CHAPTER XII

I saw these glassy messengers of painDrench her cheeks damask in a watery rout,Of salty rush and follow.Till one,A Laggard in its sorry chaseGather’d more slowly on the china’s pale curveWhere it hung trembling, in a globy danceIts little weight, its anchor.

I saw these glassy messengers of pain

Drench her cheeks damask in a watery rout,

Of salty rush and follow.

Till one,

A Laggard in its sorry chase

Gather’d more slowly on the china’s pale curve

Where it hung trembling, in a globy dance

Its little weight, its anchor.

dream lines.

TWO or three days passed over without the children seeing anything more of the life of the pictures. They had gone to bed that night after the party, with the promise of a story held out to them, to soften the pang. Yet morning came after morning, and always found them with the usual everyday life. Lessons through the day, walks, and readings aloud in the evenings, and nothing more to reveal that hidden life. Now Clare could almost think it had been a dream. Yet the boys vowed it was real, and Bim had proof of it.

Raeburn.THE LESLIE BOY.

THE LESLIE BOY.

“Don’t you think there is a deepening of the shadow in the face in the Raeburn in the drawing-room?” said the children’s Father one evening. “The Leslie boy, I mean.”

“I think there is,” said their Mother; “it has a glass. Can the dirt get in?”

Bimbo listened, and the recollection of a fight with Leslie, came vividly before him. Leslie had a black eye distinctly, and Bim’s fist had blacked it. So how could there be the least doubt that the picture people were alive? They must just wait, they told each other; and so the days passed on.

One night Clare heard a sound in the passage. It was that of a silk skirt brushing past the doorway, whispering crisply to the stairs, as its folds swept by. She was out after it in a moment, and saw Miss Woffington pass through the swing-doors on her way to the hall.

“They’re about again,” said Clare to herself joyfully, and she flew to the boys’ room. This was empty, and their voices were in the hall.

“I’m not going to racket with the children,” she said, “they’ll come directly they know Mrs. Inchbald promised stories; but I wonder where Miss Ross is all this time?” As she passed the drawing-room Clare looked in, and Miss Ross’s frame was empty.

“Then I shall see her, and talk to her,” said Clare; “when she speaks she may not look so sorrowful.” She ran swiftly to the far end of the room, where already a small company had assembled.

There she found Mrs. Inchbald, Marianne and Amelia, Miss Ross and all the children, and Miss Ridge.

“Just the right people,” she thought, as she sat down among them. “Lady Crosbie is too busy, and has too wide an acquaintance, and Mrs. Jordan is too airified, and Miss Fisher might have other things to do. These are the ones who are just right, and look as if they could tell stories if they chose.”

But a good deal of time is lost in real life in unnecessary conversation; so we’ll learn by that, and not lose any more here. I’ll just go straight on to Mrs. Inchbald’s story, as she told it that afternoon.

The Story of Mother Midnight, or theWitch of Wendlestone.

“The scene of my narrative,” commenced Mrs. Inchbald, “lies before you, my dears. Which of you can find me a small forest cottage, a river, a white cow, a church, and an oak-tree?”

“I can.”

“I know.”

“There it is.”

“The picture by Nasmyth,” cried ten voices all at once.

“Well, that small cottage once sheltered the unhappy head of the unfortunate subject of my tale. Unfortunate, yet not so at the last. Let us be happy in thinking, that after years of persecution and winters of privation, when the coldness of her fellow-creatures’ hearts was only equalled by the rigour of the pitiless winter snow that threatened to cover her humble lodge, let us be happy to remember, I repeat, that this woman lived to know the protection of a friend.”

Mrs. Inchbald paused. She was fond of telling stories. It was good practice for her art. She never gave up a life-long struggle with a stammer, that tripped her up constantly in short sentences, or conversational phrase. This stammer, however, was utterly routed by her fine-sounding and ornate sentences of narration, which she declaimed in a magnificent voice:—

There was an age of superstition which blackens history’s page. During the period immediatelyfollowing the Reformation, fear of witchcraft in England was so great, that many innocent lives were sacrificed needlessly to assuage the malignant ignorance of the time. It is true that other countries were even more to blame than England, a greater number of innocent people being put to death in Germany, Italy, and France. Yet for all that, our crimes are sufficient to make us shudder in reading of them, and thankful that such things can never recur.

Let us imagine that there is a village called Wendlestone, and that it lies a distance of a mile and a half, from a large wood. There is a common on the confines of this wood, and here the dwellings of squatters, as they are called, may be seen. This means, that a man building his own hut, and driving some humble trade, such as knife-grinder or tin-waresman, might live here free of rent. One of these dwellings is the little house you see in the picture by Nasmyth, and here in the year 1545 an old woman lived. She had a tiny patch of garden, and a donkey which she drove to market with some small load of vegetables and eggs. Or more often some medicines that she compounded from herbs, with which she administered to the ailments of the country people. She was reticent,quiet, and of a stern cast of countenance, and had lived here for many years. Her people had not belonged to Wendlestone, and no one knew her origin; perhaps this first led people to look on her with distrust.

