THE BENDING OF THE TWIG
Earlyin the morning of the hot July day there had been a sea-mist, and the fog lay on the horizon like a rolled banner gleaming with ineffable tints of opalescent purple. The glassy sea was purest blue, save where the shimmering paths of the currents shone silver-white or where the lap and fret of waves at the cliff foot made the water pink with Devon earth. The weed on the rocks glowed orange-brown in the dazzling light, and the dark line of the low-flying shag gave the only sombre touch to the brilliant hues of land, sea, and sky. The turf sweet with the breath of wild thyme, and studded with pale yellow rock rose, crept well-nigh to the water’s edge. Here a hundred years ago the sea had claimed tribute of the earth, and a big landslip rent the bosom of the patient mother. Half a mile of cliff had fallen, and in the chasm thus made, now filled full with greenery and prodigal growth of fern, bramble, and berry, a long white house stood sun-bathed and creeper-clad.
A little spring sprang seawards from the cliff, tinkling in a baby waterfall down grey rocks splashed with orange lichen, and forming in a small crystal pool ere it ran on to lose itself in the greyish-white sand of the shore.
By this little pool sat three children: two flaxen-haired girls and a small dark-haired grey-eyed boy. The girls lay on the ground; their chins resting on their clasped hands, their eyes round, blue, and awestruck. The boy knelt stiffly on the verge of the pool, his eyes looking straight out over the sea, his hands linked behind his head. He was a slim little child with a small pale face, delicate irregular features, and long-lashed grey eyes.
“They came up,” he was saying, “up the little path that comes from the shore. They left their boats on the beach. They broke down our doors, making a great noise. The doors fell down; I heard them fall; I could hear the others shrieking as the men killed them. I was painting, you know; I painted coloured letters round a face which was in the middle. I drew the face myself; it was a white face with gold all round it. The men broke into my room and killed an old man who was there with me. I stood with my back against the wall. I put out my hands, so; I had no sword, and—and—then they killed me....”
The child broke off abruptly; he gasped, threw himself face downwards on the turf sobbing either with grief or excitement. The audience drew a long breath. Never—never—never—in all the annals of the nursery had even the most gifted grown-up person told them such tales as did this, their small orphan cousin.
“What’s the matter now,” said a man’s voice. “Quarrelling? Dennis, why are you crying?”
Three people had unheard approached the little group; a man, a young girl, and a boy. The man and boy were sufficiently alike to be easily recognisable as father and son. The boy was seventeen or eighteen years old; handsome, vigorous, and graceful. He carried a gun; he had been shooting rabbits on the cliffs, and two little helpless brown bodies dangled from his left hand. The man was past middle age, but time alone had not carved the straight, severe lines about his mouth, nor made his eyes so cold. That was the work of temperament; the comely lad beside him would never have such lips and eyes, though the tinting and moulding of the two faces were very much the same.
The crying child scrambled to his feet blushing and half laughing; his grief had not been very deeply rooted. The youngest girl clinging to her father’s hand cried out eagerly in praise of the tale; “Dennis tells us such lovely stories, daddy.”
The boy with the gun threw the rabbits on the grass. “Kitty’s quite right,” he said. “They’re ripping. I can’t think how he gets hold of them. He says they’re true.” “He says they happened to him,” broke in the enthusiastic auditor. “And he tells us what he sees too. O Dennis, tell them about the little men you saw in the mist this morning.”
The dark brows of the elder listener drew together.
“Look here, Dennis,” he said shortly, “if you prefer to tell stories to the girls rather than go rabbiting with the boys”—there was a little touch of contempt in the voice—“of course there’s no harm in that; but you must not say what is untrue.”
“But it is true,” said the child eagerly. “It is true, Uncle Hugh. That did happen to me; it did really. It was a grey house by the sea, and they killed me in the room where I was painting.”
“Take care, Dennis. When did this happen, may I ask?”
“I—I don’t know, Uncle Hugh.”
“Nor any one else. Did you tell the girls it was true?”
“It is true,” said Dennis, beginning to pant and rock from heel to toe and back again. “It is quite true.”
“It is, is it? And you see little men in the mist, eh?”
“I did this morning.”
“And he sees pictures in the water,” broke in one of the listening children.
“Do you see pictures in the water, Dennis?”
“Yes, sometimes.”
“In that water for instance? Look and see.”
The child knelt down and stared into the pool.
“I don’t”—he began after a pause. “Yes. I do, yes I do, I see a little house and a cornfield and a—O, there it’s gone!”
