From
The white people (1899, 1922 ed)
by
Arthur Machen
Then the king's son fell down on the ground in a fit. And
they came and tried to get into the room, but they couldn't,
and they hacked at the door with hatchets, but the wood had
turned hard as iron, and at last everybody ran away, they
were so frightened at the screaming and laughing and
shrieking and crying that came out of the room. But next day
they went in, and found there was nothing in the room but
thick black smoke, because the black man had come and taken
her away. And on the bed there were two knots of faded grass
and a red stone, and some white stones, and some faded
yellow flowers. I remembered this tale of nurse's while I
was standing at the bottom of the deep hollow; it was so
strange and solitary there, and I felt afraid. I could not
see any stones or flowers, but I was afraid of bringing them
away without knowing, and I thought I would do a charm that
came into my head to keep the black man away. So I stood
right in the very middle of the hollow, and I made sure that
I had none of those things on me, and then I walked round
the place, and touched my eyes, and my lips, and my hair in
a peculiar manner, and whispered some queer words that nurse
taught me to keep bad things away. Then I felt safe and
climbed up out of the hollow, and went on through all those
mounds and hollows and walls, till I came to the end, which
was high above all the rest, and I could see that all the
different shapes of the earth were arranged in patterns,
something like the grey rocks, only the pattern was
different. It was getting late, and the air was indistinct,
but it looked from where I was standing something like two
great figures of people lying on the grass. And I went on,
and at last I found a certain wood, which is too secret to
be described, and nobody knows of the passage into it, which
I found out in a very curious manner, by seeing some little
animal run into the wood through it. So I went after the
animal by a very narrow dark way, under thorns and bushes,
and it was almost dark when I came to a kind of open place
in the middle. And there I saw the most wonderful sight I
have ever seen, but it was only for a minute, as I ran away
directly, and crept out of the wood by the passage I had
come by, and ran and ran as fast as ever I could, because I
was afraid, what I had seen was so wonderful and so strange
and beautiful. But I wanted to get home and think of it, and
I did not know what might not happen if I stayed by the
wood. I was hot all over and trembling, and my heart was
beating, and strange cries that I could not help came from
me as I ran from the wood. I was glad that a great white
moon came up from over a round hill and showed me the way,
so I went back through the mounds and hollows and down the
close valley, and up through the thicket over the place of
the grey rocks, and so at last I got home again. My father
was busy in his study, and the servants had not told about
my not coming home, though they were frightened, and
wondered what they ought to do, so I told them I had lost my
way, but I did not let them find out the real way I had
been. I went to bed and lay awake all through the night,
thinking of what I had seen. When I came out of the narrow
way, and it looked all shining, though the air was dark, it
seemed so certain, and all the way home I was quite sure
that I had seen it, and I wanted to be alone in my room, and
be glad over it all to myself, and shut my eyes and pretend
it was there, and do all the things I would have done if I
had not been so afraid. But when I shut my eyes the sight
would not come, and I began to think about my adventures all
over again, and I remembered how dusky and queer it was at
the end, and I was afraid it must be all a mistake, because
it seemed impossible it could happen. It seemed like one of
nurse's tales, which I didn't really believe in, though I
was frightened at the bottom of the hollow; and the stories
she told me when I was little came back into my head, and I
wondered whether it was really there what I thought I had
seen, or whether any of her tales could have happened a long
time ago. It was so queer; I lay awake there in my room at
the back of the house, and the moon was shining on the other
side towards the river, so the bright light did not fall
upon the wall. And the house was quite still. I had heard my
father come upstairs, and just after the clock struck
twelve, and after the house was still and empty, as if there
was nobody alive in it. And though it was all dark and
indistinct in my room, a pale glimmering kind of light shone
in through the white blind, and once I got up and looked
out, and there was a great black shadow of the house
covering the garden, looking like a prison where men are
hanged; and then beyond it was all white; and the wood shone
white with black gulfs between the trees. It was still and
clear, and there were no clouds on the sky. I wanted to
think of what I had seen but I couldn't, and I began to
think of all the tales that nurse had told me so long ago
that I thought I had forgotten, but they all came back, and
mixed up with the thickets and the grey rocks and the
hollows in the earth and the secret wood, till I hardly knew
what was new and what was old, or whether it was not all
dreaming. And then I remembered that hot summer afternoon,
so long ago, when nurse left me by myself in the shade, and
the white people came out of the water and out of the wood,
