Across the Plains, with Other Memories and Essays

d in her hand the sheet of paper covered with lines of meaningless scribbles, with the one intelligible sentence at the end, which Archie had written that day when he should have been doing

e wrote might actually be in Martin's handwriting. Look f

ook the two pa

itten, I thought of Martin's handwriting. And then it was signed 'Martin.' Are you

stow shook

heard his name mentioned. I remember mentioning it in Archie's hearing the other day, but he didn't pay the slightest attention. And he can't possibly recollect h

n laid down t

ou never told Archie

's great grey

e yet of the brother he had never consciously seen. Jack agreed with me, too. I have long been prepared for Archie asking questions, which certainly I would answer truthfully, and let the knowledge come to him quietly by degrees. I may ha

l Archie begin to know

time who Martin was. Indeed, I have often thought it odd that he hasn't. Only the other day Jack was talking to me about it, suggesting that it was time that

ord Davidstow?" a

. He says 'Pshaw,' as you know, if even hypnotism is mentioned. I did tell him about Archie's intuition in that guessing game, and, as

s silent

difficult for you to tell him about Martin now? A sensitive boy like t

think that," said his mother. "No,

sks?" said M

idea that h

about the room for

d, not only is the door shut, but locked. We all had our secret places, and I make a guess that this bit of paper-by the way, mind you put it back in the school-room where Archie left it-lives in Archie's secret place. How I long to g

y he did

t have done it. All we do is accountable for b

ed by what is without

re is in the match. All you can do for a child, even your own

ampton

k you one thing. Do you believe in the possibility

living somewhere in an existence as individual as ever, and even more vivid, because the weakness and the illness and the weariness are past. So why should I be frightened at the thought that he could communicat

iend a moment a

line with it. It was then that it became a settled habit with him to try to forget...

*

r weeks and months at a time its contents remained out of his reach, and if he shared them, as his mother had said, with nobody else, he had no share in them himself except at these odd, queer moments. So when, next day, he came across this curious sentence again, caught by him, as by some process of wireless telegraphy, he felt but little interest in it, though he sat for a couple of minutes with his pen held idly in his hand, just to see if anything else happened. But there was no sensation that ever so faint

cises that used to invigorate him but now only tired him. All through the month the damp chilly weather persisted, and day after day the same lowering heavens obscured the sun; never in this bright Sussex upland had there been so continuous a succession of rain-streaked hours. The wonder of seeing the lake slowly rising till i

hey scampered out, and once more saw their shadows racing in front of them. The game was to tread on somebody else's shadow. Blessington's shadow did not count because anybody could tread on that; but it required real agility to tread on Jeannie's, for it had the nippiest way of dodging before your f

hich Archie thought rather grand. There had been rather a fuss about it: she was laid down on the floor, and Miss Bampton put the door-key dow

g in my mouth," he said

ie's

ather giddy, and instantly Bl

ean against me, and we'll go home very quietly. Y

felt a rather enjoyable lightness in his head,

and once more, now with a sensati

t of all his memories, and, as then, felt absolutely comfortable in the thought that she was t

amma to come out here at once, and bring William. Master A

ly in Blessington's hands, and utterly content

'm going to sit down, and wait for a bit. And you'll wait with me, dear, won't you?

unning about at top-speed; now he had no wish except to do as he was told, to put himself into responsible hands. It was all rather dreamlike; his mother and William were coming here soon, but that seemed quite natural. And it was still rather grand to bleed at the mouth. Then came a gentle singing in his ears, a pleasant sense of complete indolence, that never quite passed in

messed you," he s

chie," said William. "It was

concerning beer-money and washing came into his head. Wil

for it anyh

s not on the floor any more, but in his bed, and whether it was at once or later, he never knew, but presently there was in the room the stranger who once had made him play the pointless game of s

