 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. THE WHITE PEOPLE by Arthur MacKinn. Red by Charles Blickmore. PRO-LOG. SORCERY AND SANCTITY, said Ambrose, these are the only realities. Each is an ecstasy, a withdrawal from the common life. Cutgrave listened, interested. He had been brought by a friend to this moldering house in a northern suburb through an old garden to the room where Ambrose the recluse dozed and dreamed over his books. Yes, he went on. Magic is justified of her children. There are many, I think, who eat dry crusts and drink water with a joy infinitely sharper than anything within the experience of the practical epicure. You are speaking of the saints? Yes, and of the sinners too. I think you're falling into the very general error of confining the spiritual world to the supremely good. But the supremely wicked, necessarily, have their portion in it. The merely carnal, sensual man can no more be a great sinner than he can be a great saint. Most of us are just indifferent, mixed up creatures. We muddle through the world without realizing the meaning and the inner sense of things, and consequently our wickedness and our goodness are alike, second rate, unimportant. And you think the great sinner, then, will be an ascetic as well as the great saint? Great people of all kinds forsake the imperfect copies and go to the perfect originals I have no doubt but that many of the very highest among the saints have never done a good action, using the words in their ordinary sense. And on the other hand there have been those who have sounded the very depths of sin who all their lives have never done an ill deed. He went out of the room for a moment and caught grave in high delight, turned to his friend, and thanked him for the introduction. He's grand, he said. I never saw that kind of lunatic before. Ambrose returned with more whiskey and helped the two men in a liberal manner. He abused the tea-total sect with ferocity as he handed the seltzer, and pouring out a glass of water for himself was about to resume his monologue when Cotgrave broke in. I can't stand it, you know, he said. Your paradoxes are too monstrous. A man may be a great sinner, and yet never do anything sinful. Come! You're quite wrong, said Ambrose. I never make paradoxes. I wish I could. I merely said that a man may have an exquisite taste in Romané canti, and yet never have even smelt for ale. That's all, and it's more like a truism than a paradox, isn't it? Your surprise at my remark is due to the fact that you haven't realized what sin is. Yes, there is a sort of connection between sin with the capital letter and actions which are commonly called sinful with murder, theft, adultery, and so forth. Much the same connection that there is between the ABC and fine literature. But I believe that the misconception, it is all but universal, arises in great measure from our looking at the matter through social spectacles. We think that a man who does evil to us and to his neighbors must be very evil. So he is from a social standpoint. But can't you realize that evil in its essence is a lonely thing, a passion of the solitary individual soul? Really, the average murderer is not by any means a sinner in the true sense of the word. He is simply a wild beast that we have to get rid of to save our own necks from his knife. I should class him rather with tigers than with sinners. It seems a little strange. I think not. The murderer murders not from positive qualities but from negative ones. He lacks something which non-murderers possess. Evil, of course, is wholly positive. It is only on the wrong side. You may believe me that sin in its proper sense is very rare. It is probable that there have been far fewer sinners than saints. Yes, your standpoint is all very well for practical social purposes. We are naturally inclined to think that a person who is very disagreeable to us must be a very great sinner. It is very disagreeable to have one's pocket picked and we pronounce the thief to be a very great sinner. In truth, he is merely an undeveloped man. He cannot be a saint, of course, but he may be and often is an infinitely better creature than thousands who have never broken a single commandment. He is a great nuisance to us, I admit. And we very properly lock him up if we catch him. But between his troublesome and unsocial action and evil, oh, the connection is of the weakest, it was getting very late. The man who had brought Cotgrave had probably heard all this before since he assisted with a bland and judicious smile. But Cotgrave began to think that his lunatic was turning into a sage. Do you know, he said, you interest me immensely. You think, then, that we do not understand the real nature of evil? No, I don't think we do. We overestimate it and we underestimate it. We take the very numerous infractions of our social bylaws, the very necessary and very proper regulations which keep the human company together, and we get frightened at the prevalence of sin and evil. But this is really nonsense. Take theft, for example. Have you any horror at the thought of Robinhood, of the Highland Caterins of the 17th century, of the Moss Troopers, of the company promoters of our day? Then, on the other hand, we underrate evil. We attach such an enormous importance to the sin of meddling with our pockets and our wives that we have quite forgotten the awfulness of real sin. And what is sin? said Cotgrave. I think I must reply to your question with another. What would your feelings be seriously if your cat or dog began to talk to you and to dispute with you in human accents? You'd be overwhelmed with horror, I'm sure of it. And if the roses in your garden sang a weird song you would go mad. And suppose the stones in the road began to swell and grow before your eyes, and if the pebble that you noticed at night had shot out stony blossoms in the morning? Well, these examples should give you some notion of what sin really is. Look here, said the third man, hear the two placid. You two seem pretty well wound up, but I'm going home. I've missed my tram and I shall have to walk. Ambrose and Cotgrave seemed to settle down more profoundly when the other had gone out into the early misty morning and the pale light of the lamps. You astonish me, said Cotgrave. I had never thought of that. If that is really so, one must turn everything upside down, then the essence of sin really is. In the taking of heaven by storm, it seems to me, said Ambrose. It appears to me that it is simply an attempt to penetrate into another and higher sphere in a forbidden manner. You can understand why it is so rare. There are few indeed who wish to penetrate into other spheres, higher or lower, in ways allowed or forbidden. Men in the mass are amply content with life as they find it. Therefore there are few saints and sinners in the proper sense are fewer still, and men of genius who partake sometimes of each character are rare also. Yes, on the whole it is perhaps harder to be a great sinner than a great saint. There's something profoundly unnatural about sin. Is that what you mean? Exactly. Holiness requires as great or almost as great an effort, but holiness works on lines that were natural once. It is an effort to recover the ecstasy that was before the fall. But sin is an effort to gain the ecstasy and the knowledge that pertain alone to angels. And in making this effort man becomes a demon. I tell you that the mere murderer is not, therefore, a sinner. That is true, but the sinner is sometimes a murderer. Gildere's is an instance. So you see that while the good and the evil are unnatural to man as he now is, to man the social, civilized being, evil is unnatural in a much deeper sense than good. The saint endeavors to recover a gift which he has lost. The sinner tries to obtain something which was never his. In brief he repeats the fall. But you are a Catholic, said Cosgrave. Yes, I am a member of the persecuted Anglican Church. Then how about those texts which seem to reckon a sin that which you would set down as a mere trivial dereliction? Yes, but in one place the word sorcerers comes in the same sense, doesn't it? That seems to me to give the keynote. Consider. Can you imagine for a moment that a false statement which saves an innocent man's life is a sin? No. Very good then. It is not the mere liar who is excluded by those words. It is, above all, the sorcerers who use the material life, who use the failings incidental to material life as instruments to obtain their infinitely wicked ends. And let me tell you. This. Our higher senses are so blunted, we are so drenched with materialism, that we should probably fail to recognize real wickedness if we encountered it. But shouldn't we experience a certain horror, a terror such as you hinted we would experience if a rose-tree sang in the mere presence of an evil man? We should, if we were natural, children and women, feel this horror you speak of. Even animals experience it. But with most of us, convention and civilization and education have blinded and deafened and obscured the natural reason. Now, sometimes we may recognize evil by its hatred of the good. One doesn't need much penetration to guess at the influence which dictated, quite unconsciously, the blackwood review of Keats. But this is purely incidental. And as a rule, I suspect that the hierarchs of taffette pass quite unnoticed, or perhaps in certain cases, as good but mistaken men. But you use the word unconscious just now of Keats' reviewers. Is wickedness ever unconscious? Always. It must be so. It is like holiness and genius in this, as in other points. It is a certain rapture or ecstasy of the soul, a transcendent effort to surpass the ordinary bounds. So, surpassing these, it surpasses also the understanding, the faculty, that takes note of that which comes before it. No, a man may be infinitely and horribly wicked and never suspected. But I tell you, evil in this, it's certain and true sense, is rare, and I think is growing rarer. I'm trying to get hold of it all, said Cotgrave. From what you say, I gather that the true evil differs generically from that which we call evil? Quite so. There is no doubt an analogy between the two. A resemblance, such as enables us to use, quite legitimately, such terms as the foot of the mountain and the leg of the table. And sometimes, of course, the two speak, as it were, in the same language. The rough miner, or puddler, the untrained, undeveloped tiger-man, heated by a quarter to above his usual measure, comes home and kicks his irritating and injudicious wife to death. He is a murderer, and Gilles de Reyes is a murderer. But you see the gulf that separates the two? The word, if I may so speak, is accidentally the same in each case, but the meaning is utterly different. It is flagrant Hobbes and Jobson to confuse the two, or rather it is as if one supposed