The White island

Front matter

THE LIBRARY

OF

LOS ANGELES

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

PROLOGUE. To THE ANGELS OF THE NATIONS i

I. FATHER ANTHONY STANDISH TO HIS NIECE,

Prologue

TO THE ANGELS OF THE NATIONS

LORDS of the nations ! ye who lead By ways of peace and ways of strife, Content to yield a passing good To serve the glory of the Life, Ye lead your peoples through the gloom ; They writhe beneath your heavy rod, That they may rise again and rest In the still Glory of their God. In 'earthly glory, bliss and ease Ye see a foolish passing show. Upon your course ye sternly press, By ways of failure steadfast go. Ye see the Purpose great and high ; The marvel of God's Plan ye know; Why should ye heed the fretful cry Of frail and foolish babes below? To lead the nation of your lot, To serve unmov'd the Hidden Plan For which alone all nature lives, Both plant and angel, beast and man; This is your task, ye mighty Pow'rs, Servants of Him Whose perfect Love Leads men and nations by the Cross To rest within the Height above. Our life is death to you, great lords ; And this is Life and this alone — To stand within the Light of God, Upon the footsteps of His Throne.

Chapter I Father Anthony Standish To His Niece, Catherine Arbuthnot

"Mr DEAR CATHERINE, — You say you have ceased to believe that Justice is the underlying law of the universe. You are not content with a 'finite God' ; your God must be infinite, eternal, all-powerful, changeless, and without beginning. Well, I agree with you! Anything less than this is not God. But, you say, if He be thus, He is not Justice.

"I have heard many a one say this, Cathy, but I have never yet heard any one give the reason you give for your conclusions. I have heard of those who rested in faith in God's Justice in a world of pain, until pain touched them. When the anguish was their own, and not that of their neighbour, all was changed. They cried, 'He is not just, that / should suffer.' But you, my niece, complain that He is not just because He has spared you suffering. That is what I might have expected from the Catherine Standish of twenty years ago, who turned upon my conscience-stricken brother with crimson cheeks, brimming eyes, and little feet that stamped with rage because he had weakly suffered his youngest daughter, who had participated in the crime of Alice and Teddy, to escape the retribution which fell upon them : namely, bed at 4.30 on a summer day ! You say your husband was needed to do important work at home, that your boy is but five years old; that your income is untouched. The world's anguish has passed you by; and there is nothing you have done, or are ever likely to do, to deserve it.

"Let us avoid the question as to whether pain is necessarily an evil, and prosperity an invariable blessing. But I would suggest to you that we can't dogmatise when we do not know all the

THE FATHER TO HIS NIECE 5

facts. The world we see is but a small corner of all there is to see. Because I know this, I am going, with the permission of those chiefly concerned, to tell you a story. You and I have this in common with Peter Pan : we refuse to grow up — at any rate where stories are concerned. We shall never outgrow our greed for them.

"The hero of my story is not unlike him, either, in making the same refusal, though from a different cause.

"I shall tell you the tale, premising that it will make demands on your credulity, and may even shake your belief in the truthfulness of "Your affectionate uncle,

"ANTHONY STANDISH."

Chapter II

IT was in the early summer of 1899 tnat I re' ceived a letter from Lady Lansworthy — you know her, I think? She is Jesse Cameron's aunt, his father's sister. She wrote to tell me she had let a house which belonged to her to Mr. and Mrs. Clinton.

The house in question — One Holly — is about a mile from Brent if you walk "as the crow flies" across the Forest. Lady Lansworthy said the Clintons wanted a house to which they could run down now and then from town. They had taken One Holly for the summer from the present tenants, with the idea of leasing it, if it suited them, when the lease now running expired, as it would do at Christmas.

Lady Lansworthy went on to say the Clintons

would like to make my acquaintance and visit

Brent. She asked me whether I would call upon them. She said, using a phrase I dislike, that Mrs. Clinton was "quite a good Church woman," but she feared Mr. Clinton was "rather indifferent to religion, as so many intellectual men appear to be."

Of course you know Mr. Clinton by repute. At that time he was just beginning to attract attention as a brilliant essayist and writer on some burning questions of the day. He had, I believe, an exceptionally distinguished career at Oxford. Altogether he was somewhat of a personage. He was member for Stacktown at the time he took One Holly; people were beginning to predict he would one day be in the Cabinet, a prediction which has never been fulfilled.

He married a very wealthy woman; she was also handsome, and possessed of just the kind of cleverness which is useful in the wife of such a man as Clinton was. She had all the domestic virtues; and in addition was a social success, tactful, agreeable, a good listener, a woman who knew when to speak and when to be silent. And she was ambitious, not for herself, but for him.