'ninety-nin

d don't talk. If you think 'ninet

at he was told to do. He thought "ninety-nine

and whether he floated out of the window, or vanished like the Cheshir

shed these also. Archie could not understand why he acquiesced in this odd state of things, or why he did not ask to get up and run about and play the shadow-game again. But merely he was quite content to lie still, and he hoped that when Jeannie came and talked to him she would not suggest the resumption of the game that had been so ecstatic but had been interrupted so suddenly

which hitherto had been a pleasant and luxurious performance, he found that Blessington could do nothing right. She put soap into his eyes, she tickled his feet and scratched his shoulder with her disgusting flannel. Ar

greeable remark, and, instead of scold

aid. "Thank God you fee

angrily. "Oh, do take care of my little toe

kiss it," said Bl

looked

wriggling his foot away from her

essington. And that was true; she wa

ie which had not oc

gton?" he asked. "

Blessington was doing. Her laughing

to die," she said. "Get that out

ie's left foot. He saw her shoulders shaking; he knew that, for some reason, she could not speak. But

ngton," he said. "What

because I'

"You let me finish wiping your foot. An

ross," said Archie. "I

is morning. And I shouldn't wonder if there was a gr

er train?" a

aid she. "How you

*

ntral Europe. There was the South of England, with London written large, and here was Lacebury also conspicuously marked. Then there was the English Channel with France below it, and Paris in the middle, and away to the right, some distance below, the Lake of Geneva. Then, still explaining, she made marks like caterpillars which were mountains, and said that now the mountains were covered with snow, even down to the tails of the caterpillars and below was the Lake of Geneva, quite blue. All t

ld be jolly to go to a place where you saw the real mountains and had a glimpse of the re

itten down: the railway only went as far as Bex, and there the sledges began. And always the

out roast beef. There was roast beef somewhere in the world, and he wanted it so b

mpton," he said. "I w

g on the edge of his

ro

to Grives in a few da

n and Jean

*

capped waves, grey in the bulk but lit with lovely green where they grew thin, come streaming up to the ship's side and fall away again in puffs of white smoke and squirts of high-flung foam. Warmly wrapped up in his new fur-coat, he sat on deck sheltered from the weather and watched with ecstatic wonder the rollicking, untamed creatures that sent the boat now over on one side, now on the other, and threw it up and caught it again within their firm, liquid embrace. Behind

med to. Then, sure enough, they came after nightfall to a great town, and drove across it, keeping firmly to the wrong side of the road, though, as everybody else did the same, there were not so many collisions as might have been expected. Then came the novelty of eating dinner in a restaurant perched up in another station, from the windows of which you could romantically observe train after train sliding out into the winter night. Before long Archie's train did the same, and then came the glorious experience of undressing in a train, while it was going at full speed. There was never so remarkable a bedroom, all g

ked smaller than the edging of a table-cloth against the blue. Blue? Archie thought he had never known what blue was till now, not what sunshine was until he saw the dazzle of it on those sparkling slopes. And they, so his mother told him, were not mountains at all: they were only hills; but soon he should see what mountains meant. As they passed through the glittering towns that stood on the edge of the lake, he could see the sleighs sliding over

of climbing, and the sleigh left them and came out on to a plateau high above the valley. And could that have been sunshine down there? For the valley seemed choked with grey fog, and here above was real sunshine and air that refreshed you as with wine. The hills that had appeared so gigantic had sunk below them, but behind them rose the spears and precipices, remote an

its old carved wooden houses, deep-balconied towards the south, and the modern hotels now just opening again for the winter season. These, too, t

we are,"

here in his mind; it had the same broad balconies, where you could lie all day in the sun, and look over the village roofs below and across the valley from which all afternoon they had climbed. He felt h

when she heard the crack of the driver's whip, and stood bareheaded, r

with a funny precision, as if she had learned it as a lesson, "I gi

er interrupted these gr

er Jeannie and Archie"-and she added something in an underton

sked round with r

said. "The sun all day and the frost all night

ame into Archie's mind the remembrance of the words his hand had scribbled one morning with the signature "Martin." It came out of the darkness like

ents which have got (by the rules) to be accepted, but which do not always convince. Blessington's saying that she could not run any more because she had a bone in her leg was an instance of this class of statement, as also was the occasion when his mother spoke, a year ago, about Abracadabra's sneezings. This mode of accounting for Madame Seiler'

