To think this was a veritable relief to her. God was where men worshipped him, and not here! She hugged the new belief and it made her bold and defiant. Doubtless, if he is here, she would say, and can read my thoughts, my horse in his very next gallop will put his foot in a mole-run, and bring me down and break my neck. Or when yon black cloud comes over me, if it is a thunder-cloud, the lightning out of it will strike me dead. If he will but listen to his servant Dunstan this will surely happen. Was it God or the head shepherd of his sheep, here in England, who, when I tried to enter the fold, beat me off with his staff and set his dogs on me so that I was driven away, torn and bleeding, to hide myself in a solitary place? Would it then be better for me to go with my cries for mercy to his seat? O no, I could not come to him there; his doorkeepers would bar the way, and perhaps bring together a crowd of their people to howl at me—Go away, Murderess, you are not wanted here!

Now in spite of those moments, or even hours, of elation, during which her mind would recover its old independence until the sense of freedom was like an intoxication; when she cried out against God that he was cruel and unjust in his dealings with his creatures, that he had raised up and given power to the man who held the rod over her, one who in God's holy name had committed crimes infinitely greater than hers, and she refused to submit to him—in spite of it all she could never shake off the terrible thought that in the end, at God's judgment seat, she would have to answer for her own dark deeds. She could not be free of her religion. She was like one who tears a written paper to pieces and scatters the pieces in anger to see them blown away like snow-flakes on the wind; who by and by discovers one small fragment clinging to his garments, and looking at the half a dozen words and half words appearing on it, adds others from memory or of his own invention. So she with what was left when she thrust her religion away built for herself a different one which was yet like the old; and even here in this solitude she was able to find a house and sacred place for meditation and prayer, in which she prayed indirectly to the God she was at enmity with. For now invariably on returning from her ride to her house at Amesbury she would pay a visit to the Great Stones, the ancient temple of Stonehenge. Dismounting, she would order her attendants to take her horse away and wait for her at a distance, so as not to be disturbed by the sound of their talking. Going in she would seat herself on the central or altar stone and give a little time to meditation—to the tuning of her mind. That circle of rough-hewn stones, rough with grey lichen, were the pillars of her cathedral, with the infinite blue sky for roof, and for incense the smell of flowers and aromatic herbs, and for music the far-off faintly heard sounds that came to her from the surrounding wilderness—the tremulous bleating of sheep and the sudden wild cry of hawk or stone curlew. Closing her eyes she would summon the familiar image and vision of the murdered boy, always coming so quickly, so vividly, that she had brought herself to believe that it was not a mere creation of her own mind and of remorse, a memory, but that he was actually there with her. Moving her hand over the rough stone she would by and by let it rest, pressing it on the stone, and would say, Now I have your hand in mine, and am looking with my soul's eyes into yours, listen again to the words I have spoken so many times. You would not be here if you did not remember me and pity and even love me still. Know then that I am now alone in the world, that I am hated by the world because of your bitter death. And there is not now one living being in the world that I love, for I have ceased to love even my own boy, your old beloved playmate, seeing that he has long been taken from me and taught with all others to despise and hate me. And of all those who inhabit the regions above, in all that innumerable multitude of angels and saints, and of all who have died on earth and been forgiven, you alone have any feeling of compassion for me and can intercede for me. Plead for me—plead for me, O my son; for who is there in heaven or earth that can plead so powerfully for me that am stained with your blood!

Then, having finished her prayer, and wiped away all trace of tears and painful emotions, she would summon her attendants and ride home, in appearance and bearing still the Elfrida of her great days—the calm, proud-faced, beautiful woman who was once Edgar's queen.



XI

The time had arrived when Elfrida was deprived of this her one relief and consolation—her rides on the Downs and the exercise of her religion at the temple of the Great Stones—when in the second winter of her residence at Amesbury there fell a greater darkness than that of winter on England, when the pirate kings of the north began once more to frequent our shores, and the daily dreadful tale of battles and massacres and burning of villages and monasteries was heard throughout the kingdom. These invasions were at first confined to the eastern counties, but the agitation, with movements of men and outbreaks of lawlessness, were everywhere in the country, and the queen was warned that it was no longer safe for her to go out on Salisbury Plain.

The close seclusion in which she had now to live, confined to house and enclosed land, affected her spirits, and this was her darkest period, and it was also the turning-point in her life. For I now come to the strange story of her maid Editha, who, despite her humble position in the house, and albeit she was but a young girl in years, one, moreover, of a meek, timid disposition, was yet destined to play an exceedingly important part in the queen's history.

It happened that by chance or design the queen's maid, who was her closest attendant, who dressed and undressed her, was suddenly called away on some urgent matter, and this girl Editha, a stranger to all, was put in her place. The queen, who was in a moody and irritable state, presently discovered that the sight and presence of this girl produced a soothing effect on her darkened mind. She began to notice her when the maid combed her hair, when sitting with half-closed eyes in profound dejection she first looked attentively at that face behind her head in the mirror and marvelled at its fairness, the perfection of its lines and its delicate colouring, the pale gold hair and strangely serious grey eyes that were never lifted to meet her own.

What was it in this face, she asked herself, that held her and gave some rest to her tormented spirit? It reminded her of that crystal stream of sweet and bitter memories, at Wherwell, on which she used to gaze and in which she used to dip her hands, then to press the wetted hands to her lips. It also reminded her of an early morning sky, seen beyond and above the green dew-wet earth, so infinitely far away, so peaceful with a peace that was not of this earth.

It was not then merely its beauty that made this face so much to her, but something greater behind it, some inner grace, the peace of God in her soul.

One day there came for the queen as a gift from some distant town a volume of parables and fables for her entertainment. It was beautiful to the sight, being richly bound in silk and gold embroidery; but on opening it she soon found that there was little pleasure to be got from it on account of the difficulty she found in reading the crabbed handwriting. After spending some minutes in trying to decipher a paragraph or two she threw the book in disgust on the floor.

The maid picked it up, and after a glance at the first page said it was easy to her, and she asked if the queen would allow her to read it to her.

Elfrida, surprised, asked how it came about that her maid was able to read a difficult script with ease, or was able to read at all; and this was the first question she had condescended to put to the girl. Editha replied that she had been taught as a child by a great-uncle, a learned man; that she had been made to read volumes in a great variety of scripts to him, until reading had come easy to her, both Saxon and Latin.

Then, having received permission, she read the first fable aloud, and Elfrida listening, albeit without interest in the tale itself, found that the voice increased the girl's attraction for her. From that time the queen made her read to her every day. She would make her sit a little distance from her, and reclining on her couch, her head resting on her hand, she would let her eyes dwell on that sweet saint-like face until the reading was finished.

One day she read from the same book a tale of a great noble, an earldoman who was ruler under the king of that part of the country where his possessions were, whose power was practically unlimited and his word law. But he was a wise and just man, regardful of the rights of others, even of the meanest of men, so that he was greatly reverenced and loved by the people. Nevertheless, he too, like all men in authority, both good and bad, had his enemies, and the chief of these was a noble of a proud and froward temper who had quarrelled with him about their respective rights in certain properties where their lands adjoined. Again and again it was shown to him that his contention was wrong; the judgments against him only served to increase his bitterness and hostility until it seemed that there would never be an end to that strife. This at length so incensed his powerful overlord that he was forcibly deprived of his possessions and driven out beggared from his home. But no punishment, however severe, could change his nature; it only roused him to greater fury, a more fixed determination to have his revenge, so that outcast as he was his enmity was still to be feared and he was a danger to the ruler and the community in general. Then, at last, the great earl said he would suffer this state of things no longer, and he ordered his men to go out and seek and take him captive and bring him up for a final judgment. This was done, and the ruler then said he would not have him put to death as he was advised to do, so as to be rid of him once for all, but would inflict a greater punishment on him. He then made them put heavy irons on his ankles, riveted so that they should never be removed, and condemned him to slavery and to labour every day in his fields and pleasure-grounds for the rest of his life. To see his hated enemy reduced to that condition would, he said, be a satisfaction to him whenever he walked in his gardens.

These stern commands were obeyed, and when the miserable man refused to do his task and cried out in a rage that he would rather die, he was scourged until the blood ran from the wounds made by the lash; and at last, to escape from this torture, he was compelled to obey, and from morning to night he laboured on the land, planting and digging and doing whatever there was to do, always watched by his overseer, his food thrown to him as to a dog; laughed and jeered at by the meanest of the servants.

