sanderson ; and, 
 by Jove, the picture justifies you. Few artists would 
 have taken so much trouble, though I read once 
 that Holman Hunt, Rossetti, or some one of that lot, 
 painted all night in his orchard to get an effect of 
 _ moonlight that he wanted.’ 
 
 He chattered on. His wife was glad to hear his 
 
22 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 voice ; it made her feel more easy in her mind. But 
 presently the other held the floor again, and her 
 thoughts grew darkened and afraid. Instinctively 
 she feared the influence on her husband. The 
 mystery and wonder that lie in woods, in forests, 
 in great gatherings of trees everywhere, seemed 
 so real and present while he talked. 
 
 - ©The Night transfigures all things in a way,’ he 
 was saying; ‘but nothing so searchingly as trees. 
 From behind a veil that sunlight hangs before 
 them in the day they emerge and show themselves. 
 Even buildings do that—in a measure—but trees 
 particularly. In the daytime they sleep; at night 
 they wake, they manifest, turn active—live. You 
 remember,’ turning politely again in the direction of 
 his hostess, ‘how clearly Henley understood that? ’ 
 
 ‘That socialist person, you mean?’ asked the 
 lady. Her tone and accent made the substantive 
 sound criminal. It almost hissed, the way she 
 uttered it. 
 
 ‘The poet, yes,’ replied the artist tactfully, ‘the 
 friend of Stevenson, you remember, Stevenson who 
 wrote those charming children’s verses.’ 
 
 He quoted in a low voice the lines he meant. It 
 was, for once, the time, the place, and the setting 
 all together. The words floated out across the lawn 
 towards the wall of blue darkness where the big 
 Forest swept the little garden with its league-long 
 curve that was like the shore-line of a sea. A wave 
 of distant sound that was like surf accompanied his 
 voice, as though the wind was fain to listen too : 
 
 Not to the staring Day, 
 
 For all the importunate questionings he pursues 
 In his big, violent voice, 
 
 Shall those mild things of bulk and multitude, 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 23 
 
 The trees—God’s sentinels . . . 
 Yield of their huge, unutterable selves, 
 
 But at the word 
 
 Of the ancient, sacerdotal Night, 
 
 Night of the many secrets, whose effect— 
 Transfiguring, hierophantic, dread—. 
 Themselves alone may fully apprehend, 
 They tremble and are changed: 
 
 In each the uncouth, individual soul 
 Looms forth and glooms 
 
 Essential, and, their bodily presences 
 Touched with inordinate significance, 
 Wearing the darkness like a livery 
 
 Of some mysterious and tremendous guild, 
 They brood—they menace—they appal. 
 
 The voice of Mrs. Bittacy presently broke the 
 silence that followed. 
 
 ‘I like that part about God’s sentinels,’ she 
 murmured. There was no sharpness in her tone ; 
 it was hushed and quiet. The truth, so musically 
 uttered, muted her shrill objections though it had 
 not lessened her alarm. Her husband made no 
 comment ; his cigar, she noticed, had gone out. 
 
 ‘And old trees in particular,’ continued the artist, 
 as though to himself, ‘ have very definite personalities. 
 You can offend, wound, please them ; the moment 
 you stand within their shade you feel whether they 
 come out to you, or whether they withdraw.’ He 
 turned abruptly towards his host. ‘You know that 
 singular essay of Prentice Mulford’s, no doubt, 
 ‘God in the Trees ”—extravagant perhaps, but yet 
 with a fine true beauty init? You've never read it, 
 no?’ he asked. 
 
 But it was Mrs. Bittacy who answered; _ her 
 husband keeping his curious deep silence. 
 
 ‘J never did!’ It fell like a drip of cold water 
 
ays PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 from the face muffled in the yellow shawl; even a 
 child could have supplied the remainder of the 
 unspoken thought. 
 
 ‘ Ah,’ said Sanderson gently, ‘ but there zs “God” 
 in the trees, God in a very subtle aspect and some- 
 - times—I have known the trees express it too—that 
 which is wot God—dark and terrible. Have you 
 ever noticed, too, how clearly trees show what they 
 want—choose their companions, at least? How 
 beeches, for instance, allow no life too near them— 
 birds or squirrels in their boughs, nor any growth 
 beneath? The silence in the beech wood is quite 
 terrifying often! And how pines like bilberry bushes 
 at their feet and sometimes little oaks—all trees 
 making a clear, deliberate choice, and holding firmly 
 to it? Some trees obviously—it’s very strange and 
 marked—seem to prefer the human.’ 
 
 The old lady sat up crackling, for this was more 
 than she could permit. Her stiff silk dress emitted 
 little sharp reports. 
 
 ‘We know,’ she answered, ‘that He was said to 
 have walked in the garden in the cool of the 
 evening ’—the gulp betrayed the effort that it cost 
 her—‘ but we are nowhere told that He hid in the 
 trees, or anything like that. Trees, after all, we must 
 remember, are only large vegetables.’ 
 
 ‘True,’ was the soft answer, ‘but in everything 
 that grows, has life, that is, there’s mystery past all 
 finding out. The wonder that lies hidden in our 
 own souls lies also hidden, I venture to assert, in the 
 stupidity and silence of a mere potato.’ 
 
 The observation was not meant to be amusing. 
 It was mot amusing. No one laughed. On the 
 contrary, the words conveyed in too literal a sense 
 the feeling that haunted all that conversation. Each 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 25 
 
 one in his own way realised—with beauty, with 
 wonder, with alarm—that the talk had somehow 
 brought the whole vegetable kingdom nearer to that 
 of man. Some link had been established between the 
 two. It was not wise, with that great Forest listening 
 at their very doors, to speak so plainly. The Forest 
 edged up closer while they did so. 
 
 And Mrs. Bittacy, anxious to interrupt the horrid 
 spell, broke suddenly in upon it with a matter-of-fact 
 suggestion. She did not like her husband’s pro- 
 longed silence, stillness. He seemed so negative—so 
 changed. 
 
 ‘David,’ she said, raising her voice, ‘I think 
 you're feeling the dampness. It’s grownchilly. The 
 fever comes so suddenly, you know, and it might 
 be wise to take the tincture. I'll go and get it, 
 dear, at once. It’s better.’ And before he could 
 object she had left the room to bring the homoeopathic 
 dose that she believed in, and that, to please her, he 
 swallowed by the tumbler-full from week to week. 
 
 And the moment the door closed behind her, 
 Sanderson began again, though now in quite a diff- 
 erent tone. Mr. Bittacy sat up in his chair. The 
 two men obviously resumed the conversation—the 
 real conversation interrupted beneath the cedar—and 
 left aside the sham one which was so much dust 
 merely thrown in the old lady’s eyes. 
 
 ‘Trees love you, that’s the fact,’ he said earnestly. 
 ‘Your service to them all these years abroad has 
 made them know you.’ 
 
 ‘Know me?’ 
 
 ‘Made them, yes,—he paused a moment, then 
 added,—‘ made them aware of your presence; aware 
 of a force outside themselves that deliberately seeks 
 their welfare, don’t you see?’ 
 
26 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 ‘By Jove, Sanderson—!’ This put into plain 
 language actual sensations he had felt, yet had never 
 dared to phrase in words before. ‘They get into 
 touch with me, as it were?’ he ventured, laughing at 
 his own sentence, yet laughing only with his lips. 
 
 ‘Exactly,’ was the quick, emphaticreply. ‘They 
 seek to blend with something they feel instinctively 
 to be good for them, helpful to their essential beings, 
 encouraging to their best expression—their life.’ 
 
 ‘Good Lord, Sir!’ Bittacy heard himself saying, 
 ‘but you're putting my own thoughts into words. 
 D’you know, I’ve felt something like that for years. 
 As though—’ he looked round to make sure his wife 
 was not there, then finished the sentence—‘ as though 
 the trees were after me!’ 
 
 ‘« Amalgamate ’’ seems the best word, perhaps,’ 
 said Sanderson slowly. ‘They would draw you to 
 themselves. Good forces, you see, always seek to 
 merge ; evil to separate; that’s why Good in the 
 end must always win the day—everywhere. The 
 accumulation in the long run becomes overwhelming. 
 Evil tends to separation, dissolution, death. The 
 comradeship of trees, their instinct to run together, 
 is a vital symbol. ‘Trees in a mass are good ; alone, 
 you may take it generally, are—well, dangerous. 
 Look at a monkey-puzzler, or better still, a holly. 
 Look at it, watch it, understand it. Did you ever 
 see more plainly an evil thought made visible? 
 They’re wicked. Beautiful too, oh yes! There’s a 
 strange, miscalculated beauty often in evil : 
 
 ‘That cedar, then nae 
 
 ‘Not evil, no; but alien, rather. Cedars grow in 
 forests all together. The poor thing has drifted, that 
 is all.’ 
 
 They were getting rather deep. Sanderson, talking 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 27 
 
 against time, spoke so fast. It was too condensed. 
 Bittacy hardly followed that last bit. His mind 
 floundered among his own less definite, less sorted 
 thoughts, till presently another sentence from the 
 artist startled him into attention again. 
 
 ‘That cedar will protect you here, though, because 
 you both have humanised it by your thinking so lov- 
 ingly of its presence. The others can’t get past it, 
 as it were.’ 
 
 -©Protect me!’ he exclaimed. ‘Protect me from 
 their love ?’ 
 
 Sanderson laughed. ‘ We're getting rather mixed,’ 
 he said ; ‘we're talking of one thing in the terms of 
 another really. But what I mean is—you see—that 
 their love for you, their “‘ awareness ” of your person- 
 ality and presence involves the idea of winning you 
 —across the border—into themselves—into their 
 world of living. It means, in a way, taking you 
 over. 
 
 The ideas the artist started in his mind ran furious 
 wild races to and fro. It was like a maze sprung 
 suddenly into movement. The whirling of the in- 
 tricate lines bewildered him. They went so fast, 
 leaving but half an explanation of their goal. He 
 followed first one, then another, but a new one 
 always dashed across to intercept before he could 
 get anywhere. 
 
 ‘But India,’ he said, presently in a lower voice, 
 ‘India is so far away—from this little English forest. 
 The trees, too, are utterly different for one thing?’ 
 
 The rustle of skirts warned of Mrs. Bittacy’s 
 approach. ‘This was a sentence he could turn round 
 another way in case she came up and pressed for 
 explanation. | 
 
 ‘There is communion among trees all the world 
 
28 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 over, was the strange quick reply. ‘They always 
 know.’ 
 
 ‘They always know! You think then By 
 
 ‘The winds, you see—the great, swift carriers! 
 They have their ancient rights of way about the 
 world. An easterly wind, for instance, carrying on 
 stage by stage as it were—linking dropped messages 
 and meanings from land to land like the birds—an 
 easterly wind——’ 
 
 Mrs. Bittacy swept in upon them with the 
 tumbler— 
 
 ‘There, David,’ she said, ‘that will ward off any 
 beginnings of attack. Just a spoonful, dear. Oh, 
 oh! not a//!’ for he had swallowed half the contents 
 at a single gulp as usual; ‘another dose before you 
 go to bed, and the balance in the morning, first thing 
 when you wake.’ 
 
 She turned to her guest, who put the tumbler 
 down for her upon a table at his elbow. She had 
 heard them speak of the east wind. She emphasised — 
 the warning she had misinterpreted. The private 
 part of the conversation came to an abrupt end. 
 
 ‘It is the one thing that upsets him more than 
 any other—an east wind,’ she said, ‘and I am glad, 
 Mr. Sanderson, to hear you think so too.’ 
 
Ill 
 
 A veep hush followed, in the middle of which an 
 owl was heard calling its muffled note in the forest. 
 A big moth whirred with a soft collision against one 
 of the windows. Mrs. Bittacy started slightly, but 
 no one spoke. Above the trees the stars were faintly 
 visible. From the distance came the barking of a dog. 
 
 Bittacy, relighting his cigar, broke the little spell 
 of silence that had caught all three. 
 
 ‘It’s rather a comforting thought,’ he said, throw- 
 ing the match out of the window, ‘that life is about 
 us everywhere, and that there is really no dividing 
 line between what we call organic and inorganic.’ 
 
 ‘The universe, yes,’ said Sanderson, ‘is all one, 
 really. We're puzzled by the gaps we cannot see 
 across, but as a fact, I suppose, there are no gaps 
 Aa hae 
 
 Mrs. Bittacy rustled ominously, holding her peace 
 meanwhile. She feared long words she did not 
 understand. Beelzebub lay hid among too many 
 syllables. 
 
 ‘In trees and plants especially, there dreams an 
 exquisite life that no one yet has proved unconscious.’ 
 
 ~©Or conscious either, Mr. Sanderson,’ she neatly 
 interjected. ‘It’s only man that was made after His 
 image, not shrubberies and things. . . .’ 
 
 Her husband interposed without delay. 
 
 29 
 
30 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 ‘It is not necessary,’ he explained suavely, ‘to 
 say that they’re alive in the sense that we are 
 alive. At the same time,’ with an eye to his wife, 
 ‘I see no harm in holding, dear, that all created 
 things contain some measure of His life Who made 
 them. It’s only beautiful to hold that He created 
 nothing dead. We are not pantheists for all that!’ 
 he added soothingly. 
 
 ‘Oh, no! Not that, I hope!’ The word alarmed 
 
 her. It was worse than pope. Through her puzzled 
 mind stole a stealthy, dangerous thing . . likea 
 panther. 
 
 ‘I like to think that even in decay there’s life,’ 
 the painter murmured. ‘The falling apart of rotten 
 wood breeds sentiency ; there’s force and motion in 
 the falling of a dying leaf, in the breaking up and 
 crumbling of everything indeed. And take an inert 
 stone: it’s crammed with heat and weight and 
 potencies of all sorts. What holds its particles 
 together indeed? We understand it as little as 
 gravity or why a needle always turns to the “ North.” 
 Both things may be a mode of life. . . .’ 
 
 ‘You think a compass has a soul, Mr. Sanderson ?’ 
 exclaimed the lady with a crackling of her silk 
 flounces that conveyed a sense of outrage even more 
 plainly than her tone. The artist smiled to himself 
 in the darkness, but it was Bittacy who hastened to 
 reply. 
 
 ‘Our friend merely suggests that these mysterious 
 agencies,’ he said quietly, ‘may be due to some kind 
 of life we cannot understand. Why should water 
 only run downhill? Why should trees grow at right 
 angles to the surface of the ground and towards the 
 sun? Why should the worlds spin for ever on their 
 axes? Why should fire change the form of every- 
 
 —_— = Se | 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 31 
 
 thing it touches without really destroying them? To 
 say these things follow the law of their being explains 
 nothing. Mr. Sanderson merely suggests—poetically, 
 my dear, of course—that these may be manifestations 
 of life, though life at a different stage to ours.’ 
 
 ‘The “breath of life,” we read, ‘‘ He breathed 
 into them.’ ‘These things do not breathe.’ She said 
 it with triumph. 
 
 Then Sanderson put in a word. But he spoke 
 rather to himself or to his host than by way of serious 
 rejoinder to the ruffled lady. 
 
 ‘But plants do breathe too, you know,’ he said. 
 ‘They breathe, they eat, they digest, they move 
 about, and they adapt themselves to their environ- 
 ment as men and animals do. They have a nervous 
 system too . . . at least a complex system of nuclei 
 which have some of the qualities of nerve cells. They 
 may have memory too. Certainly, they know definite 
 action in response to stimulus. And though this 
 may be physiological, no one has proved that it is 
 only that, and not—psychological.’ 
 
 He did not notice, apparently, the little gasp that 
 was audible behind the yellow shawl. Bittacy cleared 
 his throat, threw his extinguished cigar upon the 
 lawn, crossed and recrossed his legs. 
 
 ‘And in trees,’ continued the other, ‘behind a 
 great forest, for instance,’ pointing towards the woods, 
 ‘may stand a rather splendid Entity that manifests 
 through all the thousand individual trees—some huge 
 collective life, quite as minutely and delicately organ- 
 ised as our own. It might merge and blend with 
 ours under certain conditions, so that we could under- 
 stand it by deing it, for a time at least. It might 
 even engulf human vitality into the immense whirl- 
 pool of its own vast dreaming life. The pull of a 
 
32 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 big forest on a man can be tremendous and utterly 
 overwhelming.’ Ry 
 
 The mouth of Mrs. Bittacy was heard to close 
 with a snap. Her shawl, and particularly her 
 crackling dress, exhaled the protest that burned 
 within her like a pain. She was too distressed to 
 be overawed, but at the same time too confused ’mid 
 the litter of words and meanings half understood, to 
 find immediate phrases she could use. Whatever 
 the actual meaning of his language might be, however, 
 and whatever subtle dangers lay concealed behind 
 them meanwhile, they certainly wove a kind of gentle 
 spell with the glimmering darkness that held all 
 three delicately enmeshed there by that open window. 
 The odours of dewy lawn, flowers, trees, and earth 
 formed part of it. 
 
 ‘The moods,’ he continued, ‘that people waken 
 in us are due to their hidden life affecting our own. 
 Deep calls to. deep. A person, for instance, joins 
 you in an empty room: you both instantly change. 
 The new arrival, though in silence, has caused a 
 change of mood. May not the moods of Nature 
 touch and stir us in virtue of a similar prerogative ? 
 The sea, the hills, the desert, wake passion, joy, terror, 
 as the case may be; for a few, perhaps,’ he glanced 
 significantly at his host so that Mrs. Bittacy again 
 caught the turning of his eyes, ‘ emotions of a curious, 
 flaming splendour that are quite nameless. Well 
 
 . whence come these powers? Surely from 
 nothing thatis . . . dead! Does not the influence 
 of a forest, its sway and strange ascendancy over 
 certain minds, betray a direct manifestation of life ? 
 It lies otherwise beyond all explanation, this mysterious 
 emanation of big woods. Some natures, of course, 
 deliberately invite it. The authority of a host of 
 
 — 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 33 
 
 trees, —his voice grew almost solemn as he said the 
 words—‘ is something not to be denied. One feels 
 it here, I think, particularly.’ 
 
 There was considerable tension in the air as he 
 ceased speaking. Mr. Bittacy had not intended that 
 the talk should go so far. They had drifted. He 
 did not wish to see his wife unhappy or afraid, and 
 he was aware—acutely so—that her feelings were 
 stirred to a point he did not care about. Something 
 in her, as he put it, was ‘working up’ towards 
 explosion. . 
 
 He sought to generalise the conversation, diluting 
 this accumulated emotion by spreading it. 
 
 ‘The sea is His and He made it,’ he suggested 
 vaguely, hoping Sanderson would take the hint, ‘and 
 with the trees it is the same... .’ 
 
 ‘The whole gigantic vegetable kingdom, yes,’ the 
 artist took him up, ‘all at the service of man, for 
 food, for shelter and for a thousand purposes of his 
 daily life. Isit not striking what a lot of the globe they 
 cover . . . exquisitely organised life, yet stationary, 
 always ready to our hand when we want them, never 
 running away? But the taking them, for all that, not so 
 easy. One man shrinks from picking flowers, another 
 from cutting down trees. And, it’s curious that most 
 of the forest tales and legends are dark, mysterious, 
 and somewhat ill-omened. The forest beings are 
 
 rarely gay and harmless. The forest life was felt as 
 terrible. Tree-worship still survives to-day. Wood- 
 cutters . . . those who take the life of trees. . 
 you see, a race of haunted men... .’ 
 
 He stopped abruptly, a singular catch in his voice. 
 Bittacy felt something even before the sentences were 
 over. His wife, he knew, felt it still more strongly. 
 For it was in the middle of the heavy silence following 
 
 D 
 
34 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 upon these last remarks, that Mrs. Bittacy, rising witha 
 violent abruptness from her chair, drew the attention 
 of the others to something moving towards them 
 across the lawn. It came silently. In outline it was 
 large and curiously spread. It rose high, too, for 
 the sky above the shrubberies, still pale gold from 
 the sunset, was dimmed by its passage. She declared 
 afterwards that it moved in ‘looping circles,’ but 
 what she perhaps meant to convey was ‘spirals.’ 
 
 She screamed faintly. ‘It’s come at last! And 
 it’s you that brought it!’ | 
 
 She turned excitedly, half afraid, half angry, to 
 Sanderson. With a breathless sort of gasp she said 
 it, politeness all forgotten. ‘I knew it .. . if you 
 went on. I knew it. Oh! Oh!’ And she cried 
 again, ‘Your talking has brought it: OUis ies be 
 terror that shook her voice was rather dreadful. 
 
 But the confusion of her vehement words passed 
 unnoticed in the first surprise they caused. For a 
 moment nothing happened. 
 
 ‘What is it you think you see, my dear?’ asked 
 her husband, startled. Sanderson said nothing. All 
 three leaned forward, the men still sitting, but Mrs. 
 Bittacy had rushed hurriedly to the window, placing 
 herself of a purpose, as it seemed, between her husband 
 and the lawn. She pointed. Her little hand made 
 a silhouette against the sky, the yellow shawl 
 hanging from the arm like a cloud. 
 
 ‘Beyond the cedar—between it and the lilacs.’ 
 The voice had lost its shrillness; it was thin and 
 hushed. ‘There . . . now you see it going round 
 upon itself again—going back, thank God!... 
 going back to the Forest.’ It sank to a whisper, 
 shaking. She repeated, with a great dropping sigh 
 of relief—‘Thank God! I thought . . . at first 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 35 
 
 . It was coming here... to us! ... David 
 
 . to you!’ 
 
 She stepped back from the window, her move- 
 ments confused, feeling in the darkness for the 
 support of a chair, and finding her husband’s out- 
 stretched hand instead. ‘Hold me, dear, hold me, 
 please . . . tight. Do not let me go.’ She was in 
 what he called afterwards ‘a regular state.’ He 
 drew her firmly down upon her chair again. 
 
 ‘Smoke, Sophie, my dear,’ he said quickly, trying 
 to make his voice calm and natural. ‘I see it, 
 yes. It’s smoke blowing over from the gardener’s 
 cottage.any. 
 
 ‘But, David,—and there was new horror in 
 her whisper now—‘it made a noise. It makes it 
 still, I hear it swishing.’ Some such word she used 
 —swishing, sishing, rushing, or something of the 
 kind. ‘David, I’m very frightened. It’s something 
 awful! That man has called it out... !’ 
 
 ‘Hush, hush, whispered her husband. He 
 stroked her trembling hand beside him. 
 
 ‘It is in the wind,’ said Sanderson, speaking for 
 the first time, very quietly. The expression on his 
 face was not visible in the gloom, but his voice was 
 soft and unafraid. At the sound of it, Mrs. Bittacy 
 started violently again. Bittacy drew his chair a 
 little forward to obstruct her view of him. He felt 
 bewildered himself, a little, hardly knowing quite 
 what to say or do. It was all so very curious and 
 sudden. 
 
 But Mrs. Bittacy was badly frightened. It 
 seemed to her that what she saw came from the 
 enveloping forest just beyond their little garden. It 
 emerged in a sort of secret way, moving towards 
 
 them as with a purpose, stealthily, difficultly. Then 
 
36 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 something stopped it. It could not advance beyond 
 the cedar. The cedar—this impression remained 
 with her afterwards too—prevented, kept it back. 
 Like a rising sea the Forest had surged a moment in 
 their direction through the covering darkness, and 
 this visible movement was its first wave. Thus to 
 her mind it seemed . . . like that mysterious turn 
 of the tide that used to frighten and mystify her in 
 childhood on the sands. The outward surge of some 
 enormous Power was what she felt . . . something 
 to which every instinct in her being rose in opposi- 
 tion because it threatened her and hers. In that 
 moment she realised the Personality of the Forest 
 
 . menacing. 
 
 In the stumbling movement that she made away 
 from the window and towards the bell she barely 
 caught the sentence Sanderson—or was it her husband? 
 —murmured to himself: ‘It came because we 
 talked of it; our thinking made it aware of us and 
 brought it out. But the cedar stops it. It cannot 
 cross the lawn, you see. . . . 
 
 All three were standing now, and her husband’s 
 voice broke in with authority while his wife’s fingers 
 touched the bell. 
 
 ‘My dear, I should wot say anything to 
 Thompson.’ The anxiety he felt was manifest in 
 his voice, but his outward composure had returned. 
 ‘The gardener can go... .’ 
 
 Then Sanderson cut him short. ‘Allow me,’ he 
 said quickly. ‘I'll see if anything’s wrong. And 
 before either of them could answer or object, he was 
 gone, leaping out by the open window. ‘They saw 
 his figure vanish with a run across the lawn into the 
 darkness. 
 
 A moment later the maid entered, in answer to 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 37 
 
 the bell, and with her came the loud barking of the 
 terrier from the hall. 
 
 ‘The lamps,’ said her master shortly, and as she 
 softly closed the door behind her, they heard the 
 wind pass with a mournful sound of singing round the 
 outer walls. A rustle of foliage from the distance 
 passed within it. 
 
 ‘You see, the wind zs rising. It was the wind!’ 
 He put a comforting arm about her, distressed to feel 
 that she was trembling. But he knew that he was 
 trembling too, though with a kind of odd elation 
 rather than alarm. ‘And it was smoke that you 
 saw coming from Stride’s cottage, or from the 
 rubbish heaps he’s been burning in the kitchen 
 garden. The noise we heard was the branches 
 rustling in the wind. Why should you be so 
 nervous?’ 
 
 A thin whispering voice answered him : 
 
 ‘I was afraid for you, dear. Something frightened 
 me for you. That man makes me feel so uneasy and 
 uncomfortable for his influence upon you. It’s very 
 foolish, I know. I think .. . I’m tired; I feel so 
 overwrought and restless.’ The words poured out 
 in a hurried jumble and she kept turning to the 
 window while she spoke. 
 
 ‘The strain of having a visitor,’ he said 
 soothingly, ‘has taxed you. We're so unused to 
 having people in the house. He goes to-morrow.’ 
 He warmed her cold hands between his own, 
 stroking them tenderly. More, for the life of him, 
 he could not say or do. The joy of a strange, 
 internal excitement made his heart beat faster. He 
 knew not what it was. He knew only, perhaps, 
 whence it came. 
 
 She peered close into his face through the gloom, 
 
38 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 and said acurious thing. ‘I thought, David, for 
 a moment... you seemed ... different. My 
 nerves are all on edge to-night.’ She made no 
 further reference to her husband’s visitor. 
 
 A sound of footsteps from the lawn warned of 
 Sanderson’s return, as he answered quickly in a 
 lowered tone—‘ There’s no need to be afraid on my 
 account, dear girl. There’s nothing wrong with 
 me, I assure you; I never felt so well and happy 
 in my life.’ 
 
 Thompson came in with the Jamps and bright- 
 ness, and scarcely had she gone again when Sanderson 
 in turn was seen climbing through the window. 
 
 ‘There’s nothing,’ he said lightly, as he closed 
 it behind him. ‘Somebody’s been burning leaves, 
 and the smoke is drifting a little through the trees. 
 The wind,’ he added, glancing at his host a 
 moment significantly, but in so discreet a way that 
 Mrs. Bittacy did not observe it, ‘the wind, too, has 
 begun to roar . . . in the Forest . . . further out.’ 
 
 But Mrs. Bittacy noticed about him two things 
 which increased her uneasiness. She noticed the 
 shining of his eyes, because a similar light had 
 suddenly come into her husband’s ; and she noticed, 
 too, the apparent depth of meaning he put into those 
 simple words that ‘ the wind had begun to roar in the 
 Forest . . . further out.’ Her mind retained the 
 disagreeable impression that he meant more than 
 he said. In his tone lay quite another implication. 
 It was not actually ‘wind’ he spoke of, and it 
 would not remain ‘further out” . . . rather, it was 
 coming in. Another impression she got too—still 
 more unwelcome—was that her husband understood 
 his hidden meaning. 
 
 \ 
 : 
 a 
 
IV 
 
 ‘Davin, dear,’ she observed gently as soon as they 
 were alone upstairs, ‘I have a horrible uneasy 
 feeling about that man. I cannot get rid of it.’ 
 The tremor in her voice caught all his tenderness. 
 
 He turned to look at her. ‘Of what kind, my 
 dear? You’re so imaginative sometimes, aren’t 
 you?’ 
 
 ‘I think,’ she hesitated, stammering a little, 
 confused, still frightened, ‘I mean—isn’t he a 
 hypnotist, or full of those theofosical ideas, or 
 something of the sort? You know what I mean—’ 
 
 He was too accustomed to her little confused 
 alarms to explain them away seriously as a rule, 
 or to correct her verbal inaccuracies, but to-night 
 he felt she needed careful, tender treatment. He 
 soothed her as best he could. 
 
 ‘But there’s no harm in that, even if he is,’ he 
 answered quietly. ‘Those are only new names for 
 very old ideas, you know, dear.’ There was no 
 trace of impatience in his voice. 
 
 ‘That’s what I mean,’ she replied, the texts he 
 dreaded rising in an unuttered crowd behind the 
 words. ‘He’s one of those things that we are 
 warned would come—one of those Latter-Day things.’ 
 For her mind still bristled with the bogeys of 
 Antichrist and Prophecy, and she had only escaped 
 
 39 
 
40 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 the Number of the Beast, as it were, by the skin 
 of her teeth. The Pope drew most of her fire 
 usually, because she could understand him; the 
 target was plain and she could shoot. But this 
 tree-and-forest business was so vague and horrible. 
 It terrified her. ‘He makes me think,’ she went 
 on, ‘of Principalities and Powers in high places, and 
 of things that walk in darkness. I did zot like the 
 way he spoke of trees getting alive in the night, and 
 all that; it made me think of wolves in sheep’s 
 clothing. And when I saw that awful thing in the 
 sky above the lawn—’ 
 
 But he interrupted her at once, for that was some- 
 thing he had decided it was best to leave unmentioned. 
 Certainly it was better not discussed. 
 
 ‘He only meant, I think, Sophie,’ he put in 
 gravely, yet with a little smile, ‘that trees may have 
 a measure of conscious life—rather a nice idea on the 
 whole, surely,—something like that bit we read in 
 the Times the other night, you remember—and that 
 a big forest may possess a sort of Collective Person- 
 ality. Remember, he’s an artist, and poetical.’ 
 
 ‘It’s dangerous,’ she said emphatically. ‘I feel 
 it’s playing with fire, unwise, unsafe—’ 
 
 ‘Yet all to the glory of God,’ he urged gently. 
 ‘We must not shut our ears and eyes to knowledge 
 —of any kind, must we?’ 
 
 ‘With you, David, the wish is always farther than 
 the thought,’ she rejoined. For, like the child who 
 thought that ‘suffered under Pontius Pilate’ was 
 ‘suffered under a bunch of violets,’ she heard her 
 proverbs phonetically and reproduced them thus. She 
 hoped to convey her warning in the quotation. ‘ And 
 we must always try the spirits whether they be of 
 God,’ she added tentatively. 
 
 _— es ee | 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 41 
 
 ‘Certainly, dear, we can always do that,’ he 
 assented, getting into bed. 
 
 But, after a little pause, during which she blew 
 the light out, David Bittacy settling down to sleep 
 with an excitement in his blood that was new and 
 bewilderingly delightful, realised that perhaps he had 
 not said quite enough to comfort her. She was lying 
 awake by his side, still frightened. He put his head 
 up in the darkness. 
 
 ‘Sophie,’ he said softly, ‘ you must remember, too, 
 that in any case between us and—and all that sort of 
 thing—there is a great gulf fixed, a gulf that cannot 
 be crossed—er—while we are still in the body.’ 
 
 And hearing no reply, he satisfied himself that she 
 was already asleep and happy. But Mrs. Bittacy was 
 not asleep. She heard the sentence, only she said 
 nothing because she felt her thought was better 
 unexpressed. She was afraid to hear the words in 
 the darkness. The Forest outside was listening 
 and might hear them too—the Forest that was 
 ‘roaring further out.’ 
 
 And the thought was this: That gulf, of course, 
 existed, but Sanderson had somehow bridged it. 
 
 It was much later that night when she awoke out 
 of troubled, uneasy dreams and heard a sound that 
 twisted her very nerves with fear. It passed immed- 
 iately with full waking, for, listen as she might, there 
 was nothing audible but the inarticulate murmur of 
 the night. It wasin her dreams she heard it, and 
 the dreams had vanished with it. But the sound was 
 recognisable, for it was that rushing noise that had 
 come across the lawn; only this time closer. Just 
 above her face while she slept had passed this murmur 
 as of rustling branches in the very room, a sound of 
 
42 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 foliage whispering. ‘A going in the tops of the 
 mulberry trees,’ ran through her mind. She had 
 dreamed that she lay beneath a spreading tree some- 
 where, a tree that whispered with ten thousand soft 
 lips of green ; and the dream continued for a moment 
 even after waking. 
 
 She sat up in bed and stared about her. The 
 window was open at the top; she saw the stars ; 
 the door, she remembered, was locked as usual; the 
 room, of course, was empty. The deep hush of the 
 summer night lay over all, broken only by another 
 sound that now issued from the shadows close beside 
 the bed, a human sound, yet unnatural, a sound that 
 seized the fear with which she had waked and in- 
 stantly increased it. And, although it was one she 
 recognised as familiar, at first she could not name it. 
 Some seconds certainly passed—and, they were very 
 long ones—before she understood that it was her 
 husband talking in his sleep. 
 
 The direction of the voice confused and puzzled 
 her, moreover, for it was not, as she first supposed, 
 beside her. There was distance in it. The next 
 minute, by the light of the sinking candle flame, she 
 saw his white figure standing out in the middle of 
 the room, half-way towards the window. The candle- 
 light slowly grew. She saw him move then nearer 
 to the window, with arms outstretched. His speech 
 was low and mumbled, the words running together 
 too much to be distinguishable. 
 
 And she shivered. To her, sleep-talking was un- 
 canny to the point of horror ; it was like the talking 
 of the dead, mere parody of a living voice, unnatural. 
 
 ‘David !’ she whispered, dreading the sound of 
 her own voice, and half afraid to interrupt him and 
 see his face. She could not bear the sight of the 
 
 Se 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 43 
 
 wide-opened eyes. ‘David, you’re walking in your 
 sleep. _Do—come back to bed, dear, please!’ 
 
 Her whisper seemed so dreadfully loud in the still 
 darkness. At the sound of her voice he paused, then 
 turned slowly round to face her. His widely-opened 
 eyes stared into her own without recognition ; they 
 looked through her into something beyond ; it was as 
 though he knewthe directionof the sound, yet could not 
 see her. ‘They were shining, she noticed, as the eyes 
 of Sanderson had shone several hours ago; and his face 
 was flushed, distraught. Anxiety was written upon 
 every feature. And, instantly, recognising that the 
 fever was upon him, she forgot her terror temporarily 
 in practical considerations. He came back to bed 
 without waking. She closed his eyelids. Presently 
 he composed himself quietly to sleep, or rather to 
 deeper sleep. She contrived to make him swallow 
 something from the tumbler beside the bed. 
 
 Then she rose very quietly to close the window, 
 feeling the night air blow in too fresh and keen. 
 She put the candle where it could not reach 
 him. The sight of the big Baxter Bible beside it 
 comforted her a little, but all through her under- 
 being ran the warnings of a curious alarm. And it 
 was while in the act of fastening the catch with one 
 hand and pulling the string of the blind with the 
 other, that her husband sat up again in bed and 
 spoke in words this time that were distinctly audible. 
 The eyes had opened wide again. He pointed. She 
 stood stock still and listened, her shadow distorted 
 on the blind. He did not come out towards her as 
 at first she feared. 
 
 The whispering voice was very clear, horrible, too, 
 beyond all she had ever known. 
 
 ‘They are roaring in the Forest further out . 
 
44 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 and I... must go and see.’ He stared beyond 
 her as he said it, to the woods. ‘They are needing 
 me. hey sent for me... .’ Then his eyes 
 wandering back again to things within the room, he 
 lay down, his purpose suddenly changed. And that 
 change was horrible as well, more horrible, perhaps, 
 because of its revelation of another detailed world he 
 moved in far away from her. 
 
 The singular phrase chilled her blood; for a 
 moment she was utterly terrified. That tone of the 
 somnambulist, differing so slightly yet so distressingly 
 from normal, waking speech, seemed to her some- 
 how wicked. Evil and danger lay waiting thick 
 behind it. She leaned against the window sill, 
 shaking in every limb. She had an awful feeling 
 for a moment that something was coming in to fetch 
 him. 
 
 ‘Not yet, then,’ she heard in a much lower voice 
 from the bed, ‘but later. It will be better so. . . 
 | shall go. later. yy) 
 
 The words expressed some fringe of these alarms 
 that had haunted her so long, and that the arrival 
 and presence of Sanderson seemed to have brought 
 to the very edge of a climax she could not even dare 
 to think about. They gave it form; they brought 
 it closer; they sent her thoughts to her Deity in a 
 wild, deep prayer for help and guidance. For here 
 was a direct, unconscious betrayal of a world of inner 
 purposes and claims her husband recognised while he 
 kept them almost wholly to himself. 
 
 By the time she reached his side and knew the 
 comfort of his touch, the eyes had closed again, this 
 time of their own accord, and the head lay calmly back 
 upon the pillows. She gently straightened the bed 
 clothes. She watched him for some minutes, shading 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 45 
 
 the candle carefully with one hand. There was a 
 smile of strangest peace upon the face. 
 
 Then, blowing out the candle, she knelt down 
 and prayed before getting back into bed. But no 
 sleep came to her. She lay awake all night thinking, 
 wondering, praying, until at length with the chorus of 
 the birds and the glimmer of the dawn upon the 
 green blind, she fell into a slumber of complete 
 exhaustion. 
 
 But while she slept the wind continued roaring in 
 the Forest further out. The sound came closer— 
 sometimes very close indeed. 
 
V 
 
 Wir the departure of Sanderson the significance 
 of the curious incidents waned, because the 
 moods that had produced them passed away. Mrs. 
 Bittacy soon afterwards came to regard them as some 
 growth of disproportion that had been very largely, 
 perhaps, in her own mind. It did not strike her 
 that this change was sudden, for it came about quite 
 naturally. For one thing her husband never spoke 
 of the matter, and for another she remembered how 
 many things in life that had seemed inexplicable 
 and singular at the time turned out later to have 
 been quite commonplace. 
 
 Most of it, certainly, she put down to the presence 
 of the artist and to his wild, suggestive talk. With 
 his welcome removal, the world turned ordinary 
 again and safe. The fever, though it lasted as usual 
 a short time only, had not allowed of her husband’s 
 getting up to say good-bye, and she had conveyed his 
 regrets and adieux. In the morning Mr. Sanderson 
 had seemed ordinary enough. In his town hat and 
 gloves, as she saw him go, he seemed tame and 
 unalarming. 
 
 ‘ After all,’ she thought as she watched the pony- 
 cart bear him off, ‘he’s only an artist!’ What she 
 had thought he might be otherwise her slim imagina- 
 tion did not venture to disclose. Her change of 
 
 46 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 47 
 
 feeling was wholesome and refreshing. She felt a 
 little ashamed of her behaviour. She gave him a 
 smile—genuine because the relief she felt was genuine 
 —as he bent over her hand and kissed it, but she did 
 not suggest a second visit, and her husband, she 
 noted with satisfaction and relief had said nothing 
 either. 
 
 The little household fell again into the normal and 
 sleepy routine to which it was accustomed. The 
 name of Arthur Sanderson was rarely if ever 
 mentioned. Nor, for her part, did she mention to 
 her husband the incident of his walking in his sleep 
 and the wild words he used. But to forget it was 
 equally impossible. Thus it lay buried deep within 
 her like a centre of some unknown disease of which 
 it was a mysterious symptom, waiting to spread at 
 the first favourable opportunity. She prayed against 
 it every night and morning: prayed that she might 
 forget it—that God would keep her husband safe 
 from harm. 
 
 For in spite of much surface foolishness that many 
 might have read as weakness, Mrs. Bittacy had 
 balance, sanity, and a fine deep faith. She was 
 greater than she knew. Her love for her husband 
 and her God were somehow one, an achievement 
 only possible to a single-hearted nobility of soul. 
 
 There followed a summer of great violence and 
 beauty; of beauty, because the refreshing rains at 
 night prolonged the glory of the spring and spread 
 it all across July, keeping the foliage young and 
 sweet; of violence, because the winds that tore about 
 the south of England brushed the whole country 
 into dancing movement. They swept the woods 
 magnificently, and kept them roaring with a perpetual 
 
48 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 grand voice. Their deepest notes seemed never to 
 leave the sky. They sang and shouted, and torn 
 leaves raced and fluttered through the air long before 
 their usually appointed time. Many a tree, after days 
 of this roaring and dancing, fell exhausted to the 
 ground. ‘The cedar on the lawn gave up. two limbs 
 that fell upon successive days, at the same hour too 
 —just before dusk. The wind often makes its most 
 boisterous effort at that time, before it drops with the 
 sun, and these two huge branches lay in dark ruin 
 covering half the lawn. ‘They spread across it and 
 towards the house. They left an ugly gaping space 
 upon the tree, so that the Lebanon looked unfinished, 
 half destroyed, a monster shorn of its old-time 
 comeliness and splendour. Far more of the Forest 
 was now visible than before ; it peered through the 
 breach of the broken defences. They could see from 
 the windows of the house now—especially from the 
 drawing-room and bedroom windows—straight out 
 into the glades and depths beyond. 
 
 Mrs. Bittacy’s niece and nephew, who were staying 
 on a visit at the time, enjoyed themselves immensely 
 helping the gardeners carry off the fragments. It 
 took two days to do this, for Mr. Bittacy insisted on 
 the branches being moved entire. He would not 
 allow them to be chopped ; also, he would not consent 
 to their use as firewood. Under his superintendence 
 the unwieldy masses were dragged to the edge of the 
 garden and arranged upon the frontier line between 
 the Forest and the lawn. The children were 
 delighted with the scheme. They entered into it 
 with enthusiasm. At all costs this defence against 
 the inroads of the Forest must be made secure. 
 They caught their uncle’s earnestness, felt even 
 something of a hidden motive that he had, and the 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 49 
 
 visit, usually rather dreaded, became the visit of 
 their lives instead. It was Aunt Sophia this time 
 who seemed discouraging and dull. 
 
 ‘She’s got so old and funny,’ opined Stephen. 
 
 But Alice, who felt in the silent displeasure of 
 her aunt some secret thing that half alarmed her, 
 said : 
 
 ‘I think she’s afraid of the woods. She never 
 comes into them with us, you see.’ 
 
 ‘All the more reason then for making this wall 
 impreg— all fat and thick and solid,’ he concluded, 
 unable to manage the longer word. ‘Then nothing 
 —simply nothing—can get through. Can’t it, Uncle 
 David ?’ 
 
 And Mr. Bittacy, jacket discarded and working in 
 his speckled waistcoat, went puffing to their aid, 
 arranging the massive limb of the cedar like a 
 hedge. 
 
 ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘ whatever happens, you know, 
 we must finish before it’s dark. Already the wind is 
 roaring in the Forest further out.” And Alice caught 
 the phrase and instantly echoed it. ‘Stevie,’ she cried 
 below her breath, ‘look sharp, you lazy lump. 
 Didn’t you hear what Uncle David said? It'll 
 come in and catch us before we’ve done!’ 
 
 They worked like Trojans, and, sitting beneath 
 the wistaria tree that climbed the southern wall of the 
 cottage, Mrs. Bittacy with her knitting watched them, 
 calling from time to time insignificant messages of 
 counsel and advice. The messages passed, of course, 
 unheeded. Mostly, indeed, they were unheard, for 
 the workers were too absorbed. She warned her 
 husband not to get too hot, Alice not to tear her 
 dress, Stephen not to strain his back with pulling. 
 Her mind hovered between the homoeopathic 
 
 E 
 
50 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 medicine-chest upstairs and her anxiety to see the 
 business finished. 
 
 For this breaking up of the cedar had stirred again 
 her slumbering alarms. It revived memories of the 
 visit of Mr. Sanderson that had been sinking into 
 oblivion ; she recalled his queer and odious way of 
 talking, and many things she hoped forgotten drew 
 their heads up from that subconscious region to which 
 all forgetting is impossible. They looked at her and 
 nodded. They were full of life ; they had no inten- 
 tion of being pushed aside and buried permanently. 
 ‘Now look!’ they whispered, ‘ didn’t we tell you so?’ 
 They had been merely waiting the right moment to 
 assert their presence. And all her former vague 
 distress crept over her. Anxiety, uneasiness returned. 
 That dreadful sinking of the heart came too. 
 
 This incident of the cedar’s breaking up was 
 actually so unimportant, and yet her husband's 
 attitude towards it made it so significant. There 
 was nothing that he said in particular, or did, or left 
 undone that frightened her, but his general air of 
 earnestness seemed so unwarranted. She felt that 
 he deemed the thing important. He was so exercised 
 about it. This evidence of sudden concern and 
 interest, buried all the summer from her sight and 
 knowledge, she realised now had been buried purposely ; 
 he had kept it intentionally concealed. Deeply sub- 
 merged in him there ran this tide of other thoughts, 
 desires, hopes. What were they? Whither did they 
 lead? The accident to the tree betrayed it most 
 unpleasantly ; and, doubtless, more than he was 
 aware. 
 
 She watched his grave and serious face as he 
 worked there with the children, and as she watched 
 she felt afraid. It vexed her that the children worked 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 51 
 
 soeagerly. ‘They unconsciously supported him. The 
 thing she feared she would not even name. But it 
 was waiting. 
 
 Moreover, as far as her puzzled mind could 
 deal with a dread so vague and incoherent, the 
 collapse of the cedar somehow brought it nearer. 
 The fact that, all so ill-explained and formless, the 
 thing yet lay in her consciousness, out of reach but 
 moving and alive, filled her with a kind of puzzled, 
 dreadful wonder. Its presence was so very real, its 
 power so gripping, its partial concealment so abomin- 
 able. Then, out of the dim confusion, she grasped 
 one thought and saw it stand quite clear before her 
 eyes. She found difficulty in clothing it in words, 
 but its meaning perhaps was this: That cedar stood 
 in their life for something friendly ; its downfall 
 meant disaster ; a sense of some protective influence 
 about the cottage, and about her husband in particular, 
 was thereby weakened. 
 
 ‘Why do you fear the big winds so?’ he had 
 asked her several days before, after a particularly 
 boisterous day ; and the answer she gave surprised 
 her while she gave it. One of those heads poked 
 up unconsciously, and let slip the truth : 
 
 ‘Because, David, I feel they—bring the Forest 
 with them,’ she faltered. ‘They blow something 
 from the trees—into the mind—into the house.’ 
 
 He looked at her keenly for a moment. 
 
 ‘That must be why I love them then,’ he answered. 
 ‘They blow the souls of the trees about the sky like 
 clouds.’ 
 
 The conversation dropped. She had never heard 
 him talk in quite that way before. 
 
 And another time, when he had coaxed her to go 
 with him down one of the nearer glades, she asked 
 
52 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 why he took the small hand-axe with him, and what 
 he wanted it for. 
 
 ‘To cut the ivy that clings to the trunks and 
 takes their life away,” he said. 
 
 ‘But can’t the verdurers do that?’ she asked. 
 ‘That’s what they’re paid for, isn’t it?’ 
 
 Whereupon he explained that ivy was a parasite 
 the trees knew not how to fight alone, and that the 
 verdurers were careless and did not do it thoroughly. 
 They gave a chop here and there, leaving the tree to 
 do the rest for itself if it could. 
 
 ‘Besides, I like to do it for them. I love to help 
 them and protect,’ he added, the foliage rustling all 
 about his quiet words as they went. 
 
 And these stray remarks, as his attitude towards 
 the broken cedar, betrayed this curious, subtle change 
 that was going forward in his personality. Slowly 
 and surely all the summer it had increased. 
 
 It was growing—the thought startled her horribly 
 —just as a tree grows, the outer evidence from day 
 to day so slight as to be unnoticeable, yet the rising 
 tide so deep and irresistible. ‘The alteration spread 
 all through and over him, was in both mind and 
 actions, sometimes almost in his face as well. 
 Occasionally, thus, it stood up straight outside him- 
 self and frightened her. His life was somehow 
 becoming linked so intimately with trees, and with 
 all that trees signified. His interests became more 
 and more their interests, his activity combined with 
 theirs, his thoughts and feelings theirs, his purpose, 
 hope, desire, his fate 
 
 His fate! The darkness of some vague, enormous 
 terror dropped its shadow on her when she thought of 
 it. Some instinct in her heart she dreaded infinitely 
 more than death—for death meant sweet translation 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 53 
 
 for his soul——_came gradually to associate the thought 
 of him with the thought of trees, in particular with 
 these Forest trees. Sometimes, before she could face 
 the thing, argue it away, or pray it into silence, she 
 found the thought of him running swiftly through 
 her mind like a thought of the Forest itself, the two 
 most intimately linked and joined together, each a 
 part and complement of the other, one being. 
 
 The idea was too dim for her to see it face to face. 
 Its mere possibility dissolved the instant she focussed 
 it to get the truth behind it. It was too utterly elusive, 
 mad, protean. Under the attack of even a minute’s 
 concentration the very meaning of it vanished, melted 
 away. The idea lay really behind any words that she 
 could ever find, beyond the touch of definite thought. 
 Her mind was unable to grapple with it. But, while 
 it vanished, the trail of its approach and disappear- 
 ance flickered a moment before her shaking vision. 
 The horror certainly remained. 
 
 Reduced to the simple human statement that her 
 temperament sought instinctively it stood, perhaps at 
 this: Her husband loved her, and he loved the trees 
 as well; but the trees came first, claimed parts of him 
 she did not know. She loved her God and him. He 
 loved the trees and her. 
 
 Thus, in guise of some faint, distressing com- 
 promise, the matter shaped itself for her perplexed 
 mind in the terms of conflict. A silent, hidden battle 
 raged, but as yet raged far away. ‘he breaking of 
 the cedar was a visible outward fragment of a 
 distant and mysterious encounter that was coming 
 daily closer to them both. The wind, instead of 
 roaring in the Forest further out, now came nearer, 
 booming in fitful gusts about its edge and frontiers. 
 
 Meanwhile the summer dimmed. The autumn 
 
54 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 winds went sighing through the woods ; leaves turned 
 to golden red, and the evenings were drawing in with 
 cosy shadows before the first sign of anything 
 seriously untoward made its appearance. It came 
 then with a flat, decided kind of violence that 
 indicated mature preparation beforehand. It was 
 not impulsive nor ill-considered. In a fashion it 
 seemed expected, and indeed inevitable. For within 
 a fortnight of their annual change to the little village 
 of Seillans above St. Raphael—a change so regular 
 for the past ten years that it was not even discussed 
 between them—David Bittacy abruptly refused to 
 
 O. 
 : Thompson had laid the tea-table, prepared the spirit 
 lamp beneath the urn, pulled down the blinds in that 
 swift and silent way she had, and left the room. The 
 lamps were still unlit. The fire-light shone on the 
 chintz armchairs, and Boxer lay asleep on the black 
 horse-hair rug. Upon the walls the gilt picture 
 frames gleamed faintly, the pictures themselves in- 
 distinguishable. Mrs. Bittacy had warmed the tea- 
 pot and was in the act of pouring the water in to 
 heat the cups when her husband, looking up from 
 his chair across the hearth, made the abrupt 
 announcement : 
 
 ‘My dear,’ he said, as though following a train 
 of thought of which she only heard this final phrase, 
 ‘it’s really quite impossible for me to go.’ 
 
 And so abrupt, inconsequent, it sounded that she 
 at first misunderstood. She thought he meant go 
 out into the garden or the woods. But her heart 
 leaped all the same. The tone of his voice was 
 ominous. 
 
 ‘Of course not,’ she answered, ‘it would be most 
 unwise. Why should you ?? She referred to the 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 55 
 
 mist that always spread on autumn nights upon the 
 lawn ; but before she finished the sentence she knew 
 that he referred to something else. And her heart 
 then gave its second horrible leap. 
 
 ‘David! You mean abroad ?’ she gasped. 
 
 ‘I mean abroad, dear, yes.’ 
 
 It reminded her of the tone he used when saying 
 good-bye years ago before one of those jungle expedi- 
 tions she dreaded. His voice then was so serious, so 
 final. It was serious and final now. For several 
 moments she could think of nothing tosay. She busied 
 herself with the teapot. She had filled one cup with 
 hot water till it overflowed, and she emptied it slowly 
 into the slop-basin, trying with all her might not to 
 let him see the trembling of her hand. The firelight 
 and the dimness of the room both helped her. But 
 in any case he would hardly have noticed it. His 
 thoughts were far away... . 
 
VI 
 
 Mrs. Birtacy had never liked their present home. 
 She preferred a flat, more open country that left 
 approaches clear. She liked to see things coming. 
 This cottage on the very edge of the old hunting 
 grounds of William the Conqueror had never satisfied 
 her ideal of a safe and pleasant place to settle down 
 in. The sea-coast, with treeless downs behind and 
 a clear horizon in front, as at Eastbourne, say, was 
 her ideal of a proper home. 
 
 It was curious, this instinctive aversion she felt 
 to being shut in—by trees especially; a kind of 
 claustrophobia almost; probably due, as has been 
 said, to the days in India when the trees took her 
 husband off and surrounded him with dangers. In 
 those weeks of solitude the feeling had matured. She 
 had fought it in her fashion, but never conquered it. 
 Apparently routed, it had a way of creeping back 
 in other forms. In this particular case, yielding to 
 his strong desire, she thought the battle won, but the 
 terror of the trees came back before the first month 
 had passed. They laughed in her face. 
 
 She never lost knowledge of the fact that the 
 leagues of forest lay about their cottage like a mighty 
 wall, a crowding, watching, listening presence that 
 shut them in from freedom and escape. Far from 
 morbid naturally, she did her best to deny the 
 
 56 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 57 
 
 thought, and so simple and unartificial was her type 
 of mind that for weeks together she would wholly 
 lose it. Then, suddenly it would return upon her 
 with a rush of bleak reality. It was not only in her 
 mind ; it existed apart from any mere mood; a 
 separate fear that walked alone; it came and went, 
 yet when it went—went only to watch her from 
 another point of view. It was in abeyance—hidden 
 round the corner. 
 
 The Forest never let her go completely. It was 
 ever ready to encroach. All the branches, she some- 
 times fancied, stretched one way—towards their tiny 
 cottage and garden, as though it sought to draw them 
 in and merge them in itself. Its great, deep-breath- 
 ing soul resented the mockery, the insolence, the 
 irritation of the prim garden at its very gates. It 
 would absorb and smother them if it could. And 
 every wind that blew its thundering message over 
 the huge sounding-board of the million, shaking 
 trees conveyed the purpose that it had. They had 
 angered its great soul. At its heart was this deep, 
 incessant roaring. 
 
 All this she never framed in words ; the subtleties 
 of language lay far beyond her reach. But instinct- 
 ively she felt it; and more besides. It troubled her 
 profoundly. Chiefly, moreover, for her husband. 
 Merely for herself, the nightmare might have left 
 her cold. It was David’s peculiar interest in the 
 trees that gave the special invitation. 
 
 Jealousy, then, in its most subtle aspect came to 
 strengthen this aversion and dislike, for it came in a 
 form that no reasonable wife could possibly object to. 
 Her husband’s passion, she reflected, was natural and 
 inborn. It had decided his vocation, fed his ambition, 
 nourished his dreams, desires, hopes. All his best 
 
58 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 years of active life had been spent in the care and 
 guardianship of trees. He knew them, understood 
 their secret life and nature, ‘managed’ them intuit- 
 ively as other men ‘managed’ dogs and horses. He 
 could not live for long away from them without a 
 strange, acute nostalgia that stole his peace of mind 
 and consequently his strength of body. A forest 
 made him happy and at peace; it nursed and fed 
 and soothed his deepest moods. Trees influenced 
 the sources of his life, lowered or raised the very 
 heart-beat in him. Cut off from them he languished 
 as a lover of the sea can droop inland, or a moun- 
 taineer may pine in the flat monotony of the plains. 
 
 This she could understand, in a fashion at least, 
 and make allowances for. She had yielded gently, 
 even sweetly, to his choice of their English home ; 
 for in the little island there is nothing that suggests 
 the woods of wilder countries so nearly as the New 
 Forest. It has the genuine air and mystery, the 
 depth and splendour, the loneliness, and here and 
 there the strong, untamable quality of old-time 
 forests as Bittacy of the Department knew them. 
 
 In a single detail only had he yielded to her 
 wishes. He consented to a cottage on the edge, 
 instead of in the heart of it. And for a dozen 
 years now they had dwelt in peace and happiness at 
 the lips of this great spreading thing that covered 
 so many leagues with its tangle of swamps and moors. 
 and splendid ancient trees. 
 
 Only with the last two years or so—with his own 
 increasing age, and physical decline perhaps—had 
 come this marked growth of passionate interest in 
 the welfare of the Forest. She had watched it grow, 
 at first had laughed at it, then talked sympathetically 
 
 so far as sincerity permitted, then had argued 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 59 
 
 mildly, and finally come to realise that its treatment 
 lay altogether beyond her powers, and so had come 
 to fear it with all her heart. 
 
 The six weeks they annually spent away from 
 their English home, each regarded very differently of 
 course. For her husband it meant a painful exile 
 that did his health no good; he yearned for his 
 trees—the sight and sound and smell of them ; but 
 for herself it meant release from a haunting dread— 
 escape. To renounce those six weeks by the sea on 
 the sunny, shining coast of France, was almost more 
 than this little woman, even with her unselfishness, 
 could face. 
 
 After the first shock of the announcement, she 
 reflected as deeply as her nature permitted, prayed, 
 wept in secret—and made up her mind. Duty, she 
 felt clearly, pointed to renouncement. The discipline 
 would certainly be severe—she did not dream at 
 the moment how severe !—but this fine, consistent 
 little Christian saw it plain; she accepted it, too, 
 without any sighing of the martyr, though the 
 courage she showed was of the martyr order. Her 
 husband should never know the cost. In all but 
 this one passion his unselfishness was ever as great as 
 her own. The love she had borne him all these 
 years, like the love she bore her anthropomorphic deity, 
 was deep and real. She loved to suffer for them 
 both. Besides, the way her husband had put it to 
 her was singular. It did not take the form of a 
 mere selfish predilection. Something higher than 
 two wills in conflict seeking compromise was in it 
 from the beginning. 
 
 ‘I feel, Sophia, it would be really more than I 
 could manage,’ he said slowly, gazing into the fire 
 
60 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 over the tops of his stretched-out muddy boots. 
 ‘My duty and my happiness lie here with the Forest 
 and with you. My life is deeply rooted in this 
 place. Something I can’t define connects my inner 
 being with these trées, and separation would make 
 me ill—might even kill me. My hold on life would 
 weaken; here is my source of supply. I cannot 
 explain it better than that.’ He looked up steadily 
 into her face across the table so that she saw the 
 gravity of his expression and the shining of his 
 steady eyes. 
 
 ‘David, you feel it as strongly as that!’ she 
 said, forgetting the tea things altogether. 
 
 ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘I do. And it’s not of the 
 body only ; I feel it in my soul.’ 
 
 The reality of what he hinted at crept into that 
 shadow-covered room like an actual Presence and 
 stood beside them. It came not by the windows 
 or the door, but it filled the entire space between 
 the walls and ceiling. It took the heat from 
 the fire before her face. She felt suddenly cold, 
 confused a little, frightened. She almost felt the 
 rush of foliage in the wind. It stood between them. 
 
 ‘There are things—some things,’ she faltered, 
 ‘we are not intended to know, I think.’ The words 
 expressed her general attitude to life, not alone to 
 this particular incident. 
 
 _ And after a pause of several minutes, disregard- 
 ing the criticism as though he had not heard it— 
 ‘I cannot explain it better than that, you see,’ 
 his grave voice answered. ‘There zs this deep, 
 tremendous link,—some secret power they emanate 
 that keeps me well and happy and—alive. If you 
 cannot understand, I feel at least you may be able © 
 to—forgive.’ His tone grew tender, gentle, soft. 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 61 
 
 «My selfishness, I know, must seem quite unfor- 
 givable. I cannot help it somehow ; these trees, 
 this ancient Forest, both seem knitted into all that 
 makes me live, and if I go 
 
 There was a little sound of collapse in his voice. 
 He stopped abruptly, and sank back in his chair. 
 And, at that, a distinct lump came up into her throat 
 which she had great difficulty in managing while she 
 went over and put her arms about him. 
 
 ‘My dear,’ she murmured, ‘God will direct. 
 We will accept His guidance. He has always 
 shown the way before.’ 
 
 ‘My selfishness afflicts me 
 would not let him finish. 
 
 ‘David, He will direct. Nothing shall harm you. 
 You’ve never once been selfish, and I cannot 
 bear to hear you say such things. The way will 
 open that is best for you—for both of us.’ She 
 kissed him ; she would not let him speak ; her heart 
 was in her throat, and she felt for him far more than 
 for herself. 
 
 And then he had suggested that she should go 
 alone perhaps for a shorter time, and stay in her 
 brother’s villa with the children, Alice and Stephen. 
 It was always open to her as she well knew. 
 
 ‘You need the change,’ he said, when the lamps 
 had been lit and the servant had gone out again ; 
 ‘you need it as much as I dread it. I could manage 
 somehow till you returned, and should feel happier 
 that way if you went. I cannot leave this Forest 
 that I love so well. I even feel, Sophie dear ’—he 
 sat up straight and faced her as he half whispered 1t— 
 ‘that I can never leave it again. My life and happi- 
 ness lie here together.’ 
 
 And even while scorning the idea that she could 
 
 he began, but she 
 
62 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 leave him alone with the Influence of the Forest all 
 about him to have its unimpeded way, she felt the 
 pangs of that subtle jealousy bite keen and close. 
 He loved the Forest better than herself, for he placed 
 it first. Behind the words, moreover, hid the 
 unuttered thought that made her so uneasy. The 
 terror Sanderson had brought revived and shook 
 its wings before her very eyes. For the whole 
 conversation, of which this was a fragment, conveyed 
 the unutterable implication that while he could not 
 spare the trees, they equally could not spare him. 
 The vividness with which he managed to conceal 
 and yet betray the fact brought a profound distress 
 that crossed the border between presentiment and 
 warning into positive alarm. 
 
 He clearly felt that the trees would miss him— 
 the trees he tended, guarded, watched over, loved. 
 
 ‘David, I shall stay here with you. I think you 
 need me really,—don’t you?’ Eagerly, with a 
 touch of heart-felt passion, the words poured out. 
 
 ‘Now more than ever, dear. God bless you for 
 your sweet unselfishness. And your sacrifice,’ he 
 added, ‘is all the greater because you cannot 
 understand the thing that makes it necessary for 
 me to stay.’ 
 
 «Perhaps in the spring instead 
 a tremor in the voice. 
 
 ‘In the spring—perhaps,’ he answered gently, 
 almost beneath his breath. ‘For they will not need 
 me then. All the world can love them in the 
 spring. It’s in the winter that they’re lonely and 
 neglected. I wish to stay with them particularly 
 then. I even feel I ought to—and I must.’ 
 
 And in this way, without further speech, the 
 decision was made. Mrs. Bittacy, at least, asked no 
 
 she said, with 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 63 
 
 more questions. Yet she could not bring herself to 
 show more sympathy than was necessary. She felt, 
 for one thing, that if she did, it might lead him to 
 speak freely, and to tell her things she could not 
 possibly bear to know. And she dared not take the 
 risk of that. 
 
Vil 
 
 Tuis was at the end of summer, but the autumn 
 followed close. ‘The conversation really marked the 
 threshold between the two seasons, and marked at 
 the same time the line between her husband’s nega- 
 tive and aggressive state. She almost felt she had 
 done wrong to yield ; he grew so bold, concealment 
 all discarded. He went, that is, quite openly to the 
 woods, forgetting all his duties, all his former occupa- 
 tions. He even sought to coax her to go with him. 
 The hidden thing blazed out without disguise. And, 
 while she trembled at his energy, she admired the 
 virile passion he displayed. Her jealousy had long 
 ago retired before her fear, accepting the second 
 place. Her one desire now was to protect. The 
 wife turned wholly mother. 
 
 He said so little, but—he hated to come in. 
 From morning to night he wandered in the Forest ; 
 often he went out after dinner ; his mind was charged 
 with trees—their foliage, growth, development ; 
 their wonder, beauty, strength ; their loneliness in 
 isolation, their power in a herded mass. He knew 
 the effect of every wind upon them ; the danger from 
 the boisterous north, the glory from the west, 
 the eastern dryness, and the soft, moist tenderness 
 that a south wind left upon their thinning boughs. 
 He spoke all day of their sensations: how they drank 
 
 64 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 65 
 
 the fading sunshine, dreamed in the moonlight, thrilled 
 to the kiss of stars. The dew could bring them half 
 the passion of the night, but frost sent them plunging 
 beneath the ground to dwell with hopes of a later 
 coming softness in their roots. They nursed the life 
 they carried—insects, larvae, chrysalis—and when the 
 skies above them melted, he spoke of them standing 
 “motionless in an ecstasy of rain,” or in the noon 
 of sunshine ‘self-poised upon their prodigy of 
 shade.’ 
 
 And once in the middle of the night she woke at 
 the sound of his voice, and heard him—wide awake, 
 not talking in his sleep—but talking towards the 
 window where the shadow of the cedar fell at noon : 
 
 O art thou sighing for Lebanon 
 
 In the long breeze that streams to thy delicious East? 
 Sighing for Lebanon, 
 
 Dark cedar ; 
 
 and, when, half charmed, half terrified, she turned 
 and called to him by name, he merely said— 
 
 ‘My dear, I felt the loneliness—suddenly realised 
 it—the alien desolation of that tree, set here upon 
 our little lawn in England when all her Eastern 
 brothers call to her in sleep.’ And the answer seemed 
 so queer, so ‘ un-evangelical,’ that she waited in silence 
 till he slept again. The poetry passed her by. It 
 seemed unnecessary and out of place. It made her 
 ache with suspicion, fear, jealousy. 
 
 The fear, however, seemed somehow all lapped up 
 and banished soon afterwards by her unwilling admira- 
 tion of the rushing splendour of her husband’s state. 
 Her anxiety, at any rate, shifted from the religious 
 to the medical. She thought he might be losing his 
 steadiness of mind a little. How often in her prayers 
 she offered thanks for the guidance that had made 
 
 F 
 
66 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 her stay with him to help and watch is impossible to 
 say. It certainly was twice a day. 
 
 She even went so far once, when Mr. Mortimer, 
 the vicar, called, and brought with him a more or 
 less distinguished doctor—as to tell the professional 
 man privately some symptoms of her husband’s 
 queerness. And his answer that there was ‘nothing 
 he could prescribe for’ added not a little to her sense 
 of unholy bewilderment. No doubt Sir James had 
 never been ‘consulted ’ under such unorthodox con- 
 ditions before. His sense of what was becoming 
 naturally overrode his acquired instincts as a skilled 
 instrument that might help the race. 
 
 ‘No fever, you think ?’ she asked insistently with 
 hurry, determined to get something from him. 
 
 ‘Nothing that J can deal with, as I told you, 
 Madam,’ replied the offended allopathic Knight. 
 
 Evidently he did not care about being invited to 
 examine patients in this surreptitious way before a 
 teapot on the lawn, chance of a fee most prob- 
 lematical. He liked to see a tongue and feel a 
 thumping pulse; to know the pedigree and bank 
 account of his questioner as well. It was most un- 
 usual, in abominable taste besides. Of course it was. 
 But the drowning woman seized the only straw she 
 could. 
 
 For now the aggressive attitude of her husband 
 overcame her to the point where she found it difficult 
 even to question him. Yet in the house he was so 
 kind and gentle, doing all he could to make her 
 sacrifice as easy as possible. 
 
 ‘David, you really are unwise to go out now. 
 The night is damp and very chilly. The ground is 
 soaked in dew. You'll catch your death of cold.’ 
 
 His face lightened. ‘Won't you come with me, 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 67 
 
 dear,—just for once? I’m only going to the corner 
 of the hollies to see the beech that stands so lonely 
 by itself.’ 
 
 She had been out with him in the short dark 
 afternoon, and they had passed that evil group 
 of hollies where the gipsies camped. Nothing else 
 would grow there, but the hollies throve upon the 
 stony soil. 
 
 ‘David, the beech is all right and safe.’ She had 
 learned his phraseology a little, made clever out of 
 due season by her love. ‘There’s no wind to-night.’ 
 
 ‘But it’s rising,’ he answered, ‘rising in the east. 
 I heard it in the bare and hungry larches. They need 
 the sun and dew, and always cry out when the wind’s 
 upon them from the east.’ 
 
 She sent a short unspoken prayer most swiftly to 
 her deity as she heard him say it. For every time 
 now, when he spoke in this familiar, intimate way of 
 the life of the trees, she felt a sheet of cold fasten 
 tight against her very skin and flesh. She shivered. 
 How could he possibly know such things? 
 
 Yet, in all else, and in the relations of his daily 
 life, he was sane and reasonable, loving, kind and 
 tender. It was only on the subject of the trees he 
 seemed unhinged and queer. Most curiously it 
 seemed that, since the collapse of the cedar they both 
 loved, though in different fashion, his departure from 
 the normal had increased. Why else did he watch 
 them as a man might watch a sickly child? Why 
 did he linger especially in the dusk to catch their 
 ‘mood of night’ as he called it? Why think so 
 carefully upon them when the frost was threatening 
 or the wind appeared to rise? 
 
 As she put it so frequently now to herself—How 
 could he possibly kzow such things? 
 
68 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 He went. As she closed the front door after him 
 she heard the distant roaring in the Forest. . . . 
 
 And then it suddenly struck her : How could she 
 know them too? 
 
 It dropped upon her like a blow that she felt at 
 once all over, upon body, heart and mind. The 
 discovery rushed out from its ambush to overwhelm. 
 The truth of it, making all arguing futile, numbed 
 her faculties. But though at first it deadened her, 
 she soon revived, and her being rose into aggressive 
 opposition. A wild yet calculated courage like that 
 which animates the leaders of splendid forlorn hopes 
 flamed in her little person—flamed grandly, and in- 
 vincible. While knowing herself insignificant and 
 weak, she knew at the same time that power at her 
 back which moves the worlds. The faith that filled 
 her was the weapon in her hands, and the right by 
 which she claimed it ; but the spirit of utter, selfless 
 sacrifice that characterised her life was the means by 
 which she mastered its immediate use. For a kind 
 of white and faultless intuition guided her to the 
 attack. Behind her stood her Bible and her God. 
 
 How so magnificent a divination came to her at 
 all may well be a matter for astonishment, though 
 some clue of explanation lies, perhaps, in the very 
 simpleness of her nature. At any rate, she saw quite 
 clearly certain things ; saw them in moments only— 
 after prayer, in the still silence of the night, or when 
 left alone those long hours in the house with her 
 knitting and her thoughts—and the guidance which 
 then flashed into her remained, even after the manner 
 of its coming was forgotten. 
 
 They came to her, these things she saw, formless, 
 
 wordless ; she could not put them into any kind of 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 69 
 
 language ; but by the very fact of being uncaught 
 in sentences they retained their original clear vigour. 
 
 Hours of patient waiting brought the first, and 
 the others followed easily afterwards, by degrees, on 
 subsequent days, a little and a little. Her husband 
 had been gone since early morning, and had taken 
 his luncheon with him. She was sitting by the tea 
 things, the cups and teapot warmed, the muffins in 
 the fender keeping hot, all ready for his return, 
 When she realised quite abruptly that this thing 
 which took him off, which kept him out so many 
 hours day after day, this thing that was against her 
 own little will and instincts—was enormous as the 
 sea. It was no mere prettiness of single Trees, but 
 something massed and mountainous. About her 
 rose the wall of its huge opposition to the sky, its 
 scale gigantic, its power utterly prodigious. What 
 she knew of it hitherto as green and delicate forms 
 waving and rustling in the winds was but, as it were, 
 the spray of foam that broke into sight upon the 
 nearer edge of viewless depths far, far away. The 
 trees, indeed, were sentinels set visibly about the 
 limits of a camp that itself remained invisible. The 
 awful hum and murmur of the main body in the 
 distance passed into that still room about her with 
 the firelight and hissing kettle. Out yonder—in the 
 Forest further out—the thing that was ever roaring 
 at the centre was dreadfully increasing. 
 
 The sense of definite battle, too—battle between 
 herself and the Forest for his soul—came with it. 
 Its presentment was as clear as though Thompson 
 had come into the room and quietly told her that 
 the cottage was surrounded. ‘Please, ma’am, there 
 are trees come up about the house,’ she might have 
 suddenly announced. And equally might have heard 
 
70 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 her own answer: ‘It’s all right, Thompson. The 
 main body is still far away.’ 
 
 Immediately upon its heels, then, came another 
 truth, with a close reality that shocked her. She 
 saw that jealousy was not confined to the human 
 and animal world alone, but ran through all creation. 
 The Vegetable Kingdom knew it too. So-called 
 inanimate nature shared it with the rest. Trees felt 
 it. This Forest just beyond the window—standing 
 there in the silence of the autumn evening across the 
 little lawn—this Forest understood it equaliy. The 
 remorseless, branching power that sought to keep 
 exclusively for itself the thing it loved and needed, 
 spread like a running desire through all its million 
 leaves and stems and roots. In humans, of course, it 
 was consciously directed; in animals it acted with 
 frank instinctiveness ; but in trees this jealousy rose 
 in some blind tide of impersonal and unconscious 
 wrath that would sweep opposition from its path as 
 the wind sweeps powdered snow from the surface of 
 the ice. Their number was a host with endless re- 
 inforcements, and once it realised its passion was 
 returned the power increased. ... Her husband 
 loved the trees. . . . They had become aware of 
 it. . . . They would take him from her in the 
 Cn eve 
 
 Then, while she heard his footsteps in the hall and 
 the closing of the front door, she saw a third thing 
 clearly ;—realised the widening of the gap between 
 herself and him. This other love had made it. 
 All these weeks of the summer when she felt so close 
 to him, now especially when she had made the 
 biggest sacrifice of her life to stay by his side and 
 help him, he had been slowly, surely —drawing away. 
 The estrangement was here and now—a fact accom- 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 71 
 
 plished. It had been all this time maturing ; there 
 yawned this broad deep space between them. Across 
 the empty distance she saw the change in merciless 
 perspective. It revealed his face and figure, dearly- 
 loved, once fondly worshipped, far on the other side in 
 shadowy distance, small, the back turned from her, 
 and moving while she watched—moving away from 
 her. 
 
 They had their tea in silence then. She asked no 
 questions, he volunteered no information of his day. 
 The heart was big within her, and the terrible loneli- 
 ness of age spread through her like a rising icy mist. 
 She watched him, filling all his wants. His hair was 
 untidy and his boots were caked with blackish mud. 
 He moved with a restless, swaying motion that 
 somehow blanched her cheek and sent a miserable 
 shivering down her back. It reminded her of 
 trees. His eyes were very bright. 
 
 He brought in with him an odour of the earth 
 and forest that seemed to choke her and make it 
 difficult to breathe ; and—-what she noticed with a 
 climax of almost uncontrollable alarm—upon his face 
 beneath the lamplight shone traces of a mild, faint 
 glory that made her think of moonlight falling 
 upon a wood through speckled shadows. It was his 
 new-found happiness that shone there, a happiness 
 uncaused by her and in which she had no part. 
 
 In his coat was a spray of faded yellow beech leaves. 
 ‘I brought this from the Forest for you,’ he said, 
 with all the air that belonged to his little acts of 
 devotion long ago. And she took the spray of leaves 
 mechanically with a smile and a murmured ‘thank 
 you, dear,’ as though he had unknowingly put into her 
 hands the weapon for her own destruction and she 
 had accepted it. 
 
72 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 And when the tea was over and he left the room, 
 he did not go to his study, or to change his clothes. 
 She heard the front door softly shut behind him as 
 he again went out towards the Forest. | 
 
 A moment later she was in her room upstairs, 
 kneeling beside the bed—the side he slept on—and 
 praying wildly through a flood of tears that God 
 would save and keep him to her. Wind brushed the 
 window panes behind her while she knelt. 
 
Vill 
 
 One sunny November morning, when the strain had 
 reached a pitch that made repression almost un- 
 manageable, she came to an impulsive decision, and 
 obeyed it. Her husband had again gone out with 
 luncheon for the day. She took adventure in her 
 hands and followed him. The power of seeing-clear 
 was strong upon her, forcing her up to some un- 
 natural level of understanding. To stay indoors and 
 wait inactive for his return seemed suddenly impossible. 
 She meant to know what he knew, feel what he felt, 
 put herself in his place. She would dare the fascina- 
 tion of the Forest—share it with him. It was greatly 
 daring ; but it would give her greater understanding 
 how to help and save him and therefore greater 
 Power. She went upstairs a moment first to 
 pray. 
 
 In a thick, warm skirt, and wearing heavy boots 
 —those walking boots she used with him upon the 
 mountains about Seillans—she left the cottage by the 
 back way and turned towards the Forest. She could 
 not actually follow him, for he had started off an 
 hour before and she knew not exactly his direction. 
 What was so urgent in her was the wish to be with 
 him in the woods, to walk beneath the leafless branches 
 just as he did: to be there when he was there, even 
 though not together. For it had come to her that 
 
 73 
 
74 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 she might thus share with him for once this horrible 
 mighty life and breathing of the trees he loved. In 
 winter, he had said, they needed him particularly ; 
 and winter now was coming. Her love must bring 
 her something of what he felt himself—the huge 
 attraction, the suction and the pull of all the trees. 
 Thus, in some vicarious fashion, she might share, 
 though unknown to himself, this very thing that was 
 taking him away from her. She might thus even 
 lessen its attack upon himself. 
 
 The impulse came to her clairvoyantly, and she 
 obeyed without a sign of hesitation. Deeper com- 
 prehension would come to her of the whole awful 
 puzzle. And come it did, yet not in the way she 
 imagined and expected. 
 
 The air was very still, the sky a cold pale blue, 
 but cloudless. The entire Forest stood silent, at 
 attention. It knew perfectly well that she had come. 
 It knew the moment when she entered ; watched and 
 followed her; and behind her something dropped 
 without a sound and shut her in. Her feet upon the 
 glades of mossy grass fell silently, as the oaks and 
 beeches shifted past in rows and took up their 
 positions at her back. _ It was not pleasant, this way 
 they grew so dense behind her the instant she had 
 passed. She realised that they gathered in an ever- 
 growing army, massed, herded, trooped, between her 
 and the cottage, shutting off escape. They let her 
 pass so easily, but to get out again she would know 
 them differently—thick, crowded, branches all drawn 
 and hostile. Already their increasing numbers be- 
 wildered her. In front, they looked so sparse and 
 scattered, with open spaces where the sunshine fell ; 
 but when she turned it seemed they stood so close 
 together, a serried army, darkening the sunlight. 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 75 
 
 They blocked the day, collected all the shadows, 
 stood with their leafless and forbidding rampart like 
 the night. They swallowed down into themselves 
 the very glade by which she came. For when she 
 glanced behind her—rarely—the way she had come 
 was shadowy and lost. 
 
 Yet the morning sparkled overhead, and a glance 
 
 of excitement ran quivering through the entire day. 
 It was what she always knew as ‘children’s weather,’ 
 so clear and harmless, without a sign of danger, 
 nothing ominous to threaten or alarm. Steadfast in 
 her purpose, looking back as little as she dared, 
 Sophia Bittacy marched slowly and deliberately into the 
 _ heart of the silent woods, deeper, ever deeper... . 
 _ And then, abruptly, in an open space where the 
 sunshine fell unhindered, she stopped. It was one of 
 the breathing-places of the forest. Dead, withered 
 bracken lay in patches of unsightly grey. There 
 were bits of heather too. All round the trees stood 
 looking on—oak, beech, holly, ash, pine, larch, with 
 here and there small groups of juniper.’ On the 
 lips of this breathing-space of the woods she 
 stopped to rest, disobeying her instinct for the first 
 time. For the other instinct in her was to go on. 
 She did not really want to rest. 
 
 This was the little act that brought it to her—the 
 wireless message from a vast Emitter. 
 
 ‘T’ve been stopped,’ she thought to herself with a 
 horrid qualm. 
 
 She looked about her in this quiet, ancient place. 
 Nothing stirred. There was no life nor sign of life ; 
 no birds sang ; no rabbits scuttled off at her approach. 
 The stillness was bewildering, and gravity hung down 
 upon it like a heavy curtain. It hushed the heart in 
 her. Could this be part of what her husband felt— 
 
76 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 this sense of thick entanglement with stems, boughs, 
 roots, and foliage? 
 
 ‘This has always been as it is now,’ she thought, 
 yet not knowing why she thought it. ‘Ever since 
 the Forest grew it has been still and secret here. It 
 has never changed.’ The curtain of silence drew 
 closer while she said it, thickening round her. ‘For 
 a thousand years—I’m here with a thousand years. 
 And behind this place stand all the forests of the 
 world !’ 
 
 So foreign to her temperament were such thoughts, 
 and so alien to all she had been taught to look for in 
 Nature, that she strove against them. She made an 
 effort to oppose. But they clung and haunted just 
 the same ; they refused to be dispersed. The curtain 
 hung dense and heavy as though its texture thickened. 
 The air with difficulty came through. 
 
 And then she thought that curtain stirred. There 
 was movement somewhere. ‘That obscure dim thing 
 which ever broods behind the visible appearances of 
 trees came nearer to her. She caught her breath 
 and stared about her, listening intently. The trees, 
 perhaps because she saw them more in detail now, it 
 seemed to her had changed. A vague, faint alteration 
 spread over them, at first so slight she scarcely would 
 admit it, then growing steadily, though still obscurely, 
 outwards. ‘They tremble and are changed,’ flashed 
 through her mind the horrid line that Sanderson had 
 quoted. Yet the change was graceful for all the 
 uncouthness attendant upon the size of so vast a 
 movement. They had turned in her direction. 
 That was it. They saw her. 
 
 In this way the change expressed itself in her 
 groping, terrified thought. Till now it had been 
 otherwise: she had looked at them from her own 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 77 
 
 point of view; now they looked at her from theirs. 
 They stared her in the face and eyes; they stared at 
 her all over. In some unkind, resentful, hostile way, 
 they watched her. Hitherto in life she had watched 
 them variously, in superficial ways, reading into them 
 what her own mind suggested. Now they read into 
 her the things they actually were, and not merely 
 another’s interpretation of them. 
 
 They seemed in their motionless silence there 
 instinct with life, a life, moreover, that breathed 
 about her a species of terrible soft enchantment that 
 bewitched. It branched all through her, climbing to 
 the brain. The Forest held her with its huge and 
 giant fascination. In this secluded breathing-spot 
 that the centuries had left untouched, she had stepped 
 close against the hidden pulse of the whole collective 
 mass of them. They were aware of her and had 
 turned to gaze with their myriad, vast sight upon 
 the intruder. They shouted at her in the silence. 
 For she wanted to look back at them, but it was like 
 staring at a crowd, and her glance merely shifted 
 from one tree to another, hurriedly, finding in none 
 the one she sought. They saw her so easily, each 
 and all. The rows that stood behind her also stared. 
 But she could not return the gaze. Her husband, 
 she realised, could. And their steady stare shocked 
 her as though in some sense she knew that she was 
 naked. They saw so much of her: she saw of them 
 —so little. 
 
