— 2 —
The party of four set out. The cat Smith came a little way with them, treading with delicate precision and swinging a slow, rhythmical tail, but not too far, for he was urban-minded and not really at home in Knyghtwood. Sally had so far explored only the fringes of it and she was almost as excited as the children.
“With Jill we’ve been as far as the big oak,” said Jerry. “And with Ben we’ve been as far as his special place, where the Person is who plays the pipes, but with you we’re going right deep into the Place Beyond where the Fairy Person with the Horns is.”
Sally was interested. They had probably got Pan playing his pipes out of The Wind in the Willows; Ben had made himself a little pipe and played it in the wood sometimes, when he thought there was no one about to see and laugh at him, and they had perhaps heard his music, but where did the Place Beyond come from, and who was the Person with the Horns?
“Who is this Fairy Person?” she asked.
“We saw his pointy face looking at us out of the wood that first day we came,” said José. “We couldn’t see more of him because he was hiding in a holly tree. Then he went away and we haven’t seen him again. We want to.”
“What’s the Place Beyond?” asked Sally.
“What the other places aren’t,” said Jerry, a little impatient with her stupidity.
“But how will you know it when you get there?” persisted the obtuse Sally. “I mean, there are so many places that aren’t what other places are.”
The twins looked at her pityingly. “Because it isn’t many places; it’s one place. It’s in the middle.”
Sally gave it up and looked about her at the wood. It was, she thought, the loveliest wood she had ever seen, and full of deep peace. The woods across the river were beech woods, but this was chiefly birch and alder, with willows growing next the water, and brambles and crab apples, wild cherry and stunted oaks growing up the inland slope. The willow shoots were wands of gold, the birches and oaks silver, the brambles gemmed with bright leaves, the mosses and lichens saffron and coral and jade. The river to their left showed only as a suffusion of silver light, while overhead the patterning of branches against the sky cut from the immensity fragments and patches of blue that yet seemed each of them to hold something of the glory of the whole. There were small stirrings of unseen wild things going about their business in the undergrowth, and the rustle of wings, but the sound seemed only to intensify the deep stillness. Such autumn days have a holiness that spring lacks, thought Sally. They are like old serene saints for whom death has lost its terror.
Jerry and José were now Rat and Mole. They ran along making little squeaking noises, and dropping now and then to all fours. Mary was the spirit of all her hunting ancestors fused into a white flash of speeding light; she was here, there, and everywhere, hot upon exciting rabbit scents. Sally strode along with her hands deep in the pockets of her golden-brown tweed coat, her chestnut head gleaming, her face a little flushed with her joy. The hurt that Annie-Laurie had dealt her, together with all things of darkness, she had left behind at the green gate. The air of this wood, clean and sweet though it was to breathe, was yet somehow resistant, woven of some sort of heavenly loveliness that could not be interpenetrated by anything that was contrary to its nature. The Herb of Grace gave one a sense of defense against all that might happen to the body, but here one felt defended from all evil thoughts which might assault and hurt the soul. It had an inner safety. An old phrase came to her. “The armor of the house of the forest.” That was what the early Christians had called it when they fled there to find safety from persecution. And yet, according to the twins, it was only the courtyard; there was a Place Beyond.
Mary suddenly swerved away uphill to the right, Rat and Mole after her. Sally took her hands out of her pockets and ran after them. At the top of a grassy bank there grew an oak tree, a splendid old giant to whom one must obviously pay one’s respects before one passed any further, for he dominated this bit of the wood in a very kingly way. Standing in a group together Sally and the twins and Mary did homage. Just as they were turning away again Sally’s eye was caught by some narrow green leaves growing at the foot of the oak. “Look!” she said. “They’re like the leaves on the inn signboard. Is it the herb of grace, José?”
“Yes,” said José. “Ben said so. Rue. Herb of grace o’ Sundays. But it hasn’t any flowers.”