and played, and danced, and sang, and I began to fancy that
nurse told me about something like it before I saw them,
only I couldn't recollect exactly what she told me. Then I
wondered whether she had been the white lady, as I
remembered she was just as white and beautiful, and had the
same dark eyes and black hair; and sometimes she smiled and
looked like the lady had looked, when she was telling me
some of her stories, beginning with "Once on a
time," or "In the time of the fairies." But I
thought she couldn't be the lady, as she seemed to have gone
a different way into the wood, and I didn't think the man
who came after us could be the other, or I couldn't have
seen that wonderful secret in the secret wood. I thought of
the moon: but it was afterwards when I was in the middle of
the wild land, where the earth was made into the shape of
great figures, and it was all walls, and mysterious hollows,
and smooth round mounds, that I saw the great white moon
come up over a round hill. I was wondering about all these
things, till at last I got quite frightened, because I was
afraid something had happened to me, and I remembered
nurse's tale of the poor girl who went into the hollow pit,
and was carried away at last by the black man. I knew I had
gone into a hollow pit too, and perhaps it was the same, and
I had done something dreadful. So I did the charm over
again, and touched my eyes and my lips and my hair in a
peculiar manner, and said the old words from the fairy
language, so that I might be sure I had not been carried
away. I tried again to see the secret wood, and to creep up
the passage and see what I had seen there, but somehow I
couldn't, and I kept on thinking of nurse's stories. There
was one I remembered about a young man who once upon a time
went hunting, and all the day he and his hounds hunted
everywhere, and they crossed the rivers and went into all
the woods, and went round the marshes, but they couldn't
find anything at all, and they hunted all day till the sun
sank down and began to set behind the mountain. And the
young man was angry because he couldn't find anything, and
he was going to turn back, when just as the sun touched the
mountain, he saw come out of a brake in front of him a
beautiful white stag. And he cheered to his hounds, but they
whined and would not follow, and he cheered to his horse,
but it shivered and stood stock still, and the young man
jumped off the horse and left the hounds and began to follow
the white stag all alone. And soon it was quite dark, and
the sky was black, without a single star shining in it, and
the stag went away into the darkness. And though the man had
brought his gun with him he never shot at the stag, because
he wanted to catch it, and he was afraid he would lose it in
the night. But he never lost it once, though the sky was so
black and the air was so dark, and the stag went on and on
till the young man didn't know a bit where he was. And they
went through enormous woods where the air was full of
whispers and a pale, dead light came out from the rotten
trunks that were lying on the ground, and just as the man
thought he had lost the stag, he would see it all white and
shining in front of him, and he would run fast to catch it,
but the stag always ran faster, so he did not catch it. And
they went through the enormous woods, and they swam across
rivers, and they waded through black marshes where the
ground bubbled, and the air was full of will-o'-the-wisps,
and the stag fled away down into rocky narrow valleys, where
the air was like the smell of a vault, and the man went
after it. And they went over the great mountains and the man
heard the wind come down from the sky, and the stag went on
and the man went after. At last the sun rose and the young
man found he was in a country that he had never seen before;
it was a beautiful valley with a bright stream running
through it, and a great, big round hill in the middle. And
the stag went down the valley, towards the hill, and it
seemed to be getting tired and went slower and slower, and
though the man was tired, too, he began to run faster, and
he was sure he would catch the stag at last. But just as
they got to the bottom of the hill, and the man stretched
out his hand to catch the stag, it vanished into the earth,
and the man began to cry; he was so sorry that he had lost
it after all his long hunting. But as he was crying he saw
there was a door in the hill, just in front of him, and he
went in, and it was quite dark, but he went on, as he
thought he would find the white stag. And all of a sudden it
got light, and there was the sky, and the sun shining, and
birds singing in the trees, and there was a beautiful
fountain. And by the fountain a lovely lady was sitting, who
was the queen of the fairies, and she told the man that she
had changed herself into a stag to bring him there because
she loved him so much. Then she brought out a great gold
cup, covered with jewels, from her fairy palace, and she
offered him wine in the cup to drink. And he drank, and the
more he drank the more he longed to drink, because the wine
was enchanted. So he kissed the lovely lady, and she became
his wife, and he stayed all that day and all that night in
the hill where she lived, and when he woke he found he was
lying on the ground, close to where he had seen the stag
first, and his horse was there and his hounds were there
waiting, and he looked up, and the sun sank behind the