 Her efforts to return their gaze were pitiful. 
 The constant shifting increased her bewilderment. 
 Conscious of this awful and enormous sight all over 
 her, she let her eyes first rest upon the ground ; and 
 then she closed them altogether. She kept the lids 
 as tight together as ever they would go. 
 
78 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 But the sight of the trees came even into that 
 inner darkness behind the fastened lids, for there was 
 no escaping it. Outside, in the light, she still knew 
 that the leaves of the hollies glittered smoothly, that 
 the dead foliage of the oaks hung crisp in the air 
 above her, that the needles of the little junipers were 
 pointing all one way. The spread perception of the 
 Forest was focussed on herself, and no mere shutting 
 of the eyes could hide its scattered yet concentrated 
 stare—the all-inclusive vision of great woods. 
 
 There was no wind, yet here and there a single 
 leaf hanging by its dried-up stalk shook all alone 
 with great rapidity—rattling. It was the sentry 
 drawing attention to her presence. And then, again, 
 as once long weeks before, she felt their Being as 
 a tide about her. The tide had turned. That 
 memory of her childhood sands came back, when 
 the nurse said, ‘ The tide has turned now ; we must 
 go in,’ and she saw the mass of piled-up waters, green 
 and heaped to the horizon, and realised that it was 
 slowly coming in. ‘The gigantic mass of it, too vast 
 for hurry, loaded with massive purpose, she used to 
 feel, was moving towards herself. ‘The fluid body 
 of the sea was creeping along beneath the sky to 
 the very spot upon the yellow sands where she stood 
 and played. The sight and thought of it had always 
 overwhelmed her with a sense of awe—as though her 
 puny self were the object of the whole sea’s advance. 
 ‘The tide has turned ; we had better now go in.’ 
 
 This was happening now about her—the same 
 thing was happening in the woods—slow, sure, and 
 steady, and its motion as little discernible as the sea’s. 
 The tide had turned. The small human presence 
 that had ventured among its green and mountainous 
 depths, moreover, was its objective. 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 79 
 
 That all was clear within her while she sat and 
 waited with tight-shut lids. But the next moment 
 she opened her eyes with a sudden realization of 
 something more. The presence that it sought was 
 after all not hers. It was the presence of some one 
 other than herself. And thenshe understood. Her 
 eyes had opened with a click, it seemed; but the 
 sound, in reality, was outside herself. Across the 
 clearing where the sunshine lay so calm and still, she 
 saw the figure of her husband moving among the 
 trees—a man, like a tree, walking. 
 
 With hands behind his back, and head uplifted, 
 he moved quite slowly, as though absorbed in his 
 own thoughts. Hardly fifty paces separated them, 
 _ but he had no inkling of her presence there so near. 
 With mind intent and senses all turned inwards, he 
 marched past her like a figure in a dream, and like 
 a figure in a dream she saw him go. Love, yearning, 
 pity rose in a storm within her, but as in nightmare 
 she found no words or movement possible. She sat and 
 watched him go—go from her—go into the deeper 
 reaches of the green enveloping woods. Desire to 
 save, to bid him stop and turn, ran in a passion 
 through her being, but there was nothing she could 
 do. She saw him go away from her, go of his own 
 accord and willingly beyond her; she saw the 
 branches drop about his steps and hide him. His 
 figure faded out among the speckled shade and sun- 
 light. The trees covered him. The tide just took 
 him, all unresisting and content to go. Upon the 
 bosom of the green soft sea he floated away beyond 
 her reach of vision. Her eyes could follow him no 
 longer. He was gone. 
 
 And then for the first time she realised, even at 
 that distance, that the look upon his face was one of 
 
80 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 peace and happiness—rapt, and caught away in joy, 
 a look of youth. That expression now he never 
 showed to her. But she 4ad known it. Years ago, 
 in the early days of their married life, she had seen it 
 on his face. Now it no longer obeyed the summons 
 of her presence and her love. The woodsalone could 
 call it forth ; it answered to the trees; the Forest had 
 taken every part of him—from her—his very heart 
 and soul... . 
 
 Her sight that had plunged inwards to the fields 
 of faded memory now came back to outer things 
 again. She looked about her, and her love, returning 
 empty-handed and unsatisfied, left her open to the 
 invading of the bleakest terror she had ever known. 
 That such things could be real and happen found her 
 helpless utterly. Terror invaded the quietest corners 
 of her heart, that had never yet known quailing. 
 She could not—for moments at any rate—reach 
 either her Bible or her God. Desolate in an empty 
 world of fear she sat with eyes too dry and hot 
 for tears, yet with a coldness as of ice upon her 
 very flesh. She stared, unseeing, about her. That 
 horror which stalks in the stillness of the noonday, 
 when the glare of an artificial sunshine lights up the 
 motionless trees, moved all about her. In front and 
 behind she was aware of it. Beyond this stealthy 
 silence, just within the edge of it, the things of 
 another world were passing. But she could not know 
 them. Her husband knew them, knew their beauty 
 and their awe, yes, but for her they were out of 
 reach. She might not share with him the very least 
 of them. It seemed that behind and through the 
 glare of this wintry noonday in the heart of the 
 woods there brooded another universe of life and 
 passion, for her all unexpressed. The silence veiled — 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREESLOVED 8: 
 
 it, the stillness hid it; but he moved with it all and 
 understood. His love interpreted it. 
 
 She rose to her feet, tottered feebly, and collapsed 
 again upon the moss. Yet for herself she felt no 
 terror; no little personal fear could touch her whose 
 anguish and deep longing streamed all out to him 
 whom she so bravely loved. In this time of utter 
 self-forgetfulness, when she realised that the battle 
 was hopeless, thinking she had lost even her God, she 
 found Him again quite close beside her like a little 
 Presence in this terrible heart of the hostile Forest. 
 But at first she did not recognise that He was there ; 
 she did not know Him in that strangely unacceptable 
 guise. For He stood so very close, so very intimate, 
 So very sweet and comforting, and yet so hard to 
 understand—as Resignation. 
 
 Once more she struggled to her feet, and this time 
 turned successfully and slowly made her way along 
 the mossy glade by which she came. And at first 
 she marvelled, though only for a moment, at the ease 
 with which she found the path. Fora moment only, 
 because almost at once she saw the truth. The trees 
 were glad that she should go. They helped her on 
 her way. The Forest did not want her. 
 
 The tide was coming in, indeed, yet not for her. 
 
 And so, in another of those flashes of clear-vision 
 that of late had lifted life above the normal level, she 
 saw and understood the whole terrible thing complete. 
 
 Till now, though unexpressed in thought or 
 language, her fear had been that the woods her 
 husband loved would somehow take him from her— 
 to merge his life in theirs—even to kill him in some 
 mysterious way. This time she saw her deep mis- 
 take, and so seeing, let in upon herself the fuller 
 
 G 
 
82 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 agony of horror. For their jealousy was not the 
 petty jealousy of animals or humans. They wanted 
 him because they loved him, but they did not want 
 him dead. Full charged with his splendid life and 
 enthusiasm they wanted him. They wanted him— 
 alive. 
 
 It was she who stood in their way, and it was she 
 whom they intended to remove. 
 
 This was what brought the sense of abject helpless- 
 ness. She stood upon the sands against an entire 
 ocean slowly rolling in against her. For, as all the 
 forces of a human being combine unconsciously 
 ta eject a grain of sand that has crept beneath 
 the, skin to cause discomfort, so the entire mass 
 of what Sanderson had called the Collective Con- 
 sciousness of the Forest strove to eject this human 
 atom that stood across the path of its desire. Loving 
 her husband, she had crept beneath its skin. It was 
 her they would eject and take away ; it was her they 
 would destroy, not him. Him, whom they loved 
 and needed, they would keep alive. ‘They meant to 
 take him living. 
 
 She reached the house in safety, though she never 
 remembered how she found her way. It was made 
 all simple for her. The branches almost urged her 
 out. 
 
 But behind her, as she left the shadowed precincts, 
 she felt as though some towering Angel of the Woods 
 I¢t fall across the threshold the flaming sword of a 
 countless multitude of leaves that formed behind her 
 a barrier, green, shimmering, and impassable. Into 
 the Forest she never walked again. 
 
 And she went about her daily duties with a calm 
 and quietness that was a perpetual astonishment even 
 
” 
 
 THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 83 
 
 to herself, for it hardly seemed of this world at all. 
 She talked to her husband when he came in for tea 
 —after dark. Resignation brings a curious large 
 courage—when there is nothing more to lose. . The 
 soul takes risks, and dares. Is it a curious short-cut 
 sometimes to the heights ? 
 
 ‘David, I went into the Forest, too, this morning ; 
 soon after you I went. I saw you there.’ 
 
 ‘Wasn't it wonderful?’ he answered simply, 
 inclining his head a little. There was no surprise 
 or annoyance in his look; a mild and gentle ennui 
 rather. He asked no real question, She thought 
 of some garden tree the wind attacks too suddenly, 
 
 | bending it over when it does not want to bend—the 
 
 mild unwillingness with which it yields. She often 
 saw him this way now, in the terms of trees. 
 
 ‘It was very wonderful indeed, dear, yes,’ she 
 replied low, her voice not faltering though indistinct. 
 ‘But for me it was too—too strange and big.’ 
 
 The passion of tears lay just below the quiet voice 
 all unbetrayed. Somehow she kept them back. 
 
 There was a pause, and then he added : 
 
 ‘I find it more and more so every day.’ His 
 voice passed through the lamp-lit room like a murmur 
 of the wind in branches. The look of youth and 
 happiness she had caught upon his face out there had 
 wholly gone, and an expression of weariness was in 
 its place, as of a man distressed vaguely at finding 
 himself in uncongenial surroundings where he is 
 slightly ill at ease. It was the house he hated— 
 coming back to rooms and wallsand furniture. The 
 ceilings and closed windows confined him. Yet, in 
 it, no suggestion that he found fer irksome. Her 
 presence seemed of no account at all; indeed, he 
 hardly noticed her. For whole long periods he lost 
 
84 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 her, did not know that she was there. He had no 
 need of her. He lived alone. Each lived alone. 
 
 The outward signs by which she recognised that 
 the awful battle was against her and the terms of 
 surrender accepted were pathetic. She put the 
 medicine-chest away upon the shelf; she gave the 
 orders for his pocket-luncheon before he asked ; she 
 went to bed alone and early, leaving the front door 
 unlocked, with milk and bread and butter in the hall 
 beside the lamp—all concessions that she felt impelled 
 to make. For more and more, unless the weather 
 was too violent, he went out after dinner even, staying 
 for hours in the woods. But she never slept until 
 she heard the front door close below, and knew soon 
 afterwards his careful step come creeping up the 
 stairs and into the room so softly. Until she heard 
 his regular deep breathing close beside her, she lay 
 awake. All strength or desire to resist had gone for 
 good. The thing against her was too huge and power- 
 ful. Capitulation was complete, a fact accomplished. 
 . She dated it from the day she followed him to the 
 Forest. 
 
 Moreover, the time for evacuation—her own 
 evacuation—seemed approaching. It came stealthily 
 ever nearer, surely and slowly as the rising tide she 
 used to dread. At the high-water mark she stood 
 waiting calmly—waiting to be swept away. Across 
 the lawn all those terrible days of early winter the 
 encircling Forest watched it come, guiding its silent 
 swell and currents towards her feet. Only she never 
 once gave up her Bible or her praying. This com- 
 plete resignation, moreover, had somehow brought to 
 her a strange great understanding, and if she could 
 not share her husband’s horrible abandonment to 
 
 powers outside himself, she could, and did, in some 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 85 
 
 half-groping way grasp at shadowy meanings that 
 might make such abandonment—possible, yes, but 
 more than merely possible—in some extraordinary 
 sense not evil. 
 
 Hitherto she had divided the beyond-world into 
 two sharp halves—spirits good or spirits evil. But 
 thoughts came to her now, on soft and very tentative 
 feet, like the footsteps of the gods which are on wool, 
 that besides these definite classes, there might be other 
 Powers as well, belonging definitely to neither one nor 
 other. Her thought stopped dead at that. But the 
 big idea found lodgment in her little mind, and, owing 
 to the largeness of her heart, remained there unejected. 
 It even brought a certain solace with it. 
 
 The failure—or unwillingness, as she preferred to 
 state it—of her God to interfere and help, that also 
 she came in a measure to understand. For here, she 
 found it more and more possible to imagine, was 
 perhaps no positive evil at work, but only something 
 that usually stands away from humankind, some- 
 thing alien and not commonly recognised. There 
 was a gulf fixed between the two, and Mr. Sanderson 
 had bridged it, by his talk, his explanations, his 
 attitude of mind. Through these her husband had 
 found the way into it. His temperament and natural 
 passion for the woods had prepared the soul in him, 
 and the moment he saw the way to go he took it— 
 the line of least resistance. Life was, of course, 
 open to all, and her husband had the right to choose 
 it where he would. He had chosen it—away from 
 her, away from other men, but not necessarily away 
 from God. ‘This was an enormous concession that 
 she skirted, never really faced; it was too revolu- 
 tionary to face. But its possibility peeped into her 
 bewildered mind. It might delay his progress, or it 
 
86 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 might advance it. Who could know? And why 
 should God, who ordered all things with such 
 magnificent detail, from the pathway of a sun to the 
 falling of a sparrow, object to his free choice, or 
 interfere to hinder him and stop? 
 
 She came to realise resignation, that is, in another 
 aspect. It gave her comfort, if not peace. She 
 fought against all belittling of her God. It was, 
 perhaps, enough that He—knew. 
 
 ‘You are not alone, dear, in the trees out 
 there?’ she ventured one night, as he crept on tiptoe 
 into the room not far from midnight. ‘God is with 
 
 ou?’ 
 Ne Magnificently,’ was the immediate answer, given 
 with enthusiasm, ‘ for Heiseverywhere. And I only 
 wish that you : 
 
 But she stuffed the clothes against her ears. That 
 invitation on his lips was more than she could bear 
 to hear. It seemed like asking her to hurry to her 
 ownexecution. She buried her face among the sheets 
 and blankets, shaking all over like a leaf. 
 
IX 
 
 AND so the thought that she was the one to go re- 
 mained and grew. It was, perhaps, first sign of that 
 weakening of the mind which indicated the singular 
 manner of her going. For it was her mental opposi- 
 tion, the trees felt, that stood in their way. Once 
 that was overcome, obliterated, her physical presence 
 did not matter. She would be harmless. 
 
 Having accepted defeat, because she had come to 
 feel that his obsession was not actually evil, she 
 accepted at the same time the conditions of an 
 atrocious loneliness. She stood now from her husband 
 farther than from the moon. They had no visitors. 
 Callers were few and far between, and less encouraged 
 than before. The empty dark of winter was before 
 them. Among the neighbours was none in whom, 
 without disloyalty to her husband, she could confide. 
 Mr. Mortimer, had he been single, might have helped 
 her in this desert of solitude that preyed upon her 
 mind, but his wife was there the obstacle ; for Mrs. 
 Mortimer wore sandals, believed that nuts were the 
 complete food of man, and indulged in other idiosyn- 
 crasies that classed her inevitably among the ‘latter 
 signs’ which Mrs. Bittacy had been taught to dread 
 as dangerous. She stood most desolately alone. 
 
 Solitude, therefore, in which the mind unhindered 
 feeds upon its own delusions, was the assignable cause 
 of her gradual mental disruption and collapse. 
 
 87 
 
88 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 With the definite arrival of the colder weather her 
 husband gave up his rambles after dark; evenings 
 were spent together over the fire; he read The 
 Times ; they even talked about their postponed visit 
 abroad in the coming spring. No restlessness was 
 on him at the change; he seemed content and easy 
 in his mind; spoke little of the trees and woods ; 
 enjoyed far better health than if there had been 
 change of scene, and to herself was tender, kind, 
 solicitous over trifles, as in the distant days of their 
 first honeymoon. 
 
 But this deep calm could not deceive her; it 
 meant, she fully understood, that he felt sure of 
 himself, sure of her, and sure of the trees as well. It 
 all lay buried in the depths of him, too secure and 
 deep, too intimately established in his central being 
 to permit of those surface fluctuations which betray 
 disharmony within. His life was hid with trees. 
 Even the fever, so dreaded in the damp of winter, 
 left him free. She now knew why. The fever was 
 due to their efforts to obtain him, his efforts to re- 
 spond and go—physical results of a fierce unrest he 
 had never understood till Sanderson came with his 
 wicked explanations. Now it was otherwise. The 
 bridge was made. And—he had gone. 
 
 And she, brave, loyal, and consistent soul, found 
 herself utterly alone, even trying to make his passage 
 easy. It seemed that she stood at the bottom of 
 some huge ravine that opened in her mind, the walls 
 whereof instead of rock were trees that reached 
 enormous to the sky, engulfing her. God alone 
 knew that she was there. He watched, permitted, 
 even perhaps approved. At any rate—He knew. 
 
 During those quiet evenings in the house, more- 
 over, while they sat over the fire listening to the 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 89 
 
 roaming winds about the house, her husband knew 
 continual access to the world his alien love had fur- 
 nished for him. Never for a single instant was he 
 cut off from it. She gazed at the newspaper spread 
 before his face and knees, saw the smoke of his 
 cheroot curl up above the edge, noticed the little 
 hole in his evening socks, and listened to the para- 
 graphs he read aloud as of old. But this was all a 
 veil he spread about himself of purpose. Behind it 
 —he escaped. It was the conjurer’s trick to divert 
 the sight to unimportant details while the essential 
 thing went forward unobserved. He managed 
 wonderfully ; she loved him for the pains he took to 
 spare her distress; but all the while she knew that 
 the body lolling in that armchair before her eyes 
 contained the merest fragment of his actual self. It 
 was little better than a corpse. It was an empty 
 shell. The essential soul of him was out yonder 
 with the Forest—farther out near that ever-roaring 
 heart of it. | 
 And, with the dark, the Forest came up boldly 
 and pressed against the very walls and windows, 
 peering in upon them, joining hands above the slates 
 and chimneys. The winds were always walking on 
 the lawn and gravel paths; steps came and went 
 and came again ; some one seemed always talking in 
 the woods, some one was in the building too. She 
 passed them on the stairs, or running soft and muffled, 
 very large and gentle, down the passages and landings 
 after dusk, as though loose fragments of the Day had 
 broken off and stayed there caught among the shadows, 
 trying to get out. They blundered silently all about 
 the house. They waited till she passed, then made 
 arun for it. And her husband always knew. She 
 saw him more than once deliberately avoid them— 
 
gO PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 because she was there. More than once, too, she 
 saw him stand and listen when he thought she was 
 not near, then heard herself the long bounding stride 
 of their approach across the silent garden. Already 
 he had heard them in the windy distance of the night, 
 far, far away. ‘They sped, she well knew, along that 
 glade of mossy turf by which she last came out; it 
 cushioned their tread exactly as it had cushioned her 
 own. 
 
 It seemed to her the trees were always in the 
 house with him, and in their very bedroom. He 
 welcomed them, unaware that she also knew, and 
 trembled. 
 
 One night in their bedroom it caught her unawares. 
 She woke out of deep sleep and it came upon her 
 before she could gather her forces for control. 
 
 The day had been wildly boisterous, but now the 
 wind had dropped; only its rags went fluttering 
 through the night. The rays of the full moon fell 
 in a shower between the branches. Overhead still 
 raced the scud and wrack, shaped like hurrying 
 monsters ; but below the earth was quiet. Still and 
 dripping stood the hosts of trees. Their trunks 
 gleamed wet and sparkling where the moon caught 
 them. There wasa strong smell of mould and fallen 
 leaves. The air was sharp—heavy with odour. 
 
 And she knew all this the instant that she woke ; 
 for it seemed to her that she had been elsewhere— 
 following her husband—as though she had been ou! 
 There was no dream at all, merely this definite, 
 haunting certainty. It dived away, lost, buried in 
 the night. She sat upright in bed. She had come 
 back. | 
 
 The room shone pale in the moonlight reflected 
 through the windows, for the blinds were up, and 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 91 
 
 she saw her husband’s form beside her, motionless 
 in deep sleep. But what caught her unawares was 
 the horrid thing that by this fact of sudden, unex- 
 pected waking she had surprised these other things 
 in the room, beside the very bed, gathered close 
 about him while he slept. It was their dreadful 
 boldness—herself of no account as it were—that 
 terrified her into screaming before she could collect 
 her powers to prevent. She screamed before she 
 realised what she did—a long, high shriek of terror © 
 that filled the room, yet made so little actual sound. 
 For wet and shimmering presences stood grouped all 
 round that bed. She saw their outline underneath 
 the ceiling, the green, spread bulk of them, their 
 vague extension over walls and furniture. They 
 shifted to and fro, massed yet translucent, mild yet 
 thick, moving and turning within themselves to a 
 hushed noise of multitudinous soft rustling. In 
 their sound was something very sweet and winning 
 that fell into her with a spell of horrible enchant- 
 ment. ‘They were so mild, each one alone, yet so 
 terrific in their combination. Cold seized her. 
 The sheets against her body turned to ice. 
 
 She screamed a second time, though the sound 
 hardly issued from her throat. The spell sank 
 deeper, reaching to the heart ; for it softened all the 
 currents of her blood and took life from her in a 
 stream — towards themselves. Resistance in that 
 moment seemed impossible. 
 
 Her husband then stirred in his sleep, and woke. 
 And, instantly, the forms drew up, erect, and 
 gathered themselves in some amazing way together. 
 They lessened in extent—then scattered through the 
 air like an effect of light when shadows seek to 
 smother it. It was tremendous, yet most exquisite. 
 
92 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 A sheet of pale-green shadow that yet had form 
 and substance filled the room. ‘There was a rush of 
 silent movement, as the Presences drew past her 
 through the air,—and they were gone. 
 
 But, clearest of all, she saw the manner of their 
 going ; for she recognised in their tumult of escape 
 by the window open at the top, the same wide 
 ‘looping circles ’—spirals it seemed—that she had 
 seen upon the lawn those weeks ago when Sanderson 
 had talked. ‘The room once more was empty. 
 
 In the collapse that followed, she heard her 
 husband’s voice, as though coming from some great 
 distance. Her own replies she heard as well. 
 Both were so strange and unlike their normal speech, 
 the very words unnatural : 
 
 ‘What is it, dear? Why do you wake me 
 now?’ And his voice whispered it with a sighing 
 sound, like wind in pine boughs. 
 
 ‘A moment since something went past me 
 through the air of the room. Back to the night 
 outside it went.’ Her voice, too, held the same 
 note as of wind entangled among too many leaves. 
 
 ‘My dear, it was the wind.’ 
 
 ‘But it called, David. It was calling you—by 
 name !’ 
 
 ‘The stir of the branches, dear, was what you 
 heard. Now, sleep again, I beg you, sleep.’ 
 
 ‘It had a crowd of eyes all through and over it— 
 before and behind Her voice grew louder. 
 But his own in reply sank lower, far away, and oddly 
 hushed. 
 
 ‘The moonlight, dear, upon the sea of twigs and 
 boughs in the rain, was what you saw.’ 
 
 ‘But it frightened me. I’ve lost my God—and 
 _ you—I’m cold as death!’ 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 93 
 
 ‘My dear, it is the cold of the early morning 
 hours. The whole world sleeps. Now sleep again 
 yourself,’ 
 
 He whispered close to her ear. She felt his 
 hand stroking her. His voice was soft and very 
 soothing. But only a part of him was there; only a 
 part of him was speaking; it was a half-emptied 
 body that lay beside her and uttered these strange 
 sentences, even forcing her own singular choice of 
 words. The horrible, dim enchantment of the 
 trees was close about them in the room—gnarled, 
 ancient, lonely trees of winter, whispering round the 
 human life they loved. 
 
 ‘And let me sleep again,’ she heard him murmur 
 as he settled down among the clothes, ‘sleep back 
 into that deep, delicious peace from which you 
 called mej), e's 
 _ His dreamy, happy tone, and that look of youth 
 and joy she discerned upon his features even in the 
 filtered moonlight, touched her again as with the spell 
 of those shining, mild green presences. It sank 
 down into her. She felt sleep grope for her. On 
 the threshold of slumber one of those strange vagrant 
 voices that loss of consciousness lets loose cried 
 faintly in her heart— 
 
 ‘There is joy tn the Forest over one sinner 
 that : 
 
 Then sleep took her before she had time to 
 realise even that she was vilely parodying one of her 
 most precious texts, and that the irreverence was 
 ghastly. ... 
 
 And though she quickly slept again, her sleep 
 was not as usual, dreamless. It was not woods and 
 trees she dreamed of, but a small and curious dream 
 that kept coming again and again upon her: that 
 
J 
 
 94 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 she stood upon a wee, bare rock in the sea, and that 
 the tide was rising. The water first came to her feet, 
 then to her knees, then to her waist. Each time 
 the dream returned, the tide seemed higher. Once it 
 rose to her neck, once even to her mouth, covering 
 her lips for a moment so that she could not breathe. 
 She did not wake between the dreams ; a period of 
 drab and dreamless slumber intervened. But, finally, 
 the water rose above her eyes and face, completely 
 covering her head. i ; 
 
 And then came explanation—the sort of 
 explanation dreams bring. She understood. *For, 
 beneath the water, she had seen the world of seaweed 
 rising from the bottom of the sea like a forest of 
 dense green—long, sinuous stems, immense thick © 
 branches, millions of feelers spreading through the 
 darkened watery depths the power of their ocean 
 foliage. The Vegetable Kingdom was even in the 
 sea. It was everywhere. Earth, air, and water 
 helped it, way of escape there was none. 
 
 And even underneath the sea she heard that 
 terrible sound of roaring—was it surf or wind or 
 voices ?’—further out, yet coming steadily towards 
 her. 
 
 And so, in the loneliness of that drab English 
 winter, the mind of Mrs. Bittacy, preying upon 
 itself, and fed by constant dread, went lost in dis- 
 proportion. Dreariness filled the weeks with dismal, 
 sunless skies and a clinging moisture that knew no 
 wholesome tonic of keen frosts. Alone with her 
 thoughts, both her husband and her God withdrawn 
 into distance, she counted the days to Spring. She 
 groped her way, stumbling down the long dark 
 tunnel. Through the arch at the far end lay a 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 95 
 
 brilliant picture of the violet sea sparkling on the 
 coast of France. There lay safety and escape for 
 both of them, could she but hold on. Behind her 
 the trees blocked up the other entrance. She never 
 once looked back. 
 
 She drooped. Vitality passed from her, drawn 
 out and away as by some steady suction. Immense 
 and incessant was this sensation of her powers drain- 
 ing off. The taps were all turned on. Her 
 personality, as it were, streamed steadily away, 
 coaxed outwards by this Power that never wearied and 
 seemed inexhaustible. It won her as the full moon 
 wins the tide. She waned ; she faded ; she obeyed. 
 
 At first she watched the process, and recognised 
 exactly what was going on. Her physical life, and 
 that balance of the mind which depends on physical 
 well-being, were being slowly undermined. She saw 
 that clearly. Only the soul, dwelling like a star 
 apart from these and independent of them, lay safe 
 somewhere—with her distant God. That she knew 
 —tranquilly. The spiritual love that linked her 
 to her husband was safe from all attack. Later, 
 in His good time, they would merge together again 
 because of it. But, meanwhile, all of her that had 
 kinship with the earth was slowly going. This 
 separation was being remorselessly accomplished. 
 Every part of her the trees could touch was being 
 steadily drained from her. She was being—removed. 
 
 After a time, however, even this power of realisa- 
 tion went, so that she no longer ‘ watched the process’ 
 or knew exactly what was going on. The one satis- 
 faction she had known—the feeling that it was sweet 
 to suffer for his sake—went with it. She stood 
 utterly alone with this terror of the trees . . . mid 
 the ruins of her broken and disordered mind. 
 
96 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 She slept badly ; woke in the morning with hot 
 and tired eyes ; her head ached dully ; she grew con- 
 fused in thought and lost the clues of daily life in 
 the most feeble fashion. At the same time she lost 
 sight, too, of that brilliant picture at the exit of the 
 tunnel ; it faded away into a tiny semicircle of pale 
 light, the violet sea and the sunshine the merest 
 point of white, remote as a star and equally inacces- 
 sible. She knew now that she could never reach it. 
 And through the darkness that stretched behind, the 
 power of the trees came close and caught her, twining 
 about her feet and arms, climbing to her very lips. 
 She woke at night, finding it difficult to breathe. 
 There seemed wet leaves pressed against her mouth, 
 and soft green tendrils clinging to her neck. Her 
 feet were heavy, half rooted, as it were, in deep, thick 
 earth. Huge creepers stretched along the whole of 
 that black tunnel, feeling about her person for points 
 where they might fasten well, as ivy or the giant 
 parasites of the Vegetable Kingdom settle down 
 on the trees themselves to sap their life and kill 
 them. 
 
 Slowly and surely the morbid growth possessed 
 her life and held her. She feared those very winds 
 that ran about the wintry forest. They were in 
 league with it. They helped it everywhere. 
 
 ‘Why don’t you sleep, dear?’ It was her 
 husband now who played the rdle of nurse, tending 
 her little wants with an honest care that at least aped 
 the services of love. He was so utterly unconscious 
 of the raging battle he had caused. ‘What is it 
 keeps you so wide awake and restless?’ | 
 
 ‘The winds,’ she whispered in the dark. For 
 hours she had lain watching the tossing of the trees 
 _ through the blindless windows. ‘They go walking 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 97 
 
 and talking everywhere to-night, keeping me awake. 
 And all the time they call so loudly to you.’ 
 
 And his strange whispered answer appalled her for 
 a moment until the meaning of it faded and left her 
 in a dark confusion of the mind that was now be- 
 coming almost permanent. 
 
 ‘The trees excite them in the night. The winds 
 are the great swift carriers. Go with them, dear— 
 and not against. You'll find sleep that way if 
 you do.’ 
 
 ‘The storm is rising,’ she began, hardly knowing 
 what she said. 
 
 ‘All the more then—go with them. Don’t 
 resist. They’ll take you to the trees, that’s all.’ 
 
 Resist! The word touched on the button of 
 some text that once had helped her. 
 
 ‘Resist the devil and he will flee from you,’ she 
 heard her whispered answer, and the same second had 
 buried her face beneath the clothes in a flood of 
 hysterical weeping. 
 
 But her husband did not seem disturbed. Perhaps 
 he did not hear it, for'the wind ran just then against 
 the windows with a booming shout, and the roaring 
 of the Forest farther out came behind the blow, 
 surging into the room. Perhaps, too, he was already 
 asleep again. She slowly regained a sort of dull 
 composure. Fler face emerged from the tangle of 
 sheets and blankets. With a growing terror over 
 her—she listened. The storm was rising. It came 
 with a sudden and impetuous rush that made all 
 further sleep for her impossible. 
 
 Alone in a shaking world, it seemed, she lay and 
 listened. That storm interpreted for her mind the 
 climax. The Forest bellowed out its victory to the 
 winds ; the winds in turn proclaimed it to the Night. 
 
 H 
 
98 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 The whole world knew of her complete defeat, her 
 loss, her little human pain. This was the roar and 
 shout of victory that she listened to. 
 
 For, unmistakably, the trees were shouting in the 
 dark. There were sounds, too, like the flapping of 
 great sails, a thousand at a time, and sometimes 
 reports that resembled more than anything else the 
 distant booming of enormous drums. The trees 
 stood up—the whole beleaguering host of them stood 
 up—and with the uproar of their million branches 
 drummed the thundering message out across the 
 night. It seemed as if they all had broken loose. 
 Their roots swept trailing over field and hedge and 
 roof. They tossed their bushy heads beneath the 
 clouds with a wild, delighted shuffling of great 
 boughs. With trunks upright they raced leaping 
 through the sky. There was upheaval and adventure 
 in the awful sound they made, and their cry was like 
 the cry of a sea that has broken through its gates 
 and poured loose upon the world... . 
 
 Through it all her husband slept peacefully as 
 though he heard it not. It was, as she well knew, 
 the sleep of the semi-dead. For he was out with 
 all that clamouring turmoil. The part of him that 
 she had lost was there. The form that slept so 
 calmly at her side was but the shell, halfemptied. . . . 
 
 And when the winter’s morning stole upon the 
 scene at length, with a pale, washed sunshine that 
 followed the departing tempest, the first thing she 
 saw, as she crept to the window and looked out, was 
 the ruined cedar lying on the lawn. Only the gaunt 
 and crippled trunk of it remained. The single giant 
 bough that had been left to it lay dark upon the 
 grass, sucked endways towards the Forest by a great 
 - wind eddy. It lay there like a mass of drift-wood 
 
THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 99 
 from a wreck, left by the ebbing of a high spring- 
 
 tide upon the sands—remnant of some friendly, 
 splendid vessel that once had sheltered men. 
 
 And in the distance she heard the roaring of the 
 Forest further out. Her husband’s voice was in it. 
 
 HouMESLyY. 
 
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 THE SOUTH WIND 
 
 ee ee 
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THE SOUTH WIND 
 
 It is impossible to say through which sense, or 
 combination of senses, I knew that Someone was 
 approaching—was already near; but most probably 
 it was the deep underlying ‘ mother-sense ’ including 
 them all that conveyed the delicate warning. At 
 any rate, the scene-shifters of my moods knew it too, 
 for very swiftly they prepared the stage; then, ever 
 soft-footed and invisible, stood aside to wait. 
 
 As I went down the village street on my way 
 to bed after midnight, the high Alpine valley lay 
 silent in its frozen stillness. For days it had now 
 lain thus, even the mouths of its cataracts stopped 
 with ice ; and for days, too, the dry, tight cold had 
 drawn up the nerves of the humans in it to a sharp, 
 thin pitch of exhilaration that at last began to call 
 for the gentler comfort of relaxation. ‘The key had 
 been a little too high, the inner tautness too pro- 
 longed. The tension of that implacable north-east 
 wind, the ise noire, had drawn its twisted wires too 
 long through our very entrails. We all sighed for 
 some loosening of the bands—the comforting touch 
 of something damp, soft, less penetratingly acute. 
 
 And now, as I turned, midway in the little journey 
 from the inn to my room above La Poste, this sudden 
 warning that Someone was approaching repeated its 
 silent wireless message, and I paused to listen and 
 to watch. 
 
 — 105 
 
106 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 Yet at first I searched in vain. The village street 
 lay empty—a white ribbon between the black walls of 
 the big-roofed chalets ; there were no lights in any 
 of the houses ; the hotels stood gaunt and ugly with 
 their myriad shuttered windows; and the church, 
 topped by the Crown of Savoy in stone, was so en- 
 gulfed by the shadows of the mountains that it 
 seemed almost a part of them. 3 
 
 Beyond, reared the immense buttresses of the Dent 
 du Midi, terrible and stalwart against the sky, their 
 feet resting among the crowding pines, their streaked 
 precipices tilting up at violent angles towards the 
 stars. The bands of snow, belting their enormous 
 flanks, stretched for miles, faintly gleaming, like 
 Saturn’s rings. To the right I could just make out 
 the pinnacles of the Dents Blanches, cruelly pointed ; 
 and, still farther, the Dent de Bonnaveau, as of iron 
 and crystal, running up its gaunt and dreadful pyramid 
 into relentless depths of night. Everywhere in the 
 hard, black-sparkling air was the rigid spell of winter. 
 It seemed as if this valley could never melt again, 
 never know currents of warm wind, never taste 
 the sun, nor yield its million flowers. 
 
 And now, dipping down behind me out of the 
 reaches of the darkness, the New Comer moved close, 
 heralded by this subtle yet compelling admonition 
 that had arrested me in my very tracks. For, just 
 as I turned in at the door, kicking the crunched snow 
 from my boots against the granite step, I Anew that, 
 from the heart of all this tightly frozen winter’s night, 
 the ‘Someone’ whose message had travelled so 
 delicately in advance was now, quite suddenly, at my 
 very heels, And while my eyes lifted to sift their 
 way between the darkness and the snow I became 
 _ aware that It was already coming down the village 
 
THE SOUTH WIND 107 
 
 street. It ran on feathered feet, pressing close against 
 the enclosing walls, yet at the same time spreading 
 from side to side, brushing the window-panes, rustling 
 against the doors, and even including the shingled 
 roofs in itsenveloping advent. It came, too—against 
 the wind... . 
 
 It flew up close and passed me, very faintly singing, 
 running down between the chalets and the church, 
 very swift, very soft, neither man nor animal, neither 
 woman, girl, nor child, turning the corner of the 
 snowy road beyond the Cureé’s house with a rushing, 
 cantering motion, that made me think of a Body of 
 water—something of fluid and generous shape, too 
 mighty to be confined in common forms. And, as 
 it passed, it touched me—touched me through all 
 skin and flesh upon the naked nerves, loosening, 
 relieving, setting free the congealed sources of life 
 which the dise so long had mercilessly bound, so 
 that magic currents, flowing and released, washed 
 down all the secret byways of the spirit and flooded 
 again with full tide into a thousand dried-up cisterns 
 of the heart. 
 
 The thrill I experienced is quite incommunicable 
 in words. I ran upstairs and opened all my windows 
 wide, knowing that soon the Messenger would return 
 with a million others—only to find that already it 
 had been there before me. Its taste was in the air, - 
 fragant and alive; in my very mouth—and all the 
 currents of the inner life ran sweet again, and full. 
 Nothing in the whole village was quite the same as it 
 had been before. The deeply slumbering peasants, 
 even behind their shuttered windows and_ barred 
 doors; the Curé, the servants at the inn, the con- 
 sumptive man opposite, che children in the house 
 behind the church, the horde of tourists in the cara- 
 
108 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 vanserai—all knew—more or less, according to the 
 delicacy of their receiving apparatus—that Something 
 charged with fresh and living force had swept on 
 viewless feet down the village street, passed noiselessly 
 between the cracks of doors and windows, touched 
 nerves and eyelids, and—set them free. In response 
 to the great Order of Release that the messenger had 
 left everywhere behind her, even the dreams of the 
 sleepers had shifted into softer and more flowing 
 keysiy,. wi. 
 
 And the Valley—the Valley also knew! For, as 
 I watched from my window, something loosened about 
 the trees and stones and boulders; about the massed 
 snows on the great slopes; about the roots of the 
 hanging icicles that fringed and sheeted the dark 
 cliffs ; and down in the deepest beds of the killed and 
 silent streams. Far overhead, across those desolate 
 bleak shoulders of the mountains, ran some sudden 
 softness like the rush of awakening life . . . and 
 was gone. A touch, lithe yet dewy, as of silk and 
 water mixed, dropped softly over all . . . and, silently, 
 without resistance, the ise noire, utterly routed, 
 went back to the icy caverns of the north and east, 
 where it sleeps, hated of men, and dreams its keen 
 black dreams of death and desolation. . . . | 
 
 . . . And some five hours later, when I woke and 
 looked towards the sunrise, I saw those strips of 
 pearly grey, just tinged with red, the Messenger 
 had been to summon .. . charged with the warm 
 moisture that brings relief. On the wings of a rising 
 South Wind they came down hurriedly to cap the 
 mountains and to unbind the captive forces of life ; 
 then moved with flying streamers up our own valley, 
 sponging from the thirsty woods their richest 
 perfume. , 
 
THE SOUTH WIND 10g 
 
 And farther down, in soft, wet fields, stood the 
 leafless poplars, with little pools of water gemming 
 the grass between and pouring their musical over- 
 flow through runnels of dark and sodden leaves 
 to join the rapidly increasing torrents descending 
 from the mountains. For across the entire valley 
 ran magically that sweet and welcome message of 
 relief which Job knew when he put the whole delicious 
 tenderness and passion of it into less than a dozen 
 words : ‘ He comforteth the earth with the south wind,’ 
 
 CHAMPERY, 
 
Se Wa ala OS ( wh ap 
 \ . cae Pek 
 
ane 
 
THE SEA FIT 
 
 Tue sea that night sang rather than chanted; all 
 along the far-running shore a rising tide dropped 
 thick foam, and the waves, white-crested, came 
 steadily in with the swing of a deliberate purpose. 
 Overhead, in a _ cloudless sky, that ancient 
 Enchantress, the full moon, watched their dance 
 across the sheeted sands, guiding them carefully 
 while she drew them up. For through that 
 moonlight, through that roar of surf, there pene- 
 trated a singular note of earnestness and mean- 
 ing—almost as though these common processes of 
 Nature were instinct with the flush of an unusual 
 activity that sought audaciously to cross the 
 borderland into some subtle degree of conscious life. 
 A gauze of light vapour clung upon the surface of 
 the sea, far out—a transparent carpet through which 
 the rollers drove shorewards in a moving pattern. 
 
 In the low-roofed bungalow among the sand- 
 dunes the three men sat. Foregathered for Easter, 
 they spent the day fishing and sailing, and at night 
 told yarns of the days when life was younger. 
 It was fortunate that there were three — and 
 later four—because in the mouths of several 
 witnesses an extraordinary thing shall be established 
 —when they agree. And although whisky stood 
 upon the rough table made of planks nailed to 
 barrels, it is childish to pretend that a few drinks 
 
 115 
 
116 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 invalidate evidence, for alcohol, up to a certain 
 point, intensifies the consciousness, focusses the 
 intellectual powers, sharpens observation; and two 
 healthy men, certainly three, must have imbibed an 
 absurd amount before they all see, or omit to see, 
 the same things. 
 
 The other bungalows still awaited their summer 
 occupants. Only the lonely tufted sand-dunes 
 watched the sea, shaking their hair of coarse white 
 grass to the winds. The men had the whole spit to 
 themselves—with the wind, the spray, the flying 
 gusts of sand, and that great Easter full moon. 
 There was Major Reese of the Gunners and his half- 
 brother, Dr. Malcolm Reese, and Captain Erricson, 
 their host, all men whom the kaleidoscope of life had 
 jostled together a decade ago in many adventures, 
 then flung for years apart about the globe. There 
 was also Erricson’s body-servant, ‘Sinbad,’ sailor of 
 big seas, and a man who had shared on many a ship 
 all the lust of strange adventure that distinguished 
 his great blonde-haired owner—an ideal servant and 
 dog-faithful, divining his master’s moods almost 
 before they were born. On the present occasion, 
 besides crew of the fishing-smack, he was cook, 
 valet, and steward of the bungalow smoking-room 
 as well. 
 
 ‘Big Erricson,’ Norwegian by extraction, student 
 by adoption, wanderer by blood, a Viking reincarnated 
 if ever there was one, belonged to that type of 
 primitive man in whom burns an inborn love and 
 passion for the sea that amounts to positive worship— 
 devouring tide, a lust and fever in the soul. ‘ All 
 genuine votaries of the old sea-gods have it,’ he used 
 to say, by way of explaining his carelessness of 
 worldly ambitions. ‘ We’re never at our best away 
 
THE SEA FIT 117 
 
 from salt water—never quite right. I’ve got it 
 bang in the heart myself. Id do a bit before the 
 mast sooner than make a million on shore. Simply 
 can’t help it, you see, and never could! It’s our 
 gods calling us to worship.’ And he had never tried 
 to ‘help it,’ which explains why he owned nothing 
 in the world on land except this tumble-down, one- 
 storey bungalow—more like a ship’s cabin than any- 
 thing else, to which he sometimes asked his bravest 
 and most faithful friends—and a store of curious 
 reading gathered in long, becalmed days at the ends 
 of the world. Heart and mind, that is, carried a 
 queer cargo. ‘I’m sorry if you poor devils are 
 uncomfortable in her. You must ask Sinbad for 
 anything you want and don’t see, remember.’ As 
 though Sinbad could have supplied comforts that 
 were miles away, or converted a draughty wreck into 
 a snug, taut, brand-new vessel. 
 
 Neither of the Reeses had cause for grumbling 
 on the score of comfort, however, for they knew 
 the keen joys of roughing it, and both weather 
 and sport besides had been glorious. It was on 
 another score this particular evening that they found 
 cause for uneasiness, if not for actual grumbling. 
 Erricson had one of his queer sea fits on—the Doctor 
 was responsible for the term—and was in the thick of 
 it, plunging like a straining boat at anchor, talking in 
 a way that made them both feel vaguely uncomfort- 
 able and distressed. Neither of them knew exactly 
 perhaps why he should have felt this growing ma/aise, 
 and each was secretly vexed with the other for 
 confirming his own unholy instinct that something 
 uncommon was astir. ‘The loneliness of the sand- 
 spit and that melancholy singing of the sea before 
 their very door may have had something to do with it, 
 
118 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 seeing that both were landsmen ; for Imagination is 
 ever Lord of the Lonely Places, and adventurous 
 men remain children to the last. But, whatever it 
 was that affected both men in different fashion, 
 Malcolm Reese, the doctor, had not thought it 
 necessary to mention to his brother that Sinbad had 
 tugged his sleeve on entering and whispered in his 
 ear significantly: ‘Full moon, sir, please, and he’s 
 better without too much! These high spring tides 
 get him all caught off his feet sometimes—clean sea- 
 crazy’; and the man had contrived to let the doctor 
 see the hilt of a small pistol he carried in his hip- 
 pocket, 
 
 For Erricson had got upon his old subject : 
 that the gods were not dead, but merely withdrawn, 
 and that even a single true worshipper was enough 
 to draw them down again into touch with the world, 
 into the sphere of humanity, even into active and 
 visible manifestation. He spoke of queer things 
 he had seen in queerer places. He was serious, 
 vehement, voluble; and the others had let it pour 
 out unchecked, hoping thereby for its speedier 
 exhaustion. They puffed their pipes in comparative 
 silence, nodding from time to time, shrugging their 
 shoulders, the soldier mystified and bewildered, the 
 doctor alert and keenly watchful. 
 
 ‘And I like the old idea,’ he had been saying, 
 speaking of these departed pagan deities, ‘that 
 sacrifice and ritual feed their great beings, and that 
 death is only the final sacrifice by which the 
 worshipper becomes absorbed into them. The devout 
 worshipper ’—and there was a singular drive and power 
 behind the words—‘ should go to his death singing, 
 as to a wedding—the wedding of his soul with the 
 _ particular deity he has loved and served all his life.’ 
 
THE SEA FIT 119 
 
 He swept his tow-coloured beard with one hand, 
 turning his shaggy head towards the window, where 
 the moonlight lay upon the procession of shaking 
 waves. ‘It’s playing the whole game, I always 
 think, man-fashion. . . . I remember once, some 
 years ago, down there off the coast by Yucatan 
 
 And then, before they could interfere, he told an 
 extraordinary tale of something he had seen years 
 ago, but told it with such a horrid earnestness of 
 conviction—for it was dreadful, though fine, this 
 adventure—that his listeners shifted in their wicker 
 chairs, struck matches unnecessarily, pulled at their 
 long glasses, and exchanged glances that attempted a 
 smile yet did not quite achieve it. For the tale had 
 to do with sacrifice of human life and a rather 
 haunting pagan ceremonial of the sea, and at its 
 close the room had changed in some indefinable 
 manner—was not exactly as it had been before perhaps 
 —as though the savage earnestness of the language had 
 introduced some new element that made it less cosy, 
 less cheerful, even less warm. A secret lust in the 
 man’s heart, born of the sea, and of his intense 
 admiration of the pagan gods called a light into his 
 eye not altogether pleasant. 
 
 “They were great Powers, at any rate, those 
 ancient fellows,’ Erricson went on, refilling his huge 
 pipe bowl ; ‘too great to disappear altogether, though 
 to-day they may walk the earth in another manner. 
 I swear they're still going it—especially the ” (he 
 hesitated for a mere second) ‘the old water Powers— 
 the Sea Gods. Terrific beggars, every one of ’em.’ 
 
 ‘Still move the tides and raise the winds, eh ?’ 
 from the Doctor. — 
 
 Erricson spoke again after a moment’s silence, 
 with impressive dignity. ‘And I like, too, the way 
 
120 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 they manage to keep their names before us,’ he went 
 on, with a curious eagerness that did not escape the 
 Doctor’s observation, while it clearly puzzled the 
 soldier. ‘There’s old Hu, the Druid god of justice, 
 still alive in ‘‘ Hue and Cry”; there’s Typhon ham- 
 mering his way against us in the typhoon ; there's 
 the mighty Hurakar, serpent god of the winds, you 
 know, shouting to us in hurricane and ouragan ; and 
 there’s 
 
 ‘Venus still at it as hard as ever,’ interrupted the 
 Major, facetiously, though his brother did not laugh 
 because of their host’s almost sacred earnestness of 
 manner and uncanny grimness of face. Exactly how 
 he managed to introduce that element of gravity—of 
 conviction—into such talk neither of his listeners 
 quite understood, for in discussing the affair later they 
 were unable to pitch upon any definite detail that 
 betrayed it. Yet there it was, alive and haunting, 
 even distressingly so. All day he had been silent 
 and morose, but since dusk, with the turn of the tide, 
 in fact, these queer sentences, half mystical, half un- 
 intelligible, had begun to pour from him, till now that 
 cabin-like room among the sand-dunes fairly vibrated 
 with the man’s emotion. And at last Major Reese, 
 with blundering good intention, tried to shift the 
 key from this portentous subject of sacrifice to 
 something that might eventually lead towards comedy 
 and laughter, and so relieve this growing pressure of 
 melancholy and incredible things. The Viking fellow 
 had just spoken of the possibility of the old gods 
 manifesting themselves visibly, audibly, physically, 
 and so the Major caught him up and made light 
 mention of spiritualism and the so-called ‘ material- 
 isation séances,’ where physical bodies were alleged 
 to be built up out of the emanations of the medium 
 
THE SEA FIT 121 
 
 and the sitters. This crude aspect of the Supernatural 
 was the only possible link the soldier’s mind could 
 manage. He caught his brother’s eye too late, it 
 seems, for Malcolm Reese realised by this time that 
 something untoward was afoot, and no longer needed 
 the memory of Sinbad’s warning to keep him sharply 
 on the look-out. It was not the first time he had 
 seen Erricson ‘caught’ by the sea; but he had never 
 known him quite so bad, nor seen his face so flushed 
 and white alternately, nor his eyes so oddly shining. 
 So that Major Reese’s well-intentioned allusion only 
 brought wind to fire. 
 
 The man of the sea, once Viking, roared with a 
 rush of boisterous laughter at the comic suggestion, 
 then dropped his voice to a sudden hard whisper, 
 awfully earnest, awfully intense. Any one must have 
 started at the abrupt change and the life-and-death 
 manner of the big man. His listeners undeniably 
 both did. 
 
 ‘Bunkum !’ he shouted, ‘ bunkum, and be damned 
 to it all! There’s only one real materialisation of 
 these immense Outer Beings possible, and that’s when 
 the great embodied emotions, which are their sphere 
 of action’—his words became wildly incoherent, 
 painfully struggling to get out—‘ derived, you see, 
 from their honest worshippers the world over—con- 
 stituting their Bodies, in fact—-come down into 
 matter and get condensed, crystallised into form— 
 to claim that final sacrifice I spoke about just now, 
 and to which any man might feel himself proud and 
 honoured to be summoned. . . . No dying in bed or 
 fading out from old age, but to plunge full-blooded 
 and alive into the great Body of the god who has 
 deigned to descend and fetch you 
 
 The actual speech may have been even more 
 
122 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 rambling and incoherent than that. It came out 
 in a torrent at white heat. Dr. Reese kicked his 
 brother beneath the table, just in time. The soldier 
 looked thoroughly uncomfortable and amazed, utterly 
 at a loss to know how he had produced the storm. 
 It rather frightened him. 
 
 ‘I know it because I’ve seen it,’ went on the sea 
 man, his mind and speech slightly more under con- 
 trol. ‘Seen the ceremonies that brought these 
 whopping old Nature gods down into form—seen 
 ‘em carry off a worshipper into themselves—seen that 
 worshipper, too, go off singing and happy to his 
 death, proud and honoured to be chosen.’ 
 
 ‘Have you really—by George!’ the Major ex- 
 claimed. ‘You tell us a queer thing, Erricson’ ; 
 and it was then for the fifth time that Sinbad 
 cautiously opened the door, peeped in and silently 
 withdrew after giving a swiftly comprehensive glance 
 round the room. 
 
 The night outside was windless and serene, only 
 the growing thunder of the tide near the full woke 
 muffled echoes among the sand-dunes. 
 
 ‘ Rites and ceremonies,’ continued the other, his 
 voice booming with a singular enthusiasm, but 
 ignoring the interruption, ‘are simply means of 
 losing one’s self by temporary ecstasy in the God 
 of one’s choice—the God one has worshipped all 
 one’s life—of being partially absorbed into his being. 
 And sacrifice completes the process 
 
 ‘At death, you said?’ asked Malcolm Reese, 
 watching him keenly. 
 
 ‘Or voluntary,’ was the reply that came flash-like. 
 ‘The devotee becomes wedded to his Deity—goes 
 bang into him, you see, by fire or water or air—as 
 _by a drop from a height—according to the nature of 
 
THE SEA FIT 123 
 
 the particular God; at-one-ment, of course. A 
 man’s death that! Fine, you know!’ 
 
 The man’s inner soul was on fire now. He was 
 talking at a fearful pace, his eyes alight, his voice 
 turned somehow into a kind of sing-song that chimed 
 well, singularly well, with the booming of waves 
 outside, and from time to time he turned to the 
 window to stare at the sea and the moon-blanched 
 sands. And then a look of triumph would come into 
 his face—that giant face framed by slow-moving 
 wreaths of pipe smoke. 
 
 Sinbad entered for the sixth time without any 
 obvious purpose, busied himself unnecessarily with 
 the glasses and, went out again, lingeringly. In the 
 room he kept his eye hard upon his master. This 
 time he contrived to push a chair and a heap of 
 netting between him and the window. No one but 
 Dr. Reese observed the manceuvre. And he took 
 the hint. 
 
 ‘The port-holes fit badly, Erricson,’ he laughed, 
 but with a touch of authority. ‘There’s a five-knot 
 breeze coming through the cracks worse than an old 
 wreck!” And he moved up to secure the fastening 
 better. 
 
 ‘The room is confoundedly cold,’ Major Reese 
 put in; ‘has been for the last half-hour, too.’ The 
 soldier looked what he felt—-cold—distressed — 
 creepy. ‘But there’s no wind really, you know,’ he 
 added. 
 
 Captain Erricson turned his great bearded visage 
 from one to the other before he answered ; there 
 was a gleam of sudden suspicion in his blue eyes. | 
 ‘The beggar’s got that back door open again. If 
 he’s sent for any one, as he did once before, I swear 
 P’ll drown him in fresh water for his impudence— 
 
124 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 or perhaps—can it be already that he expects g} 
 He left the sentence incomplete and rang the bell, 
 laughing with a boisterousness that was clearly feigned. 
 ‘Sinbad, what’s this cold in the place? You've got 
 the back door open. Not expecting any one, are 
 
 ou 
 ‘Everything’s shut tight, Captain. There’s a bit 
 of a breeze coming up from the east. And the 
 tide’s drawing in at a raging pace 
 
 ‘We can all hear shat. But are you expecting 
 any one? I asked,’ repeated his master, suspiciously, 
 yet still laughing. One might have said he was 
 trying to give the idea that the man had some land 
 flirtation on hand. ‘They looked one another square 
 in the eye for a moment, these two. It was the 
 straight stare of equals who understood each other well. 
 
 ‘Some one—might be—on the way, as it were, 
 Captain. Couldn’t say for certain.’ 
 
 The voice almost trembled. By a sharp twist of 
 the eye, Sinbad managed to shoot a lightning and 
 significant look at the Doctor. 
 
 ‘But this cold—this freezing, damp cold in the 
 place? Are you sure no one’s come—by the back 
 ways?’ insisted the master. He whispered it. 
 ‘Across the dunes, for instance?’ His voice con- 
 veyed awe and delight, both kept hard under. 
 
 ‘It’s all over the house, Captain, already,’ replied 
 the man, and moved across to put more sea-logs on 
 the blazing fire. Even the soldier noticed then that 
 their language was tight with allusion of another 
 kind. ‘To relieve the growing tension and uneasiness 
 in his own mind he took up the word ‘house’ and 
 made fun of it. | 
 
 ‘ As though it were a mansion,’ he observed, with 
 a forced chuckle, ‘instead of a mere sea-shell!’ 
 
THE SEA FIT 125 
 
 Then, looking about him, he added: ‘But, all the 
 same, you know, there is a kind of fog getting 
 into the room—from the sea, I suppose ; coming up 
 with the tide, or something, eh?’ The air had 
 certainly in the last twenty minutes turned thickish ; 
 it was not all tobacco smoke, and there was a mois- 
 ture that began to precipitate on the objects in tiny, 
 fine globules. The cold, too, fairly bit. 
 
 ‘Tll take a look round,’ said Sinbad, significantly, 
 and went out. Only the Doctor perhaps noticed 
 that the man shook, and was white down to the gills. 
 He said nothing, but moved his chair nearer to the 
 window and to his host. It was really a little bit 
 beyond comprehension how the wild words of this 
 old sea-dog in the full sway of his ‘sea fit’ had 
 altered the very air of the room as well as the 
 personal equations of its occupants, for an extra- 
 ordinary atmosphere of enthusiasm that was almost 
 splendour pulsed about him, yet vilely close to some- 
 thing that suggested terror! ‘Through the armour 
 of every-day common sense that normally clothed 
 the minds of these other two, had crept the faint 
 wedges of a mood that made them vaguely wonder 
 whether the incredible could perhaps sometimes— 
 by way of bewildering exceptions—actually come 
 to pass. The moods of their deepest life, that 
 is to say, were already affected. An inner, and 
 thoroughly unwelcome, change was in progress. 
 And such psychic disturbances once started are hard 
 to arrest. In this case it was well on the way before 
 either the Army or Medicine had been willing to 
 recognise the fact. There was something coming— 
 coming from the sand-dunes or the sea. And it was 
 invited, welcomed at any rate, by Erricson. His 
 deep, volcanic enthusiasm and belief provided the 
 
126 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 channel. In lesser degree they, too, were caught 
 in it. Moreover, it was terrific, irresistible. 
 
 And it was at this point—as the comparing of 
 notes afterwards established—that Father Norden 
 came in, Norden, the big man’s nephew, having 
 bicycled over from some point beyond Corfe Castle 
 and raced along the hard Studland sand in the moon- 
 light, and then hullood till a boat had ferried him 
 across the narrow channel of Poole Harbour. Sinbad 
 simply brought him in without any preliminary 
 question or announcement. He could not resist the 
 splendid night and the spring air, explained Norden. 
 He felt sure his uncle could ‘ find a hammock’ for him 
 somewhere aft, as he put it. He did not add that 
 Sinbad had telegraphed for him just before sundown 
 from the coast-guard hut. Dr. Reese already knew 
 him, but he was introduced to the Major. Norden 
 was a member of the Society of Jesus, an ardent, 
 not clever, and unselfish soul. 
 
 Erricson greeted him with obviously mixed feelings, 
 and with an extraordinary sentence: ‘It doesn’t 
 really matter,’ he exclaimed, after a few common- 
 places of talk, ‘for all religions are the same if you 
 go deep enough. All teach sacrifice, and, without 
 exception, all seek final union by absorption into their 
 Deity.’ And then, under his breath, turning sideways 
 to peer out of the window, he added a swift rush of 
 half-smothered words that only Dr. Reese caught : 
 ‘The Army, the Church, the Medical Profession, and 
 Labour—if they would only all come! What a 
 fine result, what a grand offering! Alone—I seem 
 so unworthy—insignificant . . .!’ 
 
 But meanwhile young Norden was speaking before 
 any one could stop him, although the Major did make 
 one or two blundering attempts. For once the Jesuit’s 
 
THE SEA FIT 127 
 
 tact was at fault. He evidently hoped to introduce 
 a new mood—to shift the current already established 
 by the single force of his own personality. And he 
 was not quite man enough to carry it off. 
 
 It was an error of judgment on his part. For 
 the forces he found established in the room were too 
 heavy to lift and alter, their impetus being already 
 acquired. He did his best, anyhow. He began 
 moving with the current—it was not the first sea fit 
 he had combated in this extraordinary personality— 
 then found, too late, that he was carried along with 
 it himself like the rest of them. 4) 
 
 ‘Odd—but couldn’t find the bungalow at first,’ 
 he laughed, somewhat hardly. ‘It’s got a bit of sea- 
 fog all to itself that hides it. I thought perhaps my 
 pagan uncle 
 
 The Doctor interrupted him hastily, with great 
 energy. ‘The fog does lie caught in these sand 
 hollows—like steam in a cup, you know,’ he put in. 
 But the other, intent on his own procedure, missed 
 the cue. 
 
 f thought it was smoke at first, and that you 
 were up to some heathen ceremony or other,’ laugh- 
 ing in Erricson’s face ; ‘sacrificing to the full moon 
 or the sea, or the spirits of the desolate places that 
 haunt sand-dunes, eh?’ 
 
 No one spoke for a second, but Erricson’s face 
 turned quite radiant. 
 
 ‘My uncle’s such a pagan, you know,’ continued 
 the priest, ‘ that as I flew along those deserted sands 
 from Studland I almost expected to hear old Triton 
 blow his wreathéd horn . . . or see fair Thetis’s 
 tinsel-slippered feet. . . .” 
 
 Erricson, suppressing violent gestures, highly 
 excited, face happy as a boy’s, was combing his great 
 
128 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 yellow beard with both hands, and the other two men 
 had begun to speak at once, intent on stopping the flow 
 of unwise allusion. Norden, swallowing a mouthful 
 of cold soda-water, had put the glass down, splutter- 
 ing over its bubbles, when the sound was first heard 
 at the window. And in the back room the man- 
 servant ran, calling something aloud that sounded 
 like ‘It’s coming, God save us, it’s coming in. . .!’ 
 Though the Major swears some name was mentioned 
 that he afterwards forgot—Glaucus— Proteus— 
 Pontus—or some such word. The sound itself, 
 however, was plain enough—a kind of imperious 
 tapping on the window-panes as of a multitude of 
 objects. Blown sand it might have been or heavy 
 spray or, as Norden suggested later, a great water- 
 soaked branch of giant seaweed. Every one started. 
 up, but Erricson was first upon his feet, and had the 
 window wide open in a twinkling. His voice roared 
 forth over those moonlit sand-dunes and out towards 
 the line of heavy surf ten yards below. 
 
 ‘ All along the shore of the A®gean,’ he bellowed, 
 with a kind of hoarse triumph that shook the heart, 
 ‘that ancient cry once rang. But it was a lie, a 
 thumping and audacious lie. And He is not the 
 only one. Another still lives—and, by Poseidon, 
 He comes! He knows His own and His own know 
 Him—and His own shall go to meet Him. . .!’ 
 
 That reference to the AXgean ‘cry’! It was so 
 wonderful. Every one, of course, except the soldier, 
 seized the allusion. It was a comprehensive, yet 
 subtle, way of suggesting the idea. And meanwhile 
 all spoke at once, shouted rather, for the Invasion 
 was somehow—monstrous. 
 
 ‘Damn it-—that’s a bit too much. Something’s 
 caught my throat!’ The Major, like a man drown- 
 
THE SEA FIT 129 
 
 ing, fought with the furniture in his amazement and 
 dismay. Fighting was his first instinct, of course. 
 ‘Hurts so infernally—takes the breath,’ he cried, by 
 way of explaining the extraordinarily violent impetus 
 that moved him, yet half ashamed of himself for see- 
 ing nothing he could strike. But Malcolm Reese 
 struggled to get between his host and the open 
 window, saying in tense voice something like ‘Don’t 
 let him get out! Don’t let him get out!’ While 
 the shouts of warning from Sinbad in the little 
 cramped back offices added to the general confusion. 
 Only Father Norden stood quiet—watching with a 
 kind of admiring wonder the expression of magnifi- 
 cence that had flamed into the visage of Erricson. 
 
 ‘Hark, you fools! Hark!’ boomed the Viking 
 figure, standing erect and splendid. 
 
 And through that open window, along the far- 
 drawn line of shore from Canford Cliffs to the 
 chalk bluffs of Studland Bay, there certainly ran a 
 sound that was no common roar of surf. It was 
 articulate—a message from the sea—an announce- 
 ment—a thunderous warning of approach. No 
 mere surf breaking on sand could have compassed 
 so deep and multitudinous a voice of dreadful 
 roaring—far out over the entering tide, yet at the 
 same time close in along the entire sweep of shore, 
 shaking all the ocean, both depth and surface, with 
 its deep vibrations. Into the bungalow chamber 
 came—the Sza ! 
 
 Out of the night, from the moonlit spaces where 
 it had been steadily accumulating, into that little 
 cabined room so full of humanity and tobacco smoke, 
 came invisibly—the Power of the Sea. Invisible, 
 yes, but mighty, pressed forward by the huge draw 
 of the moon, soft-coated with brine and moisture— 
 
 K 
 
130 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 the great Sea. And with it, into the minds of 
 those three other men, leaped instantaneously, not to 
 be denied, overwhelming suggestions of water-power, 
 the tear and strain of thousand-mile currents, the 
 irresistible pull and rush of tides, the suction of giant 
 whirlpools—more, the massed and awful impetus of 
 whole driven oceans. The air turned salt and briny, 
 and a welter of seaweed clamped their very skins. 
 
 ‘Glaucus! I come to Thee, great God of the deep 
 Waterways. . . . Father and Master!’ Erricson 
 cried aloud ina voice that most marvellously conveyed 
 supreme joy. 
 
 The little bungalow trembled as from a blow at 
 the foundations, and the same second the big man 
 was through the window and running down the moon- 
 lit sands towards the foam. 
 
 ‘God in Heaven! Did youall see shat?’ shouted 
 Major Reese, for the manner in which the great body 
 slipped through the tiny window-frame was incredible. 
 And then, first tottering with a sudden weakness, he 
 recovered himself and rushed round by the door, 
 followed by his brother. Sinbad, invisible, but not 
 inaudible, was calling aloud from the passage at the 
 back. Father Norden, slimmer than the others— 
 well controlled, too—was through the little window 
 before either of them reached the fringe of beach 
 beyond the sand-dunes. They joined forces halfway 
 down to the water’s edge. The figure of Erricson, 
 towering in the moonlight, flew before them, coasting 
 rapidly along the wave-line. 
 
 No one of them said a word ; they tore along side 
 by side, Norden a trifle in advance. In front of them, 
 head turned seawards, bounded Erricson in great fly- 
 ing leaps, singing as he ran, impossible to overtake. 
 
 Then, what they witnessed all three witnessed ; 
 
THE SEA FIT 131 
 
 the weird grandeur of it in the moonshine was too 
 splendid to allow the smaller emotions of personal 
 alarm, it seems. At any rate, the divergence of 
 opinion afterwards was unaccountably insignificant. 
 For, on a sudden, that heavy roaring sound far 
 out at sea came close in with a swift plunge of speed, 
 followed simultaneously—accompanied, rather—by a 
 dark line that was no mere wave moving: enor- 
 mously, up and across, between the sea and sky it 
 swept close in to shore. The moonlight caught it 
 for a second as it passed, in a cliff of her bright silver. 
 
 And Erricson slowed down, bowed his great head 
 and shoulders, spread his arms out and .. . 
 
 And what? For no one of those amazed witnesses 
 could swear exactly what then came to pass. Upon 
 this impossibility of telling it in language they all 
 three agreed. Only those eyeless dunes of sand 
 that watched, only the white and silent moon over- 
 head, only that long, curved beach of empty and 
 deserted shore retain the complete record, to be 
 revealed some day perhaps when a later Science 
 shall have learned to develop the photographs that 
 Nature takes incessantly upon her secret plates. 
 For Erricson’s rough suit of tweed went out in 
 ribbons across the air; his figure somehow turned 
 dark like strips of tide-sucked seaweed ; something 
 enveloped and overcame him, half shrouding him from 
 view. He stood for one instant upright, his hair 
 wild in the moonshine, towering, with arms again 
 outstretched ; then bent forward, turned, drew out 
 most curiously sideways, uttering the singing sound 
 of tumbling waters. The next instant, curving over 
 like a falling wave, he swept along the glistening 
 surface of the sands—and was gone. In fluid form, 
 wave-like, his being slipped away into the Being of 
 
132 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 the Sea. A violent tumult convulsed the surface 
 of the tide near in, but at once, and with amazing 
 speed, passed careering away into the deeper water— 
 far out. To his singular death, as to a wedding, 
 Erricson had gone, singing, and well content. 
 
 ‘May God, who holds the sea and all its powers 
 in the hollow of His mighty hand, take them doth 
 into Himself!’ Norden was on his knees, praying 
 fervently. 
 
 The body was never recovered ..,. and the 
 most curious thing of all was that the interior of 
 the cabin, where they found Sinbad shaking with 
 terror when they at length returned, was splashed 
 and sprayed, almost soaked, with salt water. Up 
 into the bigger dunes beside the bungalow, and far 
 beyond the reach of normal tides, lay, too, a great 
 streak and furrow as of a large invading wave, caking 
 the dry sand. A hundred tufts of the coarse grass 
 tussocks had been torn away. 
 
 The high tide that night, drawn by the Easter 
 full moon, of course, was known to have been 
 exceptional, for it fairly flooded Poole Harbour, 
 flushing all the coves and bays towards the mouth of 
 the Frome. And the natives up at Arne Bay and 
 Wych always declare that the noise of the sea was 
 heard far inland even up to the nine Barrows of the 
 
 Purbeck Hills—triumphantly singing. 
 
 Haven Hore. 
 
MEME CAR TIC 
 
cs] 
 
A Ot 
 TH E AT Tt A =i hk u A) Ai | 
 
 SENG AE Eee! 
 
 THE ATTIC 
 
 Tue forest-girdled village upon the Jura slopes slept 
 soundly, although it was not yet many minutes after 
 ten o'clock. The clang of the couvre-feu had indeed 
 just ceased, its notes swept far into the woods by a 
 wind that shook the mountains. This wind now 
 rushed down the deserted street. It howled about 
 the old rambling building called La Citadelle, whose 
 roof towered gaunt and humped above the smaller 
 houses—Chateau left unfinished long ago by Lord 
 Wemyss, the exiled Jacobite. The families who 
 occupied the various apartments listened to the storm 
 and felt the building tremble. ‘It’s the mountain 
 wind. It will bring the snow, the mother said, 
 without looking up from her knitting. ‘And how 
 sad it sounds.’ 
 
 But it was not the wind that brought sadness as 
 we sat round the open fire of peat. It was the wind 
 of memories. The lamplight slanted along the 
 narrow room towards the table where breakfast things 
 lay ready for the morning. The double windows 
 were fastened. At the far end stood a door ajar, 
 and on the other side of it the two elder children lay 
 asleep in the big bed. But beside the window was a 
 smaller unused bed, that had been empty now a year. 
 And to-night was the anniversary. 
 
 Andso the wind brought sadness and long thoughts. 
 
 137 
 
138 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 The little chap that used to lie there was already twelve 
 months gone, far, far beyond the Hole where the 
 Winds came from, as he called it; yet it seemed only 
 yesterday that I went to tell him a tuck-up story, to 
 stroke Riquette, the old motherly cat that cuddled 
 against his back and laid a paw beside his pillow like 
 a human being, and to hear his funny little earnest 
 whisper say, ‘Oncle, tu sais, jai prié pour Petavel.’ 
 For La Citadelle had its unhappy ghost—of Petavel, 
 the usurer, who had hanged himself in the attic a 
 century gone by, and was known to walk its dreary 
 corridors in search of peace—and this wise Irish 
 mother, calming the boy’s fears with wisdom, had 
 told him, ‘If you pray for Petavel, you'll save his 
 soul and make him happy, and he’ll only love you.’ 
 And, thereafter, this little imaginative boy had done 
 so every night. With a passionate seriousness he did 
 it. He had wonderful, delicate ways like that. In 
 all our hearts he made his fairy nests of wonder. In 
 my own, I know, he lay closer than any joy imagin- 
 able, with his big blue eyes, his queer soft questionings, 
 and his splendid child’s unselfishness—a sun-kissed 
 flower of innocence that, had he lived, might have 
 sweetened half a world. 
 
 ‘Let’s put more peat on,’ the mother said, as a 
 handful of rain like stones came flinging against the 
 windows ; ‘that must be hail.’ And she went on 
 tiptoe to the inner room. ‘ They’re sleeping like 
 two puddings,’ she whispered, coming presently back. 
 But it struck me she had taken longer than to notice 
 merely that; and her face wore an odd expression 
 that made me uncomfortable. I thought she was 
 somehow just about to laugh or cry. By the table 
 a second she hesitated. I caught the flash of indeci- 
 sion as it passed. ‘ Pan,’ she said suddenly—it was a 
 
THE ATTIC 139 
 
 nickname, stolen from my tuck-up stories, he had 
 given me—‘I wonder how Riquette got in.’ She 
 looked hard at me. ‘It wasn’t you, was it?’ For 
 we never let her come at night since he had gone. It 
 was too poignant. ‘The beastie always went cuddling 
 and nestling into that empty bed. But this time it 
 was not my doing, and I offered plausible explana- 
 tions. ‘But—she’s on the bed. Pan, would you be 
 so kind She left the sentence unfinished, but I 
 easily understood, for a lump had somehow risen in 
 my own throat too, and I remembered now that she 
 had come out from the inner room so quickly—with 
 a kind of hurried rush almost. I put ‘mere Riquette ’ 
 out into the corridor. A lamp stood on the chair 
 outside the door of another occupant further down, 
 and I urged her gently towards it. She turned and 
 looked at me—straight up into my face ; but, instead 
 of going down as I suggested, she went slowly in the 
 opposite direction. She stepped softly towards ‘a 
 door in the wall that led up broken stairs into the 
 attics. There she sat down and waited. And so I 
 left her, and came back hastily to the peat fire and 
 companionship. The wind rushed in behind me and 
 slammed the door. 
 
 And we talked then somewhat busily of cheerful 
 things ; of the children’s future, the excellence of the 
 cheap Swiss schools, of Christmas presents, ski-ing, 
 snow, tobogganing. I led the talk away from 
 mournfulness ; and when these subjects were exhausted 
 I told stories of my own adventures in distant parts 
 of the world. But ‘mother’ listened the whole time 
 —nottome. Her thoughts were all elsewhere. And 
 her air of intently, secretly listening, bordered, I felt, 
 upon the uncanny. For she often stopped her 
 knitting and sat with her eyes fixed upon the air 
 
140 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 before her ; she stared blankly at the wall, her head 
 slightly on one side, her figure tense, attention 
 strained—elsewhere. Or, when my talk positively 
 demanded it, her nod was oddly mechanical and her 
 eyes looked through and past me. The wind con- 
 tinued very loud and roaring ; but the fire glowed, 
 the room was warm and cosy. Yet she shivered, and 
 when I drew attention to it, her reply, ‘I do feel 
 cold, but I didn’t know I shivered,’ was given as 
 though she spoke across the air to some one else. 
 But what impressed me even more uncomfortably 
 were her repeated questions about Riquette. When 
 a pause in my tales permitted, she would look up 
 with ‘I wonder where Riquette went ?’ or, thinking 
 of the inclement night, ‘I hope mére Riquette’s not 
 out of doors. Perhaps Madame Favre has taken her 
 in?’ I offered to go and see. Indeed I was already 
 half-way across the room when there came the heavy 
 bang at the door that rooted me to the ground where 
 I stood. It was not wind. It was something alive 
 that made it rattle. There was a second blow. A 
 thud on the corridor boards followed, and then a 
 high, odd voice that at first was as human as the cry 
 of a child. 
 
 It is undeniable that we both started, and for 
 myself I can answer truthfully that a chill ran down 
 my spine; but what frightened me more than the 
 sudden noise and the eerie cry was the way ‘ mother’ 
 supplied the immediate explanation. For behind the 
 words ‘It’s only Riquette ; she sometimes springs at 
 the door like that ; perhaps we’d better let her in,’ 
 was a certain touch of uncanny quiet that made me 
 feel she had known the cat would come, and knew 
 also why she came. One cannot explain such impres- 
 sions further. They leave their vital touch, then go 
 
THE ATTIC 141 
 
 their way. Into the little room, however, in that 
 moment there came between us this uncomfortable 
 sense that the night held other purposes than our 
 own—and that my companion was aware of them. 
 There was something going on far, far removed from 
 the routine of life as we were accustomed to it. 
 Moreover, our usual routine was the eddy, while this 
 was the main stream. It felt big, I mean. 
 
 And so it was that the entrance of the familiar, 
 friendly creature brought this thing both itself and 
 ‘mother’ knew, but whereof I as yet was ignorant. 
 I held the door wide. The draught rushed through 
 behind her, and sent a shower of sparks about the 
 fireplace. The lamp flickered and gave a little gulp. 
 And Riquette marched slowly past, with all the 
 impressive dignity of her kind, towards the other 
 door that stood ajar. Turning the corner like a 
 shadow, she disappeared into the room where the 
 two children slept. We heard the soft thud with 
 which she leaped upon the bed. Then, in a lull of 
 the wind, she came back again and sat on the oil- 
 cloth, staring into ‘mother’s’ face. She mewed and 
 put a paw out, drawing the black dress softly with 
 half-opened claws. And it was all so horribly sugges- 
 tive and pathetic, it revived such poignant memories, 
 that I got up impulsively—I think I had actually 
 said the words, ‘We'd better put her out, mother, 
 after all’—-when my companion rose to her feet and 
 forestalled me. She said another thing instead. It 
 took my breath away to hear it. ‘She wants us to 
 go with her. Pan, will you come too?’ The 
 surprise on my face must have asked the question, 
 for I do not remember saying anything. ‘To the 
 attic,’ she said quietly. 
 
 She stood there by the table, a tall, grave figure 
 
142 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 dressed in black, and her face above the lamp-shade 
 caught the ful! glare of light. Its expression positively 
 stiffened me. ‘ She seemed so secure in her singular 
 purpose. And her familiar appearance had so oddly 
 given place to something wholly strange to me. She 
 looked like another person—almost with the un- 
 welcome transformation of the sleep-walker about 
 her. Cold came over me as I watched her, for I 
 remembered suddenly her Irish second-sight, her 
 story years ago of meeting a figure on the attic 
 stairs, the figure of Petavel. And the idea of this 
 motherly, sedate, and wholesome woman, absorbed 
 day and night in prosaic domestic duties, and 
 yet ‘seeing’ things, touched the incongruous almost 
 to the point of alarm. It was so distressingly 
 convincing. 
 
 Yet she knew quite well that I would come. 
 Indeed, following the excited animal, she was already 
 by the door, and a moment later, still without 
 answering or protesting, I was with them in the 
 draughty corridor. There was something inevitable 
 in her manner that made it impossible to refuse. She 
 took the lamp from its nail on the wall, and following 
 our four-footed guide, who ran with obvious pleasure 
 just in front, she opened the door into the courtyard. 
 The wind nearly put the lamp out, but a minute later 
 we were safe inside the passage that led up flights of 
 creaky wooden stairs towards the world of tenantless 
 attics overhead. | 
 
 And I shall never forget the way the excited 
 Riquette first stood up and put her paws upon the 
 various doors, trotted ahead, turned back to watch 
 us coming, and then finally sat down and waited 
 on the threshold of the empty, raftered space that 
 occupied the entire length of the building underneath 
 
THE ATTIC 143 
 
 the roof. For her manner was more that of an 
 intelligent dog than of a cat, and sometimes more 
 like that of a human mind than either. 
 
 We had come up without a single word. The 
 howling of the wind as we rose higher was like the 
 roar of artillery. There were many broken stairs, 
 and the narrow way was full of twists and turnings. 
 It was a dreadful journey. I felt eyes watching us 
 from all the yawning spaces of the darkness, and the 
 noise of the storm smothered footsteps everywhere. 
 Troops of shadows kept us company. But it was on 
 the threshold of this big, chief attic, when ‘ mother ’ 
 stopped abruptly to put down the lamp, that real 
 fear took hold of me. For Riquette marched steadily 
 forward into the middle of the dusty flooring, picking 
 her way among the fallen tiles and mortar, as though 
 she went towards—some one. She purred loudly and 
 uttered little cries of excited pleasure. Her tail went 
 up into the air, and she lowered her head with the 
 unmistakable intention of being stroked. Her lips 
 opened and shut. Her green eyes smiled. She was 
 being stroked. 
 
 It was an unforgettable performance. I would 
 rather have witnessed an execution or a murder than 
 watch that mysterious creature twist and turn about 
 in the way she did. Her magnified shadow was as 
 large as a pony on the floor and rafters. I wanted 
 to hide the whole thing by extinguishing the lamp. 
 For, even before the mysterious action began, I 
 experienced the sudden rush of conviction that 
 others besides ourselves were in this attic—and 
 standing very close to us indeed. And, although 
 there was ice in my blood, there was also a strange 
 swelling of the heart that only love and tenderness 
 
 could bring. 
 
144 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 But, whatever it was, my human companion, still 
 silent, knew and understood. She saw. And her 
 soft whisper that ran with the wind among the 
 rafters, ‘Il a prié pour Petavel et le bon Dieu I’a 
 entendu,’ did not amaze me one quarter as much 
 as the expression I then caught upon her radiant 
 face. Tears ran down the cheeks, but they were 
 tears of happiness. Her whole figure seemed lit 
 up. She opened her arms—picture of great Mother- 
 hood, proud, blessed, and tender beyond words. 
 I thought she was going to fall, for she took 
 quick steps forward; but when I moved to catch 
 her, she drew me aside instead with a sudden 
 gesture that brought fear back in the place of 
 wonder. 
 
 ‘Let them pass,’ she whispered grandly. ‘ Pan, 
 don’t you see. . . . He’s leading him into peace and 
 safety . . . by the hand!’ And her joy seemed to 
 kill the shadows and fill the entire attic with white 
 light.. Then, almost simultaneously with her words, 
 she swayed. I was in time to catch her, but as I did 
 so, across the very spot where we had just been 
 standing—two figures, I swear, went past us like a 
 flood of light. 
 
 There was a moment next of such confusion that 
 I did not see what happened to Riquette, for the 
 sight of my companion kneeling on the dusty boards 
 and praying with a curious sort of passionate happi-- 
 ness, while tears pressed between her covering fingers 
 —the strange wonder of this made me utterly oblivious 
 to minor details. . . 
 
 We were sitting round the peat fire again, and 
 ‘mother ’ was saying to me in the gentlest, tenderest 
 whisper I ever heard from human lips—* Pan, I think 
 perhaps that’s why God took him. . . . 
 
THE ATTIC 145 
 
 And when a little later we went in to make 
 Riquette cosy in the empty bed, ever since kept sacred 
 to her use, the mournfulness had lifted ; and in the 
 place of resignation was proud peace and joy that 
 knew no longer sad or selfish questionings. 
 
 Boz. 
 
A a i Tae 
 
aly 
 
 hr oF a3 
 
 ; 
 2 
 
 | 
 Ry. 
 ). 
 
