Lore of Proserpine

by Maurice Hewlett

  THE SOUL AT THE WINDOW

  When I had been in London a year or two, and the place with its hordeswas become less strange and less formidable to me, I began to discoverit for myself. Gradually the towering cliffs resolved themselves intohouses, and the houses into shrouded holds, each with character andeach hiding a mystery. They now stood solitary which had before beenan agglutinated mass. Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.... I knewone from the other by sight, and had for each a specific sensation ofattraction or repulsion, of affection or terror. I read through theshut doors, I saw through the blank windows; not a house upon my dailyroad but held a drama or promised a tragedy. I had no sense for comedyin those days; life to me, waking life, was always a dreadful thing.And sometimes my bodily eyes had glimpses which confirmed myfancy--unexpected, sudden and vivid flashes behind curtained windows.I once saw two men fighting, shadowed black upon a white blind. I oncelooked out of a window at the Army and Navy Stores into a meanbedroom across the way. There was a maidservant in there, making beds,emptying slops, tidying this and that. Quite suddenly she threw herhead up with a real despair, and next moment she was on her knees bythe bed. Praying! I never saw prayer like that in this country. Thesoul went streaming from her mouth like blown smoke. And again, onenight, very late, I was going to bed, and leaned out of my window forair. Before me, across back yards, leafless trees, and a litter ofpacking-cases and straw, rose up a dark rampart of houses, in themidst of it a lit window. I saw a poorly furnished sitting-room--atable with a sewing machine, a paraffin lamp, a chair with anantimacassar. A man in his shirt sleeves sat there by the table,smoking a pipe. Then the door opened and a tall, slim woman came in,all in white, with loose dark hair floating about her shoulders. Shestood between door and table and rested her hand upon the edge of thetable. The man, after a while of continuing to read, quite suddenlylooked up and saw her. They looked at each other motionless. He castdown his paper, sprang up and went to her. He fell to his knees beforeher and clasped hers. She looked across, gravely considering, thenlaid her hand upon his head. That was all. I saw no more. Husband andwife? Mother and son? Sinner and Saviour? What do I know?

  As with the houses, homes of mystery, so with the men and women onepassed; homes, they too, of things hidden yet more deep. The noise ofthe streets, at first paralysing, died down to a familiar rumble, andthe ear began to distinguish voices in the tide. Sounds of crying,calls for help, hailings, laughter, tears, separated themselves andappealed. You heard them, like the cries of the drowning, drifting byyou upon a dark tide-way. You could do nothing; a word would havebroken the spell. The mask which is always over the face would havecovered the tongue or throttled the larynx. You could do nothing buthear.

  Finally, the passing faces became sometimes penetrable, betrayed bysome chance gleam of the eyes, some flicker of the lips, a secret tobe shared, or conveyed by a hint some stabbing message out of the deepinto the deep. That is what I mean by the soul at the window. Everyone of us lives in a guarded house; door shut, windows curtained. Nowand then, however, you look up above the street level and catch aglimpse of the scared prisoner inside. He may be a satyr, a fairy, anape or an angel; he's a prisoner anyhow, who sometimes comes to thewindow and looks strangely out. You may see him there by chance,saying to himself like Chaucer's Creseyde in the temple, "Ascaunces,What! May I not stonden here?" And I found out for myself that thereis scarcely a man or woman alive who does not hold such a tenant moreor less deeply within his house.

  Sometimes the walls of the house are transparent, like a frog's foot,and you see the prisoner throbbing and quivering inside. This is rare.Shelley's house must have been a filmy tenement of the kind. Withchildren--if you catch them young enough--it is more common. Iremember one whom I used to see nearly every day, the child of poorparents, who kept a green-grocer's shop in Judd Street, Saint Pancras,a still little creature moving about in worlds not recognised. She wasslim and small, fair-haired, honey-coloured, her eyes wells of blue. Iused to see her standing at the door of the shop, amid baskets ofgreen stuff, crimsoned rhubarb, pyramided dates, and what not. I neversaw her dirty or untidy, nor heard her speak, nor saw her laugh. Shestood or leaned at the lintel, watching I know not what, but certainlynot anything really there, as we say. She appeared to be lookingthrough objects rather than at them. I can describe it no otherwisethan that I, or another, crossed her field of vision and was consciousthat her eyes met mine and yet did not see me. To me she was instantlyremarkable, not for this and not for any beauty she had--for she wasnot at all extraordinary in that quality--but for this, that she wasnot of our kind. Surrounded by other children, playing gaily, circlingabout her, she was _sui generis_. She carried her own atmosphere,whereby in the company of others she seemed unaccountable, by herselfonly, normal. Nature she fitted perfectly, but us she did not fit.Now, it is a curious thing, accepted by all visionaries, that asupernatural being, a spirit, fairy, not-human creature, if you see itamong animals, beasts and birds, on hills or in the folds of hills,among trees, by waters, in fields of flowers, _looks at home_ andevidently is so. The beasts are conscious of it, know it and have nofear of it; the hills and valleys are its familiar places in a waywhich they will never be to the likes of us. But put a man beside itand it becomes at once supernatural. I have seen spirits, beings,whatever they may be, in empty space, and have observed them as partof the landscape, no more extraordinary than grazing cattle orwheeling plover. Again I have seen a place thick with them, as thickas a London square in a snow-storm, and a man walk clean through themunaware of their existence, and make them, by that act, a mockery ofthe senses. So precisely it was with this strange child, unreal to mewhen she was real to everybody else.