After a certain time, when his body grew hardened so that he could labour all day without pain, and, being fatigued, sleep all night without waking, though he had nothing but straw on a stone floor to lie upon; and when he was no longer mocked or punished or threatened with the lash, he began to reflect more and more on his condition, and to think that it would be possible to him to make it more endurable. When brooding on it, when he repined and cursed, it then seemed to him worse than death; but when, occupied with his task, he forgot that he was the slave of his enemy, who had overcome and broken him, then it no longer seemed so heavy. The sun still shone for him as for others; the earth was as green, the sky as blue, the flowers as fragrant. This reflection made his misery less; and by and by it came into his mind that it would be lessened more and more if he could forget that his master was his enemy and cruel persecutor, who took delight in the thought of his sufferings; if he could imagine that he had a different master, a great and good man who had ever been kind to him and whom his sole desire was to please. This thought working in his mind began to give him a satisfaction in his toil, and this change in him was noticed by his taskmaster, who began to see that he did his work with an understanding so much above that of his fellows that all those who laboured with him were influenced by his example, and whatsoever the toil was in which he had a part the work was better done. From the taskmaster this change became known to the chief head of all the lands, who thereupon had him set to other more important tasks, so that at last he was not only a toiler with pick and spade and pruning knife, but his counsel was sought in everything that concerned the larger works on the land; in forming plantations, in the draining of wet grounds and building of houses and bridges and the making of new roads. And in all these works he acquitted himself well.

Thus he laboured for years, and it all became known to the ruler, who at length ordered the man to be brought before him to receive yet another final judgment. And when he stood before him, hairy, dirty and unkempt, in his ragged raiment, with toil-hardened hands and heavy irons on his legs, he first ordered the irons to be removed.

The smiths came with their files and hammers, and with much labour took them off.

Then the ruler, his powerful old enemy, spoke these words to him: I do not know what your motives were in doing what you have done in all these years of your slavery; nor do I ask to be told. It is sufficient for me to know you have done these things, which are for my benefit and are a debt which must now be paid. You are henceforth free, and the possessions you were deprived of shall be restored to you, and as to the past and all the evil thoughts you had of me and all you did against me, it is forgiven and from this day will be forgotten. Go now in peace.

When this last word had been spoken by his enemy, all that remained of the old hatred and bitterness went out of him, and it was as if his soul as well as his feet had been burdened with heavy irons and that they had now been removed, and that he was free with a freedom he had never known before.

When the reading was finished, the queen with eyes cast down remained for some time immersed in thought; then with a keen glance at the maid's face she asked for the book, and opening it began slowly turning the leaves. By and by her face darkened, and in a stern tone of voice she said: Come here and show me in this book the parable you have just read, and then you shall also show me two or three other parables you have read to me on former occasions, which I cannot find.

The maid, pale and trembling, came and dropped on her knees and begged forgiveness for having recited these three or four tales, which she had heard or read elsewhere and committed to memory, and had pretended to read them out of the book.

Then the queen in a sudden rage said: Go from me and let me not see you again if you do not wish to be stripped and scourged and thrust naked out of the gates! And you only escape this punishment because the deceit you have been practising on me is, to my thinking, not of your own invention, but that of some crafty monk who is making you his instrument.

Editha, terrified and weeping, hurriedly quitted the room.

By and by, when that sudden tempest of rage had subsided, the despondence, which had been somewhat lightened by the maid's presence, came back on her so heavily that it was almost past endurance. She rose and went to her sleeping-room, and knelt before a table on which stood a crucifix with an image of the Saviour on it—the emblem of the religion she had so great a quarrel with. But not to pray. Folding her arms on the table and dropping her face on them she said: What have I done? And again and again she repeated: What have I done? Was it indeed a monk who taught her this deceit, or some higher being who put it in her mind to whisper a hope to my soul? To show me a way of escape from everlasting death—to labour in his fields and pleasure-grounds, a wretched slave with irons on her feet, to be scourged and mocked at, and in this state to cast out hatred and bitterness from my own soul and all remembrance of the injuries he had inflicted on me—to teach myself through long miserable years that this powerful enemy and persecutor is a kind and loving master? This is the parable, and now my soul tells me it would be a light punishment when I look at the red stains on these hands, and when the image of the boy I loved and murdered comes back to me. This then was the message, and I drove the messenger from me with cruel threats and insult.

Suddenly she rose, and going hurriedly out, called to her maids to bring Editha to her. They told her the maid had departed instantly on being dismissed, and had gone upwards of an hour. Then she ordered them to go and search for her in all the neighbourhood, at every house, and when they had found her to bring her back by persuasion or by force.

They returned after a time only to say they had sought for her everywhere and had failed to find or hear any report of her, but that some of the mounted men who had gone to look for her on the roads had not yet returned.

Left alone once more she turned to a window which looked towards Salisbury, and saw the westering sun hanging low in a sky of broken clouds over the valley of the Avon and the green downs on either side. And, still communing with herself, she said: I know that I shall not endure it long—this great fear of God—I know that it will madden me. And for the unforgiven who die mad there can be no hope. Only the sight of my maid's face with God's peace in it could save me from madness. No, I shall not go mad! I shall take it as a sign that I cannot be forgiven if the sun goes down without my seeing her again. I shall kill myself before madness comes and rest oblivious of life and all things, even of God's wrath, until the dreadful waking.

For some time longer she continued standing motionless, watching the sun, now sinking behind a dark cloud, then emerging and lighting up the dim interior of her room and her stone-white, desolate face.

Then once more her servants came back, and with them Editha, who had been found on the road to Salisbury, half-way there.

Left alone together, the queen took the maid by the hand and led her to a seat, then fell on her knees before her and clasped her legs and begged her forgiveness. When the maid replied that she had forgiven her, and tried to raise her up, she resisted, and cried: No, I cannot rise from my knees nor loose my hold on you until I have confessed to you and you have promised to save me. Now I see in you not my maid who combs my hair and ties my shoe-strings, but one that God loves, whom he exalts above the queens and nobles of the earth, and while I cling to you he will not strike. Look into this heart that has hated him, look at its frightful passions, its blood-guiltiness, and have compassion on me! And if you, O Editha, should reply to me that it is his will, for he has said it, that every soul shall save itself, show me the way. How shall I approach him? Teach me humility!

Thus she pleaded and abased herself. Nevertheless it was a hard task she imposed upon her helper, seeing that humility, of all virtues, was the most contrary to her nature. And when she was told that the first step to be taken was to be reconciled to the church, and to the head of the church, her chief enemy and persecutor, whose monks, obedient to his command, had blackened her name in all the land, her soul was in fierce revolt. Nevertheless she had to submit, seeing that God himself through his Son when on earth and his Son's disciples had established the church, and by that door only could any soul approach him. So there was an end to that conflict, and Elfrida, beaten and broken, although ever secretly hating the tonsured keepers of her soul, set forth under their guidance on her weary pilgrimage—the long last years of her bitter expiation.

Yet there was to be one more conflict between the two women—the imperious mistress and the humble-minded maid. This was when Editha announced to the other that the time had now come for her to depart. But the queen wished to keep her, and tried by all means to do so, by pleading with her and by threatening to detain her by force. Then repenting her anger and remembering the great debt of gratitude owing to the girl, she resolved to reward her generously, to bestow wealth on her, but in such a form that it would appear to the girl as a beautiful parting gift from one who had loved her: only afterwards, when they were far apart, would she discover its real value.

A memory of the past had come to her—of that day, sixteen years ago, when her lover came to her and using sweet flattering words poured out from a bag a great quantity of priceless jewels into her lap, and of the joy she had in the gift. Also how from the day of Athelwold's death she had kept those treasures put away in the same bag out of her sight. Nor in all the days of her life with Edgar had she ever worn a gem, though she had always loved to array herself magnificently, but her ornaments had been gold only, the work of the best artists in Europe. Now, in imitation of Athelwold, when his manner of bestowing the jewels had so charmed her, she would bestow them on the girl.

Accordingly when the moment of separation came and Editha was made to seat herself, the queen standing over her with the bag in her hand said: Do you, Editha, love all beautiful things? And when the maid had replied that she did, the other said: Then take these gems, which are beautiful, as a parting gift from me. And with that she poured out the mass of glittering jewels into the girl's lap.