» 
 
THE HEATH FIRE 
 
 THE men at luncheon in Rennie’s Surrey cottage 
 that September day were discussing, of course, the 
 heat. All agreed it had been exceptional. But 
 nothing unusual was said until O’Hara spoke of the 
 heath fires. They had been rather terrific, several 
 in a single day, devouring trees and bushes, endanger- 
 ing human life, and spreading with remarkable 
 rapidity. The flames, too, had been extraordinarily 
 high and vehement for heath fires. And O’Hara’s 
 tone had introduced into the commonplace talk 
 something new—the element of mystery; it was 
 nothing definite he said, but manner, eyes, hushed 
 voice and the rest conveyed it. And it was genuine. 
 What he /fe/t reached the others rather than what he 
 said. [he atmosphere in the little room, with the 
 honeysuckle trailing sweetly across the open windows, 
 changed ; the talk became of a sudden less casual, 
 frank, familiar ; and the men glanced at one another 
 across the table, laughing still, yet with an odd touch 
 of constraint marking little awkward, unfilled pauses. 
 Being a group of normal Englishmen, they disliked 
 mystery ; it made them feel uncomfortable ; for the 
 things O’Hara hinted at had touched that kind of 
 elemental terror that lurks secretly in all human 
 beings. Guarded by ‘culture,’ but never wholly 
 concealed, the unwelcome thing made its presence 
 known—the hint of primitive dread that, for instance, 
 
 151 
 
152 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 great thunder-storms, tidal waves, or violent con- 
 flagrations rouse. 
 
 And instinctively they fell at once to discussing 
 the obvious causes of the fires. ‘The stockbroker, 
 scenting imagination, edged mentally away, sniffing. 
 But the journalist was full of brisk information, 
 ‘simply given.’ 
 
 ‘lhe sun starts them in Canada, using a dew- 
 drop as a lens,’ he said, ‘and an engine’s spark, 
 remember, carries an immense distance without 
 losing its heat.’ 
 
 ‘But hardly miles,’ said another, who had not been 
 really listening. 
 
 ‘It’s my belief,’ put in the critic keenly, ‘that a 
 lot were done on purpose. Bits of live coal wrapped 
 in cloth were found, you know.’ He was a little, 
 weasel-faced iconoclast, dropping the acid of doubt 
 and disbelief wherever he went, but offering nothing 
 in the place of what he destroyed. His head was 
 turret-shaped, lips tight and thin, nose and chin 
 running to points like gimlets, with which he bored 
 into the unremunerative clays of life. 
 
 ‘The general unrest, yes,’ the journalist supported 
 him, and tried to draw the conversation on to labour 
 questions. But their host preferred the fire talk. 
 ‘I must say,’ he put in gravely, ‘that. some of the 
 blazes hereabouts were uncommonly —er— queer, 
 They started, I mean, so oddly. You remember, 
 O'Hara, only last week that suspicious one over 
 Kettlebury way Ei 
 
 It seemed he wished to draw the artist out, and 
 that the artist, feeling the general opposition, declined. 
 
 ‘Why seek an unusual explanation at all?’ the 
 critic said at length, impatiently. ‘It’s all natural 
 enough, if you ask me.’ 
 
THE HEATH FIRE 153 
 
 ‘Natural! Oh yes!’ broke in O'Hara, with a 
 sudden vehemence that betrayed feeling none had as 
 yet suspected ; ‘provided you don’t limit the word 
 to mean only what we understand. There’s nothing 
 anywhere—unnatural.’ 
 
 A laugh cut short the threatened tirade, and the 
 journalist expressed the general feeling with ‘Oh 
 you, Jim! You'd see a devil in a dust-storm,.or a 
 fairy in the tea-leaves of your cup!’ 
 
 ‘And why not, pray? Devils and fairies are 
 every bit as true as formule.’ 
 
 Some one tactfully guided them away from a 
 profitless discussion, and they talked glibly of the 
 damage done, the hideousness of the destroyed 
 moors, the gaunt, black, ugly slopes, fifty-foot 
 flames, roaring noises, and the splendour of the 
 enormous smoke-clouds that had filled the skies. 
 And Rennie, still hoping to coax O’Hara, repeated 
 tales the beaters had brought in that crying, as 
 though living things were caught, had been heard 
 in places, and that some had seen tall shapes of fire 
 passing headlong through the choking smoke. For 
 the note O’Hara had struck refused to be ignored. 
 It went on sounding underneath the commonest 
 remark ; and the atmosphere to the end retained 
 that curious tinge that he had given to it—of the 
 strange, the ominous, the mysterious and unexplained. 
 Until, at last, the artist, having added nothing further 
 to the talk, got up with some abruptness and left the 
 room. He complained briefly that the fever he had 
 suffered from still bothered him and he would go 
 and lie downa bit. The heat, he said, oppressed him. 
 
 A silence followed his departure. The broker 
 drew a sigh as though the market had gone up. 
 But Rennie, old, comprehending friend, looked 
 
154 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 anxious. ‘Excitement,’ he said, ‘not oppression, 
 is the word he meant. He’s always a bit strung up 
 When that Black Sea fever gets him. He brought 
 it with him from Batoum.’ And another brief 
 silence followed. 
 
 ‘Been with you most of the summer, hasn’t he?’ 
 enquired the journalist, on the trail of a ‘par,’ 
 ‘painting those wild things of his that no one under- 
 stands.’ And their host, weighing a moment how 
 much he might in fairness tell, replied—among 
 friends it was—‘ Yes ; and this summer they have 
 been more—er—wild and wonderful than usual—an 
 extraordinary rush of colour splendid schemes, 
 “conceptions,” I believe you critics call ’em, of fire, 
 as though, in a way, the unusual heat had possessed 
 him for interpretation.’ 
 
 The group expressed its desultory interest by 
 uninspired interjections. 
 
 ‘That was what he meant just now when he said 
 the fires had been mysterious, required explanation, 
 or something—the way they started, rather,’ con- 
 cluded Rennie. 
 
 Then he hesitated. He laughed a moment, and 
 it was an uneasy, apologetic little laugh. How to 
 continue he hardly knew. Also, he wished to 
 protect his friend from the cheap jeering of mis- 
 comprehension. ‘He is very imaginative, you 
 know,’ he went on, quietly, as no one spoke. ‘You 
 remember that glorious mad thing he did of the 
 Fallen Lucifer—driving a star across the heavens 
 till the heat of the descent set a light to half the 
 planets, scorched the old moon to the white cinder 
 that she now is, and passed close enough to earth to 
 send our oceans up ina single jet of steam? Well, 
 this time—he’s been at something every bit as wild, 
 
THE HEATH FIRE TE 
 
 only truer—finer. And what is it? Briefly, then, 
 he’s got the idea, it seems, that the unusual heat 
 from the sun this year has penetrated deep enough— 
 in places—especially on these unprotected heaths that 
 retain their heat so cleverly—to reach another 
 kindred expression—to waken a_ response —in 
 sympathy, you see—from the central fires of the earth.’ 
 
 He paused again a moment awkwardly, conscious 
 how clumsily he expressed it. ‘The parent getting 
 into touch again with its lost child, eh? See the 
 idea? Return of the Fire Prodigal, as it were?’ 
 
 His listeners stared in silence, the broker looking 
 his obvious relief that O’Hara was not on ’Change, 
 the critic’s eyes glancing sharply down that pointed, 
 boring nose of his. 
 
 ‘And the central fires have felt it and risen in 
 response,’ continued Rennie in a lower voice. ‘You 
 see the idea? It’s big, to say the least. The 
 volcanoes have answered too—there’s old Etna, the 
 giant of ’em all, breaking out in fifty new mouths of 
 flame. Heat is latent in everything, only waiting to 
 be called out. That match you're striking, this 
 coffee-pot, the warmth in our bodies, and so on— 
 their heat comes first from the sun, and is therefore 
 an actual part of the sun, the origin of all heat and 
 life. And so O’Hara, you know, who sees the 
 universe as a single homogeneous Oxze and—and— 
 well, | give it up. Can’t explain it, you see. You 
 must get him to do that. But somehow this year— 
 cloudless—the protecting armour of water all gone 
 too—the sun’s rays managed to sink in and reach 
 their kind buried deep below. Perhaps, later, we 
 may get him to show us the studies that he’s made 
 —whew !—the most—er—amazing things you ever 
 saw |’ 
 
156 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 The ‘superiority’ of unimaginative minds was 
 inevitable, making Rennie regret that he had told so 
 much. It was almost as if he had been untrue to 
 his friend. But at length the group broke up for 
 the afternoon. They left messages for O’Hara. 
 Two motored, and the journalist took the train. 
 The critic followed his sharp nose to London, where 
 he might ferret out the failures that his mind 
 delighted in. And when they were gone the host 
 slipped quickly upstairs to find his friend. The 
 heat was unbearable to suffocation, the little bedroom 
 like an oven. But Jim O’Hara was not in it. 
 
 For, instead of lying down as he had said, a fierce 
 revolt, stirred by the talk of those unvisioned minds 
 below, had wakened, and the deep, sensitive, poet’s 
 soul in him had leaped suddenly to the acceptance 
 of an impossible thing. He had escaped, driven 
 forth by the secret call of wonder. He made full 
 speed for the destroyed moors. Fever or no fever, 
 he must see for himself. Did no one understand ? 
 Was he the only one? . . . Walking quickly, he 
 passed the Frensham Ponds, came through that spot of 
 loneliness and beauty, the Lion’s Mouth, noting that 
 even there the pool of water had dried up and 
 the rushes waved in the hot air over a bed of hard, 
 caked mud, and so reached within the hour the wide 
 expanse of Thursley Common. On every side the 
 world stretched dark and burnt, a cemetery of 
 cinders. Great thrills rushed through his heart ; and 
 with the power of a tide that yet came at flashing 
 speed the truth rose up in him. . . . Half running now, 
 he plunged forward another mile or two, and found 
 himself, the only living thing, amid the great waste 
 of heather-land. The blazing sunlight drenched it. 
 
THE HEATH FIRE 157 
 
 It lay, a sheet of weird dark beauty, spreading like 
 a black, enormous garden as far as the eye could 
 reach. ) 
 
 Then, breathless, he paused and looked about him. 
 Within his heart something, long smouldering, ran 
 into sudden flame. Light blazed upon his inner 
 world. For as the scorch of vehement passion 
 may quicken tracts of human consciousness that 
 lie ordinarily inert and unproductive, so here the 
 surface of the earth had turned alive. He knew; 
 he saw ; he understood. 
 
 Here, in these open sun-traps that gathered and 
 retained the heat, the fire of the Universe had 
 dropped and lain, increasing week by week. These 
 _ parched, dry months, the soil, free from rejecting 
 and protective moisture, had let it all accumulate till 
 at length it had sunk downwards, inwards, and 
 the sister fires below, responding to the touch of 
 their ancient parent source, too long unfelt, had 
 answered with a swift uprising roar. They had 
 come up with answering joy, and here and there had 
 actually reached the surface, and had leaped out 
 with dancing cry, wild to escape from an age-long 
 prison back to their huge, eternal origin. 
 
 This sunshine, ah! what was it? These farthing 
 dips of heat men complained about in their tiny, 
 cage-like houses! It scorched the grass and fields, 
 yes ; but the surface never held it long enough to 
 let it sink to union with its kindred of the darker 
 fires beneath! These cried for it, but union was 
 ever denied and stifled by the weight of cooled and 
 cooling rock. And theages of separation had almost 
 cooled remembrance too—fire—the kiss and strength 
 of fire—the flaming embrace and burning lips of the 
 father sun himself. . . . He could have cried with the 
 
158 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 fierce delight of it all, and the picture he would paint 
 rose there before him, burnt gloriously into the 
 canvas of the entire heavens. Was not his own 
 heat and life also from the sun? .. . 
 
 He stared about him in the deep silence of the 
 afternoon. The world was still. It basked in the 
 windless heat. No living thing stirred, for the 
 common forms of life had fled away. Earth waited. 
 He, too, waited. And then some touch of intuition, 
 blown to white heat, supplied the link the pedestrian 
 intellect missed, and he knew that what he waited for 
 was on the way. For he would see. The message 
 he should paint would come before his outer eye 
 as well, though not, as he had first stupidly 
 expected, on some grand, enormous scale. Rather 
 would it be the equivalent of that still, small voice 
 that once had inspired anentire nation. . . . 
 
 The wind passed very softly across the un- 
 burnt patch of heather where he lay; he heard it 
 rustling in the skeletons of scorched birch trees, and 
 in the gorse and furze bushes that the flame had left 
 so ghostly pale. Farther off it sang in the isolated 
 pines, dying away like surf upon some far-off reef. 
 He smelt the bitter perfume of burnt soil, the 
 pungent, acrid odour of beaten ashes. The purple- 
 black of the moors yawned like openings in the side 
 of the earth. In all directions for miles stretched 
 the deep emptiness of the heather-lands, an immense, 
 dark, magic garden, still black with the feet of 
 wonder that had flown across it and left it so 
 beautifully scarred. The shadow of the terrible 
 embrace still trailed and lingered as though Midnight 
 had screened a time of passion with this curtain of 
 her softest plumes. 
 
 And shey had called it ugly, had spoken of its 
 
THE HEATH FIRE 159 
 
 matred beauty, its hideousness! He laughed 
 exultantly as he drank it in, for the weird and 
 savage splendour everywhere broke loose and spread, 
 passing from the earth into the receptive substance of 
 his own mind. Even the roots of gorse and heather, 
 like petrified, shadow-eating snakes, charged with 
 the mystery of that eternal underworld whence they 
 had risen, lay waiting for the return of the night of 
 sleep whence Fire had wakened them. Lost ghosts 
 of a salamander army that the flame had swept above 
 the ground, they lay anguished and frightened in 
 the glare of the unaccustomed sun. . . . 
 
 And waiting, he stared about him in the deep 
 silence of the afternoon. Hazy with distance he 
 saw the peak of Crooksbury, dim in its sheet of 
 pines, waving a blue-plumed crest into the sky for 
 signal; and close about him rose the more sombre 
 glory of the lesser knolls and boulders, still cloaked 
 in the swarthy magic of the smoke. Amid pools of 
 ashes in the nearer hollows he saw the blue beauty 
 of the fire-weed that rushes instantly into life behind 
 all conflagrations. It was blowing softly in the wind. 
 And here and there, set like emeralds upon some 
 dusky bosom, lay the brilliant spires of young 
 bracken that rose to clap a thousand tiny hands 
 in the heart of exquisite desolation. In a cloud 
 of green they rustled in the wind above the sea of 
 black. . .. And so within himself O’Hara realised 
 the huge excitement of the flame this fragment of 
 the earth had felt. For Fire, mysterious symbol of 
 universal life, spirit that prodigally gives itself with- 
 out itself diminishing, had passed in power across 
 this ancient heather-land, leaving the soul of it all 
 naked and unashamed. The sun had loved it. The 
 fires below had risen up and answered. They had 
 
160 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 known that union with their source which some call 
 deathe ie. 
 
 And the fires were rising still. The poet’s heart 
 in him became suddenly and awfully aware. Ye 
 stars of fire! This patch of unburnt heather where 
 he lay had been untouched as yet, but now the flame 
 in his soul had brought the little needed link and he 
 would see. The thing of wonder that the Universe 
 should teach him how to paint was already on the 
 way. Called by the sun, tremendous, splendid 
 parent, the central fires were still rising. 
 
 And he turned, weakness and exultation racing 
 for possession of him. ‘The wind passed softly over 
 his face, and with it came a faint, dry sound. It 
 was distant and yet close beside him. At the stir of 
 it there rose also in himself a strange vast thing that 
 was bigger than the bulk of the moon and wide as 
 the extension of swept forests, yet small and gentle 
 as a blade of grass that pricks the lawn in spring. 
 And he realised then that ‘within’ and ‘without ’ 
 had turned one, and that over the entire moorland 
 arrived this thing that was happening too in a white- 
 hot point of his own heart. He was linked with the 
 sun and the farthest star, and in his little finger 
 glowed the heat and fire of the universe itself. In 
 sympathy his own fires were rising too. 
 
 The sound was born—a faint, light noise of 
 crackling in the heather at his feet. He bent his 
 head and searched, and among the obscure and tiny 
 underways of the roots he saw a tip of curling smoke 
 rise slowly upwards. It moved in a thin, blue spiral 
 past his face. Then terror took him that was like 
 a terror of the mountains, yet with it at the same 
 time a realisation of beauty that made the heart leap 
 
 within him into dazzling radiance. For the incense 
 
THE HEATH FIRE 161 
 
 of this fairy column of thin smoke drew his soul out 
 with it—upwards towards its source. He rose to 
 his feet, trembling. . 
 
 He watched the line rise slowly to the sky and 
 vanish into blue. The whole expanse of blackened 
 heather-land watched too. Wind sank away; the 
 sunshine dropped to meet it. A sense of deep 
 expectancy, profound and reverent, lay over all that 
 sun-baked moor; and the entire sweep of burnt 
 world about him knew with joy that what was 
 taking place in that wee, isolated patch of Surrey 
 heather was the thing the Hebrew mystic knew 
 when the Soul of the Universe became manifest in 
 the bush that burned, yet never was consumed. In 
 that faint sound of crackling, as he stood aside to 
 listen and to watch, O’Hara knew a form of the 
 eternal Voice of Ages. There was no flame, but it 
 seemed to him that all his inner being passed in fiery 
 heat outwards towards its source. . . . He saw the 
 little patch of dried-up heather sink to the level of 
 the black surface all about it—a sifted pile of delicate, 
 pale-blue ashes. The tiny spiral vanished; he 
 watched it disappear, winding upwards out of sight 
 in a little ghostly trail of beauty. So small and soft 
 and simple was this wonder of the world. It was 
 gone. And something in himself had _ broken, 
 dropped in ashes, and passed also outwards like a 
 tiny mounting flame. 
 
 But the picture O’Hara had thought himself 
 designed to paint was never done. It was not even 
 begun. The great canvas of ‘ The Fire Worshipper ’ 
 stood empty on the easel, for the artist had not 
 strength to lift a brush. Within two days the final 
 breath passed slowly from his lips. The strange 
 
 M 
 
162 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 fever that so perplexed the doctor by its rapid 
 development and its fury took him so easily. His 
 temperature was extraordinary. The heat, as of an 
 internal fire, fairly devoured him, and the smile upon 
 his face at the last—so Rennie declared—was the 
 most perplexingly wonderful thing he had ever seen. 
 ‘It was like a great, white flame,’ he said. 
 
 SANDHILLS. 
 
THE MESSENGER 
 
> ESS tcc USEPLEREE, 
 
 THE MESSENGER 
 
 fo oanc naa 
 
 THE MESSENGER 
 
 I Have never been afraid of ghostly things, attracted 
 rather with a curious live interest, though it is 
 always out of doors that strange Presences get 
 nearest to me, and in Nature I have encountered 
 warnings, messages, presentiments, and the like, that, 
 by way of help or guidance, have later justified 
 themselves. I have, therefore, welcomed them. 
 But in the little rooms of houses things of much 
 value rarely come, for the thick air chokes the 
 Wires, as it were, and distorts or mutilates the clear 
 delivery. 
 
 But the other night, here in the carpenter’s house, 
 where my attic windows beckon to the mountains 
 and the woods, I woke with the uncomfortably strong 
 suggestion that something was on the way, and that 
 I was not ready. It camealong the by-ways of deep 
 sleep. I woke abruptly, alarmed before I was even 
 properly awake. Something was approaching with 
 great swiftness—and I was unprepared. 
 
 Across the lake there were faint signs of colour 
 behind the distant Alps, but terraces of mist still 
 lay grey above the vineyards, and the slim poplar, 
 whose tip was level with my face, no more than 
 rustled in the wind of dawn. AQ shiver, not brought 
 to me by any wind, ran through my nerves, for | 
 knew with a certainty no arguing could lessen nor 
 
 167 
 
168 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 dispel that something from immensely far away was 
 deliberately now approaching me. The touch of 
 wonder in advance of it was truly awful; its 
 splendour, size, and grandeur belonged to conditions 
 I had surely never known. It came through empty 
 spaces—from another world. While I lay asleep it 
 had been already on the way. 
 
 I stood there a moment, seeking for some outward 
 sign that might betray its nature. The last stars 
 were fading in the northern sky, and blue and dim 
 lay the whole long line of the Jura, cloaked beneath 
 still slumbering forests. There was a rumbling of a 
 distant train. Now and then a dog barked in some 
 outlying farm. The Night was up and walking, 
 though as yet she moved but slowly from the sky. 
 Shadows still draped the world. And the warning 
 that had reached me first in sleep rushed through 
 my tingling nerves once more with a certainty not 
 far removed from shock. Something from another 
 world was drawing every minute nearer, with a speed 
 that made me tremble and half-breathless. It would 
 presently arrive. It would stand close beside me 
 and look straight into my face. Into these very 
 eyes that searched the mist and shadow for an out- 
 ward sign it would gaze intimately with a Message 
 brought for me alone. But into these narrow walls 
 it could only come with difficulty. The message 
 would be maimed. There still was time for prepara- 
 tion. And I hurried into clothes and made my 
 way downstairs and out into the open air. 
 
 Thus, at first, by climbing fast, I kept ahead of 
 it, and soon the village lay beneath me in its nest of 
 shadow, and the limestone ridges far above dropped 
 nearer, But the awe and terrible deep wonder did 
 not go. Along these mountain paths, whose every 
 
THE MESSENGER 169 
 
 inch was so intimate that I could follow them even 
 in the dark, this sense of breaking grandeur clung 
 to my footsteps, keeping close. Nothing upon the 
 earth—familiar, friendly, well-known, little earth— 
 could have brought this sense that pressed upon the 
 edges of true reverence. It was the awareness that 
 some speeding messenger from spaces far, far beyond 
 the world would presently stand close and touch me, 
 would gaze into my little human eyes, would leave 
 its message as of life or death, and then depart upon 
 its fearful way again—it was this that conveyed the 
 feeling of apprehension that went with me. 
 
 And instinctively, while rising higher and higher, 
 I chose the darkest and most sheltered way. I 
 sought the protection of the trees, and ran into the 
 deepest vaults of the forest. The moss was soaking wet 
 beneath my feet, and the thousand tapering spires of 
 the pines dipped upwards into a sky already brighten- 
 ing with palest gold and crimson. There was a 
 whispering and a rustling overhead as the trees, who 
 know everything before it comes, announced to one 
 another that the thing I sought to hide from was 
 already very, very near. Plunging deeper into the 
 woods to hide, this detail of sure knowledge followed 
 me and laughed: that the speed of this august 
 arrival was one which made the greatest speed I 
 ever dreamed of a mere standing still. . . . 
 
 I hid myself where possible in the darkness that 
 was growing every minute more rare. The air was 
 sharp and exquisitely fresh. I heard birds calling. 
 The low, wet branches kissed my face and hair. A 
 sense of glad relief came over me that I had left the 
 closeness of the little attic chamber, and that I should 
 eventually meet this huge New-comer in the wide, 
 free spaces of the mountains. There must be room 
 
170 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 where I could hold myself unmanacled to meet it. 
 ... The village lay far beneath me, a patch of 
 smoke and mist and soft red-brown roofs among 
 the vineyards. And then my gaze turned upwards, 
 and through a rift in the close-wrought ceiling of 
 the trees I saw the clearness of the open sky. A 
 strip of cloud ran through it, carrying off the Night’s 
 last little dream ... and down into my heart 
 dropped instantly that cold breath of awe I have 
 known but once in life, when staring through. the 
 stupendous mouth within the Milky Way — that 
 opening into the outer spaces of eternal dark- 
 ness, unlit by any single star, men call the Coal 
 Hole. 
 
 The futility of escape then took me bodily, and I 
 renounced all further flight. From this speeding 
 Messenger there was no hiding possible. His 
 splendid shoulders already brushed the sky. I heard 
 the rushing of his awful wings . . . yet in that deep, 
 significant silence with which light steps upon the 
 clouds of morning. 
 
 And simultaneously I left the woods behind me 
 and stood upon a naked ridge of rock that all night 
 long had watched the stars. 
 
 Then terror passed away like magic. Cool winds 
 from the valleys bore me up. I heard the tinkling 
 of a thousand cowbells from pastures far below in 
 a score of hidden valleys. The cold departed, and 
 with it every trace of little fears. My eyes seemed 
 for an instant blinded, and I knew that deep sense of 
 joy which seems so ‘ unearthly’ that it almost stains 
 the sight with the veil of tears. The soul sank to 
 her knees in prayer and worship. 
 
 For the messenger from another world had come. 
 He stood beside me on that dizzy ledge. Warmth 
 
THE MESSENGER 171 
 
 clothed me, and I knew myself akin to deity. He 
 stood there, gazing straight into my little human 
 eyes. He touched me everywhere. Above the 
 distant Alps the sun came up. His eye looked 
 close into my own. 
 
 Bote, 
 
‘ 4 
 Ria, 
 
 my YS «= 3220s 
 A She he 
 9 ets é 
 
i ile ; 
 aces ar OP ay 
 
 ‘ ee ie te 
 
 fae 
 
 . 
 
4 
 
 a 
 
 _ THE GLAMOUR OF THE 
 
 ul 
 
I 
 
 Hispert, always conscious of two worlds, was in 
 this mountain village conscious of three. It lay on 
 the slopes of the Valais Alps, and he had taken a 
 room in the little post office, where he could be at 
 peace to write his book, yet at the same time enjoy 
 the winter sports and find companionship-in the 
 hotels when he wanted it. 
 
 The three worlds that met and mingled here 
 seemed to his imaginative temperament very obvious, 
 though it is doubtful if another mind less intuitively 
 equipped would have seen them so well-defined. 
 There was the world of tourist English, civilised, 
 quasi-educated, to which he belonged by birth, at 
 any rate; there was the world of peasants to which 
 he felt himself drawn by sympathy—for he loved 
 and admired their toiling, simple life ; and there was 
 this other—which he could only call the world of 
 Nature. To this last, however, in virtue of a 
 vehement poetic imagination, and a tumultuous 
 pagan instinct fed by his very blood, he felt that 
 most of him belonged. The others borrowed from 
 it, as it were, for visits. Here, with the soul of 
 Nature, hid his central life. 
 
 Between all three was conflict—potential conflict. 
 On the skating-rink each Sunday the tourists regarded 
 the natives as intruders; in the church the peasants 
 plainly questioned : ‘Why do you come? We are 
 
 177 N 
 
178 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 here to worship ; you to stare and whisper!’ For 
 neither of these two worlds accepted the other. And 
 neither did Nature accept the tourists, for it took 
 advantage of their least mistakes, and indeed, even 
 of the peasant-world ‘accepted’ only those who 
 were strong and bold enough to invade her savage 
 domain with sufficient skill to protect themselves 
 from several forms of—death. 
 
 Now Hibbert was keenly aware of this potential 
 conflict and want of harmony ; he felt outside, yet 
 caught by it—torn in the three directions because he 
 was partly of each world, but wholly in only one. 
 There grew in him a constant, subtle effort—or, at 
 least, desire—to unify them and decide positively 
 to which he should belong and live in. The attempt, 
 of course, was largely subconscious. It was the 
 natural instinct of a richly imaginative nature seeking 
 the point of equilibrium, so that the mind could feel 
 at peace and his brain be free to do good work. 
 
 Among the guests no one especially claimed his 
 interest. The men were nice but undistinguished— 
 athletic schoolmasters, doctors snatching a holiday, 
 good fellows all ; the women, equally various—the 
 clever, the would-be-fast, the dare-to-be-dull, the 
 women ‘who understood,’ and the usual pack of jolly 
 dancing girls and ‘flappers.’ And Hibbert, with his 
 forty odd years of thick experience behind him, got 
 on well with the lot; he understood them all; they 
 belonged to definite, predigested types that are the 
 same the world over, and that he had met the world 
 over long ago. 
 
 But to none of them did he belong. His nature 
 was too ‘multiple’ to subscribe to the set of 
 shibboleths of any one class. And, since all liked 
 him, and felt that somehow he seemed outside of 
 
> ‘ 
 
 THE GLAMOUR OF THE SNOW 179 
 
 them—spectator, looker -on—all sought to claim 
 him. 
 
 In a sense, therefore, the three worlds fought for 
 him : natives, tourists, Nature. . . . 
 
 It was thus began the singular conflict for the soul 
 of Hibbert. Jz his own soul, however, it took place. 
 Neither the peasants nor the tourists were conscious 
 that they fought for anything. And Nature, they 
 say, is merely blind and automatic. 
 
 The assault upon him of the peasants may be left 
 out of account, for it is obvious that they stood no 
 chance of success. The tourist world, however, 
 made a gallant effort to subdue him to themselves. 
 But the evenings in the hotel, when dancing was not 
 in order, were—English. The provincial imagina- 
 tion was set upon a throne and worshipped heavily 
 through incense of the stupidest conventions possible. 
 Fiibbert used to go back early to his room in the 
 post office to work. 
 
 ‘It is a mistake on my part to have realised that 
 there is any conflict at all,’ he thought, as he 
 crunched home over the snow at midnight after one 
 of the dances. ‘It would have been better to have 
 kept outside it all and done my work. Better,’ he 
 added, looking back down the silent village street to 
 the church tower, ‘and—safer.’ 
 
 The adjective slipped from his mind before he 
 was aware of it. He turned with an involuntary 
 start and looked about him. He knew perfectly 
 well what it meant—this thought that had thrust its 
 head up from the instinctive region. He understood, 
 without being able to express it fully, the meaning 
 that betrayed itself in the choice of the adjective. 
 For if he had ignored the existence of this conflict 
 he would at the same time have remained outside 
 
180 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 the arena. Whereas now he had entered the lists. 
 Now this battle for his soul must have issue. And 
 he knew that the spell of Nature was greater for him 
 than all other spells in the world combined—greater 
 than love, revelry, pleasure, greater even than study. 
 He had always been afraid to let himself go. His 
 pagan soul dreaded her terrific powers of witchery 
 even while he worshipped. | 
 
 The little village already slept. The world lay 
 smothered in snow. ‘The chalet roofs shone white 
 beneath the moon, and pitch-black shadows gathered 
 against the walls of the church. His eye rested a 
 moment on the square stone tower with its frosted 
 cross that pointed to the sky: then travelled with 
 a leap of many thousand feet to the enormous 
 mountains that brushed the brilliant stars. Like a 
 forest rose the huge peaks above the slumbering village, 
 measuring the night and heavens. They beckoned 
 him. And something born of the snowy desolation, 
 born of the midnight and the silent grandeur, born 
 of the great listening hollows of the night, something 
 that lay ’twixt terror and wonder, dropped from the 
 vast wintry spaces down into his heart—and called 
 him. Very softly, unrecorded in any word or 
 thought his brain could compass, it laid its spell 
 upon him. Fingers of snow brushed the surface 
 of his heart. The power and quiet majesty of the 
 winter's night appalled him... . 
 
 Fumbling a moment with the big unwieldy key, 
 he let himself in and went upstairs to bed. Two 
 thoughts went with him—apparently quite ordinary 
 and sensible ones : 
 
 ‘What fools these peasants are to sleep through 
 such a night!’ And the other : 
 
 ‘Those dances tire me. Ill never go again. 
 
THE GLAMOUR OF THE SNOW 181 
 
 My work only suffers in the morning.’ The claims 
 of peasants and tourists upon him seemed thus in a 
 single instant weakened. 
 
 The clash of battle troubled half his dreams. 
 Nature had sent her Beauty of the Night and won 
 the first assault. The others, routed and dismayed, 
 fled far away. 
 
IT 
 
 ‘Don’t go back to your dreary old post office. 
 We're going to have supper in my room—something 
 hot. Come and join us. Hurry up!’ 
 
 There had been an ice carnival, and the last party, 
 tailing up the snow-slope to the hotel, called him. 
 The Chinese lanterns smoked and sputtered on the 
 wires ; the band had long since gone. The cold was 
 bitter and the moon came only momentarily between 
 high, driving clouds. From the shed where the 
 people changed from skates to snow-boots he shouted 
 something to the effect that he was ‘following’; but 
 no answer came; the moving shadows of those who 
 had called were already merged high up against the 
 village darkness. The voices died away. Doors 
 slammed. Hibbert found himself alone on the 
 deserted rink. 
 
 And it was then, quite suddenly, the impulse 
 came to—stay and skate alone. The thought of the 
 stuffy hotel room, and of those noisy people with 
 their obvious jokes and laughter, oppressed him. 
 He felt a longing to be alone with the night, to taste 
 her wonder all by himself there beneath the stars, 
 gliding over the ice. It was not yet midnight, and 
 he could skate for half an hour. That supper party, 
 if they noticed his absence at all, would merely think 
 he had changed his mind and gone to bed. 
 
 It was an impulse, yes, and not an unnatural one ; 
 
 182 
 
THE GLAMOUR OF THE SNOW 183 
 
 yet even at the time it struck him that something 
 more than impulse lay concealed behind it. More 
 than invitation, yet certainly less than command, 
 there was a vague queer feeling that he stayed because 
 he had to, almost as though there was something he 
 had forgotten, overlooked, left undone. Imaginative 
 temperaments are often thus; and impulse is ever 
 weakness. For with such ill-considered opening of 
 the doors to hasty action may come an invasion of 
 other forces at the same time—forces merely waiting 
 their opportunity perhaps ! 
 
 He caught the fugitive warning even while he 
 dismissed it as absurd, and the next minute he was 
 whirling over the smooth ice in delightful curves and 
 loops beneath the moon. There was no fear of 
 collision. He could take his own speed and space 
 as he willed. The shadows of the towering mountains 
 fell across the rink, and a wind of ice came from the 
 forests, where the snow lay ten feet deep. The hotel 
 lights winked and went out. The village slept. 
 The high wire netting could not keep out the wonder 
 of the winter night that grew about him like a 
 presence. He skated on and on, keen exhilarating 
 pleasure in his tingling blood, and weariness all 
 forgotten. 
 
 And then, midway in the delight of rushing 
 movement, he saw a figure gliding behind the wire 
 netting, watching him. With a start that almost 
 made him lose his balance—for the abruptness of the 
 new arrival was so unlooked for—he paused and stared. 
 Although the light was dim he made out that it was 
 the figure of a woman and that she was feeling her 
 way along the netting, trying to get in. Against the 
 white background of the snow-field he watched her 
 rather stealthy efforts as she passed with a silent 
 
184 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 step over the banked-up snow. She was tall and slim 
 and graceful; he could see that even in the dark. 
 And then, of course, he understood. It was another 
 adventurous skater like himself, stolen down unawares 
 from hotel or chalet, and searching for the opening. 
 At once, making a sign and pointing with one hand, 
 he turned swiftly and skated over to the little entrance 
 on the other side. 
 
 But, even before he got there, there was a sound on 
 the ice behind him and, with an exclamation of amaze- 
 ment he could not suppress, he turned to see her 
 swerving up to his side across the width of the rink. 
 She had somehow found another way in. 
 
 Hibbert, as a rule, was punctilious, and in these 
 free-and-easy places, perhaps, especially so. If only 
 for his own protection he did not seek to make 
 advances unless some kind of introduction paved the 
 way. But for these two to skate together in the 
 semi-darkness without speech, often of necessity 
 brushing shoulders almost, was too absurd to think 
 of. Accordingly he raised his cap and spoke. His 
 actual words he seems unable to recall, nor what the 
 girl said in reply, except that she answered him in 
 accented English with some commonplace about 
 doing figures at midnight on an empty rink. Quite 
 natural it was, and right. She wore grey clothes of 
 some kind, though not the customary long gloves 
 or sweater, for indeed her hands were bare, and 
 presently when he skated with her, he wondered with 
 something like astonishment at their dry and icy 
 coldness. 
 
 And she was delicious to skate with—supple, sure, 
 and light, fast as a man yet with the freedom of a 
 child, sinuous and steady at the same time. Her 
 flexibility made him wonder, and when he asked 
 
THE GLAMOUR OF THE SNOW 185 
 
 where she had learned she murmured—he caught the 
 breath against his ear and recalled later that it was 
 singularly cold—that she could hardly tell, for she 
 had been accustomed to the ice ever since she could 
 remember. 
 
 But her face he never properly saw. A muffler of 
 white fur buried her neck to the ears, and her cap 
 came over the eyes. He only saw that she was 
 young. Nor could he gather her hotel or chilet, 
 for she pointed vaguely, when he asked her, up the 
 slopes. ‘Just over there * she said, quickly 
 taking his hand again. He did not press her; no 
 doubt she wished to hide her escapade. And the 
 touch of her hand thrilled him more than anything 
 he could remember ; even through his thick glove 
 he felt the softness of that cold and delicate softness. 
 
 The clouds thickened over the mountains. It 
 grew darker. They talked very little, and did not 
 always skate together. Often they separated, curving 
 about in corners by themselves, but always coming 
 together again in the centre of the rink ; and when 
 she left him thus Hibbert was conscious of—yes, of 
 missing her. He found a peculiar satisfaction, almost 
 a fascination, in skating by her side. It was quite an 
 adventure—these two strangers with the ice and 
 snow and night! 
 
 Midnight had long since sounded from the old 
 church tower before they parted. She gave the sign, 
 and he skated quickly to the shed, meaning to find a 
 seat and help her take her skates off. Yet when he 
 turned—she had already gone. He saw her slim 
 figure gliding away across the snow . . . and hurry- 
 ing for the last time round the rink alone he searched 
 in vain for the opening she had twice used in this 
 curious way. 
 
186 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 ‘How very queer!’ he thought, referring to the 
 wire netting. ‘She must have lifted it and wriggled 
 unde Annes!” 
 
 Wondering how in the world she managed it, what 
 in the world had possessed him to be so free with 
 her, and who in the world she was, he went up the 
 steep slope to the post office and so to bed, her 
 promise to come again another night still ringing 
 delightfully in his ears. And curious were the 
 thoughts and sensations that accompanied him. 
 Most of all, perhaps, was the half suggestion of some 
 dim memory that he had known this girl before, had 
 met her somewhere, more—that she knew him. For 
 in her voice—a low, soft, windy little voice it was, 
 tender and soothing for all its quiet coldness—there 
 lay some faint reminder of two others he had known, 
 both long since gone: the voice of the woman he had 
 loved, and—the voice of his mother. 
 
 But this time through his dreams there ran no 
 clash of battle. He was conscious, rather, of some- 
 thing cold and clinging that made him think of 
 sifting snowflakes climbing slowly with entangling 
 touch and thickness round his feet. The snow, 
 
 coming without noise, each flake so light and tiny 
 
 none can mark the spot whereon it settles, yet the 
 mass of it able to smother whole villages, wove through 
 the very texture of his mind—cold, bewildering, 
 deadening effort with its clinging network of ten 
 million feathery touches. 
 
II 
 
 In the morning Hibbert realised he had done, perhaps, 
 afoolish thing. The brilliant sunshine that drenched 
 the valley made him see this, and the sight of his 
 work-table with its typewriter, books, papers, and the 
 rest, brought additional conviction. To have skated 
 with a girl alone at midnight, no matter how inno- 
 cently the thing had come about, was unwise—unfair, 
 especially to her. Gossip in these little winter 
 resorts was worse than in a provincial town. He 
 hoped no one had seen them. Luckily the night 
 had been dark. Most likely none had heard the ring 
 of skates. 
 
 Deciding that in future he would be more careful, 
 he plunged into work, and sought to dismiss the 
 matter from his mind. 
 
 But in his times of leisure the memory returned 
 persistently to haunt him. When he ‘ski-d,’ ‘ luged,’ 
 or danced in the evenings, and especially when he 
 skated on the little rink, he was aware that the eyes 
 of his mind forever sought this strange companion 
 of the night. A hundred times he fancied that he 
 saw her, but always sight deceived him. Her face 
 he might not know, but he could hardly fail to recog- 
 nise her figure. Yet nowhere among the others did he 
 catch a glimpse of that slim young creature he had 
 skated with alone beneath the clouded stars. He 
 searched in vain. Even his inquiries as to the 
 
 187 
 
188 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 occupants of the private chalets brought no results. 
 He had lost her. But the queer thing was that he 
 felt as though she were somewhere close ;. he knew 
 she had not really gone. While people came and 
 left with every day, it never once occurred to him 
 that she had left. On the contrary, he felt assured 
 that they would meet again. 
 
 This thought he never quite acknowledged. 
 Perhaps it was the wish that fathered it only. And, 
 even when he did meet her, it was a question how he 
 would speak and claim acquaintance, or whether she 
 would recognise himself. It might be awkward. He 
 almost came to dread a meeting, though ‘dread,’ of 
 course, wasfar too strong a word to describe an emotion 
 that was half delight, half wondering anticipation. 
 
 Meanwhile the season was in full swing. Hibbert 
 felt in perfect health, worked hard, ski-d, skated, 
 luged, and at night danced fairly often—in spite of 
 his decision. This dancing was, however, an act of 
 subconscious surrender ; it really meant he hoped to 
 find her among the whirling couples. He was search- 
 ing for her without quite acknowledging it to himself; 
 and the hotel-world, meanwhile, thinking it had won 
 him over, teased and chaffed him. He made excuses 
 in a similar vein; but all the time he watched and 
 searched and—waited. 
 
 For several days the sky held clear and bright and 
 frosty, bitterly cold, everything crisp and sparkling 
 in the sun ; but there was no sign of fresh snow, and 
 the ski-ers began to grumble. On the mountains 
 was an icy crust that made ‘running’ dangerous ; 
 they wanted the frozen, dry, and powdery snow that 
 makes for speed, renders steering easier and falling less 
 severe. But the keen east wind showed no signs of 
 changing for a whole ten days. Then, suddenly, 
 
THE GLAMOUR OF THE SNOW 189 
 
 there came a touch of softer air and the weather-wise 
 began to prophesy. 
 
 Hibbert, who was delicately sensitive to the least 
 change in earth or sky, was perhaps the first to feel 
 it. Only he did not prophesy. He knew through 
 every nerve in his body that moisture had crept into 
 the air, was accumulating, and that presently a fall 
 would come. For he responded to the moods of 
 Nature like a fine barometer. 
 
 And the knowledge, this time, brought into his 
 heart a strange little wayward emotion that was hard 
 to account for—a feeling of unexplained uneasiness 
 and disquieting joy. For behind it, woven through 
 it rather, ran a faint exhilaration that connected re- 
 motely somewhere with that touch of delicious alarm, 
 that tiny anticipating ‘dread,’ that so puzzled him 
 when he thought of his next meeting with his skating 
 companion of the night. It lay beyond all words, 
 all telling, this queer relationship between the two ; 
 but somehow the girl and snow ran in a pair across 
 his mind. 
 
 Perhaps for imaginative writing-men, more than 
 for other workers, the smallest change of mood be- 
 trays itself at once. His work at any rate revealed 
 this slight shifting of emotional values in his soul. 
 Not that his writing suffered, but that it altered, 
 subtly as those changes of sky or sea or landscape 
 that come with the passing of afternoon into evening 
 —imperceptibly. A subconscious excitement sought 
 to push outwards and express itself . . . and, know- 
 ing the uneven effect such moods produced in his 
 work, he laid his pen aside and took instead to read- 
 ing that he had to do. 
 
 Meanwhile the brilliance passed from the sunshine, 
 the sky grew slowly overcast ; by dusk the mountain 
 
190 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 tops came singularly close and sharp; the distant 
 valley rose into absurdly near perspective. The 
 moisture increased, rapidly approaching saturation 
 point, when it must fall in snow. Hibbert watched 
 and waited. 
 
 And in the morning the world lay smothered 
 beneath its fresh white carpet. It snowed heavily 
 till noon, thickly, incessantly, chokingly, a foot or 
 more; then the sky cleared, the sun came out in 
 splendour, the wind shifted -back to the east, and 
 frost came down upon the mountains with its keenest 
 and most biting tooth. The drop in the temperature 
 was tremendous, but the ski-ers were jubilant. Next 
 day the ‘running’ would be fast and perfect. Already 
 the mass was settling, and the surface freezing into 
 those moss-like, powdery crystals that make the ski 
 run almost of their own accord with the faint 
 ‘sishing’ as of a bird’s wings through the air. 
 
IV 
 
 Tuat night there was excitement in the little hotel- 
 world, first because there was a da/ costumé, but chiefly 
 because the new snow had come. And Hibbert went 
 —felt drawn to go; he did not go in costume, but 
 he wanted to talk about the slopes and ski-ing with 
 the other men, and at the same time. .. . 
 
 Ah, there was the truth, the deeper necessity that 
 called. For the singular connection between the 
 stranger and the snow again betrayed itself, utterly 
 beyond explanation as before, but vital and insistent. 
 Some hidden instinct in his pagan soul—heaven 
 knows how he phrased it even to himself, if he 
 phrased it at all—whispered that with the snow the 
 girl would be somewhere about, would emerge from 
 her hiding place, would even look for him. 
 
 Absolutely unwarranted it was. He laughed 
 while he stood before the little glass and trimmed his 
 moustache, tried to make his black tie sit straight, and 
 shook down his dinner jacket so that it should lie 
 upon the shoulders without a crease. His brown 
 eyes were very bright. ‘I look younger than | 
 usually do,’ he thought. It was unusual, even 
 significant, in a man who had no vanity about his 
 appearance and certainly never questioned his age or 
 tried to look younger than he was. Affairs of the 
 heart, with one tumultuous exception that left no 
 fuel for lesser subsequent fires, had never troubled 
 
 191 
 
192 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 him. The forces of his soul and mind not called 
 upon for ‘work’ and obvious duties, all went to 
 Nature. The desolate, wild places of the earth were 
 what he loved ; night, and the beauty of the stars and 
 snow. And this evening he felt their claims upon 
 him mightily stirring. A rising wildness caught his 
 blood, quickened his pulse, woke longing and passion 
 too. But chiefly snow. The snow whirred softly 
 through his thoughts like white, seductive dreams. 
 . . . For the snow had come; and She, it seemed, 
 had somehow come with it—into his mind. 
 
 And yet he stood before that twisted mirror and 
 pulled his tie and coat askew a dozen times, as though 
 it mattered. ‘What in the world is up with me?’ 
 he thought. Then, laughing a little, he turned 
 before leaving the room to put his private papers in 
 order. The green morocco desk that held them he 
 took down from the shelf and laid upon the table. 
 Tied to the lid was the visiting card with his brother’s 
 London address ‘in case of accident.’ On the way 
 down to the hotel he wondered why he had done 
 this, for though imaginative, he was not the kind of 
 man who dealt in presentiments. Moods with him 
 were strong, but ever held in leash. 
 
 ‘It's almost like a warning,’ he thought, smiling. 
 He drew his thick coat tightly round the throat as 
 the freezing air bit at him. ‘Those warnings one 
 reads of in stories sometimes . . . |’ 
 
 A delicious happiness was in his blood. Over — 
 
 the edge of the hills across the valley rose the moon. 
 He saw her silver sheet the world of snow. Snow 
 covered all. It smothered sound and distance. It 
 smothered houses, streets, and human beings. It 
 smothered—life. 
 
V 
 
 In the hall there was light and bustle ; people were 
 already arriving from the other hotels and chalets, 
 their costumes hidden beneath many wraps. Groups 
 of men in evening dress stood about smoking 
 talking ‘snow’ and ‘ski-ing.’ The band was tuning 
 up. The claims of the hotel-world clashed about 
 him faintly as of old. At the big glass windows of 
 the verandah, peasants stopped a moment on their 
 way home from the café to peer. Hibbert thought 
 laughingly of that conflict he used to imagine. He 
 laughed because it suddenly seemed so unreal. He 
 belonged so utterly to Nature and the mountains, 
 and especially to those desolate slopes where now 
 the snow lay thick and fresh and sweet, that there 
 was no question of a conflict at all. The power of 
 the newly fallen snow had caught him, proving it 
 without effort. Out there, upon those lonely reaches 
 of the moonlit ridges, the snow lay ready—masses 
 and masses of it—cool, soft, inviting. He longed 
 for it. It awaited him. He thought of the 
 intoxicating delight of ski-ing in the moonlight. . . 
 Thus, somehow, in vivid flashing vision, he 
 thought of it while he stood there smoking with 
 the other men and talking all the ‘shop’ of ski-ing. 
 And, ever mysteriously blended with this power 
 of the snow, poured also through his inner being the 
 193 O 
 
194 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 power of the girl. He could not disabuse his mind 
 of the insinuating presence of the two together. He 
 remembered that queer skating-impulse of ten days 
 ago, the impulse that had let her in. That any 
 mind, even an imaginative one, could pass beneath 
 the sway of such a fancy was strange enough; and 
 Hibbert, while fully aware of the disorder, yet found 
 a curious joy in yielding to it. This insubordi- 
 nate centre that drew him towards old pagan beliefs 
 had assumed command. With a kind of sensuous 
 pleasure he let himself be conquered. 
 
 And snow that night seemed in everybody’s 
 thoughts.. The dancing couples talked of it; the 
 hotel proprietors congratulated one another; it 
 meant good sport and satisfied their guests; every 
 one was planning trips and expeditions, talking of 
 slopes and telemarks, of flying speed and distance, 
 of drifts and crust and frost. Vitality and 
 enthusiasm pulsed in the very air; all were alert 
 and active, positive, radiating currents of creative 
 life even into the stuffy atmosphere of that crowded 
 ball-room. And the snow had caused it, the snow 
 had brought it ; all this discharge of eager sparkling 
 energy was due primarily to the—Snow. 
 
 But in the mind of Hibbert, by some swift 
 alchemy of his pagan yearnings, this energy became 
 transmuted. It rarefied itself, gleaming in white and 
 crystal currents of passionate anticipation, which he 
 transferred, as by a species of electrical imagination, 
 into the personality of the girl—the Girl of the 
 Snow. She somewhere was waiting for him, 
 expécting him, calling to him softly from those 
 leagues of moonlit mountain. He remembered the 
 touch of that cool, dry hand; the soft and icy 
 breath against his cheek ; the hush and softness of 
 
THE GLAMOUR OF THE SNOW 195 
 
 her presence in the way she came and the way she 
 had gone again—like a flurry of snow the wind 
 sent gliding up the slopes. She, like himself, 
 belonged out there. He fancied that he heard her 
 little windy voice come sifting to him through the 
 snowy branches of the trees, calling his name . 
 that haunting little voice that dived straight to the 
 centre of his life as once, long years ago, two other 
 voices used todo... . 
 
 But nowhere among the costumed dancers did he 
 see her slender figure. He danced with one and all, 
 distrait and absent, a stupid partner as each girl 
 discovered, his eyes ever turning towards the door 
 and windows, hoping to catch the luring face, the 
 vision that did not come . . . and at length, hoping 
 even against hope. For the ball-room thinned ; 
 groups left one by one, going home to their hotels 
 and chalets; the band tired obviously ; people sat 
 drinking lemon-squashes at the little tables, the 
 men mopping their foreheads, everybody ready for 
 bed. : 
 
 It was close on midnight. As Hibbert passed 
 through the hall to get his overcoat and snow-boots, 
 he saw men in the passage by the ‘sport-room,’ 
 greasing their ski against an early start. Knapsack 
 luncheons were being ordered by the kitchen swing 
 doors. He sighed. Lighting a cigarette a friend 
 offered him, he returned a confused reply to some 
 question as to whether he could join their party in 
 the morning. It seemed he did not hear it properly. 
 He passed through the outer vestibule between the 
 double glass doors, and went into the night. 
 
 The man who asked the question watched him 
 go, an expression of anxiety momentarily in his eyes. 
 
 ‘Don’t think he heard you,’ said another, 
 
196 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 laughing. ‘You've got to shout to Hibbert, his 
 mind’s so full of his work.’ 
 
 ‘He works too hard,’ suggested the first, ‘ full of 
 queer ideas and dreams.’ 
 
 But Hibbert’s silence was not rudeness. He had 
 not caught the invitation, that was all. The call of 
 the hotel world had faded. He no longer heard it. 
 Another wilder call was sounding in his ears. 
 
 For up the street he had seen a little figure 
 moving. Close against the shadows of the baker’s 
 shop it glided—white, slim, enticing. 
 
 a | 
 
VI 
 
 AND at once into his mind passed the hush and 
 softness of the snow—yet with it a searching, crying 
 wildness for the heights. He knew by some 
 incalculable, swift instinct she would not meet him 
 in the village street. It was not there, amid 
 crowding houses, she would speak to him. Indeed, 
 already she had disappeared, melted from view up 
 the white vista of the moonlit road. Yonder, he 
 divined, she waited where the highway narrowed 
 abruptly into the mountain path beyond the chilets. 
 
 It did not even occur to him to hesitate; mad 
 though it seemed, and was—this sudden craving for 
 the heights with her, at least for open spaces where 
 the snow lay thick and fresh—it was too imperious 
 to be denied. He does not remember going up to 
 his room, putting the sweater over his evening clothes, 
 and getting into the fur gauntlet gloves and the 
 helmet cap of wool. Most certainly he has no 
 recollection of fastening on his ski; he must have 
 done it automatically. Some faculty of normal 
 observation was in abeyance, as it were. His mind 
 was out beyond the village—out with the snowy 
 mountains and the moon. 
 
 Henri Défago, putting up the shutters over his 
 café windows, saw him pass, and wondered mildly : 
 ‘Un monsieur qui fait du skia cette heure! II est 
 
 197 
 
198 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 Anglais, donc... !’ He shrugged his shoulders, 
 as though a man had the right to choose his own 
 way of death, And Marthe Perotti, the hunchback 
 wife of the shoemaker, looking by chance from her 
 window, caught his figure moving swiftly up the 
 road. She had other thoughts, for she knew and 
 believed the old traditions of the witches and snow- 
 beings that steal the souls of men. She had even 
 heard, ’twas said, the dreaded ‘ synagogue’ pass roar- 
 ing down the street at night, and now, as then, she hid 
 her eyes. ‘They’ve called to him . . . and he must 
 go,’ she murmured, making the sign of the cross. 
 
 But no one sought to stop him. Hibbert recalls 
 only a single incident until he found himself beyond 
 the houses, searching for her along the fringe of 
 forest where the moonlight met the snow in a 
 bewildering frieze of fantastic shadows. And the 
 incident was simply this—that he remembered 
 passing the church. Catching the outline of its 
 tower against the stars, he was aware of a faint sense 
 of hesitation. A vague uneasiness came and went— 
 jarred unpleasantly across the flow of his excited 
 feelings, chilling exhilaration. He caught the instant’s 
 discord, dismissed it, and—passed on. The seduction 
 of the snow smothered the hint before he realised 
 that it had brushed the skirts of warning. 
 
 And then he saw her. She stood there waiting in 
 a little clear space of shining snow, dressed all in 
 white, part of the moonlight and the glistening 
 background, her slender figure just discernible. 
 
 ‘I waited, for I knew you would come,’ the 
 silvery little voice of windy beauty floated down to 
 him. ‘You had to come.’ 
 
 ‘I’m ready,’ he answered, ‘I knew it too.’ 
 
 The world of Nature caught him to its heart in 
 
THE GLAMOUR OF THE SNOW 199 
 
 those few words—the wonder and the glory of the 
 night and snow. Life leaped within him. The 
 passion of his pagan soul exulted, rose in joy, flowed 
 out to her. He neither reflected nor considered, 
 but let himself go like the veriest schoolboy in the 
 wildness of first love. 
 
 Gives wme?) yout: hand,’;:hezo.cnied,+ Slim 
 Coming iisiy et” 
 
 ‘A little farther on, a little higher,’ came her 
 delicious answer. ‘ Here it is too near the village— 
 and the church.’ 
 
 And the words seemed wholly right and natural ; 
 he did not dream of questioning them; he under- 
 stood that, with this little touch of civilisation 
 in sight, the familiarity he suggested was impossible. 
 Once out upon the open mountains, ’mid the freedom 
 of huge slopes and towering peaks, the stars and 
 moon to witness and the wilderness of snow to 
 watch, they could taste an innocence of happy 
 intercourse free from the dead conventions that 
 imprison literal minds, 
 
 He urged his pace, yet did not quite overtake 
 her. The girl kept always just a little bit ahead of 
 his best efforts. . . . And soon they left the trees 
 behind and passed on to the enormous slopes 
 of the sea of snow that rolled in mountainous terror 
 and beauty to the stars. The wonder of the white 
 world caught him away. Under the steady moon- 
 light it was more than haunting. It was a living, 
 white, bewildering power that deliciously confused 
 the senses and laid a spell of wild perplexity 
 upon the heart. It was a personality that cloaked, 
 and yet revealed, itself through all this sheeted 
 whiteness of snow. It rose, went with him, fled 
 
 before, and followed after. Slowly it dropped lithe, 
 
200 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 gleaming arms about his neck, gathering him 
 rhs EA 
 
 Certainly some soft persuasion coaxed his very 
 soul, urging him ever forwards, upwards, on towards 
 the higher icy slopes. Judgment and reason left 
 their throne, it seemed, completely, as in the 
 madness of intoxication. The girl, slim and seductive, 
 kept always just ahead, so that he never quite came 
 up with her. He saw the white enchantment of her 
 face and figure, something that streamed about her 
 neck flying like a wreath of snow in the wind, and 
 heard the alluring accents of her whispering voice 
 that called from time totime: ‘A little farther on, 
 a little higher. . . . Then we'll run home together ! ’ 
 
 Sometimes he saw her hand stretched out to find 
 his own, but each time, just as he came up with her, he 
 saw her still in front, the hand and arm withdrawn. 
 They took a gentle angle of ascent. The toil 
 seemed nothing. In this crystal, wine-like air 
 fatigue vanished. The sishing of the ski through 
 the powdery surface of the snow was the only sound 
 that broke the stillness; this, with his breathing 
 and the rustle of her skirts, was all he heard. Cold 
 moonshine, snow, and silence held the world. The 
 sky was black, and the peaks beyond cut into it like 
 frosted wedges of iron and steel. Far below the 
 valley slept, the village long since hidden out of 
 sight. He felt that he could never tire. . . . The 
 sound of the church clock rose from time to time 
 faintly through the air—more and more distant. 
 
 ‘Give me your hand. It’s time now to turn 
 back.’ 
 
 ‘Just one more slope,’ she laughed. ‘That ridge 
 above us. Then we’ll make for home. And her 
 low voice mingled pleasantly with the purring of 
 
THE GLAMOUR OF THE SNOW 201 
 their ski. His own seemed harsh and ugly by 
 
 comparison. 
 
 ‘But I have never come so high before. ° It’s 
 glorious! This world of silent snow and moon- 
 light—and you. You're a child of the snow, I swear. 
 Let me come up—closer—to see your face—and 
 touch your little hand.’ 
 
 Her laughter answered him. 
 
 ‘Come on! A little higher. Here we're quite 
 alone together.’ 
 
 ‘It’s magnificent,’ he cried. ‘But why did you 
 hide away so long? I’ve looked and searched for 
 you in vain ever since we skated "he was going 
 to say ‘ten days ago,’ but the accurate memory of time 
 had gone from him ; he was not sure whether it was 
 days or years or minutes. His thoughts of earth 
 were scattered and confused. 
 
 ‘You looked for me in the wrong places,’ he 
 heard her murmur just above him. ‘You looked in 
 places where I never go. Hotels and houses kill 
 me. I avoid them.’ She laughed—a fine, shrill, 
 windy little laugh. 
 
 ‘I loathe them too 
 
 He stopped. The girl had suddenly come quite 
 close. A breath of ice passed through his very soul. 
 She had touched him. 
 
 ‘But this awful cold!’ he cried out, sharply, ‘ this 
 freezing cold that takes me. The wind is rising ; 
 it’s a wind of ice. Come, let us turn. . .!’ 
 
 But when he plunged forward to hold her, or at 
 least to look, the girl was gone again. And some- 
 thing in the way she stood there a few feet beyond, 
 and stared down into his eyes so steadfastly in silence, 
 made him shiver. The moonlight was behind her, 
 but in some odd way he could not focus sight upon 
 
 ’ 
 
202 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 her face, although so close. The gleam of eyes he 
 caught, but all the rest seemed white and snowy as 
 though he looked beyond her—out into space... . 
 
 The sound of the church bell came up faintly 
 from the valley far below, and he counted the 
 strokes—five. A sudden, curious weakness seized 
 him as he listened. Deep within it was, deadly yet 
 somehow sweet, and hard to resist. He felt like 
 sinking down upon the snow and lying there... . 
 They had been climbing for five hours.... It 
 was, of course, the warning of complete exhaustion. 
 
 With a great effort he fought and overcame it. 
 It passed away as suddenly as it came. 
 
 ‘We'll turn,’ he said with a decision he hardly 
 felt. ‘It will be dawn before we reach the village 
 again. Come at once. It’s time for home.’ 
 
 The sense of exhilaration had utterly left him. 
 An emotion that was akin to fear swept coldly 
 through him. But her whispering answer turned it 
 instantly to terror—a terror that gripped him 
 horribly and turned him weak and unresisting. | 
 
 ‘Our home is—fere!’ A burst of wild, high 
 laughter, loud and shrill, accompanied the words. 
 It was like a whistling wind. The wind had risen, 
 and clouds obscured the moon. ‘A little higher— 
 where we cannot hear the wicked bells,’ she cried, 
 and for the first time seized him deliberately by the 
 hand. She moved, was suddenly close against his 
 face. Again she touched him. 
 
 And Hibbert tried to turn away in escape, and 
 so trying, found for the first time that the power of 
 the snow—that other power which does not ex- 
 hilarate but deadens effort—was upon him. The 
 suffocating weakness that it brings to exhausted 
 men, luring them to the sleep of death in her cling- — 
 
THE GLAMOUR OF THE SNOW 203 
 
 ing soft embrace, lulling the will and conquering all 
 desire for life—this was awfully upon him. His 
 feet were heavy and entangled. He could not turn 
 or move. 
 
 The girl stood in front of him, very near ; he felt 
 her chilly breath upon his cheeks; her hair passed 
 blindingly across his eyes; and that icy wind came 
 with her. He saw her whiteness close; again, it 
 seemed, his sight passed through her into space as 
 though she had no face. Her arms were round his 
 neck. She drew him softly downwards to his knees. 
 He sank ; he yielded utterly ; he obeyed. Her weight 
 was upon him, smothering, delicious. The snow was 
 to his waist. . . . She kissed him softly on the lips, 
 the eyes, all over his face. And then she spoke his 
 name in that voice of love and wonder, the voice 
 that held the accent of two others—both taken over 
 long ago by Death—the voice of his mother, and of 
 the woman he had loved. 
 
 He made one more feeble effort to resist. Then, 
 realising even while he struggled that this soft weight 
 about his heart was sweeter than anything life could 
 ever bring, he let his muscles relax, and sank back 
 into the soft oblivion of the covering snow. Her 
 wintry kisses bore him into sleep. 
 
VII 
 
 Tey say that men who know the sleep of exhaus- 
 tion in the snow find no awakening on the hither 
 side of death. . . . The hours passed and the 
 moon sank down below the white world’s rim. 
 Then, suddenly, there came a little crash upon his 
 breast and neck, and Hibbert—woke. 
 
 He slowly turned bewildered, heavy eyes upon 
 the desolate mountains, stared dizzily about him, 
 tried to rise. At first his muscles would not act; 
 a numbing, aching pain possessed him. He uttered 
 a long, thin cry for help, and heard its faintness 
 swallowed by the wind. And then he understood 
 vaguely why he was only warm—not dead. For 
 this very wind that took his cry had built up a 
 sheltering mound of driven snow against his body while 
 he slept. Likea curving wave it ran beside him. It 
 was the breaking of its over-toppling edge that 
 caused the crash, and the coldness of the mass 
 against his neck that woke him. 
 
 Dawn kissed the eastern sky; pale gleams of 
 gold shot every peak with splendour ; but ice was 
 in the air, and the dry and frozen snow blew 
 like powder from the surface of the slopes. He 
 saw the points of his ski projecting just below 
 him. Then he—remembered. It seems he had 
 just strength enough to realise that, could he but 
 rise and stand, he might fly with terrific impetus 
 
 204 
 
THE GLAMOUR OF THE SNOW 205 
 
 towards the woods and village far beneath. The ski 
 would carry him. But if he failed and fell . . . ! 
 
 How he contrived it Hibbert never knew; this 
 fear of death somehow called out his whole available 
 reserve force. He rose slowly, balanced a moment, 
 then, taking the angle of an immense zigzag, started 
 down the awful slopes like an arrow from a bow. 
 And automatically the splendid muscles of the 
 practised ski-er and athlete saved and guided him, 
 for he was hardly conscious of controlling either 
 speed or direction. The snow stung face and eyes 
 like fine steel shot ; ridge after ridge flew past ; the 
 summits raced across the sky; the valley leaped 
 up with bounds to meet him. He scarcely felt 
 the ground beneath his feet as the huge slopes and 
 distance melted before the lightning speed of that 
 descent from death to life. 
 
 He took it in four mile-long zigzags, and it was 
 the turning at each corner that nearly finished him, 
 for then the strain of balancing taxed to the verge 
 of collapse the remnants of his strength. 
 
 Slopes that have taken hours to climb can be 
 descended in a short half-hour on ski, but Hibbert 
 had lost all count of time. Quite other thoughts 
 and feelings mastered him in that wild, swift dropping 
 through the air that was like the flight of a bird. 
 For ever close upon his heels came following forms 
 and voices with the whirling snow-dust. He heard 
 that little silvery voice of death and laughter at his 
 back. Shrill and wild, with the whistling of the 
 wind past his ears, he caught its pursuing tones ; but 
 in anger now, no longer soft and coaxing. And it 
 was accompanied; she did not follow alone. It 
 seemed a host of these flying figures of the snow 
 chased madly just behind him. He felt them furi- 
 
 ea 
 
206 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 ously smite his neck and cheeks, snatch at his hands 
 and try to entangle his feet and ski in drifts. His 
 eyes they blinded, and they caught his breath away. 
 
 The terror of the heights and snow and winter 
 desolation urged him forward in the maddest race 
 with death a human being ever knew; and so 
 terrific was the speed that before the gold and 
 crimson had left the summits to touch the ice-lips of 
 the lower glaciers, he saw the friendly forest far 
 beneath swing up and welcome him. 
 
 And it was then, moving slowly along the edge of 
 the woods, he saw a light. A man was carrying it. 
 A procession of human figures was passing in a dark 
 line laboriously through the snow. And—he heard 
 the sound of chanting. 
 
 Instinctively, without a second’s hesitation, he 
 changed his course. No longer flying at an angle as 
 before, he pointed his ski straight down the 
 mountain-side. The dreadful steepness did not 
 frighten him. He knew full well it meant a 
 crashing tumble at the bottom, but he also knew it 
 meant a doubling of his speed—with safety at the 
 end. For, though no definite thought passed 
 through his mind, he understood that it was the 
 village curé who carried that little gleaming lantern 
 in the dawn, and that he was taking the Host to a 
 chalet on the lower slopes—to some peasant in 
 extremis. He remembered her terror of the church 
 and bells. She feared the holy symbols. 
 
 There was one last wild cry in his ears as he 
 started, a shriek of the wind before his face, and a 
 rush of stinging snow against closed eyelids—and 
 then he dropped through empty space. Speed took 
 sight from him. It seemed he flew off the surface of 
 the world. 
 
THE GLAMOUR OF THE SNOW 207 
 
 Indistinctly he recalls the murmur of men’s 
 voices, the touch of strong arms that lifted him, and 
 the shooting pains as the ski were unfastened from 
 the twisted ankle . . . for when he opened his eyes 
 again to normal life he found himself lying in his 
 bed at the post office with the doctor at his side. 
 But for years to come the story of ‘mad Hibbert’s’ 
 ski-ing at night is recounted in that mountain village. 
 He went, it seems, up slopes, and to a height that no 
 man in his senses ever tried before. The tourists 
 were agog about it for the rest of the season, and 
 the very same day two of the bolder men went over 
 the actual ground and photographed the slopes. 
 Later Hibbert saw these photographs. He noticed 
 one curious thing about them—though he did not 
 mention 1t to any one: 
 
 There was only a single track. 
 
 CHAMPERY. 
 
; ‘need ge 
 
 a4 
 
_ THE RETURN 
 
 4 
 
THE RETURN 
 
 Ir was curious—that sense of dull uneasiness that 
 came over him so suddenly, so stealthily at first he 
 scarcely noticed it, but with such marked increase 
 after a time that he presently got up and left the 
 theatre. His seat was on the gangway of the dress 
 circle, and he slipped out awkwardly in the middle of 
 what seemed to be the best and jolliest song of the 
 piece. The full house was shaking with laughter ; 
 so infectious was the gaiety that even strangers 
 turned to one another as much as to say : ‘Now, 
 isn't that funny—— ?’ 
 
 It was curious, too, the way the feeling first got 
 into him at all, here in the full swing of laughter, 
 music, light-heartedness, for it came as a vague 
 suggestion: ‘I’ve forgotten something—something I 
 meant to do—something of importance. What in the 
 world was it, now?’ And he thought hard, searching 
 vainly through his mind; then dismissed it as the 
 dancing caught his attention. It came back a little 
 later again, during a passage of long-winded talk that 
 bored him and set his attention free once more, but 
 came more strongly this time, insisting on an answer. 
 What could it have been that he had overlooked, left 
 undone, omitted to see to? It went on nibbling at 
 the subconscious part of him. Several times this 
 happened, this dismissal and return, till at last the 
 
 213 
 
214 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 thing declared itself more plainly —and he felt 
 bothered, troubled, distinctly uneasy. 
 
 He was wanted somewhere. ‘There was some- 
 where else he ought to be. That describes it best, 
 perhaps. Some engagement of moment had entirely 
 slipped his memory—an engagement that involved 
 another person, too. But where, what, with whom? ~ 
 And, at length, this vague uneasiness amounted to. 
 positive discomfort, so that he felt unable to enjoy 
 the piece—and left abruptly. Like a man to whom 
 comes suddenly the horrible idea that the match he 
 lit his cigarette with and flung into the waste-paper 
 basket on leaving was not really out—a sort of panic 
 distress—he jumped into a taxi-cab and hurried to 
 his flat: to find everything in order, of course ; no 
 smoke, no fire, no smell of burning. 
 
 But his evening was spoilt. He sat smoking in 
 his armchair at home—this business man of forty, 
 practical in mind, of character some called stolid— 
 cursing himself for an imaginative fool. It was now 
 too late to go back to the theatre; the club bored 
 him; he spent an hour with the evening papers, 
 dipping into books, sipping a long cool drink; 
 doing odds and ends about the flat ; ‘I’ll go to bed 
 early for a change,’ he laughed, but really all the 
 time fighting—yes, deliberately fighting—this strange 
 attack of uneasiness that so insidiously grew upwards, 
 outwards from the buried depths of him that sought 
 so strenuously to deny it. It never occurred to him 
 that he was ill. He was zor ill. His health was 
 thunderingly good. He was robust as a coal- 
 heaver. | 
 
 The flat was roomy, high up on the top floor, 
 yet in a busy part of town, so that the roar of 
 trafhc mounted round it like asea. Through the 
 
THE RETURN 216 
 
 open windows came the fresh night air of June. 
 He had never noticed before how sweet the London 
 night air could be, and that not all the smoke and dust 
 could smother a certain touch of wild fragrance that 
 tinctured it with perfume—yes, almost perfume—as of 
 the country. He swallowed a draught of it as he 
 stood there, staring out across the tangled world of 
 roofs and chimney-pots. He saw the procession of 
 the clouds ; he saw the stars ; he saw the moonlight 
 falling in a shower of silver spears upon the slates and 
 wires and steeples. And something in him quickened 
 —something that had never stirred before. 
 
 He turned with a horrid start, for the uneasiness 
 had of a sudden leaped within him like an animal. 
 There was some one in the flat. 
 
 Instantly, with action, even this slight action, the 
 fancy vanished ; but, all the same, he switched on 
 the electric lights and made a search. For it seemed 
 to him that some one had crept up close behind him 
 while he stood there watching the Night—some one, 
 moreover, whose silent presence fingered with unerring 
 touch both this new thing that had quickened in his 
 heart and that sense of original deep uneasiness. He 
 was amazed at himself, angry; indignant that he 
 could be thus foolishly upset over nothing, yet at the 
 same time profoundly distressed at this vehement 
 growth of a new thing in his well-ordered personality. 
 Growth? He dismissed the word the moment it 
 occurred to him. But it had occurred to him. It 
 stayed. While he searched the empty flat, the long 
 passages, the gloomy bedroom at the end, the little 
 hall where he kept his overcoats and golf sticks— 
 it stayed. Growth! It was oddly disquieting. 
 Growth, to him, involved—though he neither 
 acknowledged nor recognised the truth perhaps— 
 
216 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 some kind of undesirable changeableness, instability, 
 unbalance. 
 
 Yet, singular as it all was, he realised that the 
 uneasiness and the sudden appreciation of Beauty that 
 was so new to him had both entered by the same 
 door into his being. When he came back to the front 
 room he noticed that he was perspiring. There were 
 little drops of moisture on his forehead. And down 
 his spine ran positively chills—little, faint quivers of 
 cold. He was shivering. 
 
 He lit his big meerschaum pipe, and left the lights 
 allburning. The feeling that there was something he 
 had overlooked, forgotten, left undone, had vanished. 
 Whatever the original cause of this absurd uneasiness 
 might be—he called it absurd on purpose, because he 
 now realised in the depths of him that it was really 
 more vital than he cared about—it was much nearer 
 to discovery than before. It dodged about just below 
 the threshold of discovery. It was as close as that. 
 Any moment he would know what it was: he 
 would remember. Yes, he would remember. Mean- 
 while, he was in the right place. No desire to go 
 elsewhere afflicted him, as in the theatre. Here was 
 the place, here in the flat. 
 
 And then it was, with a kind of sudden burst and 
 rush—it seemed to him the only way to phrase it— — 
 memory gave up her dead. 
 
 At first he only caught her peeping round the 
 corner at him, drawing aside a corner of an enormous 
 curtain, as it were; striving for more complete 
 entrance as though the mass of it were difficult to 
 move. But he understood ; he knew ; he recognised. 
 It was enough for that. An entrance into his being— 
 heart, mind, soul— was being attempted, and the 
 entrance, because of his stolid temperament, was 
 
THE RETURN 217 
 
 difficult of accomplishment. There was effort, strain. 
 Something in him had first to be opened up, widened, 
 made soft and ready as by an operation, before full 
 entrance could be effected. This much he grasped, 
 though for the life of him he could not have put it 
 into words. Also, he knew wo it was that sought an 
 entrance. Deliberately from himself he withheld the 
 name. But he knew, as surely as though Straughan 
 stood in the room and faced him with a knife, saying, 
 ‘Let me in, let me in. I wish you to know I’m 
 here. I’m clearing a way ...! You recall our 
 promise ...? 
 
 He rose from his chair and went to the open 
 window again, the strange fear slowly passing. 
 The cool air fanned his cheeks. Beauty, till now, 
 had scarcely ever brushed the surface of his soul. 
 He had never troubled his head about it. It passed 
 him by, indifferent; and he had ever loathed the 
 mouthy prating of it on others’ lips. He was 
 practical ; beauty was for dreamers, for women, for 
 men who had means and leisure. He had not exactly 
 scorned it; rather it had never touched his life, to 
 sweeten, cheer, uplift. Artists for him were like 
 monks—another sex almost, useless beings who never 
 helped the world go round. He was for action 
 always, work, activity, achievement—as he saw them. 
 He remembered Straughan vaguely—Straughan, the 
 ever impecunious, friend of his youth, always talking 
 of colour, sound—mysterious, ineffective things. He 
 even forgot what they had quarrelled about, if they had 
 quarrelled at all even; or why they had gone apart 
 all these years ago. And, certainly, he had forgotten 
 any promise. Memory, as yet, only peeped round 
 the corner of that huge curtain at him, tentatively, ’ 
 suggestively, yet—he was obliged to admit it— 
 
218 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 somewhat winningly. He was conscious of this 
 gentle, sweet seductiveness that now replaced his fear. 
 
 And, as he stood now at the open window, peering 
 over huge London, Beauty came close and smote him 
 between the eyes. She came blindingly, with her 
 train of stars and clouds and perfumes. Night, 
 mysterious, myriad-eyed, and flaming across her sea 
 of haunted shadows, invaded his heart and shook him 
 with her immemorial wonder and delight. He found 
 no words, of course, to clothe the new, unwonted 
 sensations. He only knew that all his former dread, 
 uneasiness, distress, and. with them this idea of 
 ‘growth’ that had seemed so repugnant to him, 
 were merged, swept up, and gathered magnificently 
 home into a wave of Beauty that enveloped him. 
 ‘See it... and understand,’ ran a secret inner 
 whisper across his mind. He saw. He under- 
 stoodoiitno. 
 
 He went back and turned the lights out. Then 
 he took his place again at that open window, drinking 
 in the night. He saw a new world; a species of in- 
 toxication heldhim. Hesighed . . . as his thoughts 
 blundered for expression among words and sentences 
 that knew him not. But the delight was there, 
 the wonder, the mystery. He watched, with heart 
 alternately tightening and expanding, the transfiguring 
 play of moon and shadow over the sea of buildings. 
 He saw the dance of the hurrying clouds, the open 
 patches into outer space, the veiling and unveiling 
 of that ancient silvery face ; and he caught strange 
 whispers of the hierophantic, sacerdotal Power that 
 has echoed down the world since Time began and 
 dropped strange magic phrases into every poet’s heart 
 since first ‘God dawned on Chaos ’—the Beauty of 
 the; Nights 2) 
 
THE RETURN 219 
 
 A long time passed—it may have been one hour, 
 it may have been three—when at length he turned 
 away and went slowly to his bedroom. A deep peace 
 lay over him. Something quite new and blessed had 
 crept into his life and thought. He could not quite 
 understand it all. He only knew that it uplifted. 
 There was no longer the least sign of affliction or 
 distress. Even the inevitable reaction that, of course, 
 set in could not destroy that. 
 
 And then, as he lay in bed, nearing the borderland 
 of sleep, suddenly and without any obvious suggestion 
 to bring it, he remembered another thing. He 
 remembered the promise. Memory got past the big 
 curtain for an instant, and showed her face. She 
 looked into his eyes. It must have been a dozen 
 years ago when Straughan and he had made that 
 foolish, solemn promise that whoever died first should 
 show himself, if possible, to the other. 
 
 He had utterly forgotten it—till now. But 
 Straughan had not forgotten it. The letter came 
 three weeks later, from India. That very evening 
 Straughan had died—at nine o’clock. And he had 
 come back—in the Beauty that he loved. 
 
 Cuarinc Cross Roan, 
 
} 
 
 i 
 
 lin. Se 
 
 | 
 
I 
 
 As Felix Henriot came through the streets that 
 January night the fog was stifling, but when he 
 reached his little flat upon the top floor there came 
 a sound of wind. Wind was stirring about the 
 world. It blew against his windows, but at first so 
 faintly that he hardly noticed it. Then, with an 
 abrupt rise and fall like a wailing voice that sought 
 to claim attention, it called him. He peered through 
 the ‘window into the blurred darkness, listening. 
 
 There is no cry in the world like that of the 
 homeless wind. A vague excitement, scarcely to 
 be /analysed, ran through his blood. The curtain 
 of fog waved momentarily aside. Henriot fancied 
 a sitar peeped down at him. 
 
 /‘It will change things a bit—at last,’ he sighed, 
 settling back into his chair. ‘It will bring move- 
 nent as 
 ’ Already something in himself had changed... A 
 restlessness, as of that wandering wind, woke in his 
 _heart—the desire to be off and away. Other things 
 could rouse this wildness too: falling water, the 
 
 Singing of a bird, an odour of wood-fire, a glimpse 
 
 | of winding road. But the cry of wind, always 
 
 _ Searching, questioning, travelling the world’s great 
 routes, remained ever the master-touch. High 
 
 longing took his mood in hand. Mid seven 
 millions he felt suddenly—lonely. 
 
 225 Q 
 
226 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 ‘I will arise and go now, for always night and day ~ 
 I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore ; 
 While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, 
 I hear it in the deep heart’s core.’ 
 
 He murmured the words over softly to himself. 
 The emotion that produced Innisfree passed strongly 
 through him. He too would be over the hills aind far 
 away. He craved movement, change, adventyre— 
 somewhere far from shops and crowds and motor- 
 ‘busses. For a week the fog had stifled London. 
 This wind brought life. 
 
 Where should he go? Desire was long; his 
 
 purse was short. 
 
 He glanced at his books, letters, newspapers. 
 They had no interest now. Instead he listened, 
 The panorama of other journeys rolled in colour 
 through the little room, flying on one another’s 
 heels. Henriot enjoyed this remembered essence 
 of his travels more than the travels themselves. 
 The crying wind brought so many voices, al) of 
 them seductive : \ 
 
 There was a soft crashing of waves upon the 
 Black Sea shores, where the huge Caucasus beckonted 
 in the sky beyond ; a rustling in the umbrella pines 
 and cactus at Marseilles; whence magic steamers 
 start about the world like flying dreams. . He hearal 
 
 the plash of fountains upon Mount Ida’s slopes, and. 
 
 the whisper of the tamarisk on Marathon. It was 
 dawn once more upon the Ionian Sea, and he smelt 
 the perfume of the Cyclades. Blue-veiled islands 
 melted in the sunshine, and across the dewy lawns 
 of Tempe, moistened by the spray of many water- 
 falls, he saw——Great Heavens above !—the dancing of 
 white forms . . . or was it only mist the sunshine 
 painted against Pelion? . . . ‘Methought, among 
 
 _ 
 
 a ean 
 
SAND 227 
 
 the lawns together, we wandered underneath the 
 young grey dawn. And multitudes of dense white 
 fleecy clouds shepherded by the slow, unwilling 
 evince.” 
 
 And then, into his stuffy room, slipped the 
 singing perfume of a wall-flower on a ruined tower, 
 and with it the sweetness of hot ivy. He heard 
 the ‘ yellow bees in the ivy bloom.’ Wind whipped 
 over the open hills—this very wind that laboured 
 drearily through the London fog. 
 
 And—he was caught. The darkness melted 
 from the city. The fog whisked off into an azure 
 sky. The roar of traffic turned into booming of 
 the sea. There was a whistling among cordage, and 
 the floor swayed to and fro. He saw a sailor touch 
 his cap and pocket the two-franc piece. The syren 
 hooted — ominous sound that had started him on 
 many a journey of adventure—and the roar of 
 London became mere insignificant clatter of a child’s 
 toy carriages. 
 
 He loved that syren’s call; there was something 
 deep and pitiless in it. It drew the wanderers 
 forth from cities everywhere: ‘Leave your known 
 world behind you, and come with me for better or 
 for worse! The anchor is up; it is too late to 
 change. Only—beware! You shall know curious 
 things—and alone ! ’ 
 
 Henriot stirred uneasily in his chair. He turned 
 with sudden energy to the shelf of guide-books, 
 maps and time-tables—possessions he most valued 
 in the whole room. He was a happy-go-lucky, 
 adventure-loving soul, careless of common standards, 
 athirst ever for the new and strange. 
 
 ‘That’s the best of having a cheap flat,’ he 
 laughed, ‘and no ties in the world. I can turn the 
 
228 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 key and disappear. No one cares or knows—no 
 one but the thieving caretaker. And he’s long ago 
 found out that there’s nothing here worth taking !’ 
 