that juggernaut and the Argonauts had something to do etymologically with one another. And no doubt the same weak likeness or analogy runs between all the social sins and the real spiritual sins, and in some cases, perhaps, the lesser may be school masters to lead one on to the greater. From the shadow to the reality. If you are anything of a theologian, you will see the importance of all this. I am sorry to say, Remarque Cottgrave, that I have devoted very little of my time to theology. Indeed, I have often wondered on what grounds theologians have claimed the title of science, of sciences, for their favorite study. Since the theological books I have looked into have always seemed to me to be concerned with the feeble and obvious pieties, or with the kings of Israel and Judah. I do not care to hear about those kings. Ambrose grinned. We must try to avoid theological discussion, he said. I perceive that you would be a bitter disputant. But perhaps the dates of the kings have as much to do with theology as the hobnails of that murderous puddler with evil. Then to return to our main subject. You think that sin is an esoteric occult thing? Yes. It is the infernal miracle as holiness is the supernal. Now and then it is raised to such a pitch that we entirely fail to suspect its existence. It is like the note of the great pedal-pipes of the organ, which is so deep that we cannot hear it. In other cases it may lead to the lunatic asylum, or to still stranger issues, but you must never confuse it with mere social misdoing. Remember how the apostle, speaking of the other side, distinguishes between charitable actions and charity. And this one may give all one's goods to the poor and yet lack charity. So remember one may avoid every crime and yet be a sinner. Your psychology is very strange to me, said Godgrave, but I confess I like it. And I suppose that one might fairly deduce from your premises the conclusion that the real sinner might very possibly strike the observer as a harmless personage enough? Certainly, because the true evil has nothing to do with social life or social laws, or if it has, only incidentally and accidentally. It is a lonely passion of the soul, or a passion of the lonely soul, whichever you like. If, by chance, we understand it and grasp its full significance, then indeed it will fill us with horror and with awe. But this emotion is widely distinguished from the fear and the disgust with which we regard the ordinary criminal. Since the latter is largely or entirely founded on the regard which we have for our own skins or purses, we hate a murderer because we know that we should hate to be murdered or to have anyone that we like murdered. So on the other side we venerate the saints, but we don't like them as well as our friends. Can you persuade yourself that you would have enjoyed St. Paul's company? Do you think that you and I would have got on with Sir Gala had? So with the sinners as with the saints. If you met a very evil man and recognized his evil, he would no doubt fill you with horror and awe. But there's no reason why you should dislike him. On the contrary, it is quite possible that if you could succeed in putting the sin out of your mind, you might find the sinner capital company. And in a little while you might have to reason yourself back into horror. Still how awful it is if the roses in the lilies suddenly sang on this coming morning, if the furniture began to move in procession as in de Maupassant's tale. I am glad that you've come back to that comparison, said Cotgrave, because I wanted to ask you what it is that corresponds in humanity to these imaginary feats of inanimate things. In a word, what is sin? You've given me, I know, an abstract definition, but I should like a concrete example. I told you it was very rare, said Ambrose, who appeared willing to avoid the giving of a direct answer. The materialism of the age, which has done a good deal to suppress sanctity, has done perhaps more to suppress evil. We find the earth so very comfortable that we have no inclination either for a sense or a descent. It would seem as if the scholar who decided to specialize in taffette would be reduced to purely antiquarian researches. No paleontologist could show you a live pterodactyl. And yet you, I think, have specialized, and I believe that your researches have descended to our modern times. You really are interested, I see. Well, I confess that I have dabbled a little. And if you like, I can show you something that bears on the very curious subject we have been discussing. Ambrose took a candle and went away to a far dim corner of the room. Cotgrave saw him open a venerable bureau that stood there, and from some secret recess he drew out a parcel, and came back to the window where they had been sitting. Ambrose undid a wrapping of paper and produced a green pocket book. You will take care of it, he said. Don't leave it lying about. It is one of the choicester pieces in my collection, and I should be very sorry if it were lost. He fondled the faded binding. I knew the girl who wrote this, he said. When you read it, you will see how it illustrates the talk we have had tonight. There is a sequel, too, but I won't talk of that. There was an odd article in one of the reviews some months ago, he began again, with the air of a man who changes the subject. It was written by a doctor. Dr. Corrin, I think, was the name. He says that a lady, watching her little girl playing at the drawing-room window, suddenly saw the heavy sash give way and fall on the child's fingers. The lady fainted, I think, but at any rate the doctor was summoned, and when he addressed the child's wounded maimed fingers, he was summoned to the mother. She was groaning with pain, and it was found that three fingers of her hand, corresponding with those that had been injured on the child's hand, were swollen and inflamed, and later in the doctor's language, purulent sloughing said in. Ambrose still handled delicately the green volume. Well, here it is, he said at last, parting with difficulty it seemed from his treasure. You will bring it back as soon as you have read it, he said, as they went out into the hall into the old garden, faint with the odor of white lilies. There was a broad red band in the east as Cotgrave turned to go, and from the high ground where he stood he saw that awful spectacle of London in a dream. End of Part 1. The White People by Arthur Mackin. The Green Book. The Morocco binding of the book was faded, and the colour had grown faint, but there were no stains nor bruises nor marks of usage. The book looked as if it had been bought on a visit to London some seventy or eighty years ago, and had somehow been forgotten and suffered to lie away out of sight. There was an old, delicate, lingering odor about it, such an odor as sometimes haunts an ancient piece of furniture for a century or more. The end papers, inside the binding, were oddly decorated with coloured patterns and faded gold. It looked small, but the paper was fine, and there were many leaves, closely covered with minute, painfully formed characters. I found this book, the manuscript began, in a drawer in the old bureau that stands on the landing. It was a very rainy day, and I could not go out, so in the afternoon I got a candle and rummaged in the bureau. Nearly all the drawers were full of old dresses, but one of the small ones looked empty, and I found this book hidden right at the back. I wanted a book like this, so I took it to write in. It is full of secrets. I have a great many other books of secrets I have written, hidden in a safe place, and I am going to write here many of the old secrets and some new ones, but there are some I shall not put down at all. I must not write down the real names of the days and months which I found out a year ago, nor the way to make the Aklo letters, or the Chayan language, or the great beautiful circles, nor the Mao games, nor the chief songs. I may write something about all these things, but not the way to do them, for peculiar reasons. And I must not say who the nymphs are, or the doles, or Jilo, or what vulas mean. All these are most secret secrets, and I am glad when I remember what they are and how many wonderful languages I know. But there are some things that I call the secrets of the secrets of the secrets that I dare not think of unless I am quite alone, and then I shut my eyes and put my hands over them and whisper the word, and the alala comes. I only do this at night in my room, or in certain woods that I know, but I must not describe them as they are secret woods. Then there are the ceremonies, which are all of them important, but some are more delightful than others. There are the white ceremonies, and the green ceremonies, and the scarlet ceremonies. The scarlet ceremonies are the best. But there is only one place where they can be performed properly, though there is a very nice imitation, which I have done in other places. Besides these, I have the dances, and the comedy, and I have done the comedy sometimes when the others were looking, and they didn't understand anything about it. I was very little when I first knew about these things. When I was very small and mother was alive, I can remember remembering things before that, only it has all got confused. But I remember when I was five or six, I heard them talking about me when they thought I was not noticing. They were saying how queer I was a year or two before, and how nurse had called my mother to come and listen to me talking all to myself, and I was saying words that nobody could understand. I was speaking the zoo language, but I only remember a very few of the words, as it was about the little white faces that used to look at me when I was lying in my cradle. They used to talk to me, and I learned their language, and talked to them in it, about some great white place where they lived, where the trees and the grass were all white, and there were white hills as high up as the moon and a cold wind. I have often dreamed of it afterwards, but the faces went away when I was very little. But a wonderful thing happened when I was about five. My nurse was carrying me on her shoulder. There was a field of yellow corn, and we went through it. It was very hot. Then we came to a path through a wood, and a tall man came after us, and went with us till we came to a place where there was a deep pool, and it was very dark and shady. Nurse put me down on the soft moss under a tree, and she said, she can't get to the ponds now. So they left me there, and I sat quite still, and watched, and out of the water and out of the wood came two wonderful white people, and they began to play, and dance, and sing. There were a kind of creamy white like the old ivory figure in the drawing room. One was a beautiful lady with kind dark eyes, and a grave face, and long black hair, and she smiled