  She had a name, a niche in the waking world. Marks, Greengrocer, wasthe inscription of the shop. She was Elsie Marks. Her father was astout, florid man of maybe fifty years, with a chin-beard andlight-blue eyes. Good-humoured he seemed, and prosperous, something ofa ready wit, a respected and respectable man, who stamped his wayabout the solid ground in a way which defied dreams.

  If I had been experienced, I should have remarked the mother, but infact I barely remember her, though I spoke with her one day. She wassomewhat heavy and grave, I think, downcast and yet watchful. She didher business efficiently, without enthusiasm, and did not enter intogeneral conversation with her customers. Her husband did that part ofthe business. Marks was a merry Jew. I bought oranges of her once forthe sake of hearing her speak, and while she was serving me the childcame into the shop and stood by her. She leaned against her ratherthan stood, took the woman's disengaged arm and put it round her neck.Looks passed between them; the mother's sharply down, the child'ssearchingly up. On either side there was pain, as if each tried toread the other.

  I was very shy with strangers. The more I wanted to get on terms withthem the less I was able to do it. I asked the child whether she likedoranges.

  I asked the child, but the mother answered me, measuring her words.

  "She likes nothing of ours. It's we that like and she that takes."That was her reply.

  "I am sure that she likes you at any rate," I said. Her hold on thechild tightened, as if to prevent an escape.

  "She should, since I bore her. But she has much to forgive me."

  Such a word left me dumb. I was not then able to meet women on suchterms. Nor did I then understand her as I do now.

  Here is another case. There was a slatternly young woman whom Icaught, or who caught me, unawares; who suddenly threw open thewindows and showed me things I had never dreamed.

  Opposite the chambers in R---- Buildings where I worked, or wasintended to work, and across a wall, there was a row of tenementscalled, if I remember, Gaylord's Rents. Part mews, part warehouses,and all disreputable, the upper story of it, as it showed itself to meover the wall, held some of the frowsiest of London's horde. Exactlybefore my eyes was one of the lowest of these hovels, the upper partof a stable, I imagine, since it had, instead of a window, a door, ofwhich half was always shut and
half always open, so that light mightget in or the tenants lean out to take the air.

  Here, and so leaning her bare elbows, I saw on most days of the week aslim young woman airing herself--a pale-faced, curling-papered,half-bodiced, unwashed drab of a girl, who would have had shamewritten across her for any one to read if she had not seemed of allwomen I have ever seen the least shamefaced. Her brows were asunwritten as a child's, her smile as pure as a seraph's, and her eyesblue, unfaltering and candid. She laughed a greeting, exchangedgossip, did her sewing, watched events, as the case might be, was notconscious of her servitude or anxious to market it. Sometimes sheshared her outlook with an old woman--a horrible, greasy go-between,with straggling grey hair and a gin-inflamed face. She chatted withthis beldame happily, she cupped her vile old dewlap, or stroked herdishonourable head; sometimes a man in shirt sleeves was with her,treated her familiarly, with rude embraces, with kisses, nudges andleers. She accepted all with good-humour and, really, complete goodbreeding. She invited nothing, provoked nothing, but resented nothing.It seemed to me as if all these things were indeed nothing to her;that she hardly knew that they were done; as if her soul could renderthem at their proper worth, transmute them, sherd them off, discardthem. It was, then, her surface which took them; what her soulreceived was a distillation, an essence.