 There followed then no lengthy indecision. 
 Preparation was even shorter still. He was always 
 ready for a move, and his sojourn in cities was but 
 breathing-space while he gathered pennies for further 
 wanderings. An enormous kit-bag—sack-shaped, 
 very worn and dirty—emerged speedily from the 
 bottom of a cupboard in the wall. It was of limit- 
 less capacity. The key and padlock rattled in its 
 depths. Cigarette ashes covered everything while 
 he stuffed it full of ancient, indescribable garments. 
 And his voice, singing of those ‘ yellow bees in the 
 ivy bloom,’ mingled with the crying of the rising 
 wind about his windows. His restlessness had dis- 
 appeared by magic. 
 
 This time, however, there could be no haunted 
 Pelion, nor shady groves of Tempe, for he lived 
 in sophisticated times when money markets regulated 
 movement sternly. Travelling was only for the 
 rich ; mere wanderers must pig it. He remembered 
 instead an opportune invitation to the Desert. 
 ‘Objective’ invitation, his genial hosts had called 
 it, knowing his hatred of convention. And Helouan 
 danced into letters of brilliance upon the inner map 
 of his mind. For Egypt had ever held his spirit 
 in thrall, though as yet he had tried in vain to 
 touch the great buried soul of her. The excavators, 
 the Egyptologists, the archaeologists most of all, 
 plastered her grey ancient face with labels like hotel 
 advertisements on travellers’ portmanteaux. They 
 told where she had come from last, but nothing of 
 what she dreamed and thought and loved. The heart 
 of Egypt lay beneath the sand, and the trifling 
 
SAND 229 
 
 robbery of little details that poked forth from 
 tombs and temples brought no true revelation of 
 her stupendous spiritual splendour. Henriot, in 
 his youth, had searched and dived among what 
 material he could find, believing once—or half 
 believing — that the ceremonial of that ancient 
 system veiled a weight of symbol that was re- 
 flected from genuine supersensual knowledge. The 
 rituals, now taken literally, and so pityingly ex- 
 plained away, had once been genuine pathways of 
 approach. But never yet, and least of all in his 
 previous visits to Egypt itself, had he discovered 
 one single person, worthy of speech, who caught 
 at his idea. ‘Curious,’ they said, then turned away 
 —to go on digging in the sand. Sand smothered 
 her world to-day. Excavators discovered skeletons. 
 Museums everywhere stored them—grinning, literal 
 relics that told nothing. 
 
 But now, while he packed and sang, these 
 hopes of enthusiastic younger days stirred again— 
 because the emotion that gave them birth was real 
 and true in him. Through the morning mists upon 
 the Nile an old pyramid bowed hugely at him across 
 London roofs: ‘Come,’ he heard its awful whisper 
 beneath the ceiling, ‘I have things to show you, 
 and to tell.’ He saw the flock of them sailing the 
 Desert like weird grey solemn ships that make no 
 earthly port. And he imagined them as one: 
 multiple expressions of some single unearthly portent 
 they adumbrated in mighty form—dead symbols of 
 some spiritual conception long vanished from the 
 world. | 
 
 ‘J mustn't dream like this,’ he laughed, ‘or I 
 shall get absent-minded and pack fire-tongs instead 
 of boots. It looks like a jumble sale already!’ 
 
230 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 And he stood on a heap of things to wedge them 
 down still tighter. 
 
 But the pictures would not cease. He saw the 
 kites circling high in the blue air. A couple of 
 white vultures flapped lazily away over shining miles. 
 Felucca sails, like giant wings emerging from the 
 ground, curved towards him from the Nile. The 
 palm-trees dropped long shadows over Memphis. 
 He felt the delicious, drenching heat, and the 
 Khamasin, that over-wind from Nubia, brushed his 
 very cheeks. In the little gardens the mish-mish 
 was in bloom. . . . He smelt the Desert . . . grey 
 sepulchre of cancelled cycles. . . . The stillness 
 of her interminable reaches dropped down upon old 
 Londons? 4 
 
 The magic of the sand stole round him in its 
 silent-footed tempest. 3 
 
 And while he struggled with that strange, capacious 
 sack, the piles of clothing ran into shapes of gleaming 
 Bedouin faces; London garments settled down with 
 the mournful sound of camels’ feet, half drop- 
 ping wind, half water flowing underground—sound 
 that old Time has brought over into modern life 
 and left a moment for our wonder and perhaps our 
 tears. 
 
 He rose at length with the excitement of some 
 deep enchantment in his eyes. The thought of 
 Egypt plunged ever so deeply into him, carrying him 
 into depths where he found it difficult to breathe, so 
 strangely far away it seemed, yet indefinably familiar. 
 He lost his way. A touch of fear came with it. 
 
 ‘A sack like that is the wonder of the world,’ he 
 laughed again, kicking the unwieldy, sausage-shaped 
 monster into a corner of the room, and sitting 
 down to write the thrilling labels: ‘ Felix Henriot, 
 
SAND 231 
 
 Alexandria via Marseilles.” But his pen blotted the 
 letters ; there was sand in it. He rewrote the words. | 
 Then he remembered a dozen things he had left out. 
 Impatiently, yet with confusion somewhere, he stuffed 
 them in. They ran away into shifting heaps; they 
 disappeared ; they emerged suddenly again. It was 
 like packing hot, dry, flowing sand. From the 
 pockets of a coat—he had worn it last summer down 
 Dorset way—out trickled sand. There was sand in 
 his mind and thoughts. 
 
 And his dreams that night were full of winds, the 
 old sad winds of Egypt, and of moving, sifting sand. 
 Arabs and Afreets danced amazingly together across 
 dunes he could never reach. For he could not 
 follow fast enough. Something infinitely older than 
 these ever caught his feet and held him back. A 
 million tiny fingers stung and pricked him. Some- 
 thing flung a veil before his eyes. Once it touched 
 him—his face and hands and neck. ‘Stay here with 
 us, he heard a host of muffled voices crying, but 
 their sound was smothered, buried, rising through the 
 ground. A myriad throats were choked. ‘Till, at 
 last, with a violent effort he turned and seized it. 
 And then the thing he grasped at slipped between his 
 fingers and ran easily away. It had a grey and 
 yellow face, and it moved through all its parts. It 
 flowed as water flows, and yet was solid. It was 
 centuries old. 
 
 He cried out to it. ‘Who are you? What ts 
 your name? I surely know you... but I have 
 forgotten. . . 2" 
 
 And it stopped, turning from far away its great 
 uncovered countenance of nameless colouring. He 
 caught a voice. It rolled and boomed and whispered 
 like the wind. And then he woke, with a curious 
 
232 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 shaking in his heart, and a little touch of chilly 
 perspiration on the skin. 
 
 But the voice seemed in the room still—close 
 beside him : 
 
 ‘I am the Sand,’ he heard, before it died away. 
 
 And next he realised that the glitter of Paris lay 
 behind him, and a steamer was taking him with much 
 unnecessary motion across a sparkling sea towards 
 Alexandria. Gladly he saw the Riviera fade below 
 the horizon, with its hard bright sunshine, treacherous 
 winds, and its smear of rich, conventional English. 
 All restlessness now had left him. True vagabond 
 still at forty, he only felt the unrest and discomfort of 
 life when caught in the network of routine and rigid 
 streets, no chance of breaking loose. He was off 
 again at last, money scarce enough indeed, but the 
 joy of wandering expressing itself in happy emotions 
 of release. Every warning of calculation was stifled. 
 He thought of the American woman who walked out 
 of her Long Island house one summer’s day to look 
 at a passing sail—and was gone eight years before 
 she walked in again. Eight years of roving travel ! 
 He had always felt respect and admiration for that 
 woman. 
 
 For Felix Henriot, with his admixture of foreign 
 blood, was philosopher as well as vagabond, a strong 
 poetic and religious strain sometimes breaking out 
 through fissures in his complex nature. He had seen 
 much life; had read many books. ‘The passionate 
 desire of youth to solve the world’s big riddles had 
 given place to a resignation filled to the brim with 
 wonder. Anything mzght be true. Nothing sur- 
 prised him. The most outlandish beliefs, for all he 
 knew, might fringe truth somewhere. He had escaped 
 
SAND 228 
 
 that cheap cynicism with which disappointed men 
 soothe their vanity when they realise that an intelligible 
 explanation of the universe lies beyond their powers. 
 He no longer expected final answers. 
 
 For him, even the smallest journeys held the spice 
 of some adventure; ail minutes were loaded with 
 enticing potentialities. And they shaped for them- 
 selves somehow a dramatic form. ‘It’s like a story,’ 
 his friends said when he told his travels. It always 
 was a Story. 
 
 But the adventure that lay waiting for him where 
 the silent streets of little Helouan kiss the great 
 Desert’s lips, was of a different kind to any Henriot 
 had yet encountered. Looking back, he has often 
 asked himself, ‘ How in the world can I accept it ?’ 
 
 And, perhaps, he never yet has accepted it. It 
 was sand that brought it. For the Desert, the 
 stupendous thing that mothers little Helouan, pro- 
 duced it. 
 
IT 
 
 He slipped through Cairo with the same relief that 
 he left the Riviera, resenting its social vulgarity so 
 close to the imperial aristocracy of the Desert ; he 
 settled down into the peace of soft and silent little 
 Helouan. The hotel in which he had a room on the 
 top floor had been formerly a Khedivial Palace. It 
 had the air of a palace still. He felt himself in a 
 country-house, with lofty ceilings, cool and airy 
 corridors, spacious halls. Soft-footed Arabs attended 
 to his wants ; white walls let in light and air without 
 a sign of heat ; there was a feeling of a large, spread 
 tent pitched on the very sand; and the wind that 
 stirred the oleanders in the shady gardens also crept in 
 to rustle the palm leaves of his favourite corner seat. 
 Through the large windows where once the Khedive 
 held high court, the sunshine blazed upon vistaed 
 leagues of Desert. 
 
 And from his bedroom windows he watched the 
 sun dip into gold and crimsom behind the swelling 
 Libyan sands. ‘This side of the pyramids he saw the 
 Nile meander among palm groves and tilled fields. 
 Across his balcony railings the Egyptian stars trooped 
 down beside his very bed, shaping old constellations 
 for his dreams; while, to the south, he looked out 
 upon the vast untamable Body of the sands that 
 carpeted the world for thousands of miles towards 
 Upper Egypt, Nubia, and the dread Sahara itself. 
 
 234 
 
SAND 235 
 
 He wondered again why people thought it necessary 
 to go so far afield to know the Desert. Here, within 
 half an hour of Cairo, it lay breathing solemnly at his 
 very doors. 
 
 For little Helouan, caught thus between the 
 shoulders of the Libyan and Arabian Deserts, is 
 utterly sand-haunted. The Desert lies all round it 
 like a sea. Hienriot felt he never could escape from 
 it, as he moved about the island whose coasts are 
 washed with sand. Down each broad and shining 
 street the two end houses framed a vista of its dim 
 immensity—glimpses of shimmering blue, or flame- 
 touched purple. There were stretches of deep sea- 
 green as well, far off upon its bosom. The streets 
 were open channels of approach, and the eye ran 
 down them as along the tube of a telescope laid to 
 catch incredible distance out of space. Through 
 them the Desert reached in with long, thin feelers 
 towards the village. Its Being flooded into Helouan, 
 and over it. Past walls and houses, churches and 
 hotels, the sea of Desert pressed in silently with its 
 myriad soft feet of sand. It poured in everywhere, 
 through crack and slit and crannie. These were 
 reminders of possession and ownership. And every 
 passing wind that lifted eddies of dust at the street 
 corners were messages from the quiet, powerful 
 Thing that permitted Helouan to lie and dream 
 so peacefully in the sunshine. Mere artificial oasis, 
 its existence was temporary, held on lease, just for 
 ninety-nine centuries or so. 
 
 This sea idea became insistent. For, in certain 
 lights, and especially in the brief, bewildering dusk, 
 the Desert rose—swaying towards the small white 
 houses. The waves of it ran for fifty miles without 
 a break. It was too deep for foam or surface agita- 
 
236 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 tion, yet it knew the swell of tides. And underneath 
 flowed resolute currents, linking distance to the centre. 
 These many deserts were really one. A storm, just 
 retreated, had tossed Helouan upon the shore and 
 left it there to dry ; but any morning he would wake 
 to find it had been carried off again into the depths. 
 Some fragment, at least, would disappear. The grim 
 Mokattam Hills were rollers that ever threatened to 
 topple down and submerge the sandy bar that men 
 called Helouan. 
 
 Being soundless, and devoid of perfume, the 
 Desert’s message reached him through two senses 
 only—sight and touch; chiefly, of course, the former. 
 Its invasion was concentrated through the eyes. And 
 vision, thus uncorrected, went what pace it pleased. 
 The Desert played with him. Sand stole into his 
 being—through the eyes. 
 
 And so obsessing was this majesty of its close 
 presence, that Henriot sometimes wondered how 
 people dared their little social activities within its 
 very sight and hearing ; how they played golf and 
 tennis upon reclaimed edges of its face, picnicked so 
 blithely hard upon its frontiers, and danced at night 
 while this stern, unfathomable Thing lay breathing 
 just beyond the trumpery walls that kept it out. The 
 challenge of their shallow admiration seemed pre- 
 sumptuous, almost provocative. Their pursuit of 
 pleasure suggested insolent indifference. They ran 
 fool-hardy hazards, he felt ; for there was no worship 
 in their vulgar hearts. With a mental shudder, 
 sometimes he watched the cheap tourist horde go 
 laughing, chattering past within view of its ancient, 
 half-closed eyes. It was like defying deity. 
 
 For, to his stirred imagination the sublimity of 
 the Desert dwarfed humanity. These people had 
 
SAND 237 
 
 been wiser to choose another place for the flaunting 
 of their tawdry insignificance. Any minute this 
 Wilderness, ‘huddled in grey annihilation,’ might 
 awake and notice them. . .! 
 
 In his own hotel were several ‘smart,’ so-called 
 ‘Society ’ people who emphasised the protest in him 
 to the point of definite contempt. Overdressed, the 
 latest worldly novel under their arms, they strutted 
 the narrow pavements of their tiny world, immensely 
 pleased with themselves. Their vacuous minds ex- 
 pressed themselves in the slang of their exclusive 
 circle—value being the element excluded. The petti- 
 ness of their outlook hardly distressed him—he was 
 too familiar with it at home—but their essential 
 vulgarity, their innate ugliness, seemed more than 
 usually offensive in the grandeur of its present setting. 
 Into the mighty sands they took the latest London 
 scandal, gabbling it over even among the Tombs and 
 Temples. And ‘it was to laugh,’ the pains they 
 spent wondering whom they might condescend to 
 know, never dreaming that they themselves were not 
 worth knowing. Against the background of the 
 noble Desert their titles seemed the cap and bells of 
 clowns. 
 
 And Henriot, knowing some of them personally, 
 could not always escape their insipid company. Yet 
 he was the gainer. They little guessed how their 
 commonness heightened contrast, set mercilessly thus 
 beside the strange, eternal beauty of the sand. 
 
 Occasionally the protest in his soul betrayed itself 
 in words, which of course they did not understand. 
 'iie- is’ so’ clever, isn't’ he?’ “And then, having 
 relieved his feelings, he would comfort himself 
 characteristically : 
 
 ‘The Desert has not noticed them. The Sand is 
 
238 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 not aware of their existence. How should the sea 
 take note of rubbish that lies above its tide-line?’ 
 
 For Henriot drew near to its great shifting altars 
 in an attitude of worship. The wilderness made him 
 kneel in heart. Its shining reaches led to the oldest 
 Temple in the world, and every journey that he made 
 was like a sacrament. For him the Desert was a 
 consecrated place. It was sacred. 
 
 And his tactful hosts, knowing his peculiarities, 
 left their house open to him when he cared to come 
 —they lived upon the northern edge of the oasis— 
 and he was as free as though he were absolutely alone. 
 He blessed them; he rejoiced that he had come. 
 Little Helouan accepted him. The Desert knew that — 
 he was there. 
 
 From his corner of the big dining-room he could 
 see the other guests, but his roving eye always re- 
 turned to the figure of a solitary man who sat at an 
 adjoining table, and whose personality stirred his 
 interest. While affecting to look elsewhere, he 
 studied him as closely as might be. There was some- 
 thing about the stranger that touched his curiosity— 
 a certain air of expectation that he wore. But it was 
 more than that: it was anticipation, apprehension in 
 it somewhere. The man was nervous, uneasy. His 
 restless way of suddenly looking about him proved 
 it. Henriot tried every one else in the room as well ; 
 but, though his thought settled on others too, he 
 always came back to the figure of this solitary being 
 opposite, who ate his dinner as if afraid of being seen, 
 and glanced up sometimes as if fearful of being 
 watched. Hlenriot’s curiosity, before he knew it, 
 became suspicion. There was mystery here. The 
 table, he noticed, was laid for two. 
 
SAND 239 
 
 ‘Is he an actor, a priest of some strange religion, 
 an enquiry agent, or just—a crank ?’ was the thought 
 that first occurred to him. And the question suggested 
 itself without amusement. The impression of sub- 
 terfuge and caution he conveyed left his observer 
 unsatisfied. | 
 
 The face was clean shaven, dark, and strong ; 
 thick hair, straight yet bushy, was slightly unkempt ; 
 it was streaked with grey; and an unexpected 
 mobility when he smiled ran over the features that 
 he seemed to hold rigid by deliberate effort. ‘The 
 man was cut to no quite common measure. Henriot 
 jumped to an intuitive conclusion: ‘He’s not 
 here for pleasure or merely sight-seeing. Something 
 serious has brought him out to Egypt.’ For the 
 face combined too ill-assorted qualities : an obstinate 
 tenacity that might even mean brutality, and was 
 certainly repulsive, yet, with it, an undecipherable 
 dreaminess betrayed by lines of the mouth, but above 
 all in the very light blue eyes, so rarely raised. Those 
 eyes, he felt, had looked upon unusual things ; 
 ‘dreaminess” was not an adequate description ; 
 ‘searching’ conveyed it better. he true source of 
 the queer impression remained elusive. And hence, 
 perhaps, the incongruous marriage in the face — 
 mobility laid upon a matter-of-fact foundation under- 
 neath. The face showed conflict. 
 
 And Henriot, watching him, felt decidedly in- 
 trigued. ‘I'd like to know that man, and all about 
 him.’ His name, he learned later, was Richard Vance; 
 from Birmingham; a business man. But it was not 
 the Birmingham he wished to know; it was the— 
 other: cause of the elusive, dreamy searching. 
 Though facing one another at so short a distance, 
 their eyes, however, did not meet. And this, Henriot 
 
240 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 well knew, was a sure sign that he himself was also 
 under observation. Richard Vance, from Birmingham, 
 was equally taking careful note of Felix Henriot, 
 from London. 
 
 Thus, he could wait his time. They would come 
 together later. An opportunity would certainly 
 present itself. The first links in a curious chain had 
 already caught ; soon the chain would tighten, pull 
 as though by chance, and bring their lives into one 
 and the same circle. Wondering in particular for 
 what kind of a companion the second cover was 
 laid, Henriot felt certain that their eventual coming 
 together was inevitable. He possessed this kind of 
 divination from first impressions, and not uncommonly - 
 it proved correct. 
 
 Following instinct, therefore, he took no steps 
 towards acquaintance, and for several days, owing to 
 the fact that he dined frequently with his hosts, he 
 saw nothing more of Richard Vance, the business 
 man from Birmingham. Then, one night, coming 
 home late from his friend’s house, he had passed along 
 the great corridor, and was actually a step or so into 
 his bedroom, when a drawling voice sounded close 
 behind him. It was an unpleasant sound. It was 
 very near him too 
 
 ‘I beg your pardon, but have you, by any chance, 
 such a thing as a compass you could lend me?’ 
 
 The voice was so close that he started. Vance 
 stood within touching distance of his body. He had 
 stolen up like a ghostly Arab, must have followed 
 him, too, some little distance, for further down the 
 passage the light of an open door—he had passed it 
 on his way—showed where he came from. 
 
 ‘Eh? Ibeg your pardon? A—compass, did you 
 say?’ He felt disconcerted for a moment. How 
 
SAND 241 
 
 short the man was, now that he saw him standing. 
 Broad and powerful too. Henriot looked down upon 
 his thick head of hair. The personality and voice 
 repelled him. Possibly his face, caught unawares, 
 betrayed this. ) 
 
 ‘Forgive my startling you,’ said the other 
 apologetically, while the softer expression danced in 
 for a moment and disorganised the rigid set of the 
 face. ‘The soft carpet, you know. I’m afraid you 
 didn’t hear my tread. I wondered ’—he smiled again 
 slightly at the nature of the request—‘if—by any 
 chance—you had a pocket compass you could lend 
 me ?’ 
 
 ‘Ah, a compass, yes! Please don’t apologise. I 
 believe I have one—if you'll wait a moment. Come 
 in, won't you? I'll have a look.’ 
 
 The other thanked him but waited in the passage. 
 Henriot, it so happened, had a compass, and produced 
 it after a moment’s search. 
 
 ‘lam greatly indebted to you—if I may return 
 itin the morning. You will forgive my disturbing 
 you at such an hour. My own is broken, and I 
 wanted—-er—to find the true north.’ 
 
 Henriot stammered some reply, and the man was 
 gone. It was all over in a minute. He locked his 
 door and sat down in his chair to think. The little 
 incident had upset him, though for the life of him 
 he could not imagine why. It ought by rights to 
 have been almost ludicrous, yet instead it was the 
 exact reverse—half threatening. Why should not a 
 man want a compass?’ But, again, why should he? 
 And at midnight? The voice, the eyes, the near 
 presence—what did they bring that set his nerves - 
 thus asking unusual questions? This strange impres- 
 sion that something grave was happening, something 
 
 5 R 
 
242 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 unearthly —how was it born exactly? The man’s 
 proximity came like a shock. It had made him 
 start. He brought—thus the idea came unbidden 
 to his mind—something with him that galvanised 
 him quite absurdly, as fear does, or delight, or great 
 wonder. ‘There was a music in his voice too—a 
 certain—well, he could only call it lilt, that reminded 
 him of plainsong, intoning, chanting. Drawling was 
 not the word at all. 
 
 He tried to dismiss it as imagination, but it 
 would not be dismissed. The disturbance in himself 
 was caused by something not imaginary, but real. 
 And then, for the first time, he discovered that the 
 man had brought a faint, elusive suggestion of per- 
 fume with him, an aromatic odour, that made him 
 think of priests and churches. The ghost of it still 
 lingered in the air. Ah, here then was the origin of 
 the notion that his voice had chanted: it was surely 
 the suggestion of incense. But incense, intoning, a 
 compass to find the true north—at midnight in a 
 Desert hotel ! 
 
 A touch of uneasiness ran through the curiosity 
 and excitement that he felt. 
 
 And he undressed for bed. ‘Confound my old 
 imagination, he thought, ‘what tricks it plays me! 
 It’ll keep me awake !’ 
 
 But the questions, once started in his mind, con- 
 tinued. He must find explanation of one kind or 
 another before he could lie down and sleep, and he 
 found it at length in—the stars. The man was an 
 astronomer of sorts; possibly an astrologer into the 
 bargain! Why not? The stars were wonderful 
 above Helouan. Was there not an observatory on 
 the Mokattam Hills, too, where tourists could use 
 the telescopes on privileged days? He had it at 
 
SAND 243 
 
 last. He even stole out on to his balcony to see if 
 the stranger perhaps was looking through some 
 wonderful apparatus at the heavens, Their rooms 
 were on the same side. But the shuttered windows 
 revealed no stooping figure with eyes glued to a 
 telescope. The stars blinked in their many thousands 
 down upon the silent desert. The night held neither 
 sound nor movement. There was a cool breeze 
 blowing across the Nile from the Lybian Sands. It 
 nipped ; and he stepped back quickly into the room 
 again. Drawing the mosquito curtains carefully 
 about the bed, he put the light out and turned over 
 to sleep. 
 
 And sleep came quickly, contrary to his expecta- 
 tions, though it was a light and surface sleep. That 
 last glimpse of the darkened Desert lying beneath 
 the Egyptian stars had touched him with some hand 
 of awful power that ousted the first, lesser excitement. 
 It calmed and soothed him in one sense, yet in another, 
 a sense he could not understand, it caught him in a 
 net of deep, deep feelings whose mesh, while infinitely 
 delicate, was utterly stupendous. His nerves this 
 deeper emotion left alone: it reached instead to 
 something infinite in him that mere nerves could 
 neither deal with nor interpret. The soul awoke and 
 whispered in him while his body slept. 
 
 And the little, foolish dreams that ran to iad fro 
 across this veil of surface sleep brought oddly tangled 
 pictures of things quite tiny and at the same time of 
 others that were mighty beyond words. With these 
 two counters Nightmare played. They interwove. 
 There was the figure of this dark-faced man with the 
 compass, measuring the sky to find the true north, 
 and there were hints of giant Presences that hovered 
 just outside some curious outline that he traced upon 
 
244 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 the ground, copied in some nightmare fashion from 
 the heavens. The excitement caused by his visitor’s 
 singular request mingled with the profounder sensa- 
 tions his final look at the stars and Desert stirred. 
 The two were somehow inter-related. 
 
 Some hours later, before this surface sleep passed 
 into genuine slumber, Henriot woke—with an appal- 
 ling feeling that the Desert had come creeping into 
 his room and now stared down upon him where he 
 lay in bed. The wind was crying audibly about the 
 walls outside. A faint, sharp tapping came against 
 the window panes. 
 
 He sprang instantly out of bed, not yet awake 
 enough to feel actual alarm, yet with the nightmare 
 touch still close enough to cause a sort of feverish, 
 loose bewilderment. He switched the lights on. A 
 moment later he knew the meaning of that curious 
 tapping, for the rising wind was flinging tiny 
 specks of sand against the glass. The idea that 
 they had summoned him belonged, of course, to 
 dream. 
 
 He opened the window, and stepped out on to the 
 balcony. The stone was very cold under his bare 
 feet. There was a wash of wind all over him. He 
 saw the sheet of glimmering, pale desert near and 
 far ; and something stung his skin below the eyes. 
 
 ‘The sand,’ he whispered, ‘again the sand; 
 always the sand. Waking or sleeping, the sand 1S 
 everywhere—nothing but sand, sand, Sand. 
 
 He rubbed his eyes. It was like talking in his 
 sleep, talking to Someone who had questioned him 
 just before he woke. But was he really properly 
 awake ? It seemed next day that he had dreamed it. 
 Something enormous, with rustling skirts of sand, 
 had just retreated far into the Desert. Sand went 
 
SAND 24.5 
 
 with it—flowing, trailing, smothering the world. 
 The wind died down. 
 
 And Henriot went back to sleep, caught instantly 
 away into unconsciousness ; covered, blinded, swept 
 over by this spreading thing of reddish brown with 
 the great, grey face, whose Being was colossal yet 
 quite tiny, and whose fingers, wings and eyes were 
 countless as the stars. 
 
 But all night long it watched and waited, rising to 
 peer above the little balcony, and sometimes entering 
 the room and piling up beside his very pillow. He 
 dreamed of Sand. 
 
Il] 
 
 For some days Henriot saw little of the man who 
 came from Birmingham and pushed curiosity to a 
 climax by asking for a compass in the middle of the 
 night. For one thing, he was a good deal with his 
 friends upon the other side of Helouan, and for 
 another, he slept several nights in the Desert. 
 
 He loved the gigantic peace the Desert gave him. 
 The world was forgotten there; and not the world 
 merely, but all memory of it. Everything faded out. 
 The soul turned inwards upon itself. 
 
 An Arab boy and donkey took out sleeping-bag, 
 food and water to the Wadi Hof, a desolate gorge 
 about an hour eastwards. It winds between cliffs 
 whose summits rise some thousand feet above the sea. 
 It opens suddenly, cut deep into the swaying world 
 of level plateaux and undulating hills. It moves 
 about too; he never found it in the same place 
 twice—like an arm of the Desert that shifted with 
 the changing lights. Here he watched dawns and 
 sunsets, slept through the mid-day heat, and enjoyed 
 the unearthly colouring that swept Day and Night 
 across the huge horizons. In solitude the Desert 
 soaked down into him. At night the jackals cried in 
 the darkness round his cautiously-fed camp fire— 
 small, because wood had to be carried—and in the 
 day-time kites circled overhead to inspect him, and an 
 
 246 
 
SAND 247 
 
 occasional white vulture flapped across the blue. 
 The weird desolation of this rocky valley, he thought, 
 was like the scenery of the moon. He took no watch 
 with him, and the arrival of the donkey boy an hour 
 after sunrise came almost frem another planet, bring- 
 ing thing of time and common life out of some distant 
 gulf where they had lain forgotten among lost ages. 
 
 The short hour of twilight brought, too, a be- 
 witchment into the silence that was a little less 
 than comfortable. Full light or darkness he could 
 manage, but this time of half things made him want 
 to shut his eyes and hide. Its effect stepped over 
 imagination. The mind got lost. He could not 
 understand it. For the cliffs and boulders of dis- 
 coloured limestone shone then with an inward glow 
 that signalled to the Desert with veiled lanterns. 
 The misshappen hills, carved by wind and rain into 
 ominous outlines, stirred and nodded. In the morning 
 light they retired into themselves, asleep. But at 
 dusk the tide retreated. They rose from the sea, 
 emerging naked, threatening. They ran together 
 and joined shoulders, the entire army of them. And 
 the glow of their sandy bodies, self-luminous, con- 
 tinued even beneath the stars. Only the moonlight 
 drowned it. For the moonrise over the Mokattam 
 Hills brought a white, grand loveliness that 
 drenched the entire Desert. It drew a marvellous 
 sweetness from the sand. It shone across a world as 
 yet unfinished, whereon no life might show itself for 
 ages yet to come. He was alone then upon an empty 
 star, before the creation of things that breathed and 
 moved. 
 
 What impressed him, however, more than every- 
 thing else was the enormous vitality that rose out of ‘ 
 all this apparent death. There was no hint of the 
 
248 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 melancholy that belongs commonly to flatness ; the 
 sadness of wide, monotonous landscape was not here. 
 The endless repetition of sweeping vale and plateau 
 brought infinity within measurable comprehension. 
 He grasped a definite meaning in the phrase ‘ world 
 without end’: the Desert had no end and no begin- 
 ning. It gave hima sense of eternal peace, the silent 
 peace that star-fields know. Instead of subduing the 
 soul with bewilderment, it inspired with courage, 
 confidence, hope. Through this sand which was the 
 wreck of countless geological ages, rushed life that 
 was terrific and uplifting, too huge to include 
 melancholy, too deep to betray itself in movement. 
 Here was the stillness of eternity. Behind the 
 spread grey masque of apparent death lay stores of 
 accumulated life, ready to break forth at any point. 
 In the Desert he felt himself absolutely royal. 
 
 And this contrast of Life, veiling itself in Death, 
 was a contradiction that somehow intoxicated. The 
 Desert exhilaration never left him. He was never 
 alone. A companionship of millions went with him, 
 and he fe/t the Desert close, as stars are close to one 
 another, or grains of sand. 
 
 It was the Khamasin, the hot wind bringing sand, 
 that drove him in—with the feeling that these few days 
 and nights had been immeasurable, and that he had 
 been away a thousand years. He came back with 
 the magic of the Desert in his blood, hotel-life taste- 
 less and insipid by comparison. To human impres- 
 sions thus he was fresh and vividly sensitive. His 
 being, cleaned and sensitized by pure grandeur, ‘ felt ’ 
 people—for a time at any rate—with an uncommon 
 sharpness of receptive judgment. He returned to 
 a life somehow mean and meagre, resuming in- 
 significance with his dinner jacket. Out with the 
 
SAND 249 
 
 sand he had been regal; now, like a slave, he strutted 
 self-concious and reduced. 
 
 But this imperial standard of the Desert stayed a 
 little time beside him, its purity focussing judgment 
 like a lens. ‘The specks of smaller emotions left it 
 clear at first, and as his‘eye wandered vaguely over 
 the people assembled in the dining-room, it was 
 arrested with a vivid shock upon two figures at the 
 little table facing him. 
 
 He had forgotten Vance, the Birmingham man 
 who sought the North at midnight with a pocket 
 compass. He now saw him again, with an intuitive 
 discernment entirely fresh. Before memory brought 
 up her clouding associations, some brilliance flashed 
 a light upon him. ‘That man,’ Henriot thought, 
 ‘might have come with me. He would have under- 
 stood and loved it!’ But the thought was really 
 this—a moment’s reflection spread it, rather: ‘He 
 belongs somewhere to the Desert ; the Desert brought 
 him out here.’ And, again, hidden swiftly behind it 
 like a movement running below water—‘ What does 
 he want with it? What is the deeper motive he 
 conceals ? For there is a deeper motive ; and it 2s 
 concealed.’ 
 
 But it was the woman seated next him who 
 absorbed his attention really, even while this thought 
 flashed and went its way. The empty chair was 
 occupied at last. Unlike his first encounter with 
 the man, she looked straight at him. ‘Their eyes met 
 fully. For several seconds there was steady mutual 
 inspection, while her penetrating stare, intent without 
 being rude, passed searchingly all over his face. It 
 was disconcerting. Crumbling his bread, he looked 
 equally hard at her, unable to turn away, determined 
 not to be the first to shift his gaze. And when at 
 
250 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 length she lowered her eyes he felt that many things 
 had happened, as in a long period of intimate con- 
 versation. Her mind had judged him through and 
 through. Questions and answer flashed. They were 
 no longer strangers. For the rest of dinner, though 
 he was careful to avoid direct inspection, he was aware 
 that she felt his presence and was secretly speaking 
 with him. She asked questions beneath her breath. 
 The answers rose with the quickened pulses in his 
 blood. Moreover, she explained Richard Vance. It 
 was this woman’s power that shone reflected in the 
 man. She was the one who knew the big, unusual 
 things. Vance merely echoed the rush of her vital 
 personality. 
 
 This was the first impression that he got—from 
 the most striking, curious face he had ever seen in a 
 woman. It remained very near him all through the 
 meal: she had moved to his table, it seemed she 
 sat beside him. Their minds certainly knew contact 
 from that moment. 
 
 It is never difficult to credit strangers with the 
 qualities and knowledge that oneself craves for, and 
 no doubt Henriot’s active fancy went busily to work. 
 But, none the less, this thing remained and grew: 
 that this woman was aware of the hidden things of 
 Egypt he had always longed to know. There was 
 knowledge and guidance she could impart. Her 
 soul was searching among ancient things. Her face 
 brought the Desert back into his thoughts. And 
 with it came—the sand. | 
 
 Here was the flash. The sight of her restored 
 the peace and splendour he had left behind him in 
 his Desert camps. The rest, of course, was what 
 his imagination constructed upon this slender basis. 
 Only,—not all of it was imagination. 
 
SAND pass 
 
 Now, Henriot knew little enough of women, 
 and had no pose of ‘understanding’ them. His 
 experience was of the slightest; the love and 
 veneration felt for his own mother had set the 
 entire sex upon the heights. His affairs with 
 women, if so they may be called, had been transient 
 —all but those of early youth, which having never 
 known the devastating test of fulfilment, still re- 
 mained ideal and superb. There was unconscious 
 humour in his attitude—from a distance; for he 
 regarded women with wonder and respect, as 
 puzzles that sweetened but complicated life, might 
 even endanger it. He certainly was not a marrying 
 man! But now, as he felt the presence of this 
 woman so deliberately possess him, there came over 
 him two clear, strong messages, each vivid with 
 certainty. One was that banal suggestion of 
 familiarity claimed by lovers and the like—he had 
 often heard of it—‘I have known that woman 
 before; I have met her ages ago somewhere; she 
 is strangely familiar to me’ ; and the other, growing 
 out of it almost: ‘Have nothing to do with her ; 
 she will bring you trouble and confusion ; avoid 
 her, and be warned’ ;—in fact, a distinct presenti- 
 ment. 
 
 Yet, although Henriot dismissed both impressions 
 as having no shred of evidence to justify them, the 
 original clear judgment, as he studied her extra- 
 ordinary countenance, persisted through all denials. 
 The familiarity, and the presentiment, remained. 
 There also remained this other—-an enormous 
 imaginative leap!—that she could teach him 
 ‘Egypt.’ 
 
 He watched her carefully, in a sense fascinated. 
 He could only describe the face as black, so dark 
 
252 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 it was with the darkness of great age. Elderly was 
 the obvious, natural word; but elderly described 
 the features only. The expression of the face wore 
 centuries. Nor was it merely the coal-black eyes 
 that betrayed an ancient, age-travelled soul behind 
 them. The entire presentment mysteriously con- 
 veyed it. This woman’s heart knew long-forgotten 
 things—the thought kept beating up against him. 
 There were cheek-bones, oddly high, that made him 
 think involuntarily of the well-advertised Pharaoh, 
 Ramases; a square, deep jaw; and an aquiline 
 nose that gave the final touch of power. For the 
 power undeniably was there, and while the general 
 effect had grimness in it, there was neither harshness 
 nor any forbidding touch about it. There was an 
 implacable sternness in the set of lips and jaw, and, 
 most curious of all, the eyelids over the steady eyes 
 of black were level as a ruler. This level framing 
 made the woman’s stare remarkable beyond de- 
 scription. Henriot thought of an idol carved in 
 stone, stone hard and black, with eyes that stared 
 across the sand into a world of things non-human, 
 very far away, forgotten of men. The face was 
 finely ugly. ‘This strange dark beauty flashed flame 
 about it. 
 
 And, as the way ever was with him, Henriot 
 next fell to constructing the possible lives of herself 
 and her companion, though without much success. 
 Imagination soon stopped dead. She was not old 
 enough to be Vance’s mother, and assuredly she was 
 not his wife. His interest was more than merely 
 piqued—it was puzzled uncommonly. What was the 
 contrast that made the man seem beside her—vile ? 
 Whence came, too, the impression that she exercised 
 some strong authority, though never directly 
 
SAND 253 
 
 exercised, that held him at her mercy? How did 
 he guess that the man resented it, yet did not dare 
 oppose, and that, apparently acquiescing good- 
 humouredly, his will was deliberately held in 
 abeyance, and that he waited sulkily, biding his 
 time? There was furtiveness in every gesture and 
 expression. A hidden motive lurked in him; un- 
 worthiness somewhere; he was determined yet 
 ashamed. He watched her ceaselessly and with 
 such uncanny closeness. 
 
 Henriot imagined he divined all this. He 
 leaped to the guess that his expenses were being 
 paid. A good deal more was being paid besides. 
 She was a rich relation, from whom he had expecta- 
 tions; he was serving his seven years, ashamed of 
 his servitude, ever calculating escape—but, perhaps, 
 no ordinary escape. A faint shudder ran over him. 
 He drew in the reins of imagination. 
 
 Of course, the probabilities were that he was 
 hopelessly astray—one usually is on such occasions 
 __but this time, it so happened, he was singularly 
 right. Before one thing only his ready invention 
 stopped every time. This vileness, this notion of 
 unworthiness in Vance, could not be negative merely. 
 A man with that face was no inactive weakling. 
 The motive he was at such pains to conceal, 
 betraying its existence by that very fact, moved, 
 surely, towards aggressive action. Disguised, it never 
 slept. Vance was sharply on the alert. He had 
 a plan deep out of sight. And Henriot remembered 
 how the man’s soft approach along the carpeted 
 corridor had made him start. He recalled the 
 quasi shock it gave him. He thought again of the 
 feeling of discomfort he had experienced. 
 
 Next, his eager fancy sought to plumb the 
 
254 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 business these two had together in Egypt—in the 
 Desert. For the Desert, he felt convinced, had 
 brought them out. But here, though he constructed 
 numerous explanations, another barrier stopped him. 
 Because he knew. This woman was in touch with 
 that aspect of ancient Egypt he himself had ever 
 sought in vain; and not merely with stones the sand 
 had buried so deep, but with the meanings they once 
 represented, buried so utterly by the sands of later 
 thought. 
 
 And here, being ignorant, he found no clue that 
 could lead to any satisfactory result, for he possessed 
 no knowledge that might guide him. He floundered 
 —until Fate helped him. And the instant Fate 
 helped him, the warning and presentiment he had 
 dismissed as fanciful, became real again. He 
 hesitated. Caution acted. He would think twice 
 before taking steps to form acquaintance. ‘Better 
 not,’ thought whispered. ‘Better leave them alone, 
 this queer couple. They’re after things that won’t 
 do you any good.’ This idea of mischief, almost 
 of danger, in their purposes was oddly insistent ; 
 for what could possibly convey it? But, while he 
 hesitated, Fate, who sent the warning, pushed him 
 at the same time into the circle of their lives: at 
 first tentatively—he might still have escaped ; but 
 soon urgently—curiosity led him inexorably towards 
 the end. 
 
IV 
 
 Ir was so simple a manceuvre by which Fate began 
 the innocent game. The woman left a couple of 
 books behind her on the table one night, and Henriot, 
 after a moment’s hesitation, took them out after her. 
 He knew the titles—The House of the Master, and 
 The House of the Hidden Places, both singular in- 
 terpretations of the Pyramids that once had held his 
 own mind spellbound. Their ideas had been since 
 disproved, if he remembered rightly, yet the titles 
 were a clue—a clue to that imaginative part of his 
 mind that was so busy constructing theories and had 
 found its stride. Loose sheets of paper, covered with 
 notes in a minute handwriting, lay between the pages ; 
 but these, of course, he did not read, noticing only 
 that they were written round designs of various kinds 
 —intricate designs. 
 
 He discovered Vance in a corner of the smoking- 
 lounge. The woman had disappeared. 
 
 Vance thanked him politely. ‘My aunt is so 
 forgetful sometimes,’ he said, and took them with 
 a covert eagerness that did not escape the other's 
 observation. He folded up the sheets and put them 
 carefully in his pocket. On one there was an ink- 
 sketched map, crammed with detail, that might well 
 have referred to some portion of the Desert. The 
 points of the compass stood out boldly at the bottom. 
 
 255 
 
256 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 There were involved geometrical designs again. 
 Henriot saw them. They exchanged, then, the 
 commonplaces of conversation, but these led to 
 nothing further. Vance was nervous and betrayed 
 impatience. He presently excused himself and left 
 the lounge. Ten minutes later he passed through 
 the outer hall, the woman beside him, and the pair 
 of them, wrapped up in cloak and ulster, went out 
 into the night. At the door, Vance turned and threw 
 a quick, investigating glance in his direction. There 
 seemed a hint of questioning in that glance ; it might 
 almost have been a tentative invitation. But, also, 
 he wanted to see if their exit had been particularly 
 noticed—and by whom. 
 
 This, briefly told, was the first manceuvre by 
 which Fate introduced them. There was nothing 
 in it. The details were so insignificant, so slight the 
 conversation, so meagre the pieces thus added to 
 Henriot’s imaginative structure. Yet they somehow 
 built it up and made it solid; the outline in his 
 mind began to stand foursquare. That writing, 
 those designs, the manner of the man, their going 
 out together, the final curious look—each and all 
 betrayed points of a hidden thing. Subconsciously 
 he was excavating their buried purposes. The sand 
 was shifting. The concentration of his mind in- 
 cessantly upon them removed it grain by grain and 
 speck by speck. Tips of the smothered thing 
 emerged. Presently a subsidence would follow with 
 a rush and light would blaze upon its skeleton. He 
 felt it stirring underneath his feet—this flowing move- 
 ment of light, dry, heaped-up sand. It was always 
 —sand. 
 
 Then other incidents of a similar kind came 
 about, clearing the way to a natural acquaintanceship. 
 
 cy a 
 
SAND 257 
 
 Flenriot watched the process with amusement, yet 
 with another feeling too that was only a little less 
 than anxiety. A keen observer, no detail escaped 
 him; he saw the forces of their lives draw closer. 
 It made him think of the devices of young people 
 who desire to know one another, yet cannot get a 
 proper introduction. Fate condescended to such 
 little tricks. They wanted a third person, he began 
 to feel. A third was necessary to some plan they 
 had on hand, and—they waited to see if he could fil 
 the place. This woman, with whom he had yet ex- 
 changed no single word, seemed so familiar to him, 
 well known for years. They weighed and watched 
 him, wondering if he would do. 
 
 None of the devices were too obviously used, but 
 at length Henriot picked up so many forgotten 
 articles, and heard so many significant phrases, 
 casually let fall, that he began to feel like the 
 villain in a machine-made play, where the hero for 
 ever drops clues his enemy is intended to discover. 
 
 Introduction followed inevitably. ‘My aunt can 
 tell you; she knows Arabic perfectly.” He had 
 been discussing the meaning of some local name or 
 other with a neighbour after dinner, and Vance had 
 joined them. The neighbour moved away; these 
 two were left standing alone, and he accepted a 
 cigarette from the other’s case. There was a rustle 
 of skirts behind them. ‘Here she comes,’ said 
 Vance ; ‘you will let me introduce you.’ He did 
 not ask for Henriot’s name; he had already taken 
 the trouble to find it out—another little betrayal, and 
 another clue. 
 
 It was in a secluded corner of the great hall, and 
 Henriot turned to see the woman’s stately figure 
 coming towards them across the thick carpet that 
 
 S 
 
258 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 deadened her footsteps. She came sailing up, her 
 black eyes fixed upon his face. Very erect, head 
 upright, shoulders almost squared, she moved wonder- 
 fully well; there was dignity and power in her walk. 
 She was dressed in black, and her face was like the 
 night. He found it impossible to say what lent her 
 this air of impressiveness and solemnity that was 
 almost majestic. But there was this touch of dark- 
 ness and of power in the way she came that made 
 him think of some sphinx-like figure of stone, some 
 idol motionless in all its parts but moving asa whole, 
 and gliding across—sand. Beneath those level lids 
 her eyes stared hard at him. And a faint sensation 
 of distress stirred in him deep, deep down. Where 
 had he seen those eyes before? 
 
 He bowed, as she joined them, and Vance led the 
 way to the armchairs in a corner of the lounge. The 
 meeting, as the talk that followed, he felt, were all 
 part of a preconceived plan. It had happened before. 
 The woman, that is, was familiar to him—to some 
 part of his being that had dropped stitches of old, 
 old memory. 
 
 Lady Statham! At first the name had disap- 
 pointed him. So many folk wear titles, as syllables 
 in certain tongues wear accents—without them being 
 mute, unnoticed, unpronounced. Nonentities, born to 
 names, so often claim attention for their insignificance 
 in this way. But this woman, had she been Jemima 
 Jones, would have made the name distinguished and 
 select. She wasa big and sombre personality. Why 
 was it, he wondered afterwards, that for a moment 
 something in him shrank, and that his mind, metaphori- 
 cally speaking, flung up an arm in self-protection 
 The instinct flashed and passed. But it seemed to 
 him born of an automatic feeling that he must 
 
SAND 259 
 
 protect—not himself, but the woman from the man. 
 There was confusion in it all; links were missing. 
 He studied her intently. She was a woman who 
 had none of the external feminine signals in either 
 dress or manner, no graces, no little womanly hesita- 
 tions and alarms, no daintiness, yet neither anything 
 distinctly masculine. Her charm was strong, possess- 
 ing; only he kept forgetting that he was talking toa 
 —woman; and the thing she inspired in him included, 
 with respect and wonder, somewhere also this curious 
 hint of dread. This instinct to protect her fled as 
 soon as it was born, for the interest of the conversa- 
 tion in which she so quickly plunged him obliterated 
 all minor emotions whatsoever. Here, for the first 
 time, he drew close to Egypt, the Egypt he had 
 sought so long. It was not to be explained. He 
 felt it. 
 
 Beginning with commonplaces, such as ‘ You like 
 Egypt? You find here what you expected?’ she 
 led him into better regions with ‘ One finds here what 
 one brings.” He knew the delightful experience of 
 talking fluently on subjects he was at home in, and to 
 some one who understood. The feeling at first that to 
 this woman he could not say mere anythings, slipped 
 into its opposite—that he could say everything. 
 Strangers ten minutes ago, they were at once in deep 
 and intimate talk together. He found his ideas 
 readily followed, agreed with up to a point—the 
 point which permits discussion to start from a basis 
 of general accord towards speculation. In the excite- 
 ment of ideas he neglected the uncomfortable note 
 that had stirred his caution, forgot the warning too. 
 Her mind, moreover, seemed known to him ; he was 
 often aware of what she was going to say before he 
 actually heard it; the current of her thoughts struck 
 
260 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 a familiar gait, and more than once he experienced 
 vividly again the odd sensation that it all had happened 
 before. The very sentences and phrases with which 
 she pointed the turns of her unusual ideas were never 
 wholly unexpected. 
 
 For her ideas were decidedly unusual, in the sense 
 that she accepted without question speculations not 
 commonly deemed worth consideration at all, indeed 
 not ordinarily even known. MHenriot knew them, 
 because he had read in many fields. It was the 
 strength of her belief that fascinated him. She 
 offered no apologies. She knew. And while he 
 talked, she listening with folded arms and her black 
 eyes fixed upon his own, Richard Vance watched with 
 vigilant eyes and listened too, ceaselessly alert. Vance 
 joined in little enough, however, gave no opinions, his 
 attitude one of general acquiescence. Twice, when 
 pauses of slackening interest made it possible, Henriot 
 fancied he surprised another quality in this negative 
 attitude. Interpreting it each time differently, he yet 
 dismissed both interpretations with a smile. His 
 imagination leaped so absurdly to violent conclusions. 
 They were not tenable : Vance was neither her keeper, 
 nor was he in some fashion a detective. Yet in his 
 manner was sometimes this suggestion of the detective 
 order. He watched with such deep attention, and 
 he concealed it so clumsily with an affectation of 
 careless indifference. 
 
 There is nothing more dangerous than that 
 impulsive intimacy strangers sometimes adopt when 
 an atmosphere of mutual sympathy takes them by 
 surprise, for it is akin to the false frankness friends 
 affect when telling ‘candidly’ one another’s faults. 
 The mood is invariably regretted later. Henriot, 
 however, yielded to it now with something like 
 
SAND 261 
 
 abandon. ‘The pleasure of talking with this woman 
 was so unexpected, and so keen. 
 
 For Lady Statham believed apparently in some 
 Egypt of her dreams. Her interest was neither 
 historical, archaeological, nor political. It was religious 
 —yet hardly of this earth at all. The conversation 
 turned upon the knowledge of the ancient Egyptians 
 from an unearthly point of view, and even while he 
 talked he was vaguely aware that it was her mind 
 talking through his own. She drew out his ideas 
 and made him say them. But this he was properly 
 aware of only afterwards—that she had cleverly, 
 mercilessly pumped him of all he had ever known 
 or read upon the subject. Moreover, what Vance 
 watched so intently was himself, and the reactions in 
 himself this remarkable woman produced. That 
 also he realised later. 
 
 His first impression that these two belonged to 
 what may be called the ‘crank’ order was justified 
 by the conversation. But, at least, it was interesting 
 crankiness, and the belief behind it made it even 
 fascinating. Long before the end he surprised in 
 her a more vital form of his own attitude that 
 anything may be true, since knowledge has never 
 yet found final answers to any of the biggest 
 questions. 
 
 He understood, from sentences dropped early in 
 the talk, that she was among those few ‘ superstitious ’ 
 folk who think that the old Egyptians came closer 
 to reading the eternal riddles of the world than any 
 others, and that their knowledge was a remnant of 
 that ancient Wisdom Religion which existed in the 
 superb, dark civilization of the sunken Atlantis, lost 
 continent that once joined Africa to Mexico. Eighty 
 thousand years ago the dim sands of Poseidonis, 
 
262 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 great island adjoining the main continent which itself 
 had vanished a vast period before, sank down beneath 
 the waves, and the entire known world to-day was 
 descended from its survivors. Hence the significant 
 fact that all religions and ‘mythological’ systems 
 begin with a story of a flood—some cataclysmic 
 upheaval that destroyed the world. Egypt itself was 
 colonised by a group of Atlantean priests who brought 
 their curious, deep knowledge with them. They had 
 foreseen the cataclysm. 
 
 Lady Statham talked well, bringing into her great 
 dream this strong, insistent quality of belief and fact. 
 She knew, from Plato to Donelly, all that the minds 
 of men have ever speculated upon the gorgeous 
 legend. The evidence for such a sunken continent— 
 Henriot had skimmed it too in years gone by— 
 she made bewilderingly complete. He had heard 
 Baconians demolish Shakespeare with an array of 
 evidence equally overwhelming. It catches the 
 imagination though not the mind. Yet out of her 
 facts, as she presented them, grew a strange likeli- 
 hood. The force of this woman’s personality, and 
 her calm and quiet way of believing all she talked 
 about, took her listener to some extent—further than 
 ever before, certainly—into the great dream after 
 her. And the dream, to say the least, was a 
 picturesque one, laden with wonderful possibilities. 
 For as she talked the spirit of old Egypt moved up, 
 staring down upon him out of eyes lidded so curiously 
 level. Hitherto all had prated to him of the Arabs, 
 their ancient faith and customs, and the splendour of 
 the Bedouins, those Princes of the Desert. But 
 what he sought, barely confessed in words even to 
 himself, was something older far than this. And 
 this strange, dark woman brought it close. Deeps in 
 
SAND 263 
 
 his soul, long slumbering, awoke. He heard for- 
 gotten questions. 
 
 Only in this brief way could he attempt to sum 
 up the storm she roused in him. 
 
 She carried him far beyond mere outline, how- 
 ever, though afterwards he recalled the details with 
 difficulty. So much more was suggested than 
 actually expressed. She contrived to make the 
 general modern scepticism an evidence of cheap 
 mentality. It was so easy; the depth it affects to 
 conceal, mere emptiness. ‘ We have tried all things, 
 and found all wanting’—the mind, as measuring 
 instrument, merely confessed inadequate. Various 
 shrewd judgments of this kind increased his respect, 
 although her acceptance went so far beyond his own. 
 And, while the label of credulity refused to stick to 
 her, her sense of imaginative wonder enabled her to 
 escape that dreadful compromise, a man’s mind in a 
 woman’s temperament. She fascinated hints 
 
 The spiritual worship of the ancient Egyptians, 
 she held, was a symbolical explanation of things 
 generally alluded to as the secrets of life and death ; 
 their knowledge was a remnant of the wisdom of 
 Atlantis. Material relics, equally misunderstood, 
 still stood to-day at Karnac, Stonehenge, and in the 
 mysterious writings on buried Mexican temples and 
 cities, so significantly akin to the hieroglyphics upon 
 the Egyptian tombs. 
 
 ‘The one misinterpreted as literally as the other, 
 she suggested, ‘yet both fragments of an advanced 
 knowledge that found its grave in the sea. The 
 Wisdom of that old spiritual system has vanished 
 from the world, only a degraded literalism left of 
 its undecipherable language. The jewel has been - 
 lost, and the casket is filled with sand, sand, sand.’ 
 
264 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 How keenly her black eyes searched his own as 
 she said it, and how oddly she made the little word 
 resound. ‘The syllable drew out almost into chanting. 
 Echoes answered from the depths within him, carrying 
 it on and on across some desert of forgotten belief. 
 Veils of sand flew everywhere about his mind. 
 Curtains lifted. Whole hills of sand went shifting 
 into level surfaces whence gardens of dim outline 
 emerged to meet the sunlight. 
 
 ‘But the sand may be removed.’ It was her 
 nephew, speaking almost for the first time, and the 
 interruption had an odd effect, introducing a sharply 
 practical element. For the tone expressed, so far 
 as he dared express it, disapproval. It was a baited 
 observation, an invitation to opinion. 
 
 ‘We are not sand-diggers, Mr. Henriot,’ put in 
 Lady Statham, before he decided to respond. ‘Our 
 object is quite another one; and I believe—I have 
 a feeling,’ she added almost questioningly, ‘that you 
 might be interested enough to help us perhaps.’ 
 
 Fle only wondered the direct attack had not come 
 sooner. Its bluntness hardly surprised him. He 
 felt himself leap forward to accept it. A sudden 
 subsidence had freed his feet. 
 
 Then the warning operated suddenly—for an 
 instant. Henriot was interested ; more, he was half 
 seduced ; but, as yet, he did not mean to be included 
 in their purposes, whatever these might be. ‘That 
 shrinking dread came back a moment, and was gone 
 again before he could question it. His eyes looked 
 full at Lady Statham. ‘What is it that you know?’ 
 they asked her. ‘Tell me the things we once knew 
 together, you and I. These words are merely 
 trifling. And why does another man now stand in 
 my place? For the sands heaped upon my memory 
 
SAND 265 
 
 are shifting, and it is you who are moving them 
 away.’ 
 
 His soul whispered it; his voice said quite 
 another thing, although the words he used seemed 
 oddly chosen : 
 
 ‘There is much in the-ideas of ancient Egypt that 
 has attracted me ever since I can remember, though 
 I have never caught up with anything definite enough 
 to follow. There was majesty somewhere in their 
 conceptions—a large, calm majesty of spiritual 
 dominion, one might call it perhaps. I am in- 
 terested.’ 
 
 Her face remained expressionless as she listened, 
 but there was grave conviction in the eyes that held 
 him like a spell. He saw through them into dim, 
 faint pictures whose background was always sand. 
 He forgot that he was speaking with a woman, a 
 woman who half an hour ago had been a stranger to 
 him. He followed these faded mental pictures, 
 though he never caught them up... . It was like 
 his dream in London. 
 
 Lady Statham was talking—he had not noticed 
 the means by which she effected the abrupt transition 
 —of familiar beliefs of old Egypt; of the Ka, or 
 Double, by whose existence the survival of the soul 
 was possible, even its return into manifested, physical 
 life ; of the astrology, or influence of the heavenly 
 bodies upon all sublunar activities ; of terrific forms 
 of other life, known to the ancient worship of 
 Atlantis, great Potencies that might be invoked by 
 ritual and ceremonial, and of their lesser influence 
 as recognised in certain lower forms, hence treated 
 with veneration as the ‘Sacred Animal’ branch of 
 this dim religion. And she spoke lightly of the 
 modern learning which so glibly imagined it was the 
 
266 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 animals themselves that were looked upon as ‘gods’ 
 —the bull, the bird, the crocodile, the cat. ‘It’s 
 there they all go so absurdly wrong,’ she said, ‘ taking 
 the symbol for the power symbolised. Yet natural 
 enough. The mind to-day wears blinkers, studies 
 only the details seen directly before it. Had none 
 of us experienced love, we should think the first 
 lover mad. Few-to-day know the Powers they knew, 
 hence deny them. If the world were deaf it would 
 stand with mockery before a hearing group swayed 
 by an orchestra, pitying both listeners and performers. 
 It would deem our admiration of a great swinging 
 bell mere foolish worship of form and movement. 
 Similarly, with high Powers that once expressed 
 themselves in common forms—where best they could 
 —being themselves bodiless. The learned men 
 classify the forms with painstaking detail. But deity 
 has gone out of life. The Powers symbolised are no 
 longer experienced.’ 
 
 ‘These Powers, you suggest, then—their Kas, as 
 it were—may still ; 
 
 But she waved aside the interruption. ‘They are 
 satisfied, as the common people were, with a degraded 
 literalism,’ she went on. ‘Nut was the Heavens, 
 who spread herself across the earth in the form of 
 a woman; Shu, the vastness of space; the ibis 
 typified Thoth, and Hathor was the Patron of the 
 Western Hills; Khonsu, the moon, was personified, 
 as was the deity of the Nile. But the high priest of 
 Ra, the sun, you notice, remained ever the Great One 
 of Visions.’ 
 
 The High Priest, the Great One of Visions !— 
 How wonderfully again she made the sentence sing. 
 She put splendour into it. The pictures shifted 
 suddenly closer in his mind. He saw the grandeur of 
 
SAND 267 
 
 Memphis and Heliopolis rise against the stars and 
 shake the sand of ages from their stern old temples. 
 
 ‘You think it possible, then, to get into touch 
 with these High Powers you speak of, Powers once 
 manifested in common forms?’ 
 
 Henriot asked the question with a degree of 
 conviction and solemnity that surprised himself. 
 The scenery changed about him as he listened. ‘The 
 spacious halls of this former khedivial Palace melted 
 into Desert spaces. He smelt the open wilderness, 
 the sand that haunted Helouan. The soft-footed 
 Arab servants moved across the hall in their white 
 sheets like eddies of dust the wind stirred from the 
 Libyan dunes. And over these two strangers close 
 beside him stole a queer, indefinite alteration. 
 Moods and emotions, nameless as unknown stars, 
 rose through his soul, trailing dark mists of memory 
 from unfathomable distances. 
 
 Lady Statham answered him indirectly. He 
 found himself wishing that those steady eyes would 
 sometimes close. 
 
 ‘Love is known only by feeling it,’ she said, 
 her voice deepening a little. ‘Behind the form you 
 feel the person loved. The process is an evocation, 
 pure and simple. An arduous ceremonial, involving 
 worship and devotional preparation, is the means. 
 It is a difficult ritual—the only one acknowledged 
 by the world as still effectual. Ritual is the passage 
 way of the soul into the Infinite.’ 
 
 He might have said the words himself. The 
 thought lay in him while she uttered it. Evocation 
 everywhere in life was as true as assimilation. 
 Nevertheless, he stared his companion full in the 
 eyes with a touch of almost rude amazement. But 
 no further questions prompted themselves; or, 
 
268 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 rather, he declined to ask them. He recalled, 
 somehow uneasily, that in ceremonial the points of 
 the compass have significance, standing for forces 
 and activities that sleep there until invoked, and a 
 passing light fell upon that curious midnight request 
 in the corridor upstairs. These two were on the 
 track of undesirable experiments, he thought. . . . 
 They wished to include him too. 
 
 ‘You go at night sometimes into the Desert 2?” he 
 heard himself saying. It was impulsive and mis- 
 calculated. His feeling that it would be wise to 
 change the conversation resulted in giving it fresh 
 impetus instead. 
 
 ‘We saw you there—in the Wadi Hof,’ put in 
 Vance, suddenly breaking his long silence ; ‘ you too 
 sleep out, then? It means, you know, the Valley of 
 Fear.’ 
 
 ‘We wondered—’ It was Lady Statham’s voice, 
 and she leaned forward eagerly as she said it, then 
 abruptly left the sentence incomplete. Henriot 
 started ; a sense of momentary acute discomfort 
 again ran over him. The same second she continued, 
 though obviously changing the phrase—‘we wondered 
 how you spent your day there, during the heat. But 
 you paint, don’t you? You draw, I mean ?’ 
 
 The commonplace question, he realised in every 
 fibre of his being, meant something shey deemed 
 significant. Was it his talent for drawing that they 
 sought to use him for? Even as he answered with 
 a simple affirmative, he had a flash of intuition that 
 might be fanciful, yet that might be true: that this 
 extraordinary pair were intent upon some ceremony 
 of evocation that should summon into actual physical 
 expression some Power—some type of life—known 
 long ago to ancient worship, and that they even 
 
SAND 269 
 
 sought to fix its bodily outline with the pencil—his 
 pencil. 
 
 A gateway of incredible adventure opened at his 
 feet. He balanced on the edge of knowing un- 
 utterable things. Here was a clue that might lead 
 him towards the hidden Egypt he had ever craved to 
 know. An awful hand was beckoning. The sands 
 were shifting. He saw the million eyes of the Desert 
 watching him from beneath the level lids of centuries. 
 Speck by speck, and grain by grain, the sand that 
 smothered memory lifted the countless wrappings 
 that embalmed it. 
 
 And he was willing, yet afraid. Why in the 
 world did he hesitate and shrink? Why was it that 
 the presence of this silent, watching personality in 
 the chair beside him kept caution still alive, with 
 warning close behind? ‘The pictures in his mind 
 were gorgeously coloured. It was Richard Vance 
 who somehow streaked them through with black. A 
 thing of darkness, born of this man’s unassertive 
 presence, flitted ever across the scenery, marring its 
 
 randeur with something evil, petty, dreadful. He 
 held a horrible thought alive. His mind was thinking 
 venal purposes. 
 
 In Henriot himself imagination had grown 
 curiously heated, fed by what had been suggested 
 rather than actually said. Ideas of immensity crowded 
 his brain, yet never assumed definite shape. They 
 were familiar, even as this strange woman was familiar. 
 Once, long ago, he had known them well; had even 
 practised them beneath these bright Egyptian stars. 
 Whence came this prodigious glad excitement in his 
 heart, this sense of mighty Powers coaxed down to 
 influence the very details of daily life? Behind them, © 
 for all their vagueness, lay an archetypal splendour, 
 
270 - PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 fraught with forgotten meanings. He had always 
 been aware of it in this mysterious land, but it had 
 ever hitherto eluded him. It hovered everywhere. 
 He had felt it brooding behind the towering Colossi 
 at Thebes, in the skeletons of wasted temples, in the 
 uncouth comeliness of the Sphinx, and in the crude 
 terror of the Pyramids even. Over the whole of 
 Egypt hung its invisible wings. These were but 
 isolated fragments of the Body that might express it. 
 And the Desert remained its cleanest, truest syrnbol. 
 Sand knew it closest. Sand might even give it 
 bodily form and outline. 
 
 But, while it escaped description in his mind, as 
 equally it eluded visualisation in his soul, he felt that 
 it combined with its vastness something infinitely 
 small as well. Of such wee particles is the giant 
 Desert:bornic. sa); 
 
 Henriot started nervously in his chair, convicted 
 once more of unconscionable staring ; and at the 
 same moment a group of hotel people, returning 
 from a dance, passed through the hall and nodded — 
 him good-night. The scent of the women reached 
 him ; and with it the sound of their voices discussing 
 personalities just left behind. A London atmo- 
 sphere came with them. He caught trivial phrases, 
 uttered in a drawling tone, and followed by the 
 shrill laughter of a girl. They passed upstairs, dis- 
 cussing their little things, like marionettes upon a 
 tiny stage. 
 
 But their passage brought him back to things of 
 modern life, and to some standard of familiar measure- 
 ment. ‘The pictures that his soul had gazed at so 
 deep within, he realised, were a pictorial transfer 
 caught incompletely from this woman’s vivid mind. 
 He had seen the Desert as the grey, enormous Tomb 
 
SAND 271 
 where hovered still the Ka of ancient Egypt. Sand 
 
 screened her visage with the veil of centuries. But 
 She was there, and She was living. Egypt herself 
 had pitched a temporary camp in him, and then 
 moved on. 
 
 There was a momentary break, a sense of abrupt- 
 ness and dislocation. And then he became aware 
 that Lady Statham had been speaking for some time 
 before he caught her actual words, and that a certain 
 change had come into her voice as also into her 
 manner. 
 
Vv 
 
 SHE was leaning closer to him, her face suddenly 
 glowing and alive. Through the stone figure 
 coursed the fires of a passion that deepened the 
 coal-black eyes and communicated a hint of light 
 —of exaltation—to her whole person. It was in- 
 credibly moving. To this deep passion was due the 
 power he had felt. It was her entire life ; ‘she lived 
 for it, she would die for it. Her calmness of manner 
 enhanced its effect. Hence the strength of those first 
 impressions that had stormed him. The woman had 
 belief ; however wild and strange, it was sacred to 
 her. The secret of her influence was—conviction. 
 
 His attitude shifted several points then. The 
 wonder in him passed over into awe. The things 
 she knew were real. They were not merely 
 imaginative speculations. 
 
 ‘I knew I was not wrong in thinking you in 
 sympathy with this line of thought,’ she was saying 
 in lower voice, steady with earnestness, and as 
 though she had read his mind. ‘You, too, know, 
 though perhaps you hardly realise that you know. 
 It lies so deep in you that you only get vague feelings 
 of it—intimations of memory. Isn’t that the case °’ 
 
 Henriot gave assent with his eyes; it was the 
 truth. 
 
 ‘What we know instinctively,’ she continued, 
 
 272 
 
SAND 274 
 
 ‘is simply what we are trying to remember. Know- 
 ledge is memory.’ She paused a moment watching 
 his face closely. ‘At least, you are free from that 
 cheap scepticism which labels these old beliefs as 
 superstition.’ It was not even a question. 
 
 ‘I—worship real belief—of any kind,’ he 
 stammered, for her words and the close proximity 
 of her atmosphere caused a strange upheaval in his 
 heart that he could not account for. He faltered 
 in his speech. ‘It is the most vital quality in life 
 —rarer than deity.’ He was using her own phrases 
 even. ‘It is creative. It constructs the world 
 anew-——— 
 
 ‘And may reconstruct the old.’ 
 
 She said it, lifting her face above him a little, so that 
 her eyes looked down into his own. It grew big and 
 somehow masculine. It was the face of a priest, 
 spiritual power init. Where, oh where in the echoing 
 Past had he known this woman’s soul? He saw her 
 in another setting, a forest of columns dim about 
 her, towering above giant aisles. Again he felt the 
 Desert had come close. Into this tent-like hall of 
 the hotel came the sifting of tiny sand. It heaped 
 softly about the very furniture against his feet, 
 blocking the exits of door and window. It 
 shrouded the little present. The wind that brought 
 it stirred a veil that had hung for ages motion- 
 188.5) 
 
 She had been saying many things that he had 
 missed while his mind went searching. ‘There 
 were types of life the Atlantean system knew it 
 might revive-—life unmanifested to-day in any 
 bodily form,’ was the sentence he caught with his 
 return to the actual present. 
 
 ‘A type of life?’ he whispered, looking about 
 
 e 
 
274 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 him, as though to see who it was had joined them ; 
 ‘you mean a—soul? Some kind of soul, alien to 
 humanity, or to—to any forms of living thing in 
 the world to-day?’ What she had been saying 
 reached him somehow, it seemed, though he had 
 not heard the words themselves. Still hesitating, 
 he was yet so eager to hear. Already he felt she 
 meant to include him in her purposes, and that in 
 the end he must go willingly. So strong was her 
 persuasion on his mind. 
 
 And he felt as if he knew vaguely what was 
 coming. Before she answered his curious question 
 — prompting it indeed—rose in his mind that 
 strange idea of the Group-Soul: the theory that 
 big souls cannot express themselves in a single 
 individual, but need an entire group for their full 
 manifestation. 
 
 He listened intently. The reflection that this 
 sudden intimacy was unnatural, he rejected, for many 
 conversations were really gathered into one. Long 
 watching and preparation on both sides had cleared 
 the way for the ripening of acquaintance into con- 
 fidence—how long he dimly wondered? But if 
 this conception of the Group-Soul was not new, 
 the suggestion Lady Statham developed out of it 
 was both new and startling—and yet always so 
 curiously familiar. Its value for him lay, not in 
 far-fetched evidence that supported it, but in the 
 deep belief which made it a vital asset in an honest 
 inner life. 
 
 ‘An individual,’ she said quietly, ‘one soul 
 expressed completely in a single person, I mean, 
 is exceedingly rare. Not often is a physical instru- 
 ment found perfect enough to provide it with 
 adequate expression. In the lower ranges of 
 
SAND 2G 
 
 humanity—certainly in animal and insect life—one 
 soul is shared by many. Behind a tribe of savages 
 stands one Savage. A flock of birds is a single 
 Bird, scattered through the consciousness of all. 
 They wheel in mid-air, they migrate, they obey 
 the deep intelligence called instinct—all as one. 
 The life of any one lion is the life of all—the lion 
 group-soul that manifests itself in the entire genus. 
 An ant-heap is a single Ant; through the bees 
 spreads the consciousness of a single Bee.’ 
 
 Henriot knew what she was working up to. In 
 his eagerness to hasten disclosure he interrupted——_— 
 
 ‘And there may be types of life that have no 
 corresponding bodily expression at all, then?’ he 
 asked as though the question were forced out of 
 him. ‘They exist as Powers—unmanifested on 
 the earth to-day ?’ 
 
 ‘Powers,’ she answered, watching him closely 
 with unswerving stare, ‘that need a group to 
 provide their body—their physical expression— if 
 they came back.’ 
 
 ‘Came back !’ he repeated below his breath. 
 
 But she heard him. < They once had expression. 
 Egypt, Atlantis knew them—spiritual Powers that 
 never visit the world to-day.’ 
 
 ‘Bodies,’ he whispered softly, ‘actual bodies?’ 
 
 ‘Their sphere of action, you see, would be their 
 body. And it might be physical outline. So 
 potent a descent of spiritual life would select 
 materials for its body where it could find them. Our 
 conventional notion of a body—what is it? A 
 single outline moving altogether in one direction. 
 For little human souls, or fragments, this is 
 sufficient. But for vaster types of soul an entire 
 host would be required.’ 
 
276 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 ‘A church?’ he ventured. ‘Some Body of 
 belief, you surely mean? ’ 
 
 She bowed her head a moment in assent. She 
 was determined he should seize her meaning fully. 
 
 ‘A wave of spiritual awakening—a descent of 
 spiritual life upon a nation,’ she answered slowly, 
 ‘forms itself a church, and the body of true believers 
 are its sphere of action. They are literally its bodily 
 expression. Each individual believer is a corpuscle 
 in that Body. The Power has provided itself with 
 a vehicle of manifestation. Otherwise we could not 
 know it. And the more real the belief of each 
 individual, the more perfect the expression of the 
 spiritual life behind them all. A Group-soul walks 
 the earth. Moreover, a nation naturally devout 
 could attract a type of soul unknown to a nation 
 that denies all faith. Faith brings back the gods. 
 
 . But to-day belief is dead, and Deity has left 
 the world.’ 
 
 She talked on and on, developing this main idea 
 that in days of older faiths there were deific types 
 of life upon the earth, evoked by worship and 
 béneficial to humanity. They had long ago with- 
 drawn because the worship which brought them 
 down had died the death. The world had grown 
 pettier. These vast centres of Spiritual Power 
 found no ‘Body’ in which they now could express 
 themselves or manifest. . . . Her thoughts and 
 phrases poured over him like sand. It was always 
 sand he felt—burying the Present and uncovering 
 the asta 
 
 He tried to steady his mind upon familiar objects, 
 but wherever he looked Sand stared him in the face. 
 Outside these trivial walls the Desert lay listening. 
 It lay waiting too. Vance himself had dropped out 
 
SAND 277 
 
 of recognition. He belonged to the world of things 
 to-day. But this woman and himself stood thousands 
 of years away, beneath the columns of a Temple in 
 the sands. And the sands were moving. His feet 
 went shifting with them .. . running down vistas 
 of ageless memory that woke terror by their sheer 
 immensity of distance. . . . 
 
 Like a muffled voice that called to him through 
 many veils and wrappings, he heard her describe the 
 stupendous Powers that evocation might coax down 
 again among the world of men. 
 
 ‘To what useful end ?’ he asked at length, amazed 
 at his own temerity, and because he knew instinctively 
 the answer in advance. It rose through these layers 
 of coiling memory in his soul. 
 
 ‘The extension of spiritual knowledge and the 
 widening of life,’ she answered. ‘The link with the 
 ‘unearthly kingdom” wherein this ancient system 
 went forever searching, would be re-established. 
 Complete rehabilitation might follow. Portions— 
 little portions of these Powers—expressed themselves 
 naturally once in certain animal types, instinctive life 
 that did not deny or reject them. The worship of 
 sacred animals was the relic of a once gigantic system 
 of evocation—not of monsters,’ and she smiled sadly, 
 ‘but of Powers that were willing and ready to 
 descend when worship summoned them.’ 
 
 Again, beneath his breath, Henriot heard him- 
 self murmur—his own voice startled him as he 
 whispered it: ‘Actual bodily shape and outline?’ 
 
 ‘Material for bodies is everywhere,’ she answered, 
 equally low ; ‘dust to which we all return ; sand, if 
 you prefer it, fine, fine sand. Life moulds it easily 
 enough, when that life is potent.’ 
 
 A certain confusion spread slowly through his 
 
278 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 mind as he heard her. He lit a cigarette and smoked 
 some minutes in silence. Lady Statham and her 
 nephew waited for him to speak. At length, after 
 some inner battling and hesitation, he put the 
 question that he knew they waited for. It was 
 impossible to resist any longer. 
 
 ‘It would be interesting to know the method,’ he 
 said, ‘and to revive, perhaps, by experiment 
 
 Before he could complete his thought, she took 
 him up: 
 
 ‘There are some who claim to know it,’ she said 
 gravely—her eyes a moment masterful. ‘A clue, 
 thus followed, might lead to the entire reconstruction 
 I spoke of.’ 
 
 ‘And the method?’ he repeated faintly. 
 
 ‘Evoke the Power by ceremonial evocation—the 
 ritual is obtainable—and note the form it assumes. 
 Then establish it. This shape or outline once secured, 
 could then be made permanent—a mould for its 
 return at will—its natural physical expression here 
 on earth.’ 
 
 ‘Idol!’ he exclaimed. 
 
 ‘Image,’ she replied at once. ‘Life, before we 
 can know it must have a body. Our souls, in order 
 to manifest here, need a material vehicle.’ 
 
 ‘ And—to obtain this form or outline ?’ he began ; 
 ‘to fix it, rather?’ 
 
 ‘Would be required the clever pencil of a fearless 
 looker-on—some one not engaged in the actual 
 evocation. This form, accurately made permanent 
 in solid matter, say in stone, would provide a 
 channel always open. Experiment, properly speaking, 
 might then begin. The cisterns of Power behind 
 would be accessible.’ 
 
 _ ©An amazing proposition!’ Henriot exclaimed. 
 
SAND 279 
 
 What surprised him was that he felt no desire to 
 laugh, and little even to doubt. 
 
 ‘Yet known to every religion that ever deserved 
 the name,’ put in Vance like a voice from a distance. 
 Blackness came somehow with his interruption—a 
 touch of darkness. He spoke eagerly. 
 
 To all the talk that followed, and there was much 
 of it, Henriot listened with but half an ear. This 
 one idea stormed through him with an uproar that 
 killed attention. Judgment was held utterly in 
 abeyance. He carried away from it some vague 
 suggestion that this woman had hinted at previous 
 lives she half remembered, and that every year she 
 came to Egypt, haunting the sands and temples in 
 the effort to recover lost clues. And he recalled 
 afterwards that she said, ‘This all came to me as 
 a child, just as though it was something half 
 remembered.’ There was the further suggestion 
 that he himself was not unknown to her; that 
 they, too, had met before. But this, compared to 
 the grave certainty of the rest, was merest fantasy 
 that did not hold his attention. He answered, 
 hardly knowing what he said. His preoccupation 
 with other thoughts deep down was so intense, that 
 he was probably barely polite, uttering empty phrases, 
 with his mind elsewhere. His one desire was to 
 escape and be alone, and it was with genuine relief 
 that he presently excused himself and went upstairs 
 to bed. The halls, he noticed, were empty; an 
 Arab servant waited to put the lights out. He 
 walked up, for the lift had long ceased running. 
 
 And the magic of old Egypt stalked beside him. 
 The studies that had fascinated his mind in earlier 
 youth returned with the power that had subdued his 
 mind in boyhood. The cult of Osiris woke in his 
 
280 PAN’S GARDEN 
 blood again; Horus and Nephthys stirred in their 
 
 long-forgotten centres. There revived in him, too 
 long buried, the awful glamour of those liturgal 
 rites and vast body of observances, those spells and 
 formulae of incantation of the oldest known rescension 
 that years ago had captured his imagination and 
 belief—the Book of the Dead. Trumpet voices 
 called to his heart again across the desert of some 
 dim past. There were forms of life—impulses from 
 the Creative Power which is the Universe—other 
 than the soul of man. They could be known. A 
 spiritual exaltation, roused by the words and presence 
 of this singular woman, shouted to him as he went. 
 
 Then, as he closed his bedroom door, carefully 
 locking it, there stood beside him—Vance. The 
 forgotten figure of Vance came up close—the 
 watching eyes, the simulated interest, the feigned 
 belief, the detective mental attitude, these broke 
 through the grandiose panorama, bringing darkness. 
 Vance, strong personality that hid behind assumed 
 nonentity for some purpose of his own, intruded 
 with sudden violence, demanding an explanation of 
 his presence. 
 
 And, with an equal suddenness, explanation offered 
 itself then and there. It came unsought, its horror 
 of certainty utterly unjustified ; and it came in this 
 unexpected fashion : 
 
 Behind the interest and acquiescence of the man 
 ran—fear: but behind the vivid fear ran another 
 thing that Henriot now perceived was vile. For 
 the first time in his life, Henriot knew it at close 
 quarters, actual, ready to operate. Though familiar 
 enough in daily life to be of common occurrence, 
 Henriot had never realised it as he did now, so close 
 and terrible. In the same way he had never realised 
 
SAND 281 
 
 that he would die—vanish from the busy world of 
 men and women, forgotten as though he had never 
 existed, an eddy of wind-blown dust. And in the 
 man named Richard Vance this thing was close upon 
 blossom. Henriot could not name it to himself. 
 Even in thought it appalled him. 
 
 He undressed hurriedly, almost with the child’s 
 idea of finding safety between the sheets. His 
 mind undressed itself as well. The business of the 
 day laid itself automatically aside; the will sank 
 down ; desire grew inactive. Henriot was exhausted. 
 But, in that stage towards slumber when thinking 
 stops, and only fugitive pictures pass across the mind — 
 in shadowy dance, his brain ceased shouting its 
 mechanical explanations, and his soul unveiled a 
 peering eye. Great limbs of memory, smothered by 
 the activities of the Present, stirred their stiffened 
 lengths through the sands of long ago—sands this 
 woman had begun to excavate from some far-off 
 pre-existence they had surely known together. 
 Vagueness and certainty ran hand in hand. Details 
 were unrecoverable, but the emotions in which they 
 were embedded moved. 
 
 He turned restlessly in his bed, striving to seize 
 the amazing clues and follow them. But deliberate 
 effort hid them instantly again; they retired in- 
 stantly into the subconsciousness. With the brain 
 of this body he now occupied they had nothing to 
 do. The brain stored memories of each life only. 
 This ancient script was graven in his soul. Subcon- 
 sciousness alone could interpret and reveal. And it 
 was his subconscious memory that Lady Statham had 
 been so busily excavating. 
 
 Dimly it stirred and moved about the depths 
 
282 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 within him, never clearly seen, indefinite, felt as a 
 yearning after unrecoverable knowledge. Against 
 the darker background of Vance’s fear and sinister 
 purpose—both of this present life, and recent—he 
 saw the grandeur of this woman’s impossible dream, 
 and kuew, beyond argument or reason, that it was 
 true. Judgment and will asleep, he left the im- 
 possibility aside, and took the grandeur. The 
 Belief of Lady Statham was not credulity and super- 
 stition ; it was Memory. Still to this day, over the 
 sands of Egypt, hovered immense spiritual potencies, 
 so vast that they could only know physical expression 
 in a group—in many. Their sphere of bodily 
 manifestation must be a host, each individual unit 
 in that host a corpuscle in the whole. 
 
 The wind, rising from the Lybian wastes across 
 the Nile, swept up against the exposed side of the 
 hotel, and made his windows rattle—the old, sad 
 winds of Egypt. Henriot got out of bed to fasten 
 the outside shutters. He stood a moment and 
 watched the moon floating down behind the Sakkara 
 Pyramids. The Pleiades and Orion’s Belt hung 
 brilliantly ; the Great Bear was close to the horizon. 
 In the sky above the Desert swung ten thousand 
 stars. No sounds rose from the streets of Helouan. 
 The tide of sand was coming slowly in. 
 
