The invisible playmate : W.V. her book & In memory of W.V.

I

LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY Of CALIFORNIA

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ISAAC FOOT

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EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY
EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS

ESSAYS AND
BELLES LETTRES

THE INVISIBLE PLAYMATE
W. V. HER BOOK, AND
IN MEMORY OF W. V.

THIS IS NO. 566 OF eFe'R^m^:Kis

LIB%AT<X THE PUBLISHERS WILL
BE PLEASED TO SEND FREELY TO ALL
APPLICANTS A LIST OF THE PUBLISHED
AND PROJECTED VOLUMES, ARRANGED
UNDER THE FOLLOWING SECTIONS:

TRAVEL $ SCIENCE $ FICTION

THEOLOGY & PHILOSOPHY

HISTORY ^ CLASSICAL

FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

ESSAYS ^ ORATORY

POETRY & DRAMA

BIOGRAPHY

REFERENCE

ROMANCE

IN FOUR STYLES OF BINDING: CLOTH,
FLAT BACK, COLOURED TOP; LEATHER,
ROUND CORNERS, GILT TOP; LIBRARY
BINDING IN CLOTH, & QUARTER PIGSKIN

London: J. M. DENT & SONS, Ltd.
New V^ork: E. P. BUTTON & CO.

55^ INVISIBLE

IPLAYIVIATE
^^. V. HER
BOOK^ef
IN MEMORY
OF \K>: V ^
BT \^ILLIAM
CANTON

LONDON &.TORONTO ..,,
PUBLISHED BY J M DENT l^jif
& SONS DP &IN NEW YORK
BYE P DUTTON &. CO

2T^^

0-1 i !

First Issue of this Edition . 1911
Reprinted .... 1916

INTRODUCTION

The sun, the sea, the forest wild —
All nature loves a little child."

This couplet is from the "Legend of Childhood " in a
volume of poems entitled Comrades, which Mr. William
Canton published after the wonderful and almost too
pitiful trilogy of " W. V." here put into one volume. That
is a legend to whose transcription he has given himself
as no other writer has done in all the recent era of
child-literature or child-interpretation; and it is only
on perusing again these records, where the chronicler's
touch is lighter than down, yet poignant as any in
the sad history of the death of kings, that one under-
stands at all where this art that is before art gets its
translunary tints and its deceptively wayward style.
It may be understood, it cannot be analysed ; the critic
is lost in the attempt to explain it, and he falls back as
he must on rhyme and the rhymed philosophy that the
creator and sad remembrancer of " W. V." has supplied
in the " Legend of Childhood: " to wit —

" Unnoticed by historian and sage,

These bright-eyed chits have been from age to age

The one supreme majority. I find

Mankind hath been their slaves and womankind

Their worshippers; and both have lived in dread

Of time and tyrants, toiled and wept and bled

Because of some quaint elves they called their own.

Had little ones in Egypt been unknown

No Pharaoh would have had the power, methinks,

To pile the Pyramids or carve the Sphinx.'

With Marjorie Fleming. " W. V." lives in a child's
region of her own ; it may not be a mile from Cloan Den,
and on the skirts of the Caledonian Forest. But it is
very near mother-earth, and very close to the stars. The

vii

viii The Invisible Playmate

effect of reading its memorials in prose and verse is to
make one wish their writer would be tempted to turn
child chronicler at large, and deal with all the children
of history and legend who, like her, never grew up^ but
remained children for ever. E. R.

Mr. Canton's published works comprise: —

A Lost Epic, and other Poems, 1887; The Invisible Playmate: a
Story of the Unseen, 1894, 1897; W. V., Her Book and Various
Verses, 1896; A Child's Book of Saints, 1898, 1902; Children's
Sayings, Edited, with a Digression on the Small People, 1900; The
True Annals of Fairyland (The Reign of King Herla), 1900, etc. ;
In Memory of W. V. (Winifred Vida Canton), 1901; Comrades:
Poems, Old and New, 1902; What is the Bible Society? 1903;
The Story of the Bible Society, 1904; A History of the British
and Foreign Bible Society, 1904-1910; Little Hands and God's
Book: a Sketch of the Bible Society (1804-1904), 1905 ; The Bible
and the English People, 1911.

CONTENTS

The Invisible Playmate: —
The Invisible Playmate
Rhymes about a Little Woman
An Unknown Child- Poem .
At a Wayside Station

W.

V. Her Book:—
Her Birthday .
Her Book

Her Friend Littlejohn
Her Bed-Time .
Her Violets

In Memory of W. V. : —
Winifred Vida .
Recollections of her Schoolday.s
In the Golden Prime

Our Stories: —

Beside a Summer Fire

Chimney Flowers .

A Prisoner of War .

A Red- Letter Day .

The First Parting .

Santa Clans and the Babe

Three Steps and a Little Door
Our Poems ....
Sub Umbra Crucis
Envoy. , . -. .

PAGE

3

19
27
37

49

63
75
89

95

117

129

143

171
176
179
181
190
196
198
203
219
229

ix

THE INVISIBLE PLAYMATE

The poor lost image brought back plain as dreams.

Browning.

No visual shade of some one lost,
But he, the Spirit himself, may come
When all the nerve of sense is numb.

Tennyson.

God, by God's ways occult,

May — doth, I will believe — bring back

All wanderers to a single track.

Browning.

Vous voyez sous mon rire mes larmes,
Vieux arbres, n'est-ce pas ? et vous n'avez pas cm
Que j'oublierai jamais le petit disparu.

Hugo.

THE INVISIBLE PLAYMATE

The following pages are taken from a series of letters
which I received a year or two ago ; and since no one
is now left to be affected by the publication of them
it can be no abuse of the writer's confidence to employ
them for the purpose I have in view. Only by such
extracts can I convey any clear impression of the
character of the person most concerned.

To many the chief interest in what follows will
centre in the unconscious self-portraiture of the
writer. Others may be most attracted by the frank
and naive picture of child-life. And yet a third class
of readers may decide that the one passage of any
real value is that which describes the incident with
which the record closes. On these matters, however,
any comment from me appears to be unnecessary.

I need only add that the writer of the letters was
twice married, and that just before the death of his
first wife their only child, a girl, died at the age of
six weeks.

" I never could understand why men should be so
insanely set on their first-born being a boy. This of
ours, I am glad to say, is a girl. I should have been
pleased either way, but as a matter of fact I wanted
a girl. I don't know why, but somehow with a girl
one feels that one has provided against the disillusion-
ment, the discomfort, the homelessness of old age and
of mental and physical decrepitude.

For one thing above all others I am grateful:

3

<<

4 The Invisible Playmate

that, so far as I can see, heredity has played no
horrible pranks upon us. The poor little mortal is
wholesome and shapely from her downy Httle poll to
her little pink toe-nails. She could not have been
lovelier if Math had made her out of flowers (or was
itGwydion? You vememheT the Mabinogion). And
she grips hard enough already to remind one of her
remote arboreal ancestors. One of God's own ape-
lets in the Tree of Life! "

" Exultant! No, dear C — anything but that!
Glad as I am, I am morbidly apprehensive and alert
to a m3(Tiad possibilities of misery. I am all quick.
I feel as though I had shed my epidermis, and had
but ' true skin ' for every breath and touch of mis-
chance to play upon.

" / have been through if all be/ore. I was exultant
then. I rode a bay trotting-horse, and was proud of
heart and wore gloves in my cap. I feel sick at heart
when I think how I was wrapped up in that child;
how in my idolatry of her I clean forgot the savage
irony of existence; how, when I was most unsus-
pecting, most unprepared — unarmed, naked — I was
— stabbed from behind!

" I know what you will say. I see the grave look
on your face as you read this. Perhaps I ought not
to write it. I have never said so much to any one
before; but that is what I felt — what I feel.

" Do you think, if I can help it, I shall give any one
a chance of surprising me so again ? This poor Httle
mite can bring my heart with a leap into my throat,
or send it down shivering into my boots — that I can't
help — but never so long as I live, and dote on her as
I may, never shall I again be taken at unawares. I
have petrified mj^self against disaster. Sometimes

The Invisible Playmate 5

as I am returning home in the grey dawn, sometimes
even when I am putting the latch-key into the lock,
I stop and hear an inward voice whispering ' Baby
is dead ' ; and I reply, ' Then she is dead.' The rest
I suppress, ignore, refuse to feel or think. It is not
pleasant schooling; but I think it is wise."

To this I presume I must have replied with the
usual obWous arguments, for he writes later:

"No; I ^ow7 think I lose more than I gain. Trust
me, I take all I can get: only, I provide against
reprisals. Yes; unfortunately all this does sound
like Cahban on Setebos. Is that Caliban's fault?
Dear man, I know I shock you. I almost shock
myself; but how can I trust? Shall I bargain and
say, ' You took the other: ensure me this one, and
I will think You as good and wise and merciful — as
a man ? ' And if I make no bargain, but simply
profess belief that ' all was for the best,' will that
destroy the memory of all that horror and anguish?
Job! The author of ' Job ' knew more about astro-
nomy than he knew about fatherhood.

" The anguish and horror were perchance meant
for my chastening! Am I a man io be chastened in
that way? Or will j^ou say, perhaps but for these
you would have been a lost soul by this? To such
questionings there is no end. As to selfishness, I
will suffer anything for her sake; but how will she
profit by my suffering /or the loss of her ? "

After an interval he wrote:

" You are very good to take so much interest in
the Heiress of the Ages. We have experienced some

6 The Invisible Playmate

of the ordinary troubles — and let me gravely assure
you that this is the single point in which she does
resemble other children — but she is well at present
and growing visibly. The Norse god who heard the
growing of the grass and of the wool on the sheep's
back would have been stunned with the tmtamarre of
her development.

"Thereto she noticeth. So saith her mother; so
averreth the nurse, an experienced and unimpeach-
able witness. Think of it, C! As the human mind
is the one reality amid phenomena, this young person
is really establishing and giving permanence to certain
bits of creation. To that extent the universe is the
more solid on her account.

" Nor are her virtue and excellency confined to
noticing; she positively radiates. Where she is,
that is the sunny side of the house. I am no longer
surprised at the folk-belief about the passing of a
maiden making the fields fertile. I observe that in
the sheltered places where she is taken for an airing
the temperature is the more genial, the trees are in
greener leaf, and the red half of the apple is that
nearest the road. . . .

" Accept for future use this shrewd discovery from
my experience. When a baby is restless and fretful,
hold its hands ! That steadies it. It is not used to
the speed at which the earth revolves and the solar
system whirls towards the starry aspect of Hercules
(half a million miles a day!). Or it may be that
coming out of the vortex of atoms it is sub-conscious
of some sense of falling through the void. The
gigantic paternal hands close round the warm, tiny,
twitching fists, soft as grass and strong as the ever-
lasting hills.

" I wonder if those worthy old Accadians had any

The Invisible Playmate 7

notion of this when they prayed, ' Hold thou my
hands.' "

In several subsequent letters he refers to the growth
and the charming ways of the " little quadruped,"
the " quadrumanous angel," the " bishop " (from
an odd resemblance in the pose of the head to the
late Bishop of Manchester). One passage must be
given :

" It is an ' animal most gracious and benignant,'
as Francesca calls Dante. Propped up with cushions,
she will sit for half an hour on the rug at my feet
while I am writing, content to have her fluffy head
patted at the end of every second paragraph.

" This evening she and I had the study to our-
selves. She on my knee, cosily snugghng within my
arm, with a tiny hand clasped about each thumb.
We were sitting by the window, and the western sky
was filled with a lovely green light, which died out
very slowly. It was the strangest and dreamiest of
afterglows. She was curiously quiet and contented.
As she sat like that, my mind went back to that old
life of mine, that past which seems so many centuries
away; and I remembered how that poor little white
creature of those unforgettable six weeks sat where
she was now sitting — so unlike her, so white and frail
and old-womanish, with her wasted arms crossed
before her, and her thin, worn face fading, fading,
fading away into the everlasting dark. Why does —
how can things like these happen ?

" She would have been nine now if she had lived.
How she would have loved this tiny sister! "

" You will be amused, perhaps you wUl be amazed.

8 The Invisible Plavmate

at my foolishness. When the postman hands you
Rhymes about a Little Woman ^ you will understand
what I mean. In trotting up and down with the
Immortal in my arms, crooning her to sleep, these
rhymes came. I did not make them! And sing —
don't read them. Seriously, the noticeable thing
about them is their unlikeness to fictitious child-
poems. I did not print them on that account, of
course. But to me it will always be a pleasant thing
to see, when I am very, very old, that genuine bit of
the past. And I like to fancy that some day she will
read — with eyes not dry — these nonsense verses that
her poor old father used to sing to her in

' the days before
God shut the doorways of her head.' "

" You remember what I Sciid about the child's
hands? When I went to bed very late last night,
the words, ' Hold Thou my hands,' kept floating
about in my mind, and then there grew on me the
most perplexing half-recoUection of a lovely air. I
could not remember it quite, but it simply haunted
me. Then, somehow, these words seemed to grow
into it and out of it :

Hold Thou my hands !

In grief and joy, in hope and fear,
Lord, let rat feel that Thou art near.
Hold Thou my hands !

If e'er by doubts

Of Thy good fatherhood depressed,
I cannot find in Thee my rest,
Hold Thou my hands !

^ See p. 19.

The Invisible Playmate 9

Hold Thou my hands, —

These passionate hands too quick to smite,
Tliese hands so eager for delight, —
Hold Thou my hands !

And when at length,

With darkened eyes and fingers cold,
I seek some last loved hand to hold.
Hold Thou my hands !

" I could endure it no longer, so I woke N [his
wife]. I was as gentle, gradual, considerate as
possible! — just as if she were waking naturally. And
she re-mon-strat-ed ! ' The idea of waking any one at
three in the morning to bother about a tune ! ' Dear,
dear !

" Well, it was from ' The Yeoman of the Guard.'
You will know where by the rhythm and refrain! "

As the months went by the " benign anthropoid "
developed into a " stodgy volatile elephant with a
precarious faculty of speech," and her father affected
to be engrossed in ethnological and linguistic studies
based on observation of her experiments in life and
language. I now extract without further interpola-
tion, merely premising that frequent intervals elapsed
between the writing of the various passages, and that
they themselves are but a small selection from many
similar :

" The ' golden ephelant ' is unquestionably of
Early-English origin. Perpend: we in our degener-
acy say ' milk ' ; she preserves the Anglo-Saxon
' meolc' Hengist and Horsa would recognise her as
a kinswoman. Through the long ages between them
and her, the pleasant guttural pronunciation of the

lo The Invisible Playmate

ancient pastures has been discarded by all but the
traditional dairyman, and even he has modified the
o into u. Similarly a ' wheel ' is a ' hweol.' But,
indeed, she is more A-S than the Anglo-Saxons them-
selves. All her verbs end in ' en,' even ' I am-en.' "

"It is singularly interesting to me to watch the
way in which she adapts words to her purposes. As
she sits so much on our knees, she uses * knee ' for
' to sit down.' To-day she made me ' knee ' in the
arm-chair beside her. ' Too big ' expresses, comically
enough sometimes, all kinds of impossibihty. She
asked me to play one of her favourite tunes. ' Pappa
cannot, dearie,' ' Oh ! ' — with much surprise — ' Too
big?'"

" Oh, man, man, what wonderful creatures these
bairnies are! Did it ever occur to you that they
must be the majority of the human race ? The men
and women combined may be about as numerous,
but they must far outnumber the men or the women
taken separately, and as all the women and most of
the men — bad as they are — side with them, what a
political power they might be, if they had their rights !
I have been thinking of this swarming of the minia-
ture people, all over the globe, during the last few
days. Could one but make a poem of that ! I tried
— and failed. ' Too big! ' But I did the next best
thing — conceived an Unknown German Child-poem,
and — what think you ? — reviewed it. If after read-
ing it, the ' Astrologer ' [a hypercritical young friend]
tells you it reminds him of Carlyle, just ask him
whether he never, never heard of Richter."

> See p. 27.

The Invisible Playmate i i

" She delights in music and drawing. It is curious
how sharp she is to recognise things. She picked out
a baby in a picture the other day, and discovered a
robin among the flowers and leaves high up on a
painted panel of the mirror. What a contrast to the
grown men of half-savage tribes one reads of, who
cannot distinguish a house from a tree in a drawing!
She has, too, quite an extraordinary ear for rhyme
and rhythm. I find, to my amazement, that she can
fill in the rhymes of a nonsense poem of twenty lines
— ' What shall we do to be rid of care ? ' by the way ^
— and when she does not know the words of a verse,
she times out the metre with the right number of
blanks.

" One is puzzled, all the while, to know how much
she understands. In one of her rhymes she sings,
' Birds are singing in the bowers.' The other day as
she was chanting it a dog went by; ' That, bowers! '
(bow-wows !) she cried suddenly, pointing to the dog."

" To-day she was frightened for the first time.
We heard her roaring ' No, no,' in great wrath in
the garden. A sparrow had dropped on the grass
somewhere near her, and she was stamping and
waving her hands in a perfect panic. When she
found it was not to be driven away, she came sweeping
in like a little elephant, screaming for ' mamma ' to
take up arms against that audacious ' dicken.' It
was really ludicrous to see her terrorised by that
handful of feathers.

" Yet she is not a bit afraid of big things. The dog
in the kennel barked the first time she went near him.
' Oh! ' she exclaimed, with a little laugh of surprise,
' coughing! ' Now she says, ' He not bark; only say

^ See p. 22.

I 2 The Invisible Playmate

good morning.' She must kiss the donkey's forehead;
she invites the mother-hen to shake hands, and the
other day she was indignant that I would not hold a
locomotive till she ' t'oked it dear head.' She has a
comfortable notion that things in general were in-
tended for her. If she wants a cow or a yoke of horses
with the ploughman for a plaything, it is but to ' ask
my pappa ' and have. The wind and the rain and
the moon ' walking ' come out to see her, and the
flowers ' wake up ' with the same laudable object."

" Yes; a child has a civilising effect. I feel that
I am less of a bear than I was. It is with some men
as it is with the blackthorn; the little white flower
comes out first, and then the whole gnarled faggot
breaks into leaf."

" I came to-day across a beautiful little bit from
the letters of Marcus Aurehus. ' On my return from
Lorium I found my little lady — domnulam meam —
in a fever; ' later: ' You will be glad to hear that our
little one is better and running about the room.'
The old Emperor was one of ourselves. Indeed, look
at his face in those marble busts in the Museum; he
might have been a man of our own generation. It
was he, I remember, who wrote, ' One prays — How
shall I not lose my little son? Do thou pray thus —
How shall I not be afraid to lose him ? ' Ah, how
shall I not be afraid! "

" We have had our first walk in the dark — a dark
crowded with stars. She had never seen it before.
It perplexed her, I think, for she stood and looked
and said nothing. But it did not frighten her in the

least.

The Invisible Playmate 1 3

" I want her to have some one marvellous thing
impressed on her memory — some one ineffable recol-
lection of childhood; and it is to be the darkness
associated with shining stars and a safe feeling that
her father took her out into it. This is to last all
through her Ufe — till the ' great dark ' comes ; so
that when it does come, it shall be with an old familial"
sense of fatherhood and starlight.

" You will laugh at me — but oh, no! you will not
laugh — when I tell you what a horror haunts me lest
I should die before her Httle brain has been stamped
with a vivid memory of me — clear as life, never to
be obhterated, never even to be blurred. Who was
it named Augustine ' the son of the tears of St.
Monica ' ? This child might well be called the
daughter of my tears — yet they have not been bitter
ones.

" When she did speak — fluently at last — it was to
suppose that a good many pipes were being lit up in
the celestial spaces ! This was both prosy and impos-
sible, yet what could I say? Ah, well! some day
she shall learn that the stars are not vestas, and that
the dark is only the planetary shadow of a great rock
in a blue and weary land — though little cause have
I now of all men to call it weary! Has that notion
of the shadow ever occurred to you? And do you
ever think of night on one of the small planetoids, five
miles in diameter ? That were the shadow of a mere
boulder; and yet on that boulder, though there can
be neither water nor air there, what if there were
some unknown form of motherhood, of babyhood,
curled up asleep in the darkness ?

" But to return to Pinaforifera. Thinking these
stars but vestas for the hghting of pipes, what must
she do but try to blow them out, as she blows out her

14 The Invisible Playmate

* dad's ' ! I checked that at once, for i' faith this
young person's powers are too miraculous to allow of
any trifling with the stellar systems."

" I fear I must weary you with these ' trivial fond
records.' Really she is very interesting. ' Ever
what you doing ? ' ' Upon my word ! ' ' Dear iccle
c'eature! ' ' Poor my hands! ' — just as people used
to say, ' Good my lord! ' "

" What heartless little wretches they are after all!
Sometimes, when I ask her for a kiss, she puts her
head aside and coolly replies, ' I don't want to! '
What can you say to that? One must respect her
individuality, though she is but a child. Now and
again she has her tender moments: ' I shut-a door
and leave poor you ? ' ' Yes, 3'-ou did, dear.' ' I
stay with you! ' — which means inexpressible things.
You should see the odd coaxing way in which she
says, ' My father! ' Then this to her doll: ' You
cry.? I kiss you. You not cr}' no more.' "

" Upon my life I am growing imbecile under the
influence of this Pinaforifera. I met a very old,
wrinkled, wizened little woman to-day, and as I
looked at her poor dim eyes and weathered face, it
flashed upon me like an inspiration — ' And she, too,
was once a rosy, merry little mortal who set some
poor silly dad doting! ' Then at the station I came
across what seemed to me quite an incident — but,
there, I have been daft enough to write the matter
out in full, and you can read it, if paternity and
its muddle-headedness do not fill your soul with
loathing." ^

i See p 37.

The Invisible Playmate 15

" By the way, she has got a new plaything. I do
not know what suggested the idea; I don't think it
came from any of us. Lately she has taken to
nursing an invisible ' iccle gaal ' (little girl) whom
she wheels about in her toy perambulator, puts care-
fully to bed, and generally makes much of. This is
— ' Yourn iccle baby, pappa old man! ' if you please.
When I sit down, this accession to the family is
manifest to her on my right knee; and she sits on
my left and calls it a ' nice lovely iccle thing.' When
she goes to bed she takes Struwwelpeter, Sambo (a
sweet being in black india-rubber), and, of all people,
Mrs. Grundy; and when she has been tucked in she
makes place for ' yourn iccle baby,' which, of course,
I have to give her with due care. It is very odd to
see her put her hands together for it, palms upward,
and to hear her assurance, ' I not let her fall, pappa.' "

" What droll little brains children have ! In Struw-
welpeter, as probably you are not aware, naughty
Frederick hurts his leg, and has to be put to bed;
and

* The doctor came and shook his head.
And gave him nasty physic too.'

This evening, as baby was prancing about in her
night-dress, her mother told her she would catch cold,
and then she would be ill and would have to be put
to bed. ' And will the doctor come and shook my
head ? ' she asked eagerly. Of course we laughed
outright ; but the young person was right for all that.
If the doctor was to do any good, it could not con-
ceivably be by shaking his own head! "

" I told you about her invisible playmate. Both

1 6 The Invisible Playmate

N [his wife] and I have been wondering whether the
child is only what is called making-believe, or whether
she really sees anything. I suppose you have read
Galton's account of the power of ' visualising,' as he
calls it; that is, of actually seeing outside of one the
appearance of things that exist only in imagination.
He says somewhere that this faculty is very strongly
developed in some young children, who are beset for
years with the difficulty of distinguishing between the
objective and the subjective. It is hard to say how
one should act in a case of this sort. To encourage
her in this amusement might lead to some morbid
mental condition; to try to suppress it might be
equally injurious, for this appears to be a natural
faculty, not a disease. Let nature have her own
way?

" If I rest my foot on my right knee to unlace my
boot, she pulls my foot away — ' Pappa, you put
youm foot on yourn iccle baby.' She won't sit on
my right knee at all until I have pretended to transfer
the playmate to the other.

" Tliis girl is going to be a novelist. We have got
a rival to the great Mrs. Harris. She has invented
Mrs. Briss. No one knows who Mrs. Briss is. Some-
times she seems to mean herself; at other times
it is clearly an interesting and inscrutable third
person."

" The poor wee ape is ill. The doctor doesn't seem
to understand what is the matter with her. We must
wait a day or two for some development."

" How these ten days and nights have dragged
past! Do not ask me about her. I cannot write.
I cannot think."

^ The Invisible Playmate 17

" M)^ poor darling is dead ! I hardly know whether
I am myself alive. Half of my individuality has left
me. I do not know myself.

" Can you believe this? / cannot; and yet I saw
it. A little while before she died I heard her speaking
in an almost inaudible whisper. I knelt down and
leaned over her. She looked curiously at me and
said faintly: ' Pappa, I not let her fall.' ' Who,
dearie? ' * Yourn iccle baby. I gotten her in here.'
She moved her wasted little hand as if to lift a fold
of the bedclothes. I raised them gently for her, and
she smiled like her old self. How can I tell the rest ?

" Close beside her lay that other little one, with
its white worn face and its poor arms crossed in that
old-womanish fashion in front of her. Its large,
suffering eyes looked for a moment into mine, and
then my head seemed filled with mist and my ears
buzzed.

" / saw that. It was not hallucination. It was
there.

" Just think what it means, if that actually hap-
pened. Think what must have been going on in the
past, and I never knew. I remember, now, she never
called it 'mamma's baby'; it was always 'yourn.'
Think of the future, now that they are both — what ?
Gone?

"If it actually happened! I saw it. I am sane,
strong, in sound health. I saw it — saw it — do you
understand? And yet how incredible it is! "

Some months passed before I heard again from
my friend. In his subsequent letters, which grew
rarer and briefer as time went on, he never again
referred to his loss or to the incident which he had
described.

B

1 8 The Invisible Playmate

His silence was singular, for he was naturally very
communicative. But what most surprised me was
the absolute change of character that seemed to have
been brought about in an instant — literally in the
twinkling of an eye. One glimpse of the Unseen (as
he called it) and the embittered recollections of
bereavement, the resentment, the distrust, the spirit
of revolt were all swept into oblivion. Even the new
bereavement had no sting. There was no anguish;
there were no words of desolation. The man simply
stood at gaze, stunned with amazement.

RHYMES ABOUT A LITTLE
WOMAN

She is my pride; my plague: my rest; my rack: ray

bliss ; my bane :
She brings me sunshine of the heart: and soft'ning of

the bmin.

RHYMES ABOUT A LITTLE

WOMAN

She's very, very beautiful; but — alas! —

Isn't it a pity that her eyes are glass ?

And her face is only wax, coloured up, you know;

And her hair is just a fluff of very fine tow!

No! — she's not a doll. That will never do-
Never, never, never, for it is not true!

Did they call you a doll ? Did they say that to you ?
Oh, your eyes are little heavens of an earth made

new;
Your face, it is the blossom of mortal things ;
Your hair might be the down from an angel's wings!

Oh, yes; she's beauti-beautiful! What else could

she be?
God meant her for Himself first, then gave her to

me,

II

She was a treasure ; she was a sweet ;

She was the darling of the Army and the F]ect!

When— she — smiled

The crews of the line-of-battle ships went wildt

22 The Invisible Playmate

When — she — crie d —

Whole regiments reversed their arms and sighed!

When she was sick, for her sake
The Oueen took off her crown and sobbed as if her
heart would break.

Ill

Look at her shoulders now they are bare ;
Are there any signs of feathers growing there ?

No, not a trace; she cannot fly away;

This wingless little angel has been sent to stay.

IV

What shall we do to be rid of care ?
Pack up her best clothes and pay her fare;

Pay her fare and let her go
By an early train to Jer-I-Cho.

There in Judaea she will be
Slumbering under a green palm-tree;

And the Arabs of the Desert will come round
When they see her lying on the ground,

And some will say, " Did you ever see
Such a remark-a-bil babee? "

And others, in the language the Arabs use,
" Nous n'avons jamais vu une telle papoose ! "

Rhymes About a Little Woman 23

And she will grow and grow ; and then
She will marry a chief of the Desert men;

And he will keep her from heat and cold,
And deck her in silk and satin and gold —

With bangles for her feet and jewels for her hair,
And other articles that ladies wear!

So pack up her best clothes, and let her go
By an early train to Jer-I-Cho!

Pack up her best clothes, and pay her fare;
So we shall be rid of trouble and care!

Take the idol to her shrine;

In her cradle lay her!
Worship her — she is divine;

Offer up your prayer!
She will bless you, bed and board,
If befittingly adored

VI

On a summer morning, Babsie up a tree
In came a Blackbird, sat on Babsie's knee.

Babsie to Blackbird — " Blackbird, how you do? "
Blackbird to Babsie — " Babsie, how was you?

" How was you in this commodious tree —
" How was you and all your famu — ilu — ee? "

24 The Invisible Playmate

• VII

This is the way the ladies ride —
Saddle-a-side, saddle-a-side !

This is the way the gentlemen ride —
Sitting astride, sitting astride!

This is the way the grandmothers ride-
Bundled and tied, bundled and tied!

This is the way the babbykins ride —
Snuggled inside, snuggled inside!

This is the way, when they are late,
They all fly over a five-barred gate!

VIII

We are not wealthy, but, you see,
Others are far worse off than we.

Here's a gaberlunzie begging at the door —
1/ we gave him Babs, he'd need no morel

Oh, she'll fill your cup, and she'll fill your can;
She'll make you happy, happy! Take her, beggar
man!

Give a beggar Babsie ? Give this child away ?
That would leave us poor, and poor, for ever and a
day!

Rhymes About a Little Woman 25

After-thought —

The gaberlunzie man is sad;

The Babe is far from glee;
He with his poverty is plagued — ■

And with her poor teeth ^ she !

IX

Oh, where have you been, and how do you do.
And what did you beg, or borrow, or buy
For this little girl with the sash of blue?

Why,
A cushie-coo; and a cockatoo;
And a cariboo; and a kangaroo;
And a croodlin' doo; and a quag from the Zoo —
And all for the girl with the sash of blue!

X

When she's very thirsty, what does she do?
She croons to us in Doric; she murmurs " A-coo! "
Oh, the little Scotch girl, who would ever think
She'd want a coo — a whole coo — needing but a drink!

Moo, moo! — a coo!

Mammie's gone to market; Mammie'll soon be here;
Mammie's bought a brindled coo! Patience, woman

dear!
Don't you hear your Crummie lowing in the lane ?
She's going up to pasture ; we'll bring her home again !

Moo, moo! — a coo!

' As who should say " poortith."

26 The Invisible Playmate

Grow sweet, you little wild flowers, about our Crum-

mie's feet;
Be glad, you green and patient grass, to have our

Crummie eat;
And hasten, Crummie, hasten, or what shall I do ?
For here's a waesome lassie skirlin' for a coo!

Moo, moo! — a coo!

A moment yet! The sun is set, and all the lanes

are red;
And here is Crummie coming to the milking shed!
Why, mother, mother, don't you hear this terrible

to-do ?
Dipechez-vous ! A coo — a coo — a kingdom for a coo !