But the maid without touching or even looking at them, and with a cry, I want no jewels! started to her feet so that they were all scattered upon the floor.

The queen stared astonished at the face before her with its new look of pride and excitement, then with rising anger she said: Is my maid too proud then to accept a gift from me? Does she not know that a single one of those gems thrown on the floor would be more than a fortune to her?

The girl replied in the same proud way: I am not your maid, and gems are no more to me than pebbles from the brook!

Then all at once recovering her meek, gentle manner she cried in a voice that pierced the queen's heart: O, not your maid, only your fellow-worker in our Master's fields and pleasure-grounds! Before I ever beheld your face, and since we have been together, my heart has bled for you, and my daily cry to God has been: Forgive her! Forgive her, for his sake who died for our sins! And this shall I continue to cry though I shall see you no more on earth. But we shall meet again. Not, O unhappy queen, at life's end, but long afterwards—long, long years! long ages!

Dropping on her knees she caught and kissed the queen's hand, shedding abundant tears on it, then rose and was quickly gone.

Elfrida, left to herself, scarcely recovered from the shock of surprise at that sudden change in the girl's manner, began to wonder at her own blindness in not having seen through her disguise from the first. The revelation had come to her only at the last moment in that proud gesture and speech when her gift was rejected, not without scorn. A child of nobles great as any in the land, what had made her do this thing? What indeed but the heavenly spirit that was in her, the spirit that was in Christ—the divine passion to save!

Now she began to ponder on those last words the maid had spoken, and the more she thought of them the greater became her sadness until it was like the approach of death. O terrible words! Yet it was what she had feared, even when she had dared to hope for forgiveness. Now she knew what her life after death was to be since the word had been spoken by those inspired lips. O dreadful destiny! To dwell alone, to tread alone that desert desolate, that illimitable waste of burning sand stretching from star to star through infinite space, where was no rock nor tree to give her shade, no fountain to quench her fiery thirst! For that was how she imaged the future life, as a desert to be dwelt in until in the end, when in God's good time—the time of One to whom a thousand years are as one day—she would receive the final pardon and be admitted to rest in a green and shaded place.

Overcome with the agonising thought she sank down on her couch and fell into a faint. In that state she was found by her women, reclining, still as death, with eyes closed, the whiteness of death in her face; and thinking her dead they rushed out terrified, crying aloud and lamenting that the queen was dead.



XII

She was not dead. She recovered from that swoon, but never from the deep, unbroken sadness caused by those last words of the maid Editha, which had overcome and nearly slain her. She now abandoned her seclusion, but the world she returned to was not the old one. The thought that every person she met was saying in his or her heart: This is Elfrida; this is the queen who murdered Edward the Martyr, her step-son, made that world impossible. The men and women she now consorted with were the religious and ecclesiastics of all degrees, and abbots and abbesses. These were the people she loved least, yet now into their hands she deliberately gave herself; and to those who questioned her, to her spiritual guides, she revealed all her life and thoughts and passions, opening her soul to their eyes like a manuscript for them to read and consider; and when they told her that in God's sight she was guilty of the murder both of Edward and Athelwold, she replied that they doubtless knew best what was in God's mind, and whatever they commanded her to do that should be done, and if in her own mind it was not as they said this could be taken as a defect in her understanding. For in her heart she was not changed, and had not yet and never would learn the bitter lesson of humility. Furthermore, she knew better than they what life and death had in store for her, since it had been revealed to her by holier lips than those of any priest. Lips on which had been laid a coal from the heavenly altar, and what they had foretold would come to pass—that unearthly pilgrimage and purification—that destiny, dreadful, ineluctable, that made her soul faint to think of it. Here, on this earth, it was for her to toil, a slave with heavy irons on her feet, in her master's fields and pleasure-grounds, and these gowned men with shaven heads, wearing ropes of beads and crucifixes as emblems of their authority—these were the taskmasters set over her, and to these, she, Elfrida, one time queen in England, would bend in submission and humbly confess her sins, and uncomplainingly take whatever austerities or other punishments they decreed.

Here, then, at Amesbury itself, she began her works of expiation, and found that she, too, like the unhappy man in the parable, could experience some relief and satisfaction in her solitary embittered existence in the work itself.

Having been told that at this village where she was living a monastery had existed and had been destroyed in the dreadful wars of two to three centuries ago, she conceived the idea of founding a new one, a nunnery, and endowing it richly, and accordingly the Abbey of Amesbury was built and generously endowed by her.

This religious house became famous in after days, and was resorted to by the noblest ladies in the land who desired to take the veil, including princesses and widow queens; and it continued to flourish for centuries, down to the Dissolution.

This work completed, she returned, after nineteen years, to her old home at Wherwell. Since she had lost sight of her maid Editha, she had been possessed with a desire to re-visit that spot, where she had been happy as a young bride and had repined in solitude and had had her glorious triumph and stained her soul with crime. She craved for it again, especially to look once more at the crystal current of the Test in which she had been accustomed to dip her hands. The grave, saintly face of Editha had reminded her of that stream; and Editha she might not see. She could not seek for her, nor speak to her, nor cry to her to come back to her, since she had said that they would meet no more on earth.

Having become possessed of the castle which she had once regarded as her prison and cage, she ordered its demolition and used the materials in building the abbey she founded at that spot, and it was taken for granted by the Church that this was done in expiation of the part she had taken in Athelwold's murder. At this spot where the stream became associated in her mind with the thought of Editha, and was a sacred stream, she resolved to end her days. But the time of her retirement was not yet, there was much still waiting for her to do in her master's fields and pleasure-grounds. For no sooner had the tidings of her work in founding these monasteries and the lavish use she was making of her great wealth been spread abroad, than from many religious houses all over the land the cry was sent to her—the Macedonian cry to St. Paul to come over and help us.

From the houses founded by Edgar the cry was particularly loud and insistent. There were forty-seven of them, and had not Edgar died so soon there would have been fifty, that being the number he had set his heart on in his fervid zeal for religion. All, alas! were insufficiently endowed; and it was for Elfrida, as they were careful to point out, to increase their income from her great wealth, seeing that this would enable them to associate her name with that of Edgar and keep it in memory, and this would be good for her soul.

To all such calls she listened, and she performed many and long journeys to the religious houses all over the country to look closely into their conditions and needs, and to all she gave freely or in moderation, but not always without a gesture of scorn. For in her heart of hearts she was still Elfrida and unchanged, albeit outwardly she had attained to humility; only once during these years of travel and toil when she was getting rid of her wealth did she allow her secret bitterness and hostility to her ecclesiastical guides and advisers to break out.

She was at Worcester, engaged in a conference with the bishop and several of his clergy; they were sitting at an oak table with some papers and plans before them, when the news was brought into the room that Archbishop Dunstan was dead.

They all, except Elfrida, started to their feet with the looks and exclamations of dismay, as if some frightful calamity had come to pass. Then dropping to their knees with bowed heads and lifted hands they prayed for the repose of his soul. They prayed silently, but the silence was broken by a laugh from the queen. Starting to his feet the bishop turned on her a severe countenance, and asked why she laughed at that solemn moment.

She replied that she had laughed unthinkingly, as the linnet sings, from pure joy of heart at the glad tidings that their holy archbishop had been translated to paradise. For if he had done so much for England when burdened with the flesh, how much more would he be able to do now from the seat or throne to which he would be exalted in heaven in virtue of the position his blessed mother now occupied in that place.

The bishop, angered at her mocking words, turned his back on her, and the others, following his example, averted their faces, but not one word did they utter.

They remembered that Dunstan in former years, when striving to make himself all powerful in the kingdom, had made free use of a supernatural machinery; that when he wanted something done and it could not be done in any other way, he received a command from heaven, brought to him by some saint or angel, to have it done, and the command had then to be obeyed. They also remembered that when Dunstan, as he informed them, had been snatched up into the seventh heaven, he did not on his return to earth modestly, like St. Paul, that it was not lawful for him to speak of the things which he had heard and seen, but he proclaimed them to an astonished world in his loudest trumpet voice. Also, that when, by these means, he had established his power and influence and knew that he could trust his own subtle brains to maintain his position, he had dropped the miracles and visions. And it had come to pass that when the archbishop had seen fit to leave the supernatural element out of his policy, the heads of the Church in England were only too pleased to have it so. The world had gaped with astonishment at these revelations long enough, and its credulity had come near to the breaking point, on which account the raking up of these perilous matters by the queen was fiercely resented.