such a strange sad smile at the other who laughed and came to her. They played together, and danced round and round the pool, and they sang a song till I fell asleep. Nurse woke me up when she came back, and she was looking something like the lady had looked, so I told her all about it, and asked her why she looked like that. At first she cried, and then she looked very frightened and turned quite pale. She put me down on the grass and stared at me, and I could see she was shaking all over. Then she said that I had been dreaming, but I knew I hadn't. Then she made me promise not to say a word about it to anybody, and if I did I should be thrown into the black pit. I was not frightened at all, though Nurse was, and I never forgot about it, because when I shut my eyes and it was quite quiet, and I was all alone, I could see them again, very faint and far away, but very splendid. And little bits of the song they sang came into my head, but I couldn't sing it. I was thirteen, nearly fourteen, when I had a very singular adventure, so strange that the day on which it happened is always called the White Day. My mother had been dead for more than a year, and in the morning I had lessons, but they let me go out for walks in the afternoon. And this afternoon I walked a new way, and a little brook led me into a new country, but I tore my frock getting through some of the difficult places, as the way was through many bushes and beneath the low branches of trees, and up thorny thickets on the hills, and by dark woods full of creeping thorns. And it was a long, long way. It seemed as if I was going on forever and ever, and I had to creep by a place like a tunnel where a brook must have been, but all the water had dried up, and the floor was rocky, and the bushes had grown overhead until they met, so that it was quite dark. And I went on and on through that dark place. It was a long, long way. And I came to a hill that I never saw before. I was in a dismal thicket full of black twisted bows that tore me as I went through them, and I cried out because I was smarting all over, and then I found that I was climbing. And I went up and up a long way till at last the thicket stopped, and I came out crying just under the top of a big bear place, where there were ugly gray stones lying all about on the grass, and here and there a little twisted, stunted tree came out from under a stone, like a snake. And I went up, right to the top, a long way. I never saw such big, ugly stones before. They came out of the earth, some of them, and some looked as if they had been rolled to where they were, and they went on and on as far as I could see, a long, long way. I looked out from them and saw the country, but it was strange. It was wintertime, and there were black, terrible woods hanging from the hills all round. It was like seeing a large room hung with black curtains, and the shape of the trees seemed quite different from any I had ever seen before. I was afraid. Then beyond the woods there were other hills round in a great ring, but I had never seen any of them. It all looked black, and everything had a voor over it. It was all so still and silent, and the sky was heavy and gray and sad, like a wicked, vorish dome in deep dendo. I went on into the dreadful rocks. There were hundreds and hundreds of them. Some were like horrid grinning men. I could see their faces as if they would jump at me out of the stone and catch hold of me and drag me with them back into the rock, so that I should always be there. And there were other rocks that were like animals creeping horrible animals, putting out their tongues, and others that were like words that I could not say, and others like dead people lying on the grass. I went on among them, though they frightened me, and my heart was full of wicked songs that they put into it. And I wanted to make faces and twist myself about in the way they did, and it went on and on a long way, till at last I liked the rocks, and they didn't frighten me any more. I sang the songs I thought of. Songs full of words that must not be spoken or written down. Then I made faces like the faces on the rocks, and I twisted myself about like the twisted ones, and I lay down flat on the ground like the dead ones. And I went up to one that was grinning and put my arms around him and hugged. And so I went on and on through the rocks till I came to a round mound in the middle of them. It was higher than a mound. It was nearly as high as our house. And it was like a green basin turned upside down, all smooth and round and green, with one stone like a post sticking up at the top. I climbed up the sides, but they were so steep that I had to stop or I should have rolled all the way down again. And I should have knocked against the stones at the bottom and perhaps been killed. But I wanted to get up to the very top of the big round mound. So I lay down flat in my face and took hold of the grass with my hands and drew myself up bit by bit till I was at the top. Then I sat down on the stone in the middle and looked all round about. I felt I had come such a long, long way just as if I were a hundred miles from home or in some other country or in one of the strange places I had read about in the tales of the genie and the Arabian knights or as if I had gone across the sea far away for years and I had found another world that nobody had ever seen or heard of before or as if I had somehow flown through the sky and fallen on one of the stars I had read about where everything is dead and cold and gray and there is no air and the wind doesn't blow. I sat on the stone and looked all round and down and round about me. It was just as if I was sitting on a tower in the middle of a great empty town because I could see nothing all around but the gray rocks on the ground. I couldn't make out their shapes anymore, but I could see them on and on for a long way and I looked at them and they seemed as if they had been arranged into patterns and shapes and figures. I knew they couldn't be because I had seen a lot of them coming right out of the earth joined to the deep rocks below so I looked again but still I saw nothing but circles and small circles inside big ones and pyramids and domes and spires and they seemed all to go round and round the place where I was sitting and the more I looked the more I saw great big rings of rocks getting bigger and bigger and I stared so long that it felt as if they were all moving and turning like a great wheel and I was turning too in the middle. I got quite dizzy and queer in the head and everything began to be hazy and not clear and I saw little sparks of blue light and the stones looked as if they were springing and dancing and twisting as they went round and round and round. I was frightened again and I cried out loud and jumped up from the stone I was sitting on and fell down. When I got up I was so glad they all looked still and I sat down on top and slid down the mound and went on again. I danced as I went in the peculiar way the rocks had danced when I got giddy and I was so glad I could do it quite well and I danced and danced along and sang extraordinary songs that came into my head. At last I came to the edge of that great flat hill and there were no more rocks and the way went again through a dark thicket in a hollow. It was just as bad as the other one I went through climbing up. But I didn't mind this one because I was so glad I had seen those singular dances and could imitate them. I went down creeping through the bushes and a tall nettle stung me on my leg and made me burn but I didn't mind it and I tingled with the bows and the thorns but I only laughed and sang. Then I got out of the thicket into a close valley, a little secret place like a dark passage that nobody ever knows of because it was so narrow and deep and the woods were so thick rounded. There is a steep bank with trees hanging over it and there the ferns keep green all through the winter when they are dead and brown on the hill. And the ferns there have a sweet rich smell like what oozes out of fir trees. There was a little stream of water running down this valley so small that I could easily step across it. I drank the water with my hand and it tasted like bright yellow wine and it sparkled and bubbled as it ran down over beautiful red and yellow and green stones so that it seemed alive and all colors at once. I drank it and I drank more with my hand but I couldn't drink enough so I lay down and bent my head and sucked the water up with my lips. It tasted much better drinking that way and a ripple would come up to my mouth and give me a kiss and I laughed and drank again and pretended there was a nymph like the one in the old picture at home who lived in the water and was kissing me. So I bent low down to the water and put my lips softly to it and whispered to the nymph that I would come again. I felt sure it could not be common water. I was so glad when I got up and went on and I danced again and went up and up the valley under hanging hills. And when I came to the top the ground rose up in front of me, tall and steep as a wall and there was nothing but the green wall in the sky. I thought of forever and forever, world without end, amen. And I thought I must have really found the end of the world because it was like the end of everything as if there could be nothing at all beyond except the kingdom of Vour where the light goes when it is put out and the water goes when the sun takes it away. I began to think of all the long, long way I had journeyed, how I had found a brook and followed it and followed it on and gone through bushes and thorny thickets and dark woods full of creeping thorns. Then I had crept up a tunnel under trees and climbed a thicket and seen all the gray rocks and sat in the middle of them when they turned round and then I had gone on through the gray rocks and come down the hill through the stinging thicket and up the dark valley all a long, long way. I wondered how I should get home again if I could ever find the way. And if my home was there any more or if it were turned and everybody in it into gray rocks as in the Arabian nights. So I sat down on the grass and thought what I should do next. I was tired and my feet were hot with walking and as I looked about I saw there was a wonderful well just under the high steep wall of grass. All the ground round it was covered with bright green dripping moss. There was every kind of moss there, moss like beautiful little ferns and like palms and fir trees. And it was all greenest jewelry and drops of water hung on it like diamonds. And in the middle was the great well, deep and shining and beautiful, so clear that it looked as if I could touch the red sand at the bottom but it was far below. I stood by it and looked in as as if I were looking in a glass. At the bottom of the well in the middle of it the red