 And a flock of enormous thoughts swooped past 
 him from fields of this unbelievable, lost memory. 
 The Desert, pale in the moon, was coextensive with 
 the night, too huge for comfort or understanding, 
 yet charged to the brim with infinite peace. Behind 
 its majesty of silence lay whispers of a vanished 
 language that once could call with power upon 
 mighty spiritual Agencies. Its skirts were folded 
 now, but, slowly across the leagues of sand, they 
 
SAND 283 
 
 began to stir and rearrange themselves. He grew 
 suddenly aware of this enveloping shroud of sand— 
 as the raw material of bodily expression : Form. 
 
 The sand was in his imagination and his mind. 
 Shaking loosely the folds of its gigantic skirts, it 
 rose ; it moved a little towards him. He saw the 
 eternal countenance of the Desert watching him— 
 immobile and unchanging behind these shifting veils 
 the winds laid so carefully over it. Egypt, the 
 ancient Egypt, turned in her vast sarcophagus of 
 Desert, wakening from her sleep of ages at the 
 Belief of approaching worshippers. 
 
 Only in this insignificant manner could he express 
 a letter of the terrific language that crowded to seek 
 expression through his soul. . . . He closed the 
 shutters and carefully fastened them. He turned 
 to go back to bed, curiously trembling. Then, as. 
 he did so, the whole singular delusion caught him 
 with a shock that held him motionless. Up rose 
 the stupendous apparition of the entire Desert and 
 stood behind him on that balcony. Swift as 
 thought, in silence, the Desert stood on end against 
 his very face. It towered across the sky, hiding 
 Orion and the moon ; it dipped below the horizons. 
 The whole grey sheet of it rose up before his eyes 
 and stood. Through its unfolding skirts ran ten 
 thousand eddies of swirling sand as the creases of its 
 
 rave-clothes smoothed themselves out in moonlight. 
 And a bleak, scarred countenance, huge as a planet, 
 gazed down into his own... . . 
 
 Through his dreamless sleep that night two © 
 things lay active and awake . . . in the subconscious 
 part that knows no slumber. They were in- 
 congruous. One was evil, small and human ; the 
 other unearthly and sublime. For the memory of 
 
284 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 the fear that haunted Vance, and the sinister cause 
 of it, pricked at him all night long: But behind, 
 beyond this common, intelligible emotion, lay the 
 crowding wonder that caught his soul with glory : 
 The Sand was stirring, the Desert was awake. 
 Ready to mate with them in material form, brooded 
 
 close the Ka of that colossal Entity that once 
 
 expressed itself through the myriad life of ancient 
 Egypt. 
 
VI 
 
 Next day, and for several days following, Henriot 
 kept out of the path of Lady Statham and her 
 nephew. The acquaintanceship had grown too 
 rapidly to be quite comfortable. It was easy to 
 pretend that he took people at their face value, but 
 it was a pose; one liked to know something of 
 antecedents. It was otherwise difficult to ‘place’ 
 them. And Henriot, for the life of him, could not 
 ‘place’ these two. His Subconsciousness brought 
 explanation when it came—but the Subconsciousness 
 is only temporarily active. When it retired he 
 floundered without a rudder, in confusion. 
 
 With the flood of morning sunshine the value of 
 much she had said evaporated. Her presence alone 
 had supplied the key to the cipher. But while the 
 indigestible portions he rejected, there remained a 
 good deal he had already assimilated. The dis- 
 comfort remained; and with it the grave, unholy 
 reality of it all. It was something more than theory. 
 Results would follow—if he joined them. He would 
 witness curious things. 
 
 The force with which it drew him brought 
 hesitation. It operated in him like a shock that 
 numbs at first by its abrupt arrival, and needs time 
 to realise in the right proportions to the rest of life. 
 These right proportions, however, did not come 
 readily, and his emotions ranged between sceptical 
 
 285 
 
286 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 laughter and complete acceptance. ‘The one detail 
 he felt certain of was this dreadful thing he had 
 divined in Vance. Trying hard to disbelieve it, he 
 found he could not. It was true. Though without 
 a shred of real evidence to support it, the horror of | 
 it remained. He knew it in his very bones. 
 
 And this, perhaps, was what drove him to seek — 
 the comforting companionship of folk he understood 
 and felt at home with. He told his host and hostess 
 about the strangers, though omitting the actual con- 
 versation because they would merely smile in blank 
 miscomprehension. But the moment he described 
 the strong black eyes beneath the level eyelids, his 
 hostess turned with a start, her interest deeply 
 roused: ‘Why, it’s that awful Statham woman,’ 
 she exclaimed, ‘that must be Lady Statham, and the 
 man she calls her nephew.’ 
 
 ‘Sounds like it, certainly,’ her husband added. 
 ‘Felix, you’d better clear out. They’ll bewitch you 
 too.’ 
 
 And Henriot bridled, yet wondering why he did 
 so. He drew into his shell a little, giving the 
 merest sketch of what had happened. But he 
 listened closely while these two practical old friends 
 supplied him with information in the gossiping way 
 that human nature loves. No doubt there was 
 much embroidery, and more perversion, exaggeration 
 too, but the account evidently rested upon some 
 basis of solid foundation for all that. Smoke and 
 fire go together always. 
 
 ‘He is her nephew right enough,’ Mansfield 
 corrected his wife, before proceeding to his own 
 man’s form of elaboration ; ‘no question about that, 
 I believe. He’s her favourite nephew, and she’s as 
 rich as a pig. He follows her out here every year, 
 
SAND 287 
 
 waiting for her empty shoes. But they are an 
 unsavoury couple. I’ve met ’em in various parts, 
 all over Egypt, but they always come back to 
 Helouan in the end. And the stories about them 
 are simply legion. You remember—’ he turned 
 hesitatingly to his wife—‘some people, I heard,’ he 
 changed his sentence, ‘ were made quite ill by her.’ 
 
 ‘Pm sure Felix ought to know, yes,’ his wife 
 boldly took him up, ‘my niece, Fanny, had the most 
 extraordinary experience.’ She turned to Henriot. 
 ‘ Her room was next to Lady Statham in some hotel 
 or other at Assouan or I:dfu, and one night she 
 woke and heard a kind of mysterious chanting or 
 intoning next her. Hotel doors are so dreadfully 
 thin. There was a funny smell too, like incense of 
 something sickly, and a man’s voice kept chiming in. 
 It went on for hours, while she lay terrified in bed 
 
 ‘Frightened, you say?’ asked Henriot. 
 
 ‘Out of her skin, yes; she said it was so uncanny 
 —made her feel icy. She wanted to ring the bell, 
 but was afraid to leave her bed. The room was full 
 of—of things, yet she could see nothing. She /e/t 
 them, you see. And after a bit the sound of this 
 sing-song voice so got on her nerves, it half dazed 
 her—a kind of enchantment—she felt choked and 
 suffocated. And then It was her turn to 
 hesitate. | 
 
 ‘Tell it all,’ her husband said, quite gravely too. 
 
 ‘Well—something camein. At least,she describes 
 it oddly, rather; she said it made the door bulge 
 inwards from the next room, but not the door alone ; 
 the walls bulged or swayed as if a huge thing pressed 
 against them from the other side. And at the same 
 moment her windows—she had two big balconies, 
 and the venetian shutters were fastened—both her 
 
288 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 windows darkened—though it was two in the morning 
 and pitch dark outside. She said it was all one thing 
 —trying to get in; just as water, you see, would 
 rush in through every hole and opening it could 
 find, and all at once. And in spite of her terror— 
 
 that’s the odd part of it—she says she felt a kind of 
 
 splendour in her—a sort of elation.’ 
 
 ‘She saw nothing ?’ 
 
 ‘She says she doesn’t remember. Her senses left 
 her, I believe—though she won’t admit it.’ 
 
 ‘Fainted for a minute, probably,’ said Mansfield. 
 
 ‘So there it is,’ his wife concluded, after a silence. 
 ‘And that’s true. It happened to my niece, didn't 
 it, John ?’ 
 
 Stories and legendary accounts of strange things 
 that the presence of these two brought poured out 
 then. They were obviously somewhat mixed, one 
 account borrowing picturesque details from another, 
 and all in disproportion, as when people tell stories 
 in a language they are little familiar with. But, 
 listening with avidity, yet also with uneasiness, some- 
 how, Henriot put two and two together. Truth 
 stood behind them somewhere. These two held 
 trafic with the powers that ancient Egypt knew. 
 
 ‘Tell Felix, dear, about the time you met the 
 nephew—horrid creature—in the Valley of the Kings, 
 he heard his wife say presently. And Mansfield told 
 it plainly enough, evidently glad to get it done, 
 though. 
 
 ‘It was some years ago now, and I didn’t know 
 who he was then, or anything about him. I don’t 
 know much more now—except that he’s a dangerous 
 sort of charlatan-devil, J think. But I came across 
 him one night up there by Thebes in the Valley of 
 the Kings—you know, where they buried all their 
 
SAND 289 
 
 Johnnies with so much magnificence and processions 
 and masses, and all the rest. It’s the most astounding, 
 the most haunted place you ever saw, gloomy, 
 silent, full of gorgeous lights and shadows that 
 seem alive—terribly impressive; it makes you 
 creep and shudder. You feel old Egypt watching 
 ou. 
 
 : ‘Get on, dear,’ said his wife. 
 
 ‘Well, I was coming home late on a blasted lazy 
 donkey, dog-tired into the bargain, when my donkey 
 boy suddenly ran for his life and left me alone. It 
 was after sunset. “The sand was red and shining, and 
 the big cliffs sort of fiery. And my donkey stuck 
 its four feet in the ground and wouldn’t budge. 
 Then, about fifty yards away, I saw a fellow— 
 European apparently—doing something— Heaven 
 knows what, for I can’t describe it—-among the 
 boulders that lie all over the ground there. Ceremony, 
 I suppose you'd call it. I was so interested that at 
 first I watched. Then I saw he wasn’t alone. There 
 were a lot of moving things round him, towering big 
 things, that came and went like shadows. ‘That 
 twilight is fearfully bewildering ; perspective changes, 
 and distance gets all confused. It’s fearfully hard to 
 see properly. I only remember that I got off my 
 donkey and went up closer, and when I was within 
 a dozen yards of him—well, it sounds such rot, you 
 know, but I swear the things suddenly rushed off 
 and left him there alone. They went with a roaring 
 noise like wind; shadowy but tremendously big, 
 they were, and they vanished up against the fiery 
 precipices as though they slipped bang into the stone 
 itself. The only thing I can think of to describe 
 "em is—vwell, those sand-storms the Khamasin 
 raises—the hot winds, you know.’ 
 
 U 
 
290 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 ‘They probably were sand,’ his wife suggested, 
 burning to tell another story of her own. 
 
 ‘Possibly, only there wasn’t a breath of wind, 
 and it was hot as blazes—and—I had such extra- 
 ordinary sensations—never felt anything like it before 
 —wild and exhilarated—drunk, I tell you, drunk.’ 
 
 ‘You saw them?’ asked Henriot. ‘You made 
 out their shape at all, or outline?’ 
 
 ‘Sphinx,’ he replied at once, ‘for all the world 
 like sphinxes. You know the kind of face and head 
 these limestone strata in the Desert take — great 
 visages with square Egyptian head-dresses where the 
 driven sand has eaten away the softer stuff beneath? 
 You see it everywhere—enormous idols they seem, 
 with faces and eyes and lips awfully like the sphinx 
 —well, that’s the nearest I can get to it.’ He puffed 
 his pipe hard. But there was no sign of levity in 
 him. He told the actual truth as far as in him lay, 
 yet half ashamed of what he told. And a good deal 
 he left out, too. 
 
 ‘She’s got a face of the same sort, that Statham 
 horror, his wife said with a shiver. ‘ Reduce the 
 size, and paint in awful black eyes, and you’ve got 
 her exactly—a living idol.’ And all three laughed, 
 yet a laughter without merriment in it. 
 
 ‘And you spoke to the man ?’ 
 
 ‘T did,’ the Englishman answered, ‘ though I con- 
 fess I’m a bit ashamed of the way I spoke. Fact is, 
 I was excited, thunderingly excited, and felt a kind 
 of anger. I wanted to kick the beggar for practising 
 such bally rubbish, and in such a place too. Yet all 
 the time—well, well, I believe it was sheer funk now,’ 
 he laughed ; ‘for I felt uncommonly queer out there 
 in the dusk, alone with—with that kind of business ; 
 and I was angry with myself for feeling it. Anyhow, 
 
SAND 291 
 
 I went up—I’d lost my donkey boy as well, remember 
 —and slated him like a dog. I can’t remember what 
 I said exactly—only that the stood and stared at me 
 in silence. That made it worse—seemed twice as 
 real then. The beggar said no single word the whole 
 time. He signed to me with one hand to clear out. 
 And then, suddenly out of nothing—she—that woman 
 —appeared and stood beside him. I never saw her 
 come. She must have been behind some boulder or 
 other, for she simply rose out of the ground. She 
 stood there and stared at me too—bang in the face. 
 She was turned towards the sunset—what was left of 
 it in the west—and her black eyes shone like—ugh ! 
 I can’t describe it—it was shocking.’ 
 
 ‘She spoke ?’ 
 
 ‘She said five words—and her voice—it’ll make 
 you laugh—it was metallic like a gong: ‘‘ You are 
 in danger here.” That’s all she said. I simply 
 turned and cleared out as fast as ever I could. But 
 I had to go on foot. My donkey had followed its 
 boy long before. I tell you—smile as you may—my 
 blood was all curdled for an hour afterwards.’ 
 
 Then he explained that he felt some kind of ex- 
 planation or apology was due, since the couple lodged 
 in his own hotel, and how he approached the man 
 in the smoking-room after dinner. A conversation 
 resulted—the man was quite intelligent after all—of 
 which only one sentence had remained in his mind. 
 
 ‘Perhaps you can explain it, Felix. I wrote it 
 down, as well as I could remember. The rest con- 
 fused me beyond words or memory ; though I must 
 confess it did not seem—vwell, not utter rot exactly. 
 It was about astrology and rituals and the worship 
 of the old Egyptians, and I don’t know what else 
 besides. Only, he made it intelligible and almost 
 
292 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 sensible, if only I could have got the hang of the 
 thing enough to remember it. You know,’ he added, 
 as though believing in spite of himself, ‘there is a 
 lot of that wonderful old Egyptian religious business 
 still hanging about in the atmosphere of this place, 
 say what you like.’ 
 
 ‘But this sentence?’ Henriot asked. And the 
 other went off to get a note-book where he had 
 written it down. 
 
 ‘He was jawing, you see,’ he continued when he 
 came back, Henriot and his wife having kept silence 
 meanwhile, ‘about direction being of importance in 
 religious ceremonies, West and North symbolising 
 certain powers, or something of the kind, why people 
 turn to the East and all that sort of thing, and 
 speaking of the whole Universe as if it had living 
 forces tucked away in it that expressed themselves 
 somehow when roused up. That’s how I remember 
 it anyhow. And then he said this thing—in answer 
 to some fool question probably that I put.’ And 
 he read out of the note-book : 
 
 ‘<< You were in danger because you came through 
 the Gateway of the West, and the Powers from the 
 Gateway of the East were at that moment rising, and 
 therefore in direct opposition to you.”’’ 
 
 Then came the following, apparently a simile 
 offered by way of explanation. Mansfield read it 
 in a shamefaced tone, evidently prepared for laughter: 
 
 ‘«* Whether I strike you on the back or in the 
 face determines what kind of answering force I rouse 
 in you. Direction is significant.” And he said it 
 was the period called the Night of Power—time 
 when the Desert encroaches and spirits are close.’ 
 
 And tossing the book aside, he lit his pipe again 
 and waited a moment to hear what might be said. 
 
SAND 293 
 
 ‘Can you explain such gibberish?’ he asked at 
 length, as neither of his listeners spoke. But 
 Henriot said he couldn’t. And the wife then took 
 up her own tale of stories that had grown about this 
 singular couple. , 
 These were less detailed, and therefore less im- 
 pressive, but all contributed something towards the 
 atmosphere of reality that framed the entire picture. 
 They belonged to the type one hears at every dinner 
 party in Egypt—stories of the vengeance mummies 
 seem to take on those who robbed them, desecrating 
 their peace of centuries; of a woman wearing a 
 necklace of scarabs taken from a princess’s tomb, 
 who felt hands about her throat to strangle her ; of 
 little Ka figures, Pasht goddesses, amulets and the 
 rest, that brought curious disaster to those who kept 
 them. They are many and various, astonishingly 
 circumstantial often, and vouched for by persons the 
 reverse of credulous. The modern superstition that 
 haunts the desert gullies with Afreets has nothing in 
 common with them. ‘They rest upon a basis of in- 
 dubitable experience ; and they remain—inexplicable. 
 And about the personalities of Lady Statham and 
 her nephew they crowded like flies attracted by a 
 dish of fruit. The Arabs, too, were afraid of her. 
 She had difficulty in getting guides and dragomen. 
 ‘My dear chap,’ concluded Mansfield, ‘take my 
 advice and have nothing to do with ’em. There és 
 a lot of queer business knocking about in this old 
 country, and people like that know ways of reviving 
 it somehow. It’s upset you already; you looked 
 scared, I thought, the moment you came in.’ They 
 laughed, but the Englishman was in earnest. ‘I 
 tell you what,’ he added, ‘we'll go off for a bit of 
 shooting together. The fields along the Delta are 
 
294 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 packed with birds now: they’re home early this year 
 on their way to the North. What d’ye say, eh?’ 
 
 But Henriot did not care about the quail shooting. 
 He felt more inclined to be alone and think things 
 out by himself. He had come to his friends for 
 comfort, and instead they had made him uneasy and 
 excited. His interest had suddenly doubled. Though ~ 
 half afraid, he longed to know what these two were 
 up to—to follow the adventure to the bitter end. 
 He disregarded the warning of his host as well as the 
 premonition in his own heart. The sand had caught 
 his feet. 
 
 There were moments when he laughed in utter 
 disbelief, but these were optimistic moods that did 
 not last. He always returned to the feeling that 
 truth lurked somewhere in the whole strange business, 
 and that if he joined forces with them, as they seemed 
 to wish, he would witness—well, he hardly knew 
 what—but it enticed him as danger does the reckless 
 man, or death the suicide. The sand had caught 
 his mind. 
 
 He decided to offer himself to all they wanted— 
 his pencil too. He would see—a shiver ran through 
 him at the thought—what they saw, and know some 
 eddy of that vanished tide of power and splendour 
 the ancient Egyptian priesthood knew, and that 
 perhaps was even common experience in the far-off 
 days of dim Atlantis. The sand had caught his 
 imagination too. He was utterly sand-haunted. 
 
Vil 
 
 Anp so he took pains, though without making 
 definite suggestion, to place himself in the way of 
 this woman and her nephew—only to find that his 
 hints were disregarded. They left him alone, if they 
 did not actually avoid him. Moreover, he rarely 
 came across them now. Only at night, or in the 
 queer dusk hours, he caught glimpses of them mov- 
 ing hurriedly off from the hotel, and always desert- 
 wards. And their disregard, well calculated, en- 
 flamed his desire to the point when he almost decided 
 to propose himself. Quite suddenly, then, the idea 
 flashed through him—how do they come, these odd 
 revelations, when the mind lies receptive like a plate 
 sensitised by anticipation ?—that they were waiting 
 for a certain date, and, with the notion, came Mans- 
 field’s remark about ‘the Night of Power,’ believed 
 in by the old Egyptian Calendar as a time when the 
 supersensuous world moves close against the minds 
 of men with all its troop of possibilities. And the 
 thought, once lodged in its corner of imagination, 
 grew strong. He looked it up. Ten days from 
 now, he found, Leyel-el-Sud would be upon him, 
 with a moon, too, at the full. And this strange 
 hint of guidance he accepted. In his present mood, 
 as he admitted, smiling to himself, he could accept 
 anything. It was part of it, it belonged to the 
 295 
 
296 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 adventure. But, even while he persuaded himself that 
 it was play, the solemn reality of what lay ahead in- 
 creased amazingly, sketched darkly in his very soul. 
 
 These intervening days he spent as best he could 
 —impatiently, a prey to quite opposite emotions. 
 In the blazing sunshine he thought of it and laughed ; 
 but at night he lay often sleepless, calculating chances 
 of escape. He never did escape, however. The 
 Desert that watched little Helouan with great, un- 
 winking eyes watched also every turn and twist he 
 made. Like this oasis, he basked in the sun of 
 older time, and dreamed beneath forgotten moons. 
 The sand at last had crept into his inmost heart. It 
 sifted over him. 
 
 Seeking a reaction from normal, everyday things, 
 he made tourist trips; yet, while recognising the 
 comedy in his attitude, he never could lose sight 
 of the grandeur that banked it up so hauntingly. 
 These two contrary emotions grafted themselves on 
 all he did and saw. He crossed the Nile at Bedras- 
 hein, and went again to the Tomb-World of Sakkara; 
 but through all the chatter of veiled and helmeted 
 tourists, the dandar-log of our modern Jungle, ran 
 this dark under-stream of awe their monkey methods 
 could not turn aside. One world lay upon another, 
 but this modern layer was a shallow crust that, like 
 the phenomenon of the ‘desert-film,’ a mere angle 
 of falling light could instantly obliterate. Beneath 
 the sand, deep down, he passed along the Street of 
 Tombs, as he had often passed before, moved then 
 merely by historical curiosity and admiration, but 
 now by emotions for which he found no name. He 
 saw the enormous sarcophagi of granite in their 
 gloomy chambers where the sacred bulls once lay, 
 swathed and embalmed like human beings, and, in 
 
SAND 297 
 
 the flickering candle light, the mood of ancient rites 
 surged round him, menacing his doubts and laughter. 
 The least human whisper in these subterraneans, dug 
 out first four thousand years ago, revived ominous 
 Powers that stalked beside him, forbidding and pre- 
 . monitive. He gazed at the spots where Mariette, 
 unearthing them forty years ago, found fresh as of 
 yesterday the marks of fingers and naked feet—of 
 those who set the sixty-five ton slabs in position. 
 And when he came up again into the sunshine he 
 met the eternal questions of the pyramids, over- 
 topping all his mental horizons. Sand blocked all 
 the avenues of younger emotion, leaving the channels 
 of something in him incalculably older, open and 
 clean swept. 
 
 He slipped homewards, uncomfortable and 
 followed, glad to be with a crowd—because he 
 was otherwise alone with more than he could dare 
 to think about. Keeping just ahead of his com- 
 panions, he crossed the desert edge where the ghost 
 of Memphis walks under rustling palm trees that 
 screen no stone left upon another of all its mile-long 
 populous splendours. For here was a vista his imagina- 
 tion could realise ; here he could know the comfort 
 of solid ground his feet could touch. Gigantic 
 Ramases, lying on his back beneath their shade and 
 staring at the sky, similarly helped to steady his 
 swaying thoughts. Imagination could deal with these. 
 
 And daily thus he watched the busy world go to 
 and fro to its scale of tips and bargaining, and gladly 
 mingled with it, trying to laugh and study guide- 
 books, and listen to half-fledged explanations, but 
 always seeing the comedy of his poor attempts. Not 
 all those little donkeys, bells tinkling, beads shining, 
 trotting beneath their comical burdens to the tune of 
 
298 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 shouting and belabouring, could stem this tide of 
 deeper things the woman had let loose in the sub- 
 conscious part of him. Everywhere he saw the 
 mysterious camels go slouching through the sand, 
 gurgling the water in their skinny, extended throats. 
 Centuries passed between the enormous knee-stroke 
 of their stride. And, every night, the sunsets — 
 restored the forbidding, graver mood, with their 
 crimson, golden splendour, their strange green shafts 
 of light, then—sudden twilight that brought the 
 Past upon him with an awful leap. Upon the 
 stage then stepped the figures of this pair of human 
 beings, chanting their ancient plain-song of incanta- 
 tion in the moonlit desert, and working their rites 
 of unholy evocation as the priests had worked them 
 centuries before in the sands that now buried Sakkara 
 fathoms deep. 
 
 Then one morning he woke with a question in 
 his mind, as though it had been asked of him in sleep 
 and he had waked just before the answer came. 
 ‘Why do I spend my time sight-seeing, instead of 
 going alone into the Desert as before? What has 
 made me change?’ 
 
 This latest mood now asked for explanation. 
 And the answer, coming up automatically, startled 
 him. It was so clear and sure—had been lying in 
 the background all along. One word contained it : 
 
 Vance. 
 
 The sinister intentions of this man, forgotten in 
 the rush of other emotions, asserted themselves again 
 convincingly. The human horror, so easily com- 
 prehensible, had. been smothered for the time by the 
 hint of unearthly revelations. But it had operated 
 all the time. Now it took the lead. He dreaded to 
 be alone in the Desert with this dark picture in his 
 
SAND 299 
 
 mind of what Vance meant to bring there to com- 
 pletion. This abomination of a selfish human will 
 returned to fix its terror in him. To be alone in 
 the Desert meant to be alone with the imaginative 
 picture of what Vance—he knew it with such strange 
 certainty—hoped to bring about there. 
 
 There was absolutely no evidence to justify the 
 grim suspicion. It seemed indeed far fetched enough, 
 this connection between the sand and the purpose of an 
 evil-minded, violent man. But Henriot saw it true. 
 He could argue it away in a few minutes—easily. 
 Yet the instant thought ceased, it returned, led up 
 by intuition. It possessed him, filled his mind with 
 horrible possibilities. He feared the Desert as he 
 might have feared the scene of some atrocious crime. 
 And, for the time, this dread of a merely human 
 thing corrected the big seduction of the other—the 
 suggested ‘ super-natural.’ 
 
 Side by side with it, his desire to join himself to 
 the purposes of the woman increased steadily. They 
 kept out of his way apparently ; the offer seemed 
 withdrawn; he grew restless, unable to settle to any- 
 thing for long, and once he asked the porter casually 
 if they were leaving the hotel. Lady Statham had 
 been invisible for days, and Vance was somehow 
 never within speaking distance. He heard with 
 relief that they had not gone—but with dread as 
 well. Keen excitement worked in him underground. 
 He slept badly. Like a schoolboy, he waited for 
 the summons to an important examination that in- 
 volyed portentous issues, and contradictory emotions 
 disturbed his peace of mind abominably. 
 
VIII 
 
 Bur it was not until the end of the week, when 
 Vance approached him with purpose in his eyes and 
 manner, that Henriot knew his fears unfounded, and 
 caught himself trembling with sudden anticipation— 
 because the invitation, so desired yet so dreaded, was 
 actually at hand. Firmly determined to keep caution 
 uppermost, yet he went unresistingly to a secluded 
 corner by the palms where they could talk in privacy. 
 For prudence is of the mind, but desire is of the soul, 
 and while his brain of to-day whispered wariness, 
 voices in his heart of long ago shouted commands 
 that he knew he must obey with joy. 
 
 It was evening and the stars were out. Helouan, 
 with her fairy twinkling lights, lay silent against the 
 Desert edge. The sand was at the flood. The 
 period of the Encroaching of the Desert was at hand, 
 and the deeps were all astir with movement. But 
 in the windless air was a great peace. A calm of 
 infinite stillness breathed everywhere. The flow of 
 Time, before it rushed away backwards, stopped 
 somewhere between the dust of stars and Desert. 
 The mystery of sand touched every street with its 
 unutterable softness. 
 
 And Vance. began without the smallest circum- 
 locution. His voice was low, in keeping with the 
 scene, but the words dropped with a sharp distinctness 
 into the other’s heart like grains of sand that pricked 
 
 300 
 
SAND 301 
 
 the skin before they smothered him. Caution they 
 smothered instantly ; resistance too. 
 
 ‘] have a message for you from my aunt,’ he said, 
 as though he brought an invitation to a picnic. 
 Henriot sat in shadow, but his companion’s face 
 was in a patch of light that followed them from 
 the windows of the central hall. There was a 
 shining in the light blue eyes that betrayed the 
 excitement his quiet manner concealed. ‘ We 
 are going—the day after to-morrow—to spend the 
 night in the Desert; she wondered if, perhaps, 
 you would care to join us? ’ 
 
 ‘For your experiment ?’ asked Henriot bluntly. 
 
 Vance smiled with his lips, holding his eyes steady, 
 though unable to suppress the gleam that flashed in 
 them and was gone so swiftly. There was a hint 
 of shrugging his shoulders. 
 
 ‘It is the Night of Power—in the old Egyptian 
 Calendar, you know,’ he answered with assumed 
 lightness almost, ‘the final moment of Leyel-el-Sud, 
 the period of Black Nights when the Desert was held 
 to encroach with—with various possibilities of a 
 supernatural order. She wishes to revive a certain 
 practice of the old Egyptians. There may be curious 
 results. At any rate, the occasion is a picturesque 
 one—better than this cheap imitation of London 
 life.’ And he indicated the lights, the signs of 
 people in the hall dressed for gaieties and dances, 
 the hotel orchestra that played after dinner. 
 
 Henriot at the moment answered nothing, so 
 great was the rush of conflicting emotions that came 
 he knew not whence. Vance went calmly on. He 
 spoke with a simple frankness that was meant to be 
 disarming. Hlenriot never took his eyes off him. 
 The two men stared steadily at one another. 
 
302 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 ‘She wants to know if you will come and help 
 too—in a certain way only: not in the experiment 
 itself precisely, but by watching merely and 
 He hesitated an instant, half lowering his eyes. 
 
 ‘Drawing the picture, Henriot helped him 
 deliberately. 
 
 ‘Drawing what you see, yes,’ Vance replied, the 
 voice turned graver in spite of himself. ‘She wants 
 —she hopes to catch the outlines of anything that 
 happens 
 
 ‘Comes.’ 
 
 ‘Exactly. Determine the shape of anything that 
 comes. You may remember your conversation of the 
 other night with her. She is very certain of success.’ 
 
 This was direct enough at any rate. It was as 
 formal as an invitation to a dinner, and as guileless. 
 The thing he thought he wanted lay within his reach, 
 He had merely to say yes. He did say yes; but 
 first he looked about him instinctively, as for guid- 
 ance. He looked at the stars twinkling high above 
 the distant Libyan Plateau ; at the long arms of the 
 Desert, gleaming weirdly white in the moonlight, 
 and reaching towards him down every opening 
 between the houses; at the heavy mass of the 
 Mokattam Hills, guarding the Arabian Wilderness 
 with strange, peaked barriers, their sand-carved ridges 
 dark and still above the Wadi Hof. 
 
 These questionings attracted no response. The 
 Desert watched him, but it did not answer. There 
 was only the shrill whistling cry of the lizards, and 
 the sing-song of a white-robed Arab gliding down 
 the sandy street. And through these sounds he 
 heard his own voice answer: ‘I will come— yes. 
 But how can I help? Tell me what you propose— 
 your plan?’ 
 
SAND 303 
 
 And the face of Vance, seen plainly in the electric 
 glare, betrayed his satisfaction. The opposing things 
 in the fellow’s mind of darkness fought visibly in 
 his eyes and skin. The sordid motive, planning a 
 dreadful act, leaped to his face, and with it a flash of 
 this other yearning that sought unearthly knowledge, 
 perhaps believed it too. No wonder there was con- 
 flict written on his features. 
 
 Then all expression vanished again; he leaned 
 forward, lowering his voice. 
 
 ‘You remember our conversation about there 
 being types of life too vast to manifest in a single 
 body, and my aunt’s belief that these were known to 
 certain of the older religious systems of the world?’ 
 
 ‘Perfectly.’ 
 
 ‘Her experiment, then, is to bring one of these 
 great Powers back—we possess the sympathetic ritual 
 that can rouse some among them to activity—and 
 win it down into the sphere of our minds, our minds 
 heightened, you see, by ceremonial to that stage of 
 clairvoyant vision which can perceive them.’ 
 
 ‘And then?’ They might have been discussing 
 the building of a house, so naturally followed answer 
 upon question. But the whole body of meaning in 
 the old Egyptian symbolism rushed over him with a 
 force that shook his heart. Memory came so mar- 
 vellously with it. 
 
 ‘If the Power floods down into our minds with 
 sufficient strength for actual form, to note the out- 
 line of such form, and from your drawing model it 
 later in permanent substance. Then we should have 
 means of evoking it at will, for we should have its 
 natural Body—the form it built itself, its signature, 
 image, pattern. A starting-point, you see, for more 
 —leading, she hopes, to a complete reconstruction.’ 
 
304 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 ‘It might take actual shape—assume a bodily 
 form visible to the eye?’ repeated Henriot, amazed 
 as before that doubt and laughter did not break 
 through his mind. 
 
 ‘We are on the earth,’ was the reply, spoken 
 unnecessarily low since no living thing was within 
 earshot, ‘we are in physical conditions, are we not? 
 Even a human soul we do not recognise unless we 
 see it in a body—parents provide the outline, the 
 signature, the sigil of the returning soul. This,’ and 
 he tapped himself upon the breast, ‘is the physical 
 signature of that type of life we calla soul. Unless 
 there is life of a certain strength behind it, no body 
 forms. And, without a body, we are helpless to 
 control or manage it—deal with it in any way. 
 We could not know it, though being possibly aware 
 of it.’ 
 
 ‘To be aware, you mean, is not sufficient ?’ For 
 he noticed the italics Vance made use of. 
 
 ‘Too vague, of no value for future use,’ was the 
 reply. ‘But once obtain the form, and we have the 
 natural symbol of that particular Power. And a 
 symbol is more than image, it is a direct and con- 
 centrated expression of the life it typifies—possibly 
 terrific.’ 
 
 ‘It may bea body, then, this symbol you speak of.’ 
 
 ‘Accurate vehicle of manifestation ; but ‘ body ” 
 seems the simplest word.’ 
 
 Vance answered very slowly and deliberately, as 
 though weighing how much he would tell. His 
 language was admirably evasive. Few perhaps 
 would have detected the profound significance the 
 curious words he next used unquestionably concealed. 
 Henriot’s mind rejected them, but his heart accepted. 
 For the ancient soul in him was listening and aware 
 
SAND 305 
 
 ‘Life, using matter to express itself in bodily 
 shape, first traces a geometrical pattern. From the 
 lowest form in crystals, upwards to more complicated 
 patterns in the higher organisations—there is always 
 first this geometrical pattern as skeleton. For 
 geometry lies at the root of all possible phenomena ; 
 and is the mind’s interpretation of a living movement 
 towards shape that shall express it.’ He brought his 
 eyes closer to the other, lowering his voice again. 
 ‘Fence,’ he said softly, ‘the signs in all the old. 
 magical systems—skeleton forms into which the 
 Powers evoked descended; outlines those Powers 
 automatically built up when using matter to express 
 themselves. Such signs are material symbols of their 
 bodiless existence. ‘They attract the life they repre- 
 sent and interpret. Obtain the correct, true symbol, 
 and the Power corresponding to it can approach— 
 once roused and made aware. It has, you see, a 
 ready-made mould into which it can come down.’ 
 
 ‘Once roused and made aware ?’ repeated Henriot 
 questioningly, while this man went stammering the 
 letters of a language that he himself had used too long 
 ago to recapture fully. 
 
 ‘Because they have left the world. They sleep, 
 unmanifested. Their forms are no longer known to 
 men. No forms exist on earth to-day that could 
 contain them. But they may be awakened,’ he added 
 darkly. ‘They are bound to answer to the summons, 
 if such summons be accurately made.’ 
 
 ‘Evocation ?’ whispered Henriot, more distressed 
 than he cared to admit. 
 
 Vance nodded. Leaning still closer to his com- 
 panion’s face, he thrust his lips forward, speaking 
 eagerly, earnestly, yet somehow at the same time, 
 horribly : ‘And we want—my aunt would ask—your 
 
 x 
 
306 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 draughtsman’s skill, or at any rate your memory 
 afterwards, to establish the outline of anything that 
 comes.’ | 
 
 He waited for the answer, still keeping his face 
 uncomfortably close. 
 
 Henriot drew back a little. But his mind was 
 fully made up now. He had known from the 
 beginning that he would consent, for the desire in 
 him was stronger than all the caution in the world. 
 The Past inexorably drew him into the circle of these 
 other lives, and the little human dread Vance woke 
 in him seemed just then insignificant by comparison. 
 It was merely of To-day. 
 
 ‘You two,’ he said, trying to bring judgment 
 into it, ‘engaged in evocation, will be in a state of 
 clairvoyant vision. Granted. But shall I, as an 
 outsider, observing with unexcited mind, see any- 
 thing, know anything, be aware of anything at all, 
 let alone the drawing of it ?’ 
 
 ‘Unless,’ the reply came instantly with decision, 
 ‘the descent of Power is strong enough to take actual 
 material shape, the experiment is a failure. Anybody 
 can induce subjective vision. Such fantasies have no 
 value though. They are born of an overwrought 
 imagination.’ And then he added quickly, as though 
 to clinch the matter before caution and hesitation 
 could take effect : ‘ You must watch from the heights 
 above. We shall be in the valley—the Wadi Hof is 
 the place. You must not be too close , 
 
 ‘Why not too close?” asked Henriot, springing 
 forward like a flash before he could prevent the 
 sudden impulse. 
 
 With a quickness equal to his own, Vance 
 answered. There was no faintest sign that he was ~ 
 surprised. His self-control was perfect. Only the 
 
SAND 307 
 
 glare passed darkly through his eyes and went back 
 again into the sombre soul that bore it. 
 
 ‘For your own safety,’ he answered low. ‘The 
 Power, the type of life, she would waken is stupend- 
 ous. And if roused enough to be attracted by the 
 patterned symbol into which she would decoy it 
 down, it will take actual, physical expression. But 
 how? Where is the Body of Worshippers through 
 whom it can manifest? There is none. It will, 
 therefore, press inanimate matter into the service. 
 The terrific impulse to form itself a means of expres- 
 sion will force all loose matter at hand towards it— 
 sand, stones, all it can compel to yield—everything 
 must rush into the sphere of action in which it 
 operates. Alone, we at the centre, and you, upon 
 the outer fringe, will be safe. Only—you must not 
 come too close.’ . 
 
 But Henriot was no longer listening. His soul 
 had turned to ice. For here, in this unguarded 
 moment, the cloven hoof had plainly shown itself. 
 In that suggestion of a particular kind of danger 
 Vance had lifted a corner of the curtain behind 
 which crouched his horrible intention. Vance desired 
 a witness of the extraordinary experiment, but he 
 desired this witness, not merely for the purpose of 
 sketching possible shapes that might present them- 
 selves to excited vision. He desired a witness for 
 another reason too. Why ld Vance put that idea 
 into his mind, this idea of so peculiar danger? It 
 might well have lost him the very assistance he 
 seemed so anxious to obtain. 
 
 Henriot could not fathom it quite. Only one 
 thing was clear to him. He, Henriot, was not the 
 only one in danger. 
 
 They talked for long after that—far into the 
 
308 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 night. The lights went out, and the armed patrol, 
 pacing to and fro outside the iron railings that 
 kept the desert back, eyed them curiously. But 
 the only other thing he gathered of importance was 
 the ledge upon the cliff-top where he was to stand 
 and watch; that he was expected to reach there 
 before sunset and wait till the moon concealed all 
 limmer in the western sky, and—that the woman, 
 who had been engaged for days in secret preparation 
 of soul and body for the awful rite, would not be 
 visible again until he saw her in the depths of the 
 black valley far below, busy with this man upon 
 audacious, ancient purposes. 
 
IX 
 
 An hour before sunset Henriot put his rugs and 
 food upon a donkey, and gave the boy directions 
 where to meet him—a considerable distance from 
 the appointed spot. He went himself on foot. He 
 slipped in the heat along the sandy street, where 
 strings of camels still go slouching, shuffling with 
 their loads from the quarries that built the pyramids, 
 and he felt that little friendly Helouan tried to keep 
 him back. But desire now was far too strong for 
 caution. The desert tide was rising. It easily 
 swept him down the long white street towards the 
 enormous deeps beyond. He felt the pull of a 
 thousand miles before him; and twice a thousand 
 years drove at his back. 
 
 Everything still basked in the sunshine. He 
 passed Al Hayat, the stately hotel that dominates 
 the village like a palace built against the sky ; and 
 in its pillared colonnades and terraces he saw the 
 throngs of people having late afternoon tea and 
 listening to the music of a regimental band. Men 
 in flannels were playing tennis, parties were climb- 
 ing off donkeys after long excursions; there was 
 laughter, talking, a babel of many voices. The 
 gaiety called to him; the everyday spirit whispered 
 to stay and join the crowd of lively human beings. 
 Soon there would be merry dinner-parties, dancing, 
 
 309 
 
310 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 voices of pretty women, sweet white dresses, singing, 
 and the rest. Soft eyes would question and turn 
 dark. He picked out several girls he knew among 
 the palms. But it was all many, oh so many leagues 
 away ; centuries lay between him and this modern 
 world. An indescriable loneliness was in his heart. 
 He went searching through the sands of forgotten 
 ages, and wandering among the ruins of a vanished 
 time. He hurried. Already the deeper water 
 caught his breath. 
 
 He climbed the steep rise towards the plateau 
 where the Observatory stands, and saw two of the 
 officials whom he knew taking a siesta after their 
 long day’s work. He felt that his mind, too, had 
 dived and searched among the heavenly bodies that 
 live in silent, changeless peace remote from the 
 world of men. They recognised him, these two 
 whose eyes also knew tremendous distance close. 
 They beckoned, waving the straws through which 
 they sipped their drinks from tall glasses. Their 
 voices floated down to him as from the star-fields. 
 He saw the sun gleam upon the glasses, and 
 heard the clink of the ice against the sides. ‘The 
 stillness was amazing. He waved an answer, and 
 passed quickly on. He could not stop this sliding 
 current of the years. | 
 
 The tide moved faster, the draw of piled-up 
 cycles urging it. He emerged upon the plateau, 
 and met the cooler Desert air. His feet went 
 crunching on the ‘ desert-film’ that spread its curious 
 dark shiny carpet as far as the eye could reach; it 
 lay everywhere, unswept and smooth as when the 
 feet of vanished civilizations trod its burning surface, 
 then dipped behind the curtains Time pins against 
 the stars. And here the body of the tide set all 
 
n 
 y 
 
 SAND 311 
 
 one way. There was a greater strength of current, 
 draught and suction. He felt the powerful undertow. 
 Deeper masses drew his feet sideways, and he felt 
 the rushing of the central body of the sand. The 
 sands were moving, from their foundation upwards, 
 He went unresistingly with. them. 
 
 Turning a moment, he looked back at shining 
 little Helouan in the blaze of evening light. The 
 voices reached him very faintly, merged now in a 
 general murmur. Beyond lay the strip of Delta 
 vivid green, the palms, the roofs of Bedrashein, the 
 blue laughter of the Nile with its flocks of curved 
 felucca sails. Further still, rising above the yellow 
 Lybian horizon, gloomed the vast triangles of a 
 dozen Pyramids, cutting their wedge-shaped clefts 
 out of a sky fast crimsoning through a sea of gold. 
 Seen thus, their dignity imposed upon the entire 
 landscape. They towered darkly, symbolic signa- 
 tures of the ancient Powers that now watched him 
 taking these little steps across their damaged territory. 
 
 He gazed a minute, then went on. He saw the 
 big pale face of the moon in the east. Above the 
 ever-silent Thing these giant symbols once inter- 
 preted, she rose, grand, effortless, half-terrible as 
 themselves. And, with her, she lifted up this tide 
 of the Desert that drew his feet across the sand to 
 Wadi Hof. A moment later he dipped below the 
 ridge that buried Helouan and Nile and Pyramids 
 from sight. He entered the ancient waters. Time 
 then, in an instant, flowed back behind his footsteps, 
 obliterating every trace. And with it his mind 
 went too. He stepped across the gulf of centuries, 
 moving into the Past. The Desert lay before him 
 —an open tomb wherein his: soul should read 
 presently of things long vanished. 
 
312 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 The strange half-lights of sunset began to play 
 their witchery then upon the landscape. A purple 
 glow came down upon the Mokattam Hills. Per- 
 spective danced its tricks of false, incredible decep- 
 tion. The soaring kites that were a mile away 
 seemed suddenly close, passing in a moment from 
 the size of gnats to birds with a fabulous stretch of 
 wing. Ridges and cliffs rushed close without a 
 hint of warning, and level places sank into declivities 
 and basins that made him trip and stumble. That 
 indescriable quality of the Desert, which makes 
 timid souls avoid the hour of dusk, emerged ; it 
 spread everywhere, undisguised. And the bewilder- 
 ment it brings is no vain, imagined thing, for it 
 distorts vision utterly, and the effect upon the mind 
 when familiar sight goes floundering is the simplest 
 way in the world of dragging the anchor that grips 
 reality. At the hour of sunset this bewilderment 
 comes upon a man with a disconcerting swiftness. 
 It rose now with all this weird rapidity. Henriot 
 found himself enveloped at a moment’s notice. 
 
 But, knowing well its effect, he tried to judge 
 it and pass on. The other matters, the object of 
 his journey chief of all, he refused to dwell upon — 
 with any imagination. Wisely, his mind, while 
 never losing sight of it, declined to admit the 
 exaggeration that over-elaborate thinking brings. 
 ‘l’m going to witness an incredible experiment in 
 which two enthusiastic religious dreamers believe 
 firmly,’ he repeated to himself. ‘I have agreed to 
 draw—anything I see. There may be truth in it, 
 or they may be merely self-suggested vision due to 
 an artificial exaltation of their minds. I’m interested 
 —perhaps against my better judgment. Yet I'll see 
 the adventure out—because I must.’ 
 
SAND 313 
 
 This was the attitude he told himself to take. 
 Whether it was the real one, or merely adopted to 
 warm a cooling courage, he could not tell. The 
 emotions were so complex and warring. His mind, 
 automatically, kept repeating this comforting formula. 
 Deeper than that he could not see to judge. Fora 
 man who knew the full content of his thought at 
 such a time would solve some of the oldest psycho- 
 logical problems in the world. Sand had already 
 buried judgment, and with it all attempt to explain 
 the adventure by the standards acceptable to his 
 brain of to-day. He steered subconsciously through 
 a world of dim, huge, half-remembered wonders. 
 
 The sun, with that abrupt Egyptian suddenness, 
 was below the horizon now. The pyramid field had 
 swallowed it. Ra, in his golden boat, sailed distant 
 seas beyond the Lybian wilderness. Henriot walked 
 on and on, aware of utter loneliness. He was 
 walking fields of dream, too remote from modern 
 life to recall companionship he once had surely 
 known. How dim it was, how deep and distant, 
 how lost in this sea of an incalculable Past! He 
 walked into the places that are soundless. The 
 soundlessness of ocean, miles below the surface, was 
 about him. He was with One only—this unfathom- 
 able, silent thing where nothing breathes or stirs— 
 nothing but sunshine, shadow and the wind-borne 
 sand. Slowly, in front, the moon climbed up the 
 eastern sky, hanging above the silence—silence that 
 ran unbroken across the horizons to where Suez 
 gleamed upon the waters of a sister sea in motion. 
 That moon was glinting now upon the Arabian 
 Mountains by its desolate shores. Southwards 
 stretched the wastes of Upper Egypt a thousand 
 miles to meet the Nubian wilderness. But over 
 
314 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 all these separate Deserts stirred the soft whisper 
 of the moving sand—deep murmuring message 
 that Life was on the way to unwind Death. The 
 Ka of Egypt, swathed in centuries of sand, hovered 
 beneath the moon towards her ancient tenement. 
 For the transformation of the Desert now began 
 in earnest. It grew apace. Before he had gone 
 the first two miles of his hour’s journey, the twilight 
 caught the rocky hills and twisted them into those 
 monstrous revelations of physiognomies they barely 
 take the trouble to conceal even in the daytime. 
 And, while he well understood the eroding agencies 
 that have produced them, there yet rose in his mind 
 a deeper interpretation lurking just behind their 
 literal meanings. Here, through the motionless 
 surfaces, that nameless thing the Desert ill conceals 
 urged outwards into embryonic form and shape, 
 akin, he almost felt, to those immense deific symbols 
 of Other Life the Egyptians knew and worshipped. 
 Hence, from the Desert, had first come, he felt, the 
 unearthly life they typified in their monstrous figures 
 of granite, evoked in their stately temples, and com- 
 muned with in the ritual of their Mystery ceremonials. 
 This ‘watching’ aspect of the Lybian Desert is 
 really natural enough; but it is just the natural, 
 Henriot knew, that brings the deepest revelations. 
 The surface limestones, resisting the erosion, block 
 themselves ominously against the sky, while the 
 softer sand beneath sets them on altared pedestals 
 that define their isolation splendidly. Blunt and 
 unconquerable, these masses now watched him pass 
 between them. The Desert surface formed them, 
 gave them birth. They rose, they saw, they sank 
 down again—waves upon a sea that carried forgotten 
 
 life up from the depths below. Of forbidding, even 
 
SAND G15 
 
 menacing type, they somewhere mated with genuine 
 grandeur. Unformed, according to any standard 
 of human or of animal faces, they achieved an air of 
 giant physiognomy which made them terrible. The 
 unwinking stare of eyes—lidless eyes that yet ever 
 succeed in hiding—looked out under well-marked, 
 level eyebrows, suggesting a vision that included 
 the motives and purposes of his very heart. They 
 looked up grandly, understood why he was there, 
 and then—slowly withdrew their mysterious, penetrat- 
 ing gaze. 
 
 The strata built them so marvellously up; the 
 heavy, threatening brows; thick lips, curved by 
 the ages into a semblance of cold smiles; jowls 
 drooping into sandy heaps that climbed against the 
 cheeks ; protruding jaws, and the suggestion of 
 shoulders just about to lift the entire bodies out 
 of the sandy beds—this host of countenances con- 
 veyed a solemnity of expression that seemed ever- 
 lasting, implacable as Death. Of human signature 
 they bore no trace, nor was comparison possible 
 between their kind and any animal life. They 
 peopled the Desert here. And their smiles, con- 
 cealed yet just discernible, went broadening with 
 the darkness into a Desert laughter. The silence 
 bore it underground. But Henriot was aware of 
 it. The troop of faces slipped into that single, 
 enormous countenance which is the visage of the 
 Sand. And he saw it everywhere, yet nowhere. 
 
 Thus with the darkness grew his imaginative 
 interpretation of the Desert. Yet there was con- 
 struction in it, a construction, moreover, that was not 
 entirely his own. Powers, he felt, were rising, stir- 
 ring, wakening from sleep. Behind the natural faces 
 that he saw, these other things peered gravely at 
 
316 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 him as he passed. ‘They used, as it were, materials 
 that lay ready to their hand. Imagination furnished 
 these hints of outline, yet the Powers themselves 
 were real. There was this amazing movement of 
 the sand. By no other manner could his mind have 
 conceived of such a thing, nor dreamed of this 
 simple, yet dreadful method of approach. 
 
 Approach! that was the word that first stood 
 out and startled him. There was approach ; some- 
 thing was drawing nearer. The Desert rose and 
 walked beside him. For not alone these ribs of 
 gleaming limestone contributed towards the elemental 
 visages, but the entire hills, of which they were an 
 outcrop, ran to assist in the formation, and were a 
 necessary part of them. He was watched and stared 
 at from behind, in front, on either side, and even 
 from below. ‘The sand that swept him on, kept 
 even pace with him. It turned luminous too, 
 with a patchwork of glimmering effect that was 
 indescribably weird ; lanterns glowed within its sub- 
 stance, and by their light he stumbled on, glad of 
 the Arab boy he would presently meet at the 
 appointed place. 
 
 The last torch of the sunset had flickered out, 
 melting into the wilderness, when, suddenly opening 
 at his feet, gaped the deep, wide gully known as Wadi 
 Hof. Its curve swept past him. 
 
 This first impression came upon him with a 
 certain violence: that the desolate valley rushed. 
 He saw but a section of its curve and sweep, but 
 through its entire length of several miles the Wadi 
 fled away. . The moon whitened it like snow, piling 
 black shadows very close against the cliffs. In the 
 flood of moonlight it went rushing past. It was 
 emptying itself. 
 
SAND gy 
 
 For a moment the stream of movement seemed 
 to pause and look up into his face, then instantly 
 went On again upon its swift career. It was like the 
 procession of ariver to the sea. The valley emptied 
 itself to make way for what was coming. The 
 approach, moreover, had already begun. 
 
 Conscious that he was trembling, he stood and 
 gazed into the depths, seeking to steady his mind 
 by the repetition of the little formula he had used 
 before. He said it half aloud. But, while he did so, 
 his heart whispered quite other things. Thoughts 
 the woman and the man had sown rose up in a flock 
 and fell upon him like a storm of sand. Their 
 impetus drove off all support of ordinary ideas. 
 They shook him where he stood, staring down into 
 this river of strange invisible movement that was 
 hundreds of feet in depth and a quarter of a mile 
 across. 
 
 He sought to realise himself as he actually was 
 to-day—mere visitor to Helouan, tempted into this 
 wild adventure with two strangers. But in vain. 
 That seemed a dream, unreal, a transient detail 
 picked out from the enormous Past that now 
 engulfed him, heart and mind and soul. This was 
 the reality. 
 
 The shapes and faces that the hills of sand built 
 round him were the play of excited fancy only. By 
 sheer force he pinned his thought against this fact : 
 but further he could not get. There were Powers at 
 work; they were being stirred, wakened somewhere 
 into activity. vocation had already begun. That 
 sense of their approach as he had walked along 
 from Helouan was not imaginary. A descent of 
 some type of life, vanished from the world too 
 long for recollection, was on the way,—so vast 
 
318 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 that it would manifest itself in a group of forms, a 
 troop, a host, an army. These two were near him 
 somewhere at this very moment, already long at — 
 work, their minds driving beyond this little world. 
 The valley was emptying itself—for the descent of 
 life their ritual invited. 
 
 And the movement in the sand was likewise true. 
 He recalled the sentences the woman had used. 
 ‘My body,’ he reflected, ‘like the bodies life 
 makes use of everywhere, is mere upright heap 
 of earth and dust and—sand. Here in the Desert 
 is the raw material, the greatest store of it in the 
 world.’ 
 
 And on the heels of it came sharply that other 
 thing: that this descending Life would press into its 
 service all loose matter within its reach—to form 
 that sphere of action which would be in a literal 
 sense its Body. 
 
 In the first few seconds, as he stood there, he 
 realised all this, and realised it with an overwhelming 
 conviction it was futile to deny. The fast-emptying 
 valley would later brim with an unaccustomed and 
 terrific life. Yet Death hid there too—a little, ugly, 
 insignificant death. With the name of Vance it 
 flashed upon his mind and vanished, too tiny to be 
 thought about in this torrent of grander messages 
 that shook the depths within his soul. He 
 bowed his head a moment, hardly knowing what he 
 did. He could have waited thus a thousand years- 
 it seemed. He was conscious of a wild desire to run 
 away, to hide, to efface himself utterly, his terror, 
 his curiosity, his little wonder, and not be seen of 
 anything. But it was all vain and foolish. The 
 Desert saw him. The Gigantic knew that he was 
 there. No escape was possible any longer. Caught 
 
SAND 319 
 
 by the sand, he stood amid eternal things. The 
 river of movement swept him too. | 
 
 These hills, now motionless as statues, would 
 presently glide forward into the cavalcade, sway like 
 vessels, and go past with the procession. At present 
 only the contents, not the frame, of the Wadi moved. 
 An immense soft brush of moonlight swept it empty 
 for what was on the way. ... But presently the 
 entire Desert would stand up and also g0. 
 
 Then, making a sideways movement, his feet 
 kicked against something soft and yielding that lay 
 heaped upon the Desert floor, and Henriot discovered 
 the rugs the Arab boy had carefully set down before 
 he made full speed for the friendly lights of Helouan. 
 The sound of his departing footsteps had long since 
 died away. He was alone. 
 
 The detail restored to him his consciousness of 
 the immediate present, and, stooping, he gathered up 
 the rugs and overcoat and began to make preparations 
 for the night. But the appointed spot, whence he 
 was to watch, lay upon the summit of the opposite 
 cliffs. He must cross the Wadi bed and climb. 
 Slowly and with labour he made his way down a 
 steep cleft into the depth of the Wadi Hof, sliding 
 and stumbling often, till at length he stood upon the 
 floor of shining moonlight. It was very smooth ; 
 windless utterly ; still as space; each particle of sand 
 lay in its ancient place asleep. The movement, it 
 seemed, had ceased. 
 
 He clambered next up the eastern side, through 
 pitch-black shadows, and within the hour reached the 
 ledge upon the top whence he could see below him, like 
 a silvered map, the sweep of the valley bed. The wind 
 nipped keenly here again, coming over the leagues of 
 cooling sand. Loose boulders of splintered rock, 
 
320 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 started by his climbing, crashed and boomed into the 
 depths. He banked the rugs behind him, wrapped 
 himself in his overcoat, and lay down to wait. Behind 
 him was a two-foot crumbling wall against which he 
 leaned; in front a drop of several hundred feet 
 through space. He lay upon a platform, therefore, 
 invisible from the Desert at his back. Below, the 
 curving Wadi formed a natural amphitheatre in 
 which each separate boulder fallen from the cliffs, 
 and even the little sz//a shrubs the camels eat, were 
 plainly visible. He noted all the bigger ones among 
 them. He counted them over half aloud. 
 
 And the moving stream he had been unaware of 
 when crossing the bed itself, now began again. The 
 Wadi went rushing past before the broom of moon- 
 light. Again, the enormous and the tiny combined 
 in one single strange impression. For, through this 
 conception of great movement, stirred also a roving, 
 delicate touch that his imagination felt as bird-like. 
 Behind the solid mass of the Desert’s immobility 
 flashed something swift and light and airy. Bizarre 
 pictures interpreted it to him, like rapid snap-shots 
 of a huge flying panorama: he thought of darting 
 dragon-flies seen at Helouan, of children’s little 
 dancing feet, of twinkling butterflies—of birds. 
 Chiefly, yes, of a flock of birds in flight, whose 
 separate units formed a single entity. The idea of 
 the Group-Soul possessed his mind once more. But 
 it came with a sense of more than curiosity or wonder. 
 Veneration lay behind it, a veneration touched with 
 awe. It rose in his deepest thought that here was 
 the first hint of a symbolical representation. A 
 symbol, sacred and inviolable, belonging to some 
 ancient worship that he half remembered in his soul, 
 stirred towards interpretation through all his being. 
 
SAND yor 
 
 He lay there waiting, wondering vaguely where 
 his two companions were, yet fear all vanished 
 because he felt attuned to a scale of things too big to 
 mate with definite dread. There was high anticipa- 
 tion in him, but not anxiety. Of himself, as Felix 
 Henriot, indeed, he hardly seemed aware. He was 
 some one else. Or, rather, he was himself at a stage 
 he had known once far, far away in a remote pre- 
 existence. He watched himself from dim summits 
 of a Past, of which no further details were as yet 
 recoverable. 
 
 Pencil and sketching-block lay ready to his hand. 
 The moon rose higher, tucking the shadows ever 
 more closely against the precipices. The silver 
 passed into a sheet of snowy whiteness, that made 
 every boulder clearly visible. Solemnity deepened 
 everywhere into awe. The Wadi fled silently down 
 the stream of hours. It was almost empty now. 
 And then, abruptly, he was aware of change. The 
 motion altered somewhere. It moved more quietly ; 
 pace slackened; the end of the procession that 
 evacuated the depth and length of it went trailing 
 past and turned the distant bend. 
 
 ‘It’s slowing up,’ he whispered, as sure of it as 
 though he had watched a regiment of soldiers filing 
 by. The wind took off his voice like a flying 
 feather of sound. 
 
 And there was a change. It had begun. Night 
 and the moon stood still to watch and listen. The 
 wind dropped utterly away. The sand ceased its 
 shifting movement. The Desert everywhere stopped 
 still, and turned. 
 
 _ Some curtain, then, that for centuries had veiled 
 
 the world, drew softly up, leaving a shaded vista 
 
 down which the eyes of his soul peered towards long- 
 4 
 
522 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 forgotten pictures. Still buried by the sands too 
 deep for full recovery, he yet perceived dim portions 
 of them—things once honoured and loved passion- 
 ately. For once they had surely been to him the 
 whole of life, not merely a fragment for cheap 
 wonder to inspect. And they were curiously 
 familiar, even as the person of this woman who 
 now evoked them was familiar. Henriot made no 
 pretence to more definite remembrance; but the 
 haunting certainty rushed over him, deeper than 
 doubt or denial, and with such force that he felt no 
 effort to destroy it. Some lost sweetness of spiritual 
 ambitions, lived for with this passionate devotion, 
 and passionately worshipped as men to-day worship 
 fame and money, revived in him with a tempest of 
 high glory. Centres of memory stirred from an 
 age-long sleep, so that he could have wept at their 
 so complete obliteration hitherto. That such 
 majesty had departed from the world as though 
 it never had existed, was a thought for desolation 
 and for tears. And though the little fragment he 
 was about to witness might be crude in itself and 
 incomplete, yet it was part of a vast system that 
 once explored the richest realms of deity. The 
 reverence in him contained a holiness of the night 
 and of the stars; great, gentle awe lay in it too; for 
 he stood, aflame with anticipation and humility, at 
 the gateway of sacred things. | 
 And this was the mood, no thrill of cheap excite- 
 ment or alarm to weaken in, in which he first became 
 aware that two spots of darkness he had taken all 
 along for boulders on the snowy valley bed, were 
 actually something very different. They were living 
 figures. They moved. It was not the shadows 
 slowly following the moonlight, but the stir of 
 
SAND 2 
 
 human beings who all these hours had been motion- 
 less as stone. He must have passed them un- 
 noticed within a dozen yards when he crossed the 
 Wadi bed, and a hundred times from this very ledge 
 his eyes had surely rested on them without recogni- 
 tion. Their minds, he knew full well, had not been 
 inactive as their bodies. The important part of 
 the ancient ritual lay, he remembered, in the powers 
 of the evoking mind. 
 
 Here, indeed, was no effective nor theatrical 
 approach of the principal figures. It had nothing 
 in common with the cheap external ceremonial of 
 modern days. In forgotten powers of the soul its 
 grandeur lay, potent, splendid, true. Long before 
 he came, perhaps all through the day, these two 
 had laboured with their arduous preparations. They 
 were there, part of the Desert, when hours ago he 
 had crossed the plateau in the twilight. To them— 
 to this woman’s potent working of old ceremonial 
 —had been due that singular rush of imagination 
 he had felt. He had interpreted the Desert as 
 alive. Here was the explanation. It was alive. 
 Life was on the way. Long latent, her intense 
 desire summoned it back to physical expression ; 
 and the effect upon him had steadily increased as 
 he drew nearer to the centre where she would focus 
 its revival and return, Those singular impressions 
 of being watched and accompanied were explained. 
 A priest of this old-world worship performed a 
 genuine evocation; a Great One of Vision revived 
 the cosmic Powers. 
 
 Henriot watched the small figures far below him 
 with a sense of dramatic splendour that only this 
 association of far-off Memory could account for. 
 It was their rising now, and the lifting of their arms 
 
324 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 to form a slow revolving outline, that marked the 
 abrupt cessation of the larger river of movement ; 
 for the sweeping of the Wadi sank into sudden 
 stillness, and these two, with motions not unlike 
 some dance of deliberate solemnity, passed slowly 
 through the moonlight to and fro. His attention 
 fixed upon them both. All other movement ceased. 
 They fastened the flow of Time against the Desert’s 
 body. 
 
 What happened then? How could his mind 
 interpret an experience so long denied that the power 
 of expression, as of comprehension, has ceased to 
 exist? How translate this symbolical representation, 
 small detail though it was, of a transcendent worship 
 entombed for most so utterly beyond recovery ? 
 Its splendour could never lodge in minds that con- 
 ceive Deity perched upon a cloud within telephoning 
 distance of fashionable churches. How should he 
 phrase it even to himself, whose memory drew up 
 pictures from so dim a past that the language fit to 
 frame them lay unreachable and lost ? 
 
 Henriot did not know. Perhaps he never yet 
 has known. Certainly, at the time, he did not even 
 try to think. His sensations remain his own— 
 untranslatable ; and even that instinctive description 
 the mind gropes for automatically, floundered, halted, 
 and stopped dead. Yet there rose within him some- 
 where, from depths long drowned in slumber, a 
 reviving power by which he saw, divined and re- 
 collected—remembered seemed too literal a word— 
 these elements of a worship he once had personally 
 known. He; too, had worshipped thus. His soul 
 had moved amid similar evocations in some aeonian 
 past, whence now the sand was being cleared away. 
 ‘Symbols of stupendous meaning flashed and went 
 
SAND 325 
 
 their way across the lifting mists. He hardly caught 
 their meaning, so long it was since he had known 
 them; yet they were familiar as the faces seen in 
 dreams, and some hint of their spiritual significance 
 left faint traces in his heart by means of which their 
 grandeur reached towards interpretation. And all 
 were symbols of a cosmic, deific nature; of Powers 
 that only symbols can express—prayer-books and 
 sacraments used in the Wisdom Religion of an older 
 time, but to-day known only in the decrepit, literal 
 shell which is their degradation. 
 
 Grandly the figures moved across the valley bed. 
 The powers of the heavenly bodies once more joined 
 them. They moved to the measure of a cosmic 
 dance, whose rhythm was creative. The Universe 
 partnered them. 
 
 There was this transfiguration of all common, 
 external things. He realised that appearances were 
 visible letters of a soundless language, a language he 
 once had known. The powers of night and moon 
 and desert sand married with points in the fluid 
 stream of his inmost spiritual being that knew and 
 welcomed them. He understood. 
 
 Old Egypt herself stooped down from her un- 
 covered throne. The stars sent messengers. There 
 was commotion in the secret, sandy places of the 
 desert. For the Desert had grown Temple. Columns 
 reared against the sky. There rose, from leagues 
 away, the chanting of the sand. 
 
 The temples, where once this came to pass, were 
 gone, their ruin questioned by alien hearts that knew 
 not their spiritual meaning. But here the entire 
 Desert swept in to form a shrine, and the Majesty 
 that once was Egypt stepped grandly back across 
 ages of denial and neglect. The sand was altar, and 
 
326 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 the stars were altar lights. The moon lit up the 
 vast recesses of the ceiling, and the wind from a 
 thousand miles brought in the perfume of her incense. 
 For with that faith which shifts mountains from 
 their sandy bed, two passionate, believing souls 
 invoked the Ka of Egypt. 
 
 And the motions that they made, he saw, were 
 definite harmonious patterns their dark figures traced 
 upon the shining valley floor. Like the points of 
 compasses, with stems invisible, and directed from 
 the sky, their movements marked the outlines of 
 great signatures of power—the sigils of the type 
 of life they would evoke. It would come as a Pro- 
 cession. No individual outline could contain it. 
 It needed for its visible expression—many. The 
 descent of a group-soul, known to the worship of 
 this mighty system, rose from its lair of centuries 
 and moved hugely down upon them. The Ka, 
 answering to the summons, would mate with sand. 
 The Desert was its Body. 
 
 Yet it was not this that he had come to fix with 
 block and pencil. Not yet was the moment when 
 his skill might be of use. He waited, watched, and 
 listened, while this river of half-remembered things 
 went past him. The patterns grew beneath his eyes 
 like music. Too intricate and prolonged to re- 
 member with accuracy later, he understood that 
 they were forms of that root-geometry which lies 
 behind all manifested life. The mould was being 
 traced in outline. Life would presently inform it. 
 And a singing rose from the maze of lines whose 
 beauty was like the beauty of the constellations. 
 
 This sound was very faint at first, but grew 
 steadily in volume. Although no echoes, properly 
 speaking, were possible, these precipices caught stray 
 
SAND R29 
 
 notes that trooped in from the further sandy 
 reaches. ‘he figures certainly were chanting, but 
 their chanting was not all he heard. Other sounds 
 came to his ears from far away, running past 
 him through the air from every side, and from in- 
 credible distances, all flocking down into the Wadi 
 bed to join the parent note that summoned them. 
 The Desert was giving voice. And memory, lifting 
 her hood yet higher, showed more of her grey, 
 mysterious face that searched his soul with questions. 
 Had he so soon forgotten that strange union of form 
 and sound which once was known to the evocative 
 rituals of olden days? 
 
 Henriot tried patiently to disentangle this desert- 
 music that their intoning voices woke, from the 
 humming of the blood in his own veins. But he 
 succeeded only in part. Sand was already in the air. 
 There was reverberation, rhythm, measure; there 
 was almost the breaking of the stream into great 
 syllables. But was it due, this strange reverberation, 
 to the countless particles of sand meeting in mid- 
 air about him, or—to larger bodies, whose surfaces 
 caught this friction of the sand and threw it back 
 against his ears? The wind, now rising, brought 
 particles that stung his face and hands, and filled his 
 eyes with a minute fine dust that partially veiled the 
 moonlight. But was not something larger, vaster 
 these particles composed now also on the way ? 
 
 Movement and sound and flying sand thus merged 
 themselves more and more in a single, whirling 
 torrent. But Henriot sought no commonplace 
 explanation of what he witnessed ; and here was the 
 proof that all happened in some vestibule of inner 
 experience where the strain of question and answer 
 had no business. One sitting beside him need not 
 
328 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 have seen anything at all. His host, for instance, 
 from Helouan, need not have been aware. Night 
 screened it; Helouan, as the whole of modern 
 experience, stood in front of the screen. This thing 
 took place behind it. He crouched motionless, 
 watching in some reconstructed ante-chamber of the 
 soul’s pre-existence, while the torrent grew into a 
 veritable tempest. 
 
 Yet Night remained unshaken ; the veil of moon- 
 light did not quiver ; the stars dropped their slender 
 golden pillars unobstructed. Calmness reigned every- 
 where as before. The stupendous representation 
 passed on behind it all. 
 
 But the dignity of the little human movements 
 that he watched had become now indescribable. The 
 gestures of the arms and bodies invested themselves 
 with consummate grandeur, as these two strode into 
 the caverns behind manifested life and drew forth 
 symbols that represented vanished Powers. The 
 sound of their chanting voices broke in cadenced 
 fragments against the shores of language. The 
 words Henriot never actually caught, if words they 
 were; yet he understood their purport — these 
 Names of Power to which the type of returning life 
 gave answer as they approached. He remembered 
 fumbling for his drawing materials, with such violence, 
 however, that the pencil snapped in two between his 
 fingers as he touched it. For now, even here, upon 
 the outer fringe of the ceremonial ground, there 
 was a stir of forces that set the very muscles working 
 in him before he had become aware of it... . 
 
 Then came the moment when his heart leaped 
 against his ribs with a sudden violence that was 
 almost pain, standing a second later still as death. 
 The lines upon the valley floor ceased their maze- 
 
SAND 329 
 
 like dance. All movement stopped. Sound died 
 away. In the midst of this profound and dreadful 
 silence the sigils lay empty there below him. They 
 waited to be in-formed. For the moment of entrance 
 had come at last. Life was close. 
 
 And he understood why this return of life had 
 all along suggested a Procession and could be no 
 mere momentary flash of vision. From such appalling 
 distance did it sweep down towards the present. 
 
 Upon this network, then, of splendid lines, at length 
 held rigid, the entire Desert reared itself with walls 
 of curtained sand, that dwarfed the cliffs, the shoulder- 
 ing hills, the very sky. The Desert stood on end. 
 As once before he had dreamed it from his balcony 
 windows, it rose upright, towering, and close against 
 his face. It built sudden ramparts to the stars that 
 chambered the thing he witnessed behind walls no 
 centuries could ever bring down crumbling into dust. 
 
 He himself, in some curious fashion, lay just out- 
 side, viewing it apart. As froma pinnacle, he peered 
 within—peered down with straining eyes into the 
 vast picture-gallery Memory threw abruptly open. 
 And the picture spaced its noble outline thus against 
 the very stars. He gazed between columns, that 
 supported the sky itself, like pillars of sand that 
 Swept across the field of vanished years. Sand 
 poured and streamed aside, laying bare the Past. 
 
 For down the enormous vista into which he gazed, 
 as into an avenue running a million miles towards a tiny 
 point, he saw this moving Thing that came towards 
 him, shaking loose the countless veils of sand the 
 ages had swathed about it. The Ka of buried 
 Egypt wakened out of sleep. She had heard the 
 potent summons of her old, time-honoured ritual. 
 She came. She stretched forth an arm towards the 
 
330 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 worshippers who evoked her. Out of the Desert, 
 out of the leagues of sand, out of the immeasurable 
 wilderness which was her mummied Form and Body, 
 she rose and came. And this fragment of her he 
 would actually see—this little portion that was obedient 
 to the stammered and broken ceremonial. ‘The 
 partial revelation he would witness yet so vast, 
 even this little bit of it, that it came as a Procession 
 and a host. 
 
 For a moment there was nothing. And then the 
 voice of the woman rose in a resounding cry that 
 filled the Wadi to its furthest precipices, before it 
 died away again to silence. That a human voice 
 could produce such volume, accent, depth, seemed 
 half incredible. The walls of towering sand swallowed 
 it instantly. But the Procession of life, needing a 
 group, a host, an army for its physical expression, 
 reached at that moment the nearer end of the huge 
 avenue. It touched the Present; it entered the 
 world of men. 
 
X 
 
 THE entire range of Henriot’s experience, read, 
 imagined, dreamed, then fainted into unreality 
 before the sheer wonder of what he saw. In the brief 
 interval it takes to snap the fingers the climax was 
 thus so hurriedly upon him. And, through it all, he 
 was clearly aware of the pair of little human figures, 
 man and woman, standing erect and commanding at 
 the centre—knew, too, that she directed and con- 
 trolled, while he in some secondary fashion supported 
 her—and ever watched. But both were dim, dropped 
 somewhere into a lesser scale. It was the knowledge 
 of their presence, however, that alone enabled him 
 to keep his powers in hand at all. But for these two 
 human beings there within possible reach, he must 
 have closed his eyes and swooned. 
 
 For a tempest that seemed to toss loose stars 
 about the sky swept round about him, pouring up 
 the pillared avenue in front of the procession. A 
 blast of giant energy, of liberty, came through. For- 
 wards and backwards, circling spirally about him 
 like a whirlwind, came this revival of Life that sought 
 to dip itself once more in matter and in form. It 
 came to the accurate out-line of its form they had 
 traced for it. He held his mind steady enough to 
 realise that it was akin to what men call a ‘descent’ 
 of some ‘spiritual movement’ that wakens a body of 
 
 331 
 
332 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 believers into faith—a race, an entire nation ; only 
 that he experienced it in this brief, concentrated 
 form before it has scattered down into ten thousand 
 hearts. Here he knew its source and essence, behind 
 the veil. Crudely, unmanageable as yet, he felt it, 
 rushing loose behind appearances. There was this 
 amazing impact of a twisting, swinging force that 
 stormed down as though it would bend and coil the 
 very ribs of the old stubborn hills. It sought to 
 warm them with the stress of its own irresistible life- 
 stream, to beat them into shape, and make pliable 
 their obstinate resistance. Through all things the 
 impulse poured and spread, like fire at white heat. 
 Yet nothing visible came as yet, no alteration in 
 the actual landscape, no sign of change in things 
 familiar to his eyes, while impetus thus fought against 
 inertia. He perceived nothing form-al. Calm and 
 untouched himself, he lay outside the circle of evoca- 
 tion, watching, waiting, scarcely daring to breathe, 
 yet well aware that any minute the scene would 
 transfer itself from memory that was subjective to 
 matter that was objective. | 
 And then, in a flash, the bridge was built, and the 
 transfer was accomplished. How or where he did 
 not see, he could not tell. It was there before he 
 knew it—there before his normal, earthly sight. He 
 saw it, as he saw the hands he was holding stupidly 
 up to shield his face. For this terrific release of 
 force long held back, long stored up, latent for 
 centuries, came pouring down the empty Wadi bed 
 prepared for. its reception. Through stones and sand 
 and boulders it came in an impetuous hurricane of 
 power. ‘The liberation of its life appalled him. All 
 that was free, untied, responded instantly like chaff ; 
 loose objects fled towards it ; there was a yielding in 
 
SAND 333 
 
 the hills and precipices; and even in the mass of 
 Desert which provided their foundation. The hinges 
 of the Sand went creaking in the night. It shaped 
 for itself a bodily outline. 
 
 Yet, most strangely, nothing definitely moved. 
 How could he express the violent contradiction? For 
 the immobility was apparent only—a sham, a counter- 
 feit; while behind it the essential deing of these 
 things did rush and shift and alter. He saw the two 
 things side by side: the outer immobility the senses 
 commonly agree upon, and this amazing flying-out 
 of their inner, invisible substance towards the vortex 
 of attracting life that sucked them in. For stubborn 
 matter turned docile before the stress of this returning 
 life, taught somewhere to be plastic. It was being 
 moulded into an approach to bodily outline. A 
 mobile elasticity invaded rigid substance. The two 
 officiating human beings, safe at the stationary centre, 
 and himself, just outside the circle of operation, alone 
 remained untouched and unaffected. But a few feet 
 in any direction, for any one of them, meant— instant- 
 aneous death. They would be absorbed into the 
 vortex, mere corpuscles pressed into the service of 
 this sphere of action of a mighty Body. .. . 
 
 Flow these perceptions reached him with such 
 conviction, Henriot could never say. He knew it, 
 because he fe/t it. Something fell about him from 
 the sky that already paled towards the dawn. The 
 stars themselves, it seemed, contributed some part of 
 the terrific, flowing impulse that conquered matter 
 and shaped itself this physical expression. 
 
 Then, before he was able to fashion any pre- 
 conceived idea of what visible form this potent life 
 might assume, he was aware of further change. It 
 came at the briefest possible interval after the beginning 
 
334 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 —this certainty that, to and fro about him, as yet 
 however indeterminate, passed Magnitudes that were 
 stupendous as the desert. There was beauty in them 
 too, though a terrible beauty hardly of this earth at 
 all. <A fragment of old Egypt had returned—a little 
 portion of that vast Body of Belief that once was 
 Egypt. Evoked by the worship of one human heart, 
 passionately sincere, the Ka of Egypt stepped back 
 to visit the material it once informed—the Sand. 
 
 Yet only aportion came. Henriot clearly realised 
 that. It stretched forth an arm. Finding no mass 
 of worshippers through whom it might express itself 
 completely, it pressed inanimate matter thus into its 
 service. 
 
 Here was the beginning the woman had spoken 
 of—little opening clue. Entire reconstruction lay 
 perhaps beyond. 
 
 And Henriot next realised that these Magnitudes 
 in which this group-energy sought to clothe itself as 
 visible form, were curiously familiar. It was not a 
 new thing that he would see. Booming softly as 
 they dropped downwards through the sky, with a 
 motion the size of them rendered delusive, they 
 trooped up the Avenue towards the central point 
 that summoned them. He realised the giant flock 
 of them—descent of fearful beauty—outlining a type 
 of life denied to the world for ages, countless as this 
 sand that blew against his skin. Careering over the 
 waste of Desert moved the army of dark Splendours, 
 that dwarfed any organic structure called a body 
 men have ever known. He recognised them, cold 
 in him of death, though the outlines reared higher 
 than the pyramids, and towered up to hide whole 
 groups of stars. Yes, he recognised them in their 
 _ partial revelation, though he never saw the monstrous 
 
SAND F3'c 
 
 host complete. But, one of them, he realised, posing 
 its eternal riddle to the sands, had of old been glimpsed 
 sufficiently to seize its form in stone,—yet poorly 
 seized, as a doll may stand for the dignity of a human 
 being or a child’s toy represent an engine that draws 
 roainese: YY, 
 
 And he knelt there on his narrow ledge, the 
 world of men forgotten. The power that caught 
 him was too great a thing for wonder or for fear; 
 he even felt no awe. Sensation of any kind that can 
 be named or realised left him utterly. He forgot 
 himself. He merely watched. The glory numbed 
 him. Block and pencil, as the reason of his presence 
 there at all, no longer existed. . . . 
 
 Yet one small link remained that held him to 
 some kind of consciousness of earthly things: he 
 never lost sight of this—that, being just outside 
 the circle of evocation, he was safe, and that the 
 man and woman, being stationary in its untouched 
 centre, were also safe. But—that a movement of 
 six inches in any direction meant for any one of 
 them instant death. 
 
 What was it, then, that suddenly strengthened this 
 solitary link so that the chain tautened and he felt the 
 pull of it? Hlenriot could not say. He came back 
 with the rush of a descending drop to the realisation 
 —dimly, vaguely, as from great distance—that he 
 was with these two, now at this moment, in the 
 Wadi Hof, and that the cold of dawn was in the air 
 about him. The chill breath of the Desert made 
 him shiver. 
 
 But at first, so deeply had his soul been dipped in 
 this fragment of ancient worship, he could remember 
 nothing more. Somewhere lay a little spot of streets 
 and houses; its name escaped him. He had once 
 
336 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 been there ; there were many people, but insignificant 
 people. Who were they? And what had he to do 
 with them? All recent memories had been drowned 
 in the tide that flooded him from an immeasurable 
 Past. 
 
 And who were they—these two beings, standing 
 on the white floor of sand below him? For a long 
 time he could not recover their names. Yet he 
 remembered them; and, thus robbed of association 
 that names bring, he saw them for an instant naked, 
 and knew that one of them was evil. One of them 
 was vile. Blackness touched the picture there. The 
 man, his name still out of reach, was sinister, impure 
 and dark at the heart. And for this reason the 
 evocation had been partial only. The admixture of 
 an evil motive was the flaw that marred complete 
 SUCCESS. 
 
 The names then flashed upon him—Lady Statham 
 —Richard Vance. 
 
 Vance! With a horrid drop from splendour 
 into something mean and sordid, Henriot felt the 
 pain of it. The motive of the man was so in- 
 significant, his purpose so atrocious. More and 
 more, with the name, came back—his first re- 
 pugnance, fear, suspicion. And human terror 
 caught him. He shrieked. But, as in nightmare, 
 no sound escaped his lips. He tried to move; a 
 wild desire to interfere, to protect, to prevent, flung 
 him forward—close to the dizzy edge of. the gulf 
 below. But his muscles refused obedience to the 
 will. The paralysis of common fear rooted him to 
 the rocks. 
 
 But the sudden change of focus instantly 
 destroyed the picture; and so vehement was the 
 fall from glory into meanness, that it dislocated 
 
SAND 337 
 
 the machinery of clairvoyant vision. The inner 
 perception clouded and grew dark. Outer and 
 inner mingled in violent, inextricable confusion. 
 The wrench seemed almost physical. It happened 
 all at once, retreat and continuation for a moment 
 somehow combined. And, if he did not definitely 
 see the awful thing, at least he was aware that it 
 had come to pass. He knew it as positively as 
 though his eye were glued against a magnifying 
 lens in the stillness of some laboratory. He 
 witnessed it. 
 
 The supreme moment of evocation was close. 
 Life, through that awful sandy vortex, whirled and 
 raged. Loose particles showered and pelted, caught 
 by the draught of vehement life that moulded the 
 substance of the Desert into imperial outline—when, 
 suddenly, shot the little evil thing across that 
 marred and blasted it. 
 
 Into the whirlpool flew forward a particle of 
 material that was a human being. And the Group- 
 Soul caught and used it. 
 