“It’ll have them when the spring comes,” said Sally, and she touched the leaves gently with her finger tips. Then she picked a spray of leaves and put it in her buttonhole.
They ran down the bank and went on, and the enchantment and silence of the wood was threaded through by the sound of running water. Presently they came to it, a stream that ran down through the woods towards the river. The water was amber in the sunlight, red-brown in the shade, tinged with iron, but crystal clear so that one could see all the pebbles on the bottom. The stream was a wide one and in the center of it was an island fringed with loosestrife and bog myrtle, with a clump of thorn trees and sloes in the center of it. It was reached by a bridge made from the fallen branch of a tree overgrown with clumps of fern. The sunlight fell softly on this island, lighting up the grape-dark sloes, the tiny ruby berries on the thorns, drawing up the scent of the bog myrtle and wet ferns.
“It’s Brockis Island,” said José. “Brockis means badger, Jill says. This is Ben’s special place. He’s painting it. He says Pan comes here. And one day we heard pipes, we did, really.”
“Pan has horns too,” said Jerry. “But not such nice horns as the Fairy Person’s.”
“Ben put the bridge there,” said José, “so that we should not get wet going to the island. We think no one knows about the island except us.”
They crossed the stream, pushed their way through the bushes upon the further side, and found themselves facing a small natural archway made by two old thorn trees leaning towards each other. The archway was just the right size for children, and Sally had hard work to get through it, yet once through she caught her breath in wonder, for inside was a small perfect green lawn so thickly surrounded by the trees that one could see nothing through them, and with the berry-jeweled branches arching overhead to make a roof. It was a sweet and secret place, a perfect little house for children. The sunlight striking through the roof overhead gave to every leaf and every blade of grass something of itself to treasure in a green loving cup, or hold triumphantly erect upon a spear point. Beautiful as it was now, shining and jeweled, Sally thought it would be even more so in the spring, when the primroses were out and the fruit blossom made a pink-and-white roof against the sky.
“Look!” said Jerry pointing.
Between the roots of an old thorn tree, veiled by bracken fronds of palest gold, was the entrance to someone’s home. Mary, barking wildly, charged up to it as though she meant to leap down inside, but at the doorstep halted, spun around in a furry flurry, and subsided with chin on paws, black eyes sparkling, hind parts elevated, well-braced legs, and trembling tail. Rat and Mole dropped to all fours and Sally sat back on her heels, looking with shining eyes at the badger’s holt.
“He’s stripy,” said Jerry, “with whiskers.”
“Ben’s seen him,” said José. “Once when he was here by himself.”
“Dear Ben,” said Sally. “Look! The herb of grace is growing here too; just one root of it beside Badger’s front door.”
José put her paws over her snout and squeaked. “Come out, Badger!” she called. “Come out and play with us.”
But Jerry dealt firmly with her. “Stop that, José! If we play at Rat and Mole and Badger we’ll be here all the morning, and never get Beyond.” He seized a fallen bit of wood, flung a leg over it, galloped once around the green lawn, neighing loudly, and proceeded to crash through the bushes upon the further side. José, quick as lightning, copied him, and Sally, dashing after them and seizing them by their disappearing tails,
was only just in time to prevent their plunging into the stream on the other side of the island, where there was no bridge.
“I’m your horse,” she said. “A mighty war horse. You’ll cross this rushing river one by one upon my back.”
This was a good idea. Sally, a hardy creature who never caught cold, took off her shoes and stockings and waded across with them, carrying Mary in her arms upon the second crossing. Then she sat down upon the further bank, dried her feet with her handkerchief, and put on her shoes and stockings again. When she looked up they had all three disappeared. Of course. They were knights on horseback now. They would go fast.