I went to call on the Clintons in obedience to Lady Lansworthy's request. The house is not in Brent parish, therefore it is probable I should not have visited them had she not wished me to do so. They were at home ; I found them sitting on the lawn under the cedars. One Holly is a pretty house, not large, but with charming gardens full of old trees. The back gate opens directly on to the Forest.

The Clintons were just a family party; Mr. and Mrs. Clinton, the three children, and the French governess. There was a little girl of ten — Margaret; Jane, aged eight; and the boy, Rene, who was six years old. Mr. Clinton's mother was a Frenchwoman ; her Christian name was Renee, and the little grandson was named after her.

The girls were delightful children; frank, simple, natural, quite at their ease but not at all forward; they were evidently excellently brought up. Nevertheless, charming as they were, it was the boy, Rene, who drew my attention. I do not think I ever saw such a strange little face. He was a little thin shrimp of a child, who had just outgrown the round curves of babyhood. His face had the most curious pallor, and his grey eyes were pale, too.

I once saw a milk-white mist-wreath lying athwart the Cornish coast; the sun's rays smote it without dispelling the mist, so that it lay — luminous life-filled whiteness — veiling the coast-line and the rolling, incoming sea.

Rene Clinton's pallor was like that mist. There was a wraith-like quality about the whole quaint little personality. His hair — a thick shock of hair, very fine, and with no curl in it — was of a dull gold like that used for aureoles in old missals. But the most curious thing about his whole appearance was that his dominant characteristic was neither colour nor form — but light. I am well aware that this sounds like incipient insanity, therefore I must explain further my reason for making such a statement.

With some people it is their colouring which strikes the eye ; with others their form and outline. With Rene it was neither. I gained an impression of luminosity; when I proceeded to investigate and analyse impressions, I realised that the face was small and insignificant, the eyes very light grey, and the hair an unlustrous pale gold.

When he had shaken hands with me he slipped away from the group and climbed on to the low bough of an old cedar. I could see him, as I talked with his father and mother, sitting there in his little holland blouse and knickers, his thin sunburnt legs and little bare feet dangling from the bough. He was evidently in a private dreamland of his own, and his moving, crooning lips testified that he was "telling himself a story."

Presently he climbed down and vanished into the bushes ; but when I was saying good-bye to Mr. Clinton at the gate which opens into the Forest, Rene suddenly flitted out of the laurels like an elf, and slipped his hand into his father's.

"Well, Rene," said I, "did you finish the Story you were telling yourself in the cedar?"

He looked up at me with his odd light eyes — he had a very steady direct gaze — and answered without a trace of shyness :

"Yes. But it was only a pertence — that one !"

"Will you come over to Brent and tell me a story one day*?" said I. 'Tm very fond of stories. Come before the strawberries have gone."

"I'll come," he answered solemnly. "Do you like truly or pertence stories best?"

"It's very kind of you, Father Standish," said Clinton. "But it is a little rash. You must not let him be a nuisance to you. You're perilously near our back gate, you know. Rene, you must not run over to Brent, except when Father Standish is kind enough to ask you."

"Father Standish did ask me," said Rene, with no abatement of his solemnity. "And I are not going to be a nuisance."

"That's all right," said Clinton, laughing. "I hope you will let me come too, Father Standish ; though I am afraid I only deal in hard facts."

I assured him I should be glad to see him, repeated my invitation to the mist-child, and took my way home across the Forest.

Three days later, I was just leaving the chapel when I saw a small holland-clad, sandalled figure standing motionless in the cloister, staring earnestly at a figure of S. Michael which stands in a niche. It is a very fine piece of work.

We do not talk in the cloister ; so I smiled and nodded, took the child's hand and led him into the turf quadrangle where the Cornish cross stands; you remember it, a big cross of grey granite.

"That's right, Rene," I said. "That's very kind of you. You've come to tell me my story."

"I are come to tell you," he said seriously, with a heavy sigh as of one who has successfully combated difficulties. "I 'tickerlily wanted to. I couldn't make them let me before. They said I should be a bother."

"They were mistaken," I replied. "We will come and have our strawberries in the little garden of the Holy Child, and there you shall tell me my story."

The garden of the Holy Child is a garden within a garden; it is walled round by an old box hedge, ten feet high, and very closely clipped. The garden has turf walks, and the only flowers in it are a profusion of different kinds of lilies and roses, save in the spring, when snowdrops and scillas reign there in great masses. At one end is a broad grey stone bench facing a little shrine at the opposite end of the garden, which takes its name from the shrine, for therein is a Figure of the Holy Mother with her Divine Child.