Moo, moo! — a coo/

XI

When she laughs and waves about
Her pink small fingers, who can doubt
She's catching at the ghttering plumes
Of angels flying round the rooms?

XII

Poor Babbles is dead with sleep;
Poor Babbles is dead with sleep!
Eyes she hardly can open keep;
Lower the gas to a glimmering peep.
All good angels, hover and keep
Watch above her — poor Babbles! — asleep.

AN UNKNOWN CHILD-POEM

Mnrniure indistinct, vague, obscur, confus, brouille:
Dieu, le bon vieux gi'and-pere, ecoute emerveille.

Hugo.

AN UNKNOWN CHILD-POEM

Of all possible books in this age of waste-paper, the
wretched little volume before me, labelled Gedichte
and bearing the name of a certain " Arm: Altegans,"
is assuredly one of the unluckiest. Outside the
Fatherland it cannot by any chance be known to
mortal; and among the author's compatriots I have
been unable to discover man, woman, or child who
has heard of Altegans, or is aware of the existence of
these Poems of his. Yet I venture to express the
opinion that this scarecrow of a duodecimo, with its
worn-out village printer's type and its dingy paper-
bag pages, contains some passages which for sug-
gestiveness and for melody of expression are not
unworthy of the exquisite " founts " and hand-made
papers of wealthier and, perhaps, less noticeable
singers.

Thin as the book is, it contains, as most books do,
more than one cares to read; but even some of this
superfluous material is in a measure redeemed by its
personal bearing. One catches a glimpse of the man,
and after reading his " Erster Schulgang " — the one
real poem in the collection — I must confess tliat I
felt some little curiosity and interest in regard to the
author. One learns, for instance, that in 1868, when
the book was printed, he was a winter-green " hoary-
head "; that he had lost wife and child long ago, in
"the years still touched with morning-red"; that
like Hans Sachs, he had —

" bending o'er his leather,
Made many a song and shoe together," —
29

30 The Invisible Playmate

the shoe better than the song, but, he adds whimsi-
cally, " better perchance because of the song "; that
he thought no place in the earth-round could compare
with his beloved village of Wieheisstes in the pleasant
crag-and-fir region of Schlaraffenland (" Glad am I
to have been born in thee, thou heart's-dearest
village among the pines"; and here, by the way,
have we not a reminiscence of Jean Paul, or is the
phrase merely a coincidence?); that as a matter of
fact, however, he had never during his seventy odd
years travelled as many miles as ten from his Wie-
heisstes; that though confined in a mere nut-shell of
a green valley he was a cosmopolite of infinite space ;
that his heart brimmed over with brotherly love for
all men — for all women especially, and still more
especially, poor hoary-head! for all children; but
truly for all men — regarding even the levity with
which they treated his name rather as a token of
affectionate familiarity than as an evidence of ill-
breeding, and, indeed, humorously addressing him-
self in more than one of the gedichte as " thou Old-
Goose." Which last play of fancy has caused me to
question — without, alas! hope of answer now —
whether the abbreviated prenomen on the title-page
stands for a heroic " Arminius " or for an ironical
" Armer " or " Arme," as one prefers the gender;
giving us the net result " Poor Old-Goose! "

Twenty years and more have elapsed since the
aged worker in leather and verse gave the " Erster
Schulgang " — " First Day at School," shall we say?
— and these personal confidences to an apathetic Ger-
mania. Doubtless he has, long since, been gathered
to his lost ones in the shadow of the grey-stone
blue-slated little church. Poor singing soul, he is
deaf to anything that compatriot or " speech-cousin "
can say now of him or of his rhymes !

An Unknown Child-Poem 3 i

Let me, nevertheless, attempt to make an impres-
sioniste transcript of this " Erster Schulgang." To
reproduce the tender, simple music of its verse would
be impossible; merely to render it in prose would
be to traduce rather than to translate it.

The poem opens with a wonderful vision of children ;
delightful as it is unexpected ; as romantic in present-
ment as it is commonplace in fact. All over the
world — and all under it, too, when their time comes
— the children are trooping to school. The great
globe swings round out of the dark into the sun;
there is alwa3'S morning somewhere; and for ever in
this shifting region of the morning-light the good
Altegans sees the little ones afoot — shining companies
and groups, couples and bright solitary figures; for
they all seem to have a soft heavenly light about them !

He sees them in country lanes and rustic villages;
on lonely moorlands, where narrow brown foot-tracks
thread the expanse of green waste, and occasionally
a hawk hovers overhead, or a mountain-ash hangs
its scarlet berries above the huge fallen stones set up
by the Druids in the old days; he sees them on the
hillsides (" trails of little feet darkening the grass all
hoary with dew," he observes), in the woods, on the
stepping-stones that cross the brook in the glen,
along the sea-cliffs and on the wet ribbed sands;
trespassing on the railway lines, making short cuts
through the corn, sitting in ferryboats ; he sees them
in the crowded streets of smoky cities, in small rocky
islands, in places far inland where the sea is known
only as a strange tradition.

The morning-side of the planet is alive with them ;
one hears their pattering footsteps everywhere. And
as the vast continents sweep " eastering out of the
high shadow which reaches beyond the moon " (here.

32 The Invisible Playmate

again, I would have suspected our poet of an uncon-
scious reminiscence of Jean Paul, were it not that I
remember Sir Thomas Browne has some similar
whimsical phrase), and as new nations, with their
cities and villages, their fields, woods, mountains and
seashores, rise up into the morning-side, lo! fresh
troops, and still fresh troops, and yet again fresh
troops of " these small school-going people of the
dawn."

How the quaint old man loves to linger over this
radiant swarming of young hfe! He pauses for a
moment to notice this or that group, or even some
single mite. He marks their various nationalities —
the curious little faces of them, as the revolving
planet shows him (here he remembers with a smile
the coloured wall-maps of the schoolroom) the red
expanse of Europe, the green bulk of America, or
the huge yellow territory of the Asiatics. He runs
off in a discursive stanza in company with the bird-
nesting truant. Like a Greek divinity leaning out
of Olympus, he watches a pitched battle between
bands of these diminutive Stone-age savages belong-
ing to rival schools. With tender hmnour he notes
the rosy beginning of a childish love-idyll between
some small Amazon and a smaller urchin whom she
has taken under her protection.

What are weather and season to this incessant
panorama of childhood? The pigmy people trudge
through the snow on moor and hillside; wade down
flooded roads; are not to be daunted by wind or
rain, frost or the white smother of " millers and
bakers at fisticuffs." Most beautiful picture of all,
he sees them travelling schoolward by that late moon-
light which now and again in the winter months
precedes the tardy dawn.

An Unknown Child-Poem 33

Had the " Erster Schulgang " ended here, I cannot
but think the poem would have been worth preserv-
ing. This vision, however, is but a prelude, and as
a prelude it is perhaps disproportionately long. A
blue-eyed, flaxen-haired German madchen of four is
the heroine of this " first day at school " — Altegans's
own Httle maiden, perchance, in the years that were;
but of this there is no evidence.

What an eventful day in each one's hfe, he moral-
ises, is this first day at school — no other day more
truly momentous; and yet how few of us have any
recollection of it !

The first school-going is the most daring of all
adventures, the most romantic of all marvellous
quests. Palaeocrystic voyages, searches for north-west
passages, wanderings in the dwarf -peopled forests of
dusky continents are trifhng matters compared with
this. This is the veritable quest for the Sangreal!
" Each smallest lad as he crosses the home-threshold
that morning is a Columbus steering to a new world,
to golden Indies that truly lie — at last — beyond the
sunset. He is a little Ulysses outward-bound on a
long voyage, where-through help him, thou dear
Heaven, past the Calypso Isles and Harpy-shores lest
he perish miserably! "

And thus, continues Altegans, after a page or two
of such simple philosophising, little " blue-eyed flax-
head " goes forth, with well-stored satchel and primer,
and with a mother's kiss; gleeful, it may be; re-
luctant, perchance; into the world, nay into the
universe, nay into the illimitable cosmos beyond
these flaming star-walls; for of all future knowing
and loving, and serving and revolt against service,
is not this the actual beginning?

Very prettily does he picture the trot of the small

34 The Invisible Playmate

feet along the narrow pathway through the fields
where the old Adam — the " red earth " of the furrows,
he means — is still visible through the soft green blades
of the spring corn ; the walk along the lanes with their
high hedges, and banks of wald flowers, and over-
hanging clouds of leaf and blossom; the arrival at
the rustic schoolhouse; the crowd of strange faces;
the buzz and noise of conning and repetition.

And then, behold! as the timid new scholar sits
on the well-polished bench, now glancing about at
her unknown comrades, now trying to recollect the
names and shapes of the letters in her primer, the
schoolhouse vanishes into transparent air, and the
good Altegans perceives that this little maiden is no
longer sitting among German fields!

Instead of the young corn, papyrus-reeds are
growing tall and thick; the palm has replaced the
northern pine; Nilus, that ancient river, is flowing
past; far away in the distance he descries the peaks
of the Pyramids, while behind the child rises a huge
granite obehsk sculptured from apex to base with
hieroglyphic characters. For, he asks by way of
explaining this startling dissolving view, does not
every child when it learns the alphabet sit in the
shadow of the sculptured " needle-pillars " of Egypt
the ancient?

Where could this simple village shoemaker have
picked up this crumb of knowledge? It seems only
yesterday that Professor Max Miiller thought it a
matter of sufficient novelty to tell us that " whenever
we wrote an a or a 6 or a c, we wrote what was origin-
ally a hieroglyphic picture. Our L is the crouching
lion; our F the cerastes, a serpent with two horns;
our H the Egyptian picture of a sieve."

An Unknown Child-Poem 35

" O thou tenderest newly- blossomed little soul-and-
body, thou freshest-formed flower-image of man,"
exclaims the emotional Altegans, " how strange to
see thee shining with this newness in the shadow of
the old, old brain-travail, the old, old wisdom of a
world dead and buried centuries ago; how strange
to see thee, thou tiny prospective ancestress, strug-
gling with the omnipotent tradition of antiquity!

" For, of a truth, of all things in this world-round
there is nothing more marvellous than those carven
characters, than the many-vocabled colonies which
have descended from them, and which have peopled
the earth with so much speech and thought, so much
joy and sorrow, so much hope and despair.

" Beware of these, thou little child, for they are
strong to kill and strong to save! Verily, they are
living things, stronger than powers and principalities.
When Moses dropped the stone tablets, the wise
Rabbis say the letters flew to and fro in the air; the
visible form alone was broken, but the divine law
remains intact for ever. They are, indeed, alive —
they are the visible shapes of what thou canst not
see, of what can never die.

" Heed well these strong ones — Aleph the Ox, the
golden cherub whose mighty wings spread athwart
the Temple of Solomon, the winged bull that men
worshipped in Assyria; him and all his fellows heed
thou carefully! They are the lords of the earth, the
tyrants of the souls of men. No one can escape them
save him alone who hath mastered them. He whom
they master is lost, for ' the letter killeth.' But
these things thou dost not yet understand."

" Close now thy book, little learner. How Socrates
and Solomon would have marvelled to hear the things

36 The Invisible Playmate

that thou shalt learn! Close thy book; clap thy
hands gladly on the outgoing {Scottice skaling) song;
hie thee home! Thy dear mother awaits thee, and
thy good grey grandfather will look down on thee
with shrewd and kindly eyes, and question thee gaily.
Run home, thou guileless scholarling; thy mother's
hands are fain of thee."

A little abruptly perhaps, unless we recollect that
half is greater than the whole, the simple poet flies
off at a tangent from his theme, and muses to his
own heart:

"And we, too, are children; this, our first long
day at school. Oh, gentle hand, be fain for us when
we come home at eventide; question us tenderly,
Thou good Father, Thou ancient One of days."

So the " Erster Schulgang " closes.

It may be that through temperament or personal
associations I have over- valued it. The reader must
judge. In any case, you dead, unknown, gentle-
hearted Old-Goose, to me it has been a pleasant task
to visit in fancy your beloved village of Wieheisstes
in the romantic crag-and-fir region of Schlaraffen-
land, and to write these pages about your poem
and yourself.

AT A WAYSIDE STATION

L'adorable hasard d'etre pere est tombe
Sur ma tete, et m'a fait une douce felure.

Hugo.

AT A WAYSIDE STATION

" Good-bye, my darling! "

The voice shot out cheerily from the window of a
second-class carriage at a small suburban station.
The speaker evidently did not care a pin who heard
him. He was a busthng, rubicund, white-whiskered
and white-waistcoated httle man of about sixty. As
I glanced in his direction I saw that his wife — a faded
blue-eyed woman, with a genius for reserve — was
placidly settling herself in her seat.

Perception of these details was instantaneous.

" Good-bye, my darhng! "

" Good-bye, papa! "

The reply, in a clear, fresh voice, was almost
startling in its promptitude.

I looked round ; and then for the next minute and
a half, I laughed quietly to myself.

For, first of all, the bright little girl, the flower of
the flock, the small, radiant beauty to whom that
voice should have belonged, was a maiden of five
and thirty, hopelessly uncomely, and irredeemably
high-coloured.

The unmistakable age, the unprepossessing appear-
ance, were thrown into ludicrous contrast by the
girlish coyness and bashfulness of her demeanour.
When her eyes were not raised to her father's face,
they were cast down with a demureness that was
altogether irresistible.

39

4© The Invisible Playmate

The little man mopped his bald scalp, hurriedly
arranged some of his belongings in the rack, abruptly
darted out another bird-hke look, and repeated his
farewell.

" Good-bye, my darling! "

" Good-bye, papa! "

It was as though he had touched the spring of a
dutiful automaton.

The carriage doors were slammed, the guard
whistled, the driver signalled, the train started.

" Good-bye, mj^ darling! "

" Good-bye, papa! "

Comic as the whole scene was, its conclusion was
a relief. One felt that if " Good-bye, my darling,"
had been repeated a hundred times, " Good-bye,
papa," would have been sprung out in response with
the same prompt, pleasant inflection, the same bright,
ridiculous, mechanical precision.

She tripped, with the vivacity of coquettish maiden-
hood, for a few paces along the platform beside the
carriage window, stood still a moment, watching the
carriages as they swept round the curve, and then,
resuming her air of unapproachable reserve, ascended
the station steps.

The reaction was as sudden as it was unexpected.
The ripple of her white muslin dress had scarce!}^
vanished before I felt both ashamed and sorry that
I had been so much amused. The whole situation
assumed a different aspect, and I acknowledged with
remorse that I had been a cruel and despicable on-
looker. The humour of the incident had mastered
me; the pathos of it now stared me in the face.

As I thought of her unpleasing colour, of her
ineligible uncomeliness, of her five and thirty un-
manied years, I wondered how I could have ever

At a Wayside Station 41

had the heart to laugh at what might well have been
a cause for tears.

The pity of it! That sweet fresh voice — and it
was singularly sweet and fresh — seemed the one
charm left of the years of a woman's charms and a
woman's chances. The harmless prim ways and
little coy tricks of manner, so old-fashioned and out
of place, seemed to belong to the epoch of powder
and patches. They were irrefutable evidence of the
seclucion in which she had lived — of the httle world
of home which had never been invaded by any rash,
handsome, self-confident young man.

As I thought of the garrulous pride and affection
of her father, I knew that she must be womanly and
lovable in a thousand ways which a stranger could
not guess at. If no one else in the world had any
need of her, she was at least his darling; but, ah!
the pity of the unfulfilled mission, of the beautiful
possibilities unrealised, of the honour and holiness of
motherhood denied. She would never have any
little being to call " her darhng," to rear in love and
sorrow, in solicitude and joy; never one even to lose

" When God draws a new angel so
Through a house of a man up to His,"

— to lose and yet know it is not lost, to surrender
and yet feel it is safe for ever; preserved beyond
change and the estrangement of the years and the
sad transformations of temperament — a sinless babe
for evermore.

" Good-bye, my darling! "

How strangely, how tranquilly, with what httle
sense of change must the years have gone by for
father and daughter ! One could not but conjecture
whether he saw her now as she actually appeared in

42 The Invisible Playmate

ray eyes, or whether she was still to him the small,
inexpressibly lovely creature of thirty years ago.
Love plays curious tricks with our senses. No man
ever yet married an ugly woman, and time is slow to
wrinkle a beloved face. To him, doubtless, she was
yet a child, and at forty or fifty she would be a child
still.

Then I thought of her as an infant in her cradle,
and I saw the faded, reserved woman and the florid
little man, a youthful couple, leaning over it, full of
the happiness and wonder that come with the first
baby. I thought of the endearing helplessness of
those early weeks; of the anguish of the first baby
troubles; of the scares and terrors, of the prayers
and thankfulness; of the delight in the first smile:
of the blissful delusions that their little angel had
begun to notice, that she had tried to speak, that she
had recognised some one ; of the inexplicable bright-
ness which made their home, the rooms, the garden,
the very street seem a bit of heaven which had fallen
to earth; of the foolish father buying the little one
toys, perhaps even a book, which she would not be
able to handle for many a day to come; of the more
practical mother who exhausted her ingenuity in
hoods and frocks, bootees, and dainty vanities of lace
and ribbon.

I thought of the little woman when she first began
to toddle; of her resolute efforts to carry weights
almost as heavy as herself; of her inarticulate volu-
bility; of the marvellous growth of intelligence — the
quickness to understand, associated with the in-
ability to express herself; of her indefatigable
imitative faculty; and of the delight of her father in
all these.

Then, as years went by, I saw how she had become

At a Wayside Station 43

essential to his happiness, how all his thoughts en-
compassed her, how she influenced him, how much
better a man she made him; and as still the years
elapsed, I took into account her ambitions, her day-
dreams, her outlook into the world of men and women,
and I wondered whether she too had her half-com-
pleted romance, of which, perchance, no one, not
even her father, had an inkling. How near they were
to each other; and yet, after all, how far apart in
many things they might still be !

Her father's darling! Just Heaven! if we have
to give account of every foolish word, for how much
senseless and cruel laughter shall we have to make
reckoning? For, as I let my thoughts drift to and
fro about these matters, I remembered the thousands
who have many children but no darling ; the mothers
whose hearts have been broken, the fathers whose
grey hairs have been brought down in sorrow to the
grave ; and I mused on those in whom faith and hope
have been kept alive by prayer and the merciful
recollection of a never-to-be-forgotten childhood.

When I reached home I took down the volume in
which one of our poets ^ has spoken in tenderest
pathos of these last in the beautiful verses entitled —

TWO SONS

I have two sons, Wife —

Two and yet the same;
One his wild way runs, Wife,
Bringing us to shame.
The one is bearded, sunburnt, grim, and fights across the

sea;
The other is a little child who sits upon your knee.

* Robert Buchanan.

44 The Invisible Playmate

One is fierce and bold, Wife,

As the wayward deep,
Him no arms could hold. Wife,
Him no breast could keep.
He has tried our hearts for many a year, not broken

them ; for he
Is still the sinless little one that sits upon your knee.

One may fall in fight. Wife —

Is he not our son?
Pray with all your might, Wife,
For the wayward one;
Pray for the dark, rough soldier who fights across the sea.
Because you love the little shade who smiles upon your
knee.

One across the foam, Wife,

As I speak may fall;
But this one at home. Wife,
Cannot die at all.
They both are only one, and how thankful should we be
We cannot lose the darling son who sits upon your knee.

This one cannot die at all ! To how many has this
bright little shadow of the vanished years been an
enduring solace and an undj/ing hope ! And if God's
love be no less than that of an earthly father, what
mercies, what long-suffering, what infinite pity may
we grown-up, wilful and wayward children not owe
to His loving memory of our sinless infancy! But
for those happ}' parents who, as the years have gone
by, have never failed to see the " sinless little one,"
now in the girl or boy, now in the young man or
maiden, and now in these no longer young but still
darhngs, what a gracious providence has encompassed
their lives !

When I had smiled in witless amusement I had not

At a Wayside Station 45

thought of all this ; and even now it had not occurred
to me that this could have been no rare and excep-
tional case — that there must be many such darlings
in the world. That same evening, however, as I
glanced over the paper, I came across the following
notice in the column of " Births, Deaths, and Mar-
riages ";

" In memoriam, Louisa S , who died suddenly on

August 22, aged 40; my youngest, most beloved, and
affectionate daughter."

W. V. HER BOOK

HER BIRTHDAY

We are still on the rosy side of the apple; but this
is the last Saturday in September, and we carnot
expect many more golden days between this and the
cry of the cuckoo. But what a summer we have had,
thanks to one of W. V.'s ingenious suggestions! She
came to us in April, when the world is still a trifle
bare and the wind somewhat too bleak for any one
to get comfortably lost in the Forest or cast up on
a coral reef; so we have made her birthday a mov-
able feast, and whenever a fine free Saturday comes
round we devote it to thankfulness that she has been
born, and to the joy of our both being alive together.
W. V. sleeps in an eastern room, and accordingly
the sun rises on that side of the house. Under the
eaves and just above her window the martins have a
nest plastered against the wall, and their chattering
awakens her in the first freshness of the new morning.
She watches the black shadows of the birds fluttering
on the sunny blind, as, first one and then another,
they race up to the nest, and vibrate in the air a
moment before darting into it. When her interest
has begim to flag, she steals in to me in her night-
dress, and tugs gently at my beard till I waken and
sit up. Unhappily her mother wakens too. " What,
more birthdays! " she exclaims in a tone of stern
disapproval; whereat W. V. and I laugh, for evasion
of domestic law is the sweet marjoram of our salad.

49 D

50 W. V.

But it is possible to coax even a Draconian parent
into assent, and oh!

Flower of the may,

If mamsie will not say her nay,

W. won't care what any one may say !

We fii-st make a tour of the garden, and it is delight-
ful to observe W. V. prying about with happy, eager
eyes, to detect M'hether nature has been making any
new thing during the dim, starry hours when people
are too sound asleep to notice ; delightful to hear her
little screams of ecstasy when she has discovered
something she has not seen before. It is singular
how keenly she notes every fresh object, and in what
quaint and pretty turns of phrase she expresses her
glee and wonderment. "Oh, father, haven't the
bushes got their hands quite full of flowers?"
" Aren't the buds the trees' little girls? "

This morning the sun was blissfully warm, and the
air seemed alive with the sparkle of the dew, which
lay thick on every blade and leaf. As we went round
the gravel walks we perceived how completely aU the
earlier flowers had vanished; even the lovely sweet
peas were almost over. We have still, however, the
single dahlias, and marigolds, and nasturtiums, on
whose level leaves the dew stood shining like globules
of quicksilver ; and the tall Michaelmas daisies make
quite a white-topped thicket along the paling, while
the rowan-berries are burning in big red bunches over
the western hedge.

In the corner near the limes we came upon a
marvellous spectacle — a huge old spider hanging out
in his web in the sun, like a grim old fisherman float-
ing in the midst of his nets at sea. A hand's breadth
off, young bees and newborn flies were busy with the

Her Birthday 51

low perennial sunflowers ; he watching them motion-
lessly, with his gruesome shadow silhouetted on a
leaf hard by. In his immediate neighbourhood the
fine threads of his web were invisible, but a Httle
distance away one could distinguish their concentric
curves, grey on green. Every now and then we
heard the snapping of a stalk overhead, and a leaf
pattered down from the limes. Every now and then,
too, slight surges of breeze ran shivering through the
branches. Nothing distracted the intense vigilance
of the crafty fisherman. Scores of glimmering insects
grazed the deadly snare, but none touched it. It
must have been tantalising, but the creature's suUen
patience was invincible. W. V. at last dropped a
piece of leaf-stalk on his web, out of curiosity. In a
twinkling he was at the spot, and the fragment was
dislodged with a single jerk.

This is one of the things in which she delights —
the quiet observation of the ways of creatures.
Nothing would please her better, could she but dwarf
herself into an " aglet-baby," than to climb into those
filmy meshes and have a chat in the sunshine with
the wily ogre. She has no mistrust, she feels no
repulsion from anything that has life. There is a
warm place in her heart for the cool, dry toad, and
she loves the horned snail, if not for his own sake,
at least for his " darling little house " and the silver
track he leaves on the gravel.

Of course she wanted a story about a spider. I
might have anticipated as much. WeU, there was
King Robert the Bruce, who was saved by a spider
from his enemies when they were seeking his life.

" And if they had found him, would they have
sworded off his head? Really, father.? Like Oliver
Crumball did Charles King's ? "

52 W. V.

Her grammar was defective, but her surmises were
beyond dispute; the}- would. Then there was the
story of Sir Samuel Brown, who took his idea of a
suspension bridge from a web which hung — but W. V.
wanted something much more engrossing.

" Wasn't there never no awful big spider that made
webs in the Forest? "

" And caught lions and bears? "

She nodded approvingly. Oh, yes, there was — once
upon a time.

" And was there a little girl there ? "

There must have been for the story to be worth
telling; but the breakfast bell broke in on the
opening chapter of that little girl's incredible adven-
tures.

After breakfast we followed the old birthday
custom, and " plunged " into the depths of the Forest.
Some persons, I have heard, call our Forest the " East
Woods," and report that though they are pleasant
enough in summer, they are rather meagre and
limited in area. Now, it is obvious that it would be
impossible to " plunge " into anything less than a
forest. Certainly, when W. V. is with me I am
conscious of the Forest — the haunted, enchanted,
aboriginal Forest; and I see with something of her
illumined vision, the vision of W. V., who can double
for herself the comfort of a fire on a chilly day by
running into the next room and returning with the
tidings, " It's very cold in the woods! "

If you are courageous enough to leave the paths
and hazard yourself among the underwood and the
litter of bygone autumns, twenty paces will take you
to the small Gothic doors of the Oak-men; twenty
more to the cavern of the Great Bruin and the pollard

Her Birthday 53

tree on the top of which the foxes hve; while yet
another twenty, and you are at the burrows of the
kindliest of all insects, the leaf-cutter bees. Once —
in parenthesis — when a httle maid was weeping
because she had lost her way at dusk in the Forest
mazes, it was a leaf-cutter bee that tunnelled a
straight line through the trees, so that the nearest
road lamp, miles away, twinkled right into the Forest,
and she was able to guide herself home. Indeed, it
will only take ten minutes, if you do not dawdle, to
get to the dreadful webs of the Iron Spider, and
when you do reach that spot, the wisest thing you
can do is to follow the example of the tiny flame-elf
when a match is blown out — clap on your cap of
darkness and scuttle back to fairyland.

What magical memories have we two of the green
huddle and the dreamy lawns of that ancient and
illimitable Forest ! We know the bosky dingles where
we shall find pappa-trees, on whose lower branches a
little girl may discover something to eat when she
is good enough to deserve it. We know where
certain green-clad foresters keep store of fruits which
are supposed, by those who know no better, to grow
only in orchards by tropical seas. Of course every
one is aware that in the heart of the Forest there is
a granite fountain; but onty we two have learned
the secret that its water is the Water of Heart's-ease,
and that if we continue to drink it we shall never
grow really old. We have stiU a great deal of the
Forest to explore; we have never reached the glade
where the dog-daisies have to be chained because
they grow so exceedingly wild; nor have we found
the blue thicket — it is blue because it is so distant —
from which some of the stars come up into the dusk
when it grows late; but when W. V. has got her

5+ W. V.

galloping-horse-bicycle we shall start with the first
sunshine some morning, and give the whole day to
the quest.

We lowly folk dine before most people think of
lunching, and so dinner was ready when we arrived
home. Now, as decorum at table is one of the
cardinal virtues, W. V. dines by proxy. It is her
charming young friend Gladys who gives us the
pleasure of her company. It is strange how many
things this bewildering daughter of mine can do as
Glad\^s, which she cannot possibly accomplish as
W. V. W. V. is unruly, a chatterbox, careless, or at
least forgetful, of the elegances of the social board;
whereas Gladys is a model of manners, an angel in a
bib. W. V. cannot eat crusts, and rebels against
porridge at breakfast; Glad3's idolises crusts, and as
for porridge — " I am surprised your little girl does
not like porridge. It is so good for her."

After dinner, as I lay smoking in the garden lounge
to-day, I fell a-thinking of W. V. and Gladys, and the
numerous other little maids in whom this tricksy
sprite has been masquerading since she came into the
world five years ago. She began the small comedy
before she had well learned to balance herself on her
feet. As she sat in the middle of the carpet we would
play at looking for the baby — where has the baby
gone ? have you seen the baby ? — and, oddly enough,
she would take a part and pretend to wonder, or
perhaps actually did wonder, what had become of
herself, till at last we would discover her on the floor
— to her own astonishment and irrepressible delight.

Then, as she grew older, it was amusing to observe
how she would drive away the naughty self, turn it

Her Birthday 55

literally out of doors, and return as the " Smiling
Winifred." I presume she grew weary, as human
nature is apt to grow, of a face which is wreathed in
amaranthine smiles; so the Smiling Winifred van-
ished, and we were visited by various sweet children
with lovely names, of whom Gladys is the latest and
the most indefatigable. I cannot help laughing when
I recall my three-3-ear-oId rebel listening for a few
moments to a scolding, and when she considered that
the ends of justice had been served, exclaiming, " I
put my eyes down! " — which meant that so far as
she was concerned the episode was now definitively
closed.

My day-dream was broken by W. V. flying up to
me with fern fronds fastened to her shoulders for
wings. She fluttered round me, then flopped into
my lap, and put her arms about my neck. " If I
was a real swan, father, I would cuddle your head
with my wings."

" Ah, well, you are a real duck. Diddles, and that
will do quite as well."

She was thinking of that tender Irish legend of the
Children of Lir, changed into swans b}' their step-
mother and doomed to suffer heat and cold, tempest
and hunger, homelessness and sorrow, for nine
hundred years, till the sound of the first Christian
bell changed them again — to frail, aged mortals. It
was always the sister, she knows, who solaced and
strengthened the brothers beside the terrible sea of
Moyle, sheltering them under her wings and warming
them against her bosom. In such a case as this an
only child is at a disadvantage. Even M'rao, her
furry playmate, might have served as a bewitched
brother, but after many months of somnolent for-

56 W. V.

bearance M'rao ventured into the great world beyond
our limes, and returned no more.

Flower of the quince,

Puss once kissed Babs, and ever since

She thinks he must be an enchanted prince.

In a moment she was off again, an angel, flying
about the garden and in and out of the house in the
performance of helpful offices for some one, or,
perchance, a fairy, for her heaven is a vague and
strangely-peopled region. Long ago she told me
that the moon was " put up " by a black man — a say-
ing which puzzled me until I came to understand
that this negro divinity could only have been the
" divine Dark " of the old Greek poet. Of course
she says her brief, simple prayers ; but how can one
convey to a child's mind any but the most provisional
and elemental conceptions of the Invisible? Once
I was telling her the story of a wicked king, who
put his trust in a fort of stone on a mountain peak,
and scoffed at a prophet God had sent to warn him.
" He wasn't very wise," said W. V., " for God and
Jesus and the angels and the fairies are cleverer'n
we are; they have wings." The "cleverness" of
God has deeply impressed her. He can make rain
and see through walls. She noticed some stone
crosses in a sculptor's yard some time ago, and
remarked: " Jesus was put on one of those; " then,
after some reflection: " Who was it put Jesus on the
cross? Was it the church people, father?" Well,
when one comes to think of it, it was precisely the
church people — " not these church people, dear, but
the church people of hundreds of years ago, when
Jesus was aHve." She had seen the world's tragedy
in the stained glass windows and had drawn her own

Her Birthday 57

conclusion — the people who crucified would be the
most Hkely to make a picture of the crucifixion;
Christ's friends would want to forget it and never to
speak of it.

