The Riddle and Other Stories/The Bird of Travel

E had been talking of houses—their looks and ways and influences. What shallow defences they were, we agreed, even for the materialist, with their brittle glass, and baked clay bricks; and what mere fungi most of them. Worse still—the dreadful species that isn't haunted at all, not even by the graces or disgraces of its inmates—mere barracks deaf to life and insensitive even to the weathers of heaven. A cherry-eyed little man of the name of Bateson, I remember, told us of a house he had known that had year by year gently and furtively shifted itself a few feet down its valley towards the sea. A full green mile to go. He said it was the property of a family so fair of skin and hair as to be almost albinos—but still, a happy one.

Somebody capped this with the ancient yarn of Lord Montberris, who built a new wing to his family edifice every year, till the estate was utterly ruined. Whereupon he set fire to the place in the vain hope of getting rid of its Devil that way. And at last a quaint old creature whose name I have forgotten, but who, so I was told, had been something of a versifier in his younger days, told us the following rather pointless story, about a house called the Wood.

“I must have been scarcely in my first breeches,” he began, rubbing his hand down his face, as if he was sleepy, “when I first heard of the old house called the Wood. We lived then—my own people I mean—some few miles distant from it as the crow flies. There was a remote kinship with its inmates—people of a restless blood and with a fair acreage of wild oats to their credit. A quarrel, a mild feud of the Montague and Capulet order, had separated us; and—well, we rarely mentioned them; their name was seldom heard. But an old relative of my mother's who lived with us in those days used to tell us about the house, warning us, in that peculiarly enticing fashion old people have, not to tempt Providence in that direction. Let but its evil genius squawk once in our young ears—we might never come back. That kind of thing.

The consequence was, that while we were still mere infants, my younger sister and I—she in a dark green tartan frock, I remember—set out one early morning, fully intending to see or hear the strange Bird that was reported to haunt its chaces and its glades. What if it did instil into us the wander-lust? It was just what we wanted—Seven League Boots. We hoped—with beating hearts—even to sprinkle a grain or two of salt on its tail!

But we never pushed as far as the house itself, nor even into the denser woods amongst which it lay. We sat in the sun-glazed buttercups and ate our dinner, and, I think, forgot our errand beneath the blossoming may-trees.

“Later, I tried the same experiment alone. It was winter then. Deep snow lay on the ground, and I pushed on through the woods until I was actually in sight of the upper windows of the house. Dusk was beginning to thicken—its strange thievish blur creeping across the whiteness of the snow. Presently, I found myself in a sort of walk or alley between a high hedge of yew and beech. And as I stood there, hesitating whether to go on or to turn back, a figure—a child of about my own age—appeared at its further end. She was dressed, I remember, in a cloak with a hood—crimson, I think, and carried a muff.

“At that very instant, as our young eyes met across the wintry air, the last of the evening's robins broke into its tiny, shrill, almost deafening peal of notes. And fled. What is it in such moments that catches the heart back, and stamps them on the memory as if they were tidings of another world? Neither of us stirred. A little snow fell from the vacant twig.

The scarcely visible, narrow, and, to my young eyes, strangely beautiful face gazed on at me. I might even then have realised that we were fated some day to meet again. But even if I had, I should hardly have surmised it would prove as eventlessly.

“Then I was shy—a gawkish boy. Moreover, I was on forbidden ground. I naturally fancied, too, any such distant cousin might resent my being there—a stranger and uninvited. With a curious drag of my body in the dead silence that had followed the song, I began a tuneless sort of airy whistling, turned on my heel and crunched off in the snow. When in the white darkening alley I cast back this phantom creature a thief-like glance out of the corner of my eye, she had vanished.

“I don't suggest that this incident left much impression on me—though I remember every detail of it to this day. Then Life called me away; and it was at least a score or so of years afterwards, while wandering one afternoon in the neighbourhood of my old home again, that I chanced on a finger-post pointing and stooping towards a thicket of trees beyond a grassy lane, and marked “To the Wood.”