ey and must stop in bed for breakfast. That was a perfectly unfounded statement, but, like those oth

dear," said Blessin

ought to know be

Blessington firmly. "And

, or even skate, but it was very well pleased that his body, well wrapped up, should sit up in bed, and bask in the sun which blazed in through the opened Fre

exclaimed this rather attractive

't let me,"

shall get," said the doctor. "But I can't wait ti

ith plugs was produced, and

te I'll have done with you. Just put that into your m

hort process, and

sun on your balcony. And, after you've had dinner, you shall go for a sleigh

" asked Archie, who

fore long, but not at present. The more you

almost meeting above the narrow track, and then standing away from it again, so that the deluge of sun poured down as into a pool, while from in front came the jingle of the horse's bells, and from below him the squeak of his runners. Then they came out again on to the ski-ing slopes, where visitors to Grives played the entrancing game of seeing, apparently, who could fall down most often in the most complicated manner. Where the slope was steepest there was erected a sort of platform, so that the runner, flying down the slope above, was shot into the air, touching ground again yards below. Or, on other mornings, when things went well, and there had been no hot-and-cold period the evening before, he tobogganed down the slope below the house to the edge of the skating-rink and sat there in the snow, with everything round frozen hard, yet feeling perfectly warm, so potent were the beams of this ineffable sun through the thin, dry air. Jeannie was learning to skate and progressed, in wobbling half-circles, and shrilly announced that this and no other was the outside edge. Or four of the experts in a railed-off and hallowed place at the end of the huge rink would put down an orange, and proceed to weave a mystic dance in obedience to th

no more bring it into the exterior life of the senses, he could no more see or hear it or produce any evidence of it, as he willed, than he could make the sun pierce and scatter the clouds, which for a whole week in January alternately rained and snowed on to Grives. All he could do was to wait for it, and he waited in a perpetual serene excitement. It came always when he was alone: he got to think of solitude, in this present stage, as an essential for its manifestation. And, as the weeks went on, he associated it more and more with the balcony on which he lay for the greater part of the day. It, the thing he waited for, and was c

ver the weather was, Archie was out of doors all day, and Jeannie, during lesson-time, used to sit out on his balcony and do her more advanced tasks, which, with his, were taken in to Lady Davidstow for correction. More often his mother used to sit on the balcony, too, but during this damp

his. He was always ready for it. As Jeannie went in with her completed French lesson, he laid down his pen, and looked for a moment at the streaming icicles on the eaves of his shelter, and listened with a sense of depression to the drip of the melted water that formed grey pits

re, and wondered at this sensation of touch. Then he saw his fingers begin to twitch, and instantly recognized the sensation he had felt onc

pen, while his hand twitched and jerked to be at its task again. The day before he had pinched his finger in the hinge of a slamming window, and he saw the moon-shaped blot of blo

ing-paper just as an excited spectator watches the action of a play, he saw wor

can't always, but sometimes I can. Dear Archie, try to be rea

eized the boy. "Oh, who is it?

him, a sense of extraordinary satisfaction. Something or somebody had "got through," whatever that meant. The words in pencil on his blotting-paper had "got through." And he tur

Archie would squat on the front of it (thereby adding considerably to the weight) and in a shrill voice direct the men who pushed it to right or left, in order to reach the steep bank down which they discharged their burden. When they were come to the edge of it, some large, strong man lifted Archie off his perch, and waited with him, while the sleigh was pushed to the very brink, and its burden overturned in a jolly lumpy avalanche that poured down the built-up bank of the rink. Then Archie mounted his t

as somebody lifted him off. "Look, m

lessington had gone shopping, and there was a bell by him, by means of which he could summon Madame Seiler if he wanted anything. But he had no thoughts of summoning Madame Seiler; he was extremely content to lie in the sun, and watch the rink sometimes, and sometimes to read a fascinating

edge of the rink, when lines of shadow began to pass over the field of his vision, exactly as they used to pass over the green-lit ceiling of his night-nursery at home. This was interesting: he did not feel in t

