From
The white people (1899, 1922 ed)
by
Arthur Machen
Sir Dickon, Sir Dickon, your day is done,
You shall be drowned in the water wan.
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 round its neck and hung it up on
a nail. Then she said--
Sir Rowland, your life has ended its span,
High on a tree I see you hang.
And the next day news came to the castle that Sir Rowland
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 Noll, Sir Noll, so cease your life,
Your heart piercèd 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. 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 Avelin, and everything she had done was
found out. So on the day after the year and 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
market-place, and burned her alive before the bishop with
her wax image hung round her neck. And people said the wax
man 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 Avelin in the market-place,
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 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 burned at the stake. I tried
again and again to forget nurse's 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 "Halsy cumsy 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 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 on my mother's old
shawl that I had brought with me on purpose. The sky was
grey, 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 b 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 nurse's 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 bough, and the bright
shining that was mounting up to the sky from over the great
round hill, but had 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 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 out 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 brakes 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
brake, over-looking 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 I 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 copse,
when she had shown me how to make things tumble about, she
showed me how to make rapping noises, and I learnt 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
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 live 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 happen really, 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 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 brakes 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 lay 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. It 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 brake, 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 voor
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 grey 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 I 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 myself,
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. And 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 are 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 turned round, and got ready, and I
bound the handkerchief tightly round 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. Boughs caught in 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 out 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 that I had not so
long a time to wait before I was happy for ever 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 of 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 I 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 there 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 came
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, Alanna, came, and she turned
the pool of water into a pool of fire. . . .
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The Green Book - Part 2
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