“I had seen something of the world by then, and without excessive satisfaction. The old story came back to mind. It linked up two selves rather crudely severed. I dropped a friendly nod at the post and turned off in its direction. The path—a pretty soggy one after the heavy summer rains—led through neglected preserves, and after walking for half an hour or so, I came out into a kind of clearing. And there amid the serene quietude of its remarkably dense woods was the long, low house.

“Its walls, once grey, were now densely mantled with greenery—rose, jasmine, wistaria. It showed, however, little trace of age or change. An unusual silence hung over its scene. No smoke, or sign of occupancy; indeed, all but one of the windows within view were shuttered. I doubt if the Ancient Mariner's spectral barque more eloquently expressed desertion and vacancy.

“For a few minutes I leaned over a decrepit gate, my eyes roving to and fro across the wide stone façade. The whole place looked as if it had settled its eyelids and composed its mouth for a protracted and stagnant sleep. I have heard of toads being found immured but yet alive in the virgin rock of a coal mine: it looked like that. At last I made my way up the weedy path, and, at the back of the house, where even yet a few hardy human vegetables contested the soil with Nature's wildings, I discovered a door on the latch.

“I tapped and listened; tapped and listened again; and, as if it were Echo herself, some hidden thrush's rapping of a snail's shell against its sacrificial stone was my only answer. Then, at a venture, I pushed open the door, stepped in, and making my way along a narrow passage, entered a little morning room whose air was burdened with a faint odour as of sweetish mildew—long-faded flowers perhaps. A piano stood where the window might best illuminate the singer, and a few pictures in water-colour hung on the low walls. A volume of music lay open on the table: It was Gounod's “How beautiful upon the mountains.”

“I passed from room to room, and from an attic window surveyed many acres—versts, one might say—of the tree-tops—of the motionless woods. And there my mind lapsed into a sort of daydream. So closely familiar seemed all around me that I even began to doubt my own memory. The chests and cupboards, the posied carpets on the uneven floors, the faint nosegays of the wall-paper—surely one couldn't so instantly “recognise,” so to speak, objects seen for the first time. And yet—well, most rare human experience is like that.

“One talks of the years of childhood: centuries would be a better word. The sense of this familiarity, this recognition—was only the sharper, the more wistful (to use an old-fashioned word) for the fact that the house was vacant, except for the faces upon its walls. Through narrow crannies sunshine had sucked the brightness of their colours from tapestry and curtain. The she-spider had woven and withered in her snares; and a legionary dust, like fine gold, floated and whirled in a beam of the declining sun, when I drew the shutter.

“I spent the next hour or so that remained of daylight in roaming the woods, half-elated, half-ashamed at my trespass, descending into every hollow, ascending every steep, but, nowhere surprised any secret, and nowhere confronted hint of ghost of man or beast. Indeed, so shut in was the house by its trees that from no point of vantage, so far as I could discover, could one command any glimpse of the country beyond the valley. It had been built in a bowl of verdure and foliage. And for those who had occupied it, rumour of the world must have been carried by the winds across the hills, unheeded in this hollow.

“And then, while I was slowly returning towards it once more, under the still, reddish, evening sky, suddenly I heard thrice repeated an extraordinary call. It pierced my mind like an arrow. It almost absurdly startled me—like the shrilling of a decoy, as if my own name had been called in a strange or forgotten tongue.

“Of English birds, the blackcap, perhaps, sings with a vestige of that wild and piercing sweetness. Imagine such a voice twenty times more vigorous suddenly breaking in upon that evening silence—falling on from note to note as if some unearthly traveller were summoning from afar his strayed dog on the hillside!

“Yet it was evidently a bird that had screamed, for presently after, as I stood hotly, attentively listening, I saw mount nobly into the deep blue air and wheel into the darker thicket a bird of the form and wing of a kestrel, but much larger—its plumage of an almost snowy whiteness, and of a flight inexpressively serene.