  Then one night I had all made plain. She entranced me on a summernight of stillness, under a full yellow moon. I was working late, tillpast ten, past eleven o'clock, and looking out of my open windowsuddenly was aware of her at hers. The shutter was down, both wings ofit, and she stood hovering, seen at full length, above the street.She! Could this be she? It was so indeed--but she was transfigured,illuminated from within; she rayed forth light. The moon shone fullupon her, and revealed her pure form from head to foot swathed infilmy blue--a pale green-blue, the colour of ocean water seen frombelow. Translucent webbery, whatever it was, it showed her beneath itas bare as Venus was when she fared forth unblemished from the sea.Her pale yellow hair was coiled above her head; her face looked mildand radiant with a health few Londoners know. Her head was bent in aconsidering way; she stood as one who is about to plunge into deepwater, and stands hesitating at the shock. Once or twice she turnedher face up, to bathe it in the light. I saw that in it which in humanfaces I had never seen--communion with things hidden from men, secretknowledge shared with secret beings, assurance of power above ourhopes.

  Breathless I watched her, the drab of my daily observation, radiantnow; then as I watched she stretched out her arms and bent themtogether like a shield so that her burning face was hidden from me,and without falter or fury launched herself into the air, and droptslowly down out of my sight.

  Exactly so she did it. As we may see a pigeon or chough high on theverge of a sea-cliff float out into the blue leagues of the air, anddrift motionless and light--or descend to the sea less by gravity thanat will--so did she. There was nothing premeditated, there was nothingdetermined on: mood was immediately translated into ability--she wasat will lighter or heavier than the air. It was so done that here wasno shock at all--she in herself foreshadowed the power she had.Rather, it would have been strange to me if, irradiated, transplendentas she was, she had not considered her freedom and on the instantindulged it. I accepted her upon her face value without question--Idid not run out to spy upon her. _Ecce unus fortior me!_

  In this case, being still new to the life into which I was graduallybeing drawn, it did not for one moment occur to me to start anadventure of my own. I might have accosted the woman, who was, as thesaying goes, anybody's familiar; or I might have spied for anotherexcursion of her spirit, and, with all preparation made, have followedher. But I did neither of these things at the time. I saw her nextday leaning bare-elbowed on the ledge of her half-door, her hair incurl-papers, her face the pale unwholesome pinched oval of most Londonwomen of her class. Her bodice was pinned across her chest; she wascoarse-aproned, new from the wash-tub or the grate. Not a sign uponher but told of her frowsy round. The stale air of foul lodgment wasupon her. I found out indeed this much about her ostensible state,that she was the wife of a cab-driver whose name was Ventris. He wasan ill-conditioned, sottish fellow who treated her badly, but hadgiven her a child. But he was chiefly on night-work at Euston, and theman whom I had seen familiar with her in the daytime was not he. Herreputation among her neighbours was not good. She was, in fact, nobetter than she should be--or, as I prefer to put it, no better thanshe could be.

  Yet I knew her, withal, as of the fairy-kind, bound to thisearth-bondage by some law of the Universe not yet explored; notpitiable because not self-pitying, and (what is more important) notreprehensible because impossible to be bound, as we are, soul to body.I know that now, but did not know it then; and yet--extraordinarything--I was never shocked by the contrast between her two states ofbeing. This is to me a clear and certain evidence of theirreality--just as it is evidence to me that when, at ten years old, Iseemed to see the boy in the wood, I really did see him. Anhallucination or a dream upsets your moral balance. The thingsimpressed upon you are abnormal; and the abnormal disturbs you. Nowthese apparitions did not seem abnormal. I saw nothing wonderful inMrs. Ventris's act. I was impressed by it, I was excited by it, as Istill am by a convulsion of nature--a thunder-storm in the Alps, forinstance, a water-spout at sea. Such things hold beauty and terror;they entrance, they appal; but they never shock. They happen, and theyare right. I have not seen what people call a ghost, and I have oftenbeen afraid lest I should see one. But I know very well that if ever Idid I should have no fear. I know very well that a natural factimpresses its conformity with law upon you first and last. It becomes,on the moment of its appearance, a part of the landscape. If it doesnot, it is an hallucination, or a freak of the imagination, and willshock you. I have much more extraordinary experiences than this torelate, but there will be nothing shocking in these pages--at leastnothing which gave me the least sensation of shock. One of them--athing extraordinary to all--must occupy a chapter by itself. I cannotprecisely fit a date to it, though I shall try. And as it forms awhole, having a beginning, a middle and an end, I shall want todepart from my autobiographical plan and put it in as a whole. Thereader will please to recollect that it did not work itself out in myconsciousness by a flash. The first stages of it came so, in flashesof revelation; but the conclusion was of some years later, when I wasolder and more established in the world.