The man laid his finger-tips lightly on the child’s shoulder. “Get up and listen to me,” he said gravely. Dennis rose; the touch had not been at all rough; on the contrary it was very gentle, and the voice was quiet, but there was a sense of danger in the air; an ominous thrill; and the child’s eyes, why he knew not, grew slightly frightened.
“What you have just said is a lie,” said his elder very distinctly, “and you know that just as well as I do; you are very young yet, and I don’t want to be hard on you. If you confess that you told a lie, I won’t say any more about it, unless you do it again. Come.”
“But—I can’t. It wasn’t a lie.”
“Take care now. Tell me you said what wasn’t true and are sorry; and then run into tea and forget about it.”
The child began to tremble. “But I can’t—it wasn’t—indeed—it—O dear, O dear!”
“I tell you I don’t want to be hard upon you. I mean to be, and I hope I always am, perfectly just. I shall ask you three times whether your stories are true. If you say no—well and good. If you persist in saying yes, you’ll—take the consequences, that’s all. I shall ask you this question every day till I make you speak the truth.”
Things were now looking very serious. The little girls were struck with awe. The young girl and the lad exchanged glances and strove to extenuate the crime of Dennis.
“O please, Mr. March,” said the girl softly, “he’s so very little and he’s imaginative, you know.”
“He’s dotty, poor little chap,” said the boy cheerily. “He means no harm, dad. He’ll be all right when he goes to school. Let him off this once.”
“He has the matter in his own hands. Now then, Dennis, are these tales of yours true?”
“Yes,” faltered the quivering lips.
“Once more, are they true?”
“They are true! they are true! What shall I do? If you kill me, they’re true.”
“I’m not at all likely to kill you, but I mean to cure you of lying. It’s obstinacy; for you must know you’ve told lies. Are these things true?”
“Y—ye—I mean—I think so,” hedged poor Dennis desperately.
“Go into the house,” said the man with a push. “You’ve brought it on yourself, and it serves you right.”
Consolatory reflection. The child slunk into the house crying bitterly. The girl attempted further intercession.
“It’s no good, Kate,” said the man angrily. “I’m shocked at the child’s obstinacy. He has told a gratuitous falsehood, and he must, as I said, take the consequences.”
So Dennis took the consequences, and woke up at night shrieking with nightmare as their direct result. Daily the same question was put to him, and received the same answer which produced the same pains and penalties, save that they grew a little more grievous daily because of the increasing blackness of his sin. Dennis went about with a white face and silent tongue; his eyes were red and swollen, and there were purple rings under them. At last on the fifth day the child breaking down confessed himself to be a wilful and egregious perverter of the truth.
“Why couldn’t you have said that before?” said Hugh March. “Now speak the truth in future, there’s a good boy.”
Dennis promised that he certainly would do so, and went away to cry over his first lie. He knew that lying was a grievous sin; and the preacher under whom the March family “sat” predicted a fiery doom for sinners. Dennis cried over his probable damnation; but the undying worm and quenchless fire of a vengeful God were far away, whereas Hugh March’s birch was horribly near; so Dennis risked eternity for the sake of comparative well-being in time.
It must not be supposed that March was the typical wicked uncle of nursery tales; he was sincerely anxious to be kind to his dead brother’s little boy. The “queerness” of Dennis was a source of concerned perplexity to his guardian. Perry, his own son, whom he idolised, was an athlete rather than a scholar, and March was glad of the fact; nevertheless he would have been satisfied with his fragile non-athletic nephew if he had shown signs of studiousness; but the child was not clever; he was backward, lazy, and dreamy; his only talents were a gift for drawing and an eye for colour effects, which were “mere accomplishments” in the eyes of his uncle. Dennis had no other gifts unless his stories presaged a future novelist.
Dennis, on his side, was stunned and terrified by his uncle’s treatment of his powers of vision. His Irish mother, like her son, possessed “the sight,” and she had treated his visions as simple facts, which were by no means extraordinary; hence the child was not vain of the gift, nor did he dream of boasting of or colouring his visions. When his mother died and he came to live with his uncle and cousins, he came simply and confidingly as to friends; unsuspicious of the possibility of harshness, inexperienced in aught save tenderness. To be suddenly denounced as an obstinate liar, to be flogged because he saw things which his cousins did not see, not only terrified but stupefied him. He relapsed into bewildered silence, and bent all his small powers of deception to conceal his power of vision.