In the main she does not much concern herself
with theology or the unseen. She lives in the senses.
Once, indeed, she began to communicate some inter-
esting reminiscences of what had happened " before
she came here," to this planet; but something inter-
rupted her, and she has not attempted any further
revelation. There is nothing more puzzling in the
world to her, I fancy, than an echo. She has for-
gotten that her own face in the mirror was quite as
bewildering. A high wind at night is not a pleasant
fellow to have shaking your window and muttering
down your chimney; but an intrepid father with a
yard of brown oak is more than a match for him.
Thunder and lightning she regards as " great friends;
they always come together." She is more perceptive
of their companionship than of their air of menace
towards mankind. Darkness, unless it be on the
staircase, does not trouble her: when we have said
good-night out goes the gas. But there sev-^ms to
be some quality or influence in the darkness which
makes her affectionate and considerate. Once and
again when she has slept with me and wakened in
the dead of night she has been most apologetic and
self-abasing. She is so sorry to disturb me, she
knows she is a bother, but would I give her a biscuit
or a drink of water ?

She has all along been a curious combination of
tenderness and savagery. In a sudden fit of mother-
hood she will bring me her dolly to kiss, and ten
minutes later I shall see it lying undressed and
abandoned in a corner of the room. She is a Spartan

58 W. V.

parent, and slight is the chance of her children being
spoiled either by sparing the rod or lack of stern
monition. It is not so long ago that we heard a
curious sound of distress in the dining-room, and on
her mother hurrying downstairs to see what was
amiss, there was W. V. chastising her recalcitrant
babe-^and doing the weeping herself. This appeared
to be a good opportunity for pointing a moral. It
was clear now that she knew what it was to be
naughty and disobedient, and if she punished these
faults so severely in her own children she must expect
me to deal with her manifold and grievous offences
in tlie same way. She looked very much sobered and
concerned, but a few moments later she brought me
a stout oak walking-stick : " Would that do, father ? "
She shows deep commiseration for the poor and old;
grey hairs and penury are sad bed-fellows; but for
the poor who are not old I fear she feels little sym-
pathy. Perhaps we, or the conditions of life, are to
blame for this limitation of feehng, for when we spoke
to her of certain poor little girls with no mothers, she
rejoined: " Why don't you take them, then ? " Our
compassion which stopped short of so simple a remedy
must have seemed suspiciously hke a pretence.

To me one of the chief wonders of childhood has
been the manner in which this young person has
picked up words, has learned to apply them, has
coined them for herself, and has managed to equip
herself with a stock of quotations. When she was
yet little more than two and a half she applied of her
own accord the name Dapple-grey to her first wooden
horse. Then Dapple-grey was pressed into guardian-
ship of her sleeping dolls, with this stimulative
quotation: "Brave dog, watching by the baby's
bed." There was some vacillation, I recollect, as to

Her Birthday 59

whether it was a laburnum or a St. Bernard that
saved travellers in the snow, but that was excep-
tional. The word " twins " she adapted prettily
enough. Trying once in an emotional moment to put
her love for me into terms of gold currency, she added :
"And I love mother just the same; you two are
twins, you know." A little while after the University
boat-race she drew mj^ attention to a doll in a shop-
window: "Isn't it beautiful? And look at its
Oxford ej/es! " To " fussle one," to disturb one by
making a fuss, seems at once fresh and useful; " sore-
fully " is an acutely expressive adverb; when you
have to pick your steps in wet weather the road may
be conveniently described as "picky;" don't put
wild roses on the cloth at dinner lest the maid should
" crumb " them away; and when one has a cold in
the head how can one describe the condition of one's
nose except as " hoarse " ? " Lost in sad thought,"
" Now I have something to my heart's content,"
" Few tears are my portion," are among the story-
book phrases which she has assimilated for week-day
use. When she was being read to out of Kingsley's
Heroes, she asked her mother to substitute '' the
Ladies " for " the Gorgons." She did not like the
sound of the word; "it makes me," drawing her
breath with a sort of shiver through her teeth, " it
makes me pull myself together." Once when she
broke into a sudden laugh, for sheer glee of hving
I suppose, she exclaimed: " I am just like a little
squirrel biting myself." Her use of the word " live "
is essential poetr}^; the spark " lives " inside the flint,
the catkins " live " in the Forest; and she pointed
out to me the " lines " down a horse's legs where the
blood " lives." A signboard on a piece of waste land
caused her some perplexity. It was not " The public

6o W. V.

are requested " this time, but " Forbidden to shoot
rubbish here." Either big game or small deer she
could have understood; but — " Who wants to shoot
rubbish, father? "

Have I sailed out of the trades into the doldrums
in telling of this commonplace little body? — for,
after all, she is merely the average, healthy, merry,
teasing, delightful mite who tries to take the whole
of life at once into her two diminutive hands. Ah,
well, I want some record of these good, gay days of
our early companionship; something that may still
survive when this right hand is dust; a testimony
that there lived at least one man who was joyously
content with the small mercies which came to him
in the beaten way of nature. For neither of us, little
woman, can these childish, hilarious days last much
longer now. Five arch, happy faces look out at me
from the sections of an oblong frame; all W. V.s,
but no two the same W. V. The sixth must go into
another frame. You must say good-bye to the
enchanted Forest, little lass, and travel into strange
lands; and the laws of infancy are harder than the
laws of old Wales. For these ordained that when
a person remained in a far country under such con-
ditions that he could not freely revisit his own, his
title to the ancestral soil was not extinguished till
the ninth man; the ninth man could utter his " cry
over the abyss," and save his portion. But when
you have gone into the world beyond, and can no
more revisit the Forest freely, no ear will ever listen
to your " cry over the abyss."

When she had at last tired herself with angelic
visits and thrown aside her fern wings, she returned
to me and wanted to know if I would play at shop.

Her Birthday 6i

No, I would not play at shop; I would be neither
purchaser nor proprietor, the lady she called " Cash "
nor the stately gentleman she called " Sign." Would
I be a king, then, and refuse my daughter to her (she
would be a prince) unless she built a castle in a single
night; " better'n't " she bring her box of bricks
and the dominoes? No, like Caesar, I put by the
crown. She took my refusals cheerfully. On the
whole, she is tractable in these matters. " Fathers,"
she once told me, " know better than little girls, don't
they? " "Oh, dear, no! how could they? Fathers
have to go into the city; they don't go to school like
little girls." Doubtless there was something in that,
but she persisted, " Well, even if little girls do go to
school, fathers are wiser and know best." From
which one father at least may derive encouragement.
Well, would I blow soap-bubbles ?

I think it was the flying thistledown in June which
first gave us the cue of the soap-bubbles. What a
delightful game it is; and there is a knack, too, in
blowing these spheres of fairy glass and setting them
off on their airy flight. Till you have blown bubbles
you have no conception how full of waywardness and
freakish currents the air is.

Oh, you who are sad at heart, or weary of thought,
or irritable with physical pain, coax, beg, borrow,
or steal a four- or five-year-old, and betake you to
blowing bubbles in the sunshine of your recluse
garden. Let the breeze be just a little brisk to set
your bubbles drifting. Fill some of them with
tobacco smoke, and with the wind's help bombard
the old fisherman in his web. As the opaline globes
break and the smoke escapes in a white puff along
the grass or among the leaves, you shall think of
historic battlefields, and muse whether the greater

62 W. V.

game was not quite as childish as this, and " sore-
fully " less innocent. The smoke-charges are only
a diversion ; it is the crystal balls which delight most.
The colours of all the gems in the world run molten
through their fragile films. And what visions they
contain for crystal-gazers! Among the gold and
green, the rose and blue, you see the dwarfed reflection
of your own trees and your own home floating up
into the sunshine. These are your possessions, your
surroundings — so lovely, so fairylike in the bubble;
in reality so prosaic and so inadequate when one
considers the rent and rates. To W. V. the bubbles
are like the wine of the poet — " full of strange con-
tinents and new discoveries."

Flower of the sloe,

When chance annuls the worlds we blow,

Where does the soul of beauty in them go ?

" Tell me a story of a little girl who lived in a
bubble," she asked when she had tired of creating
fresh microcosms.

I hfted her on to my knee, and as she settled her-
self comfortably she drew my right arm across her
breast and began to nurse it.

" Well, once upon a tune "

HER BOOK

HER BOOK

THE INQUISITION

I WOKE at dead of night ;

The room was still as death ;
All in the dark I saw a sight

Which made me catch my breath.

Although she slumbered near

The silence hung so deep
I leaned above her crib to hear

If it were death or sleep.

As low — all quick — I leant,
Two large eyes thrust me back;

Dark eyes — too wise — which gazed intent;
Blue eyes transformed to black.

Heavens ! how those steadfast eyes

Their eerie vigil kept !
Was this some angel in disguise

Who searched us while we slept;

Who winnow' d every sin,

Who tracked each slip and fall.

One of God's spies — not Babbykm,
Not Babbykin at all ?

Day came with golden air ;

She caught the beams and smiled,
No masked inquisitor was there,

Only a babbling child !

65 E

66 W. V.

THE FIRST MIRACLE

The huge weeds bent to let her pass,
And sometimes she crept under;

She plunged through gulfs of flowery grass;
She filled both hands with plunder.

The buttercups grew tall as she.

Taller the big dog-daisies;
And so she lost herself, you see,

Deep in the jungle mazes.

A wasp twang'd by ; a horned snail
Leered from a great-leafed docken;

She shut her eyes, she raised a wail
Deplorable, heart-broken.

" Mamma! " Two arms, flashed out of space

Miraculously, caught her;
Fond mouth was pressed to tearful face —

" What is it, little daughter? "

BY THE FIRESIDE
I

Red-bosomed Robin, in the hard white weather
She marks thee hght upon the ice to rest ;
She sees the wintry glass glow with thy breast

And let thee warm thy feet at thine own feather.

II

In the April sun at baby-house she plays.

Her rooms are traced with stones and bits of bricks ;

For warmth she lays a hearth with little sticks.
And one bright crocus makes a merry blaze !

Her Book 67

THE RAIDER

Her happy, wondering eyes had ne'er
Till now ranged summer meadows o'er:

She would keep stopping everywhere
To fill with flowers her pinafore.

But when she saw how, green and wide.
Field followed field, and each was gay

With endless flowers, she laughed — then sighed,
" No use! " and threw her spoils away.

BABSIE-BIRD

In the orchard bhthely waking,

Through the blossom, loud and clear.
Pipes the goldfinch, " Day is breaking;

Waken, Babsie ; May is here !
Bloom is laughing; lambs are leaping;

Every new green leaflet sings ;
Five chipp'd eggs will soon be cheeping;

God be praised for song and wings! "

Warm and ruddy as an ember.

Lilting sweet from bush to stone.
On the moor in chill November

FHts the stone-chat all alone :
" Snow will soon drift up the heather;

Days are short, nights cold and long;
Meanwhile in this ghnting weather

God be thanked for wings and song! "

68 W. V.

Round from Maytime to November

Babsie lilts upon the wing.
Far too happy to remember

Thanks or praise for anything;
Save at bedtime, laughing sinner.

When she gaily lisps along,
For the wings and song within her —

" Thank you, God, for wings and song!

THE ORCHARD OF STARS

Amid the orchard grass she'd stood
and watch'd with childish glee

The big bright burning apples shower'd
like star-falls from the tree ;

So when the autumn meteors fell
she cried, with outspread gown,

" Oh my, papa, look! Isn't God
just shaking apples down ? "

THE SWEET PEA

Oh, what has been born in the night
To bask in this blithe summer mom ?

She peers, in a dream of delight.

For something new-made or new-born.

Not spider-webs under the tree.
Not swifts in their cradle of mud.

But — " Look, father. Sweet Mrs. Pea
Has two httle babies in bud! "

Her Book 69

BROOK-SIDE LOGIC

As the brook caught the blossoms she cast,
Such a wonder gazed out from her face !

Why, the water was all running past,

Yet the brook never budged from its place.

Oh, the magic of what was so clear !

I explained. And enlightened her ? Nay —
" Why but, father, I couldn't stay here

If I always was running away! "

BUBBLE-BLOWING

Our plot is small, but sunny limes
Shut out aU cares and troubles;

And there my little girl at times
And I sit blowing bubbles.

The screaming swifts race to and fro.

Bees cross the ivied paling.
Draughts lift and set the globes we blow

In freakish currents sailing.

They glide, they dart, they soar, they break.

Oh, joyous little daughter,
What lovely coloured worlds we make,

What crystal flowers of water!

One, green and rosy, slowly drops ;

One soars and shines a minute.
And carries to the lime-tree tops

Our home, reflected in it.

yo W. V,

The gable, with cream rose in bloom,
She sees from roof to basement ;

" Oh, father, there's your little room! "
She cries in glad amazement.

To her enchanted with the gleam,
Tlie glamour and the glory.

The bubble home's a home of dream,
And I must tell its story;

TcU what we did, and how we played,
Withdrawn from care and trouble —

A father and his merry maid,
Whose house was in a bubble!

NEW VERSION OF AN OLD GAME

The storm had left the rain-butt brimming;

A dahha leaned across the brink;
Its mirrored self, beneath it swimming.

Lit the dark water, gold and pink.

Oh, rain, far fallen from heights of azure —
Pure rain, from heavens so cold and lone —

Dost thou not feel, and thrill with pleasure
To feel a flower's heart in thine own ?

Enjoy thy beauty, and bestow it,

Fair dahlia, fenced from harm, mishap!

" See, Babs, this flower — and this below it."
She looked, and screamed in rapture — " Snap!

Her Book 7^

THE GOLDEN SWING-BOAT

Across the low dim fields we caught
Faint music from a distant band —

So sweet i' the dusk one might have thought
It floated up from elfin-land.

Then, o'er the tree-tops' hazy blue
We saw the new moon, low i' the air:

" Look, Dad," she cried, " a shuggy-shue!
Why this must be a fairies' fair! "

ANOTHER NEWTON'S APPLE

We tried to show with lamp and ball

How simply day and night were " made ";

How earth revolved, and how through all
One half was sunshine, one was shade.

One side, tho' turned and turned again.

Was always bright. She mused and frowned.

Then flashed—" It's just an apple, then,
'at's always rosy half way round! "

Oh, boundless tree of ranging blue,

Star-fruited through thy heavenly leaves,

Be, if thou canst be, good unto
This apple-loving babe of Eve's

NATURULA NATURANS

Beside the water and the crumbs

She laid her httle birds of clay,
For — " When some other sparrow comes

Perhaps they'll fly away."

72 W. V.

Ah, golden dream, to clothe with wings
A heart of springing joy; to know

Two lives i' the happy sum of things
To her their bliss will owe !

Day dawned; they had not taken flight,
Tho' playmates called from bush and tree.

She sighed: " I hardl}/- thought they might.
Well, — God's more clever'n me! "

WINGS AND HANDS

God's angels, dear, have six great wings

Of silver and of gold ;
Two round their heads, two round their hearts,

Two round their feet they fold.

The angel of a man I know

Has just two hands — so small!
But they're more strong than six gold wings

To keep him from a fall.

FLOWERS INVISIBLE

She'd watched the rose-trees, how they grew

With green hands full of flowers ;
Such flowers made their hands sweet, she knew

But tenderness made ours.

So now, o'er fevered brow and eyes

Two small cold palms she closes.
" Thanks, darling! " " Oh, mamma," she cries

" Are my hands full of roses ? "

Her Book 73

MAKING PANSIES

" Three faces in a hood."
Folk called the pansy so
Three hundred years ago.

Of course she understood!

Then, perching on my knee,

She drew her mother's head
To her own and mine, and said-

" That's mother, you, and me! "

And so it comes about

We three, for gladness sake,
Sometimes a pansy make

Before the gas goes out.

HEART-EASE

Last June — how shght a thing to tell! —
One straggling leaf beneath the limes

Against the sunset rose and fell.

Making a rhythm with coloured rhjones.

No other leaf in all the air

Seemed waking ; and my little maid
Watched with me, from the garden-chair,

Its rhythmic play of light and shade.

Now glassy gold, now greenish grey,
It dropped, it lifted. That was all.

Strange I should still feel glad to-day
To have seen that one leaf lift and fall.

74 W. V.

" SI J'AVAIS UN ARPENT "

Oh, had I but a plot of earth, on plain or vale or hill.
With running water babbling through, in torrent,
spring, or rill,

I'd plant a tree, an olive or an oak or willow-tree,
And build a roof of thatch, or tile, or reed, for mine
and me.

Upon my tree a nest of moss, or down, or wool, should

hold
A songster — finch or thrush or blackbird with its bill

of gold ;

Beneath my roof a child, with brown or blond or

chestnut hair,
Should find in hammock, cradle or crib a nest, and

slumber there.

I ask for but a little plot; to measure my domain,
I'd say to Babs, my bairn of bliss, " Go, alderliefest
wean,

" And stand against the rising sun; your shadow on

the grass
Shall trace the limits of my world; beyond I shall

not pass.

" The happiness one can't attain is dream and

glamour-shine! "
These rhymes are Soulary's; the thoughts are Babs's

thoughts and mine.

HER FRIEND LIT^fLEJOHN

HER FRIEND LITTLEJOHN

The first time Littlejohn saw W. V. — a year or so ago
— she was sitting on the edge of a big red flower-pot,
into which she had managed to pack herself. A
brilhant Japanese sunshade was tilted over her
shoulder, and close by stood a large green watering-
can. This was her way of " playing at botany," but
as the old gardener could not be prevailed upon to
water her, there was not as much fun in the game as
there ought to have been.

W. V. was accordingly consoling herself with telling
" Mr. Sandy " — the recalcitrant gardener — the
authentic and incredible story of the little girl who
was " just 'scruciatingly good."

Later, on an idyllic afternoon among the heather,
Littlejohn heard all about that excellent and too
precipitate child, who was so eager to oblige or obey
that she rushed off before she could be told what to
do ; and as this was the only story W. V. knew which
had obviously a moral, W. V. made it a great point
to explain that " little girls ought not to be too good;
if — ih^y — only — did — what — they — were — told they
would be good enough."

W. V.'s mother had been taken seriously ill a few
weeks before, and as a house of sickness is not the
best place for a smaU child, nor a small child the
most soothing presence in a patient's room, W. V.
had undertaken a marvellous and what seemed an
interminable journey into the West Highlands. Her
host and hostess were delighted with her and her odd

77

78 W. V.

sayings and quaint, fanciful ways; and she, in the
plenitude of her good-nature, extended a cheerful
patronage to the grown-up people. Littlejohn had
no children of his own, and it was a novel delight,
full of charming surprises, to have a sturdy, imperious,
sunny-hearted little body of four and a half as his
constant companion. The child was pretty enough,
but it was the alert, excitable little soul of her which
peered and laughed out of her blue e3^es that took
him captive.

Like most healthy children, W. V. did not under-
stand what sorrow, sickness, or death meant. In-
deed it is told of her that she once exclaimed gleefully,
"Oh, see, here's a funeral! Which is the bride?"
The absence of her mother did not weigh upon her.
Once she awoke at night and cried for her; and on
one or two occasions, in a sentimental mood, she
sighed " I shotild like to see my father! Don't you
think we could 'run over'?" The immediate
present, its fun and nonsense and grave responsi-
bilities, absorbed all her energies and attention; and
wliat a divine dispensation it is that we who never
forget can be forgotten so easily.

I fancy, from what I have heard, that she must
have regarded Littlejohn's ignorance of the ways of
children as one of her responsibilities. It was really
very deplorable to find a great-statured, ruddy-
bearded fellow of two and thirty so absolutely wanting
in tact, so incapable of " pretending," so destitute of
the capacity of rhyming or of telling a story. The
way she took him in hand was kindly yet resolute.
It began with her banging her head against something
and howling. " Don't cry, dear," Littlejohn had
entreated, with the crude pathos of an amateur;
" come, don't cry."

Her Friend Littlejohn 79

When W. V. had heard enough of this she looked
at him disapprovingly, and said, " You shouldn't say
that. You should just laugh and say, ' Come, let
me kiss that crystal tear away! ' " " Say it! " she
added after a pause. This was Littlejohn's first
lesson in the airy art of consolation.

Littlejohn as a lyric poet was a melancholy spec-
tacle.

" Now, you say, * Come, let us go,' " W. V. would
command.

" I don't know it, dear."

" I'll say half for you —

" Come, let us go where the people sell "

But Littlejohn hadn't the slightest notion of what
they sold.

" Bananas," W. V. prompted; " say it."

" Bananas."

"And what?"

" Oranges? " Littlejohn hazarded.

" Pears! " cried W. V. reproachfully; " say it! "

" Pears."

" And " with pauses to give her host chances

of retrieving his honour; " pine — ap — pel! —

' Bananas and pears and pine-appel,'

of course. I don't think you can publish a poem."
" I don't think I can, dear," Littlejohn confessed

after a roar of laughter.

" Pappa and I published that poem. Pine-appel

made me laugh at first. And after that you say —

' Away to the market ! and let us buy
A sparrow to make asparagus pie.'

Say it!

8o W. V.

So in time Little John found his memory becoming
rapidly stocked with all sorts of nonsensical rhymes
and ridiculous pronunciations.

Inability to rhjmie, like inability to reason, is a gift
of nature, and one can overlook it, but Littlejohn's
sheer imbecility in face of the demand for a story was
a sore trial to W. V. After an impatient lesson or
two, the way in which he picked up a substitute for
imagination was really exceedingly creditable. Hav-
ing spent a day in the " Forest " — W. V. could pack
some of her forests into a nutshell, and feel herself
a woodlander of infinite verdure — Littlejohn learned
which trees were " pappa-trees "; how to knock and
ask if any one was in; how to make the dog inside
bark if there was no one ; how to get an answer in the
affirmative if he asked whether they could give his
little girl a biscuit, or a pear, or a plimi; how to
discover the fork in the branches where the gift would
be found, and how to present it to W. V. with an air
of inexhaustible surprise and delight. Every Forest
is full of "pappa-trees," as every verderer knows;
the crux of the situation presents itself when the
tenant of the tree is cross, or the barking dog intimates
that he has gone " to the City."

Now, about a mile from Cloan Den, Littlejohn's
house, there was a bit of the real " old ancient "
Caledonian Forest. There was not much timber, it
is true, but still enough; and occasionally one came
across a shattered shell of oak, which might have been
a pillar of cloudy foliage in the days when woad was
the fashionable dress material. I have reason to
believe that W. V. invested all that wild region with
a rosy atmosphere of romance for Littlejohn. Every
blade of grass and fringe of larch was ahve with
wood-magic. She trotted about with him holding his

Her Friend Littlejohn 8i

hand, or swinging on before him with her broad
boyish shoulders thrown well back and an air of
unconscious proprietorship of man and nature.

It was curious to note how her father's stories had
taken hold of her, and Littlejohn, with some surprise
at himself and at the nature of things at large, began
to fancy he saw motive and purpose in some of these
fantastic narratives. The legend of the girl that
was just " 'scruciatingly good " had evidently been
intended to correct a possible tendency towards
priggishness. The boy whose abnormal badness
expressed itself in " I don't care " could not have been
so irredeemably^ wicked, or he would never have
succeeded in locking the bear and tiger up in the tree
and leaving them there to dine off each other. And
all the stories about little girls who got lost — there
were several of these — were evidently lessons against
fright and incentives to courage and self-confidence.

W. V. quite believed that if a little girl got be-
wildered in the underwood the grass would whisper
" This way, this way! " or some little furry creature
would look up at her with its sharp beady eyes and
tell her to follow. Even though one were hungry
and thirsty as well as lost, there was nothing to be
afraid of, if there were only oaks in the Forest. For
when once on a time a httle girl — whose name,
strangely enough, was W. V. — got lost and began
to cry, did not the door of an oak-tree open and a
little, little, wee man all dressed in green, with green
boots and a green feather in his cap, come out and
ask her to " step inside," and have some fruit and
milk? And didn't he say, " When you get lost, don't
keep going this wa}^ and going that way and going
the other way, but keep straight on and you are sure
to come out at the other side ? Only poor wild

F

82 W. V.

things in cages at the Zoo keep going round and
round."

And that is " truly and really," W. V. wOuld add,
" because I saw them doing it at the Zoo."

Even at the risk of being tedious, I must finish the
story, for it was one that greatly delighted Littlejohn
and haunted him in a pleasant fashion. Well, when
this little girl who was lost had eaten the fruit and
drunk the milk, she asked the wee green oak-man to
go with her a little way as it was growing dusk. And
he said he would. Then he whistled, and close to,
and then farther away, and still farther and farther,
other little oak -men whistled in answer, till all the
Forest was full of the sound of whistling. And the
oak-man shouted, " Will you help this little girl out ? "
and you could hear " Yes, yes, yes, yes," far away
right and left, to the very end of the Forest. And the
oak-man walked a few yards with her, and pointed;
and she saw another oak and another oak-man ; and
so she went on from one to another right through the
Forest; and she said, "Thank you, Mr. Oak-man,"
to each of them, and bent down and gave each of
them a kiss, and they all laughed because they were
pleased, and when she got out she could still hear
them laughing quietly together.

Another story that pleased Littlejohn hugely, and
he liked W. V. to tell it as he lay in a hollow among
the heather with his bonnet pulled down to the tip
of his nose, was about the lost little girl who walked
among the high grass — it was quite up to her eyes —
till she was " tired to death." So she lay down, and
just as she was beginning to doze off she heard a very
soft voice humming her to sleep, and she felt warm
soft arms snuggling her close to a warm breast. And
as she was wondering who it could be that was so

Her Friend Littlejohn 83

kind to her, the soft voice whispered. " It is onl}-
mother, dearie; sleep-a-sleep, dearie; only mother
cuddling her httle girl." And when she woke there
was no one there, and she had been tying in quite a
little grassy nest in the hollow of the ground.

Littlejohn himself could hardly credit the change
which this voluble, piquant, imperious young person
had made not only in the ways of the house, but in his
very being and in the material landscape itself. One
of the oddest and most incongnious things he ever
did in his life was to measure W. V. against a tree and
inscribe her initials (her father always called her by
her initials and she liked that form of her name best),
and his own, and the date, above the score which
marked her height.

The late summer and the early autumn passed
dehghtfully in this fashion. There was some talk at
intervals of W. V. being packed, labelled, and de-
spatched " with care " to her own woods and oaI<:-men
in the most pleasant suburb of the great metropohs,
but it never came to anything. Her father was
persuaded to spare her just a little longer. The
patter of the httle feet, the chatter of the voluble,
cheery voice, had grown well-nigh indispensable to
Littlejohn and his wife, for though I have confined
myself to Littlejohn's side of the story, I would not
have it supposed that W. V.'s charm did not radiate
into other hves.

So the cold rain and the drifted leaf, the first frost
and the first snow came; and in their train come
Christmas and the Christmas-tree and the joyful
vision of Santa Claus.

Now to make a long story short, a polite note had
arrived at Cloan Den asking for the pleasure of Miss
W. V.'s company at Bargeddie Mains — about a mile

84 W. V.

and a half beyond the " old ancient " Caledonian
Forest — where a Christmas-tree was to be despoiled
of its fairy fruitage. The Bargeddie boys would
drive over for Miss W. V. in the afternoon, and
" Uncle Big- John " would perhaps come for the young
lady in the evening, unless indeed he would change
his mind and allow her to stay all night.

Uncle Big-John, of course, did not change his mind;
and about nine o'clock he reached the Mains. It
was a sharp moonlight night, and the wide snowy
strath sweeping away up to the vast snow-muffled
Bens looked like a silvery expanse of fairyland. So
far as I can gather it must have been well on the
early side of ten when Littlejohn and W. V. (rejoicing
in the spoils of the Christmas-tree) bade the Bargeddie
people good-night and started homeward — the child
warmly muffled, and chattering and laughing hila-
riously as she trotted along with her hand in his.

It has often since been a subject of wonder that
Littlejohn did not notice the change of the weather,
or that, having noticed it, he did not return for shelter
to the Mains. But we are all too easily wise after the
event, and it is to be remembered that the distance
from home was little over three miles, and that Little-
john was a perfect giant of a man.

They could have hardly been more than half a mile
from Bargeddie when the snow-storm began. The
sparse big flakes thickened, the wind rose bitterly
cold, and then, in a fierce smother of darkness, the
moonlight was blotted out. For what follows the
story depends principally on the recollections of W. V.,
and in a great measure on one's knowledge of Little-
john's nature.

The biting cold and the violence of the wind soon
exhausted the small traveller. Littlejohn took her

Her Friend Littlejohn 85

in his arms, and wrapped her in his plaid. For some
time they kept to the highroad, but the bitter weather
suggested the advisabihty of taking a crow-hne
across the Forest

" You're a jolly heavy lumpumpibus, Infanta,"
Littlejohn said with a laugh; " I think we had better
try a short cut for once through the old oaks."

When they got into some slight cover among
the younger trees, Littlejohn paused to recover his
breath. It was still blowing and snowing heavily.

" Now, W. v., I think it would be as well if you
knocked up some of your little green oak-men, for
the Lord be good to me if I know where we are."

" You must knock," said W. V., " but I don't
think you will get any bananas."

W. V. says that Littlejohn did knock and that the
bark of the dog showed that the oak-man was not at
home !

" I rather thought he would not be, W. V.," said
Littlejohn; " they never are at home except only
to the little people. We big ones have to take care
of ourselves."

" The oak-man said, ' Keep straight on, and you're
sure to come out at the other side,' " W. V. reminded
him.

" The oak-man spoke words of wisdom, Infanta,"
said Littlejohn. " Come along, W. V." And he
lifted the child again in his arms. " Are you cold, my
dearie-girl? "

" No, only my face; but I am so sleepy."

" And so heavy, W. V. I didn't think a httle girl
could be so heavy. Come along, and let us try keeping
straight on. The other side must be somewhere."

How long he trudged on with the child in his arms
and the bewildering snow beating and clotting on

86 W. V.

them both will never be known. W. V., with a spread
of his plaid over her face, fell into a fitful slumber,
from which she was awakened by a fall and a scramble.

" You poor helpless bairn," he groaned, " have I
hurt you? "

W. V. was not hurt; the snow-wreath had been
too deep for that.

" Well, you see, VV. V., we came a lamentable
cropper that time," said Littlejohn. " I think we
must rest a little, for I'm fagged out. You see,
W. v., there is no grass to whisper, ' This way, this
way ' ; and there are no furry things to say, ' Follow
me'; and the oak-men are all asleep; and — and,
God forgive me, I don't know what to do! "

" Are you crying. Uncle Big-John? " asked W. V.;
for " his voice sounded just like as if he was cr5ang,"
she exclaimed afterwards.