mountain. And he went home and lived a long time, but he
would never kiss any other lady because he had kissed the
queen of the fairies, and he would never drink common wine
any more, because he had drunk enchanted wine. And sometimes
nurse told me tales that she had heard from her
great-grandmother, who was very old, and lived in a cottage
on the mountain all alone, and most of these tales were
about a hill where people used to meet at night long ago,
and they used to play all sorts of strange games and do
queer things that nurse told me of, but I couldn't
understand, and now, she said, everybody but her
great-grandmother had forgotten all about it, and nobody
knew where the hill was, not even her great-grandmother. But
she told me one very strange story about the hill, and I
trembled when I remembered it. She said that people always
went there in summer, when it was very hot, and they had to
dance a good deal. It would be all dark at first, and there
were trees there, which made it much darker, and people
would come, one by one, from all directions, by a secret
path which nobody else knew, and two persons would keep the
gate, and every one as they came up had to give a very
curious sign, which nurse showed me as well as she could,
but she said she couldn't show me properly. And all kinds of
people would come; there would be gentle folks and village
folks, and some old people and boys and girls, and quite
small children, who sat and watched. And it would all be
dark as they came in, except in one corner where some one
was burning something that smelt strong and sweet, and made
them laugh, and there one would see a glaring of coals, and
the smoke mounting up red. So they would all come in, and
when the last had come there was no door any more, so that
no one else could get in, even if they knew there was
anything beyond. And once a gentleman who was a stranger and
had ridden a long way, lost his path at night, and his horse
took him into the very middle of the wild country, where
everything was up- side down, and there were dreadful
marshes and great stones everywhere, and holes underfoot,
and the trees looked like gibbet-posts, because they had
great black arms that stretched out across the way. And this
strange gentleman was very frightened, and his horse began
to shiver all over, and at last it stopped and wouldn't go
any farther, and the gentleman got down and tried to lead
the horse, but it wouldn't move, and it was all covered with
a sweat, like death. So the gentleman went on all alone,
going farther and farther into the wild country, till at
last he came to a dark place, where he heard shouting and
singing and crying, like nothing he had ever heard before.
It all sounded quite close to him, but he couldn't get in,
and so he began to call, and while he was calling, something
came behind him, and in a minute his mouth and arms and legs
were all bound up, and he fell into a swoon. And when he
came to himself, he was lying by the roadside, just where he
had first lost his way, under a blasted oak with a black
trunk, and his horse was tied beside him. So he rode on to
the town and told the people there what had happened, and
some of them were amazed; but others knew. So when once
everybody had come, there was no door at all for anybody
else to pass in by. And when they were all inside, round in
a ring, touching each other, some one began to sing in the
darkness, and some one else would make a noise like thunder
with a thing they had on purpose, and on still nights people
would hear the thundering noise far, far away beyond the
wild land, and some of them, who thought they knew what it
was, used to make a sign on their breasts when they woke up
in their beds at dead of night and heard that terrible deep
noise, like thunder on the mountains. And the noise and the
singing would go on and on for a long time, and the people
who were in a ring swayed a little to and fro; and the song
was in an old, old language that nobody knows now, and the
tune was queer. Nurse said her great-grandmother had known
some one who remembered a little of it, when she was quite a
little girl, and nurse tried to sing some of it to me, and
it was so strange a tune that I turned all cold and my flesh
crept as if I had put my hand on something dead. Sometimes
it was a man that sang and some- times it was a woman, and
sometimes the one who sang it did it so well that two or
three of the people who were there fell to the ground
shrieking and tearing with their hands. The singing went on,
and the people in the ring kept swaying to and fro for a
long time, and at last the moon would rise over a place they
called the Tole Deol, and came up and showed them swinging
and swaying from side to side, with the sweet thick smoke
curling up from the burning coals, and floating in circles
all around them. Then they had their supper. A boy and a
girl brought it to them; the boy carried a great cup of
wine, and the girl carried a cake of bread, and they passed
the bread and the wine round and round, but they tasted
quite different from common bread and common wine, and
changed everybody that tasted them. Then they all rose up
and danced, and secret things were brought out of some
hiding place, and they played extraordinary games, and
danced round and round and round in the moonlight, and
sometimes people would suddenly disappear and never be heard
of afterwards, and nobody knew what had happened to them.