— 3 —
The narrow path through the wood that they had followed had ended at Brockis Island. There was no track through this part of the wood, and the trees grew more closely together. Sally walked on, keeping the gleam of water upon her left. She did not feel anxious; she’d be sure to come upon the twins sooner or later. And it was good to be alone for a little with this beauty. She saw some wonderful things as she walked: a stick jeweled with scarlet moss cups, a jay’s feather lying on a cushion of green moss, a cloud of goldfinches tossing above a clump of thistles. And as the shade deepened so did the mystery of this place, and the sense of holiness that was the autumn’s gift. Her heart beat a little quicker. . . . Surely she was coming to somewhere.
There was a brighter gleam of sunshine and she came to a clearing in the wood. She shut her eyes for a moment, dazzled, and opened them upon the landscape of a vision or a dream, the same landscape that she had remembered from some picture when she had first seen Ben. Only now it was not a vague elusive memory of something that she saw, but a clear and distinct picture. A second, smaller stream ran through this clearing, seeping silently through a wide bed of smooth-rolled pebbles. The bog myrtle grew here too, robed in silver light, beautifully massed against the deep shade of the wood beyond. She saw the shapes of many birds all about her: swans upon the river to her left, a heron in flight, small birds singing in the branches; and she saw the animals clearly too, a rabbit, a bear, deer, many dogs, one of them very old and bowing his head as though in reverence. And there upon his great white horse was the chevalier, the sunlight gleaming upon his hunting horn and the rich colors of the silk and fur that clothed him, and he was gazing with a rapt face at something which he saw and she could not see. But his face was not Ben’s face this time; it was a fair face with clear-cut features, the face of a much older man.
The color, the light, were so heavenly that she could not look any longer. Against her will her mortal eyes closed, and when she opened them again the scene was of this earth.
Yet there were birds still; she saw a swan upon the water and heard the cry of the sea gulls. And two dogs were still there: a funny old mongrel like a gray woolly hearthrug, and a majestic and incomparable chow. And the chevalier was still there, gazing with that deep absorption at something that was clear to him but hidden from her. But the great white horse, the hunting horn, the garments of silk and fur, had vanished. He was a man of this century on foot in the woods. But his face was the same, and she had always known it.
Though she did not move he was aware of her and turned round. His eyes looked dazed for a moment, and then puzzled recognition dawned in them. “Haven’t we seen each other before somewhere?” he asked.
She came forward, her hands in her pockets, her face lifted to look at him with the unself-conscious absorption of a trustful child. “Yes, at a party in London. I’m Sally Adair. My father and I are staying at the Herb of Grace. I knew a relation was coming to lunch but I didn’t know he was you.”
“And I knew John Adair and his daughter were guests at the Herb of Grace, but I didn’t know the daughter was Sally the shepherdess. . . . Why, the old Bastard likes you!”
The chow, gazing at her with imperial consideration, had not yet made up his mind about her, but the Bastard was leaning his old head against her knee. She caressed his rough fur. “He’s the one who’s just the same,” she murmured. “The one who had bowed his head and was worshiping.”
David looked puzzled, as well he might. “The sunlight got in my eyes and I saw a strange picture,” she explained. “A picture of all sorts of birds and animals in a wood.”
“One sees the oddest things in woods,” agreed David.
“What were you seeing?” asked Sally.
“Nothing out of the ordinary. Just a kingfisher. Though actually a kingfisher is a bit out of the ordinary, isn’t he? A heavenly bird.”
“What we ought to be seeing,” said Sally, “are the twins and Mary. I brought them out for a walk and now I’ve lost them.”
“Those twins!” said David with sympathy. “Many’s the time I’ve lost them. If they turn into anything that gets a pace on, like a speedboat or a motor bike, it’s all up.”
“They were knights on horseback,” said Sally.
“Not so bad as a speedboat,” said David cheerfully. “I suggest that if we tramp on to the edge of the wood, where I’ve left my car, singing ‘Gaily the Troubadour,’ they might think the time had come to ride home from the wars. Do you know ‘The Troubadour,’ by the way? Grandmother brought us up on all those old songs, ‘Clementine,’ and ‘Wrap Me Up in My Tarpaulin Jacket,’ and the rest.”