"Crying! no, my dear; there's no need to kiss the
crystal tear away! But, you see, I'm tired, and it's
jolly cold and dark; and, as Mother Earth is good

to little children " He paused to see how he

should be best able to make her understand. " You
remember how that little girl that was lost went to
sleep in a hollow of the grass and heard the Motlier
talking to her? Well, you must just lie snug like
that, you see."

" But I'm not lost."

" Of course, you're not lost. Only you must lie snug
and sleep till it stops snowing, and I'll sit beside you."

Littlejohn took off his plaid and his thick tweed
jacket. He wrapped the child in the latter, and half
covered her with snow. With the plaid, propped
up with his stick, he made a sort of tent to shelter
her iiom the driving flakes. He then lay down
beside her till she fell asleep.

Her Friend Littlejohn 87

" It's only mother, dearie; mother cuddling her
little girl; sleep-a-sleep."

Then he must have arisen shuddering in his shirt-
sleeves, and have lashed his arms again and again
about his body for warmth.

In the hoUow in which they were found, the snow-
wreath, with the exception of a narrow passage a few
feet in width where they had blundered in, was im-
passably deep on all sides. All round and round
the hollow the snow was very much trampled.

Worn out with fatigue and exposure the strong
man had at last lain down beside the child. His
hand was under his head.

In that desperate circular race against cold and
death he must have been struck by his own resem-
blance to the wild creatures padding round and
round in their cages in the Zoo, and what irony he
must have felt in the counsel of the wee green oak-
man. WeU, he had followed the advice, had he not ?
And, when he awoke, would he not find that he had
come out at the other side ?

Hours afterwards, when at last Littlejohn slowly
drifted back to consciousness, he lay staring for a
moment or two with a dazed bewildered brain. Then
into his eyes there flashed a look of horror, and he
struggled to pull himself together. " My God, my
God, where is the Infant ? " he groaned.

W. V. was hurried into the room, obliviously
radiant. With a huge sigh Littlejohn sank back
smiling, and held out his hand to her. Whereupon
W. v., moving it gentl}' aside, went up close to him
and spoke, half in inquiry half in remonstrance,
" You're not going to be died, are you ? "

HER BED-TIME

HER BED-TIME

In these winter evenings, thanks to the Great North-
ern, and to Hesperus who brings all things home, I
reach my doorstep about half an hour before W. V.'s
bed-time. A sturdy, rosy, flaxen-haired little body
opens to my well-known knock, takes a kiss on the
tip of her nose, seizes my imibrella, and makes a great
show of assisting me with my heavy overcoat. She
leads me into the dining-room, gets my slippers, runs
m}- bootlaces into Gordian knots in her impetuous
zeal, and announces that she has " set " the tea. At
table she slips furtively on to my knee, and we are
both happy till a severe voice, "Now, father!"
reminds us of the reign of law in general, and of that
law in particular which enacts that it is shocking in
little girls to want everything they see, and most
reprehensible in elderly people (I elderly!) to en-
courage them.

We are glad to escape to the armchair, where, after
I have lit my pipe and W. V. has blown the elf of
flame back to fairyland, we conspire — not overtly
indeed, but each in his deep mind — how we shall
baffle domestic tyranny and evade, if but for a few
brief minutes of recorded time, the cubiculax moment
and the inevitable hand of the bath-maiden.

The critical instant occurs about half-way through
my first pipe, and W. V.'s devices for respite or escape
are at once innumerable and transparently ingenious.
I admit my connivance without a blush, though I
may perchance weakly observe: " One sees so little

91

92 W. V.

of her, mother; " for how dehghtful it is when she
sings or recites — and no one would be so rude as to
interrupt a song or recitation — to watch the httle
hands waving in " the air so blue," the little fingers
flickering above her head in imitation of the sparks
at the forge, the little arms nursing an imaginary
weeping dolly, the blue eyes lit up with excitement
as they gaze abroad from the cherry-tree into the
" foreign lands " beyond the garden wall.

She has much to tell me about the day's doings.
Yes, she has been clay-modelling. I have seen some
of her marvellous baskets of fruit and birds' nests
and ivy leaves; but to-day she has been doing what
dear old Mother Nature did in one of her happy moods
some millenniums ago — making a sea with an island
in it; and around the sea mountains, one a volcano
with a crater blazing with red crayon; and a river
with a bridge across it ; quite a boldly conceived and
hospitable fragment of a new planet. Of course Miss
Jessie helped her, but she would soon be able, all by
herself, to create a new world in which there should
be ever-blossoming spring and a golden age and
fairies to make the impossible commonplace. W. V.
does not put it in that way, but those, I fancy, would
be the characteristics of a universe of her happy and
innocent contriving.

In her early art days W. V. was distinctly Dar-
winian. Which was the cow, and which the house,
and which the lady, was always a nice question.
One could differentiate with the aid of a few strokes
of natural selection, but essentially they were all
of the same protoplasm. Her explanations of her
pictures afforded curious instances of the easy magic
with which a breath of her little soul made all manner
of dry bones live. I reproached her once with wasting

Her Bed-Time 93

paper which she had covered with a whirhng scribble.
" Why, father," she exclaimed with surprise, " that's
the north wind! " Her latest masterpiece is a
drawing of a stone idol; but it is only exhibited on
condition that, when you see it, you must " shake
with fright."

At a Kindergarten one learns, of course, many things
besides clay-modeHing, drawing and painting : poetry,
for instance, and singing, and natural history; drill
and ball-playing and dancing. And am I not curious
— this with a glance at the clock which is on the stroke
of seven — to hear the new verse of her last French
song? Shall she recite "Purr, purr!" or "The
Swing " ? Or would it not be an agreeable change
to have her sing " Up into the Cherry Tree," or " The
Busy Blacksmith " ?

Any or all of these would be indeed delectable, but
parting is the same sweet sorrow at the last as at the
first. However, we shall have one song. And after
that a recitation by King Alfred! The king is the
most diminutive of china dolls dressed in green
velvet. She steadies him on the table by one leg,
and crouches down out of sight while he goes through
his performance. The Fauntleroy hair and violet
eyes are the eyes and hair of King Alfred, but the
voice is the voice of W. V.

When she has recited and sung I draw her between
my knees and begin : " There was once a very naughty
little girl, and her name was W. V."

" No, father, a good httle girl."

" Well, there was a good Httle girl, and her name
was Gladys."

" No, father, a good little girl called W. V."

" Well, a good little girl called W. V. ; and she was
' quickly obedient ' ; and when her father said she

94 W. V.

was to go to bed, she said: ' Yes, father,' and she
just flcxv, and gave no trouble."

" And did her father come up and kiss her? "

" Why, of course, he did."

A few minutes later she is kneeling on the bed
with her head nestled in my breast, repeating her
evening prayer:

" Dear Father, whom I cannot see,
Smile down from heaven on little me.

Let angels through the darkness spread
Their holy wings about my bed.

And keep me safe, because I am
The heavenly Shepherd's little lamb.

Dear God our Father, watch and keep
Father and mother while they sleep;

" and bless Dennis, and Ronnie, and Uncle John,
and Auntie Bonnie, and Phyllis (did Phyllis use to
squint when she was a baby? Poor Phyllis!); and
Madame, and Lucille (she is only a tiny little child
a quarter past three years or something like that)
and Ivo and Wilfrid (he has bronchitis very badly
he can't come out this winter; aren't you sorry for
him? Really a dear little boy)."

" Any one else? "

" Auntie Edie and Grandma. {He will have plenty
to do, won't He?) "

" And ' Teach me ' " — I suggest.

" Teach me to do what I am told,
And help me to be good as gold."

And a whisper comes from the pillow as I tuck in
the eider-down :

" Now He will be wondering whether I am going
to be a good girl."

HER VIOLETS

HER VIOLETS

" Shall we go into the Forest and get some violets ? "
W. V. asks gleefully, as she muffles herself in what
she calls her bear-skin. " And can't we take the
Man with us, father? "

It is a clear forenoon in mid January; crisp with
frost, but bright, and there is not a ripple in the sweet
air. On the morning side of things the sun has
blackened roofs and footpaths and hedges, but the
rest of the world looks delightfully hoar and winterly.

Now when trunks and branches are clotted white
to windward, the Forest, as every one knows, is quite
an exceptional place for violets. Of course, you go
far and far away — through the glades and dingles
of the Oak-men, and past the Webs of the Iron
Spider, and beyond the Water of Heart's-ease, till
you are on the verge of the Blue Distances. There
all the roads come to an end, and that is the real
beginning of the ancient wilderness of wood, which,
W. V. tells me, covered nearly the whole of England
in the days before the " old Romans " came. From
what she has read in history, it appears that in the
rocky regions of the wold there are still plenty of
bears and fierce wolves and wild stags; and that the
beavers still build weirs and log-houses across the
streams. Well, when you have gone far enough, you
will see a fire blazing in the snow on the high rocky
part of the Forest, and around it twelve strange men
sitting on huge boulders, telling stories of old times.

" And if January would let April change places
with him," W. V. explains, " you would see jumbos of

97 G

98 W. V.

violets just leaping up through the snow in a minute.
And I think he would, if we said we wanted them
for the Man."

You see, the Man, who has been only three months
with us and has had very little to say to any one since
he came, is still almost a stranger, and W. V. treats
him accordingly with much deference and considera-
tion. The bleak foggy weather had set in when he
arrived, and it has grown sharper and more trying
ever since; and as he came direct from a climate of
perpetual sunshine and everlasting blossom, there is
always danger of his catching cold. He keeps a good
deal to his own room, never goes abroad when the
wind is in the east or north, and has not yet set foot
in the Forest. This January day, however, is so
bright and safe that we think we may lure him away ;
and in all the divine region of fresh air, what place is
sunnier and more sheltered than the Forest? And
then there is the hint of violets !

So off to the woods we go, and with us the Man,
warm and snug, and companionable enough in his
peculiar silent way.

It is pleasant to notice the first catkins, and to
get to white sunlit spots where the snow shows that
no one has preceded us. And what a delightful sur-
prise it is to catch sight of the footprints of the wild
creatures along the edge of the paths and among the
bushes !

"Are the oak-men really asleep, father?" asks
W. V. " Nobody else is."

We stop to examine the traO where Bunny has
scuttled past. And here some small creature, a field-
mouse perhaps, has waded through the fluffy drift.
And do look at the bird-tracks at the foot of the big
oaks !

Her Violets 99

" Oh, father, these go right inside that httle hole
under the root ; is the bird there ? "

And others go right round the trunk as though
there ' had been a search for some small crevice of
shelter.

As we wander along I think of all the change which
has taken place since last I recorded our birthday
rambles in the Forest. It is only a year ago, and yet
how amazingly W. V. has grown in a twelvemonth!
Even to her the Forest is no longer quite the same
vague enchanted region it used to be. Strange people
have started up out of history and invaded its green
solitude; on the outskirts "Ancient Britons,"
tattooed with blue woad, have made clearings and
sown corn, and " old Romans " have run a long
straight " street " through one portion of it. There
still lingers in her heart a coy belief in little green-
clad oak-men, and flower-elves, and subtle sylvan
creatures of fancy; indeed, it was only the other day
that she asked me, " How does the sun keep up in the
sky? Is it hanging on a fairy tree? " but I notice
a growing impatience at " sham stories," and a
preference for what has really happened — " some-
thing about the Romans, or the Danes or Saxons, or
Jesus." When I begin some wonderful saga, she
looks up alertly, " True? " — then settles down to her
enjoyment.

The shadowy figures of our old England perplex
as much as they delight her imagination. I believe
she cherishes a wild hope of finding some day the
tiled floor of a Roman villa in a corner of her garden,
"like the one in the Cotswolds, you know, father;
Miss Jessie saw it." I find a note of the following
conversation, just after the last hug had been

loo W. V.

given and the gas was being turned down to a
peep :

W. V. The Ancient Britons are all dead, are they
not?

Mother. Oh yes, of course ; long ago.

W. V. Then they can't come and attack us now,
can they ?

Mother. No! No one wants to attack us. Be-
sides, we are Britons ourselves, you know.

W. V. [after a pause]. I suppose we are the Ancient
Britons' little babies. How funny !

And so to sleep, with, it may be, lively dreams
springing out of that fearsome legend which Miss
Jessie inscribes (in letters of fire) on the black-board
as a writing exercise: " England was once the home
of the Britons. They were wild and savage."

In spite of her devotion to history and her love of
truth, I fear W. V. cannot be counted on for accuracy.
What am I to say when, in a rattle-pate mood, she
tells me that not only Julius Caesar but Oliver Crom-
well was lost on board the White Ship — Hke needles
in a haystack? Her perception of the lapse of time
and the remoteness of events is altogether untrust-
worthy. Last August we went across the Heath to
visit the tumulus of Boadicea. As we passed the
Ponds the sparkling of the water in the sun lit up
her fancy — " Wasn't it like fairies dancing? " After
a little silence she was anxious to know whether there
was a wreath on Boadicea's grave. Oh no. " Not
any leaves either?" No, all the people who knew
her had died long ago. There used to be two pine-
trees, but they were dead too — only two broken
trunks left, which she could see yonder against the
sky. A pause, and then, " We might have taken
some flowers." Poor queen of old days, hear this.

Her Violets loi

and smile and take solace! " If she hadn't poisoned
herself, would she be alive now? " (Did she poison
herself? How one forgets!) Alas, no! she, too,
would have been dead long ago. A strange mystery,
this of the long, long, long time that has gone by.

When I told her the story of the hound Gelert —
" True? " — and described how, after the Prince had
discovered that the child was safe, and had turned,
full of pity and remorse, to the dying hound,
poor Gelert had just strength to lick his hand
before falling back dead, the licking of the hand
moved her deeply and set her thinking for hours.
Next day she wanted to know whether " that Gelert
Prince " was still alive. No. Well, the Prince's
son? No. His son then? No; it was all long,
long ago.

It is incomprehensible to her that " every one "
should have died so long ago. She does not under-
stand how it happens that even I, venerable as I am,
did not know the Druids, or the Saxons, or any of
" those old Romans." " You are very old, aren't
you, father? — thirty-four?" "I am more than
thirty-five, dear! " " That is a lot older than me,"
somewhat dubiously. " Nearly six times." After
a long pause: "What was your first little girl's
name ? " " Violet, dear." " How old would she have
been?" "Nearly twenty, dearie." "Did I ever
see her, father ? " " No, chuck." " Did she ever see
me? " N Who can tell? Perhaps, perhaps.

All these things appeal strongly to her imagination.
What a delight it is to her to hear read for the twen-
tieth time that passage about the giant Atlas in The
Heroes: " They asked him, and he answered mildly,
-pointing to the seaboard with his mighty hand, ' I can

I02 W. V.

see the Gorgons lying on an island far away; but this
youth can never come near them unless he has the
hat of darkness.' " And they touch her feelings
more nearly than I should have thought. On many
occasions we have heard her crying shortly after
being tucked up for the night. Some one always
goes to her, for it is horrible to leave a child crying
in the dark ; and the cause of her distress has alwa3'S
been a mysterious pain, which vanishes at the
moment any one sits down beside her. One evening,
however, I had been reading her " The Wreck of the
Hesperus," and while she was being put to bed she
was telling her mother what a sad story it was — and
what should she do if she thought of it in her sleep ?
Here was a possible clue to her troubles. Ten
minutes later we heard the sound of sobbing. It was
the pain, she said; the mysterious pain; but I was
as certain as though I had been herself that it was

" The salt sea frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes."

Yet another evening she begged me to stay a little
while with her, as she was sure she could not fall
asleep. The best way for a little girl to fall asleep,
I told her — and every little girl ought to know it — is
to think she is in a garden, and to gather a lot of moss-
roses, and to make a chain of them; and then she
must glide away over the grass, without touching it,
to a stile in the green fields and wait till she hears
a pattering of feet; and almost immediately a flock
of sheep will pass by, dozens and dozens, and then
a flock of lambs, and she must count them every one ;
and at last a lovely white lamb with a black face will
come, and she must throw the rose-chain over its
head and trot along beside it till she reaches the

Her Violets 103

daffodil meadows where the dream-tree grows, and
the lamb will lie down under the tree, and she must
lie down beside it, and the tree will shake down the
softest sleep on them, and there will be no waking till
daylight comes. Once more, a few minutes later,
there was a sound of weeping in the dark. Oh yes,
she had counted the sheep and the lambs, every one
of them, and had got to the meadows ; but one httle
lamb had stayed behind and had got lost in the
mountains, and she could hear it crying for the others.

There is a foohsh beatitude in dallying with these
childish recollections, but unless I record them now
I shall be the poorer till the end of time; they will
vanish from memory like the diamond dust of dew
which I once saw covering the nasturtium leaves
with a magical iridescent bloom. All during the
summer months it has been a joy to see the world
through her young eyes. She is a little shepherdess
of vagrant facts and fancies, and her crook is a note
of interrogation. " What is a sponge, father? " she
asks. And there is a story of the blue sea-water and
the strange jelly-like creature enjoying its dim life
on the deep rocks, and the diver, let down from his
boat by a rope with a heavy stone at the end to sink
him. "Poor sponge!" says W. V., touching it
gently. x\s we go along the fields we see a horse
lying down and another standing beside it — both
of them as motionless as stone. " They think they
are having their photographs taken," says W. V. The
yellow of a daisy is of course " the yolk." On a
windy May morning " it does the trees good being
blown about; it is like a little walk for them." When
she sees the plane-tree catkins all fluffed over with
wool, she thinks they are very like little kittens.

I04 W. V.

Crossing the fields after dusk I tell her that all that
white shimmer in the sky is the Milky Way; " Oh,
is that why the cows lie out in the grass all night ? "
After rain I show her how the water streams down
the hill and comes away in a succession of little
rushes; "It is like a wet wind, isn't it?" she
observes. Having modelled an ivy leaf in clay, she
wonders whether God would think it pretty good if
He saw it; but " it is a pity it isn't green." When
the foal springs up from all four hoofs drawn together
and goes bounding round in a wild race, " Doesn't he
folatre, father?" then in explanation, "that comes
in Madame's lesson, Le poulain folatre."

In the woods in June we gathered tiny green oak-
lets shooting from fallen acorns, and took them home.
By and by we shall have oaks of our own, and a
svi^ing between them; and if we like we can climb
them, for no one will then have any right to shout
" Hi! come down, there! " So we planted our pro-
spective woods, and watered them. " They think it
is raining," whispered W. V. with a laugh; " they
fancy we are all indoors, don't they? " At 7.30 p.m.
on the longest day of the year the busiest of bumble-
bees is diving into bell after bell of the three foxglove
spires in the garden. W. V.'s head just reaches the
lowest bell on the purple spire. " Little girls don't
grow as fast as foxgloves, do they?" She notices
that the bells are speckled inside with irregular
reddish-brown freckles on a white ground; " Just
like a bird's eggs." This is the only plant in the
garden which does not outrun its flower; there is
always a fresh bell in blossom at the top; however
high it goes, it always takes its joy with it. That
will be a thing to tell her when she is older; mean-

Her Violets 105

while — " I may have some of the gloves to put on my
fingers, mayn't I, father? "

In July the planet was glorified by the arrival of her
Irish terrier. She threw us and creation at large the
crumbs from her table, but her heart was bound up
in her " hound." She named him Tan. " Tan,"
she explained, " is a better name than Dan. Tan is
his colour. Dan is a sleepy sort of voice (sound). If
he had been called Dan, perhaps he would have been
sleepy." Seeing the holes in my flower-beds and
grass-plot, I wish he had. " He thinks it a world of
delight to get outside," she remarks; and she is
always somewhat rueful when he has to be left at
home. On these occasions Tan knows he is not going,
and he races round to the yard-door, where he looks
out from a hole at the bottom — one bright dark brown
eye and a black muzzle visible — with pleading wist-
fulness, " Can't I go too? " " Look at One-eye-and-
a-nose! " cries W. V. "I don't think he likes that
name; his proper name is Tan. It wouldn't be a
bad idea to make a poem —

' One-eye-and-a-nose looks out at the gate,'

would it, father? Will you make it?" And she
laughs remorselessly; but long before we return her
thoughts are with the " hound." The puffing of the
train is like his panting ; its whistle reminds her of his
howl. " I expect he will be seeking for me sorrow-
fully," she tells me, " but when he sees me all his
sorrow will be gone. The dear old thing! You'll
pat him, father, won't you?" All which contrasts
drolly enough with her own occasional intolerance of
tenderness. "Oh, mother, don't kiss me so much;
too many kisses spoil the girl! " But then, of course,
her love for her " hound " is mixed with savagery.

io6 W. V.

Ever since I taught her the craft of the bow and
arrow, Tan (as a wolf) goes in terror for his hfe. Still,
it is worth noting that she continues to kiss the
flowers good-night. Do flowers touch her as some-
thing more human, something more like herself in
colour ? At any rate, Tan has not superseded them.
Early in the spring it occurred to me to ascertain
the range of her vocabulary. I did not succeed, but
I came to the conclusion that a child of six, of average
intelligence, may be safely credited with a knowledge
of at least 2000 words. A clear practical knowledge,
too ; for in making up my lists I tried to test how far
she had mastered the sense as well as the sound.
Punctual, she told me, meant "just the time";
dead, " when you have left off breathing — and your
heart stops beating too," she added as an after-
thought; messenger, " anybody who goes and fetches
things "; then, as a bee flew past, " a bee is a mes-
senger ; he leaves parcels of flower-dust on the sticky
things that stand up in a flower." "The pistils? "
" Oh yes, pistils and stamens; I remember those old
words." Flame, she explained, is " the power of
the match." What did she mean by "power"?
"Oh, well, we have a power of talking"; so that
flame, I gather, is a match's way of expressing itself.
What was a hero ? " Perseus was one; a very brave
man who could kill a Gorgon." " Brain is what you
think with in your head; and " — physiological after-
thought— " the more you think the more crinkles
there are." And sensible ? " The opposite to silly."
And opposite? " One at the top " (pointing to the
table) " and one at the bottom; they would be
opposite." Lady ? "A woman." But a woman
is not always a lady. " If she was kind I would know
she was a lady." Noble? "Stately; a great person.

Her Violets 107

You are the noble of the office, you know, father. "^
" Domino " as an equivalent for " That's done with,"
has a ring of achievement about it, but " jumbos "
in the sense of " lots," " heaps," cannot commend
itself even to the worshippers of the immortal ele-
phant. Wliile I hnger over these fond trivialities,
let me set down one or two of her phrases. " You
would laugh me out of my death-bed, mother," she
said the other day, when her mother made a remark
that greatly tickled her fancy. As the thread
twanged while a button was being sewn on her boot,
" Auntie, you are making the boot laugh! " "I
shall clench my teeth at you, if you won't let me."
" Mother, I haven't said my prayers ; let me say them
on your blessed lap of heaven."

What a httle beehive of a brain it is, and what busy
hustling swarming thoughts and fancies are filling its
cells! I told her that God made the heavens and
the earth and all things a long, long while ago. " And
isn't He dead? "— hke the " old Romans " and the
others. " I think God must be very clever to make
people. We couldn't make ourselves, could we?
Is there really a man in the sky who made us ? "
" Not a man, a great invisible Being." " A Sorcerer ?
I suppose we have to give Him a name, so we call Hini
God." And yet at times she is distinctly orthodox.
"Do you really love your father?" "Oh yes,
father." " Do you worship him ? " "I should think
not," with a gracious smile. "Why? What is
worship? " " You and mother and I and everybody
worships God. He is the greatest King in the world."
I was telUng her how sternly children were brought
up fifty or sixty years ago; how they bowed to their
father's empty chair, stood when he entered the room,
did not dare speak unless they were spoken to, and

io8 W. V.

always called him " sir." *' Did they never say
' father ' ? Did they not say it on Sundays for a
treat ? " A little while later, after profound reflection,
she asked — " God is very old; does Jesus call Him
Father?" "Yes, dear; He always called Him
Father." It was only earthly fathers after all who
did not suffer their babes to come to them.

Oh, the good summer days when merely to be ahve
is a delight. How easily we were amused. One could
always float needles on a bowl of water — needles ?
nay, little hostile fleets of ironclads which we man-
oeuvred with magnets, and which rammed each other
and went down in wild anachronism, galley and three-
decker, off Salamis or Lepanto. Did you ever play at
rainbows? It is refreshing on a tropical day; but
you need a conservatory with a flagged floor and the
sun shining at your back. Then you syringe the
inside of the glass roof, and as the showers fall in
fine spray, there is the rainbow laughing on the wet
pavement! When it is "too hot for anything,"
W. V. makes a small fire of dry leaves and dead wood
under a tree, and we sit beside it making-believe it is
wet and wintry, and glad at heart that we have a dry
nook in a cold world.

Still in the last chilly days of autumn, and after-
wards, we have our resources. Regiments of infantry
and squadrons of rearing chargers make a gay show,
with the red and blue and white of their uniforms
reflected on the polished oak table. The drummer-
boys beat the charge, the buglers blow. The artillery
begins; and Highlanders at the doubtle spin right
about face, and horsemen topple over in groups, and
there is a mighty slaughter and a dire confusion
around the man with the big drum — " his Grace's

Her Violets 109

private drum." Then farewell the plumed troop and
the big wars! We are Vikings now. Here is the
atlas and Mercator's projection. W. V. launches her
little paper boat with its paper crew, and a snoring
breeze carries us through the Doldrums and across
the Line, and we double the Cape of Storms and sniff
the spices of Taprobane, and — behold the little island
where I was born! " That little black spot, father? "
" Yes." "Oh, the dear old place! " I am surprised
that the old picturesque Mappemonde, with its ele-
phants and camel trains and walled towns and queer-
rigged ships, does not interest her. She will enjoy it
later.

The day closes in and the curtains are drawn, and
I light a solitary candle. As I bring out the globe,
she calls laughingly, " Oh, father, you can't carry the
world — don't try! " Here we are in the cold of
stellar space, with a sun to give us whatever season
we want. With her fan she sets a wind blowing over
half the planet. She distributes the sunshine in the
most capricious fashion. We feel like icy gods in
this bleak blue solitude. " I suppose God made the
suns to keep Himself warm." " He made you, dear,
to keep me warm, and He made all of us to keep Him
warm." She will get the meat out of that nut later.
" I wonder what will happen when everybody is dead.
Will the world go whirling round and round just as it
does now? "

In all these amusements one consideration gives
her huge joy: " You ought to be doing your work,
oughtn't you, father? " Once, when I admitted that
I really ought, she volunteered assistance. " Would
it help you, father, if I was to make you a poem ? "
" Indeed it would, dear." " Well, then, I must
think." And after due thought, this was the poem
she made me:

no W. V.

" Two little birdies sat on a tree, having a talk
with each other. In the room sat a little girl reading
away at her picture-book. And in the room, as well,
there was a boy playing with his horse and cart. Said
one little birdie to the other. How nice it would be
if you were a girl and I was a boy." (Hands are
dropped full length and swept backward, and she
bows.)

This was after the Man came.

Oh, the Man ! I have been day-dreaming and have
forgotten the snowy woods, and the tracks of the
wild creatures.

This is the story of the Man.

The Man arrived on the fifth of November. As
soon as I reached home in the evening, W. V. had her
lantern ready to go out Guy-Fawkesing. " I must
go and see mother first, dear; " for mother had not
been well. "May I go too, father?" "Certainly,
dear."

We found mother looking very delicate and very
happy. "We are going out to see the bonfires;
we shall not be long. Give mother a kiss, clear."
As W. V. approached the pillow, the clothes were
gently folded back, and there on mother's arm — oh,
the wonder and delight of it! — ^lay the Man. W. V.
gazed, reddened, looked at mother, looked at me,
laughed softly, and gave expression to her feelings
in a prolonged " Well! "

" You kiss him first, dear, and we'll let the httle
man get to sleep. He's come a long way, and is very
tired."

A darling, a little gem, a dear wee man! She
"wanted a boy"! How shockingly ecstatic it all
was ! For days her thoughts were constantly playing

Her Violets i 1 1

round him. She even forgot to give Tan his biscuits.
" Even when I am an old lady I shall always be six
and a half years older than Guy; and when Guy is
a httle old man he will be six and a half years younger
than me." The very fire revealed itself in the guise
of motherhood: " It has its arms about its baby."
Cross-questioned by deponent: " Why, the log is the
baby, father. And the fire has yellowy arms."

This was the chance, I thought, of helping her to
realise Bethlehem. " The donkey and the cow
would be kind to Guy, wouldn't they? They would
let no one touch him." " Was Jesus very tiny and
pink, too ? " " And was God quite pink and tiny ? "
When I explained that God was not born, had never
been a baby at all — " Oh, poor httle boy! "

Out of the ox and the ass and Gelert and Guy she
speedily made herself a wonderful drama. Watching
her round the corner of my book, I saw the following
puppet-play enacted, with some subdued mimetic
sounds, but without a spoken word.

Dramatis Person^e.
A doll, a cardboard dog, a horse ditto.

Scene I. — The doll gets a ride on the dog's back;
the horse runs whinnying round the meadow.

Scene II. — ^The doll asleep; the dog and horse
watching. Enter the serpent (a string of
beads); crawls stealthily to the doll. The
dog barks and bites. The horse jumps on the
serpent. The doll wakes. Saved!

To stand and gaze at the Man is bliss ; to hold him
on her lap for a moment is very heaven. " TeU me

112 W. V.

what you saw when you came down," she prayed him ;
but the Man never bhnked an eyehd (babes and alh-
gators share this weird faculty). Mother suggested:
" I saw a snow-cloud, so I made haste before the
snow came." W. V. " guesses " that when she came
she saw many lovely things, but unhappily she has
forgotten them.

My daughter's admiration of my great gifts has
always been exhilarating to me. Time was when
I cudgelled the loud wind for clattering her windows,
and saw that malignant stones and obdurate wood
and iron were condignly chastised for hurting her.
No one has such mechanical genius for the mending
of her dolls and slain soldiers; no one can tell her
such good stories as I; no one make up such funny
poems. Now she contrasted her voice with mine
— alas! she cannot sing Guy to sleep. Well, let us
make a new song and try together:

The creatures are all at rest,
The lark in his grassy furrow,
The crow in his faggoty nest,
And Bunny's asleep in his burrow;

But this little boy

He is no longer his mother's joy,

For he will not, will not, will not, will not, will not go
to sleep!

Oh yes, if we sing with gentle patience and a sweet
diminuendo, he always does go to sleep — in the
long run.

I do not think there is anything she would not do
for the Man. " Father, you will always be a staunch
friend to Guy? " Why, naturally, and so must she;

Her Violets i i 3

she must love him, and help him, and guide him,
and be good to him all her life, for there is only one
Guy and one W. V. in all the world. She has now
caught hold of the notion of the little mother, of
considerateness, thoughtfulness, helpfulness, self-
denial, self-sacrifice.

Yesterday the little Man noticed a bird painted
on a plate and put out his hand. " Fly out, little
bird, to Guy! " cried W. V. It was a pretty fancy,
and I wrote:

IN CHINA

With wings green and black and a daffodil breast,
He flies day and night; without song, without rest;
Through summer, through winter — the cloudy, the clear —
Encircling the sun in the round of the year.