But the queen was not yet satisfied that enough had been said by her. Now she was in full revolt she must give out once for all the hatred of her old enemy, which his death had not appeased.

What mean you, Fathers, she cried, by turning your backs on me and keeping silence? Is it an insult to me you intend or to the memory of that great and holy man who has just quitted the earth? Will you dare to say that the reports he brought to us of the marvellous doings he witnessed in heaven, when he was taken there, were false and the lies and inventions of Satan, whose servant he was?

More than that she was not allowed to say, for now the bishop in a mighty rage swung round, and dealt a blow on the table with such fury that his arm was disabled by it, he shouted at her: Not another word! Hold your mocking tongue, fiendish woman! Then plucking up his gown with his left hand for fear of being tripped up by it he rushed out of the room.

The others, still keeping their faces averted from her, followed at a more dignified pace; and seeing them depart she cried after them: Go, Fathers, and tell your bishop that if he had not run away so soon he would have been rewarded for his insolence by a slap in the face.

This outburst on her part caused no lasting break in her relations with the Church. It was to her merely an incident in her long day's toil in her master's fields—a quarrel she had had with an overseer; while he, on his side, even before he recovered the use of his injured arm, thought it best for their souls, as well as for the interests of the Church, to say no more about it. Her great works of expiation were accordingly continued. But the time at length arrived for her to take her long-desired rest before facing the unknown dreaded future. She was not old in years, but remorse and a deep settled melancholy and her frequent fierce wrestlings with her own rebellious nature as with an untamed dangerous animal chained to her had made her old. Furthermore, she had by now well-nigh expended all her possessions and wealth, even to the gems she had once prized and then thrust away out of sight for many years, and which her maid Editha had rejected with scorn, saying they were no more to her than pebbles from the brook.

Once more at Wherwell, she entered the Abbey, and albeit she took the veil herself she was not under the same strict rule as her sister nuns. The Abbess herself retired to Winchester and ruled the convent from that city, while Elfrida had the liberty she desired, to live and do as she liked in her own rooms and attend prayers and meals only when inclined to do so. There, as always, since Edward's death, her life was a solitary one, and in the cold season she would have her fire of logs and sit before it as in the old days in the castle, brooding ever on her happy and unhappy past and on the awful future, the years and centuries of suffering and purification.

It was chiefly this thought of the solitariness of that future state, that companionless way, centuries long, that daunted her. Here in this earthly state, darkened as it was, there were yet two souls she could and constantly did hold communion with—Editha still on earth, though not with her, and Edward in heaven; but in that dreadful desert to which she would be banished there would be a great gulf set between her soul and theirs.

But perhaps there would be others she had known, whose lives had been interwoven with hers, she would be allowed to commune with in that same place. Edgar of a certainty would be there, although Glastonbury had built him a chapel and put him in a silver tomb and had begun to call him Saint Edgar. Would he find her and seek to have speech with her? It was anguish to her even to think of such an encounter. She would say, Do not come to me, for rather would I be alone in this dreadful solitude for a thousand years than have you, Edgar, for company. For I have not now one thought or memory of you in my soul that is not bitter. It is true that I once loved you: even before I saw your face I loved you, and said in my heart that we two were destined to be one. And my love increased when we were united, and you gave me my heart's desire—the power I loved, and glory in the sight of the world. And although in my heart I laughed at your pretended zeal for a pure religion while you were gratifying your lower desires and chasing after fair women all over the land, I admired and gloried in your nobler qualities, your activity and vigilance in keeping the peace within your borders, and in making England master of the seas, so that the pirate kings of the North ventured not to approach our shores. But on your own gross appetites you would put no restraint, but gave yourself up to wine and gluttony and made a companion of Death, even in the flower of your age you were playing with Death, and when you had lived but half your years you rode away with Death and left me alone; you, Edgar, the mighty hunter and slayer of wolves, you rode away and left me to the wolves, alone, in a dark forest. Therefore the guilt of Edward's death is yours more than mine, though my soul is stained red with his blood, seeing that you left me to fight alone, and in my madness, not knowing what I did, I stained myself with this crime.

But what you have done to me is of little moment, seeing that mine is but one soul of the many thousands that were given into your keeping, and your crime in wasting your life for the sake of base pleasures was committed against an entire nation, and not of the living only but also the great and glorious dead of the race of Cerdic—of the men who have laboured these many centuries, shedding their blood on a hundred stricken fields, to build up this kingdom of England; and when their mighty work was completed it was given into your hands to keep and guard. And you died and abandoned it; Death, your playmate, has taken you away, and Edgar's peace is no more. Now your ships are scattered or sunk in the sea, now the invaders are again on your coasts as in the old dreadful days, burning and slaying, and want is everywhere and fear is in all hearts throughout the land. And the king, your son, who inherited your beautiful face and nought beside except your vices and whatever was least worthy of a king, he too is now taking his pleasure, even as you took yours, in a gay bejewelled dress, with some shameless woman at his side and a wine-cup in his hand. O unhappy mother that I am, that I must curse the day a son was born to me! O grief immitigable that it was my deed, my dreadful deed, that raised him to the throne—the throne that was Alfred's and Edmund's and Athelstan's!

These were the thoughts that were her only company as she sat brooding before her winter fire, day after day, and winter following winter, while the years deepened the lines of anguish on her face and whitened the hair that was once red gold.

But in the summer time she was less unhappy, for then she could spend the long hours out of doors under the sky in the large shaded gardens of the convent with the stream for boundary on the lower side. This stream had now become more to her than in the old days when, languishing in solitude, she had made it a companion and confidant. For now it had become associated in her mind with the image of the maid Editha, and when she sat again at the old spot on the bank gazing on the swift crystal current, then dipping her hand in it and putting the wetted hand to her lips, the stream and Editha were one.

Then one day she was missed, and for a long time they sought for her all through the building and in the grounds without finding her. Then the seekers heard a loud cry, and saw one of the nuns running towards the convent door, with her hands pressed to her face as if to shut out some dreadful sight; and when they called to her she pointed back towards the stream and ran on to the house. Then all the sisters who were out in the grounds hurried down to the stream to the spot where Elfrida was accustomed to sit, and were horrified to see her lying drowned in the water.

It was a hot, dry summer and the stream was low, and in stooping to dip her hand in the water she had lost her balance and fallen in, and although the water was but three feet deep she had in her feebleness been unable to save herself. She was lying on her back on the clearly seen bed of many-coloured pebbles, her head pointing downstream, and the swift fretting current had carried away her hood and pulled out her long abundant silver-white hair, and the current played with her hair, now pulling it straight out, then spreading it wide over the surface, mixing its silvery threads with the hair-like green blades of the floating water-grass. And the dead face was like marble; but the wide-open eyes that had never wholly lost their brilliance and the beautiful lungwort blue colour were like living eyes—living and gazing through the crystal-clear running water at the group of nuns staring down with horror-struck faces at her.

Thus ended Elfrida's darkened life; nor did it seem an unfit end; for it was as if she had fallen into the arms of the maiden who had in her thoughts become one with the stream—the saintly Editha through whose sacrifice and intercession she had been saved from death everlasting.



AN OLD THORN



I

The little village of Ingden lies in a hollow of the South Wiltshire Downs, the most isolated of the villages in that lonely district. Its one short street is crossed at right angles in the middle part by the Salisbury road, and standing just at that point, the church on one hand, the old inn on the other, you can follow it with the eye for a distance of nearly three miles. First it goes winding up the low down under which the village stands, then vanishes over the brow to reappear again a mile and a half further away as a white band on the vast green slope of the succeeding down, which rises to a height of over 600 feet. On the summit it vanishes once more, but those who use it know it for a laborious road crossing several high ridges before dropping down into the valley road leading to Salisbury.