grains of sand were moving and stirring all the time and I saw how the water bubbled up but at the top it was quite smooth and full and brimming. It was a great well, large like a bath and with the shining glittering green moss about it it looked like a great white jewel with green jewels all around. My feet were so hot and tired that I took off my boots and stockings and let my feet down into the water and the water was soft and cold and when I got up I wasn't tired anymore and I felt I must go on farther and farther and see what was on the other side of the wall. I climbed up it very slowly going sideways all the time and when I got to the top and looked over I was in the queerest country I had seen stranger even than the hill of the gray rocks. It looked as if earth children had been playing there with their spades as it was all hills and hollows and castles and walls made of earth and covered with grass. There were two mounds like big beehives round and great and solemn and then hollow basins and then a steep mounting wall like the ones I saw once by the seaside where the big guns and the soldiers were. I nearly fell into one of the round hollows it went away from under my feet so suddenly and I ran fast down the side and stood at the bottom and looked up. It was strange and solemn to look up. There was nothing but the gray heavy sky and the sides of the hollow. Everything else had gone away and the hollow was the whole world and I thought that at night it must be full of ghosts and moving shadows and pale things where the moon shone down to the bottom at the dead of night and the wind wailed up above. It was so strange and solemn and lonely like a hollow temple of dead heathen gods. It reminded me of a tale my nurse had told me when I was quite little. It was the same nurse that took me into the wood where I saw the beautiful white people. And I remembered how nurse had told me the story one winter night when the wind was beating the trees against the wall and crying and moaning in the nursery chimney. She said there was, somewhere or other, a hollow pit just like the one I was standing in. Everybody was afraid to go into it or near it. It was such a bad place. But once upon a time there was a poor girl who said she would go into the hollow pit and everybody tried to stop her but she would go. And she went down into the pit and came back laughing and said there was nothing there at all except green grass and red stones and white stones and yellow flowers. And soon after people saw she had most beautiful emerald earrings and they asked how she got them as she and her mother were quite poor. But she laughed and said her earrings were not made of emeralds at all but only of green grass. Then one day she wore on her breast the reddest ruby that anyone had ever seen and it was as big as a hen's egg and glowed and sparkled like a hot burning coal of fire. And they asked how she got it as she and her mother were quite poor. But she laughed and said it was not a ruby at all but only a red stone. And then one day she wore round her neck the loveliest necklace that anyone had ever seen much finer than the queen's finest and it was made of great bright diamonds, hundreds of them, and they shone like all the stars on a night in June. So they asked her how she got it as she and her mother were quite poor but she laughed and said they were not diamonds at all but only white stones. And one day she went to the court and she wore on her head a crown of pure angel gold. So nurse said and it shone like the sun and it was much more beautiful than the crown the king was wearing himself and in her ears she wore the emeralds and the big ruby was the brooch on her breast and the great diamond necklace was sparkling on her neck. And the king and queen thought she was some great princess from a long way off and got down from their thrones and went to meet her but somebody told the king and queen who she was and that she was quite poor so the king asked why she wore a gold crown and how she got it as she and her mother were so poor and she laughed and said it wasn't a gold crown at all but only some yellow flowers she had put in her hair and the king thought it was very strange and said that she should stay at the court and they would see what would happen next and she was so lovely that everybody said that her eyes were greener than the emeralds, that her lips were redder than the ruby, that her skin was whiter than the diamonds and that her hair was brighter than the golden crown so the king's son said he would marry her and the king said he might and the bishop married them and there was a great sufferer and afterwards the king's son went to his wife's room but just when he had his hand in the door he saw a tall black man with a dreadful face standing in front of the door and a voice said venture not upon your life this is mine own wedded wife then the king's son fell down on the ground in a fit and they came and tried to get into the room but they couldn't and they hacked at the door with hatchets but the wood had turned hard as iron and at last everybody ran away they were so frightened at the screaming and laughing and shrieking and crying that came out of the room but next day they went in and found there was nothing in the room but thick black smoke because the black man had come and taken her away and on the bed they were two knots of faded grass and a red stone and some white stones and some faded yellow flowers I remembered this tale of nurses while I was standing at the bottom of the deep hollow it was so strange and solitary there and I felt afraid I could not see any stones or flowers but I was afraid of bringing them away without knowing and I thought I would do a charm that came into my head to keep the black man away so I stood right in the very middle of the hollow and I made sure that I had none of those things on me and then I walked round the place and touched my eyes and my lips and my hair in a peculiar manner and whispered some queer words that nurse taught me to keep bad things away then I felt safe and climbed up out of the hollow and went on through all those mounds and hollows and walls till I came to the end which was high above all the rest and I could see that all the different shapes of the earth were arranged in patterns something like the gray rocks only the pattern was different it was getting late and the air was indistinct but it looked from where I was standing something like two great figures of people lying on the grass and I went on and at last I found a certain wood which is too secret to be described and nobody knows of the passage into it which I found out in a very curious manner by seeing some little animal running to the wood through it so I went after the animal by a very narrow dark way under thorns and bushes and it was almost dark when I came to a kind of open place in the middle and there I saw the most wonderful sight I have ever seen but it was only for a minute as I ran away directly and crept out of the wood by the passage I had come by and ran and ran as fast as ever I could because I was afraid what I had seen was so wonderful and so strange and beautiful but I wanted to get home and think of it and I did not know what might not happen if I stayed by the wood I was hot all over and trembling and my heart was beating and strange cries that I could not help came from me as I ran from the wood I was glad that a great white moon came up from over a round hill and showed me the way so I went back through the hollows and mounds and down the close valley and up through the thicket over the place of the gray rocks and so at last I got home again. My father was busy in his study and the servants had not told about my not coming home though they were frightened and wondered what they ought to do so I told them I had lost my way but I did not let them find out the real way I had been. I went to bed and lay awake all through the night, thinking of what I had seen. When I came out of the narrow way and it looked all shining though the air was dark it seemed so certain and all the way home I was quite sure that I had seen it and I wanted to be alone in my room and be glad over it all to myself and shut my eyes and pretend it was there and do all the things I would have done if I had not been so afraid. But when I shut my eyes the sight would not come and I began to think about my adventures all over again and I remembered how dusky and queer it was at the end and I was afraid it must be all a mistake because it seemed impossible it could happen. It seemed like one of nurse's tales which I didn't really believe in though I was frightened at the bottom of the hollow and the stories she told me when I was little came back into my head and I wondered whether it was really there what I thought I had seen or whether any of her tales could have happened a long time ago. It was so queer I lay awake there in my room at the back of the house and the moon was shining on the other side towards the river so the bright light did not fall upon the wall and the house was quite still. I had heard my father come upstairs and just after the clock struck twelve and after the house was still and empty as if there was nobody alive in it. And though it was all dark and indistinct in my room a pale glimmering kind of light shone in through the white blind and once I got up and looked out and there was a great black shadow of the house covering the garden looking like a prison where men are hanged and then beyond it was all white and the wood shone white with black gulfs between the trees was still and clear and there were no clouds in the sky. I wanted to think of what I had seen but I couldn't and I began to think of all the tales that nurse had told me so long ago that I thought I had forgotten but they all came back and mixed up with the thickets and the gray rocks and the hollows in the earth and the secret wood till I hardly knew what was new and what was old or whether it was not all dreaming. And then I remembered that hot summer afternoon so long ago when nurse left me by myself in the shade and the white people came out of the water and out of the wood and played and danced and sang and I began to fancy that nurse told me about something like it before I saw them only I couldn't recollect exactly what she told me. Then I wondered whether she had been the white lady as I remembered she was just as white and beautiful and had the same dark eyes and black hair and sometimes she smiled and looked like the lady had looked when she was telling me some of her stories beginning with once on a time or in the time of the fairies. But I thought she couldn't be the lady as she seemed to have gone a different way into the wood and I didn't think the man who came after us could be the other or I couldn't have seen that wonderful secret in the