But now that it's April and shiny; oh, now

That nests are a-building, and bloom's on the bough.

Alight, pretty rover, and get you a mate —

Our almond's in blossom — fly out of the plate !

But this was not at all successful. There were no
almonds in blossom, and it should have been, " Fly
out to Guy! "

No almonds in blossom! I know the oaks are " in
feathers," as W. V. says, and the Forest is full of
snow ; yet I feel that the almond is in blossom too.

The Man is sleeping peacefully in his furs, but it is
time we were turning for home.

" Then we shan't get any violets this time? " says
W. V. with a sly gleam in her eyes.

Oh, little woman, yes; the woods and the world
are full of the smell of violets.

H

IN MEMORY OF W. V.

I had no human fears;
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;

She neither hears nor sees ;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,

With rocks, and stones, and trees.

Wordsworth.

This is He
Of Galilee,
Of Nazareth,

The Christ that conquers Death . . .
Talitha cumi ! See
The tumult as of some sweet strife
Strained tremulous up — up —
" Give her to drink! " He saith —
Yea, Lord, behold, a cup !

T. E. Brown.

Thy voice is on the rolling air;

I hear thee where the waters run ;

Thou standest in the rising sun,
And in the setting thou art fair.

Far off thou art, but ever nigh;
I have thee still, and I rejoice.

Tennyson.

WINIFRED VIDA

Glasgow, April 26, 1890. Highgaie, April 15, 1901.

Though to her it is a vain service, I wish to leave
a hriei memorial of Winifred's Httle life, and so
complete the book which has made her the child
of many households besides our own. I undertake
the task at the suggestion of one who loved her,
though he never looked upon her face ; and in writing
of her I shall try to think of her, not as I last saw her,
but as she was to me for nearly eleven years ; as she
will ever be in memory ; as she is ; as I shall yet see
her, on the first day of the new week, when it is no
longer dark, when the stone has been taken away.

When she came home for the Easter holidays, she
was looking more healthy and rosy than we had seen
her for a long time — full of gaiety and high spirits.
She was so much a child of the earth, so completely
one with spring flowers and new leaves and sunshine
and the glad breath of the west wind, that one felt
that while these lasted she could not but be as they
were. Indeed, her joyous little soul seemed to give
them something of its own immortality and a human
nearness which of themselves they had not.

She had a reverence and piety of her own, thought
much of the mystery of God and of the person of
Christ, made her own quaint forms of worship — as
when she added to her evening prayer the familiar
petition, " The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and
the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost,

117

ii8 In Memory of W. V.

be with us all evermore." Yet in her many moods
she was never a " heavenly " child. She wanted
nothing better than the good earth on which she
found herself. She was wonderfully alive to all that
was beautiful; but when I once asked her whether
she would not like to live in the sunset among the
trees and little islands and tiny houses which she
imagined (her meaning for " imagine " was, " I seem
to see, although I don't quite "), she answered with
a decided " No, I should not." And my question,
"Why not?" was met with the prompt reply,
" Because I am quite happy down here."

Other children, indeed, may have been as happy;
none could have been happier. She had at times her
childish troubles, but care fell from her easily. Life
was so good to her — and so good to us through her.
Even at the end, the wind of the Valley was tempered.
She suffered little pain, and no shadow of anxiet3' or
misgiving disturbed her heart at any time. None
of us thought of death, she least of all. It is a com-
fort to me to know that in the common sense of the
word she did not die, but only swooned away through
a momentary blank of darkness into the life divine.
There was no leave-taking — no word of anguish or
dereliction; no time or chance for these, the change
was so sudden.

And yet to us now looking back, there was a sort
of premonition in a curious phrase of hers on the
evening l:iefore her death, when, a little light-headed,
she said: " Oh, mother, we shall miss you if you
go to Italy." On the following morning, too, she
wandered at intervals, and I found her much troubled
for a moment or two. " I don't want to marry the
king's son; but you have to, if you find the king's
ring." When I assured her that there was really

Winifred Vida i lo

no compulsion at all, and that she should not marry
any one unless she liked, she was greatly relieved,
and looked up at me with a smile of perfect trust.
That was the last time I saw the light in her living
eyes.

Phyllis and Winifred came home on the Tuesday
before Easter, and after a very happy holiday, in
spite of the east wind and wet, were preparing to re-
turn on Monday, April 15th, the day on which she died.

On Saturday, the 6th, she went with Guy and me
into the woods; and we talked and laughed over
the '■ old times," before Guy was born, when she
and I had adventures with the Oak-men, and went
in great dread of bears and of the webs of the Iron
Spider; and of later happy days when we used to
take out Guy in his mail-cart, and tell stories in our
country house while he lay asleep under the shade
of the tree which was his town house. That was the
last time we three were in the woods together. She
was always companionable, but now I found her
grown into a kind of equal, without having lost an\^
of her old gaiety and freshness of fancy.

The following Tuesday was beautifully bright and
warm, and the children went into the woods in the
afternoon, taking bananas, chocolate, and biscuits
with them. They tied Phyllis to a tree, as Andro-
meda exposed to Pristrix the Sea-monster, and ran
away and left her. Some boys came along, and
offered Phyllis a knife to free herself " from her
bonds," but she was not going to cut their skipping-
rope; and presently Winifred peered round a tree
laughing. She let Bertha release Phyllis, but ran
off home herself, for fear they should chain her to
the rock.

I20 In Memory of W. V.

On Wednesday Phyllis, Winifred, and mother went
to the British Museum, chiefly to see Cleopatra's
mummy and the great tomb of Mausolus, with its
huge stone chariot and horses. She was much
interested in both of these things, for we had often
talked of them, and these old stories had always a
particular attraction for her. In the evening she
was very anxious to go to church, but as the bells
had stopped ringing before she got there, and she
did not like to go in late, she came to meet me. I
was crossing the road from the station when I heard
a voice, " Father! " and Winnie came running
towards me. A little later in the evening she com-
plained of pain in the chest, which we thought was
probably caused by indigestion; and she lay down
and fell asleep.

On Thursday she still had a little pain, but the
children amused themselves with type-writing, and
were very merry. After tea it was so bright that
they took a run with their bicj^cles, but Winifred
did not stay out long.

On Friday she did not care to go to the Hippo-
drome. As the pain had shifted somewhat lower
and suggested gastric catarrh, the doctor was sent
for; but she did not appear to be at all ill. Indeed,
all day she was very lively, reading and playing
with Guy, and working at some patchwork for a
lucky-bag. The needle remains in it just as she left
it. At night when Phyllis went to bed, Winifred sat
up and said : "I feel better now ; let's have a game ! "
but soon afterwards, hearing footsteps on the stairs,
they dived under the bedclothes, and went to sleep.

About one o'clock in the morning she awoke her
mother, and complained of the pain being worse.
Hot fomentations and poultices were applied; the

Winifred Vida 1 2 1

doctor came early, and he diagnosed local peritonitis,
with a temperature of 103. The word " peritonitis "
did not then mean for us what it has come to mean
since; we saw no cause for dread. There was pain,
it is true, but it was not acute except when she tried
to move, and with a little care, we thought, all
would be well immediately. Late in the evening
her temperature had risen to 105; but although she
suffered from thirst and restlessness during the night,
it had fallen to 102 in the morning, and it did not
rise again.

I take what follows from her mother's account
in our House-book: —

She wandered a good deal all day, which we
attributed partly to the morphia she was taking,
and she kept asking what day it was. When I said
it was still Sunday, she laughed at herself quite in her
old way, " I am a donkey! " The doctor thought
her certainly no worse when he came in the evening.
She had a very restless night and talked a great deal.
Nurse called me at four in the morning, and said she
had just been very sick. After poulticing again,
nurse went away for an hour, and I lay down beside
Winifred, and held her hand and fanned her. She
slept a little until six; then I poulticed her again,
and nurse got up. Winifred looked very dark round
the eyes, and her face was thin, but I never antici-
pated any danger. She was sick several times again ;
I think she counted the number, poor child. I helped
nurse to wash and change her, and Will came up
and helped too. We moved her to the other side of
the bed, and she said she was so comfortable. She
seemed to move more easily, and I thought she was
a little better, but I could see she would need a great

122 In Memory of W. V.

deal of care and nursing. She brightened up when
I said they should not go back to school, but that,
when she got better, we should all go away to the
seaside together.

She talked quite rationally about some things,
though she wandered at times. Once she said,
'■ Shall I have to marry the king's eldest son? You
know you must, if you find the king's signet-ring."
I told Will, and he said, " Oh, you needn't, if you
don't want to," which seemed to reassure her. She
begged for ice, and Phyllis went and got some, and
brought her some flowers, too, which she looked at.
She complained of pain at the top of her head, and
we kept putting on eau-de-cologne and ice and wet
handkerchiefs. She threw the bedclothes off a good
deal, and her hands felt cold.

The doctor came soon after 10.30. He found her
temperature no higher and her body less tender, but
her puke was bad, and he said she was very low, and
proposed to send for advice. She began to speak
indistinctly too, and yet I never thought of immediate
danger. The doctor said he would come back about
one. I sent a telegram to Will at once to say that
a physician was coming, but almost immediately she
began to change. Nurse felt her hands and found
them cold and wet; "Oh, she is going! " she said.
We gave her brandy, but her teeth were clenched
and we could not get her to take it. I sent another
message to Will; and nurse seeing the doctor's
coachman, sent for him to come back at once.

I stood by her trying to reahse that she was leaving
me. Her eyes were wide open, all pupil, but quite
unseeing. I kissed her, and spoke to her, but she
never replied, and she just breathed a few times, and
it was all over. The doctor came in a few minutes

Winifred Vida 123

afterwards. I think it must have been about 11.45;
but I was too stunned to think of looking at the time.
I went downstairs and told Phyllis, and waited f« r
Will to come home. I was so cold.

So ends the story of the little life which to us was
so dear.

Before I could reach home she had been dead for
nearly two hours, yet her head and bosom were so
strangely warm that it was impossible to surrender
hope, it was not till late in the evening that the
cold of the grave set in, and one knew for certain
that her bright spirit had gone.

During the days that followed we kept the shadow
from falling on Guy as much as we were able. He
played and built and ran his trains as usual, and
wound tunes out of his musical box; only, now aii'I
then he would ask: " Will it disturb Winnie ? Won'i
she hear?" And when he got for answer, "No,
dear, but she would like it if she did," he would say:
" It isn't too loud," and would go on very softly with
his winding. Poor httle man, no trouble, I think,
fell to his share on her account.

But for us when she died all the clocks of the world
seemed to stop, and all the wheels of life to fall still.
It was strange to think how much we had to tell you,
how many things we wanted to ask you, Winifred.
Every trifle of hers became in a peculiar way precious
■ — and so many things of ours became valueless. Books
and pictures which I had kept for her when she
should have grown older, what was the use or worth
of them now that her hands should never touch them,
her eyes never take pleasure in them? The natural
impulse was to lay them beside her ; she alone seemed
to have any right to them. How clearly one under-

124 I^ Memory of W. V.

stood the sorrow of old days, when all sorts of trea-
sures were laid in the dust with the dead. I used
to suppose that this was done solely, or at least
chiefly, with a thought of an after-life; now I knew
that there was an earlier thought and a deeper
emotion at work in the heart of the ancient people;
they felt that the fitting place for these things was
the grave.

One of Winifred's last visits was to an old clergy-
man who was ill and was not expected to recover,
so very old was he. When he heard she was dead
he tried to come and look for the last time on her
innocent face, but he found he had not strength
enough to get so far.

From almost as many strangers as friends came
letters of sorrow and sjonpathy, and it chastened the
selfishness of grief to learn that of those who felt for
us most deeply, several had had losses as grievous
and nearly as recent as our own, and had suffered in
silence, and at least without our knowledge and
S5nnpathy.

We laid her to rest in Highgate Cemetery on the
i8th. Her little schoolfellows in Kent sent flowers,
among them violets from her own garden; and on
the Sunday they sang in church the Resurrection
Morning hymn. Her old companions at the Kinder-
garten in Highgate also sent a wreath. In a small
village in Norfolk, school-children she did not know
searched the woods and fields for wild flowers for her
grave ; and other children, of whom she had only heard,
sent moss and anemones from the shores of Coniston
Lake.

At the funeral not only did the sun shine on the
coffin, but in the grave itself there was light. All
during the service, which was conducted by her

Winifred Vida 125

friend. Dr. R N , a robin, I am told, sat close

to the grave; she would have hked that. When
I went up next day the bees were busy among her
flowers, and that too would have been to her liking.

From our House-book I take this portrait of her,
drawn more truthfully than I could have drawn it: —

She was very fair; her skin fine and clear and
white ; her hair fair and silky, and so fine that it did
not appear abundant, though it really felt quite
thick in the hand ; her eyes large and blue — beautiful
eyes, not so deep-set as Guy's, with long dark lashes;
light eyebrows, and pretty nose, rather long; her
mouth was not quite so pretty as it was when she was
3^ounger, her second teeth came imperfectly enamelled,
a sign of dehcacy, I sometimes think now, but there
was no other symptom that struck one in that

way.

Her body was strong, broad-built; she had fine
straight limbs, square-set feet, and extremely pretty
hands and nails — (" moons," she used to call the
white at the root of the nails: " Does God hke us
to show our moons ? ") — I used to delight over her
hands; she used them so gracefully too. Her flesh
was firm and elastic to the touch, and she gave one
the impression of having a good deal of muscular
power. But she flagged easily; much walking or
sustained exertion quickly tired her, and though
when she was well she looked well, a very little illness
made her look pale and wan.

To most people she was the embodiment of gaiety
and high spirits, but to those who knew her well her
pensive and sometimes melancholy moods were
equally familiar. Wherever she went she made
friends; she seemed to know every one's name, and

i 26 In Memory of W. V.

both in Highgate and at L — d everybody knew and
had a greeting for Winifred.

And now her playthings are laid away, within
sight and reach, but unused. No one touches the
clubs with which she set out on her adventures.
The vine has caught her hoop and twined it with
tendrils and green leaves.

The rose-bush in the garden is breaking into flower
at last. Blossom, slow bush, lift up hands of flowers,
as she would say ; the last time she was near you she
blamed your long delay. In the woods, now that
she can walk no more in the familiar footsteps, the
ways are glad with the colour of spring. How she
loved it! Here are the trees where there used to be
pools after rain, and in her later years she would look
into them and laugh at her old fancies that there were
water-fairies that lived dowm in those clear leafy
depths. To-day all the pools are dried up, there
has been no rain since she died. To me she was such
a pool of fairy water — a ten-\^ears' fountain of joy

for ever springing. How well N prayed: — " We

praise Thee for the 3'ears of good Thou hast given us ! "
How wise and helpful was his whole prayer — one
unvar5dng and ungrudging hymn of praise and thanks
for all, alike for the good and for that which does
not seem good.

" We praise Thee! "

And yet for all that, how well I understand the
misery of Othello's cry, " Othello's occupation's
gone! " Constantly I find myself referring things
to her — "This will do for Winifred; I must ask
Winifred about that; Winifred must read this " —
and as constantly I am thrust back upon myself.

"We praise Thee!"

Winifred Vida 127

Yet all the purpose, the brave plans, the high
spirits, the zest of life have vanished. If I set
mjself to my tasks anew, it will be with the thought,
" I shall go softly all my years."

Still, feeling this, kno\ving this, " We praise Thee ! "

A week later, on what would have been her birth-
day, we went to Albury where all the woods and
lanes are alive with her presence.

I knew that I should see her standing beside her
bicycle in the shadow of the great beeches in the
Warren ; that I should see her waving her hand to
me as she coasted down one of the broad drives along
the Heath ; that in one of the deep sandy lanes which
lead to the Hurtwood, where they played bare-footed,
with rods of ioxgloxe, at being Whortleberr}- Pilgrims,
I should espy her resting in one of the " wayside
chapels," formed half-way up the bank by the woven
roots of the trees. Highgate she has left for ever;
but in this still region of childish play and happy
memories her joyous spirit, I felt, would linger with
a lingering love of the sweet earth; and — who could
say that it might not pass into a sudden visibility ? —
even as a little bright cloud startles the aeronaut
by appearing suddenly at his side out of the clear air,
and as suddenly departing into its unseen home.

And indeed, in the evening, I felt her presence
with a deep sense of nearness. The sun had gone
down, but the air was still clear, and the lark was still
singing in the higher light ; the thrushes, too, in bush
and tree.

On the top of the Heath, in its little garden, the
small white post-office stood out against the sombre
green pines and beeches of the Warren, and around
the post-office the garden looked like the garden of a

128 In Memory of W. V.

vision, for a slender birch stood very tall and silver}^
with light branches which seemed to float on the
dim air, and behind there was a cloud of greenish-
white plum-blossom, the two trees appearing as one.

All the garden was full of this dreamy bloom ; and
at one corner a faint smoke, with a tinge of rose in it,
floated high above the blossom of plum and damson —
this was the flower of the wild-cherry.

Far away, on the ridge of the downs, the little
cruciform chapel of St. Martha stood cold and grey
in a reach of cold clear sky.

The twilight deepened, the half-moon high over-
head gxew bright, the garden on the Heath became
more dreamily angelic. How easy it seemed to
believe that if we waited a little we should see once
more her light figure, in its well-known pink and
dark blue, wheel past us with her nod and smile.
Oh, Winifred, one last Uving look! Oh, child, one
rose from your Paradise !

RECOLLECTIONS OF HER
SCHOOLDAYS

RECOLLECTIONS OF HER
SCHOOLDAYS

The following recollections of Winifred were written
a few weeks after her death by her cousin PhyUis.
They cover the three months they were at school
together at L — d, in 1901 : —

A week or two before we left L — d, Winifred and I
dressed up and acted our Shakespearian play. The
audience was composed of Uncle Frank, Aunt Hetty,
and the maid, Minnie.

After the play, which went very well, we had some
tableaux; they were good. Winifred was "The
First-born" and "The Little Match-seller." At
least, Mingie ^ was the mother of the First-born; the
First-born was my dolly. I was " The Sleeping
Beauty" and "What's o'clock?" After the
tableaux we sang, and the audience was immensely
pleased. When we had finished, and were retiring
(after we had come before the curtain, which was a
screen). Uncle Frank asked if we weren't going to have
a collection. So we said we would. And got three-
pence.

Our costumes for this great occasion were as
follows : —

For As You Like It, Winifred wore a flowing
white robe composed of one of Auntie's best night-

1 Mingie and W. V. were only nicknames for Winifred (as
Guy could not say Winnie he used to say Mingie); it means
the same girl all along.

131

132 In Memory of W. V.

gowns : also a lovely variegated girdle, made of strips
of the best paper, licked at the ends — the hue came
off on to our tongues, and stuck together. She also
wore all the articles of jewellery she could find, and
her party slippers. She had her hair put into a loose
graceful knot, and braided becomingly. I was very
much the same.

One night Auntie Hetty said we were not to talk
after we got into bed. So, as we are very obedient
children, we sat, after the light was put out, outside
on the very edge of the bed, and talked for quite
a long time. And Auntie could not scold us, for we
had obeyed orders so well.

Every Sunday Winifred takes a class in Sunday-
school. At least Miss N. is supposed to take it, but
Winifred keeps order for her. When she calls the
register, some of the boys say, " Yes, ma'am," and
others say, " Yes, 'm." But sometimes they answer,
" Present, teacher," which pleases her immensely.

Sometimes we play at " Scouting " in the sand-
hole during the dinner-hour. We played it like this.
First Mingie would go round one side of a hill, and I
round the other; we would both have our clubs and
our top-boots, " to make us look more like men,"
said Winifred. (They are American boots made of
rubber, and reaching to the knee ; W. V. called them
" seven-leaguers.") Then when we met at the foot
of the hill, we would wrestle and the one that could
overthrow the other first was pronounced victor.
Then we would do it all over again. Somehow
Winifred always seemed to get me down first.

One night I was having my bath before the fire,
and Winifred was waiting for her turn, when she
suddenly said, " Let us play at Nymphs! " So I was
a Nymph in the sitz-bath, and W. V., garbed in

Recollections of Her Schooldays 133

nothing but two small towels, was " A Man," as she
said. The N3miph had to try to hide in the water,
but I am unfortunately too large, and when my bod}'
was hidden, my legs dangled over into the fender;
so it was a failure. But the Man laughed so that his
towel fell off, and had to be readjusted. By this
time, however. Auntie bustled the Nymph out of the
Silent Lake, and proceeded to wash the Man, at
which daring proceeding he was very indignant.

We two always slept together, and one night when
we were unusually wakeful, we decided to make an
alteration in our sleeping quarters. So, after much
tugging and hauling, we managed to make the bed
so that one of us should sleep at the foot and one at
the head, and Auntie was vastly surprised when she
could find only one of us at the head instead of two.
We did it all in the dark, too.

Another night, when we were restless, instead of
putting out the light, like good children, I climbed
(in my nighty) on to the chest of drawers, and was
" Juliet," while W. V. was " Romeo," and serenaded
me; and as it was cold, she stood on the hot-water
bottle. All would have gone well if I had not fallen
off the chest, taking the candlestick with me, and
plunging the room into darkness as well as making
a great clatter. Up came Auntie, and we went to
bed in disgrace; but we had enjoyed it very much
all the same.

Very nearly every evening Winifred and I skip in
the playground. We fasten one end of the rope (the
clothes-hne) to the wall, and we take it in turns to
turn the other end, while one of us skips till she is
" out." We skip " Baker, baker "; this is it. The
one who is skipping gets a big stone and runs in to
the rope, and skips while a rhyme is said. When the

134 Iri Memory of W. V.

rhyme comes to an end, some one says, " One, two
three," and at " three," the skipper, still skipping,
drops the stone. Then the rhyrne, a little altered, is
again said, and when " One, two, three " again comes,
the skipper picks up the stone and goes on skipping.
It is not at all easy to do, but both W. V. and I can
do it. We have a great many more skipping games,
but this is both the most difficult and the nicest.

Uncle Will sent us each a book. W.'s was The
Adventures of Baron Munchausen, and mine was
The Comedy of Errors. We were so pleased with
them, and Uncle Frank spent the whole afternoon
in reading them.

Every day we refresh our minds with a walk on
the roof. If it is a fine day we stay out for quite
a long while (if we have time), and hide there. One
day, when I unsuspectingly walked out there, I heard
a little chck, and I looked round and saw that naughty
Winifred had cut off my only exit, by latching the
bedroom window. In vain I shouted to her that the
school-beU was ringing, and that she must let me in
to get tidy; she only smiled, and brushed her hair;
and not till the second bell was ringing did she let me
in. I often tried to fasten her out ; but no, she was
too careful for that, and I never managed it.

Every Friday evening we have a grand clearing
out of our bedroom. We take every ornament down,
dust it and the place where it has been, and put it
back again. We do all the room like this.

We like early Saturday morning better than any
of the other mornings. That was because we were
somehow allowed to stay in bed until 7.30, or past.
We used to take the bedclothes and tie them to the
four posts, and so make, by letting the sides hang
right down for walls, a house with a roof. We then

Recollections of Her Schooldays 135

would put all the pillows inside, and after that get
in ourselves, and lie there until it became too hot;
but generally before it had time to do so we were
called to get up.

One afternoon we had a half-holiday, and we were
taken to West M — g to do some shopping. I bought
a little piano, some animals (imitation ones), and
some chocolate. Winifred bought a dough-nut and
some sweets, and I forget what else; but I know we
were laden when we started to go home. Charlie
went with us, and we had to help Auntie to get the
mail-cart over the stiles.

Daddy wrote a tragic song, in which this verse
occurred: —

" God's mercy," cried the stricken knight,
And flung his sword far in the fight;
The din of battle swept away,
And on the trampled field he lay.

W. V. made a new version ; it ran like this : —

" Oh, lummie! " cried the startled Kay,

And flung her twin-brooch in the fray;

The din of Phillipses rose around.

And the twin-brooch lay on the trampled ground.

Kay was my cousin Kathleen, and she was very
fond of wearing twin-brooches, two brooches fastened
together.

On my thirteenth birthday morning Winifred and
I woke up unusually early; and when we heard the
postman at the door we left our bed-making and
raced downstairs. There were a great many parcels,
eight in all, but that was only by the first post. We
sat down on the floor and opened them all. All the
presents were lovely ; but Winifred was most taken

136 In Memory of W. V.

with the watch. In the afternoon Auntie Hetty
took Mingie to M — e, and Winifred bought me a
watch-stand, and Auntie a photo-frame. I had a
birthday-cake for tea. We used to count up the
days until it should be her birthday, but it seemed
a very long time to us to wait, for it was practically
two months.

Winifred had some very remarkable expressions,
and about the funniest was one that she always used
if I tickled her. It is hard to spell, and I think it is
Scotch. It was " Dinna do't! " She pronounced
it " Dinna doot "; and I may remark that it meant
" Do not do it." Two of her favourite words were
" wildly " and " slightly." If Uncle Frank was very
angry, Winifred would say he was " slightly vexed " ;
or if he, or any one, came into the house slowly, she
would say he was " coming wildly in." So that if
Uncle was angry with her for doing something too
slowly, she would say, " Uncle was shghtly vexed
when he saw me wildly doing so and so." If you
reversed it you got it right, but not unless. She
used to come heavily downstairs, and thump about,
which made Auntie Hetty vexed with her, for she
said, " I don't want people to think that we have
got a great heavy man in the house ! " But Winifred
used to quite forget all that, and come down just as
noisily as before ; and when again rebuked, she would
say, with a look of mild surprise, " Why, Auntie
darling, I was only thundering hghtly down! "

The day that Winifred's mother and my father
came to L — d for the concert, we were " wildly
excited." We had a half-hohday in the afternoon,
and I went with Aunt Hetty in the cab to meet them.
While we were away, Winifred helped to put the
stage up, in readiness for the concert at night. Auntie

Recollections of Her Schooldays 137

Annie brought Winifred a beautiful bunch of daffodils,
and they were put on the stage, to make it look nice.
When we went into the concert we got front seats.
Auntie Annie and Auntie Hetty played pianoforte
duets, and Daddy sang. We enjoyed it very much.

The few days they spent with us were very fine,
but alas! they went all too quickly, and before we
knew it. Daddy and Auntie were on their way back
to London. When Winifred and I were driving to
the station with them at night, Winifred, looking
up at the stars, said, " I don't know why people
call those stars the Great Bear; they are no more
hke a bear than I am." I said, " Not so much! "
And I did catch it when I was in bed. When they
had gone the place felt horrid without them, and
Winifred wept copiously (in bed), and I tried to
comfort her, although I felt bad myself.

A few weeks before Aunt Hetty's birthday, Mingie
and I heard her sajring that she wanted a new tea-
cosy; so we saved up manfully. Between us we
got 3s., aU out of our pocket-money, and sent it to
Manchester, and on the birthday there arrived a
lovely tea-cosy. Auntie was pleased.

Just before we came home we went to M — e, to
buy Easter eggs. Winifred and I each bought for
everybody we wanted to, and then went and had
some tea. After that Auntie did a lot of shopping;
and when it was finished we discovered that we
should have to wait an hour and a quarter for our
train. It was pouring with rain, and all the shops
were shutting up, as it wels their closing afternoon.
So we went home at last in the carrier's cart; and
that was the best fun of all. We bought a nest with
three eggs in it for Uncle Frank and Aunt Hetty.
I gave little Charhe a basket-pipe with an egg in it.

138 In Memory of W. V.

I forget what Mingie gave him — oh, I remember,
it was an egg with a pearl necklace in it. The egg
was made of green wood.

[In connection with this ride in the carrier's cart,
so briefly mentioned, we learned afterwards that the
carrier was very much affected by the news of
Winifred's death. The children had sat beside him
as he drove, and they were much amused because
he told them that no one had ever done so before
but his " young lady." He had been only recently
married, and he spoke a great deal about her to them.]

One day when Winifred and I had been having
a slight " difference " over something, she said with
a sigh, '* My child, you are paving my way to an early
grave," and that made us laugh, so that the difference
was entirely forgotten. She often used to try to look
pensive, and say either " My little child, you are
turning my golden locks white," or " Oh, child, child,
when you are my age you will know better! " And
when she had spoken we both used to laugh, so that
Winifred could not look pensive any longer.

Her favourite game at night was describing dresses.
Every, or nearly every, night I had to describe my
wedding dress, my going-away dress, and my baby's
dress, at least ; then she would do the same. And if
I dared to be sleepy, she would just kick all the things
off poor me, and hold them off till I would " describe."
I had no way of avenging myself, for she used to hold
the clothes very tightly so that they would not come
off. But one night I took a wet sponge into bed, and
had my revenge!

I had a calendar given to me, and every morning
I used to cross off a day, as one nearer to going home.
There was always great excitement when we came
to the end of a row.

Recollections of Her Schooldays 139

She was very fond of getting flowers and making
them into wreaths, and putting them on the graves
in the churchyard opposite. I have known her
decorate as many as five graves at once in this
manner.

One or two of the schoolboj's sometimes touched
their caps to her, and then she was dehghted. She
would sail past them with a dignified air that was
very imposing, but as soon as she was out of sight,
she forgot her dignity, and burst out laughing.

Winifred was very fond of Geometry, and she
always brightened up considerably when that lesson-
day came. She was very good at it, and generally
got ten-tenths. Indeed, she never went below
eight-tenths.

There was a tumble-down kind of outhouse not
very far from us, that was called " The Black Lodge,"
because robbers were supposed to hide there, and to
jump out at people after dark. But though we often
passed it at dusk, no one came and tried to kill us.
Winifred did want to take her clubs and seven-
leaguers and further disguise, and " lurk " there to
spring out at unsuspecting village folk, get their
wealth, and " fly." Of course, she agreed to share
the " booty " with me, who was to stay at home so
as to draw her up through the window with a rope.
But she never got the chance to do it !

One morning I woke up very early, and as it was
fine, I woke Winifred, and we put on our clothes, all
but our frocks, with our jackets and caps. We then
crept out in our bloomers and reefers as boys. We
each got our (or uncle's) gardening tools, and gardened
for quite a long time. Aunt Hetty was surprised
when she could not find us in bed, later on. I was
hungry before half-past six, and retired to seek food.

140 In Memory of W. V.

Winifred soon followed my example. But she,
unlike me, did not care for dry bread, but had to
grope for the butter, and during the proceeding
upset the bread-mug, and came so near waking the
household that we fled into the wood-lodge; but as
nothing happened she came back, found her butter,
and was happy.

If ever in the evening, or in any part of the day, I,
when I was alone, stayed out too long, Winifred
would come to find me, and very stern she was when
at length she found me. She would march me home
(dehvering a lecture as she did so), and give me some
kind of punishment when she got me there. The
punishment was generally making me do some sums.

One evening, wishing to be very helpful, she went
and thoroughly dug up about two feet wide by two
and a half feet long of an ugly bit of ground with no
plants of any kind on it. She dug it up well, and not
till she had done nearly half of it, did she discover
that she had " done for " a good part of the onion
bed. Uncle Frank was " slightly vexed," and
Mingie was sent to her room to write out fifty lines,
but by the time she had written about half the
number. Uncle told her she need not do any more.

