Weird and Witty Tales of Mystery (11 page)

Through sleep only they will open again before you,—steeped in the
illusive vagueness of the first long-past day,—peopled only by friends
outreaching to you. Soundlessly you will tread those shadowy pavements
many times,—to knock in thought, perhaps, at doors which the dead will
open to you.... But with the passing of years all becomes dim—so dim
that even asleep you know 'tis only a ghost-city, with streets going to
nowhere. And finally whatever is left of it becomes confused and
blended with cloudy memories of other cities,—one endless bewilderment
of filmy architecture in which nothing is distinctly recognizable,
though the whole gives the sensation of having been seen before ...
ever so long ago.

Meantime, in the course of wanderings more or less aimless, there has
slowly grown upon you a suspicion of being haunted,—so frequently does
a certain hazy presence intrude itself upon the visual memory. This,
however, appears to gain rather than to lose in definiteness: with each
return its visibility seems to increase.... And the suspicion that you
may be haunted gradually develops into a certainty.

You are haunted,—whether your way lie through the brown gloom of
London winter, or the azure splendour of an equatorial day,—whether
your steps be tracked in snows, or in the burning black sand of a
tropic beach,—whether you rest beneath the swart shade of Northern
pines, or under spidery umbrages of palm:—you are haunted ever and
everywhere by a certain gentle presence. There is nothing fearsome in
this haunting ... the gentlest face ... the kindliest voice—oddly
familiar and distinct, though feeble as the hum of a bee....

But it tantalizes,—this haunting,—like those sudden surprises of
sensation
within
us, though seemingly not
of
us, which some dreamers
have sought to interpret as inherited remembrances,—recollections of
pre-existence.... Vainly you ask yourself:—"Whose voice?—whose face?"
It is neither young nor old, the Face: it has a vapoury indefinableness
that leaves it a riddle;—its diaphaneity reveals no particular
tint;—perhaps you may not even be quite sure whether it has a beard.
But its expression is always gracious, passionless, smiling—like the
smiling of unknown friends in dreams, with infinite indulgence for any
folly, even a dream-folly.... Except in that you cannot permanently
banish it, the presence offers no positive resistance to your will: it
accepts each caprice with obedience; it meets your every whim with
angelic patience. It is never critical,—never makes plaint even by a
look,—never proves irksome: yet you cannot ignore it, because of a
certain queer power it possesses to make something stir and quiver in
your heart,—like an old vague sweet regret,—something buried alive
which will not die.... And so often does this happen that desire to
solve the riddle becomes a pain,—that you finally find yourself making
supplication to the Presence,—addressing to it questions which it will
never answer directly, but only by a smile or by words having no
relation to the asking,—words enigmatic, which make mysterious
agitation in old forsaken fields of memory ... even as a wind betimes,
over wide wastes of marsh, sets all the grasses whispering about
nothing. But you will question on, untiringly, through the nights and
days of years:—

—"Who are you?—what are you?—what is this weird relation that you
bear to me? All you say to me I feel that I have heard before—but
where?—but when? By what name am I to call you,—since you will answer
to none that I remember? Surely you do not live: yet I know the
sleeping-places of all my dead,—and yours, I do not know! Neither are
you any dream;—for dreams distort and change; and you, you are ever
the same. Nor are you any hallucination; for all my senses are still
vivid and strong.... This only I know beyond doubt,—that you are of
the Past: you belong to memory—but to the memory of what dead
suns?..."

Then, some day or night, unexpectedly, there comes to you at
least,—with a soft swift tingling shock as of fingers invisible,—the
knowledge that the Face is not the memory of any one face, but a
multiple image formed of the traits of many dear faces,—superimposed
by remembrance, and interblended by affection into one ghostly
personality,—infinitely sympathetic, phantasmally beautiful: a
Composite of recollections! And the Voice is the echo of no one voice,
but the echoing of many voices, molten into a single utterance,—a
single impossible tone,—thin through remoteness of time, but
inexpressibly caressing.