Hitherto “the sight” had been spasmodic; but either from some influence of climate or because of his nervous tension it now became almost unintermittent; he saw very often, and the strain of concealment troubled him. The visions were in a measure consolatory; that which he saw did not frighten him, and he lived in a world of sound, colour, and light, which was unshared by his companions. The child was very lonely, for he feared to talk much lest he should betray himself; nevertheless he became gradually aware of the fact that he had one staunch and kindly friend. This was his cousin Perry.
Perry was a good humoured, genial and sympathetic soul; his very superabundant vigour and strength gave him a chivalrous sense of pitiful protection towards the poor little frightened nervous child.
Once at a picnic on the Head, Dennis began to watch some little folk who were unseen by the others. Suddenly he became aware that Perry was watching him with puzzled eyes and knitted brows. Dennis started, his vision vanished, and he lay quivering with fear lest Perry should ask him what he had been looking at with such interest. But Perry did not ask; he smiled at his little cousin, and turned his eyes away.
After the picnic that night a party sat on the verandah and told ghost stories of a grisly nature. Dennis grew frightened, the “other world” was real to him; this grim aspect of it was terrible. He did not understand the things he saw, and the dread of seeing the horrors described in the tales fell upon him. The nervous system of a sensitive child is a delicate instrument, though it is sometimes the custom to treat it as though it were constructed of equal parts of whalebone, steel, and cast-iron. The stream of tales ran dry.
“What’s become of all your fine stories, Dennis?” said one of the circle mockingly; one who knew of the little tragedy enacted a month ago. “I’m afraid I’ve spoilt the flow of Dennis’s genius,” said March, and the laugh rippled round the circle at the expense of the young seer. Is this world so purely joyous that we should forget our heavenly heritage if our brethren did not try now and then to give us a little pain, even though it be a tongue stab to make us less contented with our earthly bliss? It would seem that there be many who think so. Perry put forth an arm in the darkness and laid it round the child’s neck.
“That’s a beastly shame,” he said to the first speaker.
They were only four homely schoolboy words; it was only the touch of a strong kindly young arm, but they drew forth a disproportionate flood of adoring gratitude from the child’s sensitive heart. Therefore when he went to bed that night he ventured to ask a favour of Perry. In Dennis’s room there was an unpleasant-looking green and yellow curtain, which had a reprehensible habit of swaying when there was not any wind. Ghost stories had made that curtain a thing of horror to Dennis; he feared it would draw back very slowly one of these days, and he should see some hideous object gibbering behind it—a class of vision of which he had formerly never dreamed. He once asked whether the curtain might be taken away: but as he could assign no reason for his request he was told “not to be silly,” and the curtain, like the poor, remained with him always. Alas! for the dumb terrors, the helpless inarticulateness of the soul of a young misunderstood child.
To-night he took courage.
“Perry,” he said, “won’t you come and stay with me till I’m asleep?”
Since the five days’ holy war which March had waged with Dennis the child had stammered slightly; it was a pathetic little falter of the tongue and Perry felt vaguely touched by it. He looked at him questioningly. At last he said:
“Why? Well, never mind. Right you are.”
He entered the room whistling, and by some instinct drew the green and yellow curtain back. Dennis undressed and slipped into bed. Perry knelt down, put his arm over the child and spoke kindly:
“You’re not very happy here, Den,” he said; “what’s the matter with you?”
Dennis bit his lip and closed his eyes; at last by dint of coaxing Perry arrived at the fact that Dennis was mourning over the sin of deceit.
“That wasn’t much,” said Perry immorally but cheerfully.
He hesitated, then he said in a whisper:
“I say, Denny, which was the lie, eh?”
He felt the slender body beneath his arm start, quiver, and grow unnaturally still.
“Was it a lie that you saw those things or that you didn’t see them, which?”
“Th-that I saw th-them.”
There was a pause. Then Perry said gently:
“Poor little chap; it’s a shame. All right old man. Go to sleep; I’ll stay with you.”
To himself he said: “Who’s to blame for that lie, Den or the dad?”
The holidays were nearly over; Perry was about to return for his last term to Harrow and Dennis was going for his first term to a preparatory school. Before his final departure Perry was going to walk fifteen miles in order to stay for a couple of days with some friends. A week before this visit there was a farewell picnic at the Head. It was a lovely day and the sea was blue and calm. Perry was on the cliff building the fire for the picnic tea; Dennis was on the rocks below. Then he turned and ran; he rushed up the cliff path sobbing out that there was a drowned man in the water below. Of course March, Perry, and three or four young men ran to the shore only to see the water rippling peacefully in and the brown weed swaying with the lazy tide.