“I heard no more his cry, though I listened long; nor did I set eyes on the bird again, either then, or afterwards: though the woods were motionless and so silent the gloaming it seemed as if the world had swooned.

“I was ridiculously elated with my adventure. Had I not now encountered the veritable Bird of Travel, which childish legend had credited with such fabulous powers? Here was the deserted house, and still echoing in my heart that cry, the lure, as of some innocent Banshee. Who, I wondered, had last heard the call in the green spring, and felt leap and kindle insatiable desire. The past slid back. I was a child again; looking up into the withered old face of my childhood:—

“But is it true, grandmamma? Please tell us, is it true?”

“'True, my dears? Why I myself perfectly well remember Hamilton and Paul when they were boys not so very many years older than yourselves. I remember, too, my father telling me how, one autumn evening, while he and these two friends of his were returning with their guns and spaniels through the woods, the bird had flown out screaming above their heads. He stopped up his ears. He had his work to do. But the other two lads watched it in the air, drinking in its forbidden song. Nothing anyone could say could restrain them then. Poor fellows!—fine handsome fellows. And now, Hamilton lies far away, unburied amid the Andes, and Paul drowned in the Straits of Magellan.'

“It didn't matter how far the old lady wandered from her theme of this family's destiny, and of their house, and of this ominous bird, she invariably concluded her narrative with this faint, high, trembling refrain—'And now, Hamilton lies far away, unburied amid the Andes, and Paul drowned in the Straits of Magellan.'”

“O Keith of Ravelston, the sorrows of thy line!”

“So ran the ancient story. And had I not that very afternoon returned the painted gaze of these young gentlemen? It seems to me, too, though you may build pretty strongly in this world, even the most substantial of us must depart in time. All the long annals of this family, anyhow, were a record of unrest, of fruitless (or worse) venture, of that absurd nomad instinct—travellers to whom had come eventually, far from home, the same practised, inevitable guide. Well, there are some of us who prefer the kind of travel that can be enjoyed in an armchair!

“I had cast one last full look behind me and was returning by the path I have mentioned, cumbered with weeds and brambles, when I looked up from out of my thoughts, and saw approaching me a lady. A bright chill half-moon had now risen in the twilight above the woods, and I could see her face distinctly in its thin radiance. The brows were high and narrow (for she was carrying her hat in her hand), the nose was long, like the noses in some old Italian pictures; the chin firm, yet rounded to a point.

“I could see her plainly in the silverish dusk-light: and yet, oddly enough, for a moment no flash of recognition told me who she was. And then I knew. She eyed me sharply and fully, almost arrogantly, a dark flush in her cheeks, and bowed. I apologised as best as I could for my intrusion. I reminded her of the former neighbourhood and acquaintance of our families; and told her of my childish curiosity to explore the woods, yes, and confessed to having heard the wondrous Phœnix, and confronted its victims.

“She listened with face slightly averted, and now turned with a lively smile. 'You have guessed right,' she said, 'the portraits are of my great-uncles; and I am the child you—but evidently you don't remember that. … So please say no more. How I love those pictures—those two outlandish brilliant faces. A bad painter may be a queerly telling artist.'

“She glanced into my eyes with a peculiar smile on her lips. 'You see, nowadays, so far as my own family is concerned, I am the last,' she continued. 'So you will realise how welcome even the remotest of cousins must be! Of all these years—all those births and deaths, and births again—there is not one left of us in this world here except me.' She glanced up under the half-moon with shining eyes, almost as if in apology, yet still, as if in boast.

“'And are you a traveller, too?'” I questioned.

“She beckoned me to follow her back by the way I had come.