And they drank more of that curious wine, and they made
images and worshipped them, and nurse showed me how the
images were made one day when we were out for a walk, and we
passed by a place where there was a lot of wet clay. So
nurse asked me if I would like to know what those things
were like that they made on the hill, and I said yes. Then
she asked me if I would promise never to tell a living soul
a word about it, and if I did I was to be thrown into the
black pit with the dead people, and I said I wouldn't tell
anybody, and she said the same thing again and again, and I
promised. So she took my wooden spade and dug a big lump of
clay and put it in my tin bucket, and told me to say if any
one met us that I was going to make pies when I went home.
Then we went on a little way till we came to a little brake
growing right down into the road, and nurse stopped, and
looked up the road and down it, and then peeped through the
hedge into the field on the other side, and then she said,
"Quick!" and we ran into the brake, and crept in
and out among the bushes till we had gone a good way from
the road. Then we sat down under a bush, and I wanted so
much to know what nurse was going to make with the clay, but
before she would begin she made me promise again not to say
a word about it, and she went again and peeped through the
bushes on every side, though the lane was so small and deep
that hardly anybody ever went there. So we sat down, and
nurse took the clay out of the bucket, and began to knead it
with her hands, and do queer things with it, and turn it
about. And she hid it under a big dock-leaf for a minute or
two and then she brought it out again, and then she stood up
and sat down, and walked round the clay in a peculiar
manner, and all the time she was softly singing a sort of
rhyme, and her face got very red. Then she sat down again,
and took the clay in her hands and began to shape it into a
doll, but not like the dolls I have at home, and she made
the queerest doll I had ever seen, all out of the wet clay,
and hid it under a bush to get dry and hard, and all the
time she was making it she was singing these rhymes to
herself, and her face got redder and redder. So we left the
doll there, hidden away in the bushes where nobody would
ever find it. And a few days later we went the same walk,
and when we came to that narrow, dark part of the lane where
the brake runs down to the bank, nurse made me promise all
over again, and she looked about, just as she had done
before, and we crept into the bushes till we got to the
green place where the little clay man was hidden. I remember
it all so well, though I was only eight, and it is eight
years ago now as I am writing it down, but the sky was a
deep violet blue, and in the middle of the brake where we
were sitting there was a great elder tree covered with
blossoms, and on the other side there was a clump of
meadowsweet, and when I think of that day the smell of the
meadowsweet and elder blossom seems to fill the room, and if
I shut my eyes I can see the glaring blue sky, with little
clouds very white floating across it, and nurse who went
away long ago sitting opposite me and looking like the
beautiful white lady in the wood. So we sat down and nurse
took out the clay doll from the secret place where she had
hidden it, and she said we must "pay our respects," and she would
show me what to do, and I must watch her all the time. So she did
all sorts of queer things with the little clay man, and I noticed
she was all streaming with perspiration, though we had walked so
slowly, and then she told me to "pay my respects," and I
did everything she did because I liked her, and it was such
an odd game. And she said that if one loved very much, the
clay man was very good, if one did certain things with it,
and if one hated very much, it was just as good, only one
had to do different things, and we played with it a long
time, and pretended all sorts of things. Nurse said her
great-grandmother had told her all about these images, but
what we did was no harm at all, only a game. But she told me
a story about these images that frightened me very much, and
that was what I remembered that night when I was lying awake
in my room in the pale, empty darkness, thinking of what I
had seen and the secret wood. Nurse said there was once a
young lady of the high gentry, who lived in a great castle.
And she was so beautiful that all the gentlemen wanted to
marry her, because she was the loveliest lady that anybody
had ever seen, and she was kind to everybody, and everybody
thought she was very good. But though she was polite to all
the gentlemen who wished to marry her, she put them off, and
said she couldn't make up her mind, and she wasn't sure she
wanted to marry anybody at all. And her father, who was a
very great lord, was angry, though he was so fond of her,
and he asked her why she wouldn't choose a bachelor out of
all the handsome young men who came to the castle. But she
only said she didn't love any of them very much, and she
must wait, and if they pestered her, she said she would go
and be a nun in a nunnery. So all the gentlemen said they
would go away and wait for a year and a day, and when a year
and a day were gone, they would come back again and ask her
to say which one she would marry. So the day was appointed
and they all went away; and the lady had promised that in a
year and a day it would be her wedding day with one of them.