When, standing in the village street, your eye travels up that white band, you can distinctly make out even at that distance a small, solitary tree standing near the summit—an old thorn with an ivy growing on it. My walks were often that way, and invariably on coming to that point I would turn twenty yards aside from the road to spend half an hour seated on the turf near or under the old tree. These half-hours were always grateful; and conscious that the tree drew me to it I questioned myself as to the reason. It was, I told myself, nothing but mental curiosity: my interest was a purely scientific one. For how comes it, I asked, that a thorn can grow to a tree and live to a great age in such a situation, on a vast, naked down, where for many centuries, perhaps for thousands of years, the herbage has been so closely fed by sheep as to have the appearance of a carpet, or newly mown lawn? The seed is carried and scattered everywhere by the birds, but no sooner does it germinate and send up a shoot than it is eaten down to the roots; for there is no scent that attracts a sheep more, no flavour it has greater taste for, than that of any forest seedling springing up amidst the minute herbaceous plants which carpet the downs. The thorn, like other organisms, has its own unconscious intelligence and cunning, by means of which it endeavours to save itself and fulfil its life. It opens its first tender leaves under the herbage, and at the same time thrusts up a vertical spine to wound the nibbling mouth; and no sooner has it got a leaf or two and a spine than it spreads its roots all round, and from each of them springs a fresh shoot, leaves and protecting spine, to increase the chances of preservation. In vain! the cunning animal finds a way to defeat all this strategy, and after the leaves have been bitten off again and again, the infant plant gives up the struggle and dies in the ground. Yet we see that from time to time one survives—one perhaps in a million; but how—whether by a quicker growth or a harder or more poisonous thorn, an unpalatable leaf, or some other secret agency—we cannot guess. First as a diminutive scrubby shrub, with numerous iron-hard stems, with few and small leaves but many thorns, it keeps its poor flowerless frustrate life for perhaps half a century or longer, without growing more than a couple of feet high; and then, as by a miracle, it will spring up until its top shoots are out of reach of the browsing sheep, and in the end it becomes a tree with spreading branches and fully developed leaves, and flowers and fruit in their season.

One day I was visited by an artist from a distance who, when shown the thorn, pronounced it a fine subject for his pencil, and while he made his picture we talked about the hawthorn generally as compared with other trees, and agreed that, except in its blossoming time when it is merely pretty, it is the most engaging and perhaps the most beautiful of our native trees. We said that it was the most individual of trees, that its variety was infinite, for you never find two alike, whether growing in a forest, in groups, or masses, or alone. We were almost lyrical in its praises. But the solitary thorn was always best, he said, and this one was perhaps the best of all he had seen: strange and at the same time decorative in its form, beautiful too in its appearance of great age with unimpaired vigour and something more in its expression—that elusive something which we find in some trees and don't know how to explain.

Ah, yes, thought I, it was this appeal to the aesthetic faculty which attracted me from the first, and not, as I had imagined, the mere curiosity of the naturalist interested mainly and always in the habits of living things, plant or animal.

Certainly the thorn had strangeness. Its appearance as to height was deceptive; one would have guessed it eighteen feet; measuring it I was surprised to find it only ten. It has four separate boles, springing from one root, leaning a little away from each other, the thickest just a foot in circumference. The branches are few, beginning at about five feet from the ground, the foliage thin, the leaves throughout the summer stained with grey, rust-red, and purple colour. Though so small and exposed to the full fury of every wind that blows over that vast naked down, it has yet an ivy growing on it—the strangest of the many strange ivy-plants I have seen. It comes out of the ground as two ivy trunks on opposite sides of the stoutest bole, but at a height of four feet from the surface the two join and ascend the tree as one round iron-coloured and iron-hard stem, which goes curving and winding snakewise among the branches as if with the object of roping them to save them from being torn off by the winds. Finally, rising to the top, the long serpent stem opens out in a flat disc-shaped mass of close-packed branchlets and twigs densely set with small round leaves, dark dull green and tough as parchment. One could only suppose that thorn and ivy had been partners from the beginning of life, and that the union was equally advantageous to both.

The small ivy disc or platform on top of the tree was a favourite stand and look-out for the downland birds. I seldom visited the spot without disturbing some of them, now a little company of missel-thrushes, now a crowd of starlings, then perhaps a dozen rooks, crowded together, looking very big and conspicuous on their little platform.

Being curious to find out something about the age of the tree, I determined to put the question to my old friend Malachi, aged eighty-nine, who was born and had always lived in the parish and had known the downs and probably every tree growing on them for miles around from his earliest years. It was my custom to drop in of an evening and sit with him, listening to his endless reminiscences of his young days. That evening I spoke of the thorn, describing its position and appearance, thinking that perhaps he had forgotten it. How long, I asked him, had the thorn been there?

He was one of those men, usually of the labouring class, to be met with in such lonely, out-of-the-world places as the Wiltshire Downs, whose eyes never look old however many their years may be, and are more like the eyes of a bird or animal than a human being, for they gaze at you and through you when you speak without appearing to know what you say. So it was on this occasion; he looked straight at me with no sign of understanding, no change in his clear grey eyes, and answered nothing. But I would not be put off, and when, raising my voice, I repeated the question, he replied, after another interval of silence, that the thorn "was never any different." 'Twas just the same, ivy and all, when he were a small boy. It looked just so old; why, he remembered his old father saying the same thing—'twas the same when he were a boy, and 'twas the same in his father's time. Then anxious to escape from the subject he began talking of something else.

It struck me that after all the most interesting thing about the thorn was its appearance of great age, and this aspect I had now been told had continued for at least a century, probably for a much longer time. It produced a reverent feeling in me such as we experience at the sight of some ancient stone monument. But the tree was alive, and because of its life the feeling was perhaps stronger than in the case of a granite cross or cromlech or other memorial of antiquity.

Sitting by the thorn one day it occurred to me that, growing at this spot close to the road and near the summit of that vast down, numberless persons travelling to and from Salisbury must have turned aside to rest on the turf in the shade after that laborious ascent or before beginning the long descent to the valley below. Travellers of all conditions, on foot or horseback, in carts and carriages, merchants, bagmen, farmers, drovers, gipsies, tramps and vagrants of all descriptions, and from time to time troops of soldiers. Yet never one of them had injured the tree in any way! I could not remember ever finding a tree growing alone by the roadside in a lonely place which had not the marks of many old and new wounds inflicted on its trunk with knives, hatchets, and other implements. Here not a mark, not a scratch had been made on any one of its four trunks or on the ivy stem by any thoughtless or mischievous person, nor had any branch been cut or broken off. Why had they one and all respected this tree?

It was another subject to talk to Malachi about, and to him I went after tea and found him with three of his neighbours sitting by the fire and talking; for though it was summer the old man always had a fire in the evening.

They welcomed and made room for me, but I had no sooner broached the subject in my mind than they all fell into silence, then after a brief interval the three callers began to discuss some little village matter. I was not going to be put off in that way, and, leaving them out, went on talking to Malachi about the tree. Presently one by one the three visitors got up and, remarking that it was time to be going, they took their departure.

The old man could not escape nor avoid listening, and in the end had to say something. He said he didn't know nothing about all them tramps and gipsies and other sorts of men who had sat by the tree; all he knowed was that the old thorn had been a good thorn to him—first and last. He remembered once when he was a young man, not yet twenty, he went to do some work at a village five miles away, and being winter time he left early, about four o'clock, to walk home over the downs. He had just got married, and had promised his wife to be home for tea at six o'clock. But a thick fog came up over the downs, and soon as it got dark he lost himself. 'Twas the darkest, thickest night he had ever been out in; and whenever he came against a bank or other obstruction he would get down on his hands and knees and feel it up and down to get its shape and find out what it was, for he knew all the marks on his native downs; 'twas all in vain—nothing could he recognise. In this way he wandered about for hours, and was in despair of getting home that night, when all at once there came a sense of relief, a feeling that it was all right, that something was guiding him.

I remarked that I knew what that meant: he had lost his sense of direction and had now all at once recovered it; such a thing had often happened; I once had such an experience myself.

No, it was not that, he returned. He had not gone a dozen steps from the moment that sense of confidence came to him, before he ran into a tree, and feeling the trunk with his hands he recognised it as the old thorn and knew where he was. In a couple of minutes he was on the road, and in less than an hour, just about midnight, he was safe at home.

No more could I get out of him, at all events on that occasion; nor did I ever succeed in extracting any further personal experience in spite of his having let out that the thorn had been a good thorn to him, first and last. I had, however, heard enough to satisfy me that I had at length discovered the real secret of the tree's fascination. I recalled other trees which had similarly affected me, and how, long years ago, when a good deal of my time was spent on horseback, whenever I found myself in a certain district I would go miles out of my way just to look at a solitary old tree growing in a lonely place, and to sit for an hour to refresh myself, body and soul, in its shade. I had indeed all along suspected the thorn of being one of this order of mysterious trees; and from other experiences I had met with, one some years ago in a village in this same county of Wilts, I had formed the opinion that in many persons the sense of a strange intelligence and possibility of power in such trees is not a mere transitory state but an enduring influence which profoundly affects their whole lives.