secret wood. I thought of the moon but it was afterwards when I was in the middle of the wild land where the earth was made into the shape of great figures and it was all walls and mysterious hollows and smooth round mounds then I saw the great white moon come up over a round hill. I was wondering about all these things till at last I got quite frightened because I was afraid something had happened to me and I remembered nurse's tale of the poor girl who went into the hollow pit and was carried away at last by the black man. I knew I had gone into a hollow pit too and perhaps it was the same and I had done something dreadful. So I did the charm over again and touched my eyes and my lips and my hair in a peculiar manner and said the old words from the fairy language so that I might be sure I had not been carried away. I tried again to see the secret wood and to creep up the passage and see what I had seen there but somehow I couldn't and I kept on thinking of nurse's stories. There was one I remembered about a young man who once upon a time went hunting and all the day he and his hounds hunted everywhere and they crossed the rivers and went into all the woods and went round the marshes but they couldn't find anything at all and they hunted all day till the sun sank down and began to set behind the mountain and the young man was angry because he couldn't find anything and he was going to turn back when just as the sun touched the mountain he saw come out of a break in front of him a beautiful white stag and he cheered to his hounds but they whined and would not follow and he cheered to his horse but it shivered and stood stock still and the young man jumped off the horse and left the hounds and began to follow the white stag all alone and soon it was quite dark and the sky was black without a single star shining in it and the stag went away into the darkness and though the man had brought his gun with him he never shot at the stag because he wanted to catch it and he was afraid he would lose it in the night but he never lost it once though the sky was so black and the air was so dark and the stag went on and on till the young man didn't know a bit of where he was and they went through enormous woods where the air was full of whispers and a pale dead light came out of the rotten trunks that were lying on the ground and just as the man thought he had lost the stag he would see it all white and shining in front of him and he would run fast to catch it but the stag always ran faster so he did not catch it and they went through the enormous woods and they swam across rivers and they waded through black marshes where the ground bubbled and the air was full of willow the wisps and the stag fled away down into rocky narrow valleys where the air was like the smell of a vault and the man went after it and they went over the great mountains and the man heard the wind come down from the sky and the stag went on and the man went after at last the sun rose and the young man found he was in a country he had never seen before it was a beautiful valley with a bright stream running through it and a great big round hill in the middle and the stag went down the valley towards the hill and it seemed to be getting tired and went slower and slower and though the man was tired too he began to run faster and he was sure he could catch the stag at last but just as they got to the bottom of the hill and the man stretched out his hand to catch the stag it vanished into the earth and the man began to cry he was so sorry that he had lost it after all his long hunting but as he was crying he saw there was a door in the hill just in front of him and he went in and it was quite dark but he went on as he thought he would find the white stag and all of a sudden it got light and there was the sky and the sun shining and the birds singing in the trees and there was a beautiful fountain and by the fountain a lovely lady was sitting who was the queen of the fairies and she told the man she had changed herself into a stag to bring him there because she loved him so much then she brought out a great gold cup covered with jewels from her fairy palace and she offered him wine in the cup to drink and he drank and the more he drank the more he longed to drink because the wine was enchanted so he kissed the lovely lady and she became his wife and he stayed all that day and all that night in the hill where she lived and when he woke he found he was lying on the ground close to where he had seen the stag first and his horse was there and his hounds were there waiting and he looked up and the sun sank behind the mountain and he went home and lived a long time but he would never kiss any other lady because he had kissed the queen of the fairies and he would never drink common wine anymore because he had drunk enchanted wine and sometimes a nurse told me tales that she had heard from her great grandmother who was very old and lived in a cottage on the mountain all alone and most of these tales were about a hill where people used to meet at night long ago and they used to play all sorts of strange games and do queer things that nurse told me of but I couldn't understand and now she said everybody but her great grandmother had forgotten all about it and nobody knew where the hill was not even her great grandmother but she told me one very strange story about the hill and I trembled when I remembered it she said that people always went there in summer when it was very hot and they had to dance a good deal it would be all dark at first and there were trees there which made it much darker and people would come one by one from all directions by a secret path which nobody else knew and two persons would keep the gate and everyone as they came up had to give a very curious sign which nurse showed me as well as she could but she said she couldn't show me properly and all kinds of people would come there would be gentle folks and village folks and some old people and boys and girls and quite small children who sat and watched and it would all be dark as they came in except in one corner where someone was burning something that smelled strong and sweet and made them laugh and there one would see a glaring of coals and the smoke mounting up red so they would all come in and when the last had come there was no door anymore so that no one else could get in even if they knew there was anything beyond and once a gentleman who was a stranger and had written a long way lost his path at night and his horse took him into the very middle of the wild country where everything was upside down and there were dreadful marshes and great stones everywhere and holes underfoot and the trees looked like gibbit posts because they had great black arms that stretched out across the way and this strange gentleman was very frightened and his horse began to shiver all over and at last it stopped and wouldn't go any further and the gentleman got down and tried to lead the horse but it wouldn't move and it was all covered with sweat like death so the gentleman went on all alone going farther and farther into the wild country till at last he came to a dark place where he heard shouting and singing and crying like nothing he had ever heard before it all sounded quite close to him but he couldn't get in until he began to call and while he was calling something came behind him and in a minute his mouth and arms and legs were all bound up and he fell into a swoon and when he came to himself he was lying by the roadside just where he had first lost his way under a blasted oak with a black trunk and his horse was tied beside him so he rode on to the town and told the people what had happened and some of them were amazed but others knew so when once everybody had come there was no door at all for anybody else to pass in by and when they were all inside round in a ring touching each other someone began to sing in the darkness and someone else would make a noise like thunder with a thing they had on purpose and on still nights people would hear the thundering noise far far away beyond the wildland and some of them who thought they knew what it was used to make a sign on their breasts when they woke up in their beds at dead of night and heard that terrible deep noise like thunder on the mountains and the noise and the singing would go on and on for a long time and the people who were in a ring swayed a little too and fro and the song was in an old old language that nobody knows now and the tune was queer nurse said her great-grandmother had known someone who remembered a little of it when she was quite a little girl and nurse tried to sing some of it to me and it was so strange a tune that i turned all cold and my flesh crept as if i had put my hand on something dead sometimes it was a man that sang and sometimes it was a woman and sometimes the one who sang it did it so well the two or three people who were there fell to the ground shrieking and tearing with their hands the singing went on and the people in the ring kept swaying too and fro for a long time and at last the moon would rise over a place they called the toll dale and came up and showed them swinging and swaying from side to side with the sweet thick smoke curling up from the burning coals and floating in circles all around them then they had their supper a boy and a girl brought it to them the boy carried a great cup of wine and the girl carried a cake of bread and they passed the bread and the wine round and round but they tasted quite different from common bread and common wine and changed everybody that tasted them then they all rose up and danced and secret things were brought out from some hiding place and they played extraordinary games and danced round and round and round in the moonlight and sometimes people would suddenly disappear and never be heard of afterwards and nobody knew what had happened to them and they drank more of that curious wine and they made images and worshiped them and nurse showed me how the images were made one day when we were out for a walk and we passed by a place where there was a lot of wet clay so nurse asked me if I would like to know what those things were like that they made on the hill and I said yes then she asked me if I would promise never to tell a living soul a word about it and if I did I was to be thrown into the black pit with the dead people and I said I wouldn't tell anybody and she said the same thing again and again and I promised so she took my wooden spade and dug a big lump of clay and put it in my tin bucket and told me to say if anyone met us that I was going to make pies when I went home then we went on a little way until we came to a little break growing right down into the road and nurse stopped and looked up the road and down it and peeped through the hedge into the field on the other side and then she said quick and