 The actual accomplishment Henriot did not 
 claim to see. He was a witness, but a witness who 
 could give no evidence. Whether the woman was 
 pushed of set intention, or whether some detail of 
 sound and pattern was falsely used to effect the 
 terrible result, he was helpless to determine. He 
 pretends no itemised account. She went. In one 
 second, with appalling swiftness, she disappeared, 
 swallowed out of space and time within that awful 
 maw—one little corpuscle among a million through 
 which the Life, now stalking the Desert wastes, 
 moulded itself a troop-like Body. Sand took her. 
 
 There followed emptiness—a hush of unutterable 
 silence, stillness, peace. Movement and sound 
 
 Z 
 
338 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 instantly retired whence they came. The avenues 
 of Memory closed; the Splendours all went down 
 into their sandy tombs. . . . 7 
 
 The moon had sunk into the Libyan wilderness ; 
 the eastern sky was red. The dawn drew out that 
 wondrous sweetness of the Desert, which is as sister to 
 the sweetness that the moonlight brings. The Desert 
 settled back to sleep, huge, unfathomable, charged 
 to the brim with life that watches, waits, and yet 
 conceals itself behind the ruins of apparent desola- 
 tion. And the Wadi, empty at his feet, filled 
 slowly with the gentle little winds that bring the 
 sunrise. 
 
 Then, across the pale glimmering of sand, 
 Henriot saw a figure moving. It came quickly 
 towards him, yet unsteadily, and with a hurry that 
 was ugly. Vance was on the way to fetch him. 
 And the horror of the man’s approach struck him 
 like a hammer in the face. He closed his eyes, 
 sinking back to hide. 
 
 But, before he swooned, there reached him the 
 clatter of the murderer’s tread as he began to climb 
 over the splintered rocks, and the faint echo of 
 his voice, calling him by name—falsely and in 
 pretence—for help. 
 
 HeEtovan. 
 
fs. 
 
 Ayyitt 
 
Peale & 
 
 LIBRARY 
 ‘OF THE | 
 UNIVERSITY OF \LLINOTS 
 
THE TRANSFER 
 
THE TRANSFER 
 
 Tue child first began to cry in the early afternoon— 
 about three o’clock, to be exact. I remember the 
 hour, because I had been listening with secret relief 
 to the sound of the departing carriage. Those 
 wheels fading into distance down the gravel drive 
 with Mrs. Frene, and her daughter Gladys to 
 whom I was governess, meant for me some hours’ 
 welcome rest, and the June day was oppressively hot. 
 ‘Moreover, there was this excitement in the little 
 country household that had told upon us all, but 
 especially upon myself. This excitement, running 
 delicately behind all the events of the morning, was 
 _.due to some mystery, and the mystery was of course 
 kept concealed from the governess. I had exhausted 
 myself with guessing and keeping on the watch. 
 For some deep and unexplained anxiety possessed 
 me, so that I kept thinking of my sister’s dictum 
 that I was really much too sensitive to make a good 
 governess, and that I should have done far better as 
 a professional clairvoyante. 
 
 Mr. Frene, senior, ‘Uncle Frank,’ was expected 
 for an unusual visit from town about tea-time. That 
 I knew. I also knew that his visit was concerned 
 somehow with the future welfare of little Jamie, 
 Gladys’ seven-year-old brother. More than this, 
 indeed, I never knew, and this missing link makes 
 my story in a fashion incoherent—an important bit 
 
 343 
 
344 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 of the strange puzzle left out. I only gathered that 
 the visit of Uncle Frank was of a condescending 
 nature, that Jamie was told he must be upon his 
 very best behaviour to make a good impression, and 
 that Jamie, who had never seen his uncle, dreaded 
 him horribly already in advance. Then, trailing 
 thinly through the dying crunch of the carriage 
 wheels this sultry afternoon, I heard the curious 
 little wail of the child’s crying, with the effect, wholly 
 unaccountable, that every nerve in my body shot its 
 bolt electrically, bringing me to my feet with a 
 tingling of unequivocal alarm. Positively, the water 
 ran into my eyes. I recalled his white distress that 
 morning when told that Uncle Frank was motoring 
 down for tea and that he was to be ‘ very nice indeed “ 
 ‘to him. It had gone into me like a knife. All 
 through the day, indeed, had run this nightmare 
 quality of terror and vision. 
 
 ‘The man with the ’normous face?’ he had asked 
 in a little voice of awe, and then gone speechless 
 from the room in tears that no amount of soothing 
 management could calm. That was all I saw ; and 
 what he meant by ‘the ’normous face’ gave me only 
 _a sense of vague presentiment. But it came as 
 anti-climax somehow—a sudden revelation of the 
 mystery and excitement that pulsed beneath the 
 quiet_of the stifling summer day. I feared for him. 
 For of all that commonplace household I loved Jamie 
 best, though professionally I had nothing to do with 
 him. He was a high-strung, ultra-sensitive child, 
 and it seemed to me that no one understood him, 
 least of all his honest, tender-hearted parents; so 
 that his little wailing voice brought me from my 
 bed to the window in a moment like a call for help. 
 
 The haze of June lay over that big garden like a 
 
THE TRANSFER 34.5 
 
 blanket ; the wonderful flowers, which were Mr. 
 Frene’s delight, hung motionless ; the lawns, so soft 
 and thick, cushioned all other sounds ; only the limes 
 and huge clumps of guelder roses hummed with bees. 
 Through this muted atmosphere of heat and haze 
 ~ the sound of the child’s crying floated faintly to my 
 ears—from a distance. Indeed, I wonder now that 
 I heard it at all, for the next moment I saw him 
 down beyond the garden, standing in his white sailor 
 suit alone, two hundred yards away. He was down 
 by the ugly patch where nothing grew—the Forbidden 
 Corner. A faintness then came over me at once, a 
 faintness as of death, when I saw him ¢here of all 
 places—where he never was allowed to go, and 
 where, moreover, he was usually too terrified to go. 
 To see him standing solitary in that singular spot, 
 above all to hear him crying there, bereft me 
 momentarily of the power to act. Then, before I 
 could recover my composure sufficiently to call him 
 in, Mr. Frene came round the corner from the 
 Lower Farm with the dogs, and, seeing his son, 
 performed that office for me. In his loud, good- 
 natured, hearty voice he called him, and Jamie 
 turned and ran as though some spell had broken 
 just in time—ran into the open arms of his fond but 
 uncomprehending father, who carried him indoors 
 on his shoulder, while asking ‘ what all this hubbub 
 was about?’ And, at their heels, the tail-less 
 sheep-dogs followed, barking loudly, and performing 
 what Jamie called their ‘Gravel Dance,’ because they 
 ploughed up the moist, rolled gravel with their feet. 
 I stepped back swiftly from the window lest 
 I should be seen. Had I witnessed the saving of 
 the child from fire or drowning the relief could 
 hardly have been greater. Only Mr. Frene, I felt 
 
346 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 sure, would not say and do the right thing quite. 
 He would protect the boy from his own vain imagin- 
 ings, yet not with the explanation that could really 
 heal. They disappeared behind the rose trees, 
 making for the house. I saw no more till later, 
 when Mr. Frene, senior, arrived. 
 
 To describe the ugly patch as ‘singular’ is hard 
 to justify, perhaps, yet some such word is what the 
 entire family sought, though never—oh, never !— 
 used. To Jamie and myself, though equally we 
 never mentioned it, that treeless, flowerless spot was _ 
 more than singular. It stood at the far end of the 
 magnificent rose garden, a bald, sore place, where 
 the black earth showed uglily in winter, almost like » 
 a piece of dangerous bog, and in summer baked and 
 cracked with fissures where green lizards shot their 
 fire in passing. In contrast to the rich luxuriance of 
 the whole amazing garden it was like a glimpse of 
 death amid life, a centre of disease that cried for 
 healing lest it spread. But it never did spread. 
 Behind it stood the thick wood of silver birches and, 
 glimmering beyond, the orchard meadow, where the 
 lambs played. 
 
 The gardeners had a very simple explanation of 
 its barrenness—that the water all drained off it owing 
 to the lie of the slopes immediately about it, holding 
 no remnant to keep the soil alive. I cannot say. It 
 was Jamie—Jamie who felt its spell and haunted it, _ 
 who spent whole hours there, even while afraid, and 
 for whom jit. was finally labelled- ‘strictly out of 
 bounds’ because it stimulated his already big 
 imagination, not wisely but too darkly—it was Jamie 
 who buried ogres there and heard it crying in an 
 earthy voice, swore that it shook its surface some- 
 
THE TRANSFER 34.7 
 
 times while he watched it, and secretly gave it food 
 in the form of birds or mice or rabbits he found dead 
 upon his wanderings. And it was Jamie who put so 
 extraordinarily into words the feeling that the horrid 
 spot had given me from the moment I first saw it. 
 
 ‘It’s bad, Miss Gould,’ he told me. 
 
 ‘But, Jamie, nothing in Nature is bad—exactly ; 
 ' only different from the rest sometimes.’ 
 
 ‘Miss Gould, if you please, then it’s empty. It’s 
 not fed. It’s dying because it can’t get the food it 
 wants.’ 
 
 And when I stared into the little pale face where 
 the eyes shone so dark and wonderful, seeking 
 within myself for the right thing to say to him, he 
 added, with an emphasis and conviction that made 
 me suddenly turn cold: ‘Miss Gould ’—he always 
 used my name like this in all his sentences— it’s 
 hungry, don’t you see? But J know what would 
 make it feel all right.’ 
 
 Only the conviction of an earnest child, perhaps, 
 could have made so outrageous a suggestion worth 
 listening to for an instant; but for me, who felt 
 that things an imaginative child believed were 
 important, it came with a vast disquieting shock of 
 reality. Jamie, in this exaggerated way, had caught 
 at the edge of a shocking fact—a hint of dark, undis- 
 covered truth had leaped into that sensitive imagina- 
 _ tion. Why there lay horror in the words I cannot 
 say, but I think some power of darkness trooped 
 across the suggestion of that sentence at the end, 
 ‘I know what would make it feel all right.’ | 
 remember that I shrank from asking explanation. 
 Small groups of other words, veiled fortunately by 
 his silence, gave life to an unspeakable possibility 
 that hitherto had lain at the back of my own 
 
348 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 consciousness. The way it sprang to life proves,I _ 
 think, that my mind already contained it. The 
 blood rushed from my heart as I listened. I re- 
 member that my knees shook. Jamie’s idea was— 
 had been all along—my own, as well. — 
 
 And now, as I lay down on my bed and thought 
 about it all, I understood why the coming of his 
 uncle involved somehow an experience that wrapped 
 terror at its heart. With a sense of nightmare 
 certainty that left me too weak to resist the pre- 
 posterous idea, too shocked, indeed, to argue or 
 reason it away, this certainty came with its full, black 
 blast of conviction ; and the only way I can put it 
 into words, since nightmare horror really is not 
 properly tellable at all, seems this: that there was 
 something missing in that dying patch of garden ; 
 something lacking that it ever searched. for; some- 
 thing, once found and taken, that would turn it rich 
 and living as the rest ; more—that there was some 
 living person who could do this for it. Mr. Frene, 
 senior, in a word, ‘ Uncle Frank,’ was this person 
 who out of his abundant life could supply the lack— 
 unwittingly. 
 
 For this connection between the dying, empty 
 patch and the person of this vigorous, wealthy, and 
 successful man had already lodged itself in my sub- 
 consciousness before I was aware of it. Clearly it 
 must have lain there all along, though hidden. 
 Jamie’s words, his sudden pallor, his vibrating 
 emotion of fearful anticipation had developed the 
 plate, but it was his weeping alone there in the 
 Forbidden Corner that had printed it. The photo- 
 graph shone framed before me in the air. I hid my 
 eyes. But for the redness—the charm of my face 
 goes to pieces unless my eyes are clear—I could have 
 
THE TRANSFER 349 
 
 cried. Jamie’s words that morning about the 
 ‘’normous face’ came back upon me like a batter- 
 ing-ram. 
 
 Mr. Frene, senior, had been so frequently the 
 subject of conversation in the family since I came, I 
 had so often heard him discussed, and had then read 
 so much about him in the papers—his energy, his 
 philanthropy, his success with everything he laid his 
 hand to—that a picture of the man had grown com- 
 plete within me. J knew him as he was—within ; 
 or, as my sister would have said—clairvoyantly. 
 And the only time I saw him (when I took Gladys 
 to a meeting where he was chairman, and later fe/t 
 his atmosphere and presence while for a moment 
 he patronisingly spoke with her) had justified the 
 portrait I had drawn. ‘The rest, you may say, was 
 a woman’s wild imagining ; but I think rather it was 
 that kind of divining intuition which women share 
 with children. If souls could be made visible, I 
 would stake my life upon the truth and accuracy of 
 my portrait. 
 
 For this Mr. Frene was a man who drooped 
 alone, but grew vital in a crowd—because he used 
 their vitality. He was a supreme, unconscious artist 
 in the science of taking the fruits of others’ work 
 and living—for his own advantage. He vampired, 
 unknowingly no doubt, every one with whom he 
 came in contact ; left them exhausted, tired, listless. 
 Others fed him, so that while in a full room he 
 shone, alone by himself and with no life to draw 
 upon he languished and declined. In the man's 
 immediate neighbourhood you felt his presence 
 draining you; he took your ideas, your strength, 
 your very words, and later used them for his own 
 benefit and aggrandisement. Not evilly, of course ; 
 
350 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 the man was good enough ; but you felt that he was 
 
 dangerous owing to the facile way he absorbed into 
 himself all loose vitality that was to be had. His 
 eyes and voice and presence devitalised you. Life, 
 it seemed, not highly organised enough to resist, must 
 shrink from his too near approach and hide away for 
 fear of being appropriated, for fear, that is, of —death. 
 
 Jamie, unknowingly, put in the finishing touch to 
 my unconscious portrait. The man carried about 
 with him some silent, compelling trick of drawing 
 out all your reserves—then swiftly pocketing them. 
 At first you would be conscious of taut resistance ; 
 this would slowly shade off into weariness ; the will 
 would become flaccid ; then you either moved away 
 or yielded—agreed to all he said with a sense of 
 weakness pressing ever closer upon the edges of 
 collapse. With a male antagonist it might be 
 different, but even then the effort of resistance would 
 generate force that he absorbed and not the other. 
 He never gave out. Some instinct taught him how 
 to protect himself from that. To human beings, I 
 mean, he never gave out. This time it was a very 
 different matter. He had no more chance than a 
 fly before the wheels of a huge—what Jamie used to 
 call—‘ attraction’ engine. 
 
 So this was how I saw him—a great human 
 sponge, crammed and soaked with the life, or 
 proceeds of life, absorbed from others—stolen. My 
 idea of a human vampire was satisfied. He went 
 about carrying these accumulations of the life of 
 others. In this sense his ‘life’ was not really his 
 own. For the same reason, I think, it was not so 
 fully under his control as he imagined. 
 
 And in another hour this man would be here. 
 
THE TRANSFER 351 
 
 I went to the window. My eye wandered to the 
 empty patch, dull black there amid the rich luxuriance 
 of the garden flowers. It struck me as a hideous bit 
 of emptiness yawning to be filled and nourished. 
 The idea of Jamie playing round its bare edge was 
 loathsome. I watched the big summer clouds above, 
 the stillness of the afternoon, the haze. The silence 
 of the overheated garden was oppressive. I had never 
 felt a day so stifling, motionless. It lay there waiting. 
 The household, too, was waiting —waiting for the com- 
 ing of Mr. Frene from London in his big motor-car. 
 
 And I shall*never forget the sensation of icy 
 shrin?!8S8les, “stress with which I heard the rumble 
 of thet eyiee had arrived. Tea was all ready on 
 the lawn beneath the lime trees, and Mrs. Frene and 
 Gladys, back from their drive, were sitting in wicker 
 chairs. Mr. Frene, junior, was in the hall to meet 
 his brother, but Jamie, as I learned afterwards, had 
 shown such hysterical alarm, offered such bold 
 resistance, that it had been deemed wiser to keep him 
 in his room. Perhaps, after all, his presence might 
 not be necessary. ‘The visit clearly had to do with 
 something on the uglier side of life—money, settle- 
 ‘ments, or what not; I never knew exactly ; only 
 that his parents were anxious, and that Uncle Frank 
 had to be propitiated. It does not matter. That 
 has nothing to do with the affair. What has to do 
 with it—or I should not be telling the story—is that 
 Mrs. Frene sent for me to come down ‘in my nice 
 white dress, if I didn’t mind,’ and that I was terrified, 
 yet pleased, because it meant that a pretty face would 
 
 . be considered a welcome addition to the visitor’s 
 
 landscape. Also, most odd it was, I felt my presence 
 was somehow inevitable, that in some way it was 
 intended that I should witness what I did witness. 
 
B52 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 And the instant I came upon the lawn—I hesitate to 
 set it down, it sounds so foolish, disconnected—I 
 could have sworn, as my eyes met his, that a kind of 
 sudden darkness came, taking the summer brilliance 
 out of everything, and that it was caused by troops of 
 small black horses that raced about us from his 
 person—to attack. 
 
 After ‘a first momentary approving glance he took 
 no further notice of me. The tea and talk went 
 smoothly ; I helped to pass the plates and cups, 
 filling in pauses with little under-talk to Gladys. 
 Jamie was never mentioned. Outy -rdly all seemed 
 well, but inwardly everything was 7 py ring 
 the edge of things unspeakable, al > Uarged 
 with danger that I could not..keep.my voice from 
 trembling when I spoke. 
 
 I watched his hard, bleak face; I noticed how 
 thin he was, and the curious, oily brightness of his 
 steady eyes. They did not glitter, but they drew 
 you with a sort of soft, creamy shine like Eastern 
 eyes. And everything he said or did announced 
 what I may dare to call the suction of his presence. 
 His nature achieved this result automatically. He_ 
 dominated us all, yet so gently that until it was 
 accomplished no one noticed it. 
 
 Before five minutes had passed, however, I was 
 aware of one thing only. My mind focussed ex- 
 clusively upon it, and so vividly that I marvelled 
 the others did not scream, or run, or do something 
 violent to prevent it. And it was this: that, 
 separated merely by some dozen yards or so, this 
 man, vibrating with the acquired vitality of others, 
 stood within easy reach of that spot of yawning 
 emptiness, waiting and eager to be filled. Farth 
 scented her prey. 
 
THE TRANSFER 353 
 
 These two active ‘ entree * were within fighting 
 distance ; he so thin, so hard, so keen, yet really 
 spreading large with the loose ‘surround’ of others’ 
 life he had appropriated, so practised and triumphant ; 
 that other so patient, deep, with so mighty a 
 ~ draw of the whole earth behind it, and—ugh !|—so 
 obviously aware that its opportunity at last had come. 
 
 I saw it all as plainly as though I watched two 
 great animals prepare for battle, both unconsciously ; 
 yet in some inexplicable way I saw it, of course, 
 within me, and not externally. The conflict would 
 be hideously unequal. Each side had already sent 
 out emissaries, how long before I could not tell, for 
 the first evidence e gave that something was going 
 wrong with him was when his voice grew suddenly 
 confused, he missed his words, and his lips trembled 
 a moment and turned flabby. The next second his ° 
 face betrayed that singular and horrid change, grow- 
 ing somehow loose about the bones of the cheek, 
 and larger, so that I remembered Jamie’s miserable 
 phrase. The emissaries of the two kingdoms, the 
 human and the vegetable, had met, I make it out, 
 in that very second. For the first time in his long 
 career of battening on others, Mr. Frene found 
 himself pitted against a vaster kingdom than he 
 knew and, so finding, shook inwardly in that little 
 part that was his definite actual self. He felt the 
 huge disaster coming. 
 
 ‘Yes, John,’ he was saying, in his drawling, self- 
 congratulating voice, ‘Sir George gave me that car 
 —gave it tome as a present. Wasn’t it char a 
 and then broke off abruptly, stammered, drew breath, 
 stood up, and looked uneasily about him. For a 
 second there was a gaping pause. It was like the 
 click which starts some huge machinery moving— 
 
 2A 
 
354 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 that instant’s pause before it actually starts. The 
 whole thing, indeed, then went with the rapidity of 
 machinery running down and beyond control. I 
 thought of a giant dynamo working silently and 
 invisible. 
 
 ‘What’s that?’ he cried, in a soft voice charged 
 with alarm. ‘What's that horrid place? And 
 some one’s crying there---who is it ?' 
 
 He pointed to the empty patch. Then, before 
 any one could answer, he started across the lawn 
 towards it, going every minute faster. Before any 
 one could move he stood upon the edge. He leaned 
 over—peering down into it. . 
 
 It seemed a few hours passed, but really they were 
 seconds, for time is measured by the quality and not 
 the quantity of sensations it contains. I saw it all 
 with merciless, photographic detail, sharply etched 
 amid the general confusion. Each side was intensely 
 active, but only one side, the human, exerted a// its 
 force—in resistance. The other merely stretched 
 out a feeler, as it were, from its vast, potential 
 strength ; no more was necessary. _It was such a 
 soft and easy victory. Oh, it was rather pitiful! 
 There was no bluster or great effort, on one side 
 at least. Close by his side I witnessed it, for I, it 
 seemed, alone had moved and followed him. No 
 one else stirred, though Mrs. Frene clattered noisily 
 with the cups, making some sudden impulsive gesture 
 with her hands, and Gladys, I remember, gave a cry 
 —it was like a little scream—‘ Oh, mother, it’s the 
 heat, isn’t it?” Mr. Frene, her father, was speechless, 
 pale as ashes. 
 
 But the instant I reached his side, it became clear 
 what had drawn me there thus instinctively. Upon 
 the other side, among the silver birches, stood little 
 
THE TRANSFER 355 
 
 Jamie. He was watching. I experienced—for him 
 —one of those moments that shake the heart; a 
 liquid fear ran all over me, the more effective because 
 unintelligible really. Yet I felt that if I could know 
 all, and what lay actually behind, my fear would be 
 more than justified ; that the thing was awful, full 
 of awe. | 
 
 And then it happened—a truly wicked sight— 
 like watching a universe in action, yet all contained 
 within a small square foot of space. I think he 
 understood vaguely that if some one could only take 
 his place he might be saved, and that was why, 
 discerning instinctively the easiest substitute within 
 reach, he saw the child and called aloud to him across 
 the empty patch, ‘James, my boy, come here!’ 
 
 His voice was like a thin report, but somehow 
 flat and lifeless, as when a rifle misses fire, sharp, 
 yet weak ; it had no ‘crack’ in it. It was really 
 supplication. And, with amazement, I heard my 
 own ring out imperious and strong, though I was 
 not conscious of saying it, ‘Jamie, don’t move. 
 Stay where you-are!’ But Jamie, the little child, 
 obeyed neither of us. Moving up nearer to the 
 edge, he stood there—laughing! I heard that 
 laughter, but could have sworn it did not come from 
 him. The empty, yawning patch gave out that 
 sound. 
 
 Mr. Frene turned sideways, throwing up his 
 arms. I saw his hard, bleak face grow somehow 
 wider, spread through the air, and downwards. A 
 similar thing, I saw, was happening at the same time 
 to his entire person, for it drew out into the atmo- 
 sphere in a stream of movement. The face for a 
 second made me think of those toys of green india- 
 rubber that children pull. It grew enormous. But 
 
Sr5 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 this was an external impression only. What actually 
 happened, I clearly understood, was that all this 
 vitality and life he had transferred from others to 
 himself for years was now in turn being taken from 
 him and transferred—elsewhere. 
 
 One moment on the edge he wobbled horribly, 
 then with that queer sideways motion, rapid yet 
 ungainly, he stepped forward into the middle of the 
 patch and fell heavily upon his face. His eyes, 
 as he dropped, faded shockingly, and across the 
 countenance was written plainly what I can only call 
 an expression of destruction. He looked utterly 
 destroyed. I caught a sound—from Jamie ?—but 
 this time not of laughter. It was like a gulp; it 
 was deep and muffled and it dipped away into the 
 earth. Again I thought of a troop of small black 
 
 horses galloping away down a subterranean passage 
 
 beneath my feet—plunging into the depths—their 
 tramping growing fainter and fainter into buried 
 distance. In my nostrils was a pungent smell of 
 earth. 
 
 And then—all passed. I came back into myself. 
 Mr. Frene, junior, was lifting his brother’s head from 
 the lawn where he had fallen from the heat, close 
 beside the tea-table. He had never really moved 
 from there. And Jamie, I learned afterwards, had 
 been the whole time asleep upon his bed upstairs, 
 worn out with his crying and unreasoning alarm. 
 Gladys came running out with cold water, sponge 
 and towel, brandy too—all kinds of things. ‘ Mother, 
 it was the heat, wasn’t it?’ I heard her whisper, but 
 I did not catch Mrs. Frene’s reply. From her face it 
 struck me that she was bordering on collapse herself. 
 Then the butler followed, and they just picked him 
 
THE TRANSFER 357 
 
 up and carried him into the house. He recovered 
 even before the doctor came. | 
 
 But the queer thing to me is that I was convinced _ 
 the others all had seen what I saw, only that no one 
 said a word about it; and to this day no one fas said 
 a word. And that was, perhaps, the most horrid 
 part of all. 
 
 From that day to this: I have scarcely heard a 
 mention of Mr. Frene, senior. It seemed as if he 
 dropped suddenly out of life. The papers never 
 mentioned him. His activities ceased, as it were. 
 Fis after-life, at any rate, became singularly in- 
 effective. Certainly he achieved nothing worth 
 public mention. But it may be only that, having 
 left the employ of Mrs. Frene, there was no par- 
 ticular occasion for me to hear anything. 
 
 The after-life of that empty patch of garden, 
 however, was quite otherwise. Nothing, so far as I 
 know, was done to it by gardeners, or in the way of 
 draining it or bringing in new earth, but even before 
 T left in the following summer it had changed. It 
 lay untouched, full of great, luscious, driving weeds 
 and creepers, very strong, full-fed, and bursting thick 
 with life. 
 
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CLAIRVOY ANCE 
 
 In the darkest corner, where the firelight could not 
 reach him, he sat listening to the stories. His young 
 hostess occupied the corner on the other side; she 
 was also screened by shadows; and between them 
 stretched the horse-shoe of eager, frightened faces 
 that seemed all eyes. Behind yawned the blackness 
 of the big room, running as it were without a break 
 into the night. 
 
 Some one crossed on tiptoe and drew a blind up 
 with a rattle, and at the sound all started: through 
 the window, opened at the top, came a rustle of the 
 poplar leaves that stirred like footsteps in the wind. 
 ‘There’s a strange man walking past the shrubberies,’ 
 whispered a nervous girl; ‘I saw him crouch and 
 hide. I saw his eyes!’ ‘Nonsense!’ came sharply 
 from a male member of the group ; ‘it’s far too dark 
 to see. You heard the wind.’ For mist had risen 
 from the river just below the lawn, pressing close 
 against the windows of the old house like a soft grey 
 hand, and through it the stir of leaves was faintly 
 audible. . . . Then, while several called for lights, 
 others remembered that the hop-pickers were still 
 about in the lanes, and the tramps this autumn over- 
 bold and insolent. All, perhaps, wished secretly for 
 the sun. Only the elderly man in the corner sat 
 quiet and unmoved, contributing nothing. He had 
 
 363 
 
364. PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 told no fearsome story. He had evaded, indeed, — 
 many openings expressly made for him, though fully 
 aware that to his well-known interest in psychical 
 things was partly due his presence in the week-end 
 party. ‘I never have experiences—that way,’ he said 
 shortly when some one asked him point blank for a 
 tale ; ‘I have no unusual powers.’ There was per- 
 haps the merest hint of contempt in his tone, but the 
 hostess from her darkened corner quickly and tact- 
 fully covered his retreat. And he wondered. For 
 he knew why she invited him. The haunted room, 
 he was well aware, had been specially allotted to him. 
 
 And then, most opportunely, the door opened 
 noisily and the host came in. He sniffed at the 
 darkness, rang at once for lamps, puffed at his big 
 curved pipe, and generally, by his mere presence, 
 made the group feel rather foolish. Light streamed 
 past him from the corridor. His white hair shone 
 like silver. And with him came the atmosphere of 
 common sense, of shooting, agriculture, motors, and 
 the rest. Age entered at that door. And his young 
 wife sprang up instantly to greet him, as though his 
 disapproval of this kind of entertainment might need 
 humouring. 
 
 It may have been the light—that witchery of 
 half-lights from the fire and the corridor, or it may 
 have been the abrupt entrance of the Practical upon 
 the soft Imaginative that traced the outline with 
 such pitiless, sharp conviction. At any rate, the 
 contrast—for those who had this inner clairvoyant 
 sight all had been prating of so glibly !—was un- 
 mistakably revealed. It was poignantly dramatic, 
 pain somewhere in it—-naked pain. For, as she 
 paused a moment there beside him in the light, this 
 childless wife of three years’ standing, picture of 
 
CLAIRVOYANCE 365 
 
 youth and beauty, there stood upon the threshold 
 of that room the presence of a true ghost story. 
 
 And most marvellously she changed—her linea- 
 ments, her very figure, her whole presentment. 
 Etched against the gloom, the delicate, unmarked 
 face shone suddenly keen and anguished, and a rich 
 maturity, deeper than any mere age, flushed all her 
 little person with its secret grandeur. Lines started 
 into being upon the pale skin of the girlish face, lines 
 of pleading, pity, and love the daylight did not show, 
 and with them an air of magic tenderness that be- 
 trayed, though for a second only, the full soft glory 
 of a motherhood denied, yet somehow mysteriously 
 enjoyed. About her slenderness rose all the deep- 
 bosomed sweetness of maternity, a potential mother 
 of the world, and a mother, though she might know 
 no dear fulfilment, who yet yearned to sweep into 
 her immense embrace all the little helpless things 
 that ever lived. 
 
 Light, like emotion, can play strangest tricks. 
 The change pressed almost upon the edge of 
 revelation, . . . Yet, when a moment later lamps 
 were brought, it is doubtful if any but the silent 
 guest who had told no marvellous tale, knew no 
 psychical experience, and disclaimed the smallest 
 clairvoyant faculty, had received and registered the 
 vivid, poignant picture. For an instant it had 
 flashed there, mercilessly clear for all to see who 
 were not blind to subtle spiritual wonder thick with 
 pain. And it was not so much mere picture of youth 
 and age ill-matched, as of youth that yearned with 
 the oldest craving in the world, and of age that had 
 slipped beyond the power of sympathetically divining 
 it. . . . It passed, and all was as before. 
 
 The husband laughed with genial good-nature, 
 
366 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 not one whit annoyed. ‘They’ve been frightening 
 you with stories, child,’ he said in his jolly way, and 
 put a protective arm about her. ‘Haven't they 
 now? ‘Tell me the truth. Much better,’ he added, 
 ‘have joined me instead at billiards, or for a game of 
 Patience, eh?’ She looked up shyly into his face, 
 and he kissed her on the forehead. ‘Perhaps they 
 have—a little, dear,’ she said, ‘but now that you've 
 come, I feel all right again.” ‘Another night of 
 this, he added in a graver tone, ‘and you'd be at 
 your old trick of putting guests to sleep in the 
 haunted room. I was right after all, you see, to 
 make it out of bounds.’ He glanced fondly, pater- 
 nally down upon her. Then he went over and 
 poked the fire into a blaze. Some one struck up 
 a waltz on the piano, and couples danced. All trace 
 of nervousness vanished, and the butler presently 
 brought in the tray with drinks and biscuits. And 
 slowly the group dispersed. Candles were lit. They 
 passed down the passage into the big hall, talking in 
 lowered voices of to-morrow’s plans. The laughter 
 died away as they went up the stairs to bed, the silent 
 guest and the young wife lingering a moment over 
 the embers. 
 
 ‘You have not, after all then, put me in your 
 haunted room?’ he asked quietly. ‘ You mentioned, 
 you remember, in your letter 
 
 ‘I admit,’ she replied at once, her manner gracious 
 beyond her years, her voice quite different, ‘that I 
 wanted you to sleep there—some one, I mean, who 
 really knows, and is not merely curious. But—for- 
 give my saying so—when I saw you —she laughed 
 very slowly—‘and when you told no marvellous 
 story like the others, I somehow felt ; 
 © But I never see anything ’ he put in hurriedly. 
 
CLAIRVOY ANCE 367 
 ‘You fee/, though,’ she interrupted swiftly, the 
 
 passionate tenderness in her voice but half suppressed. 
 ‘I can tell it from your 
 
 ‘Others, then,’ he interrupted abruptly, almost 
 bluntly, ‘have slept there—sat up, rather ?’ 
 
 ‘Not recently. My husband stopped it.’ She 
 paused a second, then added, ‘I had that room—for 
 a year—when first we married.’ 
 
 The other’s anguished look flew back upon her 
 little face like a shadow and was gone, while at the 
 sight of it there rose in himself a sudden deep rush 
 of wonderful amazement beckoning almost towards 
 worship. He did not speak, for his voice would 
 tremble. 
 
 ‘I had to give it up,’ she finished, very low. 
 
 ‘Was it so terrible ?’ after a pause he ventured. 
 
 She bowed her head. ‘I had to change,’ she 
 repeated softly. 
 
 ‘And since then—zow—you see nothing?’ he 
 asked. 
 
 Her reply was singular. ‘Because I will not, 
 not because it’s gone.’ .. . He followed her in 
 silence to the door, and as they passed along the 
 passage, again that curious great pain of emptiness, 
 of loneliness, of yearning rose upon him, as of a sea 
 that never, never can swim beyond the shore to reach 
 the flowers that it loves .. . 
 
 ‘Hurry up, child, or a ghost will catch you,’ cried 
 her husband, leaning over the banisters, as the pair 
 moved slowly up the stairs towards him. There was 
 a moment's silence when they met. The guest took 
 his lighted candle and went down the corridor. 
 Good-nights were said again. They moved away, 
 she to her loneliness, he to his un-haunted room. 
 And at his door he turned. At the far end of the 
 
368 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 passage, silhouetted against the candle-light, he 
 watched them—the fine old man with his silvered 
 hair and heavy shoulders, and the slim young wife 
 with that amazing air as of some great bountiful 
 mother of the world for whom the years yet passed 
 hungry and unharvested. They turned the corner, 
 and he went in and closed his door. 
 
 Sleep took him very quickly, and while the mist 
 rose up and veiled the countryside, something else, 
 veiled equally for all other sleepers in that house but 
 two, drew on towards its climax. . . . Some hours 
 later he awoke; the world was still, and it seemed 
 the whole house listened ; for with that clear vision 
 which some bring out of sleep, he remembered that 
 there had been no direct denial, and of a sudden 
 realised that this big, gaunt chamber where he lay was ~ 
 after all the haunted room. For him, however, the 
 entire world, not merely separate rooms in it, was ever 
 haunted ; and he knew no terror to find the space 
 about him charged with thronging life quite other 
 than his own. . . . He rose and lit the candle, 
 crossed over to the window where the mist shone grey, 
 knowing that no barriers of walls or door or ceiling 
 could keep out this host of Presences that poured so 
 thickly everywhere about him. It was like a wall of 
 being, with peering eyes, small hands stretched out, 
 a thousand pattering wee feet, and tiny voices crying 
 in a chorus very faintly and beseeching. . . . The 
 haunted room! Was it not, rather, a temple vesti- 
 bule, prepared and sanctified by yearning rites few men 
 might ever guess, for all the childless women of the 
 world? How could she know that 4e would under- 
 stand—this woman he had seen but twice in all his life ? 
 And how entrust to him so great a mystery that was 
 her secret? Had she so easily divined in him a 
 
CLAIRVOYANCE 369 
 
 similar yearning to which, long years ago, death had 
 denied fulfilment? Was she clairvoyant in the true 
 sense, and did all faces bear on them so legibly this 
 great map that sorrow traced? .. . 
 
 And then, with awful suddenness, mere feelings 
 dipped away, and something concrete happened. The 
 handle of the door had faintly rattled. He turned. 
 The round brass knob was slowly moving. And 
 first, at the sight, something of common fear did grip 
 him, as though his heart had missed a beat, but on 
 the instant he heard the voice of his own mother, 
 now long beyond the stars, calling to him to go softly 
 yet with speed. He watched a moment the feeble 
 efforts to undo the door, yet never afterwards could 
 swear that he saw actual movement, for something in 
 him, tragic as blindness, rose through a mist of tears 
 and darkened vision utterly. . . . 
 
 He went towards the door. He took the handle 
 very gently, and very softly then he opened it. 
 Beyond was darkness. He saw the empty passage, 
 the edge of the banisters where the great hall yawned 
 below, and, dimly, the outline of the Alpine photo- 
 graph and the stuffed deer’s head upon the wall. 
 And then he dropped upon his knees and opened 
 wide his arms to something that came in upon un- 
 certain, viewless feet. All the young winds and. 
 flowers and dews of dawn passed with it. . . filling 
 him to the brim . . . covering closely his breast and 
 eyes and lips. There clung to him all the small 
 beginnings of life that cannot stand alone . . . the 
 little helpless hands and arms that have no confid- 
 ence . . . and when the wealth of tears and love 
 that flooded his heart seemed to break upon the 
 frontiers of some mysterious yet impossible fulfilment, 
 he rose and went with curious small steps towards 
 
 2B 
 
370 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 the window to taste the cooling, misty air of that 
 other dark Emptiness that waited so patiently there 
 above the entire world. Hedrew thesash up. The 
 air felt soft and tender as though there were some- 
 where children in it too—children of stars and 
 flowers, of mists and wings and music, all that the 
 Universe contains unborn and tiny. ... . And when 
 at length he turned again the door was closed. ‘The 
 room was empty of any life but that which lay so 
 wonderfully blessed within himself. And this, he 
 felt, had marvellously increased and multiplied. . . . 
 
 Sleep then came back to him, and in the morning 
 he left the house before the others were astir, plead- 
 ing some overlooked engagement. For he had seen 
 Ghosts indeed, but yet not ghosts that he could talk 
 about with others round an open fire. | 
 
 ) 
 
 Tue LavenvpER Room. 
 
THE GOLDEN FLY 
 
THE GOLDEN FLY 
 
 Ir fell upon him out of a clear sky just when 
 existence seemed on its very best behaviour, and he 
 savagely resented the undeserved affliction of it. 
 Involving him in an atrocious scandal that reflected 
 directly upon his honour, it destroyed in a moment 
 the erection his entire life had so laboriously built 
 up—his reputation. In the eyes of the world he 
 was a broken, discredited man, at the very moment, 
 moreover, when his most cherished ambitions 
 touched fulfilment. And the cruelty of it appalled 
 his sense of justice, for it was impossible to vindicate 
 himself without inculpating others who were dearer 
 to him than life. It seemed more than he could 
 bear; and the grim course he contemplated— 
 decision itself as yet hung darkly waiting in the 
 background—appeared the only way of escape that 
 offered. 
 
 He had discussed the matter with friends until 
 his brain whirled. Their sympathy maddened him, 
 with hints of gui s’excuse s'accuse, and he turned 
 at last in desperation to something that could not 
 answer back. For the first time in his life he 
 turned to Nature—to that dead, inanimate Nature he 
 had left to poets and rhapsodising women : ‘I must 
 face it alone,’ he put it. For the Finger of God 
 was a phrase without meaning to him, and his entire 
 
 375 
 
376 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 being contained no trace of the religious instinct. 
 He was a business man, honest, selfish, and ambitious ; 
 and the collapse of his worldly position was para- 
 mount to the collapse of the universe itself — his 
 universe, at any rate. This ‘crumbling of the uni- 
 verse’ was the thought he took out with him. He 
 left the house by the path that led into solitude, 
 and reached the heathery expanse that formed one of 
 the breathing-places of the New Forest. There he 
 flung himself down wearily in the shadow of a little 
 pine-copse. And his crumbled universe lay down 
 with him, for he could not escape it. 
 
 Taking the pistol from the hip-pocket where it 
 hurt him, he lay upon his back and watched the 
 clouds. Half stunned, half dazed, he stared into 
 the sky. The perfumed wind played softly on his — 
 eyes; he smelt the heather-honey ; golden flies 
 hung motionless in the air, like coloured pins 
 fastening the sunshine against the blue curtain of the 
 summer, while dragon-flies, like darting shuttles, wove 
 across its pattern their threads of gleaming bronze. 
 He heard the petulant crying of the peewits, and 
 watched their tumbling flight. Below him tinkled a 
 rivulet, its brown water rippling between banks of 
 peaty earth. Everywhere was singing, peace, and 
 careless unconcern. | 
 
 And this lordly indifference of Nature calmed 
 and soothed him. Neither human pain nor the 
 injustice of man could shift the key of the water, 
 alter the peewits’ cry a single tone, nor influence one 
 fraction of an inch those cloudy frigates of vapour 
 that sailed the sky. The earth bulged sunwards 
 as she had bulged for centuries. The power of her 
 steady gait, superbly calm, breathed everywhere with 
 grandeur — undismayed, unhasting, and supremely 
 
THE GOLDEN FLY 377 
 
 confident. . . . And, like the flash of those golden 
 flies, there leaped suddenly upon him this vivid 
 thought: that his world of agony lay neatly 
 buttoned up within the tiny space of his own brain. 
 Outside himself it had no existence at all. His mind 
 contained it—the minute interior he called his heart. 
 From this vaster world about him it lay utterly 
 apart, like deeds in the black boxes of japanned tin 
 he kept at the office, shut off from the universe, 
 huddled in an overcrowded space within his 
 skull. 
 
 How this commonplace thought reached him, 
 garbed in such startling novelty, was odd enough ; 
 for it seemed as though the fierceness of his pain 
 had burned away something. His thoughts it merely 
 enflamed ; but this other thing it consumed. Some- 
 thing that had obscured clear vision shrivelled before 
 it as a piece of paper, eaten up by fire, dwindles 
 down into a thimbleful of unimportant ashes. The 
 thicket of his mind grew half transparent. At the 
 farther end he saw, for the first time—light. The 
 perspective of his inner life, hitherto so enormous, 
 telescoped into the proportions of a miniature. 
 Just as momentous and significant as before, it was 
 somehow abruptly different —seen from another 
 point of view. The suffering had burned up rubbish 
 he himself had piled over the head of a little Fact. 
 Like a point of metal that glows yet will not burn, 
 he discerned in the depths of him the essential shining 
 fact that not all this ruinous conflagration could 
 destroy. And this brilliant, indestructible kernel was 
 —his Innocence. The rest was self-reared rubbish : 
 opinion of the world. He had magnified an atom 
 into a universe... . 
 
 Pain, as it seemed, had cleared a way for the 
 
378 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 sublimity of Nature to approach him. The calm 
 old Universe rolled past. The deep, majestic Day 
 gave him a push, as though the shoulder of some 
 star had brushed his own. He had thought his 
 feelings were the world: instead, they were merely 
 his way of looking at it. The actual ‘world’ was 
 some glorious, unchanging thing he never saw direct. 
 His attitude of mind was but a peephole into it. 
 The choice of his particular peephole, moreover, lay 
 surely within the power of his individual will. The 
 anguish, centred upon so small a point, had seemed to 
 affect the entire spread universe around him, whereas 
 in reality it affected nothing but his attitude of mind 
 towardsit. The truism struck him like a blow between 
 the eyes, that a man is what he thinks or feels himself to 
 be. It leaped the barrier between words and meaning. 
 The intellectual concept became a hard-edged fact, 
 because he realised it—for the first time in his very 
 circumscribed life. And this dreadful pain that had 
 made even suicide seem desirable was entirely a 
 fabrication of his own mind. The universe about 
 him rolled on just the same in the majesty of its 
 eternal purpose. His tiny inner world was clouded, 
 but the glory of this stupendous world about him was 
 undimmed, untroubled, unaffected. Even death 
 itself 114s 
 
 With a swift smash of the hand he crushed the 
 golden fly that settled on his knee. The murder 
 was done impulsively, utterly without intention. 
 He watched the little. point of gold quiver for a 
 moment among the hairs of the rough tweed ; then 
 lie still for ever . . . but the scent of heather-honey 
 filled the air as before; the wind passed sighing 
 through the pines; the clouds still sailed their un- 
 charted sea of blue. There lay the whole spread surface 
 
THE GOLDEN FLY 379 
 
 of the Forest in the sun. Only the attitude of the 
 golden fly towards it all was gone. A single, tiny 
 point of view had disappeared. Nature passed on 
 calmly and unhasting ; she took no note. 
 
 Then, with a rush of awe, another thought flashed 
 through him: Nature fad taken note. There was 
 a difference everywhere. Not a sparrow falleth, 
 he remembered, without God knowing. God was 
 certainly in Nature somewhere. His clumsy senses 
 could not register this difference, yet it was there. 
 His own small world, fed by these senses, was after 
 all the merest little corner of Existence. To the 
 whole of Existence, that included himself, the golden 
 fly, the sun, and all the stars, he must somehow 
 answer for his crime. It was a wanton interference 
 with a sublime and sovereign Purpose that he now 
 divined for the first time. He looked at the wee 
 point of gold lying still and silent in the forest of 
 hairs. He realised the enormity of his act. It could 
 not have been graver had he put out the sun, or the 
 little, insignificant flame of his own existence. He 
 had done a criminal, evil thing, for he had put an 
 end to a certain point of view; had wiped it out; 
 made it impossible. Had. the fly been quicker, less 
 easily overwhelmed, or more tenacious of the scrap 
 of universal life it used, Nature would at this instant 
 be richer for its little contribution to the whole of 
 things—to which he himself also belonged. And 
 wherein, he asked himself, did he differ from that fly 
 in the importance, the significance of his contribution 
 to the universe? The soul. ..? He had never 
 given the question a single thought ; but if the scrap 
 of life he owned was called a soul, why should that 
 point of golden glory not comprise one too? Its 
 minute size, its trivial purpose, its few hours of 
 
380 - PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 apparently futile existence . . . these formed no true 
 criterion... 4! 
 
 Similarly, the thought rushed over him, a Hand 
 was being stretched out to crush himself. His pain 
 was the shadow of its approach ; anger in his heart, 
 the warning. Unless he were quick enough, adroit 
 and skilled enough, he also would be wiped out, 
 while Nature continued her slow, unhasting way 
 without him. His attitude towards the personal 
 pain was really the test of his ability, of his merit— 
 of his right to survive. Pain teaches, pain develops, 
 pain brings growth: he had heard it since his copy- 
 book days. But now he realised it, as again thought 
 leaped the barrier between familiar words and mean- 
 ing. In his attitude of mind to his catastrophe lay 
 his salvation or his . . . death. 
 
 In some such confused and blundering fashion, 
 because along unaccustomed channels, the truth 
 charged into him to overwhelm, yet bringing with 
 it an unwonted sense of joy that seemed to break a 
 crust which long had held back-—life. Thus tapped, 
 these sources gushed forth and bubbled over, spread 
 about his being, flooded him with hope and courage, 
 above all with—calmness. Nature held forces just 
 as real and living as human sympathy, and equally 
 able to modify the soul. And Nature was always 
 accessible. A sense of huge companionship, denied 
 him by the littleness of his fellow-men, stole sweetly 
 over him. It was amazingly uplifting, yet fear came 
 close behind it, as he realised the presumption of his 
 former attitude of cynical indifference. “These Powers 
 were aware of his petty insolence, yet had not crushed 
 him. . . . It was, of course, the awakening of the 
 religious instinct in a man who hitherto had wor- 
 shipped merely a rather low-grade form of intellect. 
 
THE GOLDEN FLY 381 
 
 And, while the enormous confusion of it shook 
 him, this sense of incommunicable sweetness remained. 
 Bright haunting eyes, with love in them, gazed at 
 him from the blue; and this thing that came so 
 close, stood also far away upon the line of the horizon. 
 It was everywhere. It filled the hollows, but towered 
 over him as well towards the pinnaces of cloud. It 
 was in the sharpness of the peewits’ cry, and in the 
 water's murmur. It whispered in the pine-boughs, 
 and blazed in every patch of sunlight. And it was 
 glory, pure and simple. It filled him with a sense of 
 strength for which he could find but one description 
 — Triumph. 
 
 And so, first, the anger faded from his mind and 
 crept away. Resentment then slunk after it. Revolt 
 and disappointment also melted, and bitterness gave 
 place to the most marvellous peace the man had ever 
 known. Then came resignation to fill the empty 
 places. Pain, as a means and not an end, had cleared 
 the way, though the accomplishment was like a 
 miracle. But Conversion is a miracle. No ordinary 
 pain can bring it. This anguish he understood now 
 in a new relation to life—as something to be taken 
 willingly into himself and dealt with, all regardless of 
 public opinion. What people said and thought was 
 in their world, not in his. It was less than nothing. 
 The pain cultivated dormant tracts. The terror also 
 purged. It disclosed... . | 
 
 He watched the wind, and even the wind brought 
 revelation ; for without obstacles in its path it would 
 be silent. He watched the sunshine, and the sun- 
 shine taught him too ; for without obstacles to fling 
 it back against his eye, he could never see it. He 
 would neither hear the tinkling water nor feel the 
 summer heat unless both one and other overcame 
 
382 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 some reluctant medium in their pathways. And, 
 similarly with his moral being —his pain resulted 
 from the friction of his personal ambitions against 
 the stress of some noble Power that sought to lift 
 him higher. ‘That Power he could not know direct, 
 but he recognised its strain against him by the resist- 
 ance it generated in the inertia of his selfishness. 
 His attitude of mind had switched completely round. 
 It was what the preachers termed development through 
 suffering. 
 
 Moreover, he had acquired this energy of resistance 
 somehow from the wind and sun and the beauty of 
 a common summer's day. ‘Their peace and strength 
 had passed into himself. Unconsciously on his way 
 home he drew upon it steadily. He tossed the pistol 
 into a pool of water. Nature had healed him; and 
 Nature, should he turn weak again, was always there. 
 It was very wonderful. He wanted to sing. .. . 
 
 BREAMORE. 
 
SPECIAL DELIVERY 
 
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 SPECIAL DELIVERY 
 
 MerIKLEJoHN, the curate, was walking through the 
 Jura when this thing happened to him. There is 
 only his word to vouch for it, for the inn and its 
 proprietor are now both of the past, and the local 
 record of the occurrence has long since assumed the 
 proportions of a picturesque but inaccurate legend. 
 As a true story, however, it stands out from those of 
 its kidney by the fact that there seems to have been 
 a deliberate intention in it. It saved a life—a life 
 the world had need of. And this singular rescue 
 of a man of value to the best order of things makes 
 one feel that there was some sense, even logic, in the 
 affair. 
 
 Moreover, Meiklejohn asserts that it was the 
 only psychic experience he ever knew. Things of 
 the sort were not a ‘habit’ with him. His rescue, 
 thus, was not one of those meaningless interventions 
 that puzzle the man in the street while they 
 exhilarate the psychologist. It was a deliberate and 
 very determined affair. 
 
 Meiklejohn found himself that hot August night 
 in one of the valleys that slip like blue shadows 
 hidden among pine-woods between the Swiss frontier 
 and France. He had passed Ste. Croix earlier in 
 the day; Les Rasses had been left behind about 
 four o’clock ; Buttes, and the Val de Travers, where 
 
 387 
 
388 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 the cement of many a London street comes from, 
 was his goal. But the light failed long before he 
 reached it, and he stopped at an inn that appeared 
 unexpectedly round a corner of the dusty road, 
 built literally against the great cliffs that formed one 
 wall of the valley. He was so footsore, and his 
 knapsack so heavy, that he turned in without more 
 ado. | 
 
 Le Guillaume Tell was the name of the inn—dirty 
 white walls, with thin, almost mangy vines scrambling 
 over the door, and the stream brawling beneath 
 shuttered windows with green and white stripes all 
 patched by sun and rain. His room was sevenpence, 
 his dinner of soup, omelette, fruit, cheese, and coffee, 
 a franc. The prices suited his pocket and made him 
 feel comfortable and at home. Immediately behind - 
 the hotel—the only house visible, except the sawmill 
 across the road, rose the ever-crumbling ridges and 
 precipices that formed the flanks of Chasseront and 
 ran on past La Sagne towards the grey Aiguilles de 
 Baulmes. He was in the Jura fastnesses where 
 tourists rarely penetrate. 7 
 
 Through the low doorway of the inn he carried 
 with him the strong atmosphere of thoughts that had 
 accompanied him all day—dreams of how he intended 
 to spend his life, plans of sacrifice and effort. For 
 his hopes of great achievement, even then at twenty- 
 five, were a veritable passion in him, and his desire 
 to spend himself for humanity a devouring flame. 
 So occupied, indeed, was his mind with the emotions 
 belonging to this line of thinking, that he hardly 
 noticed the singular, though exceedingly faint, sense 
 of alarm that stirred. somewhere in the depths of 
 his being as he passed within that doorway where 
 the drooping vine-leaves clutched at his hat. He 
 
SPECIAL DELIVERY 389 
 
 remembered it a little later. The sense of danger 
 had been touched in him. He felt at the moment 
 only a hint of discomfort, too vague to claim 
 definite recognition. Yet it was there—the instant 
 he stepped within the threshold—and afterwards 
 he distinctly recalled its sudden and unaccountable 
 advent. 
 
 His bedroom, though stuffy, as from windows 
 long unopened, was clean ; carpetless, of course, and 
 primitive, with white pine floor and walls, and the 
 short bed, smothered under its duvet, very creaky. 
 And very short! For Meiklejohn was well over 
 six feet. 
 
 ‘I shall have to curl up, as usual, in a knot,’ was 
 his reflection as he measured the bed with his eye ; 
 ‘though to-night I think—after my twenty miles in 
 this air 
 
 The thought refused to complete itself. He was 
 going to add that he was tired enough to have slept 
 on a stone floor, but for some undefined reason 
 the same sense of alarm that had tapped him on 
 the shoulder as he entered the inn returned now 
 when he contemplated the bed. A sharp repugnance 
 for that bed, as sudden and unaccountable as it 
 was curious, swept into him—and was gone again 
 before he had time to seize it wholly. It was in 
 reality so slight that he dismissed it immediately as 
 the merest fancy; yet, at the same time, he was 
 aware that he would rather have slept on another 
 bed, had there been one in the room—and then the 
 queer feeling that, after all, perhaps, he would ot sleep 
 therein the end at all. How this idea came to him 
 he never knew. He records it, however, as part of 
 the occurrence. 
 
 After eight o’clock a few peasants, and workmen 
 
390 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 from the sawmill, came in to drink their demi-litre 
 of red wine in the common room downstairs, to 
 stare at the unexpected guest, and to smoke their 
 vile tobacco. They were neither picturesque nor 
 amusing —simply dirty and slightly malodorous. 
 At nine o’clock Meiklejohn knocked the ashes from 
 his briar pipe upon the limestone window-ledge, and 
 went upstairs, overpowered with sleep. The sense of 
 alarm had utterly disappeared; his mind was busy 
 once more with his great dreams of the future— 
 dreams that materialised themselves, as all the world 
 knows, in the famous Meiklejohn Institutes. . . . 
 
 Berthoud, the proprietor, short and sturdy, with 
 his faded brown coat and no collar, slightly confused 
 with red wine and a ‘tourist’ guest, showed him the 
 way up. For, of course, there was no femme de 
 chambre. 
 
 ‘You have the corridor all to yourself,’ the man 
 said ; showed him the best corner of the landing to 
 shout from in case he wanted anything—there being 
 no bell—eyed his boots, knapsack, and flask with 
 considerable curiosity, wished him good-night, and 
 was gone. He went downstairs with a noise like a 
 horse, thought the curate, as he locked the door after 
 him. 
 
 The windows had been open now fora couple of 
 hours, and the room smelt sweet with the odours of 
 sawn wood and shavings, the resinous perfume of the 
 surrounding hosts of pines, and the sharp, delicate 
 touch of a lonely mountain valley where civilisation 
 has not yet tainted the air. Whiffs of coarse 
 tobacco, pungent without being offensive, came 
 invisibly through the cracks of the floor. Primitive 
 and simple it all was—a sort of vigorous ‘back- 
 woods’ atmosphere. Yet, once again, as he turned 
 
SPECIAL DELIVERY 391 
 
 to examine the room after Berthoud’s steps had 
 blundered down below into the passage, something 
 rose faintly within him to set his nerves mysteriously 
 a-quiver. 
 
 Out of these perfectly simple conditions, without 
 the least apparent cause, the odd feeling again came 
 over him that he was—in danger. 
 
 The curate was not much given to analysis. He 
 was a man of action pure and simple, asa rule. But 
 to-night, in spite of himself, his thoughts went 
 plunging, searching, asking. For this singular 
 message of dread that emanated as it were from the 
 room, or from some article of furniture in the room 
 perhaps — that bed still touched his mind with a 
 peculiar repugnance—demanded somewhat insistently 
 for an explanation. And the only explanation that 
 suggested itself to his unimaginative mind was that 
 the forces of nature hereabouts were—overpowering 5 
 that, after the slum streets and factory chimneys of 
 the last twelve months, these towering cliffs and 
 smothering pine-forests communicated to his soul a 
 word of grandeur that amounted to awe. Inadequate 
 and far-fetched as the explanation seems, it was the 
 only one that occurred to him ; and its value in this 
 remarkable adventure lies in the fact that he con- 
 nected his sense of danger partly with the bed and 
 partly with the mountains. 
 
 ‘I felt once or twice,’ he said afterwards, ‘as 
 though some powerful agency of a spiritual kind 
 were all the time trying to beat into my stupid brain 
 a message of warning.’ And this way of expressing 
 it is more true and graphic than many paragraphs of 
 attempted analysis. 
 
 Meiklejohn hung his clothes by the open window 
 
 to air, washed, read his Bible, looked several times 
 
392 PAN’S GARDEN — 
 
 over his shoulder without apparent cause, and then 
 knelt down to pray. He was a simple and devout 
 soul; his Self lost in the yearning, young but sincere, to 
 live for humanity. He prayed, as usual, with intense 
 earnestness that his life might be preserved for use 
 in the world, when in the middle of his prayer—there 
 came a knocking at the door. 
 
 Hastily rising from his knees, he opened. The 
 sound of rushing water filled the corridor. He heard 
 the voices of the workmen below in the drinking- 
 room. But only darkness stood in the passages, 
 filling the house to the very brim. No one was 
 there. He returned to his interrupted devotions. 
 
 ‘] imagined it,’ he said to himself. He continued 
 his prayers, however, longer than usual. At the 
 back of his thoughts, dim, vague, half-defined only, — 
 lay this lurking sense of uneasiness—that he was in 
 danger. He prayed earnestly and simply, as a child 
 might pray, for the preservation of his life. . . . 
 
 Again, just as he prepared to get into bed, 
 struggling to make the heaped-up duvet spread all 
 over, came that knocking at the bedroom door. It 
 was soft, wonderfully soft, and something within him 
 thrilled curiously in response. He crossed the floor 
 to open—then hesitated. Suddenly he understood 
 that that knocking at the door was connected with 
 the sense of danger in his heart. In the region of 
 subtle intuitions the two were linked. With this 
 realisation there came over him, he declares, a singular 
 mood in which, as in a revelation, he knew that 
 Nature held forces that might somehow communicate 
 directly and positively with—human beings. This 
 thought rushed upon him out of the night, as it were. 
 It arrested his movements. He stood there upon 
 the bare pine boards, hesitating to open the door. © 
 
SPECIAL DELIVERY 393 
 
 The delay thus described lasted actually only a 
 few seconds, but in those few seconds these thoughts 
 tore rapidly and like fire through his mind. The 
 beauty of this lost and mysterious valley was certainly 
 in his veins. He felt the strange presence of the 
 encircling forests, soft and splendid, their million 
 branches sighing in the night airs. The crying of 
 the falling water touched him. He longed to transfer 
 their peace and power to the hearts of suffering 
 thousands of men and women and children. The 
 towering precipices that literally dropped their pale 
 walls over the roof of the inn lifted his thoughts to 
 their own wind-swept heights ; he longed to convey 
 their message of inflexible strength to the weak-kneed 
 folk in the slums where he worked. He was peculiarly 
 conscious of the presence of these forces of Nature— 
 the irresistible powers that regenerate as easily as they 
 destroy. 
 
 All this, and far more, swept his soul like a huge 
 wind as he stood there, waiting to open the door in 
 answer to that mysterious soft knocking. 
 
 And there, when at length he opened, stood the 
 figure of a man—staring at him and smiling. 
 
 Disappointment seized him instantly. He had 
 expected, almost believed, that he would see some- 
 thing un-ordinary ; and instead, there stood a man 
 who had merely mistaken the door of his room, and 
 was now bowing his apology for the interruption. 
 Then, to his amazement, he saw that the man 
 beckoned: the figure was some one who sought to 
 draw him out. 
 
 ‘Come with me,’ it seemed to say. 
 
 But Meiklejohn only realised this afterwards, he 
 says, when it was too late and he had already shut 
 the door in the stranger’s face. For the man had 
 
394 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 withdrawn into the darkness a little, and the curate 
 had taken the movement for a mere acknowledg- 
 ment of his mistake instead of—as he afterwards felt 
 —a sign that he should follow. 
 
 ‘And the moment the door was shut,’ he says, 
 ‘I felt that it would have been better for me to have 
 gone out into the passage to see what he wanted. 
 It came over me that the man had something 
 important to say to me. I had missed it.’ 
 
 For some seconds, it seemed, he resisted the 
 inclination to go after him. He argued with him- 
 self; then turned to his bed, pulled back the sheets 
 and heavy duvet, and was met sharply again with 
 the sense of repugnance, almost of fear, as before. 
 It leaped out upon him—as though the drawing 
 back of the blankets had set free some cold blast of — 
 wind that struck him across the face and made him 
 shiver. 
 
 At the same moment a shadow fell from behind 
 his shoulder and dropped across the pillow and 
 upper half of the bed. It may, of course, have been 
 the magnified shadow of the moth that buzzed about 
 the pale-yellow electric light in the ceiling. He 
 does not pretend to know. It passed swiftly, how- 
 ever, and was gone; and Meiklejohn, feeling less 
 sure of himself than ever before in his life, crossed 
 the floor quickly, almost running, and opened the 
 door to go after the man who had knocked—twice. 
 For in reality less than half a minute had passed 
 since the shutting of the door and its reopening. 
 
 But the corridor was empty. He marched down 
 the pine-board floor for some considerable distance. 
 Below he saw the glimmer of the hall, and heard the 
 _ voices of the peasants and workmen from the sawmill 
 as they still talked and drank their red wine in the 
 
SPECIAL DELIVERY 395 
 
 publicroom. ‘That sound of falling water, as before, 
 filled the air. Darkness reigned. But the person— 
 the messenger—who had twice knocked at his door was 
 gone utterly. . . . Presently a door opened down- 
 stairs, and the peasants clattered out noisily. He 
 turned and went back to bed. The electric light 
 was switched off below. Silence fell. Conquering 
 his strange repugnance, Meiklejohn, with a prayer 
 on his lips, got into bed, and in less than ten minutes 
 was sound asleep. 
 
 ‘I admit,’ he says, in telling the story, ‘ that what 
 happened afterwards came so swiftly and so con- 
 fusingly, yet with such a storm of overwhelming 
 conviction of its reality, that its sequence may be 
 somewhat blurred in my memory, while, at the same 
 time, I see it after all these years as though it was a 
 thing of yesterday. But in my sleep, first of all, I 
 again heard that soft, mysterious tapping—not in 
 the course of a dream of any sort, but sudden and 
 alone out of the dark blank of forgetfulness. | 
 tried to wake. At first, however, the bonds of 
 unconsciousness held me tight. I had to struggle 
 in order to return to the waking world. There was 
 a distinct effort before I opened my eyes; and in 
 that slight interval I became aware that the person 
 who had knocked at the door had meanwhile opened: 
 it and passed into the room. I had left the lock 
 unturned. The person was close beside me in the 
 darkness—not in utter darkness, however, for a 
 rising three-quarter moon shed its faint silver upon 
 the floor in patches, and, as I sprang swiftly from 
 the bed, I noticed something alive moving towards 
 me across the carpetless boards. Upon the edges of 
 a patch of moonlight, where the fringe of silver and 
 shadow mingled, it stopped. Three feet away from 
 
396 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 it I, too, stopped, shaking in every muscle. It lay 
 there crouching at my very feet, staring up at me. 
 But was it man or was it animal? For at first I 
 took it certainly for a human being on all fours; 
 but the next moment, with a spasm of genuine 
 terror that half stopped my breath, it was borne in 
 upon me that the creature was—nothing human. 
 Only in this way can I describe it. It was identical 
 with the human figure who had knocked before and 
 beckoned to me to follow, but it was another presenta- 
 ' tion of that figure. 
 
 ‘And it held (or brought, if you will) some 
 tremendous message for me—some message of 
 tremendous importance, I mean. The first time I 
 had argued, resisted, refused to listen. Now it had 
 
 returned in a form that ensured obedience. Some 
 
 quite terrific power emanated from it—a power that 
 I understood instinctively belonged to the mountains 
 and the forests and the untamed elemental forces of 
 Nature. Amazing as it may sound in cold blood, 
 I can only say that I felt as though the towering 
 precipices outside had sent me a direct warning— 
 that my life was in immediate danger. 
 
 ‘For a space that seemed minutes, but was 
 probably less than a few seconds, I stood there 
 trembling on the bare boards, my eyes riveted upon 
 the dark, uncouth shape that covered all the floor 
 beyond. I saw no limbs or features, no suggestion 
 of outline that I could connect with any living form 
 I know, animate or inanimate. Yet it moved and 
 stirred all the time—whirled within itself, describes 
 it best ; and into my mind sprang a picture of an 
 immense dark wheel, turning, spinning, whizzing so 
 _ rapidly that it appears motionless, and uttering that 
 low and ominous thunder that fills a great machinery- 
 
SPECIAL DELIVERY 397 
 
 room of a factory. Then I thought of Ezekiel’s 
 vision of the Living Wheels. . . . 
 
 ‘And it must have been at this instant, I think, 
 that the muttering and deep note that issued from 
 it formed itself into words within me. At any 
 rate, I heard a voice that spoke with unmistakable 
 intelligence : 
 
 ‘««Come!” it said. “ Come out—at once!” And 
 the sense of power that accompanied the Voice was 
 so splendid that my fear vanished and I obeyed 
 instantly without thinking more. I followed; it 
 led. It altered in shape. The door was open. It 
 ran silently in a form that was more like a stream of 
 deep black water than anything else I can think of—out 
 of the room, down the stairs, across the hall, and up 
 to the deep shadows that lay against the door leading 
 into the road. There I lost sight of it.’ 
 
 Meiklejohn’s only desire, he says, then was to 
 rush after it—to escape. This he did. He under- 
 stood that somehow it had passed through the door 
 into the open air. Ten seconds later, perhaps even 
 less, he, too, was in the open air. He acted almost 
 automatically ; reason, reflection, logic all swept 
 away. Nowhere, however, in the soft moonlight 
 about him was any sign of the extraordinary appari- 
 tion that had succeeded in drawing him out of the. 
 inn, out of his bedroom, out of his—bed. He 
 stared in a dazed way at everything—just beginning 
 to get control of his faculties a bit—wondering what 
 in the world it all meant. That huge spinning form, 
 he felt convinced, lay hidden somewhere close beside 
 him, waiting for the end. The danger it had 
 enabled him to avoid was close at hand. ... He 
 knew that, he says... . 
 
 There lay the meadows, touched here and there 
 
398 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 with wisps of floating mist; the stream roared and 
 tumbled down its rocky bed to his left ; across the 
 road the sawmill lifted its skeleton-like outline, 
 moonlight shining on the dew-covered shingles of 
 the roof, its lower part hidden in shadow. The 
 cold air of the valley was exquisitely scented. 
 
 To the right, where his eye next wandered, he 
 saw the thick black woods rising round the base of 
 the precipices that soared into the sky, sheeted with 
 silvery moonlight. His gaze ran up them to the far 
 ridges that seemed to push the very stars farther into 
 the heavens. ‘Then, as he saw those stars crowding 
 the night, he staggered suddenly backwards, seizing 
 the wall of the road for support, and catching his 
 breath. For the top of the cliff, he fancied, moved. 
 
 A group of stars was for a fraction of a second—_ 
 
 hidden. ‘The earth—the scenery of the valley, at 
 least—turned about him. Something prodigious 
 was happening to the solid structure of the world. 
 The precipices seemed to bend over upon the valley. 
 The far, uppermost ridge of those beetling cliffs 
 shifted downwards. Meiklejohn declares that the 
 way its movement hid momentarily a group of stars 
 was the most startling—for some reason horrible— 
 thing he had ever witnessed. 
 
 Then came the roar and crash and thunder as the 
 mass toppled, slid, and finally—took the frightful 
 plunge. How long the forces of rain and frost had 
 been chiselling out the slow detachment of the giant 
 slabs that fell, or whence came the particular extra 
 little push that drove the entire mass out from the 
 parent rock, no one can know. Only one thing is 
 certain: that it was due to no chance, but to the 
 nicely and exactly calculated results of balanced cause 
 and effect. From the beginning of time it had been 
 
SPECIAL DELIVERY 399 
 
 known-—it might have been accurately calculated, 
 rather—that this particular thousand tons of rock 
 would break away from the crumbling tops of the 
 precipices and crash downwards with the roar of 
 many tempests into the lost and mysterious mountain 
 valley where Meiklejohn the curate spent such and 
 such a night of such and such a holiday. It was just 
 as sure as the return of Halley’s comet. 
 
 ‘I watched it,’ he says, ‘because I couldn’t do 
 anything else. I would far rather have run—lI was 
 so frightfully close to it all—but I couldn’t move a 
 muscle. And in a few seconds it was over. A 
 terrific wind knocked me backwards against the 
 stone wall; there was a vast clattering of smaller 
 stones, set rolling down the neighbouring couloirs ; 
 a steady roll of echoes ran thundering up and down 
 the valley ; and then all was still again exactly as it 
 had been before. And the curious thing was— 
 ascertained a little later, as you may imagine, and 
 not at once—that the inn, being so closely built up 
 against the cliffs, had almost entirely escaped. The 
 great mass of rock and trees had taken a leap farther 
 out, and filled the meadows, blocked the road, 
 crushed the sawmill like a matchbox, and dammed 
 up the stream; but the inn itself was almost 
 untouched. 
 
 ‘ Almost—for a single block of limestone, about 
 the size of a grand piano, had dropped straight upon 
 one corner of the roof and smashed its way through 
 my bedroom, carrying everything it contained down 
 to the level of the cellar, so terrific was the 
 momentum of its crushing journey. Not a stick of 
 the furniture was afterwards discoverable—as such. 
 The bed seems to have been caught by the very 
 middle of the fallen mass.’ 
 
400 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 The confusion in Meiklejohn’s mind may be 
 imagined—the rush of feeling and emotion that 
 swept over him. Berthoud and _ the peasants 
 mustered in less than a dozen minutes, talking, 
 crying, praying. Then the stream, dammed up by 
 the accumulation of rock, carried off the debris 
 of the broken roof and walls in less than half an 
 hour. The rock, however, that swept the room and 
 the empty bed of Meiklejohn the curate into dust, 
 still lies in the valley where it fell. 
 
 ‘The only other thing that I remember,’ he says, 
 in telling the story, ‘is that, as I stood there, shaking 
 with excitement and the painful terror of it all, 
 before Berthoud and the peasants had come to 
 count over their number and learn that no one was 
 missing—while I stood there, leaning against the ~ 
 wall of the road, something rose out of the white 
 dust at my feet, and, with a noise like the whirring 
 of some immense projectile, passed swiftly and 
 invisibly away up into space—so far as I could judge, 
 towards the distant ridges that reared their motionless 
 outline in moonlight beneath the stars.’ 
 
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THE DESTRUCTION OF SMITH 
 
 _ TEN years ago, in the western States of America, I once 
 met Smith. But he was no ordinary member of the 
 clan: he was Ezekiel B. Smith of Smithville. He 
 was Smithville, for he founded it and made it live. 
 It was in the oil region, where towns spring upon 
 the map in a few days like mushrooms, and may be 
 destroyed again in a single night by fire and earth- 
 quake. On a hunting expedition Smith stumbled 
 upon a natural oil well, and instantly staked his . 
 claim ; a few months later he was rich, grown into 
 affluence as rapidly as that patch of wilderness grew 
 into streets and houses where you could buy anything 
 from an evening’s gambling to a tin of Boston baked 
 pork-and-beans. Smith was really a tremendous 
 fellow, a sort of human dynamo of energy and pluck, 
 with rare judgment in his great square head—the 
 kind of judgment that in higher walks of life makes 
 statesmen. His personality cut through the difficulties 
 of life with the clean easy force of putting his whole 
 life into anything he touched. ‘God’s own luck,’ 
 his comrades called it ; but really it was sheer ability 
 and character and personality. ‘he man had power. 
 From the moment of that ‘oil find’ his rise was 
 very rapid, but while his brains went into a dozen 
 other big enterprises, his heart remained in little 
 Smithville, the flimsy mushroom town he had created. 
 
 405 
 
406 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 Fis own life was in it. It was his baby. He 
 spoke tenderly of its hideousness. Smithville was 
 an intimate expression of his very self. 
 
 Ezekiel B. Smith I saw once only, for a few 
 minutes; but I have never forgotten him. It was 
 the moment of his death. And we came across him 
 on a shooting trip where the forests melt away 
 towards the vast plains of the Arizona desert. The 
 personality of the man was singularly impressive. I 
 caught myself thinking of a mountain, or of some 
 elemental force of Nature so sure of itself that hurry 
 is never necessary. And his gentleness was like the 
 gentleness of women. Great strength often—the 
 greatest always—has tenderness in it, a depth of 
 tenderness unknown to pettier life. 
 
 Our meeting was coincidence, for we were hunting 
 in a region where. distances are measured by hours 
 and the chance of running across white men very 
 rare. For many days our nightly camps were pitched 
 in spots of beauty where the loneliness is akin to the 
 loneliness of the Egyptian Desert. On one side the 
 mountain slopes were smothered with dense forest, 
 hiding wee meadows of sweet grass like English 
 lawns ; and on the other side, stretching for more 
 miles than a man can count, ran the desolate alkali 
 plains of Arizona where tufts of sage-brush are the 
 only vegetation till you reach the lips of the Colorado 
 Canyons. Our horses were tethered for the night 
 beneath the stars. "Two backwoodsmen were cooking 
 dinner. The smell of bacon over a wood fire mingled 
 with the keen and fragrant air—when, suddenly, the 
 horses neighed, signalling the approach of one of 
 their own kind. Indians, white men—probably 
 another hunting party—were within scenting distance, 
 though it was long before my city ears caught any 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OF SMITH 407 
 
 sound, and still longer before the cause itself entered 
 the circle of our firelight. 
 
 I saw a square-faced man, tanned like a redskin, in 
 a hunting shirt and a big sombrero, climb down slowly 
 from his horse and move towards us, keenly searching 
 with his eyes; and at the same moment Hank, 
 looking up from the frying-pan where the bacon and 
 venison spluttered in a pool of pork-fat, exclaimed, 
 ‘Why, it’s Ezekiel B.!’ The next words, addressed 
 to Jake, who held the kettle, were below his breath : 
 ‘And if he ain’t all broke up! Jest look at the 
 eyes on him!’ I saw what he meant—the face 
 of a human being distraught by some extraordinary 
 emotion, a soul in violent distress, yet betrayal well 
 kept under. Once, as a newspaper man, I had seen 
 a murderer walk to the electric chair. The expression 
 was similar. Death was behind the eyes, not in them. 
 Smith brought in with him—terror. 
 
 In a dozen words we learned he had been hunting 
 for some weeks, but was now heading for Tranter, a 
 ‘“stop-off’ station where you could flag the daily 
 train 140 miles south-west. He was making for 
 Smithville, the little town that was the apple of his 
 eye. Something ‘was wrong’ with Smithville. No 
 one asked him what—it is the custom to wait till 
 information is volunteered. But Hank, helping him 
 presently to venison (which he hardly touched), said 
 casually, ‘Good hunting, Boss, your way?’; and the 
 brief reply told much, and proved how eager he was 
 to relieve his mind by speech. ‘I’m glad to locate 
 your camp, boys,’ he said. ‘That’s luck. There’s 
 something going wrong ’—and a catch came into 
 his voice—‘with Smithville.’ Behind the laconic 
 statement emerged somehow the terror the man 
 experienced. For Smith to confess cowardice and in 
 
408 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 the same breath admit mere ‘luck,’ was equivalent 
 to the hysteria that makes city people laugh or cry. — 
 It was genuinely dramatic. I have seen nothing 
 more impressive by way of human tragedy—though 
 hard to explain why—than this square-jawed, daunt- 
 less man, sitting there with the firelight on his rugged 
 features, and saying this simple thing. For how in 
 the world could he know it ? 
 
 In the pause that followed, his Indians came 
 gliding in, tethered the horses, and sat down without 
 a word to eat what Hank distributed. But nothing 
 was to be read on their impassive faces. Redskins, 
 whatever they may feel, show little. Then Smith 
 gave us another pregnant sentence.  ‘ They heard it 
 too,’ he said, in a lower voice, indicating his three 
 men; ‘they saw it jest as I did.’ He looked up 
 into the starry sky a second. ‘It’s hard upon our 
 trail right now, he added, as though he expected 
 something to drop upon us from the heavens. And 
 from that moment I swear we all felt creepy. The 
 darkness round our lonely camp hid terror in its 
 folds; the wind that whispered through the dry 
 sage-brush brought whispers and the shuffle of 
 watching figures ; and when the Indians went softly 
 out to pitch the tents and get more wood for the fire, 
 I remember feeling glad the duty was not mine. 
 Yet this feeling of uneasiness is something one rarely 
 experiences in the open. It belongs to houses, 
 overwrought imaginations, and the presence of evil 
 men. Nature gives peace and security. ‘That we 
 all felt it proves how real it was. And Smith, who 
 felt it most, of course, had brought it. 
 
 ‘There’s something gone wrong with Smithville’ 
 was an ominous statement of disaster. He said it 
 just as a man tn civilised lands might say, ‘My wife 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OF SMITH 409 
 
 is dying ; a telegram’s just come. I must take the 
 train. But how he felt so sure of it, a thousand 
 miles away in this uninhabited corner of the wilder- 
 ness, made us feel curiously uneasy. For it was an 
 incredible thing—yet true. Weall felt shat. Smith 
 did not imagine things. A sense of gloomy 
 apprehension settled over our lonely camp, as 
 though things were about to happen. Already 
 they stalked across the great black night, watching 
 us with many eyes. The wind had risen, and 
 there were sounds among the trees. I, for one, 
 felt no desire to go to bed. The way Smith sat 
 there, watching the sky and peering into the sheet 
 of darkness that veiled the Desert, set my nerves 
 all jangling. He expected something—but what? 
 It was following him. Across this tractless wilder- 
 ness, apparently above him against the brilliant stars, 
 Something was ‘hard upon his trail.’ 
 
 Then, in the middle of painful silences, Smith 
 suddenly turned loquacious—further sign with him 
 of deep mental disturbance. He asked questions 
 like a schoolboy—asked them of me too, as being 
 ‘an edicated man.’ But there were such queer things 
 to talk about round an Arizona camp-fire that Hank 
 clearly wondered for his sanity. He knew about 
 the ‘wilderness madness’ that attacks some folks. 
 He let his green cigar go out and flashed me signals 
 to be cautious. He listened intently, with the eyes 
 of a puzzled child, half cynical, half touched with 
 superstitious dread. For, briefly, Smith asked me 
 what I knew about stories of dying men appearing 
 at a distance to those who loved them much. He 
 had read such tales, ‘ heard tell of ’em,’ but ‘are they 
 dead true, or are they jest little feery tales?’ | 
 satisfied him as best I could with one or two authentic 
 
410 _ PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 stories. Whether he believed or not I cannot say 3 
 but his swift mind jumped in a flash to the point. 
 ‘Then, if that kind o’ stuff is true,’ he asked, simply, — 
 ‘it looks as though a feller had a dooplicate of him- 
 self—sperrit maybe—that gits loose and active at 
 the time of death, and heads straight for the party 
 it loves best. Ain’t that so, Boss?’ I admitted the 
 theory was correct. And then he startled us with a 
 final question that made Hank drop an oath below 
 his breath—sure evidence of uneasy excitement in 
 the old backwoodsman. Smith whispered it, looking 
 over his shoulder into the night: ‘Ain’t it jest 
 possible then,’ he asked, ‘seeing that men an’ Nature 
 is all made of a piece like, that places too have 
 this dooplicate appearance of theirselves that gits 
 loose when they go under?’ 
 
 It was difficult, under the circumstances, to ex- 
 plain that such a theory ad been held to account 
 for visions of scenery people sometimes have, and 
 that a city may have a definite personality made up 
 of all its inhabitants—moods, thoughts, feelings, and 
 passions of the multitude who go to compose its 
 life and atmosphere, and that hence is due the odd 
 changes in a man’s individuality when he goes from 
 one city to another. Nor was there any time to do 
 so, for hardly had he asked his singular question 
 when the horses whinnied, the Indians leaped to their 
 feet as if ready for an attack, and Smith himself 
 turned the colour of the ashes that lay in a circle 
 of whitish-grey about the burning wood. There was 
 an expression in his face of death, or, as the Irish 
 peasants say, ‘ destroyed.’ 
 
 ‘’That’s Smithville,” he cried, springing to his feet, 
 then tottering so that I thought he must fall into the 
 flame ; ‘that’s my baby town—got loose and huntin’ 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OF SMITH 411 
 
 for me, who made it, and love it better’n anything 
 on Gawd’s green earth!’ And then he added with 
 a kind of gulp in his throat as of a man who wanted 
 to cry but couldn’t: ‘And it’s going to bits—it’s 
 dying—and I’m not thar to save it a 
 
 He staggered and I caught his arm. The sound 
 of his frightened, anguished voice, and the shuffling 
 of our many feet among the stones, died away into 
 the night. We all stood, staring. The darkness 
 came up closer. The horses ceased their whinnying. 
 For a moment nothing happened. Then Smith turned 
 slowly round and raised his head towards the stars 
 as though he saw something. ‘Hear that?’ he 
 whispered. ‘It’s coming up close. That’s what I’ve 
 bin hearing now, on and off, two days and nights. 
 Listen!’ His whispering voice broke horribly ; 
 the man was suffering atrociously. For a moment 
 he became vastly, horribly animated—then stood still 
 as death. 
 
 But in the hollow silence, broken only by the 
 sighing of the wind among the spruces, we at first 
 heard nothing. Then, most curiously, something 
 like rapid driven mist came trooping down the sky, 
 and veiled a group of stars. With it, as from an 
 enormous distance, but growing swiftly nearer, came 
 noises that were beyond all question the noises of a 
 city rushing through the heavens. From all sides 
 they came; and with them there shot a reddish, 
 streaked appearance across the misty veil that swung 
 so rapidly and softly between the stars and our eyes. 
 Lurid it was, and in some way terrible. A sense of 
 helpless bewilderment came over me, scattering my 
 faculties as in scenes of fire, when the mind struggles 
 violently to possess itself and act for the best. Hank, 
 holding his rifle ready to shoot, moved stupidly 
 
412 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 round the group, equally at a loss, and swearing in- 
 cessantly below his breath. For this overwhelming 
 certainty that Something living had come upon us 
 from the sky possessed us all, and I, personally, felt 
 as if a gigantic Being swept against me through the 
 night, destructive and enveloping, and yet that it 
 was not one, but many. Power of action left me. I 
 could not even observe with accuracy what was going 
 on. I stared, dizzy and bewildered, in all directions ; 
 but my power of movement was gone, and my feet 
 refused to stir. Only I remember that the Redskins 
 stood like figures of stone, unmoved. 
 