Determined to find out something more, I went to other villagers, mostly women, who are more easily disarmed and made to believe that you too know and are of the same mind with them, being under the same mysterious power and spell. In this way, laying many a subtle snare, I succeeded in eliciting a good deal of information. It was, however, mostly of a kind which could not profitably be used in any inquiry into the subject; it simply went to show that the feeling existed and was strong in many of the villagers. During this inquiry I picked up several anecdotes about a person who lived in Ingden close upon three generations ago, and was able to piece them together so as to make a consistent narrative of his life. This was Johnnie Budd, a farm labourer, who came to his end in 1821, a year or so before my old friend Malachi was born. It is going very far back, but there were circumstances in his life which made a deep impression on the mind of that little community, and the story had lived on through all these years.



II

Johnnie had fallen on hard times when in an exceptionally severe winter season he with others had been thrown out of employment at the farm where he worked; then with a wife and three small children to keep he had in his desperation procured food for them one dark night in an adjacent field. But alas! one of the little ones playing in the road with some of her companions, who were all very hungry, let it out that she wasn't hungry, that for three days she had had as much nice meat as she wanted to eat! Play over, the hungry little ones flew home to tell their parents the wonderful news—why didn't they have nice meat like Tilly Budd, instead of a piece of rye bread without even dripping on it, when they were so hungry? Much talk followed, and spread from cottage to cottage until it reached the constable's ears, and he, already informed of the loss of a wether taken from its fold close by, went straight to Johnnie and charged him with the offence. Johnnie lost his head, and dropping on his knees confessed his guilt and begged his old friend Lampard to have mercy on him and to overlook it for the sake of his wife and children.

It was his first offence, but when he was taken from the lock-up at the top of the village street to be conveyed to Salisbury, his friends and neighbours who had gathered at the spot to witness his removal shook their heads and doubted that Ingden would ever see him again. The confession had made the case so simple a one that he had at once been committed to take his trial at the Salisbury Assizes, and as the time was near the constable had been ordered to convey the prisoner to the town himself. Accordingly he engaged old Joe Blaskett, called Daddy in the village, to take them in his pony cart. Daddy did not want the job, but was talked or bullied into it, and there he now sat in his cart, waiting in glum silence for his passengers; a bent old man of eighty, with a lean, grey, bitter face, in his rusty cloak, his old rabbit-skin cap drawn down over his ears, his white disorderly beard scattered over his chest. The constable Lampard was a big, powerful man, with a great round, good-natured face, but just now he had a strong sense of responsibility, and to make sure of not losing his prisoner he handcuffed him before bringing him out and helping him to take his seat on the bottom of the cart. Then he got up himself to his seat by the driver's side; the last good-bye was spoken, the weeping wife being gently led away by her friends, and the cart rattled away down the street. Turning into the Salisbury road it was soon out of sight over the near down, but half an hour later it emerged once more into sight beyond the great dip, and the villagers who had remained standing about at the same spot watched it crawling like a beetle up the long white road on the slope of the vast down beyond.

Johnnie was now lying coiled up on his rug, his face hidden between his arms, abandoned to grief, sobbing aloud. Lampard, sitting athwart the seat so as to keep an eye on him, burst out at last: "Be a man, Johnnie, and stop your crying! 'Tis making things no better by taking on like that. What do you say, Daddy?"

"I say nought," snapped the old man, and for a while they proceeded in silence except for those heartrending sobs. As they approached the old thorn tree, near the top of the long slope, Johnnie grew more and more agitated, his whole frame shaking with his sobbing. Again the constable rebuked him, telling him that 'twas a shame for a man to go on like that. Then with an effort he restrained his sobs, and lifting a red, swollen, tear-stained face he stammered out: "Master Lampard, did I ever ask 'ee a favour in my life?"

"What be after now?" said the other suspiciously. "Well, no, Johnnie, not as I remember."

"An' do 'ee think I'll ever come back home again, Master Lampard?"

"Maybe no, maybe yes; 'tis not for me to say."

"But 'ee knows 'tis a hanging matter?"

"'Tis that for sure. But you be a young man with a wife and childer, and have never done no wrong before—not that I ever heard say. Maybe the judge'll recommend you to mercy. What do you say, Daddy?"

The old man only made some inarticulate sounds in his beard, without turning his head.

"But, Master Lampard, suppose I don't swing, they'll send I over the water and I'll never see the wife and children no more."

"Maybe so; I'm thinking that's how 'twill be."

"Then will 'ee do me a kindness? 'Tis the only one I ever asked 'ee, and there'll be no chance to ask 'ee another."

"I can't say, Johnnie, not till I know what 'tis you want."

"'Tis only this, Master Lampard. When we git to th' old thorn let me out o' the cart and let me stand under it one minnit and no more."

"Be you wanting to hang yourself before the trial then?" said the constable, trying to make a joke of it.

"I couldn't do that," said Johnnie, simply, "seeing my hands be fast and you'd be standing by."

"No, no, Johnnie, 'tis nought but just foolishness. What do you say, Daddy?"

The old man turned round with a look of sudden rage in his grey face which startled Lampard; but he said nothing, he only opened and shut his mouth two or three times without a sound.

Meanwhile the pony had been going slower and slower for the last thirty or forty yards, and now when they were abreast of the tree stood still.

"What be stopping for?" cried Lampard. "Get on—get on, or we'll never get to Salisbury this day."

Then at length old Blaskett found a voice.

"Does thee know what thee's saying, Master Lampard, or be thee a stranger in this parish?"

"What d'ye mean, Daddy? I be no stranger; I've a-known this parish and known 'ee these nine years."

"Thee asked why I stopped when 'twas the pony stopped, knowing where we'd got to. But thee's not born here or thee'd a-known what a hoss knows. An' since 'ee asks what I says, I say this, 'twill not hurt 'ee to let Johnnie Budd stand one minute by the tree."

Feeling insulted and puzzled the constable was about to assert his authority when he was arrested by Johnnie's cry, "Oh, Master Lampard, 'tis my last hope!" and by the sight of the agony of suspense on his swollen face. After a short hesitation he swung himself out over the side of the cart, and letting down the tailboard laid rough hands on Johnnie and half helped, half dragged him out.

They were quickly by the tree, where Johnnie stood silent with downcast eyes a few moments; then dropping upon his knees leant his face against the bark, his eyes closed, his lips murmuring.

"Time's up!" cried Lampard presently, and taking him by the collar pulled him to his feet; in a couple of minutes more they were in the cart and on their way.

It was grey weather, very cold, with an east wind blowing, but for the rest of that dreary thirteen-miles journey Johnnie was very quiet and submissive and shed no more tears.



III

What had been his motive in wishing to stand by the tree? What did he expect when he said it was his last hope? During the way up the long, laborious slope, an incident of his early years in connection with the tree had been in his mind, and had wrought on him until it culminated in that passionate outburst and his strange request. It was when he was a boy, not quite ten years old, that, one afternoon in the summer time, he went with other children to look for wild raspberries on the summit of the great down. Johnnie, being the eldest, was the leader of the little band. On the way back from the brambly place where the fruit grew, on approaching the thorn, they spied a number of rooks sitting on it, and it came into Johnnie's mind that it would be great fun to play at crows by sitting on the branches as near the top as they could get. Running on, with cries that sent the rooks cawing away, they began swarming up the trunks, but in the midst of their frolic, when they were all struggling for the best places on the branches, they were startled by a shout, and looking up to the top of the down, saw a man on horseback coming towards them at a gallop, shaking a whip in anger as he rode. Instantly they began scrambling down, falling over each other in their haste, then, picking themselves up, set off down the slope as fast as they could run. Johnnie was foremost, while close behind him came Marty, who was nearly the same age and, though a girl, almost as swift-footed, but before going fifty yards she struck her foot against an ant-hill and was thrown violently, face down, on the turf. Johnnie turned at her cry and flew back to help her up, but the shock of the fall, and her extreme terror, had deprived her for the moment of all strength, and while he struggled to raise her, the smaller children, one by one, overtook and passed them, and in another moment the man was off his horse, standing over them.