“A traveller? No indeed. Not I. Our bright particular genius has always refused to meddle the least bit with me. I used to lie awake half the night long, summer and winter too, in hope to be exiled. That was years and years ago; the mad 'teens. But deep, deep down, perhaps, I feared my own desire. I cannot tell you—thus place is rooted in my heart. It is me. Here, only, I seem to catch at the meaning of being alive at all. It is a little lodge, and yonder winds the mysterious avenue. I'll wait. Forgive such nonsense; but it is that incessant expectation—incessant; boxes packed and corded, as it were, the door ajar. It is that I hunger for—for then.… And this quiet—it is always silent in these woods. The winds and storms go over us, you see, like the waters in the book of Job. I never remember it when I am away—this curious quiet even beneath the hollow tumult of a gale far overhead—without an almost unendurable shudder of longing. Shall I ever cease if I begin to talk of it? But now I see that with that longing, that greed—far, far beyond the greed of the little girl I used to be even for ices and macaroons (and would you believe it, to see a ghost!)—it was like keeping a wild beast without meat, to deny my poor heart its native air. Better dead than dying. It was an extraordinary home-coming—this very morning. I was alone. I got back early, soon after daybreak, and opened a window to the first rose of dawn. I cannot tell you the voracity of it all: the dew, the depth, and the immortal usualness.

“'And now—well, really it is very delightful—though an hour ago I should have madly resented such an idea—it is delightful to have found so old an unknown friend waiting me—and one remembered so well.'

“She laughed out, when I tried to excuse myself for so dull a memory.

“'That's because you are a poet, Mr.' she said. 'You see, I know all about you; and you, nothing about me! I have noticed it again and again. People with imagination are almost indecently bereft of the common feelings. And now, will you please sit on this bench while I make some tea for us both. It's all I can offer. I shan't be long. But stuff your fingers into your ears. He screams at night too! Now which was the door I left unfastened?'

“I sat there—where she had left me. The moon slid on, casting her shadows. A few late moths ghosted about me in and out of her beams. It might have been a dream. I might have been thousands of years old. Strange, that. Strange. Why, I might have been in another world … But never mind that.

“Well, my unconventional hostess returned in a few minutes, and we sat sipping our tea on the little balcony in the mild autumnal night.

“And as we sat we talked—as fancy led; she in a rather high-pitched voice, and with curious half-gestures. It seemed as if she thought always with arrow on the string and bow bent—a bow which a dull world had invariably reminded her to slacken. Her eyes were extraordinarily dark and lustrous in the shadow of that thin clear light, revealing, it seemed, a curious exaltation of spirit at this sudden and strange return to solitude and to her old home. She exulted in her solitude, and had not the least misgiving at the thought of staying indefinitely in the house.

“'It won't be for long,' she repeated. 'They have patched and tortured and experimented, and at last I am done. They've as good as told me so now, the poor dear, scientific creatures. Surely it is not surrender when the wound is mortal and the enemy is—that one. But enemy! What shallow, stuffy nonsense that is! We have handed down our restless memories, the old forlorn absurdities, father to son and son again, and now I am, well, just the last echo of the refrain before the end. 'Ah, Elizabeth,' mother used to laugh at me in the old days when we were a happy family in the Wood, 'he will sing to you too in due season.' Probably she meant a far tamer fowl. In her heart of hearts she hated the wander-taint, as you may imagine. And yet—she herself at last couldn't resist it. We are wayfaring men one and all and my journey will be better than dreams.'

“There was a peculiar sidelong movement of her head, as she said this; she was stooping a little, busied over the tea-things. With teapot poised in one thin narrow hand, she suddenly turned on me.

“'Shall I tell you why? Shall I?' Again that curious movement, and I fancied for an instant that she was about to cry. 'It is because I am coming back.'

“For an instant or two I did not catch her meaning; then, with that odd warmth and confusion within one's very body which any unforeseen reference to death inevitably brings, I muttered a few of the familiar clichés. 'Besides,' I added, 'look at me. Surely this face is nearer the sight of death than yours. You cannot see your own in this moonlight. Shall we have a wager on it? And pay—when at last we meet again? For good? Come, now.'