. And at the same moment he felt on the back of his hand the touch of another hand

of spell on him, light as a gossamer-web, which the slight

Archie,"

th The Rose and the Ring in his hand, and Jeannie on the rink. Madame Seiler clattering dishes in the kitchen, and himself all alone, lying in the sunshine. He knew that something inside him had been tremendously happy when his name was called and his hand touched in that intimate manner, and, now that the touch and the voice were gone, he felt something akin to what he felt when he was feverish, and Blessington had said "good-night" and left him. But then, he always knew that Blessington h

whispered.

but only feeling his way, he knew he had called wrong. He must call differently, if he hoped to have any reply, call from inside. But, the

going to be executed on this second occasion when he piled his table on his bed and his chair on his table, and his

humiliating hour or two. He had seen Jeannie lean outwards, and announce the outside edge, he had seen Jeannie lean a little inwards and proclaim the inside edge and round she went in curves that Archie could not but envy. He had only got to lean outwards and inwards like that, and surely he was master of his curves

he said. "I can't lea

aid this amiable young man. "I

e didn't,"

a girl," whisp

oys?" asked Archie, rather interested i

*

ppened in the earth at the summons of the suns of spring, for gentians pushed their lengthening stems up through the thinning crust, and put forth their star-like flowers, deep as the blue of night and brilliant as the blue of day. The call of the spring, though yet the snow-wreaths lingered, pierced through them, and the listening grasses and bulbs pricked up their little green ears above the soil. Wonderful as last spring had been, the first that Archie had ever consciously noticed, this Alpine Primavera was twice as magical, for winter was caught in her very arms, and warmed to life again. Morning by morning the pine-woods steamed like the hot flank of a horse, and when the mists cleared nature's great

the week, and in the absence of an instructor Archie's task was to write a long letter daily to somebody at home. This he enjoyed doing, for the search for words in which to express himself h

twitching in his fingers, which he recognized at once, and words, not searched for by him, but coming from some other source, began to tra

ght Archie, "what's that?") you'll find a circle cut on the bark of the pine opposite the f

t came over the boy, and inst

he said to himself. "I wis

had begun to see, always accompanied these manifestations, he could at least do what the writing sugge

site his eyes. A grey ring of lichen had grown into it, making it so conspicuous that he wondered he had never noticed it before. Next moment he was down on his knees, grubbing up the loose earth directly below it, with the eager, absolute certainty of success. The earth came away very easily, and his hole w

; below there was a stick of chocolate in lead paper, a pencil, a match-box, and a photograph of a boy about nine years old whom Archie

nscription, "and belongs to him alon

no wonder that he had felt that Martin was friendly and affectionate, that Martin wanted to talk to

ing in the least shocking or terrifying in the discovery, and it burst upon him as the sense of spring had done. It was just a natural thing, wonderfully beautiful, to find out for certain, as he felt he had found out, that there was close to him, always perhaps, and ce

ne open fire-place in the house, where pine-logs fizzed and smouldered and burst into flame, and glowed into a core of heat. Sometimes, for that pleasant hour before bed-time, she read to him,

ar," she said. "You don't

mly. "I like this place better

s afraid you would dislike

y round wondering if, by any new and lovely miracle, he should see the boy whose face was now familiar t

Archie?" aske

n he wanted his mother to share with him the pleasure of that glorious comedian, the man with

t Martin," he said. "You know w

en telling you abou

e lau

nd twice here. I knew he was particularly here, the moment we got here. And last time he told me about what he had hidden under the pine-tr

A test is

laughed

show you the test? I kept it all togethe

moment with his pr

said there was a circle cut on the pine-tree, and I found it, and I dug as he told

res the puppets He has created with unutterable anguish, or ravishes their souls with a joy as meaningless as dreams. Well she remembered Martin's cutting the circle on the pine-tree, but what its significance was he had never told her. But now, five years after his death, he had told it, she could not doubt, to the brother who had no normal remembrance of him. There they were, the little pathetic tokens of

the handwriting so long buried, and tea

rling," she said.

hie. "But does Marti

I suppose

particularly here?

used a

here,"

e?" asked he.

singt

ave a gr

have that room inste

OK