"Do you want a good thrashing?" he said, grasping Johnnie by the collar.

"Oh, sir; please don't hit me!" answered Johnnie; then looking up he was astonished to see that his captor was not the stern old farmer, the tenant of the down, he had taken him for, but a stranger and a strange-looking man, in a dark grey cloak with a red collar. He had a pointed beard and long black hair and dark eyes that were not evil yet frightened Johnnie, when he caught them gazing down on him.

"No, I'll not thrash you," said he, "because you stayed to help the little maiden, but I'll tell you something for your good about the tree you and your little mates have been climbing, bruising the bark with your heels and breaking off leaves and twigs. Do you know, boy, that if you hurt it, it will hurt you? It stands fast here with its roots in the ground and you—you can go away from it, you think. 'Tis not so; something will come out of it and follow you wherever you go and hurt and break you at last. But if you make it a friend and care for it, it will care for you and give you happiness and deliver you from evil."

Then touching Johnnie's cheeks with his gloved hand he got on his horse and rode away, and no sooner was he gone than Marty started up, and hand in hand the two children set off at a run down the long slope.

Johnnie's playtime was nearly over then, for by and by he was taken as farmer's boy at one of the village farms. When he was nineteen years old, one Sunday evening, when standing in the road with other young people of the village, youths and girls, it was powerfully borne on his mind that his old playmate Marty was not only the prettiest and best girl in the place, but that she had something which set her apart and far, far above all other women. For now, after having known her intimately from his first years, he had suddenly fallen in love with her, a feeling which caused him to shiver in a kind of ecstasy, yet made him miserable, since it had purged his sight and made him see, too, how far apart they were and how hopeless his case. It was true they had been comrades from childhood, fond of each other, but she had grown and developed until she had become that most bright and lovely being, while he had remained the same slow-witted, awkward, almost inarticulate Johnnie he had always been. This feeling preyed on his poor mind, and when he joined the evening gathering in the village street he noted bitterly how contemptuously he was left out of the conversation by the others, how incapable he was of keeping pace with them in their laughing talk and banter. And, worst of all, how Marty was the leading spirit, bandying words and bestowing smiles and pleasantries all round, but never a word or a smile for him. He could not endure it, and so instead of smartening himself up after work and going for company to the village street, he would walk down the secluded lane near the farm to spend the hour before supper and bedtime sitting on a gate, brooding on his misery; and if by chance he met Marty in the village he would try to avoid her, and was silent and uncomfortable in her presence.

After work, one hot summer evening, Johnnie was walking along the road near the farm in his working clothes, clay-coloured boots, and old dusty hat, when who should he see but Marty coming towards him, looking very sweet and fresh in her light-coloured print gown. He looked to this side and that for some friendly gap or opening in the hedge so as to take himself out of the road, but there was no way of escape at that spot, and he had to pass her, and so casting down his eyes he walked on, wishing he could sink into the earth out of her sight. But she would not allow him to pass; she put herself directly in his way and spoke.

"What's the matter with 'ee, Johnnie, that 'ee don't want to meet me and hardly say a word when I speak to 'ee?"

He could not find a word in reply; he stood still, his face crimson, his eyes on the ground.

"Johnnie, dear, what is it?" she asked, coming closer and putting her hand on his arm.

Then he looked up, and seeing the sweet compassion in her eyes, he could no longer keep the secret of his pain from her.

"'Tis 'ee, Marty," he said. "Thee'll never want I—there's others 'ee'll like better. 'Tisn't for I to say a word about that, I'm thinking, for I be—just nothing. An'—an'—I be going away from the village, Marty, and I'll never come back no more."

"Oh, Johnnie, don't 'ee say it! Would 'ee go and break my heart? Don't 'ee know I've always loved 'ee since we were little mites together?"

And thus it came about that Johnnie, most miserable of men, was all at once made happy beyond his wildest dreams. And he proved himself worthy of her; from that time there was not a more diligent and sober young labourer in the village, nor one of a more cheerful disposition, nor more careful of his personal appearance when, the day's work done, the young people had their hour of social intercourse and courting. Yet he was able to put by a portion of his weekly wages of six shillings to buy sticks, so that when spring came round again he was able to marry and take Marty to live with him in his own cottage.

One Sunday afternoon, shortly after this happy event, they went out for a walk on the high down.

"Oh, Johnnie, 'tis a long time since we were here together, not since we used to come and play and look for cowslips when we were little."

Johnnie laughed with pure joy and said they would just be children and play again, now they were alone and out of sight of the village; and when she smiled up at him he rejoiced to think that his union with this perfect girl was producing a happy effect on his poor brains, making him as bright and ready with a good reply as any one. And in their happiness they played at being children just as in the old days they had played at being grown-ups. Casting themselves down on the green, elastic, flower-sprinkled turf, they rolled one after the other down the smooth slopes of the terrace, the old "shepherd's steps," and by and by Johnnie, coming upon a patch of creeping thyme, rubbed his hands in the pale purple flowers, then rubbed her face to make it fragrant.

"Oh, 'tis sweet!" she cried. "Did 'ee ever see so many little flowers on the down?—'tis as if they came out just for us." Then, indicating the tiny milkwort faintly sprinkling the turf all about them, "Oh, the little blue darlings! Did 'ee ever see such a dear blue?"

"Oh, aye, a prettier blue nor that," said Johnnie. "'Tis just here, Marty," and pressing her down he kissed her on the eyelids a dozen times.

"You silly Johnnie!"

"Be I silly, Marty? but I love the red too," and with that he kissed her on the mouth. "And, Marty, I do love the red on the breasties too—won't 'ee let me have just one kiss there?"

And she, to please him, opened her dress a little way, but blushingly, though she was his wife and nobody was there to see, but it seemed strange to her out of doors with the sun overhead. Oh, 'twas all delicious! Never was earth so heavenly sweet as on that wide green down, sprinkled with innumerable little flowers, under the wide blue sky and the all-illuminating sun that shone into their hearts!

At length, rising to her knees and looking up the green slope, she cried out: "Oh, Johnnie, there's the old thorn tree! Do 'ee remember when we played at crows on it and had such a fright? 'Twas the last time we came here together. Come, let's go to the old tree and see how it looks now."

Johnnie all at once became grave, and said No, he wouldn't go to it for anything. She was curious and made him tell her the reason. He had never forgotten that day and the fear that came into his mind on account of the words the strange man had spoken. She didn't know what the words were; she had been too frightened to listen, and so he had to tell her.

"Then, 'tis a wishing-tree for sure," Marty exclaimed. When he asked her what a wishing-tree was, she could only say that her old grandmother, now dead, had told her. 'Tis a tree that knows us and can do us good and harm, but will do good only to some; but they must go to it and ask for its protection, and they must offer it something as well as pray to it. It must be something bright—a little jewel or coloured bead is best, and if you haven't got such a thing, a bright-coloured ribbon, or strip of scarlet cloth or silk thread—which you must tie to one of the twigs.

"But we hurted the tree, Marty, and 'twill do no good to we."

They were both grave now; then a hopeful thought came to her aid. They had not hurt the tree intentionally; the tree knew that—it knew more than any human being. They might go and stand side by side under its branches and ask it to forgive them, and grant them all their desires. But they must not go empty-handed, they must have some bright thing with them when making their prayer. Then she had a fresh inspiration. She would take a lock of her own bright hair, and braid it with some of his, and tie it with a piece of scarlet thread.

Johnnie was pleased with this idea, and they agreed to take another Sunday afternoon walk and carry out their plan.

The projected walk was never taken, for by and by Marty's mother fell ill, and Marty had to be with her, nursing her night and day. And months went by, and at length, when her mother died, she was not in a fit condition to go long walks and climb those long, steep slopes. After the child was born, it was harder than ever to leave the house, and Johnnie, too, had so much work at the farm that he had little inclination to go out on Sundays. They ceased to speak of the tree, and their long-projected pilgrimage was impracticable until they could see better days. But the wished time never came, for, after the first child, Marty was never strong. Then a second child came, then a third; and so five years went by, of toil and suffering and love, and the tree, with all their hopes and fears and intentions regarding it, was less and less in their minds, and was all but forgotten. Only Johnnie, when at long intervals his master sent him to Salisbury with the cart, remembered it all only too well when, coming to the top of the down, he saw the old thorn directly before him. Passing it, he would turn his face away not to see it too closely, or, perhaps, to avoid being recognised by it. Then came the time of their extreme poverty, when there was no work at the farm and no one of their own people to help tide them over a season of scarcity, for the old people were dead or in the workhouse or so poor as to want help themselves. It was then that, in his misery at the sight of his ailing anxious wife—the dear Marty of the beautiful vanished days—and his three little hungry children, that he went out into the field one dark night to get them food.