Thou most gentle Composite!—thou nameless and exquisite Unreality,
thrilled into semblance of being from out the sum of all lost
sympathies!—thou Ghost of all dear vanished things ... with thy vain
appeal of eyes that looked for my coming,—and vague faint pleading of
voices against oblivion,—and thin electric touch of buried hands, ...
must thou pass away forever with my passing,—even as the Shadow that I
cast, O thou Shadowing of Souls?...

I am not sure.... For there comes to me this dream,—that if aught in
human life hold power to pass—like a swerved sunray through
interstellar spaces,—into the infinite mystery ... to send one sweet
strong vibration through immemorial Time ... might not some luminous
future be peopled with such as thou?... And in so far as that which
makes for us the subtlest charm of being can lend one choral note to
the Symphony of the Unknowable Purpose,—in so much might there not
endure also to greet thee, another Composite One,—embodying indeed,
the comeliness of many lives, yet keeping likewise some visible memory
of all that may have been gracious in this thy friend...?

The little village of St. Faith's nestles in a hollow of wooded hill up
on the north bank of the river Fawn in the county of Hampshire huddling
close round its gray Norman church as if for spiritual protection
against the fays and fairies, the trolls and "little people," who might
be supposed still to linger in the vast empty spaces of the New Forest,
and to come after dusk and do their doubtful businesses. Once outside
the hamlet you may walk in any direction (so long as you avoid the high
road which leads to Brockenhurst) for the length of a summer afternoon
without seeing sign of human habitation, or possibly even catching
sight of another human being. Shaggy wild ponies may stop their feeding
for a moment as you pass, the white scuts of rabbits will vanish into
their burrows, a brown viper perhaps will glide from your path into a
clump of heather, and unseen birds will chuckle in the bushes, but it
may easily happen that for a long day you will see nothing human. But
you will not feel in the least lonely; in summer, at any rate, the
sunlight will be gay with butterflies, and the air thick with all those
woodland sounds which like instruments in an orchestra combine to play
the great symphony of the yearly festival of June. Winds whisper in the
birches and sigh among the firs; bees are busy with their irredolent
labor among the heather, a myriad birds chirp in the green temples of
the forest trees, and the voice of the river prattling over stony
places, bubbling into pools, chuckling and gulping round corners, gives
you the sense that many presences and companions are near at hand.

Yet, oddly enough, though one would have thought that these benign and
cheerful influences of wholesome air and spaciousness of forest were
very healthful comrades for a man, in so far as nature can really
influence this wonderful human genus which has in these centuries
learned to defy her most violent storms in its well-established houses,
to bridle her torrents and make them light its streets, to tunnel her
mountains and plough her seas, the inhabitants of St. Faith's will not
willingly venture into the forest after dark. For in spite of the
silence and loneliness of the hooded night it seems that a man is not
sure in what company he may suddenly find himself, and though it is
difficult to get from these villagers any very clear story of occult
appearances, the feeling is widespread. One story indeed I have heard
with some definiteness, the tale of a monstrous goat that has been seen
to skip with hellish glee about the woods and shady places, and this
perhaps is connected with the story which I have here attempted to
piece together. It too is well-known to them; for all remember the
young artist who died here not long ago, a young man, or so he struck
the beholder, of great personal beauty, with something about him that
made men's faces to smile and brighten when they looked on him. His
ghost they will tell you "walks" constantly by the stream and through
the woods which he loved so, and in especial it haunts a certain house,
the last of the village, where he lived, and its garden in which he was
done to death. For my part I am inclined to think that the terror of
the Forest dates chiefly from that day. So, such as the story is, I
have set it forth in connected form. It is based partly on the accounts
of the villagers, but mainly on that of Darcy, a friend of mine and a
friend of the man with whom these events were chiefly concerned.