On the evening of Sunday, April 14th (the day
before she died), as I was fanning Winifred, she said,
" Phyllis, everybody loves my choir-boy, don't they ?"
By her choir-boy she meant one in the church that
she was always gazing at, and talked of, and called
" hers."

She has often said to me that she would not like
to be very old when she died. She would Uke to die
young ; why, she never said.

Sunday, May ^th, 1901. — Last night I had the
strangest dream that I have ever had. I dreamed

Recollections of Her Schooldays 141

that it was early morning, and we were all in bed.
I was awake, and suddenly Winifred came in through
the window. Her face looked just as it did when
she was well, but she was dressed in white, and she
seemed to fly into the room. I know that she spoke
to me, but all that I can remember her saying was
that she liked being where she was.

When she had been in with me some time, she went
to see her mother and her father; when she came
out of their rooms she did not say anything more to
me except that she would come again, or something
like that, — I cannot quite remember; and then she
went out of the window again, and when I woke up
I felt like crying, for I did want to see her properly,
and I was so disappointed to find out that it was only
a dream.

I went to sleep again, and seemed to be shopping
in a great crowd, who wanted to take my purse from
me; but Winifred came, and took care of both me
and my money, and somehow no one could touch
me, and they were all making room for us, when
Auntie said, " Wake up, Phyl! "

IN THE GOLDEN PRIME

IN THE GOLDEN PRIME

Here in the autumn woods, while Guy is gathering
acorns to plant a forest of his own, I sit and think of
her; and somehow my memory goes back to our
little story, " Beside a Summer Fire." Like the
child of my fancy, she has vanished from the sun,
gone far and far into the dusky paths of the long
silence. I may call, and listen, and call again, but she
never replies — never replies. Soon I too shall go,
following you, Winifred, peering wistfully into the
shadows, and holding my breath for the sound of
your voice. Oh, some day — somewhere — beyond all
doubting, we shall meet beside another fire, blithe
and unquenchable; and know each other, and
remember with gladness, and not without tears, these
old happy years of the earth.

Guy always walks with me in the woods; but it is
only Guy — it is not She ! Yet, dear little soul, what
should I do without him ?

In places where the tree-trunks are dappled with
the low light, he " washes his hands with gold," and
on the shining patches of the grass he puts his feet
gleefully, for who would not be " The Boy with the
Golden Shoes " ? I can fancy I see her watching
him — see the smile, half amused half motherly, and
the silent motion of the humorous eyes with which
she would have called my attention to him. How
delighted would she have been, had she seen him
pointing to the two rough-hewn benches they have

145 K

146 In Memory of W. V.

placed beside the fountain: "Look at those bears,
pappa; they are growhng at each other; their feet
are stuck fast in the ground."

In his childish prattle he gives comfort that no one
else can give me. ..." Won't Winnie never come
down again?" he asks. "No, dear." "No, we
must die into heaven to her; and God will keep us
there." If he misses her it is not sorrowfully, but
with a quiet assurance: " I would like to see her.
\Vhen I die into heaven I shall see her." " Yes, you
will." " Yes, I will see her. I shall have plenty of
toys to play with there; and flowers to pluck. The
flowers never die there; they are always in warm
summer air. Where does the cold come from down
here?"

Dying into heaven ! The old Keltic folk were wont
to speak of " dying into the hills." A strange phrase
it sounded, but a child's saying shows with what
natural intuition they divined the way of our " hence-
faring."

How these woods are haunted with the recollec-
tions of her!

Here among the hoUows of the tumbled ground
we gathered bluebells in May — a lovely day, so warm
and sweet with the scent of the spring that Winifred
said she would tell her children about it, if (with a
shrug) she had any. Out in the sunny fields beyond
we once heard the crying of sheep, and when at her
entreaty we went to look at them, there was no Boy
Blue, as she had half expected, but an old rheumatic
shepherd, with a face wrinkled and brown as a walnut.
Under the trees in June we noticed how on the dappled
ground the sunshine always came through the leaves
in circles, no matter what the shape of the leaves or
of the chinks between them ; and in winter she found

In the Golden Prime 147

that the snow under these trees was spotted with tiny
discs and cnps of ice.

Dew for her was " fairy rain," and it was a delight
to move a httle this way and that so the sun might
flash on the drops. If you shut your eyes and looked
at the sun, you would see " tomato-red " through
your eyelids. It was no use to point out that you
could not look at the sun with your eyes shut ; " you
could pretend to look." On a morning in late October
she discovered a benumbed butterfly, and held it
tenderly till the warmth of her hand restored it, and
it fluttered away.

She noted that in November the foliage on the
eastern side of trees falls first; just as hoar-frost
'• blackens " first on the eastern side on a bright
winter morning, while it shows so grey on the western
side that the trees seem to be smoking. She was
always curious in the observation of colour, but
keenness for fact did not spoil her fanc}^ Long
after she had lost faith in the Oak-men, she suggested
that " perhaps the swifts or martins carried the Oak-
men away pick-a-back to the south: nicer than
sleeping in the cold trees here all the winter." There
was no capriciousness in regard to these things;
she was invariably eager to watch and conjecture
about them. " The ways of Mother Nature," was
her phrase for them. " You don't understand
Mother Nature, my dear," she once closed a lecture
to Guy, when he got cross because it was raining;
"she wants to water her plants and things."

It was pretty to watch these two at their play
sometimes. "You nice, sweet huggy Winnihne! "
he would cry, unpacking his heart, and she would
fold his head in her arms: " Oh, you little hero! "

148 In Memory of W. V.

While she was at school he often talked of her, and
picked up acorns, pebbles, bits of stick, anything
that in his fanciful way he thought she might like to
have when she came home: " I love Winnie; she
does nice thoughts for me " — not only thinks them,
but does them.

I have often been glad that she read the book from
which she got her " little hero." It filled her world
with such a sense of what was high and generous and
gallant, with such dreams of beauty and splendour.
Perseus and Danae, Theseus, Jason, Athene, Chiron,
' the Argonauts — they were all so real to her. And how
seriously she took them! "Oh no," she declared
when it was a question of playing at the " Heroes,"
" I wouldn't be Theseus for anything, for after all his
great deeds, there is a chapter which says, ' How
Theseus fell by his pride.' " It was one of her regrets
that she could not go to school to the Centaur: in
heaven, perhaps, she might be allowed — " the Centaur
would not be in Hades, would he ? " I do not know
how she acquired some of her theological notions,
unless indeed, piecing together the odds and ends of
talk which children pick up with such startling alert-
ness, she w^orked them out for herself in her untiring
spirit of inquiry. Having read somewhere about
what she called " Top-het," she asked whether " that
pit of darkness and fire " were the same as Hades,
and remarked: " There must be only very few people
in Tophet; only those, I should think, who won't be
sorry for what they have done."

" We are having quite a theollojun for our son! "
she laughed, when Guy hazarded a conjecture as to
the divine intention in the making of trees; and it
often happens that in children the theologian is
twin-born with the poet. But whatever her childish

In the Golden Prime 149

speculations, she had a deep sense of right and
reverence. Ritual appealed strongly to her, and
among the last things we talked of together were
some forgotten customs of the Ages of Faith. Greatly
did it please her to hear of the bells of mediseval
cities chiming out the quarters, night and day, with
a phrase of prayer — Ut nobis parens — Ut nobis
indulgeas — and marking the hour with the close of
the petition, Te rogamtis audi nos ! Many a time
as we came homewards through the woods at evening
we sang together in an undertone a rhyme of ours
which had taken her fancy, and which we called —

THE PASSING BELL

When our little day is ended,
When the dusk and dark have blended,
When the lights of time cease gleaming
O'er these tents of earthly dreaming, —
Te rogamus —

Do not in that hour forsake us ;
Let not dust and darkness take us;
Send Thy dawn's clear splendour streaming
From the East of our redeeming,
Te rogamus !

But what did we not sing and say and play in the
woods? Nonsense rhymes made up on the spur of
the moment, poems I had learned when I was of her
own age, verses she had picked up at school. There
was " Cadet Rousselle," with his three houses, three
hats, three coats, three eyes, and his rusty sword,
and

Quand trois poules vont aux champs
La premiere va devant,

150 In Memory of W. V.

and " Sur le pant d' Avignon," and " L'alouette "
which was at once both French and Enghsh, of a
kind: —

L'alouett', l'alouette monte en haut,

The lark runs up the heavenly stair,
Pour prier Dieu qu'il fasse chaud,

To pray God send it warm and fair
For three wee downy laverocklings,

Pour ses trois petits patureaux,
Who have not either cloaks or wings,

Qui n'ont ni ailes ni manteaux.

Her memor}/ was remarkably quick and retentive,
both for prose and verse, and she was constantly using
phrases and allusions which showed how she assimi-
lated what she read. " Hush, the naked bear will
get thee ! " she whispered in the words of Nokomis,
when little Guy was in one of his moments of ululation.
" Let us look at Tan ; he is in his kennel ; that's where
he sits and sings his evening hymn." When I referred
to a letter of hers as an " epistle," thinking she would
not understand, " Oh," she broke in, laughing, " I
remember that Epistle of St. Winifred." " Oh,
mother, you never let me come into your bed now.
You know I would be as quiet and still as a deep
lake." " My saucy son," from Norman Gale's
" Bartholomew," was one of her names for Guy —

Bartholomew's

My saucy son:
No mother has

A sweeter one !

The Songs for Little People was one of her favourite
books, though she found fault with the poet for
" leaving words out " of Auntie Nell.

In the Golden Prime 1 5 1

And then we cluster round her knees
To say our prayers,

ought to have been, " To say our morning prayers,"
and " To make us neat " — to make us " nice and
neat."

She seemed to reahse everything with a dramatic
vivacity. When the Ancient Mariner was read to
her she flopped down on the rug and lay bent and
rigid against the bulwarks (of the couch) to show how
the dead men cursed the Mariner with their glassy
eyes, and when the albatross fell off and sank like
lead into the sea, she uttered a prolonged 0-o-h! —
" I quite forgot about that whopping bird ! " " Write
when you get there," I said to nurse, as she was
caiT3nng Guy downstairs. " Wouldn't it be funny,"
cried Winifred, " if nurse wrote a letter for him,

Dear Pappa,

Dot dere,

Baby."

How one lingers over these foolish trifles! — but
at the recollection of one of the shghtest of these she
comes back to me, the bright, nimble-fancied, merry
Winifred — and a Winifred still more close and dear.
For, as though it were but yesterday, I remember
an evening after a day of illness and pain, when it
was very heaven to see the western light slanting
into the cool depths of the wood, reddening the
trunks and flushing the child's face, and darkening
to a hot purple in the distant underwood.

And in the clasp of her hand there was healing.
Winifred, "Win-peace," "Peace the White." The
meaning of names had an unfailing attraction for her ;
each new one set her questioning and wondering

152 In Memory of W. V.

about the people who first bore them, Guy, " the
leader"; William, "the helmet of resolution";
Elizabeth, " the worshipper of God "; Phyllis, " the
green bough"; Winifred, "the white peace" —
rather the Red Racket, I used to tease her — but how
well I knew that she was my Win-peace too!

Her MS. books and school cahiers lie in a small pile
before me, and I try to piece together some record
for myself of the busy working, the dreams and
projects, of her restless spirit.

How vividly this black-covered note-book recalls
her first desperate struggles with arithmetic! After-
wards she acquired more concentration and perse-
verance in her attempts to master figures.

Here, too, are her collections of wild flowers — some
of the flowers missing from their places, the others
faded and shrivelled. They mostly belonged to
June '98, and bear their dates; some few were
gathered in July '99. Among the former I notice
the " srynga," " marsh-mallow," " featherfew,"
" wild convol3ailus " and " hunyckukul," and that
remembrancer of old romance, the " Plantagenet."

One page among the flowers shows, in a sketch,
the contrast between " stones before being washed
by the sea " and " stones after being washed by the
sea." As might have been expected, there are
drawings, heads and figures, and among these a story
begins: — " Once opun a tiome there was a little fay
her name was cowslip a very pretty name too." . . .
That story was never told.

She revelled in colour, and was constantly painting.
Costumes, flowers, and decorative designs gave her
most pleasure. Her favourite amusement beyond
all others was to dress up as some historic or fairy-
story personage. An old programme of some such

In the Golden Prime 153

performance, dated May 28, 1898, survives, and in
a note-book of " Stories and Poems " belonging to
the same year, I find what seems to be her first
attempt at a play: —

ALFRED THE GREAT

Scene. — A moor with Alfred disclosed, as the curten rises,
disgised as a pesent.

Alfred. To think that I am a king — no one
would think it by my looks. Who knows when I
shall get my kingdom restored to its proper rights?
No doubt I shall never see the throne of England.
And my troops, what will become of them? They
will have to provide for themselves. I wish I could
get something to eat and drink. Ah, I see some
smoke coming from that clump of bushes; and the
good woman must be preparing dinner for her
husband, and I will ask for something to eat.

Curten.

Scene. — Alfred with a woman in a room in a cottage.

Woman. Well, I sopose you can have something
to eat. There is my husband coming in to his dinner,
and you can have some dinner with us. [They eat.

Man. Well, travlar, play for us on your violin,
come. [Alfred plays.

Man. Thanks ; come to bed now. [They go to bed.

Curten.

Scene. — The same, with brekfast ready. They eat and talk.

Man. I must go to work now. Good-bye.

[He goes out.

154 Ii^ Memory of W. V.

Woman. Will you watch these cakes while I go
out.

Alfred. Yes.

Woman. Well, mind they do not get burnt.

Alfred. Very well. [She goes out.

Alfred. Well, here we are alone again. I
wonder where the Danes are — in Denmark or Eng-
land.^ I hope the Danes will not get the crown.

[The cakes burn.
Goodness gracus! the cakes have burnt. I am in
hot water. [The wife comes in.

Woman. You good-for-nothing, all the cakes are
burnt. \The man comes in.

Man. King Alfred the Great, the good Saxon.

Alfred. Yes, I am King Alfred.

Woman. Oh, sire, I beg your pardon, for we did
not know you.

Curten.

A fragment of another play, " A Fairy Prince,"
opens with a gorgeous setting, and plunges at once
into business.

Princess. I dare say you would, and so would I ;
but I can't.

Prince. Why not?

In the " Two Good People," the Prince, who owns
a magic ring, brings the Princess Dotherinapon into
his presence by its power, and proceeds to woo her: —
"Adorable Princess, will you be my queen? for I
have riches in abundance, and I am your equil."
To which the Princess replies, " Prince, I would
gladly marry you, but I have my father, who is a
magician, and who has already given me to a man

In the Golden Prime 155

I hate." " Beloved Princess," cries the lover, " I
can easily rid you of that torment. I have a wishing
ring and I can do what I hke with it. When you
marry nie, I will give you the ring as a marriage
gift."

And so the effective, if somewhat unexpected,
Curten.

Much attention is given to the theatrical wardrobe ;
in many cases the cosiumiere has completed her task
before the dramatist has been able to start on the
text. Page after page is filled with her coloured
drawings of ladies' dresses, ladies' coats and skirts,
children's hats, evening toilettes, and heads mag-
nificent with feathers, jewels, and other gorgeous
accessories.

The last of her dramatic efforts is preceded by the
note: —

'• 1900, April 28. First fern up."

It is entitled —

THE GARDEN OF ROSES

Characters — Princes. Princesses (2). Fairies (4).

Witch.

Scene. — A little wood. A little girl is asleep. Circle of
fairies swaying backwards and fonoards singing.

FAYS' SONG

Little mortal, hushaby!
While we sing in the woods;
Though the mortals are forgetful
We will guard thee here in peace.

156 In Memory of W. V.

Chorus.

Come to the garden of roses,
Come where the roses grow,
Where we fairies dance for ever
All among the roses.

Enter Witch.

Witch. So you have got a princess. Now I will
give you each a wish — and I will have one too.
First Fairy. I give her buty.
Second Fairy. I give her happiness.
Third Fairy. I give her riches.
Fourth Fairy. I give her noble marrige.
Witch. And I give her some sorrow.

Curien.

Following this unfinished play there are openings
of two stories, that of " The Sweet Princess," who
was shut up in a great grey castle, and that of " Prin-
cess Rosa," who was dressed in pearl-grey satin, and
wore round her neck " thirteen strings of large pearls,
rubies, emeralds, diamonds, christals, sapphiers, and
amerthists."

So many beginnings! So many things to do, so
many things left undone in her little busy eager life !

I pass over in silence the various things she wrote
in ordinary prose, as I cannot be sure how far she
was merely reproducing what she had read. There
are sketches and tales — " Dorothy," " Tommj^"
"The Fairy House," "The xMagic Wande," "The
Rose Maid," " The Spoilt Princess," " The Puff-puff
and the Gee-gee," and so on — finished, unfinished,

In the Golden Prime 157

barely begun, and all distinguished by a cheery
indifference to orthography which gives them a
certain transatlantic— or shall I say mediaeval? —
piquancy. Here, however, is a happy ending: —

" But one day the Princess was in her little chapel
praying, with her white hands clasped togather, and
her golden hair reaching down to the ground, and
clad in a dress shinning like the sun. A man came
in, and with a cry of joy the Princess rushed into
his armes and sobbed opon his sholder. ' My darling,'
said the King, ' you must come with me home to my
own land.' So they started, and when they arrived
the Princess fainted. . . . ' Oh, were am I ? ' said
the Princess ; for comeing counches (conscious) again,
she was in a pink silk bed and blue curtains, and
the King was be side her, holding her hand. ' My
treasure,' said the King, ' you are with your dear one.'
The Princess fell into his arms, and the King pressed
a kiss on her pretty cheek. They were soon marred,
and ended their days in joy."

Turning to her diaries I find the following, under
date February i, 1899: —

I saw a little rain-drop sitting on a blade of grass,

and I took that little rain-drop and I made him a home.

And that pretty little rain-drop came to be my friend.

To the June of this year belongs a " Book of Laws
and Rules," drawn up by Phylhs and herself for the
observance of " the Court of Queen Titania " during
the holidays, which we spent on the edge of Albury
Heath. It is an extremely rigorous code, but the
provisions had been framed with much deliberation,
and had received the approval of all the estates of the
realm — witness their signatures: Count Randolph,

158 In Memory of W. V.

Sir Edmund Greysteel, Prince Ralph, Wildrose
Stevenson, Prince Max, Sir George Eliot, and the
worthy commoners John Gumtree, Speedwell,
Charles Krong (a foreigner?), and Arthur White
Gregson.

On the 7th August she records her earliest recol-
lections : —

" The first thing I remember is myself sitting on
my father's knee, dressed in a pale blue dress, a white
pinafore, and a pale blue sash, and my mother
coming down the road, at Glasgow. And I remember
a white statue, and father says it was the Venus of
Milo, and it stood in the corner of the room."

As she was not more than thirteen months old
when we left Glasgow, it is much more likely that
this is a recollection of things heard long afterwards
than of things actually seen.

" The second thing I remember is — Mother had
dressed me to go out, and I went into the garden to
wait for her, and there was a railing, and one end of
it was tarry, and I got some tar on my fingers and
rubbed it down my dress, and mother put some
butter on it to take the stain out."

At that time she would be a little over three.

These recollections are followed by what seems to
be a Latin exercise — " Agna saltat in prato . . .
Canis vexat taurum . . . Cornua demittit taurus,"
and so on.

In the beginning of 1900 she notes — " I read in
December ' Wyemarke and the Sea-fairies,' by
Edward H. Coupar. I learnt at school in 1899 ' The
Rh3mie of the King and the Rose,' by Elsie Hill, and
' The Inchcape Rock,' by Robert Southey."

She also knew by heart " The Revenge," by
Tennyson, " Oriana," Longfellow's " King Robert of

In the Golden Prime 159

Sicily" and the "Monk Felix," "Sir Galahad,"
Kingsley's " Pleasant Isle of Aves," and a number
of other pieces in English and French which I cannot
at this moment recall. It was no trouble to her to
learn; things lodged in her memory of their own
accord.

The verses which I now give were written at various
times during the year.

POETRY

The robins all have flown away,
The spring is coming bright and gay.
The grass is green, the sky is blue.
And that's why I like spring— Don't you?

THE SEASONS

The winter's gone, the spring is here.

And budding is the lime,
And up the sunlit old brick wall

The jessimen doth climb.

The spring is gone, the summer's here,

The rose is on the wall ;
There's marjoram, there's featherfew.

And silver lilies tall.

The summer's gone, the autumn's here,

The leaves are red and gold;
And with its clouds and autumn sun

The year is growing old.

The autumn's gone, the winter's come.

The close of all the year.
And with the Christmas snow and frost

The Christmas chimes ring clear.

1 60 In Memory of W. V,

IN SUMMER

Oh, sunlit sky,

Oh, happy hours,
I love the wind,

I adore the flowers.
It is so sweet

To see them grow.
Like heaven above

Is earth below.
The leaves are green.

Blue are the flowers.
Oh, sunlit sky,

Oh, happy hours !

THE BLACKBIRD

On a merry May morning a blackbird sits

High up in the tree-top green,
He sings a song so sweet, so clear,

All over the world he has been.

Hurrah ! cries the blackbird, and sings a note,
Hurrah ! pipes the sparrow with feathers grey.

Be glad, ye people of earth so brown,
This is a gladsome day !

Hurrah ! next month comes the swallow white,^

In June the roses sway,
A merrier month is not to be found — -

This is the month of May !

THE SUMMER

The summer is coming,
The birds are all singing,
The winter is over.
And soon comes the clover.

1 The white swallow is, I suppose, the martin, with its
white breast and its white leg and feet feathers.

In the Golden Prime i6i

With lillies and roses
The children make posies,
The breases are soft,
And the birds sing aloft.

Here, too, there are numerous beginnings which
have a certain pitifulness about them.

IN INDIA

The babes are sitting on the grass,
The Indians go to their morning Mass;
I wish I were an Indian boy. . . .

The cherry-tree is bare of fruit,
The leaves are off it now. . . ^

The sun was sinking in the sky,

I watched the little clouds on high,

And as I watched the moon came out. . . ,

When all the land is frozen o'er

With snow so thick and deep,
Jack Frost comes round with an icy touch

While Mother Nature's fast asleep. . . .

During the holidays, which we again spent among
the woods and flowery lanes of Albury, Winifred and
her cousin edited and " published " a magazine. As
Phyllis was the sub-editor, the lion's share of the
work fell naturally to her, but I am assured the profits
were divided with a scrupulous rectitude by the
editor. The opening article by the sub-editor
describes some of their amusements : —

" One day we were Princesses, and wrote letters to
imaginary Princes, and posted them in a hollow tree,
and went day by day to see if there were any answers ;
but we only found our own yesterday's notes. So
we sadly threw them away, and put in the fresh ones."

L

1 62 In Memory of W. V.

Winifred mentions another incident: —
" One afternoon Phyllis was in the garden. Sud-
denly she saw the cat with a little bird in its mouth.
She ran forward and called me and the maid, and
between us we managed to get the bird away, but it
was dead. Phyllis and I then got a little white and
silver box, and we dug a little grave in the heather,
and we buried the bird with great mourning, and we
decorated the grave with white flowers, and sang
cheerful songs over it."

Curiously enough she omits to mention that they
pretended that the dead bird was the Fairy Queen,
and that they proposed to Guy to join them in prick-
ing their fingers and shedding blood on the grave.
Guy sturdily refused to abet such paganism, just
as he refused to play the troublesome part of Faithful,
though he was prepared to eat oranges as a humble
pilgrim, worn with long wayfaring.

On the loth January 1901, Winifred began a diary,
which she kept to the end of the term. It is per-
functory, but the entries are regularly made, and
here and there they are personal.

January 21. — Monday. — I learnt a verse of " Sir
Galahad." The Queen is eighty-one now, so she is
rather old to recover.

January 22. — Tuesday. — The Queen is dead. Long
live the King.

THE QUEEN

She is dead, our beloved one,

Our good and great Queen;
She was loved by all nations,

Her life was serene.

W. V. C.

In the Golden Prime 163

January 23. — Wednesday. — I got four sums right
this morning.

January 25. — Friday. — I had five sums right this
morning.

January 28. — Monday. — We had Scripture this
morning, about Hezekiah. I had two sums right
this morning. We had recitation, " The Revenge "
(Tennyson).

January 30. — Wednesday. — We had a half-hohday
to-day because they have been changing classes.
Phyl and I made a cake all by ourselves. I had four
sums right to-day.

January 31. — Thursday. — We had geometry this
afternoon. I got ten-tenths and an enormous
" Right." We have each bought a white china
plate, and we have been each painting little girls
on them.

February g. — Saturday. — We have ■ been having
an exam. I got 19 and Phyl got 20. We have been
pretending to be princesses; I am Betty, Phil is
Edith.

February 13. — Wednesday. — We had model draw-
ing. I got seven, and Phyl got seven.

February 26. — Tuesday. — I got 9 in drawing. It
is cold. Uncle Frank is going to get us a French
book, if he can; but I hope he can't.

March 8. — Friday. — We had a lesson on recurring
decimals.

March 16. — Saturday. — We helped with cooking
this morning. This afternoon I skipped with Phyl
and May H .

March 21. — Thursday. — The tide is right up New
H — e and flooded the road. I have got chilblains,
and am going to retire to bed with goose-grease.

On the following day she was not allowed to get up,

164 In Memory of W. V.

and amused herself by making her will, which cannot
now be found.

As a rule there is very little of Winifred in her
letters. She was too impatient to say well or to say
at any length what she would have spoken with
pleasure. Spelling, too, was a great burden to her.
On occasion, however, she filled in the details, as
in the following: —

September 30, 1900. — Yesterday I went blackberry-
picking with Jane P , Grace and Cecil R , and

Charles (in his pram).

Yesterday a little gipsy baby was buried, and I
made a wreath for it. It had such a pretty httle
cofiin, white and silver. My wreath was of Christmas
daisies and red leaves. The leaves are lovely just
now, crimson.

I rode my bicycle yesterday.

I enclose one of the autam leaves. ... I must
stop, so good-bye from your very unhomesick
daughter, Winifred.

[Phyllis has already referred to the pleasure
Winifred took in laying flowers on neglected graves.
I do not know what thought it was that stirred her
to these acts of pity towards the dead, but it was
a trait very natural to her. I remember, when long
ago we went across the Heath to visit the tumulus of
Boadicea, how anxious she was to know whether
there was " a wreath on that dead queen's grave."
"Not any leaves either?" Then, when she had
heard that all who knew her had died long ago, and
even the pine-trees that had waved over her had died
too, " We might have taken some flowers." She
was not much more than six then.]

October 26, 1900. — I am sending a little poem for

In the Golden Prime 165

a birthday surprise. ... I could not think of any-
thing but a poem for your birthday, and Auntie
suggested that a letter and a poem would be the
nicest thing. So I send both. I wish I could see
you all, but it will not be long before I do so.

THE BLUE BIRD

A merry Blue Bird sat on a green bough,
V/hispering then, and whispering now,
He said to his Httle blue son, " Beware!
The cruel grey Cat is there — look there ! "

" Ha! ha! " cried Puss, " there a Blue Bird sits;
He will make an excellent meal for my Kits ! "
And down she pounced on the Blue Bird fair,
And the Blue Bird's soul went up through the air.

October 31, 1900. — . . . You promised to give
me 3^. for a good " pome," and id. for a " good, bad,
or indifferent " one. I will try and send you a nice
one to-day, though really I don't know whatever to
write about.

February 24, 1901. — ... I am at last sending
you a poem. I am afraid it is not very nice. . . .
We have bought another dormouse, and called it
Dorcas. It is so pretty. Phyllis encloses a poem.
I hope they are worth something. . . . Your loving
little girl, Winifred.

XXXXXXXXXXby 1000000000000000000.

WINTER

In the flickering warm bright firelight

I sat when all was dark.
And as I looked on the blackness

I saw the thick snow in the park.

1 66 In Memory of W. V.

I saw the red lights in the village,

I saw the stars shining bright,
I saw the dark fir-trees swinging,

And below all the snow was white.

Her last letter was written on the type-writer
(used for the first time) on April ii, four days before
her death. In it she says : — " We went to the British
Museum yesterday. We saw the mummy of Cleo-
patra. ... It was a horrid day here this morning,
but it is quite nice now. Perhaps Uncle Charlie is
going to take Phyllis and me to the Hippodrome
to-morrow. It is aggravating that the holidays
are nearly over."

Among her papers there are many little notes
written to imaginary persons, chiefly people she had
read of in stories. In her Birthday Book, too, she
entered not only the names of her friends, but of two
characters in the novels of Marion Crawford, whose
works she was very fond of, and other imaginary
people. In many instances she has evidently been
too much in a hurry to wait tiU the ink dried before
closing the book. So like our little whirlwind!
Under her name on the fly-leaf she has inscribed,
" Lord, teach us to pray " (Luke vi. i).

At Albury the sense of her unseen presence was
so acute that longing unsatisfied became a torture.
Here at Hambledon there is no presence, no com-
panionship; she does not come at all. There it
seemed but a question of time as to when she would
stand before me, living and unchanged; here in my
heart of hearts I know that this will not happen. And
yet — in spite of knowledge — as I sit at sundown
on the edge of the high pine-wood and look over the

In the Golden Prime 167

long green levels below me, the lines of " Kilmeny "
rise unbidden in my memory, as though they were
half a supplication, half a promise: —

When many a day had come and fled,
When grief grew calm, and hope was dead.
Late, late in a gloamin when all was still,
When the fringe was red on the westlin hill,
The wood was sere, the moon i' the wane.
The reek 0' the cot hung over the plain.
Like a little wee cloud in the world its lane,
When the ingle lowed with an eiry leme, —
Late, late in the gloamin, Kilmeny came hame.

The red light dies on the hill, cottage windows
ghmmer far down in the dusk, the air blows cold ; but
she does not come home. It may be that in our
hours of waking we are not fitted for intercourse
with those of our love who have passed from this
hght; but I know that when it sleeps the mind is
" bright with eyes." I shall sleep, and in sleep
surely it will be given to me to see her, as I saw one
taken more rathe in old days of loss. And as sorrow
fell from me then, so will it now drop away from me ;
apd I shall be glad that I am alive, and not unhappy,
Winifred, that you are dead.

OUR STORIES

Winifred's personality, her doings and
sayings, count for so much in the follow-
ing sketches and stories, that these pages
would by their omission be rendered still
more imperfect than they are.

BESIDE A SUMMER FIRE

One of our favourite haunts is the old quarry.

Though it is scarcely half a mile from the village
it is among the loneliest places in the world. It is
one of the greenest too, and one of the stillest, for
no sound seems to reach it, except it may be, the
song of a lark overhead, or the noise of the shallow
brook across which we have to pick our way to
enter it.

Nobody can tell me when it was last worked, or
why it was abandoned. I suppose some of the older
houses were built from its red sandstone; perhaps
some of the illegible slabs in the graveyard were hewn
out of it. No one can say.