The Child bends forward from His Mother's arms, His little hand raised in blessing; it is a lovely, gracious and very child-like figure; it is the work of a woman.

Rene and I sat on the bench, and I had the strawberries brought there, in a big cabbage-leaf, by a gardening boy.

"Now," said I, "we'll begin with our strawberries and go on to our story, shall we*?"

I said this because I supposed the immediate attraction of the red juicy berries would be hard

H THE WHITE ISLAND

to resist. I saw this was a mistake on my part. Rene was very polite and assented at once ; but evidently the strawberries were to him an unimportant detail ; he loved better his dreamland.

He ate the crimson fruit slowly ; and as he ate I talked a little ; asking him questions to draw him out. At last I asked him what he was going to be when he was a man. He paused with a strawberry in his hand and said slowly :

"I've never thought."

Then, as though striving to make up to me for his own deficiencies, he said :

"Margaret says it would be nice to write books; but Jane says it would be nicer to be an engine-driver, 'cause then you'd be always going away somewhere."

"It's very useful to be an engine-driver," said I.

"Y-yes," he said doubtfully. "But I shouldn't like always to be going away. And truly stories are useful too."

"True stories'?" said I. "Well, yes! Sometimes they are."

"Not true stories," he said quickly. "Truly stories, not pertence."

"Rene/' said I, "what's the difference between true and truly stories'?"

"If I was to say there's a drefful dragon to eat you in that bush," he replied, "that's all a pertence; and you needn't be frightened — not unless you like to be."

"I see !" I answered.

"Jane likes to be frightened," he said. "But if she gets too frightened she screams, and Margaret tells her she's a silly."

"But what's a truly story, Rene*?" I asked.

"If I tell you a very brave thing," said Rene, "that's a truly story ; because there is very brave people, and it makes you feel so."

He waved his arms skywards with a spacious gesture.

"And a true story?"

"If I say what we had for dinner, that's true."

"I see. A little dull V

"Well ! True stories is generally duller than truly stories."

"And which will you tell me*?"

"I should like," he answered slowly and thoughtfully, letting the strawberry he held fall on the grass, "to tell you about the White Island."

"Is it truly or pretence?"

"It isn't either. The White Island is true."

"Is it dull?'

"No. It's the very truliest place there is."

"I should like to hear about it. Where is it?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know ! Who told you about it?"

"Not nobody," said Rene with much earnestness.

"Have you been there, then?"

"Yes."

"Often?"

"Two times."

"How did you get there, Rene?"

"I didn't."

"Didn't get there?"

"No. You don't get there. You're there." "There, without knowing how you get there*? Do you get there after you go to sleep, is that

it?'

"No. That's when you dream."

"And you don't get to the White Island when you dream1?"

"No. There's dream things there. But you don't dream."

"Well," said I. "Suppose you tell me what it looks like, Rene."

"There's water all round it. And it's white as white."

"Yes?'

"And the cliffs all round are white."

"Yes?'

"And the stream is white."

He paused, and his eyes roved over the roses, glowing pink, crimson, white and golden in the June sunshine.

"All the colours come from the White Island," he said.

The words startled me. I began to wonder what lay behind this queer working of a childbrain.

"Is there no colour there, then?" I asked.

"Yes," he replied. "There's green pastures."

I thought I had the clue. Some one had been reading the Twenty-third Psalm to the dreamy, sensitive little boy. I was right ; in so far that I found he knew it.

"Sheep in the pasture, I suppose ?" I said.

"Yes. Black ones and white. And there's a little house. But it's a dream-house. No one lives there."

"Why is it there, then?"

" 'Cause it means a secret."

"What secret does it mean?"

"What houses do mean."

"And what do houses mean?"

"I telled you. They're a secret."

I felt I was getting out of my depth, and I hastened, as I thought, into the shallows.

"Is there anything else there?" said I.

"Yes," answered Rene. "There's the Joyous Shepherd."

The words were uttered with such swiftness and certainty, and were so strange from the lips of the child, that I exclaimed involuntarily:

"Who told you that?"

"No one telled me," he answered.

"How do you know the shepherd is joyous, and what does the word mean?"

For I felt sure the little boy was using a word without knowing its precise meaning. Children often do this; sometimes attaching to a word thus spoken an undisclosed meaning of their own.

"I don't know," he answered. "And I don't know just what joyous means. But it's what he is. He's the Joyous Shepherd."

"What does he do? Watch the sheep?"

"I s'pose so. And I s'pose he makes music."

"Why do you suppose that?"