  * * * * *

  But before I embark upon it I should like to make a large jump forwardand finish with the young woman of Gaylord's Rents. It was by accidentthat I happened upon her at her mysteries, at a later day when I wasliving in London, in Camden Town.

  By that time I had developed from a lad of inarticulate mind andunexpressed desires into a sentient and self-conscious being. I wasmore or less of a man, not only adventurous but bold in the pursuit ofadventure. I lived for some two or three years in that sorry quarterof London in complete solitude--"in poverty, total idleness and thepride of literature," like Doctor Johnson, for though I wrote little Iread much, and though I wrote little I was most conscious that I wasabout to write much. It was a period of brooding, of mewing my youth,and whatever facility of imagination and expression I have sinceattained I owe very much to my hermitage in Albert Street.

  If I walked in those days it was by night. London at night is a verydifferent place from the town of business and pleasure of ordinaryacquaintance. During the day I fulfilled my allotted hours at thedesk; but immediately they were over I returned to my lodgings, gotout my books, and sat enthralled until somewhere near midnight. Butthen, instead of going to bed, I was called by the night, and forth Isallied all agog. I walked the city, the embankment, skirted theparks, unless I were so fortunate as to slip in before gate-shutting.Often I was able to remain in Kensington Gardens till the openinghour. Highgate and its woods, Parliament Hill with its splendidpanorama of twinkling beacons and its noble tent of stars, were greatfields for me. Hampstead Heath, Wimbledon,
even Richmond and Busheyhave known me at their most secret hour. Such experiences as I havehad of the preternatural will find their place in this book, but nottheir chronological place, for the simple reason that, as I kept nodiary, I cannot remember in what order of time they befell me. But itwas on the southern slope of Parliament Hill that I came again uponthe fairy-woman of Gaylord's Rents.

  I was there at midnight, a mild radiant night of late April. Therewere sheep at graze there, for though it was darkish under thethree-quarter moon, I was used to the dark, and could see them, awoolly mass, quietly feeding close together. I saw no shepherdanywhere; but I remember that his dog sat on his haunches apart,watching them. He was prick-eared, bright-eyed; he grinned and pantedintensely. I didn't then know why he was so excited, but very soon Idid.

  I became aware, gradually, that a woman stood among the sheep. She hadnot been there when I first saw them, I am sure; nor did I see herapproach them or enter their school. Yet there she was in the midst ofthem, seen now by me as she had evidently been seen for some time bythe dog, seen, I suppose, by the sheep--at any rate she stood in themidst of them, as I say, with her hand actually upon the shoulder ofone of them--but not feared or doubted by any soul of us. The dog wasvividly interested, but did not budge; the sheep went on feeding; Istood bolt upright, watching.

  I knew her the moment I saw her. She was the exquisitely formed, slimand glowing creature I had seen before, when she launched herself intothe night as a God of Homer--Hermes or Thetis--launched out fromOlympus' top into the sea--"[Greek: ex aitheros empese ponto]," andwords fail me to describe the perfection of her being, a radiantsimulacrum of our own, the inconscient self-sufficiency, the buoyancyand freedom which she showed me. You may sometimes see boys at theirmaddest tip of expectation stand waiting as she now stood, quiveringon the extreme edge of adventure; yet even in their case there is aconsciousness of well being, a kind of rolling of anticipation uponthe palate, a getting of the flavours beforehand. That involves acertain dissipation of activity; but here all was concentrated. Thewhole nature of the creature was strung to one issue only, to thatpoint when she could fling headlong into activity--an activity inwhich every fibre and faculty would be used. A comparison of thefairy-kind with human beings is never successful, because into ourimages of human beings we always import self-consciousness. They knowwhat they are doing. Fairies do not. But wait a moment; there is areason. Human creatures, I think, know what they are doing only toowell, because performance never agrees with desire. They know whatthey are doing because it is never exactly what they meant to do, orwhat they wanted to do. Now, with fairies, desire to do andperformance are instinctive and simultaneous. If they think, theythink in action. In this they are far more like animals than humancreatures, although the form in which they appear to us, their shapeand colouring are like ours, enhanced and refined. Here now stood thiscreature in the semblance of a woman glorified, quivering; and so,perched high on his haunches, sat the shepherd's dog, and no one couldlook at the two and not see their kinship. _Arriere-pensee_ they hadnone--and all's said in that. They were shameless, and we are full ofshame. There's the difference; and it is a gulf.