we ran into the break and crept in and out among the bushes until we had gone a good way from the road then we sat down under a bush and I wanted so much to know what nurse was going to make with the clay but before she would begin she made me promise again and not to say a word about it and she went again and peeped through the bushes on every side though the lane was so small and deep that hardly anybody ever went there so we sat down and nurse took the clay out of the bucket and began to knead it with her hands and do queer things with it and turn it about and she hid it under a big dock leaf for a minute or two and then she brought it out again and then she stood up and sat down and walked round the clay in a peculiar manner and all the time she was softly singing a sort of rhyme and her face got very red then she sat down again and took the clay in her hands and began to shape it into a doll but not like the dolls I have at home and she made the queerest doll I had ever seen all out of the wet clay and hid it under a bush to get dry and hard and all the time she was making it she was singing these rhymes to herself and her face got redder and redder so we left the doll there hidden away in the bushes where nobody would ever find it and a few days later we went the same walk and when we came to that narrow dark part of the lane where the break runs down to the bank nurse made me promise all over again and she looked about just as she had done before and we crept into the bushes till we got to the green place where the little clay man was hidden I remember it all so well though I was only eight and it is eight years ago now as I am writing it down but the sky was a deep violet blue and in the middle of the break where we were sitting there was a great elder tree covered with blossoms and on the other side there was a clump of meadow sweet and when I think of that day the smell of the meadow sweet and elder blossom seems to fill the room and if I shut my eyes I can see the glaring blue sky with little clouds very white floating across it and nurse who went away long ago sitting opposite me and looking like the beautiful white lady in the wood so we sat down and nurse took out the clay doll from the secret place where she had hidden it and she said we must pay our respects and she would show me what to do and I must watch her all the time so she did all sorts of queer things with the little clay man and I noticed she was all streaming with perspiration though we had walked so slowly and then she told me to pay my respects and I did everything she did because I liked her and it was such an odd game and she said that if one loved very much the clay man was very good if one did certain things with it and if one hated very much it was just as good only one had to do different things and we played with it a long time and pretended all sorts of things nurse said her great grandmother had told her all about these images but what we did was no harm at all only a game but she told me a story about these images that frightened me very much and that was what I remembered that night that I was lying awake in my room in the pale empty darkness thinking of what I had seen and the secret wood end of part two the white people by Arthur Macken this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org the white people by Arthur Macken read by Charles Blakemore part three nurse said there was once a young lady of the high gentry who lived in a great castle and she was so beautiful that all the gentlemen wanted to marry her because she was the loveliest lady that anybody had ever seen and she was kind to everybody and everybody thought she was very good but though she was polite to all the gentlemen who wish to marry her she put them off and said she couldn't make up her mind and she wasn't sure she wanted to marry anybody at all and her father who was a great lord was angry though he was so fond of her and he asked her why she wouldn't choose a bachelor out of all the handsome young men who came to the castle but she only said that she didn't love any of them very much and she must wait and if they pastored her she said she would go and be a nun in a nunnery so all the gentlemen said they would go away and wait for a year and a day and when a year and a day were gone they would come back again and ask her to say which one she would marry so the day was appointed and they all went away and the lady had promised that in a year and a day it would be her wedding day with one of them but the truth was that she was the queen of the people who danced on the hill on summer nights and on the proper nights she would lock the door of her room and she and her maid would steal out of the castle by a secret passage that only they knew of and go away up to the hill in the wild land and she knew more of the secret things than anyone else and more than anyone knew before or after because she would not tell anybody the most secret secrets she knew how to do all the awful things how to destroy young men and how to put a curse on people and other things that I could not understand and her real name was the lady Avalon but the dancing people called her Kasap which meant somebody very wise in the old language and she was whiter than any of them and taller and her eyes shone in the dark like burning rubies and she could sing songs that none of the others could sing and when she sang they all fell down on their faces and worshiped her and she could do what they called shib show which was a very wonderful enchantment she would tell the great lord her father that she wanted to go into the woods to gather flowers so he let her go and she and her maid went into the woods where nobody came and the maid would keep watch then the lady would lie down under the trees and begin to sing a particular song and she stretched out her arms and from every part of the wood great serpents would come hissing and gliding in and out among the trees and shooting out their forked tongues as they crawled up to the lady and they all came to her and twisted round her around her body and her arms and her neck till she was covered with writhing serpents and there was only her head to be seen and she whispered to them and she sang to them and they writhed round and round faster and faster till she told them to go and they all went away directly back to their holes and on the lady's breast there would be a most curious beautiful stone shaped something like an egg and colored dark blue and yellow and red and green marked like a serpent's scales it was called a glam stone and with it one could do all sorts of wonderful things and the nurse said her great-grandmother had seen a glam stone with her own eyes and it was for all the world shiny and scaly like a snake and the lady could do a lot of other things as well but she was quite fixed that she would not be married and there were a great many gentlemen who wanted to marry her but there were five of them who were chief and their names were Sir Simon, Sir John, Sir Oliver, Sir Richard, and Sir Roland all the others believed she spoke the truth and that she would choose one of them to be her man when a year and a day was done it was only Sir Simon who was very crafty who thought she was deceiving them all and he vowed he would watch and try if he could find out anything and though he was very wise he was very young and he had a smooth soft face like a girl's and he pretended as the rest did that he would not come to the castle for a year and a day and he said he was going away beyond the sea to foreign parts but he really only went a very little way and came back dressed like a servant girl and so he got a place in the castle to wash the dishes and he waited and watched and he listened and said nothing and he hid in dark places and woke up at night and looked out and he heard things and he saw things that he thought were very strange and he was so sly that he told the girl that waited on the lady that he was really a young man and that he had dressed up as a girl because he loved her so very much and wanted to be in the same house with her and the girl was so pleased that she told him many things and he was more than ever certain that the lady Avalon was deceiving him and the others and he was so clever and told the servant so many lies that one night he managed to hide in the lady Avalon's room behind the curtains and he stayed quite still and never moved and at last the lady came and she bent down under the bed and raised up a stone and there was a hollow place underneath and out of it she took a waxen image just like the clay one that I and nurse had made in the break and all the time her eyes were burning like rubies and she took the little wax doll up in her arms and held it to her breast and she whispered and she murmured and she took it up and she laid it down again and she held it high and she held it low and she laid it down again and she said happy is he that begat the bishop that ordered the clerk that married the man that had the wife that fashioned the hive that harbored the bee that gathered the wax that my own true love was made of and she brought out of an ombre a great golden bowl and she brought out of a closet a great jar of wine and she poured some of the wine into the bowl and she laid her mannequin very gently in the wine and washed it in the wine all over then she went to a cupboard and took a small round cake and laid it on the image's mouth and then she bore it softly and covered it up and Sir Simon who was watching all the time though he was terribly frightened saw the lady bend down and stretch out her arms and whisper and sing and then Sir Simon saw beside her a handsome young man who kissed her on the lips and they drank wine out of the golden bowl together and they ate the cake together but when the sun rose there was only the little wax doll and the lady hid it again under the bed in the hollow place so Sir Simon knew quite well what the lady was and he waited and he watched till the time she had said was nearly over and in a week the year and a day would be done and one night when he was watching behind the curtains in her room he saw her making more wax dolls and she made five and hid them away and the next night she took one out and held it up and filled the golden bowl with water and took the doll by the neck and held it under the water then she said Sir Dickon Sir Dickon your day is done you shall be drowned in the water won and the next day news came to the castle that Sir Richard had been drowned at the ford and at night she took another doll and tied a violet cord around its neck hung it up on a nail then she said Sir Roland your life has ended at span high on a tree I see you hang and the next day news came to the castle that Sir Roland had been hanged by robbers in the wood and at night she took another doll and drove her