 And the sounds about us grew into a roar. The 
 distant murmur came past us like a sea. There was 
 a babel of shouting. Here, in the deep old wilder- 
 ness that knew no living human beings for hundreds © 
 of leagues, there was a tempest of voices calling, 
 crying, shrieking ; men’s hoarse clamouring, and the 
 high screaming of women and children. Behind it 
 ran a booming sound like thunder. Yet all of it, 
 while apparently so close above our heads, seemed in 
 some inexplicable way far off in the distance—muted, 
 faint, thinning out among the quiet stars. More 
 like a memory of turmoil and tumult it seemed than 
 the actual uproar heard at first hand. And through 
 it ran the crash of big things tumbling, breaking, 
 falling in destruction with an awful detonating thunder 
 of collapse. I thought the hills were toppling down 
 upon us. A shrieking city, it seemed, fled past us 
 through the sky. 
 
 How long it lasted it is impossible to say, for my 
 power of measuring time had utterly vanished. A 
 dreadful wild anguish summed up all the feelings I 
 can remember. It seemed I watched, or read, or 
 dreamed some desolating scene of disaster in which 
 
THE DESTRUCTION OF SMITH $413 
 
 human life went overboard wholesale, as though one 
 threw a hatful of insects into a blazing fire. This 
 idea of burning, of thick suffocating smoke and 
 savage flame, coloured the entire experience. And 
 the next thing I knew was that it had passed away as 
 completely as though it had never been at all; the 
 stars shone down from an air of limpid clearness, and 
 —there was a smell of burning leather in my nostrils. 
 I just stepped back in time to save my feet. I had 
 moved in my excitement against the circle of hot 
 ashes. Hank pushed me back roughly with the 
 barrel of his rifle. 
 
 But, strangest of all, I understood, as by some 
 flash of divine intuition, the reason of this abrupt 
 cessation of the horrible tumult. The Personality of 
 the town, set free and loosened in the moment of 
 death, had returned to him who gave it birth, who 
 loved it, and of whose life it was actually an 
 expression. The Being of Smithville was literally 
 a projection, an emanation of the dynamic, vital 
 personality of its puissant creator. And, in death, 
 it had returned on him with the shock of an accu- 
 mulated power impossible for a human being to 
 resist. For years he had provided it with life—but 
 gradually. \t now rushed back to its source, thus 
 concentrated, in a single terrific moment. 
 
 ‘ That’s him,” I heard a voice saying from a great 
 distance as it seemed. ‘He’s fired his last shot—!’ 
 and saw Hank turning the body over with his rifle- 
 butt. And, though the face itself was calm beneath 
 the stars, there was an attitude of limbs and body 
 that suggested the bursting of an enormous shell 
 that had twisted every fibre by its awful force yet 
 somehow left the body as a whole intact. 
 
 We carried ‘it’ to Tranter, and at the first real 
 
Wid PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 station along the line we got the news by telegraph : 
 ‘Smithville wiped out by fire. Burned two days and 
 nights. Loss of life, 3000.’ And all the way in 
 my dreams I| seemed still to hear that curious, dread- 
 ful cry of Smithville, the shrieking city rushing 
 headlong through the sky. 
 
 Hank’s Came. 
 
(( 
 Beate NE 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 
 
I 
 
 SOME men grow away from places, others grow into 
 them: It isa curious and delicate matter. Before 
 now, a man has been thrown out by his own property, 
 yet his successor made immediately at home there. 
 Once let Imagination dwell upon this psychology 
 of places and it will travel very far. Here lies 
 a great mystery, entangled with the mystery of 
 life itself, delicately baited, too. Only the utterly 
 obtuse, one thinks, can ignore the hint offered by 
 Nature —that there is this very definite relation- 
 ship existing between places and human beings, and 
 that the aggressive attitude is not always chiefly upon 
 the side of the latter. 
 
 So it is that there are spots of country—mere bits 
 of scenery, a valley, plain, or river bank, estate or 
 even garden—that undeniably bid a man stay, and 
 welcome; or for no ascertainable reason reject him,and 
 make him anxious to leave. Campers, looking for a 
 night’s resting-place, know this well; and so may 
 owners of estates and houses,—campers on a larger 
 scale, seeking to settle somewhere for the few years 
 of a life-time. Neither one nor other, however, one 
 thinks, unless he be a swift-minded poet with vivid 
 divination, gets quite to the root of the matter. 
 
 Very suggestive are the mysterious processes by 
 which such results are sometimes brought about, a 
 
 419 
 
420 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 certain pathos in them too. For the rejected owner 
 is usually of that hard intellectual type that is utterly 
 insensible to the fairy flails of Beauty, and seeks, 
 therefore, in vain through all his stores of logic for a 
 reasonable cause and effect ; whereas the accepted 
 one, exquisitely adjusted though he may be to the 
 seduction of the place that takes him in, yet is 
 unable to tell in words what really happens, or .to 
 express a tithe of that sweet marvellous explanation 
 that lies concealed within his heart. The one denies 
 it, the other makes wild, poetic guesses ; but neither 
 really knows. 
 
 Dick Eliot understood something of the two 
 points of view perhaps, because he experienced both 
 acceptance and rejection ; and this story, of how a 
 place first welcomed him, then violently tossed him out 
 again, is as queer a case of such relationship as one 
 may ever hear. But, then, Dick Eliot combined in 
 himself a measure of both types of mind; he was 
 intellectual, and knew that two and two make four, 
 but he was also mystical, and knew that they make 
 five or nothing, or a million—that everything is One, 
 and One is everything. Neither was, perhaps, very 
 strong in him, because life had not provided the 
 opportunity for one or other’s exclusive develop- 
 ment ; but both existed side by side in his general 
 mental composition. And they resulted in a level so 
 delicately poised that the apparent balance yet had 
 instability at its roots. 
 
 Leaving England at twenty-two or three—there 
 were misunderstandings with his University, where 
 in classics and philosophy he had promised well ; 
 with his step-parents who regarded him as well lost ; 
 and in a sense, that yet did not affect his honour, 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 421 
 
 with his country’s law—he had since met life in 
 difficult, rough places. He had lived. All manner 
 of experiences had been his; he had known starvation 
 in strange cities, and had more than once been close 
 to death—queer kinds of death. But, also, he had 
 been close to earth, and the earth had wonderfully’ 
 taught him. The results of this teaching, not 
 recognised at the time, came out later to puzzle and 
 amaze him. For years he dwelt in the wilderness 
 with life reduced to its essentials—the big, crude, 
 thundering facts of it—so that he had come to regard 
 scholarship, once so valued, as over-rated, and action 
 as the sole reality. The poetic, mystical side of him 
 passed into temporary abeyance. Worldly achieve- 
 ment and ambition led him. This, however, was a 
 mood of youth only, a reaction due to the resentment 
 of his exile, and to the grievance he cherished against 
 the academic conventions—so he deemed them—that 
 had cut him off from his inheritance. 
 
 At thirty, or thereabouts, he fell in love and 
 married—a vigorous personality of a woman with 
 Red Indian in her blood, picked up in some wild 
 escapade along the frontiers of Arizona and New 
 Mexico; and, within six months of marriage, the 
 death of an aunt had left him unexpected master of 
 this little gem of an estate in the south of England 
 where the following experience took place. 
 
 This impulsive action of an aunt whom he had 
 seen but once, due to her wish to spite the other 
 claimants rather than to any pretended love for him- 
 self, resulted in a radical change of life. He came 
 home, ignored by his relations, and ignoring them in 
 turn, The former love of books revived; the imagina- 
 tive point of view re-asserted itself; he saw life from 
 another angle. Action, after all, was but a part of 
 
422 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 it, another form of play. The mental life was the 
 reality ; he studied, meditated, wrote. Once more 
 the deep, poetic mystery of things lit all his thoughts 
 with wonder. Corrected by the hard experiences of 
 his early years, the philosopher and dreamer in him 
 ‘assumed the upper hand, though the speculative 
 dreams he indulged were more sanely regulated 
 than before. The imagination was now more finely 
 tempered. 
 
 To look at, he was sometimes obviously forty-five, 
 yet at others could easily have passed for thirty :—a 
 tall, lean figure of a man ; spare, as though the wilder- 
 ness had taken that toll of him which no amount of 
 subsequent easy living could efface. Io see him was 
 to think of men toiling in a hard, stern land where 
 all things had to be conquered and nothing yielded 
 of itself, where, moreover, human life was cheap and 
 of small account. He was alert, always in training, 
 cheeks thin, neck sinewy, knees ready instantly to 
 turn a horse by grip alone, the reins unnecessary so 
 
 that both hands were free to fight. The eyes were — | 
 
 keen and dark, moustache clipped very short and 
 partly grizzled; deep furrows marked the jaw and 
 forehead ; but the muscular hands were young, the 
 fling of the shoulders young, the toss and set of the 
 big head young as well. And he always dressed in 
 riding breeches, with a strap about the waist instead 
 of braces. You might see him hitch them up as he 
 stepped back to leap the stream, or to take the pine 
 knolls with a run downhill. 
 
 Indeed, the imaginative side of him seemed almost 
 incongruous ; and that such a figure could conceal a 
 mystical, tenderly poetic side not one man in a 
 thousand need have guessed. But, in spite of these 
 severer traits, the character, you felt, was tender 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 423 
 
 enough upon its under side. It was merely that the 
 control of the body and emotions acquired in the 
 wilds had never been unlearned, and that no amount 
 of softer living could let it be forgotten. 
 
 About the rather grim and over-silent mouth, for 
 instance, there were marks like the touches of a flower 
 that sometimes made the sternness seem a clumsy 
 mask. An intuitive woman, or a child, must have 
 found him out at once. 
 
Il 
 
 AFTER years spent as he had spent them among the 
 conditions of primitive lands, Dick Eliot came back 
 with his ‘uncivilised’ wife, to find that with the old 
 established values of English ‘ County’ existence they 
 had little or nothing in common. Their ostracism 
 by the neighbourhood has no place in this story, 
 except to show how it threw them back intensely 
 into the little property he had inherited. They lived 
 there a dozen years, isolated, childless, knowing that 
 solitude in a crowd which yet is never loneliness. 
 The ‘ Place,’ as they always called it, took them, 
 and welcome, to itself. The land, running to several 
 hundred acres, was comparatively worthless, mere 
 jumbled stretch of sand and pines and heathery hills ; 
 too remote from any building centre to be easily sold, 
 and of no avail for agricultural purposes. For which, 
 since he had just enough to live on quietly, both were 
 grateful: they could keep it lovely and unspoilt. 
 All round it, however, was an opulent, over-built- 
 upon country that they loathed, since they felt that 
 its quality, once admitted, would cause the Place 
 to wither and die. The gross surfeit of prosperous 
 houses, preserved woods, motoring hotels, and the 
 rest would settle on its virgin face. Builders and 
 business men would commercially appraise it, financiers 
 undress it publicly so that it would know itself naked 
 424 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 425 
 
 and ashamed. Deep down its soul would turn 
 weakly and diseased, then disappear, and their own 
 assuredly go with it. 
 
 For both had loved the Place at sight. She in 
 particular loved it—witha kind of rude enthusiasm 
 she forced, as it were, upon his gentler character. 
 Its combination of qualities fascinated her—the old- 
 world mellowness with the unkempt, untidy wildness. 
 The way it kept alive that touch of the wilderness 
 she had known from childhood, set in the midst of 
 so much over-civilised country all about, gave her 
 the feeling of having a little, precious secret world 
 entirely to herself. She forced this view with all the 
 vigour of her primitive poetry upon her husband till 
 he accepted it as his own. It became his own; only 
 she realised it more vitally than he did. The contrast 
 laid a spell upon her, and she would not hear of going 
 away. They lived there, in this miniature world, until 
 they knew it with such close intimacy that it became 
 identified with their very selves. She made him see 
 it through her eyes, so that the place was haunted, 
 saturated, invested with their moods of worship, love, 
 and wonder. It became a little mystery-world that 
 their feelings had turned living. 
 
 Thus when, after twelve years’ happiness together, 
 she died there, he stayed on, sole guardian as it were of 
 all she had loved so dearly. Too vital a man to 
 permit the slightest morbid growth which comes 
 from brooding, he yet lived among fond memories, 
 aware of her presence in every nook and glade, in 
 every tree, her voice in the tinkle of the stream, new 
 values everywhere. Each ridge and valley, made 
 familiar by her step and perfume, strengthened 
 recollection, and more than ever before the Place 
 
426 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 seemed interwoven with herself and him, subtle 
 expression of vanished joys. The Past stayed on 
 in it; it did not move away; it remained the 
 Present. Her death had doubly consecrated the 
 little estate, making it, so to speak, a sacrament of 
 dear communion. The only change, it seemed, was 
 that he identified it with her being more than with 
 himself or with the two of them. He guarded it 
 unspoilt and sweet because of her who held it once 
 so dear—as another man might have kept a flower she 
 had touched, a picture, or a dress that she had worn. 
 Now it was doubly safe from the damage she had 
 feared—-commercial spoliation. ‘Keep the Place as 
 it is, Dick,’ she had so often said with a vehemence 
 that belonged to her vigorous type, ‘I'd hate to see 
 it dirtied!’ For her the civilised country round 
 had always been ‘dirty.’ And he did so, almost 
 with the feeling that he was keeping her person clean 
 at the same time; for what a man thinks about is 
 real, and he had come to regard the Place and herself 
 as one. 
 
 Throwing himself into definite work to occupy 
 his mind, he kept it as the apple of his eye, living 
 in solitude, and cared for only by a motherly old 
 housekeeper (years ago his mother’s maid) whose 
 services he had by fortunate chance secured. He 
 spent his leisure time in writing—studies of obscure 
 periods in forgotten history that, when published, 
 merely added to the clutter of the world’s huge 
 mental lumber-room, to judge by the reviews. Once 
 he made a journey to his haunts of youth, sheir youth, 
 in Arizona, but only to return dissatisfied, with added 
 pain. He settled down finally then, throwing him- 
 self with commendable energy into his studies, till 
 the hurrying years brought him thus to forty-five. 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 427 
 
 Rarely he went to London and pored over musty 
 volumes in the British Museum Reading-room, but 
 after a day or two would hear the murmur of the 
 mill-wheel singing round that portentous, dreary 
 dome, and back he would come again, post-haste. 
 And perhaps he chose his line of study, rather than 
 more imaginative work, because it reasonably absorbed 
 him, while yet it stole no single emotion from his 
 past with her, nor trespassed upon the walking of 
 one dear faint ghost. 
 
II 
 
 AND it was upon this gentle, solitary household that 
 suddenly Manya Petrovski descended with her 
 presence of wonder and of magic. Out of a clear 
 blue sky she dropped upon him and made herself 
 deliciously at home. Only daughter of his widowed 
 sister, married to a Russian, she was fourteen at the 
 time of her mother’s death; and the duty seemed 
 forced upon him with a conviction that admitted of 
 no denial. He had never seen the child in his life, 
 for she was born in the year that he returned to 
 England, family relations simply non-existent ; but 
 he had heard of her, partly from Mrs. Coove, his 
 housekeeper, and partly from tentative letters his 
 sister wrote from time to time, aiming at reconcilia- 
 tion. He only knew that she was backward to the 
 verge of being stupid, that she ‘loved Nature and 
 life out of doors,’ and that she shared with her 
 strange father a certain sulking moodiness that 
 seemed to have been so strong in his own _half- 
 civilised Slav temperament. He also remembered 
 that her mother, a curious mixture of puritanism 
 and weakly dread of living, had brought her up 
 strictly in the manufacturing city of the midlands 
 where they dwelt ‘wealthily,’ surrounded by an 
 atmosphere of artificiality that he deemed almost 
 criminal. For his sister, fostering old-fashioned 
 428 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 429 
 
 religious tendencies, believed that a visible Satan 
 haunted the frontiers of her narrow orthodoxy, and 
 would devour Manya as soon as look at her once 
 she strayed outside. She too had claimed, he 
 remembered, to love Nature, though her love of it 
 consisted solely in looking cleverly out of windows 
 at passing scenery she need never bother herself to 
 reach. Her husband’s violent tempers she had 
 likewise ascribed to his possession by a devil, if not 
 by t#he—her own personal—devil himself. And 
 when this letter, written on her death-bed, came 
 begging him, as the only possible relative, to take 
 charge of the child, he accepted it, as his character 
 was, unflinchingly, yet with the greatest possible 
 reluctance. Significant, too, of his character was 
 the detail that, out of many others surely far more 
 important, first haunted him : ‘She'll love Nature 
 (by which he meant the Place) in the way her 
 mother did—artificially. We shan’t get on a bit!’ 
 —thus, instinctively, betraying what lay nearest to 
 his heart. 
 
 None the less, he accepted the position with- 
 out hesitation. There was no money ; his sister’s 
 property was found to be mortgaged several times 
 above its realisable value, and the child would 
 come to him without a penny. He went headlong 
 at the problem, as at so many other duties that had 
 faced him—puzzling, awkward duties—with a kind of 
 blundering delicacy native to his blood. ‘Got to be 
 done, no good dreaming about it,’ he said to himself 
 within a few hours of receiving the letter ; and when 
 a little later the telegram came announcing his sister’s 
 death, he added shortly with a grim expression, 
 ‘Here goes, then!’ In this plucky, yet not 
 really impulsive decisiveness, the layer of character 
 
430 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 acquired in Arizona asserted itself. Action ousted 
 dreaming. 
 
 And in due course the preparations for the girl’s 
 reception were concluded. She would make the 
 journey south alone, and Mrs. Coove would meet 
 her. Moreover, evidence to himself at least of true 
 welcome, Manya should have the bedroom which 
 had been for years unoccupied—his wife’s. 
 
 For all that, he dreaded her arrival unspeakably. 
 ‘She'll be bored here. She'll dislike the Place— 
 perhaps hate it. And I shall dislike her too.’ 
 
IV 
 
 Exrot ruled his little household well, because he 
 ruled himself. No one, from the tri-weekly gardener 
 to the rough half-breed Westerner who managed the 
 modest stable, felt the least desire to trifle with him. 
 Even Mrs. Coove, in the brief morning visits to 
 his study, did not care about asking him to repeat 
 some sentence that she had not quite caught or 
 understood. Yet, in a sense, as with all such men, 
 it was the woman who really managed him. ‘Mrs.’ 
 Coove, big, motherly, spinster, divined the child 
 beneath the grim exterior, and simply played with 
 him. She it was who really ‘ran’ the household, 
 relieving him of all domestic worries, and she it was, 
 had he fallen ill—which, even for a day, he never did— 
 who would have nursed him into health again with 
 such tactfully concealed devotion that, while loving 
 the nursing, he would never have guessed the 
 devotion. ; 
 
 So it was largely upon Mrs. Coove that he secretiy 
 relied to welcome, manage, and look after his little 
 orphaned niece, while, of course, pretending that he 
 did it all himself. 
 
 ‘She’ll want a companion, sir, of sorts—if I may 
 make so bold—some one to play with,’ she told him 
 when he had mentioned that later, of course, he 
 would provide a ‘governess or something’ when he 
 had first ‘sized up’ the child. 
 
 431 
 
432 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 He looked hard at her for a moment. He 
 realised her meaning, that the hostile neighbourhood 
 could be relied on to supply nothing of that kind. 
 
 ‘Of course,’ he said, as though he had thought of 
 it himself. 
 
 ‘She'll love the pony, sir, if she ain’t one of the 
 booky sort, which I seem to remember she ain’t,’ 
 added Mrs. Coove, looking as usual as though just 
 about to. burst into tears. For her motherly face 
 wore a lachrymose expression that was utterly 
 deceptive. Her contempt for books, too, and 
 writing folk was never quite successfully concealed. 
 
 In silence he watched the old woman wipe her 
 moist hands upon a black apron, and the perplexities 
 of his new duties grew visibly before his eyes. She 
 had little notion that secretly her master stood a 
 little in awe of her superior domestic knowledge. 
 
 ‘The pony and the woods,’ he suggested briefly. 
 
 ‘A puppy or a kitten, sir, would help a bit—for 
 indoors, if I may make so bold,’ the housekeeper 
 ventured, with a passing gulp at her own audacity ; 
 ‘and out of doors, sir, as you say, maybe she'll be 
 ‘appy enough. Her pore mother taught——’ 
 
 The long breath she had taken for this sentence 
 she meant to use to the last gasp if possible. But 
 her master cut her short. 
 
 ‘Miss Manya arrives at six,’ he said, turning to his 
 books and papers. ‘The dog-cart, with you in it, to 
 meet her—please.’ The ‘please’ was added because 
 he knew her vivid dislike of being too high from the 
 ground, while judging correctly that the pleasure 
 would more than compensate her for this risk of 
 elevation. It was also intended to convey that he 
 appreciated her help, but deplored her wordiness. 
 Laconic even to surliness himself, he disliked long 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 433 
 
 phrases. It was a perpetual wonder to him why 
 even lazy people who detested effort would always 
 use a dozen words where two were more effective. 
 
 So Mrs. Coove, accustomed to his ways, departed, 
 with a curtsey that more than anything else 
 resembled a sudden collapse of the knees beneath 
 more than they could carry comfortably. 
 
 ‘Thank you, sir; I'll see to it all right,’ she 
 said, obedient to his glance, beginning the sentence 
 in the room but finishing it in the passage. She 
 looked as though she would weep hopelessly once 
 outside, whereas really she felt beaming pleasure. 
 The compliment of being sent to meet Miss Manya 
 made her forget her dread of the elevated, swaying 
 dog-cart, as also of the silent half-breed groom who 
 drove it. Full of importance she went off to make 
 preparations. 
 
 And later, when Mrs. Coove was on her way to 
 the station five miles off, dangerously perched, as it 
 seemed to her, in mid-air, he made his way out slowly 
 into the woods, a vague feeling in him that there 
 was something he must say good-bye to. The Place 
 henceforth, with Manya in it, would be—not quite 
 the same. What change would come he could not 
 say, but something of the secrecy, the long-loved 
 tender privacy and wonder would depart. Another 
 would share it with him, a trespasser, in a sense an 
 outsider. And, as he roamed the little pine-grown 
 vales, the mossy coverts, and the knee-high bracken, 
 there stole into him this queer sensation that it all 
 was part of a living Something that constituted 
 almost a distinct entity. His wife inspired it, but, 
 also, the Place had a personality of its own, apart 
 from the qualities he had read into it. He realised, 
 for the first time, that it too might take an attitude 
 
 2F 
 
434 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 towards the new arrival. Everywhere, it seemed, 
 there was an air of expectant readiness. It was 
 aware. . . . It might possibly resent it. 
 
 And, for moments here and there, as he wandered, 
 rose other ideas in him as well, brought for the first 
 time into existence by the thought of the new 
 arrival. ‘This element, like a sudden shaft of sun- 
 light on a landscape, discovered to him a new 
 aspect of the mental picture. It was vague; yet 
 perplexed him not a little. And it was this: that 
 the thing he loved in all this little property, 
 thinking it always as his own, was in reality what 
 she had loved in it, the thing that she had made him see 
 through the lens of her own more wild, poetic vision. 
 What he was now saying good-bye to, the thing that 
 the expected intruder might change, or even oust, 
 was after all but a phantom memory—the aspect she 
 had built into it. This curious, painful doubt 
 assailed him for the first time. Was his love and 
 worship of the Place really an individual possession 
 of his own, or had it been all these years but her 
 interpretation of it that he enjoyed vicariously ? 
 The thought of Manya’s presence here etched this 
 possibility in sharp relief. Unwelcome, and instantly 
 dismissed, the thought yet obtruded itself—that his 
 feelings had not been quite genuine, quite sincere, 
 and that it was her memory, her so vital vision of 
 the Place he loved rather than the Place itself at first 
 hand. 
 
 For the idea that another was on the way to share 
 it stirred the unconscious query: What precisely 
 was it she would share? 
 
 And behind it came a still more subtle question- 
 ing that he put away almost before it was clearly 
 born: Was he really guite content with this 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 435 
 
 unambitious guardianship of the dream-estate, and 
 was the grievance of his exile so completely dead 
 that he would, under all possible conditions, keep 
 its loveliness inviolate and free from spoliation? 
 
 The coming of the child, with the new duties 
 involved, and the probable later claims upon his 
 meagre purse, introduced a worldly element that for 
 so long had slept in him. He wondered. The 
 ghosts all walked. But beside them walked other 
 ghosts as well. And this new, strange pain of 
 uncertainty came with them—sinister though 
 exceedingly faint suggestion that he had been 
 worshipping a phantom fastened into his heart by a 
 mind more vigorous than his own. 
 
 Ambition, action, practical achievement stirred a 
 little in their sleep. 
 
 And on his way back he picked some bits of heather 
 and bracken, a few larch twigs with little cones upon 
 them, and several sprays of pine. These he carried 
 into the house and up into the child’s bedroom, 
 where he stuck them about in pots and vases. The 
 flowers Mrs. Coove had arranged he tossed away. 
 For flowers in a room, or in a house at all, he never . 
 liked ; they looked unnatural, artificial, Flowers 
 and food together on a table seemed to him as dread- 
 ful as the sickly smelling wreaths people loved to 
 put on coffins. But leaves were different; and 
 earth was best of all. In his own room he had two 
 wide, deep boxes of plain earth, watered daily, 
 renewed from time to time, and more sweetly 
 scented than any flowers in the world. 
 
 Opening the windows to let in all the sun and air 
 there was, he glanced round him with critical 
 approval. To most the room must have seemed 
 
436 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 bare enough, yet he had put extra chairs and tables 
 in it, a sofa too, because he thought the child would 
 likethem. Personally, he preferred space about him ; 
 his own quarters looked positively unfurnished ; 
 rooms were cramped enough as it was, and useless 
 upholstery gave him a feeling of oppression. He 
 still clung to. essentials; and an empty room, like 
 earth and sky, was fine and dignified. 
 
 But Manya, he well knew, might feel differently, 
 and he sought to anticipate her wishes as best he 
 might. For Manya came from a big house where the 
 idea was to conceal every inch of empty space with 
 something valuable and useless ; and her playground 
 had been gardens smothered among formal flower- 
 beds—triangles, crescents, circles, anything that 
 parodied Nature—paths cut cleanly to neat patterns, 
 and plants that acknowledged their shame by grow- 
 ing all exactly alike without a trace of individuality. 
 
 He moved to the open window, gazing out across 
 the stretch of hill and heathery valley, thick with 
 stately pines. The wind sighed softly past his ears. 
 He heard the murmur of the droning mill-wheel, 
 the drum and tinkle of falling water mingling with 
 it. And the years that had passed since last he stood 
 and looked forth from this window came up close 
 and peered across his shoulder. The Past rose silently 
 beside him and looked out too. . . . He saw it all 
 through other eyes that once had so large a share in © 
 fashioning it. 
 
 Again came this singular impression—that, while 
 he waited, the whole Place waited too. It knew that 
 she was coming. Another pair of feet would run 
 upon its face and surface, another voice wake all its 
 — little echoes, another mind seek to read its secret and 
 share the mystery of its being. 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 437 
 
 ‘If Manya doesn’t like it !? struck with real 
 pain across his heart. But the thought did not 
 complete itself. Only, into the strong face came a 
 momentary expression of helplessness that sat_ 
 strangely there. Whether the child would like 
 himself or not seemed a consideration of quite 
 minor importance. 
 
 A sound of wheels upon the gravel at the front 
 of the house disturbed his deep reflections, and, 
 shutting the door carefully behind him, he gave one 
 last look round to see that all was right, and then 
 went downstairs to meet her. ‘The sigh that floated 
 through his mind was not allowed to reach the lips ; 
 but another expression came up into his face. His 
 lips became compressed, and resolution passed into 
 his eyes. It was the look—and how he would have 
 laughed, perhaps, could he have divined it!—the 
 look of set determination that years ago he wore 
 when in some lonely encampment among the Bad 
 Lands something of danger was reported near. 
 
 With a sinking heart he went downstairs to meet 
 his duty. 
 
 But in the hall, scattering his formal phrases to 
 the winds, a boyish figure, yet with loose flying hair, 
 ran up against him, then stepped sharply back. 
 There was a moment’s pitiless examination. 
 
 ‘Uncle Dick!’ he heard, cried softly. ‘Is that 
 what you’re like? But how wonderful!’ And he 
 was aware that a pair of penetrating eyes, set wide 
 apart in a grave but eager face, were mercilessly 
 taking him in. It was he who was being ‘sized up.’ 
 No redskin ever made a more rapid and thorough 
 examination, nor, probably, a more accurate one. 
 
 ‘Oh! I never thought you would look so kind 
 and splendid ! ’ 
 
438 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 ‘Me!’ he gasped, forgetting every single thing 
 he had planned to say in front of this swift-moving 
 creature who attacked him. 
 
 She came close up to him, her voice breathless still 
 but if possible softer, eyes shining like two little lamps. 
 
 ‘I expected—from what Mother said—you’d be 
 —just Uncle Richard! And instead it’s only Uncle 
 —Uncle Dick !’ 
 
 Here was unaffected sincerity indeed. He had 
 dreaded—he hardly knew why—some simpering 
 sentence of formality, or even tears at being lonely in 
 a strange house. And, in place of either came this 
 sort of cowboy verdict, straight as a blow from the 
 shoulder. It took his breath away. In his heart 
 something turned very soft and yearning. And yet 
 he—winced. 
 
 ‘Nice drive?’ he heard his gruff voice asking. 
 For the life of him he could think of nothing else 
 to say. And the answer came with a little peal of 
 breathless laughter, increasing his amazement and 
 confusion. 
 
 ‘I drove all the way. I made the blackie let me. 
 And the mothery person held on behind like a 
 bolster. It was glorious.’ 
 
 At the same moment two strong, quick arms, 
 thin as a lariat, were round his neck. And he was 
 being kissed—once only, though it felt all over his 
 face. She stood on tiptoe to reach him, pulling his 
 head down towards her lips. 
 
 ‘ How are you, Uncle, please ?’ 
 
 ‘Thanks, Manya,’ he said shortly, straightening 
 up in an effort to keep his balance, ‘all right. Glad 
 you are, too. Mrs. Coove, your ‘“ mothery person 
 _who held on like a bolster,” will take you upstairs 
 and wash you. Then food—soon as you like.’ 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY § 439 
 
 He had not indulged in such a long sentence for 
 years. It increased his bewilderment to hear it. 
 Something ill-regulated had broken loose. 
 
 Mrs. Coove, who had watched the scene from 
 the background and doubtless heard the flattering 
 description of herself, moved forward with a 
 mountainous air of possession. Her face as usual 
 seemed to threaten tears, but there was a gleam in 
 her eyes which could only come from the joy of 
 absolute approval. With a movement of her arm 
 that seemed to gather the child in, she went 
 laboriously upstairs. The back of her alone proved 
 to any seeing eye that she had already passed 
 willingly into the state of abject slavery that all 
 instinctive mothers love. 
 
 ‘We shan’t be barely five minutes, sir,’ she called 
 respectfully when half-way up; and the way she 
 glanced down upon her grim master, who stood still 
 with feet wide apart watching them, spoke further 
 her opinion—and her joy at it—that he too was 
 caught within her toils. ‘She’ll manage you, sir, if 
 I may make so bold,’ was certainly the thought her 
 words did not express. 
 
 They vanished round the corner—the heavy tread 
 and the light, pattering step. And he still stood on 
 there, waiting in the hall. A mist rose just before 
 his eyes ; he did not see quite clearly. In his heart 
 a surge of strong, deep feeling struggled upwards, but 
 was instantly suppressed. Manya had said another 
 thing that moved him far more than her childish 
 appreciation of himself, something that stirred him 
 to the depths most strangely. 
 
 For, when he asked her how she enjoyed the 
 drive, the girl had replied with undeniable sincerity, 
 looking straight into his eyes : 
 
440 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 ‘The last bit was like a fairy-tale. Uncle, how 
 awfully this place must love you !’ 
 
 She did not say, ‘ How you must love the place!’ 
 And—she loathed the ‘dirty’ country all about. 
 
 Then, the first rush of excitement over, a sort of 
 shyness, curiously becoming, had settled down all 
 over her like a cloud. It settled down upon himself 
 as well. But—she had said the perfect thing. And 
 his doubts all vanished. It was—yes, surely—the 
 Place she loved. 
 
 And yet, when all was over, there passed through 
 him an unpleasant afterthought—as though Manya 
 had applied a test by which already something in 
 
 himself was found gravely wanting. 
 
V 
 
 Wiru its sharp, pine-grown declivities, its tumbling 
 streams, stretches of open heather, and its miniature 
 forests of bracken, the dream-estate was like a 
 liliputian Scotland compressed into a few hundred 
 acres. All was in exquisite proportion. 
 
 The old house of rough grey stone, set in one 
 corner, looked out upon a wild, untidy garden that 
 melted unobserved into woods of mystery beyond, 
 and farther off rose sharp against the sky a series 
 of peaked knolls and ridges that in certain lights 
 looked like big hills many miles away. There were 
 diminutive fairy valleys you could cross in twenty 
 minutes; and several rivulets, wandering from the 
 moorlands higher up, formed the single stream that 
 once had worked the Mill. 
 
 But the Mill, standing a stone’s-throw from the 
 study windows, so that he heard the water singing 
 and gurgling almost among his book-shelves, had 
 for a century ground nothing more substantial than 
 sunshine, air, and shadow. For the gold-dust of the 
 stars is too fine for grinding. But it ground as well 
 the dreams of the lonely occupant of the grey-toned 
 house. And he let it stand there, falling gradually 
 into complete decay, because beneath those crumbling 
 wooden walls—he remembered it as of yesterday— 
 the sudden stroke had come that in a moment, 
 
 441 
 
442 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 dropping as it seemed out of eternity, had robbed 
 him of his chief possession—fashioner of the greatest 
 dream of all. The splash and murmur of the water, 
 the drone of the creaking wheel in flood time, the 
 white weed that gathered thickly over the pond 
 formed by the ancient dam, and the red-brown tint 
 of walls and rotting roof,—all were like the colour of 
 the water’s singing, the colour of her memory, and 
 the colour of his thinking too, made sweetly visible. 
 
 Indeed, despite his best control, she still lurked 
 everywhere, so that he could not recall a single 
 experience of the past years without at the same time 
 some vivid aspect of the scenery, as she saw it, rising 
 up clearly to accompany it. In every corner stood 
 the ghost of a still recoverable mood. Here he had 
 suffered, fought, and prayed ; here he had loved and 
 hated; here he had lost and found. All the kaleido- 
 scope aspects of growing older, of hopes and fears 
 and disappointments, were visualised for him in 
 terms of the Place where he had met and dealt with 
 them for his soul’s good or ill. But behind them 
 always stood that Figure in Chief; it was she who 
 directed the ghostly band; and she it was who 
 coaxed the romantic scenery thus into the support of 
 all his personal moods, and continued to do so with 
 even greater power after she was gone. 
 
 His respect for the Place seemed, therefore, 
 involved with his respect for himself and her. That 
 tumbling stream had an inalienable right of way ; 
 that mill of golden-brown claimed ancient lights as 
 truly as any mental palace of thoughts within his 
 mind ; and the little dips and rises in the woods 
 were as sacred—so he had always felt—as were those 
 twists and turns of character that he called his views 
 
 of life and his beliefs. This blending of himself with 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 443 
 
 the Place and her had been very carefully reared. 
 The notion that its foundations were not impregnable 
 for ever was a most disturbing one. ‘That the mere 
 arrival of an intruder could shake it, possibly shatter 
 it, touched sacrilege. And for long he suppressed 
 the outrageous notion so successfully that he almost 
 entirely forgot about it. 
 
 This strip of vivid land whereon he dwelt 
 acquired, moreover, a heightened charm from the 
 character of the odious land surrounding it. For on 
 all sides was that type of country best described as 
 over-fed and over-lived-upon. The scenery was 
 choked and smothered unto death ; it breathed, if at 
 all, the breath of a fading life pumped through it 
 artificially and with labour. Heavily beneath the 
 skies it lay—acres of inert soil. 
 
 There were, indeed, people who admired it, 
 calling it typical of something or other in the south 
 of England ; but for him these people, like the land 
 itself, were bourgeois, dull, insipid, and phlegmatic 
 as the back of a sheep. Like rooms in a big club, 
 it was over-furnished with too solid upholstery— 
 thick, fat hedges, formal oak woods, lifeless copses 
 stuck upon slopes from which successful crops had 
 sucked long ago the last vestiges of spontaneous 
 life ; and spotted with self-satisfied modern cottages, 
 ‘improved’ beyond redemption, that made him 
 think with laughter of some scattered group of city 
 aldermen. ‘They're pompous City magnates, he 
 used to tell his wife, ‘strayed from the safety of 
 Cornhill, and a little frightened by the wind and 
 rain. 
 
 Everywhere, amid bushy trees that looked so 
 pampered they were almost sham, stood ‘country 
 
444 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 houses,’ whole crops of them, dozing after heavy 
 meals among gardens of sleek tulip and geraniums. 
 They plastered themselves, with the atmosphere of 
 small Crystal Palaces, upon every available opening, 
 comfortably settled down and weighted with every 
 conceivable modern appliance, and in ‘ Parks’ all cut 
 to measure like children’s wooden toys. They stood 
 there, heavy and respectable, living close to the 
 ground, and in them, almost without exception, 
 dwelt successful business men who owned a 
 ‘country seat.’ From his uncivilised, wild-country 
 point of view, they epitomised the soul of the entire 
 scenery about them—something gross and sluggish 
 that involved stagnation. They brooded with an 
 air of vulgar luxury that was too stupid even to be 
 active. Here ‘resided,’ in a word, the wealthy. 
 
 When he walked or drove through the five 
 miles of opulent ugliness that lay between Mill 
 House and the station, it seemed like crossing an 
 inert stretch of adipose tissue, then lighting suddenly 
 upon a pulsating nerve-centre. To step back into 
 the fresh and hungry beauty of his pine valley, with 
 its tumbling waters and its fragrance of wild loveli- 
 ness, was an experience he never ceased to take 
 delight in. The air at once turned keen, the trees 
 gave out sharp perfumes, waters rustled, foliage sang. 
 Oh! here was life, activity, and movement. Vital 
 currents flowed through and over it. The grey 
 house among the fir-trees, beckoning to the Mill 
 beyond, was a place where things might happen and 
 pass swiftly. Here was no stagnation possible. 
 Thrills of beauty, denied by that grosser landscape, 
 returned electrically upon the heart. With every 
 breath he drew in wonder and enchantment. 
 
 And all this, for some years now, he had enjoyed 
 
> Ae. 
 
 THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 445 
 
 alone. Rather than diminishing with his middle 
 age, the spell had increased. Then came this sudden 
 question of another’s intrusion upon his dream-estate, 
 and he had dreaded painful alteration. The presence 
 of another, most likely stupid, and certainly un- 
 sympathetic, must cause a desolating change. Altera- 
 tion there was bound to be, or at the best a readjust- 
 ment of values that would steal away the wild and 
 accustomed flavour. He had dreaded the child’s 
 arrival unspeakably. It had turned him abruptly 
 timid, and this timidity betrayed the sweetness of the 
 treasure that he guarded. For it came close to fear 
 —the fear men know when they realise an attack 
 they cannot, by any means within their power, hope 
 to defeat. 
 
 And alteration, as he apprehended, came ; yet not 
 the alteration he had dreaded. Manya’s arrival had 
 been a surprise that was pure joy. Its wonder 
 almost woke suspicion. And the surprise, he found, 
 grew into a series of surprises that at first took his 
 breath away. The alchemy that her little shining 
 presence brought persisted, grew from day to day, 
 till it operated with such augmenting power that it 
 changed himself as well. No stranger fairy-tale was 
 ever written. 
 
VI 
 
 Next day he put his work aside and devoted him- 
 self whole-heartedly to the lonely child. It was not 
 only duty now. She had stirred his love and pity 
 from the first. They would get on together. Un- 
 consciously, by saying the very thing to win him— 
 ‘Uncle, how the Place must love you! ’—she had 
 struck the fundamental tone that made the three of 
 them in harmony, and set the whole place singing. 
 The sense of an intruding trespasser had vanished. 
 The Place accepted her. 
 
 It was only later that he realised this completely 
 and in detail, though on looking back he saw clearly 
 that the verdict had been given instantly. For no 
 revision changed it. ‘I’m all right here with Uncle,’ 
 was the child’s quick intuition, meeting his own half- 
 way :—‘ We three are all right here together.’ For 
 she leaped upon his beloved dream-estate and made 
 it seem twice as wild and living as before. She 
 delighted in its loneliness and mystery. She clapped 
 her hands and laughed, pointed and asked questions, 
 made her eyes round with wonder, and, in a word, 
 put her own feelings from the start into each nook 
 and corner where he took her. There was no shy- 
 ness, no confusion ; she made herself at home with a 
 little air of possession that, instead of irritating as it 
 might have done, was utterly enchanting. It was 
 
 446 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 447 
 
 like the chorus of approval that increases a man’s 
 admiration for the woman he has chosen. 
 
 She brought her own interpretations, too, yet 
 without destroying his own. They even differed 
 from his own, yet only by showing him points and 
 aspects he had not realised. The child saw things 
 most oddly from another point of view. From the 
 very first she began to say astonishing things. They 
 piqued and puzzled him to the end, these things she 
 said. He felt they unravelled something. In his 
 own mind the personality of the Place and the 
 memory of his wife had become confused and 
 jumbled, as it were. Manya’s remarks and questions 
 disentangled something. Her child’s divination 
 cleared his perceptions with a singular directness. 
 She had strong in her that divine curiosity of children 
 which is as far removed from mere inquisitiveness 
 as gold-dust from a vulgar-finished ornament. 
 Wonder in her was vital and insatiable, and some of 
 these questions that he could not answer stirred in 
 him, even on that first day of acquaintance, almost 
 the sense of respect. 
 
 Morning and afternoon they spent together in 
 visiting every corner of the woods and valleys; no 
 inch was left without inspection ; they followed the 
 stream from the moorlands to the Mill, plunged 
 through the bracken, leaped the high tufts of heather, 
 and scrambled together down the precipitous sand- 
 pits. She did not jump as well as he did, but showed 
 equal recklessness. And the depths of shadowy 
 pinewood made her hushed and silent like himself. 
 In her childish way she fe/t the wild charm of it all 
 deeply. Not once did she cry ‘How lovely’ or 
 ‘How wonderful’; but showed her happiness and 
 
 pleasure by what she did. 
 
448 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 ‘Better than yesterday, eh?’ he suggested once, 
 to see what she would answer, yet sure it would be 
 right. 
 
 ° She darted to his side. ‘That was all stuffed,’ 
 she said, laconically as himself, and making a wry 
 face. And then she added with a grave expression, 
 half anxious and half solemn, ‘ Fancy, if that got in! 
 Oh, Uncle !’ 
 
 ‘Couldn’t,’ he comforted himself and her, delighted 
 secretly. 
 
 But it was on their way home to tea in the dusk, 
 feeling as if they had known one another all their 
 lives, so quickly had friendship been cemented, that 
 she said her first genuinely strange thing. Fora long 
 time she had been silent by his side, apparently tired, 
 when suddenly out popped this little criticism that 
 showed her mind was actively working all the time. 
 
 ‘Uncle, you Aave been busy—keeping it so safe. 
 I suppose you did most of it at night.’ 
 
 He started. His own thoughts had been travel- 
 ling in several directions at once. 
 
 ‘I don’t walk in my sleep,’ he laughed. 
 
 ‘I mean when the stars are shining,’ she said. 
 She felt it as delicately as that, then! She felt the 
 dream quality in it. ‘I mean, it loves you best 
 when the sun has set and it comes out of its hole,’ 
 she added, as he said nothing. 
 
 ‘Manya, it loves you too—already,’ he said gently. 
 
 Then came the astonishing thing. The voice was — 
 curious ; the words seemed to come from a long way 
 off, taking time to reach him. They took time to 
 reach her too, as though another had first whispered 
 them. It almost seemed as though she listened while 
 she said them. A sense of the uncanny touched him 
 here in the shadowy dark wood: 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 449 
 
 ‘It’s a woman, you see, really, and that’s why 
 you're so fond of it. That’s why it likes me too, 
 and why I can play with it.’ 
 
 The amazing judgment gave him pause at once, 
 for he felt no child ought to know or say such things. 
 It savoured of precociousness, even of morbidity, 
 both of which his soul loathed. But reflection 
 brought clearer judgment. The sentence revealed 
 something he had already been very quick to divine, 
 namely, that while the ordinary mind in her was 
 undeveloped, backward, almost stunted, by her bring- 
 ing up, another part of her was vividly aware. And 
 this other part was taught of Nature ; it was the 
 fairy thing that children had the right to know. 
 She stood close to the earth. Landscape and 
 scenery brought her vivid impressions that fairy- 
 tales, rather stupidly, translate into princes and 
 princesses, ogres, giants, dragons. Manya, having 
 been denied the fairy books, personified these im- 
 pressions after her own fashion. What was it after 
 all but the primitive instinct of early races that 
 turned the moods of Nature into beings, calling 
 them gods, or the instinct of a later day that per- 
 sonified the Supreme, calling it God? He himself 
 had ‘felt’ in very imaginative moments that bits 
 of scenery, as with trees and even the heavenly 
 bodies, could actually express such differences of 
 temperament, seem positive or negative, almost male 
 or female. And perhaps, in her original, child’s 
 fashion, she felt it too. 
 
 Then Manya interrupted his reflections with a 
 further observation that scattered his philosophising 
 like an explosion. Something, as he heard it, came 
 up close and brushed him. It made him start. 
 
 ‘In some places, you see, Uncle, I feel shy all 
 
 2G 
 
450 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 over. But here I could run about naked. I could 
 undress.’ 
 
 He burst out laughing. Instinctively he felt this 
 was the best thing he could do. A sympathetic 
 answer might have meant too much, yet silence 
 would have made her feel foolish. His laughter 
 turned the idea in her little mind all wholesome and 
 natural. 
 
 ‘Play here to your heart’s content, for there’s no 
 one to disturb you,’ he cried. ‘And when I’m too 
 busy,’ he added, thinking it a happy inspiration, 
 ‘Mrs. Coove can 
 
 ‘Oh,’ she interrupted like a flash, ‘but she’s too 
 bulgey. She could never jump like you, for one 
 thing.’ 
 
 cob ries 
 
 ‘Or play hide-and-seek. She couldn’t fit in any- 
 where. She'd never be able to hide, you see.’ 
 
 And so they reached the house, like two friends 
 who had found suddenly a new delight in life, and 
 sat down to an enormous tea, with jam, buttered 
 muffins, and a stodgy indigestible cake straight from 
 the oven. His tea hitherto had consisted of one 
 cup and two pieces of thin bread and butter. But 
 the appetite of twenty-five had come back again. 
 
 A new joy of life had come back with it. After 
 so many years of brooding, dreaming, solitary work- 
 ing, he had grown over solemn, the sense of fun and 
 humour atrophying. He had erected barriers be- 
 tween himself and all his kind, hedged himself in too 
 much. The arrival of this child brought new impetus 
 into the enclosure. Without destroying what im- 
 agination had prized so long, she shifted the old 
 values into slightly different keys. Already he 
 caught his thoughts running forward to construct 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 451 
 
 her future—what she might become, how he might 
 help her to develop spiritually and materially—yes, 
 materially as well. His thoughts had hitherto run 
 chiefly backwards. 
 
 This need not, indeed could not, involve being 
 unfaithful to the past. But it did mean looking 
 -ahead instead of always looking back. It was more 
 wholesome. 
 
 Yet what dawned upon him—rather, what chiefly 
 struck him out of his singular observations perhaps, 
 was this: not only that the Place had whole-heartedly 
 accepted her, but that she had instantly established 
 some definite relation with it that was different to 
 his own. It was even deeper, truer, more vital than 
 his own; for it was somehow more natural. It had 
 been discovered, though already there; and it was 
 not, like his own, built up by imaginative emotion. 
 Flence came his notion that she disentangled some- 
 thing ; hence the respect he felt for her from the 
 start ; hence, too, the original, surprising things she 
 sometimes said. 
 
VII 
 
 For several days he watched and studied her, while 
 she turned the Place into a private playground of 
 her own with that air of sweet possession that had 
 charmed him from the first. Backward and un- 
 developed she undeniably was, but, in view of her 
 stupid, artificial bringing up, he understood this 
 easily. Of books and facts, of knowledge taught 
 in school, she was shockingly ignorant. ‘he wrong 
 part of her had been ‘forced’ at the wrong time ; the 
 ‘play’ side had been denied development, and, while 
 gathering force underground, her little brain had 
 learned by heart, but without real comprehension, 
 things that belonged properly to a later stage. For 
 if ever there was one, here was an elemental being, 
 free of the earth, native of open places, called to the 
 wisdom of the woods. It all had been suppressed in 
 her. She now broke out and loose, bewildered, and 
 a little rampant, wild rather, and over joyful. She 
 revelled like an animal in new-found freedom. 
 
 In time she sobered. He led her wisely. Yet 
 often she went too fast for him to follow, and slipped 
 beyond his understanding altogether. For there 
 were gaps in her nature, unfilled openings in her 
 mind, loopholes through which she seemed to escape 
 too easily, perhaps too completely, into her play- 
 ground, certainly too rapidly for him to catch her 
 
 452 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 4.53 
 
 up. It was then she said these things that so 
 astonished him, making him feel she was somehow 
 an eldritch soul that saw things, Nature especially, 
 from a point of view he had never reached. Her 
 sight of everything was original. <A bird’s-eye 
 view he could understand ; most primitive folk 
 possessed it, and in his wife it had been vividly 
 illuminating. But Manya had not got this bird’s- 
 eye view, the sweeping vision that takes in every- 
 thing at a single glance from above. Her angle was 
 another one, peculiar to herself. Laughing, he 
 thought of it rather as seeing everything from below 
 —a fish’s point of view ! 
 
 Brightness described her best—eyes, skin, teeth, 
 and lips all shone. Yet her manner was subdued, 
 not effervescent, and in it this evidence of depth, a 
 depth he could not always plumb. It was a nature 
 that sparkled, but the sparkle was suppressed ; and 
 he loved the sparkle, while loving even more its 
 suppression. It gathered till the point of flame was 
 reached, and it was the possible out-rushing of this 
 potential flame that won his deference, and sometimes 
 stirred his awe. His dread had been considerable, 
 anticipation keen; and the relief was in propor- 
 tion. Here was a child he could both respect and 
 love ; and the sense of responsibility for the little 
 being entrusted to his charge grew very strong 
 indeed. 
 
 In due course he supplied a governess, Fraulein 
 Buhlke. She came from the neighbouring town, 
 with her broad, flat German face, framed in 
 flaxen hair that was glossy but not oiled, and 
 smoothed down close to the skull across a shining 
 parting. Mechanically devout, rather fussy, literal 
 in mind, exceedingly worthy and conscientious, her 
 
454 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 formula was, ‘ You think that would be wise? Then 
 Itry it.’ And the ‘trying,’ which the tone suggested 
 would be delicate, was applied with a blundering 
 directness that defeated its own end. Her method 
 was thumping rather than insinuating, and her 
 notion of delicacy was to state her meaning heavily, 
 add to it, ‘Try to believe that I know best, dear 
 child,’ and then conscientiously enforce it. Manya 
 she understood as little as an okapi, but she was 
 kind, affectionate, and patient; and though Eliot 
 always meant to change her, he never did, for the 
 getting of a suitable governess was more than he and 
 Mrs. Coove could really manage. ‘Der liebe Goit 
 weisst alles, was the phrase with which she ended all 
 their interviews. And if Manya’s obedience showed 
 a slight contempt, it was a contempt he did not 
 think it wise entirely to check. 
 
 For he himself could never scold her. It was 
 impossible. It felt as though he stepped upon a 
 baby. Their relations were those of equals almost, 
 each looking up to the other with respect and 
 wonder. Her schoolroom life became a thing apart. 
 So did the hours in his study. Her walks with the 
 governess and his journeys to the British Museum 
 were mere extensions of the schoolroom and the 
 study. It was when they went out together, roam- 
 ing about the Place at will, exploring, playing, build- 
 ing fires, and the rest, that their true enjoyment came— 
 enjoyment all the keener because each stuck valiantly 
 to duty first. 
 
 Her face, though not exactly pretty, had the 
 charm of some wild intelligence he had never seen 
 before. The nose, slightly tilted, wore a tiny plat- 
 form at its tip. The mouth was firm, lips exquisitely 
 cut, but it was in the dark, shining eyes that the 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 455 
 
 expression of the soul ran into focus; though at 
 times she knew long periods of silence that seemed 
 almost sullen, when her eyes turned dead and coaly, 
 and she seemed almost gone away from behind them. 
 One day she was old as himself, another a mere baby ; 
 something was always escaping the leash and slipping 
 off, then coming back with a rush of some astonishing 
 sentence it had gone to fetch. Her physical appear- 
 ance sometimes was elusive too, now tall, now short, 
 her little body protean as her little soul. 
 
 Like running water she was all over the house, not 
 laughing much, not exactly gay or cheerful either, 
 but somehow charged to the brim with a mysterious 
 spirit of play—grave, earnest play, yet airy with a 
 consummate mischief sometimes that was the despair 
 of Fraulein Buhlke, who wore an expression then as 
 though, after all, there were things God did xot know. 
 Yes, like running water through the rooms and 
 corridors, and tumbling down the stairs behind the 
 kitten or round the skirts of ‘ bulgey ’ Mother Coove. 
 Swift and gentle always, yet with force enough to 
 hurt you if you got in her way; almost to sting 
 or slap. Soft, and very girlish to look at, she 
 was really hard as a boy, flexible too as a_ willow 
 branch, and with a rod of steel laced somewhere 
 invisibly through her tenderness, unsuspected till 
 occasion—rarely—betrayed its presence. It shifted 
 its position too ; one never knew where that firmness 
 which is character would crop out and refuse to bend. 
 For then the childishness would vanish. She became 
 imperious as a little natural queen. The half-breed 
 groom had a taste of this latter quality more than 
 once, and afterwards worshipped the ground she 
 walked on. To see them together, she in her dark-~ 
 grey riding-habit, holding a little whip, and he with 
 
456 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 his sinister, wild face and half malignant manners, 
 called up some picture of a child and a savage animal 
 
 she had tamed. 
 
 But the thing Manya chiefly brought into his 
 garden, and so also into the garden of his thoughts, 
 was this new element of Play. She brought with her, 
 not only the child’s make-believe, but the child’s 
 conviction, earnestness, and sense of reality. 
 
 ‘Tell me ove thing,’ she had a way of saying, sure 
 preface to something of significant import that 
 she had to ask, accompanied always by a darker ex- 
 pression in the eyes, puzzled or searching and not 
 on any account to be evaded or lightly answered ; 
 ‘Tell me one thing, Uncle: do these outside things 
 come after us into the house as well?” ‘Only when 
 we allow them, or invite them. in,’ he replied, taking 
 up her mood as seriously as herself, yet knowing her 
 question to be a feint. She knew the true answer 
 better than himself. She wished to see what he 
 would say. Her sly laughter of approval told him 
 that. ‘ They’re already there, though, aren't they ?’ 
 she whispered, and when he nodded agreement, she 
 added, ‘Of course ; they’re everywhere really all the 
 time. They don’t move about as we do.’ 
 
 But she had often this singular way of seeing 
 things, and saying them, from the original point of 
 view whence she regarded them—from beneath, as it 
 were, topsy-turvy some might call it, almost a little 
 mad, judged by the sheep-like vision of the majority, 
 yet for herself entirely true, consistent, not imagined 
 merely. 
 
 Her literal use of words, too, was sometimes 
 vividly illuminating—as though she saw language 
 directly, and robbed of the cloak with which familiar 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 457 
 
 use has smothered it. She undressed phrases, making 
 them shine out alone. 
 
 ‘Moping, child?’ he asked once, when one of 
 her silent fits had been somewhat prolonged. ‘ Un- 
 happy ?’ 
 
 ‘No, Uncle. And I’m xot moping.’ 
 
 ‘ What is it, then ?’ | 
 
 ‘Fraulein told me I was self-ish, rather.’ 
 
 ‘That’s all right,’ he said to comfort her. ‘Be 
 yourself—self-ish—or you’re nothing.’ 
 
 She followed her own thought, perhaps not 
 understanding him quite. 
 
 ‘She said I must put my Self out more—for 
 others. Mother used to say it too.’ 
 
 He turned and stared at her. The little face 
 was very grave. 
 
 ‘Eh?’ he asked. ‘ Put your Self out?’ 
 
 Manya nodded, fixing her eyes, half dreamy, 
 upon his own. She had been far away. Now she 
 was coming back. 
 
 ‘So I’m learning,’ she said, her voice coming as . 
 from a distance. ‘It’s so funny. But it’s not really 
 difficult—a bit. I could teach you, I think, if you’d 
 promise faithfully to practise regularly.’ 
 
 There was a pause before he asked the next 
 question. 
 
 ‘How d’you do it, child?’ came a little gruffly, 
 for he felt queer emotion rising in him. 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 ‘Oh, I couldn’t tell you ke that. I could only 
 show you.’ 
 
 There was a touch of weirdness about the child. 
 It stole into him—a faint sense of eeriness, as though 
 she were letting him see through peepholes into that 
 other world she knew so well. 
 
458 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 “Well, he asked, more gently, ‘what happens 
 when you fave put your Self—er—out? Other 
 things come in, eh?’ 
 
 ‘How can I tell?’ she answered like a flash. 
 STianvont. 
 
 He stared at her, waiting for more. But nothing 
 followed, and a minute later she was as usual, 
 laughing, her brilliant eyes flashing with mischief, 
 and presently went upstairs to get tidy for their 
 evening meal that was something between an early 
 dinner and high tea. Only at the door she paused 
 a second to fling him another of her characteristic 
 phrases : 
 
 ‘I wonder, Uncle. Don’t you?’ For she cer- 
 tainly knew some natural way, born in her, of 
 moving her Self aside and letting the tide of ‘ bigger 
 things’ sweep in and use her. It was her incom- 
 municable secret. 
 
 And he did wonder a good deal. Wonder with 
 him had never faded as with most men. It had 
 often puzzled him why this divine curiosity about 
 everything should disappear with the majority after 
 twenty-five, instead, rather, of steadily increasing the 
 more one knows. Familiarity with those few scattered 
 details the world calls knowledge had never dulled its 
 golden edge for him. Only Manya, and the things 
 she asked and said, gave it a violent new impetus that 
 was like youth returned. And her notion of putting 
 one’s Self out in order to let other things come in 
 filled him with about as much wonder as he could 
 comfortably hold just then. He dozed over the 
 fire, thinking deeply, wishing that for a single 
 moment he could stand where this child stood, see 
 things from her point of view, learn the geography 
 of the world she lived in. The source of her 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 459 
 
 inspiration was Nature of course. Yet he too stood 
 close to Nature and was full of sympathetic under- 
 standing for her mystery and beauty. Did Manya 
 then stand nearer than himself? Did she, perhaps, 
 dwell inside it, while he examined from the outside 
 only, a mere onlooker, though an appreciative and 
 loving onlooker ? 
 
 It came to him that things yielded up to her their 
 essential meaning because she saw them from another 
 side, and he recalled an illuminating line of Alice 
 Meynell about a daisy, and how wonderful it must 
 be to see from ‘God’s side,’ even of such a simple 
 thing. 
 
 Manya, moreover, saw everything in some amazing 
 fashion as One. The facts of common knowledge 
 men studied so laboriously in isolated groups were 
 but the jewelled facets that hung glittering upon the 
 enormous flanks of this One. The thought flashed 
 through his mind. He remembered another thing 
 she said, and then another; they began to crowd 
 his brain. ‘I never dream because I know it 
 all awake,’ she told him once; and only that after- 
 noon, when he asked her why she always stopped 
 and stood straight before him—a habit she had— 
 when he spoke seriously with her, she answered, 
 ‘Because I want to see you properly. I must be 
 opposite for that! No one can see their own face, 
 or what’s next to them, can they?’ 
 
 Truth, and a philosophical truth! Of no par- 
 ticular importance, maybe, yet strange for a child to” 
 have discovered. 
 
 Even her ideas of space were singularly original, 
 direct, unhampered by the terms that smother 
 meaning. ‘Up’ and‘ down’ perplexed her ; ‘left’ 
 and ‘right’ perpetually deceived her ; even * inside ’ 
 
460 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 and ‘ outside,’ when she tried to express them, landed 
 herin a chaos of confusion that to most could have 
 seemed only sheer stupidity. She stood, as it were, 
 in some attitude of naked knowledge behind thought, 
 perception unfettered, untaught, in which she knew 
 that space was only a way of talking about some- 
 thing that no one ever really understands. She saw 
 space, felt it rather, in some absolute sense, not yet 
 ‘educated ° to treat it relatively. She saw everything 
 ‘round,’ as though her spatial perceptions were all 
 circles. And circles are infinite, eternal. 
 
 With Time, too, it was somewhat similar. ‘It’ ll 
 come round again,’ she said once, when he chided her 
 for having left something undone earlier in the day ; 
 or, ‘when I get back to it, Uncle,’ in reply to his re- 
 minding her of a duty for the following day. To 
 the end she was ‘stupid’ about telling the time, and 
 until he cured her of it her invariable answer to his 
 question, ‘ what o’clock it was,’ would be the literal 
 truth that it was ‘just now, Uncle,’ or simply ‘now,’ as 
 though she saw things from an absolute, and not a 
 relative point of view. She was always saying things 
 to prove it in this curious manner. And, while it 
 made him sometimes feel uncomfortable in a way he 
 could not quite define, it also incréased his attitude 
 of respect towards the secret, mysterious thing she 
 hid so well, though without intending to hide it. 
 She seemed in touch with eternal things—more than 
 other children—not merely with a transient expres- 
 sion of them filtered down for normal human 
 comprehension. Some giant thing she certainly 
 knew. She lived it. Death, for instance, was a 
 conception her mind failed to grasp. She could not 
 realise it. People had ‘left’ or ‘ gone away,’ perhaps, 
 but somehow for her were always ‘shere.’ 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 461 
 
 Thus started, his thoughts often travelled far, but 
 always came up with a shock against that big black 
 barrier—the army of the dead. The dead, of course, 
 were always somewhere—if there was survival. But, 
 though he had encountered strange phases of the 
 spiritualistic movement in America, he had known 
 nothing to justify the theory of interference from the 
 other side of that black barrier. The deliverances 
 of the mediums brought no conviction. He some- 
 times wondered, that was all. And in particular he 
 wondered about that member of the great army who 
 had been for years his close and dear companion. 
 This was natural enough. Could it be that his 
 thought, prolonged and concentrated, formed a 
 prison-house from which escape was difficult ? And 
 had his own passionate thinking that ever associated 
 her memory with the Place, detained one soul from 
 farther flight elsewhere? Was this an explanation 
 of that hint Manya so often brought him—that her 
 presence helped to disentangle, liberate, unravel . . .? 
 Was the Place haunted in this literal sense? . . . 
 
VIll 
 
 Yet, perhaps, after all, the chief change she intro- 
 duced was this vital resurrection of his sense of play. 
 For Play is eternal, older than the stars, older even 
 than dreams. She taught him afresh things he had 
 already known, but long forgotten or laid aside. 
 And all she knew came first direct from Nature, 
 large and undiluted. 
 
 He learned, for instance, the secret of that deep 
 quiet she possessed even in her wildest moments ; 
 and how it came from a practice in her mother’s 
 house, where all was rush and clamour about worldly 
 ‘horrid things ’—her practice of lying out at night 
 to watch the stars. But not merely to watch them 
 for a minute. She would watch for hours, following 
 the constellations from the moment they loomed 
 above the horizon till they set again at dawn. She 
 saw them move slowly across the entire sky. For 
 ‘mother hurried and fussed’ her so, and by doing 
 this she instinctively drew into her curious wild heart — 
 the deep delight of feeling that ‘there was lots of — 
 room really, and no particular hurry about anything.’ 
 Her inspiration was profound, from ancient sources, 
 natural. | 
 
 And her ‘play,’ for the same reason, was never 
 foolish. It was creative play. It was the faculty by 
 which the poets and dreamers re-create the world, 
 
 462 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 463 
 
 and thus rejuvenate it. Adam knew it when he named 
 the beasts, and Job, when he made rhymes about 
 taking Leviathan with a hook, and sang his little 
 heart-sweet songs about the conies and the hopping 
 hills. In the wise it never dies, for it is most subtly 
 allied to wisdom, and only the dreamless can divorce 
 it quite. It is the natural, untaught poetry of the 
 soul which laughs and weeps with Nature, knowing 
 itself akin, seeing itself in everything and everything 
 in itself. Manya in some amazing fashion, not yet 
 educated out of her, knew Nature in herself. 
 
 She did naughty things too, as he learned from 
 Mrs. Coove, when he felt obliged to lecture her, but 
 they were invariably typical and explanatory of her 
 close-to-Nature little being. And he understood 
 what she felt so well that his lectures ended in 
 laughter, with her grave defence ‘ Uncle, you’d have 
 done the same yourself.’ Once in particular, after a 
 fortnight of parching drought, when the gush of 
 warm rain came with its welcome, drenching soak, 
 and the child ran out upon the balcony in her night- 
 gown to feel it on her body too—how could he prove 
 her wrong, having felt the same delight himself? ‘I 
 was thirsty and dry all over. I had to do it,’ she 
 explained, puzzled, adding that of course she had 
 changed afterwards and used the rough Turkey 
 towel ‘just as you do.’ 
 
 But other things he did not understand so well ; 
 and one of these was her singular habit of imitating 
 the sounds of Nature, with an accuracy, too, that 
 often deceived even himself. The true sounds of 
 Nature are only two—water and wind, with their 
 many variations. And Manya, by some trick of tone 
 and breath, could reproduce them marvellously. 
 
 ‘It’s the way to get close,’ she told him when he 
 
464 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 asked her why, ‘the way to get inside. If you get 
 the sound exact, you feel the same as they do, and 
 know their things.’ And the cryptic, yet deeply 
 suggestive explanation contained a significant truth 
 that yet just evaded his comprehension. ‘They often 
 played it together in the woods, though he never 
 approached her own astonishing excellence. This, 
 again, stirred something like awe in him; it was a 
 little eerie, almost uncanny, to hear her ‘ doing trees,’ 
 or ‘playing wind and water.’ 
 
 But the strangest of all her odd, original tricks 
 was one that he at length dissuaded her from 
 practising because he felt it stimulated her imagina- 
 tion unwisely, and with too great conviction. It is 
 not easy to describe, and to convey the complete success 
 of the achievement is impossible without seeing the 
 actual results. For she drew invisible things. Her 
 designs, so clumsily done with a butt of pencil, or 
 even the point of her stick in the sand, managed to 
 suggest a meaning that somehow just escaped grasping 
 
 by the mind. They made him think of puzzle-— 
 
 pictures that intentionally conceal a face or figure. 
 Vague, fluid shapes that never quite achieved an 
 actual form ran through these scattered tracings. 
 She used points in the scenery to indicate an outline 
 of something other than themselves, yet something 
 they contained and clothed. His eye vainly tried to 
 force into view the picture that he felt lay there 
 hiding within these points. 
 
 On a large sheet of paper she would draw roughly 
 details of the landscape—tops of trees, the Mill roof, 
 a boulder or a stretch of the stream, for instance— 
 and persuade these points to gather the blank space of 
 paper between them into the semblance, the suggestion 
 rather, of some vague figure, always vast and always 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 465 
 
 very much alive. They marked, within their 
 boundaries, an outline of some form that remained 
 continually elusive. Yet the outline thus framed, 
 whichever way you looked at it, even holding the 
 paper upside down, still remained a figure ; a figure, 
 moreover, that moved. For the child had a way of 
 turning the paper round so that the figure had an 
 appearance of moving independently upon itself. 
 The reality of the whole business was more than 
 striking ; and it was when she came to giving 
 these figures names that she decided to put a stop 
 to it. 
 
 One day another curious thing had happened. 
 He had often thought about it since, and wondered 
 whether its explanation lay in mere child’s mischief, 
 or in some power of discerning these invisible Pre- 
 sences that she drew. 
 
 They were returning together from a scramble in 
 the gravel-pit which they pretended was a secret 
 entrance to the centre of the world; and they were 
 tired. Manya walked a little in front, as her habit 
 was, so that she could turn and see him ‘opposite’ 
 at amoment’s notice when he said an interesting thing. 
 Her red tam-o’-shanter, with the top-knot off, she 
 carried in her hand, swinging it to and fro. From 
 time to time she flicked it out sideways, as though to 
 keep flies away. But there were no flies, for it was 
 chilly and growing dark. The pines were thickly 
 planted here, with sudden open spaces. Their foot- 
 steps fell soft and dead upon the needles. And 
 sometimes she flung her arm out with an imperious, 
 sudden gesture of defiance that made him feel sus- 
 picious and look over his shoulder. For it was like 
 signing to some one who came close, some one he could 
 
 2H 
 
466 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 not see, but whose presence was very real to her. 
 The unwelcome conviction grew upon him. Some 
 one, in the world she knew apart from him, ac- 
 companied them. A few minutes before she had 
 been wild and romping, playing at ‘mushrooms’ 
 with laughter and excitement. She loved doing this 
 —whirling round on her toes till her skirts were 
 horizontal, then sinking with them ballooning round 
 her to the ground, the tam-o’-shanter pulled down over 
 her entire face so that she looked like a giant toad- 
 stool with a crimson top. But now she had turned 
 suddenly grave and silent. 
 
 ‘Uncle!’ she exclaimed abruptly, turning sharply 
 to face him, and using the hushed tone that was 
 always prelude to some startling question, ‘tell me 
 one thing, please. What would you do if 
 
 She broke off suddenly and sprang swiftly to one 
 side. 3 
 
 ‘Manya! if what?’ He did not like the move- 
 ment; it was so obviously done to avoid something 
 that stood in her way—between them—very close. 
 He almost jumped too. ‘I can’t tell you anything 
 while you’re darting about like a deer-fly. What 
 d’you want to know?’ he added with involuntary 
 sharpness. 
 
 She stood facing him with her legs astride the 
 path. She stared straight into his eyes. The dusk 
 played tricks with her height, always delusive. It 
 magnified her. She seemed to stand over him, ~ 
 towering up. 
 
 ‘If some one kept walking close beside you under 
 an umbrella,’ she whispered earnestly, ‘so that the 
 face was hidden and you could never see it—what 
 would you do?’ 
 
 ‘Child! But what a question!’ ‘The carelessness 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 467 
 
 in his tone was not quite natural. A shiver ran down 
 his back. 
 
 She moved closer, so that he felt her breath and 
 saw the gleam of her big, wide-opened eyes. 
 
 ‘Would you knock up the umbrella with a bang,’ 
 she whispered, as though afraid she might be over- 
 heard, ‘or just suddenly stoop and look beneath— 
 catching it that way?’ 
 
 Fle stepped aside to pass her, but the child stepped 
 with him, barring his movement of escape. She 
 meant to have her answer. 
 
 ‘Take it by surprise like that, I mean. Would 
 you, Uncle?’ 
 
 He stared blankly at her; the conviction in her 
 voice and manner was disquieting. 
 
 ‘Depends what kind of thing,’ he said, seeing his 
 mistake. He tried to banter, and yet at the same 
 time seem serious. But to joke with Manya in this 
 mood was never very successful. She resented it. 
 And above all he did not want to lose her confidence. 
 
 ‘Depends,’ he said slowly, ‘whether I felt it 
 friendly or unfriendly ; but I s4ink—er—I should 
 prefer to knock the brolly up.’ : 
 
 For a moment she appeared to weigh the wisdom 
 of his judgment, then instantly rejecting it. : 
 
 ‘I shouldn’t!’ she answered like a flash. ‘I 
 should suddenly run up and stoop to see. I should 
 catch it that way!’ 
 
 And, before he could add a word or make a 
 movement to go on, she darted from beside him 
 with a leap like a deer, flew forwards several yards 
 among the trees, stooped suddenly down, then turned 
 her head and face up sideways as though to peer 
 beneath something that spread close to the ground. 
 Her skirts ballooned about her like the mushroom, 
 
468 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 one hand supporting her on the earth, while the other, 
 holding the tam-o’-shanter, shaded her eyes. | 
 
 ‘Oh! oh!’ she cried the next instant, standing 
 bolt upright again, ‘it’s a whole lot! And they’ve 
 all gone like lightning — gone off there!’ She 
 pointed all about her—into the sky, towards the 
 moors, back to the forest, even down into the earth 
 —a curious sweeping gesture; then hid her face 
 behind both hands and came slowly to his side again. 
 
 ‘It wasn’t one, Uncle. It was a lot!’ she 
 whispered through her fingers. Then she dropped 
 her hands as a new explanation flashed into her. 
 ‘But p’raps, after all, it was only one! Oh, Uncle, 
 I do believe it was only one. Just fancy—how 
 awfully splendid! I wonder!’ 
 
 Neither the hour nor the place seemed to him 
 suitable for such a discussion. He put his arm 
 round her and hurried out of the wood. He put the 
 woods behind them, like a protective barrier; for his 
 sake as well as hers; that much he clearly realised. 
 He somehow made a shield of them. 
 
 In the garden, with the stars peeping through 
 
 thin clouds, and the lights of the windows beckoning — 
 
 in front, he turned and said laughing, quickening his 
 pace at the same time : 
 
 ‘Rabbits, Manya, rabbits! All the rabbits here 
 use brollies, and the bunnies too.’ It was the best 
 thing he could think of at the moment. Rather neat 
 he thought it. But her instant answer took the wind 
 out of his sham sails. | 
 
 ‘That’s just the name for them!’ she cried, — | 
 clapping her hands softly with delight. ‘Now they 
 needn’t hide like that any more. We'll just pretend 
 they’re bunnies, and they’ll feel disguised enough.’ 
 
 They went into the house, and it was comforting 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 469 
 
 to see the figure of Mother Coove filling the entire 
 hall. At least there was no disguising her. But on 
 the steps Manya halted a moment and gazed up in 
 his face. She stood in front of him, deaf to Mrs. 
 Coove’s statements from the rear about wet boots. 
 Her eyes, though shining with excitement, held a 
 puzzled, wild expression. 
 
 ‘Uncle,’ she whispered, with sly laughter, standing 
 on tiptoe to kiss him, ‘I wonder 1’ then flew 
 upstairs to change before he could find a suitable 
 reply. 
 
 But he wondered too, wondered what it was the 
 child had seen. For certainly she had seen something. 
 
 Yet the thought that finally stayed with him— 
 as after all the other queer adventures they had 
 together—was this unpleasant one, that his so willing 
 acceptance of the little intruder involved the dis- 
 approval, even the resentment, of—another. It 
 haunted him. He never could get quite free of it. 
 Another watched, another listened, another—waited. 
 
 And Manya knew. 
 
IX 
 
 AuTuMN passed into winter, and spring at last came 
 round, The dream-estate was a garden of delight 
 and loveliness, fresh green upon the larches and 
 heather all abloom. The routine of the little house- 
 hold was established, and seemed as if it could never 
 have been otherwise. The relationship between the 
 elderly uncle and his little charge was perfect now, 
 like that between a father and his only daughter, 
 spoilt daughter, perhaps a little, who, knowing her 
 power, yet never took advantage of it. He loved 
 her as his own child ; and that evasive ‘something’ 
 in her which had won his respect from the first still 
 continued to elude him. He never caught it up. 
 It had increased, too, in the long, dark months. 
 Now, with the lengthening days, it came still more 
 to the front, grown bolder, as though ‘spring’s sweet 
 trouble in the ground’ summoned it forth. This 
 sympathy between her being and the Place had 
 strengthened underground. The disentangling had 
 gone on apace. With the first warm softness of the 
 April days he woke abruptly to the fact, and faced 
 it. The older memories had been replaced. It 
 seemed to him almost as though his hold upon the 
 Place had weakened. He loved it still, but loved it 
 in some new way. And his conscience pricked him, 
 for conscience had become identified with the trust 
 470 
 
 ee 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 471 
 
 of guardianship thus self-imposed. He had let 
 something in, and though it was not the taint of 
 outside country she had said would ‘dirty’ it, it yet 
 was alien. It was somehow hostile to the conditions 
 of his original Deed of Trust. 
 
 Then, into this little world, dropping like some 
 stray bullet from a distant battle, came with a bang 
 the person of John C. Murdoch. He came for a 
 self-proposed visit of one day, being too ‘rushed’ to 
 stay an hour longer. Chance had put him ‘on the 
 trail’ of his old-time ‘pard of a hundred camps,’ 
 and he couldn’t miss looking him up, not ‘for all 
 the money you could shake a stick at.’ More like 
 a shell than mere bullet he came—explosively and 
 with a kind of tempestuous energy. For his vitality 
 and speed of action were terrific, and he was making 
 money now ‘dead easy ’—so easy, in fact, that it was 
 ‘like picking it up in the street.’ 
 
 ‘Then you’ve done well for yourself since those 
 old days in Arizona,’ said Eliot, really pleased to 
 see him, for a truer ‘partner’ in difficult times he 
 had never known ; ‘and I’m glad to hear it.’ 
 
 ‘That’s so, Boss’—he had always called the 
 ‘Englisher’ thus because of his refined speech and 
 manners—‘ God ain’t forgot me, and I’ve got grub- 
 stakes now all over Yurrup. Just raking it in, and 
 if you want a bit, why, name the figger and it’s 
 yours.” He glanced round at the modest old- 
 fashioned establishment, judging it evidence of 
 unsuccess. 
 
 ‘What line?’ asked Eliot, dropping into the 
 long-forgotten lingo. 
 
 ‘Why, patents, bless your heart,’ was the reply. 
 _¢They come to me as easy as mother’s milk to baby, 
 and if the heart don’t wither in me first, I'll patent 
 
472 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 everything in sight. I'll patent the earth itself before 
 I’m done.’ 
 
 And for a whole hour, smoking one strong green 
 cigar upon another, he gave brief and picturesque 
 descriptions of his various enterprises, with such 
 energy and gusto, moreover, that there woke in 
 Eliot something of the lust of battle he had known 
 in the wild, early days, something of his zest for 
 making a fortune, something too of the old bitter 
 grievance—in a word, the spirit of action, eager 
 strife and keen achievement, which never had quite 
 gone to sleep... . ! 
 
 ‘And now,’ said Murdoch at length, ‘tell me 
 about yerself. You look fit and lively. You’ve 
 had enough of my chin-music. Made yer pile and 
 retired too? Isn’t that it? Only you still like 
 things kind o’ modest and camp-like. Is that so ?’ 
 
 But Eliot found it difficult to tell. This side of 
 him that life in England had revived, to the almost 
 complete burial of the other, was one that Murdoch 
 would not understand. For one thing, Murdoch had 
 never seen it in his friend; the Arizona days had 
 kept it deeply hidden. He listened with a kind of 
 tolerant pity, while Eliot found himself giving the 
 desired information almost in a tone of apology. 
 
 ‘Every man to his liking,’ the Westerner cut him 
 short when he had heard less than half of the 
 stammering tale, ‘and your line ain’t mine, I see. 
 I'm no shadow-chaser—never was. You've changed 
 alot. Why’—looking round at the little pine-clad 
 valley—‘I should think you’d rot to death in this 
 place. There’s not room to pitch a camp or feed a 
 horse. I’d choke for want of air.2 And he lit 
 another cigar and spat neatly across ten feet of 
 lawn. 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 473 
 
 John Casanova Murdoch—in the West he was 
 called ‘John Cass,’ or just ‘John C.,’ but had 
 resurrected the middle name for the benefit of 
 Yurrup—was a man of parts and character, tried 
 courage, and unfailing in his friendship. ‘Straight 
 as you make ’em’ was the verdict of the primitive 
 country where a man’s essential qualities are soon 
 recognised, ‘and without no frills.” And Eliot, 
 whatever he may have thought, felt no resentment. 
 He remembered the rough man’s kindness to him 
 when he had been a tenderfoot in more than one 
 awkward place. John C. might ‘rot to death’ in 
 this place, and might think the vulgar country round 
 it ‘great stuff,’ but for all that his host liked to see 
 and hear him. He remembered his skill as a mining 
 prospector and an engineer; he was not surprised 
 that he had at last ‘struck oil.’ 
 
 They talked of many things, but the visitor 
 always brought the conversations round, to his two 
 great healthy ambitions, now on the way to full 
 satisfaction : money and power. Upon some chance 
 mention of religion, he waved his hand impatiently 
 with enough vigour to knock a man down, and 
 said, ‘Religion! Hell! I only discuss facts.’ And 
 his definition of a ‘ fact” would no doubt have been a 
 dollar bill, a mining ‘ proposition,’ or a food-problem 
 —some scheme by which John C. could make a 
 bit. Yet though he placed religion among the 
 fantasies, he lived it in his way. He ranked the 
 Pope with Barnum, each of them ‘biggest in his own 
 line of goods,’ and ‘Shakespeare was right enough, 
 but might have made it shorter.’ 
 
 And Eliot, listening, felt the buried portion of 
 his nature waken and revive. It caused him acute 
 discomfort. 
 
474 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 ‘Now show me round the little hole a bit,’ said 
 Murdoch just before he left. ‘I'd like to see the 
 damage, just for old times’ sake. It won’t take above 
 ten minutes if we hustle along.’ 
 
 They hustled along. Eliot led the way with a 
 curious deep uneasiness he could not quite explain. 
 His heart sank within him. Gladly he would have 
 escaped the painful duty, but Murdoch’s vigorous 
 energy constrained him. The whole way he felt 
 ashamed, yet would have felt still more ashamed 
 to have refused. He ‘faced the music’ as John 
 Casanova Murdoch phrased it, and while doing so, 
 that other music of his visitor’s villainous nasal twang 
 cut across the deep-noted murmur of the wind and 
 water like a buzz-saw with a bit of wire trailing 
 against its teeth. 
 
 The entire journey occupied but half an hour, for 
 Eliot made short-cuts, instinctively avoiding certain 
 places, and the whole time Murdoch talked. His 
 business, practical soul expanded with good nature. 
 ‘The place ain’t so bad, if you worked it up a bit,’ 
 he said, striking a match on the wall of the mill, and 
 spitting into the clear water, ‘but it’s not much 
 bigger than a chicken-run at present. If I was you, 
 Boss, I'd have it cleaned up first.” Again he offered 
 a cheque, thinking the unkempt appearance due to 
 want of means. His uninvited opinions were freely 
 offered, as willingly as he would have given money 
 if his old ‘pard’ had needed it; given kindly too, 
 without the least desire to wound. He picked out 
 the prettiest ‘ building sites,’ and explained where an 
 artificial lake could be made ‘as easy as rolling off a 
 log.’ His patent wire would fence the gardens off 
 ‘and no one ever see it’; and his special concrete 
 paving, from waste material that yielded a hundred 
 
THE TEMPTATION: OF THE CLAY. 476 
 
 per cent profit, would make paths ‘so neat and pretty 
 you could dance to heaven on ‘em.’ The place 
 might be developed so as to ‘ knock the stuffing’ out 
 of the country round about, and the estate become 
 a ‘ puffect picture-book.’ 
 