NasmythTHE COTTAGE BY THE WOOD

THE COTTAGE BY THE WOOD

She had herself put to rights the little tumble-down house, which let the weather in when first she appropriated it. And she had, by her industry and thrift, managed to make a comfortable living, cutting the rushes from the riverside, and thatching her own roof. Often you might see her, crouched low and bent by rheumatism, a straw hat tied beneath her nut-cracker chin, and her red cloak battling with the weather, while she gathered sticks from the woodlands, or took her donkey laden to the town.

“There com’ Granny Gather-stick,” the children would cry. “Some say as she d’ fly by night.” And they would scamper into their cottages, and peer back from their mothers’ apron-folds.

You have only to live in a village for a year without going away from it, to understand how busy people can be manufacturing stories about each other. Given plenty of time, and every one knowing every one else, there is sufficient irresponsible mischief in the average human heart to bring about the same result as deliberate malice.

How many of our friends are there, I wonder, who have not at various times given utterance to some thorny thrust, or spiky supposition, at our expense, loving us, nevertheless, quite warmly all the while? It is a valuable training to be early taught the eleventh commandment: “Thy neighbour shalt thou not discuss.” Detraction, defamation and dislike may be grouped under the comfortable word “Gossip.” We often flatter ourselves it is the human interest that we feel.

And so it came about that on Granny Gatherstick centred the gossip of the village. She was first looked on with suspicion, because they did not understand her, and, with ordinary minds, to fail to understand generally means to dislike. Passive dislike grew to fear, and from fear of her grew lies and wicked charges, of which the unfortunate woman was wholly innocent.

“Whoi doan’t her be satisfied wi’ the ways of other folk? Whoi can’t her be in her bed at night time, sem as other folk, ’sted o’ flitting about a’ gathering of them nesty pisonous stuffs? d’ be only when the moon’s full, that she d’ stir. Noa, noa, say I, let folk keep to folk’s ways, and then there won’t be nothen’ said about un. If a body come to get the name of Mother Midnight, it’s not fornothen’, of that you may be sure; I don’t hold wi’ such ways.”

This was what was felt generally among the village folk, and, if you come to think of it, it is not only among the uneducated that such feeling prevails. How seldom people are allowed in this life to take their own way unmolested. Even children playing together interfere, and scold, and bicker about trifles, and family life among grown-up people may be devastated by the same pest.

Let us early write on the tablets of our heart: “Let others lead their own life, in their own way.” Then shall our ways be ways of pleasantness, and all our paths be peace.

One day a little boy and girl were playing in the woodlands, which you see painted in that picture before you now. They were friends, not brother and sister, and their names were Martin and Faith. They were wood-cutter’s children, and often they played together, for their homes stood near each other in the wood.

There was no authorised village school. You must remember I am telling you of English village life, some three hundred years ago. Children of humble parents were brought up to learn to plough, and reap, and carpenter; they hardly ever weretaught to read, or write. Such as could do so in those days were called “clerkes,” and some day, you will read a ballad that tells how Clark Saunders loved May Margaret, and you will find it one of the most sorrowful stories, ever written down.

So it came about that these children spent hours in the woodlands with the flowers, and animals, and insects for companions. And their books were the clouds and streams.

It was in the month of October when the acorns lie freshly fallen. There is something arresting about an acorn; the form is beautiful, the texture glossy, there is perfection in the cup, and completeness in the whole. Who could pass under an oak tree in autumn without picking up a fallen acorn, and turning it in the hand? Faith was threading these, and Martin wandered into the wood. He was away a long time, and Faith was telling herself stories, as she loved doing when she was alone.

“Now it happened the water was very crystal-clear at this part of the river,” she was saying, “and flowed between tall sedges, and forget-me-nots, like angels’ eyes. And the river was so clear because it was the home of a very beautiful Water Nixie who lived in it, and who sometimes could emerge fromher home, and sit in woman’s form upon the bank. She had a dark green smock upon her, the colour of the water-weed that waves as the water wills it, deep, deep down. And in her long wet hair were the white flowers of the water-violet, and she held a reed mace in her hand. Her face was very sad, because she had lived a long life, and known so many adventures, ever since she was a baby, which was nearly a hundred years ago. For creatures of the streams, and trees, live a long, long time, and when they die they lose themselves in Nature. That means that they are for ever clouds, or trees, or rivers, and never have the form of men and women again.