The whole sad history was in his mind as they slowly crawled up the hill, until it came to him that perhaps all their sufferings and this great disaster had been caused by the tree—by that something from the tree which had followed him, never resting in its mysterious enmity until it broke him. Was it too late to repair that terrible mistake? A gleam of hope shone on his darkened mind, and he made his passionate appeal to the constable. He had no offering—his hands were powerless now; but at least he could stand by it and touch it with his body and face and pray for its forgiveness, and for deliverance from the doom which threatened him. The constable had compassionately, or from some secret motive, granted his request; but alas! if in very truth the power he had come to believe in resided in the tree, he was too late in seeking it.

The trial was soon over; by pleading guilty Johnnie had made it a very simple matter for the court. The main thing was to sentence him. By an unhappy chance the judge was in one of his occasional bad moods; he had been entertained too well by one of the local magnates on the previous evening and had sat late, drinking too much wine, with the result that he had a bad liver, with a mind to match it. He was only too ready to seize the first opportunity that offered—and poor Johnnie's case was the first that morning—of exercising the awful power a barbarous law had put into his hands. When the prisoner's defender declared that this was a case which called loudly for mercy, the judge interrupted him to say that he was taking too much upon himself, that he was, in fact, instructing the judge in his duties, which was a piece of presumption on his part. The other was quick to make a humble apology and to bring his perfunctory address to a conclusion. The judge, in addressing the prisoner, said he had been unable to discover any extenuating circumstances in the case. The fact that he had a wife and family dependent on him only added to his turpitude, since it proved that no consideration could serve to deter him from a criminal act. Furthermore, in dealing with this case, he must take into account the prevalence of this particular form of crime; he would venture to say that it had been encouraged by an extreme leniency in many cases on the part of those whose sacred duty it was to administer the law of the land. A sterner and healthier spirit was called for at the present juncture. The time had come to make an example, and a more suitable case than the one now before him could not have been found for such a purpose. He would accordingly hold out no hope of a reprieve, but would counsel prisoner to make the best use of the short time remaining to him.

Johnnie standing in the dock appeared to the spectators to be in a half-dazed condition—as dull and spiritless a clodhopper as they had ever beheld. The judge and barristers, in their wigs and robes and gowns, were unlike any human beings he had ever looked on. He might have been transported to some other world, so strange did the whole scene appear to him. He only knew, or surmised, that all these important people were occupied in doing him to death, but the process, the meaning of their fine phrases, he could not follow. He looked at them, his glazed eyes travelling from face to face, to be fixed finally on the judge, in a vacant stare; but he scarcely saw them, he was all the time gazing on, and his mind occupied with, other forms and scenes invisible to the court. His village, his Marty, his dear little playmate of long ago, the sweet girl he had won, the wife and mother of his children, with her white, terrified face, clinging to him and crying in anguish: "Oh, Johnnie, what will they do to 'ee?" And all the time, with it all, he saw the vast green slope of the down, with the Salisbury road lying like a narrow white band across it, and close to it, near the summit, the solitary old tree.

During the delivery of the sentence, and when he was led from the dock and conveyed back to the prison, that image or vision was still present. He sat staring at the wall of his cell as he had stared at the judge, the fatal tree still before him. Never before had he seen it in that vivid way in which it appeared to him now, standing alone on the vast green down, under the wide sky, its four separate boles leaning a little way from each other, like the middle ribs of an open fan, holding up the widespread branches, the thin, open foliage, the green leaves stained with rusty brown and purple; and the ivy, rising like a slender black serpent of immense length, springing from the roots, winding upwards, and in and out, among the grey branches, binding them together, and resting its round, dark cluster of massed leaves on the topmost boughs. That green disc was the ivy-serpent's flat head and was the head of the whole tree, and there it had its eyes, which gazed for ever over the wide downs, watching all living things, cattle and sheep and birds and men in their comings and goings; and although fast-rooted in the earth, following them, too, in all their ways, even as it had followed him, to break him at last.



POSTSCRIPT



I

DEAD MAN'S PLACK

One of my literary friends, who has looked at the Dead Man's Plack in manuscript, has said by way of criticism that Elfrida's character is veiled. I am not to blame for that; for have I not already said, by implication at all events, in the Preamble, that my knowledge of her comes from outside. Something, or, more likely, Somebody, gave me her history, and it has occurred to me that this same Somebody was no such obscurity as, let us say, the Monk John of Glastonbury, who told the excavators just where to look for the buried chapel of Edgar, king and saint. I suspect that my informant was some one who knew more about Elfrida than any mere looker-on, monk or nun, and gossip-gatherer of her own distant day; and this suspicion or surmise was suggested by the following incident:

After haunting Dead Man's Plack, where I had my vision, I rambled in and about Wherwell on account of its association, and in one of the cottages in the village I became acquainted with an elderly widow, a woman in feeble health, but singularly attractive in her person and manner. Indeed, before making her acquaintance I had been informed by some of her relations and others in the place that she was not only the best person to seek information from, but was also the sweetest person in the village. She was a native born; her family had lived there for generations, and she was of that best South Hampshire type with an oval face, olive-brown skin, black eyes and hair, and that soft melancholy expression in the eyes common in Spanish women and not uncommon in the dark-skinned Hampshire women. She had been taught at the village school, and having attracted the attention and interest of the great lady of the place on account of her intelligence and pleasing manners, she was taken when quite young as lady's-maid, and in this employment continued for many years until her marriage to a villager.

One day, conversing with her, I said I had heard that the village was haunted by the ghost of a woman: was that true?

Yes, it was true, she returned.

Did she know that it was true? Had she actually seen the ghost?

Yes, she had seen it once. One day, when she was lady's-maid, she was in her bedroom, dressing or doing something, with another maid. The door was closed, and they were in a merry mood, talking and laughing, when suddenly they both at the same moment saw a woman with a still, white face walking through the room. She was in the middle of the room when they caught sight of her, and they both screamed and covered their faces with their hands. So great was her terror that she almost fainted; then in a few moments when they looked the apparition had vanished. As to the habit she was wearing, neither of them could say afterwards what it was like: only the white, still face remained fixed in their memory, but the figure was a dark one, like a dark shadow moving rapidly through the room.

If Elfrida then, albeit still in purgatory, is able to re-visit this scene of her early life and the site of that tragedy in the forest, it does not seem to me altogether improbable that she herself made the revelation I have written. And if this be so, it would account for the veiled character conveyed in the narrative. For even after ten centuries it may well be that all the coverings have not yet been removed, that although she has been dropping them one by one for ages, she has not yet come to the end of them. Until the very last covering, or veil, or mist is removed, it would be impossible for her to be absolutely sincere, to reveal her inmost soul with all that is most dreadful in it. But when that time comes, from the very moment of its coming she would cease automatically to be an exiled and tormented spirit.

If, then, Elfrida is herself responsible for the narrative, it is only natural that she does not appear in it quite as black as she has been painted. For the monkish chronicler was, we know, the Father of Lies, and so indeed in a measure are all historians and biographers, since they cannot see into hearts and motives or know all the circumstances of the case. And in this case they were painting the picture of their hated enemy and no doubt were not sparing in the use of the black pigment.

To know all is to forgive all, is a good saying, and enables us to see why even the worst among us can always find it possible to forgive himself.



II

AN OLD THORN

I was pleased at this opportunity of rescuing this story from a far-back number of the English Review, in which it first appeared, and putting it in a book. It may be a shock to the reader to be brought down from a story of a great king and queen of England in the tenth century to the obscure annals of a yokel and his wife who lived in a Wiltshire village only a century ago; or even less, since my poor yokel was hanged for sheep-stealing in 1821. But it is, I think, worth preserving, since it is the only narrative I know of dealing with that rare and curious subject, the survival of tree-worship in our own country. That, however, was not the reason of my being pleased.