 ‘You’ve got a gold mine here, and God never 
 meant a gold mine to lie unnoticed like a roadside 
 ditch. Only you’ll need to gladden it up a bit first. 
 You could make it hum as a picnic or amusement 
 resort for the town people. Take it from me, 
 Boss. It’s so.’ 
 
 And the effect upon Eliot as he listened was 
 curious; it was twofold. For while at first the 
 chatter wounded him like insults aimed directly at 
 the dead, at the same time, to his deep disgust, it 
 stirred all his former love of practical, energetic 
 action. ‘The old lust and fever to be up and doing, 
 helping the world go round, making money and 
 worldly position, woke more and more, as Murdoch’s 
 vigorous, crude personality stung his will, stung also 
 desires he thought for ever dead. It made him 
 angry to find that they were not dead, and yet 
 he felt that he was feeble not to resent the gross 
 invasion, even cowardly not to resist the coarse 
 attack and kick the vulgar intruder out. It was like 
 a breach of trust to take it all so meekly without 
 protesting, or at least without stating forcibly his 
 position, as though he were not sufficiently sure of 
 himself to protect his memories and his dead. But 
 this was the truth: he was not sure of himself. 
 The blinding light of this simple fellow’s mind 
 showed up the hidden inequalities to himself. 
 Another discovered his essential instability to himself. 
 This other side of him had existed all the time ; and 
 his attachment to the Place was partly artificial, 
 
476 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 built up largely by the vigorous assertion of the 
 departed. His love had coloured it wonderfully all 
 these years, but—it was a love that had undergone 
 a change. It had not faded, but grown otherwise. 
 Another kind of love had to some extent replaced 
 and weakened it. He felt mortified, ashamed, but 
 more, he felt uneasy too. 
 
 The wrench was pain. ‘If only she were here 
 and I could explain it to her,’ ran his thought over 
 and over again, followed by the feeling that perhaps 
 she was there, listening to it all—and judging him. 
 
 Behind the trees, a little distance away, he saw 
 the flitting figure of Manya, watching them as they 
 passed noisily along the pathways of her secret 
 playground. Her attitude even at this distance 
 expressed resentment. He imagined her indignant 
 eyes. But, closer than that, another watched and 
 followed, listened and disapproved—that other whom 
 she knew yet never spoke about, who was in league 
 with her, and seemed more and more to him, like a 
 phantom risen from the dead. 
 
 With difficulty, and with an uneasiness growing 
 every minute now, he gave his attention to his 
 talkative, well-meaning, though almost offensive 
 guest, at once insufferable yet welcome. One 
 moment he saw him in his camping-kit of twenty 
 years ago, with big sombrero and pistols in his belt, 
 and the next as he was to-day, reeking of luxury 
 and money, in a London black tail-coat, white 
 Homburg hat, diamonds shining on his fingers and 
 in his gaudy speckled tie, his pointed patent-leather 
 boots gleaming insolently through the bracken and 
 heather. 
 
 And through his silence crashed a noise of battle 
 that he thought the entire Place must hear. But 
 
 . 
 j 
 
 t 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 477 
 
 clear issue to the battle there was none. ‘The 
 opposing sides were matched with such deadly 
 equality. Which was his real self lay in the balance, 
 until at the last John Casanova unwittingly turned 
 the scales. 
 
 It came about so quickly, with such calculated 
 precision, as it were, that Eliot almost felt it had 
 all been prepared beforehand and Murdoch had come 
 down on purpose. It was like a sudden flank attack 
 that swept him from his last defences. Help that 
 could not reach him in the form of Manya signalled 
 from the distance with her shining eyes, her red tam- 
 o’-shanter the banner of reinforcements that arrived 
 too late. For John C. stood triumphantly before 
 him, a conqueror in his last dismantled fortress. 
 His face alight with enthusiasm that was all excite- 
 ment, he held his hands out towards him, cup-wise. 
 
 ‘See here,’ he said with excitement, but in a hard, 
 dry tone that reminded Eliot of prospecting days in 
 Arizona, ‘ Boss, will you take a look at this, please ?’ 
 
 He had been rooting about in the heather by the 
 edge of the sand-pits. And he thrust his joined 
 hands beneath the other’s nose. Something the size 
 of a hen’s egg, something that shone a dirty white, 
 lay in them against the thick gold rings. ‘Didn't I 
 tell you the place was a gol-darned gold mine? 
 But what’s the use o’ talking? Will you look at 
 this, now?’ He repeated it with the air of a man 
 who has suddenly discovered the secret of the world. 
 The voice was quiet with intense excitement kept 
 hard under. 
 
 And Eliot obeyed and looked. He saw his 
 visitor, his Bond Street trousers turned up high 
 enough to show the great muscles of his calves, the 
 Homburg hat tilted across one eye, coat-sleeves 
 
478 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 pulled up and smeared with a whitish mud. There 
 was perspiration on his forehead. It only needed the 
 sombrero and the pistols to complete the picture of 
 twenty years ago when Cass Murdoch, after weeks 
 of heavy labour, found the first gold-dust in his pan. 
 For John C. had found gold. It lay, a dirty lump 
 of white earth, in his large spread hands. Those 
 hands were the pan. The breeze that murmured 
 through the pine trees came, sweet and keen, from 
 leagues of open plain and virgin mountains far away. 
 . .. Eliot smelt the wood-fire smoke of camp... 
 heard the crack of the rifle as some one killed the 
 Ginner ist 
 
 ‘Well, John C.,’ he gasped, as he dropped back 
 likewise into the vanished pocket of the years, 
 ‘what’s your luck? Out with it, man, out with it !’ 
 
 ‘A fortune,’ replied his visitor. ‘Put yer finger 
 on it right now, an’ don’t tell mother or burst out 
 crying unless yer forced to!’ High pleasure was 
 in his voice. 
 
 He stepped closer, transferring the lump of dirt — 
 into the hand his host unconsciously stretched open 
 to receive it. It lay there a moment, looking even 
 dirtier. than before against the more delicate skin. 
 Eliot felt it with finger and thumb. It was soft and 
 sticky and a little moist. It stained the flesh. 
 
 Then he looked up and stared into his com- 
 panion’s eyes—blankly. A horrible excitement 
 worked underground in him. But he did not even 
 yet understand. 
 
 ‘You've got it,’ observed John C., with dry 
 finality. 
 
 ‘Got what ?’ asked Eliot. 
 
 ‘Got it right there in yer westkit pocket,’ said the 
 other, with an air of supreme satisfaction. His cigar 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 479 
 
 had gone out. He lit it again in leisurely fashion, 
 spat accurately at a distant frond of bracken, eyed 
 the lump of dirt again with inimitable pride, and 
 added, ‘Got it without asking; the working soft 
 and easy too; water-power on the spot, and the sea 
 all close and handy for shipping it away. He made 
 a gesture to indicate the tumbling stream and the 
 sea-coast a few miles beyond. 
 
 Then, seeing that his host still stared with blank 
 incomprehension, holding the little lump at arm’s 
 length as though it might bite or burn him, he 
 deigned to explain, but with a note of condescending 
 pity in his voice, as of a man explaining to a stupid 
 child. 
 
 ‘Clay,’ he said calmly, ‘and good stuff at that.’ 
 
 ‘Clay,’ repeated Eliot, still a little dazed, though 
 light was breaking on him. ‘Bricks ...?’ he 
 asked, with a dull sinking of the heart. 
 
 ‘Bricks, nothing!’ snapped the other with 
 impatient scorn, as though his friend were still 
 a tenderfoot in Arizona. ‘Good, white pottery 
 clay, and soft as a baby’s tongue. The best God 
 ever laid down for man. Worth twice its weight 
 in dust. And all to be had for the trouble of 
 shovelling it out. Old pard, you've struck it good 
 and hot this time; and here’s my blessing on yer 
 both.’ 
 
 Eliot dropped the lump his fingers held so long 
 and took half-heartedly the giant hand that squeezed 
 his own. Across his brain ran visions of slender 
 vases, exquisite white cups and bowls and pitchers, 
 plates and « sweet-rimmed basins, all fashioned in 
 delicate-toned shades of glaze—beautifully finished 
 pottery—‘ worth twice their weight in dust.’ 
 
X 
 
 Anp half an hour later, when John Casanova 
 Murdoch had boomed away in his luxurious motor- 
 car like a departing thunderstorm, Eliot, coming 
 back by the pinewood that led from the high road, 
 heard a step behind him, and turned to find Manya's 
 face looking over his very shoulder. 
 
 ‘Uncle, who was that?’ There was a touch of 
 indignation in her voice that was almost contempt. 
 
 ‘Man I knew in America—years ago,’ he said 
 shortly. He still felt dazed, bewildered. But 
 shame and uneasiness came creeping up as well. 
 
 ‘He won't come again, will he?’ 
 
 ‘Not again, Manya.’ 
 
 The child took his arm, apparently only half 
 relieved. 
 
 ‘He was like a bit of the dirty country,’ she said, 
 and when he interrupted with ‘ Not quite so bad as 
 that, Manya,’ she asked abruptly with her usual 
 intuition, ‘Did he want to buy, or build, or some- 
 thing horrid like that °’ 
 
 ‘We haven’t met for twenty years,’ he said 
 evasively. ‘Used to hunt and camp together 
 in America. He went to the goldfields with me.’ 
 He was debating all the while whether he should 
 tell her all. He hardly knew what he thought. 
 Like a powerful undertow there drove through the 
 
 480 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 481 
 
 storm of strange emotions the tide of a decision he 
 had already come to. It swept him from all his 
 moorings, though as yet he would not acknowledge 
 it even to himself. 
 
 ‘Uncle, she cried suddenly, stepping across the 
 path, and looking anxiously into his face, ‘ tell me 
 one thing : will anything be different?’ 
 
 And the simple question, or perhaps the eager, 
 wistful expression in her voice and eyes, showed him 
 the truth that there was no evading. He must tell 
 her sometime. Why not now? 
 
 He decided to make a clean sweep of it. 
 
 ‘ Manya,’ he began gently, ‘ this Place one day— 
 when I am gone, you know—will be your own. But 
 there'll be no money with it. You'll have very little 
 to live on.’ 
 
 She said nothing, just listening with a little air of 
 boredom, as though she knew this already, yet felt 
 no special interest in it. It belonged to the world of 
 things she could not realise much. She nodded. 
 They still stood there, face to face. 
 
 ‘I’ve been anxious, child, for a long time about 
 your future,’ he went on, meeting her dark eyes with 
 a distinct effort, for they seemed to read the shame 
 he felt rising in his heart; ‘and wondering what I 
 could do to make you safe f 
 
 ‘I’m safe enough,’ she interrupted, tossing her 
 hair back and raising her chin a little. 
 
 ‘But when I’m gone,’ he said gravely, ‘and Mrs. 
 Coove has gone, and there’s no one to look after you. 
 Money’s your only friend then.’ 
 
 She seemed to reflect. She moved aside, and they 
 walked on slowly towards the house. 
 
 & Bhat ss) ayvlong. «way: off, sWnele. i I’m) ‘not 
 afraid.’ 
 
 21 
 
482 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 ‘But it’s my duty to provide for you as well as 
 possible,’ he said firmly. 
 
 And then he told her bluntly and in as few words 
 as possible of the discovery of the clay. 
 
 The excitement at first in the child was so great 
 that nothing would satisfy her but that they should 
 at once turn back and see the place together. They 
 did so, while he explained how ‘ Mr. Murdoch,’ 
 who was learned in strata, their depth and dip and 
 outcrop, had declared that this deposit of fine white 
 clay was very large. Its spread below the heather- 
 roots might be tremendous. ‘My aunt,’ he said, 
 ‘your great-aunt Julia, lived all her life upon a gold 
 mine here without knowing it, poor as a church 
 mouse.’ 
 
 This particularly thrilled her. ‘ How funny that 
 she never fe/t it!’ was her curious verdict. ‘ Was 
 she very deaf?’ 
 
 ‘Stone deaf, yes,’ he replied, laughing, ‘and 
 short-sighted too.’ 
 
 ‘Ah!’ said the child, as though things were thus 
 explained. ‘But she might have digged ! ’ | 
 
 She ran among the heather when he showed her 
 the place, found lumps of clay, played ball with them 
 and was wildly delighted. She treated the great dis- 
 covery as a game; then as a splendid secret ‘just 
 between us two.” Mr. Murdoch wouldn’t tell, would 
 he? ‘That seemed the only danger that she saw—at 
 first. 
 
 But her uncle knew quite well that this excitement 
 was all false ; and far from reassuring him, it merely 
 delayed the deeper verdict that was bound to come 
 with full comprehension. All the discovery involved 
 had not reached her brain. As yet she realised only 
 the novelty, the mystery, the wonder. The spot, 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 483 
 
 moreover, where the great deposit showed its lip was 
 beside the loveliest part of all the wood, and just 
 where the child most loved to play. 
 
 At last, then, as her body grew tired and the 
 excitement brought the natural physical reaction, he 
 saw the change begin. She paused and looked about 
 her half suspiciously, like an animal that suspects a 
 trap. Her glance ran questioningly to where her 
 uncle leaned, watching her, against a tree. She eyed 
 him. He thought she suddenly looked different, 
 though wherein the difference lay escaped him. He 
 felt as if he were watching a wild animal, only half 
 tamed, that distrusts its owner, and would next deny 
 his mastership and wait its opportunity to spring. 
 The simile, he knew, was exaggerated, but the picture 
 rose within him none the less. Misgiving and un- 
 easiness grew apace. 
 
 Abruptly Manya stopped her wild playing and 
 with the movement of a little panther ran towards 
 him. She took up a position, as usual, directly 
 opposite. With the strange air of dignity that 
 sometimes clothed her, the figure of the child stood 
 there among the darkening trees and asked him 
 questions, keen, searching questions. He was grate- 
 ful for the shadows, though he felt they did not 
 screen his face from her piercing sight; but it was 
 her imperious manner above all that made his defence 
 seem so clumsily insincere, and the questions a verit- 
 able inquisition. 
 
 Before the flood of them, as before their pitiless 
 scrutiny, he certainly quailed. Their keen directness 
 convicted him almost of treachery, and he was hard 
 put to it to persuade her and himself that it really 
 was a sense of duty he obeyed in this decision to 
 work the clay. ‘I’m doing it all for her,’ he repeated 
 
484 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 again and again to himself, and loathed, with a dash 
 of terror, that curious sudden drive, as of a blow 
 from outside, that sent his tongue into his cheek. 
 But the terror, he dimly divined, was due to another 
 feeling as well, equally vague yet equally persistent. 
 For it seemed that while she listened to his explana- 
 tions, another listened in the darkness too. Her 
 resentment and distress he realised vividly ; but he 
 felt also the resentment and distress—of another. 
 And more than once, during this strange dialogue in 
 the darkening wood, he knew the horrible sensation 
 that this ‘ other ’ had come very close, so close as to slip 
 between himself and the child. Almost—that the 
 child was being used as the instrument to express the 
 vehement protest .. . |! 
 
 But he faced the music, to use the lingo of John 
 C., and spared himself nothing. He told Manya, 
 though briefly, that workmen must swarm all through 
 her secret playground, that machinery must grind 
 and boom across the haunted valleys, that the water 
 of her little stream must yield the power to turn 
 great ugly wheels, and that perhaps even a little railway 
 might be built to convey the loads of precious clay 
 down to the sea where steamers would call for them. 
 Acres of trees, too, would be swept away, and heather- 
 land marred and scarred with pits and ditches and 
 quarries. But the benefits in time would all be hers. 
 He put it purposely at its worst, while emphasising 
 as best he could the interest and excitement that 
 must accompany the developments. The dream of 
 many vears was nevertheless shattered into bits in 
 half an hour. 
 
 The child listened and understood. He was re- 
 lieved, if puzzled at the same time, that she betrayed 
 no emotion of disappointment or indignation. What 
 
 i al eo al ee arti ee ee ee 
 
Pie wEMPTATION OF THE CLAY: 485 
 
 she felt she dealt with in her own way—inside. At 
 the stream, however, on her way home, she paused a 
 moment, watching it slip through the darkness under- 
 neath the old mill-wheel. 
 
 ‘It won’t run any more—for itself,’ she said in 
 a low, trembling little voice, that was infinitely 
 pathetic. 
 
 “No; but it will run for you, Manya,’ he answered, 
 though the words had not been addressed really to 
 him ; ‘working away busily for your future.’ 
 
 And then she burst into tears and hid her face 
 against his coat. He found no further thing to say. 
 He walked beside her, feeling like a criminal found 
 out. 
 But at the end, as they neared the house side by 
 side, she suddenly turned and asked another question 
 that caused him a thrill of vivid surprise and dis- 
 comfort—so vivid, in fact, that it was fear. 
 
 They were standing just beneath her bedroom 
 window then. Memory rushed back upon him with 
 overwhelming force, and he glanced up instinctively 
 at the empty panes of glass. It was almost as though 
 he expected to see a face looking reproachfully down 
 upon him. Through him like spears of ice, as 
 he heard the words, there shot again the atrocious 
 sensation that it was not Manya, the child, who asked 
 the question, but that Other who had recently moved 
 so close. For behind the tone, with no great effort 
 to conceal it either, trailed a new accent that Manya 
 never used. Greater than resentment, it was anger, 
 and within the anger lay the touch of a yet stronger 
 note—the note of judgment. 
 
 ‘But, tell me one thing, Uncle,’ she asked in a 
 whispering voice : ‘ will the Place let you?’ 
 
XI 
 
 Morive, especially in complex natures, is often 
 beyond reach of accurate discovery, and a mixed 
 motive may prove quite impossible of complete 
 disentanglement. But for the sense of shame that 
 Eliot felt, he might never have discerned that with 
 his genuine desire to provide for Manya’s future 
 there was also involved a secret satisfaction that he 
 himself would profit too. The sight of gold de- 
 molishes pretence and artifice; and deep within he 
 felt the old lust of possession and acquisition assert 
 itself. All these years it had been buried, not 
 destroyed. His love of the Place, his worship of 
 Memory, his guardianship of the little dream-estate, 
 compared to the prize of worldly treasure, were on 
 the surface. They were artificial. 
 
 This little thing had proved it. The child’s 
 tears, her significant question above all, had shown 
 him to himself. If not, whence came this sense of 
 ignominy before her own purer passion, the loss of 
 confidence, this inner quailing before Another who 
 gazed reprovingly, resentfully, upon him from the 
 shadows of the past? That note of menace in 
 Manya’s suggestive question was surely not her own. 
 It haunted him. Day and night he heard it ringing 
 in his brain. This new distrust of himself that he 
 recognised read into it something almost vindictive 
 and revengeful. 
 
 486 
 
 ee ee ee ee ee 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 487 
 
 But Eliot, for all that, was not the man to give 
 in easily. He resolutely dismissed this birth of 
 morbid fancy. Clinging to the thought that his 
 duty to his niece came first, he resisted the suggestion 
 that imputed a grosser selfishness. Cass Murdoch, 
 too, unwittingly helped ; for the side of his character 
 John C.’s visit had revived—the love of fight and 
 energetic action—came valiantly to the rescue. To 
 a great extent he persuaded himself that his motive 
 was—almost entirely—a pure one. Preparations for 
 developing the clay went forward steadily. 
 
 Manya too appeared to help him. She said no 
 more distressing things; she showed keen interest 
 in the coming and going of surveyors, architects, 
 soil experts, and the like. And Murdoch’s discovery 
 was no false alarm; the bed of clay was deep and 
 extensive as he prophesied, its quality very fine. 
 Men came with pick and shovel ; sample pits were 
 dug; the stuff was tested and judged excellent ; 
 and the verdict of the manufacturers, to whom 
 ‘lots’ were forwarded on approval, pronounced it 
 admirable for a large and ready market. ‘There was 
 money in it, and the supply would last for years. 
 The papers heralded the fortunate discoverer, and a 
 moderate fortune undeniably was in sight. 
 
 The preparations, however, took time, and the 
 finding of the initial capital, which Murdoch readily 
 supplied, also took time, and spring meanwhile 
 slipped into summer before the enterprise was fairly 
 on its feet. Soft winds sighed lazily among the 
 larches, and the scent of flowers pervaded every 
 valley ; the pine-trees basked in the sunshine, the 
 pearly water laughed and sang ; and at night the 
 moon shot every glade with magic that was like the 
 wings of moths whose flitting scattered everywhere 
 
488 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 the fine dust of a thousand silvery dreams. The 
 beauty of the little haunted estate leaped into a 
 rich maturity that was utterly enchanting, like wild 
 flowers that are sweetest just before they die. 
 
 And over Manya, too, there passed slowly a 
 mysterious change, for it seemed as if for a time she 
 had been standing still, and now with a sudden leap 
 of beauty passed into the glory of young womanhood. 
 With her short skirts and tumbled hair, her grave 
 and wistful face, swinging idly that red tam-o- 
 shanter from which she was, inseparable, he saw her 
 one evening on the lawn outside his study window, 
 and the change flashed into him across the moonlight 
 with a positive shock. The child had suddenly 
 grown up. AQ barrier stood between them. 
 
 But the barrier was not so sudden as it seemed, 
 for, on looking back, he realised the daily, almost 
 imperceptible manner of its growth. Its complete 
 erection he realised now, but he had been aware of it 
 for a long time—ever since his decision to work the 
 clay, in fact. Here was the proof her deceptive 
 silence had concealed. She had felt it too deeply for 
 words, for arguing, for disappointment volubly ex- 
 pressed ; but it had struck into the roots of her little 
 being and had changed her from within outwards. 
 It had aged her. Reality had broken in upon her 
 world of play and dream. He had destroyed her 
 childhood at a single blow. She questioned, 
 doubted, and grew old. 
 
 But though every one grows older in identically 
 this way, by sudden leaps, as it were, due to the 
 forcing impulse of some strong emotion, with Manya 
 it brought no radical alteration. She deepened 
 rather than definitely changed. The sense of wonder 
 did not fade, but ripened. The crude facts of life 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 489 
 
 could never satisfy a nature such as hers, and though 
 she realised them now for the first time, they could 
 not enter to destroy. They drove her more deeply 
 into herself. That is, she dealt with them. 
 
 And the change, though he devoted hours of 
 pondering reflection over it, may be summed up 
 briefly enough in so far as it affected himself. There 
 was a difference in their relationship. He stood 
 away from her ; while she, on her side, drew nearer 
 to something else that was not himself. With this 
 elusive and mysterious Thing she lived daily. She 
 took sides with it and with the Place, against him- 
 self. It went on largely, he felt, behind his back. 
 She grew more and more identified with some active 
 influence that had always been at work in all the wild 
 gardened loveliness of the property, but was now 
 more active than before. Stirred up and roused it 
 was ; he could almost imagine it—aggressive. And 
 Manya, always knowing it at closer quarters than 
 himself, was now in definite league with it, ) Chere 
 was opposition in it, though an opposition as yet 
 inactive. 
 
 And in the silent watches of the night sometimes, 
 when imagination wove her pictures all unchecked, 
 he again knew the haunting thought close beside his 
 bed : that the mind and hand of the dead were here 
 at work, using the delicate instrument of this rare, 
 sensitive child to convey protest, resentment, warning. 
 Over the little vales, from all the depth of forest, 
 and above the spread of moorland just beyond, there 
 breathed this atmosphere of disapproval. 
 
 Manya, never telling him much, now told him 
 less than before; for he had forfeited the right to 
 know. 
 
 If it made him smile a little to notice that she had 
 
490 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 made Mother Coove lengthen her dresses, it did not 
 make him smile to learn that she still wore her old 
 shorter ones once the darkness fell, or that she now 
 went out to play in her wild corners of the woods 
 chiefly after dusk. For he saw the significance of 
 this simple manoeuvre, and divined its meaning, 
 She felt shy now in the daylight. This new thing 
 in the spirit of the Place had changed it all. She 
 could not be abandoned as before, go naked and 
 undressed as once she graphically put it. The vulgar 
 influence from outside had come in. It stared 
 offensively. It asked questions, leered, turned every- 
 thing common and unclean. 
 
 And she changed from time to time her play- 
 ground as the workmen drove her out. She moved 
 from place to place, seeking new corners and going 
 farther into the moors and open spots. She followed 
 the stream, for instance, nearer to its source where its 
 waters still ran unstained. And from the neighbour- 
 hood of the sample pits that gaped like open sores 
 amid the beauty, she withheld herself completely. 
 Nothing could persuade her to come near them. 
 
 Towards himself especially, her attitude was 
 pregnant with suggestion, and though he made full 
 allowance for the phantoms conscience raises, there 
 always remained the certainty that the child, and 
 another with her, watched him sharply from a distance. 
 She was still affectionate and simple, even with a new 
 touch of resigned docility that was very sweet, as 
 though resolved to respect his older worldly wisdom, 
 yet with an air of pity for his great mistake that 
 was half contempt, half condescension. Her silence 
 about the progress of the work made him feel small. 
 It so mercilessly judged him. And, while the dignity 
 he had always recognised in her increased, it seemed 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 491 
 
 now partly borrowed—his imagination leaned more 
 and more towards this unwelcome explanation— 
 from this invisible Companion who overshadowed 
 her. He felt as though this silence temporarily 
 blocked channels along which something would 
 presently break out with violence and scorn to over- 
 whelm him ; till at last he came to regard her as a 
 prisoner regards the foreman of the jury who has 
 formed his verdict and is merely waiting to pronounce 
 it—Guilty. Behind her, as behind the foreman, 
 gathered the composite decision of more than one, 
 and the decision was hostile. It urged her on against 
 him. Opposition accumulated towards positive 
 attack. He dreaded some revelation through the 
 child ; and piling guess on guess he felt certain who 
 was this active Influence that sought to use her as its 
 instrument. The dead now, day and night, stood 
 very close beside him. 
 
 And meanwhile, things ran far from smoothly 
 with the work itself. Unforeseen difficulties every- 
 where arose to bafle him. Even Murdoch made 
 oppressive, troublesome conditions about the money 
 that seemed unnecessary, insisting upon details 
 of management with a touch of domineering in- 
 terference that exasperated. Obstacles rose up 
 automatically, involving, as it were, the very pro- 
 cesses of Nature itself. There was a strike that 
 delayed the railway builders for a month, and when 
 they returned the heavy summer rains had washed 
 yards of embankment down again. Soon afterwards 
 a falling tree killed a workman, and there ensued 
 compensation worries that threatened a law-suit. 
 The clay itself, too, played them sudden tricks, 
 proving faulty the maps the surveyors had drawn ; 
 its depths and direction were not as supposed, its 
 
492 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 angle to the lie of the slope deceptive, so that an 
 extra branch of single line for the trucks became 
 essential, And the money was insufficient ; further 
 advances became imperative, and, though readily 
 forthcoming, involved more delay. The spirit of 
 lonely peace and beauty departed from the Place, 
 hiding its injured face among the moorland reaches 
 further up. Obstruction, with turmoil and confusion 
 at its back, rose up onevery side to baffle him. 
 
 Though the advance was steady enough on the 
 whole, and the difficulties were only such as most 
 similar enterprises encounter, Eliot was conscious 
 more and more of this sense of obstacles deliberately 
 interposed. It all seemed so nicely calculated to 
 cause the maximum of trouble and delay. The 
 interference was so cunningly manceuvred. He 
 brought all his old energy and force to meet them, 
 but there was ever this curious sense of advised 
 and determined opposition that began to sap his 
 confidence. 
 
 ‘More trouble, sir,’ the foreman said one morning, 
 when Eliot went down to view the work, unac- 
 companied as usual by Manya. ‘There seems no 
 end to it.’ 
 
 ‘What is it this time?’ He abhorred these 
 conversations now. It always seemed that Another 
 stood behind his shoulder, listening. 
 
 ‘The clay has gone,’ was the curious answer. He 
 said it as though it had gone purposely to spite them 
 like a living thing. 
 
 ‘Gone !’ he exclaimed incredulously. 
 
 ‘Sunk away, gone deeper than we expected,’ was 
 the answer. The man shrugged his shoulders as 
 though something puzzled him. ‘A _ kind of 
 subsidence come in the night,’ he added gloomily. 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 493 
 
 They stared at one another for a full minute with 
 eyes that screened other meanings. Eliot felt a sort of 
 fury rise within him. Somehow the idea of foul play 
 crossed his mind, though instantly rejected as absurd. 
 
 ‘With this loose sandy bottom, and a steep slope 
 that ain’t drained properly, you’re never very sure of 
 where you are,’ said the man at length, feeling his 
 position made some explanation necessary. He 
 seemed to regard the Clay as something ever on the 
 move. 
 
 ‘I see,’ said Eliot, grateful for a solution that he 
 could apparently accept. They talked of ways and 
 means to circumvent it. 
 
 ‘Queerest job I ever come across, sir,’ the fore- 
 man muttered, as at length Eliot turned away, 
 pretending not to hear it. 
 
 And scenes like this were frequent. Another 
 time it was the white weed—with the pretty little 
 flower Manya loved to twine about her tam-o’- 
 shanter —that had gathered so thickly on the 
 artificial ponds where the water was stored, that it 
 clogged the machinery till the wheels refused to 
 turn; and next, a group of men that quit working 
 without any reasonable excuse—open symptom of a 
 hidden dissatisfaction that had been running under- 
 ground for weeks. There was something about 
 the job they didn’t like. Rumours for a long time 
 had been current—queer, unsubstantiated rumours 
 that those in authority chose to disregard. Super- 
 stition hereabouts was rife enough without encourag- 
 ing it. 
 
 Taken altogether, as products of a single hostile 
 influence at work, these difficulties easily assumed in 
 his imaginative mind the importance of a consciously 
 directed opposition. He remembered often now 
 
494 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 those words of Manya, the last time she had opened 
 her lips upon the subject. For she had credited the 
 Place with the power of resisting him ; only by ‘the 
 Place’ she now meant this mysterious personal 
 influence that she knew behind it. 
 
 Yet he persisted in his consciousness of doing 
 right. His duty to the child was clear; her future 
 was in his charge; and the fact that he meant to 
 leave her everything proved that his motive, or part 
 of it at least, was above suspicion. From John C. 
 he also gathered comfort and support. He had only 
 to imagine him standing by his side, repeating that 
 remark about religion, to feel strong again in his 
 determination. Cass Murdoch recognised no mystery 
 or subtlety anywhere. He discussed only facts. 
 
 The consciousness that he was partly traitor none 
 the less remained, and with it the feeling that the 
 very Tradition he had nursed and worshipped all 
 these years was up in arms against him. Manya, 
 standing closer to Nature than himself, had divined 
 this Tradition and, in some fashion curiously her 
 own, had personified it. And this personification 
 linked on with the dead. His love of the Beauty, 
 and his love of a particular memory he had read into 
 the Place, she had most marvellously disentangled. 
 Both were genuine in him; yet he had suffered 
 them in combination to produce a false and artificial 
 Image existing only in his own imagination. There 
 was conflict in his being. His motive was impure. — 
 
 Behind them stood the giant, naked thing the 
 child divined that was—Reality. She knew it face 
 to face. What was it? The mere definite question 
 which he permitted himself made him sometimes 
 hesitate and wait, not unwilling to call a halt. He 
 was aware that the child stood ever in the background, 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 495 
 
 waiting her time with that sly laughter of superior 
 knowledge. These obstacles and difficulties were 
 sent as warnings ; and while he disregarded them of 
 set purpose, something deep within him paused to 
 question—and while it questioned, trembled. For 
 protest, he seemed to discern, had become resentment, 
 resentment grown into resistance; resistance into 
 hostile opposition, and opposition now, with some- 
 thing horribly like anger at its back, was hinting 
 already at a blank refusal that involved almost— 
 revenge. 
 
 Hitherto he had been hindered, impeded, thwarted 
 merely ; soon he could be deliberately overruled 
 and stopped. Nature, ever defeating an impure 
 motive, would rise up against him and cry finally No. 
 
 ‘But, Uncle, tell me one thing: will the Place 
 let you?’ rang now often through his daily thoughts. 
 He heard it more especially at night. At night, 
 too, when sleep refused him, he surprised him- 
 self more than once framing sentences of explana- 
 tion and defence. They rose automatically. They 
 followed him even into his dreams. ‘My duty to 
 the child is plain. Howcan I helpit? If you were 
 here beside me now, would you not also approve ?’ 
 
 For the idea that she was beside him grew 
 curiously persuasive, so that he almost expected to 
 see her in the corridors or on the stairs, standing 
 among the trees or waiting for him by the Mill itself 
 where last she drew the breath of life. 
 
 And by way of a climax came then Manya’s 
 request to change her room, and his own decision to 
 move himself into the one she vacated. The reason 
 she gave was that the ‘trees made such a noise at 
 night’ she could not sleep, and since it had three 
 windows, two of which were almost brushed by pine 
 
4.96 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 branches, the excuse, though discovered late, seemed 
 natural enough. At any rate he did not press her 
 further. She occupied a room now at the back 
 where a single window gave a view far up into the 
 moors. And, turning out the unnecessary furniture 
 to suit his taste, he moved into the one she ha 
 
 vacated—his wife’s. : 
 
XII 
 
 SUMMER passed in the leisurely, gorgeous way that 
 sometimes marks its passage into autumn, and the 
 work ploughed forward through the sea of difficulties. 
 The conspiracy of obstacles continued. There was pro- 
 gress on the whole, but a progress that seemed to bring 
 success no nearer. The beds of clay, however, were 
 definitely determined now, and their extent and depth 
 fulfilled the most sanguine expectations. The troubles 
 lay with the railway, the men, water, weather, and a 
 dozen things no one could have foreseen. These 
 seemed far-fetched, and yet were natural enough. 
 And they continued—until Eliot, never a man who 
 yielded easily, began to feel he had undertaken more 
 than he could manage. He weakened. The idea 
 came to him that he would sell his interest and leave 
 the development to others. 
 To retire from the fight and acknowledge himself 
 defeated was a step he could not lightly take. There 
 was a bitterness in the thought that stung his pride 
 and vanity. here was also the fact that if he held 
 on and first established a paying business, he could 
 obtain far more money—for Manya. Yet he felt 
 somehow that it was from Manya herself that the 
 suggestion first had come. For the child gave hints 
 in a hundred different ways that he could not possibly 
 misunderstand. They were indirect, unconsciously 
 497 2 aie 
 
498 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 given, and they followed invariably upon curious 
 little personal accidents that about this time seemed 
 almost a daily-occurrence. 
 
 And these little accidents, though perfectly natural 
 taken one by one as they occurred, when regarded 
 all together seemed to compose a formidable whole. 
 They pointed an attack almost. The menace he had 
 imagined was becoming aggressive. Some one who 
 knew his habits was playing him tricks. Some one 
 with intimate knowledge of the way he walked and 
 ran and moved laid traps for him. And at each 
 little ‘accident’ Manya laughed her strange, sly 
 laughter—precisely as a child who says ‘I told 
 you so! You brought it on yourself!’ She had 
 expected it, perhaps had seen it coming. And now, 
 to avoid more grave disasters, she wanted him— 
 elsewhere. Her deep affection for him, sinner 
 though he was in her eyes, sought to coax. him out 
 of the danger zone. 
 
 When he slipped in jumping the stream—he, 
 who was sure-footed as a mountain goat !—and 
 turned his ankle; and when the heavy earth, 
 loosened by the rains, rolled down upon him as he 
 climbed the embankment, or when the splinter that 
 entered his hand as he vaulted the fencing near the 
 wharf, led to festering that made him carry his 
 arm in a sling for days—in every case it was the 
 same: the child looked up at him and smiled her 
 curious little smile of one who knew. She was in 
 safety, but he stood in the line of fire. She knew 
 who it was that laid the traps. She saw them being 
 laid. It was always wood, earth, water thus that 
 hurt him and never once an artificial contrivance 
 of man. 
 
 ‘Uncle, it wouldn’t happen if you stayed away,’ 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 499 
 
 was what she said each time, though never phrased 
 the same. And the obvious statement only just 
 covered another meaning that her words contained. 
 She knew worse things would come, and feared for 
 him. ‘There’s no good hiding, Uncle Dick, because 
 it’s in the house as well.’ 
 
 He grew to feel unwelcome in his own woods 
 and garden, an intruder in his own moors and 
 valleys, an element the Place rejected and wished 
 elsewhere. ‘The Place had begun to turn him out. 
 And Manya, this queer mysterious child, in league 
 with the secret Influence at work against him, was 
 being used to point the warnings and convey the 
 messages. Her silent attitude, more even than her 
 actual words, was the messenger. The hints thus 
 brought, moreover, now troubled themselves less and 
 less with disguise. He realised them at last for what 
 they were: and they were beyond equivocation— 
 threatening. | 
 
 And it was at this point that Eliot made the 
 journey up to London to see Cass Murdoch, and feel 
 his way towards escape. Retirement was the word 
 he used, and the sentence John C. heard in the bar 
 of the big hotel as they discussed clay and cocktails 
 was ‘sell my interest to more competent hands who 
 will get quicker and bigger results than I can. The 
 work and worry affect my health.’ 
 
 The interview may be easily imagined, for John 
 Casanova Murdoch was more than willing to buy 
 him out, though the conditions, with one exception, 
 have no special interest in this queer history: Eliot 
 was to lease the Place for a period of years. And 
 this meant leaving it. 
 
 In the train on his way back his emotions fought 
 one another ina regular pitched battle. He stood 
 
500 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 in front of himself suddenly revealed—a traitor. It 
 seemed as if for a moment he saw things a little from 
 his niece’s inverted point of view, standing outside 
 of Self and looking up. It provided him with 
 unwelcome sensations that escaped analysis. Love 
 and hate are one and the same force, according to the 
 point in the current where one stands; repulsion 
 becomes, from the opposite end, attraction; and a 
 great love may be reversed into a great hate. There 
 is no exact dividing line between heat and cold, no 
 neat frontier where pleasure becomes pain, just as 
 there is really no such absolute thing as left and 
 right, uphill and downhill, above and below. Manya 
 stood outside these relative distinctions men have 
 invented for the common purposes of description. 
 He understood at last that the power which had 
 drawn his life into the Place as by a kind of 
 absorption, was now inverted into a process of 
 turning him out again as by a kind of determined 
 elimination. 
 
 It was being accomplished, moreover, as he felt 
 and phrased it to himself, from outside ; by which 
 perhaps he meant from beyond that fence which men 
 presumptuously assume to contain all the life there 
 is. But the dead stand also beyond that fence. 
 And Manya, being so obviously in league with this 
 hostile, eliminating Influence stood hand in hand, 
 therefore, with—the dead. 
 
 But for him The Dead meant only one. 
 
XIII 
 
 He walked home from tthe station, which he 
 reached at nine o’clock. Crossing the zone of the 
 ‘dirty ’ country, now successful invader of the dream- 
 estate, he entered his property at length by the upper 
 end of the Piney Valley. A passionate wind was 
 searching the trees for music, and handfuls of rain 
 were flung against the trunks like stones; but, on 
 leaving the road the tempest seemed to pass out 
 towards the sea, leaving an unexpected, sudden hush 
 about his footsteps. “Ihe moon peered down through 
 high, scudding clouds. It was partly that the storm 
 was breaking up, and partly that the valley provided 
 shelter ; but it gave him the feeling that he had 
 entered a little world prepared for his reception. 
 He was expected, the principal figure in it. 
 Attention everywhere focussed on himself. He felt 
 like a prisoner who comes out of streets indifferent 
 to his presence and enters a Court of Law. This 
 ominous silence preceded the arrival of the Judge. 
 The path at once dipped downwards into a world 
 of shadows where the splashes of moonlight peered 
 up at him like faces on the ground. He heard the 
 water murmuring out of sight; and it came about 
 his ears like whispering from the body of the Court. 
 There reigned, indeed, the same gentle peace and 
 stillness he had known for years, but somewhere in 
 sor 
 
502 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 it a brooding unaccustomed element that was certainly 
 neither peace nor stillness. Something unwonted 
 stirred slowly, very grandly, through the darkness. 
 
 He paused a moment to listen ; he looked about 
 him ; he pushed aside the bracken with his stick, and 
 his eyes glanced up among the lower branches of the 
 trees. And everywhere, it seemed, he encountered 
 other eyes—eyes usually veiled, but now with lifted 
 lids. Then he went on again, faster a little than 
 before. A touch of childhood’s terror chilled his 
 blood. And it took at first a childhood’s form. He 
 thought of some big, savage animal that lurked in 
 hiding, its presence turning the once friendly wood 
 all otherwise and dreadful. A giant paw filled the 
 little valley to the brim. The stir of the wind was 
 the opening and shutting of its claws. The lips 
 were drawn back to show the gums and teeth. 
 Something opened ; there came a rush of air. The 
 awful spring would follow in a moment. . 
 
 Another hood of memory lifted then and ‘showed 
 him Manya, as she played about the sand-pits—then 
 paused when the full discovery dawned upon her 
 mind. She had eyed him. She had given him this 
 similar impression of an animal waiting its opportunity 
 to spring. But now it was the Place that waited to 
 spring. 
 
 He banished the bizarre, exaggerated picture his 
 imagination conjured up, but could not banish the 
 emotion that produced it. The Place was different. 
 Change spread all over it. Potential attack hummed 
 through the very air. ‘Thus might a man feel walk- 
 ing through a hostile crowd. But thus also might 
 he feel in the presence of a friend to whom in a time 
 of confidence he had betrayed himself too lavishly— 
 a friend now turned against him with this added 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 503 
 
 power of knowing all his secrets. His own imagina- 
 tion leaped upon him, calling him coward, traitor, 
 unfaithful steward. Fear made him bitterly regret 
 the familiarity that years of unguarded dreaming had 
 established between himself and—and His 
 mind hesitated horribly between the choice of pro- 
 nouns; and when he finally chose the neuter, it 
 seemed that a curious running laughter passed within 
 the sounds of wind and water. It almost was like 
 the mockery of Manya’s laughter taken over by the 
 dying storm. 
 
 While he evaded the direct attack, his mind, how- 
 ever, continued searching for the word that should 
 describe accurately, and so limit all this vague, dis- 
 tressing feeling of hostility. But for long he could 
 not find it. ‘Che new element that breathed through 
 the sombre intricacies of the glen played with him as 
 it pleased until he could catch it in the proper word, 
 and so imprison it. Branches seemed no'longer soft 
 and feathery: they bristled, pointed, stood rigid 
 for a blow. The stream no longer murmured : it 
 laughed and cried aloud. The shadows did not 
 cover smoothly: they concealed; and the whole 
 atmosphere of the Place, instead of welcoming, 
 repelled. : 
 
 And then, quite suddenly, the word emerged and 
 stood before his face: Disturbance. 
 
 Less than disorder, yet more than mere dis- 
 quietude, this word described the attitude he was 
 conscious of. In its aggressive, threatening, sinister 
 meaning, he accepted it as true. 
 
 There was Disturbance. Somewhere in those 
 chains of iron that bind the operations of Nature 
 within invariable, unyielding laws, a link had 
 weakened. Disturbance was the result—but a 
 
504 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 disturbance that somehow let in purpose. Urging 
 everywhere through the manifestations of Nature 
 in his dream-estate was the drive and stress of 
 purposiveness. 
 
 _ The discovery of the word, moreover, announced 
 the approach, though not yet the actual entrance, of 
 the Judge. There were steps, and the steps were in 
 himself. Some one walked upon his life. 
 
 He quickened his pace like a terrified child. 
 With genuine relief at last he reached the house. 
 But even in the friendly building he was aware of 
 this keen discomfort at his heels. It penetrated 
 easily. The Disturbance came in after him into the 
 house itself. Hanging up coat and hat, he then 
 passed into the Study, and the prosaic business of 
 drinking milk and munching water-biscuits scattered 
 the strange illusion for a time. It weakened, at any 
 rate, for it never wholly disappeared. It waited. 
 
 The house was silent, every one in bed. He 
 locked the front door carefully, stared at his face a 
 moment in the hat-stand mirror—wondering at a 
 certain change in the expression of the features, 
 though he could not name it—and with his lighted 
 candle went on tiptoe up to bed. But the 
 instant he entered the room he was aware that the 
 feeling of distress had already preceded him. He 
 was forestalled. There was this dark disquiet in 
 the very atmosphere of his bedroom. The Dis- 
 turbance had established itself in these most private, 
 intimate quarters that once had been his wife’s. It 
 was strongest here. : 
 
 Dismissing a sharp desire to sleep in another room 
 —anywhere but in the place made sacred by long- 
 worshipped memories—he began to undress. He 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 505 
 
 said to himself with a certain vehemence, ‘I'll ignore 
 the thing.’ But it was fear that said it. A frightened 
 child without a light might as well determine to 
 ignore the darkness. For this thing was urgent 
 everywhere about him, inside and outside, like the 
 air he breathed. And the next minute, instead of 
 ignoring it, he made an attempt to face it. He 
 would drag the secret out. The fact was, both will 
 and emotions were already in disorder. He knew not 
 how or where to take the thing. 
 
 The attempt then showed him another thing. It 
 was no secret. The terror in his heart and conscience 
 made pretence of screening something that he really 
 knew quite well. This aggressive, hostile Presence 
 was a Presence that he recognised, and had recognised 
 all along. 
 
 And instinctively he turned to this side and to 
 that, examining the room ; for space in this room, he 
 realised, was no longer quite as usual: there was a 
 change in its conditions. Everything contained 
 within it—the very objects between the four walls— 
 were affected. He felt them altered; they had 
 become otherwise. He himself was changed as well, 
 become otherwise. And if anything alive—another 
 person or an animal even—came in, they also, in 
 some undetermined, startling way, would look other- 
 wise than usual. ‘They would look different. 
 
 Hurriedly he sought a concrete simile to steady 
 his shaking mind on, and his mind provided this: 
 That, if the temperature were suddenly lowered, the 
 invisible moisture would at once appear, otherwise— 
 frost-crystals on the window-panes, snow, and so 
 forth. The change would not be untrue or even 
 distorted, no falseness in it anywhere, nor exaggera- 
 tion—only otherwise. And if the presence of the 
 
506 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 dead, whom he felt so close now in this room, turned 
 visible owing to the changed conditions of the space 
 about him, he would see—but the thought remained 
 unfinished in his mind . . . — 
 
 He thrust the terror down into the depths. Yet 
 the idea must have been very insistent in him, for he 
 crossed the floor on tiptoe to lock the door securely, 
 and stood already within easy reach of it, one hand 
 actually stretched out, when there came a faint 
 knocking on the panelling within a few inches of his 
 very face. He saw the handle turn. With suggestive, 
 dreadful stealthiness the door then opened, the 
 merest crack at first, then gradually wider and wider. 
 And the slowness was exasperating. The seconds 
 dragged like hours. Had he not been spellbound he 
 would have violently slammed it to again or torn it 
 instead wide open. 
 
 There was just time in his bewildered mind to 
 wonder what form this Presence from the dead would 
 take, when he realised that the figure stood alread 
 by his side. She had crossed the threshold. With 
 amazement he saw that it was Manya. 
 
 She came in swiftly. She was on the carpet close 
 against him before he could speak a word or move. 
 And she looked, as he had expected, otherwise : 
 she looked extraordinary. The word came to 
 him in the way she might herself have used it, 
 getting its first meaning out—extra-ordinary. 
 
 And her appearance was—might well have been, 
 at least—ludicrous. For she was dressed to go out, 
 but in a fashion that at any other time must have 
 been cause for laughter. Now it stood at the very 
 opposite pole, however. It was superb. Her red 
 tam-o’-shanter was perched carelessly, almost gaily, 
 on her hair, which was already fashioned into plaits 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 507 
 
 for the night, and underneath the garden jacket that 
 he knew so well, he saw white drapery that plainly 
 was her little nightgown. She had pulled her 
 stockings on, but had not fastened them. They 
 hung down, partly showing her skin below the knee. 
 The boots flapped open, with no attempt to button 
 them. Her hurry had been evidently great, and she 
 looked at the first glance like some one surprised by 
 a midnight call of fire. 
 
 Yet these details, which he took in at a single 
 glance, stirred no faintest touch of amusement in 
 him, for about her whole presentment was this other 
 nameless quality that showed her to him—utterly 
 otherwise than usual. It made him wince and 
 shudder, yet pause in a wondering amazement too— 
 amazement that barely held back awe. He stared 
 like a man struck suddenly dumb. The phrase the 
 child so often used came back upon him with the 
 force of a shock. The girl had put her Self out. 
 This being that stood just opposite to his face was 
 not Manya. It was another. It was she other ! 
 
 And both doubt and knowledge dropped down 
 upon him in that fearful moment: knowledge, that 
 it was the Influence she had been so long in league 
 with, and that sought to use her as its instrument of 
 protest ; and doubt, as to exactly what—or who— 
 this Influence really was. 
 
 For it came to him as being so enormously bigger 
 and vaster than anything his mind could label ‘the 
 dead.’ He felt in the presence of a multitude. He 
 had once felt thus when seeing a single Redskin 
 steal like a shadow round the camp, knowing that 
 the night concealed a host of others. About her 
 actual form and body, too, this sense of multitude 
 also spread and trembled, only just concealed : and 
 
508 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 indescribable utterly. For the edges of the child 
 were ill-defined and misty, so that he could not see 
 exactly where her outline ceased. The candle-light 
 played round and over her as though she filled the 
 room. She might. have been all through the air 
 above him, behind as well as opposite, close in front 
 as well. In a-sense he felt that she had come to 
 him through the open windows and from the night 
 itself, and not merely along the passage and through 
 the narrow door. She came from the entire Place. 
 
 He made a feverish struggling effort to con- 
 centrate his mind upon common words. He wanted 
 to move backwards, but his feet refused to stir. 
 The familiar sound of her name he uttered close 
 into her face :— 
 
 ‘Manya! And at this hour of the night!” he 
 stammered. 
 
 His voice was thick and without resonance in his 
 mouth, smothered like a sound in a closed box. 
 And as he heard the name a kind of silent laughter 
 reached him—inaudible really, as though inside him 
 —sly laughter like her own. For the name had lost 
 its known familiarity. It, too, was different and 
 otherwise, though for the life of him he could not 
 seize at first wherein the alteration lay. 
 
 She smiled, and her eyes, wide opened, were like 
 stars. ‘I'he breath came soft and windily between 
 her lips, but no words with it. It was regular, deep, 
 unhurried. There was something in her face that 
 petrified him—something, as it were, non-human. 
 He began to forget who and where he was. Identity 
 slipped from him like a dream. 
 
 With another effort, this time a more violent one, 
 he strove to fasten upon things that were close and 
 real in life. He felt the buttons down his coat, 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY  5f09 
 
 fingering them desperately till they hurt his hands 
 and escaped from his slippery moist skin. 
 
 ‘Manya!’ he repeated in a louder voice, while 
 his mind plunged out to seek the child he had always 
 known behind the familiar name. 
 
 And this time she answered ; but to his horror, 
 the whole room, and even space beyond the actual 
 room, seemed to answer with her. The name was 
 repeated by her lips, yet came from the night beyond 
 the open window too. He had made a question of 
 it. The answer, repeating it, was assent. 
 
 ‘Man y-a...’ he heard all round him, while 
 the head bent gently down and forward. 
 
 The shock of it restored to him some power of 
 movement, and he stumbled back a step or two 
 further from her side. It might well have been 
 whimsical and cheap, this artificial play upon a name, 
 but instead of either it was abominably significant. 
 This motionless figure, so close that he could feel 
 her breath upon his face, was positively in some 
 astonishing way more than one. She was many. 
 The laughter that lay behind the trivial little thing 
 was a laughter both grand and terrible. It was the 
 laughter of the sea, of the woods, of sand—a host 
 that no man counteth—the laughter of a multitude. 
 
 And he thrust out both his hands automatically 
 lest she should touch him. He shook from head to 
 toe. Contact with her person would break up his 
 being into millions. The sensation of terror was 
 both immense and acute, sweeping him beyond 
 himself. Like her, he was becoming many -— 
 becoming hundreds and thousands—sand that none 
 can number. 
 
 ‘Child!’ he heard his voice repeating faintly, 
 yet with an emphasis that spaced the words apart 
 
510 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 with slow distinctness, ‘what does this mean?’ In 
 vain he tried to smother the beseeching note in it 
 that was like a cry for help. 
 
 He stepped back another pace. She did not 
 move. Composure then began to come back slowly 
 to him, a little and a little. He remembered who 
 he was, and where he was. He said to himself the 
 commonplace thing: ‘This is Manya, my little 
 niece, and she ought to be asleep in bed.’ It 
 sounded ridiculous even in his mind, but he tried 
 deliberately to think of ordinary things. 
 
 And then he said it aloud : ‘Do you realise where 
 you are and what you are doing, child?’ And then 
 he added, gaining courage, a question of authority : 
 ‘Do you realize what time it is?’ 
 
 Her answer came again without hesitation, as from 
 a long way off. A smile lit up the entire face, 
 gleaming from her skin like moonlight. There were 
 tears, he saw, upon the cheeks. But the face itself 
 was radiant, wonderful. 
 
 ‘The time,’ she said, peering very softly into his 
 eyes, ‘1s mow.’ And she took a slow-gliding step 
 towards him, with a movement that frightened him 
 beyond belief. 
 
 But by this time he had himself better in hand. 
 He understood that the child was walking in her 
 sleep. It was her little frame that was being worked 
 and driven by— Another. She was possessed. 
 Something was speaking through the entranced 
 physical body. Her answer regarding time was 
 the answer absolute, not relative, the only true 
 answer that could be given. Other answers would 
 be similar. He understood that here was the long 
 expected revelation, and that he must question her 
 if he wished to hear it. He resolved to do so, 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 511 
 
 but with a cold awe in his heart as though he were 
 about to question—Death. 
 
 They both retained their first positions, three feet 
 apart, standing. The candle behind him on the table 
 shed its flickering light across her altered features. 
 Outside he heard the trees shaking and tossing in the 
 gusts of rainy wind. 
 
 ‘Who are you then ?’ he asked hesitatingly, in a 
 low tone. 
 
 There was no reply. But effort, showing that she 
 heard and tried to answer, traced a little frown above 
 the eyebrows; and the eyes looked puzzled for a 
 moment. 
 
 ‘You mean,’ he whispered, ‘you cannot tell me?’ 
 
 The head bowed slowly once by way of assent. 
 
 ‘You cannot find the word, the language?’ he 
 helped her. ‘Is that it?’ He still whispered, afraid 
 of his own voice. 
 
 ‘Yes,’ was the answer, spoken below the breath. 
 Then instantly afterwards, straightening herself up 
 with a vigorous movement that startled him horribly, 
 she made a curious, rushing gesture of the whole 
 body, spreading her arms out through the air about 
 her. ‘1 am—Zke that!’ the voice sprang out loud 
 and clear. 
 
 She seemed by the gesture to gather space and the 
 night into her wide embrace. She repeated it. ‘The 
 face smiled marvellously. Through this slim body, 
 he realised, there rolled something ancient as the stars. 
 It poured through space against him like asea. It 
 turned his little ideas of space all—otherwise. 
 
 ‘Tell me where you come from,’ he asked quickly, 
 eager yet dreading to hear. 
 
 ‘From everywhere,’ came the answer like a wind. 
 
 He paused, breathless with astonishment. He felt 
 
512 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 himself dwindling. Here was a vaster thing than 
 he had contemplated. It was surely no single dis- 
 carnate influence that possessed the child ! 
 
 ‘And—for whom?’ It was whispered as before. 
 
 The figure stepped with a single gliding stride 
 towards him, coming so close that he held his ground 
 only by a tremendous effort of the will. 
 
 ‘For you!’ The voice came like a clap of wind 
 again, at once soft yet thundering, filling the entire 
 room. 
 
 ‘For me,’ he faltered. ‘Your message is for 
 me?’ 
 
 He felt the assault of strange, violent sensations 
 he had never known before and could not name. A 
 boyhood’s dream rushed back upon him for an instant. 
 He recalled his misery and awe when he stood before 
 the Judgment Throne for some unforgivable breach 
 of trust which he could not explain because the dream 
 concealed its nature. Only this was ten times greater, 
 and his guilt beyond redemption. 
 
 ‘And I,’ he stammered, ‘who am [?’ | 
 
 Her eyes looked him all over like a stare of the 
 big moon. 
 
 ‘You,’ she answered, without pause or hesitation. 
 
 ‘You do not know my name?’ he insisted, still 
 clinging to the clue that her he spoke with must be 
 from the dead. 
 
 The little frown came back between the eyes. 
 She nodded darkly. 
 
 ‘You,’ she repeated, giving the answer absolute 
 again, the only really true one. 
 
 The girl stood like a statue,serene and solemn. She 
 stared through and beyond him, motionless but for a 
 scarcely perceptible swaying, and calm as a meadow 
 in the dawn. Enormous meanings passed from her 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 513 
 
 eyes across the air, and sank down into him like 
 meanings from a forest or a sea. 
 
 From these, he realised, came her stupendous 
 inspiration, and, so realising, he knew at last his deep 
 mistake. For not so do the Dead return. They 
 never, indeed, return, because from the heart that 
 loved them they have never gone away, but onl 
 changed their magic intercourse in kind. And, had 
 she known, she would have approved the wisdom of 
 his great decision, while clearing his motive of all 
 insincerity at the same time. 
 
 It was not she who brought the protest and the 
 menace. It was something bigger by far, something 
 awful and untamed. It was the Place itself. And 
 behind the Place stood Nature. It was Nature that 
 possessed the child and used her little lips and hands 
 and body for its thundering message of disapproval. 
 
 Manya was possessed by Nature. 
 
 And the shock of the discovery first turned 
 him into stone. His body did not stir the fraction 
 of an inch. In that moment of vivid realisation 
 these two little human figures stood facing one 
 another, motionless as columns; and, while so 
 standing, the One who brought the Message for 
 himself drew closer. 
 
 For several minutes he saw absolutely nothing. 
 The approach was too big for any sensory perceptions 
 he could recognise. And then, mercilessly, pitilessly, 
 the power of sight returned. 
 
 He knew the touch of a giant, earthy hand was 
 upon his arm. Beside him, in the flickering candle 
 light, stood Nature. He looked into a host of 
 mighty eyes that yet his imagination translated into 
 merely two—eyes set wide apart beneath enormous 
 
 a8 
 
514 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 brows. He met the gaze of the Gigantic, the Patient, 
 the Inexorable that saw him as he was, and judged 
 him where he stood. And a melting ran through 
 his body, as though the bones slipped from their 
 accustomed places, leaving him utterly without sup- 
 port. He swayed, but did not fall. His physical 
 frame stood upright to receive like a blow the 
 revelation that was coming. 
 
 And then, with a curious, deep sense of shame, 
 he realised abruptly that his position in regard to 
 her was inappropriate. He, at any rate, had no 
 right to stand. His proper attitude must be a very 
 different one. ' 
 
 He took her by the hand and, bending his head 
 with an air of humble worship, led her slowly 
 across the room. The touch of her was wonderful 
 —like touching wind—all over him. With a 
 reverence he guided her, all unresisting, to a high- 
 backed chair beside the open window. She lowered 
 herself upon it, and sat upright. She stared fixedly 
 before her into space. No clothing in the world 
 could have stolen from her childish face and figure 
 the nameless air of grandeur that she wore. She 
 was august. 
 
 And he knelt before her. He raised his folded 
 hands. A moment his eyes rested on the dispassionate 
 little face, then looked beyond her into the night of 
 wind and rain. His gaze returning then sought 
 the eyes again. 
 
 And the child, sweet little human interpreter 
 of so vast a Mystery, bent her head downwards and 
 looked into his heart. Wind stirred the hair 
 upon her neck. He saw the bosom gently rise and 
 fall. 
 
 ‘What is it that you have to say to me?’ he 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 515 
 
 whispered, like a prayer for mercy. ‘What is the 
 message that you bring? ’ 
 
 Her lips moved very slightly. The smile broke 
 out again like moonlight across the lowered face. 
 The words dropped through the sky. Very 
 slowly, very distinctly, they fell into his open heart : 
 simple as wind or rain. 
 
 ‘ Leave — me — as — 1 —-am—and —as— you—— 
 found—me. Leave—us—together—as—we—are— 
 and—as—we—were.’ 
 
XIV 
 
 THERE came then a sudden blast that swept with 
 a shout across the night; and through his mind 
 passed also a tumult like a roaring wind. Both 
 winds, it seemed to him, were in the room at once. 
 He had the sensation of being lifted from the earth. 
 The candle was extinguished. And then the sound 
 and terror dipped away again into silence and into 
 distance whence it came. .. . 
 
 He found himself standing stiffly upright, though 
 he had no recollection of rising from his knees. 
 With an abruptness utterly disconcerting he was 
 himself again. No item of memory had faded; 
 he remembered the entire series of events. Only, he 
 was in possession of his normal mind and powers, 
 fear, awe, and wonder all departed. Manya, who had 
 been walking in her sleep, was sitting close before 
 him in the darkness, He could just distinguish her 
 outline against the open window. But he was master 
 of himself again. Even the wild improbability, the 
 extravagance of his own actions, the very lunacy of 
 the picture that the night now smothered, left him 
 unbewildered. And the calmness that thus followed 
 the complete transition proved to him that all he had 
 witnessed, all that had happened, had been—true. 
 In no single detail was there falseness or distortion 
 
 516 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 517 
 
 due to the excitement of a hysterical mood. It had 
 been right and inevitable. , 
 
 He lit the candle again quietly, with a hand that 
 did not tremble. He saw Manya sitting on the high- 
 backed chair with her head sunk forward on her 
 breast. Gently he raised the face. The eyes were 
 now closed, and the regular, deep breathing showed 
 that the girl was sound asleep—but with the normal 
 sleep of tired childhood. The Immensity to which 
 he had knelt and prayed in her was gone, gone from 
 the room, gone out into the open darkness of the 
 Place. It had visited her, it had used her, it had 
 left her. But at the same time he understood, as 
 by some infallible intuition, that the warning to 
 depart she brought him was not yet complete. It 
 had reached his mind, but not as yet his soul. In 
 its fulness the Notice to Quit could not be delivered 
 between close, narrow walls. Its delivery must be 
 outside. | 
 
 He looked at the sleeping child in silence for 
 several minutes. She sat there in a semi-collapsed 
 position and in momentary danger of falling from 
 her chair. The lips were parted, the eyes tight shut, 
 the red tam-o’-shanter dropping over one side of 
 the face. Both hands were folded in her lap. By 
 the light of two candles now he watched her, while 
 the perspiration he had not been as yet aware of, 
 dried upon his skin and made him shiver with the 
 cold. And, after long hesitation, he woke her. 
 
 With difficulty the girl came to, stared up into 
 his face with a blank expression, rubbed her eyes, 
 and then, with returning consciousness of who and 
 where she was, looked mightily astonished. 
 
 ‘Manya, child,’ he began gently, ‘don’t be 
 frightened.’ 
 
518 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 ‘I’m not,’ she said at once. ‘But where am I? 
 Is that you, Uncle?’ 
 
 ‘Been walking in your sleep. It’s all right. 
 Nothing’s happened. Come, I’ll see you back to 
 bed again.’ And he made a gesture as though to 
 take her hand. 
 
 But she avoided him. Still looking bewildered 
 and perplexed, she said: 
 
 ‘Oh—I remember now—I wanted to go out and 
 see things. I want to go out still.’ Then she added 
 quickly as the thought struck her, ‘But does 
 Fraulein know? You haven’t told Fraulein, Uncle, 
 have you? I mean, you won't ?’ 
 
 He shook his head. This was no time for 
 chiding. : 
 
 ‘I often go out like this—at night, when you’re 
 all asleep. It’s the only time now, since 
 
 He stopped her instantly at that. ‘You fell 
 asleep while dreaming! Was that it?’ He tried 
 to laugh a little, but the laughter would not come. 
 
 ‘I suppose so.’ She glanced down at her extra- 
 ordinary garments. But no smile came to the eyes 
 or lips. Then she looked round her, and gazed for 
 a minute through the open window. The rain had 
 ceased, the wind had died away. Moist, fragrant air 
 stole in with many perfumes. ‘I don’t remember 
 quite. I was in bed. I had been asleep already, I 
 think. Then—something woke me.’ She paused. 
 ‘There was something crying in the night.’ 
 
 ‘Something crying in the night?” he repeated 
 quickly, half to: himself. | 
 
 She nodded. ‘Crying for me,’ she explained in 
 a tone that sent a shudder all through him before he 
 could prevent it. ‘So I thought I’d go out and see. 
 Uncle, I had to go out,’ she added earnestly, still 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 519 
 
 whispering, ‘because they were crying—to get at 
 you. And unless J brought them—unless they came 
 through me,’ she stopped abruptly, her eyes grew 
 moist, she was on the verge of tears — ‘it would 
 have been so terrible for you, I mean 
 
 He stiffened as he heard it. He made a violent 
 effort at control, stopping her further explanation. 
 
 ‘And you weren’t afraid—to go out like this into 
 the dark?’ he asked, more to cover retreat than 
 because he wanted to hear the reply. 
 
 ‘I put myself out for you,’ she answered simply. 
 ‘J let them come in. That way you couldn't get 
 hurt. In me they had to come gently. They were 
 an army. Only, nothing out of me could hurt you, 
 Uncle.’ She suddenly put her arms about his neck 
 and kissed him. ‘Oh, Uncle Dick, it was lucky I 
 was there and ready, wasn’t it?’ 
 
 And Eliot, remembering that great Disturbance 
 in the woods, pressed the child tenderly to him- 
 self, praying that she might not understand his 
 heart too well, nor feel the cold that made his entire 
 body tremble like a leaf. He had thought of an 
 angry animal Presence lurking in the darkness. It 
 had been bigger than that, and a thousand times 
 more dangerous ! 
 
 ‘You see,’ she added with a little gasp for breath 
 when he released her, ‘they waked me up on purpose. 
 I dressed at an awful rate. I got to the door—l 
 
 remember that perfectly well—and then trl Aa 
 expression of bewilderment came into her face 
 again. 
 
 ‘Yes,’ he helped her, ‘and then—what ? ‘ 
 
 ‘Well, I forget exactly ; but something stopped 
 me. Something came all round me and took me 
 in their arms. It was like arms of wind. I was 
 
520 _ PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 lifted up and carried in the air. And after that I 
 forget the rest, forget everything—till now.’ 
 
 She stopped. She took off her tam-o’-shanter 
 and smoothed her untidy hair back from the fore- 
 head. And as he looked a moment at her—this 
 little human organism still vibrating with the passage 
 of a universal Power that had obsessed her, making 
 her far more than merely child, yet still leaving in 
 her the sweetness of her simple love—he came to 
 a sudden, bold decision. He would face the thing 
 complete. He would go outside. 
 
 ‘Manya,’ he whispered, looking hard at her, 
 ‘would you like to go out—now—with me? Come, 
 child! Suppose we go together ! ’ 
 
 She stared at him, then darted about the room 
 with little springs of excitement. She clapped her 
 hands softly, her eyes alight and shining. 
 
 ‘Uncle Dick! You really mean it? Wouldn’t 
 it be grand !’ 
 
 ‘Of course, I mean it. See! I’m dressed and 
 ready!’ And he pointed to his boots and clothes. 
 
 ‘It’s the very best thing we can do, really,’ she 
 said, trying to speak gravely, but the mischievous 
 element uppermost at the idea of the secret nocturnal 
 journey. ‘They'll see that you’re not afraid, and 
 you'll be safe then for ever and ever and ever! 
 Hooray !’ 
 
 She twirled the tam-o’-shanter in the air above 
 her head, skipping in her childish joy. 
 
 ‘And we'll go past Fraulein’s door,’ she insisted 
 mischievously, as he took her outstretched hand and 
 led the way on tiptoe down the dark front stairs. 
 
 ‘Hush !” he whispered gruffly. ‘Don’ttalkso loud.’ 
 
 ‘She fastened up her garments, and they moved 
 like shadows through the sleeping house. 
 
XV 
 
 Tuat journey he made with this ‘child of Nature’ 
 among the dripping trees and along soaked paths was 
 one that Eliot never forgot. For him its meaning 
 was unmistakable. His early life again supplied a 
 parallel. He had once seen a wretched man marched 
 out of camp with two days’ rations to shift for him- 
 self in the wilderness as best he might,—a prisoner 
 convicted of treachery, but whose life was spared on 
 the chance that he might redeem it, or die in the 
 attempt. He had seen it done by redskins, he had 
 seen it done by white. And hanging had been better. 
 Yet the crime—stealing a horse, or sneaking another’s 
 ‘grub-stakes’—was one that civilisation punishes 
 with a paltry fine, or condones daily as permissible 
 ‘ business acumen.’ 
 
 In primitive conditions it was a crime against 
 the higher law. It was sinning against Nature. 
 And Nature never is deceived. 
 
 Richard Eliot was now being drummed out of 
 camp. And the child who led him, mischief in her 
 eyes and the joy of forbidden pleasure in her heart, 
 was all unconscious of the awful rédle she played. 
 Yet it was she who as well had pleaded for his life 
 and saved him. 
 
 Nature turned him out; the Place rejected him ; 
 and Manya saw him safely to the confines of that 
 
 521 
 
22 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 wilderness of houses, ugliness, commercial desolation 
 where he must wander till he re-made his soul or 
 lost it altogether. 
 
 They cautiously opened the front door, and the 
 damp air rushed to meet them. 
 
 ‘Hush !’ he repeated, closing it carefully behind 
 him. But the child was already upon the lawn. 
 Beyond her, dark blots against the sky, rose the 
 massed outline of the little pointed hills. There 
 were no stars anywhere, though the clouds were 
 breaking into thinning troops; but it was not too 
 dark to see, for a moon watched them somewhere 
 from her place of hiding. The air was warm a 
 very sweet, left breathing by the storm. 
 
 ‘Hush, Manya!’ he whispered again, ill at ease 
 to see her go. She ran back, her feet inaudible upon 
 the thick, wet lawn, and took his hand. ‘ We'll go 
 by the Piney Valley,’ she said, assuming leadership. 
 And he made no objection, though this was the 
 direction of the sample pits. It led also, he re- 
 membered, to the Mill—the spot where she who had 
 left him in charge had gone upon her long long 
 journey. 
 
 They went forward side by side. The wind below 
 them hummed gently in the tree-tops, but it did not 
 reach their faces. The whole wet world lay breath- 
 ing softly about them, exhausted by the tempest. It 
 was very still. It watched them pass. There was 
 no effort to detain them. And in Dick Eliot’s heart 
 was a pain that searched him like a pain of death 
 itself. 
 
 But his companion, he now clearly realised, was 
 merely the child again—eerie, wonderful, eldritch, 
 but still the little Manya that he knew so well. 
 Mischief was in her heart, and the excitement of 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 523 
 
 unlawful adventure in her blood ; but nothing more. 
 The vast obsessing Entity that had constituted her 
 judge and executioner was now entirely gone. He 
 was spared the added shame of knowing that she 
 realised what she did. 
 
 Sometimes she left his side, to come back presently 
 with a little rush of pleasurable alarm. He was 
 uncertain whether he liked best her going from him 
 or her sudden return. Their tread was now muffled 
 by the needles as they went slowly down the pathways 
 of the Piney Valley. The occasional snapping of 
 small twigs alone betrayed their movements. Heavy 
 branches, soaked like sponges, splashed showers on 
 the ground when their shoulders brushed them in 
 passing, and drops fell of their own weight with 
 mysterious little thuds like footsteps everywhere 
 about them in the woods. 
 
 Manya dived away from his side. She came back 
 sometimes in front of him and sometimes behind. 
 He never quite knew where she was. His mind, 
 indeed, neglected her, for his thoughts were concen- 
 trated within himself. Her movements were the 
 movements of a block of shadow, shifting here and 
 there like shadows of trees and clouds in faint 
 moonlight. 
 
 ‘Uncle, tell me one thing,’ he heard with a start, 
 as she suddenly stood in front of him across the 
 narrow pathway, and so close that he nearly bumped 
 against her. ‘Isn’t there something here that's angry 
 with you? Something you’ve done wrong to?’ 
 
 ‘Hush, child! Don’t say such things!’ He 
 felt the shiver run through him. He pushed her 
 forward with his hands. 
 
 ‘But they’re being said—all round us. Uncle, 
 don’t you hear them?’ she insisted. 
 
524 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 ‘T’ve always loved the Place. We've always been 
 happy here together.’ He whispered it, as though a 
 terror was in him lest it should be overheard and— 
 contradicted. 
 
 Her answer flabbergasted him. Her intuitions 
 were so uncannily direct and piercing. 
 
 ‘That’s what I meant. You’ve been unkind. 
 You’ve hurt it.’ 
 
 ‘Manya,’ he repeated severely, ‘you must not say 
 such things. And you must not think them.’ 
 
 ‘I’m so awfully sorry, Uncle Dick,’ she said softly 
 in the dark, and promptly kissed him. The kiss 
 went like a stab into his heart. 
 
 Then she was gone again, and he caught her light 
 footstep several yards in front, as though a shower of 
 drops had fallen on the needles. 
 
 ‘Uncle,’ came her voice again close beside him. 
 She stood on tiptoe and pulled his ear down to the 
 level of her lips. ‘Hold my hand tight. We're 
 coming near now. She was curiously excited. 
 
 ‘To the Mill?’ he asked, knowing quite well she 
 meant another thing. 
 
 ‘No, to the pits the men dug,’ she answered, 
 nestling in against him, while his own voice echoed 
 faintly, ‘Yes, the sample pits.’ He felt like passing 
 the hostile outposts of the Camp who would shoot 
 him but for the presence of the appointed escort. 
 
 A sigh of lonely wind went past them with its 
 shower of drops. And these little hands of wind 
 with their fingers of sweet rain helped forward his 
 expulsion. The empty wilderness beyond lay waiting 
 for his soul. It heard him coming. 
 
 And a curious, deep revelation of the child’s state 
 of mind then rushed suddenly upon him. He knew 
 that she expected something. And her answer to 
 
iar TEMPTATION OBS ERE CLAY’: 525 
 
 the question he put explained his own thought to 
 himself. 
 
 ‘What is it you expect, Manya?’ he had asked 
 unwisely. 
 
 ‘Not expect exactly, Uncle, for that would be the 
 wrong way. But I know.’ 
 
 And several kinds of fear shot through him as he 
 heard it, for the words lifted a veil and let him see 
 into her mind a moment. She had said another 
 of her profoundly mystical truths. Expectation, 
 anticipation, he divined, would provide a mould for 
 what was coming, would give it shape, but yet not 
 quite its natural shape. ‘To anticipate keenly meant 
 to attract too quickly: to force. The expectant 
 desire would coax what was coming into an unnatural 
 form that might be dreadful because not quite true. 
 Let the thing approach in its own way, uninvited by 
 imaginative dread. Let it come upon them as it 
 would, deciding its own shape of arrival. _ To expect 
 was to invite distortion. This flashed across him 
 behind her simple words. 
 
 ‘You fearful child!’ he whispered, forcing an 
 unnatural little laugh. 
 
 ‘The soft, wet, sticky things, half yellow and half 
 white, she began, resenting his laughter, ‘always 
 moving, and never looking twice the same ai 
 
 Then, before he could stop her, she stopped of 
 her own accord. 
 
 She clutched his arm. He understood that it 
 was the closeness of the thing that had inspired the 
 atrocious words. She held his arm so tightly that 
 it hurt. They stood in the presence of others than 
 themselves. 
 
 Yet these Others had not come to them. The 
 movement of approach was not really movement at 
 
526 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 all. It was a condition in himself had altered so 
 that he knew. Out here the veil had thinned a 
 little, as it had thinned in the room an hour ago. 
 And he saw space otherwise. This Power that in 
 humanity lies normally inarticulate was breaking 
 through. In the room its language had been a 
 stammer ; it was a stammer now. Or, in the terms 
 of sight, it was a little fragment utterly inexplicable 
 by itself, since the entire universe is necessary for 
 its complete expression. 
 
 Yet Eliot did perceive the enormous thing behind 
 —the thing to which he had been unfaithful by 
 prostituting his first original love. And the fact 
 that it was interwoven with his ordinary little human 
 feelings at the same time only added to the bewilder- 
 ment of its stupendous reality. 
 
 He saw for a fleeting moment just as Manya saw 
 —from her immediate point of view. 
 
 ‘It’s here,’ she whispered, in a voice that sounded 
 most oddly everywhere ; ‘it’s here, the angry thing 
 you've hurt.’ 
 
 On either side of the path, where the heatherland 
 came close, he saw the openings the men had dug— 
 pale, luminous patches of whitish yellow. Between 
 the bushy tufts they shone faintly gleaming against 
 the night. Perspective, in that instant, became the 
 merest trick of sight, a trivial mental jugglery. 
 That slope of coal-black moor actually was extra- 
 ordinarily near. The tree-tops were just as well 
 beneath his feet, or he stood among their roots. 
 Either was true. There was neither up nor down. 
 The sky was in his hands, a little thing ; or the stars 
 and moon hid washed within the current of his blood. 
 Size was illusion, as relative as time. No object in 
 itself had any ‘size’ at all. He saw her universe, 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY 527 
 
 all true, as ever, but from another point of view. 
 And the entire Place ran down here to a concen- 
 trated point. The sample pits pressed close against 
 his face. 
 
 ‘The pits,’ she whispered, with a sound of wind 
 and water in her breath. 
 
 So, for a moment, he saw from the point of view 
 whence Manya always saw. He and the child and 
 the Spirit of the Place stood side by side on that 
 narrow shelf of darkness, sharing a joint and absolute 
 comprehension. Her elemental aspect became his 
 own, for his inner eye was against the peep-hole 
 through which her Behind-the-Scenes was visible. 
 He realised a new thing, grand as a field of stars. 
 
 For the Place here focussed almost into sentiency. 
 Those slow moving forces that stir to growth in 
 crystals, waken and breathe in plants, and first in 
 the animal world know consciousness, here moved 
 vast and inchoate, through the structure of the 
 dream-estate he owned. Yet moved not blind and 
 inarticulate. For the stress of some impulse, 
 normally undivined by men, urged them towards 
 articulate expression. Here was reaction approximate 
 to those reactions of the nervous cells which in their 
 ultimate result men call emotions. And this irre- 
 sistible correspondence between the two appalled him. 
 
 The raw material of definite sensation here poured 
 loose and terrible about him from the ground. In 
 them, moreover, was anger, protest, warning, and a 
 menacing resentment—all directed against his mean, 
 insignificant being. From these sample pits issued 
 the menace and the warning, just as literally as there 
 issued from them also the soft, white clay that would 
 degrade the immemorial beauty he had once thought 
 he loved with a clean, pure love. The pits were 
 
528 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 wounds. They drew all the feelings of the injured 
 Place into the tenderness of sentient organs. 
 
 But behind the threatening anger he recognised 
 a softer passion too. There was a sadness, a deep 
 yearning, and a searching melancholy as well, that 
 seemed to bear witness to his rejection with a sighing 
 as of the sea and wood and hills. 
 
 And here, doubtless, came in the interweaving of 
 his own little human emotions. For an overpower- 
 ing sorrow soaked his heart and mind. The judg- 
 ment that found him wanting woke all his stores of 
 infinite regret. It would have been better for him 
 had he found that millstone which can save the soul, 
 because it removes temptation. 
 
 ‘It is too late,’ breathed round him in three weep- 
 ing voices that passed out between his lips as a single 
 cry together. ‘It is too late.’ 
 
 Yet nothing happened ; that is, he saw nothing— 
 nothing translatable by any words that he could find. 
 Time dwindled and expanded curiously. The past 
 ran on before him, and the future grouped itself 
 behind his back. The seconds and minutes which 
 men tick off from the apparent movement of the sun 
 gave place to some condition within himself where 
 they lay gathered for ever into the circle of the 
 Present. He remembers no actual sequence of acts 
 or movements. Duration drew its horns back into a 
 single point. . . . It is sure, however, that these two 
 human beings marched presently on. They steadily 
 became disentangled from the spot, and somehow or 
 other moved away from the staring pits. For Eliot, 
 looking back, recalls that it felt like walking past the 
 mouths of loaded cannon; also that the pits watched 
 them out of sight as portraits follow a moving figure 
 with their expressionless stare. He thinks that he 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF THE CLAY § 529 
 
 looked straight before him as he went. He is sure 
 no single word was spoken—until they left the trees 
 behind and emerged into the open. The Mill, the 
 old, familiar building, was the thing that first restored 
 him to a normal world again. He saw its outline, 
 humped and black, shouldering its way against the 
 sky. He heard the water running under the wheel. 
 But even the Mill, like a hooded figure, turned its 
 face away. It expressed the melancholy of a multi- 
 tude. And the woods were everywhere full of tears. 
 
 Manya, he realised then beside him, was making 
 the humming sound of the water that flowed beneath 
 that motionless wheel. Her voice became the voice 
 of the Place—the undifferentiated sound of Nature. 
 It was the voice of dismissal and farewell. Here was 
 the Gateway through which his soul passed out into 
 the Wilderness. 
 
 He involuntarily stooped down to feel her, and 
 she lifted her face up in the darkness and kissed him. 
 But it was across a barrier that she kissed him. He 
 already stood outside. 
 
 And half an hour later they were indoors again 
 and the house was still. Manya slept as soundly as 
 the placid Fraulein Buhlke or the motherly Mrs. 
 Coove doubtless also slept. 
 
 But he lay battling with strange thoughts for 
 hours. Night and the wind were oddly mingled with 
 them; water, hills, and masses of strong landscape 
 too. They rose before his mind’s eye in a giant 
 panorama, endlessly moving past beneath huge skies, 
 and visible against a pale background of luminous, 
 yellowish white. It had strange movements of its 
 own, this yellowish background, like the swaying of 
 a curtain on the stage; and sometimes it surged 
 
530 PAN’S GARDEN 
 
 forwards with a smothering sweep that enveloped 
 everything of beauty he had ever known. It then 
 obliterated the world. Stars were extinguished ; 
 scenery turned to soil. The Spectre of the Clay he 
 had invoked possessed the Place. 
 
 He lay there frightened in his sleepless bed and 
 saw the dawn—a helpless little mortal, destroyed by 
 his faithlessness and breach of trust. And all night 
 long there lay outside, yet watching him, something 
 else that equally never slept—agile, alert, unconquer- 
 able. Only it was no longer disturbed. For its 
 purpose was accomplished. It had turned him out. 
 
 And it is not necessary to tell how John Casanova 
 Murdoch soon thereafter took the work in hand and 
 developed the Place, as he expressed it, ‘ without a 
 hitch.’ For John C. had made no promises of love ; 
 nor had he pretended to establish with Nature that 
 intimate relationship of trust and worship which 
 invokes the spiritual laws. Nature took no note of 
 him, for he worked frankly with her, and his motive, 
 if not exalted, was at least a pure one. And the Clay, 
 as he phrased it a little later in his expressive Western 
 lingo, soon was ‘ paying hand over fist. The money 
 was pouring in—more money than you could shake 
 a stick at!’ 
 
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