The day had been one of untarnished midsummer splendour, and as the sun
drew near to its setting, the glory of the evening grew every moment
more crystalline, more miraculous. Westward from St. Faith's the
beechwood which stretched for some miles toward the heathery upland
beyond already cast its veil of clear shadow over the red roofs of the
village, but the spire of the gray church, overtopping all, still
pointed a flaming orange finger into the sky. The river Fawn, which
runs below, lay in sheets of sky-reflected blue, and wound its dreamy
devious course round the edge of this wood, where a rough two-planked
bridge crossed from the bottom of the garden of the last house in the
village, and communicated by means of a little wicker gate with the
wood itself. Then once out of the shadow of the wood the stream lay in
flaming pools of the molten crimson of the sunset, and lost itself in
the haze of woodland distances.

This house at the end of the village stood outside the shadow, and the
lawn which sloped down to the river was still flecked with sunlight.
Garden-beds of dazzling colour lined its gravel walks, and down the
middle of it ran a brick pergola, half-hidden in clusters of
rambler-rose and purple with starry clematis. At the bottom end of it,
between two of its pillars, was slung a hammock containing a shirt
sleeved figure.

The house itself lay somewhat remote from the rest of the village, and
a footpath leading across two fields, now tall and fragrant with hay,
was its only communication with the high road. It was low-built, only
two stories in height, and like the garden, its walls were a mass of
flowering roses. A narrow stone terrace ran along the garden front,
over which was stretched an awning, and on the terrace a young
silent-footed man-servant was busied with the laying of the table for
dinner. He was neat-handed and quick with his job, and having finished
it he went back into the house, and reappeared again with a large rough
bath-towel on his arm. With this he went to the hammock in the pergola.

"Nearly eight, sir," he said.

"Has Mr. Darcy come yet?" asked a voice from the hammock.

"No, sir."

"If I'm not back when he comes, tell him that I'm just having a bathe
before dinner."

The servant went back to the house, and after a moment or two Frank
Halton struggled to a sitting posture, and slipped out on to the grass.
He was of medium height and rather slender in build, but the supple
ease and grace of his movements gave the impression of great physical
strength: even his descent from the hammock was not an awkward
performance. His face and hands were of very dark complexion, either
from constant exposure to wind and sun, or, as his black hair and dark
eyes tended to show, from some strain of southern blood. His head was
small, his face of an exquisite beauty of modelling, while the
smoothness of its contour would have led you to believe that he was a
beardless lad still in his teens. But something, some look which living
and experience alone can give, seemed to contradict that, and finding
yourself completely puzzled as to his age, you would next moment
probably cease to think about that, and only look at this glorious
specimen of young manhood with wondering satisfaction.

He was dressed as became the season and the heat, and wore only a shirt
open at the neck, and a pair of flannel trousers. His head, covered
very thickly with a somewhat rebellious crop of short curly hair, was
bare as he strolled across the lawn to the bathing-place that lay
below. Then for a moment there was silence, then the sound of splashed
and divided waters, and presently after, a great shout of ecstatic joy,
as he swam up-stream with the foamed water standing in a frill round
his neck. Then after some five minutes of limb-stretching struggle with
the flood, he turned over on his back, and with arms thrown wide,
floated down-stream, ripple-cradled and inert. His eyes were shut, and
between half-parted lips he talked gently to himself.

"I am one with it," he said to himself, "the river and I, I and the
river. The coolness and splash of it is I, and the water-herbs that
wave in it are I also. And my strength and my limbs are not mine but
the river's. It is all one, all one, dear Fawn."

A quarter of an hour later he appeared again at the bottom of the lawn,
dressed as before, his wet hair already drying into its crisp short
curls again. Then he paused a moment, looking back at the stream with
the smile with which men look on the face of a friend, then turned
toward the house. Simultaneously his servant came to the door leading
on to the terrace, followed by a man who appeared to be some half-way
through the fourth decade of his years. Frank and he saw each other
across the bushes and garden-beds, and each quickening his step, they
met suddenly face to face round an angle of the garden walk, in the
fragrance of syringa.