“Of course I know them,” said Sally. “My Scotch nanny sang them all to me when I was little.” And as they swung inland and began to climb up the slope of the wood, the two old dogs at their heels, her deep contralto voice rang out in the air of “The Troubadour.” David was silent for a moment, astonished at the loveliness of her untrained voice, and then he joined in. Another couple might have felt themselves ridiculous, singing the sentimental old ballad together at the tops of their voices, but neither Sally nor David suffered from self-consciousness. They tramped on singing through waist-high bracken, until the trees thinned and they came out into a narrow winding lane, high up on the brow of a hill, with a beautiful patchwork of pasture and shorn harvest fields rolling away towards the distant silver line of the Estuary, with the Island opal-tinted and celestial beyond. David’s silvery gray car waited at the edge of the wood, but there was no sign of the twins.
“You’d have thought the row we made would have fetched them, wouldn’t you?” said David.
“I suppose the Place Beyond was not that lovely hollow where we met each other, but beyond again,” said Sally, and she explained about the twins and the Fairy Person whom they expected to find in the place that is not what other places are because it is the one place, in the middle.
“Like the hub of a wheel,” said David, opening the door of his car. “Sounds very deep. And I shouldn’t like to intrude on the twins in the place—if they’ve found it. We’ll sit and talk in the car and every now and then make a noise like an air-raid siren to let them know where we are. Jerry likes the noise of a siren. The only person of my acquaintance who does.”
“What is the wood like beyond the hollow?” asked Sally, as they settled themselves in the front of the car with the two old dogs comfortably installed at the back.
David laughed. “I can’t tell you. I don’t know this wood.” Then he looked at her teasingly. “I believe you’re taking this mysterious place of the twins quite seriously. You’re disappointed because you didn’t get there, aren’t you?”
Sally flushed, but she did not deny the charge. “Yes, I am,” she said stoutly. “Though if I’d got there I don’t suppose I’d have seen whatever it is the twins are seeing. Children have vision.”
“Imagination,” amended David.
“It’s the same thing,” said Sally.
“Not quite, I think. Imagination comes from yourself and can deceive you, but vision is a gift from outside yourself—like light striking on your closed eyelids and lifting them to see what’s really there.”
“Or only half see it,” said Sally sadly. “So that you can’t express it at all.”
> “Keats had a good idea of the difference between the imaginative man and the visionary,” said David. “ ‘Every man has his speculations, but every man does not brood and peacock over them till he makes a false coinage and deceives himself. Many a man can travel to the very bourne of heaven, and yet want confidence to put down his half-seeing.’ You’d be like that, I think. As for me, I brood and peacock.”
Sally laughed. “I don’t see that a visionary who can’t say what he has seen is of much use.”
“Pens and paint, a good voice production, and grease paint and things aren’t the only means of expression. Some people express loveliness just by loving. It’s the better way. You don’t get that bitter contrast between the artist and his works that shocks people so.”
“Don’t run down artists, please. The great ones—they’re utterly selfless. ‘I would write from the mere yearning and fondness I have for the Beautiful even if my night’s labours should be burnt every morning, and no eye ever shine upon them.’ ”
“Writers and painters have a medium that can foster self-effacement. Actors haven’t. An actor can’t hide himself behind paper or canvas. If you’re not there your art’s not there. That’s why we actors are often such self-centered objects. I wish I was a painter like your father.”
“Father’s not selfless,” laughed Sally. “Nothing would induce him to paint a portrait that would be burnt in the morning. He likes material rewards. He’s clever. He has a most uncanny insight into people, their real selves, and their motives, but he’s not a genius.”
“ ‘A prophet is without honor,’ ” laughed David. “And what’s a genius?”
“A man of imagination who has vision too. . . . Or a child. . . . You said children had only imagination, but I think that sometimes they have both. And I think you have, too.”