The Day Before Yesterday. Richard Middleton

strangely altered. The familiar lanes had become rivers of changing shadows, the hedgerows were ambuscades of robbers, the tall trees were affronted giants. Fortunately, we were on very good terms with the moon at the time, so when she made her periodical appearances from behind the scudding clouds she came as a friend. Nevertheless, when my hand accidentally touched my brother’s in the dark it stayed there, and we were glad to walk along hand in hand, a situation which we would have thought deplorable for two fellows of our years by day. It seemed to me that my brother was breathing shortly and noisily as if he were excited, but presently the surprising thought came to me that it might be my own breathing that I heard. As we drew near to Hayward’s Wood the moon retired behind a cloud, and stayed there. This was hardly friendly of her, for the wood was terribly dark, and the noise of our own stumblings made us pause in alarm again and again. When we stood still and listened all the trees seemed to be saying “Hush!”

      Somehow we reached the pool at last, and stayed our steps on the bank expectantly. At first we could see nothing but shadows, but, after a while, we discovered that it was full of drowned stars, a little pale as though the water had extinguished some of their fire. And then, as we wondered at this, the moon shone through the branches overhead and lit the wood with a cool and mysterious radiance that reminded me oddly of the transformation scene in our last pantomime. My brother pulled his watch out of his pocket, but his hand shook so that he could hardly tell the time. “Five minutes more,” he whispered hoarsely. I tried to answer him, and found that I could not speak.

      And then, as we waited breathlessly, we heard a noise among the undergrowth on the other side of the pool—a noise, it seemed, of footsteps, that grew louder and louder in our excited ears, till it was as if all the armies of the world were tramping through the wood. And then . . . and then . . .

      When we stopped to get our breath halfway home we first discovered that neither of us had had presence of mind enough to wish. But we knew that there was no going back. We had had our chance, and missed it. But, even now, I do not doubt that it was a magic pool.

THE STORY-TELLER

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      He changed with the seasons, and, like the seasons, was welcome in every mood. In spring he was forlorn and passionate in turn; now fiercely eloquent, now tuneful with those little cheerful songs that seem in terms of human emotion to be the saddest of all. In summer he dreamed in sensuous and unambitious idleness, gladly conscious of the sunshine and warm winds and flower-smells, and using only languorous and gentle words. In autumn, with the dead leaves of the world about his feet, he became strangely hopeful and generous of glad promises of adventure and conquest. It seemed as though he found it easier to triumph when Nature had abdicated her jealous throne. But it was in the winter-time when he came into his own kingdom, and mastered his environment and his passions to make the most joyful songs. Then he would lie at full length on the hearthrug, and we children, sitting in a rapt circle, fantastically lit by the fire, would listen to his stories, and know that they were the authentic wisdom.

      It was in vain that the grown-ups warned us against the fascinations of his society, telling us that dreamers came to no good end in a practical world. As well might the townsfolk of Hamelin, in Brunswick, have ordered their children to turn a deaf ear to the tune of the Pied Piper. We had studied life from a practical point of view between our games, and found it unsatisfying; this man brought us something infinitely more desirable. He would come stepping with delicate feet, fearful of trampling on our own tender dreams, and he would tell us the enchanted stories that we had not heard since we were born. He told us the meaning of the stars and the significance of the sun and moon; and, listening to him, we remembered that we had known it all once before in another place. Sometimes even we would remind him of some trivial incident that he had forgotten, and then he would look at us oddly and murmur sadly that he was getting very old. When the stories were over, and all the room was still ringing with beautiful echoes, he would stand erect and ask us fiercely whether we saw any straws in his hair. We would climb up him to look (for he was very tall), and when we told him that we could not find any he would say: “The day you see them there will be no more stories.” We knew what the stories were worth to us, so we were always afraid of looking at his head for fear that we should see the straws and all our gladdest hours should be finished.

      His voice was all the music extant, and it was only by recalling it that our young ears could find that there was beauty in fine singing and melodiousness in the chaunt of birds. Yet when his words were eloquent we forgot the voice and the speaker, content to sacrifice our critical individualities to his inspiration till we were no more than dim and silent figures in the background of his tale. It was only in winter-time that he achieved this supreme illusion; perhaps the firelight helped him, and the chill shadows of the world. In the summer his stories had the witchery of dreams; their realism startled us, and yet we knew that they were not real. After listening to them through a hot afternoon we would stretch back into consciousness, as though we had been asleep; his drowsy fancies lulled our personalities, but did not conquer them. The winter magic was of a rarer kind. Then even his silences became significant, for he brought us to so close an intimacy with his mind that his very thoughts seemed like words.

      It is idle to expect a child to believe that every grown-up person was a child once upon a time, for it is not credible that they could have forgotten so much. But this man was a child both in feeling and in understanding. He knew the incidents that perplexed us in those nursery legends that have become classics, and sometimes it was his pleasure to tell them to us again, having regard to our wakeful sympathies. He was the friend of all the poor, lost creatures of romance—the giants whose humiliating lot it was to be defeated by any stripling lad, the dragons whose flaming strength was a derision when opposed to virtue in armour. He shared our pity for Antæus and Caliban and Goliath of Gath, and even treated sorcerers and wicked kings with reasonable humanity. Somehow, though we felt that it was wicked, we could not help being sorry for people when they were punished very severely. The very ease with which giants could be outwitted suggested that the great simple fellows might prove amiable enough if they were kindly treated, while it was always possible that dragons might turn out to be bewitched princes, if only the beautiful princesses would kiss them instead of sending heroes to kill them unfairly, without giving them an opportunity of explaining their motives. Our story-teller understood our scruples and sympathised with them, and in his versions every one had a chance, whether they were heroes or no. Even the best children are sometimes cruel, but they are never half so pitiless as the writers of fairy-stories.

      But better than any fairy-stories were the stories that he told us of our own lives, which under his touch became the wonderful adventures which they really were. He showed us that it was marvellous to get out of bed in the morning, and marvellous to get into bed at night. He made us realise the imaginative value of common things, and the fun that could be derived even from the performance of duties, by aid of a little make-believe. The grown-up folk would probably have derided his system, but he made us tolerate our lessons, and endure the pangs of toothache with some degree of fortitude. He had a short way with the ugly bogies with which thoughtless nurses and chance echoes from the horrors columns of newspapers had peopled the shadows of our life. We were no longer afraid of the dark when he had told us how friendly it could be to the distressed. Hitherto we had vainly sought to find the colours and sounds of romance in life, and, failing, had been tempted to sum up the whole business as tedious. After he had shown us how to do it, it was easy to see that life itself was a story as romantic as we cared to make it. Our daily official walks became gallant expeditions, and we approached arithmetic with a flaming sword.

      Can any childhood ever have known a greater wizard than this? And yet since that state does not endure for ever, it must surely have happened to us to seek for straws in his towering head once too often, had not death taken our kindly enchanter from our company, and thus spared us the bitter discovery that the one man who reconciled us to life was considered rather more than eccentric by an obtuse world. It is true that we noticed that the grown-up people were apt to treat him sometimes as if he were one of us, but we felt that he merited this distinction, and did not find it strange. Nor did we wonder that he should tell stories aloud to himself