Up in the fields above, a fence runs along the brink to
keep the cattle and sheep from falling over. Around
it there are rowans, larches, hazels, bushes covered
with dog-roses in June; and the grass has grown
thick over the litter of chipped stone, and lichens
have tinged with curious colours the big blocks
which were ready for lifting but were never carted
away.

In the face of the perpendicular rock there is a hole
which looks like a cavern that might lead into the
heart of the hill, but we have never ventured to ex-
plore it. It is too uncanny, too menaceful. One of
us is too old, one is too young to be so recklessly-
adventurous.

We are content to gather dead wood and hght a

171

172 In Memory of W. V.

fire beneath one of the larches. We watch the smoke
curl up in blue wavering puffs and wreaths, and we
sit beside our wild summer hearth, and spread our
lunch — venison from the King's vert, we pretend,
which we have brought down at the peril of losing
our right hands, so barbarous are the laws of the
forest.

How is it that we both take such delight in a handful
of fire under a tree in a blazing summer day ?

As I lie and listen to my companion's merry chatter
I wonder at the curious feeling of contentment, of
freedom, of romance which I experience. Then I
endeavour to account for it, but I find myself baffled
by the prosaic common-sense which I presume must
accompany all our grown-up attempts at reasoning.
I ask my companion to explain. She, who is so young
yet, so much nearer to Nature and the Ancestors,
ought to be able to give some intelligible account
of the matter. I can see by her smile that she knows,
but it becomes manifest that she cannot find words
for things so elusive. I do make out, however, that
she thinks we ought really always to live like this —
under the blue, in the clear sunny air or in the clear
shadow of trees. It is nicer than a house, it is the
real house ; a house is a sort of clay modelling of this
larger home — good enough in winter, but a very
inferior imitation when it is warm and one has no
Kindergarten to attend.

Then fire is a most beautiful creature; "more
wonderful really than dog-roses," though they, too,
look like a kind of fairy fire. Still it is not solely
the beauty of the fire which delights us. It appears
rather to be its companionableness. '' Lightning is
quarrelsome; but fire is friendly," she thinks. I
imagine she is right. Through long centuries men

Beside a Summer Fire 173

and fire have been housemates, and mates when
there was never a house.

Can this be really the clue to the mystery — that
for ages and ages, beginning far away back in the
houseless nights and skin-clad days of the ancient
life, our ancestors have loved the cheerful face of
fire; that the antique joyous association of burning
wood with the savage woodland was so long a habit
that the civilisation of our historic centuries has been
unable to obliterate it completely ?

I can scarcely resist the conclusion that it is so.
I remember the desert islands of my boyhood, and
I know it was not merely a wish to put into action
the books of adventure I had read which made me
a little savage who caked his hair into a spire with
clay from the river. At any rate it is no desire to
play at pirates and outlaws which thrills me to-day
with the dreadful atavistic joy in a tramp's fire and
free life under the greenv/ood tree. No, we are the
children of the Ancestors, and their blood in us beats
true to the old forest paths and the laws of the
wilderness.

As we idle by the dull embers and white ashes my
companion asks for a story.

Well, does she know where the Fens are ?

Why, yes ; and they were drained long ago.

Just so. Well, once upon a time there was a savage
hunter who came with his little girl up the river in
a canoe hollowed out of a tree, and paddled to a httle
piece of beach on the edge of the forest ; for in those
days there were no Fens, but there was a mighty
forest of great oaks and firs and alder and birch and
willows. And they landed and drew up the canoe,
and they gathered sticks and dead leaves and lit
a fire, just as we had done.

174 In Memory of W. V.

And the little girl went away in among the trees
to look for berries and wild fruit, and the father piled
more wood on the fire.

And when the little girl had been away a long while,
and the father heard no crackling of dry branches or
rustling of bushes, he called to her, but she did not
answer. He grew uneasy, and went into the forest
to seek her, and kept calling and calling, but she never
replied.

So he went deeper and deeper into the wilderness
of great oaks and firs, and continued to call her name
tin the sound of his voice died away.

And the fire beside the canoe smouldered, and
then went out, with only half the wood burnt.

And the forest grew older and older and older;
and the great trees decayed and fell down with age,
one by one, till nearly all the forest was dead; and
storms tore up the other trees; and water lodged
among the fallen trunks ; and reeds and marsh plants
matted them together, till great peat bogs covered
the country many feet deep.

Then the sea broke in and flowed over the bogs,
for the land sank down ; and sand and shells and sea-
weed were drifted together in thick sheets.

And all this took hundreds and hundreds of years
to happen.

And at last when the sand and sea-warp grew high
enough, the country became the Fenland, and the
Romans, when they conquered Britain, made a road-
way across it with trunks of trees and a bed of gravel,
and that was fifteen hundred years ago.

"True?"

Why, yes.

How did I know?

Because not long ago when people were digging

Beside a Summer Fire 175

in the Fens they found the canoe, and the wood piled
for the fire and the burnt embers in the middle of it.

And the little girl ?

Well, she wandered into the forest and her father
went to seek her.

And hundreds and hundreds of years went by.

And they never came back?

Not to the Fenland. But she wandered on and
on till she came to an old quarry, and there she lit
a fire, and when she had done she turned round, and
there was her father sitting beside it.

W. V. laughed incredulously: " Father, you said
it was true! "

CHIMNEY FLOWERS

On a wild night three winters ago the wind Euroclydon
tore it from the chimney top, and sent it clattering
down the slates. It plunged like a Bulwan shell into
a huge laurel bush in the garden, and there W. V.
and I found it in the morning, unbroken, in a litter
of snow and shredded branches.

Neither in shape nor in colour was it a pretty
specimen of the potter's craft; but it had been clay,
and all clay appeals to humanity. As I looked at it,
it seemed to deserve a better fate than the dustman's
cart, so, to Winifred's great delight, I dug a hole for
it in one of the flower-beds that catch a little of the
sun, set it on end, and filled it with stones and soil, in
which something might be planted.

This is Nature's way; when she lets her volcanic
fires smoulder to ashes she lays out the crater in grass
and wild flowers. And this appeared to be the
proper way of treating this old retainer which had
served so staunchly on the ridge of the roof; which
had never plagued us with smoke, whatever the wind
or the weather.

We were puzzled what to plant till I recollected
London Pride, which, I pointed out to Winifred, is
a true roof flower. You find it, no doubt, in gardens
little above sea level, but in Kerry, in Spain, its
natural place is on the roof of the hills. An " ice-
plant," the country people call it, I believe; and that
too was appropriate to the hollow of the cylinder
through which no fire would ever again send its
familiar smoke.

176

Chimney Flowers 177

Wherefore we planted London Pride in the old
chimney-pot, and masked its plainness with ferns.

To-day the feathery fronds hide all but the thick
blackened rim ; behind it a rose-bush, trained against
the dark paling, shows four crimson buds; in the
crater itself the space is filled with green rosettes, and
a score of stalks send up stars of pink-and-white
blossom.

As I pass by in my walk I think of all the comfort-
able fires that have burned on the hearth beneath it;
of the murmur of pleasant talk, of the laughter of
children; of the sound of music and singing, of the
fragrance of tobacco, that have floated up to it and
through it on the current of warm air. In a way it
has shared our joy and our sorrow, our merriment and
our cares, and it, too, can thrill with " the sense of
tears in human things."

I recall especially one March night. The rain
from the roof is splashing from the gorged gutters;
all are in bed save a restless four-months child — " the
Fretful Porcupine," W. V. flippantly calls him— who
is asleep in his cradle in a shadow of the room. His
little socks are on the fender. About midnight he
will awake and cry for food, and I shall take him
upstairs. Meanwhile I read and write. Raindrops
fall and hiss on the glowing coal.

How long ago it seems !

The other day I saw a blackbird light on the rim
of the chimney-pot, and make a dab with his yellow
beak among the rosettes. In the old time, on the
roof, sparrows used to alight there, possibly for
the sake of the warmth; so I am glad the blackbird
came.

I wonder, in an absurd way, whether it misses the
wreaths of homely smoke. Perhaps it has forgotten

M

lyS In Memory of W. V.

them — it is the nature of clay to forget easily; per-
haps it remembers, but is reconciled, feeling dimly
(as I do) that flower and leaf are only another and
less fleeting form of the old-time smoke and flame
and warmth — are indeed the original form, the
beautiful form which they wore in the far-off days
when the coal murmured and tossed in the green
forests which murmured and tossed in the sunshine.

A PRISONER OF WAR

There were silvery summer clouds floating in a vision
of blessed peace in the blue depths; the wind in the
limes and rowans was wafting an elfin summons to
me to return The World as Will and Idea to its
place on the shelf, and to come out and enjoy the
world as a shining reahty ; the swifts were diving and
wheeling to and fro with shrieks of delight that life
was so good to Uve; a big, velvety bumble-bee was
droning, with sudden stoppages and intervals of
busy silence, about the white stars of the clematis
and the cream roses which muffled the gable wall.
I read on stoically, and might have finished Book III.
but for the sound of childish merriment in the garden.

I went to the window and looked out, unobserved.

A rosy little maid of seven was pla5nng at shuttle-
cock on the lawn. By the edge of a flower-bed, in
the shadow of the rowans, her mother was leaning
back in a garden chair. Beside the chair on a rug
spread over the grass a chubby nine-months bo}^
sat working his plump little body backwards and
forwards in a ceaseless rhythm of eager, ineffectual
activity.

" The planetary babe," some one had called him,
seeing that the only kind of motion he had acquired
was a revolution on his own axis; and looking down
with fond pride at the radiant little soul, his mother,
I think, was not ill-pleased.

The little girl soon tired of her solitary game.
Dropping the racket on her mother's lap, she threw

179

i8o In Memory of W. V.

herself down on the rug, and catching the planetary
babe by the hands, began to sing the rhyme of " See-
saw, Margery Daw."

Mother took up the racket, and looked dreamily
through the square meshes of the network at the
summer clouds. As she looked a happy thought
struck her. The racket was a prison window, she said
aloud ; and gazing through the iron bars she could see
the green fields and pleasant woods, with the sun
shining on them.

The little girl paused in her rhyme, held the babe's
hands, and listened.

Yes, she could see the swifts flying joyously up
and down, and in the fields there were flowers grow-
ing; and onl}^ a hundred yards away there was a
little boy and a little girl playing. How happy they
must be out in the sweet air and the warm sunshine!
If they only knew that she was there in a dark
dungeon, with chains on her feet and hands, perhaps
they would gather some flowers and give them to
her.

The little girl sprang to her feet, and hurried round
the garden plucking pansies and marigolds and spires
of blue veronica. Returning, she put them into the
babe's hands, raised him on to his unsteady feet,
and lifted him up to the dolorous prison window.

" Give them to the poor man inside, baby. He
is a poor old prisoner of war, and cannot get out."

Through the loophole in the dungeon wall an
emaciated hand took the flowers, and a pitiful voice
thanked the children for their kindness.

Then W. V., sitting down on the rug and settling
the babe on her lap, looked up eagerly at the face
behind the iron bars: " Say it again, mother! "

A RED-LETTER DAY

My Red-Letter Day began with a cry of a cuckoo,
a glitter of dewy leaves tossing under my window,
a fragrance of flowers and wood-fires, and a wild
chant of jubilee. Guy Greatheart was lifting up his
voice in the garden in one of his mystic songs without
words.

A few minutes later I saw him under the white
rosettes of the syringa. He had provided himself
with a couple of pebbles, and was swinging from one
foot to the other as he sang; then he walked round
thrice in a ring, clashing his stone C3mibals, and
finally resumed his musical rocking from foot to foot.
Surely some antique ancestor who worshipped the
Sun with quaint dance and barbaric minstrelsy thirty
centuries ago, must have at last wakened up in Guy.

And, now that I think of it, this may account for
the interest and even awe with which he listens to
any reference to the Laws of the Medes and Persians.
When every other appeal to his sense of duty and
propriety has been exhausted, when he stands stolid
and breathing heavily, with eyes cast down, or sits
roaring in his chair, " Wants his own way! Wants
his own way! " a rhyme from that memorable code
generally acts like a spell, and he gives in with a
"Wipe eyes, mamma!" — whether there be tears
or not.

I fear, however, that neither Winifred nor her
cousin Phyllis has the same reverence for the beautiful

i8i

1 82 In Memory of W. V.

examples of conduct recorded in those ancient laws.
The other day, after hearing that —

The Medes and Persians did not dream
Of doing such a thing as scream;

and

The Medes and Persians always did
Religiously what they were bid;

and

The Medes and Persians thought it rude
To play at table with their food;

Winifred rejoined —

English children never can
Be like Mede or Per-si-an;

and Phyllis abetted her by laughing hilariously.

Immediately after breakfast we started for a long
day in the Hurtwood. Under the cool awning of his
mail-cart, Guy Greatheart took charge of the string
bag and basket which contained the locusts and wild
honey of our wayfaring. Mother and the " chawl-
dren," as he calls Winifred and his cousin, went
briskly on before with their long hazel staffs, and I
brought up the rear.

Now there are many ways of reaching the Hurt-
wood, but the properest is through the Two Tree
Field and the Emerald Door. You turn by the mill-
pool — and on this day of all days the young men were
washing sheep, and a brood of fluffy ducklings were
dancing among the ripples made by the heavy woolly
creatures as they were tumbled into the water
hurdled off f<Dr them, and martins were dipping their
wings in the pool as they swept over it. Then,
between the yellowing wheat and the brown hay, 5-ou
push up the long slope of the Two Tree Field.

A Red-Letter Day 183

Just before you reach the first of the two trees you
perceive, in a break of the high woods, the bhiish bare
ridge of the North Downs, and the grey silhouette of
St. Martha's chapel against the sky. Along that
ridge, as the children knew, thousands of travellers
in the old time — travellers from the west country
or from over-seas — passed on their journey to the
shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury, and rested under
the shadow of St. Martha's ; for that is a bit of the
Pilgrims' Way.

From the second tree, the pathway mounts straight
up the slope to a bright emerald door which is set in
a dark green wall of oak and beech and pine at the
top of the field. Some people say there is no door,
that what seems so is only the path piercing the dark
wall to a patch of sunht hazels in the wood; but we
have no patience with people who are always wanting
to explain away things. In at the Emerald Door,
and through the dim pines you go ; and lo ! you are
on Black Heath, which, with the white sand, worn
into numberless cross-tracks by sheep and rabbit and
human feet, and showing through grass and gorse,
through green fronds of bracken and tufts of flower-
ing hng, might well be called White Heath.

St. Martha's was again in sight, and as we toiled
slowly over the rough gi'ound of the Heath, I told the
children how, ages before Thomas a Becket was born,
this same Pilgrims' Way was a famous road which
wound from the coast of Kent, right along the
northern edge of the mighty forest of Anderida, into
Devon and Cornwall.

The ancient traders in Cornish tin used to travel
that way; and sometimes they were attacked by
robbers who were beaten off, and sometimes they
were killed among the hills.

184 In Memory of W. V.

How could any one know that for certain ? Why,
because there were ingots of tin — shaped hke knuckle-
bones, in the Phoenician fashion — blocks of tin which
the traders must have buried when the alarm was
given, and which have been found beside the track.

There are huge old yew-trees, too, along the route.
Some say the Druids planted these; but others sa}^
they grew naturally, and that the Druids, who could
find here no great boulders for their standing-stones
and circles, cut down the yews they did not want and
left the rest growing in rings and avenues.

The sound of Latin once was as familiar along this
way as the song of the nightingale in the May nights
is still; and just as the old traders left their ingots
of tin, so the old Romans left their urns and mosaic
pavements to tell of their presence.

Then there are said to be fruit trees among the
wildwood which fringes the old road. It was the
Canterbury Pilgrims who are believed to have dropped
the seeds from which these sprang, as far back, per-
haps, as seven hundred years ago, when the great
festival of St. Thomas was fixed for July 7.

Sweet was the fruity smell of the pines in the hot
sun. A fresh breeze tempered the shadowless glare,
and far away, in some pleasant tent of green, the
cuckoo called with a muffled note.

Underfoot the spider had spread curious patches
of iridescence. These, when you came to look, were
made by his web, stretched fiat on the low wiry
heath; and he himself lurked stealthily in his well,
in a corner of his glistening trap.

Wild roses built wonderful mounds of fairy colour
on the waste. Here and there, to Winifred's horror,
honeysuckle and deadly nightshade were entangled
in the same clump of bushes, for deadly nightshade.

A Red-Letter Day 185

as she gravely warned me, is so venomous that it
may be fatal even to touch it with a finger. Once or
twice I gathered wild flowers, the names of which
I wanted to know. " Why, father," she cried,
laughing, " you are as fond of flowers in your hat as
Plantagenet ! "

Skirting the corner of Farley Heath and passing
through Farley Green, we came to the shadow of a
huge beech about midway to the Hurtwood; and
here we rested, and refreshed ourselves on the locusts
and wild honey.

There is something curiously unreal about the
colouring of the trunk and branches of a big beech-
tree. One could fancy that it had been whitewashed
long ago, and that the rains of many seasons had only
at last begun to restore some of the primeval colour-
ing. The thick twisted roots of this beech of ours
made a ladder down the steep bank into the road,
and in a few moments the " chawldren " were snugly
nestled in the meshes half-way up the bank. Guy
was satisfied with a small cavern scooped by the rain
out of a ledge of friable sandstone.

As we rested we heard the clanking of a bell, and
a flock of sheep came down the road and passed.

They were driven by a very aged " Heathen," as
Winifred delights (among ourselves) to call these
dwellers on the Heath — an earth-coloured, shrivelled,
wir}^ little man, who indeed looked so old that he
might well have been a survivor of the ancient men
of the real heathen time.

Away in the east there was a gloom of thunder,
and I ventured to ask this antique shepherd whether
we might expect a storm. He shook his grey head
as he glanced at the sky. "No; the South-east do
mostly bring blight," he said. " It's the South-west

1 86 In Memory of W. V.

that do give us rain, and we wants en badly." I
thought of the horrible bronze demon of the South-
west wind which the Chaldeans used to hang out of
door or window as a talisman against the blast of
the desert. If these " Heathens " were to make an
image of the vSouth-west wind, it would take the shape
of a beautiful goddess breathing soft airs and showers,
and they would worship her with garlands of wild
flowers and Mttle sheaves of grass and green corn.

After a stiff shove up the powdery road, for the
ground rises all the way, we came at last to the high
pines of the Hurtwood, and the wayside banks
matted v/ith the small green leaves and spangled with
the pink little globes of the berry from which it
derives its name. For, in spite of the maps, the
Hurtwood is not the Hartwood, and it is not called
the Hurtwood because some royal hunter, as Phjllis
conjectures, was hurt there, but because " hurts " is
a corruption of " whorts," and " whorts " is the short
for " whortleberries."

Tlie cuckoo shifted about the dusky coombes and
steep hillocks as the youngsters took off shoes and
socks, kilted their dresses, and danced among the
sand and pine needles.

Then a pleasant fancy occurred to them. They
tied bunches of blossoming ling to their hazel sticks,
and gave Guy a rod of foxglove. This was the Pil-
grims' Way, and they were Canterbury Pilgrims.

" Whortleberry Pilgrims, I think," said Winifred.

"It doesn't matter," replied Phyllis; "come
along, Brother Greatheart," and Guy trod warily,
with his soft feet wincing at the bits of dry wood.

" We should not go to an holy place without singing
an holy song," said Winifred. "Ah, httle Brother,
is the way painful? It would be worse if you had

A Red-Letter Day 187

peas in your shoes. But come, you shall bathe your
feet in the healing sand."

" We are such very poor pilgrims," continued
Phyllis, " that we have no choice but to go bai'efoot."
Then perceiving our preparations for lunch: " O fair
and noble woman " — to her aunt — " may we beg
a cup of cold water from your well, and a crust of
bread from your store? Come, Brother Chatterbox
and Brother Greatheart, this good queen will help
us."

Brother Greatheart, however, was busy with sand
and fir-cones making " a pilgrim pie " for his own
delectation; and he did not feel disposed to abandon
it for any week-day fare that even a queen could
bestow.

" Come along, little Child of Angels," said Winifred
coaxingly ; but Greatheart turned a deaf ear.

" The Babe of Eden will not come, mother,"
Winifred reported.

" Then let us make merry ourselves," cried Phyllis,
" for the way is long."

When Greatheart heard me " hopping " the ginger-
beer and saw the oranges and bananas, he thought
better of it and came up to our palace of oak, where
fair couches of bracken and heather were spread for
the pilgrim guests.

Phyllis noticed his hands. " O royal woman,"
she said, " give me thine outer raiment that I may
wipe the sand from his hands; " then she added
presently, " No matter, I have cleansed them in the
bracken."

The time went quickly and gaily in all sorts of
sports and nonsense.

Greatheart resumed pilgrim-pie making, or took
a rest in some wayside chantry among the oak roots.

1 88 In Memory of W. V.

The " chawldren " played at tin-traders and ancient
British marauders on a pine-covered mound.

Mother lay back against the fallen tree which was
our palace, and dozed like the Belle au bois dormant.

I smoked and took surreptitious notes, for this was
a day I should be glad to remember in every little
detail of sight and sound and feeling.

At last when shoes and socks had been put on
again, and Greatheart had been strapped into his
mail-cart, with his rod of foxglove stuck up beside
him like a flowery thyrsus, I found that the " chawl-
dren " had wandered off into the pages of The
Heroes. Mother was the fair Danae; I was old
Chiron the Centaur, Winifred and Phyllis were
Perseus and Theseus, and Guy was " the one Chiron
loved best, little Achilles, the too wise child."

As we trudged merrily homeward I overheard
Perseus telling Phyllis: "To-day I have slain two
oxen, and watched the spotted snake change its skin."
To which Theseus was somewhat at a loss for an
answer, I thought, for Phyllis has not read the whole
of The Heroes yet.

In the evening, after tea, I went out for a stroll by
myself, for one never really tires of these Heaths and
sandy lanes full of flowers.

I met little children, who had got back from school,
playing in wild green places or driving the slow
friendly cows to some fresh evening pasture. They
paused or got up to smile and drop a curtsey.

Out of tangles of greenery a curl of blue smoke
arose and betrayed a quaint timbered cottage which,
if a hen had not run across my path, I should probably
have passed unnoticed earlier in the day, so thick is
the foliage.

Young lads, returning from work, went by with

A Red-Letter Day 189

a salute, and it was pleasant to observe their shj^
clean eyes and girlish faces. Wear}- as the farm
labourer or woodman must have been, his spirit was
light enough to let him be companionable. Sweet
are the Surrey hills and the wild acres of moorland
and the stretches of dingle and forest, and good and
kindly are the Surrey folk.

Coming home through the dusk of the avenue of
elms, I saw a mail-cart which I could pick out from
a thousand, and in the still evening air I heard a brief
dialogue :

" I thought it was pappa," said Guy; " and it is
a gempy " (gentleman).

" It isn't a gempy," said mother, " it's pappa! "

But even this disparagement of two generations
did not cast a shadow on the brightness of my Red-
Letter Day.

And, after all, Guy makes up for it handsomely
when he is in bed; for, after seizing my hands and
squeezing them to his breast, he sits up and kisses
the palms, kisses the backs, kisses my face, kisses the
top of my head, and at last exhausts himself in a gush
of affection; " I simply like you, pappa! "

THE FIRST PARTING

As I sit near the white and red roses in the cool green
of the garden I am troubled in my mind. I try to
divert thought by noting that in the last decade of
July the sparrows seem to nest about half-past seven,
after a good deal of chatter in the trees. Now it is
eight, and there is a clear grey sky, with pearly drifts
and pinkish clouds ; and the martins are racing over-
head, high and silent. Far beneath them come
suddenly, in rushes, flights of hilarious swifts, scream-
ing and laughing like girls let loose from school.
Just for an instant as they pass I hear the whiff of
their wings.

It is no use ; the very swifts remind me of the child.
Even the long sunny weeks among the hills and pine-
woods do not seem to have been of much benefit.
" Growing too fast," they say; pale and easily tired,
and too excitable, I can see plainly enough ; and these
hot days do not agree with her, though she says she
likes them.

We wait and watch; and July effects no change.
August comes with the red rowan berries and cooler
air, but she seems no better; and it becomes clear to
us that the wisest course is to send her to the seaside
till Christmas.

W. V. is, of course, delighted at the idea. The
cliffs, the sands, the great waters, the magical ships
sailing east and west, are anticipations of unspeakable
rapture. We look for Broadstairs in the atlas ; as we
walk through our poor woods, from which the glamour

190

The First Parting 191

seems now to have exhaled, hke the dew from the
grass of the morning, all our talk is of the sea, and
brown mariners from foreign waters, and white sails,
and sand-castles, and wading, and donkey rides on
the shore. I fear that as she will be at school she
will not find that every day will be a holiday, but she
is overjoyed at the thought of a change and new
companions. " Of course " she is sorry to go away
from home and to leave us, but Christmas will soon
be here, and " of course " we shall go and see her at
the half-term.

The day of parting comes in September, and she
is radiant. The day is dull, but her little head is full
of sunshine. At the London terminus her mother
remarks, " What a dirty station this is! " but London
is paved with gold and roofed with sapphire for her.
One must admit that it is not sylvan, but the excuse
comes readily: " Oh, well, mother, you couldn't
expect to find green pastures and shepherds and lambs
on the platform, could you? "

Poor little woman, so eager to fly away from the
old woods and familiar nest, so easily caught by the
glitter of change, by the mere sound of the word Sea!

At home one small mortal goes about the house
wondering, missing the accustomed voices and the
faces he has seen daily since the beginning of creation.
He has promised to be very good till mother comes
home, but he is puzzled by the silence, the vanished
presences, the strange gaps left in his tiny world.
He creeps under the table, and takes his wooden
horse with him for companionship. Who can guess
what passes between the two in that primeval rock-
shelter ?

When I return from town I find him breathing
very heavily, almost sobbing, as he tells me, " Mingie

192 In Memory of W. V.

gone'chool! Mamma gone 'chool." He repeats the
phrase in grievous whispers to himself. At night
before he faUs asleep, he weeps the first tears of
bereavement, and at last drops off into slmnber with
a bitter sigh: " Gone 'chool! "

He is more cheerful in the morning, but the mys-
terious sense of loss and desolation has not been
washed away in sleep. He has a droll way of putting
his hands together with the pahns open upward, and
cooing, " 0-o-oh, pappa! " as if he were offermg up
his whole heart to you; but when I have taken him
on my knee and cuddled him, he begins his tragic
refrain, hke a Greek chorus, " Mingie gone 'chool!
Mamma gone 'chool! "

It is Saturday, so we may go into the forest to-
gether to see some of the old friends whom he can
greet with his favourite, " Hallo ! " He can still say.
-Ha'o Mist' Oak! Ha'o, Lady Birch!" but alas,
the birds and the flowers have aU " gone 'chool.

A small boy, of friendly disposition, to whom he
shouts "Ha'o, boy!" smiles at him and stops to
speak, and he unfolds his trouble to his s>'mpathetic
face—" Mingie gone 'chool! " ^ ■ -u-

It is just a year since Mingie and I, with Guy in his
mail-cart, went through this same underwood. Here
was the spot where she threw down a piece of flmt—
" firestone "— and was sadly disappointed that it
did not burst into flames. There were the pools
showing glimpses of fairyland, which she afterwards
made pictures of, so that we might remember them
- when we grew old. It was here that in the cold days
at the close of October she found a benumbed butter-
fly and held it tiU the warmth of her hand revived
it and it fluttered away. Here was the sheltered
dingle, so dry and pleasant in July, where she showed

The First Parting 193

me " fairy houses," and composed me extempore
poems, while Guy slept under his white awning.

The " poems," joyously free from the trammels of
rhyme and metre, were after this fashion: —

" The Oak-men are always in the wood under their
spreading trees, their high roof. In autumn we go
and gather their cups and saucers." (" The acorns,
you know, father," she adds by way of annotation.)

" All day long, if it rains, the Fairies sit under their
fungus umbrellas of yellow and reddy-brown." (" I
don't know why any one should call them toadstools,
do you, father?") "They gather honey from the
bees, and drink the rain from the grass."

" Guy looks with sunny eyes of blue at the Oak-
men and the trees. The Oak-men laugh when they
see Guy looking."

The reddy-brown and yellow toadstools are still
there ; the acorn-cups ; the fairy houses, and the high
roof; but alas, alas. Oak-men and Fairies and all
gentle spirits of the rain-pool and the woodlands have
vanished with W. V. They have all " gone 'chool."

Sometimes for whole days Guy will forget his
bereavement, and then, just as we are saying, " How
soon things slip out of their memories! " we hear him
telling the gardener or a tradesman's boy, in mournful
tones and with a hopeless shake of his head, " Mingie
gone 'chool," or whispering the same reminder to
himself or to his playthings.

And the radiant W. V., how does she fare on the
shores of old romance? Her first letter, which

N

194 I" Memory of W. V.

reaches us a week after her absence, is not so wildly
hilarious as one would have anticipated.

(First page) My dear Mother,
I am not very happy hear and I do wish you wood
come and take me baak with you.

(Second page) I am so very unhappy. j\Iother dear
do do come take me baak do do Mother Dear I cry
every night and I cannot helpit. I am glad to hear
that dear Baby is well and do come and take me baak
do do Mother I shall die if you dount
Give my love to every one

Your loveing little doughter

Winifred.
do come

Her mother cried over that letter, as mothers will,
but Guy and I had already supped our sorrow; and
though we cannot help muttering in silent rooms,
we know that Christmas will soon come, and that long
before Christmas, Mingie will have recovered from her
home-sickness.

There is a dense fog on Christmas Day, and the gas
has to be lit early in the afternoon. It is delightful
to watch the small people sitting at the table decked
in Christmas-tree jewelry, cracker caps and sashes of
many colours — W. V. looking rosy and strong, and the
boy tips}^ with joy to see her again.

Mingie is playing with her enchanted people. It
isn't quite Fauyland, but a borderland of spells and
charms, with Brownies and Pixies and Oak-men.
There is a forest of mistletoe, holly and red berries,
and narcissus (in vases); and on the edge of the
forest a lake, and on the lake the Queen of Pixies sails
in a magic barge (a swan-shaped salt-cellar); and

The First Parting 195

a donkey (a prince bewitched) walks on the lake
beside her, and there are Pixies in a wicker boat,
which does not sink, " because the water runs out
of it as fast as it runs in."

On this memorable day, Guy gets a new name —
" Biboffski," on account of his post-prandial clamour,
" Bib off! bib off! "

"Biboffski, the great Russian poet?" suggests
some one.

" Oh no," says W. V. " It is Biboffski, the mighty
hunter! "

" Not at all," says mother; " Biboffski is the
heavenly babe — the Babe-of-Sky! "

Whereupon we all laugh, and Guy most gleefully
of all.

SANTA CLAUS AND THE BABE

Mingie's was the first of the Christmas cards to
arrive. It came early on Christmas Eve. Made-
moiselle had sent it from Rouen, and she must have
chosen the loveliest she could buy, for when the box
was opened and the card unfolded, there, within
a ring of Angels, was the Stable of Bethlehem, with
the Babe in the manger, and a star gleaming over
the roof.