bodkin right into its heart then she said Sir Noel Sir Noel so cease your life your heart is pierced with the knife and the next day news came to the castle that Sir Oliver had fought in a tavern and a stranger had stabbed him to the heart and at night she took another doll and held it to a fire of charcoal till it was melted and then she said Sir John return and turn to clay in fire of fever you waste away and the next day news came to the castle that Sir John had died in a burning fever so then Sir Simon went out of the castle and mounted his horse and rode away to the bishop and told him everything and the bishop sent his men and they took the Lady Avalon and everything she had done was found out so on the day after the year in a day when she was to have been married they carried her through the town in her smock and they tied her to a great stake in the marketplace and burned her alive before the bishop with her wax image hung around her neck and the people said the wax men screamed in the burning of the flames and I thought of this story again and again as I was lying awake in my bed and I seemed to see the Lady Avalon in the marketplace with the yellow flames eating up her beautiful white body and I thought of it so much that I seemed to get into the story myself and I fancied that I was the lady and that they were coming to take me to be burnt with fire with all the people in the town looking at me and I wondered whether she cared after all the strange things she had done and whether it hurt very much to be burnt at the stake I tried again and again to forget nurses stories and to remember the secret I had seen that afternoon and what was in the secret wood but I could only see the dark and a glimmering in the dark and then it went away and I only saw myself running and then a great moon came up white over a dark round hill then all the old stories came back again and the queer rhymes that nurse used to sing to me and there was one beginning Halsey comesy Helen musty that she used to sing very softly when she wanted me to go to sleep and I began to sing it to myself inside of my head and I went to sleep the next morning I was very tired and sleepy and could hardly do my lessons and I was very glad when they were over and I had my dinner as I wanted to go out and be alone it was a warm day and I went to a nice turfy hill by the river and sat down in my mother's old shawl that I had brought with me on purpose the sky was gray like the day before but there was a kind of white gleam behind it and from where I was sitting I could look down on the town and it was all still and quiet and white like a picture I remembered that it was on that hill that nurse taught me to play an old game called Troy town in which one had to dance and wind in and out on a pattern in the grass and then when one had danced and turned long enough the other person asks you questions and you can't help answering whether you want to or not and whatever you are told to do you feel you have to do it nurse said there used to be a lot of games like that that some people knew of and there was one by which people could be turned into anything you liked and an old man her great-grandmother had seen had known a girl who had been turned into a large snake and there was another very ancient game of dancing and winding and turning by which you could take a person out of himself and hide him away as long as you liked and his body went walking about quite empty without any sense in it but I came to that hill because I wanted to think of what had happened the day before and of the secret of the wood from the place where I was sitting I could see beyond the town into the opening I had found where a little brook had led me into an unknown country and I pretended I was following the brook over again and I went all the way in my mind and at last I found the wood and crept into it under the bushes and then in the dusk I saw something that made me feel as if I were filled with fire as if I wanted to dance and sing and fly up into the air because I was changed and wonderful but what I saw was not changed at all and had not grown old and I wondered again and again how such things could happen and whether nurses stories were really true because in the daytime in the open air everything seemed quite different from what it was at night when I was frightened and thought I was to be burned alive I once told my father one of her little tales which was about a ghost and asked him if it was true and he told me it was not true at all and that only common ignorant people believed in such rubbish he was very angry with nurse for telling me the story and scolded her and after that I promised her I would never whisper a word of what she told me and if I did I should be bitten by the great black snake that lived in the pool in the wood and all alone on the hill I wondered what was true I had seen something very amazing and very lovely and I knew a story and if I had really seen it and not made it up out of the dark and the black bow and the bright shining that was mounting up to the sky from over the great round hill but I'd really seen it in truth then there were all kinds of wonderful and lovely and terrible things to think of so I longed and trembled and I burned and got cold and I looked down to the on the town so quiet and still like a little white picture and I thought over and over if it could be true I was a long time before I could make up my mind to anything there was such a strange fluttering at my heart that seemed to whisper to me all the time that I had not made it up out of my head and yet it seemed quite impossible and I knew my father and everybody would say it was dreadful rubbish I never dreamed of telling him or anybody else a word about it because I knew it would be of no use and I should only get laughed at or scolded so for a long time I was very quiet and went about thinking and wondering and at night I used to dream of amazing things and sometimes I woke up in the early morning and held up my arms with a cry and I was frightened too because there were dangers and some awful thing would happen to me unless I took great care if the story were true these old tales were always in my head night and morning and I went over them and told them to myself over and over again and went for walks in the places where nurse had told them to me and when I sat in the nursery by the fire in the evenings I used to fancy nurse was sitting in the other chair and telling me some wonderful story in a low voice for fear anybody should be listening but she used to like best to tell me about things when we were right out in the country far from the house because she said she was telling me such secrets and walls have ears and if it was something more than ever secret we had to hide in breaks or woods and I used to think it was such fun creeping along a hedge and going very softly and then we would get behind the bushes or run into the wood all of a sudden when we were sure that none was watching us so we knew that we had our secrets quite all to ourselves and nobody else at all knew anything about them now and then when we had hidden ourselves as I have described she used to show me all sorts of odd things one day I remember we were in a hazel break overlooking the brook and we were so snug and warm as though it was April the sun was quite hot and the leaves were just coming out nurse said she would show me something funny that would make me laugh and then she showed me as she said how one could turn a whole house upside down without anybody being able to find out and the pots and pans would jump about and the china would be broken and the chairs would tumble over of themselves I tried it one day in the kitchen and found I could do it quite well and a whole row of plates on the dresser fell off it and cook's little work table tilted up and turned right over before her eyes as she said but she was so frightened and turned so white that I didn't do it again as I liked her and afterwards in the hazel cops when she had shown me how to make things tumble about she showed me how to make rapping noises and learned how to do that too then she taught me rhymes to say on certain occasions and peculiar marks to make on other occasions and other things that her great-grandmother had taught her when she was a little girl herself and these were all the things I was thinking about in those days after the strange walk when I thought I had seen a great secret and I wished a nurse were there for me to ask her about it but she had gone away more than two years before and nobody seemed to know what had become of her or where she had gone but I shall always remember those days if I lived to be quite old because all the time I felt so strange wondering and doubting and feeling quite sure at one time and making up my mind and then I would feel quite sure that such things couldn't really happen and it began all over again but I took great care not to do certain things that might be very dangerous so I waited and wondered for a long time and though I was not sure at all I never dared to try to find out but one day I became sure that all that nurse had said was quite true and I was all alone when I found it out I trembled all over with joy and terror and as fast as I could I ran into one of the old breaks where we used to go it was the one by the lane where nurse made the little clay man and I ran into it and I crept into it and when I came to the place where the elder was I covered up my face with my hands and laid down flat on the grass and I stayed there for two hours without moving whispering to myself delicious terrible things and saying some words over and over again was all true and wonderful and splendid and when I remembered the story I knew and thought of what I had really seen I got hot and I got cold and the air seemed full of scent and flowers and singing and first I wanted to make a little clay man like the one nurse had made so long ago and I had to invent plans and stratagems and to look about and to think of things beforehand because nobody must dream of anything that I was doing or going to do and I was too old to carry clay about in a tin bucket at last I thought of a plan and I brought the wet clay to the break and did everything that nurse had done only I made a much finer image than the one she had made and when it was finished I did everything that I could imagine and much more than she did because it was the likeness of something far better and a few days later when I had done my lessons early I went for the second time by the way of the little brook that had led me into a strange country and I followed the brook and went through the bushes and beneath the low branches of trees and up thorny thickets on the hill and by dark woods full of creeping thorns a long long way then I crept through the dark tunnel