March shouted to the child on the cliff:
“Come here.”
Dennis obeyed him shuddering still.
“There’s no drowned man here,” said March sternly. “Why did you say there was?”
The child caught his breath with a jerk and his face grew white as ashes. The thing he so dreaded had come; he had betrayed himself. He glanced imploringly at his only hope—Perry, and his lip quivered.
“It was the weed he saw,” said Perry. “He’s always fanciful and nervous you know.”
“Nonsense,” said March. “These are his old tricks. I thought I’d cured you of this, Dennis.”
He left the shore with an angry glance at the child.
Dennis began to cry, and Perry laid a hand on his shoulder. Dennis clutched his arm.
“O Perry,” he wailed, “do go to him. Do speak to him. Do tell him I’m sorry. I’d n-never have said what I saw if I hadn’t thought everyb-body could see it t-too.”
“I thought so,” said Perry under his breath; “you do see these things and you pretend you don’t for fear of a licking.”
“Don’t tell. Please don’t tell; dear Perry, d-don’t tell.”
“All right, don’t cry. I’ll speak to the governor.”
But Perry spoke in vain. March was an obstinate thick-headed man, and he was very angry indeed. The vials of his righteous wrath descended on the luckless seer, who was utterly broken and unnerved in consequence. Perry also was very angry though not with the helpless little victim of March’s dull wits. When three days after the child’s punishment a drowned sailor was actually washed up at the Head, Perry boldly avowed his belief in the visions of Dennis. March was as angry with Perry as it was possible for him to be with his idolised only son. He made many acute and scathing remarks about ignorance, superstition, and naughty, lying, hysterical children whose imagination and hysteria must be crushed with the strong hand of authority.
Perry went away in a very bad temper, and Dennis remained behind in such a state of abject terror that he hardly dared to grasp his coffee cup when it was offered to him at the breakfast table lest it should prove to be an elusive and unshared vision.
On the evening of Perry’s departure Dennis stood at the door of his uncle’s study trying to make up his mind to go in. Like many men who never read anything save the daily paper March had a “study.” At last Dennis went in. March who was writing a letter looked up:
“Well, Dennis, what is it?”
“H-have you heard from Perry, Uncle?” stammered the child.
“Heard from Perry! The boy’s daft. He only left this morning.”
“O,” said Dennis nervously, “y-yes, so he did; I f-forgot.”
And he crept out again like a frightened mouse.
The next morning a telegram arrived for Perry which his father opened; it was from the friends with whom he was supposed to be staying asking the reason of his non-arrival; Perry was going over to play in a cricket match; hence their agitation. March rode over to them at once. Perry had not arrived; inquiries on the road gained no tidings of him. Search was made for him throughout that day and through the night and through the next day and still there was no news of Perry.
For the first time in his life March was shaken to the finest fibre of his soul. His son was the apple of his eye, the best beloved of all his children. He felt a tremor of the nerves which he would have called weakness and affectation in another. When on the third night the searchers returned with no tidings of the young man, March went to his room with a grey-hued face and eyes that were glazed with agony and suspense. He sat at his table and bowed his head upon it. He tried to pray—March was a somewhat conventionally religious man—but he could only groan. In the room above where was the green and yellow curtain the child knelt by the side of the bed shaking from head to foot, the drops of agony standing on his forehead. The soul which was so much older than the little body was wrestling in the throes of a complex passion of love and personal cowardly dread; the poor little ten-year old body could scarcely support the strain.
In the afternoon, two hours after Perry had left, Dennis knelt by the little pool and chanced to look therein. Before his eyes a picture grew. It was Perry stunned and lifeless lying in a hollow, the mouth of which was hidden by elder bushes with their luscious black berries. It was a narrow rocky crevasse formed by the rending slipping land. Everything about the picture was very clear; on the hill above the hollow was an old pine tree twisted into a strange shape; there was a bent bough on it on which a human form dangled—a dead man hanged by the neck to the bent tree. This was the vision that had driven Dennis to his uncle’s room; since then the picture appeared to him again and yet again. Sometimes the hanged man was not there, but the scene was always the same point for point. Even now as he knelt it formed itself between him and the green and yellow curtain.
The child sobbed and twisted his fingers in his hair. In his ears rang the stern words: “If I hear a whisper of this again I shall write very strongly to Mr. Brownlow and warn him of your untruthfulness.”