Mingle was in an ecstasy; Phyllis, her cousin, was
delighted; and even Guy Greatheart, though the
little man was too young to understand, clapped his
hands and cried, " Pretty, pretty! "

It was placed on the music-cabinet, so that the
maidenhair fern drooped over it, and made it look
like a scene in a forest among the lonely hills.

And there, after many last looks, the children left
it when they went up to bed.

It had been very cold all day, and it was snowing
when mother and auntie and uncle set out for the
watch-night service. Father preferred a book by
the warm fireside.

" Then," said mother, " you might leave the door
ajar, so that you can hear the children. And won't
you send a line to Tumble-Down Dick ? "

Father and Tumble-Down Dick had quarrelled
long ago, and it seemed no longer possible to say
anything that could make any difference.

" You know that I am in the right," said father,
shaking his head and frowning.

iq6

Santa Claus and the Babe 1 97

"Yes, dear, I know," said mother; "but when
one is in the right, it is so much easier to be large-
minded."

Father smiled grimly at the crafty reply, but said
nothing.

Long afterwards, as he sat thinking, two little
white figures crept down the stairs (which creaked
dreadfully), and stole into the drawing-room. Then
father heard the striking of a match, and going out
to see what it meant, found Mingie and Phyllis.

" Oh, father," Mingie explained, " we awoke and
remembered that there was no stocking hung up
for the Babe; so we thought we would each hang
up one of ours for him. Santa Claus is sure to see
them, isn't he? "

Father laughed and carried the two back to bed.

Then he went and looked at the Stable and the
Babe and the stockings.

Over the roof the Star of the East was shining,
as it shone two thousand years ago. The song the
Angels were singing was one of peace and good-will.

Then father wrote to Tumble-Down Dick, and
hurried through the snow to catch the last post.

Tumble-Down Dick never knew what had induced
father to write that letter.

THREE STEPS AND A LITTLE DOOR

I KNOW not from what dim days on the furthest verge
of memory there comes floating to me an odd rhyme
about some small Scotch bairn whose story has
vanished with the lost legends of strath and corrie: —

" Tommy Gorrie —
Went — up — three — steps ;
And in at a little doorie."

Even at this distance of time it seems to me that I
can bring back the feeling of delight and wonder-
ment and curiosity which those words awakened in
my childish soul. They were a sort of spell; for
when I repeated them to myself, there, in front of
me, set in a long high wall of grey stone, was the
little door with its pointed arch — a door of solid oak
almost bleached by the weather from brown to grey;
and there were the three stone steps leading to it.

The other evening I overheard Carrie telling Boy-
Beloved the rh5mie, and now Winifred goes up and
down the house repeating it.

Of Tommy Gorrie I was often told — just as Carrie
now tells Boy-Beloved — that he never did any of the
discreditable and uni"uly things of which I appear
to have been guilty. Tommy Gorrie never said
" No; " he never screamed or stamped in great
wrath; he liked everything that was good for him;
he did not need to be told twice.

I am in doubt as to how Boy-Beloved regards the
exemplary Tommy. " You mustn't crumble your

1 98

Three Steps and a Little Door i 99

biscuit on the cloth," said Carrie. " Mustn't I
crumble my biscuit? " asked Boy-Beloved; " didn't
Tommy Gorrie crumble his biscuit?" "No, he
didn't." "Didn't he? Naughty boys do!" For
my part, I was not emulous of Tommy Gorrie; I
should have taken no interest in him if it had not
been that he went up those three steps and in at that
little door. But that was an adventure which might
well excite the envy and admiration of the most
revolutionary little Radical.

What did Tommy Gorrie see when he went in ?

No one could tell me. I used to stare for ten
minutes together at the door I could picture before
me, and wish it would open — ^were it but a hand's
breadth — so that I might have just one glint of the
wonderland on the other side of the wall; but it
only ended in some one coming to see what new
scheme of mischief was keeping me so quiet.

At night I would dream that I was going up the
steps, and that the door was yielding to the push of
my strong hand ; but either I awoke before it opened,
or the dream took another turn, and I found myself
as far as ever from solving the mystery.

Those three steps and that little door were the
imperishable romance of my childhood. Had my
curiosity been gratified I should have forgotten all
about them; but as no one could tell me, and as I
never found the door while awake and could never
enter by it while asleep, I had for years an inex-
haustible subject for my day-dreams.

Since I have grown up I have had several curious
reminders of that old rhyme. It v/as with a singular
shock of reminiscence that I read Goethe's sketch
in his Autobiography, of the enchanted garden wliich
he entered bv the little brown wicket in the Bad Wall;

200 In Memory of W. V.

and of his complete failure to find the entrance a
second time, although he had noted the extremely
old nut-trees, whose green branches hung down over
the wall on the opposite side of the way, and the
niche with the fountain.

And almost as much like a page from my own
experience was the passage in Mr. Pater's idyll, " The
Child in the House," in which he tells of such a vision
of loveliness as Tommy Gorrie must have had when he
went up the three steps.

For " it happened that, as he walked one evening,
a garden gate, usually closed, stood open; and lo!
within, a great red hawthorn in full flower, embossing
heavily the bleached and twisted trunk and branches,
so aged that there were but few green leaves thereon
— a plumage of tender crimson fire out of the heart
of the dry wood. The perfume of the tree had now
and again reached him, in the currents of the wind,,
over the wall, and he had wondered what might be
behind it."

But beautiful as that sight must have been, and
sweet as were that child's dreams, loitering all night
" along a magic roadway of crimson flowers," my
three steps and the little doorie gave promise of a
surprise more strange, and of a more rapturous

joy-

Only once have I seen in print anything that came
near to the glad mystery hidden behind my leagues
of lofty stone wall. Any one who is curious will find
it in Carlyle's translation of Tieck's little master-
piece, " The Elves."

When Tommy Gorrie went up three steps and in
at a little doorie, he must have been as fortunate as
little Mary when she ran across the bridge. He
must have met a glittering elf-maiden, and swung

Three Steps and a Little Door 201

with her on the tops of the trees which she made
spring up with a stamp of her fairy foot, and seen
the dwarfs carrying sacks of gold-dust, and watched
the water-children swimming and sporting and
blowing on crooked shells. Only I do not believe
that his story ended with the sorrowful disenchant-
ment of Mary's. The magic garden into which
Tommy Gorrie's door opened never lost a green leaf
or a coloured blossom, and no wicked weather of the
world ever reached it, and Tommy

Well, as for Tommy, I don't believe he never said
" No," and hked everything that was good for him,
and did not need to be told twice. I think he was
no better and no worse than Boy-Beloved, or even
than myself. I think Tommy is ahve yet, and never
grows any older. I think he spends his time in
seeking for those three steps and going in at that
little door.

What happens then I don't know; but I fancy
he gets tired with play and falls asleep; and when
he awakes he finds himself outside, with just a dim,
dreamy recollection of something strange and delight-
ful, and so he sets off again to find the three steps.
And as long as there are children Tommy Gorrie
will be a child, and will continue to go up three
steps and in at a little doorie.

There is a curious tenacity and suggestiveness
about rhymes, and this of Tommy Gorrie hitches
itself on to all sorts of people and incidents. When
I read a page of a beautiful book, I nod across to the
invisible author: " You went up three steps and in
at a httle doorie." When I meet a couple of lovers
in the wood, I smile to myself: " You are looking
for three steps, eh?" When I pass a Sister of
Charity, or watch a working woman rocking a babe

202 In Memory of W. V.

in her arms, I think: " And you too have been up
the three steps."

To-night even, as I sat with my small son on one
knee and his sister on the other, and my wife asked,
"Which way did you come home?" I replied,
somewhat absently it might seem, " Up three steps
and in at a little doorie; " but her laugh showed that
she understood.

OUR POEMS

Insignificant as they may be in themselves, the
verses which follow are to me so full of sad and of
happy memories, that I cannot forbear giving them
a place in these pages. As I read them once more
the leaves of vanished smnmers are green on the
trees, the snow of a winter forgotten drifts against
the window; the day, the spot, the bright young
faces are all brought back, with the light of love
and gladness upon them. And nothing of the least
of these would I willingly lose.

OUR POEMS

THE RING-FENCE

Oh, happy garden trees.

By dim degrees

Your subtle branches, muffling me about.

Shut all my neighbours out !

Not that I love them less, but they
Being fenced away,

'Tis sweet to feel in oh ! how small a round
May peace and joy abound.

HOME

East or West, at home is best!

Let the norland blizzard blow
From the icy mountain crest.

While I wade through drifts of snow.

Smoke I'd see — blue smoke alone —
From my own chimney gladlier than

Cheeriest fire on the hearthstone
Of another and better man.

THE MIRACULOUS

I LEFT her in the dark to find

Her own way home ; she had no fear.

I followed noiselessly behind;

She never dreamed that I was near.

20^

2o6 In Memory of VV. V.

I let her have her childish will;

But had she cried, why in a wink! —
That would have seemed a miracle.

So in our little life, I think.

BEDTIME

She kneels and folds her baby hands,
And gaily babbling lisps her prayer.

What if she laughs ? God understands
The joyous heart that knows no care.

Her prayer is like a new-fledged bird
That cannot flutter to its tree;

But God will lift it, having heard.
Up to the nest where it would be.

CAROL

When the herds were watching
In the midnight chill.

Came a spotless lambkin
From the heavenly hill.

Snow was on the mountains,
And the wind was cold.

When from God's own garden
Dropped a rose of gold.

When 'twas bitter winter,
Houseless and forlorn

In a star-lit stable
Christ the Babe was born.

Our Poems 207

Welcome, heavenly lambkin;

Welcome, golden rose;
Alleluia, Baby

In the swaddhng clothes !

SANTA CLAUS

Wee Flaxen-poll and Golden-head,
They both are sleeping, rosy-red;
And loving hands that make no noise
Have filled each stocking full of toys.

Oh, think! — unslumbering and forlorn.
Perchance one little Babe new-born
Lies wondering that we never saw
Him too, in spirit, in the straw.

IN THE STORM

Thro' half the wild March night the sleet
Against the shuddering windows beat.
" Pity," a small voice prayed, " dear God,
Our blackbird in the ivy-tod! "

The blackbird, darkling in her nest.
Felt five green eggs beneath her breast,
And knew no cold: through all the storm
Five coals of mothering kept her warm.

ALMOND BLOSSOM

Among the snow-flakes, whirling white,

I saw a vision of delight —

All clotted by the wintry shower.

An almond-tree laughed out in flower!

2o8 In Memory of W. V.

Blow, wintry years, I shall not care,
If I the almond's joy may share,
And break in bloom at heart, although
My aged head be white with snow!

MY FRIEND ^

I SAW a little raindrop

Upon a grassy blade ;
I touched it not, but in my heart

A home for it I made.

For mirrored in the raindrop

I saw the skies descend;
And Heaven was there. So in my heart

It came to be my friend.

GARDEN-FIRES

What though the snow gleams on the hill !
The sweet west wind blows fresh and clear;
The world feels new.
Tree-tops are full of heavenly blue;
The hollyhock and daffodil
Are shooting leaf and spear ;

The rosebush starts from sleep.
And, redding plots and walks.
The gardener rakes into a fiery heap
The dead year's withered leaves and shrivelled stalks.

Blow, wind of heaven, and make me whole!
Oh, blue of heaven, fill full my soul!
And, while the new-born flower springs,
I too will burn all dead and worthless things.
1 See p. 157.

Our Poems 209

APRIL SONG— I.

Little Boy Blue, come blow, come blow
Through wood and field your magic horn!

The almond blossom is chilled with snow,
The green bud seared on hazel and thorn.

We want to see the spring clouds go

Like lambs through sunny fields of morn ;

So wake, you Little Boy Blue, and blow
Through wood and field your April horn!

APRIL SONG— II.

How glad I shall be

When summer comes round-
The leaf on the tree,

The flower on the ground;

A welkin of glass,

A wind from the west,

A nest in the grass.
And eggs in the nest;

Lambs leaping for joy.

My boy in his pram,
My big baby boy.

Half wild for a lamb !

The snow's on the ground,
No leaf's on the tree;

When summer comes round
How glad shall I be !

2IO In Memory of W. V.

IN THE WOODLANDS

In the forest lawns I see

Little ring-plots fenced around.
So that shrub and sapling tree

Thrive in safe and happy ground;

And I wonder, Cannot I

Keep some little place apart,

Open to the wind and sky,
For the growing of my heart ?

MARTIN-TIDE

When morning rain has washed with sheen

Each blade and flower, and made them sweet,
And twinkling trees stand wet and green.

And rain-pools sparkle in the street.
Oh, then beside some lakelet filled

With quivering shapes of mirrored leaves.
The martin gathers mud to build

His hanging nest beneath the eaves.

Then, in a little, you shall hear,

Awaking at the break of hght,
Low twitterings, very soft and clear,

For joy of five pure eggs of white;
And so take heart for the new day

That oh, such little things suffice —
Eggs, raindrops, particles of clay —

To make a bower of paradise.

Our Poems 2 1 1

MAY-MORNING RAIN

Oh sweet, oh sweet, oh sweet the Spring,

When angels make the world anew,
And gladness gleams from everything

Between the living green and blue ;

And airs that breathed in Paradise

Blow draughts of life through shower and shine,
And the five gifts of sense suffice

To make mere consciousness divine!

Oh, fresh on leaf and blossom-flake

The rain of early morning glints ;
It lies about in little lakes.

It fills the ruts and horseshoe prints;

With leaf and bloom its depths are lit —

How magically deep they seem !
A flock goes by: far down in it

Glide sheep and lambs as in a dream.

A sparrow comes, and bathes and drinks;

Wildly he flounces in his joy.
Breaks the clear glass, and little thinks

What fairy scenes his freaks destroy.

Yet who'd begrudge him ? Off he flies!

And once again, most beautiful.
Leaf, blossom, clouds, and sunny skies

Are pictured in the little pool ;

And, wandering in some fairy deep

Where grass is sweet and sweet the air,

As Winnie knows, the herd and sheep
And bleating lambs are also there.

2 12 In Memory of W. V.

FELLOW-FEELING

Poor little soul ! We kissed the place
To make the smarting forehead whole.

Then dried the May and April face,
Saying, Poor little soul!

So soothed, he felt within him stir
Some pity for his mate in woe.

And went and kissed the baluster.
Sighing, Poor itty so' !

IN THE UNDERWOOD

<(

I FOUGHT you was quite gone away! "
He said, with blue eyes big with tears;
Then hugged and kissed my hands. I'll play
No more upon his childish fears.

For, as he frolicked through the wood,
I watched from leafy hiding-place,

And saw how, missing me, he stood
With startled eyes and twitching face.

And thought how soon the day will come,
When shadowed by the cypress-tree

I shall be very cold and dumb.
And he bereft of power to see.

And I, too stark to breathe or move,

Shall watch his piteous dismay.
And hear his sob of frightened love —

" Pappa! " grow faint and die away.

Our Poems 2 1 3

FROM FLOWER TO FLOWER

When morning comes with golden air.
Before the garden shadows wane,

Her tenderness dehghts to bear

From flower to flower the gift of rain.

And God, who gives in gracious wise.
Her own sweet gift on her bestows ;

Joy flowers, Hke speedwells, in her eyes,
And in her heart love, hke a rose.

THE ANGLER

On pool and pinewood, clearly grey.

The twihght deepened, hushed and cool;

The trout swam high in languid play;
Ring-ripples stirred the darkening pool.

And as I watched in pleased content.

Dim memories of bygone things
Rose softly, and through my spirit sent

A glimmering joy in trembhng rings,

THE WATER-OUSEL

Beneath the brook, with folded wings
The Ousel walks ; and one may hear.

In happy hour, the song he sings,
Submerged, yet elfin-sweet and clear.

Dear child, I see in those fresh eyes

Far down, drawn deep from troublous things.
Your spirit walking, ousel-wise.

In dreamy song with folded wings.

214 Ii^ Memory of W. V.

RED-C\P CHERRIES

Red-cap Cherries, hanging high
In the azure and the sun.

Cuckoo now has ceased his cry —
Now his summer song is done.

He with cherries plumped his crop
Three times — so he calls no more.

We'll be dumb too, if you'U drop.
Filling thrice our pinafore.

A CHILD'S SONG i

The little white clouds are playing to-day,
Playing to-day, playing to-day;

They call to the flowers, Come out and play.
Come out and play !

Come out and play, for the sun is rolled.

Sun is rolled, sun is rolled.
Thro' meadows of blue, like a ball of gold,

A ball of gold.

The flowers reply, We see you on high,
See you on high, see you on high,

We flutter our leaves, and long to fly.
And long to fly.

We dance in the breeze, pirouette and sway,
'ouette and sway, 'ouette and sway,

Pretending we're clouds, and with you at play.
With you at play!

1 The first stanza and the " ball of gold " in the second are
Winifred's.

Our Poems 2 1 5

TO WINIFRED

When I am dead,
And you are old,
You'll sit as we are sitting now,

Close to the fire, hearing the wind blow cold ;
And you will stroke a golden head,
And, suddenly, remembering how
I fondled yours, become at last aware
How dear to me was every single hair.

When I am dead,
And you are old.
You'll clasp in yours a little hand —

A nestling hand, sweet as a flower to hold —
The pretty fingers you will spread,
And kissing them will understand

How kissing yours, I found therein a joy
Beyond the world's to give, or to destroy.

THE LOOK

Beside the fire he sits between my feet,

And, snuggling, feels how winter can be sweet.

Then leaning back — such love in his clear eyes! —

" You look at me a little bit! " he cries.

" I have been looking, dear! " " You look again! '

O least importunate of tiny men.

Have eyes such power ? Can such a trifling thing

So lift up your fond heart upon the wing ?

Yet I that know Whose eyes upon me brood

Have never felt this child's beatitude.

21 6 In Memory of W. V.

THE CALL

I WALKED with one whose child had lately died.

We passed the little folk i' the street at play,
When suddenly a clear voice " Father! " cried;

The man tui^ned quick and glad; sighed; moved
away.

I spoke not, but 'twas given me to discern
The love that watches through th' eternal years ;

God surely so must start and quickly turn

Whene'er the cry of " Father! " strikes His ears.

THE MANTELPIECE

The polished oaken lintel showed

Dusk forest, and a winding road.

The grain o' the oak-heart only ? Nay,

We trod that road but yesterday.

Through hushed and haunted trees it wound.

To wishing-wells and faerie-ground.

The elfin horns blew crystal-clear!
No more we two those horns shall hear.
Her sprightly feet are lapped in clay —
Joy's very feet! O Yesterday!
Beloved playmate, are you dead ?
Winifred! Winifred!

THE WELLS OF ELIM

Elim, Elim ! Through the sand and heat
I toil with heart uplifted, I toil with bleeding feet,
For Elim, Elim! at the last, I know
That I shall see the palm-trees, and hear the waters
flow.

Our Poems 217

Elim, Elim ! Grows not here a tree,
And all the springs are Marah, and bitter thirst to me;
But Elim, Elim ! in thy shady glen
Are twelve sweet wells of water, and palms threescore
and ten.

Elim, Elim! though the way be long.
Unmurmuring I shall journey, and lift my heart in

song;
And Elim, Elim! all my song shall teU
Of rest beneath the palm-tree, and joy beside the well.

GLOAMING

The green sky!

The far hills!

My heart fills ;
I sigh — sigh!

Spirits blest
Surely lie
In green sky

In God's rest.

My heart fills;

I sigh — sigh.

The green sky!
The far hills!

SUB UMBRA CRUCIS

SUB UMBRA CRUCIS

Here by the green mound where she lies, the cry
of PHny rises in my heart, " Give me some fresh com-
fort, great and strong, such as I have never yet heard
or read. Everything that I have read or heard
comes back now to my memory, but my sorrow is
too deep to be reached by it."

But oh, mothers on whose wet pillows sit the little
shadows of lost babes, how shall I have better comfort
than you, for whom no one has found oblivion in
Lethe, or balm in Gilead ? I know, and I understand,
with what sweet and sorrowful dreams you have
sought to dull the edge of anguish; why you hung
tiny moccasins above the little grave ; how you filled
the cradle with feathers and decked it with toys, and
carried it on your back, so that the wearied baby-
spirit might find warmth and rest when it would. I
know, and I understand, how, looking at the sunrise
of the new day, you made its ghttering fields the land
of the bright little creatures of whom you had been
bereaved.

These of old were your dreams waking and sleep-
ing; and these you gave for solace to those who
grieved with you, and to all who in days to come
should have an empty chair in the house, and toys
with which no one should care to play any more.
And we too, of a later time, seek for relief in the same
fond way, and try to quench our thirst from the
well of dreams. But it is only in our own dreams

221

222 In Memory of W. V.

that our pain is assuaged, not in the dreams of any
other.

Oh, friend, let me thank you for your tender words.
Again and again I have read them: — " It is a lovely
face, and the soul in the face is more beautiful than
the face itself. Strange, how extraordinarily near I
feel to that girl. Her death affected me more than
any death outside my own household. To see her
face in that photograph made me feel it still more.
To lose her was a tragedy. But as I looked at her I
felt also that her happiness was now supreme, and
her love for all she loved tenfold. Yet — would she
had stayed. She looks immortal in her picture, and
I suppose she was sorely needed where she lives now."

Do not blame me if I am not made happy by your
words; nor by yours, dear woman, who write to me
from your lonely mission-house in the far East: —
" Perhaps, too, as the disciples were tired and cross,
and there was no other way but that one of calling
unto them a little child, so perchance Jesus called
your little one to teach the angels something they,
too, would not understand; and, perhaps, no other
little child would do."

Dreams, dreams, and not my dreams — dreams that
might give rest if one knew that they were only a
little more than dreams.

Surely sorrow is fractious and hard to please, for
I must quarrel with you, old friend, who bid me be
glad of heart, for now she is " removed from the evil
to come," now she is " safe." Is that a worthy, and
not a shallow comfort? Do you not see beneath it
the selfishness and the cowardice that are glad to
be set free from future responsibility? Why should
we so disparage the dead, and discount God's pur-
poses? Do you forget the poet's lines —

Sub Umbra Crucis 223

If he had lived, you say —

Well, well — if he had lived, what then?

Some men

Will always argue — yes, I know ... of course . . .

The argument has force.

If he had lived, he might have changed —

From bad to worse ?

Nay, my shrewd balance-setter.

Why not from good to better?

Why not to best? to joy

And splendour ? O, my boy !

And you who chide me gently, and bid me be a
man and bear as a man, considering — oh. Job's com-
forter!— how, at the heart of it, sorrow is rooted in
self, and when we mourn it is less for the lost than
for the losers, shall I not also feel as a man? How
shall I not " remember such things were, that were
most precious to me " ?

For whom should I lament ? Not for her — oh, not
for her, for she is in Thy keeping, O Thou Light of
the Dead. For whom should I lament, if not for the
living who are left? Did we so lightly value Thy
gift to us that when it was withdrawn we dried eyes
scarcely wet, and straightway forgot that she had
ever been flesh of our flesh and soul of our soul ?

Oh, friend, whose hand hurts and does not heal,
ape not a vain and foolish stoicism. God is not
vexed by the tears whose fountains He has made.
And if He who could raise from the dead was moved
to tears beside the sepulchre at Bethany, who shall
rebuke us that we weep rather for ourselves than for
those who have been taken from us ?

And you who, meaning well, but speaking not so
well, write to me wondering why one who died so
young should have lived at all oh, do not ask for

224 ^" Memory of W. V.

reasons. These things are God's mysteries. As she
herself used to say, " Our sense is nothing to God's;
and though big people have more sense than children,
the sense of all the big people in the world put
together would be no sense to His. We are only
little babies to Him; we do not understand Him
at all."

Is it not enough to know that to be born is to enter
into the birthright of a blessed immortahty?

Oh, Thou whose shadow is death, whose shadow
is immortality, "we do not understand Thee at all."
But we know that Thou art good and wise and pitiful ;
and we believe that when Thou takest childhood in
its blossom, and seemest to forget old age in weariness
and penury, Thou hast Thy purpose for that with
Thee, as Thou hast for this which awaits Thee.

And if we weep the loss of our little child, it is not
that we would call her back, but that it is a need of
our nature to regret the beloved made invisible.
Nay, if Thou shouldst promise, Call her and she shall
return, we should be dumb with the dread of an
unknown. future, we should not call, we should leave
her to Thy divine fatherhood.

And if in the dust and darkness of our souls we
reach out our hands to her, it is but to know that she
is happy, that it is well with her, that she is indeed
with Thee.

And if we ask for a sign, it is but the longing of
creatures who live and feel and know by the senses,
to have through the senses an assurance of that which
we believe in the spirit. Thou knowest our frame;
remember that we are dust. Is it strange that we,
too, should cry, Lama sahachthani ?

And you, true friend and wise consoler, who bid
me think of that little Agatha, " aged fourteen

Sub Umbra Crucis 225

years," who sleeps in the catacombs at Rome mider
that simple avowal of grateful hearts,

" For whom thanks be to the Lord and to Christ,"

perhaps you perceived more clearly than I myself
how much I had to be thankful for in this child.

When I ponder on all that I owe her, I seem to
apprehend a strange and heavenly truth underlying
one of the most savage superstitions of the Dark
Ages. For you have not forgotten how when the
walls of Copenhagen, as the legend tells, crumbled
and fell as fast as they were built, an innocent httle
girl was set in her chair beside a table, where she
played with her toys and ate the rosy apples they
gave her while twelve master-masons closed a vault
over her; and then the walls were raised, and stood
firm for ever after. And so it may sometimes be in
the dispensations of providence that the hves of men
can only be raised high and stable in virtue of the
little child immured for ever within them.

Poor Mttle shadow, with its apples and playthings !
Poor little child, if still the walls crumble and
fall!

They have finished the white cross upon her grave;
they have set the marble curbs about her little plot
of earth, and covered it with flowers.

The first sight of it shocked me in a manner that
I could not have anticipated. I had learned to find
a sort of comfort in the broken turf, the grassy clods,
the new leaves of weeds springing between the
clods and stones, the bees droning from flower to
flower. These were in the rough but kindly way of
nature. And the earth lay light — hght and warm

p

226 In Memory of W. V.

and living in the sunshine. It is a foohsh thing to
say : to the green mound I had grown reconciled.

But now this heavy slab seemed the last seal set
on the irretrievable. It was the visible, immovable
symbol of that unseen door, which we knew was
closed, but which, to our own hearts, we made-
believe was not so surely closed but that it might
miraculously fall open to our prayers. Oh, how
many have known that unaccountable feeling of
unreasoning expectation — to how many does it cling
for months, for years — that, somehow, something is
going to happen which will bring their dead children
back to them again!

Heavily lay that slab upon me, until there dawned
within me the memory of another grave, whither an
angel " came, and rolled back the stone from the
door, and sat upon it."

How strange that that should ever have been
written; for of the four who told the story of the
tomb in the garden, three have been silent as to that
heavenly vision; and a merciful thing it seemed —
predestined, one almost dared to think, for such a
time of trouble — that to one of the Evangelists it
was given to use words which have power to change
the stone of the last despair into a seat for an angel.

Deep in her garden I have buried a wisp of warm
brown hair twined with a faded flower plucked in
some New South Wales field and sent by a stranger
who loved her.

Between the dark green ledges of the cedar which
grows beyond her grave I see far below me the dome
of St. Paul's, dream-like in the smoke and autumn
haze; and the dim masses of the great city. How
her eyes brightened with interest when she looked

Sub Umbra Crucis 227

on that romantic region of Dick Whittington's ad-
ventures.

On one of the steps of the cross is her name, with
the date of birth and of death.

Not there, but in my heart, is written —

" For whom thanks be to the Lord and to Christ."

W. V,

Here's a flower for you, lying dead,

Child, whom living I never met.

Friends a many I may forget —
Not you, little Winifred.

Men grow sick when they live alone,
And long for the sound of a childish voice.
And you — ^how often you've made me rejoice

In a simple faith like your own !

So here's a flower for you, Winifred —

Out of London, a violet —

Little child whom I never met,
Winifred, lying dead.

H. D. LowRY.

The Moruing Post, April i8, 1901.

228

ENVOY

ENVOY

".Crying Abba, Father "

Abba, in Thine eternal years

Bethink Thee of our fleetinq day;

We are but clay;
Bear with our foolish joys, our foolish tears,

And all the wilfulness with which we pray'

I have a little maid who, when she leaves
Her father and her father's threshold, grieves.
But being gone, and life all holiday,
Forgets my love and me straightway;
Yet, when I write.

Kisses my letters, dancing with delight,
Cries " Dearest father! " and in all her glee
For one brief live-long hour remembers me.
Shall I in anger punish or reprove ?
Nay, this is natural; she cannot guess
How one forgotten feels forgetfulness ;
And I am glad thinking of her glad face,
And send her little tokens of my love.

And Thou — wouldst Thou be wroth in such a case ?

And crying Abba, I am fain

To think no human father's heart
Can be so tender as Thou art.

So quick to feel our love, to feel our pain.

231

232 In Memory of W. V.

When she is froward, querulous or wild,

Thou knowest, Abba, how in each offence

I stint not patience lest I wrong the child

Mistaking for revolt defect of sense.

For wilfulness mere spriteliness of mind ;

Thou know'st how often, seeing, I am blind;

How when I turn her face against the wall

And leave her in disgrace,

And will not look at her or speak at all,

I long to speak and long to see her face ;

And how, when twice, for something grievous done,

I could but strike, and though I lightly smote,

I felt my heart rise strangling in my throat;

And when she wept I kissed the poor red hands.

All these things. Father, a father understands;
And am not I Thy son ?

Abba, in Thine eternal years

Bethink Thee of our fleeting day;
From all the rapture of our eyes and ears

How shall we tear ourselves away ?

At night my little one says nay.
With prayers implores, entreats with tears

For ten more flying minutes' play;

How shall we tear ourselves away ?

Yet call, and I'll surrender
The flower of soul and sense.

Life's passion and its splendour,
In quick obedience.

If not without the blameless human tears
By eyes which slowly glaze and darken shed.
Yet without Questionings or fears

Envoy 233

For those I leave behind when I am dead.

rhou, Abba, know'st how dear

My Httle child's poor playthings are to her;

What love and joy

She has in every darling doll and precious toy;

Yet when she stands between my knees

To kiss good-night, she does not sob in sorrow,

" Oh, father, do not break or injure these! "

She knows that I shall fondl}' lay them by

For happiness to-morrow;

So leaves them trustfully.

And shall not I ?

Whatever darkness gather
O'er coverlet or pall.

Since Thou art Abba, Father,
Why should I fear at all ?

Thou'st seen how closely, Abba, when at rest.

My child's head nestles to my breast ;

And how my arm her little form enfolds

Lest in the darkness she should feel alone;

And how she holds

My hands, my two hands in her own?

A little easeful sighing

And restful turning round.
And I too, on Thy love relying.

Shall slumber sound.

TUe

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