where the brook had been and the ground was stony till at last I came to the thicket that climbed up the hill and though the leaves were coming out upon the trees everything looked almost as black as it was on the first day that I went there and the thicket was just the same and I went up slowly till I came out on the big bare hill and began to walk among the wonderful rocks I saw the terrible vor again on everything for though the sky was brighter the ring of wild hills all around was still dark and the hanging woods looked dark and dreadful and the strange rocks were as gray as ever and when I looked down on them from the great mound sitting on the stone I saw all their amazing circles and rounds within rounds and I had to sit quite still and watch them as they began to turn about me and each stone danced in its place and they seemed to go round and round in a great whirl as if one were in the middle of all the stars and heard them rushing through the air so I went down among the rocks to dance with them and to sing extraordinary songs and I went down through the other thicket and drank from the bright stream in the close and secret valley putting my lips down to the bubbling water and then it went on till I came to the deep brimming well among the glittering moss and I sat down I looked before me into the secret darkness of the valley and behind me was the great high wall of grass and all around me there were the hanging woods that made the valley such a secret place I knew there was nobody here at all besides me and that no one could see me so I took off my boots and stockings and let my feet down into the water saying the words that I knew it was not cold at all as I expected but warm and very pleasant and when my feet were in it I felt as if they were in silk or as if the nymph were kissing them so when I had done I said the other words and made the signs and then I dried my feet with a towel I had brought on purpose and put on my stockings and boots then I climbed up the steep wall and went into the place where there were the hollows and the two beautiful mounds and the round ridges of land and all the strange shapes I did not go down into the hollow this time but I turned at the end and made out the figures quite plainly as it was lighter and I had remembered the story I had quite forgotten before and in the story the two figures are called Adam and Eve and only those who know the story understand what they mean so I went on and on till I came to the secret wood which must not be described and I crept into it by the way I had found and when I had gone about halfway I stopped and looked round and got ready and I bound the handkerchief tightly around my eyes and made quite sure that I could not see at all not a twig nor the end of a leaf nor the light of the sky as it was an old red silk handkerchief with large yellow spots that went round twice and covered my eyes so that I could see nothing then I began to go on step by step very slowly my heart beat faster and faster and something rose in my throat that choked me and made me want to cry out but I shut my lips and went on bows caught my hair as I went and great thorns tore me but I went on to the end of the path then I stopped and held up my arms and bowed and I went round the first time feeling with my hands and there was nothing I went round the second time feeling with my hands and there was nothing then I went round the third time feeling with my hands and the story was all true and I wished that the years were gone by and then I had not so long a time to wait before I was happy forever and ever nurse must have been a prophet like those we read of in the bible everything that she said began to come true and since then other things that she told me have happened that was how I came to know that her stories were true and that I had not made up the secret myself out of my own head but there was another thing that happened that day I went a second time to the secret place it was at the deep brimming well and when I was standing on the moss I bent over and looked in and then I knew who the white lady was that I had seen come out of the water in the wood long ago when I was quite little and I trembled all over because that told me other things then I remembered how sometime after I had seen the white people in the wood nurse asked me more about them and I told her all over again and she listened and said nothing for a long long time and at last she said you will see her again so I understood what had happened and what was to happen and that understood about the nymphs how I might meet them in all kinds of places and they would always help me and I must always look for them and find them in all sorts of strange shapes and appearances and without the nymphs I could never have found the secret and without them none of the other things could happen nurse had told me all about them long ago but she called them by another name and I did not know what she meant or what her tales of them were about only that they were very queer and they were two kinds the bright and the dark and both were very lovely and very wonderful and some people saw only one kind and some only the other but some saw them both but usually the dark appeared first and the bright ones afterwards and there were extraordinary tales about them it was a day or two after I had come home from the secret place that I first really knew the nymphs nurse had shown me how to call them and I had tried but I did not know what she meant and so I thought it was all nonsense but I made up my mind I would try again so I went to the wood where the pool was where I saw the white people and I tried again the dark nymph Alana came and she turned the pool of water into a pool of fire epilogue that's a very queer story said caught grave handing back the green book to the recluse ambrose I see the drift of a good deal but there are many things I do not grasp at all on the last page for example what does she mean by nymphs well I think there are references throughout the manuscript to certain processes which have been handed down by tradition from age to age some of these processes are just beginning to come within the purview of science which has arrived at them or rather at the steps which lead to them by quite different paths I've interpreted the reference to nymphs as a reference to one of these processes and you believe that there are such things oh I think so yes I believe I could give you a convincing evidence on that point I'm afraid you've neglected the study of alchemy it is a pity for the symbolism at all events is very beautiful and moreover if you were acquainted with certain books on the subject I could recall to your mind phrases which might explain a good deal in the manuscript which you have been reading yes but I want to know whether you seriously think that there is any foundation of fact behind these fancies is it not all a department of poetry a curious dream with which man has indulged himself I can only say that it is no doubt better for the great massive people to dismiss it all as a dream but if you ask me my veritable belief that goes quite the other way no I should not say belief but rather knowledge I may tell you that I have known cases in which men have stumbled quite by accident on certain of these processes and have been astonished by wholly unexpected results in the cases I am thinking of there could have been no possibility of suggestion or subconscious action of any kind one might as well suppose a schoolboy suggesting the existence of escholus to himself while he plods mechanically through the clenches but you have noticed the obscurity ambrose went on and in this particular case it must have been dictated by instinct since the writer never thought that her manuscripts would fall into other hands but the practice is universal and for most excellent reasons powerful and sovereign medicines which are of necessity virulent poisons also are kept in a locked cabinet the child may find the key by chance and drink herself dead but in most cases the search is educational and the files contain precious elixirs for him who has patiently fashioned the key for himself you do not care to go into details no frankly I do not know you must remain unconvinced but you saw how the manuscript illustrates the talk we had last week is this girl still alive no I was one of those who found her I knew the father well he was a lawyer and it always left her very much to herself he thought of nothing but deeds and leases and the news came to him as an awful surprise she was missing one morning I suppose it was about a year after she'd written what you have read the servants were called and they told things and put the only natural interpretation on them a perfectly erroneous one they discovered that green book somewhere in her room and I found her in the place that she described with so much dread lying on the ground before the image it was an image yes it was hidden by the thorns and the thick undergrowth that had surrounded it it was a wild lonely country but you know what it was like by her description though of course you will understand that the colors have been heightened a child's imagination always makes the heights higher and the depths deeper than they really are and she had unfortunately for herself something more than imagination one might say perhaps that the picture in her mind which she succeeded in a measure in putting into words was the scene as it would have appeared to an imaginative artist but it is a strange desolate land and she was dead yes she had poisoned herself in time no there was not a word to be said against her in the ordinary sense you may recollect a story I told you the other night about a lady who saw her child's fingers crushed by a window and what was this statue well it was a roman workmanship of a stone that with the centuries had not blackened but had become white and luminous the thicket had grown up about it and concealed it and in the middle ages the followers of a very old tradition had known how to use it for their own purposes in fact it had been incorporated into the monstrous mythology of the Sabbath you will have noted that those to whom a sight of that shining whiteness had been vouchsafed by chance or rather perhaps by a parent chance were required to blindfold themselves on their second approach that is very significant and is it there still I sent for tools and we hammered it into dust and fragments the persistence of tradition never surprises me ambrose went on after a pause I could name many an English parish where such traditions as that girl had listened to in her childhood are still existent and occult but unabated vigor no for me it is the story not the sequel which is strange and awful for I have always believed that wonder is of the soul end of the white people by Arthur Mackins