" 'Cause there is a big music. An' there's no one else there to make it."

I determined to lead the conversation to another subject. After a while I made him tell me a "pertence" story of an extremely thrilling character, and then I took him to see the Persian kittens, and promised to give him one of them later.

I walked home with him across the Forest, and saw him safely into the back gate at One Holly.

Chapter III The Sprite From One Holly

A FEW days later Mr. Clinton came over to Brent to see the farm. I spoke to him of Rene, saying how much I had been struck by the child's play of fancy and quaint thought. He answered with a little touch of fretfulness.

"Yes, yes," he said, "there's too much play of fancy. However, I think he will soon get rid of all that at school. I shall send him to school as soon as he is eight. He is very backward."

"But he is only six years old."

"True ! And I do not think nursery children should be pressed with lessons. Their brains suffer for it later. But he is backward, for all that. The governess can get nothing into his idle little head. I doubt if he can read. But I think all will be well when he is with other boys."

He hesitated. Then he said :

"Father Standish, did the child tell you his queer 'White Island' fancy*?"

"He did," I answered.

"Now I should like your advice as to how to deal with that," said Clinton. "My wife's mother, who is of the old school, is terribly shocked. She thinks the child ought to be whipped for lying. I won't allow that. I should be severe in a case of genuine lying, but I do not think this is one. I believe I am fairly tolerant; but I should not like a boy of mine to be a liar. If I thought Rene lied, I should punish him for it. But he is truthful. He is the most accurate in his thought and careful in his statements of the three children. I never hear him make loose and exaggerated reports of anything which has happened."

"I noticed," I answered, "the perfectly clear distinctions he drew between actual occurrences, tales which were simply personifications of possibilities, and tales with no possible foundation in the world of facts, which were sheer and con-

SPRITE FROM ONE HOLLY 23

scious creations of fancy. I thought it meant an instinct for truth, and a clarity of thought rather unusual in a child of six."

"It is true," he said. "I gather you think with me. The boy ought not to be punished for lying1?"

"I think you would do him a great injustice," I replied. "When a truthful person makes an inexplicable statement, you owe it to him to treat his statement with respect, though you may find it impossible of credence. Rene's 'White Island' is real to him. To punish him as a liar would be a gross injustice. Don't let him feel that injustice lies at the root of things in his little world."

"I am glad you feel that," answered Clinton. "I shall take your advice. I'm sure it's sound. This 'island' idea of his is a queer thing, and I don't like it. But I expect the better plan is to take no notice of it; the fancy will die or get crowded out by facts."

I assented. At the same time I wondered, just in passing, whether Rene's White Island was a root fact.

"There is one thing to be said," went on Clinton cheerfully. "The child is a remarkably good boy. He is very obedient, and never out of temper. He is unselfish ; he never wants to keep anything he can give up to the girls. And the little chap has any amount of pluck. I do not know of anything, real or imaginary, that he is afraid of."

I gave Rene the freedom of Brent, and the quaint little boy took a great fancy to the place. He used to come over alone from One Holly, for he was very independent in his ways, and, as his father said, quite fearless. We became used to the sight of the quiet little figure. He never claimed our attention, nor did he seem to want it.

Once I found him in the chapel, standing motionless, with his eyes fixed on the white veil of the Tabernacle. But for the most part he flitted about the gardens and the farm lands.

One day my friend, David Alison, who has

SPRITE FROM ONE HOLLY 25

rooms in the guest-house, came to my room off the cloister.

"What is there about that sprite from One Holly that makes me feel Eternity to be man's natural dwelling-place*?" he said suddenly.

I looked up from my desk with a sense that Alison had given expression to a vague thought which had been lurking in the back of my mind, and troubling me because I could not put it into form.

"My dear David," said I, "I'm grateful to you. That is what small Rene Clinton does make me feel. That is precisely it! But why? I fear I cannot answer you that."

"I came across him just now," said Alison. "I went into the garden of the Holy Child to look at the lilies. I saw Rene sitting crosslegged on the grass before the shrine. I said, 'Hullo, little chap, what are you doing?' He scrambled up, and said in his portentously solemn way : 'I are telling a truly story to the Holy Child, Mr. Alison.' He looked more like a little white flame than a flesh-and-blood child."

Alison's words made me think of the legends I had heard of child saints whose gambols the Holy Babe deigned to join. I wondered whether He had gathered up Rene's little offering of faith and love, his "truly story," and garnered it among His Treasures.

There came a night, the fourth of September, in the summer of 1917, when I felt sure He had done so.