  After a while of this quivering suspense she gave a low call, a longmellow and tremulous cry which, gentle as it was, startled by itssuddenness, as the unexpected call of a water-fowl out of the reeds ofa pond makes the heart jump toward the throat. It was like some bird'scall, but I know of no bird's with which to get a close comparison. Ithad the soft quality, soft yet piercing, of a redshank's, but itshuddered like an owl's. And she held it on as an owl does. But it wasvery musical, soft and open-throated, and carried far. It was answeredfrom a distance, first by a single voice; but then another took it up,and another; and then another. Slowly so the soft night was filledwith musical cries which quavered about me as fitfully as fire-fliesgleam and glance in all quarters of a garden of olive-trees. It wasenchantment to the ear, a ravishing sound; but it was my eyes whichclaimed me now, for soon I saw them coming from all quarters. Orrather, I saw them there, for I can't say definitely that I saw anyone of them on the way. It is truer to say that I looked and they werethere. Where had been one were now two. Now two were five; now fivewere a company; now the company was a host. I have no idea how manythere were of them at any time; but when they joined hands and set towhirling in a ring they seemed to me to stretch round Parliament Hillin an endless chain.

  How can I be particular about them? They were of both sexes--that wasput beyond doubt; they were garbed as the first of them in somethingtranslucent and grey. It had been quite easy in the lamplight to seethe bare form of the woman whom I first saw in Gaylord's Rents. It wasplain to me that her companions were in the same kind of dress. Idon't think they had girdles; I think their arms and legs were bare. Ishould describe the garment as a sleeveless smock to the knees, orperhaps, more justly, as a sack of silky gauze with a hole for thehead and two for the arms. That was the effect of it. It hung straightand took the folds natural to it. It was so light that it clungclosely to the body where it met the air. What it was made of I haveno notion; but it was transparent or nearly so. I am pretty sure thatits own colour was grey.

  They greeted each other; they flitted about from group to groupgreeting; and they greeted by touching, sometimes with their hands,sometimes with their cheeks. They neither kissed nor spoke. I neversaw them kiss even when they loved--which they rarely did. I saw onegreeting between two females. They ran together and stopped shortwithin touching distance. They looked brightly and intently at eachother, and leaning forward approached their cheeks till theytouched.[2] They touched by the right, they touched by the left. Thenthey took hands and drew together. By a charming movement ofconfidence one nestled to the side of the other and resting her headlooked up and laughed. The taller embraced her with her arm and heldher for a moment. The swiftness of the act and its grace werebeautiful to see. Then hand in hand they ran to others who were alittle further off. The elder and taller had a wild dark face withstern lips, like a man's; the younger was a beautiful little creaturewith quick, squirrel's motions. I remember her hair, which lookedwhite in that light, but was no doubt lint colour. It was extremelylong, and so fine that it clung to her shoulders and back like a webof thin silk.

  [Footnote 2: I argue from this peculiar manner of greeting, which Ihave observed several times, that these beings converse by contact, asdogs, cats, mice, and other creatures certainly do. I don't say thatthey have no other means of converse; but I am sure I am exact insaying that they have no articulate speech.]

  They began to play very soon with a zest for mere irresponsiblemovement which I have never seen in my own kind. I have seen youngfoxes playing, and it was something like that, only incomparably moregraceful. Greyhounds give a better comparison where the rippling ofthe body is more expressive of their speed than the flying of theirfeet. These creatures must have touched the earth, but their bodiesalso ran. And just as young dogs play for the sake of activity,without method or purpose, so did these; and just as with younganimals the sexes mingle without any hint of sexuality, so did these.If there was love-making I saw nothing of it there. They met on exactequality so far as I could judge, the male not desirous, the femalenot conscious of being desired.

  But it was a mad business under the cloudy moon. It had a dream-likeelement of riot and wild triumph. I suppose I must have been there fortwo or three hours, during all which time their swift play was neveraltogether stopped. There were interludes to be seen, when some threeor four grew suddenly tired and fell out. They threw themselves downon the sward and lay panting, beaming, watching the others, or theydisappeared into the dark and were lost in the thickets which dot theground. Then finally I saw the great whirling ring of them form--underwhat common impulse to frenzy I cannot divine. There was no signal,no preparation, but as if fired in unison they joined hands, andspreading out to a circumference so wide that I could distinguishnothing but a ring of light, they whirled faster and faster till thespeed of them sang in my ears like harp
s, and whirling so, meltedaway.

  Later on and in wilder surroundings than this I saw, and shall relatein its place, a dance of Oreads. It differed in detail from this one,but not, I think, in any essential. This was my first experience ofthe kind.