Mr. Brownlow was Dennis’s future schoolmaster and poor Dennis pictured himself as being pilloried and held up for execration before a whole community of youthful devotees of truth. But then there was Perry. Perry had been kind to him; Perry had banished the terrors of the green and yellow curtain; had tried to screen him from wrath. If only some one else could see! His Highland nurse had told him “the sight” was God’s gift. If only He would give that gift to some one else; to some one who would not be punished and scolded because of his possession. Dennis had prayed on this subject with a child’s unreasoning and sometimes unreasonable faith, and now he once more extended his clasped hands and sobbed into the darkness:
“O do-do-do make some one else see instead of me.”
But no one else saw, and the burden, responsibility, and terror of a gift, whatsoever be its nature, lay heavily on the slender shoulders of Dennis. Therefore the end was inevitable. All strong powers lie upon the men who possess them like mighty compelling forces unless the man be stronger than the gift. To Dennis and to no other was the vision; as he closed his streaming eyes it slowly formed itself once more. He staggered to his feet and made for the room below; the force was stronger than he, or else he was stronger than his weak nerves and trembling body. Though March should beat him within an inch of his fragile life he must tell that which he saw. He did not hesitate now; he opened the door and went straight in. March raised his head, started, and stood up.
“Dennis! Bless my soul, child, what are you doing at this hour? Not undressed. Are you ill.”
“Uncle Hugh,” said Dennis, steadying himself by the table edge, “I—I know where Perry is. At least I think so.”
“You know where Perry is. What do you mean?”
The child began to describe the place of his vision and March listened with growing interest and excitement; when Dennis spoke of the pine and the dangling figure he sprang up:
“It’s the highwayman’s pine,” he almost shouted; “they say a man was hanged there a hundred years ago. But I’ll take my oath you’ve never been there. How do you know the place?”
“I s-saw it,” faltered Dennis, and having thus betrayed his evil-doing he swung forward and fainted. When he recovered he was lying on a sofa and March was pouring water on his face.
“Lie still,” he said kindly. “Don’t be frightened. You must have been dreaming, you know. I—I think I’ll go to this place you dreamed of. It is superstition, of course, but er—er——”
March called a maid to tend the child; then he summoned the men who had been searching through the day and led them on another quest. This time they found the missing lad. He was insensible and his leg was broken.
The next day the doctor spoke gravely of the condition of his patient. “I am very much afraid his condition is serious,” he said. “If he had been cared for at once recovery would have been quite certain; but he has been lying there half-stunned and without food, drink, or care four days and nights.”
March did not speak; possessed by a sudden thought he sought his nephew.
“Dennis, child,” he said, “when did you first see the place where we found Perry?”
“The day he left.”
“Why didn’t you tell me at once what you saw? Perry’s very ill from lying there four days.”
“I’m sorry,” murmured Dennis, “I—I thought you’d, you’d——”
“You thought I should be angry?”
“Y-yes, I was afraid.”
He did not know how innocently he avenged himself and paid off old scores. March was silent for a minute, then he said in a low voice: “It’s just. It’s my own fault.”
He stooped and took the child’s face gently between his hands, kissed his forehead and went out alone to wrestle with his pain and anxiety.
As this tale began so it ends at the pool in the landslip. Perry lay beside the stream apparently none the worse for his fall of the year before. Dennis sitting cross-legged beside the little rock basin watched the water. March was talking with his son; following the direction of Perry’s smiling eyes he saw Dennis. Dennis’s pictures were less frequent now and his “stories” were less marvellous. The press of outer interest which crowded in was doing its work. March looked at the boy as he rose and stood beside him and laid his hand on his head:
“Seeing pictures?” he asked with a half-mocking laugh. March’s position was a very illogical one and he was semi-conscious of the fact. The child looked up and nodded.
“What nonsense,” said March, “it’s all fancy. If there was anything to see why shouldn’t I see it?”
“Come, father,” said Perry laughing, “why can’t I tell ‘Rule Britannia’ from ‘God save the King?’”
“Nonsense! I tell you it’s a rampant medieval superstition that’s got hold of you. As for Denny he’s a little donkey.”
But he laughed and pulled the boy’s hair with a gentle hand; which seems to prove that one is not necessarily incapable of learning even after one has “come to forty years.”
Note.—This story is founded on fact. That is to say, although it is mine as regards characters and incidents, themotif, the clairvoyance of the child, is true. The drastic methods which were employed for the repression of the gifts of the luckless little seer are also facts, and that is the reason I wrote the story.