Chapter IV

AT the end of the summer the Clintons left One Holly and did not return there. I do not know whether they did not like the house, or whether some hitch occurred in their arrangements with Lady Lansworthy.

They went away, and I heard nothing of them for fourteen years. When I say I did not hear of them, I mean I had no personal communication with them. I heard of Clinton from time to time. I read some of his writings. People who came to the guest-house mentioned him, for he was increasingly in the public eye. I heard that his daughter Jane was remarkably beautiful, and I saw in the papers that she was married. It was what is called a "good match."

I often thought of little Rene; and I prayed 27 for him, especially during the years in which I knew he must be growing from youth to manhood.

In the spring of 1913, while we were yet living in our fool's paradise of a false peace, I received a letter from Mrs. Clinton. She wrote as follows: —

"DEAR FATHER STANDISH, — I think you will scarcely remember me ; it is fourteen years, I believe, since we were your neighbours at One Holly. You were very kind then to my boy ; I suppose that is why my mind turns to you now. A very bitter sorrow has fallen upon me and upon my husband. The most bitter and cruel, I think, we could possibly have been called upon to endure. It has utterly undermined my faith. I do not believe in God's Love, nor in His Justice. Perhaps when you read these words you will refuse to help me. For Rene's sake I entreat you not to refuse. You are the one hope I have. My husband has none. But I have just a little hope that you will make my cup less bitter. May I come and see you*?

"Yours very sincerely,

"THERESA CLINTON."

I wrote at once, expressing my sympathy, and asking her to choose her own time for coming to Brent. She came to stay at an hotel in Lexminster, and came to Brent in a hired car. She arrived at the guest-house, and I went to her at once. She was a very handsome, dignified, and graceful woman; she was then forty- four, and she did not look very much older than she did when I saw her at One Holly.

Her manner was composed and restrained ; she did not display her emotion during the first five minutes of our interview. She asked after David Alison, and spoke of his books; commented on the spring flowers in our gardens, and spoke of the marriage of her daughter Jane to an American.

Then came a silent pause; during which she sat with her eyes fixed on the floor, I broke iti

"Mrs. Clinton," I said, "I hope you know that if there is anything I can do "

She rose and walked to the window. Standing with her back to me, she spoke.

"You have not heard of our great trouble?" she asked.

"Only from you, and you gave me no details."

"No," she said, "you are not one to hear gossip. There is gossip enough about it, but they do not readily bring it to you."

Then she turned. Her face was working with agony. Her hands were clenched.

"O," she cried, "the pain of knowing the talk and chatter is the least part ! Father Standish, if there be a God, He is cruel ! What can it be but cruelty that stabs us through our child1? What can it be but incompetent folly or malignant cruelty? O, I shock you! I shock you! But just look at it! A wasted life! Exquisite pain to me and to my husband. We were not neglectful parents. We were prepared to spare neither pains nor expense to make him a credit to us, and a useful member of society. And this happens — this! How can you wonder if my faith is dead4?"

"Faith never dies," I answered, "Faith is that which is brought to birth when God's Touch falls on the spirit of man. It is an immortal thing. Belief is sometimes a name for the noncritical acceptance of statements in which we are not sufficiently interested to inquire whether they are true. That kind of belief cannot weather a storm."

She looked at me for a moment.

"You've hit home, Father Standish," she said. "I have accepted things without inquiry because I was not very deeply interested in them. I own that. I am worldly. If the choice had been put before me as to whether Rene should be a S. Francis of Assisi or Prime Minister of England, I should have chosen the latter. I know that. But doesn't that make it harder for me now1?"

"It does," I answered. "I gather that your sorrow is caused by Rene. Is it not so?"

She nodded silently. She could not speak /or the moment. When she spoke, her lips trembled ; and she found it hard to form her words.

"You remember him," she said. "He was a strange, dreamy little boy, wasn't he*?"

"He was. He interested me very much."

"My husband so built on him," she went on. "We had two girls, and he was so delighted when the boy came. He is an ambitious man, Father Standish, but his ambitions for our son were greater than for himself. You know — though I am his wife, I must say it — he is very able."

"Every one knows that," I replied.

"Margaret is like him," she continued. "You may have heard how brilliant his career was at the University. Hers has been equally so. She went to Newnham; she carried off everything she could. There was no man of her year who did so well as she. My husband does not care much for that kind of cleverness in a woman. He likes a clever woman. He likes a woman who can 'tenir un salon' and help her husband socially. Jane is more of that type. But he was pleased about Margaret, too."

She paused for a few seconds.

"But all his real hopes were for Rene. Think, Father Standish, what an awful blow it was when he found they could never be realised."