“'Yes, but you see,' she replied eagerly, 'it's all very well to talk about happy reunions. Where? Call it a condition of mind; whose? Surely that which found the very bones of its delight here? Do you remember what Catherine says in Wuthering Heights? But there, never mind, when my bird wings free, I know its resting place. I know it. You see? The ones that have gone—they changed little; but strangely and instantaneously. And now they some finer air, have rarer senses, and their tap is heard on walls of the mind that are scarcely there, so tenuous they are. Not that I want proof. And such proof! I know it. And when your time comes, I give you my invitation now. What is that old phœnix of ours? Do you suppose we could snare him, cage him; tie him to a perch? Isn't he in our very minds? How then? Could we be else than wanderers? May we be forgiven for this futile waste of its powers.'

“I suppose I was a little taken aback by this outpouring. For she leaned her face into her hands and laughed.

“'Just 'hysteria,' you are thinking,' she said suddenly, looking up at me from them. I sat in the shadow now, so perhaps my face was not too clearly visible.

“'But what is this coming back?' I stupidly questioned.

“'Oh, but you don't understand,' she cried, turning breathlessly on me. 'It is here now. And then, shall I not see? shall I not know? and probably before the very last of these leaves is fallen? Oh, how I detest the sentimentality they talk; fobbing us off with their precious stones and golden harps. Symbols if you like, but beyond any poor earthly spirit's hope or desire. If we humans have climbed to where we are—though I don't believe it—by way of the happy and innocent animals, do you suppose we are going to suddenly jump half-a-dozen stories instead of ascending on and on and on? What is space but the all I am? What is time but the all I was and shall be? I cannot express myself, but if you could hear the roaring of the fire here, you would not be wanting any words. Never in the whole of my reading, in the whole queer skein of things called my life—never have I encountered a single human being who expressed a tenth of the sheer delight of sharing—well, say, just that bit of garish moon in this tiny bowl of the world's greenery. 'Blind,' 'ungrateful,' 'worms of earth,' no word in the language could express our fatuity. Then I shall be free … But there, it's time, as the old Scottish ballad says, you were awa'. And it's time, as some less anonymous poet says, I sought my couch. I confess I hated the very sight of you when I saw you trespassing in my woods. Another hereditary taint. But you have forgiven me … and I will walk a little distance with you on your way.'

“Well, I confess, her vehemence had stirred up my sluggish mind a good deal more even than had the bird before her. I followed her all but in silence. We came to a kind of alley, its yew hedge long untended, though the light of the moon pierced through upon its sward.

“She paused, her face averted. 'And now'—she said, 'goodbye, for this life. Yours that way; mine this. And may all that is meant by heaven be with you.'

“I did as I was bid. Silence crept in upon me—an entire world—like a dangerous flood. The grass was hoar with a moonlight almost as white as snow. The years seemed to melt away like a dream, and, as I turned, seeing her there still waiting, I realised that she herself must have devised this echo of our first and only other meeting. The strange rapt face looked curiously unreal. With queer contrary thoughts in my mind, I gazed across at her, not more trustful of my eyes perhaps in that uncertain light than I had been of my ears earlier in the evening. She did not stir. All perfectly still things seem to have a look of agelessness and of the eternal. And then—I turned on my heel, and when, now no longer a shy awkward silly boy, I looked back as of old and for the last time; again it was in vain. She was gone. …”

So this, it appeared was all. This was the story of “The Wood”! We others glanced a little uncomfortably at one another, I remember, at this crisis in the evening's talk—a poet's story in sober earnest: incoherent, obscure, unreal, unlifelike, without an ending.

“And the Bird?” cried one of us, maybe a little more “fatuous” than the rest. The old man was at that moment beckoning to the Club waiter, and appeared not to have noticed the question. And nobody, it seemed, had either the stupidity or the courage to add, “And what, pray, are you waiting for?”