“All water-creatures would live, if they might choose it, in the sea, where they are born. It is in the sea they float hand in hand upon the crested billows, and sink deep in the great troughs of the strong waves, that are green as jade. They follow the foam and lose themselves in the wide ocean—

‘Where great whales come sailing by,Sail and sail with unshut eye,’

‘Where great whales come sailing by,

Sail and sail with unshut eye,’

and they store in the Sea King’s palace the golden phosphor of the sea.

“But this Water Nixie had lost her happiness through not being good. She had forgotten many things that had been told her, and she had done many things that grieved others; she had stolen somebody else’s property—quite a large bundle of happiness—which belonged elsewhere and not to her. Happiness is generally made to fit the person who owns it, just as do your shoes, or clothes; so when you take some one else’s it’s very little good to you, for it fits badly, and you can never forget it isn’t yours.

“So what with one thing and another, this Water Nixie had to be punished, and the Queen of the Sea had banished her from the waves.

“The punishment that can most affect Merfolk is to restrict their freedom. And this is how the Queen of the Sea punished the Nixie of our tale.

“‘You shall dwell for a long time in little places, where you will weary of yourself. You will learn to know yourself so well, that everything you want will seem too good for you, and you will cease to claim it. And so, in time, you shall get free.’

“Then the Nixie had to rise up and go away, and be shut into the fastness of a very smallspace, according to the words of the Queen. And this small space was, a tear.

“At first she could hardly express her misery, and by thinking so continually of the wideness and the savour of the sea, she brought a dash of the brine with her, that makes the saltness of our tears. She became many times smaller than her own stature, even then by standing upright and spreading wide her arms, she touched with her finger-tips, the walls of her tiny crystal home. How she longed that this tear might be wept, and the walls of her prison shattered. But the owner of this tear was of a very proud nature, and she was so sad that tears seemed to her, in nowise to express her grief.

“She was a Princess who lived in a country that was not her home. What were tears to her? If she could have stood on the very top of the highest hill and with both hands caught the great winds of heaven, strong as they, and striven with them, perhaps then she might have felt as if she expressed all she knew. Or, if she could have torn down the stars from the heavens, or cast her mantle over the sun; but tears! would they have helped to tell her sorrow? You cry if you soil your copy-book, don’t you, or pinchyour hand? So you may imagine the Nixie’s home was a safe one, and she turned round and round in the captivity of that tear.

“For twenty years she dwelt in that strong heart, till she grew to be accustomed to her cell. At last in this wise came her release.

“An old gipsy came one morning to the castle and begged to see the Princess. She must see her, she cried. And the Princess came down the steps to meet her, and the gipsy gave her a small roll of paper in her hand. And the roll of paper smelt like honey as she took it, and it adhered to her palm as she opened it. There was little sign of writing on the paper, but in the midst of the page was a picture, small as the picture reflected in the iris of an eye. The picture showed a hill, with one tree on the sky-line, and a long road wound round the hill.

“And suddenly in the Princess’s memory a voice spoke to her. Many sounds she heard, gathered up into one great silence, like the quiet there is in forest spaces, when it is Summer, and the green is deep:—

‘Blessed are they that have the home longing,For they shall go home.’

‘Blessed are they that have the home longing,

For they shall go home.’

Then the Princess gave the gipsy two golden pieces, and went up to her chamber, and long that night she sat, looking out upon the sky.

“She had no need to look at the honeyed scroll, though she held it closely. Clearly before her did she see that small picture; the hill, and the tree, and the winding road, imaged as if mirrored in the iris of an eye. And in her memory she was upon that road, and the hill rose beside her, and the little tree was outlined, every twig of it, against the sky. And as she saw all this, an overwhelming love of the place arose in her, a love of that certain bit of country that was so sharp and strong, that it stung and swayed her, as she leaned on the window-sill.

“And because the love of a country is one of the deepest loves you may feel, the band of her control was loosened, and the tears came welling to her eyes. Up they brimmed and over, in salty rush and follow, dimming her eyes, magnifying everything, speared for a moment on her eyelashes, then shimmering to their fall. And at last came the tear that held the disobedient Nixie.

“Splish! it fell. And she was free.

“If you could have seen how pretty she looked standing there about the height of a grass blade,wringing out her long wet hair. Every bit of moisture she wrung out of it, she was so glad to be quit of that tear. Then she raised her two arms above her in one delicious stretch, and if you had been the size of a mustard-seed perhaps you might have heard her laughing; then she grew a little, and grew and grew, till she was about the height of a bluebell, and as slender to see.

“She stood looking at the splash on the window-sill that had been her prison so long, and then with three steps of her bare feet, she reached the jessamine that was growing by the window, and by this she swung herself to the ground.

“Away she sped over the dew-drenched meadows till she came to the running brook, and with all her longing in her outstretched hands, she kneeled down by the crooked willows among all the comfry, and the loosestrife, and the yellow irises, and the reeds.

“Then she slid in to the wide, cool stream.”

Back to Index Next