But the truth was, that she was the queen of the people who
danced on the hill on summer nights, and on the proper
nights she would lock the door of her room, and she and her
maid would steal out of the castle by a secret passage that
only they knew of, and go away up to the hill in the wild
land. And she knew more of the secret things than any one
else, and more than any one knew before or after, because
she would not tell anybody the most secret secrets. She knew
how to do all the awful things, how to destroy young men,
and how to put a curse on people, and other things that I
could not understand. And her real name was the Lady Avelin,
but the dancing people called her Cassap, which meant
somebody very wise, in the old language. And she was whiter
than any of them and taller, and her eyes shone in the dark
like burning rubies; and she could sing songs that none of
the others could sing, and when she sang they all fell down
on their faces and worshipped her. And she could do what
they called shib-show, which was a very wonderful
enchantment. She would tell the great lord, her father, that
she wanted to go into the woods to gather flowers, so he let
her go, and she and her maid went into the woods where
nobody came, and the maid would keep watch. wen the lady
would lie down under the trees and begin to sing a
particular song, and she stretched out her arms, and from
every part of the wood great serpents would come, hissing
and gliding in and out among the trees, and shooting out
their forked tongues as they crawled up to the lady. And
they all came to her, and twisted round her, round her body,
and her arms, and her neck, till she was covered with
writhing serpents, and there was only her head to be seen.
And she whispered to them, and she sang to them, and they
writhed round and round, faster and faster, till she told
them to go. And they all went away directly, back to their
holes, and on the lady's breast there would be a most
curious, beautiful stone, shaped something like an egg, and
coloured dark blue and yellow, and red, and green, marked
like a serpent's scales. It was called a glame stone, and
with it one could do all sorts of wonderful things, and
nurse said her great-grandmother had seen a glame stone with
her own eyes, and it was for all the world shiny and scaly
like a snake. And the lady could do a lot of other things as
well, but she was quite fixed that she would not be married.
And there were a great many gentlemen who wanted to marry
her, but there were five of them who were chief, and their
names were Sir Simon, Sir John, Sir Oliver, Sir Richard, and
Sir Rowland. All the others believed she spoke the truth,
and that she would choose one of them to be her man when a
year and a day was done; it was only Sir Simon, who was very
crafty, who thought she was deceiving them all, and he vowed
he would watch and try if he could find out anything. And
though he was very wise he was very young, and he had a
smooth, soft face like a girl's, and he pre- tended, as the
rest did, that he would not come to the castle for a year
and a day, and he said he was going away beyond the sea to
foreign parts. But he really only went a very little way,
and came back dressed like a servant girl, and so he got a
place in the castle to wash the dishes. And he waited and
watched, and he listened and said nothing, and he hid in
dark places, and woke up at night and looked out, and he
heard things and he saw things that he thought were very
strange. And he was so sly that he told the girl that waited
on the lady that he was really a young man, and that he had
dressed up as a girl because he loved her so very much and
wanted to be in the same house with her, and the girl was so
pleased that she told him many things, and he was more than
ever certain that the Lady Avelin was deceiving him and the
others. And he was so clever, and told the servant so many
lies, that one night he managed to hide in the Lady Avelin's
room behind the curtains. And he stayed quite still and
never moved, and at last the lady came. And she bent down
under the bed, and raised up a stone, and there was a hollow
place underneath, and out of it she took a waxen image, just
like the clay one that I and nurse had made in the brake.
And all the time her eyes were burning like rubies. And she
took the little wax doll up in her arms and held it to her
breast, and she whispered and she murmured, and she took it
up and she laid it down again, and she held it high, and she
held it low, and she laid it down again. And she said,
"Happy is he that begat the bishop, that ordered the
clerk, that married the man, that had the wife, that
fashioned the hive, that harboured the bee, that gathered
the wax that my own true love was made of." And she
brought out of an aumbry a great golden bowl, and she
brought out of a closet a great jar of wine, and she poured
some of the wine into the bowl, and she laid her mannikin
very gently in the wine, and washed it in the wine all over.
Then she went to a cupboard and took a small round cake and
laid it on the image's mouth, and then she bore it softly
and covered it up. And Sir Simon, who was watching all the
time, though he was terribly frightened, saw the lady bend
down and stretch out her arms and whisper and sing, and then
Sir Simon saw beside her a handsome young man, who kissed
her on the lips. And they drank wine out of the golden bowl
together, and they ate the cake together. But when the sun
rose there was only the little wax doll, and the lady hid it
again under the bed in the hollow place. So Sir Simon knew
quite well what the lady was, and he waited and he watched,
till the time she had said was nearly over, and in a week
the year and a day would be done. And one night, when he was
watching behind the curtains in her room, he saw her making
more wax dolls. And she made five, and hid them away. And
the next night she took one out, and held it up, and filled
the golden bowl with water, and took the doll by the neck
and held it under the water. Then she said--
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